This is Big Green – Octobercast 2012. Features: 1) Mr. Ned, Romney’s Dancing Horse, Episode 3; 2) Put the phone down: Matt gives his account of playing spaceman with Dr. Waleed Abdalati; 3) Remembering Andy Williams, Barry Commoner, and Sen. Arlen Spector; 4) More madness assorted; 5) Song: Paradise, by Big Green; 6) Song: Kublai Khan, by Big Green; 7) Graceless exit
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Well it’s been a while. Time to open up the old mailbag, right? Right, then, right!
Here’s a little missive from alert listener Ozymandius Lake in southern Nevada, somewhere near the Arizona border. (“No fixed address” is a strange name for a street, but anyway…)
Dear ignorant buggers,
It is manifestly obvious to me, Ozymandius Lake, that you people are a bunch of frauds. Stinking, lousy frauds! I may have no fixed address, but that doesn’t mean I’m gullible. You don’t live in the Cheney Hammer Mill! That place was knocked down decades ago. And even if it hadn’t been, it was hardly large enough to accommodate everything that you claim happens there. And that Rick Perry album you’re producing – there ain’t no such thing. I’ve been living in these bottoms for nigh onto twenty years, and I ain’t never seen no Rick Perry album.
Yours respectfully,
O.L.
Well, Ozymandius – taking your last comment first – I would have to say, “look upon my works and despair”, because there is indeed a Rick Perry album on the way, Big Green is indeed producing it, and it is called Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. If you received our podcast out there in Nevada (I think we have a repeater in Reno), you would know that’s true. As for the mill, if it doesn’t exist, I’ve been sleeping in the street for the last ten years. Could explain a lot. I’ll look into it. Thanks, Oz!
Here’s another one, this from Polly (Esther) Batson in Paolo Alto, California…
Dear Big Green,
You haven’t said anything about Big Zamboola in months. Did he return to his home solar system, or is he just lurking quietly in the the cloistered basement of the mill, keeping his titanic gravitational forces to himself?
Best,
Polly
Thanks for the letter, Polly. Didn’t know people wrote letters anymore in this age of Twitter, Facebook, blah blah blah. Anywho, no worries about Big Zamboola. He has kept quiet, true, over the past year or so, mainly because he shares with sFshzenKlyrn, our sit-in guitarist from the planet Zenon, that transcendental quality of being an gaseous entity of no determinate shape or density. Sometimes he just pops up out of nowhere, like a jack in the box. Zamboola in the box, we call him.
Okay, back to the non-existent studio with me to work on that non-existent album. If only I had known of its insubstantial nature before I started working on it!
Coming down to the wire, here. A little more than two weeks to the general election and it’s going to be a nail biter. Thing is, it shouldn’t even be close, but it very likely will be. And that’s not good news for the 47%. Or the 99%. Because we all stand to be screwed big time if it goes the wrong way.
Right now, Mitt Romney is running around the country like the freaking Candyman, promising everyone everything they want with zero cost. We’ll cut your taxes twenty percent and you’ll get to keep all of your deductions! We’ll make sure rich people pay the same percentage (key term) of taxes that they pay now! All of you middle class folks will be able to deduct 18%, no, 25%, no, 40% of your taxable income! Pick a number! We’ll do all that, raise the military budget a trillion dollars, and reduce the deficit at the same time! I’ll create 12 million jobs! No rain ever again … unless, of course, you like rain!
It is often said that incumbency has its advantages, and it certainly does, but it has many drawbacks. One is that, as president, it’s harder to go around saying what you are going to do because the first thing people wonder is, well, why aren’t you doing it now? You are, in essence, applying for the job you already have. Your performance in that job is an actuality, not an abstraction. On the other hand, if you’re the challenger, you can promise anything, make any wild claim, run against mathematics itself, and act as though you have a big vat of miracle sauce locked up in your car elevator, and that once you take the oath of office, you’ll start ladling that stuff all over everything that’s bad and make it good.
The president did much better in the second debate. Plenty for me to disagree with, to be sure, but a better performance. However, that first debate had an impact. It encouraged voters – particularly women, it seems – to feel more comfortable with the idea of a Romney presidency. I’ve said this before and I’ll likely say it again before November 6 – there is no reason to feel comfortable with the notion of John Bolton running American foreign policy. If you’re worried about the economy, think of what extremist austerity and another decade long war will do to it.
Let go of your childhood wishes. Or you may end up really eating those dishes. More on this later.
luv u,
jp