NOTES FROM SRI LANKA.
(February '06)
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02/06/06
Here we are again, man....
Whoa, was that a week just then? Not sure. Let me check
my pocket calendar. Yes. Yes. I believe that qualifies as a week. Anyone else
care to 
chime in? Mitch? Marvin (my personal robot assistant)? You both have
internal atomic-powered chronometers.
Not for nothing, but I'm getting a little sick and tired of the attitude around
here. Oh, I don't mean you. I mean some of my associates here on the island of
misfit toys. I mean, the way SOME people act, you'd think they rule the freaking
world. But then, of course, anti-Lincoln seems to be under the delusion that he
rules the world. Could this be a problem? Well....yeah, since he is certainly
attempting to rule the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill..... which for him IS the
world. (Where do I find these people? My-hi-hi-Li-hi-hi-fe.....)
Let's back up a bit. As you may recall from last week's
column, the illustrious antisocial psychopath anti-Lincoln had declared himself
absolute ruler of...well...absolutely everything. He found himself some
rent-a-generals somewhere along the line -- enough to comprise a junta (less
than three is not considered a quorum in junta-ville, my friends) -- and 
set up
shop in the abandoned third floor of the Cheney Hammer Mill, right across from
my summer office, the old sledgehammer forge room. (Talk about
atmosphere!) He got himself a big oak table, some leftover flag from the
Pinochet administration, and a bunch of old rifles from our neighbor Gung-Ho.
(Right now they're up on the roof, posturing for the masses.)
Yeah, kind of ridiculous -- I know. But I think he's
taking it seriously. Yesterday, for instance, he swore out a death warrant for
his alter-ego, Posi-Lincoln. Not a very nice thing, especially since Posi-Lincoln
has been living on pins and needles since reading about his assassination. You
know what's really sad, though, is that General Anti-Lincoln only has the
man-sized tuber to carry out the warrant, since none of the rent-a-generals are
willing to go that far. (Tubey isn't up to it, either, but since he can't say
"no" -- or any other 
words, for that matter -- Anti-Lincoln assumed he
had accepted the commission.) Now the "General" is pitching a fit
because the man-sized tuber has just been sitting there, not assassinating
anybody....but, in fact, that's tubey's natural state.
That was one thing. Actually not too difficult to handle. The thing that's got me concerned is the tiger cages he has on order. I think he's planning on putting a few of us into them - which ones, I can't be sure. (My guess is tubey will be amongst the first.) Tyrant! Cad! Anti-matter junta-monkey!
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
The
State Of It. Did you watch the state of the union address this past
week? I didn't. What the hell's the point, eh? Junior reading a speech written
by his handlers -- a piece of annoying theater I can gladly do without. It isn't
like you don't hear the policy initiatives and "themes" again and
again both before and after the fact. And I've gleaned bits and pieces of what
he said just through proximity to media sources. Some ludicrous clap-trap about
ending our addiction to oil -- it's like Foster Brooks preaching sobriety. Then
the usual cowardly posturing about the failed war in Iraq... something about
"surrender", I believe. (I wonder what John Murtha thought of that.)
And even though this was not one of Bush's 
sanitized
"town hall meetings", they apparently tried to apply the same standard
for audience admission, yanking Cindy Sheehan out of there because she was
wearing the wrong tee-shirt. (The capitol police later dropped the charge and
apologized for improperly arresting her.) Poor Junior -- he's still afraid of
being in the same room with the mother of a dead soldier.
All in all, it appeared to be basically the same as all of Dubya's speeches -- no hint that everything is going all pear-shaped around him. Hey, what the hell.... he's having a good time anyway, and that's all that matters. Back to the point about oil dependency. Only America could miss the irony of this son of an oil politician decrying the pernicious effects of our voracious fossil fuel habit. So what's he trying to say? Break the dependency so you won't end up with losers like me leading the country to ruin? He can't be hoping that people think of the Iraq war when he reads that line. Because, folks, that war has nothing to do with those massive oil reserves -- the administration has told us so in no uncertain terms. And Jonah Goldberg of National Review online (that's a magazine...sort of) pointed out a long time ago that the oil companies were against this war, so there! Hey -- so they're risk-averse, so what's new? Doesn't mean they won't try to profit from the aftermath. They may like the outcome even if they thought the invasion was too potentially destabilizing (i.e. disruptive to the flow of profits).
