President Colbert?

Dear Friends,

This last Thursday, satirist and comedian Stephen Colbert announced his campaign for the fictional post of President of South Carolina. A day or so later he released his first attack ad against Mitt Romney, funded by a SuperPAC now headed by Comedy Central colleague Jon Stewart. It declared Mitt a serial killer. Today, Colbert is presently atop Huntsmen in the polls and neck and neck with Gingrich and Santorum in the race for Republican Presidential nominee. That is a position that Colbert is not actually running for.

Think about what this indicates regarding the crisis in American public education. South Carolinians are not, as has often been alleged, natively stupid. They just don’t seem to know that their state has no office of President. Neither have they been informed in civics class that they are liable to being pranked by an obvious clown. Yet, they will confide to a total stranger that they strongly support a brilliant goofball in his non-existent run for the White House, and if successful in his ill-understood quest, they will reward him with nuclear weapons and the grandest military that this planet has yet seen. Real comedy is not funny.

I am astonished, smiling, but a bit tearful for the state of this nation.

Kludge Ergo Foo,

S

Plan C: Paisley Jello

Dear Friends,

My lawyer has advised me that he will not represent me in what he judges to be the certain repercussions, the stout fist of The Law falling upon my head and his fragile reputation as an officer of the court, upon my following through on either Plan A or Plan B for the local Occupy movement. The Commonwealth will not abide by dead pigs, dead horses, baloney cannons nor a spew of stinky mortadella juice showing up in the lobby of a prestigious bank; one globally owned tho currently leasing a small patch of property for a tiny office next to the Mayor’s office and up the street from the police station.

Thus, I have come up with Plan C. It’s a good plan, I think.

Ya’see, I have an associate. His name, his code-name, is Wladimir. He is late of Minsk. He has an advanced degree in, um, engineering, from a Soviet-era university where the education was as broad as it was deep and included a minor in “social engineering”. He knows some people who know some people. He also owes me a favor. One of the peoples that Wladimir knows who know some peoples is a fellow that I cannot presently name.

That fellah has access to a Redi-Mix cement truck. It’s a Teamster Union-thing. Anyhow, that fellah that Wladimir knows knows the guy with the cement truck who knows a guy who found about a ton of Jello® brand jello that just sort’a happened to fall off the back of a semi down by the river. The Staties have yet to find the driver, but the accident had been ruled an accident, so it’s all okay. Okay. Well, the missing driver’s wife will have to wait until the corpse is recovered until she gets her insurance check, but it’s all okay. Okay?

Now, Wladimir is a bit of a tinkerer, a serious hobbyist. He’s got this microwave dish in his garage. He made it himself. It’s a lot like the little flying-saucer things that you see on cable or cell phone company towers, but has enough power to roast an elephant with radio waves in about ten-seconds. That is not our purpose in its first “real world” deployment of his device.

No. We will soon fill the Redi-Mix truck with 200 or so gallons of water, dump in a ton of yellow jello powder. Then we will add the secret ingredient! That is the paisley in the pudding. Yes! I’ve got it all figured out.

Down the hall from my tenement apartment is Mad Ray, The Insane Poet. He is brilliant but does not write well. His dyskinetic scrawls are indecipherable, but this apparent affliction makes him the perfect man for the task at hand. You see, his jittery squiggling of a pair of scissors, while a potential risk to his trembling digits, is ideally suited to cutting the colorful swirls and giggling ameboid lines from the lovely drapes we will rip from his beautifully adorned windows.The wobbly serrations will perfectly complement the generous folly of the pattern, as well as the iridescent goop in which the fabric will be embedded. Even better, Mad Ray will do this garment work at no cost, in the name of ART! All he requires are some real scissors (not his little plastic ones) and plenty of beer and cigarettes.

Once the millinery effort is complete, we are off in the cement truck to the side of the river, just out of site of the highway and the marina. There is a fire hydrant right up the hill. I’ll take my trusty Moon Wrench and attach the fire hose borrowed from the apartment building. As the giant, rotating cylinder gyres and fills with water, we’ll dump the heady compost of paisley and approximately one hundred pounds of jello mix into the beast. Once mixed, it is time to fire up the portable generator that somehow disappeared from the hardware store up the road and light up that microwave to boil the water.

