June03

NOTES FROM SRI LANKA.

(June '03)

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6/1/03

How!

Greetings from the subcontinent, friends of Big Green everywhere. Hope all is well in your little corner of the planet, wherever that may be. (Odd expression -- does a sphere have corners?) Whether you're in Santiago or St. Petersburg, Toronto or Tonga, we send our very best to you. (The best to you each morning, straight from Battle Creek...) Believe it!

I know you've all been sitting on the edges of your seats since last week's gripping column, wondering how we were going to work our way out of that seemingly hopeless situation. You remember, don't you? Sure you do. You don't? Well, just to recap, the army of brigands from Hegemonic Total Resource Extraction, Inc., had withdrawn, presumably to join the ongoing Indonesian invasion of Aceh. In spite of this, Gung-Ho's withering onslaught on our lean-to building site continued, and we had been unable to reach him with our desperate entreaties to call off the dogs of war. Our militant neighbor's property was sealed off and his communications were all on scrambler. How to get his attention, short of a surgical decapitation air strike on his bunker (which wouldn't be, well, neighborly)?

Actually, the solution was quite simple. The chemist shop where we rented our hot air balloon offered a full line of novelty "character" balloons, as well. So in as much as nothing short of the second coming would get Gung-Ho's attention, we had the man behind the counter inflate the king-of-king-size commemorative Jesus balloon, then we plunked Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and Matt's man-sized tuber in the gondola and wafted them off toward Gung-Ho's place. We then rigged an array of speakers on the roof of the Cheney Hammer Mill with the intention of blasting celestial music in that general direction (as it turned out, we settled for playing old Big Green tapes...close enough.)

Well, let me tell you...that caught old Gung-Ho by surprise, all right. The howitzers fell silent as the inflated godhead bobbed majestically above the shooting range -- they were getting a good look at the thing, perhaps awestruck...or perhaps simply drawing a bead. Before the shooting could begin again, Marvin carried out the instructions we gave him: he pinned a personal note to Gung-Ho onto the man-sized tuber and then chucked the massive root vegetable over the side. The tubester bounced a couple of times before coming to a stop just outside our neighbor's primary command bunker (at least that's what our intelligence sources told us it was). A gaggle of Gung-Ho's tin soldiers approached the object like it was unexploded ordinance, then found the note and brought it back to their boss. Our phone rang about five minutes later. Thank-ya, Jeeezuz!

So it took better than a week of trying, but we did finally stop our paramilitary pal from totally incinerating our lean-to building site for the second time in living memory. Not that the property might be considered prime real estate at this point. In fact, right now it resembles more than anything else an enormous grilled cheese sandwich, the ground all pitted and scorched, molten yellow Velveeta oozing out from between fractures in the shattered landscape. It'll take a little reclaiming, what with all those depleted uranium shell casings lying about. (Oh, Maaaarr-viiin!)

Just as a footnote: Gung-Ho's ordinance disposal unit pulled up to the Cheney Hammer Mill this morning in a horse-drawn cart with our man-sized tuber in the back, doused in an enormous bucket of spirit. There's a gentlemanly neighbor for you! Now if we could only get Marvin back down from on high. Aside from a brief (and somewhat clueless) eyewitness report from the battlefield, we haven't heard from our robot friend in days. That tuber was his principal ballast, it seems, and so Marvin's still sailing about our island nation, inspiring a whole new generation of Christian zealots. Who knows? This might get him honorable mention in the next edition of "The Book."

Progress In Space. Well, I was going to report this week that "Merry Christmas Jane (Part II)" had slipped back to #225 on Garageband.com's hot six thousand, but then I took another look and saw that it had risen to a new high of #187, breaking 200 for the first time. Woo-hoo! We've parked yet another song from our first album 2000 Years To Christmas on that site -- "All Saints Come" -- while continuing work on our sophomore effort. For those who need instant gratification, take heart...there's still Big Green LIVE From Neptune, available directly from us. Later this summer, we'll have remastered some never-before-heard archival material, which we will make available on line and on disc. Today the hits...tomorrow the oldies....Big Green marches on!

