Tag Archives: Cheney Hammer Mill

There’s another way of saying this

October 29, 2021 Joseph

I could have sworn I left it right here. Sometimes I think I’m losing my nut. And sometimes I think I’m losing my soup. So I’ve got it covered, soup to nuts. What was I saying again?

Hoo, man. Those squatters upstairs must be smoking the devil’s weed once again. I’ve got second-hand smoke brain. Of course, after having spent a third of my life with first-hand smoke brain, this almost rises to the level of clarity. No, there are many possible reasons why I’m thick as a brick today. Here’s one …

Sleep is our friend

Let’s face it. When you don’t sleep enough, you start getting stupid. Ask anyone who’s been up for five days. Rest assured, they will tell you that they cannot rest assured. And if you ask anyone who’s been up for a hundred days, they won’t answer because they’re busy being dead. In short, sleep is obligatory.

Now, many of you know I’m a part time geezer. In fact, pretty much everyone in Big Green is exactly that. My illustrious brother Matt, for instance, seems to expend endless amounts of energy looking after all of nature’s creatures. Does he sleep any more than I do? Probably not. But – and this is important! – he makes more sense than I do. Good thing, too. Anyhow … they say that you need less sleep when you get older. The truth is, you just GET less sleep. How they mix those two things up is beyond me.

Go to the window

Some people lose sleep because they walk in their sleep. The name for this syndrome is somnambulism, or “whooping cough.” (Okay, maybe not, but never mind.) To be clear, this illness not only makes you tired, it can beat the hell out of you. I don’t think that’s my problem, though to be sure I roped Marvin (my personal robot assistant) into testing my slumbering ass.

Here’s how the test worked. Marvin would wait until I was sleeping, then start playing the recording of Leo McKern in the movie Help saying “Go to the window”. The theory was that, if I were a sleepwalker, the power of suggestion would be enough for me to defenestrate myself. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. (It wasn’t for want of trying, however. Marvin ran that thing on a loop for about five hours.)

The power of Z

Leave us face it: the only cure for not getting enough sleep is getting enough sleep. Trouble is, when I try to sleep, I think about trying, then I think about thinking, then I think about thinking about thinking …. oh, damn it. It’s the brain, man! How do you stop a brain? (No one can restore a brain!)

Fortunately, I can put myself to sleep simply by playing my favorite songs. Three or four bars in, and the big Z sneaks up and takes hold. It’s a real crowd pleaser, people.

Usual Rubbish

This is not the sort of thing I meant

October 22, 2021 Joseph

Okay, back it up a little further. That’s it. Little more. Little more. That’s great, stop there. I said stop. STOP, DAMN IT! Bloody hell!

Yeah, hey, everybody. Just attempting to wave a shipment of widgets into the loading dock here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. I have to say, it’s not working out very well. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) volunteered to drive the truck. Need I say more? (We’ll be needing to put a tarp over the loading dock, now that he’s punched a truck-shaped hole in the garage door.)

What kind of widgets are we receiving? Not sure. This wasn’t my gig. Actually, Anti-Lincoln had the bright idea of getting an assembly line going here in the old mill. He is from the mid 19th century, and so a hammer mill from the 1890s looks quite modern to his eyes, particularly when he’s had some of his beloved absinthe.

Unintended consequences

So, I’m pretty sure I’m partly to blame for Anti-Lincoln’s new project. I told him to do something constructive with his time. It was just an effort at mild criticism. Frankly, the guy sits around the mill sulking most of the time, wishing he were made of positrons instead of pure anti-neutrons (absolutely pure!). I got sick of his whining. And his wining. (He likes wine as much as Kavanaugh likes beer. Do YOU like beer?)

Anyway, next thing I knew, Anti-Lincoln was rebuilding the works in the assembly room. I thought little of that until the shipments started coming. Ball bearings arrived first, then aluminum brackets. Next came long spools of rattan string. God only knows how he’s paying for this stuff! But aside from that, what the hell is he building in there? WHAT HAVE I DONE?

