300 Songs

Last Post i put up my beautifully annotated map and never really explained it’s significance.  Let me explain the map and the backstory to New Roman Times.  This backstory was created by Jonathan Segel and I over a couple of weeks via email exchanges.

As a counterpoint to the  Red State/Blue State theme We divided  North America up into 13 distinct Nations.  So North America looks more like south America.  We did this based on our experiences touring.  Calgary with it’s cowboy heritage and country music; Edmonton with it’s oil patch politics seemed part ofTexas.  Greater Texas if you will. The western half of South Dakota, for similar reasons is part of Greater Texaas. Half of South Dakota is green farms, restaurants advertising Swedish Meatballs  and polka nights.  The Sunday sermons listed on the Lutheran Churches seem fairly pragmatic and don’t suggest any snake handling is going on inside.  But you cross the Missouri river and it’s range land, cowboys and off- brand  evangelical churches in old storefronts. Their signs scream “Repent Sinners”.  You also get weird billboards urging the US to leave the UN cause it’s part of the Anti-Christ’s plan for one world government.

So therefore Texas includes all the high plains and front range grasslands.  All the way up to Canada’s arctic oil patch.  Texas also includes the other North American oil patches in west texas, Louisiana,  and the Mexican gulf coast down to Veracruz..  And a good bit of the Commanche, Apache and Navajo Country.  The latter as part of the semi-autonomous Aztlan.  Similarly Louisiana (Acadia ) is semi autonomous as well as parts of the Yukon and Canadian arctic.

Texas is the most powerful nation in North America. It is the only Country with access to the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans. It also controls most of the oil and gas resources of North America.

Texas is closely allied with Deseret the Mormon nation which occupies much of the Great Basin of the intermountain west. It is also closely allied with The Confederate States of America.

The Confederate States of North America are occupy the exact area that you imagine they would.  Except they’ve managed to annex Cuba, The Bahamas and other islands in the Caribbean.

Maritime Canada is it’s own nation Nova Scotia.  This seemed to make sense to us as Maritme Canada seems much culturally closer to Scotland, Ireland or England.  And few Americans realize that Labrador and Newfoundland were not part of Canada until the late 1940’s.

Quebec is where you would imagine.  The United States is basically  everything above the mason Dixon line and East of the Missouri river.  There are a couple of notable exceptions:  Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia,  Franklin ( a new state formed by union loyalists in Eastern TN and Western NC) Kentucky,  Missouri parts of Northern Arkansas, Washington DC and northern Virginia north of the Rappahanock river are all part of the United states.

Cascadia is most of Oregon, Washington State, Northern Idaho and parts of Montana,  British Columbia and Alaska.  Cascadia was established as a separate English colony after President Millard Fillmore ceded the most of the great plains west of the Missouri to Texas and the Pacific Northwest to England.  It was rumored but never proven that president Fillmore and some of his cabinet received enormous bribes from the British and Texan Governments. (White or Tsarist Russian Alaska joined Cascadia in 1922 after the Bolshevik Revolution.)

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In Reality Reality This was the Proposed State of Deseret.

Texas then encouraged the Mormons in parts of the Northwest to rebel against the British and establish their own polygamous nation. Texas also allowed Mormon areas of Utah, Nevada, Wyoming and eastern Oregon to secede and join the Mormon state.

Earlier Texas had wrested much of this area from Mexico in the second Texan-Mexican War of 1845.   At this time Texas also helped California (including Baja California)  break away from Mexico.  California at first was a virtual colony of Texas.  But as many Union loyalist from the Northwest, Deseret and Plains filtered into California it became more and more independent.  This division between the chiefly Texan  Confederate and Mormon settlers in the sparsely populated and impoverished  Southern California and the wealthy Union loyalists in the North would come back to haunt California.

Indeed this is how our story begins. In 2004  parts of Southern California try to Secede from the Republic of California and a civil war ensues.   The Republic of Texas and The Mormon republic Deseret opportunistically intervene on the side of the Southerners.

Deseret hopes to expand their borders  to include the large mormon communities in the Las Vegas and San Bernadino Provinces of California.

The Texans gain control the Pacific ports at Ensenada and San Diego.  This is important because previously their Pacific Fleet was based out of Rocky Point or Puerto Penasco on the bay of California in the semi-autonomous Aztlan region of Texas. Mexico and California could effectively “bottle up” the Texan fleet in the Bay of California.

And also about this time It is revealed that two distinct Space Alien races have  established secret bases in the California.  The “Blues” in Baja California near Loreto.  And the “Greys” just outside of Las Vegas.  At area 51.

The Blues and the Greys who had taken a hands off approach to Earthling politics up to  this point intervene to enforce a truce on the two warring sides.  The conflict becomes a simmering insurgency.  The northern Insurgents call themselves The CVB.  No one is sure exactly what the acronym stands for.

There is also this new genetically altered weed that is floating around.  It actually increases ones intelligence and it may have come from the aliens.  It may also explain Californias sudden technological advances. It’s called Flower in English or Chocolate in Spanish.  It’s distribution is controlled by a Mexican gang (Los Tigres Trafficantes) operating with the complicity of the Mexican intelligence services.

See my post on Jo stalins Cadillac for the Camper Van Beethoven patented songwriting formula.   But I believe we have the three main elements.

Aliens.  Check

Pot or Psychedelics.  Check

Crazy conspiracy theories.  Check

Seems like a Camper Van Beethoven Album to me.

Los Tigres Traficantes- Camper Van Beethoven

In reality Jonathan recorded this guy selling chocolate on a street corner in Lima Peru.  He chopped it up and put it to this instrumental.

I Am Talking To This Flower- Camper Van Beethoven

The young Texan Soldier is now working for Texintelsecuricorp.  A private intelligence company in Texas.  He’s supposed to be gathering intelligence on the CVB and Mexican operatives in Southern California but he’s really just spending most of his time smoking Flower with Los Tigres Trafficantes.

Also TexIntelSecuriCorp is none as a “Doo Dah”  in other words it has the same cadence as “Camptown Races five miles long”.   Frank Funaro Cracker’s drummer can hear any instance of this cadence.  He quickly says “Doo Dah”.  I was singing practicing pronouncing TexIntelSecuirCorp when Frank Funaro shouted across the room “Doo Dah”.

In part three I will do the songs and the story chronologically.

This entry was posted on August 12, 2010 at 6:18 pm and is filed under Camper Van Beethoven with tags i am talking to this flower, Los Tigres Trafficante. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.