Sittin’ in a railway station, got a ticket for my destina-shun. Oooooooh. Ah yes, that brings me back. Back to all those lame gigs I played as a twenty something. Damn that sucked!
Well, hello, my friends, and welcome to the Big Green saga on the Web, now in its… let’s see… eighth year? Good god, man – that’s nearly old enough to type. I could practically put this blog to work in an electronics factory in Nogales. (What’s Spanish for, “One more electrocution and you’re fired”??) The least it could do is key itself in. Work, work, work, that’s all I ever do. That and sleep. And run from dinosaurs. Dinosaurs! That’s right – the nauseating circumstances of our most recent posting. It seems the saying is true… that one about music soothing the savage beast. (Though it is taking some license to refer to that Dino song as “music”, still… the principle applies.) We found that singing the Dino song was just comforting (or perhaps confusing) enough to keep the Creature of the Barge Canal from swallowing us whole. (Or perhaps the shrimp – or was it crab? – salad hadn’t agreed with him. More likely the hapless lieutenant he washed it down with was what caused any gastric distress…)
Anyway, keeping ourselves from becoming the soup du jour was hardly enough – we had to work our way back home somehow. While Matt continued the serenade, I asked for ideas from the group. Nothing. Well… Matt had one, but he was singing. Then Marvin (my personal robot assistant) piped 
up – not verbally, you understand, but through the use of a handy chalk board. The means of our return home was right before us, and we hadn’t seen it. That freaking dinosaur – we could hitch the half-eaten cruise ship to its ass and have it drag the sucker forward. Marvin could wheel along the tow-path, playing a greeting-card chip recording of the hypnotic song, leading the dinosaur like the pied piper. Hey… not half bad for a constabulary school drop-out.
Well…. it didn’t work so well. I know you’re as shocked and amazed as I was. It seemed like such a good idea. Turns out Marvin couldn’t get the song quite right – it was too tinny, and that creature of the deep has very selective hearing. And the thing about lashing the ship to its back? Yeah, well… that was just… kind of… dumb. So, what the fuck, with no better ideas at hand, we made our way to shore, humming the Dino melody all the way so as not to seem like attractive morsels in the somewhat stagnant water of the canal. (Though I hear it’s great for kayaking! And waterskiiing!!) Once on the banks, we ran as best we could (with our sea-legs) up an embankment to State Route 5. Then it was thumbs out. Not the first time, friends. Not by a long 
shot. Sure, I know what you’re going to say…. Hitchhiking is dangerous, Joe. You could get mugged… or abducted. Think of young Marvin and the poor defenseless tuber…. Right, right… I’ve heard it before. I just want to live MY life the way I WANT TO. And NO, I’m NOT going to do my homework! And YOU CAN’T MAKE MEEEEEE…..!!!
Whoops, sorry. Don’t know where that came from. (Issues.) Well we did get a ride. And as much as I hate to admit it, it was kind of dangerous. Tied up, gagged, and thrown into the back of a van kind of dangerous, to be more specific. Okay, you were right. Just pay the ransom, please. I’m keying this blog on my cell phone, and it’s taken me the better part of a week to do it…
in on phone conversation, read e-mails, etc., without a warrant, subject only to the approval of two guys appointed by the president – the attorney general (!) and the Director of National Intelligence. It was triangulation, of course, in the House – conservative and “centrist” Dems voting with Republicans to gain a majority; similar story in the Senate. Liberals voted against it, but the leadership could have scuttled it… and didn’t. So there you go. As with the Iraq war supplementals, Congress has signed on to a very destructive and unpopular policy because they’re afraid of being terror-baited by a president whose power base has shrunken to historic lows. Useless.
So… where from here? Good question. Anyone who supposed the 2006 election was something akin to a revolution was kidding him/herself. Change comes from us, not from pre-packaged, poll-driven, lobbyist-funded politicians. We have to speak with a united voice, one that is loud enough to overwhelm the influence of corporate money. (In other words, pretty goddamned loud.) Until we can get that faculty together, it will be the same deal over and over again – Democrats promising the moon and stabbing us in the back the moment they’re elected. And scoundrels like Bush starting wars and spying on us because there is no one to stop them. Dag nab it, we’ve got to stand up fer ourselves! If’n we do, maybe that scrawny old Harry Reid will, too! (Great… now I’ve got frontier accent syndrome again. Bloody Democrats! See what your spinelessness has done to me!)
If this is prehistory, what the hell was yesterday? And if the universe is infinite, where the hell does it end? And if God is both infallible and omnipotent, how come s/he can’t make mistakes?
Okay, okay… I didn’t face all this alone. Naturally, I was joined in my misadventures by fellow Big Green-ers, Matt Perry and John White, plus Marvin (my personal robot assistant), the man-sized tuber of our acquaintance, Big Zamboola, and the two Lincolns (posi- and anti-), who split up with us on the mysterious island of Manna-hat-a-hun. Last week, we were being pursued by a large, loch-dwelling denizen of the deep – in essence, the Creature of the Barge Canal – which had barged (so to speak) into the riverboat’s on-deck buffet and helped itself to a generous serving of shrimp salad with a side of officer of the day. Believing we were next on the menu, we opted for below-decks, from whence we had emerged, in hopes that our giant pursuer would be unable to follow.
… and so on and so forth. Well… the giant sea creature – Diplodocus, I believe – started swaying back and forth in time with the music. It was a trance like state, brought on by the singing of this ludicrous little number Matt and I pulled out of our asses in about five minutes some years back. Damnedest thing.