Usual Rubbish

Ahoy, ahoy, ahoy.

It’s awful hard to hide on a ship, m’ladies. Scuttle me britches, sons-of-a-bitches. Raise the yard-arm. Lower the yard-leg. Hoist the mizzen-mast. Mast the hoist-mizzen. Hast the moist hizzen, for shizzle.

Whoops. Didn’t know you were copying all that. Just practicing my ship-board jargon. Getting a little bit rusty, what with having spent the last year on solid ground. My pirate words are getting all tangled up with one another. (Hard enough to understand those scurvy fuckers to begin with without putting their ravings through a scrambler.) We’re getting awfully close to launch time (it’s about noon right now, and I’m getting peckish) … launch time, and if I’m going to be scuffling around in zero gravity environments, I want to talk the talk as well as walk the walk, you follow me? Arrrgghh.

Enough of this gay banter. We are about to embark on a bold new expedition to remote corners of the galaxy. I’m not talking some old Ford Galaxy, either, I’m talking about the big enchilada, the mongo galaxy… what we know as the Milky Way. No, not the candy bar. The real deal. No, not John Kerry. Arrrgghhhh. Bloody brand names! You just can’t get away from them. Try to have a five minute conversation without stumbling upon large swaths of the language they have appropriated to their own dark purposes… just TRY. Okay, I’m a bit on edge – I admit. This trip is looming, and I’m just not ready. Not packed, not rehearsed, no house-sitter. I haven’t even gotten Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to agree to sign an appearance contract so that he can join us on stage without charging extra money later on. (Oh, he learns QUICKLY.)

Actually, speaking of contracts, we’ve gotten some interest from another corporate label. You remember our old label – Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc.? (I think they’ve contracted that to just Hegephonic since our day.) Well, just as we were packing our pipe organ onto the spacecraft, a blank contract came in from a label called Loathsome Prick Records. Can’t say as I’ve ever heard of them before. I think they do a lot of spoken word stuff. (They may be the guys who distribute Bill O’Reilly’s books on tape, but that’s just supposition.) I’m not sure where they found out about Big Green, but what the fuck… they HAVE to be better than Hegemonic (or Hegephonic). Sound like a nice bunch of people, anyway. Think maybe I’ll drop them a note before we blast off. Or maybe I’ll have the Big Zamboola carry it over to them personally. (He can always catch up with us, being a planetoid and all.)

What’s that sound? It’s the low murmur of our stardrive engines revving up. Yeah, I just made that up. I don’t know what propels us from planet to planet – we just press buttons, consult our science advisors, and somehow we get there. What the hell, do I look like someone who knows what he’s doing? Look closer!

Political Rants

Roach bottle.

The great peacemaker Ehud Olmert started pounding the living shit out of Gaza this week on the pretext of saving a captured Israeli soldier — one soldier, mind you, who is being held on the demand of releasing 1,000 detainees in Israel. Apparently Olmert’s “way forward” (Kadima) is destined to lead through the shattered lives of every Palestinian in that impoverished tract of land. The prime minister is proving that he has the blood of his mentor, the killer Sharon, in his veins – – a wise move, no doubt, given the sentiments of his constituency. We are witnessing collective punishment of a kind that might be vigorously prosecuted in a just world, its planners facing the gallows, if precedent were to be followed. (Not my preference, but there you have it.) The Israeli attack on Gaza began with air strikes against power generation facilities, effectively cutting off electricity and water to entire communities. No small matter in such a place. Civilian casualties have been reported to be minimal, even non-existent, up to this writing, but are they checking the hospitals? People on respirators? Old folks who need meds, heart monitors, etc.? 

Is it a coincidence that this operation should occur as Hamas was in the process of working out a policy regarding recognition of Israel and a two-state solution? Recall the Sharon modus operandi — moderation is the enemy and must be attacked whenever it rears its not-so-ugly head. The Israeli government can only press its expansionist agenda on the West Bank to the extent that it successfully portrays the Palestinians — all Palestinians — as violent extremists hell bent of the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jewish civilians. What if Hamas were to formally accept the prospect of a treaty based on the long-held international consensus (two states based on the pre-June 1967 borders)? What if they were to become principally a political grouping like Sinn Fein or the African National Congress? That would never do — the Israeli government and a significant portion of the population do not want to relinquish the West Bank and Jordan valley. Sharon dedicated most of his career to that conviction, as have many other Israeli politicians of the right and left. A demilitarized Hamas would be a far greater threat to that project than any armed brigade; it would constitute the legitimate negotiating partner Olmert and others insist does not exist on the Palestinian side. 

