I began writing this on the anniversary of that fateful day seven years ago when all hell broke loose and that psycho Bin Laden put a loaded bazooka into the sweaty hands of a dry-drunk frat-boy named George W. Bush. God knows, the ruins of the twin towers hadn’t even stopped smoking before Dubya started blowing holes in everything pretty much at random. The war he started in Afghanistan – the “good war” as many see it – is nearing the end of its seventh year, still sowing death and destruction week after week, with no end in sight. This success story has become a dire failure, even in the eyes of military commanders, and our primary objective appears to have become one of staying there permanently. Not very different from our goal in Iraq, in essence. We allied ourselves with some of the most retrograde elements in Afghanistan, many of whom worked alongside the Taliban before our invasion (and in tandem with our own intelligence services two decades ago). These are the power brokers in that country – blood-soaked creatures like Dostum. Little wonder large areas of the country are beyond the control of the national government.

So, if Afghanistan is now a base for a resurgent Al Qaeda even with tens of thousands of U.S. troops there, how is it any less of a threat than it was before the invasion seven years ago? I’ve heard no satisfactory answer to that question, and yet there appears to be a strong bipartisan consensus to keep the meat-grinder running, even though increasing civilian casualties are bringing the predictable result of turning the nation (not to mention neighboring Pakistan) passionately against the occupation. This is what we’re sending young, battle-weary soldiers into, placing this imperial project on their necks and making them hostages to some ephemeral “victory” as a reward for helping to pacify Iraq. Only Afghanistan is not Iraq, where one confessional community can relatively easily be played off another and where a murderous civil conflict (sparked by our invasion and ham-fisted occupation) drove large components of the Sunni insurgency into an alliance of convenience with the U.S. in order to counter ascendant Shiite power and avoid a total rout.

In light of the fact that we are now embroiled in two endless wars, it is almost shocking to think that we may be on the brink of sending back to the White House the same cabal of neo-conservative fanatics that carried Ahmed Chalabi on their shoulders and drove us into the ditch that is the Iraq war. McCain’s campaign manager Charlie Black was a big Chalabi booster; the candidate’s chief foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann as well. Scheunemann is a bona-fide neo-con, member of the Iraq Liberation Council and, as noted previously, a paid lobbyist for the government of Georgia up until earlier this year… though he is still apparently representing their president in his new role of shadow national security advisor. I have to say, Georgian President Saak’ashvili certainly got his money’s worth this week, with the advent of a major party candidate for the vice presidency of the United States going on record as saying we may go to war with Russia over Georgia. Why this Alaskan creature is not considered a dangerous lunatic is a matter for Americans to sort out (and quickly), but she’s probably a big hit in Tbilisi right now.

Now George W. is frantically rooting around Waziristan, hoping to pull a turbaned rabbit out of a hat for John McCain before election day. Thus may we be granted yet another seven years bad luck… if we’re not very vigilant indeed.

luv u,

jp

As I write these words, Senator John McCain, F.O.B. (Friend of Bush) is delivering his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. (I think I hear him yelling “Fight with me!” – watch out!) I have to say, just having had a good look at his audience, that is one of the whitest gatherings of people I have ever seen, and I grew up in the suburbs. After listening to bits and pieces of what has been said over the past few days, I’m getting a pretty good feel for what will be the overriding themes of the G.O.P. general election campaign. A bit different from 2004, it seems. That year, “service” was largely vicarious – i.e. honoring our people in uniform in the abstract (from 5,000 miles away) while denigrating the service record of the opposing party’s nominee quite shamelessly (recall the band-aids with purple hearts printed on them being sported by the smirking manatees on the convention floor, almost none of whom had ever heard a shot fired in anger).

This year it’s different – the veteran is on the G.O.P. ticket, and there’ll be no diminishing his war record. In fact, there will be very little scrutiny of McCain’s general attitude towards war as it relates to his worldview and his vision for American power in the coming decade. Judging by his past statements, McCain feels bitterness over the U.S. defeat in Vietnam. He has expressed the opinion that the failure of U.S. policy resulted from lack of resolve on the part of our political leaders, particularly L.B.J. (McCain is a little less hard on Nixon, whom he credits for bombing North Vietnam more relentlessly.) If this sounds at all familiar, it should: this has been the dominant conservative assessment of America’s failure in Vietnam since the end of that war. McCain and other high profile P.O.W.’s have been at the core of that revisionist project from the very beginning, ever since the Nixon administration first demagogued on the P.O.W./M.I.A. issue during the war.

