Usual Rubbish

‘Nuther world.

Don’t tell me – let me guess. It’s big. It’s dense. And it’s very, very attractive. Ummmmm… that could be almost anything that fits those criteria. Am I getting warmer? Well, am I?

Crikey. Sometimes Marvin (my personal robot assistant) takes his programming far too seriously. I’ve asked him to help me with a little problem I’m trying to work out… namely, what inhabitable planets can we sail off to in case the titanic struggle between sFshzenKlyrn (trans-physical etheric energy being from Zenon) and Gizmandiar (lawn-obsessed, power-mad space creature now occupying the seat of our local government) renders the earth uninhabitable for a brief time (perhaps six or seven million years… which passes quickly if you are made of feldspar). Matt heard recently that the astronomical community has identified another 28 planets circling distant stars they’ve observed, and I’m sure at least one of them has our name written on it. If I can just get Marvin to tell me which one! Focus, damn it… focus!

We’re almost certain that Gizmandiar and his turf-hugging minions came to us from the relatively proximate planet known as Earth 2. That certainty, of course, is not based on any scientific evidence, since the science complement of our party has long since departed the vicinity of the Cheney Hammer Mill (Mitch Macaphee, never fond of the alley, has other fish to fry, while Trevor James Constable has grown tired of fighting the sewer rats for discarded breadfruit rinds. Mmmmmm…) No, sir, we’re shooting from the hip here, scientifically speaking, and that’s plenty close enough for Big Green. Fact is, the discovery of Earth 2 was announced around the same time that these too-clever-by-half space creatures showed up and started bossing us around, so we made a major inductive leap on the basis of that. (Don’t try this at home!)

Anyway, last week we put out the call for sFshzenKlyrn and he responded with the usual dispatch, faithful cohort that he is. Of course, this hyper-powerful man from Zenon is as uncontrollable in normal life as he is on stage. And if you’ve heard one of his rip-snorting guitar solos, you have a pretty good idea of how sFshzenKlyrn conducts his affairs more generally. I suspect he and this Gizmandiar have some history – maybe a little bad blood, if that term can be said to apply to gaseous beings that exist in multiple dimensions at the same time. sFshzenKlyrn set about stalking city hall in a semi-menacing fashion, later bombarding it with keltone rays which caused the building to shift from its moorings and… well…. kind of disintegrate. (Sorry, folks. Unintended consequences, you know.) Then there was a slightly larger boom, followed by a smoky smell and what felt like a minor earthquake.

So yeah – it was at this point that I started asking Marvin about other hospitable planetary bodies. Just a little insurance, you understand – nothing to get worked up about. So far the best he’s come up with is one of those Magnetars – a neutron star with a tremendously powerful gravitational field. Of course, unless I learn to eat gamma rays for breakfast, that’s probably not much better than a trash-strewn alley on a condemned world… Care to join me? (Thought not.)

Big Green lives at www.big-green.net. Excoriate them at your pleasure.
Political Rants

Lethal legacy.

Clinging to their precious terror war, the Bush administration now cannot stop talking about al Qaeda, as if Bin Laden were running a kind of Wal*Mart of terror as opposed to serving as inspiration to hundreds and perhaps thousands of self-directed extremist organizations. It’s the last rhetorical refuge for a president who has lost the support of the vast majority of his countrymen and is now hunkering down to ride out the last 18 months of a particularly septic tenure. If we leave Iraq, Bush cautions us, we will be hit again. What he doesn’t tell us is, if we stay, we are just as likely to be hit again, if not more so, thanks to his war in Iraq, which has spawned a new generation of terrorists and significantly destabilized a region already boiling with hatred and injustice. Alas, there is no “undo” button on this war, which is why so many of us opposed it most strenuously before its start. We have set into motion a catastrophe the repercussions of which will be with us for decades to come. If Bush is in search of a legacy, there it is.

Consider the realities of the situation. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. had been directly responsible for the deaths of many, many thousands of Iraqis, indirectly responsible for many more deaths, and a primary bankroller and military guarantor of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem (now celebrating 40 years). America also funded (as it does now) some of the region’s most repressive and unpopular regimes, including that of Saddam Hussein for a good few years. After the Gulf War, its bloody aftermath, a dozen years of deadly sanctions, and nearly constant bombardment by U.S. and British aircraft from 1998 forward, Dubya smashed the country open and set up this seemingly endless war – the first long-term U.S. military occupation of an Arab country. Aside from the death and displacement this has caused, it has made us the subject of ever deepening resentment as foreign occupiers – never the best way to make friends, particularly in countries that have a colonial history.

