Hmmm… thought I shut that thing down. Lincoln – have you been using this computer again? How ’bout you, Anti-Lincoln? Big Zamboola? Right. Must’ve been the other ones. Man god damn.

Oh, hi. Lucky thing you’re reading this, really. Some of our Big Green travel associates have been monopolizing our one reliable connection to the “Internets”, as Stephen Colbert calls it, for their own evil purposes. No, I don’t mean Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been cavorting with his fellows in Captured By Robots, or that the man-sized tuber is plotting with his co-religionists in some kind of anti-animal jihad (I believe the are Unitarians, but don’t quote me on that). Nay, I refer to their recent obsession with so-called “social networking” sites – your MySpaces, your FaceBooks, your Linkedins (though one might have thought that the Lincolns would be all over that last one…. it is for the more mature amongst us, after all….)

So… how, you may ask, can these strange tag-alongs feed their new-found obsession whilst we are bobbing aimlessly in space on a rented interstellar craft? Well, I’m gon’ tell yuh. This here cream puff of a space ship we borrowed has got one hell of a wireless connection. I mean, this sucker can connect from a distance of 3.5 light years, without losing any bandwidth. Crikey – I can watch that freaking guy screaming about Britney Spears all the way from Aldebron! Okay, so you’re probably thinking, “Hey, fucker, there’s only one Web-connected terminal on board… why can’t you keep them off of it?” (Not thinking that? All right then. What was I thinking?) The truth is, I can’t really tell these guys anything. Now they only communicate through virtual groups and friend lists and other strange methods for avoiding conversation. (Did I say that?)

That’s not the only thing holding me back. I mean, you have to do something with your time during these long treks across the trackless wastes of outer space. Tubey and Marvin soak up the hours in front of a computer screen. Matt fills in tablets with imaginary bird sightings (he conducted his own personal Christmas Bird Count en route to Proxima Centauri, where there’s nary a pigeon to be counted). John builds model volcanoes and juggles the disembodied heads of ventriloquist dummies (gotta have a hobby). Big Zamboola practices his gravity phenomena, while the Lincolns catch up on their history (140+ years of catching up to do, and posi-Lincoln is only up to the progressive era). Me, I’ve got my distractions, most of which involve sleeping. I’ve been known to yawn a bit in my free time, and I’m a semi-professional dreamer. Not much on snoring, but I dabble.

Matt thinks I should put my foot down. Not with respect to the on-board Web surfing, you understand… he just wants me to get my feet off the furniture. I’ve got an answer for him, but he’s going to have to look at my Facebook page. (Gawd… not me too!)

I hear rocks… rocks bubbling. Or is that something else. Wait a tick, wait a tick… could be… Yes, by god it is. It’s… the man-sized tuber cooking dinner. Again.

I suppose it probably comes as no surprise to those of you who have known Big Green for more than a week or two that an oversized vegetable does much of our cooking. Yeah, we’re vegetarians, and I think that particularly resonates with the man-sized tuber – my guess is that he thinks the safest place for a vegetable around here is on the handle-end of the ladle. Fact is, we don’t eat a lot of root vegetables, and the man-sized tuber is far too tough to roast, far to fibrous to fry, far too husky to boil. He’s just plain inedible, that’s what it comes down to. (Though with a handful of shallots and a splash of merlot, he might respond to an overnight marinade. Mmmmmm-boy.) Wait, tubey, wait…. just kidding, man! Aw, put the pot down. Put it DOWN. No. NO. NOOOOOOOO…

Oh, okay – he’s just moving it to the back burner. Can’t hear real well, our tubey. I keep forgetting. Well, what the hell else is new? Oh, yeah. We’re hurtling through space in our new ride. Yessir, the cobbed together playground equipment we’ve been using to traverse interstellar space finally proved itself unworthy of even terrestrial travel, so we broke down (quite literally) and scraped together enough scratch to rent ourselves a ship… a proper ship. Not the kind that comes in a bottle, mind you – a space vessel, with functioning navigational controls, living quarters, and a hull that will hold atmosphere. But where… where would we find such a conveyance out here in the void between Cancri 55 and Earth? Actually, not that much of a problem. Hey… every shit town has its commercial strip, with gas stations and used car lots, right? Well, this interstellar backwater is no different. We just followed the neon lights and pulled into Proxima Centaurii Motor Rentals and South Asian Grocery. (Take exit 452a, just past the companion star – can’t miss it.)

