This is truly the age of the pirate. I don’t mean those Somali teenagers in speedboats – I mean the kind you find trawling the rich waters of Wall Street, J-Street, and 
Pennsylvania Avenue. And if there were any justice in this world, they wouldn’t have a peg leg to stand on. So short of any proper court proceeding, lets look at who wins the Jolly Roger award this week.
Hedge Fund Managers. Well, here’s a class of individuals that’s been cut a rather serious break over the past year or so. Our massive bailout of the financial industry, A.I.G., etc., has been a godsend to hedge fund managers – albeit not the sort that might put the fear of any god into them. The “trickle-down” theory of economics is so ingrained in our system that we keep using it even when it utterly implodes. Thus the hedge funds and other manipulative sectors of our economy are given unlimited underwriting courtesy of the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve in hopes that this will grease the wheels for the “real” economy that actually employs working people.
And yet, when Chrysler (employer of working stiffs) went through the process of restructuring, it managed to gain concessions from workers, suppliers, everyone but their creditors…. hedge funds! So thousands will be at least temporarily laid off as the company goes into a controlled bankruptcy spiral. What the fuck – if we can pour billions into these massive speculative funds, why the hell can’t we divert some of that money into something that actually creates jobs… particularly when the class of companies that received the most bailout money are cutting manufacturing off at the knees? Justice, please.
Good ship Cheney. Just to return briefly to the detainee abuse / torture issue. Does anyone think 
for a moment that the Bush Administration wasn’t trying to elicit false confessions out of people? Am I the only one who remembers the fact that Cheney was constantly running over to CIA headquarters in the run-up to the Iraq war, pressing them to come up with that “smoking gun”? A New York Times reporter I heard on the radio this week dismissed the notion that they were trying to drum up incriminating – if false – evidence about Saddam Hussein’s government; his point was, in essence, why wouldn’t they just make it up themselves? Answer – it doesn’t matter. They obviously felt they needed some evidence to ratchet up the fear factor and build support for the war. That’s why they relied on a drunk like “Curve Ball” and a shyster like Chalabi. That’s the central principle of terrorism, as the name suggests – scare the be-jeebus out of them so that they’ll do what you say.
So… when are we going to stop letting these fuckers off the hook?
luv u,
jp
Add a little cilantro. Mmmm…. probably not THAT much. Jesus christmas, Mitch – you’re kind of extravagant with the spicing, aren’t you. Now, don’t get offended, I…. uh, Mitch….?
What’s happened over the last week or so? Oh, you know… the usual stuff for a virtual rock band. Practice. Recording. Personal appearances. Listening for that fateful knock on the door from the codes department. (Shhhhh…. Don’t tell them we’re here!) Scraping up loose change wherever we can find it. How is the vacationland scheme going? Ah, we let that one drop. Pretty typical for us, really. Get an idea first, then think about it and realize how stupid it is. (Story of our lives.) The only one of us that was truly into doing it was the man-sized tuber. He had polished up all of his customer service skills and was ready to man that front desk. It took a while to break it to him, frankly. I certainly didn’t have the heart for it, and we didn’t want to delegate it to someone outside of the band proper (particularly since that might end up being anti-Lincoln, who would take delight in tubey’s misery). In the end, it was Matt who handed him the clue. (Scribbled on the back of an empty book of matches, as it happened.)
(Luckily, John lent me his banjo… though I had to blacken in a few teeth before hitting the record button.) Matt tried his hand at mandolin and washboard, and we both tracked a jug-band accompaniment. What’s the song? Let’s just say it’s a little number about some friends of ours. No, it won’t be stuffed with inside jokes… just a little topical humor (i.e. only to be taken externally). There are a few others in the works, and we’re following the usual production schedule, so don’t pop the earbuds in just yet (unless you’ve got other things to listen to). In the meantime, we’ve been trying our hand at developing recipes for something we plan on calling the “Big Green Cookbook”. Hence the extra cilantro. (An atypical ingredient for blueberry muffins, I will admit.) Another little money-making scheme that’s sure to….
the effectiveness of waterboarding. The writer – whose anonymous user name suggests he/she is a veteran – makes the claim that waterboarding produced the intelligence that foiled the plot to fly a jetliner into the library tower in Los Angeles. Of course, the claim falls apart on the most superficial level. The Bush administration took credit for foiling the plot in February of 2002; the torture (“enhanced interrogation”) program went into effect in August of that year. I can understand the writer’s confusion, though. There has been so much garbled noise around this issue in the past few weeks, much of it stirred up by that bloated ex-Vice President of ours, whom Gore Vidal once likened to “300 pounds of condemned veal in a gray suit.” Yes, Dick Cheney, evident war criminal, wants more memos released – the ones that show how effective his war crimes truly were in producing actionable intelligence. I say, tell it to the jury.