Georgie Paycheck. The morning after Dubya and his all-CEO band of renown signed off on their most recent multi-billion dollar giveaway to the wealthiest Americans, I was greeted by this headline: Expect Bigger Paychecks This Summer. I assume that was the line of the day, since the evening before I had heard the same words uttered on a little CBS business news report. Luckily, these pillars of the fourth estate are not held to any particularly stringent standard of accuracy, or they might have felt compelled to qualify that clumsy piece of sloganeering with some caveat like: ...Unless You're In The Half That Gets Next To Nothing, or: ...Unless You're One Of Those Families Just Above The Poverty Line That Got Written Out Of The Final Version Of The Earned Income Tax Credit Expansion To Make Room For The Dividend Tax Cuts That Will Help Make Cheney, Snow, Evans, Frist, And Dubya So Much Richer. Not as concise, but it would at least brush against the truth.

Of course, now that the legislation is law, the press can start talking about all the reasons why it shouldn't have been allowed to pass under Junior's pen -- just as the real story about NAFTA only got reported after its passage. Now we can know about the study ordered and later suppressed by the White House that predicted that the long-range impact of these serial tax giveaways will be in the range of $144 trillion and will severely undermine any publicly funded programs to help the sick, the elderly, and anyone who isn't rich. Perfect! say the corporate CEO's and lobbyists that run both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue...just don't let the unwashed masses know how badly they're being screwed until after they can't do anything about it.

So look for a little something extra in your paychecks, folks...particularly you big boys who will soon be asked to part with virtually none of the enormous wealth those thousands of working stiffs generate for you year after year. Go buy yourself a little something...another yacht, perhaps. You've earned it!

Cause & Effect. There's some frantic backpedaling going on in that tiny room where Rumsfeld and his 3 or 4 best buds get together and decide our foreign policy. After making what probably seemed to them like discreet comments minimizing the enormous role WMD's played in their relentless push for war in Iraq, they are now in damage-control mode, harrumphing loudly about beefed up searches, etc....this just days after Wolfowitz admitted in Vanity Fair that the WMD argument was made for what he described as "bureaucratic" reasons -- i.e. it would be easier to get action that way. Their "real" reason for war? So they could get US troops out of Saudi Arabia (which, of course, they could have done at any time in the last 12 years), where they are resented.

Sounds like they're also backpedaling on the "lean/mean" Rumsfeld approach to occupation, with plans to send more U.S. troops to Iraq (where they are not resented?) in response to this week's string of American combat deaths [local newspaper headline: Violence Against U.S. Continues(!)] and growing resistance throughout the country (not that that has stopped Rumsfeld from threatening Iran, but boys will be boys...). We begin to see the steady drip....drip....drip....of casualties that begins to eat away at all imperial adventures sooner or later. Which begs the question: Who wants to be the last one to die in Iraq? Any hands?

Take care out there.

luv u,

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6/8/03

Howahyuh, howahyuh, howahyuh...

The morning sun is ascending through the still-lingering clouds of acrid smoke rising off our devastated smallholding. It looks like Paul Simon's red rubber ball -- y'know, the one he tossed over to Cyrcle. So I guess you know what that means...it means I think it's gonna' be all right...yeah, the worst is over now...

Well, maybe. Or maybe not. Yes, we've managed to off those piratical characters from Hegemonic Total Resource Extraction, Inc. (who, it appears, have landed a subcontracting gig with Halliburton in a certain Arab country that will remain nameless). Yes, we've salvaged at least a portion of the burned-out slag of landscape upon which our lean-to once stood. Yes, we still have our squat at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, which seems like home to me now, in spite of the occasional disgruntled mongoose. But all is not sweetness and light, you know. We've got our troubles, just like any other indigent rock group...and right now our biggest problem is spelled M-A-R-V-I-N.

