NOTES FROM SRI LANKA.
(July '04)
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07/04/04
Next up....
Gravity. Whose bright idea was that, eh? Well, whoever the responsible party may be, they forgot to install an on/off switch. It's the little things that make all the difference, know what I mean? Jeebus.
All
right, so I'm not cut out to be an interstellar navigator -- some of us
have got it and some of us don't. It's just that I'm not so good at reading star
charts... those little circles and specks and meaningless lines -- they all look
about the same to me. For chrissake, you'd think the genius who designed the
chart would have put a big red-lined box over one of those dots that says, 
"WARNING:
NEUTRON STAR!" or something similar. But nooooo.
Just some stupid alpha-numeric code footnoted with impenetrable scientific
jargon. Bloody useless. No wonder they hire rocket scientists for this job!
Anyway, we were streaking (not in the popular euphemism) across the great star desert, fresh from our triumphant (if smoky) gig on Uranus (The Planet That Starts With YOU®) and bound for Ajax 7, a little planet somewhere in the Pleiades star cluster. We were driving at break-neck speed, of course, because our (soon-to-be-ex) tour promoter Jeremiah Beauregard Tuber had allowed us only 36 hours travel time to cross this enormous distance (bastard!). This is where the lack of skill comes into play -- apparently (or, rather, not so apparently) there's this invisible neutron star right in the middle of the desert, and the sucker's got gravity like Carter's got little liver pills. Naturally, I had no inkling of its existence until I found Marvin (my personal robot assistant) with his head pinned to the starboard bulkhead by the deep space object's enormous magnetism. This was not good. (As luck would have it, Marvin had been right in the middle of one of the informal English language lessons he gives the man-sized tuber when the deadly neutron star got hold of him.)
I
think it was John who first noticed that we were flying in an enormous circle,
even though our astrogator was set for Ajax (not the foaming cleanser...
the planet!). We enlisted Matt's help in administering smelling salts and
other stimulants to our regular pilot/navigator/mad science advisor Mitch
Macaphee in hopes of breaking him out of the Zenite snuff-induced stupor he'd
put himself into some days before. When Mitch could get his legs under him, he
hobbled over to the controls and announced that we were stuck in the
gravitational pull of the neutron star. Far more dense even than our current
tour promoter, the object exudes a magnetic force strong enough to reduce our
vehicle to the size of a dime and chuck us into the nearest inter-dimensional
parking meter. "This could ruin our whole day," Mitch explained, and
we nodded in unison.
The
first remedy Mitch attempted was to have Trevor James Constable add the power of
his patented orgone generating device to that of our ship's engines. Using the
man-sized tuber as an assistant, Trevor James pointed the powerful array of his
invention out the aft viewing port and threw the switch. Nothing. He kicked it
once or twice, then asked us to check the inertial guidance system yet again. We
were still flying in circles. Damn -- this wasn't working. We tossed
around the "portable clue" in a desperate attempt to generate a
credible Plan B. Oddly enough, the answer came from Marvin, who -- while still
stuck to the bulkhead -- printed off a sheet of data paper that read, quite
simply, "sFshzenKlyrn... bait and
switch..." Mitch read this and said, "Of course!" Naturally, I
needed to don the "portable clue" to understand what they were talking
about. It appears sFshzenKlyrn, being
something of an interstellar object himself, has 
sufficient
density to draw the attention of the neutron star long enough so that we might
slip the surly bonds of gravity and touch the face of freedom. (Whoops... too
much Reagan coverage. Now I'm starting to sound like the old fuck.)
One problem -- sFshzenKlyrn stayed behind for an extra day to do a little Hubble-stumping... or in this case, Cassini-stumping, pulling his dead-ringer imitation of the planet Saturn just to get himself in all the newspapers and web sites this week. (At least they tell me it looks like Saturn -- I saw him do the imitation and I didn't know what the hell he was supposed to be.) So we've sent him a simple radio message: sFshzenKlyrn with your specific gravity so bright...won't you stump this neutron star tonight? We patiently await his reply....
