July03

NOTES FROM SRI LANKA.

(July '03)

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7/06/03

Hola...

I've got toothpicks propping my eye lids open after an all-night session in the anteroom of the Cheney Hammer Mill (our squat-house here in old Sri Lanka) making frozen toaster waffles for the local constabulary's charity bake sale. They said if we stacked comestibles high enough on the card table, they'd agree to keep Marvin (my personal robot assistant) at the same pay scale as before his several-week ballooning-related absence. I never knew indolence could be such hard work...I'm z'hausted!

Yeah, we patched Marvin together all right, with some small difficulty. Those folks in Fiji didn't exactly separate his constituent parts at the joints. I don't want to nauseate anybody out there, but I think they took a hacksaw to the poor sod in more than one place. Nobody has the patience to do things the right way anymore, that's the trouble. I have to believe there's a set of metric sockets somewhere on Fiji....but they were in a hurry to ship Marvin out after he scared the humpback whales away with his Jesus balloon. (Note to first-time readers: No, I'm not taking drugs. Check My Back Pages for June 2003 and you'll see what I'm talking about.) So Marvin took a few welds, courtesy of John White, the technically adept member of the group. (Hi, kids...I'm Jimmy Carl Black, the Indian of the group....)

Marvin's inventor, Mitch Macaphee, was kind enough to fax us over a schematic of his creation from his retreat in Oslo. I believe we've convinced the good man of mad science to accompany us on our upcoming interplanetary tour, scheduled for August. (He has yet to return the pro-forma contract we sent for him to sign -- all I can say is that, if he wants a bigger retainer, he should tell it to his orthodontist.) There's no question but that we need a science advisor on these tours -- someone who can explain to us all manner of peculiar phenomena, like why Plutonians caulk their windows with cashew butter, or how scrap dealers on Kaztropharius 137b can buy scrap iron at $3 a ton and sell it at a profit for $1.50 a ton. (Mitch's answer: they buy it on a planetoid with 0.15% Earth gravity and sell it on a dead star with 500% Earth gravity. Like so many things in space, it's location, location, location.) I mean, how would we ever figure this shit out without his help?

You'll be glad to know that our now semi-regular guitarist from the planet Zenon, sFshzenKlyrn, has signed on. I'm relieved that he wasn't discouraged by our last foray -- particularly the "inner-planetary" leg of the tour, arranged by our cut-throat corporate label, Hegemonic Records & Worm Farm, Inc. Actually, sFshzenKlyrn has even joined us for a few rehearsals on the roof of the Cheney Hammer Mill, in the shadow of our ramshackle water tower. That's quite remarkable, since the very notion of rehearsal is considered a sign of moral infirmity on his home planet. (Like most semi-solid clouds of supercharged elemental particles, Zenites value spontaneity over studiousness, impulse over industry, volatility over...well, you get the idea.) I'm hoping we'll be able to rope him into doing a few parts on our new album, since he's back to working cheap again.

And our road manager? Well, we tried a little experiment in our free time. The three of us wrote down the names of everyone we know onto little slips of paper, put the slips into a barrel and rolled it down a flight of stairs. We asked our neighbor Gung-Ho to reach in and call out the name on the first slip that came to hand, just to ensure total impartiality. Our random selection for road manager? "Man-sized tuber," read Gung-Ho. So, obviously, this method doesn't work. Or does it? Maybe an oversized root vegetable is just the manager we need to keep us on the path of righteousness and out of the path of wrong-teousness. Maybe he'll keep us on the straight and narrow...and off the crooked and wide. Maybe...not.

We'll work it out. Meanwhile, I'm going to get some shuteye. (Anyone hear the sound of toothpicks cracking?) ZZZZzzzzzzzz.......

Garageband.com Update. Well, they changed their method of reporting this week, so everybody dropped a thousand places or so in the rankings. That leaves Merry Christmas, Jane (Part 2) at around 1,945 out of 7,739. (Imagine 7,700+ alternative bands playing in one big garage....)

