All posts by Joseph

Usual Rubbish

Escape.

What’s this? Parchment? Could just be old vellum, you never know. Look for the watermark, that’s what Mitch always says. Kind of crisp and, well, fragrant, quite frankly. Good lord, throw that thing away.

Digging around for buried pirate maps of the greater Indian Ocean. What can I tell you? That’s what desperation will do to a man. Let me be the first to report that I am so sick and tired of this bloody island I could lay my head on an anvil and order the blacksmith to give me twenty of his best… that is, if there were a blacksmith in this deity-forsaken place. Yes, it’s that bad. Oh sure, I know what you’re thinking. Tropical paradise, isolated from the insanity of the civilized world. Peace and quiet, or as Elmer Fudd would say, “West and wewaxation at wast.” Yeah, well… that’s a lot of aloha hooey. I like civilization, damn it. I like indoor plumbing. I like having more than one dry cleaner to choose from. And just for the record, I hate fucking plantains! (And no, I haven’t been fucking them, so settle down… settle down….)

Another thing you have to remember about being stranded on a desert island — there’s nobody there but you. Oh, sure… we’ve got each other to keep us company, but frankly, I’ve been cooped up with these assholes for the last month and a half, bobbing around in a cramped spacecraft, and while I like everybody okay (except for Lincoln), enough is freaking enough, already. We’re all getting on one another’s nerves. Matt’s not talking to Mitch. Mitch is pissed off at Trevor James Constable. Trevor James has a mad on against John. John and anti-Lincoln have been exchanging ugly looks. Even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been copping an attitude lately. (He’s spending most of his time with the stabilization control unit on the command deck of the spacecraft. Only intelligent conversation he can muster.) And even tubey has had a falling out with the Mango tree.

Wow. Listen to me, dissing Marvin. I have been here too long. So what’s holding us back? Well, a spacecraft with no engine, for one. Not likely to fly again soon, even taking into consideration the scientific “brain trust” we have on hand here on Ben-Lostawhile island. Just try making an ion-magnetic interstellar drive run on coconut shells. Just try. (Mitch did, and the result wasn’t pretty.) Believe it or not, the most practical suggestion came from anti-matter Lincoln — throw a mast and a mainsail on the top of the mock-jupiter 2 and push it into the water, then use some worm-eaten piece of driftwood (posi-Lincoln) as a rudder. Lash a rope to the rudder handle and call it “mother hubbard.” (Okay, that last suggestion wasn’t so constructive. But it was better than what Mitch came up with. Coconut reactor vessel, indeed!)

Right, then — our task is clear. Build us a mast and sew together some scraps for a broadsheet sail. And, if luck smiles down upon us, dig up a pirate map that’s useful as well as being rancid… i.e. one that shows us the way to the subcontinent. Dig, men, dig!

Political Rants

Majority rule.

Here’s a big surprise: the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) surmises that the war in Iraq has led to an increased threat of terrorism, both in terms of the volume of potential attacks and the global spread of extremist groups. Who woulda’ thunk it? Once again, those initial arguments against invading Iraq are finding vindication years into the conflict, and — once again — its appears to make no difference. I feel like standing in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue and shouting, Hey, fuckers! Those antiwar freaks were right about everything. Think there’s a chance they may be right about pulling the troops out, too? But let’s face it, these are very cynical times. People seem to have neither the energy nor the inclination to join a political fight they sense is pointless — that of convincing a bi-partisan Washington pro-war consensus that it’s time to abandon the Iraq project, shut down the permanent bases, pack up the gear, and pull out…. maybe even pay reparations for the mess we’ve made of the place. Most people think the war is stupid, not worth the cost, etc., but there’s no fire in the belly, because they’re not being compelled to a.) fight the war, or b.) pay for it. “Not my problem” seems to be the operative phrase.

