All posts by Joseph

Usual Rubbish

Sound off.

Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t. What can I tell you? You’ve got to roll with the … hey…. put the gun down. Put it DOWN!

Oh, hi. No worries, my friends, no worries. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) may have a trigger finger, but it’s not supple enough to squeeze off anything like an accurate shot. Sometimes he gets worked up enough to wave that old revolver our militant former neighbor Gung-Ho left lying around the mill so many years back. (He dropped it in mid-stride during some imagined emergency, if I recall correctly. It was his side-arm, and he was firing his principal weapon randomly at the time. Those were the days!) I know, I know… I shouldn’t lecture my mechanical companion, but sometimes it’s hard to resist. The fucker gets so disappointed sometimes, you’d think he was, well… human, or something capable of even greater whiny-ness. I guess attendance at his opening night performance of the Wizard of Oz (in three acts) was less than expected. In fact, I think the only people there were some of the school’s nighttime janitorial staff and some of our local downtowners who were trying to get in out of the cold. (Poor tin man.)

Can’t believe this is his first taste of rejection! What a sheltered life these automatons lead. Even root vegetables like the man-sized tuber have experienced the dusty flavor of defeat. (Or perhaps that is just dirt from the garden from which he was plucked.) Yes, his fortunes have turned since his salad days, if you will, but tubey’s life has been far from a bed of roses prior his election to the local municipal mayoralty. (We bear some responsibility for that, of course. Yet another mea culpa. I’m thinking of changing our band’s name to mea culpa. What do you think? Hmmmmm?) And we human members of the Big Green complement have taken a few lumps over the years. Hell, just look at the two Lincolns. Are you looking? Well, if you are, then you know… they look like HELL. Just like it, I tell you! But I digress…

Of course, Marvin is a machine. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But let us face it, his problems should not be thought of as permanent. Why, with the right kind of attention and the requisite skills, his disappointment may be programmed away and replaced with joy. A talented machinist could give him an extra arm with the power to throw a javelin at escape velocity so that it sails through deep space and pierces the moon (or “the” Mars). His inventor Mitch Macaphee could power him down and set him on a nuclear timer of some kind so that he would restart in 1,000 or even 10,000 years – he would know the future! (Lord knows, he has already seen the past. As have we all….. right?) The sad fact is, though, that Mitch could have saved him even this childish disappointment he has encountered of late. He could have given Marvin a new set of pipes, or more terpsichorean robot legs, so that his Wizard of Oz (in three acts) performance would have brought the house down and dragged audiences in from distant cities and even the microscopic hillside hamlets that dot our countryside.

Well, is that the time? Got to get back to my Mexican stand-off. All right, Marvin…. you’ve had your fun. Step away from the revolver.

Political Rants

Geography.

What can one say about the misery, the sheer horror, of what is happening in Haiti right now? It is as if the planet itself has seen fit to kick them in the teeth when they were down. I don’t want to write even five more words before encouraging anyone who reads this blog to donate to relief efforts in any way you see fit. (My personal recommendation would be to support Partners in Health, but choose whichever means you prefer.)

Aside from the devastation and massive human suffering, the most impressive element of this catastrophe is the hypocrisy demonstrated by people in the United States who have been primarily responsible for the immiseration of Haitians over the past few decades. President Obama is correct when he describes how Haiti is “tied” to the United States historically, but he might more accurately have used the term “chained” – a sickening litany of occupation, subjugation, and sabotage that stretches back to the dawn of that nation’s independence. Just to focus on the most recent phase of this ugly relationship, it is important to remember that the Bush I administration supported the 1991 coup that ousted Haiti’s first popularly-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and ushered in a reign of terror marked by unspeakable brutality on the part of the Junta and paramilitary organizations like FRAP.

While Clinton is credited with returning Aristide to power, his administration turned a blind eye to fuel shipments to the coup regime of Raoul Cedras while insisting that Aristide return under conditions that would result in deeper penury for the Haitian people. That was a bitter pill for the Haitian people, who had taken great risks in very dark times to organize the Lavalas political movement that brought Aristide to the presidency in the first place, and subsequently paid a high price at the hands of the U.S.-sanctioned coup regime.

Ten years later, after Aristide had returned to power and had begun steering Haiti away from the neoliberal model that had been strangling it for decades, the Bush administration supported yet another coup, staged in part from the Dominican Republic, that brought a kleptocratic business-based elite back to power which, once again, looted the nation and persecuted Aristide supporters. More help from Uncle Sam. With a severely weakened government, by 2008 there were food riots, and now Haitians live on something like $2 a day.

It sickens me to see the crocodile tears of politicians in this country over the misery that they helped make possible. An even greater nausea comes over me at the thought of W. Bush and Clinton coordinating relief efforts.  But, for the nonce, we can only try to help as best we can, by supporting those groups who will help Haitians not only recover but build their social institutions back up again.

luv u,

jp

Uncategorized

Direction, please.

2 Comments

I think that planter goes over here. No, no… not there. Just behind the divider, where no one can see it. That’s right – perfect. Now… where to place the emerald city?

Yes, friends… this is Hammermill Days, the blog chronicling Big Green’s bizarre existence. You haven’t stumbled onto some daycare center message board. I’m just doing a little compassionate backfill for one of our number who does not respond well to his responsibilities. I’m speaking of our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, who cannot take it upon himself to devote a few stray hours to the upbringing of his invention, Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Oh, the trials of surrogate fatherhood! Now I’m left with filling in for an absentee mad scientist. This is awful – I’ve forgotten all the rituals, the nostrums, the pat-on-the-head kind of shit. And, well… Marvin is so damn needy.  Something in his programming, I think. He craves approval almost as much as he needs 3-in-1 oil. In spite of this, I made the mistake of recommending an amateur theatrical debut for our mechanical friend. (I’m not good.) 

Okay, so… Marvin is going to be in the local school production of the Wizard of Oz (in three acts); he’s appearing as the tin man, of course (no costume needed), and he’s freaking scared to death. Why? I don’t know. Stage fright. Some kind of computer virus. What am I, psychic? I told you, I’m no good at this parent or guardian thing. I can’t even keep track of my pet rock, let alone a full-grown robot. Sweet mother of pearl, why can’t Mitch take some responsibility? He’s just obsessed with his work, that’s why. And that’s enough to scare the paint off the walls, quite frankly. I’ve told you about the anti gravity experiments. That’s small potatoes, friend, very small. Listen… you didn’t hear it from me, but old Mitch has been working his bony fingers to the marrow cooking up this global warming phenomenon everyone is talking about. I suppose you thought it was the result of tailpipe emissions and coal-fired power plants, eh? Well…. think again.

Mitch started getting interested in climate change a few years back. Think of this as a kind of mea culpa, actually. You see, we threw together a little number we call “The Dino Song”, which goes a bit like this:

Dinos had a good time on the trolley!
Dinos had a good day at the fair!
Dinos had a holiday ’til the sky turned mean and gray
Their underbellies went a-gushing jelly and they died in searing pain!

That jolly little number became a particular favorite of Mitch’s, not because of its musical or poetic merits (or lack of same) but because of the subject matter. Hmmmmm, he thought (yes, he sometime generates visible thought bubbles), If the sky turned mean and gray then, why not now? Which was followed by an utterance along the lines of BWAA-HA-HA-HA-HA!! … which I believe is the Pashto term for “this is good.” Anyway, that’s when he got to work.

Hey… sometimes a man can’t be a good parent because he expends all his goodness elsewhere. In Mitch’s case, it’s a little different. So that last observation, well… just forget it.