To say the least, this should probably be a point of some concern to voters. We’re talking about a guy who believes in his heart that, if we had just bombed a little harder, we could have won the Vietnam war. Based on his perspective as a prisoner in Hanoi, McCain feels that Nixon’s bombing drove North Vietnam to the bargaining table. And yet it is demonstrably true that the Paris Peace Accord signed in early 1973 was in essence the same as the agreement that could have been had in October 1972, prior to the massive U.S. terror bombing of Hanoi/Haiphong around Christmas of that year. Moreover, the accord reflected terms at least as favorable to Hanoi if not more so than those that had been put forward for many years prior to that – certainly more favorable than what the “Vietcong” (NLF) had offered in the early 1960s. All of the death, destruction, massive bombing, appalling chemical defoliation (that still kills today, incidentally)… all of that was for nothing. So… we should have bombed more? We dropped many times more bombs on Indochina than in all theatres of World War II combined, with most ordinance falling on South Vietnam, our supposed ally. Sorry, but the suggestion is simply bizarre and obscene.

This is the “maverick” we want making decisions that affect millions of lives? I think not… even if he brings a caribou-hunting evangelist back to Washington with him.

Yeah, I watched it… at least parts of it. Who can resist partaking of at least a slice or two of such rich political theatre? The DNC nominating convention in Denver had some odd moments, to be sure, at least from the television viewer’s perspective. I’m still trying to work our, for instance, why they were playing the ’70s disco number “Rollercoaster of Love” when Dennis Kucinich was walking up to the podium. (Coincidence? I think not!) Dennis gave a volcanic speech that certainly touched on most of the issues I hold dear, and for that I love him. Jimmy Carter got a video but no speech – his reward for being the only sane mainstream voice on Israel/Palestine. Bill Clinton delivered a senior statesman-like address, making many wonder (myself included) where that particular B.C. was during the primary season. (For a while there, he was replaced by a look-alike good ol’ boy. Gratefully, that fucker got put back in the box.)

Obama gave a very Obama-like acceptance speech, a performance of the caliber Democrats have been wishing for from their nominees since Moses was a pup. I mean, this guy tosses inspiring speeches out like it’s nothing – so much so that people, including many in his own party, complain about how good he is. (His wife’s good, too. What are the chances of that?) The complaints are mostly that he’s short on substance, but he’s hawking mostly the same policy positions that Democrats have been promoting for years, under much lamer nominees. Honestly, what have they got to be unhappy about? For me, there are plenty of policy differences that will keep me from being ecstatic, but never to the point where I’d be willing to even contemplate another four years of the G.O.P. in the White House. So guess what? I’m voting for the fucker, and I suggest you do the same. Not suggesting that’s all we need to do, not by a long shot, but that, certainly.

Now, if Obama really wants things to change in this country, there is something he could do about it. If he really thinks this election is, as he says, about all of us and not just him, he could look us in the eyes and say that he needs our vote, but not just that. He could say that he needs us to be there with him when he goes back to Washington. He could tell us that when he pushes for, say, national health care, he needs us to push for it, too…. because if we don’t, it’s never going to happen. Same with ending the occupation of Iraq. Same with closing Gitmo. Same with everything. Yeah, I know how unlikely this is. Politicians don’t like it so much when people get engaged – they don’t tend to encourage movements they can’t control. But those are the only ones that bring about meaningful change.

Sure, we can have empty change, like an anti-choice, mooseburger-eating “hockey mom” as Vice President. But what we really need is action on the same scale as the titanic problems we face.

luv u,

jp

I guess by now everybody knows about how many houses John McCain owns, even if he seems to be a little unclear on the subject. And it’s likely that even I know by now who Obama’s running mate will be (my guess: Pat Paulson). Call me morbid, but my mind is more focused on what appears to be a strong indication of how a President McCain might be expected to rule the American empire. His stance and rhetoric on the Georgian conflict have been jaw-droppingly bellicose – torn as they may be from the playbook of paid Georgian lobbyist (and former Rumsfeld advisor… and former Chalabi promoter) Randy Scheunemann, one of McCain’s chief advisors, they represent a side of the candidate that has been chillingly consistent for as long as he’s been in public office: a knee-jerk preference for military force. As much as he’s milked his own wartime experience and mouthed platitudes about the horrors of war, McCain has been fully on-board with virtually every invasion, attack, bombing run, etc., we’ve undertaken since his return home from Hanoi. He apparently has never met a war he didn’t like.

