NOTES FROM SRI LANKA.

(August '04)

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8/01/04

Six bells and....what the hell.

Not too soon to see the stars of home. The great radiant orb of our mother world looming large in the forward viewing screen. Earthly gravity tugging at our heartstrings. The Van Allen belts shimmering a hyper-magnetic greeting in the firmament above us -- the vaulted dome of the heavens, now emblazoned with the same constellations whose dots were first connected in the imaginations of ancient peoples. Home. Home. Terra firma.

By the fires of Krakatoa, I never thought we'd get back in time for the closing session of the Democratic National Convention. And you know what? I was right. That gig on Sirius ran over a couple of days... not because they're all that sold on Big Green or our opening act, The Steels. No, they liked the banjo, bagpipes, and kettledrum ensemble formed by our "Sustained Super-Light Entropy Syndrome"--generated doubles and Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who's picking up the banjo parts. Yeah -- incredible as it may seem, these wispy replicas of Matt, myself, John, and Marvin arrived at the hall ahead of us last Tuesday (wholly unencumbered, as it were, by the constraints of an obstructive material universe) and took the significant liberty of setting up and playing. Marvin saw this and wasted no time in wheeling off to get his axe. (That's what we get for not providing him with some creative outlet. I was warned, more than once.)

What were they playing? Hell, they were all over the road. Irish drinking songs, Turkish smoking songs, Italian cooking songs.... then there was the ethnic music. They even played something from the Sun Ra Arkestra -- that went over quite well on Sirius. Now, I hate to seem petty, but this evident success was starting to piss some of us off. I mean, talk about upstaging -- these fuckers didn't even have to take the jitney from the hotel to the amphitheater. For them, it's just poof and they're ready to play. And, of course, they can make their equally in-substantial musical instruments change into whatever they want them to be, including ludicrously improbable Dr. Seuss-like noisemakers. (All except Marvin, of course, and his all-too-solid banjo.)

With this humiliation behind us, we asked Mitch Macaphee to redouble his efforts at finding a way to make the doubles disappear double-time (forgive the doubletalk). I had to interrupt the marathon tennis match he'd been engaged in since our arrival on Sirius -- he was playing doubles (no, really -- I mean his double and that of Trevor James Constable). At first, I thought it was part of his ongoing research... but then I recalled that Mitch considers our interstellar tours to be something of a vacation opportunity for him. (The whole time we were on Kaztropharius 137b, he wore flippers, goggles, and a snorkel.) Anyway, we coaxed him away from the courts and escorted him to the lab on the J-2, where he proceeded to botch the hydro-mozoline acetate test, whatever that is, on the man-sized tuber. (I blame those Siriusan cocktails -- they got a kick like a horse.) Then Mitch got busy with beakers and microscopes and... well... we just wandered away.

So here we are, days later, chugging into the neighborhood of what looks like our home planet. (Yes, Earth...what else?) Taking our time, in hopes of a solution to the double problem. Seems likely we'll be laden with extra passengers when we set down in the courtyard of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill... unless Mitch has a startling breakthrough that has nothing to do with a new recipe for faux-Chicken Tikka Masala. (Okay, so our ship's laboratory doubles as a kitchen. Space is at a premium up here, my friends.) So when they open that hatch down in Sri Lanka, the Big Green that steps out may not be the real Big Green... but then, this may not be the real Earth. So that would make us even, right?

Pick Yer Poison. In the midst of the week's Democratic Party revelry, the Bush/Cheney juggernaut-in-waiting floated their new theme for the Fall candidate shopping season -- "We've turned the corner," which sounds to me like, "We've gone 'round the bend." If this is meant to reference their kaleidoscopic strategy on "terror" (or as Bush calls it, "tear"), "round the bend" is more like it. Iraq is going to hell in a hand basket, not that the major news media are making too much of this fact (their Iraq correspondents are holed up in their Baghdad hotels, with good reason). Al Qaeda recruitment is reportedly up, and between the two continuing "hot" wars and the various thinly-veiled threats, we're doing everything we can to promote generations of dedicated suicide bombers to come. If they can portray this as a success, pigs will surely fly.

