NOTES FROM SRI LANKA.
(September '03)
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9/7/03
Ahoy, ahoy, ahoy....
No, we haven't gone on a boating holiday....bloody far from it. This is work, friends, work, this facing the privations of "the road"...especially when the proverbial "road" is a theoretical line tracing your trajectory through the trackless void of interstellar space. No picnic. Hey, Tiny...pass the potato salad, there's a good chap.
As
you may have surmised, we were forced to abandon our rented Titan II booster
after National Grid put out its lights on the boost phase of our lift off, due
to non-payment of the electric bill. Our agents on the ground were unable to
locate the used rocket dealer (his little shack was boarded up, his stock seized
by the Bank-a-Sri-Lanka), so little assistance was forthcoming from that
quarter. That left us reliant on the ingenuity of our staff mad scientist Mitch
Macaphee, who had wisely chosen to remain behind after getting a close look at
the ramshackle transport Tiny Montgomery had procured for us. Mitch flipped
through his rolodex and eventually hired a more suitable space craft to collect
us and proceed to our next destination. Didn't come a moment too soon,
either....we had been reduced to playing 
mumbly
peg and other similar pirate games involving cutlery, while dipping into the
Titan II's inadequate provisions of Tang, fruit roll-ups, and forty-year-old
jerky. (Traveler's tip: flat jerky makes a good insert when you've worn a hole
in your space boot.)
Because our second tour destination was the remote planet Kaztropharius 137b (Tiny's inexperience as a tour promoter resulted in an itinerary that had us zigzagging back and forth across hundreds of light years), Mitch Macaphee also had to arrange for a "wormhole" passage out to the edge of the galaxy, just to pick up a little time. Using a device related to Trevor James Constable's orgone generator, Mitch opened the interstellar tunnel, threw the rent-a-craft into gear, and drove us through. (There was one toll booth towards the center of the wormhole, otherwise it was a straight shot to Kaztropharius 137b.) At the end of the wormhole, a camera-like iris opened to reveal our destination, lurching into our navigational cross-hairs like an animated James Bond figure. Fifteen seconds and we were clear across the galaxy...grease lightning.
We
tuned in the Kaztropharian astrogational control system on our transceiver
and requested permission to approach, but all we got in response was a crackle
of static. Mitch suggested our radio may have been damaged, and advised us to
send our road manager (the man-sized tuber) down in the space dinghy. After a
half-hour of cajoling, we got tubey to board the tiny landing vessel, but only
after agreeing to his demand that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) accompany
him. They were away only 
ninety
minutes or so before returning to the "mother ship" (yes, the same
ship Zappa's group used on their interstellar tours). "What's
happening down there?" Tiny asked the landing party. Marvin reported having
seen no signs of life. "What did you see?" I asked.
"Rocks," was his robotian reply. "Rocks...bubbling."
Mitch's
face went white. "Ooooooh, shit," he said, and started marking up
complex equations on his chalk board. It seems our wormhole had brought us
through another dimension...not one of space or of time, but of mind...
No, wait, I'm sorry -- that's the twilight zone. Go back a tick; it was
one of time. Like the Time Tunnel...you know, Doug and Tony and Miss America.
Through a minor accounting error, Mitch sent us snaking back approximately 1.3
billion years, to a time just prior to the appearance on Kaztropharius 137b
of the first Big Green fans. That places us
in what amounts to the Kaztropharian Pleistocene era...which presents
certain challenges from a performance standpoint, as you can probably imagine.
Hey -- we've played for pools of molten lava before, and take it from 
me...they're
a tough audience. Play the best set of your career, and you might see
them bubbling over, only it won't be in gratitude, my son.
Okay, so we've got another little problem. But again, there's no point in disorderly panic. We'll all just sit quietly, while Mitch works through his time warp equations and Marvin fills the gaps between chalk-squeaks with his stock recording of "We're done for! We're done for!" Sounds soothing, doesn't it?
