Obedience.

I was in a medical waiting room the other day, the ubiquitous television tuned to “American Morning” or “Good Morning, America” or “American America – Great Day in the Morning” or whatever the hell they call that show with old Nixon crony Diane Sawyer, joined on that particular day by sit-in co-host (and old Clinton crony) George Snuffleupagus. Their two big stories were the intelligence reports about a resurgent Al Qaeda and the interim report on “progress” in Iraq. While those two stories are, by virtue of previous intelligence reports, intimately related, Sawyer and Stephanopoulos were careful to keep them in their separate silos. No chance that either of these seasoned journalists would, say, ask Michael Chertoff whether or not Al Qaeda’s new strength was further evidence that the Iraq war is spawning a new generation of terrorism, drawing more people to extremism, and alienating those people in the middle east who might otherwise harbor some affection for us. I mean, we know that this stupid war is making terrorism worse – why do we pretend otherwise?

This thing the mainstream media calls journalistic objectivity amounts to basically wiping the slate clean before every story. Know-nothing journalism, that’s what it is. So even a not overly subtle White House communications team can fill that slate with whatever dreck they want and watch it passed along to the viewing/reading/browsing public without significant challenge. For christ’s sake, is it at all controversial to say that this war was not a good idea? More than 60% of the American people believe it was a mistake. That’s landslide territory, last time I looked. So why in fuck’s name can’t the corporate media build on that foundation? Why do reports on Iraq always proceed from the administration-encouraged assumption that the conflict needed to be fought, that our intentions have always been good, and that the success of the U.S. project in Iraq is essential to both our country and theirs? Political figures give voice to this nonsense – but does anyone really believe it?

Even in the face of no significant progress on the “benchmarks”, Bush demands patience. That’s basically the only card he has left. He’s got nothing to lose by taking that position because… well… he’s got nothing to lose. He can’t run for president again and he knows it’s unlikely that he’ll be impeached, so he’s got the office for the next 18 months. And as long as he never admits failure, Bush can always tag the collapse of Iraq on someone else. It won’t be down to him. It will be Congress’s fault if they cut off funds and Iraq falls apart. It will be the Iraqis’ fault if the money keeps flowing but the place implodes anyway. It will be the skeptics’ fault in either case for draining the American people’s will to “stay the course.” And when he leaves office with the war still rolling lethally along, he leaves the mess to someone else who will take the blame for the ensuing disaster. For now, Bush and company are content to prolong the fiction that there can be a good outcome to this war for anyone besides Halliburton and Blackwater. If doing so kills another World Trade Center’s worth of Americans between now and the end of his term, it’s no skin off his nose.

Dubya’s message for now is clear: our portion is obedience. Wait ’til September. And be kind of scared.

luv u,

jp

Up north.

Saints preserve us. Not that we’re saints, but then… if we were, wouldn’t we be preserving ourselves rather than asking others to do it for us? What’s with the look? Hey… you’ve got to think about these things when you’re an explorer, you know.

Right. Leaving matters of religion out of this (since, after all, we represent many faiths), avid readers of Big Green‘s putrid blog “Hammermill Days” will know that we have embarked upon an intrepid journey northward from the mysterious and little known island the inhabitants refer to in their obscure dialect as “manna-hat-un” and sometimes “nuu-yawk” or “nuu-yawk, gah-dammit.” (Several natives used an even more complex variant of the second term – I believe it’s pronounced, “nuu-yawk, yuhfuggin-nidiot”.) Whatever the name may be, we chose to leave this place behind, with its deep grimy canyons, overpriced lunches, and peculiar honking denizens, so northward we went, straight up fifth avenue and deep into the unknown. What sent us in this direction? Instinct mostly. And the coaxing of Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who has some kind of navigational device built into him that always makes him choose north when you ask him for directions. (He’s like a freaking compass with casters and a great big yap.)