Land
of the Free. This week the U.S. government handed over a packaged good they
and the news media call "sovereignty" to the predictable assortment of
exiles, CIA assets, and other unelected "representatives" of the Iraqi
people they chose to lead its first government. For this lot,
"independence" began with the show-trial arraignment of one-time
exile, CIA asset, and unelected "representative" of the Iraqi people
Saddam Hussein, who appeared without the benefit of counsel before a panel of
anonymous judges who questioned him on a series of crimes against humanity he
committed with our full support. Even under these somewhat favorable
circumstances, our great leaders (though I should probably call Bush Jr.
"Dear Leader") felt it necessary to run footage of the event through
military censors before releasing just enough of it so that our news media could
show haggard photos of Hussein with headlines that express shock over his
defiance. (It's not hard to see how this trial is going to play out -- when
Saddam starts talking about how we 
provided
many of the components for his weapons programs, the story will be: "Him
Ramblin'! Him Don't Know What Him Sayin'!")
It was entertaining, at least, to see Viceroy Bremer scurrying back to the states (or CONUS, as the military likes to refer to us), having done as much "good" as he was allowed to do, putting the legal, military, and political framework in place to ensure total penetration of the Iraqi economy by western corporations for many years to come. I assume we may look forward to books, lecture tours, campaign appearances, etc., by Proconsul Jerry. If so, I hope they've got his Frank Luntz reductionist talking points guide all ready for him -- the same cue card the White House has been reading off of for some time now. You know how it goes -- I'm sure you could say it in your sleep by now:
POINT ONE: 9-11 Changed Everything!!!
POINT TWO: Saddam Had A "Relationship" With Al Qaeda!
POINT THREE: You Gotta Admit, The World Is Better Off Without Saddam In Power!!
Of
course, we all know the enduring value of point one -- the fact that it isn't
even remotely true doesn't seem to matter a bit. In fact, it's remarkable how
much the same everything is in the wake of such a mind-shattering event -- same
arrogance, same rhetoric, same "solutions", and even many of the same
characters as during the Cold War. Point two has been downgraded by stubborn
fact a bit lately (Bill Safire has replaced "relationship" with the
term 
"dealings"
so as to accommodate what appears to have been a state of outright enmity), but
is still in common use. Point three is almost as popular as point one... and
about as meaningless. Is it literally true? Well, with radioactive components of
the unguarded Tuwaitha nuclear facility turning up in Europe, I have to suspect
not. Beyond that, we don't know where Iraq is going. Clerical state? Fratricidal
civil war? Partition and regional war? Right now, it doesn't look good...
especially with an unelected ex-Ba'athist thug in charge.
Perhaps the 10-20,000 dead Iraqis are better off now... or the 850+ dead Americans. Somebody should ask Luntz -- maybe he's got a theory.
luv u,
jp
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07/11/04
Oh, my soul....
Holy subterfuge, Batman! That hat trick with sFshzenKlyrn worked! Who woulda thunk it? Even with the portable clue, I'm usually kinda clueless. Good fortune has smiled upon us once again. (Must be luck 'cuz skill don't shake like that.)
Well,
we succeeded in convincing sFshzenKlyrn to
knock off the Saturn imitation long enough to come and help us out. (There was
an element of bribery involved, but I'm not prepared to go into the details just
yet. Give me time.) Our Zenite axeman performed a flawless "bait and
switch" maneuver with the neutron star that had held us in its
gravitational clutches, soaking up its magnetic force while we slipped 
away
into the inky void. Wonderful show! Turns out, sFshzenKlyrn
and the neutron star were old school chums -- spent a few eons together at one
of those upscale stellar nurseries in M32 (a Messier business you
couldn't imagine). They had a real good yak while we zipped off to the
land of the living, thankful for friends in high places. (Though Mitch Macaphee
was a little disappointed at not getting the opportunity to try the new gravity
negation formula he and the man-sized tuber had been working on for the past
week. Pity.)
Liberated
from near-certain neutronization, we made our way to the small brown planet
known as Ajax, where our oddly-misshapen tour promoter Col. Jeremiah Beauregard
Tuber (ret.) set us up with four consecutive nights of showcase performances --
a stint he characterized as "the ah-puh-too-ni-tay of uh lahf-tahm"
for a group like us. Good money. Enthusiastic crowds. Excellent advance
promotion. Radio interviews. Blimp rides. Free carrot sticks. Paper fans. Stop
me. Little bags of air. No, really. Soup spoons. Stop me. Anvils.
