I think we need more compression on the mids. No, more than that – I can still hear my voice. What do you mean I’m paranoid? Does everybody think that??
Whoops – didn’t think anyone was listening. (See… I’m not paranoid!) That’s right, I’m here at my lonely console, cloth-eared, putting the finishing touches on Big Green’s new album. (Not so new anymore, actually, but…. don’t say that to the vultures at our corporate label.) Just twiddling a knob here and there, virtually speaking. Pressing the “good” button, as it were. Then it’s just a question of running order, album art, and…. oh yeah, a name. What the hell should we call the freaking thing, anyway? That’s usually the easy part. I mean, Matt can think of album names all day long. (I just follow him around with a bucket.) Trouble is, around this place, you can’t even hear yourself think.
Vas is loss? The place sounds like a bloody machine shop, that’s vas… I mean, what. No, I’m 
not talking about the album. That sounds more like a bottling plant. The machine shop-type sound is coming from that nasty piece of work I call Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Oh, yes… he has taken his paranoia up to a whole new level. I told you about his obsession with the Canadian space robot “Dextre”, currently being deployed from the international space station. Well, it’s getting worse. It started out with some off-hand comments, a derisive “squx” here and there, that sort of thing. Then it got uglier. How ugly? Well…. he found himself some second-hand sheet iron, not sure where. (Check your backyards… or forget that, check your cars.) He then built himself a full-sized replica of Dextre. (Pretty good one, too. Almost proud.)
Yeah, well… I do feel a kind of pride about Marvin. He is, after all, the only personal robot assistant I’ve ever worked with, and if I do say so myself, I’ve brought him along rather well. Except for the “being insane” part. And hey, that’s a sickness – just ask my doctor. The upshot is, he can’t help it. So when he does something like 
build a replica of a space robot, then starts whamming away at it with a sledgehammer, then steals a welder’s torch from the auto repair shop up the road and blasts big molten holes through its frame… it’s…. not…. my …. fault…. (Don’t know how else to say it.) Matt says I should just “pull his power pack” for a week or two, but that’s the easy way out. What would anyone learn from that experience, right? The man-sized tuber, the two Lincolns, and Big Zamboola all agree… this is potentially a teachable moment. We could all come out of this having grown. (Though if Zamboola grows any bigger, he’s going to have to go back in orbit.)
Anyway, what I was trying to convey over the last three paragraphs is that, yes, we are working on the album, albeit slowly. Distractions, distractions… when will they ever cease? Wait a minute…. excuse me… Marvin! Marvin! PUT THAT FLAMETHROWER BACK WHERE IT BELONGS!!
difficult this week for the administration, pro-war congresspeople, and the corporate media to act as though things are going swimmingly over there and that “life is returning to normal for ordinary Iraqis,” as John McCain suggested during his surprise (is there any other kind for prominent Americans?) visit. The escalation in violence was pretty strongly telegraphed by all the rhetoric about Iranian interference in the shape of arms and support for extremists (or “Al Qaeda”, as McCain bizarrely claimed on more than one occasion recently – you know you’re in trouble when Joe Lieberman has to step in to correct your reactionary fulminations). No doubt our trusty veep was giving Baghdad’s leaders a pep talk before they commenced their attack on what is likely the largest organized indigenous political force in the country – Al Sadr’s Mahdi Army, which had only just recently renewed its unilateral cease-fire.
The al-Maliki government has issued ultimatums for surrender which has thus far been ignored, and as of this writing, the militias appear to control twice as much of Basra as do the government troops – this is probably based on U.S. military data, so it may be actually kind of rosy. Al-Maliki’s latest deadline for the Mahdi Army to disarm coincides with the day that General Petraeus and Ryan Crocker are slated to give their progress report to Congress. (Amazing coincidence.) Our military is muttering to the press that they are not heavily involved in this fight, but that they will not allow the Iraqi army to lose. There is no question that they are involved, to the extent that helicopter gunships and F-18s are bombing the living hell out of some of Baghdad’s and Basra’s most miserable slums. This is, frankly, an American fight, and no one should expect Iraqis to fight it for us. We have been antagonizing Al-Sadr since Bremer’s time, because he cannot be controlled. In this respect, we have been on the same page as Saddam – not surprising, since we appear to want what he wanted… a quiescent Iraq that we can happily pump oil out of.
All right, all right, I’m coming. Keep your shirt on. Not wearing a shirt? Fine – keep your pants on. Wait, wait…. don’t tell me… don’t leave me with that image…
our mastering project (still underway!), our corporate overlords, expecting product. Hey – they can’t get it from a corpse, right?
have had a diode or a circuit board knocked loose. No, he’s not doing the same weird stuff as before. He’s actually developed a morbid obsession about that new Canadian robot they’ve hung out on a pole from the International Space Station. Marvin keeps watching YouTube videos of the “Dextre” critter, trying to figure out how fitting him out with “hands” would bring him power. (Perhaps those hands might give him the power to manipulate the space station, then use its power to, dare I say it? Rule…. the world!) This is the kind of thinking that’s going down here at the hammer mill. And frankly, it worries me.