All posts by Joseph

Usual Rubbish

Song mill.

Got another pencil? This one’s a little scratchy. You know – dull. And there ain’t no pencil sharpener on this here space ship. Hmmm…. could be a lyric. Got to write that down… if I just had a PENCIL.

Oh, hiya. You’ve come upon us in mid-passage, once again. We’re meandering our way into deep, deep space, heading for some place a bit more congenial to the particular brand of music we’ve dedicated ourselves to. (What brand is that? Not sure how to answer you. Try my brand.)  Having left Neptune under something of a cloud, Big Green is setting its sites on the mysterious deep space object known as Kaztropharius 137b, where we had a substantial following a few tours back. (You know… way back in, what, 2003 or 2002? Can’t rightly recall. Do a Google search on Kaztropharius and then tell me.) Now, I don’t think I have to tell you that Kaztropharius 137b is quite a long ways away from here. It’s actually close to Zenon, the home planet of our sit-in guitarist sFshzenKlyrn somewhere in the depths of the Small Magellanic Cloud. (And when I say “close,” I mean 40 or 50 light years up the track. So…. close-ish.) And if you think everything’s big in Texas, well, you haven’t been to Kaztropharius 137b. That place makes Texas look like a sandbox full of porcelain miniatures. But I digress.

So anyway…. we’re making our way across the trackless void of space, occupying ourselves with whatever bands do when they’re not doing what bands do. You know – practicing, sleeping, reading, drinking, experimenting, making lists. I’m on the list thing right now, as it happens. Trying to sketch out a couple of sets for our first night on Kaztropharius. Of course, some might say that’s the easy part… it’s actually learning how to play the songs that takes some effort. Fair enough. That comes later in my world. (Much…. much later…)

Matt seems inclined to kick off a set with something like Special Blood, our homage to 70’s television’s “The Immortal”, starring Chris George (for the five minutes it was on). That usually gets the Kaztropharians hopping around like … well, like colossal hopping things. (Kaztropharians are, on average, about 60 feet tall.) Strange that they would respond so positively to a song about a short-lived terrestrial television show, but…. they do. I think it’s because they are only now receiving T.V. transmissions from the 1970s, so it might seem like very current material indeed. Though if it were the case that they happen to be big (or even colossal) Immortal fans, watching it religiously every Thursday, you’d think they might find this verse kind of disappointing:

Canceled, canceled, canceled, canceled
They took my pictures away
Canceled, canceled, canceled, canceled
They threw my series away
I was immortal but the show was stupid
Too stupid to last a day

I mean, you hate to be the one to break it to them that their favorite T.V. show has three weeks to live. Still, like the Zenites, Kaztropharians appear to live in an asynchronous netherworld where the usual laws of space and time do not apply. (Also, they play soccer with ping pong balls and eat peas with a knife.  But that’s beside the point!) So maybe it doesn’t matter. I just hope they don’t get drunk and start throwing bottles again. (Their beer bottles are the size of a Buick.)

Okay, well… it seems Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is equipped with a pencil sharpener (right next to the cappuccino spigot). So … back to work with me!

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Political Rants

Winning.

There’s a pretty strong essay by Andrew Bacevich in the November issue of Harper’s (“The War We Can’t Win”) that looks at the impasse of the Afghan war and the fallacy of believing we can make America safe by continuing to occupy a foreign land. One would hope that Obama reads it – I have my doubts he’s hearing this point of view with any regularity. Bacevich observes that Obama is carrying forward the legacy of failure his predecessor established in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and while I don’t agree with every nuance of his analysis, he’s spot-on when questioning the general approach to the “War on Terror” that Bush took and which has since become a matter of conventional wisdom (or lack of same). The impetus towards revenge, stoked by the Bush team, that swept us into both wars has proven a dismal failure, as Bacevich points out. It is also a criminal abuse of power that has sowed the seeds of future disasters.  

