NOTES FROM SRI LANKA.

(October '03)

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10/06/03

Astra, astra!

We've lost your signal... (or have we?) That's the trouble with these short-term rental spaceships. The radio sets are all leftover props from sixties television and b-movies, and invariably some tubes are blown. Just try to get a vacuum tube on Mars sometime -- they look at you like you've got two heads. (Of course, they've all got three.)

Radio or no radio, our sojourn on the red planet was worth the wait -- an oasis of relative sanity in the midst of an otherwise chaotic tour, booked by a madman and road-managed by a giant root vegetable. (My idea, I'm afraid...) I've always liked Mars, particularly the performance venue at the base of Olympus mons, the tallest "known" mountain in the solar system. They've got a skyline theatre there that puts that bloody great peak right in your face....though the parking lot is still a little rocky and far away from the facility. And then there are the solar powered chair-lifts that tourists love so much (until the sun goes down, at least). We put the man-sized tuber on one of them as a joke...he came back a slightly greenish hue, perhaps the result of thin air and low gravity. Can turnips get the bends? Must check my references. 

There was one little glitch in our Martian holiday -- a practical joke of sorts, put on by our Zenite guitarist, sFshzenKlyrn. He invented this story about a special reception being held for us on the Martian moon Deimos -- little more than a slag of rock in orbit, without so much as a single high-rise convention center to recommend it. I'm sure our Zenite friend was hoping we would all just pile into the rent-a-saucer and head out to this icy, airless asteroid....but luckily, we thought to send Marvin (my personal robot assistant) up as our advance man. 

Well, Marvin clanked around on Deimos a bit, took a few core samples, and cranked some sort of pinwheel-like atmospheric gas analyzer gizmo a few times over, but could detect no evidence of a welcome reception. He brought his findings back to our Martian hotel rooms and presented the data in a film strip, complete with a scratchy 33-rpm LP audio soundtrack punctuated by loud beeps when the frame was supposed to change. (I think Marvin was throwing those in himself, frankly.) We sat through the whole show, eating popcorn and puzzling over the presence on Deimos of a trace amount of mushroom canapé vapor...but all the gladder that we hadn't hauled our sorry asses up there for no good reason. Well done, Marvin!

With the thunderous applause of our red planet fans still ringing in our ears, we set off our next booking on Andromeda Station -- a small outpost at the very rim of our famous sister galaxy. Andromeda Station was established by the Kaztropharians sometime between Earth's Cretaceous period and the invention of the electric toaster. (It's difficult to be precise, as the inhabitants of Kaztropharius 137b outsource all their record-keeping to an extra-terrestrial subsidiary of Andersen Consulting.) The journey is a long one, necessitating long periods at maximum speed, which the man-sized tuber rather enjoys but which also kept Mitch Macaphee's knuckles white through the entire passage. (He started muttering that thing about "certain doom" again. I don't know what gets into him.) Maybe we shouldn't have let Tiny Montgomery sit in the driver's seat while Mitch was in the control room. Sometimes it's the little things that get to you. 

So...as we close in on the great Andromeda nebula, I am reminded of Matt's lyric in the song "Going To Andromeda" ....you remember...that part about....well...going to Andromeda. Anyway, that's where we're going. 

Loose Lips. Sunk Ships. Every time scandal casts a malevolent shadow over the Bush White House, I can hear millions of hearts quicken -- will this be "the big one?" ("Did you hear that, pappy? I'm comin' to join ya!") Frankly, I'm skeptical...but I can't totally suppress that cry of "Down in flames!" in a shrill, strangulated little voice, when things start looking bad for them. This Joseph Wilson thing -- the story broke months ago, and I thought it was just another heinous act of Dubya's political apparatus (i.e. the entire administration) that the press, as usual, let lie like smoking bearshit. I mean, in the context of all they've done, outing a CIA operative seems relatively minor. It's a bit like getting Nixon -- the destroyer of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and much else -- in trouble for spying on his political enemies. I mean, there's bad and then there's bad, right?

