NOTES FROM SRI LANKA.
(July '01)
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7/1/2001
Good morning, sunshine....Sorry this dispatch is a little late. Been busy.
Things are a bit more complicated than we thought they'd be. But then, what's new? Hey...Gung Ho never promised us a rose garden. And since this was the first thermonuclear device ever used in renovation, we're encountering some new ground here. In fact, it's positively rising to meet us.
I spent a
disagreeable night out in the no-man's land that was once the mongoose
residential subdivision. Don't get me wrong -- I don't mind living in a tent
while the lean-to is reconstructed. It's dying in a tent that I mind very
much, thank you...which is very close to what happened when I rolled out of bed
and nearly bumped into a few of Gung-Ho's cohorts, who were doing some kind of
recreational mop-up operation amongst the ruins. I made the mistake of asking for
a light, and they incinerated my tent, detonated sFshzenKlyrn's
favorite refrigerator, and shot up a couple of saplings we'd planted to replace
some ancient Yew trees the mongooses had ripped out. (Man, I'll tell you --
around here, if the weather don't get you, the out-of-work mercenaries will.)
The particular military gentleman who burned my tent to the ground lit the flame with his copy of the US Army's Field Manual. You know -- the one that outlines the Law of Land Warfare with respect to treatment of civilians, etc. (It didn't look too dog-eared, I must say.) When I brought my complaint to Gung Ho the following morning, he dismissed the incident as "a little good-natured horseplay."
This rationale didn't go down too well
with Matt's equestrian friend Mr. 
Tedd,
who insists that horses don't play that rough. Mr. Tedd has, in fact,
volunteered to help with the reconstruction of our lean-to, and has amazingly
consented to drawing cartloads of building supplies to the construction site. So
as not to fall unwittingly into the servile role traditionally reserved for his
species, the four-legged philosopher has been continually paraphrasing John
Dewey as a kind of mental self-inoculation against oppression. Clever
boy.
For my own part, I try to take comfort in the words of ex-POW and Mr. "Straight-Talk Express" himself, Senator John McCain, who summed up his take on the Law of Land Warfare thus:
"I hated my enemies even before they held me captive because hate sustained me in my devotion to their complete destruction and helped me overcome the virtuous human impulse to recoil in disgust from what had to be done by my hand."
Heck...I'm sure glad he's on our side!
Provisioning remains a challenge. As I
said, sFshzenKlyrn's
fridge got all shot up, so what was left of our leftovers is now over and done
with. We've had to subsist on the meanest of diets...mostly seeds, husks, and
tubers from the farm stand, which was sadly taken out by one of Gung-Ho's
counterinsurgency teams (they considered it NLF infrastructure). Thanks to our
Taiwan-based friend Ned Danison, we have availed ourselves of one small luxury
-- the purest lard, packed in ice and flown in from Des Moines, with a nice
golden crumb coating. Disgusting? Yes. But hey...if it makes you happy, why not
dig in? Thank you, Lard Information Council! There's a free CD on its way right
now!
What next? Well...we'll let you know how the reconstruction goes. Right now it's anyone's guess, but I expect to be back in business before the year is out. 2003 at the latest. Stay tuned!
Dubya Standard. Anyone see the
Surgeon General's report on sexuality? You know, the one that shows (yet again)
that abstinence-only education has no measurable effect on teenage pregnancy,
AIDS prevention, and so 
on? Well, it doesn't matter. According
to Mr. Mouthpiece Ari Fleischer, the federal cash will still flow to abstinence
education because the president thinks it's effective. What else do we need to
know?
Here's another one: though Missile Defense (or the "Missile Defense Shield" as the corporate press has taken to calling it) doesn't work and will destroy the entire existing arms control framework, we still want it because the president thinks it's a good idea. And because the various defense contractors whose board members inhabit Dubya's administration like the sound of all that public money. And because the Pentagon's "Space Command" wants to own outer space as a theater of operations...own it.
So hey...even if you don't think like a caveman, fear not. We've got someone to do our caveman thinking for us. So long as we don't kick up a fuss.
Gotta go. Luv u,
jp
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7/8/2001
It's showtime (...for another column).
Spent a week amongst the smoldering ruins of my one-man refugee tent, heating tins of scalloped potatoes over the still-glowing embers, spreading lard thick on stale toast, trying to keep body and soul together in anticipation of our lean-to's ultimate reclamation. Been here before, for sure.