Still, as I watched the DNC play to the cameras in Boston, it was hard to contain a feeling of political angst. The Dems have clearly adopted the current Republican world-view, inspired by Cheney, Wolfowitz, and other fuzzy-minded reactionaries. Bush/Cheney have been successful in establishing the precedent in international relations for overtly unjustified "preventive" war -- that is, invading another country at will for reasons that reflect traditional imperial priorities, not those of self-preservation. There's no question but that the Democrats have long espoused such a doctrine in a more quiet way, as one option among many. Now the cat is out of the bag, and who knows where this will lead. Who will we hear citing this new precedent on the eve of future invasions? John Kerry? Is there any way to vote for the John Kerry of 1971, who so eloquently criticized the aggressive foreign policy of the day, the one that had employed him and his fellows as its disposable instruments? Must we vote for the John Kerry who will be anxious to demonstrate (for the umpteenth time) his willingness as a liberal Democrat to wage war? In other words, are we being asked to support the modern-day equivalent of the JFK/LBJ team that sent young Kerry into a pointless conflagration?

Okay, so now that there are effectively two Republican parties, those of us who were, say, against the war in Iraq (the position of the vast majority of the delegates at this week's convention, incidentally) are faced once again with a national ticket that does not even remotely represent our views. The movement that energized the primaries, not to mention the vast, overlapping anti-globalization coalition, did not hear very much to cheer about at the Fleet center. They had their antiwar signs taken away. They had their speakers instructed to "tone it down". Those who weren't invited were fenced into a "free speech zone" under a highway overpass, their approach to the convention hall blocked by razor wire, cops, soldiers, armor, etc. So here we stand, between one armed camp and another, with Homeland (or Fatherland) Security dropping vague hints to keep us all on edge. (My guess is that Ridge & company's aim is to depress turnout... without discouraging people from going to the mall.) These fuckers are turning this whole country into a "free speech" holding pen.

Good cop, bad cop. Which will get your vote?

luv u,

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8/08/04

Anaconda da vida, baby...

Dank it may be. Decrepit it most certainly is. Dark it often seems...particularly at night. But damn it, it's home, and I for one am glad to see it, warts and all, after so long a sojourn amongst the stars. To stumble once more over the shattered brick threshold. To crack my skull with rough familiarity against the too-low-by-half concrete lintel over my bedroom doorway. To hear the sound of bricks falling from four stories up as the parapets slowly decay. (Sigh) The sounds of home.

Well, there were several things we expected to see when we set down on the roof of the Cheney Hammer Mill. One was some kind of "welcome home" sign -- a banner, perhaps -- arranged by our low-rent tour promoter Col. Jeremiah Beauregard Tuber (ret.). Another was the colonel himself, who turned out to be as absent as the welcoming committee... and whose neck we could cheerfully wring (if he indeed had a neck) for the string of awful bookings he set up for us, to say nothing of the impossible distances we were obliged to cover... and the malevolent consequences of our mad rush from star system to star system. Finally, we saw no obvious sign of the extended mongoose clan that had taken up residence at the mill before our departure. (Just a stack of empty pizza boxes, some breadfruit hulls, and an unpaid bar tab or two.)

Fact is, we had a little help inspecting the place. Our Sustained Super-Light Entropy Phenomenon™ doubles were still with us when we landed, flickering on and off like a neon sign in a cheap detective movie. While Matt, John, Mitch Macaphee, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and I were going room-to-room, our doppelgangers were popping up in random places, mocking our efforts, appearing in costume as Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade, and other famous fictional detectives. I've already reached the point where I don't even react to them at all anymore. I wish I could say the same for the other members of our party. Mitch almost fell out his laboratory window when one of them appeared inside a beaker. Marvin blew a circuit board over the sight of his own double bending pretzels in the parking lot. (It may have been the impossible geometric shape on the phony Marvin's tee-shirt that toasted the board -- hard to say.)

Anyway, the Cheney Hammer Mill was empty as a cold cut platter the morning after the Super bowl. What could account for this? Well... I can guess why Jeremiah isn't here. He probably caught wind of our disgruntlement from his many contacts in deep space and decided to make himself scarce until we had had the opportunity to thoroughly gruntle ourselves once again. God knows -- a few of us wanted to make roasted vegetable ravioli our of him after the tour he put us through -- untested venues, improper logistical preparations, bad promotion, and an itinerary that had us zigzagging across the galaxy like...like...like an interstellar pop group with a lousy tour promoter... which is exactly what we were. Hey -- I fucked up. I trusted him, right? And in deference to our own man-sized tuber, I'm willing to let the whole matter drop. (Mmmmmm. Grilled vegetable ravioli.....)

