It's about time.

I don't know, I'm thinking it's time. What do you think? Not sure? Okay. When do you think you'll have an answer? I don't know about you, but ... I'm thinking it's time.

Okay, well ... I'll be frank with you. (Just call me "Frank" from now on.) We are grasping at straws here in Big Green land, now that our interstellar tour has been scuttled. And here it is, the holidays. We were thinking that we'd be traversing interstellar space when Christmas week came, but no dice. Trouble is, that was going to be our excuse for not getting anyone presents - sorry folks, we're headed to a big gig on planet KIC 8462852. No time to shop! Well, THAT'S out the window. Any other good ideas for cheapskates?

Marvin (my personal robot assistant) humbly suggested we hand out signed copies of our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, which appropriately follows a theme somewhat tangentially related to the holidays. Of course, we've resorted to that tactic before - it's been a full 17 years since we put the sucker out, so everyone we know (and quite a few people we don't know) has a copy. By this point, they're stacking them under broken table legs and using them for drink coasters. I saw one of our friends re-purposing the jewel cases. Talk about a post-apocalyptic music hell-scape - people are mining our album like it's a natural resource. (And it's anything but natural.)

The gift of music is always an early resort for us. That's basically how 2000 Years To Christmas was born - Matt writing songs as holiday gifts, back in the day. Then there's the gift of podcasting. There, we have some good news and some bad news. The GOOD news is that we are working on another Christmas pageant as we speak - a Ned Trek holiday classic that will have some new songs embedded in it. The BAD news is that ... at the rate we're going, it likely won't be finished until AFTER Christmas, so ... hot holiday leftovers are coming your way.

For the holiday week itself, we may put out a rerun podcast with some additional "members only" elements. (Oh, right - we don't have membership levels. Scratch that.) Back to the grind, boys!

Picking your friends.

I suppose I may as well work the same furrow as the mainstream media does and talk about President Elect Trump's cabinet choices. It's a bit like drinking urine, but here goes.

The list thus far seems custom designed to irritate centrists and liberals. That's only to be expected, right? People who didn't support Trump, people who said bad things about him, people who worked for his opponent - their attitude is, well, fuck those people. And since they have no philosophical commitment to making government work effectively, the vengeance factor is of greater relative importance than it might otherwise be. Still, it is pretty stunning to see them assemble such a wrecking crew. We knew that a Republican win would mean hitting the ground running in January, and it looks like that's going to be the case.

So what the hell - Trump has hired three generals so far: Flynn, Mattis, and Kelly, in order of crazy (most to least). Mattis seems problematic in that one might prefer overtly civilian control of the Pentagon, but then there's putting General Kelly in charge of Homeland Security. So military control of the Pentagon and domestic security policy? Sheesh. (Don't get me started about Flynn .... that man should be in a straitjacket.) There are also several billionaires under consideration, as well as a couple of financial crisis profiteers, most notably Mnuchin, who cleaned up on the purchase and re-sale of IndyMac, playing a prominent role in robo-signing mortgage foreclosures in between.

But I think the overriding theme is "opposite day": putting people in charge of federal departments towards which they are either actively hostile or blissfully indifferent. Putting Dr. Carson in charge of HUD is just a case of appointing a functional incompetent to run a complex agency. Making Scott Pruitt head of the EPA is just a sick joke - that sounds like a Pence choice to me, but I'm guessing. Same with Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary. It seems like the charge of each of these ass-clowns is to destroy the thing they've been hired to run, and I'm certain they will be successful.

Hey, nobody said it was going to be easy. And if anybody thought Trump might be inclined to throw the other side a bone for the sake of national "healing", they must surely be disabused of that notion by now.

luv u,

jp