Of course, this latest NIE demonstrates that, yes, it is our problem, including those of us who have had nothing to do with the military and who have enjoyed Bush’s tax cuts over the past five years of war. Like our ludicrous policies in Afghanistan during the 1980s, we are banking on a new generation of jihadist attacks. The (borrowed) money we spend in Iraq is an investment in future violence… meaning we can look forward to another wave of 9/11 type attacks just as the bills come due from this seemingly endless war. Why isn’t this treated as the scandal it truly is? Well, the press won’t stick their neck out on any story that doesn’t reflect some major center of power. If the leadership of neither party is willing to talk about an issue, the corporate media will avoid it as well. And because this is at least formally a democracy, neither party will move on something like bringing the troops home until we the people make it a political necessity for them to do so.

Maybe I’m wrong. (Has happened.) Maybe people will vote on the war this November and send the Republican congress packing out of sheer frustration. I know I intend to work towards that end, knowing that it is a minimalist approach to making a difference. (I live in a key congressional district that’s up for grabs this fall — more on that later.) Interestingly enough, the sentiments of the Iraqi people — those upon whom we have bestowed the toxic blessings of Bush-league democracy — seem to count for very little. Recent polling shows a solid majority of them want us out, while more than sixty percent support attacks on U.S. troops. (Not sure what those two statistics reflect, but they could mean that some Iraqis want us to stay so that they can shoot at us.) Seems to me that, at the very least, we should take these people at their word. But, of course, Bush is sticking to his line, now apparently relying on a fraudulent ABC television docudrama (or melomentary) to substantiate his suggestion that 9/11 was, basically, Clinton’s fault.

So much for vox populi.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Blog in a bottle.

Day six. Lifted my head, shook the sand out of my hair, and looked around. Picked up notebook and pencil. Started scratching out some notes. Starfish attacked me from behind — not good. Dropped off to sleep. Day seven…

Hi, kids. Thought I’d treat you to an excerpt from my journal as a castaway on this remote tropical island we’ve been calling Ben-Lostawhile. Kind of has a biblical ring to it, no? (No? Guess not.) I’ve just gotten started on this narrative, and hope to parlay it into some kind of publication — a novel, perhaps. Use a little creative license, what the hell. Just me instead of bunch of re-entry-burned bandmates. Nothing for sustenance but coconuts and coconut milk and… and coconut sorbet. A humble but loveable native islander assistant named Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Sounds about right. But I need a more literary sounding name. Like … DeFoe, perhaps. Or Pope. How about DePope? How’s that sound, Marvin?

Aside from the journal, things have been pretty quiet here on Ben-Lostawhile — quiet as a grave since we made landfall last week. Once the fires in and around the ship went out and Matt, John, Mitch Macaphee, Trevor James, the two Lincolns, and I were finished hopping up and down on the sand, clasping our smoking feet recently pan-seared on the super-hot hull of our space vehicle, we took a few moments to inspect the damage, looking for tell-tale signs of irreparability, like… well, like major navigational components missing or large breaches in the hull. We found nothing like that, but as you may remember, our engine was blown to atoms by Posi-Lincoln (whose master’s license was revoked more than a century ago, after he got tanked up and drove the monitor into a giant starfish — a lost chapter of history, to be sure), so we weren’t going anywhere fast. Or slow, for that matter.

Okay, so what did we do next? Ask yourself, “Self? What would you do next?” I think the answer might be… search the island for an affordable dry cleaner — the kind that doesn’t use that deadly chemical stuff. Surprising as this may be to you ultra-urban types, our search turned up nothing. Plantains. We found lots of plantains. But no two-hour shirt services to speak of, at least not within walking distance. Dejected, I sat on an overflowing chest of pirate treasure and tried to work out how we were going to survive on such an un-cosmopolitan outpost in the middle of the … well… I’m not even sure which ocean it is. The only one who seems relatively happy with this miserable exile is the man-sized tuber, who has planted himself a few hundred yards from the beach so that he can hit on this mango tree. (He’s been in space far too long, that boy.)

No, we haven’t given up. (Except for sFshzenKlyrn, who drifted off just moments after our arrival — as only he can do.) Who knows… maybe I can write my way off of this island. Worth a shot. Day seven. Sun burning hot through the palm leaves. A mast appears on the horizon. Nah. Too easy.