What about the mongooses? Glad you asked. It's impossible to be certain what became of them. Perhaps our neighbor Gung-Ho had something to do with it... though his solutions are usually of the scorched-earth variety. Then there's Trevor James Constable's theory (or that of his double -- I always get those two mixed up) that the mongooses got tired of Jeremiah's continual cigar-smoking and southern cooking (southern American cooking, that is... not masala dosai) and chased his fibrous tuber ass all the way to Katmandu. Seems as likely an explanation as any, and rather elegantly accounts for both anomalies. Well done, Trevor James (or bogus Trevor James)! Still... best we check inside all the pizza boxes, just to make sure...

Danger: Election! Nothing like a little terror talk to help take the "bounce" out of the opposition party's post-convention polling, eh? Not that one would expect more than incremental movement in Kerry's favor. In spite of what the Krauthammers of the world would have you believe, the American voting public is split right down the middle between the two corporate-run parties of empire. Still, the Bush crew is not an organization that ever leaves much to chance. For the last ten solid days, they've been trying to keep the focus on terrorism, terrorism, terrorism. Suddenly there's a rash of "major" arrests in the short stretch of weeks leading up to the Republican National Convention. Three or four year old research on potential targets in New York and New Jersey surfaces and is treated as evidence of a grave and imminent threat. They bring the fear index up a notch... then it's on to the convention, scheduled to wrap up just as prime product launch season hits, as Andy Card so aptly pointed out in 2002. Bush/Rove political choreography at its finest. (For a closer look at the Election warning chart, click on the image.)

Trouble is, it's hard to completely control the front page when there's a colonial war going on. Much as they try to keep a lid on that burning barrel of garbage, it's bound to pop open from time to time, as it did this week with the renewal of the Shi'ite uprising we saw in April. If Saturday's headlines are any indication, it appears the administration's spin on this is that they're killing a large number of Sadr's Mahdi army -- this is what I would term "not a good thing," from the standpoint of the glorious Iraq crusade our great leaders of both parties have committed us to. Aside from the sheer brutality of using advanced helicopter gunships and high-tech munitions against a poorly-armed militia of ghetto kids, a military confrontation with Sadr might be enough to knock this "interim government" flat on its ass, leaving the U.S. military occupation with no Arab facade to hide behind. Not the best way to keep Iraq off the front pages.

It's hard to say whether this is the result of the general unraveling that's been occurring in Iraq over the past months or the product of some bone-head attempt to eliminate the Sadrist movement from Iraq's political equation. My guess is more toward the latter. These Bush people are some of the worst military strategists ever to run an empire. Saddam shouldn't have been a hard act to follow -- they've managed to alienate everyone in country who isn't either dependent upon us for their authority or using us to their own ends. Domestically, it's a similar deal. What the hell sense does it make to announce the prospective targets of a terror campaign, then very obviously put massive resources into guarding them? What... do they think terrorists don't read the papers or watch Fox News? Do they imagine Al Qaeda types haven't learned to provoke this kind of reaction deliberately (which certainly seems easy enough to do)? Is it that hard to simply change the target of your truck bomb? Or are they doing all this for some... other ... reason....?

On one of the first "orange alert" days, as I was making sure all my oranges were fully circumspect, I noticed my local paper had two major national stories on the front page. One was about the massive preparations to thwart terror. The other, above the fold, was a big article about how the Statue of Liberty pedestal was once again open to visitors, featuring cut-away diagrams of the building, visitor center, etc. Now... either our leaders are the most impossibly stupid people on the planet... or they're not really worried about an attack at all. What's your guess?

luv u,

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8/15/04

Hi-di-le-ho, kids...

No, this isn't Ned Flanders. This is just plain old me, sitting in my squat mill, watching the world go by all too fast through the narrow battlement-type windows. Just trying to offer an upbeat greeting for a change, that's all -- something for those of you who get sick and tired of all this doom and gloom stuff all the time. (I for one am fed up with being sick and tired.) Nothing wrong with that.