Gung-Ho's
mop-up squad -- all veterans of the Contra terror war against Nicaragua -- came
through once or twice last week, eviscerating a few of the locals and otherwise
making themselves at home. I've talked to Gung-Ho about this before, but I guess
I'll have to bring it up again next time I see him. I mean, it's hard enough
dealing with unexploded ordinance (we unearthed another 500-pounder last
Wednesday -- see photo), but doing it with your throat slit ear-to-ear is almost
twice as hard. Then, as if that isn't bad enough, the out-of-work death
squad commandeers my sofa and watches re-runs of Oliver North's show on NBC.
(I'd wondered who his audience was...)
Hey -- we all have our problems, right? At least mine are confined to those associated with unwanted houseguests. That's more than I can say for my Big Green virtual band mates, who have been much closer than I to the process of actually rebuilding our lean-to and bringing it up to spec. I mean, John has been grappling with construction issues involving engineering tolerances so fine they require a supercomputer just to confirm the possibility of their existence. Matt, for his part, spent the better part of the last week locating a supercomputer so that John can pursue his strangely metaphysical approach to lean-to reconstruction. So you see, they both have their hands full on this one.
Meanwhile, sFshzenKlyrn
has been trying to piece his life
back together after Gung-Ho's hired guns shot up his refrigerator. This has
involved a certain 
amount
of innovative thinking, on his part. Ever since his brush with
flapjack-addiction earlier this year, our extraterrestrial colleague has
struggled to maintain his caloric
intake at a high enough level to keep himself from turning solid once again (see
Notes for March and April
'01) and being sold as cheap sculpture. Thanks to his friends at the Russian
Orthodox church, he's been coming home every day with an enormous supply of Vienna
snausages, which he piles onto a makeshift grill and cooks to a fare-thee-well.
What an aroma! (We've had the Colombo fire department out twice this week
to douse his hibachi. If it keeps up like this, they'll take the phone off the
hook.)
Of
course, any time you rebuild, there's an opportunity to retool as well. So we've
decided to completely redo our studio, replacing our 8-track DTRS with a new
24-track hard disc recording system. Handling the upgrade for us is the renowned
Electrical Engineer and friend of Dr. Hump, Professor Mitch Macaphee, on loan
from the University of Bologna. A pioneer in the field of digital audio, Dr.
Mitch has come up with some really adventurous ideas for our new studio layout,
including a vocal enhancement device that runs on vegetable oil! We're dying to
give it a whirl...once it's out of the prototype phase.
So as you can see, the news isn't all bad. Who knows? If Dr. Mitch's contrivances pan out, we may be ready for another interplanetary tour before the year is out. That is, if we can find a spaceship big enough to carry a month's supply of snausages for one hungry Zenite guitarist. And one zero-gravity, liquid oxygen-fueled hibachi. Anyone?
Conserving Compassion. You'd think that when a president appoints a war criminal to a human rights post on the National Security Council (if such a thing can be imagined), it would be considered news. Especially when that president's father (a former president) had pardoned said war criminal 8-1/2 years before as part of an effort to cover his own spotty political ass. But I guess not. Do a Google search on Elliott Abrams, and you'll turn up not one single news story about his recent appointment. Check the "newspaper of record's" website for stories over the past thirty days, and you'll find one very brief, perfunctory article, and a short op-ed letter. Hey -- Dubya didn't want to make an issue of this, okay?
Other
than appointing that killer slug who should be rotting in a Nicaraguan jail
right now, Dubya has been making some real news this week. Like his new
policy, worked out with HHS Secretary Tommy "Gun" Thompson, of
classifying an unborn fetus as a "needy child" -- thereby enabling
their miserly allocation of pre-natal care to by-pass the mother entirely as a
political entity.
Thompson (pictured here in conference with the president) will soon be announcing some new initiatives along the same lines. Since they are now officially considered by the administration to be "baby cartons," HHS plans to start printing the photos of lost and missing children on the side of expectant mothers. Sounds like a plan! Nice work, Tommy...keep cutting 'em off at the knees. What a wonderful way to show you care!
Watch out for low-flying aircraft. Talk to you soon.
luv,
jp
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7/15/2001
Halo, mes amis...