Now the admiral appears to be drawing a line in the Caucasus, calling this the first serious crisis of the post cold war era. I’m not sure what creeps me out more – the notion that he actually believes that to be true, or the fact that no one seems to recognize that it’s crazy talk. Actually, I think the second part is scarier. We’ve really reached kind of a sad day in America when, in the wake of five years of pointless bloody war in Iraq, we don’t recoil violently from the kind of blather that’s emanating from McCain and his neocon colleagues. Remember that McCain has taken a position distinctly to the right of the Bush administration on this. In light of the fact that we’ve been stoking up Georgia’s military for years, under both Bush and Clinton, and that both Bush and McCain have been pushing to make Georgia part of NATO, it’s a little disconcerting to know that this man who would be president is willing to turn this dispute into a full-blown confrontation between ourselves and Russia, still possessed of thousands of ICBMs (real ones, not the imaginary kind Bush officials keep referring to in places like Iran).

So anyway… let’s see a show of hands. Who wants to die or send their child to die over a dispute between Russia and Georgia about a region that most Americans can’t even pronounce let alone find on a globe? Anyone? Honestly, I have to think the numbers are pretty low. And yet… why do I keep hearing that McCain is more trusted on national security and foreign policy than is his opponent? The man has neocon-fueled Napoleonic delusions about putting Russia in its place. He clings to a war that never should have been fought, and seems more than eager to start yet another. He referred to Iraq as “phase II” of the War on Terror back in 2001, working with the administration to link that country to the anthrax attacks on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. He has been dangerously wrong on pretty much every major foreign policy issue of the last decade. This man is more qualified?

Note to the Obama campaign: take a page out of LBJ’s book. He rightfully painted Goldwater as a dangerous extremist. McCain has done half of that job for you…. take it from there, folks.

luv u,

jp

“This isn’t 1968.”

That was Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice just before embarking on her diplomatic mission to Georgia (the Republic of), to carry a cease fire agreement and presumably get a first-hand look at the smoldering ruins of yet another brilliant foreign policy initiative, this time played out in the region of her supposed expertise. If she was at all aware of the irony in her statement, she certainly gave no hint of it. She was, of course, referring to the USSR’s invasion of Czechoslovakia (a country still very much in John McCain’s world atlas) as a means of calling out Russia on its brutal violation of a neighboring nation’s sovereignty. In her eagerness to link present-day Russia with the Soviet invasion of four decades ago, she appears to have forgotten somewhat more recent history… like her own administration’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and subsequent occupation of both countries; like the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the displacement of millions as a result of said invasion. If her point is, as she put it, that it is no longer acceptable for nations to behave in this way, this new order must be a very recent development. News of it has yet to reach Washington.

Because she is not technically “stupid,” I assume what she’s saying is that nowadays only the United States can act as though we own the world and can invade any country we want without provocation. This comports with the “what we say goes” principle articulated by her husb… I mean, her boss’s father some 17 years ago or so. Of course, there are many ways in which this is quite a bit like 1968. If you cast your mind back to that awful year, you might ask yourself if the Soviets were the only ones rampaging through a sovereign country. The answer would be, well, not as such. Our military was in the fourth year of a far more brutal invasion of Vietnam, reducing that nation and its immediate neighbors to “a land of ruin and wreck”, as Arthur Schlesinger put it, with an expeditionary force of more than half a million and the most devastating campaign of sustained aerial bombing in history. We now appear to be just as stuck in Iraq as we were in Southeast Asia in 1968, for reasons every bit as illegitimate.

It’s not surprising to hear our leaders speaking arrogantly or ignorantly – or with a presumption of ignorance on our parts. Nor is it surprising to hear a hallelujah chorus of pundits, journalists, and pols deploring this notion of invading another country while never once referring to the Iraq exemption. (Aggravating, but not surprising.) What did sort of astound me over the past few days was the impossibly ham-fisted timing of our pact with the Polish government to base “missile defense” (a.k.a. “defense contractor defense”) within their national territory, something the Russians (and many Poles) deplore. I truly believe the administration hopes for war to break out – that seems to work for them. No one could be that incompetent. (Or… could they… ?) I think back to Israel’s attack on Lebanon two years ago, when Condi Rice and company were actually blocking a cease fire. The bombing and abortive invasion were the “birth pangs” of a new Middle East, we were told then. Perhaps Russia will argue with similar conviction that their overreaction in Georgia amounts to the birth pangs of a new Southeastern Europe.