Now, this might be the only dangerous part of the enterprise. Microwaves do not like metal. Great bolts of lethal electrical energy and howling tongues of plasma may erupt about the vehicle. There is diesel fuel in its tanks. Thus, as a precaution, I will be at a safe remove as Wladimir hits the switch. If things should go horribly awry at least his boiling, exploding flesh will be contained in the rubber suit obtained from the local exterminator’s shop.

I am, however, an optimist by nature. I believe that Plan C is a good plan. Wladimir will pilot the commandeered cement beast laden with a then well congealed load of paisley jello from the river’s edge and into town. In front of the bank, an “accident” will occur. About a ton of yellow gunk laced with the ephemeral proceeds of a crazy person’s two days and nights with a dangerous tool and the supremely coordinated efforts of several criminals and a right-thinking citizen will be disgorged during a slight parking mishap on Main Street. A terrified driver, mysteriously clad in a rubber suit and lugging a fire extinguisher will be seen fleeing the scene as pedestrians recoil in horror and confusion. I will be nowhere nearby.

The bank will closed for quite a spell as police and haz-mat men in bunny suits from the Department of Homeland Security argue with the good folks from the EPA and the local DPW as to what this mess actually is and what might be done about the radiant excrescence that is slowly melting into confetti as its liquid corpulence flows into the city’s sewage system.

Yes. I think that Plan C is a good plan. It's much better than Plans A and B. Nobody gets killed… well, probably. Are you with me, my fellow patriots?


Kludge Ergo Foo,

S

Plan B

Dear Friends,

I’ve been getting a bit of feedback on my previous post. Most of the local Occupy folks no longer talk to me. They regard me with glowering stares and sullen silence. My girlfriend, a strict vegetarian, has moved out of the apartment. She regards the killing of farm raised animals as a heathen practice and will have no more to do with me following my modest proposal that would involve their gun-shot demise at the hands of a thuggish idiot startled into a panic by their mere presence in the small lobby of a bank on Main Street.

Thus, here I am in a now unfurnished apartment. She did leave Sophie, the cat, and tins of cat food. It smells very poorly, but Sophie and I enjoy it at our meals together. It is nutritious, I think, and with enough cinnamon and sugar, it does go down without provoking a gag reflex. Sophie has shown me how to eat right from the can, as my girlfriend took all of her fine silverware before slamming the door behind her.

So, tummy full of nasty gravy soaked meal and unspecified meats and gristle, I am rethinking my approach to making a statement at the bank. There is a possible solution, an alternative to sending pre-deceased critters into a confrontation with an armed maniac. See, there’s a fire hydrant in front of that bank and an invention called Baloney (Bologna, if you prefer).

Now, for forty-seven dollars and fifteen cents (plus shipping) I can get my hands on a Grainger Adjustable Moon Wrench, suitable for opening any hydrant. A trip to the hardware store will provide me with the PVC pipe and fittings to affix it to the fire hose procured down the hall from my apartment. A fat tube of baloney will only cost about ten dollars. But, at minimal cost, there you have a baloney cannon!

Of course, firing the baloney through the window of the bank will require some legal risk to myself, along with the theft of public property, damages to private property, and perhaps the damage to a customer’s skull should that skull be in the trajectory of the hurling meat. That would be regrettable and, thus, I have a Plan B. Let’s say we commandeer a book binder’s press. I know where to get my hands on an old rig that is no longer in use. It’s in the basement of a neighborhood bar that long ago housed a printing shop. Let’s make some baloney juice!

With proper squeezing, a fulsom tube of commercial baloney will yield quite a bit of juice. Baloney is mainly made of water, salt, and spices; there’s really not much else but fur, bones, gristle, insect parts and fat in it. So, we got about a gallon of baloney juice from the enterprise. Yet, it occurs to me that baloney juice is not sufficiently stinky to do the job intended. Let’s try salami or, better yet, mortadella! Mortadella has the right water and fat content. It’s a fine Italian cold cut from which to ring a truly horrible herb saturated goo from. I’m surprised that our military has yet to exploit the properties of mortadella sludge in the field of modern warfare.

