NOTES FROM SRI LANKA.

(January '03)

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1/5/03

H-h-h-a-p-p-p-p-ee--Ni-ni-ni...

Okay, so I was trying to say "Happy New Year." Turbulence, you see. One of the many hazards of space travel. That and lack of air are probably my most hated. And then there's the reconstituted food that comes in little silver packets, delivered via conveyer belt in our ship's galley. Glack!

When last I wrote you, your friends in the Big Green interstellar tour entourage had been robbed, vandalized, and cast adrift by our rent-a-pilot Urich Von Braun, who made a very rude getaway in the replica J-2 space pod. The great blonde beast made off with our pay packets from a string of successful gigs on the planet Zenon (home of our semi-permanent guitarist sFshzenKlyrn)...but not before smashing our navigational system with a monkey wrench and sending us out of control into an uncharted and sinister quadrant of space. Blackguard! Scoundrel! Cake stealer!

Why did Urich go septic on us? We've since discovered damning evidence of a plot carefully laid by our corporate label, Hegemonic Records & Worm Farm, Inc., to deny us the proceeds of this "unauthorized" tour and punish us for our insubordination. Turns out Urich was bought and paid for by Hegemonic -- we found his instructions for sabotage scribbled on the back of his "deal-a-meal" diet recipe cards. (I should have guessed it was some kind of plot -- Urich ate like a horse and never played his "Sweating to the Oldies" exercise video.) We also discovered a Hegemonic logo tee-shirt in with his pressure suit. Bastard!

Our crack (pot) scientist Mitch Macaphee eventually managed to gain limited navigational control of the ship by rigging a space "tiller" to guide us through the ethers. But that marvelous innovation came only after days of hyperdrive travel into a most menacing region of the galaxy where -- legend has it -- summary arrests are commonplace and strangers are kept incarcerated for long stretches without due process (funny -- it almost seems like I've been there before...). Wary of any further misfortune, we had Trevor James Constable focus his orgone generating device forward to deflect any "bad vibes" emanating from the solar systems that lay ahead. 

I know you'll think we're out of our tiny little minds for doing so, but we gave Marvin (my personal robot assistant) the graveyard watch at the controls. Hey, it was either that or let sFshzenKlyrn drive...and you know where that can get us. [If you don't, check our tour log for details.] Marvin actually handles the controls quite gingerly for an automaton. Perhaps his short association with our now departed professional pilot taught him something. Though he is a bit unpredictable, having been programmed by a madman. One morning we woke up to find ourselves docked at some deep space station; after an hour of uncertainty, Marvin wheeled in through the airlock with a stack of frozen pizzas. Thing is, we've got frozen pizzas in the store room. What we need is club soda, bean sprouts, and other staples...but he's always been an impulse shopper. Never makes a bloody list. 

Well, it happened that on the following evening, as Marvin was heating up a couple of split-pea and gorgonzola pies, the ship was locked into some kind of strange magnetic field emanating from an unknown solar system we just happened to be passing through. The modified boat tiller -- which Mitch affectionately dubbed "Mother Hubbard" -- was rendered useless. Before we knew it, we were being drawn toward a dark and forbidding world, closer and closer, penetrating layer after layer of atmosphere so that the impact of each successive layer shook the ship like a cheap sideshow thrill ride (which this ship may, in fact, have been at one time). Through a truly Herculean effort (hungover as he was from the previous night's pointless revelry), Mitch Macaphee managed to wrestle the ship into a low orbit. A very low orbit. I believe perigee is about 100 yards above the surface. 

So wish us luck, my friends. Expect a legible dispatch same time next week if we can k-keep the sh-sh-sh-ip from sh-sh-sh-sh-aking l-l-l-ike a br-br-br-ide g-g-g-g-g-g-roo-o-o-o-o-m-m-m-m....

