Tag Archives: hammer mill

Usual Rubbish

Anudder home.

Where did I put my html tags? I thought I packed them with my socks, but they don’t appear to be in there. WFT, man…. getting a new home is always such a pain.

No, friends. We have not abandoned the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. That would be something you might expect from the department of redundancy department (of redundancy). We have, however, abandoned our old web site and moved into a new one, designed by, I don’t know, professional web designers… as opposed to my sorry ass, who threw together our last site with Front Page and some tweezers … not to mention some cracked old photo manipulation software. Yeah, that’s right. Do I have to draw you a picture? (Actually… that would have been better than what came out of that software.)

Anywho… out with the old, in with the new. We’ve been using WordPress for Hammermill Days (and, earlier, Notes from Sri Lanka) for over five years, and so we thought, hey, why not build the whole freaking site using the same software? It actually works, you can edit it from anywhere using a Web browser…. How easy is that? Too easy! That’s what Mitch Macaphee says. Being a mad scientist, he thinks things should be hard … at least as hard as building Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was. Sure, he built Marvin out of spare parts and bric-a-brac he had lying about his lab, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. Building a sentient being never is, my friends.

Now, the cynical and suspicious-minded amongst you (and you all know who you are) will imagine that this web site face lift is all about our supreme ambition to become special assistants to inevitable president-elect and future king of the moon Newt Gingrich; that we somehow abandoned and discarded our illin’, aging old web site for a shiny, sexy younger one, like … well, like … something some politician did once. That is a dirty lie. Fact is, we have already been invited by Newt Gingrich – future president and current Lincoln in his own mind – to advise him on interplanetary relations including, most specifically, his plans for our nearest neighbor in space. In point of fact, we will be a bit like the late Richard Holbrook, who was given the Af-Pak portfolio. (We will be in charge of the Moon, Mars, and Saturn, so it might be called the LunaMaSa portfolio, in media culture shorthand-speak.)

So anyway… welcome to Big Green’s new home on the Web. Take a look around. Kick the tires. Leave comments. Move in to one of the pages and order expensive dinners. Glad to have yuh.  

 

Usual Rubbish

Fruit cup.

These are indeed auspicious days to be Big Green. What the hell am I talking about? I was hoping you would know, good browser.

Yes, just hanging about at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, assembling the next podcast of THIS IS BIG GREEN. Uh-huh, that’s right – we personally assemble each episode by hand. (And no, that’s not the royal “we” – I in fact have a mouse in my pocket.) It’s painstaking work. Ironing out the dross, cutting the vulgarities, tuning up the music, tweaking the costumes (oh yes … we wear costumes on our audio podcast). It is details like these that make for great podcasts. Ours is not one, but … we use the same means that the greats use, with less than great results. I’m being honest, okay. YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT? (You do? My apologies.)

Okay, so that takes some time. What do we do with the other 23.5 hours in the day? Well…. we’ve actually got a project ahead of us. Yes, another project. It’s not one of those diorama things you used to build for show and tell – you know, a box depicting the battle of the Monitor and the Merrimac, with a starfish thrown in for good measure. Then if you do particularly well on your in-class presentation, you get a little reward – perhaps a star sticker, or an extra fruit cup at lunch time. That’s all good, until you run into that bruiser out on the playground, whose dad left town with some floozie from the Shriners circus last year, and who’s been going around with a chip on his shoulder ever since, and who apparently owns all the playground equipment because if you even go NEAR the see-saw he’ll break you in half, and …

Right… well, I strayed a bit. The project. Remember, way back in the year 2000, when we briefly hooked up with Dubya Bush while he was out on the campaign trail, sharing our interstellar tour bus with the soon-to-be president of these here United States? Well, it helps to know people – that’s all I can say. One introduction leads to another. Because of our experience with extraterrestrial constituencies, the Gingrich campaign has tapped us to be its liaison to the moon people. This could be huge, friends – one of us (Matt, perhaps) could be named ambassador to the moon if the Newt-like object is elected president this fall. How awesome would that be?

Tough commute? No worries. With gas at $2.50 a gallon, it won’t matter a bit.

Usual Rubbish

Albumination.

We’re out of the big box retail business. Easy come, easy go. Now what do we do for scratch? Start scratching? What am I, a dee-jay? (Perhaps I am…. )

Leave us face it. As so many of our closest friends and advisors have told us, Big Green’s money-making gene is recessive. The cash bone definitely is not connected to the Green bone. Even when we have a hole to China’s most productive consumer good factory – literally a tunnel to the bank! – it blows up in our faces. The gods want us humble. They have given us a mission, and we must fulfill it. Live simply in an abandoned mill. Make music. Travel to other planets via questionable means. Go forth and do as I tell you. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

What the…. got gods for three minutes and they’re already demanding as hell. Well, you should know that we’re not letting the grass grow under our feet. (Except the mansized tuber, of course – that’s his natural state.) As you may be aware, Matt and I have been busy with our podcast. A grueling monthly broadcast schedule, now in its eighth grueling month. Ever eat gruel for eight months straight? Just try it sometime, Ebeneezer. Even you will be calling for more bread, damn the ha-penny extra. Right…. where was I? Ah, yes. Work. Work, work, work. The podcast demands a great deal out of us – namely, that we turn on the recorder, stand in front of studio mics, and talk total, rambling nonsense like we always do. Then we press stop. (I told you – it’s a great deal.)

Then there are the songs. We’ve done a lot of Cousin Rick Perry songs – it’s becoming a bit of a theme, like Christmas or rare foot diseases. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been good enough to help track some of the numbers. In fact, we’re thinking about pulling it together into an album – finishing the songs we threw together for the podcast and putting out an album of Rick Perry themed material. Would the resulting product be an abomination of sorts? Perhaps in the Eyes (or the Ears) of the Almighty Rick. He is among our more sensitive cousins, to be sure.

So, yes, our hands are full, our hearts (and wallets) light, our spirits…. I don’t know, I’ll go with spongy.