NOTES FROM SRI LANKA.
(May '05)
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05/01/05
Mayday! Mayday!
Don't you hate when this happens? First the TV set goes on the Fritz.... then the telefunken is on the Heidrich... and as if that's not enough, the programmable toaster is now totally on the Gertrude. Between all of the faulty pieces of technology we've got in this drafty old Cheney Hammer Mill, we're running out of German names. (Look, ma -- no Hans!) Ulp... I'm verclempt. Talk amongst yourselves....
That's
better. Where were we? Ah, yes. The diabolical orgone generating device left
behind by mister Trevor James Constable -- that thing is running just fine,
thank you very much. In fact, it has quite handily hurled our friend Lincoln
back about a century to what may be the most celebrated maritime disaster in the
history of... well.... maritime disasters. No, no -- not when that giant
starfish attacked the Monitor and the Merrimac (though Lincoln could have
witnessed that one contemporaneously). I mean the dreaded Titanic disaster,
mother of a thousand movies and made-for-TV adaptations (incalculable
suffering!!). Before the TV went on the Franz, we caught a glimpse of Lincoln
striding past a lifesaver emblazoned with the name of the fateful cruise liner.
This could mean only one of two things -- either the Great Emancipator (or as
they put it in Hair, "Emanci-mother-fucking-pator of the slaves,
yeah-yeah-yeah") had been beamed over to a Hollywood studio with a
life-size section of Titanic deck ready for an imaginary iceberg, or (perhaps
more likely) he was riding into near certain catastrophe. "Abe Lincoln on
the Titanic." Hmmmm. Get my agent on the phone. What? I don't have
an agent? What's up with that?
Arrgh....me
punchy. Must focus. Must.... Okay, I'm back. So -- we had a man-sized tuber
intervention strategy. You'll be amazed by its complexity. It involved plunking
the large root vegetable on his little Mars-rover and rolling him through the
orgone-generated revolving door between the 
dimensions. Step two was to kick the
little portable TV upside the head and look for the outline of our cruciferous
friend within the sea of static granules. There was no step three -- tubey got
rejected by the machine, suggesting that only members of the animal kingdom
(that includes Lincoln) can make the bewildering journey back through time. We
looked around for volunteers. When John called for a show of hands, a dry cough
echoed hollowly through the mill. I was about to phone our financial advisor
Geet O'Reilly and ask for a really big favor when someone (Matt) suggested we
try sending Marvin (my personal robot assistant) through the breach in the very
fabric of time itself (already). Actually, it hadn't occurred to me that the
time warp would make an exception for an automaton... but hey, it seemed worth
a try.
Marvin
was not keen, not at all. As you may recall, he's been more than a little
disgruntled lately, owing to his correspondence with that terrifying concept
group Captured By Robots. I had thought of offering him a more prominent
role in Big Green -- perhaps an instrumental
position of some sort -- but this seemed a more appropriate means of displacing
his anger and resentment. What better way to take your mind off your troubles
than by hurtling back through the decades to rescue a dead president from a
doomed cruise ship? We gave Marvin some oblique directions and a drawing of some
foodstuffs to sustain him on his journey, then directed him to the
spine-tingling St. Elmo's Fire of the orgone generating device. He wheeled his
way into the vortex, buzzing and clicking, and before any of us 
could say Fritz
Robinson, we were watching Marvin moving along that same stretch of deck railing
where we'd seen Lincoln only days before -- though Marvin looked a little
fuzzier on the portable TV (which is strange, because Lincoln is, in actuality,
much fuzzier than Marvin).
Okay, you're not going to believe this. (Or maybe you will.) That ship is not the Titanic -- the owners apparently picked up some surplus life savers from the famous cruise ship at a maritime supply store. It's actually the HMS Tremendous, a British naval vessel of questionable provenance. Hey -- Marvin may seem clueless to you, but he can tell one boat from another, this much I know. Now.... how to get them back. Any orgone experts out there? Write your band ASAP.
(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.)
