NOTES FROM SRI LANKA.

(September '02)

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9/1/02

Avast, ye!

Let's see, here. Guidebook? Check! Itinerary? Check! Deluxe robot maintenance kit? Check! Invisible flying predator repellant (extra large size)? Check! Atabrine tablets? Check! No more scones for me, waiter, just bring the...Check! All set? In the name of the father, the son...and into the hole he goes!

Yes, it's embarkation day, Big Greenians, and we're trying to shoehorn all of our gear into the converted diving bell that will serve as our descent module on the first leg of our somewhat inglorious "inner-planetary" tour. Yeah...we abandoned the chair-o-vator idea -- too damned time consuming (I wish we'd decided that two weeks ago, before I'd chiseled the detailing on seven vertical miles of spiral staircase). Our ever-resourceful resident mad scientist Mitch Macaphee pulled a few strings and got us this retired diving bell, which we have rigged to a derrick and hung over the hole we dug to the chewy center of the Earth. The plan is for us to climb aboard, then have someone throw the switch that will drop that baby right down the chute. Simple...but effective. 

And what of the pernicious effects of gravity, you ask? Fear not, dear friends. Our erstwhile companion Trevor James Constable has pressed his orgone generating device into service for us once again. By pointing the thing down through the floor of the transport capsule and potting the amplitude up to 50K MHz, Trevor James can create enough of a magnetic flux to serve as a sort of "air brake" system. Our only problem has been finding enough 220 extension cord to reach to the center of the planet (luckily there's a Home Depot® nearby...check is in the mail, boys!) Not the first time Big Green's bacon has been saved by a little rock-solid scientific know-how. Where would pop music be without it, I ask you? Huh? 

Is it tight in that little vessel? You know it is...especially with all of our gear packed in with us. It reminds me of the little cargo room on the port side of Brad Terry's modified 1953 GMC city coach -- the one we did the 1977 college tour in. Brad and my brother Mark had a jazz group. I was a roadie, so I got to know the equipment room pretty well. It was just big enough to fit everything, if you squeezed out all the air. That's what my corner of the diving bell looks like. In fact, that's what the whole bloody thing looks like, now that we've got my keyboard gear loaded in on top of John's drums and sFshzenKlyrn's monstrous Marshall stacks. (Only Matt has the sense to keep his onstage rig semi-portable, having commissioned Mitch Macaphee to work out a miniaturized version of his usual amp set-up...now he's got this thing the size of a transistor radio that puts out enough bass response to drive any hip-hop teen out of their blackened-windowed 1991 Honda CRX). 

So anyway, we got inside our little metallic teardrop and braced ourselves...only to realize that there was no one outside to throw the switch on the derrick and let this baby drop. One of us would have to stay behind, it seemed. We drew straws, and as luck would have it, I drew the short one. So I did what any self-respecting adult would do in that situation -- I sent my personal robot assistant Marvin out to do the job for me. 

On our signal, Marvin dutifully threw the switch and sent us cannoning down through the Earth's crust to our first destination. After several hours of free-fall (and an odd feeling of weightlessness), Trevor James' orgone generating device managed a fairly soft landing for us in a quartz cavern just up the pike from the Upper Crust, our tour-opening venue. I got on the cell phone to Marvin to let him know we had arrived safely and was amazed at how clear the signal was...until I noticed that he was sitting on top of the diving bell. It seems that when he pulled the release switch, he had chosen to stand there, of all places. (Good thing he does those deep knee bends every morning.)

As we stand in this iridescent underground rock garden, waiting for the porters our label Hegemonic Records & Worm Farm, Inc., hired to come and carry our gear, one thought comes to mind -- if Marvin's down here, who's going to look after my turmeric patch while I'm on tour? Gung-Ho? I never think of these things until it's too late....

Whitemail. Anyone hear Cheney's whole speech last week? You know -- the one they played on that bellicose Monday morning before the slightly more conciliatory Monday afternoon before the somewhat more saber-rattling Monday evening...(I'm getting dizzy). It struck me as particularly funny that the press dutifully latched onto his "we will not look away" sound bite...since the only obvious reason behind all this drum beating is to get you and I to "look away" from Fat Boy's record at Halliburton and Frat Boy's record at Harken. 