As you may recall, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) went sailing off with the prevailing winds in his Jesus balloon after dropping the note-bearing man-sized tuber where our neighbor Gung-Ho could spot it from his pillbox. (Man, life can get complicated sometimes!) From what we've been able to determine by studying the images from his chest-mounted web cam, we believe he's heading north by northeast toward the Himalayas -- perhaps the pointiest place in the world. That could be a problem, in as much as the Jesus balloon is only rated for about 10 to 15 thousand feet above sea level -- this according to the chemist shop proprietor who rented it to us. Of course, he's delighted at the news, since every day the balloon is out he takes another piece out of us (fully 40 pounds a day). Add to that the fact that we're not getting Marvin's paycheck anymore (the constabulary doesn't believe in paid leave for robots), and you'll understand why grilled cheese sandwiches are all over the Big Green menu for this week. Woof!

Hey -- drastic circumstances require drastic methods, right? We needed to replace that lost income, and there was only one practical way to do it -- put the man-sized tuber to work. The great root vegetable has had some experience helping Marvin out at busy intersections. He makes a fairly good scarecrow, as well. Well...not in the rain (he starts to take root, you see). Anyway, in keeping with our longstanding tradition of doing the least we can possibly get away with doing, we put the tuber on a dolly and wheeled him over to Marvin's police station in hopes that they would accept him as a substitute.

We returned to the Hammer Mill and continued work on our album (we're in the meditation stage of production right now), watching the mail for any reappearance of Marvin's coveted paycheck. For the first few days we were disappointed, then Matt went out shopping for kulfa balls one afternoon and saw his man-sized tuber sitting at one of those police information desks at a substation in the local village. That was a good sign -- they were putting the boy to work. Matt noticed he had a badge pinned to his husk...perhaps they had made him a detective! (On closer inspection, Matt discovered that it was a school safety patrol badge...the cops may have been running short on shields). Only time will tell if the paychecks start rolling in again. Stay tuned!

With Marvin off on his Himalayan-holiday-from-hell and sFshzenKlyrn back on Zenon for some kind of reunion, the cavernous Cheney Hammer Mill seems kind of empty these days. Just the three of us walking about the place, whistling nervously to ourselves. Even the paper carrier just leaves the local broadsheet at the door...he doesn't even say hi. I sent an email to Mitch Macaphee over at his mad scientist retreat in Oslo, but it returned unopened. God only knows where Trevor James Constable is (the left coast, perhaps?) and Dr. Hump has stopped sending transmissions, as well. I mean, what are we -- the pox? The Maytag repairmen of alternative rock? Hallooooo out there!!

At least there's opportunity to work on music...and to contemplate what will likely be a late summer tour (details to follow). Who knows? We may even start liking grilled cheese sandwiches. And with Marvin's Jesus balloon travels to our credit, we might find ourselves plugging the bible-belt circuit, sharing bills with Keith Green. Hallelujah, brother Graham!

Garageband.com update: This week "Merry Christmas Jane (Pt. 2)" hit 152, then dropped back to 270 (out of 5,500 or so). Volatile little sucker.

The War Process. Hey, since it's 1991 again (Iraq is in ruins, Bush is president, the economy's in the toilet) I guess it's only fitting that we should be treated to another sham "settlement" of the Israel/Palestine conflict...one that seeks to enlist Palestinian cooperation in the Israeli policy of occupation and expropriation that's been proceeding apace since 1967. All the made-for-TV elements are in place -- a triumphant American president magnanimously plays the role of peace broker; a hard-bitten Israeli ex-general makes a dramatic Nixonian reversal in a bid for peace; and a marginal Palestinian "leader" is selected as the negotiating partner. It's almost like they've hired some cut-rate actors to play Bush senior, Rabin, and Arafat in the last remake of "The Peace of the Brave." Coming to a television near you.

