All posts by Joseph

Usual Rubbish

Xmas again.

2000 Years to Christmas

I don’t know. Why don’t we just toss it out into the street and see if anyone happens upon it? Wait … that was our original marketing strategy? Did it work? Huh. I thought not. Oh, well … maybe twice is the charm.

Oh, hi, silent majority of Americans who read this blog on a regular basis. I didn’t recognize you at first with that mask on. You just caught us in the middle of a marketing strategy session – we’re trying to shift more physical and digital copies of our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, a full twenty years after its release. (I’m sure you’ve noticed the banner. Yeah, that was us that put that there.) We’ve got discs stacked in the basement of the hammer mill, discs serving as ashtrays and drink coasters, discs nailed to the walls of the bathroom in a psychedelic mirror-room kind of effect – freaky! We’ve handed them out, tossed them out, used them as Frisbees, table hockey pucks, sacred amulets, etc. Everything but sold them. Yes, as capitalists, we’re abject failures. We’re the worst robber barons ever!

Well, it’s time to embrace our failure and make it our own. Now that it’s aged a solid two decades and made its way into countless music services, we’ve finally gotten around to posting 2000 Years To Christmas on YouTube. I’ve handed the task off to Marvin (my personal robot assistant), and he has assured me that he will upload the songs in a timely fashion. Of course, his wifi connection is a little wonky, and we can’t afford decent internet around this joint, so we have to rely on him rolling on his gimbals past the public library so that he can tap into their free wifi long enough to send another music video skyward. That necessarily involves circling the library a few times, maybe five, maybe seven for the longer songs. Eventually, the librarian comes running out of the building, swinging a yardstick at Marvin and telling him to get the hell out. I’ve programmed Marvin to comply, so he does so … then comes back later. (I programmed that into him, too.)

He's dead, Lincoln. And he's fictional!

Is this a reasonable strategy for a band in this era of COVID lockdown? Hell, I don’t know. Are there any reasonable strategies? We’re just pushing shit out there, hoping someone hears it and gets some enjoyment out of it. Or not. Either way, putting an album on YouTube is the functional equivalent of dropping it in the middle of the street and hoping someone happens upon it. So you could say we’ve been consistent from the get-go with this album.

I know some of my colleagues disagree with this approach. “Get a manager”, they holler, “like that blonde guy on the Partridge Family!” “I think he’s dead,” I’ll respond, but they are undeterred. “Did you try to call him,” they say. “Did you send him a postcard? His name is Reuben Kincaid!” Hoo man. I guess I’ll have to write that postcard if I ever want to get anti-matter Lincoln off my back. I just wish to hell someone would tear him away from his classic TV channel.

Political Rants

Eyes open.

We’ve reached a moment in American life when blindness is no longer an option. When I say “American life”, I’m referring to the world of relatively comfortable white people, a world I inhabit. A lot of the people in this world were skeptical of the notion that racism is a feature of our society, not a bug. Many still are, I’m sure, but not as many as at the beginning of this year. We’ve seen race-based murder on the part of police and vigilantes many times in the decade prior to January 2020, but like mass shootings, they never seemed to move the needle on public opinion. And again, by “public opinion”, I mean the views of relatively comfortable white people, whose preferences and sentiments drive public policy (not as much as corporate power does, but to some degree).

In July of 2014, Eric Garner was choked to death by a New York City cop. It was an arbitrary, racist killing shockingly caught on video, and yet very little happened as a result. The cop was eventually fired, that’s about it. George Floyd was killed in a similarly arbitrary, racist manner, caught on video, but as if to underline the heinousness of the abuse of power that took Garner’s life, Floyd’s murderers affected a kind of casual air as they choked the life out of him, keeping the knee on his neck minutes after he stopped breathing. And the effect was like, listen up, white people, this REALLY is a thing. If you didn’t get it when you saw Eric Garner heinously murdered by a choke hold, here’s the same crime plus a kind of devil-may-care attitude and mutilation for good measure.

In 2015, Walter Scott was shot in the back by a cop. The heinous crime was, again, caught on video. The cop went to jail, but still, not a lot changed. Now, five years later, Rayshard Brooks was killed in a similar way, under similar circumstances in some respects, but with the added outrage of physical abuse of the wounded victim. When Scott fled, his assailant shot him, then dropped his taser next to his dying victim in an attempt to substantiate his bogus police report. When Brooks fled, his assailant shot him through the heart, then kicked him as he lay dying while another cop put his boot on Brooks’s shoulders. So here again, it was as if the gods were saying, take another look, white people – Walter Scott’s death was not some kind of unicorn. This shit happens all the time.

Obviously, it takes a lot to get through our thick skulls. But if the recent wanton murders of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Breonna Taylor and others have opened some … perhaps most white people’s eyes a bit, well, better late than never, I suppose, though distinctly not better for the families of those we’ve lost.

luv u,

jp

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Usual Rubbish

Walled-off salad.

2000 Years to Christmas

I don’t have any walnuts. Apples? Nope, none of them either. Celery? Who the hell eats CELERY? Aside from anti-Lincoln, that is. (He’ll eat anything except chicken fricassee, the real Lincoln’s favorite dish.)

Yeah, well … it was bound to happen. This sequester, social distancing business is getting pretty old. I know what you’re going to say (just call me Kreskin) – But you guys are always cooped up in that abandoned hammer mill! you’ll say, what the hell’s the difference? Such an insolent question! Actually … yeah, you have a point, but watching all these crazy people get even crazier because of home confinement is prompting us to get kind of sick of it too, if only for appearances sake. I mean, I don’t want to be that guy … you know, the one that isn’t climbing up the walls, even though he hasn’t been able to go golfing since last November. Of course, I’m genuinely not that guy, but you see where I’m going with this, right? No? Fuck. I was hoping you could tell me.

Anyway, that’s me. What about my fellow hammer mill-dwellers? Well, they are going stir crazy. Nothing to do with the quarantine. It think they’re just sick of my stir fry. You see, I’ve somehow ended up as the mill cook by default. The job originally fell to Marvin (my personal robot assistant), as that seemed well within the scope of his job description. (“Other duties as assigned,” it says in big red letters.) Anyway, when he set a tossed salad on fire last week, he was out, and because he reports to me, they handed me the apron. I let a few days pass to see if they’d forget about it, but they didn’t, and well …. they were getting kind of hungry, so I put the kettle on. I’ve had worse assignments. Like selling insulated windows over the phone. Sheesh, what a gig!

I think it needs more fire.

Ever try to make something out of nothing? Well, if you haven’t, come on down the Cheney Hammer Mill kitchen. We’ve got some ginger root that’s been lying around the pantry for about five years. There’s a half jar of mustard. Two digestive biscuits. Half a pint of club soda. Oh … our neighbors sent over some carrots. Um … that’s about it. I’m making a casserole. By that, I mean … I’m throwing a bunch of random stuff in a pot and putting it on the fire. I might stir it a couple of times, but again … they didn’t like last night’s stir fry, and I’m getting a little sensitive about the criticism. Mitch Macaphee had the gall to put a review of my cooking up on Yelp. Ripped me a new one, the bastard. Hell, he‘s the mad scientist …. why doesn’t he just invent a decent dinner? TAKE WHAT YOU CAN GET, YOU SHIFTLESS MOTHERS!

Ahh, I feel much better now. Soup’s on!