Anyway,
this "we did it for the oil" claim is a straw man that war supporters
love to cite even more than opponents. Procuring access to Iraqi oil for
U.S.-based energy corporations may be a fringe benefit of the war, but that's
not why it was prosecuted. The U.S. has always sought a stable, long-term
presence in the Persian Gulf, particularly since the fall of the 
Shah
of Iran in 1979. Saudi Arabia has proven too unreliable -- our troops are
clearly not wanted there. By arranging for a "friendly" government in
Baghdad -- one that would consent to our maintaining a presence astride the
world's largest oil reserves (in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iran) -- the
U.S. would be able to exercise an effective veto over the ambitions of China and
the far east, Europe, and other regions dependent on those resources who might
consider an independent path of development. So in a warped sense, there is a
grain of truth in the administration's stated goals in the Middle East, if you
understand that, when they say "democracy", they mean "client
regimes", and when they say "freedom" they mean "taking
orders from Washington."
The only reason Saddam's in that ludicrous play-pen and not in his palaces is that he stopped being compliant. Otherwise, he'd be just another Hosni Mubarak. With a mustache.
luv u,
jp
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02/13/06
Pull the other one....
It wasn't me. I swear! It was that metallic-looking guy, you know....the one with the claw for a hand. Or maybe that life-size potato man. I tell you, you got the wrong guy......!
Oh,
hi. I suppose you overheard me ratting out Marvin (my personal robot assistant)
and the poor old man-sized tuber, none of whom have ever done anyone any harm.
Well, these are grim times we live in, grim indeed. It's hard to trust anyone,
even yourself. Why just the other day, one of my associates turned himself in --
took him totally by surprise. (After Mitch Macaphee gets a few glasses of Brut
in him, he's liable to do anything.) Here at the Cheney Hammer Mill, we're
constantly looking over our shoulders, wondering when the next dagger will be
inserted into our mailboxes. (I meant to say "backs" just them. Sorry
-- I was thinking about Tim Hinely's excellent Dagger zine for a moment.
Miles away. Miles away.)
Why
have I "named names," so to speak? Let me back up a few steps. You
remember the (heh-heh) quite laughable situation we had last week with
Antimatter Lincoln fomenting a coup d'etat (or should I say, coup de
mill?) here at the hammer mill? Well, turns out.... not so funny. Oh, sure,
at the beginning we laughed. Oh, HOW we laughed. And as we were laughing and
pointing and tossing Necco wafers at one another (a time-honored custom here at
the mill), Anti-Lincoln and his generals were gradually consolidating their
power. First it was just the forge room upstairs. 
Then they annexed the soudaten
room.... I mean, the commissary. Once there, their maniacal control of all
foodstuffs (including all of our frozen mung bean casserole) gave them a
formidable lever of power to apply against all of us. And still we laughed. And
pointed. And tossed....Neccos.
Well,
you know what they say....so I don't have to repeat it here. Dictatorships --
even small-scale ones like the Cheney Hammer Mill Junta -- all end up doing
about the same thing. First they came for the sandwiches, and we said nothing.
Then they came for the potted plants, and we said nothing. Then they came for
the automatic coffee machines and programmable toasters, and we said nothing.
But when they came for the mechanical man, that's when everybody started yakking
it up (and I don't mean last night's mung bean casserole). It wasn't pretty. I
mean, Trevor James Constable spoke up for Marvin; so did Mitch Macaphee, his
inventor. But the rest of us failed to recognize the seriousness of the
situation. These fuckers were determined to expand their influence beyond the
commissary and into (dare I say it?) the abandoned first-level shop floor, and
to do that they needed 
Marvin to be their arms and legs. And wheels. (Did I
mention Marvin has wheels?)
So hey, there, my dears.....situation normal, all fucked up. (That's what they say.) We're all covering our asses just because of our past experiences with authoritarianism -- namely, our old corporate label, Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc. (which I believe has shortened their moniker to Hegephonic), which sent the Indonesian military after us more than once. Now I imagine Anti-Lincoln (don't call him Auntie!) and his minions are busily transforming Marvin into some kind of mindless robo-cop. And god knows what they'll make of the man-sized tuber....