Aside from being a felony, leaking the identity of Wilson's wife to Robert Novak is one more indication of how unconcerned the Dubya crew truly is with "weapons of mass destruction." That is, after all, what Valerie Plame was supposedly working on. Doesn't this suggest that her entire line of inquiry may have been compromised for the sake of squelching criticism? Sure, those fuckers say "WMD" almost as much as they say "terrorism," but look at what they do. Their invading armies either wouldn't or couldn't secure the most sensitive known sites for weapons development (such as the Tuwaitha nuclear facility) on their way to occupying the oil fields. And even if Dr. Kay eventually turns up some expired sarin, any sensitive materials could have been carried through Iraq's admittedly porous borders and smuggled around the world a dozen times by this point. As many in the antiwar movement were right to observe, this was one of the main reasons why attacking Iraq was a stupid -- repeat, stupid -- idea from an arms control standpoint. It practically guaranteed the very outcome it was promoted to prevent -- that of putting deadly agents into the hands of terrorists. 

The administration also seems blithely unperturbed by the fact that their blithering arrogance is spawning a new weapons proliferation cycle -- specifically a nuclear one -- in the countries they have singled out for attack, and most likely elsewhere, as well. That's not a crime, exactly...but it should be. Then there's the drip-drip-drip of dead and wounded coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom might have been spared with better equipment (like enough Kevlar vests to go around!) that we somehow can't provide for them on more than $400 billion in military appropriations a year. Again, no crime there...but it is negligent and odious in the extreme. Then there's the long procession of lies, distortions, omissions, and deceptive language that has emanated from this White House since their push for elective war against Iraq began in earnest over a year ago, perhaps best illustrated by Wolfowitz's comments last month about "a great many of bin Laden's key lieutenants" now working in tandem with "old loyalists from the Saddam regime," which he, one day later, retracted with the admission that he had actually meant one...one of bin Laden's "key associates"...namely Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the guy they yakked about before the war whose connection to Saddam is questionable at best. 

It's not a crime to be a congenital liar, but it's not a good thing, either, particularly when you're managing policies that affect thousands of lives. No matter how much Dubya portrays himself as "Mr. Virtue," now there's a clear record of deceit that he cannot run away from. For the first time in his life, he may actually have to take responsibility for something. That'd be something to see. 

Be well. And be careful. 

luv u,

jp

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10/12/03

Hey now,

Woke to the sound of sawing wood. Why do I get the cabin next to Tiny Montgomery? He's got sleep apnea so bad I might just spring for that Morley Safer mask thingy I keep getting emails about. It's either that or a penis enlargement solution of some type. (Question: do they stop emailing you if your dick gets longer?)

Our gig on Andromeda Station was worth the long journey (except for Mitch Macaphee, who seems about ready to swear off space travel entirely). Solid attendance figures, enthusiastic receptions...I don't know what it is about our music that appeals to the natives of Kaztropharius 137b, who inhabit this remote outpost. Maybe it's the burger...or maybe it's the bun. It could just be that they're genetically mean. In any case, as strong as these explanations might seem, I'm sure it's just random aesthetics at work on the Kaztropharians....the same strange principle that prompts them to like Dragnet re-runs or Christo's Valley Curtain. (And Vienna sausages in a jar. They just can't get enough of that red sauce.)

The cushy luxury hotel they've got at "the Station" is beyond merely bacchanalian, quite frankly. I myself was embarrassed by the opulence of the place, wading knee-deep through amenities and complimentary pleasure items, a ceremonial tasting goblet hung 'round my neck with which to sample vintage brut from spigots that lined the sideboard. Gourmet victuals were wheeled in at frequent intervals, prompting sFshzenKlyrn to abandon his various dietary restrictions and start absorbing everything in sight, including an ice machine and three Louis XIV chairs. (sFshzenKlyrn did comment that the blancmange seemed a little crunchy...) Tiny discovered the dreaded flapjacks and was even more useless than usual for the rest of our stay. Even the man-sized tuber was treated to a serious five-person manicure and shellacking that removed the ugly greenish tinge he had acquired on his daring chair-lift ride to the top of Mars' Olympus Mons. (They filed down a few of his sharper edges as well, and now he's one smooth root vegetable.) This was living. 

The only one in our party who seemed at all put off by all this extra-galactic hospitality was Marvin (my personal robot assistant). There was something about that hotel that didn't click with him. You can always tell Marvin is puzzling over something because his processor light flashes on and off -- well, that thing was steady as a streetlight the whole time we were there. He'd be scanning bowls of Kaztropharian fruit salad, taking samples from the wine taps, having deep exchanges with the automated room service system (the "wait-o-matic"), trying to roll through the giant flat-screen plasma TV as if it were a portal to another dimension, sitting in front of the portal to another dimension and watching it like it was a plasma TV...I don't know about anyone else, but I'm expecting another one of those film-strip reports when all this is done. 

