There once was a planet named Borax, a land of all head and no thorax…. That’s all I’ve got so far. What do you think, stuffed chef? Is it lacking a certain, well, goodness? How about you, plastic ficus tree?
Man oh Manischewitz, I have never seen a place as uptight as this hideous little orb! A big cowboy howdee of thanks to honest Abe Lincoln for booking us into this hell hole. Not for nothing, as they say in the vernacular, but from the moment we crash-landed into their luxurious nightclub, the people who hired us have been… well… more than a little hostile, if you want to know the truth. As I mentioned in my previous entry, we were held at scrootch-gun point as we descended from the wreckage of our space vehicle. A fine how do you do! We were then marched off to a reception area that look suspiciously like the local drunk tank. Ever spent a night in an 11 by 14 foot cell with several disgruntled band members and a drunken Boraxian? Well… just don’t.
The next morning, we were brought before the local magistrate and ordered to explain ourselves. Unfortunately for us, the Boraxians look uncannily like our companion, the man-sized tuber, (except that they have two antenae on their heads with a little purple spark that shoots between them). This meant, of course, that they insisted on addressing all of their comments to tubey, who (as you know) is not fully checked out on the lingua franca of the galaxy. Even sFshzenKlyrn couldn’t get a 
decent hearing in that courtroom (and he’s such a cosmopolitan fellow of infinite jest and undeniable charm… cretins!). So there we were, standing like statues as the Boraxians babbled incoherently at our mute vegetable companion. This was not going well.
As luck would have it, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) as able to act as the man-sized tuber’s “translator,” so we could feed Marvin lines and attempt to steer the proceedings to our favor. How did it turn out? Man, I’ll tell you – magistrates get very touchy during war time. We were stuck not only with damages on the luxury night club, but also a stint of community service… which in this war-torn world meant mostly digging trenches and removing unexploded ordinance dropped the night before. Hey, what can I tell you? They treated us like immigrant labor, giving us the jobs they least wanted to do. None of those tuber-like Boraxians were lining up to yank 500 pounders out of the ground, believe you me. (When I told Mitch Macaphee about the verdict, he turned green as a Martian.) Worse luck, our performance was cancelled, so we were forced to work off the damages with pick and shovel.
So what the fuck. Do any of you know what the code number 76-OX9-NL stands for on a laser guided missile? I know it means turn the cylinder either one click to the left or three click to the right, but I don’t remember which. Mitch! Come on and take a look at this thing, will you? I’ll just finish this trench. Pharaoh… Let my people gooooooo!!!
Still, this near miss (or as George Carlin might term it, “near hit“) fills me with dread. Maybe it’s just paranoia born of anticipating the inevitable fallout from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon, but I can’t help but wonder – why such an obvious scenario? Why attempt an attack using the very system that is most closely watched by the authorities? Might this be an elaborate diversion, a rouse to distract us from some far more novel operation now in progress? I hope not, but I know this has occurred to others besides myself. It would be reckless to assume that this would never have occurred to groups like al Qaeda, as well. The malign brilliance of the 9/11 plot was that it completely blind-sided our national security establishment and used the failings of our profit-obsessed commercial aviation system and the atrophied regulatory bodies that oversee it as weapons against us, to terrifying effect. Someone – I doubt bin Laden – was bright enough to look closely at our society, discern where the structural weaknesses are, and proceed accordingly. If they’re smart enough to pull that off, it seems to me they’re probably too smart to rely solely on a plot that uses those same resources, which while still vulnerable are much more highly scrutinized by intelligence and law enforcement than they were prior to September 2001.
a few jobs and it makes it look like our politicians are doing something to make us safer, but when you’ve got a top-level leadership that doesn’t think New York City has any important landmarks worth protecting; one that has demonstrated its inability and unwillingness to respond to predictable disasters like Katrina; a national political culture that has done more to breed terrorism in the last five years than Osama might have dreamed possible in 2000, there’s no question but that we have a major problem here.
