All posts by Joseph

Usual Rubbish

Say what?

Six-eleven. Hell, that’s 9-11 turned upside-down, isn’t it? Spooky. Strange coincidences abound in the land of the paranoid – a foggy and foreboding place if ever there was one… and there WAS one. Six-eleven. Our fodder who art in heaven.

Guess we’ve got that old travelin’ blues. Ain’t that how the song goes? (There seem to be a lot of old songs on my mind these days, I must admit. Please forgive me.) Anyway, you’d have them too if somebody blew a big hole in YOUR squat-house. Crikey, the whole place smells like charcoal and old hammer-stock splinters. Old anti-Lincoln can’t even make himself a plate of anti-matter toaster waffles without nearly yakking all over his stew. Intolerable, I tell you. Just the sort of situation that would drive normally reasonable derelicts such as ourselves to thoughts of the road… of performing before throngs of adoring fans (many of which have two or even THREE heads)… of visiting exotic ports of call in undiscovered galaxies. Of… of…. of escape, damn it, escape!

Turns out that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is
not all that keen on the idea of being left behind to handle little tasks like… oh…. rebuilding the mill, buying off the constables, dodging any stray shells from Gung-Ho’s proving grounds (I believe the Cheney Hammer Mill may now be listed as a legitimate practice target). Minor stuff, but he’s balking… at least to the extent that his programming will allow. Robots of Marvin’s general classification don’t frown, exactly, but they do have subtle ways of letting you know that they are not too pleased with what you’re demanding of them. Lookit — when professor Mitch Macaphee builds a robot, it’s bound to be more than just a soulless servo-mechanism. Our Marvin has feelings, you know? And opinions, lots of opinions. Only thing is, he’s programmed to be somewhat reticent, in an automatonic sort of way. (I keep thinking one of these days he’s just going to EXPLODE. Or join “Captured By Robots” for real.

Hey, you can’t make everybody happy. Neither should you try, in my book. (I have a book? News to me.) Still, Marvin is an important part of our ludicrous entourage, and as such, he is due more than a minimum of consideration. Truth be told, he has a substantial fan base in his own right. It certainly rivals our own, particularly in those out-of-the-way corners of the galaxy run entirely by robots, cyborgs, or the like. I don’t think it’s entirely clear to them that Marvin is not a musician, as such, though he does pick up an instrument every once in a while – banjos, guitars, drums, the occasional bagpipes, etc. As you might imagine, out in the great beyond there isn’t always a whole lot of difference between holding an instrument and actually doing something with it. (Yeah, that’s right. It’s a lot like planet Earth.)

Anyway, so once we’ve got the rent-a-spacecraft in shape, we can start thinking about little details like, where the hell are we going? and what the hell are we going to do for money? One thing at a time. Don’t ask more than that of us, my friends. Too damn taxing.

Political Rants

Irony: still dead.

Somebody – I don’t quite remember who – opined recently that irony might still be with us, albeit just barely. Well, I’m here to tell you that rumors of its demise have not been greatly exaggerated. I’m referring of course to Rumsfeld’s Asia trip. Yes, the “Omega Man” of the Bush administration visited the region with which he is truly obsessed – more so, I’ll wager, than with the middle east. Recall that prior to the 9/11 attacks, there was that somewhat exciting stand-off with China over one of our spy planes, covered with typical disdain right here in Notes. Rumsfeld is a poster child for that faction of the Republican party that still has the 1954 map of Red China tacked up on its situation room wall; the folks that fueled the Wen Ho Lee spy controversy during the Clinton administration, which resulted in a bogus trial-by-media of Lee, incarceration, and subsequent retraction of the most serious allegations. (I forget which genius it was, but one Congressional Republican was so worked up in a lather about the Chinese menace that he fulminated over Clinton state department nominee Bill Lan Lee for some time without realizing he had the wrong Chinese guy.  