Our subsequent journey to Venus for what was planned to be our final stop was a bit more problematic. The trans-stellar insertion quotient was rasterized at such an obtuse angle that our ship's power vector stabilizer reached amplitudes of hitherto unheard-of modulations...making us go real fast until we hit something hard. (That something hard was the rocky surface of the unforgiving planet Venus.) Mitch Macaphee was spot-on in his calculations about exactly where we would crash, though he covered his ass somewhat with oblique references to "primary" and "secondary" impact zones. Many (well...Matt and John, anyway) thought this was a cop out, but I admired Mitch's courage. And if we'd broken in two before crashing, I'm confident we would have hit both targets. 

Of course, now we're finding that Venus might benefit from some sort of brown fields recovery plan, considering the fact that it appears to be nothing but brown fields and boulders, with no living matter of any kind. Where the hell was everybody? We took the bold step of throwing Marin out there to see if he could figure out what had happened to our reservations, etc. He came back with a less-than-encouraging report about how we had wormholed into the distant future (5 million years) and that the auditorium we were scheduled to perform in had long since been converted to a karaoke joint. So while Mitch works on the reverse-rasterization formula that will return us to where people are waiting with money in their hands, I will take this opportunity to resort to a cheap plug for yet another cheap Big Green disc.

Get Your "Brain" Here. That's right, we've chucked another EP over the side, featuring one new song, one recent song, and a couple of archival chestnuts mastered to disc for the first time ever. The President's Brain (Is Missing) is Big Green's battle hymn for our old tour mate Dubya. You can purchase your very own copy right here at our Get CD section.  Hey -- it's something to spin while we're working on the next album, right?

King Shit. California's got its new governor ("the governator" as some wag has dubbed him) and he's a whopper. After untold millions of dollars worth of free advertising and public coddling by major figures from the national corporate media, voting Californians chose "Arnold" ... and why not? What's not to like? He never answered any substantive policy questions. He's for legal abortions, gay unions, and can hardly be described as a front-line soldier in the great Republican culture wars. He's got a checkered past coupled with a hunky physique -- in fact, he and his Kennedy-clan wife exemplify America's obsession with self and all things superficial. There's the Republican party's new action hero...Bill Clinton??

Question is: How does this contribute to the all-important goal of making Karl Rove master of the universe? When they're out chucking the red meat of hyper-religious bigotry to the faithful next year, where will "playful" old "Arnold" fit in with all of that? Come to think of it, where are all those Republican defenders of womanly virtue and despisers of all things Hollywood? You know -- the crew who brought us to the brink of a constitutional crisis because big Bill Clinton had a moronic affair with an intern. Where dey go? And those Republicans that complain about Terminator-like TV and movie violence (though not actual violence like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) inspiring violent antisocial behavior in our youth...Where dem? Even Orrin Hatch (the pious) has suggested a constitutional amendment that would allow the Austrian-born bodybuilder governor run for president. So...is hypocritical moralizing now the exclusive province of the Democrats, like balanced budgets? (I can hear Lieberman lecturing us now, his voice a rusty hinge of virtuous disdain...)

Something's wrong with the California coup. I mean, proposition 54 (which would have banned the gathering of racial statistics in practically every sphere of public life) was defeated. Do people out there know that they're getting the Wilson administration with a b-grade actor grafted onto it? (Back in '92, did Clinton voters know they were getting Bush lite?) They'll find out soon enough. Perhaps school closings, privatization, and people in bread lines will be enough to please the mullahs of the national right, like Pat Robertson, who appears to share brother Franklin Graham's affection for liberal use of nuclear weapons...on the State Department, no less! Looks like Robertson and Osama have a lot more in common than people thought. They've certainly both contributed immeasurably to Dubya's career. Count Sharon in, and you've got bomb throwers from three major religions working in the same direction. Let us pray. 

Take care out there.       

luv u,

jp

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10/19/03

Ship ahoy....ship ahoy....

Is this up or down? And the ecliptic? How am I supposed to navigate without basic points of reference, damnit? And how come every one of these tours ends up in some bizarre cul-de-sac denouement? I'm wait-ing for an an-swer....and not in French!

