An absence has drowned inside me

And from it has poured a watchful ghost,

A gentle child in the night,

Who keeps me from sleep.

I go out in the dark and paint this town blue,

At the quiet command of this ghost.

We drink from tiny teacups,

Play midnight parlor games,

Toasting to the acupuncture of the sun.

To see Rachid Taha filed at the record store next to these dorky looking, cartoonishly-Arab guys in striped, poofy pants on display for their gullible Western market was kind of depressing. If you picked five albums at random from the "North Africa" section at the hip Amoeba Records, you’d wonder why none of the albums were in the same genre (once you were done wondering what in the hell the singers were saying). Maybe we haven’t figured it out yet, but not only has American-style music infiltrated the radio waves around the world, but it’s caught on and bred new types of music we haven’t bothered to import.

Which sucks.

Granted, in certain hands, these combinations crash and burn like an unlucky blimp transporting a load of kerosene over an active volcano, the same goes for any genre’s handlers here in the US. Don’t get me started. But to us, many of the bad handlers from other parts of the world are at the very least amusing. See also: Japanese glam rock. I get a kick out of it, even the headachy kinds.

Anyway, I’ll take this opportunity to pique your interest (hello? Anyone home?) with a pair of quickie-reviews of Middle Eastern-Euro fusion.

RACHID TAHA: "TÉKITOI"

Sometimes when I’m listening to this album, I feel like I’m in a particularly funkalicious Middle Eastern jail cell, underground, with angry jailers yelling at me while bellydancing, and meanwhile I’m feeling kind of groovy, so it’s not really bad at all.

Taha is an Algerian via France; he immigrated when he was just a wee child, and it shows on this album, as the language switches between French and Arabic, and, I’ve heard, Berber. I can neither confirm nor deny the Berber part, though, because even if I heard the two juxtaposed, I wouldn’t be able to guess which is which. What was I saying?

Oh, yes. The combination of sounds on this album is shockingly cool. There’s definitely a heavy Arab motif in his songs, especially in the form of strings, but he pulls a lot of influence from Western rock and techno. So it ends up sounding like rubber sitars, over which is the heavy grinding of guitars.

One of my favorite details about Taha I learned from his review on the Pitchfork site:

The second track on "Tékitoi" is called "Rock El Casbah," and is in fact an Arabic translation of the Clash’s similarly named work, which, it is conjectured, was, ah, shall we say, borrowed, from "Taha himself [who] passed the Clash a tape of Carte de Sejour while they were touring France, and less than a year later found himself listening to a very familiar sound coming from the radio in the form of "Rock the Casbah". It’s possible to view "Rock el Casbah" as a reclamation as much as a cover, and listening back…"

As for his decidedly original material, the intensity of the Arabic language combined with the gruffness of his voice gives the impression of paint-stripping sandpaper, only somehow sexier. On the track, "H’asbu-hum," for instance, the muffled beat and periodic bursts of noise, the crescendos and warbling instrumentation makes one feel shaken, jerked about. The harsh consonants of Arabic add to the feel. It’s a fascinating experience, and strangely physical. But, as granpappy-ol’-reliable used to say, when the funk within is roused, there’s no sense in silencing it. If you feel like being violently forced to react to music, Taha is the quick cure.

ZEBDA: "L’arène Des Rumeurs" "Le Bruit et l’Odeur" "Essence Ordinaire" "Utopie d’Occase"

Zebda is composed of bald men.

Their sound is much less traditionally Arabic than Taha’s, but definitely a thorough melange of styles. From one song to the next on each of their three albums (that I’ve heard) the changes in tone and instrumental composition fluctuate wildly, but with the same base, a sort of roux of long-simmered reggae and something sort of spicy. Delectable, truly! Analyzing the sound in our lab, our crack team concludes that the sound is distinctly not American, despite the influences, and that they have a sound all their own. And that’s a fact, not a generic review statement. There is nothing else like them in my collection; their talent and innovative habits have surprised me. Their sound is reminiscent of French rock, which maintains in large part, its cultural roots. Their use of accordion in the background of their songs serves to highlight their melodies and produce a peculiar, almost Maanouche flavor in their music.