Ironically, the thing that is most dramatically different this time around is, well, the roadmap. No, not the outline agreement that will result in what Junior calls a "continuous" Palestinian state...but the actual roadmap of the West Bank, which is marked up by scores of new Israeli settlements, massive expansion of pre-existing ones, and a growing network of military roads barred to Palestinians that slice the territory into isolated little segments within which the natives may be shot, harassed, humiliated, beaten, starved, rendered homeless, and generally dehumanized at the IDF's leisure. This is an official policy of the Israeli government that has run through both Labor and Likud administrations -- a gradual integration of the West Bank into pre-1967 Israel that is being underwritten by billions of dollars in U.S. aid and loan guarantees every year.

This is not a small matter that may be stifled by cosmetic gestures and coercive measures. Settlement of this bloody conflict can only be based upon Israel's return to its 1967 borders and the dismantling of all of its colonial outposts -- a point that has been the international consensus (and more or less official U.S. State Department policy) since the occupation began 36 years ago. In as much as Israeli leaders of both major groupings have built their political fortunes on the kind of hyper-religious ultra nationalism that dominates the settler movement, doing so would not be easy, even if the political will were there. But that is the only hope for peace -- not this farcical repeat of Oslo that will obviously allow the cantonization of Palestinian society to continue unchecked.

Make no mistake -- the U.S. has considerable leverage here. Our support for an expansionist Israel is very deeply rooted in U.S. strategic planning for the Middle East. If America were to abandon the Kissingerian policy of stalemate between Israel and Palestinian national aspirations, you'd see real movement...and not just this warmed-over sham.

Bombs Away. Looks like the only weapons of mass destruction in Iraq may be the ones we unleashed against them over the past 13 years -- water bourn diseases, increased cancer from depleted uranium shells, and lack of medicines by virtue of sanctions. Down to us, all of it. Shall we invade ourselves, now?

Take care out there.

luv u,

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6/15/03

Welcome, amigos...

Damn, is that the time? My watch must be running backwards. It's probably because of that sick exercise regime Gung-Ho has gotten me into...you know, the one where you run backwards...through a minefield...with bowling balls in each hand? So, I don't know -- since everything is relative, maybe my watch is running forward....or maybe the world is turning backwards. Maybe I'm falling through a hole in tiiiiiiime!!!

Sorry. I've got a grip on myself now. (Ouch!) You may ask yourself why I'm following a fitness plan mapped out by our militant neighbor -- the one who dropped more ordinance on our lean-to construction site than Truman dropped on Tokyo. Well, ask away....the short answer is that I was starting to go a bit pear-shaped. It's a combination of inactivity and our squatter's diet of Puffa-Puffa Rice, cheese whiz, and meatless mini-corndogs. Since Gung-Ho had been kind enough to help us before when conditioning was needed, I thought I'd avail myself of his valuable expertise once again. I guess you could say it was a lapse in judgment on my part...one that came home to me quite dramatically in the middle of a minefield...or as I was attempting to do what the Gungster calls "atomic squat-thrusts" with massive electro magnets strapped to my wrists and ankles. Damn, I'm exhausted!

Hey -- you think I've got troubles? What about dear old Marvin (my personal robot assistant), dangling precariously beneath that holy hot air balloon we rented two weeks ago? Well, he nearly bought it crossing the Himalayas, skimming the tops of some of the tallest mountains in the world (I think his boat hook came in handy more than once). Then the prevailing winds carried the Jesus balloon northeast across China and straight into Japanese airspace, later shifting south/southeast towards....well, towards a whole lot of water, basically. I don't want to leave you with the impression that Marvin is a lousy balloonist -- not a bit of it. Marvin is no balloonist at all. His directional skills are better suited for trips to the green grocer's and that sort of thing...not global circumnavigation.