If we can get back to our own time (and if, incidentally, this column is being read by something other than rudimentary unicellular organisms sloshing around in stagnant peptide-laced pools), our tour itinerary should go something like this (note: planets are identified by the name Tiny gives them; their actual names appear in parentheses):
Sept. 10: "Ringo" (Saturn)
Sept. 14-17: "Cyclops" (Jupiter)
Sept. 20-22: "Snowball" (Pluto)
Sept. 25: "Junior" (Zenon)
Sept. 28: "Big Red" (Mars)
Sept. 30-Oct. 2: "Chippy" (Andromeda)
Oct. 4-5: "Whitey" (Venus)
Release Notes. As our placebo release for Fall 2003 (in anticipation of our still-under-construction second album), we will be making available to devoted Big Green listeners two new songs and at least three recovered gems from yesteryear. Watch this space for details (translation: I've got Trevor James sticking them together right now).
Circular
Treasoning. Been to a book store lately? If so, you may have noticed yet
another wave of rabid right-wing screed masquerading as non-fiction. Nothing
novel, you understand. Just more about those traitorous "liberals" and
their decades of treachery (Ann Coulter) and how Bill Clinton's failures brought
the current rash of terrorism upon us (god-knows-who). Intended take-away: Keep
Dubya and the congressional lugnuts in power so they can finish screwing us
harder and faster than the DLC Democrats that preceded them. Coulter's love for
Joe McCarthy is emblematic of the right's only workable tactic (outside theft)
for winning elections -- scare "liberals" and middle-of-the-roaders so
they'll imitate hard-line Republicans. That way, bona fide progressive and left
political 
discourse
-- in fact, any politics that respond to the needs and interests of poor and
working class people -- can be portrayed as beyond extremism.
Lord knows, it's easy to put the scare into liberals. They react to reactionary Republican whining like a nervous parent to an infant with colic. They'll do anything to avoid an argument. And because the mainstream Democratic party instinctively goes after the same constituencies as the Republicans, the strategy works pretty well. For Christ's sake, they've even got Democrats talking about Howard Dean as if he's George McGovern, when the guy's a virtual political clone of Bill Clinton. It appears the DLC doesn't like him only because a.) he opposed the war on Iraq without involvement by the UN, and b.) he's not a southerner (even though the party's last son of the South lost every southern state except Florida, which they let their opponents walk away with anyway). Of course, any attempt to rein in the out-of-control military budget is tantamount to surrender (i.e. treason)...so right from the get-go, the majority progressive constituencies (working stiffs, people of color, women) get screwed. Without their enthusiastic participation, any Democrat is sunk.
The
presidential race is really just the tip of the iceberg. Progressive social and
environmental activists, defenders of civil liberties, opponents of corporate
globalization, and anti-imperialists have a lot of organizing to do before there
can be any meaningful change in this country. We have to 
make
the case for positive progress in clear, unambiguous terms, and give people an
opportunity to see how they, too, are affected by the money-driven juggernaut
that's currently beggaring the majority of people on this planet. If we fail at
this, then we fail...it doesn't matter who's president. Organize, and you can
move mountains.
We Want You. Now they've got Powell trawling for international volunteers to go to Iraq and get shot. Any hands?
luv u,
jp
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9/14/03
Wagons Ho!
Greetings from the inky blackness of interstellar space -- an airless void into which no sane creature passes gladly...unless duly enticed by promises of gold, glory, and free luncheon vouchers (i.e. more gold). In our case it was all three, and lo, we have paid the price for our ambition.
As
you will recall from last week's dispatch, we had been hurled into the remote
past by the rapid transit wormhole Mitch Macaphee had generated to allow us near
instantaneous passage to the outer rim of the galaxy and our gig on Kaztropharius
137b. Mitch retired to his physicist's chalkboard to work out the solution
to our dilemma. The results of his deliberations -- initially, at least -- were
not too encouraging. After several hours, Mitch stuck his head in the crewman's
lounge and said, "Just learn to live like a 
microbe!"
That was going to be a tough adjustment for some of us (though not for the
man-sized tuber, who would be the colossus of the Pleistocene back on Earth).
Of course, Mitch was a little frustrated just then, and understandably so. He needed some motivation...and he got it in the form of the strange temporal distortion that began to take place about then. Because we were now at a point in time prior the evolution of...well...just about anything, we all started showing signs of severe developmental regression. No, the humans amongst us didn't change into shrews. It was more a behavioral thing, really. I can tell you that I myself had an overwhelming urge to wade around in circles in stagnant puddles of water -- even to the point of shuttling down to the surface of prehistoric Kaztropharius 137b to satisfy this strange urge. Even worse, we all had this insatiable craving for complex organic molecules. (Not the most palatable snack on the block. Thing is, you can't eat just one.)
