Mmmbbgh. fffmmmprphhh dblffffmmmbfff. mmfmnfb! Okay, okay… so I’ll stop dictating. Awfully hard to make yourself understood with a sweaty bandana tied over your gob. Must… reach…. ENTER… key…. nnghh….

There! New paragraph. Hello again, Big Green aficionados, and welcome to another installment of Hammer Mill Days, that mentally fractured, unspeakably pointless journal of our travels from nowhere to nowhere fast. As many of you may recall, we were in the process of hitchhiking our way across the placid countryside of upstate New York, towards our adopted homestead a.k.a. the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, when the lot of us were cruelly abducted, bound, gagged, and stuffed into the back of a panel van. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I think we’re traveling in the right direction… and we’re making pretty good time. Now… that ENTER key again… nnnghh… (click!)

Yes! As you can well imagine, this has been a bit of a morale-buster, what with our mixing project awaiting us and a production schedule that loses more ground by the hour. (And our corporate label, Loathsome Prick Records, is not known for its patience.) But what the hell can you do, right? So with the assistance of Marvin (my personal robot assistant), I’ll take advantage of this unplanned sojourn to answer a few cyber-grams from our avid readers. Ready, Marvin? Ready?? Oh, right…. they put a bucket over his head. Well… here’s the first note, anyway…

dear big green,

your lame-ass blog never seems to go anywhere but down. i can see why you changed the freaking name. why don’t you fuckers shut the fuck up and play some fucking music before i fucking step all over your shit.

– m. f. friendly, Boise, Idaho

Thanks for that message, m.f. We couldn’t agree more! Fact is, we would far sooner be making music than doing what we’re doing now. Only trouble is, we appear to be caught in some kind of pernicious space-time vortex that turns all joy into soul-crushing angst. Drop by and visit some time – there’s always room for more!

Next message….

Our Warmest Greetings!!! Incomparable proposition for you Dear Clients!!! Only these 5 days for your byers incredible rebates!!! On all pharma you need!!! Fill in your life with colors of merriment!!!

Sincerely Yours,

On-line association of druggists

Hey, “On-line”… Seriously, now – this is the fourteenth time you’ve written us this week. Give somebody else a chance to ask something, will you? I mean, it’s not fair to all the other Big Green fans… like Felix Richter and Ola Dooley. They’ve been writing too.

Okay, we seem to be pulling over to a truck stop of some kind, so maybe one more message – this one from Guy Incab, no known address….

Dear Big Green….

Keep it down back there or I’ll break your fucking heads.

Best wishes,

guy in cab

Uh, right. Thanks, guy. Well, I guess that’s probably enough typing for now…. don’t want to make the driver nervous. Oh, and if you get anywhere within shouting distance of my mom’s house, tell her Matt and I said mmmpfhfwrrrgwabflllrmmmm!!!!

Sittin’ in a railway station, got a ticket for my destina-shun. Oooooooh. Ah yes, that brings me back. Back to all those lame gigs I played as a twenty something. Damn that sucked!

Well, hello, my friends, and welcome to the Big Green saga on the Web, now in its… let’s see… eighth year? Good god, man – that’s nearly old enough to type. I could practically put this blog to work in an electronics factory in Nogales. (What’s Spanish for, “One more electrocution and you’re fired”??) The least it could do is key itself in. Work, work, work, that’s all I ever do. That and sleep. And run from dinosaurs. Dinosaurs! That’s right – the nauseating circumstances of our most recent posting. It seems the saying is true… that one about music soothing the savage beast. (Though it is taking some license to refer to that Dino song as “music”, still… the principle applies.) We found that singing the Dino song was just comforting (or perhaps confusing) enough to keep the Creature of the Barge Canal from swallowing us whole. (Or perhaps the shrimp – or was it crab? – salad hadn’t agreed with him. More likely the hapless lieutenant he washed it down with was what caused any gastric distress…)

Anyway, keeping ourselves from becoming the soup du jour was hardly enough – we had to work our way back home somehow. While Matt continued the serenade, I asked for ideas from the group. Nothing. Well… Matt had one, but he was singing. Then Marvin (my personal robot assistant) piped up – not verbally, you understand, but through the use of a handy chalk board. The means of our return home was right before us, and we hadn’t seen it. That freaking dinosaur – we could hitch the half-eaten cruise ship to its ass and have it drag the sucker forward. Marvin could wheel along the tow-path, playing a greeting-card chip recording of the hypnotic song, leading the dinosaur like the pied piper. Hey… not half bad for a constabulary school drop-out.