Don't you love how these guys wail away at the war drums and then complain that people are indulging in "speculation" about the decision to attack Iraq? Being cavemen themselves, they naturally assume that we're all thick as two planks as well and don't remember what they said this morning, let alone last week. It's possible that somewhere deep in Cheney's pea brain he thinks he's being subtle, or that that relic Rumsfeld imagines he's cleverly manipulating public opinion with his porcine utterances. The fact is, the Bush team handles the levers of power like a cartoon gorilla at the controls of a ten-story wrecking ball, swinging that baby wildly in every direction, smashing everything around them to rubble. I mean, I expected them to be incompetent and dangerously combative...but I really underestimated their capacity for sheer blockheadedness. Remarkable!

Cheney's much-covered speech of course offered no new information to back up their rabid claims about Iraq's relentless drive to develop "the bomb" and other weapons of mass destruction. It did touch on a favorite Bush theme -- that Hussein, once possessed of these weapons, would use them to "blackmail" neighboring states and, indeed, the world. How does that work, exactly? Let's see -- Iraq is beset by a global superpower that's  chomping at the bit to attack it with full force, anxious for any pretext that will even remotely justify wiping Iraq off the face of the Earth. Hussein "marshals his resources," as Cheney puts it, and builds an H-bomb. Now what? Does he send an anonymous extortion note to the Emir of Kuwait? Any move toward menacing or attacking a neighboring state will bring total war with the U.S. and, probably, Britain. An attempt at "blackmail" under these circumstances would be like sending a threatening letter to the neighborhood Mafioso and signing your name to it (So what if he's got twenty thugs with machine guns? I've got a pistol!).

Now, it's just possible that Iraq might be the first nation in history to consciously choose to commit suicide...but they would hardly need WMD's to bring that about. Of course, back in the real world, any 3-year-old could figure out that an H-bomb's only utility to a regime in Hussein's position would be as a deterrent against attack. Which means Cheney et al are doing their best to bring about the only likely scenario under which such weapons -- if they were to exist -- would be used. Sounds like a plan!

Plain or Peanut? Yes, I missed the MTV music awards again...(tenth or fifteenth year in a row). It's about as formulaic as most network television. Or maybe professional wrestling. Eminem™, that kid we love to hate, being Mr Bad Boy™ and threatening to punch Moby™. (Ooooh!) Cheers and boos all in the right places. Pencils down, kids. 

Oh, well...you could always drop by mp3.com/biggreen and download our LIVE From Neptune EP. No, we don't have videos. No, we don't have any ongoing feuds with Moby™. But you can get that elsewhere, right? Besides...who cares if music melts in your mouth and not in your hands? Live dangerously!

luv u,

jp

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9/8/02

HELLO! (Hello....hello....hello....)

Greetings from the first leg of our "inner-planetary" tour (tour...tour...tour...). The constant cave echoes become rather tiresome down here (here...here...here...). If you don't mind, I won't bother transcribing them for the balance of my message. Much obliged (much obliged....much obliged....much...). Whoops!

Well, we ended up waiting about five hours for those rent-a-porters Hegemonic Records & Worm Farm, Inc., hired to come and help us over land (or is it under land?) with our gear. Cheeky bastards, too -- I suspect they were dramatically underpaid for their services. (Hell, so are we, if it comes to that.) They were off-duty cops, borrowed from one of Hegemonic's subsidiary operations in Papua New Guinea, I believe. Local security, you understand -- can't beat it with a stick. Anyway, they clearly didn't like this assignment and took their displeasure out on my B-3 organ, dropping the fantastically heavy console instrument down a steaming crevice -- one so deep, it was fully five minutes before I heard the fatal thud of my B-3's unhappy landing. 

I wasn't going to take this sitting down. "Good goin'," I said, and sFshzenKlyrn made the mistake of chiming in with, "Yeah, what's he going to do with his Leslie cabinets now? They're fucking useless!" It didn't take a great deal of imagination to predict what would happen next. Before I could stop them, the disgruntled porters had put my rented Leslie cabinets on dollies and wheeled the two of them into the abyss, as well. (No bloody insurance rider, either. Sure, we've got a blanket policy...but who needs blankets down here? Besides, our legal advisor tells us that all coverage is void when you travel to Antarctica, Greenland, Idaho, or any point beneath the Earth's crust. Who knew?)