Anyhow, all you have to do is fill a very large plastic container with the proceeds of the Italian cold cut squeezing and load it in the back of a van. I know where to steal a forklift to do the job. That container will be fitted with couplings to attach Fire Hose-A to the hydrant, and Fire Hose-B. The nozzle of Fire Hose-B will be placed in the mail slot by the front door of the bank from whence it will gush the foul excrescence at force into the lobby. Nobody will be hurt. The creep with the gun will be running from his post to alert the pudgy little manager to the horrible situation. Customers will flee whilst gagging on the aromatic fumes and rising, soupy tide of shattered animal parts. I and my unnamed confederate will hasten to abscond as panic and confusion take the day!

Yeah. That’s the plan. What do you think?

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S

Trouble in Paradise…

 

Jenny Lind: The Swedish Nightingale

Dear Friends,

Jenny Lind, a renowned opera singer of the 19th Century and known across the world as the Swedish Nightingale, visited my small, fair city, Northampton, Massachusetts for a brief run near the hight of her career. The event was highly celebrated and well publicized. Indeed, at one point she made a comment from the stage of our Academy of Music, pronouncing the little dimple in a small valley along the Connecticut River “The Paradise of America.” I can only assume that Ms Lind was then swooning under the influence of too much tincture of opium taken as a precaution against stage fright or being kidnapped by the rough and ready local merchants and still nearby red-skins of that day.

Whatever. She was pretty well right. This is a lovely place, even today. It is the sweet spot in the middle of an urban and rural terrain beset by a severe recession and the failing of family farms. It’s far enough from the river, some one-hundred and fifty feet above sea-level, to remain dry and cozy and we’ve got our own soot belching coal plant and a nearby nuke to provide power even when the lights go out on neighboring burgs. There are also many public parks and playgrounds that are well tended, good schools, and several colleges within eye-shot from the meadows down low by the water or from up on the mossy bumps we call mountains ‘round here.

The place is quite congenial. People actually look up and say “hello” to each other when promenading on our prosperous Main Street or searching the aisles of the little food markets that still thrive in a day when in most other places they’ve long shuttered their doors. Folks are also quite politically active in both local civic affairs and politics nationally and worldwide. We tend to be conscious and conscientious citizens. Thus, a group of fine individuals have come together to act in concert, or not, in The Occupy Movement.

That is were I see the trouble in Paradise. These folks tend to be too nice. They are obliging to the goon with a loaded gun and pepper spray guarding the the little office of the local Bank of America. Their signs are itty-bitty things, nicely laminated. Their banners could have been painted by a brutally damaged vet undergoing art therapy in rehab at the local VA hospital. They politely stand on the curb so as not to disrupt anything, and are always handy with a hug but otherwise do not bother anybody or anything… other than handing our tiny flyers adorned with indecipherable doodles or a few dozen bullet points so as to be utterly meaningless in informing the public.

There is one very large exception to this stereotype that I have just drawn. There’s this one amiable, shaggy, very clever and observant fellow that regularly shows up to raise some gentle hell. He noticed a sign on the door to the bank that said “No Pets Allowed.” He had the idea that we should bring a horse into the lobby. I rather liked that idea. I thought about it for the next day or so.

Now, I do know how to get my hands on an old nag, one about to be put down by a nearby college’s stable. That stable is close enough to walk the old lady down to Main Street, and gentle pat on the ass will get her to walk on in, just as she enters her stable. Once in, she will be in the comfy confines of a place of no exit, except in reverse. She will not be able to move forward to the lobby, as the corner around the banister is too tight for a beast of such dimensions. She will likely be rather upset and confused and her bowels will loosen. A heavy compost of horse poop will now grace the entrance to the Bank of America. The manager will not be pleased.

He will encourage his hired thug to shoot the poor creature. As this jerk has been thumbing the stock of his pistol and fingering the trigger in a masturbatory gesture for weeks on end (without ever achieving climax), the guy might just comply in his eagerness to satisfy his boss and get his rocks off by killing something, anything, at last. Now they got a dead horse and a further enriched pile of horse manure blocking the entrance of the bank.

I rather like that plan, but wonder if it is ethical to doom a creature, even one already sentenced to meet her demise, to death by prank… even in the name of a good cause.