STOP ME. [SCENE
MISSING] Anyway, everything seemed totally
"Archie" when we made landfall -- our rooms were booked and ready, our
advance person solicitous. True, the Ajaxians are a bit strange to my Terran
eyes -- a basketball-like head/body nodule (the "powerhouse" of the
whole thing) suspended atop a single pedal appendage that works like a pogo
stick. It is more than a bit unnerving 
to
constantly see them bouncing up and down through the corner of your eye... but
you adjust quickly.
We got our first whiff of trouble when we met the director of the venue we were to play on the first night. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) obligingly served as interpreter for us, using a decommissioned dynamic microphone he termed his "universal translator." A few brief exchanges were enough for us to determine that Col. Jeremiah had sold us to the Ajaxians as the galaxy's premier polka band! Polkas, it seems, are enormously popular on Ajax, perhaps owing to the pogo-stick locomotion factor, though it's difficult to be certain. In any case, we had obviously been misrepresented big time and were now facing the prospect of four nights of disgruntled audiences demanding "Roll Out The Barrel" and chucking billiard balls at us. Not good. Subsequent conversation revealed that we had also been billed as having a particularly lively and acrobatic stage show involving trapeze stunts and dramatic Tarzan swings. Karate demonstrations. Kick-boxing clinics. The works.
How
did we survive the week? Well, it wasn't easy. Luckily, Marvin has some
experience as an acrobat... he and the man-sized tuber managed to keep the
Ajaxians mildly amused with their low-rent (and somewhat puzzling) aerial stunts
as we slogged through some of the lamest polka music ever heard in the Pleiades
star cluster. That included polka-fied versions of 
Big
Green songs. (Imagine "Christmas Out West" with an
"Obla-Di Obla-Da bass line. Ouch.) I'll tell you something my fine
friend -- Mitch Macaphee couldn't pilot us out of that solar system fast enough
for anyone's taste...including the Ajaxians. (They were hopping mad.) Damn you,
Jeremiah!!
Senseless
Consensus. Amazing as it may seem, the race for the White House '04 is about
a year old (in earnest) and all the major party candidates seem to agree on
fundamental questions of war and survival. All four contenders supported the
invasion of Iraq and continue to support the basic rationale for "staying
the course" -- i.e. compounding the crime. While they disagree on how best
to achieve it, all four agree on the concept of American "leadership"
in the world -- i.e. continuation of empire building through support of
"friendly" repressive regimes and the targeting of dissident players
like Venezuela, Cuba, and Haiti. All four enthusiastically support Israel's
continued expropriation of the West Bank, its subjugation of the Palestinians
under occupation, its dispossession of those in the diaspora, and the
construction of the massive (and clearly illegal) 
apartheid
wall, as true a barrier to peace as ever I have seen.
That's not to say there are no significant differences between the two tickets. But unless there is a significant shift of rhetoric from the Democrats (which seems unlikely), there is little obvious incentive for opponents of the war to make their way to the voting booth...beyond that of a burning desire to punish Dubya and crew with a humiliating electoral defeat. That was my reason for voting in 1992 -- I just wanted to see the disgusting elder Bush board that plane and fly off to one of his adopted home states. Perhaps a lot of people felt the same way, but I can tell you that people are much angrier now than they were then... and I'm talking about mainstream Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, not just political activists. It's a very polarizing anger, partly motivated by issues and partly by a visceral reaction to the arrogance of the Bush administration. I never thought I'd live to see the day when an anti-war, anti-Bush Michael Moore documentary would be the #1 movie in America (this week it was #2, behind "Spiderman"). I mean, my country music-loving dental hygienist told me -- unprompted -- that her military brother doesn't like Bush. Say what? A working class soldier resents the corporate-owned motherfucker who sent him to war? That just makes too much sense.
It's
impossible to say what's going to happen with this election -- too many
variables, too much time to go. But it does seem that, once again, the parties
are locked into a political strait jacket. No one wants to stand out for fear of
tipping the delicate 50-50 balance in the other side's favor. That's why
Bush/Cheney will highlight McCain, Giuliani, and Gov. Arnold at their
convention, plus as many black people as 
they
can rent. That's why Kerry will steer a path straight down the center of the DLC
line -- hawkish, "non-redistributive" Democrat who's pro-choice but
tough on crime, etc., etc.... particularly if he doesn't have to compete with
Nader for left voters. And that's why Bush/Cheney, in particular, will talk
about their opponents almost exclusively, touching very lightly on their own
record, and using every penny of that $200 million to hammer away at
Kerry/Edwards in those key swing states with attack ads so shameless they would
make Lee Atwater blush. Looks like another squeaker, folks.
