The thrills and chills continue as Mary Marvel brings a dynastic level of pain down upon the dessicated kisser of THE MAD MUMMY...
So, did you manage to catch last night's presidential debate? No? Well, I don't blame you considering it ran opposite Say Yes to the Dress. If I'm going to suffer through a television-induced optical migraine, I'd much rather it be caused by the diva-tastic antics of a megalomaniacal bride-to-be than by the phony bloodsport of 21st century American politics.
The wheels of the media-established consensus machine are still spinning at this point, so I am forbidden by law to assess which of the candidates "won" the face-off. Senator Obama did well enough in discussing foreign policy issues, considering that such subjects are supposedly where he is weakest. His nuanced approach to American militarism remains troubling, as it is impossible to tell how much of it is pandering to the "kick some ass" demographic and how much of it is sincere.
As for Senator McCain?
Wow, he actually looks better there than he did on the podium last night. (I kid. McCain doesn't look like the Reverend Kane from Poltergeist 2, no matter what my wife might say. He looks like an old school Sontaran. I'd add that Sarah Palin looks like the evil auction house woman from the first season of Charmed, but that would mean letting the world know I watch Charmed and....oh, fuck.)
While I do not believe that appearances ought to be the deciding factor in a political contest (though "Empress Tuesday Weld" has a nice ring to it), I'm pretty sure that looking and comporting oneself like Mr. Neighborhood Crankypants isn't the best way to win votes. The only things he was missing last night were an overgrown hedge, a German Shepherd, and a collection of seized Frisbees and wiffle balls.
When he did exhibit a rare flash of lucidity and substance, it was only to elucidate a more belligerent, if such a thing is even possible, foreign policy platform than we presently have. I don't deny that shit sells to a substantial section of the populace, but "extremist reiteration of the status quo" isn't what I'd call synonymous with "maverick."
The debate was McCain's to lose, despite the backfiring of his economic "white knight" stunt. The expert was supposed to school the neophyte, thus proving the latter's unreadiness to lead. Even if one calls the debate a draw, as the media consensus is tentatively claming it was, it means that McCain was evenly matched by Obama in the one area where he supposedly held a decisive advantage.
They can spin it in the media arena as much as they like, but I'm guessing that whatever pragmatic souls exist in the McCain campaign are currently shitting themselves.
Iggy Pop - Winners & Losers (from Blah Blah Blah, 1986) - Pop goes mainstream! This track (along with two others on the album) was co-written by ex-Pistol Steve Jones, coming on the heels of his stint in Chequered Past and prior to his solo career as a former guitar hero-turned-MOR hard rocker.
Fun Boy Three - The More I See (The Less I Believe) (from Waiting, 1983) - I liked Terry Hall better when he wasn't trying to compete with Robert Smith. One Robert Smith is enough for this world (or rather "too much," since Mr. Smith discovered the magical powers of elastic waistbands). That said, when Hall and company weren't moping up songs originally written by Hall for The Go-Go's, they did manage to record the odd bit of nifty, socially aware pop such as today's featured selection.
I took a stoll over to Wheately Hall yesterday afternoon to see if the vending machines in the lobby had a better selection than the ones closer to my office had. Trapped between the double doors at the entrance to the building was a representative example of a certain breed of freshman which flocks to the campus at the start of every semester.
Dressed to the nines in the latest "hot" celebrity fashions, they look like they're headed out for a night of high-cover charge clubbing rather than a rousing 8:30 AM session of English 101. For them, the college experience isn't about pedagogy as it is about being seen, a rather sad attempt at prolonging the superficial bullshit of the high school experience. A few of these kids eventually smarten up and knuckle down, but the vast majority barely make it to midterms before quietly departing to work at the local Tello's store.
This particular example was sporting a Posh Spice-meets-Kim Kardashian-meets-South Shore mallrat ensemble, complete with oversized sunglasses, an unnaturally black dye job, and an uneven spray-on tan. I guess she tried to slip between the doors as they closed behind another student, but wasn't quick enough and got pinned between them halfway through.
For most folks with a modicum of common sense, it wouldn't be a big deal. The doors are on the heavy side and have really bizarre centers of gravity (especially if you're a southpaw, like I am), but not so much as to cause more than a slight inconvenience. This aspiring scholar, however, was having a tough time of it, due to the fact that she was holding the requisite giant cup of coffee in one hand and was fantically texting on her cell phone in the other.