All right, there was a better reason to head northward. The two Lincolns – posi and anti – who have plagued our existence since their arrival in this time period, jumped into a taxi and told the cab driver to take them to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. The cabbie seemed to know what they were talking about, and he went north, so we’re following him. Not much to go on, I will admit, but that’s what we’ve got, okay, so get off my back… JUST CLIMB OFF, DAMMIT! Ahem… forgive me. It’s the pressure, that’s all. You can’t know what it’s like unless you’ve taken on an unknown continent with no one you can rely on for support or guidance – a sojourner cut off from civilization and condemned to find his way through the wilderness in the company of some very questionable associates, one of whom is, quite frankly, a vegetable. It sickens me to think of what Magellan must have gone through… or that guy who explored the Hudson Valley…. what the hell was his name?

I would be less than honest to suggest that we are experiencing anything like the hardships faced by the early exploiters… er…explorers of the North American continent. For instance, they did not have the New York State Thruway, though if they had, they probably would have been denied access for lack of negotiable currency (I doubt Henry Hudson had an EZ-Pass tacked onto the hull of this ship). Yea, I say unto you, our fortuitous discovery of the Thruway actually made our journey home a simple matter of following the expensive ribbon of asphalt through the remote valleys of upstate New York until the right exit sign appeared. I tell you, the gods of the State Department of Transportation were smiling down upon us (quite literally, from their enormous yellow vehicles) as we made our way along this magnificent causeway (’cause way up yonder, they’re ain’t a whole lot of other good roads). I can only wonder at what might have been the source of their amusement. (Perhaps the fact that we, unlike our fellow Thruway travelers, did not have a vehicle, and we’re trailing along behind Big Zamboola like mutant ducklings.)

Such was our journey home. (And as such, it sucked.) Can you believe it’s more than six bucks to get from New York to the Hammer Mill? Jesus Christ on a bike. (No doubt, Christ on a bike could have made it home faster.)

Ruling in hell.

Just when the pundits were predicting all-out pandemonium in Gaza, things seem to be kind of… well… not so chaotic, considering the place is being starved by a maniacal “international community” (i.e. Europe and America) and beaten by the local military hegemon (i.e. Israel). In just a couple of short weeks, Hamas has managed what Fatah couldn’t do in months – free BBC reporter Alan Johnston. They’re cracking down on organized crime, drug trafficking, even celebratory gunfire. Aside from that last item, it’s unclear to me why Bush doesn’t fucking love them, inasmuch as they’re religious conservatives as well. And now reporters and the “experts” who love them (including many who thought the Iraq war was a great idea and are still on television) are finding themselves backed into saying something not entirely disparaging about Hamas, which by their expressions appears to be roughly equivalent to drinking their own urine. Oh my god! Hamas is governing! They’re not acting like crazed chimps with machine guns, like we always said they would!

No question – Hamas has engaged in attacks against civilian and military targets. Name a resistance movement that hasn’t. Fatah has done the same, and yet they seem to have no trouble getting the U.S. and Israel to talk to them, send them money, give them guns, etc. What’s the difference? Don’t say it’s because Fatah renounced violence – not when the U.S. media and political culture have repeatedly linked them to the al Aqsa brigades, one of the most violent Palestinian groups. Besides, Hamas observed a long-term ceasefire with Israel, despite repeated provocations. The difference is this: Fatah follows orders, Hamas does not. Fatah has demonstrated again and again that they will not stand up for even minimal Palestinian rights. Hamas, on the other hand, shows signs of becoming the Israeli political culture’s worst nightmare – a determined popular political organization that cannot be co-opted with promises of privileged trusteeship over the open air prisons that Gaza and the West Bank have become. When Bush and Olmert demand “recognition of Israel,” they’re really saying “recognize Israel’s right to keep building settlements, take what they want, and impose their will on the occupied territories.” That – and that alone – is why Bush and Olmert hate Hamas.

