NOTES
FROM SRI LANKA.
(March '06)
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03/05/06
What the effin' ay....?
Surprise, surprise. Roofing tiles on your bedspread (if
you call empty rice bags a "bedspread"). Ravens peering down from a
ragged hole above you. Blue sky up above. Whoops, now it's raining. Scratch the
blue sky. Scratch it with a stick and call the roofer.
I don't think I need remind you -- this place is not
very well maintained. After all, the Cheney Hammer Mill -- our home away from
homelessness -- is an abandoned building we've been using as a squat house for
the past, what is it, five years? I lose track. In any case, we don't have any,
shall I say, standing contracts with local tradesmen, no credit to draw on, no
confidences to leverage. What reputation we have in our little hamlet is, well,
less than positive. Are we good neighbors? Depends on who you ask. If you ask
the shop keeper who gets half a hundred weight of roofing tiles dropped on his
vegetable stands every alternate Thursday, I think the answer would have to be no.
If you're the iron monger on the other side of us, well.... depends on the day.
Most days, no.
Why am I telling you this? Well, my friends -- just
another part of the service. You see, if you have any abandoned buildings in
your neighborhood, best to keep a close eye on them. There are tell-tale signs
of squat house occupancy that our own neighbors know all too well. Space craft
coming and going at all hours of the night. Automatons sweeping iron 
filings
from the back stoop. Ghostly sounds and eerie glows emanating from deep within
the bowels of the factory. All these and more add up to unwanted hangers-about
in your manor, so don't be fooled. Sure, the mail carriers come and go, the
pizza man delivereth, just as with any normal household. But inside that
shabby doorway lies a shabby band of nomads, fit for naught. Don't we know, eh?
We with our cackling in the back alley. Shameless.
As is my wont in situations like this, I asked Marvin
(my personal robot assistant) to see what he could do about fixing my overhead.
Being a metallic automaton of the kind mentioned in my previous tirade, he
should bloody well appreciate the value of a rain-proof roof. Christ, it seems
like only weeks ago (in fact, it was only weeks ago) that Marvin stood
out in the elements a little too long, cutting up some kindling for a fire, and,
like Jack Haley the Tin Man, he froze in mid-chop. Rusted into statuary, poor
bastard. Instead of muttering "oil can....oil can...", though, he was
muttering "flapjacks.... flapjacks...." Luckily, an IHOP truck
was within shouting distance. Close call. Close call. In any case,
Marvin understood my concern about the roof and took it upon himself to work a
solution of 
some kind. And so he did.
Ever seen a stack of old cargo pallets that have been
laying out in the sun and rain for too many years? Well, I have. They are now
stacked clumsily astride the hole in my roof. So now I get rain coming through
and bits of rotten wood as well. Send a robot to do a roofer's job....serves me
right! Lord a-mighty, perhaps one day you will send us a better class of squat
house, but I and my compadres are not waiting by the phone to hear about it. (We
figure the news will come over the wireless....)
WEEKLY RANT.
(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.)
Rights & Wrongs. Bush's polling
numbers reached another all-time low this week, a subterranean 34% job approval
rating and, remarkably, 30% approval of how he's handling the war in Iraq. (It's
getting to the point where only the truly hardcore dittoheads support his
performance, and a few of them are apparently peeling off as well.) Quite
honestly, Dubya has never been a broadly popular figure, barely squeaking by on
both of his presidential races and paddling along in the 40s and low 50s for
much of his time in office, with the exception of the post-9/11 period when
Americans were scared enough to stand behind anybody who would just,
please, stand in front of them. There is a nub of reactionary religious zealots
who would follow the president into a live volcano - aside from them, there's no
one else who's reliably in the Bush corner, with the 
possible
exception of his family and other mega-wealthy people. So these numbers aren't
surprising and probably won't mean much politically, since the administration
does not really care about the popular will, for all their blather about
"democracy." And last time I looked, they are no longer standing for
election.
I haven't examined the polling numbers
closely, but I wonder how much (if any) of Bush's meteoric fall can be ascribed
to the open adoption of torture as a legitimate tool in the "war on
terror"? Though most Americans are probably blissfully unaware of the fact,
torture is nothing new to us as a nation and a major imperial power; the newness
is in this administration's public acceptance of it, just as they have publicly
embraced the principle of unprovoked aggressive warfare (something previous
administrations had always quietly counted among their foreign policy options).
