Need a couple more of those buckets. How about some pale green in the upper left hand corner? And put that HMI light just behind the plastic fichus tree. That’s the ticket.
Ah, visitors. Welcome, welcome. Reading this, you may ask yourself, “What the fuck – do these guys do everything themselves?” (No, I’m not affecting to give you permission to ask such a question. Nay, I believe in free will, and am merely speculating on the character of your thoughts. Affected, me? Perish the thought!) And the answer to that question might be yes, if by “everything” you mean “everything that can be done in that run-down mill.” (If you mean something else, well… what can I say?) So… yes, we do… uh… do everything around these parts. Well… most of us do, anyway. (Some of us don’t do everything… or “do nothing”, as the saying goes.)
Oh, sure – we have the equivalent of domestic help. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) counts as a domestic, technically speaking. (Very technically.) I suppose the man-sized tuber counts, too, sort of like a coffee table might. (Hey… it holds coffee for you, right? Defies gravity in a sense, no?) But 
how much help are they, really, when it comes to the important stuff, like… like bricking up an open window, or finding a lost quail egg, or whitewashing the widder-woman’s fence? How about mastering an album, damnit? How much help is Marvin, eh? Squat! And the freaking man-sized tuber – when’s the last time he twiddled a volume pot? Day before never, that’s when! So, hey… the next time you wonder why it takes us five years to make a m.f.-ing album, here’s an easy answer – we get no help from nobody, no how. (pant, pant, pant….)
Phew! I feel much, much better now. Catharsis aside, there is a grain of truth to what I’m saying, albeit an extremely minute one. Don’t think I need to mention that our rapacious corporate label is worse than useless in this regard. What the hell – who would have ever thought a 
company called Loathsome Prick Records would be run by scoundrels and assholes? And yet, there you have it. (Don’t tell them I said so, okay?) And then there are the closer-to-home issues, like the quarrelling Lincolns (posi and anti), and Big Zamboola, who just hangs around the courtyard confounding the local astronomy club with his mysterious gravitational light-bending trick (quite astounding). It’s not so much that they’re destructive – more that they simply don’t contribute to a harmonious living atmosphere. Neither does Mitch Macaphee, with his rapidly multiplying horde of experimental critters. (Frankenstone has discovered the rave. A couple of decades late, but what the hell… he’s made of stone.)
At least we’re back in the confines of the mill, safe from the rain (or most of it, anyway). Now if we could just get past these household projects, maybe we could … I don’t know … take a raft down the Mississippi… or the Mohawk…
This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. Leave the mill immediately. Proceed to the exits marked “exit”. We apologize for the absence of standard, lighted exit signs – crayon on cereal box will have to do.
right? Not so. Nothing succeeds like success, as they say, especially in the land of mad scientists. I mean, what would the guy say to his colleagues at the next convention if all he had to show for his efforts over the preceding months was one… just one! … monster carved out of stone? Embarrassing, to be sure. Also, between you and me, I think old Mitch has a problem meeting new friends. Now, making friends is something he’s real good at. And he just keeps making more and more all the time. And some of them are proving a bit inconvenient, setting things on fire, spreading hazardous materials around the mill, etc. Hence our current dilemma (noxious gases – some of them, evidently, are trying to poison our asses, to borrow a line from Flight of the Conchords).
not a typo nor a brain fart – Vietnam is exactly what I mean. Totally different war, of course, but the reasoning in both the public and the internal planning spheres is very much the same. It’s kind of instructive to look back at how that war was sold to us – swap a few nouns around and you’ve got the Iraq narrative, post 2003. Interestingly enough, opportunity presented itself this past week in the shape of various remembrances of Robert Kennedy on the 40th anniversary of his assassination. Amy Goodman played a tape of a talk RFK gave at St. Lawrence University in 1966 (I believe my cousin was at that event, as it happens) in which the senator responded to a question about Vietnam with a somewhat lengthy defense of LBJ’s escalation policy, in progress at the time. His justification, in essence, was the contention that the Vietcong (NLF), Hanoi, and China were hoping that the U.S. was going to “turn and run from Vietnam” and that to pull out would be “disastrous”.
RFK said a lot of things that year, some of it more principled, and you had the feeling that there was some movement in him along the lines of what the entire country was going through. Really, today, we have less of an excuse than folks did in those days – we have the experience of Vietnam to draw on, whereas this was new territory politically in the 1960s. And I suppose, for sentimental reasons, I always assumed that he would have ended that war sooner if elected, though I have very little concrete to go on in that regard. Same thing with Obama. His statements on Iraq carry a certain amount of equivocation, and it’s hard to say with any certainty that he will bring the Iraq hell-disaster to a close. One thing we can be sure of – the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) being foisted on Iraq as we speak reflects the actual planning goals of this war more accurately than any public statements from our fearless leaders. That document will set us up for the long term military presence the war’s authors sought from the very beginning – a goal that’s very unpopular in the U.S. and in Iraq… which is why they’re not talking about it much.