I’m talking to you, bwah!
series. Only difference is, these fuckers use real bombs, missiles, lasers, and other assorted anti-personnel devices. Anyway, that FAX Lincoln was waiting for was being sent by one of the antagonists in an interplanetary dust-up that’s been going on for the better part of a decade. The planet BORAX 19 and its near neighbor CALGON were exchanging missiles as we arrived, in fact. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was the first to notice when one skimmed by our break lounge window. The second one, well…. that landed in the galley. Not good.
preconditions for a cease fire in Lebanon. As foreign ministers and diplomats haggle at the U.N., people continue to die in the Levant. Israel attacked a hospital in southern Lebanon, capturing what it described as Hezbollah fighters but what a Hezbollah parliamentarian said were civilians, several of whom were in their 50s. The Hezbollah guy challenged Israel to show the people they captured, but quite frankly, the same demand might be made regarding any of the thousands of detainees Israel holds without charge. Now the IDF is pursuing a push up to the Litani, strafing little fishing boats south of Beiruit, while Hezbollah is promising to respond by targeting Tel Aviv.
Even as the middle east is drenched in blood (Iraq, of course , continuing its slide toward the total anarchy Bush terms “freedom”), there was also time enough to crow about Fidel Castro’s health problems, as the key Bush constituency of Cuban exiles celebrated in Miami and major news outlets pondered what Washington’s “options” might be. My hometown newspaper ran an interesting little chart that compared various socio-economic statistics in Cuba and the U.S. – a comparison in which Cuba fared quite well, actually. Pretty remarkable when you consider the difference in available resources and the fact that Cuba has been under embargo for decades. Far more instructive would be a similar comparison between Cuba and, say, Guatemala or Honduras, since that is the model that America’s political culture would like to see Cuba adopt, post-Castro. Troubled as Cuba’s living standard is, it’s not anywhere near as miserable as that of its neighbors, whose economies are totally supine to U.S. economic power. Even so, the press opines how Cuba is a “nation ripe for economic change” and how its “enormous pent-up consumer demand” and 97 percent literacy rate make “Cuba’s workforce… hungry to work and full of potential.”
Oh, Crikey! I had no idea you were standing right behind me (virtually speaking, of course). And here I am right in the middle of blowing a fairly salty spaceman joke. Stand-up is not my long suit. (Actually, I don’t have a long suit. Kept tripping over the excess pant-legs, quite frankly, so I cuffed the bastards.) Actually, that last aside is kind of how this joke is supposed to go, so now I’ve really blown it. No matter. I’d really much rather talk to you than this impromptu crowd of acolytes that has materialized around me. And when I say “materialized,” that is precisely what I mean. Here on the planet Omicron Rigbox, the natives move by molecular dissolution and refabrication, so they’re always appearing and disappearing at unpredictable intervals. Damned unnerving, if you ask me.
Andromedans kept requesting David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes”, and we did a kind of cobbed together version of the song just to shut them up. Before we got to the end of the number, old captain fishbowl had gotten hold of one of the Andromedans and was attempting to choke the fucker to death. (In vain, luckily, since Andromedans have three necks. Though, strangely, only two heads.) Punches were thrown. Mayhem ensued. When bottles started landing on stage, we took our leave. 
Not a quality experience, you’ll readily admit. I, for one, had thought we’d moved beyond this sphere of performance venue long ago. Sadly, posi-Lincoln has proven a bit of a disappointment as a tour promoter/booking agent. (He’s beginning to make the man-sized tuber’s cracker cousin look competent by comparison.) The guy is just too ready to say yes when an offer comes his way. He’s got issues, frankly… and I’ve neither the time nor the inclination to work through them with him. (Trevor James Constable is taking a crack at it as we speak, applying some kind of Reichian device I cannot even begin to understand. It reminds me of that glass booth people climb into at a casino where they try to grab $20 bills that are being blown around them by a fan. Disgusting. 
of firepower both in Lebanon and in Gaza. One would think that this might constitute a breach of the Arms Export Control Act since both civilians and non-military infrastructure are being targeted, but honestly… what law is there in times such as these?
directed against Hezbollah alone. The fact is, the broad nature of this military campaign is itself an implicit recognition of the fact that Hezbollah is a deeply integrated part of Lebanon’s Shi’ia community and its political/social landscape. No amount of U.S.-supplied munitions will make Hezbollah go away. Israel is simply laying the groundwork for a more virulently anti-Israeli sentiment in Lebanon and elsewhere in the region. This, too, resembles U.S. policy in Iraq. Just like the people of these stricken countries, we will be living with the consequences of these wars of choice for decades to come. It is likely that future jihadists will make no distinction between those who execute our military policies and the quiescent millions back home who blandly allow the killing to continue. 
