Going to have to transpose that one as well. Try it in B-flat. That’s right, B-flat. No, no… not THAT B-flat, the one that’s between A and B. Jesus.
Oh, hi, reader. (I think you’re out there, somewhere). Just reharmonizing a thing or two before Big Green gets underway with their upcoming interstellar tour 2010 (theme not yet announced). Matter of no small necessity, actually, as I just blew out a key on my Roland A-90ex – the A below middle C, as it happens. I think it died of overuse. (We seem to play a lot in A and A minor.) But, frugal as we are, rather than replace the sucker, I’ve been working around it. Hey… we’ve got to keep our tinder dry for this tour, man. Wouldn’t want to be halfway out to Aldebaran without a spare dime in our pockets, now would we? (Would we? Could be a question for Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, who is an unaffiliated expert on interstellar economics. I myself cannot be certain. A dime COULD be worth a FORTUNE in space…)
Okay, so this is becoming kind of an annoying workaround, to tell the god’s honest truth. For instance, we might usually play “Johnny’s Gun” in A. That’s a non-starter. Key doesn’t exist, damn it, unless I have Marvin (my personal robot assistant) stand by and make the appropriate A-440 tone every time I hit the broken key. Seems less than a practical use of his time, quite frankly. Not that there is a truly appropriate use for his time. He’s a freaking robot, for chrissake. Built to serve man… and I don’t mean that in the sense of some contrived semantic turn of phrase meant to conceal the fact that he, in fact, cooks people for lunch (or perhaps supper). Not a bit of it. Marvin eats tofu and light machine oil, 
that’s it. Just like the rest of us.
You may wonder why it is that we take such a large complement of hangers-on along with us on these extraterrestrial tours. Well, you know the old saying, there’s safety in numbers, right? Well, that’s got nothing to do with us – we’ve never been particularly good with numbers. What I was about to say was that we need help, and lots of it. We’re not teenagers anymore, and we’ve long since lost track of our unicycles and pogo sticks. If we’re going to face multiple G’s, interplanetary turbulence, meteor showers, unexplained magnetic phenomena, irritable and unreasonable extraterrestrials with death-ray eyeballs, extremes of heat and cold, and so on, we’re bloody well not going to do it alone. That’s the bottom line, friends. We need human (and some non-human) shields and plenty of ’em.
And the first step in our self-defense strategy is learning everything in the right key. What? Oh, damn. sFshzenKlyrn broke a guitar string. Now we can’t play in E either!
Man, I’ll tell you – tempers run short here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in the middle of July. All this heat… it’s driving us mad! Those of us who weren’t mad to begin with, that is. (Strangely, it kind of drives Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, sane.) I’m just trying to clear out the clutter a little bit, and I threw out a beam of wood. I mean literally, I threw it out the window in hopes the trash collectors would pick it up. Next thing I know, it’s back in the freaking hallway. I guess Lincoln (or perhaps anti-Lincoln… I keep mixing them up because the heat makes them switch personalities) has grown attached to that particular fallen roof beam, or was perhaps planning to whittle it into something more attractive. Don’t know for sure, but he appears to have taken the heat. Calm down, Mr. President!
Still, as many of you probably know, the main consideration with these tours is logistics. I don’t know if you’ve followed our previous outings, but typically we run into some kind of technical or manpower-related difficulties at some point in the proceedings, then mayhem ensues. That’s been the pattern. Why, you ask? Well, it could be because we’re just plain unlucky. Or maybe because we’re getting a little old and codger-like. But I think the most convincing explanation is that we rely too much on frail human faculties to carry us from solar system to solar system. We need more automation. And watching all that footage of those BP robots working furiously on that spill in the Gulf, I’m reminded that robots – excluding for a moment Marvin (my personal robot assistant) – are an under-utilized resource in this operation.
Yes, friends, we’re back home in Indiana… I mean, in upstate New York again. Back at the fabled and storied (actually, three stories, plus the roof and basement) Cheney Hammer Mill. We arrived on the redeye late last night… and by “redeye” I don’t mean an overnight flight from Andrews Airforce Base; rather, an eye-popping super-light speed journey through the outer solar system with a drunken mad scientist at the controls, half-empty quart of redeye clutched in his left paw. Weaving? Yes, we had that. Sudden drops in altitude? Most def. And what about those dramatic gravitational variances? Well, we endured our share, clinging to the exposed plumbing of the upper deck (some of which emitted an eerie green glow – uuuuhhhllll), rolling with the turbulence as our inebriated navigator snaked his way between the planets like celestial highway cones. There were a couple of exciting moments – Mitch Macaphee had missed the memo about that new Saturnian ring, and we plowed right through the sucker with inches to spare – but even with one eye closed (and one brain neutralized), we managed to hit our earthly target.
man, I pulled open the front door and let the uniformed individuals in. They were looking for the man-sized tuber, they told me, and would only say why directly to the tuber himself. When he wheeled himself into the room, one of our visitors hung a ceremonial ribbon around his… well… neck, I guess you could call it. “Congratulations, Mr. Mayor,” said the woman to the tuber, “and welcome home.” And I was like… and tubey was like… and Mitch was like… what the fuck, we were ALL like something I obviously can’t describe, but which approximates surprise and flabbergastedness. (At least not using words. Gestures, perhaps.)
Folks just north of here almost elected the intellectual equivalent of a box of rocks as their congressman. And what the hell, this seemed like it could redound significantly to our benefit, know what I mean? After all, we are just SQUATTERS here, no defined rights at least in the local codebook (except the right to be taken to jail). Now that he’s mayor, tubey can keep the heat off of us. He can, I don’t know, appoint Marvin (my personal robot assistant) as Public Safety Commissioner and Mitch Macaphee as his, I don’t know, budget director. I’m just thinking out loud here. Well, that sounded all well and good, and as they led the new mayor off to his cush mansion in the middle of town, we all sat back and waited for those benefits to start rolling in the front door like over-ripe oranges, fresh-plucked from the plush fronds of the juiciest tree in town. Mmmmm, boy – solid privilege!