Holy
Shit. So what's the biggest threat to our "way of life" -- Islamic
fundamentalism or Christian fundamentalism? Here's a hint -- one of them has
effective control of all three branches of our national government, to say
nothing of state legislatures and governorships. Bzzzt! Time's up! If you
picked church over mosque, you win the prize. Our national politics is being
driven by drunks -- power-drunk Christian neo-fascists, that is, who combine
their allegiance to a strangely butch, buzz-cut Jesus with support for economic
neoliberalism and a highly aggressive foreign policy. While they don't represent
majority opinion by any stretch of the imagination, they set the agenda on many
issues by virtue of the near total collapse of an effective political opposition
in this country. Christian "conservatives" (a misnomer if ever there
was one), on the other hand, are highly organized with pots of money for
lobbying and enormous reach through their 
wholly-owned
(or is it holy-owned?) and operated media institutions. They have
fashioned their religious extremism -- a literalist interpretation of the
bible...with a bit of creative license around Revelations -- into a
political project dedicated to marginalizing and, if possible, eliminating
secular society.
You've seen the vanguard of this movement -- old-timers like Falwell and Robertson, as well as the execrable Rev. Dobson, pictured here attempting to fight idols with idols. Gay-bashing, Muslim-bombing, gun-toting pig-biters, the lot of them, whose supposed spirituality is such a thin gruel of bigotry and selfishness it would hardly merit discussion but for the disproportionate attention it receives even in the mainstream ("liberal") media. Thanks to radical right networking, the most ludicrous opinions are presented as received scientific fact. Naturally, the "intelligent design" curriculum comes to mind. While corporate free-trade Republicans talk about keeping us competitive in the global marketplace, their bible-beating allies are ensuring that a growing percentage of America's young people will enter the workforce thinking that the Grand Canyon was formed a few thousand years ago and humans co-existed with Allosaurs. (I say if they allow this tosh to be taught in public school science classes, archeologist and microbiologists should be allowed to deliver the Sunday sermon.)
And
what about Bush? Does he share this narrow world-view? Clearly, he subscribes to
a large portion of it, since it tends to simplify matters down to his level of
comprehension. But as Jonathan Schell has pointed out, it doesn't really matter
what Dubya personally believes. The fact is, he wouldn't be president without
the support of religious extremists. That is a power bloc Karl Rove and others
have cultivated very successfully, helping to bring it to the fore first in
Texas and now on a national level. That's the reasoning behind Bush's
hypocritical "culture of life" that incorporates his record number of
executions as governor and his endless, bloody wars as 
president.
(The only "life" he values is life imprisonment without parole.) Of
course, this strategy would go nowhere if there were an organized opposition
willing to take a stand against it. Frankly, Karl Rove is no genius -- he just
enjoys the enormous advantages of a well-oiled reactionary media machine and a
flat-footed Democratic Party that is stuck on a kind of watered-down
"me-too" approach. Saying "yeah, we're sorta religious too,"
is not an electoral strategy that's going to work for the Dems.
Minister Fox. They've put Chalabi temporarily in charge of Iraq's oil reserves. Temporary...because they'll probably turn up missing before long with him watching the store.
luv u,
jp
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05/08/05
Hello, then.
Woke up this morning, my head was so bad... you know the rest. Or probably you do, anyway. Not sure how many of you out there indulge, imbibe, and otherwise partake. No, I don't refer to inebriants or controlled substances. I mean the intoxicating power of bad songs. Is there a single aspect of human existence that has not been enshrined in the cardboard mausoleum of some popular song? Well, if there is, I can't think of what it would be. What happened to me last night....?
Yeah,
well...anyway. When last you heard from us, we were grappling with the problem
of accidental time travel -- a phenomenon that has placed Marvin (my personal
robot assistant) and President Lincoln (our strangely anachronistic associate)
on board the HMS Tremendous back in the early part of the 20th Century. Both
were deposited there by virtue of Trevor James Constable's spare orgone
generating device, which has been running amok in the basement of the Cheney
Hammer Mill for the better part of a month. The renegade machine has opened a
strange time portal -- more like a time turnstile, actually -- through
which ex-presidents and the odd automaton may pass with relative ease...at least
on the way out. The way back is another question, one that we desperately
needed to put to the machine's inventor. After spending every spare dime we
could find under the sofa cushions, we finally tracked Trevor James down in his
native California. The conversation went something like this:
BG: "Trevor James?"
