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…
Oh, hi blog-o-files (or perhaps merely ultra-patient Big Green-o-files). You’re probably thinking you may have stumbled in on some kind of trade negotiation, perhaps the latest upgrade of NAFTA. Not so, though it is coercive, expropriative, and downright nasty, so I can understand the confusion. Yes, indeed… after several days (or was it weeks?) in the back of some grimy delivery van, bound and gagged by belligerent strangers, we arrived at our destination. T’was a strange and lifeless place, cold as the grave, its chalky brick facade crumbling beneath the groaning burden of decades of neglect and abandonment. This was the grim place our captors had intended for us to see when our blindfolds were removed.
The abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill – just as I pictured it!
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…
Actually, it’s really just simple. (Forgive me. Can’t resist a little cheap drama.) These rough fellows are merely representatives from our (relatively) new corporate label, Loathsome Prick records. It seems we never quite got around to formalizing our relationship with LP, so the company hired some strong-arms to pressure… ahem… negotiate with us on the terms of how we will divide the proceeds from the 
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.
Best we can do at this point is stall on the signing. I have asked Marvin to send transmissions to his inventor, Mitch Macaphee, in hopes that he will drop his six-month martini in Montserrat and fly in to our rescue. Until then, we’ll just play dumb. And hold our breaths….
winning side. Pro-war ad campaigns funded by arch-reactionary swift-boaters. Improbably optimistic National Intelligence Estimates, at least in their highly redacted declassified form. What is this, 2002? Are we starting from scratch yet again? This is the product of our political culture’s “ballgame” approach to foreign policy adventures, wherein the central question becomes “will it succeed?” Is this the question we ask when someone commits murder and holds a family hostage? Do we console our consciences with the notion that, well, he did kill that old man and that baby, but at least he’s finally got that household under control? (Right – before someone jumps all over my shit, let me make it clear that I don’t consider our troops to be the “murderer” here. They are the weapon, the instrument of policy that is initiated by our democratically elected leaders, so ultimately it is we who bear responsibility for what they are ordered to do.) 
The rest of Bush’s selling points are just laughable, frankly. Grim as the situation is, I couldn’t resist a guffaw when I heard Dubya tossing around that hallucinogenic contention about how we left Vietnam too soon. (Strange argument for someone who did his level best to avoid going there himself.) He raised the specter of the “boat people” and the “killing fields” that await our departure from Iraq. Not sure if he’s quite been paying attention over the last four years, but that scale of human catastrophe has already been taking place in the unfortunate land he chose to invade, with more than 2 million external refugees, a similar number of internal refugees, and between 500,000 and 1 million killed, plus god knows how many grievously wounded, orphaned, widowed, etc. This is an upheaval easily on the scale of that which accompanied and followed our criminal invasion and destruction of Indochina. (See journalist 
Mmmbbgh. fffmmmprphhh dblffffmmmbfff. mmfmnfb! Okay, okay… so I’ll stop dictating. Awfully hard to make yourself understood with a sweaty bandana tied over your gob. Must… reach…. ENTER… key…. nnghh….
Yes! As you can well imagine, this has been a bit of a morale-buster, what with our mixing project awaiting us and a production schedule that loses more ground by the hour. (And our corporate label, Loathsome Prick Records, is not known for its patience.) But what the hell can you do, right? So with the assistance of Marvin (my personal robot assistant), I’ll take advantage of this unplanned sojourn to answer a few cyber-grams from our avid readers. Ready, Marvin? Ready?? Oh, right…. they put a bucket over his head. Well… here’s the first note, anyway…
Hey, “On-line”… Seriously, now – this is the fourteenth time you’ve written us this week. Give somebody else a chance to ask something, will you? I mean, it’s not fair to all the other Big Green fans… like Felix Richter and Ola Dooley. They’ve been writing too.