"World Music" is a lame excuse for record stores who don’t listen to their stock. It comes in all flavors, my friend, and is just as valid as any other.

Behind the door marked, LADIES, this is obvious, but she isn’t thinking about it. She’s thinking about how her skirt is too tight around her hips, and wondering how long until intermission is over; she’s calculating how late she’ll get home, how many hours of sleep she’ll get. She’s wiggling her achy toes and cracking her knuckles. She hears the ladies’ room door swoosh open, and, still thinking of minutes and hours, she looks up, and that’s when it happens–nutrient-processor meets people–she glances through the space between stall panels and what she sees is a pair of eyes, little black pupils looking square at hers.

Well, the clash freezes the moment, like a cold front meeting Eastern Seaboard humidity. Sink woman and toilet woman’s muscles all lock. Toilet woman is sitting in perfect silence and stillness; her blood ceases to move in her veins. and she is suddenly aware of the coldness of the porcelain toilet, floor tiles, and pink-painted sheet metal.

Sink woman’s people-ness suddenly breaks; she yields to the inclination to blink. All machinery restarts, and toilet woman looks back at her shoes, actively not wondering what sink woman is doing at her sink that takes so long! She remains silent until the second swoosh of the door signals her solitude’s return. The roar of flushing water is at last permitted.

And escape is complete.

She doesn’t look in the mirror as she washes her hands. As she pushes the door back open, the powerful warbling from the stage rushes her to her seat once again. John turns to her and says,

"Sure took long enough. What, did you fall in?"

"Sh," she says to him.

"Your eyes are beautiful,"
I said to her,
And took her by the throat.
Silk skin, pillow flesh,
Sugarplum skirt.

Precious pumps,
Clatter to corners,

Baby
Baby
Baby.

And I took her by the throat.

Wash my hands,
Look at her,
A long, long time.
She, splattered ‘cross the bed.

Her eyes are very beautiful.

2.  Once A Glass of Warm Milk.

Spilt milky skin
Slow ‘cross the boards
Warm milk,
in steam disappears.

The shoes that tread these planks
Spilling old words.
The clatter of special shoes
Dresses for occasions
Filled the room ahead.

Remember the face
After the show.
Not the circle of
Moonlight milk,
Glimmering like a manuscript
Scattered o’er the stage.

After the show,
Didn’t see me for the moons in her eyes.

Didn’t see her for the knife in my hand.
Softly pierced the glass,

Spilled warm milk
Cooling on the boards
She once tread.

3.  The Jeweler.

Hummingbirds have jewelled wings.
Hummingbirds drink flower juice.

I’ve a pair of jewelled things
I’ve a bottle of living nectar.

There’s a pair of girl’s earrings
Hanging on the wall.
There’s a pair of earring-piercings
Fresh inside her thighs.

4.  Pedagogical Error.

Brother,
Little brother,
Sammy Boy,
Ice cream fallen on the ground.

Tears pool soft in Sammy Boy’s eyes,
Someone takes Sammy’s sticky hand.

"What a mess, buddy!"

Someone takes Sammy Boy’s
Little neck,
Steals Sammy southbound
In a vanilla Camaro.

Sammy’s ice cream pools on the walk,
Strawberry blood pools in the seat.

A poodle snoozed nearby.

The film progressed, and I watched beautiful landscapes flutter around and two attractive young Spanish actors become increasingly dirty and tired and yet hungrier for adventure and so on. They met miners and out-of-work indigenous people and cowherds and doctors and attractive young women and a whole colony of lepers. They could quote Neruda and treat elderly old women’s diseases and bullshit their way into good favor. They relied largely on the kindness of strangers for room and board. They eventually gave in to the seemingly celestially-imposed tug of social responsibility. They came to understand the lives and sufferings of people all across their continent. They came to care deeply about the welfare of their countrymen and in the end gave birth once again to the phoenix-egg of Simón Bolivar’s dream of a united Latin America.