Another clammy morning out here in the rubble-field that was once a mongoose-built subdivision. I've found myself a nice, cozy shell crater to curl up into, and spent the last few nights wrapped in burlap sacking, reading myself to lullaby-land with a dog-eared copy of Reed Brody's 15-year-old fact finding mission report on Contra Terror in Nicaragua. (Gung-Ho's paramilitary pals have rekindled my interest in the Reagan/Abrams/North/Secord--driven killing machine, particularly now that Abrams has found himself a new wormhole to occupy in the Dubya administration.) Enchanting reading.
How
is the lean-to construction project progressing, you ask? We're making
remarkable strides...under the circumstances. After all, a good portion of our
meager resources have been sunk into bringing Dr. Hump's protégé Professor
Mitch Macaphee out here to work on the new studio. Then, of course, there's been
a certain amount of compensation to be tendered for sFshzenKlyrn's
midnight raids on every
refrigerator within a seven mile radius. (I had no idea frozen TV dinners
were so expensive in this part of the world...) Between all of this and the
various liability suits still pending from our historical tourism ventures, our
pathetic bank balance has been reduced to its lowest level since our return from
Neptune last summer. Man, it's a good thing I've got that refund check coming
from Dubya...shooo-weee!
Even with these substantial impediments,
the building crew has been making visible progress. Just visible, I
should say. There are a few issues 
with
the location that need to be sorted out. (It appears that Gung-Ho's saturation
bombing campaign drilled deep enough into the Earth's crust to allow water to
percolate up from an aquifer, creating a body of water about the size of Lake
Powell.) And the new lean-to design is a little, well...flimsy, if you ask me.
The construction firm assures me that everything will "fall into
place" as soon as the masonry arrives from Belize. (Perhaps a poor choice
of words on his part. The fucking thing looks like a dilapidated houseboat!)
In as much as our lean-to rebuilders came highly recommended from the greater Colombo chamber of commerce, I can only attribute their shoddy work to the cash-flow problem I alluded to earlier -- the fact that they haven't been paid in three weeks seems to be bringing the workmanship down a notch. Go figure.
Matt's solution to this dilemma has been
mostly histrionic. For the last few days, he's been donning a Santa Claus-style
hat and knocking the workmen 
on
head with a rubber mallet. When this fails to produce the desired results, he
taunts them mercilessly. "Oh, sure," he shouts from a discreet
distance, "first you gotta have MONEY...THEN you do the work, is that
it? Prima-freakin-donnas!" John and I have been taking a somewhat more
supply-side approach -- trying to double our money at the local betting shop.
The numbers have been pretty good to us so far. We've only lost about $47 (US),
but it's coming back. I can feel it. Come on, six! Come on!
Hey...we're not letting a few financial bumps get in the way of the important work we do. And even though our demo project has been frozen in place since our ill-fated appointment to Dubya's X-Commission last winter, that doesn't mean we haven't been continuing to hone our music to a fine edge. We're always improving ourselves. Even sFshzenKlyrn has committed himself to learning a new instrument in the interim -- though Matt already plays kazoo, so it won't add much to our overall sound. That thing I said earlier about improving ourselves? Well....just....forget it.
Batting
Average. I'm sure you're all breathless with the news of the Pentagon's
latest "Missile Defense" testing triumph. Shouts of glee, high-fives,
and triumphal fists filled the air of the command center as the target warhead
was obliterated by the still-experimental "kill" vehicle. What a
show!
Only yesterday the administration spinmeisters were frantically lowering expectations (...harrumph ...this is just one test of many in a long process....harrumph ...can't read too much into this ... harrumph ...each test should be judged separately on its own merits....harrumph... is that the time?) Our local newspaper even carried some Pentagon PR line equating "Missile Defense" testing with batting averages in baseball -- if this one goes through, NMD will be batting .500! Now doesn't that give you a warm feeling of security? ("Nuclear war has been declared? Don't worry, honey...only half of those deadly H-bombs will make it though our impenetrable defense shield!")
Though I haven't the belly to watch the
Sunday talk shows, I'm sure they'll be infested by talking heads extolling the
virtues of our new Defensive technology and decrying the naysayers as luddites.
Hey, why not? Since success is measured by the degree to which they can con the
American public into underwriting a costly, ludicrously conceived weapons system
that will actually make them more vulnerable to nuclear attack, the test was
something of a success. By any actual operational measure, however, it appears
to have been a fraud of similar dimensions to the previous few tests -- the
mylar "decoy" balloon serving as a guide to the "kill"
vehicle, 
the homing radio
signal, etc. Not to mention the fact that the target was launched from
Vandenberg in California and struck in its boost phase -- a much simpler
undertaking than hitting a warhead on descent, launched from an unknown
location.
