Tag Archives: mansized tuber

Trying to overcome the rule of thumb

November 12, 2021 Joseph

Step back a little bit further – you’re out of frame. Okay, now take a step to the right. That’s it. That’s … no, that’s too far. Go back to the left. LEFT! You know, the side your left hand is on. Oh, Jesus!

Oh, hi. Well, once again I’m called upon to do something that I have zero aptitude for. Namely, that’s taking pictures of our band. We do not have an official photographer, which is a shame … because we had a professional photographer before we even had a drummer. (In fact, he sat in on one of our photo sessions as our drummer.) Then we had a drummer, but no guitar player. But I digress.

Bad self portaits

That said, I’m not averse to learning new skills. Neither am I skilled at learning a new verse. The thing is, I am singularly bad at photography. Ask anybody I’ve taken a picture of. I’m always giving them portrait orientation when they want landscape, and vice versa. (Turns out a lot of people prefer portrait – it’s more slimming.)

There’s another thing, too. I think it’s because of these damn camera phones. Back in MY day (get off my lawn!), camera’s were big, bulky things with a massive lens and hard metal shutter buttons. Now, you hold your dumb-ass phone out in front of you, accidentally pressing three or four soft-touch buttons, and next thing you know you’ve essentially butt-dialed Madagascar.

Thumbs up, baby

Then there’s my honking thumb. The sucker keeps getting in the way of the lens. I spend half an hour setting up a shot, getting all the folks together, polishing Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to a high gloss, trimming the root-mesh off of the mansized tuber’s strange protuberances, and so on. Then I take the shot …. and my MF thumb is taking up a third of the frame.

See, this is why I’m not filthy rich. If I was a shameless capitalist opportunist, I would promote this as my distinctive style, an aesthetic flourish, a unique take on the world. A little hot air can go a long way, my friends. Soon my thumb-obscured photos would hang in galleries and museums all over Europe, and I would have many imitators. But alas, like my clumsy thumb, the money-making gene skipped my generation of Perry. Them’s the breaks.

Xmas greetings ahead

Now, I know we’ve been doing nothing but repeats these past few Christmases. This year will be different …. I hope. Stay tuned. I’m thinking another nano concert is in order. Think of it as our Christmas Pageant. I’ll be the third reindeer on the left.

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 bread (or perhaps toast) upon the water.

October 8, 2021 Joseph

Well, blown me down. I appear to be talking like a pirate today. Why? Damned if I know. Maybe it’s the weather. Or maybe it’s that scurvy crew who’s planning to make off with my booty. (That’s treasure, by the way, not some part of my anatomy).

Well, as you know, Big Green has never been the best pirate ship on the high seas. We have scuttled very few corsairs over our time, whatever the hell THAT means. I guess what I’m saying is that, well, we are somewhat remuneratively challenged. In other words …. we are a freaking financial flop, full stop. (Take that, full stop twitter bot!)

A balance lower than whale shit

There was a time in our early years when we sought some advice on how to manage our finances. We were putting the cart before the horse, in a sense, as we didn’t HAVE any finances at the time. But like most bands, we expected riches to fall from the sky. Our fear was that, if such riches came in the form of gold or silver pieces, we might be crushed by these great falling projectiles. That would never do!

So we went to the local financial advisor and asked him (and yes, it was a him) what we should do if we ever came into some cash. He asked to see our bank account, and when we showed him the passbook that we had kept from grammar school, his face went white (I should say whiter, actually). That was when we were ushered out. No, really – an usher showed us out, and he was kind of large.

Giving it all away

So what do you do with an asset that has no value? Well, friends, it’s simple – you give it away. That’s what we started to do with our music, and damn it, it caught on. Now bands all around the world give their music away for nothing. True, almost none of them are famous bands. And also true, we’ve had zero influence over them on this. But we’re all on the same page – that’s what counts.

A few weeks ago I talked about the interstellar lengths we’ve gone chasing a few stray quatloos. And I realize that this creates a false impression that we’re merely affecting to be non-commercial. Well, nothing could be farther from the truth. Just because we’re chasing money, doesn’t mean we’ve sold out. After all … to sell out, you need something to sell. I rest my case.

Raise the big blue flag

Of course you’ve all heard of Perry’s flag, right? Don’t give up the ship! Well, like any good pirate, we would never give her up, not to some low-down scum of a tugboat operator. And while that flag which bears our name also seems to stand opposed to our principle of giving things away, that doesn’t bother us too much. Anything written on a flag couldn’t be all wrong.

So we will continue pushing out content for no compensation. That’s just how we roll around here. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) does everything HE does for free. Mansized tuber never asks for compensation of any kind. It wouldn’t be right for us to ignore their good example, wouldn’t you agree?

So, look out, opposite shore – here comes some soggy bread!

BIG GREEN