If
that wasn't bad enough, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) started behaving
like his remote evolutionary ancestors...namely, virgin minerals. Which
is to say that he became as lethargic as a rock face -- a bit of a problem,
since he does most of the work around here. The only one who 
seemed
relatively unaffected by this phenomenon was the man-sized tuber, whose crude
plant fibers and thick, wiry husk could hardly be more primitive. In any case,
Mitch Macaphee saw the urgency of our problem and redoubled his efforts at
working out a formula for our return. After countless hours of grueling work
with only deep-fried organic molecule crisps to sustain him, Mitch marked up the
equation and fed it into our navigational system. The course sent us hurtling
forward through time to an expectant audience on present-day Kaztropharius
137b. We emerged from the time corridor with only about an hour or so to
spare before our first performance on that remote world (Mitch might have
bought us enough time to unwind a bit before playing, but....so be it).
When
we landed beside our luxury hotel, a hovercraft was waiting to take us to the amphitheater.
sFshzenKlyrn was already there, working on
his guitar sounds and eating blintzes (an indication of nervousness on his home
planet of Zenon). He was visibly relieved when we appeared, and switched over to
perogies (a sign of, well, visible relief on Zenon). We opened with The
President's Brain (Is Missing) and slogged wearily through a dozen numbers
before collapsing in a heap and being brought to our hotel rooms on a large
spatula. The second night went better, though it is a little hard to compete
with the latest fad out here on Kaztropharius 137b -- watching
holographic images of Leonard Nimoy 
singing
the Hobbit song. Kaztropharians just can't get enough of that video! Want to see
why? Check
it out for yourself!
The President's Brain (Is Missing). Be the first on your block to get a copy of our newest CD-R single...President's Brain, plus three bonus tracks. For details, send me an email. I'll be posting ordering info on our Get CD page very soon.
Glory Days. We Americans keep a good neurotic's calendar, to borrow a phrase from J.D. Salinger. Now September 11 is marked with sanctimonious speeches, paranoid editorials about the endless terror war ahead, and repeated echoes of that horrible day. This year's observance wasn't quite as traumatic as the first anniversary, but then it's been an eventful year. I was glad to see that Counterpunch.org took the opportunity to commemorate the 30th anniversary of another 9-11 terrorist catastrophe -- the Pinochet coup in Chile, orchestrated by Washington after years of economic pressure designed to make the Chilean economy "scream," per the Nixon White House. No big, tearful memorial ceremonies for those folks.
As
Dubya shuffles from military audience to million-dollar fundraiser and his
demented minions crowd the news shows, this administration is still playing what
they consider to be their best hand, dealt by old family friend 
Bin
Laden two years ago. The lame attempt to portray Iraq not only as the principal
front in the "war on terror" but also as a military and political
success is coming up against an ever more persistently contradictory reality --
namely that these cartoon pirates have opened an enormous can of worms in
pursuing their pre-9-11 agenda in Iraq, and that the mess they've made cannot be
unmade, just as much of the antiwar camp had predicted. The killing of nine or
ten Iraqi police this week flies in the face of their dubious claims of
progress. Our hysterical use of firepower ("thousands of bullets"
fired, according to Robert Fisk), our practice of carting off the dead and
wounded, our fanatical concealment of evidence and information...all of this
merely confirms what most Iraqis probably already know -- their lives are worth
very little to the Americans.
Unfortunately,
in as much as our service people are being told to stay in Iraq for an
indefinite period of time, their lives also appear destined for the
bargain basement, despite all the drippingly hollow expressions of gratitude
from Bush and the de rigueur pledges to "do what's
necessary to protect our troops" from the congressional Democrats running
for president (with the notable exception of Kucinich, who alone has pointed out
that the best way to "protect" them is to bring them home). Trust me
on this -- one day we will leave Iraq...and if anyone out there really cares
about those troops, they should push for sooner rather than later. The longer we
put it off, the more likely they are to leave feet first. Recent polls suggest
that close to 
half
of Americans who express an opinion on the subject (43%) feel the war on Iraq is
making us more vulnerable, not less...apparently arriving at that
conclusion on their own, since virtually no one in the mass media universe has
suggested this is the case. (Domestic terror aside, it certainly is making the
U.S. military personnel in Iraq more vulnerable, to say nothing of the Iraqis
themselves.) One can only hope this persistent truth will grow to embrace a
supermajority before this needless and criminal war destroys too many more
lives.