Home On The Range. Dubya repaired to his "Western White House" (how Nixonian!) in Crawford, Texas, to enjoy a traditional holiday photo opportunity or two with a chipper and well accommodated press corps. His public comments whilst on vacation are always more entertaining than the usual gibberish. This week's prize goes to Dubya's observation that an attack by Iraq on American interests would "cripple our economy." My first thought was, "whoa, Tex...Who needs Saddam when we've got you?" Perhaps a brutal and costly war with Iraq is part of his much-heralded Economic Stimulus Package, to be unveiled this coming week. That and another massive tax cut for the rich ought to get America going again. Now hop back in the pickup, George -- it's almost tee time. 

You almost have to think that one day U.S. workers of every stripe will have had enough of being told by their much more comfortable bosses that they're lucky to have a job...that they'll get tired of the class warfare their employers practice on them every day, demanding more work for less pay (code word "productivity"), pushing their advantage to the limit, blaming the results of economic mismanagement on "9/11". You have to think that after years of abuse, layoffs, and blatant corporate malfeasance at the highest levels, working class Americans will awake one morning to notice that their country is being run by someone who shares the values of the ownership class -- a man of privilege (son of a man of privilege) who has been given a free pass at every stage of life and who has used that advantage to profit at others' expense; someone who has surrounded himself with corporate CEOs and profit mongers, and has embarked on an economic program designed to reward their friends and allies while screwing everyone else. 

And if the awakening comes, what then? Faced with a choice between the fratboy-in-chief and some proto republican like John Edwards or Lieberman, voting isn't much of an option. Then again, I remember voting in 1992 just to see Dubya's dad climb aboard the plane that would carry his sorry ass back to Texas or one of his other home states. When that was done, I felt I'd had my vote's worth of satisfaction, and expected little else. Perhaps hammered workers will simply opt for putting Dubya back on the ranch permanently. 

Or maybe they'll finally get a clue and organize, then let the politicians follow them around for a change...like it ought to be.

luv u,

jp

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1/12/03

O-Yay, O-Yay, O-Yay...

Well, well...hasn't this been another week for the books, eh? Or maybe it's the kind of week that should skip the books altogether and go straight to Saturday morning television. Or cheap, fifth-run drive-in movies. That bad. 

While we should have been on the planet Kaztropharius 137b, playing to sell-out crowds of Big Green's most enthusiastic fans and making buckets of money, we spent several days circling a stark, uncharted world that looks remarkably like Preplanus, the first planet visited by space family Robinson. Locked in an orbit low enough to scrape the bottom of our ship's hull on the taller mountains, we took a good long time assessing our situation, trying to decide what to do, whether to attempt a soft landing or mount a Quixotic effort to reach escape velocity in our partly disabled spacecraft. Someone -- I think it was Matt -- suggested we hang a rope ladder out the back door and send Marvin (my personal robot assistant) down it. Others thought we should just chuck him out the door. 

I suppose they blame Marvin for the predicament we're in -- after all, he was tight with our former pilot/saboteur Urich Von Braun, then failed to stop him from trashing the ship...and was missing in action (on his watch) when this planet's strange magnetic pull got hold of us. Then again, maybe it's not that at all -- maybe they're just sick of the troubadour routine Marvin has been practicing to pass the time. It is pretty god-awful...especially his tortured rendition of Cielto Lindo. (I've taken to calling him "Mariachi Marvin" -- when I do, his lights blink strangely and he prints i.d. tags that say "error!" where the name should go.) Where Marvin got the jumbo western guitar I don't know...so you better check inside that Gibson case and see if that sucker is missing. Please -- tell me it's yours!  

Anyway, our low orbit didn't last forever. It ended rather abruptly while John and Mitch Macaphee were working out the details of a plan to sell advertising space on the outside of the spaceship (a back-lit billboard would have been easily visible to patrons on the ground). Just as it seemed they had a customer on the hook (some Ford dealership on Aldebron) the ship began to wobble and pitch. Mitch dropped his cell phone and heroically guided us in for a belly landing on a sandy hillside, light years from home and at least a mile from the nearest convenience store (or "7-11" as they call them way out here). Marooned!

