Got your bearings straight? Well, then, where the hell are we? What’s that? The Bering Strait? How the hell did we… oh, right. You’re just repeating the last two words of every sentence that comes out of my mouth. How helpful. Stop it!
Yes, friends… that’s right. We still haven’t found our way back to the Cheney Hammer Mill, which we now presume is no longer under the control of the dreaded space alien Gizmandiar since his ignominious defeat at the pseudo-pods of the equally dreaded (though beloved by us) space alien sFshzenKlyrn . (Long story, actually. If you’ve missed the last few installments, click that Usual Rubbish link and scroll down a bit.) Anyway, we spent several salty days at sea following our splashdown in the Atlantic (or was it the Pacific… because the Atlantic isn’t so terrific, though the Pacific, I hear, is not all it’s cracked up to be…) before Marvin (my personal robot assistant) caught sight of land. It was the first we’d actually heard so much as a squeak from Marvin since his collision with the alien drink dispenser last week, and though his exclamation was a bit of a non-sequitur, it was clear that he had seen our journey’s end up ahead.
Now, those of you who have been following the exploits of Big Green over the past few months (rudderless wretches though you may be) know that we spent a fair amount of time on a remote, uncharted island just recently. 
Needless to say, none of us was looking forward to this landfall – I can still feel those underripe plantains scraping my palate on the way down…. uuuhhhlllllggghh… Anyway, the strange, unknown island loomed before us, filling even the hardiest amongst us with dread. It was a dark and foreboding place, seemingly lifeless, with massive palisades of sheer rock reaching to the heavens like a confinement wall around a prison. Matt ordered the man-sized tuber to row a little harder so we could get a closer look. (Tubey isn’t good at a lot of things, but rowing he knows.) I think the root vegetable may have misunderstood Matt’s instructions somewhat, since he propelled us right up onto dry land without so much as a by your leave. (Can’t get good galley help these days…)
We got out and took a look around. Was this an island? Marvin said yes, but again, he still seemed a bit addled. So we worked our way northward through the deep canyons until, exhausted from the trials of the previous few days, we stopped to rest and collect our thoughts. Marvin did a little self lubrication, while Matt, John, and I ordered a half-carafe of 
merlot and a basket of bruschetta to bolster us for the long and arduous journey up Fifth Avenue towards terra incognita. Anticipating our plans (which we had largely kept to ourselves), the Lincolns (posi and anti) had hailed a cab while we were enjoying our provisions and sped off towards god only knows where. How many times do I have to tell these guys? This isn’t the 19th century anymore! All of the places they knew are now something else entirely. (I can picture poor anti-Lincoln scratching his fool head over the shoe factory they built on remains of his family home.)
Anyway, it’s northward bound for us, in hopes of finding a clue as to how to get back home. I’m thinking, though, we should at least try to take credit for discovering this previously unknown island, with its awful beauty and its overpriced luncheon options. How about Greenland? Taken? Then Greensfield. Greensboro. Keep thinking… we’ve got all night.
senators and congresspeople are watching the polls and worrying about their prospects for fending off anti-war challengers if this Iraq business doesn’t roll to a stop before fall of 2008. Others are probably just sick of hearing about dead and grievously wounded constituents. Dubya, for his part, obviously couldn’t care less. In some ways, he’s strikingly similar to his predecessor in the White House, at least with respect to his disregard for the health of his party. Oh sure, Bush, Rove, and Tom Delay tried to rig Washington into a G.O.P.-only club, but look where they have brought the party after six years. Pretty much the only thing they have a firm grip on now is the Supreme Court, which can be relied upon to hand down draconian decisions and maybe decide an election in a pinch. That’s enough to win… but not to govern.
It is remarkable, though, the extent to which they’ve discredited not only military adventurism (resuscitated temporarily by the Gulf War) but, more generally, the U.S.’s capacity for getting its way in the world. We still have plenty of weight to throw around, make no mistake – both economic and military – but that easy way we had of getting ordinarily compliant governments to line up behind us (or in front of us) is not what it once was. Just this week it was reported that African nations are bridling at the prospect of hosting permanent U.S. bases on the continent to support the Pentagon’s new “Africa Command”. Even notoriously corrupt western-oriented (i.e. able to be bribed) leaders are afraid that any movement in that direction will provoke an awful backlash from the populace, which trusts neither American power nor the motives behind its application. (Recall that Africa is now a substantial source of petroleum for the U.S.) Russia is off the reservation and Latin America is in open revolt (both are committing the mortal affront of putting their national and regional interests ahead of our own).
Ahoy, mateys! Yes, it’s your old friends in the calamitous band Big Green shouting out to you from the high seas, somewhere east (or perhaps west) of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in sunny upstate New York. As you may have surmised, we…. um, excuse me… Hey Matt – ask one of the Lincolns to put his finger up in the air and get a check of our wind direction. No, no – not THAT finger! Mother of pearl…. As I was beginning to say, you have probably surmised that we made it through re-entry okay. A bit touch and go, though it helps to remember that we have had much, much more experience with the terrifying phenomenon of re-entry than practically any rock band in business. (Except perhaps 
process of elimination, having activated every accessory in the bloody vehicle (including all of the vanity mirror lights… and can you believe that Gizmandiar’s ship has electric sun visors?) We hit all of the banks at once, and the resulting shock threw Marvin (my personal robot assistant) across the cabin and into what turned out to be the space alien equivalent of a water cooler (assuming, of course, Gizmandiar’s planet finds toxic sludge somehow refreshing… like the rest of us). Despite this slight mishap, our bold action did in fact slow our descent and correct our attitude to the point where we could safely re-enter the earth’s atmosphere. (Who wants to come home with a bad attitude, right? People’d just as soon you’d stayed where you were.)
troposphere (forgive me – or what used to be called the troposphere) and ker-plunked into a rather large, salty body of water, quite probably an ocean… but damn, I’m just not sure. We asked Marvin to use his sensor array to try and determine where the hell we had ended up, but he was still loopy from his collision with the sludge-cooler. It occurred to me that the man-sized tuber might try behaving like a divining rod in reverse and find the closest land mass, but… well… that was just a…. dumb idea… So we put together some plastic insulation sheeting and hoisted it up on a makeshift mast to catch the wind so that we would start heading somewhere. John tried to raise someone with his cell phone, but it was no use. (Bloody Verizon!)