TJ: "Yes?"
BG: "This is Joe, from Big Green..."
TJ: "I don't know any Joe Green."
BG: "No, no. Joe Perry. Big Green."
TJ: "Just a moment...."
BG: "Trevor James?"
TJ: "Yes?"
BG: "This is Joe..."
As
you can see, we didn't make very good headway for the first half-hour or so. But
ultimately I came away with what I had hoped for -- Trevor James's 
promise
that he would fly halfway around the world to help us retrieve our comrades from
a fate worse than Garfield: The Movie. Sure enough, his word was his bond
-- a few days later, a large, antiquated-looking airship loomed over the mill
long enough to deposit a disheveled Trevor James into our courtyard. After a
quick gnosh (Matt grabbed some day-old potato knishes from the deli shack up the
street), he went straight to work, grabbing the controls on his renegade
invention and wrestling it into a more compliant condition.
Within minutes of his masterful intervention, the spiraling time vortex had changed direction, turning counter-clockwise now. Etheric energy flowed outward like a stiff summer breeze. We adjusted the broken-down portable TV set to see if we could get a "fix" on our intrepid time travelers. It took some manipulation of the rabbit ears, but we finally managed a fuzzy image of Marvin and President Lincoln playing shuffleboard on the forward deck of the HMS Tremendous. Got them! Trevor James turned up the gain on his orgone generating device and we could see our cohorts look up from their game and do a double-take. Then they began sliding aft, as if pulled by some unseen, irresistible force....which was, of course, exactly the source of their predicament. As the song goes....
A force is a force, of course, of course
And no one can fathom a force, of course
That is, of course, unless the source
Is the orgone generating device!
Go right to the source, and ask the force...
Anyway...before
any of us could even think to say Jack Robinson (or contemplate the significance
of doing so), Marvin and Lincoln were once again in our company, looking tanned
and refreshed, very much the man (and robot) in form, certainly none the worse
for wear after their interdimensional ordeal. Hey -- how the hell would you
look after an experience like that, eh? As good as Lincoln? Be honest!
(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.)
Survivors.
Tony Blair squeaked by another election -- so Dubya Bush won't have to be
without his lapdog for the rest of his lame duck presidency. Even if they can't
dump their lousy leaders either, at least British voters get the satisfaction of
watching the S.O.B. sweat -- there are a lot more opportunities to confront the
head of their government with uncomfortable questions than there are on this
side of the pond, where (as you know) there are no such opportunities at all.
Blair must face direct questions from various members of opposition parties and
Labor back-benchers every week Parliament is in session. Their "town hall
meetings" allow people of a variety of political stripes into the audience,
not just hand-picked sycophantic supporters, like the kind Bush's handlers
surround him with wherever he goes. (No wonder the guy thinks he's god almighty
-- everybody he sees kisses his ass like it was the reincarnation of their
favorite grandmother.) And yet Britons sent Blair back to 10 Downing 
Street,
though with a reduced plurality and some egg on his face. He may be a liar and a
warmonger, they appear to reason, but at least he's not the Tories.
I must admit, when I saw Spain's Aznar go down to the ignominious defeat he so richly deserved, I thought maybe it was the start of a positive trend that would take out all three major pro-war leaders. Not so easy, it turns out... particularly since the opposition parties in Britain and the US so obligingly hand their elections to the incumbent. Just as the Democrats have mediocred themselves into a state of near total collapse, Britain's Conservative Party have such lame leadership that they were unable to seriously challenge a very troubled Prime Minister. Maybe a lot of this failure may be attributed to people's memory of the nearly two decades of Thatcherite rule under the Tories -- fairly recent history. Whatever the case may be, Britain saw a divisive election resulting in a relatively unpopular leader being re-elected to lead a nation full of disgruntled people. Sounds like what we've got over here.