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
Power Play. In an effort to
rationalize his domestic wiretapping program, Dubya Bush deployed a new tactic
this week. Addressing yet another military audience, the president described a
thwarted terror attack on an LA skyscraper back in 2002; another plane crash
extravaganza planned by Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and bin Laden. Though I haven't
seen the Friday morning paper as of this writing, I'm certain it will say
something like "Bush Saved LA!" somewhere on the front page (if such
news manages to displace the daily coverage of some local luge athlete who's
headed for the Winter Olympics). I say bully for him... it's just a shame he
didn't get his shit together in time to save lower 
Manhattan
or New Orleans. Assuming the LA story is accurate, one out of three ain't bad;
it's abysmal. Oh, yes -- I know invoking the specter of terrorism and 9/11 works
for this president (it's pretty much the only thing he's got left), but that's
only because he was never held accountable for allowing 9/11 to happen in the
first place. Did anyone lose their job over that little lapse? And don't even
talk about Katrina -- junior only let Brownie go after people started coming
after them with pitchforks.
As it turned out, this was not the best week for the administration -- probably nothing like they had hoped after dropping that LA story (somewhat precipitously, as it turns out, in as much as they didn't even bother to tell the mayor of Los Angeles about it prior to their nationally televised announcement ). More bad news about Libby, this time from Libby, who suggested that he had authorization from higher up to leak Valerie Plame's identity. I mean, higher up could only be Cheney, Bush, or Karl Rove. (Whatever happened to Karl, anyway? Did he take a swift boat to Bermuda or something?) Then there was that CIA guy who piped up about cooked intelligence on Iraq prior to the war -- just another nail in the coffin of that WMD rationale. And of course Brownie's testimony before Congress, taking some swings at Michael Chertoff. Seems like everybody who's had to take a fall for the administration is turning up disgruntled, and high time too. Pity we don't have either a functioning legislative branch or an effective opposition party.
I
hate to sound cynical (no, honest, I do) but I'm expecting these stories
to march off into oblivion like those poor bastards being forced to fight
Dubya's wars (while we sit at home on our hands and do nothing). Congress will
not hold this president accountable under any circumstances. I can't conceive of
a level of certitude more complete than what's emerged with regard to Bush's
record of wrongdoing and ineptitude, but the congressional leadership would
sooner vote themselves out of office than actually do anything about it. These
people are so ethically challenged that even in the house Republican caucus vote
to choose their own leadership there were more votes cast than members
present! The Democrats should be mopping the floor with these fuckers, but
instead they cave-in on issue after issue, letting an overtly anti-choice jurist
like Alito gain a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court (to say nothing of
their help in confirming Roberts), so that now there will be a solid block of
justices who oppose a woman's right to an abortion, support unlimited executive
power, and stand with corporations virtually every time.
Where the hell's Al Lewis when you need him, right?
luv u,
jp
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02/19/06
Man goddamn....
Will it go 'round in circles? Will it fly high like a
bird up in the sky? Who can say? I'm still trying to work out the solution to:
Nothin' from nothin' 
leaves
nothin'. Isn't that a sad commentary on our times.
No? All right, then.
Welcome back to the tiny military principality known as the Cheney Hammer Mill, now under the iron thumb of one very deluded Lincolnian doppelganger. I am of course referring to Anti-matter Lincoln, who Big Green stalwarts know as the man who pulled the junta over our eyes and hit us over the head with his big coup stick. He's the guy now officially classified as "not at all nice" in our great big book of despots, owing to his commandeering of most of our adopted home here in the middle of nowhere, as well as our two dear associates, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and the man-sized tuber. What hath nasty Lincoln and his evil cartoon generals wrought, you ask? Well... lemme tell you.
For one thing, they've transformed Marvin -- by many
accounts a mindless cyborg -- into a mindless cyborg with an evil mission.
Whereas he used to answer to me personally, he now answers to Anti-Lincoln's
second in command, general Muchos Gustos III. Gustos is a veteran of the Western
hemisphere's most abusive regimes... at least in his own imagination. He is, to
state the matter briefly, completely out of his fucking mind, and now he has a
robot friend. Perfect! Aside from reprogramming our Marvin, they've made some
rather ugly modifications to the man-sized tuber in an ill-advised effort to
transform him into some kind of killing machine. (If looks could kill....)
Actually, now tubey's more of a LAUGHING machine, if you follow my
meaning.
If this is the basis of the Cheney Hammer Mill Junta's
plan for world conquest, well... the world has little to fear. In fact, up to
this point, the junta has only managed to take control of the mill itself, as
well as bits of the courtyard and the alley along the north wall. (Though that
has been contested by some of the local winos. Details at eleven.) Why have these
areas fallen to what would seem a completely ineffective imperial war machine?
Lack of spirited opposition. That is to say, none of us has been willing to
waste the effort in dissuading these morons from clinging to the delusion that
they 
run the mill. So they strut around, issuing orders, alternately rippling
their jaw muscles and folding their arms in histrionic displays of defiance. And
we go about our business. Pretty simple. The only friction occurs in the commissary,
which (as you may remember) they "annexed" first. (Around lunch time,
the shit really hits the fan.)
