Holy smithereens, batman. Or are you superman? Either way, keep an x-ray eye open for falling debris. Actually, that’s only if you’re superman. If you’re batman, perhaps you have some kind of protective or repellant device in you utility belt. If so, deploy at once. Use ’em if you got ’em. (That’s what I need… a utility belt! Mitch!)

Hola, you blog browsers out there. Welcome to the land of unintended consequences. Yes, that’s right, my friends… Big Green has made another slight miscalculation. It seems we weren’t real careful about what we were asking for, and Jesus Christmas, we got it. (Or is that Mother of Pearl?) As you may recall (if, like me, you haven’t got anything better to do than surfing the net and catching up on one bogus thread or another), we had resorted to a last ditch effort at getting a-hold of Gung Ho, our militant neighbor, and asking him to use his mercenary war machine to… well… blast our way back into our beloved squat house, the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, in a manner of speaking. Now, specifically what I had had in mind was a show of force to intimidate the developers who pulled the mill out from under us. You know what I mean – a couple of ultra-low flyovers aimed at their local headquarters. Maybe dropping a couple of duds on the roof. Leafleting, perhaps. That sort of thing.

Well, we tried to reach Gung-Ho at his remote deployment (destination: classified) via a number of different methods of communication – smoke signal, orgone generator, e-mail, etc. I’m not sure which one(s) actually got through to the old man, but whichever it may have been, the message must have gotten significantly garbled somehow. (My vote is on Trevor James Constable’s orgone generating device, which should never be confused with a telegraph.) Gung-Ho apparently got the impression that he should mount a full-scale, sustained bombing campaign against the real estate firm in question. Or maybe he just thought that would be a more fun way to do the job — he’s never been real big on the subtle approach, quite frankly. Either way, he and his A-Team came screaming into town in their surplus F-15’s, shooting up everything within seven square blocks of the real estate office. To make matters worse, he chose the very moment when we were making another appeal for leniency to the local magistrate… on the basis of our good will towards the community.

Awwwk-ward. 

Okay, so how did this affect our plea? Never mind that now. Suffice to say we failed to engender a sufficient degree of sympathy from the judge — or so it seemed when he was fleeing the courtroom along just ahead of a collapsing cinderblock wall. (Yes, the courtroom is downtown, a stone’s throw from the developer’s office.) It’s a little hard to describe the phantasmagoric scene that confronted us as we scurried into the street. The word pandemonium comes to mind, but I’m sure there are others more appropriate to the occasion. Catastrophe, perhaps. Suffice to say that Gung-Ho’s principal target — the headquarters of the Madagascarian firm that had arranged for our eviction — had sustained more than superficial damage. The basement looked as though it might still be useable, once rubble from the five floors above it could be steam shoveled out. Ouch. 

We tried to reach Gung-Ho on the phone, but no luck. He must have just swooped in for the air strikes and then flown back to whatever area of the world he’s destroying-for-hire this week. Seems like the only thing to do is to make our way back to the outskirts of town and see if, by any small chance, a stray round or two might have homed in on… the… hammer… mill……       

Fill in the blank. (My preference is “fuck”, but don’t let that influence you.) Always the “f” word in this group, eh? Not so unusual. A million and one uses for that storied old English term, and most of them apply to the music business. Nouns and modifiers… sometimes proper names. (Sometimes improper names.)

Anyway, greetings from the streets of Colombo, Sri Lanka — Big Green‘s new “virtual squat house”, now that we’ve been tossed out of the Cheney Hammer Mill. As always, morning finds us scrambling for shelter amongst the curbside artifacts and trash bins. Expect to see us huddled together? Not a chance – it’s every slug for himself in this band. At least that’s the way I felt about it while there was still a relatively congenial spot available to me beneath the flapjack vendor’s stand. Alas, I have been expelled from that sanctuary, as well. Bloody merchants! Now I’m trying to worm my way into my colleagues’ temporary digs. So that thing I said earlier about every man for himself? Not so. Not so.