And though Marvin doesn't have a 2-way radio, we still get fuzzy images from his web cam (must be dust on the lens -- everything looks like one of those silk watercolors). We can also exchange "instant messages" with him o'er the Internet. The messages aren't usually real helpful -- his most recent went like this:

squx....flebmot. click-click.

It takes some deciphering, but these utterances could mean he's heading towards the famous Marianas Trench -- a deep undersea depression caused by a massive out-flow of molten cheesefood. I expect we'll see. (If I could get him to hang a sharp right, we'd be in business.)

Our sole source of sustenance -- Matt's giant root vegetable we refer to as the "man-sized tuber" -- has been suspended from his police duties for collecting bribes. That tuber's on the take, they tell us. Frankly, we're skeptical. I think the constables are just pinning their protection money envelopes to the hapless vegetable's husk like he's a bulletin board, and now somebody's envelope has gone missing. They tried this with Marvin, too, only the tuber is a somewhat more cooperative subject, emitting not so much as an autonomic squeak or rattle of protest when they press-gang him into doing their mule work. (Which reminds me...the monthly bribe for not trashing the Cheney Hammer Mill is coming due. Damn -- can't that tuber work overtime?)

At least the big bulb has been suspended with pay, so those paychecks will keep rolling in. Good thing, 'cuz daddy's stomach is starting to growl.

Garageband Update. Merry Christmas, Jane (Part 2) is at #223 this week, out of almost 5,800 alternative songs in the www.garageband.com rankings. We march from triumph to triumph.

More Peace On Tap. Well, this week saw Sharon doing what Sharon does best -- blasting a hole in a bunch of people and in any prospect for a peaceful outcome. His strike on the Hamas leader came as Palestinian "Prime Minister" Abbas was attempting to work truce arrangements with the group's militant wing. The consequences of this act of terror could only have been clear to the bloated freak who runs Israel -- a (U.S. supplied) missile fired from a (U.S. supplied) IDF helicopter at a car in a crowded intersection necessarily means dead and mutilated bystanders. Likewise, Sharon knew such an attempt -- successful or not -- would result in another suicide bombing like the one in Jerusalem that killed 16, providing the pretext for another deadly IDF terror bombing in yet another crowded Palestinian street...and on from there.

Not that there was any peace to disturb -- not that there ever is for the Palestinians. While Sharon was hauling off a few empty trailers from an abandoned West Bank settlement, he was also demolishing about a dozen Palestinian houses in Gaza...just another day in paradise. Of course, Sharon is just unabashedly continuing the same policies his government (with billions in support from our government) has been following for decades -- the "Road Map" is merely a hollow effort by the Bush team to construct a Potemkin Village of peace behind which the killings, demolitions, and expropriation can continue. Never much on PR, Sharon and his political allies can't get their heads around deceptions like Oslo and the "Road Map". They just want to do the land grab, shoot-em-dead thing. (The Israeli Labor Party is more about looking good...while they do the same thing.)

Actually, this kind of makes Sharon Bush's political godfather, ideological brother of the bloated Vice President. As we have seen, the Bush team lies like a rug to get their way...only they're just so bad at it! You can tell their heart isn't really in it. I mean, Bush is the quintessential guy who never did his homework, putting that ludicrously bogus story about uranium from Niger into his state of the union address, among other fairy tales. Now the whole National Security team is galloping from news show to news show saying the equivalent of "the dog ate my homework." Jeezuz! You know they just want to say, "Okay, the invasion is about controlling Iraq's vast energy resources, pumping up our tough-guy image, and getting our corporate cronies a bunch of lucrative no-bid government contracts and first dibs on the scuttled Iraqi economy. Harrumph! C'mon, America! You love a winner! Beat your chests with pride and join us!"

Sounds like a plan. They knock themselves out making terror attacks more likely than ever before. Then when another 9/11 or two happens, they can be as unvarnished about their rapacious brutality as Likud is now.