Newton without the figs

Okay, so I have a theory. I don’t know if you remember this, but there was a popular gadget back in the 1970s called the Newtonian Demonstrator. My notion is that Anti-Lincoln is planning to corner the market on these things. It’s just a hunch, but in a way it makes sense. Brackets, ball bearings, string … what the hell else is he going to do with it?

Then, of course, there’s the question of who the customers might be. Are Newtonian Demonstrators a hot item these days? I didn’t think so, but again …. I have to consider Anti-Lincoln’s 19th Century perspective on this. Newtonian physics was really coming into its own when he was reaching adulthood in anti-matter Kentucky. It’s possible he doesn’t know that these gadgets went out with the Whole Earth Catalog.

Stopping the line

Now, as you know, Anti-Lincoln has done a lot of crazy shit in his time. And it’s likely that he’ll do a lot of crazy shit in the future. But when he set up an actual assembly line and press ganged Marvin and the man-sized tuber into pulling double shifts, he clearly went too far.

Now, I’m a pretty reasonable guy. I put up with a lot of nonsense. But when you start exploiting the living crap out of my entourage, you’re crossing a line. I pulled the plug on the assembly line and encouraged Marvin and tubey to start a job action. We shut that sucker down and started picketing our own hammer mill. That’s how serious we are, friends. STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! Send pizzas! Anti-Lincoln is a corporate snake!

Usual Rubbish

Putting a gloss on that broken shoe

October 1, 2021 Joseph

Yep, they just keep rolling in. That’s what Mitch tells me, anyhow. We’re rich, baby, rich. Unless, of course, our mad science advisor is lying to us. For what reason? Madness has no reason, captain. But it can have a goal.

Well, THAT got weird quick. No matter. Just living the dream here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, Big Green’s adopted home. Now that we’ve started performing again, at least in the digital space, we’re finding some small reason to celebrate. Not that we don’t have cheerful moments from time to time. We’re Big Green, after all, not Big Blue. That’s a whole different thing.

Chasing the residuals

Anyway, so we launched this nano solo concert featuring yours truly, Joe of Big Green. And, of course, we assumed that the residuals would start rolling in like oranges on a down ramp. Au contraire, mon frer! Not a farthing found its way to us, not a sausage. We shook the YouTube machine upside-down a few times, but it was no use.

Now, ordinarily this would upset any band. But Big Green is not any band, my friend. Don’t forget – we are a collectivist institution. It’s share and share alike around here. We have built a post-capitalist artist collective in the abandoned mill we call home, and we have no desire for the typical consumer comforts. When we make a sandwich, it’s big enough for five. In other words, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) doesn’t get any. But I digress.

An attempt at radical redistribution

Dennis Moore proved decades ago that redistribution of wealth is trickier than he thought. Among the members of Big Green and our extended network of cast offs, we have tried various methods of radical redistribution over the years. It comes more naturally to some than to others. Anti-Lincoln, for instance, has an innately redistributive ethos: what’s yours is mine, what’s mine is mine. At least you know where he stands!

I don’t want to suggest that we completely eschew standard currency. That’s simply not true. We accept all types of money, from dollars to lire to Aldebaran Quatloos. In fact, we see playing music for money as a form of radical wealth redistribution – exchanging something abstract and intangible for something concrete. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m not particularly crazy about accepting payment in concrete. Sometimes you have to take what you can get.

Barrelling toward the future

Last week, the garbage collectors tried a kind of informal redistribution of capital. The took our recycling container and dropped it on our neighbor’s lawn. What’s more, they took the recycling container that belongs to our neighbor on the other side and dropped it on our step. I’m pretty sure this is a signal from the solid waste workers that the revolution is nigh.

Hey, when the revolution comes, we’ll all be rich. That’s right – our new leaders will insist on calling everyone Rich. (I believe it’s an homage to a fallen comrade.)

(P.S. – Don’t forget to check out our nano-concert. New posts coming this week – stay tuned.)

BIG GREEN