Sorry to subject you to those ill-tempered ravings. Everyone has to vent every now and again. (Fuck! ...That was "again.") Okay, I'm over it. Why am I all bent out of shape? Because I'm finding you just can't rely on anyone anymore, that's why. I mean, we get hurtled involuntarily into a bleak, pay-as-you-go, rent-to-own remote future, and my chief science advisor (in fact, my only science advisor on this trip) has decided to drop out on me. Before I could get a workable reverse rasterization formula out of him, Mitch Macaphee shut himself inside a suspended animation tube and froze himself in place, his right hand locked in an obscene gesture which I'm convinced is aimed at yours truly. (Or it could be intended for Tiny Montgomery, the galaxy's worst tour promoter, who insisted on regaling Mitch with useless advice while he was working on our star drive calibration. Either way, we're fucked.)

Okay, so imagine yourself in this predicament. It's the year five million A.D. and you're parked on the planet Venus with a.) no filling stations, b.) no all-night diners, and c.) some unusually lively volcanoes observable at all four cardinal points. Your pilot and technical expert (mad scientist) has quit his post, and there's no one to replace him. What to do? Leave immediately or stay until you get your bearings? And where do you purchase bearings in this century, with no local hardware stores in sight? Actually, the decision pretty much made itself. Our advance sentry Marvin (my personal robot assistant) returned from his rounds one morning with the somewhat gripping news that great steaming heaps of molten lava were rolling in our general direction. This seemed ample incentive to initiate a "crash" pilot training course. (Mind you, we've endured less hospitable receptions on our own home planet of...of....of....hold on, it'll come to me...)

Anyway...so we did all the obvious stuff to get the craft moving -- you know, electrodes to power, turbines to speed, that sort of thing. And we did manage a kind of wobbly lift-off with John at the helm, Matt running the sno-cone machine, and me at the navigation console, trying to work out what all those little flashing lights represent. (Marvin thought they were asteroids, but I wasn't too concerned. I know they're softer than planets because they've got puddin' baked right inside 'em.) Engines straining, we skimmed the top of the lava flow, following the contour of the land as it rose beneath us to the summit of the fire-belching volcano just north of our landing site. 

You amateur pilots out there might find this amusing -- John was flying virtually without instruments, due to (you guessed it) non-payment of our ship's electric bills (the long arm of National Grid reaching parsecs into space). Well, that's not entirely true. There was Matt's sno-cone machine...and we did fashion a crude altimeter using a large glass cylinder and a somewhat reluctant man-sized tuber. During our stay at the plush hotel on Andromeda Station, we had discovered quite by accident that the giant root vegetable's buoyancy varied in direct relationship to his altitude. The higher he goes, the less water he takes on. So just before take-off, we scratched graduations on to the side of the cylinder, then chucked tubey in there and filled it half-way with water. Hey, you may laugh...oh you may laugh...but that's one little piece of improv that kept our sorry asses out of a smolderin' cano. And a little water won't do that man-sized tuber any harm. 

So, yeah...we finally reached escape velocity and now we're closing in on Earth...the Earth of five million years A. D., that is. Should be interesting to see how things turned out. We may even go down below and wake Tiny Montgomery from his slumber fest so he can have a look-see, as well. Who knows, maybe my passbook savings account is worth billions by now. Then I'll be able to bribe Mitch into working out that reverse rasterization formula that will get us out of here!

Full Court Press. Somewhere along the line, somebody (George Senior? Uncle Ronny? Babs? Uncle Dan Quayle?) must have convinced Dubya that if you say a few solemn words or excise a little inconvenient text, the world will adjust itself to accommodate you. His environmental policy is driven by this principle, from deleting whole sections on global warming (problem solved!) to his ongoing attack on clean air standards, to appointing mining company lovechild Mike Leavitt as EPA chief. Then, of course, there are his economic policies, predicated on massive tax cuts for the wealthy that somehow help working people...just 'cuz he says so. But the boy has gotten his most satisfying results (up to now) in the foreign policy arena, his Iraq campaign having been built entirely on a foundation of lies, evasions, and gross misstatements of fact. Obviously perturbed by slipping poll numbers, he and his team started another marketing offensive this week, trying to convince the true enemy in the war on terror (the American electorate) that resistance is futile and that, in the words of junior, things in Iraq are "going better than you probably think." 