The September 11 attacks represented a colossal failure of our political leaders, our commercial airline industry, our national security apparatus, and our intelligence community, as Jim Ridgeway so aptly described a few years ago in The Five Unanswered Questions About 9/11  (note: not a “9-11 truth” work by any means). The problem wasn’t so much in Afghanistan as it was – and is – right here. The attacks were planned largely in Germany and in flight schools in the United States. So… are we planning to occupy Germany and Florida? Prolonging and expanding the eight-year-old war in Afghanistan is not going to make us safer – it’s simply going to inspire more people to try to take a shot at the empire that’s subjugating two Muslim nations and helping to oppress a third (Palestine). Bacevich contrasts our policy in Afghanistan to America’s relationship with Mexico, pointing out the absurdity of the notion that an army of occupation can be used to impose a more effective, less corrupt government and to disable international criminal networks operating within that country’s borders. To suggest this approach in Mexico would be to invite ridicule – even more so when you consider the degree to which our own trade policy has fueled the disintegration of the Mexican state and created a flood of economic refugees and illicit drugs across our southern border.

Truthfully, our policy in Afghanistan is the same as though we had allied ourselves with some of the worst drug cartels in Mexico in the hope that they might someday voluntarily adopt at least the pretense of virtue as not to embarrass us any further. The objective is not good governance for the Afghans – it is denying Al Qaeda safe haven, and we seem willing to do anything to bring that about… including a lot of things that seriously undermine that very goal. Like support for figures like the warlord Dostum and his ilk who would, I’m sure, tolerate their former jihadist allies if they saw benefit in doing so. Like killing senior Taliban leaders, so that younger, more energetic, more zealous militants can take their places. Like sacrificing some of the best among us for an unworthy cause.

Cheney and family are more than happy to trumpet this as some kind of triumph. Obama should know better than to follow in their footsteps.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

What virus?


Try reversing the cabin pressure. That’s right – send it all out into the void of space. Oh, wait… we probably need the oxygen, don’t we. Scratch that. I said SCRATCH IT! NOOOOOO….!!

Oh, hi. Wow, THIS is embarrassing. Didn’t know anyone was listening/reading. I was just having a heated word with our navigator, the man-sized tuber. (Yes, that’s right – we have a plant for a navigator.) Got a little technical issue that needs some attention, that’s all. Wouldn’t want you to think that Big Green is hard on the help – no, sir… we treat them like KINGS. Emperors, really… especially the cruciferous ones like Tubey. He needs a little extra consideration, given his mobility problems. (Though the cart has helped these past few years, I must admit.) Don’t want to sound like I’m hyper-critical, but occasionally tempers wear a little thin in the vacuum of space, especially when you have some kind of deadly space virus loose in your vehicle, and the only thing your navigator can think of doing is EVACUATING THE CREW CABIN OF ALL ARTIFICIAL ATMOSPHERE. And while that may sound like a pretty good idea, there are a few problems with it. I won’t elaborate.

Well, anyway… how did we get here? Last you heard we were on Neptune. That didn’t work out so well, actually. Funny story. Our perennial sit-in guitarist sFshzenKlyrn went through the considerable trouble of entertaining the Neptunians while we were caught up in the time vortex (kind of a long, not-so-funny story), and by the time we arrived, they had had about enough of us. We ran through a few numbers – Why Not Call It George?, Quality Lincoln, Volcano Man, Ask For Leave, and a couple of others, but it was no good. Now, I’ve always said the Neptunian principal landmass audience is the greatest audience on the planet. (Actually, I’ve never said that, but I may start saying it from now on.) And I don’t want to start calling them out now. But those fuckers hold a grudge, to be sure. Their ears still ringing from sFshzenKlyrn’s extended shred-fest, they decided to take it out on us. And now mine are ringing too… ’cause they’re saying nasty shit about us.

Not only that, they appear to have loosed a rare virus on us as we were leaving their planet in something of a hurry. I call it “deadly”, but it’s really a bit more benign than that – which is to say, it only makes you wish you’d drop dead. I won’t elaborate, but man… I will say those Neptunians are damned vindictive. I mean, they could have tossed a celluloid stink bomb in the cabin as we were lifting off, or perhaps some kind of annoying noisemaker… maybe burdened us with one of their least favorite prison detainees (or stand-up comics, which would be worse). They might have hired a clown, for chrissake – anything but biological warfare. Cheese and crackers – that sFshzenKlyrn solo must have been lame as well as long. In any case, the somewhat reckless tactic of evacuating all of our breathable air seems to have worked like a charm. Now, as we head for our next destination, all of us are holding our breath. Not in anticipation, you understand. Simply because THERE’S NO AIR.

Never leave to a plant what should be done by a human. Or a Zenite. What the hell – back to rehearsal with us!