The question in my mind is whether or not enough people in this country care
about our abuse of detainees overseas. It's not that I'm a cynic; it's just that
I know how people tend to think about our own domestic prisoners. I've heard
friends and co-workers joke about prison rape. I've heard people complain about
how good prisoners have it because there might be a TV or computer they can use
on the inside; how everything is so expensive and they get far better than they
deserve. In large measure, it is demonization of the underclass that makes
people like Bush president, and I'm certain that when they issue their
implausible denials, it is done with a knowing wink to that core constituency of
vindictive motherfuckers who probably think those towel-heads have it
coming.
As
the administration continues to implement what they internally referred to as
the "Salvador option" in Iraq, we are faced with many of the same
moral questions that defined our interventions in Latin America two decades ago
and Southeast Asia two decades before that. In either case, the reason why those
policies were curtailed in any way was because of spirited domestic opposition -
the willingness of ordinary Americans to stand up and say that this is wrong and
unacceptable. Such opposition did not result in total success by any measure,
but it did force our government to settle for less than their maximum objectives
in some cases. Right now, death squads are operating in Iraq on our dime; people
are being rounded up and interrogated with neither mercy nor due process;
communities are being terrorized by our overwhelming military force; and
so-called "black sites" are being maintained around the world for the
application of torture against anyone we get our hands on. History will judge us
by how we respond...and history has been known to be very unforgiving.
Spot the Dictator. Bush is visiting
his friend "President" Musharraf. Let's see - he seized power in a
coup, and they call him president. Meanwhile, Hugo Chavez was elected and won a
recall national election overwhelmingly, and they call him a dictator. Maybe
it's the "friend" part that counts, eh?
luv
u,
jp
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03/12/06
G'day...
Sweep up. I been sweepin' up the tips I've made. I
been livin' on Gatorade....a-hem. Testing, one, two, tree, fowah....
see-cue, see-cue. One for the money, two 
for the...oh what's the use. I love
you when it's raining...I love you when it's not. You god damned son of a
bitch... son of a bitchin' bee. Oh yes, by Jesus, oh yes.
Whoops.... didn't know anyone was listening. I was just
warming up at the old microphone. Got to get those shredded vocal cords
vibrating a bit before even attempting another track. A-hem! Harrumph!
That's
better. A few more like that and it'll sound like a yodeling society in
here. Nothing new around this studio, my friends, nothing new at all. We've
built a long, proud tradition of ad-hoc backing vocals, composed on the spot by
vocalists who've had a few too many flapjacks....or jelly beans.... or pots of
coffee.... or Newcastle Brown Ales. (I can feel that endorsement contract coming
- oh, baby! Come to papa.)
Sure, I know what you're thinking. Why not give it a
rest, right? You guys are getting a little long in the tooth...let some young
upstarts do your singing for you. Am I right? Or perhaps just hire some choral
singers to come in and do the job for you -- is that what you think? Huh? I
CAN'T HEAR YOU! You didn't say anything? That's probably the reason. Forgive 
me.
Still, the very thought of bringing so-called "professional" singers
in on our recording sessions makes my skin crawl. (And I mean crawl without the
rest of my anatomy crawling along with it.) Why, the very nub of the Big
Green concept is anti-professionalism. We've dedicated our entire
professional careers to that ideal. Introducing the element of effort at this
point would be counter-counterproductive. I would far sooner have Marvin (my
personal robot assistant) start doing vocal parts.
Actually, Mitch Macaphee thinks that this is a good
idea, the Marvin plan. He sees himself as a kind of svengali, perhaps with an
eye on residuals stretching into the foreseeable future. Hate to disappoint our
resident man of science, but the mechanical rights for a back-up singer on one
of our albums are almost too miniscule to calculate, unless one resorts to
scientific notation. Once in a while, Matt and I get a check for these
royalties. A small check...a very small check. I don't just mean the amount --
the actual check itself is only an inch and a half long. I guess the only way
they could depict an amount so miniscule was by putting it on the 
world's
smallest bank draft. Just try to get that sucker deposited, just try.
(Sometimes when I open the envelope, the check gets lodged under my thumbnail. I
have to call Mitch Macaphee in to dislodge it with his patented neutron-powered
turbo-tweezers. So HE of all people should KNOW better.)
Talk about getting warmed up -- I think I'm overheated
at this point. Jesus Christmas. Somebody get me a pint of water or something.
Not that stuff from the faucet, something potable. That's the ticket. Ahem.
Aaaa-hem! Here we go. OoogaChackaOogaOogaOogaChackaOoogaOooga.....
WEEKLY RANT.
(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.)