When
I look at Bush and Blair, not to mention Rumsfeld, Cheney, and other
high-ranking pirates, I'm reminded of that Robert Duvall character in Apocalypse
Now -- the general that never gets hit, though bullets are flying all around
him. Born survivors. If it weren't so ugly, it would be laughable how our
government is trying to punish all of these low-ranking people for 
detainee
abuse policies that obviously originated at the highest levels of command. How
many ludicrous self-investigations have we seen with respect to military conduct
in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere? And yet the highest-ranking person to take
a bullet is former Abu Ghraib commandant General Janet Karpinski, who was busted
down to colonel. Meanwhile, General Sanchez, General Myers, Rumsfeld, Alberto
Gonzales, and other architects of this policy stand around whistling and kicking
the dirt. The feds nab Larry Franklin for passing military secrets to AIPAC, but
Franklin's boss Doug Feith -- whose Office of Special Plans served up all that
bogus intelligence that helped drive our nation into this needless war -- is
still at liberty.
To paraphrase Dubya himself: Criminals...real criminals...need to know there are consequences for their actions. Without the credible threat of punishment, they'll just do it again and again. Just look at the Bush White House.
luv u,
jp
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05/15/05
Hmmmmm.
What the hell was I saying? You know, two or three minutes ago. I was telling you how I would start this week's pointless rant and rave session. What was I going to say again? Think, man, think! I'm paying by the word, here, so every one counts. Even articles like "a" and "the" cost half-a-buck a piece. It adds up, and pumping all that change into this coin-operated blog-o-matic is, well, exhausting.
I'll
be the first to tell you that it's good to have Trevor James Constable back in
the compound again. It just isn't the same drafty old decrepit mill without him.
And now that he's pulled Lincoln (our presidential advisor) and Marvin (my
personal robot assistant) back from the remote and vaguely maritime past, Trevor
James has volunteered to help plan the next year or so of Big
Green's trajectory to an even more profound obscurity than we've ever
aspired to before. You look surprised. Oh, sure -- I know... you think we're a
bunch of semi-conscious vagrants who just fell out of a tree, right? Well, it
may interest you to know that we plan every step of our ill starred career right
down to the tiniest detail, to the most insignificant seeming misstep, from the
very moment we fall out of the tree. We now have a department of strategic
planning here at the Cheney Hammer Mill, and while its managing director (Mitch
Macaphee) is currently dousing himself in complementary champagne and canapés
over at the Zurich E-Z Rest Motel, his assistant director (the man-sized tuber)
has a firm hand on the tiller. What's more, Trevor James Constable is kindly
assisting us with applying certain pop group "best practices" to
ensure compliance with the lofty quality standards of our industry.
Of
course, one of the key standards we must meet is that of... well... producing an
album once in a while. Like every couple of years or something. Ouch. That will
be a tough one... especially since Trevor James and the man-sized tuber are
mapping out an ambitious production schedule for the next nine months, with live
recording sessions at the Filmore East and an album release party at Windows On
The World, high atop the World Trade Center. (Yeah, I know. Trevor James doesn't
get to New York very often. He's proud of himself for booking these sweet
venues, and nobody wants to burst his 
bubble.)
When one of us (John) eventually pointed out that these places no longer exist,
Trevor James reminded us of the amazing time travel capabilities of his patented
orgone generating device. It was at that moment that the true genius of his
planning became clear to us -- why, with the power to traverse time at will, we
could swoop into these places in the past, release multiple CD's at
strategically advantageous times, and even (dare I say it?) rule....the world.
MA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAAAAA!!!
Forgive
me. Now you understand what strategic planning can do to a man. Strong stuff,
damnit. Anyway, Trevor James and tubey have recommended (well, just Trevor
James, actually -- tubey more or less functions as a work surface) that we convince
our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee (inventor of Marvin) to return to the
Cheney Hammer Mill and help us work out some of the technical issues (or
"problems" as they are known in the non-corporate world) associated
with time travel, world domination, etc. Our friend Lincoln thought this was a
good idea, and like that Stockdale dude who was up for vice president in 1992,
he ran a whole civilization once. So, having nothing really better to do with my
time, I started making a master "to do" list based on all the great
ideas flying around the mill like chafe from a thresher 
(Or
is it chaffe from a thrasher? Me confused.). Here's what I came up with, with a
little help from Marvin and his magic chalk board:
-
Make record
-
Go back in time
-
Release record
-
Go back to mill
-
Use money to buy dinner
Yeah, well... it's a start. When Mitch gets here (if he gets here) he can help us flesh it out. Hey -- some companies spend years and zillions of shekels getting as far as we've gotten on our strategic plan. Thanks to Trevor James, we've made a "great leap forward" (funny how corporate jargon intersects with totalitarian prop-talk).