I’ve never been any good at haggling, so I left the negotiations to John, and he came away with a sharp looking little unit for a one-way rental back to Earth. All we had to do was, well, hand over the licensing proceeds to our recordings for a radius of three light-years around Proxima Centaurii for the next three years – not too shabby, since we’ve yet to sell a single disc out here. (Don’t say anything!) That and whatever else we had in our pockets, including the last of our Cancri 55 currency. Got to tell you, it’s a relief to stand on a solid deck once again, instead of monkey bars… particularly when you’re traveling at 65% light velocity. And crew cabins, for chrissake! Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was immediately tasked with setting up the galley for the man-sized tuber.

So here we are, cruising along towards home, rice on the boil. Why rice? It’s cheap, that’s why. We blew the bankroll on this ship. Sure, it would be nice if we had a few vegetables to sauté;…. nice… root…. vegetables…..

Did you hear what I heard? Was that… sleigh bells? That can only mean one thing. That’s right, children… it’s the sound of jolly old fire alarm. The engines are burning up.

Yes, yes… Christmas freaking day. Don’t you just love this time of year? (Judging by your reaction, perhaps “love” was the wrong word.) Don’t you just fireplug this time of year? (That’s a bit better.) Over here in Big Green land, we have a reputation for keeping Christmas better than any virtual pop band you can name that traverses interstellar space and has a robot friend (and hangs out with Lincoln). Sure, that’s mostly down to our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, now a venerable nine holidays old and still available for purchase and/or download at a retailer near you (or not so near you … check us out on the Russian mp3 download site Yanga.ru, which ranks us among “Best Artists” under Psychedelic Rock… and whose url sounds strangely like “kangaroo”, of which there are few in mother Russia). Yes, it’s hard to think of “Christmas” and “obscure indie alternative psychedelic (in Russia) rock” in the same breath without thinking Big Green. (So far, that’s the legacy. Don’t spend it all in one place.)

But our holiday isn’t just about the music. No, no… we follow tradition over here. Every Christmas, we break out the crackers and start passing out gifts, just like any normal band. And friends, this year is certainly no exception, even though we are bobbing here in space, directionless, our controls replaced by discarded vegetables, our navigation effectively disabled. No matter – the man-sized tuber donned his garish Christmas sweater and led a somewhat enfeebled rendition of “Oh, Holy Night” (which degenerated into “Oh, Holy Shit!” when the fire alarm went off). Due to limited shopping opportunities in deep space, we did a sort of round-robin gift exchange, a secret Santa type deal, drawing straws for gifts.

Who did I pick? Well, as it happened, I got Big Zamboola. He’s a little hard to shop for, but I got my hands on something I always felt he needed – head covering. Unlike full-sized planets, Zamboola doesn’t benefit from active weather patterns, mainly because he is no longer orbiting a star, so his delicate surface is virtually unprotected by cloud cover. (Sounds practical, eh? WTF – it was all I could think of, frankly.) My “secret Santa” was Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who handed me something that might have been a battleship or an enormous Chicklet, but was, in fact, a humble kitchen sponge. (Marvin went a little overboard on the wrapping this year. Could have knocked me over with a feather when I opened that sucker.) Our shipboard penury notwithstanding, it was a holiday celebration very much in the spirit of previous years. Lincoln made punch. (And that punch had a kick – thank you, great emancipator.)

So whoever you are, whatever you are, Big Green sends its best from its flying yurt. See you back on Earth…. assuming we arrive sometime this century. (Are the primaries over yet?)