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Winter pursuits.

Pass the all-spice. Now the dried currents. Okay, now shake this up. Shake harder! HARDER! That’s good. Okay … now we need five coconuts, cracked like hen’s eggs. Hurry, hurry!

Jebus Christmas. It’s so hard to get good ingredients this time of year. How the hell am I supposed to make Madagascarian ratatouille without five coconuts cracked like hen’s eggs? What the hell are we supposed to eat between now and St. Swithun’s day? Coal dust? Hammer handles? (Actually, they’re pretty close to corn on the cob if you close your eyes … and your mouth.) It’s a bit of an issue.

Aside from working on the next episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast, and the various songs contained therein, we do try to keep busy here inside the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill as the snow falls in sheets, covering the rolling farmland of upstate New York like a bedspread. It seems to slow everything down to a crawl this time of year. And yes, that is a lame attempt to blame the lateness of our first-of-2015 podcast episode on the weather or some other factor beyond our control. Let’s be honest: we’re freaking useless. But loveable, I like to think.

Yeah, that's the stuff.Tonight Matt and I will return to tracking the new songs we’ve been working on these long, frigid winter weeks. Mostly working on vocals now, though that effort often descends into strange hooting sounds and choruses of background harmonies that incorporate the words “banana boat” in some fashion. I had the temerity to attempt a guitar part the other day … an ELECTRIC guitar part … but thought better of it. Mostly confining myself to keys lately. House keys … and car keys. Now where did I leave that kazoo … ?

Apologies if I seem scattered this week. So much to do, so little time.  Then there’s the ratatouille and the recently discovered planet NASA’s been talking about. We’re considering sending Marvin (my personal robot assistant) up on a scouting missions to see if the new world contains any potential listeners. Could be why he’s been making himself scarce these last few days. COWARD!

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Week that was, part IX.

Sure, there’s a lot going on, and my inclination is to comment on some of it and leave the rest on the shelf. Hence, this is the week that was. Again.

Iraq Redux. It’s worth noting that Obama’s 300 military advisers have arrived in the nation we destroyed, ready to counsel the leaders of one of Iraq’s rump states on how to stitch the mangled limbs back onto the dismembered torso of that nation. I have heard a lot of T.V. commentator theories over the past few weeks about how this situation came to be, but perhaps only one U.S. based analyst – Steve Clemons at the Atlantic who has Unintended consequences: the next generation.bothered to follow the money back from ISIS to their funders in Saudi Arabia, a nation our own John McCain and others have praised to the rafters for funding the Syrian opposition. Once again, we are staring down the barrels of our own guns, scratching our heads in wonder.

Tea Party: zip. We had a primary here in upstate New York, the 22nd Congressional District, in which incumbent corporatist Republican Richard Hanna was challenged by a tea party convert named Claudia Tenney, who claimed Hanna wasn’t a true conservative. You’ve heard this before. Hanna won the G.O.P. primary, mostly because our district simply isn’t as blood red as Claudia Tenney likes to think it is. This is Centerville, Claudia – always has been. Hanna is a center-right Republican, essentially pro-choice, anti-tax, but not afraid of appropriations. This drives the reactionaries mad, while Democrats and those on the left must content themselves with watching from the sidelines – we have no candidate this year. Didn’t send in enough boxtops, I guess.

Big Loss. Last week, Central New York lost one of its most committed peace activists, Dr. Sunithi Bejekal. Sunithi was always encouraging me to do more, attend meetings, write more letters to the editor, etc., very likely because she herself had accomplished so many things through the course of her life. I will miss her encouraging, always kind words, and will try to heed them even in her absence. But more than that, I will miss seeing her on the street, in the shops, and in the pages of the local paper, stirring the pot, making some noise, and hopefully moving some minds in a more humane direction. OM SHANTI SHANTI.

Next week: SCOTUS decisions.

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Dwarfed ambitions.

Interstellar Tour Log: April 10, 2014
On the surface of Dwarf Planet 2012 VP.

That’s it. I am officially declaring our Interstellar Tour over and done with. I’m sick of these stupid slug lines reminding people where the hell we are all the time. Also, we’ve simply run out of places to play here on Dwarf Planet 2012 VP. That’s likely because, aside from a few street-corner fried plantain vendors, there is virtually no commerce here. This planetoid is devoid of performance venues. We actually set up and jammed in a nearby crater just on the off chance that random extraterrestrials would happen upon us. Nothing. Not a sausage.  This is just like back home.

Ah, home. The sainted abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. It’s leaky roof, its moldy basement, its crumbling walls, its heaps of abandoned hammer parts and random knobs of discarded pig iron that I keep tripping over even after having squatted there for more than a decade. I miss that dump, and I’m not alone in that sentiment. Hell, even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) looked a little misty yesterday as he scrolled through photos of the mill on his laptop. Lincoln seems like a man without a rostrum. The mansized tuber, well … he’s a plant. Don’t expect a lot of overt sentiment out of him.

That's the ticket!So, yeah, after months in space, we are ready to take the long trip home, back from the Ort Cloud, back from hastily named space rocks that are hard to classify. Before we go, though, we want to leave a stake in the ground here on Dwarf Planet 2012 VP. My thought is, well, let’s name the sucker after ourselves. Let’s claim it for Big Green, well and truly. We could be subtle about it and just shift the name to 2012 BG. Or we could go all-out and call it Big Greenland (though I was reserving that for a future theme park). We’ve got friends at NASA … I’m guessing this is do-able. (And yes, we have to ask for permission, since we need telemetric data from the space agency to find our way back to the mill.)

Homeward bound, chaps!