Listen carefully, tubey. These deer are very small. These deer… are far away. These, very small. These… far away! Get the idea? No? Hoo, boy. Let’s start again…

Ah, it is you, my friend. Welcome to the Cheney Hammer Mill one-room school house, here in the hinterlands (or, more properly speaking, the hinder-lands, since you can do nothing here). Just trying, in my own sorry way, to give the denser among us some semblance of an education. Why? Simple… they’re simple. And they live with creatures of quite enormous intellect. I refer not to myself, of course, nor to brother Matt or Johnny White – we’re all thick as posts compared to Big Green‘s scientific contingent. You know who I mean… your Mitch Macaphees, your Trevor James Constables… your doctors Hump. The brain guys. Stubborn as hell, they may be. One is mean as a snake (Mitch). But intellectually, they outpace us by leagues.

So here I am, trying to explain complex spatial relationships to an overgrown sweet potato. (I can hardly wait to show him two-point perspective!) Like most potatoes, the man-sized tuber has eyes, but he cannot see the difference between a porcelain miniature and an 800-pound buck. That will likely be a problem for him as he moves through the world of men. Sadly, there are other dead spots in his noggin, as well. The whole math thing is a big mystery to tubey. He can count the hairs on his tap-root up to the lower double digits, but that’s about his limit. And even with the full support of Marvin (my personal robot assistant) as a teacher’s aide, I can’t get him to recall the six major continents by name. (He calls Australia “Big Zamboola”. I mean, that’s like calling the Chrysler Building “Fred McMurray”.)

Is there anything more depressing than a cruciferous vegetable that will not learn? Of course there is. But that’s not the point here. Think of all that the man-sized tuber is missing as a result of his ignorance. Think of the ridicule and degradation he must endure from his more learned colleagues. And anti-Lincoln – what about him? He’s as dense as the rest of us. Where the hell is he going in this hyper-competitive world of ours? When society demands success, all he can offer is failure. Like the tuber, he’ll be a nothing, a nobody. (Arrogant as he is, of course, he will insist on Mister Nobody.) Hell, don’t even get me started on Big Zamboola. He isn’t even allowed on public buses, let alone elevators. (Though he can defy gravity, so that’s not as much of an issue…)

Back to the books. Damnit, Marvin – what did you do with my third grade primer? Holding up a hot plate? But it’s flammable, you imbecile! That’s it – take that open seat in the third row. Christ on a bike – we’re moving backwards.

Is this the Boise office? It ain’t? Well then, who the hell is this, anyways? Okay, okay, get me Washington. Huh? Since when? Never mind, then… get me Lincoln. What… him too? Jeezus….

Oh, it’s you. Just try to get somebody on the phone these days! I mean, you’d think with all the portables and the VoIP and all that, it’d be easy… but nooooo. Actually, I’ve been trying to reach our rep over at Loathsome Prick Records – not the annoying PR guy who puts words in my mouth, but the A&R guy who takes money out of our pockets…. that guy. Wired up like a freaking christmas tree, he is. Never seen so many bleeding lights on something that wasn’t a tractor-trailer. (So much for the colorful asides.) Been dialing long distance all morning and so far no luck. It’s almost like they don’t want to talk to us. And no, I’m not using the royal “we”, nor is there a mouse in my pocket. When I call someone, it’s on behalf of all of us. (Particularly the crank calls.)

Why the urgency? Well… couple of things. First off, I’m hoping to extend the grace period on the delivery of our next musical “product” – the long-awaited sophomore Big Green album. We’ve been running into some post production difficulties, as you may have gathered from the last few columns. I know, I know… with Marvin (my personal robot assistant) turning the dials and the man-sized tuber sulking in the corner, how could we miss, right? Friends, it’s not as simple as that. There’s the never-ending battle with entropy, for instance. And as you well know, if the entropy doesn’t get you, then the inertia certainly will. (Maybe both will get you. Ever consider that possibility?)

Then there’s the other thing. See, we were hoping for a little advance on our next release… and everybody thought it made sense to ask for this at the same time I’m informing them that the master won’t be ready on time. Who says we’re not cost conscious? (Actually, Geet O’Reilly, our financial advisor, suggested we cut down on the long distance charges.) Anyway, we thought… well… maybe a couple of grand in small bills might be appropriate, seeing as though we’re living in an abandoned mill and haven’t had a properly cooked meal in several months (since coming off our last interstellar tour, actually). Face it, Big Green is a cheap date. Just ask Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm Inc., our former corporate label. Don’t think they spent much on us, aside from the cost of the goon squads they put on our ass. (And goons were pretty easy to get back in those days. Just ask the Indonesian military.) That was a heap of trouble.

So what the fuck, Loathsome Prick Records – let’s have a little respect, eh? We’re making the bloody album. It’s coming, like Issa’s snail climbing Mount Fuji (slowly… slowly). I’ve got a hungry robot over here, and a couple of impatient Lincolns. Send money!

p>Big Green‘s little ditty, the President’s Brain is Missing, is now at #51 on Neil Young’s Living With War chart. Drop on over and help get us into the top 50. Hey… if we do particularly well with this, we’ll chip in on getting Dubya a new brain. Can’t hoit.