All posts by Joseph

Uncategorized

Hoodniks.

Here comes Big Green, like a bat out of hell, someone gets in our way, someone don’t feel so well!  Hey, what’s the problem, Lincoln? You depraved on account a’ you’re deprived?

Oh, hi, friends. Didn’t know you were looking in just then. (We always seem to get caught by surprise… probably shouldn’t live our lives on the Internets so much.) No, we’re not working up some numbers for a West Side Story revival of some kind. Not a bit of it. Just feeling a little like outsiders, that’s all. Our own village government has turned against us, our own man-sized tuber has made monkeys of us, and our own abandoned hammer mill is getting draftier by the day. (The fire brigade broke a few windows when they were here… Mayor’s orders.) Ergo, we’re spending more time out on the mean streets, or at least, in the mean courtyard. (Cobblestones make a lumpy mattress, friends – word to the wise.) With the cold weather coming on, it’s almost like we’ve been exiled to Siberia, except that the snacks are a bit better. And no nasty guards. Then there’s the being kept there for the rest of your life. Actually… it’s a lot easier than Siberia, so scratch that last observation.

What was I saying again? Oh, yeah. Having friends in high places is turning out to be less than a benefit for us. I’m beginning to understand why. The man-sized tuber, apparently, is taking advice from anti-matter Lincoln, about as mean-spirited a piece of work as you can imagine. Imagine for a moment the ambition of a President Lincoln, matched with the guile of a Richard III. Got that in your sights? Okay, well… discard it. Anti-Lincoln is much, much worse than that. Was it not HE who worked his way back through time to seize control of the Lincoln administration from his more virtuous doppelganger? Was it not HE who made common cause with the South American-style junta leaders who took over the Cheney Hammer Mill a couple of strange years ago? Was it not HE who stole my tofurkey sandwich earlier today and tossed it out into the street when he surmised its vegan character? Such calumny! Curse him! CURSE HIM!!! 

Anyway, that’s what has put us on the wrong side of the law – an oversized root vegetable taking the counsel of an anti-matter great emancipator. Sure, it’s complicated – LIFE is complicated. So what’s new? Now when we rehearse, we have to sneak into the public library and kick some teenager out of one of the study carrels… then hope nobody notices the awful sound of our craft. Hell, there are times when we actually all have to go into different public libraries and SKYPE each other just to squeeze another rehearsal in. (The last terminal I used smelled like urine and aftershave… and if you want to know WHICH one, well… I’m just not talking to you anymore.) It’s gotten to the point where only Matt and I show up at these “rehearsals”, and we don’t even know what we’re rehearsing for. Perhaps it’s a concert. Perhaps it’s a riverboat cruise. So many possibilities. 

My apologies. Living out in this courtyard is making me goofy with a capital stupid.

Political Rants

Strategy.

Nice speech, Mr. President.

Now explain to me why, when committing 30,000 more Americans to this endless debacle in Afghanistan, you aren’t asking those of us who are not in the military to make some real sacrifices. You invoked the noble acts of some of your predecessors, but they were not reluctant to ask for the able-bodied to serve (even if many had “other priorities”) or the relatively well-heeled to pay more taxes. Why are you so reluctant? Don’t feel as though I’m singling you out. I could, of course, ask this question of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and the sainted Ronald Reagan with equal justice. The difference, I believe, is that you are probably brighter and more worldly than any of them. I know what their excuses would have been. What is yours?

Explain, also, why it is so much more urgent to keep Al Qaeda, violent extremists, the Taliban, etc., from taking hold in Afghanistan than in, say, Jordan or Syria, where literally hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees are living in squalor, driven from homes they will likely never see again. You and your advisors seem eager to draw dubious lessons from Bush’s “surge” in Iraq, but not so eager to consider the broader implications of massive land army invasions of foreign lands and the misery they generate. If we’re going to pour resources into preventing extremism in the Muslim world, it might be a good idea to start where we’ve made the biggest mess and spend some serious cash on helping those people whose world we turned inside-out (admittedly prior to your tenure) instead of investing in similar mayhem directed at others. Remember – Al Qaeda is more than just a group; it’s a brand, and one that can easily be emulated by disaffected and disenfranchised people anywhere.