(Not) Vietnam. It was another ugly week in Iraq, with several U.S. deaths and god knows how many Iraqis blown away. Back stateside, of course, safe and dry, the two top cards in FoxNews's hero deck were pulling their best Clint Eastwood/Rambo mugs. For George Dubya AWOL-from-the-cushy-stateside-squadron-for-a-year Bush, this entailed a challenge to the Iraqi resisters, a little Texas tough-guy "bring 'em on" that was followed by yet more wounded and dead Americans -- those unfortunates charged with securing Dubya's new imperial platform in the Middle East. For Rumsfeld (pronounced "rump-smelled"), it was another salvo of self-validating denial that Iraq is turning into a military quagmire or another Vietnam. Iraq is a different place, the administration assures us with what seems like a real sense of discovery. And yet the process of attempting to impose a political solution by military means must have something of a familiar ring for military and foreign policy operatives who've been in Washington more than a week or two.

Naturally, there are monumental differences between the two conflicts...but the principal U.S. aim in Iraq is, at its core, similar to what it was in Vietnam -- the establishment of a stable client regime in a country that badly wants its independence. For about a century, the Vietnamese were sat on by the French, who colluded with local elites to squeeze the life out of the vast majority that worked the fields. The Iraqis have been hammered by the "West" as well -- principally the United States in recent years -- in partnership with the Ba'athist, who we helped establish and sustain through their worst abuses. In both countries, we have been closely associated with the rapacious landlord, the corrupt politician, the faceless torturer...an association one could generalize to dozens of other nations, with current standouts like Colombia, Algeria, Indonesia, and others. (Fact is, with its astoundingly bloody human rights record, our only complaint with Colombia is that it signed on to the International Criminal Court without exempting the U.S. from prosecution.) Then, of course, there's Chalabi, the consummate liar and lobbyist, waiting to be made Iraq's Diem.

So with our brothers/uncles/sons/fathers being popped off on a weekly basis, me thinkst the administration doth protest too much on the Vietnam analogy. It's just a good goddamn thing that Dubya takes his orders straight from the Big Guy (I'm not sure whether it's Godster or Jesus-boy he talks to) ...otherwise, there might be some serious policy implications here. Hopefully, Karl Rove can convince the Holy Trinity to pose with Dubya for a photo-op before the election. Maybe we can rent the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln again, only have the boy-king flown in by cherubim this time.

Okay...last one out, turn out the lights. Take care, you people you.

luv u,

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7/13/03

Aloha...

Well, the constabulary bake sale was a big success, thanks to uncle Joe's last minute flapjack intervention. Yeah, I know -- I said I was working on toaster waffles last week, but that was just a ruse to keep the others from discovering my cache of flaps and descending into binge-dom. It was a necessary deception, and one that ultimately kept old Marvin (my personal robot assistant) on the payroll at city hall, where he can continue to work his little mechanical heart out supporting us lazy lugs in Big Green.

Why does the local police department need to run bake sales to stay in business? Things are a little difficult here in Sri Lanka, public works-wise...kind of like in the states. There just doesn't seem to be enough money for anything anymore, once the protection money is paid. There's even talk of subcontracting traffic control to somebody like our militant neighbor Gung-Ho, who maintains a fully outfitted army as a personal hobby, more than anything else. I imagine Marvin's job is secure as long as the constabulary's "fundraising" efforts (known elsewhere by the somewhat more technical term "bribery") remain at their current levels. Otherwise the poor old sod may have to turn in his patrolman's field day cap and get a job with Gung-Ho to keep the paychecks marching in. Hey -- we all have to make sacrifices in these challenging times. Just the other day I had to do without something...can't quite remember what it was, but it was something I wanted really, really bad. So pity me, damn it.

Marvin, for his own part, is in pretty good shape, having come through a relatively frantic reassembly job that involved a lot of welding, hammering, and swearing. I've told him to avoid Fiji entirely in the future, if he ever found himself in similar circumstances -- their 3-box solution for robot repatriation is about one of the harshest immigration policies I've ever come across. You've got to think they really didn't like Marvin too much, sawing his head off like that. Small wonder we sell almost no CD's in Fiji. Matt's thinking of sending the man-sized tuber as a kind of good will ambassador for Big Green, but personally I'm against it. If they hack tubey up, it would take a couple of years to grow a suitable replacement...that's just too damn long! We need a road manager this summer. Keep that tuber home where he belongs!