So if you live in Hawaii in the future...and some renegades take control of Vandenberg and announce their intention to launch a nuclear strike against Honolulu at a time certain, this system would have a 50/50 chance of shooting that sucker out of the sky. Isn't that worth a renewed arms race? Sure it is. Just ask the boys at TRW and Lockheed Martin.
See you soon, goon.
luv u,
jp
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7/22/2001
Greetings...
What a night I had! Up 'til four with a nauseated Zenite guitarist. (Poor old sFshzenKlyrn just doesn't know when to stop with those Vienna snausages. I warned him not to eat the red cocktail sauce, but you can't tell these extraterrestrials anything.)
It's been a momentous
construction week. I can't say that our efforts to talk some sense into these
builders haven't paid off. After repeated harassment from all three (or four) of
us and lethal threats from Gung-Ho's ex-Contras (the "Abrams Brigade,"
we call them), our yet-to-be-fully-recompensed 
contractors
have abandoned the houseboat project and started building on dry land. (Reminds
me of Noah's noisy neighbors in the movie "The Bible"... What is
more stupid than this? A man...building a ship...on DRY LAND!) Using many
board-feet of barn wood left over from a recent traffic accident, our builders
have fashioned a large shed-like object that looks as if it were built for
Matt's friend Mr. Tedd, the anarcho-syndicalist horse. A step in the right
direction, I'd say. (Matt got so excited, he planted an ash tree in the front
yard. Though I think the hole was a little shallow...)
Now that we have something
like a roof over our heads, we can turn our attention to the next order of
business -- finding the scratch to pay off our construction costs. This is a
difficult proposition, particularly in today's 
world,
when a single global hegemon rules unchallenged, like a wealthy man dwelling at
peace within his habitations. At least during the days of that geopolitical
bi-polar disorder known as the Cold War, there was someplace else to go for
"development" money besides the Washington/IMF/World Bank nexus. And
with bill collectors breathing down our necks, lemme tell you...I'd be on that
phone to Moscow in a heartbeat, even if the next day's Murdoch tabloids
screamed: BIG
GREEN SAVED BY KREMLIN GOLD!
Sadly, that's not an option. But our creditors need not fret...we're good for the cash. Just ask our friends at Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc. -- we've got the number five record on Antares! Repatriating the profits is a bit of a challenge, though, given the seemingly unbridgeable void of outer space that separates us from our most enthusiastic fans. Then there's the cabal of old Suharto cronies on the Hegemonic board of directors soaking up the payola. (One crony let us take a picture of his brick collection for use in the preceding paragraph. Nice, huh?)
We haven't even been able to pay Professor
Macaphee's fee for designing our just-too-hip new studio. He has agreed to stay
on, so long as no one talks to him. I don't think this is just about money. I
think Professor Mitch 
has
got some serious issues -- he's so careful about everything he says! We're
trying to coax him out of his shell with subtle encouragements. John placed a
tray of walnuts outside his sleeping quarters, hoping that would make him talk.
Matt and I put our lunch money into buying an antique iron cross, which we plan
to use as an incentive. (He's an avid collector of
fascist-era memorabilia, perhaps due to his long tenure at the University of
Bologna, where he became involved in neo-fascist Silvio Belusconi's successful
campaign for Italian Premier.) This will get him talking, for sure!
Collective Self-Defense. Speaking of Berlusconi, the G-8 summit in Genoa, Italy saw a bit more of the usual police-state tactics in response to the rabble -- about what you'd expect from Il Duce lite. The one fatality amongst the demonstrators was described by Berlusconi's Interior Minister as probably the result of police firing "in self-defense." While the corporate media relay various world leaders' packaged lamentations about this "regrettable" event, one wonders about the concept of self-defense in the context of a gathering of the world's richest and most powerful nations, deciding the fate of billions behind an impenetrable phalanx of riot police. Cannot the demonstrators' actions be described as collective self-defense against the most destructive and pernicious forces on the face of the globe? I say yes. What do you say? Say it here: jperry@biggreenhits.com
Meanwhile,
far from the fray (as always), Baby Bush shares a laugh with Mussolini Jr., as
they presumably compare notes on how to turn an election to the advantage of the
moneyed interests they both represent. Of course, old Dubya had the usual rogues
gallery of corporate underwriters, plus all the good efforts of Brother Jeb,
Kathy Harris, and the five Supremes. Berlusconi had his pals in the various
neo-fascist parties, plus good old-fashioned cash from his media empire -- pots
of it. Enough to send every household in Italy a copy of his rags-to-riches life
story, written by him, published by him, totally about him him him.