(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.)
Terror-Firma.
It has been observed may times that Americans behave as if no one else in
the world matters. I think now we act as if no one else is watching, either,
even though the globalization of information has made it a certainty that they
are. Look at what happened in our national capital this week when a stray single
engine plane wandered into its airspace --- EEEEK! Evacuate! It's the Cessna
of doom! Sheesh. Frankly, I'm dreading some kind of massive hit here in the
states before too long (we haven't exactly been walking around on tip-toe for
the last few years), but all this yumpiness makes our political leadership look
like the bunch of spineless cowards they truly are. Might as well show the world
how easy it is to press the panic button over here. As nearly always, it took
Jon Stewart to point 
out
how ridiculous the incident was, with news shots of people running in all
directions like scenes from a cheap 60s horror movie. Stewart's point should
have been obvious: weren't they supposed to have some kind of plan for
this by now?
One might just as well ask (as I have in the not so distant past) how Bin Laden's fiendish plot to disrupt our elections is going. Or why there have been no terror alerts from DHS since, well, the day after the Democratic convention. This never-ending "war on terror" reminds me of that bogus movie Peter Sellars was making in After The Fox, when Sellars' henchmen were just barely bothering to keep up the pretense of actually filming "The Gold of Cairo". I mean, the Bush team -- between elections, at least -- cops a "why bother?" attitude, mostly because no one calls them on it. (Note to concerned citizens everywhere: that would be unpatriotic.) They figure their ongoing pointless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are enough to show all of us that they are "taking the fight to the terrorists"...though it's really young men and women who are doing the actual fighting and, consequently, paying an awful price for it. Back home, we're just as vulnerable as we ever were, only now there are more people with the motivation to deal us another devastating blow, thanks to our arrogant, ignorant, and incompetent foreign policy.
I
think in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, people want to believe the
fables about our good intentions, particularly if they're not being asked to
sacrifice or contribute anything more than their tacit acceptance. These
comforting lies about freedom, democracy, etc., are an attractive option for
people who do not want to be bothered with a lot of tiresome details,
particularly when knowledge of 
them
implies some responsibility to take corrective action. It's not that Americans
are intrinsically immoral; it's that our political leaders incentivize
immorality (or, at least, amorality) by making every effort to shield the vast
majority of us from the costs of war, both in terms of dollars and human
suffering. They even keep the returning coffins under wraps, claiming that they
are protecting the "privacy" of those killed in action (as if it is
obvious by looking at a flag-draped coffin whose body is contained within). The
only thing they are protecting is their own political ass and the viability of
this virtually invisible, credit-card war of theirs.
Fact is, more people are likely to despise Rumsfeld and company for eliminating their military base jobs than for dragging us into a needless war. They can't keep that from hitting home.
luv u,
jp
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5/22/05
Bienvenu...
Got
a match? Not since superman died? Probably need more than one. Lots of candles
to light in this damp and drafty old mill. In fact, better give me the whole box
-- by the time I light up one room, the candles in the last room have all blown
out. Pointless, bloody pointless. Probably could use 
some hurricane lamps.
Hmmm... Got a hurricane lamp?
No, I'm not engaging in some kind of medieval Christian ritual. The freaking provincial gas and electric provider (I will withhold their name in the interests of Entergy...I mean, harmony) has decided to cut us off at the knees over prolonged non-payment of our power bills. Since the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill is our official squat house, we've essentially been off-the-grid for the last four or five years anyway, relying on makeshift tap lines from the nearest utility pole for our electrical sustenance. Clearly, this was a short-term solution, made even shorter by the unwelcome attentions of local codes inspectors and meter readers (damnable snoops!) ....so we are now Big Green unplugged, at least for the nonce. No juice, my friends, no juice. I feel like one of my brother's various friends and associates who live in an assortment of shacks, huts, forts, tents, and hovels. I think only shacks have any hope of electricity; the rest are every bit as dark and cold as this mill of ours.