Now, I don’t want to leave you with the impression that there has been no movement on our efforts towards reparations. As I mentioned last week, our (former) neighbor Gung-Ho may prove to be our ace in the hole, so to speak. So far we’ve had no luck trying to reach him at whatever remote location he’s been hired to invade, but we’ve got our best minds working on it. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has graciously allowed his solar batteries and internal cosmium oscillator to be linked into a makeshift transmitter. (Matt’s on the key now, tapping out “C-Q, C-Q”, just like pops used to. Sometimes Marvin throws in “S.O.S.” for good measure.) Trevor James Constable is using his patented orgone generating device to send distress signals out into the ethers, even though the chances of their attracting Gung-Ho’s attention are next to nil (especially if he has his helmet on). John? I don’t know… I think he and anti-Lincoln are resorting to smoke signals. Either that, or they’re burning an awful lot of Zenite snuff.

It may seem ignoble of us to be calling in for close air support. Why, you may ask, don’t we use the legal process? Why the early resort to violent methods? Well, I’m going to tell you. We Big Green ers are simple folk. We don’t go in for all that fancy legal-schmeegal mumbo-jumbo. Most of us, at least, prefer a more direct message… like blow a big hole in their land office headquarters. (My brother is a bit more attached to the intimidation method – have some goon lean on them, know what I mean? Only goon we’ve got is Big Zamboola, and his intimidating days are definitely over.) Not that we can count on Gung-Ho to do anything particularly rash, but hey… we can ask, right? Doesn’t hurt to ask.

There’s a time limit on this street lifestyle – I’m sure some of you know what I’m talking about. As my photos indicate, I’m getting a little scruffier every day. (You should see the man-sized tuber. Couple of days out in the rain and he starts taking root… and even the pillbox-dwellers can’t take the sight of him.) Come on, Gung Ho!

Once I had a hammer mill, made it run… made it race against time. Once I had a hammer mill, now it’s gone. Brother, can you spare a… Oh, if I had a hammer mill…. I’d hammer in the mornin’ …

They say there’s a song for every occasion, every circumstance of life. Particularly the less pleasant circumstances (though most of those are country songs). Why do you suppose that is, eh? I mean, what is it about living in a small, damp, shaded area beneath a pancake-vendor’s cart that drives a person to song? Is it the persistent smell of rancid cooking oil? The muttered oaths of disgruntled customers, waiting in vain for a decent stack of jacks? The puddle of stagnant muck that is gradually leeching into my ragged clothes? Well… it’s hard to quantify the precise sources of creative inspiration. It pains me to tell you that, though the shadow of the wrecking ball is not yet upon her, our beloved Hammer Mill is not long for this world. Damn their eyes, those Madagascarian developers…. O defilers of our humble dreams! What kind of upscale tourists or well-pensioned retirees would want to make a new start upon the ruins of this sainted mill? Okay… so perhaps I’m overstating it a little bit. The place smells like a city bus. But… and this is important … it smells better than the bottom of that malodorous pancake stand! And after a few years, I’ve became used to the draftiness, the rusted machinery, the occasional cave-ins, the crumbling brick battlements. Yea, we even started to look forward to them. After all, it’s all just part of the squatter’s lot — living the dream, as it were, even if it more resembles a nightmare. (What… you can think of a better way to live? I’m listening. Speak louder!) I think the hardest part is watching Marvin (my personal robot assistant) fighting against more than five years of programming that keeps sending him up to the barricaded doorway, only to be turned back again. He’s got a number of routine Mill maintenance tasks filed away in his sophisticated electronic brain, and not being able to complete them makes his circuits smoke like a chimney. (I saw Mitch Macaphee lighting a cigar on one of Marvin’s red hot relay panels just yesterday. Matt and John sometimes warm their hands over the glow when the night air gets brisk.) Hmmm… well, maybe that’s not the hardest part. The hardest part is probably listening to Anti Lincoln make his dictatorial speeches to nobody. Even his low-rent junta generals have skipped town in search of more promising digs. All right, mister anti-president — it’s been three hours. Time to clam up. Jesus, do I miss those massive hammer mill walls! What recourse for the wrongly evicted? Well… there is one possibility, slight though it is. We’ve put a call in to Gung Ho, who’s currently deployed with his mercenaries someplace explosive (and profitable, no doubt). I figure he might know a guy who knows a guy… who’d be willing to drop a bomb on a guy before they get the wrecking ball in position. Hey, don’t look at me like that. Last chances are last chances, right? Anyway, so far no response from the Gungster. If you happen to run into him (and live to tell the tale), have him contact us at:

Just under the Flapjack Cart

Third vendor stall along

Colombo Market Square

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Or just have him dial “JOE FLAPJACK” on his cell phone- it will go right to me.