become so used to the idea, both through the actions of their government and via television shows like “24,” that they consider the “smoking gun” scenarios constantly referred to in the media as plausible. This is a bit like the phenomenon of judges – actual trial judges – deciding cases partly on the basis of science used in shows like “CSI”. It’s as if NASA started basing everything they do on the scientific principles embodied by “Lost in Space.” That’s kind of scary… almost as scary as the torture itself. If we’re getting that detached from reality when we set policy or even just consider its effects, we are in “deep doo-doo,” as Bush’s father used to say. Just the fact that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded more than 180 times over the course of a single month should indicate that, as a “smoking gun” remedy, this does not work.
You hear that sound? A little subtle, eh? Well, it’s cotton on cotton. That’s me turning my pockets inside out and shrugging my shoulders. Bottom scraped, my friends.
our ideas had gone flat. The portraits with Lincoln didn’t pan out. People refused to believe he actually was Lincoln. I think it was because we had one Lincoln on both ends of town. (We nuked our own credibility on that one, I’m afraid.) There was a suggestion – I think it may have come from me – that we put the man-sized tuber up for sale, but that didn’t fly either. (The bottom fell out of the tuber market months ago.) It seemed as though the only thing left was to start searching for honest remunerative employment. Odd jobs, perhaps. Like bending pretzels and raising alligators. (Apologies to Mad comics.)
Mill out as a luxury resort hotel! Apart from the luxury, we have everything we need. I could print tickets. Matt could borrow some floral umbrellas from the local sporting goods store. John could stop by the lumber yard and pick up some groceries. We could rename the mill something like “Falcon’s Harbor” or “Happy Acres”, even though there’s no harbor and there are no acres. (It’s what’s called the “Pelican Cove” principle, after a planned community by that name that had neither pelicans nor a cove.) We could start selling reservations on the internets – just post a message on any old site and patrons will flock toward us like lemmings. It’s just that easy.
triumphalist rhetoric about some military action against a “worthy” opponent. But the U.S. Navy vs. some teenage pirates… that’s about as lopsided a contest as I can imagine. Sure, they needed to get that ship captain out alive. Perhaps there was no other way to resolve the standoff – I can’t say, really. But this is nothing to crow about, and certainly not some enormous success that strikes a blow against tyranny. These pirates are desperate young men driven to a bandit’s life by circumstances we can barely comprehend. The very life’s blood of international commerce flows right past their shores in the form of these enormous freighters and tankers, and they see this as a meager opportunity to scrape some wealth out of a global system that passes them by. Not surprising that they grasp this nettle, even at risk of life and limb.
control their coastal waters, they have been unable to compete with unregulated fishing vessels from elsewhere in the region as well as Europe. Groups of Somalis have attempted to interdict illegal fishing, and these efforts have been conflated with piracy. There has also been a history of illegal dumping of toxic materials in Somali waters – something 
Yes, yes, my friends – it’s just as it sounds. Broke again, fighting the mice for scraps of cheese. Matt just had a smack-down with a praying mantis that was making off with a fragment of stale halvah. (Did Matt prevail? Let us pray.) I’ve asked Big Green’s mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, to put his considerable skills to good effect and invent us some money (or maybe a pizza), but he can’t be bothered with such trifles…. not when he’s preoccupied with his unified field theory. (Not going so well, I perceive.) And now we’re rifling through drawers (not with real rifles, you understand), rummaging through garments, and shaking the hell out of every cup and jar in the joint looking for loose change with which to keep our lights on for another week. What? What do you mean you hocked the lights? You moron!
Marvin (my personal robot assistant) just how much of a problem lack of money can be for us humans. Marvin, of course, has no need of crass commodities such as food, water, heat, clothing, etc. I’m certain he thinks we’re just obsessive and addicted to our well-entrenched consumer behaviors. Of course, he’s partly true – our fondness for Zenite snuff has proven a little difficult to shake. (I blame 
know. But the bill still has some value, and the fact that we have not one but two Great Emancipators in our entourage means that both can be put into service attracting $5 bills. Actually, John had the best idea – set up booths on opposite sides of town offering patrons the opportunity to have their portrait taken with Honest (or Dishonest, depending on which one you get) Abe for… well, for $5. So in a way, it’s like trading one portrait of Lincoln for another, but hey… it’s the best idea we’ve got, okay? And aside from the occasional meltdown by Anti-Lincoln (who rails against the very notion of being put to work like a beast of burden), it might actually help us make back all that credit default swap cash Loathsome Prick Records lost on our behalf.
stone’s throw away from where my sisters lived in one of the many small towns that dot the landscape of central New York. He’s the second local K.I.A. in the space of about a month or so, and it’s disgusting. What the hell are these kids dying for? How could we justify (if any justification were required before allowing it to happen) sending them into this hopeless situation, sacrificing life and limb for a cause most people in America wouldn’t give up a meal at Wendy’s to advance? Pundits and politicians never tire of telling us that we’re a nation at war, but it’s not so – we’re a nation whose all-volunteer military is at war, while the rest of us busy ourselves with other matters. This is the trap that empires are liable to fall into. The foreign legion will protect our overseas possessions, while the homeland is bled dry by the cost of underwriting the global projection of military power. Not worth that young person’s life… nor anyone else’s.