The implication of this particularly vacuous Bushism is that the "liberal" media has become something of a loose canon on the deck of our national security state. This smells like Rove to me, though it is kind of a familiar reactionary Republican refrain...the visible impatience with the fourth estate, the indignant sneer, the grade-school-assistant-principal lecture delivered for the cameras in front of ubiquitously friendly (and preferably military) audiences. This last one is Cheney's whole raison d'etre, now. How many times have you heard him say that it would have been "irresponsible in the extreme" not to whip up war hysteria using accusations and insinuations about Iraqi military capabilities and links to al Qaeda that don't hold an ounce of water? The man is beyond pedantic. 

Fact is, they're running away from a failure so obviously criminal that even the mainstream press has had to report on it, albeit timidly. They're running away from the national shame of mounting combat deaths, including four killed yesterday in a clash with Shi'ites. They're running away from the fallout from the many lies they've circulated about WMD's in Iraq, and from their pig-fucking tactics of intimidation against whistleblowers. They're running away from credible reports that their Iraq war is (predictably) sending al Qaeda recruitment through the roof and U.S. military re-enlistment through the floor. They're running away from the new taxpayer-funded profit center they've created for multinational firms closely connected with members of their administration. They're running away from a weapons search that has come up emptier than anyone -- including many in the antiwar movement -- could have imagined possible. 

All they have left is fear. And trust me, they will use all the power of the federal government and every dollar in Dubya's $80+ million campaign war chest to put the scare into American voters over the next 12 months. As Bush said (or I should say, read) just the other day, "wars are won on the offensive." There's just too much at stake in this game for them to let their hammerlock on power go. So beware, friends....wild ride ahead.

luv u,

jp

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10/26/03

Oh, yea! Oh, yea!

Greetings from the white knuckle express. Glad you could make it. We hope you enjoy your brief stay with us. How's the armchair? And is the coffee to your liking? Good. Very good. 

Our Story: Val has nearly apprehended the sadistic Visigoth who's been giving him the page-boy haircut in his sleep for the past fifty years. Aleta, having spent the weekend in the Misty Isles, is now discovering that her adopted Camelot is really a suburb of Patterson, New Jersey, and that her father-in-law is a lay minister...Oops! Wrong story. Yeah, this is life in the funny papers, all right, but not that particular strip. Sorry, squire.

For the curious amongst you, we did indeed have a close encounter with the Earth of five million A.D. -- a much changed little globe, I can tell you. However, I have taken the precaution of carefully and subtly editing my descriptions of that future world so as to conceal certain key aspects of its nature, knowing that an unscrupulous person might use that knowledge to manipulate stocks, command whole industries, etc., to his or her advantage. This we cannot in good conscience allow...particularly since it might dilute our prospects for doing so. (There's money in dis, I know it!) At any rate, here is what we saw on Oit, five million A.D.

We couldn't resist stopping in Washington D.C., of course, and aside from the 100-ft statue of  REDACTED  the first odd thing that we noticed was the fact that everyone was walking on  REDACTED  . Cars had been replaced by hovercrafts (just like my third grade teacher had promised would happen...by 1987) which appeared to be made entirely of  REDACTED , a surprising and quite practical innovation. We went into the only supermarket we could find -- a  REDACTED -Wiggly -- and were disappointed to find that  REDACTED  and  REDACTED  were the only foodstuffs available in this century. You think that's amazing? Well, here's the kicker. The  REDACTED  of every  REDACTED  was  REDACTED   in a  REDACTED  of  REDACTED  against the rear quarter panel until  REDACTED  spelled the enchanted word "huckleberry" in flaming letters. Oh, and every time you say the word "awesome" in this century, the government fines you  REDACTED  dollars. Fair enough.

One would think that someone of the automatonical persuasion like Marvin (my personal robot assistant) would feel right at home in this brave new world where even the bread toasters are electrified(!), but Marvin was perhaps more anxious than us to get under way. This I can only attribute to his having recently received news from the rural constabulary that employs him back home...apparently he (Marvin) had been promoted to the  REDACTED  of Major during his absence. Our robot friend was just a little eager to return to Sri Lanka and collect his congratulations from his fellow P.C.'s. From what I understand, they have quite a decoration ceremony in store for him, with hot air balloons and dancing ostriches and speeches praising his many accomplishments, like manning the bake sale booth at the annual fundraiser last spring or apprehending the dreaded tumbleweed gang. Well done, Marvin!