Well…. it didn’t work so well. I know you’re as shocked and amazed as I was. It seemed like such a good idea. Turns out Marvin couldn’t get the song quite right – it was too tinny, and that creature of the deep has very selective hearing. And the thing about lashing the ship to its back? Yeah, well… that was just… kind of… dumb. So, what the fuck, with no better ideas at hand, we made our way to shore, humming the Dino melody all the way so as not to seem like attractive morsels in the somewhat stagnant water of the canal. (Though I hear it’s great for kayaking! And waterskiiing!!) Once on the banks, we ran as best we could (with our sea-legs) up an embankment to State Route 5. Then it was thumbs out. Not the first time, friends. Not by a long shot. Sure, I know what you’re going to say…. Hitchhiking is dangerous, Joe. You could get mugged… or abducted. Think of young Marvin and the poor defenseless tuber…. Right, right… I’ve heard it before. I just want to live MY life the way I WANT TO. And NO, I’m NOT going to do my homework! And YOU CAN’T MAKE MEEEEEE…..!!!

Whoops, sorry. Don’t know where that came from. (Issues.) Well we did get a ride. And as much as I hate to admit it, it was kind of dangerous. Tied up, gagged, and thrown into the back of a van kind of dangerous, to be more specific. Okay, you were right. Just pay the ransom, please. I’m keying this blog on my cell phone, and it’s taken me the better part of a week to do it…

If this is prehistory, what the hell was yesterday? And if the universe is infinite, where the hell does it end? And if God is both infallible and omnipotent, how come s/he can’t make mistakes?

Questions, questions, questions! Oh, how you vex me with your endless inquisitiveness! What was that? I was asking those questions? I? Hmmm… I do remember muttering something a few moments ago, and my utterances did end in an upward lilt. So perhaps you’re right – I guess I am the inquisitor, not the inquisitee. (Inquisitee?) My apologies. I’m a bit disoriented, I admit. Driven from my home by a titanic battle of extraterrestrials. Shot into space and dropped into an inhospitable ocean whose evil currents deposited us onto the shore of a strange and foreboding land. Lashed to an oar like a galley slave (hard work, few breaks, but you meet some very interesting people), then winning my freedom at enormous personal cost… only to face the wrath of a gorgon-like creature from the deep. What kind of a week have I had? Don’t ask!

Okay, okay… I didn’t face all this alone. Naturally, I was joined in my misadventures by fellow Big Green-ers, Matt Perry and John White, plus Marvin (my personal robot assistant), the man-sized tuber of our acquaintance, Big Zamboola, and the two Lincolns (posi- and anti-), who split up with us on the mysterious island of Manna-hat-a-hun. Last week, we were being pursued by a large, loch-dwelling denizen of the deep – in essence, the Creature of the Barge Canal – which had barged (so to speak) into the riverboat’s on-deck buffet and helped itself to a generous serving of shrimp salad with a side of officer of the day. Believing we were next on the menu, we opted for below-decks, from whence we had emerged, in hopes that our giant pursuer would be unable to follow.

The thing about Diplodocus-like critters is that they have kind of a long neck… a real long neck. And if they want to follow you through a bulkhead, down a long flight of stairs, and into several cabins, well, they can kind of do just that. What to do? We panicked, quite frankly. My eyes started rolling back in my head. Marvin’s gears started squeaking rather loudly, and smoke came out of his audio sensors. Before we all had the chance to fall over backwards, Matt came forth with a rendition of Big Green’s Dino song:

Dinos had a good time on the trolley!

Dinos had a good time at the fair!

Dinos had a holiday, ’til the sky turned mean and gray

Their underbellies went a-gushin’ jelly and they died in searing pain!

… and so on and so forth. Well… the giant sea creature – Diplodocus, I believe – started swaying back and forth in time with the music. It was a trance like state, brought on by the singing of this ludicrous little number Matt and I pulled out of our asses in about five minutes some years back. Damnedest thing.

What happened next? Matt kept singing. When he got tired, I took over. Then it was Marvin’s turn. Then John. Sheesh. It’s going to be a long trip back to the mill.