Usual Rubbish

Over the river (of nitrogen)

A little colder than I expected for this time of year. Minus 254 degrees Kelvin. Crikey – better put on another pair of socks.

Yes, friends – Big Green is spending another traditional family holiday a long, long way from home. It’s Thanksgiving on Neptune, and I have to say, this holiday doesn’t mean much to folks up here. The casinos are filled with punters, and I don’t think they’re shipping them in from Saturn. It’s just another day to these creatures. And as we enter the final (turkey) leg of our [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011, we have another succession of bizarre events to greet us. Here is the week that was:

11.14.2011 – Took up residence in the Neptune Hyatt resort. A bit seedy if you ask me. I think they stole the name, actually – everything’s bootlegged up here. Even our albums. Hell, we’re giving them away on Neptune and they still bootleg them. I think it’s for the sheer joy of doing it. There is, I imagine, a certain satisfaction in sticking it to the man. My only question is… when did we become “the man”?

11.15.2011 – Hit the stage at 0400 hours Neptune time. Gravity was a little uneven this afternoon. Little known fact about the Neptunians – they’ve discovered the secret to gravitational force. Their scientists have been messing with it for years now, and I have to say that the results appear mixed at best. As far as anyone can tell, they’ve only managed to make gravity more like the weather. So our feet left the stage as we ran through “Just Five Seconds” and “I Hate Your Face”, but it wasn’t from exhilaration. Damned scientists!

11.17.2011 – With the holiday season approaching, it seems like a good time to get some shopping done out here in the outer solar system, where most of the big outlet stores are located these days. (Ever wonder what happened to STARS? You guessed it.) So we took the day off, rummaging through bins, riding escalators, hiring forklifts to check out what that big box on the top shelf might contain, etc.  Marvin (my personal robot assistant) set his sensors to savings.  Just like the old days, Steve. (Steve? I must be running low on oxygen.)

Took a little time out to post Episode 4 of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, featuring rambling conversation with Matt Perry, another song from cousin Rick, an explanation of Grandfather’s War, a “first draft” new recording of I Hate Your Face with accompanying commentary, and other unexplainable phenomena.  Let us know what you think. We’ll be finishing our shopping.

Political Rants

Occupatience.

This has been quite a year. Who would have thought it? One that started with massive uprisings in the middle east and is ending with a major economic justice movement in the United States – perhaps even more unlikely than the popular overthrow of Mubarak. Now we’ve seen renewed attempts to evict the protesters from Zucotti Park and other encampments across the country, but as many have said, you cannot kill an idea. The Occupy movement has gotten people accustomed to standing up again. And to paraphrase Dr. King, a man – even if he’s a millionaire – can’t ride on your back when you stand up straight.

And contrary to what is argued by Ayn Rand acolytes like Paul Ryan and (Ayn) Rand Paul, the wealthy truly do ride on the backs of working people. That has always been the case. Rand imagined the world being brought to a standstill by a wealthy, innovative class of overlords who withhold their beneficent participation in Rand’s dystopian top-down economy. The truth is, they are far more reliant on us than we are on them. Sure, the wealthy can choose to invest their capital in ways that create jobs. But where did that capital come from? How does an industrialist, a banker, an entrepreneur, an oil executive gather all that wealth? Mostly through the under-compensated labor of millions of workers.

The supply siders are always touting small businesses as the primary engine of our economy, so let’s use them as an example. Take a small to medium-sized privately held company. The owner hires people to create whatever product or service the firm sells, whether it be mint jelly or Web applications. Increased productivity means fewer workers doing more work, so the incentive is always there for small business owners to lay people off and shift their responsibilities to their fellow workers. This happens all the time, as anyone who’s ever held a job in a small company knows very well. This is the process by which fortunes can be made. If those workers refuse – if all workers withhold their labor, Galt-like, that’s what would bring the whole thing to a halt. We’ve seen owner-less factories work just fine everywhere from Argentina to right here at home. Name one worker-less factory.

The occupy movement shows that we have a long road ahead of us. But thanks to them, we can say – astoundingly – that we’ve actually begun that journey to a better nation.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Tour log: five-oh

Merry Christmas, Children? Not sure I remember the parts. Besides, that’s … well … challenging. Anything easier for the season? Jit-Jaguar? That’s a Christmas song? Oh, right.

Hey, sorry. Just working out the set list for our next string of performances. We’re not one of those groups that just gets up on stage in front of 20,000 people (or 20,000 amorphous blobs of protoplasm) and wings it, playing whatever comes into our heads. No, sir … we plan out every inch of our stage show, from the song list to the dance steps to Marvin (my personal robot assistant) juggling torches. (Yes, that’s right, Marvin – it’s torches this time! Deal with it!)

Right, well … okay, we don’t have dance steps per se. Nor set lists. But we do work up a vague idea of what we’re going to play over the course of the next week. That’s called planning, my friends. How does it work out in the specific context of Big Green’s [INSERT NAME HERE] INTERSTELLAR TOUR 2011? Here’s how…

11.8.2011 – Cranking out Jit-Jaguar in front of 20,000 Neptunians. They like the part about the tin pot politician apologizing to “Mr. Jesus” for calling out for robotic revenge on the town that rejected him. (Oh, yes… it’s titanic theme night here on Neptune.) It’s a bit of schtick, but we always bring Marvin out for this number, just so that the audience has a robot to look at while we sing of, well, robots. Never mind the cognitive dissonance of employing a peaceful robot to evoke the image of a warlike one. We give the people what they want – end of story.

11.10.2011 – Busted! Pulled over by the interplanetary highway patrol for doing 1/2C in a 1/4C zone. Anti-Lincoln was driving. Yeah, that was kind of a mistake, come to think of it. Mitch Macaphee was on break at the time, and Anti- was handy. (I call him “Auntie” sometimes because he just hates that.) The patrol hung an appearance ticket on us. We’ll probably just send the check along with our guilty plea … if the Post Office still delivers to Titan. (Cutbacks, you know. Now they send all of Pluto’s mail to Saturn for processing.)

11.11.2011 – My, but that’s a lot of elevens. And look… it’s 11:11 a.m. Time to play Wrap Up World War I.

Next stop: mystery planet opposite the sun from Earth. You know… where everything’s a mirror image of Earth, except that people eat corn on the cob on the vertical. (We learned of this from Saint Guido Sarducci.)

Weird ass music since 1986