Of
course, this has made recording a bit of a challenge, since that particular
creative/technological process has required either DC or AC current since
Edison's day or slightly thereafter. (Though someone once told me of an ancient
meso-American society that did a form of audio recording using... I don't
know... stones or something. And don't say the Rolling Stones!) Not that
we've been neglecting our duties. Hey -- we've got a strategic plan now, and
we're going to implement it if we have to work night and day....NIGHT AND DAY...
(gasp). Sure, the night part will be something of a challenge without lights,
but we've found a way to run the recording equipment at least. It's quite
simple, actually. Attach a generator to Lincoln's treadmill, then put Marvin (my
personal robot assistant) on the belt and tell him to pace for all he's worth.
This seemed like a really good 
idea until our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee
flew in from Brussels and pointed out (with a professorial grimace) that Marvin
was using more energy than he was producing. (I knew that. Really I did.) He
chalked up a simple equation on Marvin's blackboard to illustrate his point:
M = ( r + b )2 x 1023
Well,
now, we all know what that means. (Though Trevor James Constable is still
scratching his head over it.) What was Mitch's solution? Simply run a power tap
from Marvin's internal proteum q-90 ion generator, route it through a
transformer and into our mastering console. Child's play for the sorts of
scientific minds we have on board here at the mill. And yet, we found that the
only way to generate enough power to run the whole studio complex (including the
rec room carousel) was to have Marvin jog in place. He was not pleased, I can
tell you. Before we even got through a couple of rhythm tracks, he abandoned
ship and went off to drown his sorrows at his favorite internet cafe where the
"Captured by Robots" cult site beckoned. (Though, much to his
disappointment, the cafe had been converted to kind of a speakeasy for gay
dudes.) At that point, it was down to plan B...and of course, there was
no plan B, except in the sense of being shit out of luck (which is really just
an admission). Big Green had found itself on
the horns of a moral dilemma -- should we drop our recording project and take up
knitting, or should we pay our electric bill and thereby abandon every 
principle
we've ever held dear?
Fortunately, there was a third way. Mitch Macaphee -- bless his big floppy brain -- called his chief lab assistant Gertrude and had her send a team over with the replica Jupiter 2 spacecraft we have flown across the known universe several times now. We simply rolled our recording equipment onto the flight deck and turned the ship into a flying studio. (Well.... a studio capable of flight. Actually, we just keep the thing parked on the roof with the motors running.) So if our next album sounds a bit "other-worldly", there's a better than usual reason for it: Matt will be using a stellar infrarometer as his guitar stomp box.
(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.)
News
& Publicity. This week Newsweek magazine retracted key
portions of a story that reported on an alleged incident in which a Koran was
flushed down a toilet in Guantanamo Bay -- news of which had sparked protests
and repression by deadly force throughout the Muslim world. Naturally, the White
House is appalled... shocked and appalled that such
irresponsible reporting would suggest the Bush Pentagon is anything but highly
deferential to those who practice Islam the world over (and particularly those
practitioners now slammed into one of our extralegal detention/torture
facilities). Damn those over-the-top radical investigative 
journalists,
anyway... why don't they confine their stories to what's on the administration's
press releases, like the rest of the corporate media?
Man... this stuff is beyond parody.
Actually, I always had my doubts about the flush-the-Koran story. What the fuck, Bush's toilet is probably still too clogged up with the Bill of Rights and the Geneva Convention for that to be even a remote possibility. (boom-crash!) Seriously, this is hardly the first time allegations of Koran desecration have come to the surface, and the Muslim world is generally not very happy with us right now, what with all the other cases of confirmed religious, psychological, and extreme physical abuse still vividly in the news. I can just picture the guards at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib, their hands red with fake menstrual blood they'd just smeared on the face of some naked and humiliated detainee, cautioning one another not to defile the Koran because, hot-damn, that would be going just too far. Let's do another human pyramid, instead. Similarly, I can imagine pious protesters in Islamic countries throwing their hands up on word of Newsweek's retraction and saying, Now we can go back to loving America again!