One Big Party. Our national
legislature distinguished itself once again this week as a body with all the
integrity and independence of the Stalin-era Supreme Soviet. The House passed
re-authorization of the USA PATRIOT act - that executive branch wish list cooked
up pre-9/11 then served in the weeks following the attacks, when a very
well-timed anthrax scare (still unsolved and now unmentionable) had cleared the
halls of Congress. Re-authorization required a 2/3 majority, so clearly enough
Democrats supported the measure as to indicate their total uselessness as an
opposition party. Congress has also apparently decided there is no need for a
serious investigation of the NSA domestic eavesdropping program, neither is
there any need to address the primary role lobbyists play in the 
implementation
of national policy, neither do we need to look into the manipulation of pre-war
intelligence. And while fresh evidence has surfaced of the administration's
dishonesty regarding preparation for hurricane Katrina - a video, no less, of
Bush being told precisely what he claimed he couldn't have known - I doubt the
congressional leadership will do much to hold the president accountable.
Welcome to the one-party state, friends.
In essence, our government has been trending in that direction since the
emergence of the Democratic Leadership Conference and its drive to erase any
remaining distinctions between the two major parties. Now we have truly reached
a point where, despite all the ceremonial hand-wringing about the "partisan
tone" in Washington, there is consensus between Republicans and Democrats
across a broad range of issues, particularly those dealing with war and national
security. That consensus, to a large extent, runs counter to the sentiments of
the majority of Americans. Listening to our political leaders, you would never
suspect that most of us want an end to the Iraq war, nor that we overwhelmingly
support single-payer national health insurance, a more progressive tax system
(i.e. the rich and corporate interests paying more), and other
"extreme-left" policies not being discussed in our nation's capital.
This is all the more remarkable when you consider that almost none of these
positions is advocated in the media - that people are arriving at these
conclusions virtually on their own.
So
how is it that we end up with politicians that don't reflect our politics? How
is it that some guy named "Boner" is now our most powerful legislator
- arguably more powerful than the speaker since this is, after all, the
post-Gingrich, Tom Delay system of running Congress? It's mostly
fear-mongering... playing on the majority's fear of terrorists, of black people
and Latinos, or dreaded pandemic diseases, of gays getting married and setting a
bad example for our children with their accursed monogamy. Here's a
generalization for you: when white people are scared, they tend to vote more
Republican, even if the Republicans have, with the cooperation of the Democrats,
made life a lot more dangerous. Hence, more fear. This is the electoral
principle that keeps Karl Rove in pork rinds - scaring people enough so that
they vote Republican... but not so much that they stay home and spend less
money.
The administration has said that they
"create" reality. Luckily for them, the Democratic leadership is more
than happy to live in the bizarrely dysfunctional little world they've cooked
up.
luv
u,
jp
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03/19/06
Yo-ho, ta-ho!
Tack to the left. That's right, now back a little.
Back, back. Further. Not that far! Bring the bow around a bit. No, no, to
starboard. Watch out for the rocks! Over, you fool! Over! Ooooohhhh, Christ.
Kindling. Useless kindling. Mother of pearl.
Hey, there. Just playing one of those reality-based
video games - you know, the kind where you solve REAL problems for REAL people?
Like, I was just trying to help this clueless fucker get his sailboat out of the
channel in this little inland lake where he lives. As you can tell, I was less
than successful. Of course, I have less than zero experience as a navigator -
I've only ever been a passenger on boats, and a reluctant one at that. But hey -
put the controls in my hands, and I'll give it a go...at least from the safety
of my computer keyboard. So, little guy in the lake - sorry about your boat.
Hope your next remote computer navigator has some rudimentary skills, unlike
yours truly.
Lord knows, I will do anything... ANYTHING... to get
out of doing any real work. That's what drew me to this pointless
"game" in the first place. The only alternative around this drafty old
hammer mill is work, work, work. This will come as no surprise, but Big
Green's social life is not exactly electrifying between tours. It's
the same old drab routine - record, cook, chase away the mongooses, record, beg
the baker for scraps, yawn, yawn a second time, record, pay tribute to the
supreme leader, sleep. And that's the exciting part of the
day. Even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) 
is stifling yawns. So... why not
arrange another interstellar tour? Why not indeed! Only trouble is we need to
scrape together the cash to do the planning, the advance work, rent the space
craft, hire the openers, open the hires, bribe the club owners, bribe the border
patrols, etc.
That's right - music is a
very involved business, especially on an interplanetary or interstellar scale.
That's why it's tempting just to stick close to the squat house (or squat mill,
in our case) and make recordings. Or just occupy space, which is what we appear
to be doing right now, for the most part. Yes, we are working on that
interminable project known as Big Green's
second album (working title), and yes it looks like it will be finished sometime
this year... yes, this year, the one we're in right now. It's slow going,
as you can surely tell, but we're hoping it will prove worth the wait for all of
you Big Green-ites out there. You are...out
there....aren't you? I can see your eyes in the darkness. 