This is all about keeping the conflict in the military sphere, where the Israelis have an insurmountable advantage, as opposed to the diplomatic/political sphere, where they haven’t a legitimate leg to stand on. If nothing else, the events of this week illustrate what a sham this Gaza “disengagement” policy has been. The place is completely under the control of the Israelis. They control all the exits and entrances. Their massive air force flies over at will, and they lob tank shells and fire missiles into the strip at every opportunity. This is the kind of sovereignty Palestinians on the West Bank can look forward to as well. It is the fulfillment of the vision articulated by an Israeli politician some years back, that the Palestinians should be made to exist like “drugged roaches in a bottle.” An apt description of the quality of life in Gaza, to be sure. 

It may look miserable, but don’t be fooled. For some, Gaza is a dream come true. 

Usual Rubbish

Eldorado.

Can you talk any faster? Me thinkst not. Even if you could, I can’t type any faster, so it wouldn’t do any good. That’s what I’ve become, after seven years of this. Stenographer to assorted denizens of cyberspace. Can I stand the strain? Well, no.

I’m sitting on the landing gear of our rent-a-spacecraft, killing time as my cohorts continue their preparations for the upcoming Big Green GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE interstellar tour. Yes, we did change the name — thought better of it. I think this is a bit more descriptive than the last one, wouldn’t you agree? There’s a greater urgency, a more definite sense of momentum. Just wait a momentum, please. WATCH THAT CRATE! THOSE COMMEMORATIVE VASES COST A FORTUNE! Okay, sorry. Hard to get good help these days — very hard… especially when you don’t have any money with which to pay them. We just hope to bugger off before they expect compensation. (Hey… I told you the new name was more appropriate.) JUST LET ME KNOW IF YOU NEED A HAND, GUYS!  

As I mentioned last week, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) will accompany us this time out, as he has so many times before. This decision was taken by popular demand on the part of Marvin’s enormous cyborg fan base out yonder. (So if you’re listening out there… he’s coming, damn it! Stop e-mailing me, you obsessive cyborgs!) Yes, we will have the full complement on board the imitation J-2 space cruiser; a regular who’s who of Notes From Sri Lanka lore. We got your man sized tuber, your sFshzenKlyrn, your Trevor James Constable (complete with orgone generating device; additional T.J. Constable accessories sold separately), your Mitch Macaphee, your posi Lincoln and anti-Lincoln, and even your Dr. Hump right here. I’ve seen each one of their crates being carried on board whilst I’ve been sitting here, relaxing. (Yes, we’re keeping them all in crates. Why not, eh?)

Who will be keeping an eye on the mill while we’re gone? Well, this is where the clever part comes in. Frankly, I didn’t have the heart to leave tubey or any of the others behind to face the hostility of an entire community, still bent out of shape from the bombing run that Gung-Ho treated them to on our behalf. (Well… they all flatly refused, for one thing, and let’s face it — there are more of them than there are of me.) So we commissioned our scientific cohort Mitch Macaphee to rig up the equivalent of a baby monitor system… our “eye from the sky”, as it were. That’s the more clever half. The slightly less clever half involves cardboard cut-outs of ourselves strategically positioned at all the windows. This will give the mill the appearance of occupancy. What purpose does that serve? Not sure. Fact is, we set them up before really thinking through what the effect of doing so would be. So rather than let all that good work go to waste…. we left them there. And we mounted one outside the front viewing port of our space craft. Call it a hood ornament… or a baby monitor.

Anywho, Mitch set it up so that we can talk back through those monitors and, hopefully, intimidate any intruders into abandoning their nefarious designs. I thought that was a nice touch. And as I sit here watching people work, I can only applaud Mitch’s initiative in devising this “solution”, as they say in the corporate world (where thesauruses are as rare as hen’s teeth).

Hopefully when you hear from me again, it will be from somewhere in outer spaaaaaace. Somewhere with breathable air and a positive gravity. (Hey… we wrote it into the contracts this year, so no surprises, right?)

Weird ass music since 1986