Lay Down. Ken Lay's finally had his day before the judge. Maybe he can get Cheney to vouch for him. (Though probably not Dubya, who seems to remember so little of his personal history.)
luv u,
jp
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07/18/04
Take a bow.
07:40 Hours: I'm lying in my cabin, feeling the ship list gently port to starboard, port to starboard... The engines hum deeply, vibrating the deck beneath me like an electric Lazy-Boy. My mind latches onto the thought of our tremendous velocity, the vast ribbons of open space reeling past our viewing port... millions and millions of miles at a clip... 07:51 Hours: I'm calling Ralph on the big ceramic phone. (Aaak.)
Man-o-man
-- when I get motion sickness on an interstellar tour, it's serious business.
Doesn't usually happen because ordinarily our bookings are no more than 5 to 10
light-years apart. Not this time around. Our de-facto promoter Jeremiah
Beauregard Tuber has got us zig-zagging across the length and breadth of this
galaxy like a bottle fly at a pie-eating contest. We've been clocking an average
of 27 light-years a day for over three weeks 
now....
must be some kind of record. Unfortunately, it's the only kind of
"record" we're likely to make on this trip, since the overwhelming
majority of these gigs have been logistical nightmares and virtually
unrecordable -- no electricity, bad sound, roomfuls of bouncing polka fans,
scuttled P.A. gear... Crikey!
Then there's another little problem. Mitch Macaphee calls it "sustained super-light entropy phenomenon" (he's preparing a monograph on the subject for the journal Mad Science). It seems that when you spend too much time going way too fast, your molecular structure starts going haywire. It's almost as if half of your molecules get dislodged from the other half and start acting independently, like a couple of band members breaking away and starting their own group. We first noticed the phenomenon when a peculiar "evil twin" of Marvin (my personal robot assistant) turned up on the flight deck, circling the central astrogator and playing the banjo. At first we thought it was simply a case of our mechanical companion having taken leave of his senses once again... until the real Marvin showed up and flummoxed us completely. Which one was the genuine article? (It didn't help a bit that the real Mavin happened to be practicing his bagpipes at the time.)
It
got worse when we pulled into Aldebron Five for our next scheduled engagement. I
awoke that morning to find a wispy doppelganger of myself piloting our little
craft, cackling insults into his headset, and flipping off the customs officers
in the escort dinghies. Naturally, when a somewhat testy looking Aldebron
immigration agent looked over our ship's manifest, my obnoxious double flickered
a couple of times and then disappeared altogether, leaving me to talk...
to.... the...... nice...... police...... man. (I didn't know there was a customs
duty on dental work. Doesn't seem right, but....okay.) Then Matt's and John's
doubles followed us on stage and tried to commandeer our instruments, upstaging
us with a strange amalgamation of 70s pop songs and selections from Captain
Beefheart's Doc at the Radar Station. (It's not what they did... it's the
way they did it.)
Part
of the trouble is, our wispy evil twins are just substantial-looking enough to
pass for the real thing in a place like Aldebron Five. They also seem possessed
with the malevolent excesses of 70s road bands. I mean, by the time we got back
to our hotel rooms, they had already trashed them in the spirit of Led Zeppelin
and other dark legends of the hospitality 
industry.
We were handed a bill of particulars detailing acts of mayhem, arson,
bestiality, and general not-niceness that far exceeded our take for the evening.
(Note to Jeremiah: send money.)
Of course, then when we went out into the parking lot to make our escape, we discovered that Mitch Macaphee's double had flown our spaceship into orbit, then disappeared (as doubles often do), leaving the craft unmanned and circling Aldebron Five in a remarkably aimless fashion. Damn. I'll bet Robert Plant never had to deal with this. (What am I saying???)
