There’s a thank you in this somewhere

November 26, 2021 Joseph

Over the river and through the woods to Macaphee’s house we go. Isn’t that the lyric? Got it wrong again? Damn. Okay, here goes. Over the river and through the woods to Trevor James Constable’s house we go.

Oh, hi. Didn’t think anyone would be reading the blog on Thanksgiving weekend, but here we are. My guess is that you’re trying to get away from your annoying relatives, especially uncle Sully, quaffing his gin, telling you all about it. That’s the kind of holiday we know and love – food and family conversation, both thoroughly indigestible.

What’s cooking, bad looking?

Let’s talk about the fare. People have this mental picture of what the traditional Thanksgiving feast should be like. Naturally, it is a concoction of many different stories and fables. The harvest feast shared by English settlers and Wampanoag people in 1621 was likely a diplomatic gathering of sorts. Who the hell knows what they ate? Corn, maybe. Freaking pine cones.

Yeah, well … we don’t go in for these fables. None of that in the old Cheney Hammer Mill. Of course, we’re all vegetarians, except for one or two vegans. Actually, Anti-Lincoln is a pescatarian, though in a very narrow sense, as he only eats one kind of fish. That’s the ancient Coelacanth, and frankly, they’re a little thin on the ground in Central New York. Most of the ones you find up here are fossilized. Sometimes they’ve got a little friend in the rock with ’em.

A thankless job

I don’t want to even suggest that Big Green is exemplary of bands in general. Contrary to popular 1960s belief, the groups don’t all live together, as Frank Zappa suggested so many years ago. And no, we don’t all gather around a big walnut table on Thanksgiving day and break bread together in fellowship. Ridiculous suggestion. The table is oak, and it used to hold woodcutter’s tools.

One of us has to cook. I usually leave that task to Marvin (my personal robot assistant). That’s because you can write up a menu, insert it into his scanner, and he will attempt to make it real. That’s the good part. The bad part is that he makes it real bad. The tofurkey is like tire rubber from the 1930s. The stuffing came out of an abandoned easy chair. And don’t even get me started on the sweet potatoes.

I know you’re supposed to thank the chef, as well as the author of the meal, but it seldom happens around this dump. Next time Mitch invents something, let’s hope it’s edible.

Incoming: annoying holiday mail

You know how people you hated in high school sometimes send a letter around the holidays telling you what they did all stupid year? Well, I’ve been thinking about doing something similar. Just a festive photo of the high times we’re having this Thanksgiving, so as to lord it over all you losers who are spending the day alone with a can of spam.

Of course, like anyone on facebook, I had to embellish the image a bit. Hard to gloat when you live in an abandoned hammer mill. All of our photos turned out hideous, so here’s a shot of me at the Macy’s multi-promotional parade, brought to you by EveryCorp(R) – slogan: “If it were in our inventory, we’d sell you ass.”

Political Rants

Keeping an eye on the foreign policy blob

November 26, 2021 Joseph

After a week of nearly non-stop domestic news, good and bad, I’m going to talk about foreign policy. Think of this as the latest in an ongoing series of posts about how bad Biden’s foreign policy is. Frankly, the only good thing I can say about it at this point is that it is better than Trump’s version, albeit not by much.

Longtime readers of this blog and listeners to my podcast Strange Sound (now on hiatus) know that I have been critical of Biden’s imperial world view from the beginning. Since his candidate days, he has de-emphasized foreign affairs. His campaign web site, for instance, included almost no detailed information about his plans in this regard. That was not because he had no plans – it was because he didn’t want to talk about them.

Target Asia (again)

If you watch the mainstream media, you can’t miss the extent to which they are obsessing over China. They don’t do that unless our nation’s political leaders give them the space to bloviate. This is true of the so-called liberal networks, like MSNBC.