Oh, sure -- we've had our difficulties. Who hasn't? I mean, we're not the only band who's ever gotten booked into dives from here to Aldebron by a wayward root vegetable who's gone a bit south of the Mason-Dixon line, if you know what I mean. And I'm sure plenty of other perfectly nice, normal people are plagued by intermittently visible doppelgangers of themselves and their entire families. Hell, it happens so much, you almost never read about it in the papers anymore. There's no reason for us to feel singled out. Still, this seemed like a good time to kick back and relax, so we're all concentrating on re-coop and recreation this week. John's locked in his computer game room, Matt's out planting baobab trees, Mitch Macaphee's catching up on his technical journals, Trevor James Constable is contemplating his next horizon, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is also staring into space from the crumbling top floor of the mill, and the man-sized tuber is working on his tan in the courtyard.

And me? I'm going through the old mail bag. Here's a letter from a listener in Provo, Utah...

Dear Big Green,

Why don't you guys ever perform on planet Earth? I keep wanting to follow your tours, but the guy at the Greyhound Bus terminal tells me they don't offer service to other planets. What the fuck.

Frank Bogus, Provo UT

Well, Frank....if you check into some of our back story, available right here on this web site, you'll learn that we once performed on Earth eons ago, but have since abandoned it for richer pastures, as it were. Fact is, playing on other planets is what playing in Japan used to be -- lucrative and full of enthusiastic fans. Just don't tell anybody, or else every band will want to get in...on...the... Hey, Frank... forget I said anything, okay? Just forget the whole thing.

Here's another from St. Augustine, Florida....

Dear Guys,

Whatever happened to Marvin's (your personal robot assistant's) career in law enforcement? Has he been kicked off the force?

Ida No, St. Augustine FL

Well, Ida -- Marvin has been on an extended sabbatical from the local constabulary (officially, it's considered unpaid sick leave, but we won't get into the details of his generous benefits package right now), but that's only because he's been so desperately needed at home. I'm pretty certain the police have other personal robot assistants they can press into service if need be. Frankly, they don't have a lot of crime to investigate around these parts. My guess is that when Marvin goes back to work, it will simply mean that he'll be paid for keeping an electronic eye on us, since we're the only locals who might constitute a threat to the peace. (And if we make any false moves, there's always that spare pair of robot arms the cops installed in our studio. Fuck up and you're busted!)

Finally, there's this....

Dear Big Green,

Why do you insist on posting these phony letters? Everybody knows they're bogus as all hell, and that you're only doing it to slag off for a week. Even this one is fake!

Joe Perry, Utica NY

Well, I have a point there, I guess. My bad. Our quality control department will get on it right away. We believe in continuous improvement here at Big Green... whatever your lying eyes tell you.

Kerry'd Away. The Democrats' presidential candidate wants my vote...sort of. I don't live in a "swing" state, so neither major party candidate seems willing to sleep with me to get my measly vote. Neither seems particularly inclined towards making any political concessions in my direction, either -- which is, by the way, the general direction most Americans are moving in on Iraq and other matters. The policy positions on both sides employ much the same rhetoric and envision an American occupation of Iraq (or what Rumsfeld might call, a non-occupation of Iraq) that stretches ahead indefinitely, a war on terror that will be fought on the battlefield, and so on. Yes, there are nuances of difference between the two and, yes, just about any individual would be better than George Dubya. But politics at its most meaningful level is about policy, not personality, and I am not optimistic about policy.

Here's the biggest difference -- while Team Bush simply uses people like me to encourage their core supporters to vote, Team Kerry incessantly browbeats left-progressives and antiwar types about staying on the Dem's bandwagon... even in a "safe" Kerry state like New York. I mean, you'd think in New York you could debate whether or not to press the Kerry campaign on this or that issue without getting a near-hysterical response from his hardcore supporters (the "house party" set) and red-faced accusations that you're a closet Bush-lover or a mindless dupe of Karl Rove. I've seen people slammed on peace activist listserv's (listserv's, for chrissake, not the public square!) for raising questions about Kerry's positions on the war in Iraq, on Haiti, on Colombia (the other other war), on Chavez's Venezuela, and so on. Just like the Deaniacs before them, these folks are stifling the kind of debate activist communities should be having on how, when, and where to apply what small amounts of pressure they can bring to bear.