Once we had recovered from the initial jolt of our unceremonious landing, we began to take in the magnitude of our situation. Something like this can, like, ruin your whole day...especially if the air is laced with some deadly chemical or pathogen. Yuk. Naturally, it had never occurred to us to test the atmosphere during our week-long orbit. sFshzenKlyrn helpfully suggested that we send Marvin out there with a portable analyzer (of course, sFshzenKlyrn requires no special atmosphere himself...just a little room of his own and regular infusions of cottage cheese and ketchup). I was against this idea, but unfortunately Marvin chose that moment to break into a "welcome" song (offering a duet with the photocopier) and so I was overruled. 

Dropped out into the forbidding landscape of a barren world, Marvin plucked tenuously at the strings of his guitar, waving its neck about as if it were some kind of atmospheric test equipment, which, of course, we had neglected to provide him in our haste to chuck him out there. Will the air be capable of supporting Terran life? Will we be able to effect repairs and get off this wretched rock? Will Marvin ever learn the real words to Cielto Lindo? For the answers to these and other gripping questions, check this space next week, same time. There should be some kinda web page here, or something. 

Two Can Play. Now, there's a successful foreign policy. After two solid years of belligerence in every direction and ripping up multilateral treaties, the Dubya administration is outraged -- OUTRAGED -- that one of them there other countries should...well...act belligerently and rip up multilateral treaties. Can it be that they are truly surprised by developments on the Korean peninsula, or is that just a sanctimonious facade? I've got to think it's the former. After all, this is rule by corporate CEO...and they seldom look any further ahead than the hot end of their half-smoked cigars. 

So just in the relatively short time the Bush doctrine has been in force, we've seen two very major escalations of regional nuclear tensions -- India/Pakistan, which nearly came to blows last year, and North Korea, which just announced its withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In both cases, national leaders invoked the Bush team's actions and rhetoric (particularly those after 9/11) as justification for their own. And in both cases, the Bush-ites have scrambled to find some diplomatic solution that would allow them to focus the world's attention back on the war they really want to fight against Iraq...without, of course, resorting to...gulp...appeasement.

Back in Pyongyang, Kim is rallying the rank and file the way they often do in the more coercive societies -- forced demonstrations, to a large extent (though I'm sure many of the marchers are there because they agree, too). Here in the States, our regime uses the time-tested methods of public relations (guaranteed effective in stirring up war fever since 1917) in as much as this is a formal democracy with a tradition of significant (if somewhat uneven) civil liberties, long under attack by our society's more coercive elements. Ergo, in the midst of our earth-rattlingly bellicose foreign policy of late, NPR newscasters attempt to "fathom" Kim Jong Il's motives. What's to fathom? We put the fucker in the "Axis of Evil" (i.e. the short list for regime change). We reneged on the '94 agreement to build a "light water" reactor. We floated scenarios of pre-emptive nuclear strikes. In short, we pissed them off but good, and now they're going to take steps to ensure we think twice before attacking them. Is there a mystery here?

Sharon Share Alike. Looks like Ariel Sharon has finally stumbled upon a criminal activity that may actually alienate his electoral base. How Nixonian! Invade whole countries (Lebanon) and slaughter thousands? No problem. Beat, torture, murder, humiliate, and generally dispossess an entire people? Bravo. Gun people down in the doorway as they try to escape their burning homes which have been set ablaze on your orders (Qibya)? That's fine. Get a little funny with campaign cash and sweetheart loans from South African cronies? Whoa!  

luv u,

jp

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1/19/03

Oh for the love of...!

Oh, hey -- sorry. Didn't know anybody was there. I'm just trying to get some of Marvin's internal wiring straightened out after that extra-normal encounter he had out on the planet's surface with some killer electric tumbleweeds. It's pretty painstaking work and, well, I just didn't hear you log in. Hand me that soldering iron, will you? There's a good chap. Why, of all the...where the hell does this wire go? Mitch!!

Yeah, so Marvin was out there with his guitar last week -- you remember -- testing for pathogens in the air and soil without the benefit of the portable lab package we have for just that purpose (oops!). So there he was, strumming and caterwauling like some wayward caballero, when across the highway came a screaming herd of tumbleweeds with electromagnetic properties and the uncanny ability to imitate Jonathan Winters. Marvin dropped his jumbo western guitar and gave off a loud zapping sound, then his lights went out. Cold. 