And of course we know that Ernesto Guevara of Buenos Aires dashed into a telephone booth one day to change clothes and become Comandante Che of Havana, and later yet of Kinshasa and finally (with a bullet in the spine) in La Higuera.

I don’t think I’m ever going to be killed engaging in guerrilla war.

But that would be pretty cool, wouldn’t it?

Comandanta Gata, la guerrerra con la mas ferocidad:

¡Viva la Revolucion!

¡VIVA CAT!

But as I said, unlikely.

Upon the opening of Salles’s epic, Ernesto Guevara and Alberto Granado seem no more than enthusiastic and wealthy young men. They are well-educated, with lucrative careers in both of their futures. They just want to have some reckless fun. Says the former, "Viajamos para viajar." The latter might well have added, "…y por el sexo."

And that’s all fine and well. There are two things that happen, though. They experience trials which they refuse to back off from, and they allow these trials to change them.

In a few weeks, I’ll be leaving for a somewhat shorter trip, along the other of these siamese-twin Americas. I’m taking a train (I haven’t got a car, nor a driver’s license) across southern Canada. Watching this film in such close proximity to my departure date makes me wish to reconsider all my travel plans. They make me want to swim across the Wazoo in the middle of the night and treat AIDS patients or something. But I can’t even quote Whitman.

Anyway, I have to remind myself that these guys had some things I didn’t. Medical training, for one. A reason for people to respect them on first meeting and help them out.

But you get the idea. One of the benefits of this film is it inspires the viewer to reconsider travel and be conscious of the possibilities thwacking us from every direction when we travel, and the things we should allow travel to do to us while we’re in it. To allow an effect.

I just hope that despite the looks of it, I’ll be able to extract some kind of profundity from my impending travels; I want to find something to care about on this trip; I want my travel to teach me something. But I suppose all I can do is let it happen.

The beauty of this film is in its messages. Its portrayal of Guevara and of the continent is sensitive and careful in a way I cannot describe. The imagery is rich, the scenes are well-chosen. Though, I’m a sucker for dance scenes. The characters are appealing, though not without faults. But we all saw that coming. Salles is an extraordinary artist in film. When Godard said cinema was over not too long ago, it was a slip of the ego; it’s not his fault; he’s French.

Ooh. Ouch.

I’ll close with the film’s tagline: "Let the world change you… and you can change the world." But all you’ve got to do is sit back and let the gears turn.

Okay, here is the George Saunders Flip Book.

1. Man has job as some kind of sad and ramshackle spectacle or exhibition. Man generally has a wife figure. Man is of good intelligence, but lacking in courage. Man is usually entrenched in poverty.

2. Enter Oppressive Boss Man. He oppresses.

3. Man somehow displays pitiful cowardice or incompetence at his demeaning and dehumanizing job site.

4. Wife thereafter runs to the folds of the freakish biceps of the Oppressive Boss Man.

5. Enraged Man protests somehow, engaging in some act of rebellion, usually overthrowing Oppressive Boss Man.

6. In the first availible moment to enjoy his success, Man is crushed by the unbearable weight of society or some other outside force acting in the way of the Boss Man’s Avenger.

So why, again, dear reader, was I talking about America? Why, you ask, was I rambling on about the meaning behind these stories?

Because they resonate enormously. Through details, Saunders manages to recreate some perverse reflection of our society. In "Sea Oak," for example, a male Hooters girl comes home from work to find his jobless sisters watching "How My Child Died Violently," in which some sleazily-named host forces "healing experiences" upon mourning parents. Though you claim to know nothing about daytime TV, this sounds oddly familiar to you. For dinner, it’s "Stars ‘n’ Flags," into which, Saunders remarks, the company inserts some kind of sugar which renders the food product somewhat addictive. Any American who doesn’t occasionally eat this kind of stuff is generally a member of some departed social elite.

