Usual Rubbish

Lookout: Cleveland.

Is it coming round again? Hah. Some mad scientist YOU turned out to be. I could get better weather reports from an open window. Stupid Macaphee.

Mitch and his diabolical machine
Mitch and his diabolical machine

Yes, hello and welcome to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, located in upstate New York, once a land of relatively stable weather, but now … rollicking storms. Sometimes I feel like we’re living in a bowling alley, our sorry asses parked in the lanes. I keep wondering if all this atmospheric upheaval is in anyway related to that massive gizmo Mitch Macaphee is always messing with. He just built it last month, and it’s got dials and levers and wheels and lights, and it belches black smoke into the air above the mill. Just like old times, really. Then it rains like hell.

If my suspicions are correct, I suppose that means I owe you all an apology. Or at least Mitch does. Understand – we do not control Mitch, we just utilize his expertise from time to time. He can be quite handy with minor repairs on spacecraft, for instance, like that time when our ion drive went out halfway to Neptune, and we didn’t have a space buoy, and Marvin (my personal robot assistant) got automatonic space sickness and couldn’t do the EVA to fix our guidance tracking antenna, so we had to send Major West, and … well…

It gets more complicated after that. Suffice to say, Mitch means well, even if he is trying to destroy the planet (well … he put that on his bucket list, at least). We will try to keep you posted on new developments as Mitch continues to twirl knobs, throw switches, and rub his hands together in glee.

In the meantime, keep an eye out for our upcoming May podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, which will feature another spellbinding episode of Ned Trek, some previously unreleased music tracks, and ridiculous conversation about killer chickens and other phenomena.

Keep an ear out, too. It’s really more about hearing than anything else.

Political Rants

On serving.

This is one for the veterans. I felt I had to write about this because of a story I heard on DemocracyNow! this week about wounded and PTSD soldiers receiving less-than-honorable discharges based on behavior attributable to their injuries … and in some cases, based on virtually nothing at all. This is one of the most maddening stories I have heard this year, but I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. It’s pretty much a given in this country that many of the people who fight our wars will be discarded after they’ve sacrificed dearly on our behalf. These past twelve years have brought us back to a place we hadn’t been since the end of the execrable Vietnam war – dealing with the aftermath of a prolonged, highly destructive conflict, and doing a very poor job of it.

Why do we – in the age of magnetic yellow ribbons – still suck so badly at this? A couple of things come to mind. First, this war is not broadly shared, so any improvement in our basic humanity since the end of the last war (and I like to think there has been some) is offset by the fact that, in the absence of conscription, only a tiny fraction of American families have any skin in this fight. 

The second is an institutional/political reason. When a large institution like the United States military, as an instrument of American power, is very good at something, that’s usually because it’s deemed of great importance to those in power. The opposite is true of things they are really bad at. Our leaders look bad when many Americans are killed on the battlefield, so we’re really good at getting soldiers out alive. Once they’re out of the action, they become statistically insignificant to those in power. If they suffer, it doesn’t cost our leaders anything. If they die, no one is counting the way they do when soldiers die overseas.

This phenomenon isn’t unique to this bogus war. When my dad returned from World War II and the occupation of Europe, he evidently had PTSD – nightmares, sleeping with a gun under his pillow, etc. There was no help for him, just as there was none for those returning from Korea and Vietnam. The philosophy was, suck it up. It’s up to us to say that this is as unacceptable today as it was then.

Raise your voice about this. These people deserve better.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Fire away.

Where did I leave my garlic press? Marvin? Marvin! Jesus. What kind of a dung hole is this, anyway?

Oh yeah … that kind of a dung hole. The abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill kind. A place where garlic presses go to die, apparently. This is the third one I’ve lost this month. And I used to have a blender, seems like, though our electrical service is a bit spotty anyway, so it hardly matters that that thing disappeared. Somebody around this mill has sticky fingers. I’m looking at you, mansized tuber! Oh, right. No fingers. Still … those roots seem a little grabby.

Where am I going with all of this? Not sure. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is helping me today with my weekly chore of straightening out the kitchen. Don’t know if any of you have ever lived with a rock band, but let me tell you – no one wrecks a kitchen more completely than wayward musicians, down on their luck. Open cans of kipper snacks strewn about like poker chips. Half-eaten bowls of cereal. Do I have to draw you a picture?

It gets worse … particularly when we’re producing an album. People tend to keep strange hours … like ninety-seven o’clock (really strange hours). There’s a lot of work that goes into putting together an album as complex and nuanced as Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. You may think it’s just another crackpot enterprise, cooked up by a bunch of ass-clowns in upstate New York. And, well … you’re right, but (and this is important) there’s still a lot of work that goes into putting it together. (Is there an echo in here?)

Right now, the song count on this sucker is at 21. I can’t guarantee it will stay there, but if it does, it will be the longest album we ever made and maybe a little too long for a standard CD. Thank god those little discs are as archaic as dinosaurs! Digital releases mean no limits! Make it 35 songs! Quick, write 14 more!

All right, back to the search.

Weird ass music since 1986