As our next interplanetary tour looms closer with every passing day, we have taken all reasonable steps to secure the talent we need to support our performances. Just yesterday I dropped a couple of tickets in the mail to our trusted mad scientist, Mitch Macaphee. Granted, because of our recent budgetary constraints, they are not the best seats in modern trans-hemispheric transportation. But then, Mitch is a man of science. He may find the cargo hold of a plantain freighter fascinating -- maybe he'll even do a paper on his experiences for delivery at the next conference of the Institute for the Study and Promotion of Bananas and Plantains. (Perhaps his great intellect will settle the controversy over whether there truly is a difference between a plantain freighter and a banana boat -- I was on the phone with the travel agent for about 45 minutes over that sticky little issue.)

Of course, we withheld from Mitch and other members of our entourage (John, for instance) the news that the man-sized tuber would, in fact, be our road manager on this journey to Venus and beyond. Unethical, yes, but necessary to avoid mass defections. Besides, we've got good reason to put tubey on board. After all, we've gone into space more times than anyone would care to remember. Not only would this be the man-sized tuber's first trip up yonder, it would be the first time a root vegetable has ever been sent on an interplanetary voyage in a command capacity. That means front-page coverage, above the fold, instead of a tawdry little item written by an intern and tucked inside somewhere, next to ads for wart remedies or psychic hotlines. ("Know your future -- $2 a minute?" Hmmm.) First tuber in space...the Yuri Gugarin of the vegetable garden. The eyes of the world will be upon us.

In any case, we'll try to keep the lid on the story for the time being, just to keep people from begging off. We wouldn't want this to reflect badly on the space corps, after all. Think of the little children...how they look up to us. Think of how disillusioned they would be if they discovered that space suit was stuffed full of fibrous vegetable sinew instead of flesh and blood. Think of the future spacepeople we would be discouraging. Okay, got all that? Good. Keep thinking. I'm going to take a nap.

CD Project: Even at our glacial pace, you see a little progress from time to time. We actually finished Matt's demos and slapped them on a disc; mine still need some vocals and mixing. O snail / Climb mount Fuji, / but slowly, slowly! (-- Issa)

The League of Extraordinary Goofballs. While Dubya was tooling around what he refers to as the "country" of Africa this week, the ghost of deceptions past was with him at nearly every turn, clanking its ponderous chain loudly, demanding to be heard. It seems journalists in Africa are not as cowed by the imperial presidency as their American counterparts -- the Boy King faced a few uncomfortable questions in between pulling a grim face at the slave shipment point on the island of Gorée in Senegal (probably the same face he pulled when he heard about the Supreme Court's ruling on affirmative action) and petting elephants with his daughter. The Lie That Wouldn't Die was even gaining momentum in the American media, propelled somewhat by the growing scandal in Britain over Blair's "dodgy dossiers" regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Ultimately, the administration felt it had to respond. (People were talking about the wrong Africa story, dammit!) So they did the thing they usually do -- duck responsibility. First they deployed Powell to say that discussion of the issue is "overblown," hoping that would shame the press back into its rabbit hole. When this didn't work, they threw somebody expendable under the bus. It was a two-phase worm-turn, actually. Phase one was a statement from the White House admitting that the Niger/Uranium connection story was bogus, and that it shouldn't have been included in Bush's State of the Union address -- this effectively sawed through the limb Tony Blair had climbed out on (Hey...he fucked up. He trusted 'em.) Phase two was getting Condi "Supertanker" Rice to hang it on the CIA and George Tenet.

Now, how lame is this? Word about the bogus Niger connection story had been circulating through the administration since last fall. What, has the CIA become Bush's speechwriting team? Ludicrous! The administration knew at the highest level that this story was baseless. Their language on this and a slew of other baseless charges was carefully crafted to provoke fear and a sense of imminent danger, which they used as their primary justification for the invasion of Iraq. Not liberation. Not human rights. The threat of a 9/11-like attack -- that was the lynchpin. Now they've been caught in a particularly heinous lie -- one of many, I might add -- and they're trying to duck responsibility for it. Typical.

Maybe Bill Bennett should do a personal responsibility intervention on the Bush team. Or...maybe not.

Keep your heads down...

luv u,

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7/20/03

Y'ello...