She was so fixated on the latter activity that she could barely summon more than a slight wiggle, and even that was for the sake of getting a closer look at her phone's display screen. Maybe she was typing in the last string of a chemical formula that could cure cancer, solve world hunger, and provide an eco-friendly alternative for fossil fuel, and the urgency of the task was so great that she couldn't put the phone down for fifteen seconds and lever the doors open with her shoulders...but I somehow doubt it.
After watching this sorry display of obliviousness for a couple of minutes, I wondered if I should perhaps give her a hand.
Good Andrew thought: "Well, gee, sure she's an idiot, but that doesn't negate your obligation to do the right thing and help her out! Such small acts of basic kindness are what make a random and uncaring universe tolerable for its residents!"
Evil Andrew thought: "Anyone that fucking stupid deserves exactly what he or she gets."
Guess which side won the moral debate?
Pete Townshend - Let My Love Open the Door (from Empty Glass, 1980) - Or let my profound disgust make me circle around to the back entrance of the building and leave the idiots to wallow in their idiocy.
Note: I almost forgot to mention that there's a new pronounced WOO-BIN post on the subject of parenting, Woobin-style.
One of my strongest childhood memories is of my mother relating a bit of family folklore to me. It concerned some great-great-relation of her father's side of the family, a stoically creepy bunch of Old Yankees from Maine's Androscoggin County. This particular relative worked in a lumber mill, and during the course of his duties got his arm stuck in the machinery. As his friends tried in vain to find the best way to extricate the ruined limb from the works, my laterally-thinking ancestor came up with an easy solution -- power up the machinery and let it take the limb off quickly and cleanly. So they did.
I can't help but think that lingering effects of my mother's story somehow figure into the following random, but characteristically "Andrew," autobiographical antidote.
I adopted Mia not too long after Zoe Blackfeet, my previous feline companion, wandered off and never returned. Mia had belonged to some neurotic yuppies from Winchester who had soured on the idea of pet ownership and dumped her off at the vet's office.
Unlike Zoe (or Budwina before her), Mia was not a personable cat. I don't know if it was from poor socialization or abuse experienced at the hands of her previous owners, or a simple matter of temperament. I've lived around cats my entire life; they're capricious creatures. Mia, though, wasn't so much aloof as sociopathic, and able to switch from snugglebunny to psycho-slasher with no warning whatsoever. (She also possessed the ability to shed her weight in long white fur on a daily basis.)
Even if she wasn't the nicest cat, I was still happy to have her around and living in a decent home.
On a lovely spring afternoon in 2002, I was in my bedroom reading a book when Mia hopped on the bed and stretched out beside me. I patted her. She purred. I scratched behind her ears. She viciously bit and scratched my left forearm, and refused to let go until my limb had been thoroughly flensed.
It hurt like hell, but cat scratches usually do, and this didn't appear that much worse than some of the previous feline-related injuries I had dealt with. I washed the arm with some soap and water and let nature do the rest. That the cuts seemed to be a long time in healing or there was a growing burning sensation in the arm didn't worry me a whole lot. Nor did the fact that over the course of the following week or so my forearm swelled up to near-Popeye proportions.
Maura, of course, was concerned, but it's her job to be. Besides, who is more familiar with my internal workings than I am? It wasn't until I had entered the second week following the incident that I was forced to acknowledge that something wasn't right. (Maura's mom was particularly persuasive with her worried stare and repeated use of "Jaysis.") While my co-workers and family (not Maura, because she understands me) chimed in with a loud chorus of "EMERGENCY ROOM," I decided to take matters into my own (swollen and healthy) hands.
Using a sterilized needle, I opened up the bite wounds that were the source of the infection and let the stream of pus drain out. Afterwards I soaked the arm in warm water and Epsom salt for an hour before slathering the area with anti-bacterial ointment and bandaging it up. It took about a week of such therapy before my arm started to resemble its old self (though I still have a few scars), thus proving that not only that am I too laid back for my own good, but that I can occasionally remedy the problems which arise from my complacency (in an extremely painful and disgusting way that could have been avoided with a glimmer of foresight).
Prince Buster - Pussy Cat Bite Me (from Wreck A Pum Pum, 1976) - Felis dentata ska.
Tom Jones - It Takes a Worried Man (from Along Came Jones, 1965; collected on Millennium Edition, 2000) - Devo's cover of this folk standard will always be the definitive version as far as I'm concerned, but Sir Tom's powerhouse vocals and that magnificent horn section are almost enough to make me reconsider my position.