You have said that this will not be an “open-ended commitment” to defending the Afghan government. That’s all well and good, but how do we determine when, in the cold light of failure, it is time to leave? Indeed, we do not even seem to be aware of how self-defeating our efforts in Afghanistan truly are. An article by Aram Roston in The Nation described how our practice of contracting out logistical operations is providing a substantial revenue stream for the Taliban. For safe passage through hostile territory, contractors are paying protection money, in essence, to the insurgents. Roston writes:

US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts–hundreds of millions of dollars–consists of payments to insurgents. 

Now, I’m not a Pentagon analyst, but last time I looked, the Taliban was not a resource-intensive organization like the U.S. military. “Hundreds of millions of dollars” is likely still a lot of money in their world of warcraft. If the claims of these U.S. military officials are even partly true, it sounds to me like we may be underwriting something close to the total cost of Mullah Omar’s war effort. Is your plan going to address this? Wouldn’t it make more sense just to deny them those funds, rather than pour more lives and money into this rathole?

Isn’t this an enormous mistake, Mr. President? Just askin’.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Under seige.

Bailiffs to the left of me, lawyers to the right; judge straight ahead. Half a league, half a league, half a league on. (Whoops… sorry, your honor. Went half a league too far.)

Yes, well… greetings from the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill on this blessed week of giving thanks. Thanks for what? Nothing, that’s what around this dump. Forgive my ill humor… it’s just that the man-sized tuber – our own beloved root vegetable companion – has embarked upon a virtual reign of terror as our municipality’s new mayor. I’ll tell you, friends, you never really know a person (or a sweet potato) until you’ve a.) had them over for holiday dinner, or b.) elected them village mayor or town supervisor. The maxim about absolute power corrupting absolutely may well be ascribed to the extremely limited power conferred upon the executive in charge of the little hamlet that has heretofore reluctantly tolerated the presence of Big Green. Silly me – I thought with one of our very own in that position, we would be safe from sanction, yay unto the ages, we and our progeny (not that we have any as of yet).  Oh, I was so wrong.  (Spoiler alert: that happens quite a lot.)  

I mean, it was only hours after they hung that victory ribbon on his… his… chest-like protuberance that he started issuing edicts of the most punishing character imaginable. First there were the codes enforcement decrees – what we have come to refer to as “The Awful Things”. Matt heard this pounding on the front door, and attached thereupon (with a railroad spike, no less) was a parchment-like posting that advised us in no uncertain terms to leave the premises or face eviction. Yes, there was a grace period – 48 hours. Generous, eh? This much consideration (and no more) from someone we pulled out of the ground with our bare hands. What was he before he met us, eh? A NOTHING! A NOBODY! A…. a… SWEET POTATO! Who brought him up from the unforgiving earth? Who gave him his little wheely cart to ride around in? Who took him from one end of the galaxy to the other as our trusted mascot? (If you need answers to any of this, let me know.)

Well, that was just the start. Next came the firefighters. They were banging on the door, climbing in the windows, selling us raffle tickets, all on the orders of the man-sized tuber. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was so undone at the sight of these first responders that one of his capacitors blew and he started listing up and down the halls, emitting smoke and humming “Keep the Ball Rolling” by Jay and the Techniques. Mitch Macaphee, Marvin’s inventor, has been following him around with test equipment as we fend off the firemen. It actually took Anti-Lincoln’s guile to get them to desist. He started selling them (forged) raffle tickets right back. But hot on the heels of that disruption came the codes enforcers – big, burly fellows with measuring tapes, T-squares, and deadly writs from the local magistrate. That’s right – the man-sized tuber had blown us in to a justice of the peace! (A redundant title if ever I heard one, for there can be no justice without peace… or is it vice-versa?) 

Either way, we got headaches, and it’s all because of one of our own. And to think I attended tubey’s budding ceremony last year! There’s gratitude for you.