That spot. I dropped acid there over a year ago. No, no – not L.S.D. … hydrochloric acid, and I wasn’t using “dropped” as a euphemism for “ingested,” I literally dropped it. Didn’t the man-sized tuber clean it up? Strange….
Oh, there you are. Thank you for joining us once again at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill – ground zero for the Big Green experience in all of its glorious cognitive dissonance. So good of you to drop by every week for the latest installment in our little notebook of horrors. Pretty mundane horrors, I will allow, this being the world we all know it is, but horrors none the less, and very much our own. Last week, as you may recall, we were at the point of being waterboarded into a binding contract regarding the distribution of our upcoming CD release (still in the mixing/mastering stage), the working title of which is WORKING TITLE. Big Green‘s current corporate label, Loathsome Prick records, had grown a little impatient with our interminable production delays and, well, decided to apply a little pressure in the shape of a gang of kidnapping goons.
Did it do the trick? Well, let me tell you – those suits at Loathsome Prick are obviously not real familiar with the history of this band. Those of your who’ve been with us since back in the day know that we’ve faced down intimidation by 
hired thugs, mongooses, extraterrestrials, morlocks, mutant space aliens, hostile Neptunian metal fans, and a host of other nasties. Big Green laughs in the face of death, sneers at danger, and gives blackmail the finger. That’s the long answer. The short answer is, well, yes… it did work. Hey – I couldn’t let Marvin (my personal robot assistant) suffer! They insisted on waterboarding him first and, well, he hasn’t been detailed in a few weeks, so his water resistance is less than what it should be. I won’t draw you a picture, but the proceedings were quite unsavory. So we signed. What the fuck, right?
Well, anyway…. once the paper was signed, we at least had the opportunity to settle back into our digs, restoring some order (or familiar disorder) to the hovel we had been forced to abandon some weeks back by a cadre of lawn-obsessed extraterrestrial invaders. The man-sized tuber made his way back to his climate-controlled terrarium; the two Lincolns 
took up residence in opposite wings of the mill; John returned to his virtual aviation console; Matt to his anvil collection… and so on. I retired to the kitchen for a swipe at the cooking sherry, taking that opportunity to thumb through the document we had just signed. (No easy task, since my thumbs were still sore from the interrogation sessions. There ought to be a law against that sort of thing.) As Trevor James Constable always told me, it’s a good idea to read documents you sign because, well, they may have something written on them. Sound advice.
That’s when I noticed that the date for our next CD was moved up to November 14. Those mothers at Loathsome Prick! (They sounded like such a nice bunch of folks…) Crikey, we’re only in our fifth year of production on this thing. You can’t put inspiration on an assembly line! (Or can you….?)
shuffled down the highway to the land of yellow roses, god help it. The old Texas mafia is disbanded, and Dubya now nearly stands alone amongst assorted replacements and second tier “Bushies”, like Condi Rice and Chertoff. (Media child that I am, this reminds me of the final seasons of “The Waltons,” with no mother, no grandma, no grandpa, an ersatz “John-Boy”, somebody named “Miss Rose”, and the guy who played Patty Duke’s father.) The only constant is Cheney, and he’s very much alive in this embattled White House, at the very center of greatly expanded presidential powers and, paradoxically, greatly diminished presidential influence around the world. Even after monumental failures of judgment, Cheney is still driving policy, pushing the same discredited and disastrous agenda that has cost so many lives overseas and consumed so many resources at home.
Given the climate of the country today and the bankruptcy of Dubya’s current endeavor in Iraq, it seems unlikely that even a well-crafted scare campaign could drum up majority support for yet another war. But they don’t particularly need or want majority support. It would be nice to have, I’m sure, but they don’t really care that much. If they can keep the hardcore reactionary base on board, they’re fine with that. Barnett’s sources suggest that they consider 35-40% enough of a mandate for them to attack another country without provocation – that this level of public consent is “plenty.” I suppose it’s not surprising. They’re in the final 18 months of their reign and from their point of view, they’ve accomplished everything they set out to do. We now effectively have a permanent presence in Iraq, our public sector institutions are crumbling around us, hundreds of billions of tax dollars have been squandered on well-connected contractors, and trillions have been added to the national debt, making major “structural adjustment” of the U.S. economy far more likely in the coming years.
Okay, now where does the signature go? Ah, yes – the line which is dotted. Okay, okay. Right, now… where is that dotted line? Sure, sure… on the contract, sure…
I know what you’re thinking. What the hell are the chances that these brigands and ne’er-do-wells would have chosen for their hideout the same condemned hole we had occupied illegally for the last five or six years? Good question. Hard to calculate those odds. Even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is totally stumped. Still, there’s no need to strain your brain or burn out your pocket slide-rule – these pirates of the open road had known about our residence at the Cheney Hammer Mill, and had deliberately brought us back there. Now I can hear you saying, “For what PUR-pose!?!” (That is you talking, isn’t it?) Well, my friends, the answer to that is both simple… and complex…
interstellar sales of our upcoming album, [Marvin: insert album name here before we go to press, there’s a good lad]. This is a bit technical, but we had agreed on a release date of [Just stick any date in here – we can back away from it later – thanks, jp], assuming the mastering and publishing processes went according to schedule. Only catch is, they kind of want to keep all of the money. Sure, I know – that’s their starting position, but they’ve presented it after tying us to waterboards. Not sure I like where this is headed.