Usual Rubbish

Count sideways.

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Well, great day in the morning… I was wondering where I left that freaking thing. Who might have thought it would turn up in the rock garden? What’s next, eh? (Well, the next thing you know, old Jed’s a millionaire…)

I don’t have to tell you – when you start packing your bags for an extended trip beyond the bounds of our solar system, that is when things start turning up… things you haven’t seen for months, maybe years. Just yesterday I found a pair of sneakers I’d misplaced during last year’s election. The day before that, Matt stumbled across the remains of his first kazoo (the one he’d used to record the theme from our never-completed sci-fi epic, “Destination: Space”). John has been turning up all sorts of remnants of past lives, such as an ancient banjo labeled simply “The Gibson”. And I’d rather not get into what Mitch Macaphee has been dragging out of the depths of his makeshift studio in the old forge room of the Cheney Hammer Mill, our humble squat-house. Half-human cyborgian experiments. Beakers of nameless goo, glowing five colors at once. A bald unicycle tire. (How did that get in there?) What did the man-sized tuber find in his terrarium? Some old plant food… that’s about it.

It’s always hard to know what you’ll need on this kind of journey. Big Green’s last interstellar tour required a great deal of ingenuity on our parts, and that’s mostly because we didn’t have the proper supplies. This time, that’s not going to happen. In fact, we’ve given Marvin (my personal robot assistant) the responsibility of being our quartermaster. He has, as I’m sure you realize, a machine-like memory. (I don’t mean a computer kind of machine… more like a desk stapler or tape dispenser.) In addition, he has the strength of ten ordinary men (like the cartoon Hercules), so he can load whatever he requisitions. Now that is what I call efficient use of humanoid resources. Now if he could only convince the man-sized tuber to put his little push-cart to use loading the spacecraft. (Though that degree of efficiency might be considered borderline obsessive. Scratch that.)

How are the Lincolns helping us? Good question. Anti-Lincoln is still billeted in the hoosegow, the crowbar hotel, the pokey… whatever you call it where you come from.  Trust me – the biggest help he can be is by staying right there until launch date (or launch date plus one, even). Posi-Lincoln, for his own part, has been keeping to himself of late. I think he’s working on an address of some sort. He keeps poking his head out and asking Marvin to find him some used envelopes and a spare bottle of India ink, then he disappears again, scratching away. Another Gettysburg address in the works? No man can say. Not sure what the occasion would be. Maybe he’s working on his memoirs… though they are likely to make a very strange read at this juncture. (I’ll look with interest for the chapters describing his transit to the 21st Century via Trevor James Constable’s orgone generating device.)  And then there’s Mitch, who… who…. Oh, bloody hell! He’s blown a hole in the side of Jupiter! Nice going, Mitch! They’re going to love us in the Big Red Spot! 

With all this going on, of course, we’ve had to… well… hold up the countdown. Or something close to that, anyway. (We’re counting sideways, in point of fact.)   

Political Rants

Big dog.

While most of the media focuses on health reform efforts in Washington, there’s a lot going on in the area of global empire maintenance, now the responsibility of Mssr. Barack H. Obama, Esq.  There are, of course, the ongoing wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan, with much of the attention focused on the U.S. soldier captured by an Afghan Taliban group. I did hear other news of the Afghan conflict this week – the Physicians for Human Rights call for a formal investigation into the 2002 Dasht-e-Leili massacre perpetrated by Afghan warlord (and soon to be military chief) General Dostum. This killing of hundreds – probably more than a thousand – Afghan prisoners of war was reported on shortly after it took place. The Bush defense department actively squelched any inquiry, even though FBI agents sent to Guantanamo had collected testimony from survivors of the massacre and felt an investigation into a possible U.S. role may have been warranted. Technically, as the occupying power, we would be considered responsible anyway, but given the circumstances it’s hard to imagine some of our forces weren’t at least aware of this war crime.  