We sent a rescue party after the automaton, headed by my illustrious brother Matt. In fact, Matt was the only one in the rescue party, since he was the only one who could get his head inside those cheesy space helmets that came with our split-level interstellar craft. So Matt ordered himself out to the spot where Marvin had been immobilized. There he found our mechanical friend frozen in mid stride, his mouth open wide with mute song, his v.u. meters pinned, and his knobs all spun up to eleven, poor bastard. Matt wheeled him back home, only to find Trevor James and I outside tinkering with the barbecue grill (we had taken the opportunity to do a little atmospheric testing and had found the air to be at least as breathable as at Chicago-O'Hare). Matt's face plate steamed up a bit at the sight, and he kicked the grill over. I think he was okay after that. 

As we took our first look at this strange new world, our colleague sFshzenKlyrn was inside the ship having a minor relapse on his flapjack addiction. This often happens with our Zenite friend when he becomes a little disaffected and feels like he can't fully participate in the challenges we face as humans, he being a semi-contiguous cloud of sentient nebulosity for whom time and matter are mere distractions. Flapjacks always make him feel more human -- especially when he adds a rasher of bacon on the side -- so while we were busy with the grill, sFshzenKlyrn commandeered the galley and started frying. 

When I found sFshzenKlyrn later that evening, he was lying on the galley floor, solid as a stone. It took all five of us to move him to his bunk -- quite a task without Marvin to put his back into it. Trevor James was kind enough to set up his orgone generating device in sFshzenKlyrn's cabin, where it could steadily bombard the somnambulant guitarist with soothing M-rays while Mitch and I continued our work on Marvin. Why does everything always have to happen at the same time? Huh? Why for, this?

John has tinkered with the transceiver, hoping to raise someone who may be inclined to assist us, but so far all he's picked up is our ex-pilot Urich Von Braun's diabolical cackle, still echoing across the void of interstellar space. (At least he's happy in his work.) And so, as we prepare for our first barbecue on this forgotten cinder in space, there seems little chance that we'll be able to cover any of our scheduled gigs on Kaztropharius 137b...or drop off Mitch Macaphee's dry cleaning before his discount coupon expires. Those fiends at Hegemonic Records & Worm Farm, Inc., have a lot to answer for -- Mitch has been wearing the same lab coat for three weeks now!

The Sixty Percent Solution. Well, it's happened, friends. Our beloved president's job approval rating has finally slipped back down to where it was prior to 9/11/01 -- around 58% -- this after a year and a half of economic stagnation, unprecedented corporate scandals involving companies closely tied to the administration, and a "war on terror" that, aside from being a logical absurdity, is a total failure by any rational standard, having failed to achieve either its tactical goals (apprehending bin Laden and rendering his al Qaeda network inoperative) or its strategic goals (making the U.S. safe from terrorism). Even worse, Bush's single-minded pursuit of his most hawkish advisors' maximum objectives for "full spectrum dominance" in military power has squandered any sympathy the world may have felt for Americans in the wake of 9/11 and aggravated a range of conflicts, most notably on the Korean peninsula, where North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has taken the initiative to confront Washington on its repeated threats now rather than at a time of Bush's choosing. 

Not that any of this would tend to make the president unpopular or anything, but hey...maybe people are just gradually slipping back into the knowledge of what an arrogant, incompetent little creep he is. I think, though, that this is probably a very dangerous time for the world, including us here in America. My feeling has long been that when Dubya's polls dip below 60%, something will happen...war, another terror strike, who knows? Obviously, the prospect for war with Iraq is very strong, and there's any number of ways Dubya could trigger its commencement. And because al Qaeda is still in business (see above), terror attacks could happen at any time, with severe consequences for civilian life and limb, to say nothing of civil liberties. I can't think Dubya and the boys would be unhappy with the outcome of either eventuality. 