See you. Don't fly over the Vincennes.

luv u,

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6/22/03

Ahem...a-hem...

You'll be glad to learn that Marvin's (my personal robot assistant) overtime check came this week. Your friends in Big Green (if you have any) can eat again. This is good. It was getting a little uncomfortable in here, cooped up with two hungry rhythm section guys and an oversized root vegetable. I felt like the guy in that song "Timothy" from the seventies -- y'know, the one about the miners trapped underground and one of them (Timothy, if I recall correctly) ends up as brunch. I think that man-sized tuber was starting to look pretty good to the boys in the band -- just a hunch.

Huh -- Shows how bad my memory is! Matt just reminded me that the cannibal instigator in that song was named Joe. (Actually, I am feeling a bit peckish....)

It's a bit selfish for us to complain when poor old Marvin is still floating around out there, his provisions certainly close to exhaustion, the Jesus balloon just barely keeping itself above the ocean waves. As I mentioned last week, our mechanical cohort was headed towards the northern Marianas at about 12 knots, approaching the site of that erupting volcano they've got going on Anatahan. Our web cam view of his progress showed the chilling spectacle of his gondola passing through a nearly opaque plume of ash rising above the Pacific. For a moment there it looked like a case of "Marvin vs. the 'cano," but he pulled out okay, buoyed momentarily by the heat of the escaping geo-thermal energy -- enough to power a billion novelty character hot-air balloons.

While it may seem like Marvin has the devil's own luck, I have to say that he is kind of a misfortune magnet. We've seen this phenomenon on the road with Marvin and nothing in his balloonathon has changed my opinion about it. After all, he just missed the nasty Hebei hailstorm when he passed over China. Now he's just in time for major volcanic activity. What next? My money is on a Fiji flyover, where Marvin will probably scare off the humpback whales, who have reportedly made their first appearance at Levuka Harbor in living memory. One look at that Jesus balloon and they'll be gone for good...then the Fiji defense forces will probably try to shoot Marvin down. I wonder what the sentence is on Fiji for whale spooking? (Are they particularly hard on robots?)

Marvin's probably not going to want to hear it when he gets back, but we've begun working out the details of our next tour, slated for August. Rehearsals are a bit of a problem. Oh, sure....the Cheney Hammer Mill has plenty of space to set up and play, but it's such a freaking cave that everything degenerates into one big, wooly, undifferentiated noise. (Some might say that's an improvement -- see below.) That's why we've started playing on the roof, in the shadow of one of our big water towers. It's kind of fun, actually, and the locals have been very supportive, hanging up little flags and standing along the street to hear us swear at the equipment. Only when it rains, it sucks...but even that is good practice for Venus. I hear that on Venus, it rains all the time...even inside the buildings. And Venus is our first stop next time out, so we're quizzing ourselves on its many quirks, using study aids supplied by the local astronomical society.

Here's what we've learned so far:

Venus is the closest planet to the 'oit.
Venus is about the same size as the 'oit.
Venus has more cloudy days than Utica, NY.
Venus has only three Indian restaurants.

I'm sure there's a lot more we can learn about our sister planet. And while most of our fellow humans are focused on yet another quixotic effort to unlock the secrets of Mars, we will devote our scientific energies to the evening star (I wonder if you can get there via hot air balloon...?)

Garageband.com -- "Merry Christmas, Jane (Part 2)" is hovering around 224 out of 5,600 right about now, and has also garnered this glittering review:

You need a new singer he sounds like a cat getting strangled. Kind of niel young sounding or something I don't know what you are looking for the lyrics are stupid to jesus. The band is good so many good bands with bad singers on here why is it that. Maybe you could get that backup singer to sing lead., Just a thought.

-- "locodemon" (Pikeville, Kentucky)

Hey, many thanks "loco" -- glad you like the band. Of course, that "cat" singing lead is one of the guys singing backup...and it's thanks to him that those lyrics are "stupid to jesus."

