First there was day of the triffiids. Then there was night of the living dead. Now there’s week of the homeless virtual rock band. And what do they all have in common? Space people. Mother-fucking space people.
Hello again from sleepy upstate New York (formerly known as Sri Lanka). Last week as you recall, your friends in Big Green had made the fearful discovery that our local city hall was under foreign occupation. No, it hadn’t been overrun by stormtroopers from a distant power – this was a far more congenial takeover. Space people, armed with sacks of cash and buckets of Miracle Grow bribed their way into the building and have taken the place of our entire city council. This could be a problem, folks. Got a tax dispute? Tell it to the space man. Need the street sweepers to do a once-over on your block? Better learn to speak Betelgeusean real quick. (And take it from me – it is not an easy language to learn. No vowels. Nada.) Someone set your house on fire? Contact the mother ship… pronto. (Little bit of extra response time, you understand.)
I suppose you’re wondering how in the world our elected officials could possibly have been coaxed away from their posts by large amounts of cash… how proffered piles of filthy lucre could convince them to abandon their constituents to other worlders… how the promise of permanent paid vacation could somehow outweigh their dedication to public service. Well, stop it. Of course they took the money and ran – that’s their job. Damnit, if our public officials weren’t corruptible, we would never have been able to remain in our adopted squat house for lo these many years. Our corporate label – Loathsome Prick Records – understood this very well. It’s thanks to them, in part, that we were able to keep Marvin (my personal robot assistant) under our leaky roof. Apparently there’s a local ordinance against harboring mechanical men. (You’d be surprised what kinds of Byzantine laws lurk in the dusty volumes stacked down at your local codes department.) Nothing a little palm grease couldn’t finesse.
No more. See, this is where our problem lies. Not only are these space people total-ass lawn freaks, they’re also straight as the proverbial arrow. Incorruptible, at least by any terrestrial standard of graft. And now that they have taken over our local government, they appear determined to follow the letter of every law on the books, dating back to… well… the civil war, perhaps. Not a good thing at all. Just the other morning, 
there was a loud knock on the door. It was some of Marvin’s old colleagues from the local constabulary, only they weren’t collecting quarters for the annual charity cotillion. They were putting us out on the street, in effect – a 10-day eviction notice, signed by someone named Gizmadiyar (apparently the acting mayor… and between you and me, I don’t think he’s acting). Even Marvin’s timely intervention seemed to have no effect – the constables seemed quite happy in their work…. almost… TOO… happy….
Now, those of you who’ve been reading this blog for the last seven years know. We of Big Green have seen the elephant and heard the owl… or is it heard the elephant and seen the owl…? (Can you herd elephants?) Either way, we’ve been through far too much in our time to allow ourselves to be made homeless by some interstellar freak named Gizmandiar. Not to worry… though if you do happen to send a package our way, be sure to address it:
Big Green
Open garbage can
Corner of Sherman Street and Bolton Place
Colombo, NY
… and be sure it’s waterproof. (And trash-proof.)
on any of his former selves that the public will buy – Mister Independent, Mister Inevitable, Mister Iraq Victory, etc. Pick your favorite McCain… or collect all three! At this stage, the Arizona senator’s flagging campaign appears to be centered on his dogged support for the Iraq project, albeit a “better managed” variant of that catastrophe. The calculation is a simple one – McCain supports the troop increase because he believes it’s right, even though it’s unpopular; a position that is supposed to lend him an aura of integrity and moral authority. Everyone else is playing politics with the war, but not McCain. That’s his card, and he’s playing it for all it’s worth, equating troop withdrawals with “surrender” and any war funding conditions with abandonment of our troops (mainstream G.O.P. positions, in essence).
McCain talks as though he has the right to speak for everyone in uniform. Frankly, I don’t see why. He is not the only person who suffered during the Vietnam War, not by a long shot. Plenty of Americans had a rougher time of it than McCain, and something like 58,000 never came back at all. That’s to say nothing of what the Vietnamese and other southeast Asians endured during that war. From what I’ve seen, I doubt very many of those incarcerated by the Saigon regime or the U.S. military / C.I.A. during those years are now trotting around the countryside angling for votes. (Most are in unmarked graves or sleeping with the fishes, as they say.) Just this week 
Spacemen to the left of me. Spacemen to the right of me. Spacemen above my head. And beneath my soles? Astroturf. That’s right… astroturf.
You know, it wouldn’t be so bad to have all of these new neighbors if they had taken up residence the normal way: the way we got here… find an empty house and squat. No, that wasn’t good enough for them. They had to bring their own houses. And before you say anything, no, I don’t have a “problem” with space people. In fact, some of my best friends are from far beyond the confines of our little solar system. Did I mention Big Zamboola? I did. Okay. Well, there’s also sFshzenKlyrn, our perpetual sit-in guitarist. He, of course, is from the planet Zenon in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy far, far, away. sFshzenKlyrn and I go way back, so you can’t say I don’t like space people, even if they do keep me up all night with their smelly lawn mowers and their noisy stellar infrarometers running incessantly over the same measurements. (Ooooooh, I hate them, I hate them!) Don’t listen to Mr. Subliminal. I love those dang space people, I really do. (RRRRrrrrrr)
robot assistant) did serve with distinction in the local constabulary. And we have, in fact, generated a little bit of economic activity in the area with the occasional payout we receive from our new corporate label, Loathsome Prick Records, which has been willing to advance us a bit on our upcoming release (still in the mixing stage – arrrrrghhh). Yeah, we help keep the pizza joint and the pub in business, so that’s probably worth an ordinance or two from city hall about unauthorized extraterrestrial housing and landscaping. (Turns out, it isn’t even real grass. It’s like a freaking lawn toupee, man!) So one would expect a little cooperation from the authorities, eh?