Better take this slow, Mitch. Those suckers look sharp, real sharp. Sharp as a … a very sharp thing. Got a thesaurus? No, it’s not a creature from the Cretaceous. It’s a book with…. oh never mind.
Well here we are, on the first leg (or arm, perhaps) of Big Green’s much anticipated (by us) [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011 – an aimless romp through the chewy center of the galaxy and from one end of our voluminous songbook to the other. Oh yes, we’re going from A to Z on this one. That was something we settled on in the rehearsal cellar, mainly because we couldn’t decide what the hell to play. So Matt pulls out this massive loose-leaf tome of songs from hell, arranged alphabetically, and we started paging through. From All Saints Come to You’re Dripping… it’s a veritable cornucopian magnum opus of Big Green numbers from back in the day. Our set lists are the stuff of nightmares, frankly. (And who’s this Frank Lee you keep speaking of?)
Okay, so… we lifted off rightly enough. At least that’s what I’m told. I was unconscious… or so I’m told. (How would I know I was unconscious when I was unconscious?) No, I bit down on a cough drop and fell over backwards, I’m told, then was strapped into my couch on the rented spacecraft of doom Mitch procured for us. Actually, that was probably the best way to get me on board the sucker – feet first. I was all for getting some other type of transport. Perhaps a long elevator or some ultra-lift shoes – something, anything that would get us closer to Betelgeuse.
Well, now, I may have been overreacting to the spacecraft. It’s actually not that bad once you’ve gone a couple of million miles in it. By the time I woke up, we had gone that and then some. Of course, now we’re making our way through the asteroid belt – perhaps the pointiest part of the solar system – on our way to an engagement in the Jovian system. Which, incidentally, we may be a little late for, as this is taking longer than I’d thought likely. In truth, I’d rather our pilot, Mitch Macaphee, err on the side of caution rather than treat us like one of his lame experiments. (Did I say that? Let it pass, let it pass….)
For now, I’m just strumming on Matt’s guitar, waiting, waiting to be told to start performing, sharing this tin can with a dyspeptic crew of oddball mofos. Oh, the solitude of space travel! How I miss it.
It’s hard to imagine how a war this difficult to justify could last a decade or more on the backs of anything other than an all-volunteer force. If there’d been a draft, these wars might never have started. If the true costs were passed along to taxpayers, they certainly wouldn’t have lasted as long as this. Our nation’s war making power has been effectively insulated from public involvement and, consequently, from meaningful public input as well. America’s wars are now self-contained and self-perpetuating; they are fought by a separate nation of military families – one that bears every burden, pays every price, while we continue our normal lives, only vaguely aware of the catastrophe our elected leaders are visiting upon these unfortunate men, women, and children.
Doesn’t matter, really. We’re getting close to the departure date on Big Green’s [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011, our hotly-anticipated romp through the musical hinterlands of outer space, with planned stops in the Jovian system (Jupiter for you space travel novices), Betelgeuse, Kaztropharius 137b, Sirius, and the planet Zenon in the Small Magellanic Cloud, home base of our sometime-guitarist, 