Tag Archives: mitch

Usual Rubbish

Time wasting.

Ever see that episode of Lost In Space when they’re rushing to get the piece-of-shit Jupiter 2 spaceworthy before the planet they’ve been living on for an entire television season explodes beneath them? Yeah, well … that’s sort of where Big Green is right now.

Big GreenNo, a stereotypical t.v. gold miner named Mister Nerim is not fracking the Cosmonium out of the living rock beneath us (at least, not yet), but it’s nearly as bad. Our corporate label, Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc. (also known as Hegephonic) has arranged for an interstellar tour to support the release of our most recent album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, which – while it hasn’t done squat down here on earth – is selling briskly on Aldebaran, I hear.  (Great music always finds its audience. And, well, ours does, too, if it travels far enough.)

Of course, Hegemonic subcontracted the tour arrangements to some underworld figures, as they typically do. That has its upsides, like … I don’t know …. valet parking on Aldebaran? Free breakfast for gamblers? No, it’s the downsides I’m more concerned with. Like the fact that the contractors just handle the booking; the transportation is completely up to us. So as you saw last week, we’ve been scrambling to pull together some kind of interstellar space vessel – quite a challenge in the continued absence of our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, who is sunning himself in beautiful Madagascar right now.

Well ... a little ambitious, perhaps. Don’t know if you know this, but underworld booking agents take breach of contract kind of seriously. That’s why we’re resorting to just about any means of getting from one planet to the other. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) helpfully suggested a design for a new space craft, but it seems a little ambitious, to be perfectly frank. I’m not certain that we need anything with forty-story legs and a cavernous exercise room. I was thinking something more on the modest size. Maybe a step up from the 1954 GMC city coach, but not a large step.

Hey, however we do it, we’ll need to have it done in a few weeks. Got suggestions? Put them behind the hot water pipes. I’ll find them.

Usual Rubbish

Geek to me.

Connect blue wire (A) to terminal (3). Check. Connect yellow wire (F) to terminal (48c). Check. Hit boot switch, but first, insert index fingers (K) and (M) into ears (7) and (8). Hmmm…. okay.

Big GreenOh, hi. Caught me in the middle of something, as usual. Always some task to perform here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted squat-house in lovely upstate New York. As you may recall from previous posts (or not), we are preparing for an upcoming interstellar tour to support extraterrestrial sales of our new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Fact is, we make most of our money on units sold outside the bounds of the known solar system. (The rest we make on Neptune and some of the smaller, rockier moons of Saturn.)

Anyhow, as you might suspect, we will be needing some means of transportation for ourselves, our hangers-on, our instruments and gear, our provisions, etc. We have an old 1954 GMC City Coach (or we at least have access to it in the junk yard across the street), but it’s seen better days and probably isn’t up to a journey of 1,000 light years across the trackless void of space. (The windows haven’t been caulked in a couple of decades, so I doubt it’s space-worthy.) We used to simply “rent” spacecraft from other fictional narratives, like Lost in Space or Here Come The Brides, but that option is walled off by lack of funds. Our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee is still in Madagascar, enjoying the sun, so we’re left to our own devices.

The one on the leftRight, so … using Mitch’s credit card, I ordered a do-it-yourself space ship from Heathkit. (Yes, I know … they no longer exist. I had to go through Mitch’s time portal to place the order.) So here I am, perhaps the most technically challenged member of Big Green, a man without a smart phone (I still use that brick phone my dad lent me in 1989), assembling a deluxe interstellar space cruiser stick by stick, armed only with a soldering gun and a pair of superannuated pliers.

No need to back away. I haven’t gotten to the volatile rare earths part yet. Stay tuned.

Usual Rubbish

Unique opportunity.

No, this isn’t spam. This is real life. Real as it gets, man. Gravity, oxygen, water, the whole nine yards.

This is what we need. I was just thinking back to the bad old days in the 1970s when television was king and the internets were just a twinkle in DARPA’s eyes. On about five million occasions – maybe slightly more than that – I can remember watching an ad for 120 Classical Masterpieces introduced by the well-known character actor John Williams (not the classical guitarist … nor the composer of the Lost In Space theme song). Now that we are on the verge of releasing our third and perhaps silliest album ever, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, I only wish we had a marketing powerhouse behind us like John Williams. Or even Guy Williams. (Except that he‘s dead too!)

Looks like, once again, Big Green will do the legwork on our own. We have some volunteer help, as you know. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) will tell all of his robot friends to download the album. (They don’t even need a freaking smart phone!) The man-sized tuber will be in charge of rural distribution; we’ve provided him with the requisite maps of Nebraska and Idaho. The rest of the country will be handled by the two Lincolns, who – as candidates for the presidency – have tread that ground before with great success. We have great hopes for anti-Lincoln, who has made some friends in Nashville. (Actually, that’s Nashville, Franklin, Idaho. Look it up.)

Yes, distribution is always a headache when most of your fans live on other planets. There’s a cost-benefit issue in trying to ship discs via UPS to Neptune; it’s hard to make that $9.95 per unit generate a profit against the transportation costs, even with our interplanetary handling surcharge of $45,682.53 per disc. Add in the exchange rate headaches, particularly in the Quatloo zone planets, and it’s hard to make your nut that way. Still, we try. Mitch Macaphee has some ideas involving matter transportation technology. All very hush hush at this point. We’ll let you know.

Hey, we live on crumbs. It’s the art that matters, right? That’s why we’re assembling an all-star panel of reviewers for our June podcast – experts who will examine Cowboy Scat from multiple insane perspectives. So stay tuned. This may be the best batch yet.