So my advice to you folks at home is hang on tight. Something's got to keep this rotten economy and Dubya's pea brain off the front pages. And something's got to scoot that popularity rating back up again like a guided missile, lest Dubya suffer from Pappy Bush syndrome...you know, unbeatable in war...insupportable in peace. 

Does Jonah Read Jonah? National Review Online editor and ubiquitous talking head Jonah Goldberg has been one of the more insistent voices pressing for this bizarro war against Iraq. Aside from some pretty tired-sounding red-baiting of peace activists (this week's syndicated column revived the oft-cited "useful idiots" description attributed to Lenin by conservative pundits during those good old cold war), young Jonah has been lurching about a bit in his effort to portray Dubya's Iraq policy as some kind of admirable moral crusade to benefit those we are planning to kill, maim, and occupy. One week he's razzing his TV debate partners for relying on the somewhat limited "double standard" critique of Bush's Iraq policy vs. his North Korea policy, pointing out that "Iraq and North Korea are different places." (Who can argue with that?) Then the following week Goldberg's going on at the "useful idiots" for not standing in the way when Saddam invaded Kuwait or gassed the Kurds, suggesting that peaceniks apply a...well...double standard. Hmmm. Does he read his own column, I wonder?

Interesting that he would raise this point, since his beloved Dubya's daddy did nothing to stop the invasion of Kuwait when he was in a position to at least try...and since Goldberg's conservative idols in the Reagan White House (including special envoy Rumsfeld) actively supported Saddam through his repeated chemical attacks against Iranians and Kurds. Then, of course, there's the elementary moral principle that we are more directly responsible for the actions of our own government than we are for those of other governments. Why should it surprise him that you see larger protests in Washington when Washington plans a war than when the troops start marching in Sierra Leone? After all, they're different places, right?

luv u,

jp

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1/26/03

Come in, Rangoon...

Greetings from a sparse and desolate world hundreds of light-years from that shabby old abandoned hammer mill in Sri Lanka where we sling our hammocks. I hope my dispatches are reaching you lot -- it's an awful long way for a web upload to travel, especially when you're slipping it into the payload section of a miniature V-2 rocket and firing it into space with explicit posting instructions. I know it's a long shot, but my hope is that some good space Samaritan will chance upon my missive while on his/her way to inspiring another religious movement and pause long enough to tap that sucker into FrontPage or whatever. Hey -- you can't say I'm not an optimist, now can you?

Y'know, it's really remarkable how much like the Robinsons' first planet ("Preplanus") this place is -- it's almost like this cheap knock-off of the Jupiter Two has carried some really bad karma along with it, no extra charge. I mean, this planet does the extreme hot/cold thing, there are giant hairy biped Cyclops critters stomping around at all hours of the night, we've encountered evil electric tumbleweeds and giant peapods (actually, it's a bit like my home town, come to think of it!). 

There are some advantages to this, of course -- we can avoid some of the obvious pitfalls the Space Family Robinson stumbled into because (what?) we saw them on TV. So we didn't pile into the chariot and head south when the temperature began to drop (we don't even have a chariot!)...and we don't let Dr. Smith (may he rest in peace) help with anything. Or hang out with the kids. 

Marvin is back in commission, you'll be glad to hear, after extensive rewiring by Mitch Macaphee and the insertion of at least three picnic baskets worth of fried chicken and potato salad. No, that's no typo...as soon as we rewired Marvin's mouth, he started asking for all kinds of bizarre things, and the easiest way to shut him up was to simply relent until we were able to patch new lines into his electronic brain. So it was chicken (faux, of course) and potato salad, capers, rubber cement, cinder blocks, scotch tape, a keychain flashlight, and quite a bit more. There were, of course, items we couldn't provide -- the Chrysler Building, Madagascar, colorless blue liquid, stuff like that -- but the requests cycled through so quickly it didn't matter much. (Marvin seemed puzzled by the odd collection of goods when we were finished with him....I think he thought they may have held some curative properties.)