In
his address to an independent media convention, Bill Moyers spoke of the
distinction between news and publicity, pointing out that much of what passes
for the former is, in fact, the latter. We have come to a pass where anything
that rises above the level of officially sanctioned public information is
excoriated by our government and its allies in the right wing press, regardless
of its factual merits. The result is no real reporting going on at all. Look at
the case of Luis Posada Carriles, confirmed terrorist, 
plane
bomb mastermind, and former CIA asset (hmmm... seems like those things go
together quite often...can you say Osama?). I have been waiting for my local
newspaper's limp coverage of this matter to make mention of Carriles' colleague
in terror Orlando Bosch, now living comfortably in Miami -- a man every bit as
guilty as the aging thug now in custody. There's no point in scanning the
columns for evidence of Immanual Constant, another CIA asset and known terrorist
now residing unmolested in Queens, NY, sheltered from justice for the literally
thousands of killings chalked up to his FRAPH paramilitary organization during
Haiti's 1991 coup.
My guess is Dubya will deport Carriles, not to Venezuela (where he broke jail) or Cuba (where he killed people) but someplace where he can live in obscurity. Maybe they'll move him in with Osama... somewhere where no one can hear the embarrassing stories he has to tell.
luv u,
jp
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5/29/05
Glad you could make it...
Another shabby room. Like Kimble, still toiling at many jobs. When will that ship come in, oh Jeebus? Sometimes you think you can almost see the tip of the main mast just peeking over the horizon. Just another mirage. Then it dissipates, and you're left muttering to yourself....another shabby room....
Reporting
this week from a shabby room in the _____ Marriott. Hey -- we all need a little
change of scenery every now and again, right? So I decided to do what Mitch
Macaphee is always doing -- go park my sorry ass at some convention center and
blow a day or two on pointless presentations and indigestible road food amongst
other transients of varying sizes and descriptions. So, which Marriott am I 
calling
home this evening? Does it matter? This room could be anywhere. I may be in
Bangkok, for all I know. (Reminds me of an old saying... Man who walk sideways
through turnstile going to Bangkok.) You've heard of the universal soldier?
Well, this is the universal hotel room, decorated by a blind rodeo clown, I'll
wager (carpet: green & gold; bedspread: blue, red, and gold; easy chair: red
with gold diamond accents). The smell of cheap fragrance masking the traces of
the last 500 nameless guests who slept here. Aaaak.
Okay...now that you've got the complete picture, pretty much all I've got the belly for this week is digging through our mailbag, which I thought to bring with me on this trip. So let's hear what you've got to say for yourselves out there. Here's a letter from my native land:
Dear Big Green,
Where the hell is this album you've been working on for the last three years? I hear threats, promises, progress reports, but no freaking music. What the hell kind of band are you anyway? You suck!
Best wishes,
Alma Children
Well, Alma....sure glad to hear you've been keeping such close tabs on what we've been up to. You've actually noticed that our progress on the new album has been incremental at best and, at worst, non-existent. And yes, that is one of the core brand attributes that makes Big Green "suck" so bad. It's gratifying that the next generation of music fans are being raised by perceptive parents such as yourself. Rest assured, when the next album comes out, we'll send a complimentary copy to you and the little ones, signed by me personally (and whoever else I can find at that precise moment).
Okay....rummaging deep inside this canvas mail bag...and here's the next one:
To: Big Green,
This is to inform you that electrical service at Cheney Hammer Mill has been terminated for the following reason:
Non payment of balance
If you wish to appeal this order, contact your local branch of the Provincial Power Authority no later than April 30, 2005.
PPA Collections Department
Thanks
for writing, "P". I'm not certain I understand your question, 
but
I'll try to answer it anyway. Actually, we are off the grid by choice and have
been cultivating alternative sources of energy, true to our moniker and our
mandate as an "alternative" music combo. These sources include 1.)