I briefly consulted with our official tour scientist Mitch Macaphee about recovery operations. He told me our resources might be better applied to keeping the porters from wheeling my Steinway "L" into the same crevice, which he perceived them attempting to do at that very moment. Mitch's suggestion (based on sound scientific reasoning) was that we (a.) bribe the porters, and (b.) ask them only to carry very light things, thereby providing two disincentives to destroying what remained of our gear. The theory worked, though the porters (who share with Marvin a remarkable resemblance to the famous "Bowery Boys") had to "take the Mickey out " on me, so to speak, as part of their traditional bonding ritual. While I was handing them the payoff, one of them got down on his hands and knees behind me and the gang leader pushed me over him. Then everything was cool. They had their money...and I was flat on my back in symbolic disgrace. We could finally proceed (once my band mates stopped yukking it up over my ignominious pratfall).

The limestone trail down to The Upper Crust was long and arduous, strewn with all kinds of obstacles. Boulders. Stalactites. Stalagmites. In places, the stalactites met the stalagmites halfway, conspiring to form hourglass-shaped columns that afforded only narrow gaps through which we could squeeze our equipment. Luckily, Marvin had thought to bring along an extra tub of his machine grease (he uses it as tanning lotion, and had hoped to get some sun bathing in while we're down here) which we slathered liberally on the flight cases. That did the trick well enough, and we slithered into the Upper Crust a couple of hours before our opening. 

I can only hope that our first performances on this tour are not representative of what the rest of this sodding venture is going to be like. For one thing, the audiences are mostly made up of troglodytic refugees from B-movie caveman sagas. (When they don't like you, they throw rocks. When they like you, well...they throw rocks.) The owner of the Upper Crust is a dead ringer for Joan Crawford, and her husband looks like Trog. When paypacket time came, they were a little slow on the uptake (or downput, I should say). In fact, I had to send Marvin back to the diving bell to retrieve Trevor James Constable's orgone generating device so that we would have something to threaten them with besides sFshzenKlyrn's acid contempt. Tightwads!

Our journey down to the next level and our gig at Pat Boone's Cano-A-Go-Go was somewhat harrowing -- a bit like parachuting down an artesian well, if you want to know the truth. We immediately lost our way after landing in some kind of underground disco chamber, with backlit mica panels and a constantly chugging beat machine. I'll tell you, if Hegemonic ever talks us into doing this again, I'm going to insist that they provide us with flashlights. And dance lessons. (When Morlocks can dance circles around you, it's a bit embarrassing.) More later. (later....later....later....) Christ! 

Scoundrel Time. Actually, I'm kind of glad I'll be deep in the bowels of the Earth as the anniversary of the September 11th attacks comes upon us. I'd just as soon not witness the hyper-patriotic gyrations of every scoundrel who hopes to further capitalize on the thousands who died that day, as well as participate in a grisly sanctification of the orgy of murder and extra-constitutional police action that has ensued in the year since. The proceedings have already begun for Madison Avenue -- witness the Pro Football season kickoff in New York City, featuring flag-waving fans, Bon fucking Jovi singing America The Beautiful, and a phalanx of cops unfurling an elephantine Old Glory, all front-page news in hometown America. So....are NFL tickets now to be considered the modern-day equivalent of war bonds? 

This is, of course, the very basis of today's sprawling public relations industry, dating back to Woodrow Wilson's Creel Commission and its effort to whip up public frenzy in support of U.S. participation in World War I. Their resounding success prompted commission members like Edward Bernays to apply the same techniques to the purposes of business as well as politics. Bernays wrote in the 1920s about regimenting the public mind the same way you would regiment a soldier to obey commands, and this principle has been put to the test many times since. You've got to admit -- it works. I suppose it plays into the basic gregariousness of human nature, the herd mentality. Whatever the reason, it puts an irresistible temptation in the hands of politicians, pundits, and corporate propagandists the world over. 