I know, I know... Anybody But Bush, right? Fine. The best argument I've seen for ABB so far was put forward by Naomi Klein in The Nation (check it out). But this discouragement of dissent and discussion amongst activists -- where is this leading? The same place it always leads, that's where: No place fast. If Kerry becomes president, he'll likely face a Republican House and perhaps the Senate, as well. These same people who want us to shut up now will attempt to squelch criticism of president Kerry then, too, whenever he makes Clintonian lurches to the right to gain Tom Delay's cooperation. Ironically, they'll accuse us of helping Tom Delay. After that, it will be re-election that's at stake. (Don't criticize Kerry! You'll only get Bill Frist elected!) Next, it's getting Edwards elected....and on and on.

Better to speak our minds consistently... than to become reactionaries by default.

luv u,

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8/22/04

Here we go...

Good afternoon, my children. Slept late again today. Quite groggy, frankly. Don't know who I'm talking to. What is this, instant messenger or something? Guess I can type in my sleep after all these years... if that's what I'm doing. Might be dictating. Might be dreaming in long hand. Hmmmm. Long hand....

What the... Okay, I am actually doing this, aren't I? My apologies. Haven't been sleeping all that well lately. You'd think that being back in your own abandoned hammer mill in your own makeshift bed would be comfort enough to promote undisturbed slumber for at least six or seven hours a night. Sadly not. We've got a few issues here at the Cheney Hammer Mill that have yet to be resolved, the most pressing of which remains the existence of our annoyingly intermittent doubles -- the ones that were generated by the phenomenon Mitch Macaphee has dubbed Sustained Super-Light Entropy Syndrome (or SSLES™), a pernicious side effect of our mad rush from planet to planet during our recently completed Interstellar Tour 2004. Yes, those pesky doppelgangers are still with us... only now they're exhibiting some remarkably antisocial behavior beyond the scope of most science fiction twins.

Last week, as you may recall, I made reference to our crumbling brick parapets, disintegrating from age and neglect. Well, didn't my double climb up there and knock a few dozen bricks over, sending them hurtling down to the sidewalk below? They hit like...well... like a ton of bricks, doing noticeable damage to some neighbor's bicycles that were parked outside the row of second-hand stores other squatters had established during our absence. (Just watch... this place could end up a hammer mill once again.) Naturally, the insubstantial sonufabitch vanished after doing his dirty work, leaving most observers to conclude that I was responsible for this heinous act of negligence. Well, before I knew what was happening, I had a bit of a Ben-Hur problem on my hand... and I don't mean a nasty opponent in the chariot race. I mean big trouble resulting from poor roofing maintenance...and the cops pounding on the front door, for chrissake.

This prompted me to kind of put my foot down with the scientific contingent of our party. Hell, we've been waiting for Mitch Macaphee and Trevor James Constable to come up with a solution for this doppelganger problem for nigh on to a month, now, and still no soap. Even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is losing patience. (I saw him standing outside the local pub with steam pouring out of his ear the other day... though it may be unrelated...) It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Mitch has been dragging his feet while he works up a major treatise on the SSLES™ phenomenon. Sure, I know, this could be the big breakthrough he's been waiting for... the discovery that will send him straight to the top of the mad science totem pole. As it is, he's been working night and day on his paper, following the man-sized tuber around with a clipboard and snapping Polaroids of doppelgangers every time they appear with a banjo or a backhoe. But man goddamn, now these troublesome doubles are sending me to freaking jail, and I (for one) am not amused.

In any case, as the cops gather evidence at the site of the fallen bricks, I've decided to make myself scarce for a couple of days in hopes that if they arrest anybody, it will be my double. So I've been hanging out at the local pub (the Shiva's Arms), banging out a few songs on the electric piano and trying to stay out of trouble. It's not so bad, really. You see, John at the bar is a friend of mine. Gets me my drinks for free. And he's quick with a joke or a light of your smoke, but.... Oh Fuck! No wonder I can't get any sleep. Somebody tell Mitch to get to work on that anti-doubles formula pronto. And if the constables come looking for me, tell them I've got a special number just for them... a little tune from Mr. Manilow....

The New Normal. A couple of weeks ago, I tuned into CSPAN and saw testimony before the House Intelligence committee by members of the 9-11 Commission, which had just delivered its recommendations for restructuring the U.S. intelligence apparatus, among other things. I happened to be watching when Dennis Kucinich delivered a pretty diplomatic defense of civil liberties and invited the commission members to comment on how we might preserve our basic rights and remain secure at the same time. At that point, 9-11 commissioner Bob "Chicken Shack" Kerry (one-time owner of a string of cheap fast-food fried chicken joints) launched into a sanctimonious tirade about how Ben Franklin would have agreed to limits on civil liberties if he'd seen the slaughter of 9-11 and how when hypothetical people "in a mosque somewhere" praise those atrocities they forfeit their right to free speech, and so on.