Marvin (my personal robot assistant) on a treadmill hooked to a generator
(though this has proven of limited utility); 2.) Running a cord
from the proteum reactor in the spacecraft we keep at idle on the roof; and 3.)
"Harvesting" power from the man-sized tuber, who has been shown to
possess the qualities of an enormous lodestone. (We pretty much just park him
out by a hollow tree and place buckets around him, then tell him to think real
hard and, after an hour or so, carefully pour the collected energy into our wall
sockets using a standard funnel.) Hope that helps!
Here's one more from the bottom of my satchel...
Dear Friend:
How many times have you asked yourself, "Why didn't I start planning my retirement sooner?"
Well, stop asking. Now there's something you can do about it. It's called PonziFund.
[edited for length -- jp]
Best regards,
Gordon C. Knockoff
President, CEO, CFO, Treasurer & Secretary
PonziFund, LLC
Hey,
Gord -- that's some title you've got there! Great to hear from a 
fan
in the financial sector. Actually, we started planning our retirement years ago,
when we first started putting the elements of Big Green together back in 1981 or
so. I was living in a half-restored walk-up apartment on Hudson Street in
Albany, NY, fighting the mice for fragments of bread (and losing badly), when it
occurred to me that, hey, we should start a band and, hey, we should figure on
retiring at some point. That's our plan, Gord. Now if we'd only thought of
insurance.....
Damn it. I knew we've been missing something all these years! I owe you one, Gord old man.
(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.)
No
Surrender. So the majority Republicans in the Senate and the Democrats
struck a compromise on the judicial filibuster this week which appears to work
like this: We won't gut the filibuster rules if you agree never to use it. Harry
Reid declares victory! The immediate result of this great triumph? Priscilla
Owens (every corporation's friend) has been confirmed for a lifetime appointment
on one of America's most important courts. Justices Brown and Pryor are soon to
follow, all significantly outside the mainstream of public opinion. The media
won't say it, but anybody who's been paying attention knows that these nominees
were hand-picked by 
Karl
Rove and company specifically because they were controversial and would help
energize the Republican's hysterical sham-religious base. Not on the agenda for
the nightly newscasts... and yet it pretty much tells everything about how these
people operate. They will continue to provoke confrontations because they know
the Democratic "leadership" will simply roll over dead if they are
persistent enough. Works every time.
So.... why the evident spinelessness? Is it that the Dems share the same fundamental world view (and corporate donor base) as the Republicans? Or is it just that they don't have the belly for a fight? After all, they could shut down the Senate if they wanted to and have a sit-in on the steps of the Capitol. And if it delays the work of that august body, so be it. The less they accomplish under the leadership of Frist and Santorum (Latin for asshole), the better. Shut it down, baby! After all, the Senate was never meant to be a chamber where lawmakers simply vote and move on -- if that were its purpose, the fuckers could all work from home. The whole point of the Senate is protecting minority rights.... though if the distinguished party of the opposition would think about it for five minutes, they might realize that the 45 members of their caucus represent a majority of Americans. This should count for something, right?
Where
is the fire in the belly? Good question. A handful in the House and Senate have
it. It took somebody like Bill Moyers, 
though,
to articulate a stinging rebuke of the Bush administration's policy of news
management, including their efforts to pack the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting full of right-wing ideologues. Moyers gave a rip-roaring speech of
the kind that should be delivered by the Senate minority leader... particularly
if he has some intention of being the Majority leader one day. This week, Ann
Coulter churned out a syndicated screed describing Moyers as
"demented" and a peddler of "conspiracy theories", so Moyers
clearly hit a nerve there. (Good....good...) If Coulter had ever bothered
to watch Now before selling columns dedicated to it, she'd know that
Moyers had not been an early opponent of the war in Iraq; that he'd given plenty
of airtime to the Gigots and the Vigueries of the world. What the mad dogs of
the right can't stand is seeing people who disagree with them on
television....ever. Kind of insecure, I'd say. Fits the chicken-hawk
profile, certainly.
Come on, folks. These reactionaries are cowards. We should be eating their lunch, not the other way around.
luv u,
jp