Category Archives: Usual Rubbish

Usual Rubbish

And for you.

2000 Years to Christmas

T’was the night before Wednesday, and all through the house not a minion was haunting, not even the louse … who lives upstairs. And this isn’t a house, it’s a freaking mill. Anything else?

Hah. So much for seasonal poetry. Not my best effort, I’m afraid. Hope all is well in your part of the country at this festive time of year. Did racist uncle Bob come up from Montgomery County? Did he break the electric blinds in the dining room again? Thought so. He does that every year, for crying out loud. Then he starts crying out loud. And your pretty little Christmas goes up in flames. Not a sound around the holiday table; just the ticking of the grandfather clock. The ticking! THE TICKING!

Whoa, THAT took a dark turn. My apologies. It’s kind of a subdued Christmas around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill this year. Sure, we stand at the ready to fill 20th anniversary orders for our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, a space odyssey. We’re anticipating order #1 … any day, now! In the meantime, one selection off of that now generation-old album, Pagan Christmas, got more than a hundred plays on Spotify last week. That prompted us to include it in this month’s THIS IS BIG GREEN (TIBG) podcast episode, which features a re-broadcast of a musical Ned Trek episode from a couple of years ago, plus some holiday songs, plus …. me talking like an idiot. That’s a holiday trifecta. You’re welcome, America!

What do you get for the Lincoln who has everything?

What else did we get you this year? Well …. there’s a couple of rare coins in my pocket. (Quarters, which are rare when you’re broke.) We also took a few moments to re-post a special Christmas episode of Ned Trek we played two years ago on TIBG. It’s called “It’s a Profitable Life” and it features no less than five Big Green Christmas songs …. and none of them pulled from 2000 Years to Christmas. If you haven’t heard it already, or don’t remember it, well … give it a listen. It’s got Paul Ryan in it, for crying out loud … or a bad imitation of same. And in case you haven’t heard! No, it doesn’t stack up well against the more mainstream holiday classics, but that’s because it’s a cheap-as-hell podcast performed by non-actors derisively portraying well known political figures as thieves and imbeciles. In other words, a dead ringer for the real thing.

Did Santa bring anything else this year? Well, we shall see. If you are very, very good, there may be an orange in the toe of this stocking. Or a lump of coal. If it’s the latter, for crying out loud … don’t burn it!

Usual Rubbish

Joy to it.

2000 Years to Christmas

No, we’re not doing that this year. Why? Because I said so, damn it. Last year it was a freaking disaster, and I’m not going through THAT again. Right, now … where were we?

Oh, right … penning another blog post. Yes, friends, our longtime companion here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, antimatter Lincoln, was making a crazy suggestion, and I just had to shut it down. Yes, we live with a mad scientist. Yes, he does turn the gravity on an off occasionally just for fun. Yes, I do have permanent injuries that resulted from that kind of horseplay, and rightfully so. But there’s a point at which even people as tolerant as the members of Big Green have to draw a line, and this is it. NO SECRET SANTA. PERIOD.

I mean, I don’t know why people do stuff like that, let alone why someone who is the anti-matter doppelganger of perhaps our greatest president would want to indulge in such a bankrupt and troubling holiday tradition. Now if Anti-Lincoln were Anti-Buchanan or Anti-Johnson (the first), I could understand. But jumping Christ, does the man not remember even one thin year ago? We drew names out of a hat one frigid afternoon … and it was all downhill from there. Our mad scientist Mitch Macaphee drew my name, as luck would have it, and so he gave me the gift for the man who has everything and doesn’t mind losing it all – weightlessness! (He’s had this thing about gravity over the last few months. It’s a little troubling.)

Time for a song!

Who did I draw? Anti-Lincoln. I found an old fashioned two-man saw and gave it to him. He proceeded to use it on our best shade tree. I guess I should have saw that coming. It’s a bit like buying beer for your neighbor without giving a thought as to whether he or she might have a drinking problem. (He does.) Then of course, all of our names were drawn by the city elders, who sought to evict us from this drafty old mill. We outsmarted them by coincidentally being out of town on the day they came to get us. But then came the nasty upstairs neighbors, and well … from there you know what came next. I won’t draw you a picture. (Unless that’s what you want for Christmas.)

Hey, suckers … our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, is celebrating its 20th birthday this year. Great time to check it out, particularly if you’ve been cased in aspic since 1999. Give it a listen right now. Or not. Totally up to you, man.

Usual Rubbish

T’is the seizin’.

2000 Years To Christmas

No, you’re not on my list, and for one very good reason: I don’t have a freaking list. I can see about getting you on Anti-Lincoln’s list, but I don’t think that’s the kind of list you want to be included on, if you know what I mean. A word to the wise.

Yes, I’m afraid it’s that time of year again, friends. And once again I have to explain to Marvin (my personal robot assistant) how the world of humans works. You’d think after twenty years he would have some of this stuff encoded into his memory banks, but no … every holiday season it’s human nature 101 and elements of capitalism. What the hell am I, anyway, a freaking community college for robots? Hey …. not a bad idea, really. We’ve got the space, and at least a couple of spare power strips they can plug into. We could call it Robotech, order some jerseys and pennants and …. WHAT AM I SAYING?

Christmas is always confusing, right? For one thing, it’s a consumer frenzy, at least for half of the population. For the rest of us, it’s mostly about blocking our ears when we go to the grocery store so that we don’t hear the holiday loop, playing over and over … something we of Big Green find particularly irritating, as they almost never include any selections from 2000 Years To Christmas, our now-classic holiday album, only this year celebrating its 20th anniversary. And while millions are charging their way into credit oblivion, we remain cloistered in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, crazy neighbors right upstairs, and the bailiffs at the door. “The law is an ass,” I keep shouting at them, and they just keep pounding.

Are they still pounding on the door? Sounds like it.

Well, you know what they say about the law. First comes the pounding, then comes the impounding. And while I’m explaining capitalism to Marvin for the nineteenth time, I may as well share this small lesson with you, namely the part about what happens when you pay neither rent nor property taxes for years on end. As dyed in the wool collectivists, we are merely seeking shelter where shelter is available (such as it is), but that carries little weight with the local constabulary, whose minions are apparently under orders to evict us in time for the Christmas pageant. They want to see us shivering in our second-hand galoshes on the side of the road as the yuletide procession trudges past the hammer mill entrance. How festive these men in blue can be!

Right, well … in any case, if you want to help with our legal defense fund, celebrate this Christmas with a 20th anniversary edition of 2000 Years To Christmas, available now from us or from online streaming/download services. We’ve got a few signed copies, so if you want one, let me know. Just don’t tell the bailiff … he’ll want one, too.