Hey, I'm back. Fact is, I never left...it is you who is back. (You is back?) When you finish this column each week, I'm still sitting here, patiently awaiting your return, hands folded, smiling pleasantly day after day until the time again arrives for me to fulfill my sole function on the internet (besides that of providing a repository for spam). We're kind of a quantum band -- your observation of us brings us to life, makes things happen. (I need Mitch Macaphee to explain this, damnit!)

Speaking of physics and physicists, you'll be interested to know that circumstances have compelled us to change our interplanetary itinerary for next month's Big Green tour 2003. Instead of kicking off on Venus, we're giving our first performances on Mars, the famed "red planet." Why? Location, location, location, my friends. On August 27th, Mars will be closer to Earth than it has been in 50,000 years...a mere stone's throw away in astronautical terms. That's an opportunity not only for free publicity, but for a tremendous savings on the resources needed to get us there -- this according to our new tour promotion consultant.

Who is this consultant, you may ask? Well, remember Tiny Montgomery, the showroom organist we hired for our 2001 interplanetary tour? That's the dude. Tiny has put his stage get-up in mothballs and taken on the ghastly characteristics of a rent-a-manager for engagements at both terrestrial and non-terrestrial venues. He's assured us that he can turn a profit for us on this tour, even after his 15% commission...but frankly, I'm skeptical. Still, I'd rather have Tiny calling the shots than the cutthroats at Hegemonic Records & Worm Farm, Inc. Now, I know what you're thinking (those of you with long memories, that is)...that Tiny Montgomery cut out on us when we were being bombarded by the Indonesian Kopassus brigade (see my back pages), so how do we trust him now, right? Well, our attitude is, lightning never strikes twice in the same place. And no two snowflakes are alike. And if you could find a body of water large enough to hold it, the planet Saturn would float like a beach ball. And...well, I've wandered a bit. But the point is still the same. Give Tiny a chance. That's all we're saying...

I see where Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has started his own little venture on the side, just to make us some extra money (so Matt can buy some bass strings...and I a new ascot clip). He's leading an exercise class over at the local community college gym -- something that occurred to him while he was working up his strength after his recent dismemberment at the hands of the Fijian immigration authority. At first, Marvin's class was pretty much just him and the man-sized tuber, who Matt thought should get in better shape for the upcoming tour (his physique is admittedly less than Olympian). Once word got out, though, there were quite a few takers, both from the local subdivisions and from Gung-Ho's on-base housing. Hey -- at $12 a pop, it makes for a good second income...and Marvin's thinking of doing a video, besides, or maybe a series like sFshzenKlyrn's now defunct cooking show. This could be our ticket out of this dump!

While we've been busy with pre-production on Big Green's much anticipated second commercial release [working title: new album project], we've continued to gather as much information as we can about the planets on our tour itinerary...that's so there'll be fewer surprises along the way. Sure, we've been to Mars before -- plenty of times -- but there's much we still don't know. For instance, our research has revealed that Mars has a "gooey" center, as opposed to a "crunchy" one. (If you're unfamiliar with geological jargon, consult an online glossary.) Also, Mars is (and I think we may have mentioned this before) close...very close. Hell, it's practically coming to us. Maybe if we could just get our hands on one of those honking big extension ladders, we wouldn't have to hire another ramshackle space ferry.

Actually, Tiny thinks we should climb Mount Everest and wait until the colossal Martian peak of Olympus Mons is pointing towards us -- that would shave off a few miles. Always thinking, that Tiny. I'm sure we'll have these logistical details all worked out by the time I "see" you again. Until then...well, I'll just sit here patiently, then...shall I?

Scandal? I found myself scratching my head this week over the question of whether it's possible that the Bush administration has actually gone too far. Can they go too far, or does Dubya's lifetime free pass work for any situation, cradle to grave? The notion that there might actually be some limit on their actions occurred to me for the first time, prompted by the minor media uproar over one of Dubya's more heinous pre-war distortions of fact. Of course, given the circumstances of their frenzied, relentless push for war, the attention placed on the bogus Iraq/Niger uranium story seems to my mind impossibly narrow and cautious. Can anyone dispute that these people were hell-bent on invasion? For chrissake, it was just a few months ago -- surely everyone can remember their scare talk, threats, ultimatums, accusations...all against a backdrop of steady military buildup on Iraq's borders, making invasion a practical inevitability. There were so many evident (and demonstrable) lies emanating from the administration over that period that the Niger fraud -- talked about before the war by Sy Hersch and others -- hardly seemed exceptional.