Staying the course. This is the first presidential campaign in my memory that hasn’t featured a contender from the current administration. Not a huge surprise, since the Bush team appears to have the midas touch in reverse (everything they touch turns to shit). In fact, it’s too consistent a pattern to be mere incompetence. Politically, Bush represents some of the most extreme right elements of the G.O.P. Usually the focus is on social “conservatives”, but his true base is corporate America and people with enormous pots of money and no desire to part with any of it. Since 2001, Bush has steadily and methodically trashed the federal government, outsourcing its functions, privatizing its resources, and running what’s left into the ground with his “hekuva job” cronyism. Even his astoundingly well-funded Pentagon is now largely a clearing house for private contracting. When he finally leaves, he will have gone a long way towards fulfilling the desires of his well-heeled supporters, turning the government into a cash cow and undermining public faith in its effectiveness and accountability for probably decades to come.

Do Dubya or Cheney care? Hell, no. They’ve got a job to do, and they’re doing it.

luv u,

jp

Strange new world.

Got your bearings straight? Well, then, where the hell are we? What’s that? The Bering Strait? How the hell did we… oh, right. You’re just repeating the last two words of every sentence that comes out of my mouth. How helpful. Stop it!

Yes, friends… that’s right. We still haven’t found our way back to the Cheney Hammer Mill, which we now presume is no longer under the control of the dreaded space alien Gizmandiar since his ignominious defeat at the pseudo-pods of the equally dreaded (though beloved by us) space alien sFshzenKlyrn . (Long story, actually. If you’ve missed the last few installments, click that Usual Rubbish link and scroll down a bit.) Anyway, we spent several salty days at sea following our splashdown in the Atlantic (or was it the Pacific… because the Atlantic isn’t so terrific, though the Pacific, I hear, is not all it’s cracked up to be…) before Marvin (my personal robot assistant) caught sight of land. It was the first we’d actually heard so much as a squeak from Marvin since his collision with the alien drink dispenser last week, and though his exclamation was a bit of a non-sequitur, it was clear that he had seen our journey’s end up ahead.

Now, those of you who have been following the exploits of Big Green over the past few months (rudderless wretches though you may be) know that we spent a fair amount of time on a remote, uncharted island just recently. Needless to say, none of us was looking forward to this landfall – I can still feel those underripe plantains scraping my palate on the way down…. uuuhhhlllllggghh… Anyway, the strange, unknown island loomed before us, filling even the hardiest amongst us with dread. It was a dark and foreboding place, seemingly lifeless, with massive palisades of sheer rock reaching to the heavens like a confinement wall around a prison. Matt ordered the man-sized tuber to row a little harder so we could get a closer look. (Tubey isn’t good at a lot of things, but rowing he knows.) I think the root vegetable may have misunderstood Matt’s instructions somewhat, since he propelled us right up onto dry land without so much as a by your leave. (Can’t get good galley help these days…)

We got out and took a look around. Was this an island? Marvin said yes, but again, he still seemed a bit addled. So we worked our way northward through the deep canyons until, exhausted from the trials of the previous few days, we stopped to rest and collect our thoughts. Marvin did a little self lubrication, while Matt, John, and I ordered a half-carafe of merlot and a basket of bruschetta to bolster us for the long and arduous journey up Fifth Avenue towards terra incognita. Anticipating our plans (which we had largely kept to ourselves), the Lincolns (posi and anti) had hailed a cab while we were enjoying our provisions and sped off towards god only knows where. How many times do I have to tell these guys? This isn’t the 19th century anymore! All of the places they knew are now something else entirely. (I can picture poor anti-Lincoln scratching his fool head over the shoe factory they built on remains of his family home.)

Anyway, it’s northward bound for us, in hopes of finding a clue as to how to get back home. I’m thinking, though, we should at least try to take credit for discovering this previously unknown island, with its awful beauty and its overpriced luncheon options. How about Greenland? Taken? Then Greensfield. Greensboro. Keep thinking… we’ve got all night.

Death watch.

A mighty tree has fallen in the Republican foreign policy establishment, senatorial division. Indiana Senator Richard Lugar has publicly broken with Bush’s Iraq policy, signaling what may be the leading edge of a much broader exodus amongst rank-and-file G.O.P. lawmakers. Many of these senators and congresspeople are watching the polls and worrying about their prospects for fending off anti-war challengers if this Iraq business doesn’t roll to a stop before fall of 2008. Others are probably just sick of hearing about dead and grievously wounded constituents. Dubya, for his part, obviously couldn’t care less. In some ways, he’s strikingly similar to his predecessor in the White House, at least with respect to his disregard for the health of his party. Oh sure, Bush, Rove, and Tom Delay tried to rig Washington into a G.O.P.-only club, but look where they have brought the party after six years. Pretty much the only thing they have a firm grip on now is the Supreme Court, which can be relied upon to hand down draconian decisions and maybe decide an election in a pinch. That’s enough to win… but not to govern.