Hey – Russia was invaded twice in the last century, and they’re still a little sensitive to adversarial military alliances on their borders. Maybe we should be trying to ratchet this down a little… before somebody else gets hurt, eh?

luv u,

jp

Looking for something to take your mind off the media marathon they call the Olympic Games? I know I am. Never been big on sports, frankly – I just can’t get interested enough, particularly in the win/lose part of it all. Anyway, if you’re like me and constitutionally disinclined to sit in front of the television hour after hour watching athletes run, hop, swim, or do something with a ball, join me in thinking about a few other things this weekend and beyond. Stuff like:

The Cheney War Plan – Sy Hersh said last week that one of his sources related a story to him about some high-level planning meeting regarding how to get up a war with Iran. According to this source, Cheney was fond of a scheme to assemble a small fleet of bogus Iranian PT boats, man them with disguised Navy Seals, and have them fire on U.S. vessels in the Straits of Hormuz, thereby provoking a kind of Gulf of Tonkin incident (except even more contrived than the original). This brought two things to mind. First was the administration’s empty rhetoric about “supporting the troops.” Second, that close encounter some months back between Iranian PT’s and a Navy ship, wherein a mysterious radio voice (not from the Iranians) called in a cartoon-like threat, apparently with the intent of provoking a confrontation.

Cheney’s fratricidal plan was shot down, according to Hersh’s source. Was the mystery taunt Plan B?

Candid Camera. Video cameras are playing an increasingly important role in activism and the protection of human rights around the world. I’m thinking not only of the footage of a NYC police officer “checking” a rider in the critical mass ride last week, but of the very productive deployment of cameras by B’Tselem in the form of the “Shooting Back” project in the occupied territories. Not only do these efforts document abuses beyond the power of official denial, but the mere presence of cameras (and outside observers) can serve to shield the vulnerable from harm. In a place like the West Bank, the more Web videos the better. Same goes for Iraq. Great work, B’Tselem!

Shocked, Shocked. The Bush administration tried to coax an exiled Iraqi security chief into claiming Saddam helped train the 9/11 hijackers? They also tried, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that Iraq was behind the anthrax attacks of late 2001? The sun rose yesterday? All part of a pattern.

That’s what’s on my mind, folks. And yours?

luv u,

jp

In case the power’s been off in your neighborhood this week, I should mention that the first American war crimes tribunal since the end of World War II has been in session. Who’s the first accused war criminal to take the stand, the Herman Goering of the global war on terror? Well, it’s some dude who drove Bin Laden’s car. Or so they say. Actually, the evidence about that is a little thin, and some of that is testimony extracted under torture (or “enhanced interrogation techniques” as the dark comedians of the Bush administration term it). Another problem: a lot of the folks at Gitmo (Hamdan included) were handed over by surrogates in exchange for a bounty, so you tend to get a high error rate on your collars (e.g. a lot of people who owed a neighbor money or just got on the wrong side of somebody). Happily, the tribunal doesn’t rely on the same standard of evidence as one might expect in, say, a mainland American court of law. I suspect many of these cases, like that of Hamdan the “driver”, would simply fall apart in domestic courtrooms. Not on Fantasy Island, however.

Okay, so you’ve got one of Bin Laden’s alleged schleppers. He’s standing trial in a military courtroom. He is a Yemeni man accused of working with el primo terroristo, and the jury is made up of uniformed American military officers. (Wonder how that is going to come out?) And if that isn’t sure-fire enough for you, the jury need only render a majority vote to convict. Now, these proceedings have a history of questionable policies and practices, including credible accusations (some by senior military officers) against the commanders in charge of stacking the legal deck against the defendants (like insisting there be no acquittals). Still not comfortable with the potential outcome? How about the fact that, if acquitted, the defendant will stay at Gitmo until the end of the global war on terror (i.e. forever)? Same deal if he is convicted and sentenced to time served. (These Bush critters sure are risk-averse, aren’t they?)

