All posts by Joseph

Usual Rubbish

Gawd.

Two guys walk into a bar, see? Okay… and one of these guys, well… he’s not really a guy, exactly, okay? Follow me so far? Right, so this one guy who’s NOT a guy, he’s got like five heads. And he breathes not so much air as, well, liquid nitrogen. Stick with me, now, it gets better…

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.

Anyway, we played kind of a small club here – not the usual stadium or theater routine, to be quite frank. I would say this is the Omicronian equivalent of CBGB – kind of rough looking and smelling of cheap beer and urine, mostly. Only Marvin (my personal robot assistant) didn’t seem to be bothered by it. (Even sFzshenKlyrn looked green… and I mean more green than is normal for him.) There was this one spaceman at the bar, dressed in a 1950s-vintage sci-fi astronaut suit, with the fish bowl helmet, the oxygen tanks, the whole nine yards. He was hitting the sauce pretty hard (his fish bowl was half-full of high-balls). Then some party of 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. 

Apparently, mister spaceman had objected to these lines in the chorus of said Bowie song:

Ashes to ashes, funk to funky

You know Major Tom’s a junkie

…and like many a cartoon spaceman from the 1970s, he closely identified with the fictional astronaut from Space Oddity. Touch S.O.B. … touchy crowd, too. Wouldn’t want you to think that we are at all squeamish about rowdy listeners, but you should know that the beer bottles on Omicron are the size of bowling pins, and just about as heavy. (The whole bleeding planet is made of glass, so there’s no shortage of the stuff.) You get hit by one of those suckers, and man… you stay hit. With the help of some of Marvin’s cyborg groupies, we loaded the equipment back on to the ersatz Jupiter 2 space cruiser and buggered off into the ethers, a fist-full of generally non-negotiable glass coins our only reward for the night’s work.  

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.  

Next stop? Don’t know, frankly. I just hope it’s better than the last one. This GET ME THE HELL OUTA HERE Tour 2006 is turning out to be one of the lousiest tours we’ve had since our journey to the center of the earth mis-adventure a few years back.  You know — when Marvin and the Morlocks took over the dance floor? Don’t remember? Just as well. Just as well.

Political Rants

No daylight.

It’s week three of Israel’s assault on Lebanon, and once again it appears certain that the international community is unwilling to make any meaningful effort at restraining Tel Aviv. The Rome conference was a total waste of time, offering no relief to those whose lives are being torn apart by this attack and, in effect, sustaining (or at least not challenging) Washington’s veto of intervention towards a cease-fire.  With probably 600 dead in Lebanon and close to a million driven from their homes, the Bush cabal is still saying let the killing continue. Word has it that they are rush-shipping more highly sophisticated munitions to Israel to replenish an arsenal probably somewhat depleted by a hysterical use 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?

With an almost palpable air of disingenuousness, press secretary Tony "tar-baby" Snow declared there to be "no daylight" between the U.S. and its European allies on the question of a cease-fire. Not exactly true, but here again, a U.S. veto means no action will be taken, so we can pretend. One thing is for certain – Israel’s actions are demonstrating in very graphic fashion that there is no daylight between the U.S. and Israel when it comes to tactics, military hardware, and total disregard for Arab civilians. The IDF has attacked fleeing civilians, blown up clearly marked ambulances, hit residential buildings in crowded neighborhoods. Who does that sound like? Lebanon’s cities are getting the Fallujah treatment, to say nothing of what Gaza is facing. As Dubya robotically repeats his stock phrases about "terrorists" and "wanton killers" and Condi Rice stumbles about aimlessly in Southeast Asia, Lebanese, Palestinians, and Iraqis continue to die in disproportionately high numbers as a result of his policy. 

Israel’s strikes on Lebanon are a highly premeditated effort to do lasting damage to the nation’s social infrastructure and economic viability. There is no way in hell these actions can be justified as 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. 

Prove them wrong: tell your government to put a stop to this now. [White House: 202.456.1111; Congress: 202.224.3121] 

Usual Rubbish

No fear, mate.

None so far, anyway. Fear? I laugh in its face. Danger? Mere amusement. Calamity? She and I are old friends. (I call her Jane.) Certain doom? I spit in your face, you flimsy cardboard sideshow attraction…. What was that? Did you hear a noise?

Welcome back to the traveling sideshow that is Big Green‘s GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE SUMMER TOUR 2006 – a welcome departure from the trials of a tiresome planet Earth, to say the least. I can only speak for our tiny corner of that accursed globe, but even so, there are troubles-a-plenty down there. If you are reading from some extraterrestrial locale, heed this piece of advice – stay away from the one called Earth! Stay AWAY!!! Misfortune awaits you there – just ask Big Zamboola, who was once a planet himself and found it necessary to abandon his own personal gravitational field in order to accommodate the demands of the demonic planet Earth. Christ, you can’t even get a decent egg salad on rye down there without someone shorting you on the half-sour pickle. (Last time, I got a freaking dill spear… out of a jar! Barbarians!)

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 sFshzenKlyrn would call, “a fun, fun carnival ride!”) I guess until you’ve been crushed to a wafer-thin singularity, you can never know how purely FUN it is. (Try this at home, kids.) Luckily, trusty (or is it “rusty”?) Marvin took the reins and pulled us away from the icy grip of fate just in time. Man-o-man, what a ride.

We were greeted on Kaztropharius 137b with the usual enthusiasm. All the denizens of that mysterious, murky world were flashing their little blue lights at us. This is what passes for applause here, and it can be a bit disconcerting from the prospect of a climate-controlled stage. In fact, the flashing became so furious at one point that Matt nearly dropped his bass guitar and the man-sized tuber (who was doubling as a conga stand) started breaking out in strange blisters. There may 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 – sFshzenKlyrn, to whom the laws of physics do not in any serious way apply. (Some of you may remember the time, a few years back, when he grew to be ten stories tall. Now there’s a guy who refuses to obey the laws of physics.)

Things went pretty well, though, I must confess. Only headache is the lack of confirmation on our upcoming jobs in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Kind of want to have a signed contract before we cross the void, know what I mean? Poor old Lincoln has been sitting by that FAX machine for the last two weeks, waiting, waiting, waiting for word to come buzzing through. A man of great patience, our man Abe. (My guess is that anti-Lincoln pulled the plug on the FAX machine, but don’t quote me on that.