Welcome back to the traveling sideshow that is 
Okay… enough of my tirade. You’ve come to hear happy news, and I shall not disappoint you. For those of you who were wondering (and I’m sure there are at least one or two), I did ultimately relent and allow Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to take the helm of our J2 space RV and guide us to the mysterious planet Kaztropharius 137b where the vast majority of our records are sold. Good thing, too. It turned out that our witless wandering was being remotely guided by nefarious critters from a nearby dead star (the one known as “Dead Star 14”), who were attempting to steer us into a black hole (or what 
be radiological factor involved here, I’m not certain. (Note to self: schedule visit to health clinic upon return home…. assuming they’re still accepting no-pays.) The only one who was unaffected was — of course – 
of U.S. newspapers – a safe distance from the fighting, to be sure – Chuck Krauthammer fulminated about how Israel is fighting for its life… though how a resistance organization of maybe 1,000 full-time fighters with second hand munitions can pose an existential threat to the world’s 4th most powerful military state (one with perhaps 300 nuclear weapons) is a bit of a mystery, frankly. 
non-combatants so far. Not the first time, either. Furthermore, Hezbollah is anything but a foreign occupier of southern Lebanon, much as it may serve the neo-con paradigm to paint them as terror legions under orders from Tehran and Damascus. Hezbollah is an indigenous political organization deeply rooted in Lebanon’s Shi’a community, the nation’s single largest religious group comprising 40 percent of Lebanon’s population. Like Hamas, they are an Islamist group that has both political and military wings, and provides some level of basic services to a population that has been neglected by its own government and battered by the Israelis. It is Israel that is the invader, and it is they who will ultimately be driven out — now or ten years from now. 
So much for twenty questions. (Always hated that game!) Well, here we are in deep, deep shit… I mean, space, trying to feel our way from solar system to solar system without the benefit of anything even resembling a trained spacecraft pilot. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) keeps insisting that he knows how to drive this thing, but quite honestly… I can’t understand a word he’s saying, and unless he makes himself a bit clearer, I simply cannot risk putting all of our lives in his “hands” (actually claws, but you get me). Mitch Macaphee, our chief science advisor, claims to have a master’s license, and he has actually piloted us through this “middle passage” between solar systems before, but…. well…. he’s having a bit of a bender this week. Got his hands on some Neptunian schnapps during our showcase on Uranus and, well… the rest is history (or should I say nausea). Anyway, not a chance of letting him have the tiller. 
on him. The last time we let our Zenite guitarist take the reins, he took us on a scrape ’round the galaxy none of us are likely to forget. (As a pan-dimensional being of no fixed shoe size,
written into our standard contract that magma-based performance surfaces are not acceptable – John White insisted on that, and with good reason!) To top it all off, it turned out that the representative from Loathsome Prick Records was a real… well… loathsome prick. Who woulda thunk it? (You woulda? Hmmmmm….) 
what a great congressman Ray Meier would make is just the kind of free advertising the opposition needs. 
Speaking of the empire, things are really going septic just lately. If some kind of imperial order does exist, there is currently no one at the helm. Israel is pounding the living hell out of Gaza and Lebanon at the same time, while Hizbullah (in Lebanon) is vowing all out war on Israel in retaliation. They are, of course, a Shi’ite organization, and attacks on them will ripple through the majority population of Iraq, as well as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. Probably 100-150 million Shi’ia Muslims in the world, and I can’t think that very many of them are happy to see clerics’ homes being flattened and their children beheaded by Israeli munitions. Our official response? Israel has the right to offend itself. Did I get that right? Oh, yeah… a good offense is the best defense, right? So our way of helping is by lecturing the victims. That’s the stuff, Bolton. You tell ’em.