That's why 9/11 proved a bonanza for the masters of manipulation. Once you get an enormous number of people all doing the same thing (i.e. waving the flag) you can get them all to do something else they wouldn't ordinarily do (i.e. start liking Rudy Giuliani). Ultimately, you can turn this toward a panoply of political (kill Iraq) or commercial (buy Pepsodent) purposes. Once the symbology of mass appeal has been appropriated -- in this case, the good old stars 'n stripes -- it can be usefully draped over any shitpile or hung behind any rat-bastard under the sun. Just visit your local bookstore and you'll see what I mean. Blow-dry conservative talking heads defending embattled "true Americans" from a terrifying army of "liberals" in whose shadow we all now cower. On sale now at your neighborhood Borders (if you've got one).

It's amazing to watch these overpaid hacks presume to take ownership of "patriotism" and attempt to blame the 9/11 catastrophe on their political opponents, tarring everyone from the DLC to the far left as some sort of "fifth column" in the "war on terror." Some frothy-mouthed comments by Ann Coulter come to mind, but there are plenty of others, many backed by the ample pockets of Heritage and Olin and Scaife, etc. You'd think that their mad-dog McCarthyite rhetoric would be enough to bury them, but the blather lives on, permeating every corner of the same corporate media they accuse of terminal liberalism. Whiny little weasels. Why don't they take the last train back to fuckville?...it's big enough for all of them.

So, do me a favor. If some neocon-man starts lecturing you this week about 9/11, clock them one for me. I'll be down here at the Cano-A-Go-Go, rooting for you. 

luv u,

jp

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9/15/02

Can you read me?

The subterranean disco that was last week's way station turned out to be one of the high points of what has so far been an even more abysmally pointless tour of inner Earth than we could possibly have imagined. Man god damn -- this is worse than that Mortadella gig when we had to back up some bogus renegade robot from Mars!

Back to disco-land. We were unsure as to how to get to Pat Boone's Cano-A-Go-Go, so we ended up hanging out at the primitive Morlock-infested dance club. Mitch Macaphee took the opportunity to recharge the batteries on all of our Coleman lanterns, while Matt refilled our canteens with coffee and absinthe (a favorite of his). When the groove machine started chugging out a cobbled-together medley of KC & The Sunshine Band songs, some odd compulsion took possession of Marvin, my personal robot assistant, who had previously been studying a complicated-looking stamp machine. He abruptly began dancing the Latin hustle, "boogie-ing" across the dance floor like that guy who taught John Travolta® how to dance...except without anything like what you might term as "skill."  The Morlocks cleared the floor as Marvin cantered from one end of the room to the other, his finger in the air. At one point, while he was executing a stilted R&B spin in front of a line of astonished Morlocks, he looked like the headliner for the most bizarre Temptations tribute band imaginable. (Yowza, yowza, yowza.)  

We finally managed to get the Morlocks to draw a crude map of how to get to our next tour destination (Marvin's performance was a big factor in motivating them to help us on our way). It was a bit of a hike and we had to make really good time in order to get there on schedule. Our surly porters were none too happy about it -- at one point they threatened to walk unless we forked over half the proceeds from our Upper Crust gig, plus all of Marvin's dance contest winnings. sFshzenKlyrn got really irritated and started to emit some of his extreme ultraviolet-end radiation. Of course, that caused our cache of microwave popcorn to explode out of its crates. (It also ruined all the little radiation badges our corporate label Hegemonic Records & Worm Farm, Inc., gave us in lieu of health coverage.) Now we all look like we've spent the last week in a tanning salon (I guess Marvin's sunbathing idea wasn't so farfetched after all).

Pat Boone's Cano-A-Go-Go was another one of these retro joints frequented by troglodytic cavemen, Morlocks, and giant cave turtles with their shells painted in day-glo colors (they serve as drink caddies...it's a living). There's the usual bandstand and dance floor, plus a unique amusement that recalls the club owner's role in Journey To The Center Of The Earth -- a genuine volcano ride. You sit in this big fireproof bowl, and when the magma starts flowing, up the spout you go. (How you get back down is another matter. I think there's a long ladder in the back, somewhere.) Fun!