After a few days of indulgence, we did manage to thaw Mitch Macaphee out from his self-imposed cryogenic state and -- with generous applications of cognac and cigars -- got him started on a reverse rasterization formula that would send us back in time to the tortured 21st Century where we started this tour. This time we kept our neophyte tour promoter Tiny Montgomery out of Mitch's  REDACTED  by confining him to the lower deck, with the man-sized tuber standing sentry. (Say what you like...that giant root vegetable can be kind of intimidating when he's in uniform.) This intervention enabled Mitch to complete his complex calculations unmolested, and before you could say " REDACTED  Madagascar!" we were hurtling down the business end of a long and tumultuous wormhole through time/space...or is it space/time? Either way, we emerged from the 34th Street egress of the Lincoln Tunnel, which seemed a little odd to me (though not to New Yorkers, who wouldn't be surprised to see the  REDACTED  building water-skiing up the East River). 

So this interstellar tour ends with a whimper, and not a bang. Just as well. There've been far too many things going bang around here just lately. And as the rough outline of our beloved abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill comes into view, we can anticipate a gradual return to that which passes for normalcy here in Big Green land...not to mention getting back to work on our next bloody album. Need to pay those bills, you know...not that we'll do it with record sales, but hey, now that Marvin will be making a decent wage (as an officer and an automaton), a little supplemental income could make all the difference. 

Prez Brain. Well, we haven't finished our second album yet, it's true...but we do have a new single out -- The President's Brain (Is Missing) -- accompanied by three bonus tracks: one acoustic song and a couple of archival numbers. There's some fun. Want one? Click here and find out more.  

Praise It And Pass It. We seem to be approaching the goal of a wholly faith-based foreign policy in the U.S. of A., courtesy of the current crop of reactionaries infesting the acrid corridors of power. Things are going great in Iraq -- just believe it when they tell you. Why, we can point to all kinds of things we've begun rebuilding after having destroyed them in one way or another over the past twelve years. Sure, sometimes the "filter" of the media distorts the pretty picture by focusing on the untidy and inconvenient deaths of U.S. soldiers (don't worry -- they're not related to anyone important) and of many more Iraqis (even less important). Don't be a naysayer...it's downright "unAmerican." (Hell, Ann Coulter considers "liberals" to be traitors -- I imagine she would think me the devil incarnate.) We don't need any tiresome "facts" to prove what our leaders say is true. We need only faith, and faith renders proof superfluous. 

Actually, the cross-toting lieutenant general William Boykin is probably one of the only players in the "War on Terror" enterprise who has come close to telling the truth. Sure we're involved in a manichean struggle between christian goodness and idolatric evil -- what else could it possibly be? Our leaders certainly haven't come up with anything substantive to fight about. And since this is a foreign policy the support of which requires total ignorance of history (our own and everyone else's), no one should be surprised that blind faith would play a major role in its prosecution. Just scanning the news of Bush's far eastern travels this week is an exercise in historical denial. He stops in the Philippines where we are now full partners in the suppression of various militant movements that pre-date 9/11 by years if not decades, urging support for the struggle against a few hundred Abu Sayyaf bandits because a Filipino brother-in-law of bin Laden once sent them a check close to ten years ago. Next stop Indonesia, where upwards of a million people were murdered by Suharto in the mid-sixties with our eager help -- Bush deplores the Bali bombing while pledging our help in that country's suppression of their dissident and separatist groups. (The press scratches its collective head over apparent "anti-American" sentiment in Indonesian schools -- why would they ever dislike us?)  

Dubya and the boys have got the enemy every president prays for -- one wholly defined and identified by them and their allies. For Israelis, it's the Palestinians...all Palestinians. For the Russians, it's the Chechens. The list goes on and on. Now Bush can don the mantle (not to mention the over-tailored suit) of his political mentor Ronnie Reagan, and affect to be standing tall as he takes on one worthy enemy after another. For Reagan, it was middle-aged construction workers in Grenada mysteriously empowered by the Soviet Menace. For Dubya, it's a pack of kidnappers in Basilan, rendered evil by remote association with the one bin Laden family member no longer  welcome at Kennebunkport. 

Get babs on the phone and tell her to set an extra place at dinner. Watch yourselves...and don't fly over the Vincennes. 

luv u,

jp

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