Lesson one: if you find yourself staked out in an abandoned hammer mill with your bandmates, never… never let your resident mad scientist work unattended. Negative consequences will be had.
Sure, this sort of thing is bound to happen with a creative mind, right? Our Mitch is always throwing something together. Marvin (my personal robot assistant), after all, is one of his greatest inventions (and, not coincidentally, one of the greatest pains in my ass). Trouble is, unlike other idle hobbies and casual interests, what Mitch creates tends to have a mind of its own. That’s why I became a bit concerned when he chipped his Frankenstone sculpture free of its moorings. My colleagues tried to reassure me. “Relax, Joe,” they would say, “Mitch obviously prefers freestanding three-dimensional art.” This surprised me. (Not because of what they were telling me, but because they had not addressed me with my usual nickname “fucker.”) So I tried to put my concerns out of mind.
kicking up a fuss because someone had walked off with it yet again. (Sometimes I think there’s a bit of the pirate in that old man.) But the footfalls were heavier than that. Sounded like they were breaking through the floorboards. Shortly thereafter, I saw a sinister shadow in the hall. Totally unrelated to the stomping, as it happens. (Just a bit of water damage on the drywall – nothing to get worked up about.) Nonetheless, those steps were strange, unnerving. And when I rose the next morning, the Frankenstone statue was gone. That’s right – GONE! Just a faint trail of stone dust leading out into the hall.
sight of my mom pulling the Kennedy bumper sticker off my bedroom door, her grave expression rendering the news superfluous. A sliver of the sticker remained on that door for some time. Nasty days indeed.
We need to fix this – this tendency we have to sit on our hands while outrageous crimes are committed in our names. We need to stand up when we’re being ripped off by the pirates and speculators whose representatives currently occupy the White House and halls of Congress. Failure to do so only encourages them to continue doing the same thing. Even now they’re talking about Iran almost constantly; even now they’re blackmailing the Iraqi government into allowing permanent U.S. bases in that country. They feel confident in doing all this (and more) because, aside from a little harmless unpopularity, their crimes have cost them nothing.
Look at that. Chip off the old block, eh, Mitch? You should be proud, very proud. You are? Good, good. (Arrogant sonofabitch…)
into the fields where they belong. That’s right, friends – the potato head family is gone, gone, gone. And it was Mitch who came up with the solution. Foolishly simple, really. He just phoned up our mutual friend Trevor James Constable and asked him to focus the full strength of his patented orgone generating machine towards the Hammer Mill. Let me tell you, that got a rise out of those little suckers. They started rolling out the door the minute Trevor James flipped the switch. Of course, there were some side effects. My fillings, for instance, began emitting easy listening music. Also, the fireplace implements took on an unearthly glow. But it was well worth the trouble.
place.) The only real downside here is that Mitch is insufferably pleased with himself for having solved this thing so quickly, so elegantly, so…. so enough, already! Even I’m singing his praises. The fact is, he doesn’t react very well to success. Now he thinks he can do anything. He’s inserted himself into my mixing and mastering sessions (which at least gives me someone else to blame for the positively geological pace of this project). He’s taken up cooking (using the same tools he uses to work with micro-organisms… uuuhhhlllll….). And, even worse, Mitch now thinks he can sculpt figures out of living rock. He chipped a crude Frankenstein’s monster out of the side of a cliff – looks ridiculous. Today I saw him looking discerningly at one of the mill’s courtyard wall – the one that makes up the north side of my room!
occasion prompted appearances on evening news shows of all manner of expert, so long as they share the view that Iran should never, ever be allowed to possess nuclear technology. One “expert” opined that such an eventuality would set off an arms race in the Middle East, prompting Saudi Arabia to get the bomb and so on. Not sure how closely he’s been paying attention to his area of expertise, but that train left the station decades ago. Israel has a substantial arsenal of nuclear weapons which, though undeclared, has inspired nuclear development programs in Iraq, perhaps Syria, and yes, Iran, if not elsewhere. That is the elephant in the room – the massive destructive power in the hands of a state that has recently and repeatedly attacked its neighbors, and that regularly threatens Iran with air strikes.
applies. Iran’s leaders have the rudimentary intelligence it takes to see which countries get attacked by the sole remaining superpower and which ones get negotiated with. They don’t even need to look beyond the very exclusive club Dubya Bush himself established – the Axis of Evil – for their answer. Nuclear armed Korea, with batteries of conventional artillery massed in preparation for a retaliatory strike on Seoul, was able to cut a deal – no invasion was seriously contemplated. Non-nuclear Iraq, on the other hand, which had abandoned its early-stage atomic weapons program in the early 90s, was attacked, invaded, destroyed, occupied, and buried in corpses. What Bush claimed would be a beacon of freedom in the Middle East is, in fact, a national catastrophe no one will ever wish to emulate. So what lesson should the Iranians – third of three in the Axis – take away from this? Get the bomb… and fast.