Lemon Socialism. Dubya's boys have been applying the wrecking ball to so many things over the past 30 months that it's hard to react to all of it -- that's their strategy, of course. But probably their most remarkable domestic achievement is their application of the Reagan formula for crippling the public sector -- cut taxes for the rich and spend like a sailor on useless military gear. They've already implemented a policy that will result in more than $40 trillion in deficit spending over the coming decades, according to their own analysts. Dubya suppressed that report while debate on the tax cut package was underway in Congress, but once the fix was in, the truth could be told. The reaction was, well, less than dramatic.

Now, I know this is economics and therefore not something ordinary people are supposed to think about very much these days, but what the fuck....$44 trillion in new debt and "conservatives" voted for it? I've even heard some "conservatives" (including tin horn talk show mouthpieces like Murdoch's Sean Hannity) say deficits are not such a bad thing. Wha-at? Did someone swap all their brains with those of statist socialists sometime during the night? I'm glad they've come around to the notion that borrowing is okay...but they're still clueless on the investment side of the equation. Shouldn't we be getting something for the money, other than a bunch of fatter, sassier rich people and stacks of overpriced, missionless weaponry? Shouldn't we be investing in some grassroots economic activity or basic national infrastructure...rather than lining the pockets of the same 10 percent who have been the principal beneficiaries of this economy for over 20 years? Shouldn't we get a clue?

Note to progressives: The next time somebody tells you that we can't afford universal single-payer health insurance, or that Social Security is going broke in 25 or 30 years, or that our education and social welfare systems are too costly, throw that $44 trillion in their face. If we can afford to give all that cash away, we can afford just about anything.

Iraq Attaq. The peace in Iraq is well on its way to being bloodier (for Americans) than the war -- more than 50 dead in two months, and a long, long way to go. This appears to be the Bush "peace" formula, not only for Iraq, but for Afghanistan and Palestine, as well. Take heart, soldiers -- Dubya's thinking of you every minute. (Right now, he's thinking of sending you to Iran.) Got to beat daddy's record of three invasions in four years, after all.

Take care, all.

luv u,

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6/29/03

Yak-yak-yak...

That's all we web loggers ever do, right? Yakity-yak (don't talk back) -- an ongoing monologue, a perpetual font of rhetoric, one-sided and compulsive. Lucky for you, mine is a weekly blog, if such a thing is imaginable...so you get a chance to breathe between postings and send us nasty emails. Like that one about penis enlargement -- what the hell, is it that obvious from my pictures? And all you sons/wives/siblings of deposed African dictators....no, you can't have my savings account & bank routing numbers, okay? So stop asking!

Yeah, we need some kind of spam filter. Those nefarious advertising goons (you know the type) are skewering us with promotional messages, filling up our email boxes and guestbook with useless entreaties to buy/join/gape and otherwise click-click-click. One wonders if they won't fill the universe with cheesy ads before long. In any case, I finally got hold of our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee (ensconced at a cushy retreat outside Oslo) to ask him to work on the problem, and he agreed. He also offered us a "quick fix" suggestion to tide us over -- a kind of firewall solution he thought might work for a time. Trouble is, that man-sized tuber only has parallel ports and our computers are all USB now. Any suggestions out there?

While we were sorting this out, Mitch's invention Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was making good on last week's prediction with regard to those Fijian humpback whales. One look at that Jesus balloon and they were out of there, despite Marvin's somewhat muddleheaded efforts to reassure them. Sure enough, the Fijian Defense Forces opened fire on the offending floatation device, forcing the inflatable prince of peace down on the island paradise. Marvin was arrested, interrogated, and brought before a local magistrate who decided the best way to deal with him was to ship him back home. (Luckily, Marvin has the mailing address for Big Green engraved on a brass plaque just above the small of his back.) Unfortunately, they couldn't find a large enough container for Marvin, so they clumsily dismantled him and sent him home in three boxes, C.O.D.

