Usual Rubbish

Anchors aweigh.

Tell me what I say, right now. Or rather, I’ll tell you what I say right now. And do it right now. See how much meaning there is in even the simplest, most emotive pop lyrics? Just dripping with meaning… like Crimson and Clover… the song that, I believe, could have more logically inspired the Manson rampage than Helter Skelter (which is just a raucous song about a carnival ride). I’ve mentioned this before — think about it. “Crimson”… blood! “Clover”…. on the graves of the dead! “Over and over”… many dead

So I say unto you – beware those who read too deeply
into pop lyrics.

Anyway, what the hell, things are a little disheveled here in Big Green land (so what’s new?). Seems we’ve gained a Hammer Mill but lost a … well… lost a wall of the Hammer Mill. A major supporting wall. Not a good thing from a structural engineering perspective, no sir. Our overzealous neighbor Gung-Ho really knows how to put a hole in something. (And if we hadn’t been in the midst of our eviction order, that something might have been us.) With a daunting clean-up and repair job ahead of us — to say nothing of the effort we will need to expend staying ahead of the legal consequences of Gung-Ho’s bombing run — we are giving serious thought to another interplanetary romp, spreading our message of love throughout the galaxy through the universal language of song. You know, on the lamb again.

What about the album? Well, we’re close to finished with that sucker. Just doing some backing vocals, incidental instrumental parts… then it’s mixing time. So I think we can afford to take the old mastering deck on the road with us. Only trouble is, Mixmaster Marvin (my personal robot assistant) will probably be staying behind on this trip to oversee the reconstruction work at the Cheney Hammer Mill (and to soak up all the love from the local constabulary as they arrive with torches, hoping to put our heads on pikes). Don’t know how that’s going to work, exactly. We may need to have the man-sized tuber sit in for some of the mixing. He can actually push those faders pretty well with his larger roots. (It’s the ears I’m a little worried about. Namely, he ain’t got any.)

Hey, we’re used to just feeling our way along around here, anyway. You know that, right? That’s what drives us creatively… grim happenstance and the usual assortment of animal needs. For Matt and I, that means assorted vegetables and a hard roll. For John, a carton of cottage cheese (or “cowboy food” as it’s known in this manor). For Mitch Macaphee, a bottle of Riesling and a live circuit board, or one of those Frankenstein-era arc generators with a big spark flying off the end. See? It’s a little different for everyone.

So next week, expect to see us packing our belongings into the battered spacecraft we use as an interstellar RV. Something to look forward to, eh? Let’s just hope the local constables are a little slow on the uptake. (It usually takes a week or two for them to get around to discovering that we’re responsible for some disaster.) ‘Nuff said. 

Political Rants

Brutal truth.

The story of Haditha is finally emerging in its ghastly entirety, just the kind of tale this sort of conflict inevitably produces. A war of hostile occupation, fueled by a generalized distaste and even hatred of the people being occupied; a war with no discernible strategy or end point, in which soldiers are sent on patrol after pointless deadly patrol until their hopelessness and anger tears them apart from within. This is a brutal act, but it’s enormously easy for someone like me to sit safe at home and moralize — if I were there on patrol, I don’t know what the fuck I’d be doing, and let’s face it, neither would you. We are all responsible for this crime, because we have been unwilling to restrain our government from committing the larger crime of invading Iraq and compounding that crime with the evils that have proceeded from the occupation. I say “unwilling” because we are free to make our voices heard. If we demanded an end to this war, it would be over. 

One of our biggest problems as a society, in my opinion, is that we let ourselves off the hook too easily. It’s part and parcel of the prevailing trend in modern American politics — separate the voters from the costs of major policy decisions and you will gain their tacit support. This is especially true of anything involving our all-volunteer military. For the first time ever (I believe), our forces have been deployed in a major conflict for an extended period of time without the support of a national mobilization. In essence, the money to fund the deployment is entirely borrowed — another first. We are just barely aware that there’s a war going on, and yet the administration, members of Congress, and political pundits intone Churchillian rhetoric about the long struggle ahead, etc., etc., as if to sell the American public on a flattering image of itself as a defiant, heroic people facing incredible odds (like Britain during the blitz) without the inconvenience of, well, any actual sacrifice… unless you are among the unlucky minority with family members in the military. 