While in Singapore, Rumsfeld made some ludicrous statement about China’s military spending, which I believe comes in at around $35 billion U.S. per annum. Last I looked, that’s about eight percent of what we spend annually, if you leave out the intelligence budget and various extras. It should surprise no one that China is spending more on defense than it used to – this is a quite predictable response to our massive increases in military expenditure, particularly our stated intention to deploy “missile defense” (which, in truth, amounts to an offensive capability) along the Pacific rim. There is also a little thing called the Bush doctrine, which incorporates “preventive” (i.e. unprovoked) war and the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons. This has got Russia spending more on its military capabilities as well, which provides yet another stimulus for the Chinese, provoking India and Pakistan to follow suit. You can’t really call this an arms race, since we’re so far in the lead… but it’s something similar. 

As remarkable as this East Asia performance may have been, never has irony been so sorely missed as in the wake of Zarqawi’s death. There was Rumsfeld at the podium, earnestly commenting on how, in all the world, no man had been responsible for the deaths of more innocent civilians than the late Jordanian jihadist. I could only ask myself, how many people watching this are thinking the same thing I’m thinking? That, in terms of lives extinguished, no jihadist on Earth holds a candle to the rap sheet of mssrs. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and partners. That’s another league entirely. A member of Rumsfeld’s press entourage described the defense secretary’s mood on the plane as ebullient and optimistic about the future of the Iraq enterprise. No surprise there – visions of sweets and flowers still dancing in his tiny head. Back in the real world, it seems to me this execution will have two effects on the insurgency. For the foreign jihadists, it will provide a new martyr – a rank far higher than that of regional commander, to be sure. And for the vast majority (85%-90%) that comprise the native Iraqi resistance, it removes what can only be described as a major obstacle to their success – a mad dog bent on killing civilians, one they themselves would ultimately have had to put down. 

So someone has something to cheer about today. The question is, who?

Usual Rubbish

Anchors aweigh.

Tell me what I say, right now. Or rather, I’ll tell you what I say right now. And do it right now. See how much meaning there is in even the simplest, most emotive pop lyrics? Just dripping with meaning… like Crimson and Clover… the song that, I believe, could have more logically inspired the Manson rampage than Helter Skelter (which is just a raucous song about a carnival ride). I’ve mentioned this before — think about it. “Crimson”… blood! “Clover”…. on the graves of the dead! “Over and over”… many dead

So I say unto you – beware those who read too deeply
into pop lyrics.

Anyway, what the hell, things are a little disheveled here in Big Green land (so what’s new?). Seems we’ve gained a Hammer Mill but lost a … well… lost a wall of the Hammer Mill. A major supporting wall. Not a good thing from a structural engineering perspective, no sir. Our overzealous neighbor Gung-Ho really knows how to put a hole in something. (And if we hadn’t been in the midst of our eviction order, that something might have been us.) With a daunting clean-up and repair job ahead of us — to say nothing of the effort we will need to expend staying ahead of the legal consequences of Gung-Ho’s bombing run — we are giving serious thought to another interplanetary romp, spreading our message of love throughout the galaxy through the universal language of song. You know, on the lamb again.

What about the album? Well, we’re close to finished with that sucker. Just doing some backing vocals, incidental instrumental parts… then it’s mixing time. So I think we can afford to take the old mastering deck on the road with us. Only trouble is, Mixmaster Marvin (my personal robot assistant) will probably be staying behind on this trip to oversee the reconstruction work at the Cheney Hammer Mill (and to soak up all the love from the local constabulary as they arrive with torches, hoping to put our heads on pikes). Don’t know how that’s going to work, exactly. We may need to have the man-sized tuber sit in for some of the mixing. He can actually push those faders pretty well with his larger roots. (It’s the ears I’m a little worried about. Namely, he ain’t got any.)

Hey, we’re used to just feeling our way along around here, anyway. You know that, right? That’s what drives us creatively… grim happenstance and the usual assortment of animal needs. For Matt and I, that means assorted vegetables and a hard roll. For John, a carton of cottage cheese (or “cowboy food” as it’s known in this manor). For Mitch Macaphee, a bottle of Riesling and a live circuit board, or one of those Frankenstein-era arc generators with a big spark flying off the end. See? It’s a little different for everyone.

So next week, expect to see us packing our belongings into the battered spacecraft we use as an interstellar RV. Something to look forward to, eh? Let’s just hope the local constables are a little slow on the uptake. (It usually takes a week or two for them to get around to discovering that we’re responsible for some disaster.) ‘Nuff said.