Okay, so now not only do we have to pay for the cost of replacing the chemist's Jesus balloon, but also an inflated shipping charge for Marvin's return...plus the cost of putting him back together, so he can start earning his paycheck again at the local constabulary. You can see why we are being driven to go on the road again. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. "Don't do it, asshole," you're saying to your computer screen right now, "It always ends in disaster!" Perhaps you're even shaking your fist at me (a lot of people do that) because you think we're "stupid to Jesus" for even contemplating another hair-raising interplanetary tour. We look at it this way -- with several disasters in a row behind us, we're probably due for some good fortune, anyway. Besides, we haven't seen the outer planets in a good long time...and aside from compelling financial need, that's reason enough to leave this clammy Hammer Mill behind for a few weeks.

So, go ahead. Keep reminding me of all those reasons why we shouldn't go back out there...of the time sFshzenKlyrn took us on that wild goose chase...or the time that alien sentry got hold of Mitch Macaphee during our visit to Metaluna. Go ahead -- it won't do a bit of good. Why? Because we never learn.

In the meantime, we've been making gradual progress on our various recording projects. We've made cheap recordings of about 20 songs for our next album -- now we just have to make the not-so-cheap ones. Then there are those older songs I was going to remaster for y'all -- I'm getting to that. Of course, it's nigh time for our next semi-annual newsletter...what the hell, I need help! Where's my personal assistant? Anybody out there know how to put robots back together? If so, contact me at:

Joe Perry c/o Big Green

Abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill

West Colombo, Sri Lanka

Earth, Solar System

3rd Universe from the Executive Restroom

Garageband.com Update. Merry Christmas Jane (Part 2) is holding at 233. No new reviews, but I'll keep you posted.

Like Jericho. Almost fifteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and a decade beyond the last days of apartheid, another wall of political separation is being constructed -- this one more racist and dehumanizing than its predecessors. The so-called "security barrier" Israel is now building in the occupied West Bank has little to do with "security" (generally understood in the context of the middle east to mean only Israeli security, not that of Palestinians). Rather, it is an integral part of the ever expanding infrastructure of colonization and control that the Israeli government has been building since seizing the occupied territories in 1967. It represents yet another means by which they seek to make life impossible for the Palestinians -- so much so that they will either a.) break, or b.) leave en masse.

Not even mentioned in the "road map" document, this 225 mile long wall cuts through Palestinian villages, separating nearly 100,000 Palestinians from the agricultural land they depend upon. The project itself is a massive undertaking, involving the uprooting of 83,000 fruit and olive trees (according to the World Bank) and the demolition of god knows how many houses. It is an attempt to create a de-facto "border" established well inside the West Bank, further isolating East Jerusalem, carving the territory into isolated Bantustans, and rendering meaningless any suggestions of negotiations over the dimensions of a Palestinian state. Like all aspects of this conflict, Israel (and its superpower ally) will impose the terms of peace, creating facts on the ground that trump all the high-sounding rhetoric about peaceful coexistence. In the face of this, the Palestinians -- as always -- have only their will.

Don't be fooled by the high-profile, made-for-TV dismantling of one or two Israeli settler outposts, performed with great restraint by virtually unarmed Israeli soldiers. The established settlements and many of the newer outposts will continue to expand off-camera. They and the "security" barrier are truly formidable barriers to a just settlement. If the United States continues to authorize and underwrite this day-by-day destruction of Palestinian society, there can be no peace. And while Sharon is closely associated with the settler movement ("take every hilltop," he told the faithful while serving as Netanyahu's housing minister), it bears remembering also that Israel's Labor party supports this hideous project, too. Only a mass movement of non-violent civil disobedience by Israelis and Palestinians will bring this wall down. That is what we in America should support...and not this sham called "peace."

For more on "the Wall," see B'tselem's web site. For more on supporting non-violent action, see Ta'ayush and others.

luv u,

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