How is this affecting our production schedule on the new album. My only answer is.... what production schedule? We've been working on this record for three years, so anything like a schedule has long since been blown. Still, we're making progress within the confines of our new military dictatorship (with the emphasis on "dick"). So long as commandante Lincoln doesn't insist on having his picture placed on the CD cover.
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
Drawing Fire. I can't decide which
part of the Cheney shotgun story is the most bizarre. Is it the fact that they
tried to sit on it for an entire day (why, exactly?) or the rare glimpse it
affords into the warped private world of our disgustingly obese and persistently
obtuse vice president? What the hell -- here's a guy who apparently hobbles from
one lobbyist-sponsored canned hunt to the next, medical team in tow, an impenetrable
phalanx of secret service protecting him from contact with the outside world,
and he still 
manages
to shoot a septuagenarian in the face. Perhaps it's because he's more than a bit
like that hunting party portrayed on Monty Python's Flying Circus, guns
a-blazing before they've even left the front porch of their mansion. I'm told
that at a preserve Cheney frequents in the northeast, old deadeye Dick shot
something like seventy pheasants himself in a single outing. These were like the
quail - caged, domesticated birds released just long enough for some clueless
overfed bastard to draw a shaky bead on them. Seventy pheasants. Guns-a-blazin', for sure.
In case no one else has said it yet, I suppose Cheney needs to battle those quail in Texas so we don't have to fight them here. Still, at least this incident has shone a light on the fact that the vice president's avoidance of the Vietnam War -- his emphasis on "other priorities" -- likely did not in any way involve an aversion to the use of firearms. In fact, it appears he's got a piece in his fat little paws through much of his down-time... which amounts to most of the time he spends outside of his high-tech biological renewal chamber (or undisclosed location). The part he didn't like about Vietnam is the fact that, very often, the targets had weapons... and while they were massively out-gunned (like all of our post-World War II worthy opponents), there was a fair chance that some VC might "pepper" him. Hence those other priorities. Can't blame him for not wanting to go (I wouldn't) ... except that he was very much in favor of that war -- both he and junior Bush -- except the part about fighting it himself.
I
know I've mentioned it before (so bear with me, for god's sake), but I think one
of the things people forget about those Vietnam years is the fact that you
couldn't just ignore the war like people do now -- it would come and grab you if
you didn't actively avoid it... and, most often, even if you did. When
Cheney made his deferments sound like a lifestyle choice, I imagine he knew most
people under the age of fifty wouldn't think twice about it, and that many of
those old enough to remember facing the draft would be a little fuzzy on the
subject by now. Those serial deferments and Dubya's hitch in the Texas Air
National Guard (champagne unit) were indicative of a level of privilege not
accessible by the vast majority of their generation, even if it was enjoyed by
practically every senior member of their administration.
Cheney's hunting accident illustrates something else as well: that the first impulse of this administration is to conceal, stonewall, deceive, and otherwise avoid responsibility for what they do. But then... we knew that.
luv u,
jp
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02/26/06
A- heya, heya....
What is this, a commercial for Puffa-Puffa Rice? Don't
get me started on that again. Christ in himmel. Last time I thought about those
ads, I was humming that blasted jingle for the better part of a month. A
little hard to explain to the constable writing your failure-to-keep-left ticket
why you 
keep muttering "a digga digga bowl-full UMPH! New kind of
break-a-fast cereal UMPH!" Dey think you like CRAZY, man.
Ah, the distractions. Such is the life of a virtual musician. Errant strains of cheesy music following you about, climbing in your ear and squatting down on your brain for a day or two. Over here at the Cheney Hammer Mill, I get that all the time. It's quiet, you see -- quiet as the grave. Not like it used to be, of course, back in the day. There was a time when the sound of hammers being forged from virgin iron could be heard throughout this manor, clear across the valley, and practically to the sea. Not any more -- the forges have long been silent. The last hammer was hammered out probably fifty years ago....and it wasn't a very good one. (It's still mounted on my bedroom wall, actually, right next to the first rupee the mill ever earned. Sentimental fellows.)