The shows, well...that's another story. If we were to make a live album out of our performances at the Cano-A-Go-Go, it would be called Generation Reverb. No need for the old Lexicon unit down here, friends -- there's plenty of free reverb in this here cave. Consequently, we end up pumping out some of our more country-fried numbers, like Little Pig Flies and Box of Crackers, because everything's got that rockabilly echo to it, perfect for twangy guitars (or gee-tars). Of course, I feel like I've got a freaking bucket on my head, the bale crammed under my chin, and somebody's banging on it with a big metal spoon. How's it sound? After four hours, about the same as everything else. 

What's next? Mickey's Mantle Inn...a real hard rock cafe with a kind of Cooperstown baseball twist to it, only way down deep in the nougat of the Earth, far deeper than any man has dared go before. Are we worried? Oh, sure...there's no place to get checks cashed down here, for one thing, and our credit cards are all maxed out. But John and sFshzenKlyrn keep assuring us that our chit is good anywhere. (That's what I keep hearing them say over in the dressing room..."Is good chit, mun!")

In the meantime, if you' all want to hear what we sound like LIVE (sans generation reverb), go to www.mp3.com/biggreen and download our live takes of Special Kind of Blood, Merry Christmas Jane, and more. Hey -- it's free...and it's worth every penny!

Roman Holiday. What commemoration of 9/11 would be complete without a threatcom charlie orange alert, just to put everybody in the mood, eh? Cheney scurrying off to his undisclosed location. Dubya taking on that contrived stern look, as if trying to convince his father he hadn't quaffed that fifth of Beefeater's. Military planes flying low. Just like old times! Of course, the solemn speeches and ceremonial observances quickly gave way to more saber-rattling over the Gulf, with Dubya eager to capitalize on the heightened sense of insecurity among his target audience -- us -- by renewing the push on his current flagship product. His bellicose speech to the UN was the centerpiece of this week's campaign. 

While Dubya was ticking off Iraq's violation of UN Security Council resolutions, one could picture the Israeli delegation sitting there, hands folded, eyes toward heaven, little cartoon halos over their heads, now well into their fourth decade of contempt for Security Council Resolution 242 calling for their withdrawal from the occupied territories (a document whose merits Bush's father extolled on the same dais as UN Ambassador). This stonewalling has been the basis, of course, of Middle East turmoil for many, many years.

Lucky for us in the good old USA, we have a permanent seat on the Security Council, with veto power over any resolution that doesn't suit us. Even so, Israel's rejection of 242 has been made possible by U.S. support, though this is technically in violation of "official" U.S. policy, since we played a leading role in passing the resolution back in the day. In the meantime, Israel has denied Palestinian national rights, built militarized colonial settlements throughout the occupied territories, constructed a web of Israeli-only highways connecting these settlements and dividing Palestinian communities, invaded Lebanon killing about 18,000 people (under Sharon's command), built a sizable arsenal of nuclear weapons (probably in the hundreds), detained, tortured, and killed thousands of Palestinian civilians in the areas they occupy, and a good deal more....paid for with our tax dollars. So basically, we sponsor perhaps the most heinous violation of Security Council authority in the history of the organization...and that's okay. 

Elder statesman Nelson Mandela pointed to this double standard in a recent Newsweek interview. I doubt Dubya's scolding schoolmaster performance at the UN much impressed him -- a man Cheney would have preferred to see remain within Apartheid South Africa's penal system beyond the 28 years he spent there. I'm sure much of the world feels the same way, in as much as we treat them with the same kind of contempt. That's what makes us so well loved, folks.

Running an empire has its costs. Unless you're Marvin. (After that false alarm terror scare in Florida, he wants to be born again as a bomb squad robot.)  

luv u,

jp

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9/22/02

Yo-ho, me hardies...

Two nights at Pat Boone's Cano-A-Go-Go and our crew of nudnik roadies walked. They were hoping to meet the famous singer/actor/television personality and were sadly disappointed to learn that the club was just another bogus franchise run by a drunken Morlock and two ersatz spacemen from The Time Tunnel who spent most of our last evening there arguing over a signed waxwork figure of James Darrin. That's when the roadies made a rather noisy exit, cracking pool cues in half and tossing the bouncer into the automated Cano-Magma Thrill Ride (an experience from which he has yet to return). 