Now, the Iraq war has generated at least 2 million external refugees, with probably 700,000 in Jordan and more than 1 million in Syria, plus another 2 million internally displaced within Iraq. These are enormous populations of desperate people who will probably not be returning home anytime soon, and I have to think that the vast majority of them blame us for their plight (assuming some level of rationality). Meanwhile, the U.S. is all but ignoring this growing catastrophe, even though it threatens to metastasize the horror of an imploding Iraq throughout the entire region, putting added pressure on societies already under stress. (The U.S. quota for accepting Iraqi refugees this year is about 7,000 – so far, we’ve taken less than 100.) If I were to guess, I’d say the next major attack on the U.S. will include some of these folks in Jordan and Syria – people who have lost everything – family, home, future, hope. What’s your guess?

Seems to me, the best way to prevent terrorism is to 1) pull our troops out of this stupid war, and 2) help Iraqis rebuild their society (from a discreet distance). No matter what the punk tells us.

luv u,

jp

Big Green lives at www.big-green.net. Excoriate them at your pleasure.
Usual Rubbish

Shouldn’t-a dunit.

I know, I know. I shouldn’t-a dunit. But I dunit. They left me no alternative. Do I suck? Maybe. But at least you know where I stand. (Am I standing? Feels like sitting…)

Howdy, friends. Expect you recall last week’s tiresome debacle and the intolerable acts of our extraterrestrial overlords, as they came to occupy our humble city hall. Who could forget the arrogance of a certain Gizmandiar? A gentleman he is not. (Neither gentle, nor man… nor any other species I’ve ever come across.) I am not being ungenerous. Consider, if you will, the bill of particulars with regard to said Gizmandiar. He and his minions hath:

  1. deliberately and wantonly, with malice aforethought, driven us from our ancestral (relax – that’s just the paint color) home and consigned us to a life of enhanced beggary (that’s like the beggary we enjoyed previously, only with 65% more cat’s pee);

  2. issued the intolerable and wholly despicable decree known as “Special Order 14-2007” which directs us, on pain of prosecution, to “refrain from employing any foul, obscene, or abusive language commonly known as ‘swearing,'” thereby foreclosing our most immediate (and highly satisfying) remedy to item #1 (dag nab it!);

  3. taken the foul and underhanded step of using his considerable resources to purchase our corporate record label (Loathsome Prick Records), subsequently employing that organization as yet another tool in our ongoing persecution (which is to say, well beyond the level of persecution we had experienced previously simply by being associated with Loathsome Prick Records);

  4. heinously and relentlessly transformed the distressed brick courtyard of our beloved abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill into a carpet-like monoculture of lawn grass, later applying the same pernicious ground cover to other public and private spaces throughout our community.

Need I go on? I think not. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is pointing frantically to his watch, so… How do you battle a well-heeled cadre of space aliens who have taken over your town and evicted you from your squat house? Fight fire with fire, my friends. Oh, yes… Gizmandiar and company are not the only space aliens in the universe. And we of Big Green can name one space alien of long acquaintance who could easily mop the floor with these interlocutors, these usurpers, these…. gall-dangit, I wish I could fricking swear!!!

Ahem…. that space alien is, of course, sFshzenKlyrn, our occasional sit-in guitarist from the planet Zenon, located in the small Magellanic Cloud, quite a long ways from here. Didn’t want to do it, but with all that’s at stake, I put a call in to sFshzenKlyrn and asked for assistance. Are there risks? Oh, yes. Great risks. Remember what happened a few years back when our Zenite friend had a few too many flapjacks. (Suffice to say, they had to add a whole new chapter to Lost New York in the last edition.)

So, yeah… I know I may have acted rashly. But I think we can control the unpredictable force of nature that is sFshzenKlyrn this time. Or not….

Big Green lives at www.big-green.net. Excoriate them at your pleasure.

Weird ass music since 1986