Love and Rockets - No Big Deal (from Love and Rockets, 1989) - True, but a perfectly fine song, nonetheless.
"When you get older, you'll understand." So speaks the purported voice of "realism" when cautioning on the pitfalls of youthful idealism. The underlying message is that once one has "bought in" or "sold out" or however one wants wants to spin it, logic dictates that hungry radicalism must give way to a defensive stance. Lock the doors, man the barricades, and beware the ravenous hordes that covet your treasures.
The rousing, yet polite debate in the comments of the Crass post from the other day got me to thinking about politics, specifically where I stand on the ideological spectrum these days. I've dabbled with the various -isms on the left side of the dial over the years -- flirtations both tempestuous and mild with anarchist, socialist, and communist schools of thought. I'm a registered Democrat, but voted SWP and Green in a couple of elections, and have a lasting mistrust of self-labeled "liberals" and "progressives" over the recurring lack of conviction and undercurrents of paternalism on their part.
In the end, doctrinal semantics or theories built on wishful thinking matter less to me than a core principle, namely that everyone deserves a fair shake and equal access to essential goods and services. Egalitarianism is the cornerstone, and the rest is just trivia to be endlessly debated in closed, self-defeating circles.
Dogma and abstract theory have no purpose towards this end. My idealism is rooted in pragmatism forged by years of empirical evidence. Alliances and associations are made and broken depending on how well they serve the greater objectives, and if that means participating a electoral system that is fundamentally broken for the sake of seeing that rights are extended to those who deserve them or defended from those who would subvert them, then so be it. I would rather play a short term game for tangible benefits than a dubious long term strategy that hurts many in the meantime.
I'm with the Enlightenment thinkers on this: People will be people, no matter how educated they are, and the the best we can really strive for is to encourage the better angels of our nature and mitigate the impact of the worse ones.
No revolution, no shift in the political paradigm, no amount of education will eradicate the intrinsic pettiness of the human animal. Trust in socialist revolution and you end up with Year Zero. Trust in free-market self-interest and you end up with...well, take a look around at the mess we're mired in. Trust in mutual co-operation based on shared interests, and it's likely that you've never had to sit through the collective paralysis and bickering of a union gathering or town meeting.
Education and faith mean less than a modicum of awareness and a functioning sense of empathy. The framework of modern civilization has gotten so elaborate and the threads of interdependence so convoluted that it is too easy to fall into a false sense of moral hazard, so that even when the consequences of one's actions manifest themselves it is an easy enough matter to deny, shift, or ignore the blame.
Barring some massive depopulation of the species and a return to scattered tribes of hunter-gatherers, a shift from psuedo-free market capitalism to autonomous soviets or nationalized industries will not address the real problem. Indoctrination of the abolition of currency will not prevent the emergence of would-be Dick Cheneys looking for angles to exploit.
It's a classic Catch-22: Revolutionary change without a mass awakening in civic vigilance is pointless, but if the masses possessed such a sense of vigilance, a revolution would be redundant.
Ten Years After - I'd Love to Change the World (from A Space in Time, 1971) - The sound of the 1960s counterculture collapsing in on itself.
Comsat Angels - Waiting for a Miracle (from Waiting for a Miracle, 1980) - What's the difference between a miracle and the 134 bus? The 134 bus does show up on rare occasions. The only historical inevitability is that people will do foolish things for foolish reasons.
He came to us on a brisk October afternoon in 1951. His arrival was heralded by the hum of servo motors and the intoxicating scents of ozone and machine oil.
His name was Timmy Tinkle, he was a robot, and he needed a job.
He was created in the laboratory of Professor Derook, but wanted to leave his surrogate father's shadow and blaze his own path.
Mr. Morris found Timmy a position in the WHIZ-TV warehouse, and he soon proved himself to be a motivated and tireless worker. Many were the days we labored shoulder to mechanical shoulder in the cramped, dusty space, and a bond developed between boy reporter and mechanical man.
Such was the strength of our mutual affection that I failed to see the obvious warning signs -- the failure to properly sign off on shipping manifests, the vicious beating and hospitalization of the night watchman, the way in which the office safe was torn out of the wall and its contents emptied.
I didn't want to believe it. I worked with Timmy. He was my friend. We were closer than brothers. How could such a sweet, gentle construct be a brutal robo-criminal?
In my grief and confusion, I confronted him, wishing more than anything that it was just a silly misunderstanding.
His reaction was terrifying to behold.