Speaking of mounting things on the wall, the Cheney
Hammer Mill junta is still engaged in its imaginary reign of terror, now aided
and abetted by 
Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who has donned the
appropriate military accoutrements and begun carrying out Anti-Lincoln's orders,
though not precisely to the letter. He was, for instance, asked to put a bullet
in Posi-Lincoln, but that didn't happen - not nearly. You see, Marvin has
hard-wired into him the automaton's code of ethics...an iron-clad series of
commandments and proscriptions that amount to a virtual corral through which our
metallic friend must navigate all of his days. One of the primary ... I mean
PRIMARY commandments is to do no harm.... DO NO HARM TO HU-MANS! Especially
those humans who resemble the Great Emancipator so remarkably.
When it came to putting bullets in the revolver,
Marvin's fingers revolted. He started drawing pictures on his chalk board, as
well as random pleas for deliverance. (This puzzled me.) Then
he went out and tossed a few soccer balls into the sewer -- his version of
street basketball. The junta was very frustrated with him, of course, since they
found they could not program the evil into him....only the extra goodness out.
And that simply was not not good enough. You see, my friends -- once you
have set your mind to great 
evil, you will settle for nothing less than that....
or at least, significant badness. And I don't mean "bad" in the sense
of the popular euphemism for "hip" or "with it" -- you know,
the way kids talk these days. (What decade is this again? Who am I,
really?)
So, all in all, another disappointing week all around. It's just so damn hard to get what you want, know what I mean? Even if all you want is a new kind of break-a-fast cereal..... oh, Christ! Somebody get this jingle out of my head before I get an endorsement contract! (And look what that did to the Monkees.)
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
Smoke and Mirrors. Bush was on the
road this week touting his energy "initiative". I put the word in
quotes because what he's talking about doesn't amount to much more than photo
ops and sound bites. In fact, one of the alternative fuel research facilities he
visited had recently laid off a bunch of people because of a cut in federal
funding. The administration thoughtfully found the money to reinstate the
workers in time for Bush's visit. Sometimes being a propaganda tool can have its
benefits. (Ultimately perhaps we will all be cheap props at some point in our
lives, if only for fifteen minutes.) Sadly for junior, world events were not
cooperating with his plans for conquest of the evening news. Here he gets his
show on the road and someone just HAS to blow up that Shi'ite shrine in Samara
so that Iraq goes ultra-septic once again, then there's the UAE port contract 
controversy
at home... and before he's seen more than once or twice with safety goggles on,
the show is over. Hey - he wants to talk about switch grass, but now everybody's
too busy obsessing over the spiraling catastrophe in Iraq he ignited under false
pretenses. Sheesh.
I saw an article in our Friday Gannett daily -- marked "analysis", so look out -- that considered the situation in Iraq as one of brother vs. brother, with both brothers blaming us (unfairly, the author appears to suggest). The reason we come in for all the blame is that we are the "outsider", you see. It's that A-rab hostility to all things foreign and particularly western. "They hate us for our freedom" is one small step away from this argument. Gosh - do you think maybe they blame us because we're responsible for the mess they're in right now? Was there mass sectarian violence before March 2003? Talk about being chin-deep in denial. We as a nation have simply become incapable of taking responsibility for anything we do, including what the Nuremberg tribunal found to be the most serious crime a nation can commit -- that of unprovoked armed aggression, the worst evil because so many other evils proceed from that act. By that august standard, and by virtue of even a rudimentary notion of fairness, we're guilty as hell. That's not "blame America first." That's just facing the truth like a nation of adults. Unfortunately our leaders would much rather we endlessly blow smoke than take a glance in the mirror.
Just a word about Bush's other distraction
this week. I've noted that some commentators have found it difficult to
understand why people react negatively to the Dubai harbor deal in places
like...oh, say...New York City. Well, let's see. Two of the 9/11 hijackers were
from the United Arab 
Emirates.
Further, UAE provided the financial hub through which the operation was funded.
Now it's true that they are financially and politically well-connected over
here, like Saudi Arabia (source of fourteen 9/11 hijackers) with which
"we" (i.e. our intermediaries in U.S. based multinational
corporations) do billions of dollars worth of business every year. So on the
face of it, there's nothing particularly remarkable about this transaction. It's
only when you look at it in the unavoidable context of the 9/11 attacks and the
endless "war on terror" the administration has since crammed down our
throats that it seems outrageous. Iraq (no 9/11 hijackers, no financial support
for the attack) gets invaded; Dubai gets a sweetheart deal, making massive
profits on port-of-entry shipping operations within spitting distance of the WTC
they helped blow up. Can you blame New Yorkers for being pissed off about
that?
One other irony: wasn't the WTC owned by the port authority? So Dubai World Shipping might have had a swell office in the twin towers, had it not been for a previous transaction.
luv u,
jp