Hey...maybe old Silvio would shake on a forward deployment for theater missile defense. Somebody get Dubya's boys on the phone. Sounds like a plan!
Stay inside. Wear sun block.
luv you,
jp
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7/29/2001
Good god, y'all.
Here it is. The best to you each morning, straight from battle creek. Well...each Sunday morning, anyway. And perhaps not the very best, but...the best we can do, okay? OKAY??
Sorry. Just a bit on edge. This protracted
construction-related sabbatical of ours is beginning to get on my nerves. You
know how it is -- nothing happens fast enough. The foundation goes in, the walls
go up, Matt plants a tree, and the next thing you know, some of Gung-Ho's old
cronies from the Indonesian Kopassus brigade show up and shoot the place full of
holes. No 
sooner do the
four of us finish stopping up the holes with plastic wood than a burning 'cano
sprouts up in our backyard, spewing lava, ash, boulders, breakfast cereals, and
luminous Raelian-esque beings, reducing our new barn-like structure to
cinders.
Now our building permit is almost expired, and we've got major volcanism taking place in the back yard. Plus sFshzenKlyrn is now on some kind of cloning kick that he picked up from the luminous beings. I know, I know...every builder runs into these types of setbacks. But we've got an album to produce, for Chrissake! Matt and I have got a whole sockful of songs all battered up and ready to fry. Plus we've got the very expensive (and retiring) Professor Mitch Macaphee plugging together a studio in the shadow of one of the most impressive lava flows South Asia has seen in more than a decade. This is costing us a fortune!
Luckily, we've been able to defray some of
our costs thanks to the trunk full of counterfeit scrip John managed to smuggle
on board our leaky 
freighter
before we left Washington. (It was just some funny money Matt and John printed
up, using whoever's portrait was handy for the front side.) Though we haven't
been able to pass them off in the local stores, our handy "Debs"
dollars have kept our international creditors at bay for some time. To keep them
out of eyeshot from the customs folks, we hid the bills inside bales of fragrant
contraband. sFshzenKlyrn invited the more
suspicious inspectors to partake of some Zenite snuff -- that did the
trick.
I don't want to suggest that we've been
completely on our own in this. We've had some help in procuring valuable
government coupons 
redeemable
for a variety of useful consumer goods. Matt's friend Mr. Tedd, the
anarcho-syndicalist horse, has offered his services as a draft horse for some
19th Century people who emerged from our backyard volcano after the initial
eruption to establish a beer distribution company on the outskirts of Colombo.
Tedd's been kindly passing the fruits of his labors along to us. (I think Mr.
Tedd was so taken by the design of our Socialist Party dollars that he thought
it only fitting he should contribute something to our housekeeping. "From
each according to his ability," he told us. Thoughtful horse.)
Hey...where would any of us be without our friends, right? And we of Big Green certainly count you among our most valuable. So what are you waiting for? Start sending us money now!!! Send your checks to:
BIG GREEN -- Behind the hot water pipes, Abandoned Building at 30-mile marker on old Route 9, North Sri Jayavardhanapura, Sri Lanka
Thanks, mom!
World Of Satisfaction. I hate to go on about that thing the Bush Administration and conservative columnists (like Utica's own Dick Benedetto) call a "Missile Defense Shield," but y'know -- these guys are too much! This whole National Missile Defense (NMD) project is just part and parcel of the U.S. military's efforts to build their power projection capabilities beyond the point of ridiculous, populating Earth orbit with advanced weaponry and creating an unassailable combined military force proportionate to the kind of weight Britain threw around in the 19th Century.
Of course, nations potentially on the
business end of this military machine rationally view NMD as a threat to their
security, buttressing the US ability 
to
attack at will and underscoring its longstanding "first-use" doctrine
with regard to nuclear weapons. Somehow, I think it will take more than just a
visit or two from the salesman-in-chief, or Condoleeza Rice, or Colin Powell, to
set their minds at ease. Especially if they read any of the publicly available
information on Pentagon planning, like Vision
2020. Check it out yourself, then contact your Congressional
representatives (and your "president") and let them know what you
think of their latest "defensive" posture.
Keep in touch.
luv,
jp