Rule by deception is fundamentally illegitimate. Just keep this in mind when Bush starts telling you he feels threatened by the Yucatan peninsula. Take care...
luv u,
jp
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9/21/03
Pastafazoola!
Just catching my breath after a whirlwind of activity here on Big Green's Interplanetary Tour 2003...and I do mean that quite literally. We're on the planet Pluto this weekend ("Snowball" as our clueless tour promoter Tiny Montgomery refers to it) where every exhalation of breath produces a...well...snowball. I catch 'em as they come out, and make a nice little pile. You can, too.
Perhaps
you can picture us cavorting around the snows of Pluto like a forty-something
version of the fab four (more like the Fantastic Four, with sFshzenklyrn
as The Thing)...except that none of us can pitch a snowball worth a damn, with
the possible exception of Marvin (my personal robot assistant) who put in so
many hours at those constabulary benefit softball games back in old Sri Lanka
(all part of the job, you understand). Actually, playing on Clyde Tombaugh's
planet is more work than play, as anyone 
who's
ever spent time at the South Pole can tell you. Even in heated pressure domes,
the air is cold enough to make your fingers numb and your lips turn a
fashionable shade of violet. Plutonians are tough to please, too. We had to dig
out some of our old stuff, like "Sensory Man" (Matt's song
about the Lost In Space robot) and "Beautiful Grid." Even then it was
hard to keep them from throwing snowballs at us. (Or were they just coughing?
It's hard to say for sure.)
Because
of the little time warp cul-de-sac Mitch Macaphee inadvertently tossed us into,
we missed our appointed gig on Saturn ("Ringo," per Tiny). Our relief
at having been restored to the present was such that we hardly even cared. As it
turned out, there have been one or two strange residual effects of our journey
back to the Pleistocene. For instance, every once in a while one of the human
members of our party will suddenly appear in 19th Century costume...almost as if
we brought some part of that period with us as we fast-forwarded through the
centuries, dragging it along like an empty box on the carriage way that gets
stuck under your front bumper. As unnerving as this was at first, we've gotten
used to it...and our audience just thinks it's part of the show (though we're
not known for multiple costume changes...in fact, if we change once a week on
tour, that's a lot). Occasionally the timing is a little odd. The other day at
breakfast, I took a 
bite
out of some buttered toast and a crown appeared on my head. (Funny thing was, it
turned out to be margarine, not butter. And there was a brief fanfare of
coronets...)
Our gigs on Jupiter ("Cyclops" to Tiny) were a bit more lively -- our old friends "The Steels" opened for us at the Big Red Spot. The accommodations beat Pluto all to hell, frankly. I mean, when you get back from a hard night on the bandstand, the last thing you want to do is crawl into some glorified bunker like they have out here. That's Pluto -- Quonset huts and campfires. On Jupiter, they have proper hotels with heat and running water, for Christ's sake. And beds. We're talking luxury. (Even the man-sized tuber is starting to complain. He's got a thick layer of permafrost on him now that makes him look like an enormous frozen turnip. On his insistence, we've had to keep the spaceship reactor engines running, just to generate a little extra warmth in the guest hut.)
Frankly,
I think the only one who's really hitting his stride this time out is sFshzenKlyrn.
He's been playing up a storm, ripping through those Big
Green songs like a Zenite possessed. I think he's psyching himself up
for our arrival on his home planet this coming week. Last night he was pulling
out all the stops, doing his favorite duck walks, playing with his
"teeth," bounding around the stage like a "hoppy toad,"
putting himself in "quotation marks" and (parentheses)...at one point
he even split himself in half and played a harmonized solo (you can hear what it
sounded like on 
the
live version of "Holiday" from last year's Big
Green LIVE From
Neptune EP). It reached the point where Mitch Macaphee was
concerned that sFshzenKlyrn might be
overheating himself -- one spark and he's a dwarf star, friends. Not good.
Still, even with the dangers, it's good to be playing together again. And if you've got decent interstellar transportation, you can catch us this coming week on sFshzenKlyrn's home planet of Zenon. If not, hang in there...we'll be on Mars next Sunday. Can't make it much easier than that.
