Hammer Mill Days

A little colder than I expected for this time of year. Minus 254 degrees Kelvin. Crikey - better put on another pair of socks. Yes, friends - Big Green is spending another traditional family holiday a long, long way from home. It's Thanksgiving on Neptune, and I have to say, this holiday doesn't mean much to folks up here. The casinos are filled with punters, and I don't think they're shipping them in from Saturn. It's just another day to these creatures. And as we enter the final (turkey) leg of our [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011 , we have another succession of bizarre events to greet us. Here is the week that was: 11.14.2011 - Took up residence in the Neptune Hyatt resort. A bit seedy if you ask me. I think they stole the name, actually - everything's bootlegged up here. Even our albums. Hell, we're giving them away on Neptune and they still bootleg them. I think it's for the sheer joy of doing it. There is, I imagine, a certain satisfacti...

This has been quite a year. Who would have thought it? One that started with massive uprisings in the middle east and is ending with a major economic justice movement in the United States - perhaps even more unlikely than the popular overthrow of Mubarak. Now we've seen renewed attempts to evict the protesters from Zucotti Park and other encampments across the country, but as many have said, you cannot kill an idea. The Occupy movement has gotten people accustomed to standing up again. And to paraphrase Dr. King, a man - even if he's a millionaire - can't ride on your back when you stand up straight. And contrary to what is argued by Ayn Rand acolytes like Paul Ryan and (Ayn) Rand Paul, the wealthy truly do ride on the backs of working people. That has always been the case. Rand imagined the world being brought to a standstill by a wealthy, innovative class of overlords who withhold their beneficent participation in Rand's dystopian top-down economy. The truth is, they...

Merry Christmas, Children? Not sure I remember the parts. Besides, that's ... well ... challenging. Anything easier for the season? Jit-Jaguar ? That's a Christmas song? Oh, right. Hey, sorry. Just working out the set list for our next string of performances. We're not one of those groups that just gets up on stage in front of 20,000 people (or 20,000 amorphous blobs of protoplasm) and wings it, playing whatever comes into our heads. No, sir ... we plan out every inch of our stage show, from the song list to the dance steps to Marvin (my personal robot assistant) juggling torches. (Yes, that's right , Marvin - it's torches this time! Deal with it!) Right, well ... okay, we don't have dance steps per se. Nor set lists. But we do work up a vague idea of what we're going to play over the course of the next week. That's called planning, my friends. How does it work out in the specific context of Big Green's [INSERT NAME HERE] INTERSTELLAR TOUR 2011 ?...

As always, a bit pressed this week, so I'll keep my comment brief. Moving right along... The uncertainty principle. It can be said that the uncertainty principle is a major talking point on the center-right particularly, but certainly present across the political spectrum. Why is the U.S. job market so weak? Uncertainty. Why are global stock markets in turmoil? Uncertainty. Why does gravity hold down large rocks and trees? You know the answer. I hear this all the time - uncertainty is keeping businesses from investing in new capacity, new labor, etc. The operative question is, though, what is certainty? Since when do investors expect certainty? Don't we all deal with uncertainty every moment of every day, particularly on the margins of society where one's very existence is subject to it? When has that ever not been the case for either individuals or organizations? Invoking uncertainty is merely an attempt to shout down any thought of raising taxes on rich people, on profit...

Here's the fourth installment of our vaunted tour diary. Anybody got a pen? How about a knife? I can just whittle the words. A pen knife? Even better! Where have all the good tours gone? This one has gone a bit flat, though I will say that we did manage to get the rent-a-ship rolling again, thanks to sFshzenKlyrn . I know what you're thinking - he probably used some kind of trans-temporal presto-digitation to conjure us up a new ion drive servo chip. No such thing. He just waited until Marvin (my personal robot) was in sleep mode and plucked the chip out of his sorry hide. (Marvin lists a bit now. Not that that's a bad thing... I have him doing our set lists. Boom- crash .) Here's the lowdown on Big Green's [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011 : 10.31.2011 - Hallowe'en on Betelgeuse. Surprisingly, this is kind of a big deal up here. Not that they do the costumes or the trick or treat. In fact, it's kind of an interstellar anti-gravity day - the Betelge...

My brother Matt was complaining about NPR today. I guess they were talking to one of the fifty generals they have on tap; a guy named General Mills. ("What the hell, does he command Cap'n Crunch?" said Matt.) We groused about this a bit for the podcast . NPR and PBS have always been heavily freighted with retired generals, like the commercial networks and cable channels. But because they have been erroneously described as "leftist" or somehow associated with an elusive liberal elite, they go overboard to disabuse people of that notion. They fired Soundprint's Lisa Simeone for her association with Occupy DC, apparently fearing that her defense of the 99% would cloud her journalistic objectivity about opera, which is mostly what she covers. Call them National Paranoid Radio. I'm thinking about NPR particularly because of the president's declaration that the Iraq war will be drawn to a close at the end of this year, despite the administration's effo...

What is all the ruckus about? I told you we were bringing equipment with us. And no, we don't need unicycles. We can get around on our own two feet, thank you very much. That's the problem with interstellar tours, my friends. A billion opportunities for misunderstandings. No shortage of those, particularly when you're traveling with the two Lincolns (posi- and anti-), as we appear to be out here on Big Green's vaunted [INSERT NAME HERE] INTERSTELLAR TOUR 2011 . Anyway, here's how it went down this week: 10.25.2011 - Our first full night on Kaztropharius 137b . If anything, it's quiet - too quiet. Keep forgetting that there's no atmosphere here, ergo, no sound. (Or is it "air-go; no sound"? You decide.) We strummed our way silently through about a dozen tunes. The denizens of this strange little rock appeared partial to "My Bed", one of Matt's dream-sequence numbers. They pick up vibrations from our instruments via the floor of the ...