Usual Rubbish

Tour log (third story).

What is all the ruckus about? I told you we were bringing equipment with us. And no, we don’t need unicycles. We can get around on our own two feet, thank you very much.

That’s the problem with interstellar tours, my friends. A billion opportunities for misunderstandings. No shortage of those, particularly when you’re traveling with the two Lincolns (posi- and anti-), as we appear to be out here on Big Green’s vaunted [INSERT NAME HERE] INTERSTELLAR TOUR 2011. Anyway, here’s how it went down this week:

10.25.2011 – Our first full night on Kaztropharius 137b. If anything, it’s quiet – too quiet. Keep forgetting that there’s no atmosphere here, ergo, no sound. (Or is it “air-go; no sound”? You decide.)  We strummed our way silently through about a dozen tunes. The denizens of this strange little rock appeared partial to “My Bed”, one of Matt’s dream-sequence numbers. They pick up vibrations from our instruments via the floor of the venue. (They all appear to be equipped with stethoscopes. Looks kind of odd from on stage.) sFshzenKlyrn ripped the song a third corn chute, as the Simpsons once put it. Another triumph.

10.28.2011 – Pulling away after three successful gigs on Kaztropharius. By successful, I mean survivable… but only just barely. Anti-Lincoln decided to take a stroll down by the river district, apparently. Well, he got kind of drunk and one thing led to another. I’m not precisely sure how he acquired the riding saddle, but however it happened, he seems to have won first prize. We are now band non grata on Kaztropharius 137b. Nice work, anti-Lincoln! Who’s going to eat our discs now, pray tell?

10.29.2011 – Well, now he’s done it. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has trashed the hyperdrive. He has this self-preservation circuit that compels him to replace any defective parts with whatever’s available. He needed a certain kind of chip for one of his motor circuits, and… well… he found one in our rent-a-ship’s hyper drive. So now we’re chugging along at the interstellar equivalent of 25 miles an hour, garbage scows passing us like we’re standing still. Got a string of gigs waiting for us, and at this rate, we’ll get to the first of them sometime in early 3109011 A.D. My guess is that they’ll pull out on us. What’s yours?

Oh well. Do me a favor, eh? Email me a diagram for a q47 space modulator chip.  Just google it. Thanks a million.

Political Rants

Failure to add.

It’s almost November, and the occupations are continuing. With so much bad news on so many fronts, this is a little bit of good. Movements often emerge at the most unexpected times, in the most unexpected ways. And while the titanic unfairness of our economic system (as currently operated) should lead us to expect a massive uprising, I think we have experienced so many years of seeing so little reaction to outrageous assaults by the powerful that we have come to believe the response will never come. Well, the occupation movement is a response; how broadly it will resonate has yet to be seen.

I think it’s worth remembering that in Egypt, in Tunisia, and likely elsewhere, it was economics that really lit the fire under people. Torture in police custody, exclusion from meaningful political participation, persecution of minorities … abuses of every kind and character were endured by Egyptians – not without resistance, mind you, but without broad outrage. It wasn’t until Mubarak instituted substantial neoliberal economic “reforms”, opening up the Egyptian economy to greater international corporate penetration, that people had had enough. Now not only did you lack a voice in government and enjoy no constitutional rights when detained; you also could not make even the meager living you were making a year or two before. In a nation of extreme economic inequality, this was more broadly felt even then the hard end of the police baton. Everyone was affected.

Something similar has happened here. When Bush invaded Afghanistan, relatively few people stood in the street. When he invaded Iraq, the crowds were much bigger, but still not massive enough even to slow the administration down. But when our overleveraged, underregulated banking system imploded, exposing the corruption within these massive institutions, and our government’s only response was to throw literally trillions of dollars at them while millions of Americans were put out of work, that was a little hard to ignore. Now banks and businesses are sitting atop a pile of cash probably larger than any in history. Now firms are making their remaining employees do the work of two, three, perhaps four, knowing that they will not complain in this job market. Now people are seeing that without meaningful intervention on the side of working people, capitalism reverts to its core principles – one of which is maintaining a large surplus labor force to keep pressure on wages down.

Perhaps now people are waking up and realizing why the 1% is not adding any employees: because this economy works for them. It just doesn’t work for the rest of us.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Tour log (part deux).

There are no filling stations out yonder. Just ask Warren Oates. If you can’t find him, seek out another character actor and ask him or her. You may be surprised by their answer. (Or not.)

Here’s what happened on the “road” this week:

10.15.2011 – Pulled into Neptune, was feeling ’bout half-past dead. Our rent-a-ship has been sputtering, so we brought it into a Neptunian garage for service. The cost? Full proceeds from our three performances on Neptune, plus 9% excise tax. (Looks like Herman Cain is having an impact up here, as well. The craters tell the tale.) sFshzenKlyrn practically melted his Telecaster on the fourth song (Why Not Call It George?), then settled down for a succulent Neptunian roast. (Roasted crater peat. This is important: Neptunian is not … repeat, not … one of the great cuisines.)

10.17.2011 – Strange how Polaris looks like downtown Rochester. Could be worse. We set up on a suspended platform – one of those anti-gravity jobs you see all over the place on Kaztropharius 137b – and went through the better part of our song list. Looks like we’ll have to work up some more numbers. The Polaroids experience time in extreme slow motion – the equivalent of about 14 hours to each of our standard Earth minutes. Kind of a difficult gap to fill, actually. Hey dudes…. how about a slow one? 

10.19.2011 – Right through the center of the Great Onion Ring. You full-time terrestrials know it as the Ring Nebula, but out here they associate it with their favorite snack. Pity, really, that more interstellar phenomena aren’t named for appropriate junk food back on Earth. After all, we invented junk food, we perfected it, we raised it to a high cultural value, and we defend it with our lives. The Greeks had their gods, sure. But we have our Ring Dings.

10.20.2011 – Closing in on the next venue; that hideous little globe named Kaztropharius 137b … the one place in god’s great universe where our CDs sell like hot cakes. I may have explained this before – the denizens of Kaztropharius 137b eat complex plastics, so to put a fine point on it, our CDs are, in fact, hot cakes to them. And we’re okay with that. Just settling in for a few night gigs.

Hey…. we’re not idle on the road. Always thinking, you know. We posted the third episode of our increasingly strange podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. Check it out at http://www.big-green.net/pod and be not ashamed.

Weird ass music since 1986