Fool Me Twice...and the rest of it. Where's Phil Rizutto when you need him? He should be doing ads for "The Inquiry Store." They'd be doing a pretty brisk business just lately, with such a high volume of off-the-shelf official inquiries, congressional investigations, and the like surrounding what is now almost universally conceded to be bogus intelligence on Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction." What other purpose can these internal investigations serve than to help exonerate the many who rushed to war by blaming something (and someone) we can't talk about openly -- classified intelligence and the agents who gather it. The recent Senate Intelligence committee report rips the CIA; a British inquiry rips MI6 (though Blair's victory appears to be a fleeting one). Both say little or nothing about how the information was used by those in power. So now we've got the approved narrative for Operation Iraqi Freedom: the spooks were wrong and our leaders acted in good faith. All is well. All is well.
Of
course, in reality, this is just sad, as Ross Perot used to say. Over on this
side of the Atlantic, we've got the administration running around using
practically the same talking points as before the invasion... and we've got
pro-war Democrats saying "If I had known the intelligence was unreliable, I
wouldn't have voted for the war." Talk about lame. Could anything have been
more obvious than the speciousness of the administration's case for war? They
had no solid evidence for any of their claims -- worse, there was
substantial evidence to the contrary. Most of what was said by Cheney, Powell,
Rumsfeld, and Dubya himself was clearly intended to mislead, and was easily
refutable on the basis of publically available information. Powell's supposedly
airtight Feb. 5th dossier fell apart very quickly. Their resolve to drag this
country to war and to make major political hay with it during the 2002 election
was clear to anyone willing to look beyond the level of the most superficial
rhetoric.
And
yet, even though a five-year-old could tell they were scamming us, Democrats
like Kerry, Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Schumer, and others claim they were fooled
by convincing-sounding intelligence. This position truly makes them look silly.
For chrissake, the key informant on Iraqi WMD's was some Chalabi-connected drunk
codenamed "Curve Ball"! I mean, you can't make this stuff up! Pro-war
Democrats made a political decision to support this war -- they were being
"terror-baited" and they took the bait. But someone like Kerry could
have gotten away with voting no. He wasn't 
up
for election, he had a safe constituency, a military record, etc. In the end,
though, he made what appeared to be the "safe" choice politically, and
now he and others are trying to finesse their way out of the disaster they
helped create -- a disaster the full extent of which many still do not seem to
realize. One wonders, in light of this, what one might expect from this loyal opposition
party should former CIA asset Osama bin Laden team up with Dubya to derail the
November election and what remains of our civil liberties along with it. Osama
throws the bomb, Dubya puts the fix in.
Will we see a bleat of protest from the Dems? Or will they prevaricate while we line up for lunch at the local detention center? Place your bets.
luv u,
jp
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07/25/04
Roll film.
No more coffee for me, thanks. No, honestly... I've had enough. What's that? Something amiss with the bill, eh? No problem. Just take another twenty, there's a good chap. That should put us close to even... maybe even closer. Ummmm... perhaps I will have that refill after all. Thanks, mate.
Oh
-- greetings. Didn't know anyone had "checked in" yet, so to speak.
We're at a rest stop on the great trans-galactic Thruway, just grabbing a spot
of breakfast before pressing on to what will probably be our final port of call
on this strange and ill-begotten tour. Our little problem on Aldebron Five was
rectified with the help of the local port authority, who (though not
particularly inclined towards charitable thoughts) took pity on us and towed our
unpiloted ship back to ground. A fairly satisfactory end to a rather
embarrassing episode in the ongoing saga of Big Green.
It only 
remains
for us to settle our accounts with various government agencies and hotel
proprietors on Aldebron, and we may even be able to return without being
arrested. Maybe.
Should that day ever arrive, I'm hoping we'll have solved our "evil twin" problem. Yes, those semi-substantial doubles are still with us, the product of Sustained Super-Light Entropy Syndrome™, as Mitch Macaphee has branded... or rather, termed it. Talk about annoying! My double flickers on and off like a lamp with a faulty switch. He seems to be aware of this and likes to position himself right in the center of my frame of vision, so that when he flickers on, I'll see him flipping me off (or giving me The Cheney™, as we call it). Then when I try to hit him with a shovel, he disappears with a diabolical disembodied cackle. Just hours after we lifted off from Aldebron Five, I caught him and Trevor James Constable's double trying to pilot us through the center of the Ring Nebula. Luckily, they couldn't stay corporeal long enough to execute the course change... but they came damn close. Menace!