Without porters, the journey to The Su(b)duction Zone would have been an impossible one. Luckily, Trevor James Constable had brought his satellite phone and was able to call for new transportation which arrived some hours later in the form of a 1953 GMC City Coach identical to the one I took to California decades ago. (It may even be the same bus, for all I know...there were 25-year-old Winston® butts in the ashtrays.)

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. That stupid bus is just way too big to fit through the nooks, crannies, and claustrophobically narrow passageways that lay ahead of us on this ludicrous tour. But you're forgetting we have two world-class mad scientists on board. Trevor James simply reversed the polarity on his orgone generating device and pointed it at the bus with all hands on board, and hey presto! the vehicle shrank to the size of a cheap sofa. Sweet!

All that was left to be done before departure was to have Mitch Macaphee fit the bus's undercarriage with tiny jet engines he'd kept from his last Mad Scientist trade show reception (they were party favors). Coupled with a sophisticated control mechanism retro-fitted to the old steering wheel and pedals, this modification transformed our 1953 City Coach into a tiny ramshackle hovercraft, ideal for tooling around the mantle. 

Who's driving the bus? Marvin, of course. Yes, I had to find something to occupy the lad since his bout of Saturday Night Fever back at the Morlock Disco. Not a bad job for him, actually. With extension brackets fastened to his legs, he can reach the pedals, and he's nearly got the hang of double-clutching. (It's a little less critical a skill with the modified jet engines, but he felt he needed the challenge, so I didn't dissuade him.) So, off we went with my plucky robot assistant at the helm, John White in the navigator's seat, and sFshzenKlyrn up in the crow's nest. 

We found The Su(b)duction Zone to be one of those murky, dark, slightly sinister clubs of the type we played fairly frequently in the 1990s. After a greasy spoon dinner and a quick Tab® with sFshzenKlyrn, we hit around 9:30pm with Special Kind of Blood as an opener. When we finished the song, you could hear crickets chirping. I thought, Christ...there's nobody out there. But I was wrong -- apparently the locals carry crickets in matchboxes and they use the chirping to show appreciation, rather than using applause. (Applause they use when they don't like something. Weird.) Of course, when you can't see anybody in the audience, it's easy enough to get these things mixed up. And the fact that we forgot to use Trevor James' orgone generating device to restore us to actual size before performing didn't help our side much, either. (I'm told our mysterious patrons were squinting and using opera glasses to get a good look at us.)

Next on our itinerary was a peculiar Irwin Allen theme club called the Power Core, which was adorned with leftover props from the "Master of Disaster's" various movies and television shows. Not a bad venue for deep down here, except that every 20 minutes or so the floor starts to pitch wildly from side to side, accompanied by strains of raucous action-adventure music. What this is suppose to signify depends on what room you happen to be in. In the "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" room it represents a titanic struggle with a giant squid; in the "Lost In Space" room (where we were) it represents a meteor shower...and so on. When John and Matt asked the manager if he could turn the gag earthquake off while we performed, the man gave a blood-curdling Jonathan Harris-type scream and fled from my band mates as if they were some kind of slimy, bubble-like creatures (which, of course, they are...as are we all). 

I'll tell you, sFshzenKlyrn fits right in at this joint. Marvin, too. Next is the Lava-Rama -- sounds like a hot time. I'll let you know. 

Same Old Song. Well, Dubya and the boys thought they were being clever with the UN appeal ("We care about the foundations of international law. No, really!") Hit 'em with the Security Council Resolutions, since there's no new "evidence" to offer of Iraq's sprawling weapons programs. But by making his case for war turn on Iraq's compliance with the Security Council, Dubya and his handlers were leaving themselves wide open for what ultimately happened. Think about it, though -- how could Hussein resist such a temptation? By inviting the weapons inspectors back (withdrawn by the UN just ahead of Bill Clinton's "Operation Desert Fox" bombing campaign back in 1998), he has split the U.S. from its allies once again. What reasonable (i.e. not power drunk) national government would refuse to accede to reinstating the only system that has actually furthered the goal of disarmament in Iraq? (Now if we could just put the Scott Ritters of the world to work in Israel...)

