There are headaches and then there are headaches. Some just come and go. Some move in with you and stay for weeks, months, years… The kind with legs and a mouth. You know what I’m talking about. Pour me another drink, mate.
Okay, okay — you got me. I was referring obliquely to my mill-mates. No, I don’t mean Matt or John, who I’ve known to be insufferable for longer than any of us can remember. (Don’t … get … me … started …) No sir, I’m referring to some other members of our entourage. The Mitch Macaphees, if you will; the Trevor James Constables; the Big Zambooli. Nothing but trouble just lately. Perhaps it’s the confining sameness of our abandoned hammer mill that makes them so difficult to live with. These are, after all, men of the world, used to a far more ostentatious lifestyle than can be had within these rough and clammy walls. Who can blame Mitch for being dissatisfied with the accommodations after having dined with princes, premiers, and potentates in uncounted citadels of power throughout Europe and Asia? No caviar, no braised mutton, no clam pudding, no box car rides, no free balloons shaped like a baobab tree… Let’s face it — he’s seen better days!
I have to say, Mitch has been the biggest headache, pain in the ass, whatever extremity you prefer. Last week it was experiments with the weather — he invented something called the “thunder-quake” which has ruined our fence-mending efforts with the local constabulary (that and his dreaded “hurricanado”). Now he’s “on strike”, which means he refuses to maintain Marvin (my personal robot assistant) until we pony up some cash, luncheon vouchers, whatever. This is not good, because (as you know) we lean on Marvin to do just about everything around here so that we can maintain our slovenly musician-like lifestyles. When Marvin starts clunking in a serious way, his many chores fall to the next person on the duty list. And when I say “person”, I mean to include large, oddly misshapen root vegetables. That’s not a good thing. He’s got strong roots, that man-sized tuber, and a lot of pride to go with it. But as domestic help, he leaves much to be desired.
Don’t think our relationship with Mitch Macaphee is pure friendship — not at all. We have a service contract with him. Mitch is paid to find scientifically valid solutions to a variety of problems around the mill. Not that he always manages to find solutions. But what the hell — he built Marvin from bits and bobs lying around his laboratory. Only he can keep that man of tin on his rails. So when Marvin starts to cant a bit to the left, or his programming goes haywire and he starts watering the mixing console as if it were a fichus tree, I haven’t the slightest notion how to straighten the boy out. And though it pains me to give Mitch money for something he should gladly do for free… the tuber could never tell the difference between a fichus and a Soundcraft. It just ain’t in him.
So pluck me some asper-grass. Something tells me this headache is only going to get worse. Eee – gods.
They’ve already made certain we won’t be called upon to fight if we don’t want to, and that all of the costs will be deferred until long after they leave office to their opulent retirement consultancies (Uncle Carlucci! Keep that chair warm for me!) A little high fructose news-food puts icing on the multi-layer cake of denial they’ve baked up for us — devil’s food, for sure. And yet, at the same time, the Iraq war story keeps growing larger and larger, its lethal tentacles stretching into every corner of American life, destined to touch each one of us, whether we like it or not.
It never ceases to amaze me the extent to which the principal boosters of this war will engage in rhetorical gymnastics in order to prove themselves right in some small measure. Chuck Krauthammer is exemplary of the war planners’ three-strike process to the hell we live in today. Strike one: scare talk about a grave and gathering threat — Saddam’s dreaded nuclear weapons that Krauthammer and others insisted we must “pre-empt”. Strike two: triumphalist blather just following the fall of Baghdad about the glorious “three week war”. Strike three: shifting the blame to the Iraqis and domestic opponents of the war, whom Krauthammer attempts to portray as possessed of a kind of paternalistic, colonial attitude that in effect discriminates against Iraqis by suggesting that America is the author of the current catastrophe, not the Iraqis themselves (who, according to Krauthammer, “chose” civil war). That’s the trajectory of both the administration and the congressional leaders who bought into the 2003 invasion, and if we’re not careful, that is the kind of thinking that will define the debate in the coming election.
After all that baking, this is what you come up with? Doesn’t even look edible. I’m telling you, I’ve never heard of an artichoke pie. That’s just plain deees-gusting. (Last night it was artichoke sorbet. Uuuulllgghh….)
on our mechanical friend? Wasn’t it me who said, let’s just be glad for our time together? (No, wait — that last one was Diana Ross. Sorry.) Right, right… but that was weeks ago. Marvin should be able to handle cooking. Mitch has programmed him with the latest recipes from Wolfgang Puck and Chef Guillame. Can we help it if the sauce gets ruined somewhere in the transcription process? Am I to be blamed for everything that goes wrong around here, huh? HUH?
It may well be true that Marvin can burn this coarse material in his ion reactor, but it certainly doesn’t constitute “food” to the rest of us. Christ in himmel, it’s not even a savory artichoke pie! It’s got brown freaking sugar in it. This robot is trying to make me spew in the worst way. (Though John White and Trevor James Constable seem to enjoy what they term the pie’s “delicate flavor.” I think it’s the result of food poisoning.) Oh, doctor!