Wouldn't
it figure that the one that stays visible (and audible) the most consistently is
the banjo-toting doppelganger of Marvin (my personal robot assistant)? In fact,
he's such a regular addition to our on-stage complement, I noticed last week he
had put in for a paycheck. And at union scale! I mean, even our opening
act The Steels™ --
seasoned performers that they are -- don't even ask for scale on these cheap
seat plainclothes tours. And pseudo-Marvin isn't even all there, if you
know what I mean. Anyway, there aren't very many Big
Green songs that call for random banjo plucks and strums 
executed
by a semi-substantial idiot... neither are there all that many cadences in our
musical canon that allow for the fevered honking on a clarinet that Matt's
double offers, or the detuned vibraphone strikes delivered by John's evil twin.
Suffice to say, they are making a mockery of the mockery that is our stage
show.
We've
issued a challenge to our two resident (mad) scientists, Mitch Macaphee and
Trevor James Constable (at least, I think the challenge was given to them
and not their doubles...), to find a solution to this vexing problem by the time
we reach Sirius (if we can figure out which little point of light it is), our
last stop on this tour. Mitch has taken to studying the man-sized tuber, who
appears to be the sole member of our party to have escaped the duplication
phenomenon. (He is, after all, the only one who belongs to the vegetable
kingdom.... though we're all honorary members.) Trevor James Constable is
working on the problem by way of his efforts to develop a unified field theory
-- we can expect the results sometime within 
the
next twenty or thirty years, foundation grants willing. Hey -- you can't rush
science. The time'll pass quickly. And maybe by then we'll have found a
way to send our doubles to lucrative jobs so that we can pay back some of the
damage they've done without selling Marvin on ebay. (Just kidding Marvin.
Incidentally, did you keep that box you came in...?)
Dis Vas Ze Veek Zat Vas. Well, there've been a great many political stories this week -- so many, I hardly know where to begin. I have to say my personal favorite was the slight re-write of Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land released in animated video form by Atom Films (click here to view), but there was a lot more in the area of unintentional comedy. Like the spectacle of Republican congressmen giving "Special Orders" speeches on how great things are going in Iraq right now. (One congressman on C-SPAN was lamenting the media's morbid focus on Baghdad bombings and the resulting carnage while, just behind the severed limbs and burning vehicles, traffic is moving quite normally....honest.) Then there was the astounding double miracle surrounding the president's military records -- first they were missing, presumed complimentary, and no one knew how or why... then they magically reappeared, like the mountain in that Donovan song ("First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is..."), and no one knew how or why. (Who knows -- maybe that trillion dollars that the Pentagon mislaid over the last 20 years will miraculously reappear as well, and we can go out and buy ourselves a universal health coverage system.)
Of
course, who could fail to be appalled by Dick Cheney's disastrous attempt to
appear cheerful on the campaign trail this week. By god, his momma (or was it
Lynne?) told him that if he gave people that terrifying "happy look",
his face might well freeze that way, and well...momma was right! Just look at
him, willya? Now what's poor Dick Cheney going to do? How is he going to
drop the F-Bomb on the Senate floor with that permanent "happy face"?
This could deal a real blow to his new-found tough-guy charisma...and it's all
John Edwards's fault.
Okay...
so I made that last one up. But you've got to admit, it's not all that
much stranger than some of the actual news... like the Senate taking up the vital
issue of an anti flag-burning amendment to the constitution (God, we need
this right now!) or Alan Greenspan saying that the economy is doing just
fine, thank you (you folks out of work are doing a great job, really). Then
there was, of course, the release of the 9-11 Commission Report, which prompted
the hilarious spectacle of the House Republican leadership getting up in front
of a sign that reads "Terror On The Run" and taking credit for all
those imaginary things they keep telling us about, like "taking 
the
fight to the terrorists" in Iraq. (Hot dang -- every time we invade
a country, turns out the place is chock full of terrorists trying to take
a shot at us. Go figure!) Helpfully, some "conservatives" are even now
pushing for some kind of "pre-emptive" strike on Iran's nuclear
program, including Admiral Chuck Krauthammer, who thinks this would be a doable
thing since we have 146,000 troops "standing" next door in Iraq. (To
the admiral, "standing" and "getting shot at" appear to be
the same thing.)
Perhaps the one item from the week's news that is beyond even Atom Films' ability to lampoon was Dubya's appearance before the National Urban League. I don't know... he looks a little uncomfortable to me. What do you think?
luv u,
jp