I was forced to defend myself, and perhaps the shock of betrayal made me strike back with more force than necessary.
Afterwards, I kneeled over Timmy's inert body and gazed down in disbelief at the shattered remains of my once-close friend.
I prepared to squash his cybernetic corpse into a ball for easy transport to the scrapyard, but my blearly eyes noticed something unusual embedded in Timmy's inner workings.
It was a remote control device planted by Derook. Having managed to create a fully functioning humanoid robot and a complex artificial intelligence unit with vacuum tube era technology, Derook had decided the best way to monetize his discoveries was to use Timmy as a Trojan Robot in order to steal the petty cash box from a minor market broadcast studio.
With Derook in police custody, the refurbished Timmy returned to his job at WHIZ-TV, and put his killer robot ways behind him.
Well, for the most part...
Moloko - Are 'Friends' Electric? (from Random: A Tribute to Gary Numan, 1997) - The sleazy side of future shock.
The Gymslips - Robot Man (from a 1983 single; collected on Rockin' with the Renees: The Punk Collection, 2000) - Not to be confused with the Scorpions track (covered by The Expoxies on Stop the Future) with the same name, this is an infectious piece of punky retro-pop by a quartet of hard-partying British lasses.
(panels taken from Captain Marvel Adventures #125 and #136.)
The irrefutable shame-based ontology of Josie McCoy, as applied to the question of burps and invisible dogs:
The dreaded return of Senator Psycho Man -- because there is no gag I can't milk 'till the udders squirt dust!
My system doesn't suck, yours does! If you look at the specs, the Atari 7800 is far superior to the NES, and Solaris beats that stupid Super Mario bullshit any day! I wouldn't get a Nintendo even if they were giving them out for free! Quit laughing!Repeat it often enough, and you might even come to believe it...even if in your heart of hearts you know the real truth. This midset, I suspect, is why videogame fandom tends to outstrip all others when it comes to twisted loyalty and bizarre outburts.
Experience matters, except when it doesn't. Oh, I mean a different kind of experience. Okay, look, I'm a fucking shill who will claim the moon is made of cheese if the party bosses say it will help their chances.It's also great that the self-appointed arbiters of "traditional Christian morality" have managed to dig some Christian forebearance and compassion out of their junk drawers when it comes to Palin's unwed teenage daughter. "These things happen." Indeed they do, but will this new-found magnamity be extended to all...or just the certain politically expedient few?
The voice of white Protestant middle-class suburban youth, courtesy of Pat Boone #1 (September-October 1959):
By being a "teenager for life" does J.M.G. mean "I plan on living in my parents' house, working a part-time minimum wage service job, and suffering from wild mood swings until I die of old age?"
New experiences and challenges -- such as trying to sneak into your second floor bedroom at two in the morning while blitzed on lemon gin or trying to find a decent backroom abortionist after the football captain "forgot" to disengage on time.
"You'll appreciate your time you've spent in locked Mommy's Evil Clown Closet when you have kids of your own. In fact, you'll be calling Mommy for advice on how to inflict maximum emotional trauma through greasepainted nightmares after you've been saddled with the hellish fruit of boozy, unprotected, marital sex with an emotionally distant spouse. So suck it up -- God hates weaklings and whiners."Hold onto your golden tiaras, ladies and gents, because this installment of the Donnybrook Cosmic features a widescreen dust up between the Amazons of Paradise Island and Eviless and her Saturnic Girls. (Great garage band name, that.)
It happened in the pages of Wonder Woman #28 (March-April 1948), in an epic tale best described as a Bayeux Tapestry of B&D sequences. While William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman's creator, was never one to pass up the opportunity to depict his kink of choice in scripting the adventures of Princess Diana and company, he well and truly pulled out the stops in this long-form exploration of the many ways one could be bound, gagged, or otherwise physically restrained.
Here's the (much abridged) highlight reel:
...and to think Joss Whedon claimed Wonder Woman lacked a decent rogues' gallery. Pshaw, I say.
The Equals - Police on My Back (from Greatest Hits, 1994) - The original 1968 version, featuring the talents of a young Eddy Grant (before he decided to cruise Electric Avenue as a solo artist).
The Clash - Police on My Back (from Sandinista! 1980) - The one flawless diamond in a six-sided pile of dross.
(Inspired by the works of Chris Sims, current Scion of the Arashikage Clan.)