And when the inevitable happens — when it becomes clear that our soldiers are cracking under the stress of multiple tours of duty and shooting civilians like Cheney shoots caged quail — how do we react? Well, the military begins by blaming the messengers, calling the journalists who follow the stories traitors and dupes of al Qaeda, etc. After about 3 or 4 months of that, when they’re forced by mounting evidence to admit to some portion of the ugly truth, it becomes the individual soldiers’ fault. They then apply the dubious remedies of courts martial and sensitivity training slide shows, while the administration and its various flacks encourage us to look at the bigger picture (it took an endless war to get conservatives talking about “context”). But there’s one thing Bush’s cousin Tony Snow won’t tell us at the daily briefing — we are more responsible for those deaths than the soldiers who pull the trigger. This is the result of a criminal foreign policy, and because we enjoy the unparalleled freedoms of American democracy, we must also accept the responsibility for what our elected officials get us into. 

Our soldiers have very few options. We have many. If we don’t want them to kill, we should bring them the fuck home. Now.

Usual Rubbish

Whoops…

There it is – the magic word. Little mishap or major catastrophe, doesn’t matter. One word covers it all. Call it an apologia, a mea culpa, a universal admission of human failing… that’s the word of the day. Then there’s that other little word: FUCK!

Fair warning to all: Be careful what you ask for! Yes, friends, in an effort to restore our squatter’s status at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, we have managed to blow a big hole in our beloved squat house – a major breach in the street-side wall, courtesy of neighbor Gung-Ho and his squadron of bombers-for-hire. Of course, we had asked the good fellow to drop a few intimidating shells on the offices of the developer-bloodsuckers that turned us out onto the streets. This he did – actually, a bit more emphatically than we had expected. In fact, much of the town is in ruins, including the local magistrate’s courthouse. (Our plea for leniency was vacated, as was the courthouse itself… just ahead of a wall of fire.  But as is his wont, he got a little carried away and… well…. ka-boom. That’s right — ka. boom.

When we headed back towards the mill to claim what was rightfully ours and saw a yawning gap with black smoke rising to the heavens, we knew something was awry. Though I was inclined to send Marvin (my personal robot assistant) in first to assess the damage (and perhaps extinguish the fires before secondary explosions ensue), I took it upon myself to walk through the front door ahead of him. What happened then? Well… I can only tell you in the form of a popular song:

I fell in through a burnin’ ring of fire!

Down, down, down, and the flames a-gettin’ higher!

Yes indeed — Gung-Ho had opted for the heavier ordinance. I think he may have had one or two of those mini-MOAB’s in his arsenal, I don’t know. Earth penetrators, perhaps. Either way, there was a gaping hole in the Earth’s crust just inside the front entrance, the walls of which were alight with an unearthly flame – Saint Elmo’s Fire, perhaps. (Saint somebody’s fire…) In any case, I was imploring Saint Getmethehelloutahere in as loud a voice as possible, grabbing uselessly at the air as I hurtled downward through a newly drilled chimney of living rock that appeared to stretch straight to the chewy center of the “oit”, already. And I would have encountered that great ball of molten caramel, had it not been for the diligence of our own Trevor James Constable, who quickly surmised my perilous circumstance and trained his orgone generating device down the bomb crater, grabbing me like a science fiction tractor beam and pulling me back from the very jaws of oblivion. Close shave, big mister.

I would rather not go through the trauma of describing the rubble-strewn mess that confronted us within the bowels of our beloved squat-mill. Suffice to say that we (i.e. Marvin) have a very large clean-up job ahead of us. Probably a good time to go back on the road, especially since the local constabulary will be after our collective ass, once they discover who is responsible for the surprise attack… and once they’ve dug themselves out of their collapsed building. Spaceward ho!

Weird ass music since 1986