Busted Drum Head...er...Guestbook. Yeah, I know. Our guestbook has stopped working. We're on it, and hopefully Mitch Macaphee can straighten it out when he's done screwing around with that oxygen release valve problem...and when he can stop that crown from appearing on my head. (He says it's something I ate.) Try it again in a few days...we'll see.
Mr.
Integrity. How many times can you lie in public and still earn valuable
points for your integrity? Ask Colin Powell. Perhaps in his case it works
because there's a strong institutional incentive in America to elevate a
conservative person of color to a prominent role in the furtherance of our (now
admittedly) imperial destiny. African Americans who are left of, say, 
Nelson
Rockefeller are held to so stringent a standard of moral and ethical purity that
there is virtually no chance one will ever reach a position of substantial
authority over significant numbers of white people. In order for a black
American to hold high office, he or she must be completely subservient to
prerogatives of corporate/government power...in a sense, more Catholic than the
Pope. People like Powell and Condi "Supertanker" Rice. Subservience
allows them to have serial moral and ethical lapses (in service to power) and
still come out clean.
Powell
gets credit from liberals for being the least crazy privateer on the Bush pirate
ship, but make no mistake...he's a good soldier. Why anyone would trouble to
defend him is beyond me. Back in 1968 he was the officer in charge of papering
over the My Lai massacre, the truth of which didn't become public until
individual U.S. servicepeople came forward. During the Iran-Contra
investigation, Powell initially told special prosecutor Walsh that he knew of no
journal kept by DOD Secretary Cap Weinberger, then later -- years later
-- admitted that he had seen Weinberger making entries in 
a
book in his office...apparently not considering this worthy of mention
previously. (Can you say obstruction of justice?) Then there was the phantom
Iraqi army massing on the border of Saudi Arabia just before the Gulf War --
Powell providing a timely little nudge in the right direction.
His
performance as Dubya's moral compass has been remarkably appalling. Particularly
memorable was Powell's meandering journey to Israel while Sharon was laying
waste to Jenin and other Palestinian towns in the spring of 2002, obviously
giving the butcher of Tel Aviv ample time to kill to his microscopic heart's
content. (Powell's pace was so dilatory that even the normally compliant King of
Morocco felt compelled to remark upon it publicly.) His February 5th show and
tell at the UN Security Council -- described breathlessly as
"devastating" by the corporate press -- has fallen completely to
pieces, freighted as it was with the core fabrications of the Bush/Blair war
party. (For an excellent post mortem, see Charles
Hanley's piece at Philly.com.) I personally witnessed the man
reciting what I knew to be a shameless and crucial lie in the run up to
war -- his comments about the Iraqi defector Kemal, the general in charge of
Saddam's WMD programs, who told his interviewers 
that
all such weapons had been destroyed. (Powell left that "destroyed"
part out, preferring instead to concentrate on the weapons.)
Maybe now that Dubya and Rumsfeld are disavowing any links between Saddam and 9/11, Powell will carry that bucket for them, as well. Better he than someone who's obviously a compulsive liar, like Wolfowitz. Damn useful man.
Take care out there,
luv u,
jp
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9/28/03
Ahem...ahem....
Has anyone seen my anti-gravity toothpaste dispenser? It was just here about an hour ago....Oh, shit...Marvin, are you transcribing my column already? I can't believe it's been a week. Well look, just strike what you've got down so far and I'll throw in a better intro before we post it. Just cut it off up to right now. No, right now. Just do it, okay? Jesus...
Is
this thing on? Welcome back to Big Green's
Interstellar Tour 2003. How's it going so far? Well....less than stellar. We
were booked into sFshzenKlyrn's home planet
of Zenon this week, as you may recall. Man -- they say it's hot on Zenon, but
not where they put us up for our gig. There's been a bit of a misunderstanding.
It seems sFshzenKlyrn had sent some
snapshots of us at our Quonset hut on Pluto back to his relatives, and somehow
the photos found their way to the people who were organizing 
our
performances -- apparently, all relatives of sFshzenKlyrn,
as well. In any case, they got it into their oddly-misshapen heads that we
actually prefer to live in a tin can planted on the frozen wastes...so
that's what they procured for us. As Dr. Smith (rest his soul) would say, oh..the
pain....