As I write these lines – not long after beginning this column – news has come through of five more U.S. soldiers killed in Mosul, Iraq. This comes on the heels of a multi-billion dollar supplemental appropriations request from the Administration to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This feels like a perpetual motion policy machine to me. Bush is gone and Obama has climbed into the cockpit, promising to be a better, more thoughtful driver than his predecessor… but it is still this massive killing machine designed to do only one thing. The only thing powerful enough to stop it is, well, us. Only we have to be aware of the fact that it needs stopping. And right now we’re busy with other stuff. As Obama said, you gotta be able to do more than one thing at a time. Let’s take his advice.
Momma, don’t let your babies grow up to be band leaders! Not that this band has any leaders, per se – we kind of pass the talking stick around, and who ever happens to be holding it has the floor. (In truth, we don’t really have a stick here in Big Green. We just take turns in non-stick holding ways.) However you cut it, it’s hard to make music in this abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill environment, particularly with patience running thin in the midst of such a serious economic downturn. Oh yes, my friends – it affects us, as well. Big Green is not immune, no sir. We put our pants on one leg at a time, just like everybody else. Except the man-sized tuber, who doesn’t have legs. Or Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who doesn’t wear pants. (He’s made of metal, you see.) Or sFshzenKlyrn, who is a transcendental being of no fixed mass, location, or temporal displacement, and therefore does not need pants, not in the least. So that thing I said earlier about pants… well… just forget it. 
Prick, who currently handles our intergalactic CD sales, ran into a little trouble with a small business unit they established some years back down here on terra firma. It’s called LP Financial Products and it specializes in something called, um…. let’s see…. credit…. credit default swaps. Yeah, that’s it. Whatever the hell they are. Anyhow, they ended up owing a whole lot of cash to somebody, and I’m not quite sure how or why. Interesting side note: I went over to their office the other day and saw our A&R rep leaving by the freight elevator with a large suitcase. Must have been in a hurry – he apparently closed the suitcase on some $100 bills he was packing. (Damned untidy, I thought. Curious thing.)
believe they sunk most of it into a doomed asteroid – seemed like a good bet at the time) and LP Financial Products was asked to pay up, they… well… defaulted. Now they’ve applied for an AIG style government bailout. My guess is that, with a name like Loathsome Prick, they should have no worries. In the meantime, our reps have apparently decided to go on a hastily planned vacation to …. well, they didn’t say where, exactly. All I know is that they must have been running a little late. (Never seen a car take a turn on one wheel before….)
did a somewhat incoherent interview with the organizer, an elderly sounding gentleman who said he was bringing together people who represent a broad range of political tendencies, left to right, to protest taxes against the backdrop of Fort Stanwix in Rome, a tourist-oriented recreation of the Revolutionary War era outpost. His contention was that, like the colonists during the revolution, he was encouraging people to take a stand against taxation. Actually, I think the founding fathers took issue with the notion of taxation without representation, but nevermind. This is a very 21st Century type of revolution – a bunch of people gathered at a local tourist trap to complain about something that will be with us as long as we have an organized society. It’s kind of like protesting gravity. Jump as high as you like – eventually, you’ll have to come down.
The truth is, they’re not against running deficits – their own alternative budget provides for a $1.7 trillion shortfall. They’ve just against the notion of that borrowed money going to benefit ordinary people in any tangible way. So I have to wonder what that guy who’s picketing Fort Stanwix hopes to achieve, except perhaps a completely dysfunctional government that still runs massive deficits.
Turn it down a little more. Little more. Okay. Good. Can’t hear that at all. Yeah, that’s right – nothing. Much better. And… hey! Don’t throw things at me!
listener responses to our last single, “
Gosh, “Skelington”, not sure where to begin! Thanks for the kudos on the “willing spirit”, though you should know we eliminated all the “granny’s armpit” sounds kind of early on in the production process. We’ll definitely take your “humour… not a carte blanche” comment to heart, though. From now on, we’ll start editing ourselves more judiciously. We’re going to get all serious, now. Totally. No, seriously.