Of course, once Marvin could roll again, Trevor James Constable immediately sent him out for pizza. Not for himself, you understand, but for poor, dear sFshzenKlyrn, who is lying in his bunk like a granite statue after having flapjacked himself into a stupor. It's not the first time this has happened, and we know from experience that a little tender loving care, coupled with regular ministrations of Zenite snuff and several dozen artichoke and pineapple pizzas (party-cut) will bring him back to where he ought to be. This far out in space, there aren't a great many options for pizza-lovers, though one of the local ground-dwelling mutants opened a small take-out joint near the inland sea...a short hike for Marvin, and a relatively safe one with his new portable force-field device (now he's guaranteed tumbleweed-proof). 

Meanwhile, Mitch Macaphee and Johnnie White are working up an idea to get us off this dreadful planet (as Smithy would say). Since our fuel situation is marginal and the gravity of this rock relatively strong (we all weigh about 350-400 pounds here -- and no, it's not the pizzas), John and Mitch are thinking about building a platform under the mock Jupiter Two that would raise the ship up about, oh...500 miles in the air, putting it beyond the iron grip of gravitation. There are one or two logistical difficulties they need to work out, then we can get started. 

So fear not, friends of Big Green...we'll soon be off this wretched cinder and on our way back to what passes for civilization. Isn't science wonderful?

The Capital Gang. I saw Dubya on CSPAN-1 the day he made his remarks to the press about France and Germany's reluctance to go to war over the as-yet invisible Iraqi nuclear weapons program. He'd been meeting with some "economists" discussing vital matters of the day (like golf, probably). You gotta love the pugnacious way he barks out the name of the White House reporter he wants to take a question from, like calling roll -- I half expect the questioner to shout "Yo!" in response. Even under these controlled conditions, Dubya takes three questions, no follow-ups, awkwardly repeating his line of the day about the inspection regime being like a "rerun of a bad movie" and that he doesn't want to watch it, using variants of the term "disarm" way too many times, getting more and more petulant as he moves unavoidably beyond his brief. This they call "strength."

I'm watching this, still somehow aghast at the notion that this...this is the leader of the most powerful nation on the planet -- a man who literally has the fate of the world in his clumsy, careless hands. How terrifying for the world...but I guess that's the idea. Dubya and his administration use violence and the threat of violence to achieve their own political ends, exploiting people's fears over 9-11 to get movement on a whole range of issues (including Iraq) wholly unrelated to any "war on terror." That's a textbook definition of terrorism...which is why the very concept of their "war on terror" is absurd, aside from the fact that it's like having a "war on anger" or a "war on unfriendliness." They can't define their enemy without indicting themselves...so they prefer to leave it vague. And if there's one thing junior can communicate, it's vague. 

As I've said before in this column, it's a regime led by CEO's, and their values and priorities are consistently those of an extremely privileged class. The prime movers in this Iraq vendetta share an appalling ignorance of the destructiveness and horror of war, and a clear contempt for common people. Rumsfeld's recent comments on Fox News regarding the relative "value" of draftees to the military are typical. Here's this Princeton frat-boy Naval reservist (who carefully navigated his fighter-bomber between wars) on network television opining that draftees "add[ed] no value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services over any sustained period of time." 

I can tell you, I've known a number of draftees -- my dad amongst them -- and each of them was worth ten of Rumsfeld, both in and out of the service. That pinched little fucker -- along with Cheney, Pearle, Wolfowitz, and Bush himself -- never risked anything for his country, neither life, nor career, nor fortune, and yet he has the arrogance and the self-righteousness to denigrate the many thousands who did the bulk of the fighting in every major war, and who sacrificed what little they had to do it. There's a true CEO mentality for you. 

What he avoided mentioning (in his haste to show what an insufferable putz he is) was the main reason why they are against a military draft -- it would make their splendid little wars a lot more unpopular. Asked to put their plans on hold, young people of relative means would be compelled to focus hard on what they're getting into. Not a good thing, particularly with the kind of thin gruel that is Bush's Iraq policy. 

The all-CEO Bush White House would much prefer they confine their consideration of the matter to some grumbling about what an asshole Saddam is, then turn back to the super bowl. That's the kind of democracy they like.

luv u,

jp

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