So yeah, we spent another couple of days huddled around a Coleman stove, camped out as it were on a somewhat larger than average asteroid in a parallel orbit to Zenon. When we got on the actual planet for our first show, Tiny Montgomery (on our insistence) tried on his appointed role as tour promoter long enough to lodge a complaint with the Zenite entities responsible for our care and feeding. Naturally enough, things got plugged 'round the wrong way...the Zenites, who have a somewhat twisted understanding of our admittedly twisted English-speaking culture, were under the impression that we like to complain, and that our grousing was an indication of just how happy we were with the accommodations. (Personally, I don't think Tiny pressed them very hard on this point. He actually kind of likes living in a frozen Quonset hut...he and the man-sized tuber.)
After
several days of appearing on stage as the "Ice Pops", Matt decided
that the only way to keep us from going back there was to make sure there was no
there to go back to...there. So he, John, and our mad science advisor Mitch
Macaphee got together on a little solution...which took the shape of a small
explosive device, planted in our "living" quarters and timed to go off
while we were on Zenon performing. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was
dispatched to take a photograph of the destroyed hut and transmit it back to us
so we could demonstrate to our Zenite handlers 
that
alternative accommodations were needed. Even with such convincing visual
evidence, it took personal intervention by sFshzenKlyrn
to get the point across (our erstwhile alien guitarist had been too busy
carousing with his Zenite cronies to take much notice of our predicament up to
that point...and of course, he was staying at his family's comfortable
split-level ball of nebulosity, the Zenite equivalent of a McMansion, just
outside of the potemkin village they maintain for the convenience of visiting
humanoids).
Well,
the ruse copped us one night's sleep in a comfortable hotel, but then we were
off again on the long trek back to Mars for our rescheduled performance -- a
"make-good" show for the one we missed a few weeks ago due to the
failure of Tiny's ramshackle rent-a-rocket. We took the usual route back -- you
know, take a left at Betelgeuse, follow the dipper 'round to Polaris, then get
on the galactic expressway and exit when you see the 
big
white arrow. (We've been grateful for Matt's decision to enroll the man-sized
tuber into the local auto club -- those free intergalactic road-maps for
vegetables are indispensable.) We'll see how our Martian performances go...and
whether we'll be given actual hotel rooms to ritually trash, as our pro-forma
rock musician requirements document clearly stipulates. We'll let you
know.
Download Away! Starting this week, you can download free mp3's of select Big Green songs right from our home on the web. Go to our Get CD/MP3 page and check it out. We'll be posting more right along, so stop back soon.
Mourning
In America. Just in case things didn't seem bleak enough, this week saw the
passing of one of our truly great voices for peace and justice.
Palestinian-American scholar, musician, and educator Edward W. Said died after a
long battle with leukemia, leaving a legacy of compassionate insight that has
inspired more than one generation of activists. To my mind, 
perhaps
his most important contribution has been putting the lie to the Manichean
"clash of civilizations" world view so eagerly advanced by the likes
of Samuel Huntington and Thom Friedman. Said understood the complexity of all
societies and argued convincingly that there is no such thing as a
"pure" culture, unaffected by its neighbors. He knew that there are
cross-currents and counter-tendencies within Arab and "Western"
societies that defy the reductionist view that now dominates our foreign
policy.
I won't even attempt to eulogize the man -- there are some very good remembrances posted at Electronic Intifada, Counterpunch.org, Z-magazine, and elsewhere. Democracy Now! has audio and, I believe, video of some of Said's recent talks. And there are, of course, his essays, collected into numerous volumes with more than a few of them available online at the Edward Said Archive. I know I'll be reading them whenever the jackals who run our nation start barking again...and whenever that bloated gangster who "leads" Israel blasts another hole in what remains of Palestinian society. The best tribute, of course, is to share them with someone else...and work towards those goals he so eloquently espoused. He'll be missed, for sure.
Crash
Rummy. Seems Rumsfeld thinks $87 billion is not really all that much money.
Not too surprising, when you take a look at the federal department he
runs...with something in excess of $1 trillion in revenue unaccounted for over
the past two decades or so. Small wonder our soldiers in Iraq are carrying
around 30-year-old reconditioned rifles and having to buy boots from catalogs. I
guess there's just never enough money to go around in a department run
for the benefit of corporate contractors.
Take care out there.
luv u,
jp