So… if a mighty tree falls and no one in the White House gives a damn, does it make a sound? We already know the answer to that one. We’ve seen generals and low-ranking officers turn against this war. We’ve seen mothers of the slain, conservative “freedom fries” loving congressmen, and the vast majority of the American public turn against it. And yet still it continues, with another 100+ U.S. deaths in June and an appalling number of Iraqis wasted. Absent any willingness on the part of the Congress to use their power of the purse, there is only one locus of power with regard to our overseas military deployment. Bush and Cheney (that hybrid executive-legislative extra-constitutional being) are the only ones who can call it off, and they’re not budging before the moving van arrives on January 20, 2008. Their obstinacy is all they have left.

It is remarkable, though, the extent to which they’ve discredited not only military adventurism (resuscitated temporarily by the Gulf War) but, more generally, the U.S.’s capacity for getting its way in the world. We still have plenty of weight to throw around, make no mistake – both economic and military – but that easy way we had of getting ordinarily compliant governments to line up behind us (or in front of us) is not what it once was. Just this week it was reported that African nations are bridling at the prospect of hosting permanent U.S. bases on the continent to support the Pentagon’s new “Africa Command”. Even notoriously corrupt western-oriented (i.e. able to be bribed) leaders are afraid that any movement in that direction will provoke an awful backlash from the populace, which trusts neither American power nor the motives behind its application. (Recall that Africa is now a substantial source of petroleum for the U.S.) Russia is off the reservation and Latin America is in open revolt (both are committing the mortal affront of putting their national and regional interests ahead of our own).

So what remains for us, as our congressional leadership sits on its hand, but to watch the empire crumble? I’m sure there are many in the world who feel it’s about time.

luv u,

jp

Splashdown.

Every man is the captain of his soul, sure. But what about every robot? And every root vegetable? I mean, how many captains can this unseaworthy scow handle, eh? Cheeez.

Ahoy, mateys! Yes, it’s your old friends in the calamitous band Big Green shouting out to you from the high seas, somewhere east (or perhaps west) of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in sunny upstate New York. As you may have surmised, we…. um, excuse me… Hey Matt – ask one of the Lincolns to put his finger up in the air and get a check of our wind direction. No, no – not THAT finger! Mother of pearl…. As I was beginning to say, you have probably surmised that we made it through re-entry okay. A bit touch and go, though it helps to remember that we have had much, much more experience with the terrifying phenomenon of re-entry than practically any rock band in business. (Except perhaps Captured by Robots – they’ve got us beat, for sure.)

Yes, the strange craft we borrowed from Gizmandiar lacked comprehensible controls, having been designed by a strange anemic race from a distant solar system. In point of fact, we found the retro rocket switches through the process of elimination, having activated every accessory in the bloody vehicle (including all of the vanity mirror lights… and can you believe that Gizmandiar’s ship has electric sun visors?) We hit all of the banks at once, and the resulting shock threw Marvin (my personal robot assistant) across the cabin and into what turned out to be the space alien equivalent of a water cooler (assuming, of course, Gizmandiar’s planet finds toxic sludge somehow refreshing… like the rest of us). Despite this slight mishap, our bold action did in fact slow our descent and correct our attitude to the point where we could safely re-enter the earth’s atmosphere. (Who wants to come home with a bad attitude, right? People’d just as soon you’d stayed where you were.)