So, let’s try Plan B. We get a pig. I know where to get a pig. So, what I do is get a pig and pull up the trailer and loading ramp to the door of the bank. We then run Piggly-Wiggly down the ramp through the door after slathering the little monster in cheap mineral oil or sun-block discounted by CVS for the New England winter season.

Most of the public will have no problem with seeing a pile ‘o porcine flesh dispatched, even at the hands of a creep in jack boots in the lobby of a major bank. People eat bacon or ham every day. They will be grateful for the bloody horror before them, in fact, as the two-hundred pound pink maniac will be charging around the lobby, forcing customers up on the counters and the manager’s desk, tellers will be weeping and screaming. Poor, old Mrs. McGuillicuty will vomit and faint. Mr. McGuillicuty, a prominent local lawyer, will be irate when he learns that his wife has to be picked up at the hospital and will begin legal proceedings as no bank that allows crazy pigs into its lobby should be in business.

I think, quite assuredly, that either on of these modes of direction action will serve to advance the cause of The Occupy Movement, put our points across, and perhaps get the attention of local news media.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S

Remember Vaclav Havel

R.I.P. Vaclav Havel

Dear Friends,

This will take me a little stem winding to get to the point. That regards the loss of a real Man, a fellow who did put a dent in the little corner of the universe that we humans inhabit. He actually made our little pale blue dot a better place.

Anyhow, last night was the typical deal with local Occupy Noho folks in General Assembly politely waiting their turn to wiggle their fingers and then tell others in the room how nice they are. In other words, not much was accomplished other than ignoring practical business or taking a single action. But, on the upside, most agreed that we are very nice people.

Meanwhile, Vaclav Havel died as our group was meeting to decide to do nothing. I doubt that many in our group nor the American public know many of the details of the two peaceful revolutions that he pulled off in what is now the Czech Republic and Slovakia. They likely know nothing of his methods and the action on the street that he provoked with nothing more than will and words. The man took down an empire ruled by a man with atom bombs. He prepared himself to do so by first studying history and looking unflinchingly at present reality as it is. Then he reported on what he saw as best he could during fifteen years behind bars. Yeah. Havel was a Man.

He was a poet and philosopher, then a reluctant leader of his fellows as the first President of the nations that he freed from tyranny. The only bombs he ever lobbed in the revolutions that he fomented were made of syllables. The shrapnel that rained down on his tormentors heads was reason. His smile, wit and generosity of spirit were his only armor in his battle.

So, as folks settle back to their comfy seats in a warm house with a safe roof over their heads, when you dare talk politics with your neighbors next door or on the 'Net, think about what this guy, Havel, dared to do and pulled off, and study how he did it. Study a little recent history. Then think and feel. If you are so inclined, even get yourself arrested for the crime of thinking and speaking on your own streets in your own country.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S

A Song for my Betrothed…

A Little Ditty for My Beloved,

In the Dimensions of Heaven © Solomon 2011

In the space of heaven

I fell in love with you

tossed in the rushes

by the fine blue bayou

The sky broke wide open

I found you in my arms

We found ourselves where

we’re safe from any harm

In the dimensions of Heaven

we rock and roll and hold tight

We know that we are right and winning

We know there’s no need to fight

Nobody's gonna hurt us

We are safely kept

We can sleep where Jacob slept

Our pillow is a rock

and that's just fine

We got a love

that's all ours and yours is mine

A bed of Queen Anne’s Lace

Juniper in my tea

Tough and rough Justice

Eternity of Love

Nobody's gonna hurt us

We are safely kept

We can sleep where Jacob slept

Our pillow is a rock

and that's just fine

We got a love

that's all ours and yours is mine

Metamusical Review…

Dear Friends,

Lo many years ago, I published my first article for pay. It appeared in “Mondo 2000”, a periodical that presaged “Wired” in reporting on the intersection of tech/science and culture. The publisher and gnome, R.U. Sirius, still owes me fifty bucks for the following piece of what might pass for journalism. Whatever. It’s just a brief review of the music of a fine old band, Rare Air, and an interview with one of its non-leaders, Grier Coppins.

Metamusical Notes: Experience Replayed  © Solomon 1989

Blasting out of the granite heart of the Berkshires on the bitter end of a three day burn, I was looking forward to some long-delayed sleep. Through daggered winds, blinding sleet and fog, I piloted the venerable Zephyr V8 out of the mountains and smack into the web of coincidence.