By invoking the Security Council Resolutions as a justification for war, the U.S. was proposing to punish Iraq for committing transgressions that, while serious, seem relatively minor in comparison to the proposed invasion itself, which would be a serious breach of the peace and precisely the kind of wrong the UN was created to defend against. It's a bit like vigilantes torching a city to get at an outlaw who lives there...or like dropping a king-size bomb on a tightly packed Gaza neighborhood. 

Of course, with the news that Iraq would readmit the UN inspectors, Dubya and company changed course yet again and started ratcheting up the pressure on an election-focused Congress for a broad resolution authorizing force against the Hussein regime. ("Dag nab it, Saddam, yer supposeta stonewall!") Hmmmm....it almost seems as if they just desperately need a war before Election Day, doesn't it? Fact is, they need war all the time, a policy made official by Bush's National Security position paper submitted to Congress last week -- you know, the one that says we will strike first against potential enemies before they're "fully formed." Attack at will on little or no evidence, and call it "self defense" -- this from the folks who, just a few days ago, were all about complying with the UN. Sheesh.  (Bush had help on this one from Condy Rice, the first National Security Advisor to be named after a Chevron supertanker.)

Any chance this doctrine will be abused? No way! In a statement that approaches holocaust denial in its ignorance of history, Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "What the world has seen in the 20th Century is a benevolent America that uses its strength for good around the world."

For those not comforted by such credible assurances, I can only suggest complaining to your (perhaps useless) Congressional delegation, as well as checking out some of the online resistance resources at www.endthewar.org, www.moveon.org, www.peacepledge.org, and elsewhere. Make noise. Aloha.

luv u,

jp

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9/29/02

Bueno!

Welcome back to the planet's only web log from inner spaaaaace! That's right, friends, we of Big Green can now rightfully call ourselves pioneers. No, we didn't contribute wheelbarrows full of money to George W. Bush's campaign for coronation as president...we're a different kind of "pioneer," having made our way deeper than anyone...anyone has ever gone before. Deeper than James Mason. Deeper than Pat Boone. Deeper than...well...the other people in that movie. We got here ahead of all of 'em!

Our trusty (if temporarily diminutive) hover-coach has wended us through capillaries of living rock, down bottomless shafts and around pillars of iron. This is the long haul to Levantine's Lava-Rama, where we were booked for a one-night stand on the 28th. Opening for us there is a Morlock-led a capella ensemble known as the "Tectonic Plates" -- they do an avante garde performance art that reminds me of Mumenschantz with a banjo behind it. (It's a mock banjo, a vocalese impersonation of that most country-fied of instruments.) One weird-ass group, my dears. 

Our one-week gap between gigs has allowed us the luxury of doing a little sight seeing. Once we were certain we could cover the considerable distance down to the Lava-Rama, we decided to take in some historic landmarks. Of course, Matt and I have always wanted to visit the Earth's core, and since we were so close, we thought what the fuck. Trevor James Constable cranked up the gain on his orgone generating device, creating a bubble of magnetic flux that would keep the magma out, while Mitch Macaphee and sFshzenKlyrn rigged the crow's nest with ultra-powerful sensor equipment. When all preparations were complete, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) nudged her into drive, and we were off to see the center. 

You'd think it would be easy to find the Earth's core, but surprisingly, it's not. Our maps were worse than useless (particularly the 1973 Fodor's guide to Lithuania...no help at all!) John suggested we just turn off the engines and let gravity simply yank us there, but that seemed too obvious. Since (as everybody knows) there's a honkin' huge magnet down in the core that runs this whole gravity deal, we had Mitch Macaphee glued to the screen of his electro-magnetometer, flagging us whenever the dial jumped up to the next increment, indicating that we were on the right track. 

Of course, this method involved a lot of trial and error. More than once we were compelled to ask directions at one of the many roadside taco stands that dot the landscape of inner Earth (no wonder it gets so hot down here). But eventually we got to where we wanted to go -- the very point at which up and down cease to be meaningful categories...there to behold the mysterious source of our planet's colossal magnetism. 