It’s in details like this that Saunders creates an Ultrareality, which is to say that he pushes every detail of all that is demeaning in American life to the maximum volume. He emphasizes the strangely dehumanizing modern poverty both of wealth and of spirit through these things, in the most straight-faced way. He drops the reader in these Ultrarealities without blinking an eye, and the reader is at once repulsed and empathetic to these stories. His style is direct, as if spoken with steady eye contact, with little regard for anything except accurate depiction of character and situation.

His other stories include, "Downtrodden Mary’s Failed Campaign of Terror," "The Barber’s Unhappiness," "The End of FIRPO in the World," and "Winky."

In each of these stories, he approaches several questions, both of society and human nature. One thing he deals with is the seeming inverse relationship between intelligence, and audaciousness. His protagonists are usually quite intelligent and well aware of their oppression, but choose to merely exist in it, accept it, bow to it. While less intelligent characters around them usually remain in their situations via total ignorance. The sisters in "Sea Oak," mentioned above are unemployed and studying for GEDs at home for no explained reason. After concluding that Winston Churchill was in opera, one sister says to the protagonist, "You’ve done high school, man…We got to get our GEDs so we can watch TV and not be all distracted." They’re not afraid of anything, the sisters, but they haven’t any larger concept of life than what’s there in front of them. Like cows, they graze upon whatever’s there. And the protagonist submits to his job as visual meat, adhering to rules and settling for chump change in return.

All of this really amounts to a point about poverty. In this country, one in five adults lives below the poverty line. There is a cheapness to life in America, and we are in a time when often luxuries are cheaper than necessities; when Cheetos and the like are more accessible than fresh food, there is a problem. But the problem is, the intersection of necessary character components to relieve the problem isn’t happening. Or that’s how Saunders sees it, anyway. Basically, the proper sorts of people haven’t all come together in a situation where the problem and the means to solution are all clear and important to them.

In short, Saunders writes his Ultrareality, perhaps, in the hopes of inspiring people who think like him to get their cranks turning in regards to this particular problem in America: complacency and low expectations, lack of temerity and ignorance are the enemies, and one man alone cannot fight them. Through his wrenchingly unflinching and vivid creations, he does so with excellent effect. Style, plot, depth, meaning, Saunders has it all. And by the end of a book, you get the idea, and you start to care.

The Bubble climbs up my vertebrae and rises to the top of my
skull, squishing my brain tissue down below the level of my
eyes. A strange spongy pressure seeps into my sinuses and
the Bubble grows, grows and — !

Pops!

I climb then out of my ear, yes, the left one, and land on Matt
Burke’s shoulder. I shake off the cranial fluids that have
coagulated around me and commence to crawl over the desks,
clumsily slinking on all fours over notebooks and plastic bottles
toward the window. I hop onto the ledge and reach into the
pane, pulling open a portal, and I jump right through.

I am able to survey the area standing on the plumage of a
bottlebrush tree. I jury-rig a parasol out of twigs and
leaves, and skip-hop onto the telephone wire. I walk the
tightrope like a circus ballerina straight on out to the beach,
my sequins glimmering in the spotlights, the crowd aghast below,
holding its collective breath at my danger. The myriad
faces widen in a gasp as I leap forward and land back in my skull
with a small kersploosh! of cranial juices. The classroom
buzzing resumes and the Bubble subsides, retreating down the
optic nerve, through thickets of grey matter and climbing down
the vertebrae, nesting again in the base of my spine.

###

MEDITATION ON THE STARS.

They’re up there, spying on me.