The cassette machine had just broken, disgorging my most precious Grateful Dead bootleg in ribbons of vinyl confetti onto the muddy cabin floor. I flipped on the radio to land on the AM band. Bigots, spinsters and cranks traded misanthropic bile and hallucinating mind sets on talk radio. Tuning in FM 109.9, I was treated to the worst hits of the past decade, all presaging the coming wave of ‘80s nostalgia. God help us.

However, low down on the dial in the NPR/College Radio ghetto, odds noises begin to percolate and rasp out of the tuner. It’s a proud stomping jig! Bagpipes and whistles are madly chasing over and ‘round each other as gongs, middle eastern goat hide and temple bells collide. KEE-RACK! There’s a percussive explosion that resolves into something improbably melodious and even sort’a pretty. Somebody is playing a guitar that sounds like the hormone-drenched mating call of an ancient lizard king. This is good. Good and weird.

Diverting, mind warping and appealing all at once, they make a sound like no other band. It’s a sound that launches the notion of World Music at a feverish, giddy pitch. As the bright music crackled into static and faded into the night across the mountains, the DJ reveals the source of the musical confabulation; Canadian born, world-bred Rare Air. Yes, this is what the planet needs now; the first and only Celtic bagpipe-middle eastern/asian/scat jazz-funk fusion band!

Shortly after my little journey, I took the time to get better acquainted with the arguably demented, perversely contented cabal of musical sorcerers behind the deadpan socio/acoustic brew that is their unique creation. I tracked down Grier Coppins, cofounder of this strange unit and wizard of the highland bagpipes, whistles, synths and bombarde. Following are excerpts from our interview.

Steven Solomon: The pipes have such a haunting sound. How would you describe it?

Grier Coppins: Obnoxious. Rude. Sometimes wispy or melancholy. Strange, though. That primitive tuning won’t really sit on a piano, if you know what I mean.

Steven Solomon: Now, how did you decide to play this weird blend of music? Did you wake up one morning and say, “Hey, guys, let’s start a bagpipe-funk-fusion band with Japanese gongs in the mix?

Grier Coppins: Actually, it began when we lived together in Brittany, France. I was a pretty isolated area. We wanted to learn Breton music, and that’s where I learned the bombarde. We were always open to learning whatever interested us. It’s never been really conscious, but the music just evolved this way as we did what we wanted to do. So, we tend to escape labels.

Steven Solomon: So, how does that relate to the commercial side of things? Yours is not a convenient attitude in terms of marketing and doing music as a business.

Grier Coppins: Well, one effect of the recent acceptance of what folks are calling World Beat, I guess is that it’s easier to make a living today. Just the same, we’ve never really thought about commercializing it. (End of transcript)

Indeed, how would one go about commercializing so strange and rare a thing, this Tonique Sonique? It is a thing of the heart, from the heart; vitally and purely human. The process might have gone something like this…

• 30,000 BCE: Deep in the heart of Africa, Humankind discovers that hollowed tree trunks struck with stones make a sound that scares even the lions.

• 10,000 BCE: In a shallow cave nearby the coast of what is now called France, spatular Cro-Magnon pluck a bison shank from the embers of a campfire and fashion a flute with tools of stone. A song goes up to the heavens, praying for a good hunt.

• 3,000 BCE: High in the Himalayas, the eerie ringing of crude, bronze temple bowls heralds the coming of a total solar eclipse.

• 600 BCE: Under a leaky sod roof, in a neighborhood later know as the Scottish Highlands, somebody sews a dried goat bladder to a reeded flute and thus creates the grandaddy of all bagpipes. A rude, obnoxious bleating noise ensues, meant to invoke a dispel some gloomy, grey-bearded northern god of foul weather.

• Late Seventeenth Century through the 1990s CE: We see the eventual decline of the ancient Oriental and Islamic empires and the rise of the decadent west. Electricity is tamed, modern chemistry emerges, and the phonograph and radio are invented. Then comes, in a single generation, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. The kids discover ever better methods of making their glands sweat, their feet jump, and getting their elders upset and concerned. Canada moves to the fore in the search for world peace and universal love with the advent of Rare Air. Fans across the globe throng to hear the music.

Just that easy!

S