Funny, I always imagined the magnet would be larger. Though Mitch tells me it wouldn't necessarily need to be, with all that molten iron around it, amplifying its magnetism (with bogus theories like that, Mitch could work at the Department of Defense). One wonders how life might have evolved on our creepy little planet had someone not accidentally dropped this dime store horseshoe magnet down here six billion years ago. Makes you think. 

As one might expect, after witnessing something so awesome (in the traditional sense) as the very source of Earth's gravitational fields, Levantine's Lava Rama seems something of a let-down. I mean, we were expecting bubbling pools of molten rock brimming over with sparks and acrid smoke. Not so. Problem with semantics, you see. We were thinking magma. All they've got is lava -- solid igneous rock, long cool from ancient eruptions. Not even any interesting shapes...just rock. Oh -- and they have those dayglow turtles working as drink tables, like that other dive we played in a few weeks ago. 

The reaction to our set? Eh. They seemed to like the Mumenschantz knock off better. Though sFshzenKlyrn did get a rise out of them when he pulled out some lighter fluid and torched one of his Telecasters. (Real crowd pleaser, that Zenite friend of ours.) Next week -- Base Camp Alpha. We'll keep you posted.

Shame. Okay, you can relax, now...sort of. Governor Ridge has brought us all back down to "yellow alert," now that the anniversary is over. No attack, but at least they had us standing at attention through 9/11, so it didn't go to waste. Feel manipulated at all? So do I. They just love to make us jump, and September 11th was an ideal opportunity to get us all facing the front of the classroom so Dubya and company could start their daily rant campaign over Iraq. 

It's the old "line of the day" routine, except more frantic than ever before, as Dubya watches the clock count down to November's mid-term elections. It takes a lot of effort to divert attention away from the largest corporate scandal in history, particularly when the president, vice president, and other members of the administration are up to their gills in it; there's also the small matter of our tanking economy to be avoided. The war card's the only winner for this boy. (Hmmm...annual invasions and an economic downturn -- must be a Bush in the White House.)

The arrogance of these people is astounding. To hear them talk, you'd never think any of them had the slightest notion how dense they all are. Amidst his crumbling economy, Treasury Secretary O'Neill was asked what the cost of their madman crusade in Iraq would be. His reply? "You can't put a price on freedom." This sort of thing was the worst kind of cop-out during the Cold War when our obsession was with the missile-rich Soviet Union. In the case of a ruined country like Iraq, it's just embarrassing. Who would put this man in charge of anything more than his own wall safe? Simple answer -- the same geek who put a Crisco-anointed fundamentalist in charge of our justice system, a deeply implicated Enron senior manager in charge of our Army, and a fulminating power-freak in charge of both the Defense Department and, apparently, the State Department, as well. (Rumsfeld seems to be running foreign policy pretty much single-handedly.)

Though some Democrats are now only beginning to pipe up misgivings about  war with Iraq, their opposition is so conditional (in most cases) as to be essentially meaningless. To focus on whether or not the Administration can provide "proof" of Iraq's WMD programs or al Qaida "connections" is to concede the legitimacy of this wacky "pre-emptive" war doctrine. Also, as always, the discourse is completely ahistorical, our support for Iraq's military effort during the bloody Iran-Iraq war a matter of supreme indifference somehow, particularly since many of the key people behind that policy are now in Dubya's Administration. 

There's one other missing element: oil. As Michael Klare reported in The Nation last week, Iraq holds the second largest known oil reserves in the world, as well as perhaps the greatest potential for as yet undiscovered petroleum deposits. Klare points out that Hussein has been selling oil concessions worth billions to European and Asian companies, shutting out American firms. This gives "regime change" a whole different dimension. With Saudi Arabia's future uncertain, the Bush Team (Vice President Halliburton, National Security Advisor Chevron, and others) appear poised to scuttle the Hussein regime, nullify those contracts, and install a government that will cut U.S. firms in for the lion's share over the coming decades. 

It's that old great power game again, friends -- nothing much has changed. This would be a good time to call your reps in Congress and tell them this doesn't work for you. Already done so? Call them again -- there's a good chap. 

luv u,

jp

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