They peer down, they do, though little sprockets, little
sprockets in the atmosphere’s black tarp. They’re made of
some kind of brilliant, more-than-phosphorescent light, and
they’re big tall things, performing all kinds of EXPERIMENTATIONS
on me — and I guess on you too. Though, I don’t
know. Maybe they don’t care about me at all, or you,
either, and maybe that’s why we’re under the tarp. It’s
like a fungal garden they’re growing, the sprockets are actually
little ice-pick holes to let water in but not really out, and
when they find us in a few years, you know, in the back corner of
the yard, they’ll be like, “Oh, woah, I totally forgot about
that.”

But anyway we were walking all silent one night and I looked out
the sprockets and looked at the superphosphorescent
scientists. The little sprockets were all laid out just so,
like a bag of marbles spilt over wet pavement, and I said, I
said,

“You’ve got to look — just look at those stars.”

And you glanced, and you shrugged, and you said,

“Whatever.”

And your smug little proclamation of teenaged ennui got the
scientists all huffy and they went to go sit in some sullen
corner somewhere. You really ruffled their feathers.
They’re not so hot on you, I reckon; no, they’re not. But I
think, and this is in the realm of conjecture now — I make no
guarantees — I think they might think I’m okay. Because
they still do come out from time to time. I don’t mind them
looking at me, much, in fact, it’s a little nice from time to
time, and ceilings really can get to be a bother for that
reason. A ceiling does get so lonesome at night; makes it
hard to breathe, you know? Like they tied up the tarp too
tight, as one does around a murdered corpse, wrapped twice and
all. I think those sprockets are good to breathe
through.

The syncopated rhythm of shoes on concrete steps is
audible, but unheard by the woman, who is humming. She
jauntily slips the noose over her head. She tugs a
little on the rope above her, peers up at the pipe it
is tied to.

At this moment, a young man enters the room. His
shoes, buttered with shoeshine, glint dustily from the
bare light-bulb on the ceiling. He blinks. The woman
is somewhat embarrassed. She stares at him, and he
stares at her.

“Hello, mother.” A pause.
“Hello,” the woman says.
“What are you doing?” The son is answered with the
shifting eyes of the woman. Then,
“Baking a cake,” says the woman. This is met with a
particularly empty silence.
“Oh,” he says. “Do you need any help?” The young man
swallows, looks around.
“No,” she answers after a brief silence. “Thank you,
though.”
“All right,” says her son.

They stare.

The sound of a kettle’s whistle enters the basement.

“I think that I hear my tea kettle,” says the woman,
and looks at the young man. He nods, and she moves
past him, up the stairs. He listens to the syncopated
clacking of stair climbing. He stands there, at the
base of the stair, and listens to the sharp
commingling of dishes. He clears his throat.

She descends the stairs, the woman, again with the
familiar syncopation.
She sees her son and blinks abruptly.

“Oh,” she says, “You’re still here.”
“Yes,” he replies, “I am.” He furrows his brow at
this.

The woman coughs, asks if he would like some toast.
She holds out a plain
round dish to him, with several slices of vaguely
burnt bread atop it.

“Yes,” he says to her. “Thank you.”
He takes one, puts the corner of it in his mouth,
closes his jaw upon it. There is the conspicuous
initial crunch of toast between teeth. There is
uncertain chewing.

The young man and the woman sit in green gingham
folding chairs on the floor of the basement. They
quietly chew their toast. The woman delicately sips
her tea. The noose swings.

Nonetheless, the fact of the matter is
that we now live in a very divided nation. Approval
of President Bush has been inconsistent,2 meaning his “rule”
is weak, or at least unstable. However, he has some Machiavellian
techniques of retaining it, and could ameliorate his
position if only he used more. Many would agree that
today is reflective of the European Renaissance in
many ways; ideas conceived during that time can prove
useful to us today. President Bush could improve his
position as President by taking the advice given in
Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince.