Thousands of eyes
staring back at me from the void. Get back..... Get BACK!!!
Ahem. Please accept my apology. It's this listlessness.
(Anybody seen my lists? I left them on the kitchen table, next to the Major Grey
Chutney, and they've disappeared.) Or maybe it's the old cabin fever, cooped up
in this mill. Let's get out and get some air, what do you say? I see Big
Zamboola's (the rogue planet who followed us home from our last tour) is out on
neighbor Gung-Ho's proving range, trying to get his picture taken before the
next bombing run begins. Let's do something fun like that, eh?
WEEKLY RANT.
(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.)
Year Three. Dubya celebrated the
third anniversary of his most totally excellent adventure by going on a
full-bore PR offensive targeting domestic public opinion, which has been
treating him like a leper just lately. It's just a little bit of everything
designed to make him and his crew look effective -- arrogant speeches, a new,
more bellicose edition of the National Security Strategy re-emphasizing the
"preventive" war doctrine, tours of Guantanamo detention facility for
pliant journalists, and even an airborne assault on an Iraqi town with half US
and half Iraqi troops. One wonders why they bother -- do they really need public
opinion behind them 
on this? The Democrats have thus far refused to make the war
an issue in the upcoming election. Is it just to appease nervous Republican
congress members? Is it ego? Or are they simply trying to drive home the true
lessons of this conflict -- that the president can effectively do whatever he
decides to do, and there's nothing anyone can do to restrain him.
The sheer audacity of the National
Security Strategy alone is astounding. This idea, repeated by the execrable
Steven Hadley, that we must deal with threats from terrorists and rogue states
"before they fully materialize"... well, that's certainly open-ended.
You can justify invading Aruba on the basis of that standard. And yet what is
even more heinous is the practice of re-branding their policy in the style of a
product rollout, with tight coordination between the various arms of the
campaign. Don't tell me it's a coincidence that this major combined US/Iraqi
assault took place this week. What an opportunity for them to show their plan in
action, and to ensure that Condi Rice will be on TV driving the points home...
and all the retired military commentators will be on the evening news ratcheting
up the wow factor. So the Pentagon has become subordinate to the communications
office, eh? In essence, this is consistent with what has previously been
admitted by administration insiders. "Mayberry Machiavellians" I
believe they termed it. So where do we invade next, General Rove?
Of course, there were cries of
foul play,
of playing politics with our national security policy. Not so much with respect
to Bush's media blitz, you understand. No, the outcry was in response to Senator
Russ Feingold's introduction of a resolution to censure the president for having
clearly and unambiguously broken the FISA law by authorizing NSA domestic
wiretapping without warrants. Feingold has hinted at a possible run for the
presidency in 2008, so this was attacked by the Republicans as political
grandstanding. They subscribe to the administrations Nixonian contention that if
the president does something, it's legal, and that, by the way, the use of force
authorization after 9/11 implicitly allows Dubya to wiretap without a warrant.
So I guess he can have us all shot if he likes -- why the hell not, right? Don't
throw the law in his face. What a shame for Bill Clinton he didn't simply claim
his affair with Monica Lewinsky was vital to national security. He was, after
all, commander in chief.
It only took three years to get this far. Where
the hell will we be in another three?
luv
u,
jp
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03/26/06
Hep. Hep. Hep.
Tramp tramp tramp the boys are marching...oh the moon
is in the sky! We must go where danger's hiding, ready to do or die! All you
fighting sons of wild men, are you with me wrong or right? And follow where I go
to meet the savage foe.....
Whoops. Typing with my ass again. How did that happen? No, no -
don't answer that. Just humming the old Nelson Eddy marching-through-the-woods
number. What put that in the front of my tiny little mind? Well, you know...
it's probably the product of living next door to a proving range. I mean, the
goings on over there at all hours of the day and night, you can't imagine.
Marching, planes taking off and landing, missiles flying, tanks engaging in mock
battles, battleships on wheels taking tight corners just a block away from my
bedroom window. It's hell's a-poppin', old man. But you know what they say. War
is hell (za-poppin).
So what about our neighbor, eh? They say you can't pick
'em, but hell... we could have chosen any abandoned mill as our squat house, not
just THE Cheney Hammer Mill.... which just happens to be right next door to the
remote Sri Lankan outpost of Gung-Ho, the bullet-headed former special forces
commando who is now in the burgeoning private soldier industry. 
Not sure, but I
think he's got a super hotline straight to Rummy himself, 'cause the Gung-Ho
crew seems to be awfully busy just lately. Looks like they're getting ready for
some new deployment somewhere, god knows where. There's a real dust-up
going on next door -- can't even hear myself think.