It's a familiar process, though -- limiting the discussion to a single item, in this case, the notorious "sixteen words" in Bush's execrable state of the union speech. Still, enough shots are being taken at Cheney for his role in the affair -- his trumpeting of the nuclear "threat", his multiple visits to the CIA, his apparent knowledge of the truth early on, etc. -- it does beg the question of whether or not they might chuck him overboard if matters got too hot for them. He is ancient and not all that fit, after all, and he's probably anxious to cash in on all those lucrative contracts he's rustled up for his energy sector pals. (Of course, there is the small matter that Cheney is probably the guy who does the chucking in this administration, but that may not be insurmountable.) Then, the guilty one removed, Dubya would be purified and we would be able to put all this "revisionist history" to rest. (Though Dubya now seems to think we invaded because Saddam "wouldn't let the inspectors in." Hmmm.)

With Cheney gone, we'd need a new vice president for the boy, and pronto. I've got somebody in mind, actually. Another old friend of the family, with sterling anti-communist cold war credentials. A man to whom Dubya owes much of his popularity, who played an enormous role in putting the boy's administration on track with its reactionary agenda. A devout man, invoking the Almighty at every opportunity and deploring the excesses of our hedonistic society. Most importantly, a bold man who isn't afraid to blast hundreds or even thousands of people to smithereens when he believes the cause is just, as it always is in the never ending battle against evil. Oh sure, he's got health problems, but none worse than Cheney...and he's got an oil-soaked pedigree that's a perfect match for junior.

Hail to the chief...God is great! Watch yourselves out there....

luv u,

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7/27/03

Yo' mama...

We're deep in the dog days here in Sri Lanka, and I've taken to wearing the dun-colored canvas shoes of a tourist; sockless, I pad from room to room, the walls of the great Cheney Hammer Mill beaded with condensation, the scuffling of my crepe soles pursuing me down the dark, dank corridors. Sometimes I wear a miner's helmet just to let others know I'm here -- a mere courtesy, nothing more.

I'd say it's been uncomfortably warm here, but this would be news to no one. Fact is, we've been spending quite a bit of time indoors lately, both to avoid the heat and to get on with our many preparations for Big Green's upcoming interplanetary tour, not to mention pre-production for our sophomore studio album (that's sophomore, not sophomoric, damn it!). Since I hate to pack, I've adopted a method that Matt has used to good advantage over the years: starting a month before your departure, open your suitcase and place one item in it every waking hour. By the end of the month, you're packed and ready to go. How easy is that? Yesterday I packed eight pairs of socks and a bottle opener. Today's going a bit slow -- I'm working on a fifty-pack of toothpicks. (Perhaps I should treat that as one item...)

Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is taking a little time off from his police work this week to lend a hand around the mill. Ever since he started that tony exercise class, we hardly ever see him. You may think that police constable and fitness instructor make an odd, even unnatural combination, but they are, in fact, strangely compatible occupations. Marvin finds a surprising number of takers for his class at the donut shops of the Colombo area. Also -- if he's careful about it -- he can convince collared lawbreakers to opt for exercise in lieu of incarceration or community service. It's one of those rare "win-win" bribery situations that actually benefits the sucker that's being shaken down. And just so long as the Chief Constable gets his slice, it's all kosher. Quite an innovator, that Marvin. (Though he does get a little overzealous in his recruiting...like when he arrested John, Matt, and I for "failure to employ turn signal" when we were walking home the other day. Then there's those men in hats he roped into doing squat thrusts...but I digress.)

Our interplanetary tour is beginning to take form in full glorious detail, thanks to the tireless off-camera efforts of our new tour promoter, Tiny Montgomery. Sure, he's a neophyte in the world of booking agents, but that hasn't slowed him down much. Tiny already knows the names of fully two-thirds of the planets in our solar system, and he can name them in order from the sun outward (with the help of a visual aid and his official space cadet "guide to the planets" lunchbox). This after a brief two-week tutorial with Mitch Macaphee, conducted over the internet. Hey -- it's important that he "put a face to a name" with some of these planets as he proceeds to make commitments for Big Green performances.