The first mistake President Bush made was his
“bipartisan” 2000 presidential campaign. He promised to make both
sides
content, and, naturally, failed. Taking
Machiavelli’s advice may have aided this process for
him. “…You may find that you have enemies in all
those whom you have injured in seizing the Princedom,
yet cannot keep the friendship of those who helped you
gain it; since you can neither reward them as they
expect, nor yet, being under obligations to them, use
violent remedies against them” (p 2). This can be
likened to Bush’s clumsy approach to assumption of
power. He decided to run his campaign in a
“bipartisan” manner, claiming he could make decisions
that, though he was a rather right-wing Republican,
could please the masses, liberal and conservative.
Unfortunately for him, he was bound to disappoint
many, and enrage even more all those who were so
adamantly opposed to his election. His campaign was
fairly weak, and he should have found a way to avoid
at all costs such a rift as the one he caused upon
being inaugurated.

President Bush’s dubious election is still being
scrutinized by his dissenters; Machiavelli warned
against such methods, and therefore would have proved
useful to Bush then, as well. This was his second
mistake. The election made him many enemies. “For
however strong you may be in respect of your army, it
is essential that in entering a new Province you
should have the good will of its inhabitants” (p 2).
Unfortunately, Bush did not manage this, and had to
make up for it. He managed to recover quite well, due
to a stroke of luck involving an outpouring of
patriotic affection.2 However, had he managed to
assume the position of President with fewer qualms on
the part of the USA, his reign would be smoother.

Bush has been wrestling with dissenters since he first
appeared in office three years ago; his methods could be
improved (for his purposes) via Machiavelli’s advice
on the matter. In the section of The Prince entitled,
“Of Cruelty and Clemency; And Whether It Is Better to
be Loved or Feared,” Machiavelli discussed the
benefits of cruelty over kindness in a ruler, as well
as the necessary nature of said cruelty. “A prince,”
he wrote,
“should therefore disregard the reproach of being
thought cruel where it enables him to keep his
subjects united and obedient. For he who quells
disorder by a very few signal examples will in the end
be more merciful than he who from the too great
leniency permits things to take their course and so to
result in rapine and bloodshed; for these hurt the
whole State, whereas the severities of the Prince
injure individuals only (p 43).” If taken into account by President Bush,
he could gain
a much stronger hold on his power. Perhaps he needs
not take such extreme measures as they would in the
Renaissance, such as public executions, but find a
more modern method of showing the American public that
it is unwise to disagree. This is not necessarily an
“ethical” course of action, but one that would most
likely unite the people. One of Machiavelli’s main
points in this section is indeed that it is preferable
for a ruler to be feared by the people ruled: “Men
love at their own free will, but fear at the will of
the prince, and…a wise prince must rely on what is
in his power and not what is in the power of others,
and he must only contrive to avoid incurring
hatred…”(p 45) People respond more strongly with
fear than with love. Love is a precarious, easily
destructible state of affairs, a delicate matter.
Striking fear into the hearts of the masses, however,
is a different question. It is delicate in the sense
that, one must not inspire hatred. Hatred spoils the
entire system. Hatred spawns revolt. The proper
amount of fear, however, results in a strong hold on a
country full of people.

“Fear and the absence of hatred may well go together,
and will always be attained by one who abstains from
interfering with the property of his citizens and
subjects…And when he is obliged to take the life of
anyone, let him do so when there is a proper
justification and manifest reason for it, but above
all he must abstain from taking the property of
others…”4
In the USA we have, and frequently use as punishment,
the death penalty. Most people here would agree that
it is more important to protect ourselves from
unreasonable search and seizure (as the Fourth
Amendment guarantees us), than from being put to death
for more serious crimes. In fact, many people
outwardly support capital punishment. This is to say,
people are able to respect execution and fear it
properly without hating the government for using it as
a form of punishment. However, the second a
government agent enters a home without a warrant,
there will be a public outcry against such activity;
there is a characteristic paranoia in this country
about surveillance. The newspapers and magazines
constantly print stories about government
surveillance; the Internet is rich with Web sites on
the subject. However, the number of these concerning
the death penalty is significantly fewer. In this
respect as well, today’s politics are similar to those
of the Renaissance.