After the tragic death of poor Tessie the Tortoise last June, my wife and the kindhearted folks of the Woburn Feral Cat Coalition tracked down and captured the combined litter of Tessa's and her sidekick Pepi's kittens so that they could be socialized and placed in good homes. One of wee kits managed to dodge the feral kitten round-up and started tagging along with Pepi to our house during feeding times. We named the orange and white ball of fuzz "P.J." as in "pajamas," "Pepi Junior," or perhaps as a subconscious homage to the Intrepid Mariner (and Friend to Felines) of the South Coast.
Over the past few weeks, Maura and the folks from the WFCC have been staking out the feral cat feeding sation in our driveway in hopes of trapping the dynamic mother-and-child duo so that Pepi could be spayed and released and little "Peej" could be socialized for adoption before his feral ways could become too ingrained (though I've yet to encounter a feral in our colony that didn't become human-friendly after spending some time around the wife and I. Maura tells me I'm a "cat whisperer," whatever that means).
Pepi, however, has turned out to be as elusive as Robert Denby, and can smell a set-up a mile away even though the irresistable aroma of canned sardines. While Peej has inherited his mom's cunning ways, the WFCC was finally able to trap the little fellow last night while Maura was at a roller derby bout and I was at Target trying to recapture my lost youth via action figures. (What, the Kid Flash shirt didn't already clue you in that I'm a major fucking geek?)
Pepi, alas, still remains at large, and quite possibly pregnant again, but Peej is now chilling out in a little pen we set up for him to feel secure as we try and get him acclimated to humans and indoor life. I've been letting him curl up on my lap while I read so that he can take in his new, strange surroundings from a safe vantage point, and it's been working out pretty well so far (apart from the savaging my right hand took when I tried to clean off some of the dingleberries he brought with him). Our house's resident feline population isn't sure what to make of the new arrival yet, but we're hoping they adjust fairly soon so that we can let Peej roam free and discover the many comforts of housecatdom.
The First Gear - Leave My Kitten Alone (from the Pebbles, Vol. 6: The Roots of Mod LP, 1980) - Here's some fine tooth-and-claw freakbeat from the British Invasion period, possibly featuring (the sources aren't entirely in agreement) the guitar stylings of a young Jimmy Page.
Scholastic's Dynamite used to run a regular feature titled "Super-Heroes Confidential," much adored by my younger self yet completely forgotten about until I flipped through the recently purchased stack of mid-1970's issues of the defunct kiddie magazine.
It was a pretty nifty (and corporately ecumenical) method of genre evangelism from a time when kids were still the primary target audience for superhero comics. Each installment spotlighted a specific superhero -- mostly Marvel and DC characters, though I vaguely remember some representatives of the King Features comic strip stable getting face time -- with a smartly recolored reprint of the character's origin story followed with a single page FAQ covering other details and semi-pertinent information.
In a time before The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe or Who's Who in the DCU and the ready availability of comprehensive reprint collections, it offered the tykes a handy little infodump (and an opportunity to read otherwise unavailable material) to kindle the flames of nacent fandom...even if for only a short while.
The FAQ sections are especially priceless, as they attempted to distill months and years of often slapdash sequential storytelling into a couple of sentences of kid-friendly plain text. It may have escaped my notice at the time, but these nuggets of continuity-laden (and now, thanks to the endless circular grind of the medium, mostly out-of-date) trivia highlight the stupidity and absurdity of the genre in a manner that surpasses works such as Watchmen or Marshal Law.
For instance, check out this explanation of Captain America's romantic take on "family values," from a 1974 issue of Dynamite:
Look what I got in the mail last Saturday!
The 25th anniversary edition of Barbecue, the G.I. Joe team's resident firefighter! Or more accurately, the G.I. Joe team's rezahdint fy-ah-fy-tah and token Bostonian.
Lady Jaye's file card states she was born in the Vineyard, but it's safe to assume that she was a high holiday baby with a permanent address in Manhattan's Upper West Side. Gabriel "Bahbahcue" Kelly, on the other hand, was the real fictional deal, a seventh generation Beantown jake presumably well versed in the local culture of fradulent disability reports and lack of independent oversight.
"I'd love tah help ya fight Cobra Cammandah, Duke, but my back's been actin' up. Union rules. Maybe when I get back from rock climbin' I can do somethin'."
While the general wisdom regarding special forces operatives stresses cross-training (so that the units can function effectively despite loss of individual members), the Joes were hyper-specialized to a fault, with full-time team members dedicated solely to covering even the most narrow of disciplines. In practice, this meant that many of the less well-rounded members of the team either spent most of their time warming the benches back at the Joes' HQ or got dragged along on missions outside their areas of expertise, leading to absurd scenarios like Snow Job, an arctic warfare expert, fighting in full cold weather gear in the tropics. Call it the "licensed merchandise theory of warfare."
