Okay, what have you got? Mildred… Fitch. Mildred Fitch, 1429 Mulberry Lane, Aurolias, NJ. Got it. Who’s next? Get… Get… Stuffed. Get Stuffed. And where does “Get” live? Up… my… HEY!!

Oh, hi. Okay, good enough, how are you? Great, great. What are we doing? Funny you should ask. We’re working on our mailing list. In fact, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and I were just compiling names when you logged on. Frankly, it could use a little work. We haven’t released a full-length album in almost nine years – that’s NINE YEARS to those of you who are hard of hearing – and our list has kind of gone to seed in the interim. Truth be told, we sent out a little teaser message to the folks on our 2000 Years To Christmas list, and it bounced back so hard the sucker hit me square in the face. (I think it loosened a tooth or two, actually.) It’s been a rough nine years on our constituency, friends, and a lot of them have moved on to bigger, greener pastures. C’est domage.

Okay, well… that experience was a little unnerving. So we took it up with our label, Loathsome Prick, and they put us in touch with their Marketing V.P., Gertrude Al-Kabar, who suggested (no… fairly demanded) that we build a new list. “What the hell,” I said, “most of our most loyal fans are beyond the orbit of Saturn. The post office doesn’t ordinarily deliver to rural routes in that zone.” She was, however, insistent on this point, and we decided to at least appear as if we were doing something about it. Matt took the opportunity to sit down with the two Lincolns and ask about their presidential campaign experiences, direct mail appeals, that sort of thing. (Not a lot of help there – in point of fact, they got into a fist fight. Something to do with Steven Douglas.) John and I spoke with Mitch Macaphee, but he has nothing but contempt for the social sciences and would never associate himself with something so crude as a direct mail campaign. (Now handbills he might agree to, but not direct mail.)

You get the drift. Once again, we are left to our own devices. So with nearly two names on our mailing list (call it one), one of which resides at our own address (man-sized tuber), we set ourselves to aggressively expanding our database… by swiping names from the phone book. Foolishly simple, isn’t it? Don’t know why I never thought of it before. All we do is send junk mail to people at random. In fact, that’s such a wildly adventurous idea, we should try to sell it to other bands. Hey, Coldplay! Hey, Captured By Robots! Here’s a great way to get heard by strangers! Send them shit in the mail! (Shouting across the internet? Another new communications strategy! Get Gertrude on the phone!)

Okay, so we’re pulling names at random from the phone book. And Marvin is getting kind of surly after an hour or so. Fatigue? I don’t think so. He’s a little sore about his credits on the new album. Marvin claims to have mixed no less than four of the sixteen songs on International House. I’m sure that’s an exaggeration, but… frankly I don’t remember who mixed what at this point. And what’s the name of the band again? Can’t say. Can’t … say….

Man, it has been a long time since the last one. We need more names, damnit!

Amazing thing happened this past week: the Iraqi government appears to have actually represented one of the main concerns of the nation it purports to represent – namely that the occupying army of the United States start making definite plans for withdrawal… that is, total withdrawal from their country. One spokesperson for al-Maliki actually talked about a timetable for pulling out. Now, this is the government the Bush administration is so very adamant about protecting. The mere mention of a timetable on this side of the ocean is an invitation to be denounced as a “surrender monkey”. Those who’ve advanced the idea are roundly accused of undermining the Baghdad government, whose stability has been bought by the blood of our soldiers, etc. And yet, this is the opinion of the vast majority of Iraqis, so it’s little wonder Maliki would bring it up a) while status of forces agreement talks are going on, and b) when there are elections coming up. Maliki’s party has a slight problem with being seen as an indigenous political movement (i.e. Dawa and SCIRI were exile parties, SCIRI formed in Iran with help from the dreaded Revolutionary Guard). This is their version of a gas tax holiday, I suppose.

Either way, it seems we’ve been asked to leave. That can only mean one thing, if history is any guide: time for a new Iraqi government. This issue is a bit more complicated than it used to be, of course. Even though there are some paleolithic imperialists in the Bush orbit, I doubt they have the bottle to pull an outright coup d’etat, like we used to in the good old bad old days. Iran’s Mossadeq, Guatemala’s Arbenz, Chile’s Allende… even a longtime asset like South Vietnam’s Diem was dispatched with little thought to what would follow. In Vietnam, it was one desperate general after another, until they settled on the reliably fanatical Nguyen Van Thieu, who seemed more than content to preside over the utter destruction of his country under relentless and unprecedented American firepower. His predecessors were ejected most often because they were caught seeking some kind of rapprochement with the NLF. Not what Washington wanted then… or wants now.

Different war, different time, right? True enough. But the principle still applies. Suppose for a moment everything goes swimmingly in Iraq, from the Iraqi perspective. Suppose there’s a serious and deep reconciliation among the various sectarian and ethnic groupings, and that they all agree on one thing – that they want us to go home. Would we leave? I doubt it. As I’ve said here before, we didn’t invade Iraq to leave it; we came to stay, maybe as long as 100 years, as McCain suggested. (The oil would certainly be tapped out by then.) The administration and its allies have become very frank about wanting a military presence there to secure access to the second largest oil reserves in the world (and among the most profitable, as well). We’re building permanent bases and trying to push a status of forces agreement on a nation we basically destroyed over the course of the last 18 years. In the current atmosphere of rising gas prices, I’m sure our politicians believe that Americans will tolerate such a long-term commitment if they believe affordable gas may be a result. That remains to be seen… but will Iraqis tolerate it?

My guess is no. And though this hasn’t been an ultimatum, we may well be feeling that door hitting us in the ass quite soon.

luv u,

jp