Just one bloody chapter in a nearly eight-year-old war that shows no sign of letting up. Our military people keep marching two-by-two into oblivion, just as they have in Iraq for the past six years, and we as a society seem unwilling and/or unable to put a stop to it.  What exactly is the point, here? If we’re propping up a government that gives a major post to a mass murderer like Dostum, how the hell is that different from having the Taliban run the joint? The ever-increasing military presence, the pilotless drone strikes, the bombings… all of this is hardening the populace’s distrust for their American occupiers and setting off a chain reaction of violence that threatens neighboring Pakistan, as well. I have to think Obama knows the risks, and yet we continue. Before we had an arrogant imbecile in control – what’s our excuse now?

I wish that were all, but it isn’t. We’ve got Hillary Clinton dispatched to Asia, speaking of the dangers of purported North Korean nuclear proliferation to Myanmar (Burma), then hopping over to India to celebrate the nuclear proliferation deal that George W. Bush signed with that nation. Double standard? Well, we already had that going for us, obsessing over a possible Iranian bomb while refusing to officially acknowledge the presence of hundreds of Israeli nukes (a largely useless arsenal that will continue to prompt nuclear proliferation efforts in the Middle East). She and the administration have been making relatively encouraging noises on the Honduran coup, calling for the return of President Zelaya, but it seems to be having little effect. Unfortunately, the Honduran military is an institution designed not for national defense, but for “internal security” (i.e. keeping the peasants and workers in line), much like the many other militaries we helped foster in that region. Once you teach the little dog to bite, he may continue to do it, even if doggy daddy no longer wants him to.

If the administration is going to err, it should err on the side of justice. In the case of Honduras, frankly, we owe them. They are struggling with the military straitjacket we put them in decades ago. Let’s help them undo the last buckles.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Launch date zero.

Sorry, Mitch. The batteries aren’t charged yet. No, sir… still got a few more hours to go. Hey, where’d you find those used fuel tanks? Clever man. Very clever.

Oh, hi folks. Just doing a few last-minute tasks before launch. Did I say “launch?” I meant lunch. How careless of me… and me, a man of words! No, launch won’t be for a few days yet. We’re moving the components into place, though – no doubt about it. It’s like a big, fat, dysfunctional chess board with pieces whittled from plastic explosives. A little on the touchy side, let’s say. That’s what we get for working with a mad scientist, especially one as mercurial as Mitch Macaphee. No matter… we’ll get off the ground, possibly before the Space Shuttle does. (Oh, that launched, finally? Well…. I guess maybe not.) There are other races to be won, however. We may well be the first band on the sun. Hmmm… good idea for a song. Maybe the chorus would go something like this:

Band on the sun!
Band on the sun!
The tuber-man, and uncle sam
will be toasting hot dog buns
when we land on the sun!

Well, it needs a little work. In any case, we’ve got other stuff we can play when we reach the outer rings of the Jovian system. There’s a little number called “Volcano Man” we can pull on the denizens of Titan. (It’s a tune off of our recent album International House that features a strange interlude eerily reminiscent of an afternoon we spent once on that dry alien moon.) It happens that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is particularly fond of that song. (I think it’s because he plays the singing saw in the middle 24. Listen carefully.)

Got a little extra rehearsal time in this evening. Actually, it’s kind of funny the way it worked out. We got the two Lincolns to run upstairs and bang pots and pans in the courtyard while we were playing. That’s just to throw the local constabulary off – we’re still behind about 28 months on the taxes and are technically squatters. Fact is, the boys in blue don’t know we’re in here… and so long as they don’t read this blog, they probably won’t catch on. I think the ruse worked, at least to the extent that it got Anti-Lincoln arrested for disturbing the peace. (While he’s in jail, we should get posi-Lincoln to do outrageous things and then deny responsibility, since Lincoln is obviously in jail. Clever, eh? No? Just checking. )

Okay, so anyway… back to work with us. Everybody’s got an instrument in hand, yes? Very good. And man-sized tuber…. you can use your tap root, there’s a good chap.

Weird ass music since 1986