For poor Barbecue -- armed with a hi-tech supersoaker and a fire axe -- the time not spent inspecting the base's smoke detectors and spinkler systems went something like this...
An important function, to be sure, but it doesn't dull the gnawing feelings of inadequacy when the other guys and gals on the team are doing some post-op boasting about how many Rattlers they shot down or how they kicked Destro in the 'nads while leaping from an exploding A.W.E. Striker.
In the overfondly remembered G.I. Joe cartoon series, Barbecue's great shining moment came in "The Viper Is Coming," a episode revolving around the title's ominous warning and culminating, as these things usually do, with an Eastern European gentleman arriving to "vipe the vindows."
Yes, for real. So fuck your rose-tinted childhood nostalgia, fanboys. All the perfumes in Araby can't mask the pungent stink of 80's toy cartoons.
The episode did treat the public, however, to another interesting popcult attempt to duplicate the Bay State's distinctive regional accent. It goes about as well as you'd expect, as demonstrated by this fan-edited trip into the poorly-synched mouth of madness...
I was born in 1972, and my formative years were split between the self-asorbed malaise of the Me Decade and the superficial glitter of the Greed Decade. It was fun time to be a kid, as long as you discount the nuclear war anxiety, plaid chinos, Foreigner songs....
...and toy cartoons. Those fruits of the FCC's (at Reagan's behest) removal of restrictions on maximum advertising time allowed toy manufacturers to target their sales pitch to the tykes though program-length commercials posing as poorly-animated syndicated cartoon shows. Even as a kid, I thought they were pretty stupid and far tamer than what happened in actual backyard play sessions, though I did collect and play with some of the featured plastic gee-gaws.
G.I. Joe was a special favorite. Its superheroic presentation (with code names and colorful costumes) of ostensibly "real" military professions and hardware was an easy sell to a kid who was obsessed with comic books and dreamed of following in the footsteps of his war hero father. My brother and I didn't follow the script as laid out in the cartoon and licensed Marvel comic book series, but instead crafted our own (very derivative) characterizations and scenarios, which prefigured the role playing games that would supplant action figures as our hobby of choice.
All of my old figures, along with a lot of other popcult artifacts I'd sacrifice an eye to regain, were lost in the crazy period after my mother's death. My brother did hang on to, or rediscover, a handful of mostly-broken figures which rest in the hulk of a Cobra Terrordrome we pulled out of a neighbor's trash and which is now collecting dust in a corner of my grandma's attic.
I've purchased the occasional vintage or reissued figure or vehicle for reasons of nostalgia or lingering sentimental value, though I've generally avoided the totemic fetishization of childhood diversions that affects too many of my peers. I understand the allure of employing the disposable income of one's adult self to try to recapture (or to hold on to) the stuff of one's youth, but it's a path fraught with the risk of crossing over into dogma and obsession, long nights spent scanning eBay listings and arguing over minutae in discussion section of Optimus Prime's Wikpedia page.
Or worse, using facile references to Thundercats or The Inhumanoids as shorthand for real humor.
There is a certain sense of victory in scoring a coveted prize toy twenty-five years after the fact, but it's a hollow victory....unless you're talking about a set of these beauties.
Sick Of It All - G.I. Joe Headstomp (from Blood, Sweat, and No Tears, 1989) - "Headstomp?" Wasn't he the Joes' civil affairs and community relations specialist?
The Clash - Ivan Meets G.I. Joe (from Sandinista! 1980) - Revisionist rock historians be damned, there is only one word that effectively describes Sandinista!
That word is hubris.
Finally, no musical tribute to G.I. Joe would be complete without some Cold Slither...
From a bulk flyer that arrived in yesterday's mail:
I know the economy is going through a rough patch at the moment, but if it has started turning tricks for tenners then things are far worse than I previously thought. I suppose it had to find some way to pay for its nasty and destructive addiction to neoliberal policies.
"Hey, mister, are you looking for some free market action?"
"For real? How low are your interest rates, really?"
"As low as you want them to be."
"Uh, I'll pass. You look like you're about to collapse."
"Wait, mister! Don't go! I'll throw in some offshoring and privatization for free! Please! The World Bank will cut me if I don't bring him back some cash!"
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