With this monstrous individual on trial and Radovan Karadzic at the Hague, we should be feeling pretty safe, right? Well…. there are a few bad characters still on the loose, my friends. In fact, there’s one group of people currently at large that are responsible for what’s probably the most serious war crime of recent years. These criminal leaders:

• invaded a sovereign nation that posed no threat to their country;

• brought about the deaths of as many as one million civilians, both directly and as a result of their actions;

• allowed the total dissolution of order, massive looting, destruction of public property, and collapse of public services while acting as an occupying power;

• created a situation that produced 4 million refugees, more than 2 million of whom have fled the country;

• violated their own laws of land warfare as well as international law by fundamentally altering the economy of the invaded nation;

…and actually quite a bit more than that. Pretty heinous, eh? Makes Karadzic look like a piker, frankly. And yet they hide in plain sight… even dancing on national television, with no worries about being carted away.

Schleppers beware: this war is on you.

luv u,

jp

Pretty bizarre to hear McCain complaining about the media and how they treat him. It’s kind of like grousing about your family or your best friend. For chrissake, they freaking love the guy. Why else would he be running nearly even with Obama in the polls? His campaign is amazingly flat-footed and visionless, he gets details (Czechoslovakia, for instance) wrong repeatedly, he has yet to demonstrate any awareness of our economic crisis, and he thinks Iraq shares a border with Pakistan. Speaking of Iraq, he has been as phenomenally wrong and boneheaded as the administration he has so frequently embraced. His pronouncements about the “success” of the “surge” reek of desperation, like an arsonist telling the judge he helped put out the fire he started after the building had already burned to the ground. The mainstream press challenges almost none of his positions, blithely passing along the campaign fiction that he is an expert on foreign and security policy. They hold him responsible for neither his words nor his work as a senator. And yet he complains – go figure.

Part of what the press is doing here reflects their usual subservience to power (something that puts them in the same boat as McCain). Those who hold economic and political sway over national affairs would prefer to see McCain elected, and so the press rides along. (If the Earth were taken over by space aliens, I’m sure the press would serve them, too.) but another component of their somewhat forgiving attitude towards McCain is a reflection of the general lack of an effective opposition party in the United States – one made up of working people and the poor, consistently representing their interests in opposition to corporate power and an expansive (and expensive) American empire. The liberal-left in this country has given ground on issue after issue, conceding where no surrender was necessary. They’ve allowed the right to canonize Ronald Reagan and, by extension, his disastrous policies. They let reactionaries re-write the history of the 1960s and 70s into something utterly unrecognizable to anyone who was alive then. Small wonder the press plays along with the G.O.P. – the Democrats do, too.

One other thing. We live in a time when military service has become such a rare and exotic experience that politicians and the press are positively in awe of it, rhetorically speaking. When I was a pre-teenager, I was surrounded by people who had either been in the armed forces or were about three inches away from being conscripted. Today, very few middle class folks could say the same thing. As that experience recedes into history, McCain’s campaign can get away with ads like the “Summer of Love” TVC that appears to portray 1967 America as a nation divided between a) hippies who chose to stay home and party, and b) patriots who chose to fight for freedom in Vietnam (!). Spoiler alert: Those freaky kids they show – the young men, anyway – were mostly all on the draft rolls and probably self-medicating as a result of the terror of that circumstance. Not only was that situation frightening and dangerous, but those who were inclined to resist had almost no support. Today it’s not hard to imagine saying no to a draft (if any such thing existed). Back then, it was pretty much unprecedented. That’s part of what made those years so gut-wrenching.

Here’s my point. If the press doesn’t at least try to remind Americans of their own history, what the hell use are they?

luv u,

jp

A few weeks ago, we saw the Democrats cave on the revised FISA law, voting with the administration and congressional republicans on a bill that would grant the co-conspiratorial telecom giants retroactive immunity from civil lawsuits while underwriting Bush’s claim that the president can break pretty much any law any time he wants to (as well as spy on any of us who happen to communicate with people beyond our national borders – see Sen. Feingold’s appearance on Democracy Now! ). Now we can watch in disgust as the party of Jefferson caves on the question of opening vast wilderness areas and the continental shelf to drilling by the obscenely overfed oil companies. Clearly Harry Reid and company have one beady eye on opinion polls that suggest a majority of Americans favor this giveaway in the misguided belief that it will bring down the price of gas. When I say “misguided”, I mean actively so not only by a shameless political leadership but by an industry with more money than any industry has ever possessed in the history of this planet – money that buys a lot of misleading and utterly nauseating marketing about drilling “more respectfully” and tapping “the power of human energy.”