Okay, enough parenthetical asides, already! (I promise.) Our saucer-like craft rocketed down through the troposphere (forgive me – or what used to be called the troposphere) and ker-plunked into a rather large, salty body of water, quite probably an ocean… but damn, I’m just not sure. We asked Marvin to use his sensor array to try and determine where the hell we had ended up, but he was still loopy from his collision with the sludge-cooler. It occurred to me that the man-sized tuber might try behaving like a divining rod in reverse and find the closest land mass, but… well… that was just a…. dumb idea… So we put together some plastic insulation sheeting and hoisted it up on a makeshift mast to catch the wind so that we would start heading somewhere. John tried to raise someone with his cell phone, but it was no use. (Bloody Verizon!)

So here we are, bobbing away on the high seas (or ocean… whatever), issuing orders to one another, none of which ever get carried out. Someone out there, just do me a favor. Bring up Mapquest or something like it and key-in “Big Green” + “lost at sea”, then let me know what comes up. There’s a good chap.

Newborn disaster.

The “new” Middle East is emerging, and it isn’t at all pretty – a child, in fact, that only its mother (the Bush administration) could love. When a massive military presence on main street Ramadi is considered freedom, you know something is dreadfully wrong with this picture. But then freedom is a very malleable word, one that enables scoundrels to sound high-minded while in fact speaking a portion of the grisly truth. “Freedom” may sound like human rights, but what they’re really talking about is the freedom to apply power at will. Pirates’ freedom, or perhaps more accurately, the freedom of the mafia don. Our standard is clear: a regime loves freedom if it is compliant with our directives. If not, it is radical, dictatorial, extreme. Uri Avnery, the great Israeli peace activist, sums it up quite neatly in a recent column. Palestinians are “moderate” if they follow U.S. orders and “pragmatic” if they follow Israel’s orders.

Clearly Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is both “moderate” and “pragmatic”, joining Bush and Olmert in roundly condemning Hamas (which is neither). Rather than criticize Israel and the “Quartet” for systematically strangling Gaza while allowing the expansion of settlements and related infrastructure in the West Bank, Abbas is working in coordination with the powers that have denied his people their most basic national and human rights for the last four decades. These are, of course, the same powers that sign his paycheck and provide his security forces with arms, so how can Abbas not be compromised in the eyes of most Palestinians, who have nothing… not even a national identity. They see the Palestinian Authority living relatively affluent lives, eating well amid screaming poverty, bowing to their occupiers… and so they vote for Hamas, not just in Gaza, mind you, but throughout the West Bank, as well. They exercised their right to choose their own leaders late last year, and now they are being punished for not having legitimized the “leaders” we chose for them. There’s Bush’s democracy.

If it weren’t so grim, it would be almost laughable to hear Dubya clumsily working his rhetoric around this situation when he and Olmert have so obviously undermined the very principles the claim to champion. Pundits in the U.S. media – those critical of Bush – fault him for being “disengaged” from the Israel / Palestine issue, but the problem is just the opposite. That lack of progress in reaching a comprehensive peace agreement? That’s what they’ve accomplished, with the full cooperation of the Israeli government. Bush has involved himself deeply, pouring money and arms into one Palestinian side, strangling the other (and 1.5 million civilians along with it), and fomenting this conflict under the watchful eye of their Middle East point person, Elliot Abrams, who by rights should be spooning gruel in a Nicaraguan prison right now. The result is quite typical for this administration – a total disaster, people at one another’s throats, that sort of thing. More birth pangs, and with a midwife like Abrams, you can see what this sucker is going to look like when it grows up.

The new Middle East – slouching soon towards a Bethlehem near you.

luv u,

jp

Downtown.

Skin temperature 500 degrees Kelvin. 550 Kelvin. 600 Kelvin. Damage report! Skin temperature 750 Kelvin. Pilot to co-pilot – what the hell is “Kelvin” and why is it so damn hot?

Oh, yes… hello, blogospheric visitor. You’re catching your friends in Big Green at kind of a bad time, actually. I would ask you to come back in about half an hour, but we just may have all been burned to a cinder by that time. So… now’s better. You may ask yourself, why is this band always chin-deep in some kind of unlikely peril, rather than wired to a mixing console, turning the pots and making the record you’ve been promised for the last four years? I have an answer to that, I’m fairly sure, only it’s back on the surface of the Earth, where we are headed at approximately 575 miles per hour, through ever-thickening layers of atmosphere, like riding a matchhead over an enormous striker. Hot, baby, hot!

