Hey, Lincoln… you seen my water jug? Didn’t think so. How about anti-Lincoln? Drank it? What the hell… how thirsty is that guy, anyway?

Hiya, folks. Big Green here. Just working our way through tour preparations; pulling together all our gear and provisions, packing them onto the space elevator, and writing our wills (not a lot of confidence in the space elevator, frankly). Have we started the countdown yet? Nah. Getting close, though. I’m guessing we’ll probably hit the starry trail around September 30 or so, just as we’re scheduled to release our new album, International House – 16 tracks of pure Big Green pleasure, just in case you’re interested. Anyways… our CD release party will be held in the star system of Aldebaran. Not that we want to diss our terrestrial listeners – we just got to go where the money is, friends. And that money…. is in outer space. (At least that’s what our corporate uber-label Loathsome Prick has assured us.) You heard it here first.

As I imagine you’ve guessed by now, it’s going to take a while for us to load the ship. So while Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and the man-sized tuber toil away, I’ll tell you just what goes into releasing a new Big Green album. First, there’s that bit about making the music. I’ve talked about this before. Oh, it’s a painstaking process of cultivation and assembly. You start with good topsoil – rich Mississippi delta loam is the best. Turn it over a few times to get some air in there, then start planting random musical notes. If the weather is with you and you have a reliable robot (or root vegetable) to do the tilling and the watering, you will yield probably twice as much raw music as you plant. Then you start picking and sorting, then assembling them into DNA-like strings… and eventually whole songs.

The manufacturing process is a bit more complicated. I suppose you think we go to a CD replication house for that, eh? Not a bit of it… not when we’ve got all this factory space and lots of empty hands (not to mention root tendrils). Really, the hardest part is getting the songs into those discs. We get Marvin to get a big crock on the boil. We cook the songs down to a thick paste-like consistency (takes about five hours). Marvin and the man-sized tuber then apply the paste to the bottom of each disc with a wooden spatula, like frosting Christmas cookies. The coated discs are then placed face down on an anvil made of pure anti-proton material (absolutely pure!), and Big Zamboola sits on them one at a time, fusing the music right into the disc. Works like glass mastering, only cheaper. (We just have to keep feeding them pizzas. They’re like interns, you know.) The album art is then handpainted on by anti-Lincoln. (He’s better at it than his posi-doppelganger.)

Okay, well… now you know. Go and tell the world how Big Green makes their albums and, lord knows, maybe in a century or two, everybody will be doing it that way.

He’s about to pull the lever. He’s pulling it. Grit your teeth! Oooohh, no. He’s done it. Hmmm… I don’t feel any different. Do you?

Hi, folks. Back at the Hammer Mill again for some more off-season fun, eh? I’ll tell you, never a dull moment around these parts. You’d think we’d have enough to do, preparing for our trip out to Aldebaran to debut the songs on our soon-to-be-released new album, International House. W.t.f., there’s a ship to pack, instruments to lug about, Lincoln clones to verbally abuse… We’ve got to train a man-sized tuber in space-bound emergency procedures (his performance rating was very poor on our last outing). Matt and John are busily typing up lyric sheets to hand out as party favors at our first pre-concert reception. (I keep telling them… you don’t have to type them all. Just use a photocopy machine.) That’s what we call the personal touch around here. Customer service, that’s what Big Green is all about. Have a seat. Anything I can get for you? Drink, perhaps? Something a little stronger?

Man, with a spiel like that, they’re going to love us on Aldebaran… if we ever make it there alive. Unfortunately, this may not happen. In fact, you may be vaporized by the time you read this. I imagine you’ve heard about the impending “Big Bang” experiment utilizing the Large Hadron Collider on the border of Switzerland and France. (Yes, that big bang experiment.) Well, it’s going forward despite doubts that it may in fact spawn tiny, powerful black holes that will swallow the earth and pulverize all we know into a massively dense ribbon of compressed matter. That sort of thing can, well, ruin your whole day. And though the experiment’s detractors have been roundly criticized, you have to wonder a bit whether or not there’s something to these fears of imminent destruction. Hey… I live under the same roof as a mad scientist. Imminent destruction is a fact of life around these parts, friends.

Anyway, here’s the problem. Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser, inventor of Marvin (my personal robot assistant), etc., had at one point harbored ambitions to be a part of this Big Bang experiment, but was spurned by its organizers. He has since held a bit of a grudge. This might not have been a problem, except that now that he has finished work on our space elevator (built from spare submarine parts), Mitch has got a lot of time on his hands. And let’s face it, the Large Hadron Collider has been very much in the news just lately. I mean, every time the guy watches the evening news, smoke starts coming out of his ears. So for a couple of days, he holed himself up in his lab, hammering away at something, ultimately to reveal a diabolical-looking device which he claims has the power to inhibit the Collider experiment, even though it is halfway around the world from here. How it is supposed to do this, I don’t know…. but before I could ask him, he pulled the lever.

Don’t know if it’s nervousness or what, but it feels like the ground is shaking. Crikey – we’d better get that new album out fast.

What’s this one for? Cabin pressure? Kool. And this one? Get out! What the fuck, this thing is like something out of… I don’t know… fantastic voyage or something.

Oh, hiya. Hope all is well out there in monitor land. Things are going okay over at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, more or less. We’re getting our ducks in a row, for sure. (It’s hard to get ducks in a row, actually… kind of like herding cats.) Tubey seems all psyched up for his new customer service job. (He’s never without that headset. Haven’t the heart to tell him it isn’t plugged into anything.) Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been doing a prolonged inventory of our supplies, starting with anvils, atlases, and a few other things that start with “a”. (Last I looked, he was counting paper clips… could mean good progress, unless he’s inventorying them under “clips, paper”). So hell, everybody’s got something to do.

Mitch Macaphee (the temperamental mad scientist) has plugged together an elaborate-looking contraption that he claims is the most sophisticated space elevator yet devised by the mind of man. We were just having a look around inside, and I must say… it’s sweet. Very sweet by our standards, certainly. Usually we’re pock-pock-pocking around the galaxy in some rent-a-wreck or a distressed piece of interstellar transportation history borrowed from a cheap sci-fi television show. This sucker is different. All that plush furniture, a working refrigerator, gauges and levers galore…. I half expected Captain Nemo himself to come striding in disapprovingly. (John could play the Kirk Douglas part… I’ll take Peter Lorre.) In fact, at one point, I turned to Mitch and asked him if perhaps he thought we were playing our first promotional gig in Atlantis.

Okay, do me a favor – remind me never to joke around with a mad scientist. He got a little hot under the collar and repaired to his study, where he spent the rest of the evening fiddling with something that looked a hell of a lot like a Rigelian Death Ray Generator. (Not that I’m an expert in these things…. it was Matt who pointed out the similarity.) Mitch is a little sensitive, no doubt about it, so we took it upon ourselves to order take out from his favorite restaurant, the Bavarian Castle (big fan of…. uhhhhlll… sauerbraten….). That did lift his mood a bit, though I think I may have hit a particularly sore spot. Turns out that the space elevator he devised was built from remnants of an undersea vessel of some kind. Where did the parts come from, specifically? He wouldn’t say. And with his twitchy hands on that death ray, I wouldn’t ask him. (They were someone else’s, now they’re ours. End of story.)

Well, however we get there, Aldebaran has no idea what’s in store for it. Spoiler alert: a diving bell full of freaks, and a boatload of new songs from planet weird.