If, for instance, Tiny books us into a festival on Jupiter, I want him to know that he's sending us to a vast, turbulent world with bone-crushing gravity, a lethal atmosphere, and massive cyclonic storms that have been raging for billions of years. That way he'll be sure to put a rider in the contract for some kind of overhead protection on any open air performances. Or if he sends us to the rings of Uranus, I want him to remember that that strange gaseous world is tilted sideways, so the rings run vertically, not horizontally. It may seem like a small point, but trust me -- without the proper orientation, you're sunk on Uranus before you play a single note. Tough audience to please.

Speaking of which, your friends at Big Green garnered a rare "In The Spotlight" review in the current issue of Dagger. Tim Hinely, the zine's founder and editor, had this to say about our LIVE From Neptune EP:

Utica, NY trio who, despite being as obscure as a band gets, drop off 4 swingin' tunes. The opener, "Special Kind of Blood" has a marvy ska' feel w/ some wicked guitar leads. "Merry Christmas Jane" is sublime pop at its best as is "Holiday." I thought the other tune, "Oh Larry!" was a bit wanky but the rest is more than ok.

Hey, man...we'll take it. Now, back to work on the next one....

Greetings From Baghdad! The Bush administration was doing what amounted to a political turkey strut this week over the killing of Saddam Hussein's two sons and their companions, including a 14-year-old "individual" (as the military puts it), probably Hussein's grandson. It certainly made for some much sought-after jingoistic media noise...enough to nearly drown out the growing scandal over the administration's pre-war uranium lie (responsibility has changed hands yet again, this time tossed over to Condi Rice's second in line). Good week for a victory dance, since a potentially very damaging story also broke about senior administration officials exposing the identity of a CIA weapons investigator as payback to her husband, who happens to be Joseph Wilson IV, the former ambassador who was sent to Africa by the CIA to investigate the bogus Niger/uranium story and later publicly criticized the administration for using it as part of their justification for war. So it appears Dubya's crew compromised an entire chain of CIA inquiry regarding illicit trade in WMD materials, just to punish a whistleblower and, presumably, discourage others from doing the same. Don't you feel extra safe, now?

Back to the dazzling display of Uday and Qusay's patched-up bodies...it reminded me of those ghastly picture postcards the French used to send back from colonial Indochina -- the ones that depicted the severed heads of captured and executed Vietnamese rebels. ("Hi, mom! Hope you're well. Here's a picture of some dead guys. Come visit sometime!") I imagine some Washington PR shop is busy producing a grisly "deck of the dead" for collectors...though they'll need more than 52 cards. While they were plugging the bullet holes in those corpses, Viceroy Paul Bremer was dispatched to the various talk shows to proclaim how "quiet" Iraq was becoming and to deplore the level to which Saddam had allowed the country's infrastructure -- particularly its electrical grid and water treatment facilities -- to decay. I suppose it's just possible that the good colonial administrator is unaware of the fact that we bombed the shit out of these very resources back in '91 and regularly since then, while specifically denying Iraq the technology to rebuild them over the years that led up to this year's war...when the infrastructure was bombed again. Bremer should get out more. Of course, he's just repeating the official narrative on Iraq -- the one that excludes our concerted military and economic campaign to reduce this most developed of Arab countries to penury, anarchy, and total dependence in less than 13 years. Quite an accomplishment.

It's likely that most Americans are unaware of this sordid history (leading to the preventable deaths of upwards of a million Iraqis), since more than forty percent of us seem to think that the 9/11 hijackers counted several Iraqis among their number...and more than half of us believe Saddam planned the WTC/Pentagon attacks. Thank our well-oiled media machine, masterfully filling in the spaces for people who don't take the trouble to learn the facts for themselves. This information monoculture is likely to grow even more centralized, thanks to the good offices of FCC Chairman Michael Powell (who has done wonders in the past for his daddy's stock portfolio) and Dubya (who's helped his daddy as well). And though unprecedented public outcry has forced Congress to deal with the new, looser media ownership rules, Dubya has his veto pen handy...and I'm sure he'll use it.

Hey -- the system works just fine for him. Our nation is remarkably ignorant of the facts on crucial issues that will affect all of us for years to come. That can only be a good thing for George Dubya Bush.

Take care out there.

luv u,

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