Not that you need a lot of back story (just look below, or click the “Usual Rubbish” link), but last week we rocketed into orbit in one of Gizmandiar’s abandoned space vehicles in order to escape the mindless wrath of our oversized Zenite friend sFshzenKlyrn on his flapjack-fueled rampage through the heart of our little city. Mind you, Gizmandiar and his crew are from a whole ‘nuther planet, so as you might imagine, the controls in this spacecraft were not exactly intuitive. It took me better than five hours to figure out which of these gizmos was a radio (during which time my imagination had gotten the better of me, filling my tiny brain with pictures of a devastated world below, devoid of life… a Rumsfeldian paradise, if you will). Luckily, the seriously unmoored sFshzenKlyrn had not reduced human civilization to ash – everything was still standing except the IHOP in our city center, which… I believe… the man from Zenon… devoured… whole…. (Cue timpani. I said, cue timpani! Damn it, man… you’ve killed the suspense!)

Anyway, his jones sated, his rampage disgorged, sFshzenKlyrn moved on to better things (somewhere in the Pleiades star cluster, I believe – check Entertainment Weekly – Galactic Edition). And with Gizmandiar presumably incinerated or dispatched to some other more tolerable realm of being, there seemed to be no point in bobbing around in orbit for very much longer. Loogit, we may all be indolent, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have work to do. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has to get back to his panhandling. (Once you cultivate a good corner, an absence of even two or three days can mean a serious loss of territory.) Besides, the two Lincolns are beginning to get on everyone’s nerves, even the man-sized tuber’s, who – being a root vegetable – can suck it up better than just about anyone in this organization. But for chrissake, first anti-Lincoln throws posi-Lincoln’s hat out into space, then posi-Lincoln steals anti-Lincoln’s juice box… I mean, how the fuck did either one of those guys win the Civil War, let alone establish the Republican party as a dominant force in American politics?

Okay, so… re-entry was decided upon, destination Cheney Hammer Mill. In the absence of a qualified pilot, it was down to John White, who has circumnavigated the globe many times in his virtual air crafts. Not a lot of difficulty here – just point the nose of the ship towards upstate New York, and down fast! (Though it is getting a bit warm in here…)

Roach bottle.

The Palestinian’s two main political factions are on the brink of all-out civil war – the first such fratricidal conflict in that unfortunate people’s modern history. How the Israeli leadership must be chortling right now. To them, this is a dream come true – at long last, Palestinians are killing one another. Forty years into the illegal occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem (not to mention the Syrian Golan, still illegally occupied), the imperial tactic of divide and conquer is finally paying dividends. Back in the 1980s, when the first intifada was brewing, Israeli intelligence made an investment in the then-nascent Hamas movement, hoping that it would undercut Fatah in the occupied territories. Of course, the intifada made Arafat’s organization, then in exile in Tunis, far less relevant, as resistance was driven by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, not in the diaspora. That was when Hamas began to take hold as a political force, providing social services while the territories were under siege.

Few will remember that in the late 80s, when Israeli leaders were saying they would never talk to the PLO, they were preparing to do just that. As the post Gulf War peace negotiations began – brokered by papa Bush – Israel took the opportunity to conduct separate negotiations with Arafat, whose witless, mapless, and self-serving representatives were more than happy to give away the store in exchange for an exclusive franchise (to wit, the Palestinian Authority) and the power/graft potential it offered. From that point on, Israel would only talk to the PLO, and not the Palestinians from inside the territories, having effectively co-opted Arafat and his organization into the native colonial administration they had always sought, with little success, since the occupation began. “President” Arafat’s cooperation allowed Israel, in essence, to expand the infrastructure of colonialism in the territories without organized harassment throughout the 1990s, until the inevitable explosion occurred in 2000, provoked by Barak and Sharon.