Kucinich had no opportunity to respond, since members were limited to about 5 minutes total (including panelist responses) -- even so, he probably would have been too courteous to the former Senator to point out the monumental hypocrisy of Kerry's indignant little outburst. Bob Kerry was a strong supporter of the Iraq invasion, which has (quite predictably) generated far more hatred of America in the Muslim world than ever existed before. While he's affecting to save us from nefarious persons muttering in mosques, we are busily planting seeds of rage in the soil of Iraq that will plague us for generations to come. Kerry, incidentally, is one of the "liberals" on the 9-11 commission -- a Democrat who couldn't bring himself to oppose this totally unnecessary, fraudulent, and disastrous war. Small wonder their final report papers over many of the key issues identified by the 9-11 families (without whom there would have been no commission) or quite credible whistle-blowers like Sibel Edmonds. The report fails to address the 800-lb gorilla of 9-11 -- the political determination to avoid blame and conceal the institutional and diplomatic underpinnings of what led to those attacks. These are issues that will not be addressed by creating yet another national spying entity, a recommendation that is already being used by Congressional "leaders" to heap blame on the CIA for the war Congress insisted upon and to start working on the next war -- Iran.

Meanwhile, back at the Bush administration, everyone is still rolling along just as they were before the war, now that George "Fall Guy" Tenet has been given his walking papers. Thanks to the now total lack of accountability with respect to (Republican) elected officials, you can still open the funny papers and read about Rumsfeld giving cautions on intelligence reform (as if his Pentagon hadn't created their own intel unit to gather bogus evidence on Iraq) and Condi Rice telling us not to get too caught up in the "ups and downs" of "post-war" Iraq (as if that burning disaster were just a mildly upsetting reality TV show) and Cheney grumbling about Saddam's relationship with Al Qaeda (as if that hadn't been discredited nine ways from Tuesday). One begins to wonder if these guys will actually leave when it's time for them to leave. (Someone should check on Ashcroft, too. After all these high profile arrests, he's starting to look a little toasty...)

When No Means Yes. Hugo Chavez took his "recall" vote in a walk this week, nearly 60/40 against the well-heeled Venezuelan opposition. I can just hear Roger Noriega over at the State Department now, letting loose with a Yosemite Sam-like fulmination: "OOOoooooooo!!!!!!!"

luv u,

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8/29/04

Heeey, kiiids, heya heya...

Greetings from beautiful sub-tropical Sri Lanka, far away from anyplace you'd expect to find a pack of losers like us. Hell, we've got rust belt written all over our sorry asses -- writ large, as they say, like a brand burned into our souls. We carry our crumbling heritage along with us everywhere we go. Even our squat house drops the occasional hundred-weight of bricks in sympathy. Hoo-boy.

Hey, if you drop in unannounced, don't look for me at the pub. I've been shown the door, struck off, banned, etc. -- i.e. they won't let me in the joint again, ever. At first, I thought it was because Marvin (my personal robot assistant) had smoked the place up pretty good when he had that minor short circuit in the parking lot last week. Then I though it might be my rendition of "This One's For You," complete with hand gestures and obscene noises. But no, it was the local constables -- they came during the day and told the management to pull the plug on me until they had finished their investigation of the "falling brick" incident, a crime for which my evil doppelganger was completely responsible. So much for my social night.

Just to add insult to injury, my double popped into the pub a few nights later and (against the express wishes of the proprietor) pulled a few pints of his best ale, then sang raucous rugby songs with the local drunks. The bouncer couldn't get his hands on him, of course, because of his irritating tendency to fade away at the first sign of trouble, then reappear behind the bar, or in the garden, or on planet Mars...wherever. So now I have to appear before the local magistrate on a charge of mayhem or hooliganism (maybe both) in that fucker's stead. This is going to cost a fortune! I mean, you'd think the constables would get a clue that maybe there's an element of truth in what I've been telling them about this Sustained Super-Light Entropy Syndrome (SSLES™) doppelganger phenomenon, but they still look at me like I've got three heads whenever I so much as mention it. (And I don't have three heads. I don't.)