Morning Joe, for instance, platformed Indiana Senator Todd Young, who stuck to his party’s current insistence on referring to the nation of China as “The Chinese Communist Party”. (See Young’s pinned tweet about his “Endless Frontier Act”.) Young spent some of his time warning of China’s undue influence in the South China Sea (which, as the name suggests, is closer to them than it is to us). There have been multiple stories, also, about China’s supposed military hardware, like hypersonic missiles, and so on.

Enter the killer subs

This would be laughable if it weren’t so potentially dangerous. The United States accusing another country of throwing its weight around militarily is objectively ridiculous. We have a much, much more muscular presence on the periphery of China than China does. That includes massive military installations throughout the region, thousands of troops, fighter/ bomber squadrons, and a fleets of warships.

Case in point, as Noam Chomsky pointed out recently on Democracy Now!, a single Trident submarine holds enough nuclear weapons to destroy nearly 200 cities in Asia. We have more than one, of course, and have contracted with the Australians to ensure that there will be more killer subs patrolling the Chinese coast.

So, why the hell …. ?

Of course, this policy is about Asia writ large and who calls the shots in the region. American presidents have been focused on this for multiple administrations, with a significant uptick since the Bush II regime. A permanent presence is essential to our ability to project power – and, crucially, the credible threat of power – across the continent.

That’s why it’s target China time. Frankly, we can’t maintain a large military presence in the region without inventing some enemies. I’m personally convinced that that is the reason why the Korean conflict has remained in stasis for seven decades. We need to keep the threat level up to continue this toxic policy.

In short, regardless of what happens on the home front, we need to keep an eye on Biden’s foreign policy establishment, even – and really, especially – if they don’t want us to.

luv u,

*Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.*

Usual Rubbish

Can Christmas be that far behind?

November 19, 2021 Joseph

I don’t think that’s the right box, man. I keep the glass bulbs in the box marked “winter gloves” and the tinsel in the box marked “soup can collection”. That box is marked “Christmas decorations”, and that’s where I keep my soup can collection. And my winter gloves.

Oh, hey. I hear you knocking, but you can’t come in. No, I’m not being anti social. I just don’t want to spoil the surprise. We’re working on our Christmas pageant, and we’re hoping that no one will guess this year’s theme before we finish our parade floats. I’ve had Marvin (my personal robot assistant) run out for some more plaster of Paris. What’s that, Anti-Lincoln? Are you sure? Damn. Marvin went to Paris.

What’s in a theme?

I can tell you what the theme won’t be this year. Anti Lincoln wanted to do a reconstruction-themed Christmas. I told him that we simply couldn’t do it justice. Also, our crazy neighbors upstairs would come at us with torches for advancing what they’ve been calling Critical Race Theory. Much as I like the idea of pissing them off, I think we’ll let that one rest.

Then there was the mansized tuber’s idea. Do you really want to hear it? It’s kind of predictable. He had some goofy notion that you could find a fir tree, chop it down, haul it through the snow and back to the Mill, then poke the trunk into a base so that it stands upright. What then? According to tubey, you hang little baubles and lights from the carcass, and when you wake up Christmas morning, they’ll be a surprise under the dead tree. Crazy shit.

Living in Christmas past

Hey, in all honesty, we’re getting older. And when you get on in years, there’s a tendency to look back a bit. We’ve got a kind of storied Christmas past, which is to say that we’ve got a lot of stories about it. Of course, there’s 2000 Years To Christmas, our first album. Then there’s all those Xmas episodes we did on THIS IS BIG GREEN. And don’t forget the fractured carols we sing when we’re drunk, in any season.

Suffice to say, we’ve got a lot of material. If we actually opt for a pageant this year, there will be singing. No dancing, though – unless you count what Marvin does when he updates his operating system. Will there be a full band performance? Well …. not likely. But you may see me sitting in front of a cheap camera, strumming hesitantly on a guitar.

Our pledge to you, dear listener

One promise: I won’t play any Cowboy Scat songs. That’s final. That wouldn’t be Christmas-y. (If you want more promises, I’m taking requests – just use the comment form, below.)