Want to see me make a donut disappear. Ala-kazam! (*Gulp*) Ta-daaaa! Okay, now… watch me do a half-moon. Presto-change-o! (*Gulp*) Where’d it go? Where’d it go? Next…
With me so far? Okay, then. So I sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) over to the local public library in search of some standard volumes on magical spells and incantations. He was gone several thirsty hours, only to return with some lame-ass tome they must have ordered through the mail in 1973 from a publisher’s over-stock house somewhere in New Jersey. (This I know from nothing.) I mean, it was full of pointy hats and al-a-kazams and hey-prestos… the kind of stuff that would embarrass a sit-com pre-teenager. Just plain sad. We were thinking the real dark arts stuff… you know. Beads and flammable powders, all that. Still, I was getting too thirsty to think clearly, so I actually started messing around with some of the spells in the book. I borrowed a few strands of spaghetti to use as a wand, a rolled-up newspaper for a sorcerer’s hat, and went to work. What happened next was shocking, just shocking….
collective attention of all of tubey’s relatives. Picture a thousand potatoes in a room, and all eyes on you. Kind of unnerving, actually… but they were being mildly entertained. And that meant less water being drawn off of our somewhat piffling little water table. Within an hour or so, the taps were working again and we could even switch on the humidifier in tubey’s terrarium. (His skin gets scaly during the summer months – that’s why I keep a peeler handy.) Talk about the law of unintended consequences! (Did that ever make it out of committee?) This situation was so twisted, it came out straight.
lives across the street, my sisters the next street over… in fact, none of my immediate relatives live more than 15 or 20 miles away, and they all work within spitting distance of where I live. Both of my wife’s and my vehicles, while ancient, are four-cylinder sedans, only one of which we drive with any regularity. If we clock 5,000 miles in a year’s time, that’s a lot for us, so I’m filling the tank of my ’93 Accord probably once every two weeks. A year ago, that cost around $30; now it’s $40 or so – manageable, thus far. But these precipitous price increases on gasoline are killing most people I know (and most of those I don’t know), and there appears no end in sight. It would be bad enough if it just hit you at the gas pump, but it affects everything else as well. The food you buy, the employer you work for, the community you live in – every aspect of our lives, it seems, is built on the assumption of cheap and plentiful fuel. Take that away, and our economy starts to scream.
improving fuel efficiency standards back in the late eighties and through the nineties, with horror stories about how U.S. auto manufacturers would lay off thousands of workers, etc. (an important talking point in Dan Quayle’s bizarro performance during the 1992 Vice Presidential debate). Of course, the auto manufacturers shed enormous numbers of workers anyway in the years that followed, even with fuel standards that allowed massive V-8 engines and SUV’s that look like passenger trains. Most states – including my own state, under Gov. George Pataki – allowed the speed limit to move up to 65, causing greater fuel consumption (55 mph was determined decades ago to be an optimum speed for fuel efficiency). And who can forget the current administration deploying Ari Fleischer and others to defend gas-guzzling as central to the American way of life? This is a failure of leadership, to be sure… but it is also enabled by the goofy choices we make.
Okay, boys – let’s dig a bit deeper. Matt, it’s your turn with the post-holer. Marvin (my personal robot assistant), you’ve got the pick axe this time. I’ll occupy myself with this dime novel. (KLANG!) Oowwww!!!
you about before. Our entertainment was not up to their high standards, apparently – not enough musicality, I’m told – so they began taking on more and more precious water. Pretty soon our well was dry, and in light of the fact that we have been cut off from municipal water supplies ever since we started squatting here (I think it’s some kind of sanction, but would have to consult with a lawyer to be certain), this was becoming a problem. I mean, no showers. No coffee, tea, etc. No water for the garden. Getting a little sticky around here, I can tell you. So, faced with the unattractive alternative of either paying our water bill or learning to drink air, we grabbed mining implements and started heading south…. way south… assuming you think of skyward as “north” (as I do).
table around here is made of freaking granite. (Three or four water-chairs and we’ve got ourselves a dining room set.) Like on every occasion when we need scientific advice of some kind, we consulted Mitch Macaphee on the matter, but he was of little value. You see, his solutions always tend towards the mad-scientist bag of tricks. You know – blow a hole in it with a high-powered neutron laser, or harness the power of Rigelian lava ants… that sort of thing. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but what the hell… these things take time, and I’m freaking thirsty, man!