Above us it loomed, its great bulk blocking the early afternoon sun. Oh, foul it was, with a stench that recalled many a dormitory morning back at S.U.N.Y. New Paltz (Gaige Hall). Queasy…. so queasy…
Oh, Jeebus…. my mistake, friends, sorry. I didn’t know I was posting that last bit. Just getting a bit ahead of myself, that’s all – some of my contemporaneous impressions during the strange events that befell us this week, as we made our way westward along the N.Y. State Barge Canal (successor to the Erie Canal) towards the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home (squat house). Some of you (or perhaps all of you) may remember our decision to surreptitiously board a riverboat, which had obligingly docked near the spot where we had made our precipitous exit from the Thruway. Not the wisest decision, as it turned out. Ever seen Ben-Hur? Not the chariot race – the part where the guy is counting cadence below decks with a big drum. Well, we were surprised to find that fucker still in action. (OSHA needs to take a closer look at these riverboats, damn it.)
Okay, so anyway… row, row, row, goes the galley; boom, boom, boom goes the drum. After a couple of days of this, we’re getting a little, well, tired. So I encourage Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to sneak upstairs during his bathroom break (not entirely necessary in his case, anyway… Marvin’s leaks all involve machine oil) and have a look around. Well, he came back with a couple of interesting discoveries. First, the ship appears to have an engine and a great paddle wheel… which suggests to my mind that they’re making us row purely out of meanness and nastiness, and not for any locomotive purposes. Second, there’s gambling going on up there at practically all hours of the day and night. So this barge turned out to be one of those riverboat casinos (either that, or the captain has a bit of an issue with certain compulsive behaviors). On top of that, Marvin was, quite frankly, sent away with a bee in his ear by the captain’s imperious wife. There was only one thing for it – mutiny!
On Big Zamboola’s signal (a slight northward shift in his primary magnetic field – subtle, yes, but 
noticeable), we all dropped our oars and marched up the stairs, deaf to the belligerent calls of our overseer, with the intent of confronting our captain. I felt the spray from the canal as we broke through the bulkhead doors and climbed up on deck for the first time in four days. It was then that we saw it. Oh, foul it was, with a stench that recalled…. oh, right, you’ve heard that bit. We saw what looked like an enormous garden hose stretching straight up into the sky. Closer to the water, you could see the outlines of some kind of Diplodocus-like body. No doubt about it – this was the real thing. The lock 17 monster. I’d heard legends, but never… never did I suppose they were true.
So, I don’t know, what do you say to an enormous prehistoric creature as it towers over you with something akin to hunger in its eyes? There’s only one thing you can say, and friends… its starts with *GULP*
That’s because it’s not being televised, just as the daily suffering of U.S. soldiers and ordinary Iraqis (now suffering at our hands non-stop since 1990) seldom makes it to our national news programs. As during the later years of the Vietnam War, the use of massive firepower is becoming a kind of consolational therapy for our political leaders and senior military commanders, as well as a sign of their increasing frustration over so persistent a policy failure as Operation Iraqi Freedom. Planners know that the clock is ticking on the Iraq project, and that they need to show “progress”, “results”, etc., and fast. So… bombs away.
Why, then, does Colonel Cathcart keep raising the number of missions? Well, obviously the administration did not invade Iraq just to quit it 5 short years later. (Fact is, they didn’t invade Iraq at all; only their unfortunate charges.) It is an enormous geopolitical prize, if it can be tamed, and a long-term U.S. presence (invited by a compliant Iraqi regime, of course) is what U.S. decision makers want here, even if it costs another 700, 1,500, or 3,000 American lives. Now, they will always present it as a matter of completing the job that the fallen have started, but if that “job” (created by politicians, not soldiers) is illegitimate, immoral, and extremely ill-advised, then the sooner we quit, the better. By their logic, we will never leave Iraq… which is, of course, their intention. So the dying will continue, until we decide it’s time for them to stop. Perhaps that time will only come when they start digging a little deeper to find live bodies to fill all those empty boots. Sooner or later, they will have to.
Low bridge, everybody down. Low bridge, ’cause our driver is a clown! Man, don’t you just love those old work songs! Just the thing to take the ache out of my sorry ass.
the not so distant future). Hell, if we were to let fear stop us from doing what we need to do, we would have stopped doing anything meaningful years and years ago. So….wait a minute… maybe we are a-feared after all!
conveyance? (Perhaps with a séance?) We puzzled over this for quite a while before fortune smiled down upon us (as it always does) and placed the means of transport within our grasp. The Barge Canal! (formerly known as the Erie Canal, eighth wonder of the world… back when there were probably only about seven wonders). We made our way to the nearest marina and negotiated passage on a somewhat tired looking riverboat. (That’s right, that’s right… we didn’t have any money, so the negotiation mainly involved sneaking on board while the crew was below deck drinking their wages. Don’t look at me like that…. I’m freaking sensitive, okay?) It’s not the kind of barge you would expect to see on this superannuated waterway, but…. it’ll do, and it’s headed in the right direction.