It’s not hard to understand why Hamas won a plurality in last year’s elections. It’s not because the Palestinians are mostly hard-line Islamists; it’s because, despite their Mossad-funded beginnings, Hamas is definitely not in the pocket of the Israelis. Abbas and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority is funded, trained, and dog-whipped by Israel and the United States. We Americans may be ignorant of this, but it’s only too clear to the people living in the territories. And since the election, Palestinian society has been strangled by an act of collective punishment (shamelessly supported by the Europeans) that would be condemned bitterly in any other context, touching off this fratricidal struggle. This fulfills the fervent wish of an Israeli leader decades ago who envisioned Palestinians in the territories being contained like “drugged roaches in a bottle.” Quite so, and the world looks on. Our own indifference is fueled by a mainstream media that almost never goes out on a political limb, even when ex-presidents give them cover. I just heard NPR’s Steve Inskeep talking to Brookings’ Bruce Reidel about weapons going to Hamas and Fatah, the operative question being, “where is Hamas getting guns?” Answer? Wait for it…. Hezbollah and Iran, of course, the sources of all evil, able to defy geography itself by smuggling arms into Gaza via its border with, what, Lebanon?? Crikey. (Though to their credit, NPR did talk to Rashid Khalidi the next day.)

When you look at this conflict, just remind yourself – this is the result of a 40-year illegal (and quite brutal) occupation, underwritten by us.

luv u,

jp

Come in, Brazzaville!

Auckland, do you read me. Come in, Brazzaville, come in. Are you receiving me, Des Moines? Is there anybody out there, for chrissake?

Well, now we’ve done it. Golsh dang-git. I mean, god damn it… I may as well swear again, since Gizmandiar and his entire extraterrestrial junta may well have been atomized by deadly keltone rays, fired at city hall by our somewhat intemperate sit-in guitarist from Zenon, sFshzenKlyrn. What the fuck… if only that were the end of it. As many of you know, we called sFshzenKlyrn in to help us deal with these foul usurpers, who had deprived of us squathouse, livelihood, and even language. And as I may have mentioned before, our Zenite friend is a little hard to stop once he gets going. And friends, old sFshzenKlyrn got going all right. He certainly hasn’t lost his touch with concentrated trans-dimensional matter disruption beams.

Okay, here’s what happened, judge. First the man from Zenon smashed city hall to smithereens. Gizmandiar had either returned to his home dimension or… well… gone to perdition, as he would have me put it. Anyway, to celebrate our liberation from this tyrant, we offered to take sFshzenKlyrn out for a hardy meal. Sadly, he chose the local IHOP and ordered about 17 consecutive half-stacks of buckwheat flapjacks with blueberry syrup and extra sweet butter. (Mmmmmm-boy.) I know what you’re going to say – why couldn’t you fuckers in Big Green stop him? Well… there’s no simple answer to that question. It was a matter of honor, you see. Also, we partook of a few half-stacks ourselves, and well… let’s say we soon found ourselves in a state of diminished responsibility. (Do I have to draw you a picture? I just got finished with a freaking breath test!)

Yeah, well anyway… what happened next. Like the last time, sFshzenKlyrn got big. I mean, really really big. He freaking broke through the roof of the IHOP and towered over our little city. Even worse, when he goes on a flapjack binge, his state of matter changes from gaseous to solid. It’s like a thunder cloud that suddenly turns to granite, only instead of just lying there, he starts tromping around the village emitting keltone rays left and right. Now, our little upstate town had never experienced anything like godzilla before – extraterrestrial mayors, yes, but no ten-story space monsters. The local constabulary was at a loss as to how to deal with sFshzenKlyrn, and so everybody just kind of closed their shutters and kept their fingers in their ears. This caused Marvin (my personal robot assistant) a certain amount of consternation. (When he can’t see your face, he thinks you’re gone forever.)

I have to confess, we of Big Green kind of panicked. In our flapjack-induced stupor, we commandeered one of Gizmandiar’s spacecrafts and launched ourselves into a super-wide orbit. Now I’m trying to raise someone down on planet earth, and not having a lot of luck. For fuck’s sake, if you’re reading this, contact us, damnit! We don’t know how to land this bloody thing! (And it’s chock full of lawn fertilizer.)

Official site of the band Big Green