It just bloody figures that my double would turn out to be the ne'er-do-well of the bunch. Practically everyone else has made significant progress in applying their doubles to some constructive purpose. For instance, Matt's SSLES™ twin has actually pitched in with some of the landscaping and maintenance tasks that we routinely neglect around the Cheney Hammer Mill, much to the chagrin of our neighbors. (Sure, sometimes he appears, somewhat bizarrely, as the "juggling carrot," but that doesn't do any real harm...except confuse Marvin a bit.) John's double has been seen raising money for UNICEF with those little milk carton-like collection boxes we used as kids. Even Marvin's double does better than mine -- he's put the bagpipes away and stopped interrupting our studio work with unscheduled appearances and uncharted horn parts. (First do no harm, right?) I mean, why does my double have to be from the wrong side of the tracks? Why can't he be the juggling carrot? Why am I asking you? Why do I only italicize pronouns? (Well, there's an exception...)

Okay, now I've got something to get off my chest. (No, not the tattoo depiction of Versailles.) Last week, our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee came in for some serious criticism on this very blog page, and I want to set the record straight. (The clichés just keep on rolling out, one after another.) He's actually been working pretty hard on our recent troubles -- not just for his own glory, as I suggested last week, but as part of a sincere effort to fix something he didn't break in the first place. Mitch's exhaustive study of the man-sized tuber (the only one in our party not dogged by a dastardly doppelganger) has yielded some significant information that may indeed solve our problem. And in the midst of this Herculean scientific labor, he has managed to find time to do a number of other helpful tasks, like fixing my portable TV set and inventing a new kind of club sandwich. Useful things. Important things. (There.... I feel chastened.) Let's see what he can come up with next, eh?

War Crimes. It seems the Pentagon's Abu Ghraib investigation has been turned in, and while it is somewhat critical of top officials for inadequate oversight, it doesn't hang any meaningful blame on them. What do you know? Another free pass for the Bush team. There's a surprise. They who set up extralegal detention and interrogation centers all around the world, outsourced torture to client regimes, and are preparing to kangaroo court their way the Guantanamo detainees have managed to beat yet another rap in advance of their 9/11 commemorative political convention, featuring "America's Mayor" Rudy "The Profile" Giuliani (don your Kevlar vests, friends, and don't reach for that wallet!) and "America's Gropenfuehrer" Arnold "The Pig" Schwartze-whatever. Anyone who laid money against Rumsfeld having his job by the time Bush reads his acceptance speech is sorry now. He's even almost "sexy" again, according to an increasingly impotent corporate press corps.

Of course, his crimes are legion, as are his fellow criminals. The war party (both Democrat and Republican versions) have a good lot to answer for in Iraq. A war and an occupation driven by extremist ideologues, trying out their various crackpot neo-con theories (economic, military, and otherwise) on a subject population already battered by 25 years of armed conflict and deadly sanctions; an American fighting force stretched to the limit for a wholly unnecessary war; reservists (some of them with 20 years of stateside duty) sent into battle with shoddy gear, no armor, and the same Vietnam-era vehicles they drove around the countryside back home; the deaths of almost 1,000 U.S. soldiers with many thousands maimed for life; tens of thousands of Iraqis dead and wounded, their nation in turmoil, their lives in constant jeopardy; a world that looks upon us with growing fear and hatred, angered by a "preventive" war clearly motivated by a desire for imperial gain, the repercussions of which we will have to endure for many years to come. There's more, but I'll stop there.

The costs of what they've done -- what we've done -- drive home a sense of failure. Just the other day there was a story in my local Podunk newspaper about a 24-year-old soldier who had recently returned from Iraq, obviously deeply troubled by what he'd been through -- a young man who ended his own life by walking out into a busy expressway. That is one death that will not show up on the Pentagon's casualty tally... but like all the others, it represents the profound, irretrievable failure of our society -- all of us, pro war and anti war -- to prevent an avoidable catastrophe like this one from happening. Republican heavyweights are telling the president he should avoid the issue of the Iraq war this week; too many of us are taking their advice, as well. This should be our obsession, this war, because lives are being shattered by it every day. We're too late to save that 24-year-old soldier, or the eight-year-old he killed back in Iraq. But we can save others if we face this thing and start taking responsibility for it.

luv u,

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