Interruptions, interruptions. Try as we might, it's
impossible to totally soundproof our Hammer Mill studio, especially when surplus
B52 bombers are flying low overhead. (Listen closely to the tracks on this CD
when it's finally released, and you'll hear what I mean. Next thing we know,
Gung-Ho will want residuals and a credit on the box.) Aside from that small
inconvenience, all this military mustering is getting the Cheney Hammer Mill
junta all worked up and lantern-jawed. For a brief moment in time, anti-Lincoln
and his generals can pretend that they are a real-live third world junta, with
tanks and planes and everything. Suspension of disbelief is what it's called, I
think. At least now they are leaving Marvin (my personal robot assistant) alone
long enough to do his household chores...and to watch our other hostile 
neighbor's concession stand. (With a little help from Big Zamboola.)
You know, there's just a chance that one day Gung-Ho
will be hired to invade Sri Lanka. That would make for a very short trip indeed.
Unfortunately, short of that unlikely happenstance, we will be treated to sortie
after sortie after sortie (we seem to be at the end of their new makeshift
landing strip). The things we endure in the spirit of good neighborliness! Sure,
Gung-Ho liberated our domicile from the renegade Mongooses. But what has he done
for us lately, eh? Eh?
I'm just going to lie down, now. Turn the lights off
when you're through.
WEEKLY RANT.
(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.)
Roll up. Roll over. The P.R.
offensive continues, now in its second big week -- a full-court press with the
aim of convincing us that the Iraq war is a great success, if difficult, and
that we're on the road to victory, yes VICTORY at some point in the
not-so-definite future. More public appearances by the president, including a
particularly bizarre event in Ohio and a press conference. Message-wise, it's
essentially the same crap, though the administration appears to be preparing the
ground for the next big thing, whatever that may turn out to be. I assume
that will be some kind of strike against Iran, but it may also be a Syrian
adventure-holiday for the president. I just heard a former Iraqi general, now
working in the new regime's security apparatus, hawking his book that describes
how Saddam had his 
weapons
of mass destruction spirited away to Syria just prior to the U.S. invasion. He
made his hearsay "case" on The Daily Show with curveball-like
confidence, informing the audience that our leaders will be telling us more of
this treachery in the coming months. No doubt. Here we go, kiddies. We appear to
be on the road to Damascus -- be prepared for revelatory visions.
There are some major potholes in this
road, to be sure. For one thing, it's hard to imagine Saddam Hussein giving away
his most destructive weapons on the eve of what promised to be his final battle,
let alone give them away to a bitter rival. But even more than that, this theory
is rendered ludicrous by what we already know for certain -- Saddam's existing
non-conventional weapon components, identified and monitored by international
arms control organizations, were largely scattered to the winds after the U.S.
invasion due to an apparent lack of interest on the part of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld
in keeping them secure. As a result, nuclear weapons-related parts and materials
started showing up in Europe and likely followed the usual black market pathways
after the looting of the Tuwaitha nuclear reserve, left unguarded by U.S.
forces. This was true of many conventional weapons caches, as well, including
extreme high explosives and many of the munitions subsequently used against our service people.
So did any of this stuff go through Syria? Seems possible, since it probably
went just about everywhere.
Does
anyone doubt for a moment that this administration would take the end of the
Iraq war as an opportunity to attack one or the other of Iraq's neighbors? And
does anyone doubt that the reason would be, once again, WMDs? Here our leaders
smell blood, because the worst kept secret in international arms control is that
many poorer nations have some kind of non-conventional arsenal -- most likely
chemical weapons -- because that's the most cost-effective way to obtain
something that approaches a deterrent against attack and a weapon of last
resort. So if Bush ever invades Syria, I'm sure they would be able to display
chemical or even biological weapons like a trophy -- the one denied them in
Iraq, to their chagrin. Then they wouldn't have to resort to ludicrously
implausible rationales like "We invaded to help the Iraqi people." Has
our government ever cared less about a nation than it has about Iraq? It's a
bipartisan callousness that stretches back to the Eisenhower administration,
though Republican and Democratic presidencies alike. Every day we demonstrate
how little Iraqi lives mean to us simply by refusing to even attempt an
accounting of how many have died as a result of our policy. That country has
great geo-strategic/economic value -- that's why we're there. And that's why
we'll make every effort to stay there, regardless of what hardships that may
bring to the Iraqi people.
And it Cheney starts feeling vulnerable
again, we may well spread the joy to other deserving nations, as
well.
luv
u,
jp
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