Foreign policy is a touchy subject in today’s
politics, a precarious affair, and it was
significantly less so in the Renaissance; however,
some wise practices of that day are also wise courses
of action in the modern world. In The Prince,
Machiavelli makes a number of analogies to times past
in Europe. One particularly relevant one is this:
“[France’s King] Louis, then, had made these five
blunders. He had destroyed weaker States, he had
strengthened a Prince already strong, he had brought
into the country a very powerful stranger, he had not
come to reside, and he had not sent colonies” (p 7).
While it is not recommended to create colonies, most
of this analysis is useful today as well. A blunder
Bush has imitated, for instance, is the destruction of
a “weaker State,” namely Afghanistan, which we have
nuked most thoroughly back to the Stone Age. It
has done us very little good and created a stir among
more aware and liberal citizens. The nation,
realistically, posed very little threat to ours, yet
the bombs dropped. This is an example of the folly
made by an administration that looks rarely to the
past for aid. We wasted military energy bombing a
country unnecessarily and without real reason.
Another analogous indiscretion is that of not
“com[ing] to reside.” The President does not travel
nearly often enough. Given, he has had bad luck with
the practice, but nonetheless it’s got to be done. In
order to understand and gain the respect of foreign
countries, one must visit and show respect to them.

George Bush could use the writings of Niccolò
Machiavelli to his advantage in his political work.
His power could be more secure with the help of
the Renaissance’s famous political writer. In regards
to both local and world politics, Machiavelli could
come to Bush’s aid. This is not necessarily an
ethical issue, because were politics an ethical issue,
the world would be a very different place today; no,
this is an issue of power and of order. Machiavelli’s
ideas can be transferred over to today’s political
situation and make sense and work with the present
circumstances, despite being 500 years old.

1. Edition of The Prince used: ©1992 Dover
Publications. Translated by NH Thomson.
2. It’s been on and off the fence, lingering around 50 percent.
3. There are those who would suspect that this was
not the works of chance at all, but a carefully
crafted plan by the Bush administration itself. We
shall now proceed to ignore these people for the sake
of the simplicity of this essay.
4. This excerpt taken from a slightly differently
translated copy of The Prince.

The testy spaceman’s smile was a dare;
It had that particular astronaut flair.

With a six-shooter Taser he rode out of Texas
On a Japanese horse by the name of Old Lexus

One night he up and left his girl MaryLou
Who swore to high heaven all the things that she’d do

She threatened her man til the break of dawn
But she’d done gone hoarse, and he’d just done gone.

On Jupiter’s moon, one day at high noon
Drear walked through the doors of a cosmonaut saloon.

He eyed the clientele and the Russian bartender
Sizing them up, looking for a contender.

Old Zeke set himself down on a ratty barstool
And ordered a beer and looked round real cool

He caught the gaze of an alien nearby
The kind of guy who’d made a few Martians die

Before he knew it the alien was charging up
Onto Drear’s table, overturning his cup

Drear was quick; the alien was quicker
But Drear was enraged by the loss of his liquor

They had each other in a deadly lock
Their sour breaths hung in the air as they each took
stock

Suddenly the alien shoved him down to the floor
And our hero Zeke was chilled sober to the core

Suddenly old man Zeke was petrified with fear–
Because the alien was no alien, but MaryLou Drear!

She said, “The nice Russian astronauts gave you away
And I borrowed this suit from the MIR pod bay.”

She nagged that he’d been too long interstellar
And that she couldn’t live proper without her feller

So she dragged him on back to the Texas homestead
Where she chained his ankles to the foot of the bed.

The moral of the story is, of course,
Don’t trust the Russians to keep your whereabouts
secret from your wife.