When I started seeing the airwaves saturated with this bullshit, I thought it was mostly defensive on their part. They were making ridiculous amounts of money off of us, fueling climate change, while we were losing our shirts… so the image needed a little burnishing, let’s say. Now I’m convinced this is more an offensive strategy. (Naomi Klein has talked about this a bit lately.) This lease deal is an enormous wealth opportunity for them, and they surely saw it coming. Continental shelf oil is well worth drilling for when oil is at $140 a barrel, so why not get the politicians to open up all those federal lands? They can build support by spreading the lie that drilling will reduce the price of oil. And the oil companies can buy all the influence they need, filling campaign coffers and hiring the best lobbyists in town, so enlisting our politicians’ cooperation (Republican and Democratic) shouldn’t be a problem.

Apologists for congressional Democrats who are leaning toward supporting increased drilling argue that they are responding to public opinion. But any public sentiment in favor of this policy is the product of some pretty serious demagoguery. Seriously… how hard would it be to articulate a convincing argument against drilling off the coast of Florida or in ANWR? For one thing, it will only benefit firms like Halliburton, which is already making a fortune off of electrocuting our soldiers in Iraq with their shoddy workmanship. And as Klein points out, this type of capital intensive oil production is already taking place on a massive scale in western Canada, which has become the biggest supplier of petroleum to the U.S. and one bound by NAFTA to provide us with oil even if it means sacrificing their own energy security. And yet, this massive supply of oil from a highly reliable neighbor has not exactly brought the price down, has it? Why should we think developing much smaller reserves off shore and in Alaska would make the slightest difference (especially when industry experts say it won’t)?

Fact is, the oil companies want the price high. That is, in fact, what makes these domestic leases particularly valuable – they’re not worth shit if oil drops below $80 a barrel. So… why aren’t Harry Reid and company saying that every day and twice on Sunday?

luv u,

jp

Okay, what have you got? Mildred… Fitch. Mildred Fitch, 1429 Mulberry Lane, Aurolias, NJ. Got it. Who’s next? Get… Get… Stuffed. Get Stuffed. And where does “Get” live? Up… my… HEY!!

Oh, hi. Okay, good enough, how are you? Great, great. What are we doing? Funny you should ask. We’re working on our mailing list. In fact, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and I were just compiling names when you logged on. Frankly, it could use a little work. We haven’t released a full-length album in almost nine years – that’s NINE YEARS to those of you who are hard of hearing – and our list has kind of gone to seed in the interim. Truth be told, we sent out a little teaser message to the folks on our 2000 Years To Christmas list, and it bounced back so hard the sucker hit me square in the face. (I think it loosened a tooth or two, actually.) It’s been a rough nine years on our constituency, friends, and a lot of them have moved on to bigger, greener pastures. C’est domage.

Okay, well… that experience was a little unnerving. So we took it up with our label, Loathsome Prick, and they put us in touch with their Marketing V.P., Gertrude Al-Kabar, who suggested (no… fairly demanded) that we build a new list. “What the hell,” I said, “most of our most loyal fans are beyond the orbit of Saturn. The post office doesn’t ordinarily deliver to rural routes in that zone.” She was, however, insistent on this point, and we decided to at least appear as if we were doing something about it. Matt took the opportunity to sit down with the two Lincolns and ask about their presidential campaign experiences, direct mail appeals, that sort of thing. (Not a lot of help there – in point of fact, they got into a fist fight. Something to do with Steven Douglas.) John and I spoke with Mitch Macaphee, but he has nothing but contempt for the social sciences and would never associate himself with something so crude as a direct mail campaign. (Now handbills he might agree to, but not direct mail.)

You get the drift. Once again, we are left to our own devices. So with nearly two names on our mailing list (call it one), one of which resides at our own address (man-sized tuber), we set ourselves to aggressively expanding our database… by swiping names from the phone book. Foolishly simple, isn’t it? Don’t know why I never thought of it before. All we do is send junk mail to people at random. In fact, that’s such a wildly adventurous idea, we should try to sell it to other bands. Hey, Coldplay! Hey, Captured By Robots! Here’s a great way to get heard by strangers! Send them shit in the mail! (Shouting across the internet? Another new communications strategy! Get Gertrude on the phone!)

Okay, so we’re pulling names at random from the phone book. And Marvin is getting kind of surly after an hour or so. Fatigue? I don’t think so. He’s a little sore about his credits on the new album. Marvin claims to have mixed no less than four of the sixteen songs on International House. I’m sure that’s an exaggeration, but… frankly I don’t remember who mixed what at this point. And what’s the name of the band again? Can’t say. Can’t … say….

Man, it has been a long time since the last one. We need more names, damnit!