Dispatch from the string recycling center

November 5, 2021 Joseph

Hey … this one doesn’t have so much twang in it. No, not Tang! Twang! You know – the sound that doesn’t occur when you pluck this dead-ass string you gave me. That’s the stuff.

Yeah, hiya, folks. It’s your old pal Joe from Big Green. No, don’t get up – just relax and have another glass of lemonade. We believe in hospitality here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our longtime squat house. You’re more than welcome to stop by, take a seat, and watch us attempt to record pop music using stone knives and bear skins.

Friends of the band will know that I’ve been framming on the guitar just lately, as seen in my recent nano-concert on YouTube. I’m not a virtuoso, to put it mildly. In fact, I beat that mother like Betty Crocker, even when I’m practicing. That’s why I found myself in need of replacement strings.

The principle of scarcity

Now, with MOST bands, when someone breaks a string, someone else runs up with a fully stringed and pre-tuned spare guitar. The musician need not trouble him/herself with menial maintenance duties and can concentrate on the performance. The music deserves their FULL attention, and that is exactly what it gets.

Well, that’s not the way things work around the hammer mill. When i snap a string, I start looking for some old set I left lying around five years ago, then pirate it for a spare. We simply don’t have a running inventory of replacement strings – that would demand too much in the way of resources. And for all you macroeconomics students out there, that means strings are scarce, real scarce.

Doc takes a detour

Sure, I know what you’re thinking: we have a mad scientist at our disposal. Why not utilize his talents towards keeping our instruments in good working order? Well, aside from the fact that Mitch Macaphee never thinks of himself as part of our entourage, the fact is that he’s skipped town.

Where did he go? Way on down to Texas. He thought he’d slip into the Q-Anon subgroup rally in Dallas to see if JFK junior might be interested in underwriting some of his projects. (Yeah, I know …. I told him.) In the end, though, those Q-folks can spot a fed when they see one. Though I think what probably gave Mitch away was his decision to bring Marvin (my personal robot assistant) with him. Even in a crowd of crazy, that makes you kind of stand out.

The Macaphee bail fund

From what I understand about Texas law, it may be illegal to have an unregistered automaton. If that’s the case, Mitch might wind up in the crowbar hotel. We may have to resort to GoFundMe or the like. Might not be a bad idea. Maybe we can use part of the proceeds to buy some freaking guitar strings.

Political Rants

We have met the enemy, and s/he is you know who

November 5, 2021 Joseph

We live in an age of miracles, my friend. Well … minor miracles, anyway. Just this week a neighbor’s cat who disappeared ten days ago turned up. That almost never happens. Then, of course, there are the elections. As always, it was a night of many disappointments and few surprises. Elections always give me heartburn, frankly.

The thing is, there are only a few institutions in modern society that are even nominally responsive to the public will. The most important of these is government. And while government has become increasingly unresponsive to the concerns of the people over the past few decades, that fact is partly a reflection of our lack of interest or participation.

Through a mirror darkly

The last thing I want to do is sound like the morning-after prognosticators on MSNBC. But I will say that complaining about Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema is something like displacement. Yes, they are tremendous assholes doing valuable service to capital. Yes, in the most proximate sense, it is their fault that we can’t have good things.

But, again, the Senate is a reflection of the voters, albeit in its very undemocratic way. If people are frustrated with the lack of progress in Congress, they need to work harder at getting progressives elected to the Senate. As a nation, we delivered a 50:50 split in that body, and you can see the result – we’ve basically empowered every senator to be a potential deal-breaker. The fact is, we need more votes … and we won’t get them until we organize more voters.

I wish I weren’t in Dixie

Of course, we’re dealing with some real challenges. We have a center-left party that is dysfunctional and shot through with corporate cash. In the other corner, we have a proto-autocratic party fueled by racism, misogyny, and other bad impulses. The clash between those two organizations was on full display this past Tuesday, particularly in Virginia.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that race-baiting still works in the heart of the old Confederacy. And as someone who knows the history of the PR industry, I also shouldn’t be surprised that propaganda is so effective. The thing they call “Critical Race Theory” is so vaguely defined that it could literally include anything. It’s just the most recent label the Republicans have slapped onto the perennial project of scaring white voters with stories about black people. So, not a departure.

Running the numbers

I haven’t seen the exit polling or any official results from the 2021 elections, but I have heard some comments from people who have. (I will try to dig into this data at some point soon.) From what I have heard, in Virginia, the Republican candidate for governor garnered about 80% of the votes that Trump received last year, while McAuliffe only received about 60% of the votes Biden got.

Since Youngkin only won by about 2%, this underlines the notion that the Virginia race was a turnout election. Republicans motivated their voters, while Democrats failed to do so sufficiently. The blame lies with the flat-footed candidate, but it is the citizens of Virginia who will pay the price for this failure, particularly the most vulnerable. That is what voters on the left need to bear in mind.

luv u,

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

Uncategorized

There’s another way of saying this

October 29, 2021 Joseph

I could have sworn I left it right here. Sometimes I think I’m losing my nut. And sometimes I think I’m losing my soup. So I’ve got it covered, soup to nuts. What was I saying again?

Hoo, man. Those squatters upstairs must be smoking the devil’s weed once again. I’ve got second-hand smoke brain. Of course, after having spent a third of my life with first-hand smoke brain, this almost rises to the level of clarity. No, there are many possible reasons why I’m thick as a brick today. Here’s one …

Sleep is our friend

Let’s face it. When you don’t sleep enough, you start getting stupid. Ask anyone who’s been up for five days. Rest assured, they will tell you that they cannot rest assured. And if you ask anyone who’s been up for a hundred days, they won’t answer because they’re busy being dead. In short, sleep is obligatory.

Now, many of you know I’m a part time geezer. In fact, pretty much everyone in Big Green is exactly that. My illustrious brother Matt, for instance, seems to expend endless amounts of energy looking after all of nature’s creatures. Does he sleep any more than I do? Probably not. But – and this is important! – he makes more sense than I do. Good thing, too. Anyhow … they say that you need less sleep when you get older. The truth is, you just GET less sleep. How they mix those two things up is beyond me.

Go to the window

Some people lose sleep because they walk in their sleep. The name for this syndrome is somnambulism, or “whooping cough.” (Okay, maybe not, but never mind.) To be clear, this illness not only makes you tired, it can beat the hell out of you. I don’t think that’s my problem, though to be sure I roped Marvin (my personal robot assistant) into testing my slumbering ass.

Here’s how the test worked. Marvin would wait until I was sleeping, then start playing the recording of Leo McKern in the movie Help saying “Go to the window”. The theory was that, if I were a sleepwalker, the power of suggestion would be enough for me to defenestrate myself. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. (It wasn’t for want of trying, however. Marvin ran that thing on a loop for about five hours.)

The power of Z

Leave us face it: the only cure for not getting enough sleep is getting enough sleep. Trouble is, when I try to sleep, I think about trying, then I think about thinking, then I think about thinking about thinking …. oh, damn it. It’s the brain, man! How do you stop a brain? (No one can restore a brain!)

Fortunately, I can put myself to sleep simply by playing my favorite songs. Three or four bars in, and the big Z sneaks up and takes hold. It’s a real crowd pleaser, people.

BIG GREEN