Hammer Mill Days

Did you hear what I heard? Was that... sleigh bells? That can only mean one thing. That's right, children... it's the sound of jolly old fire alarm. The engines are burning up. Yes, yes... Christmas freaking day. Don't you just love this time of year? (Judging by your reaction, perhaps "love" was the wrong word.) Don't you just fireplug this time of year? (That's a bit better.) Over here in Big Green land, we have a reputation for keeping Christmas better than any virtual pop band you can name that traverses interstellar space and has a robot friend (and hangs out with Lincoln). Sure, that's mostly down to our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas , now a venerable nine holidays old and still available for purchase and/or download at a retailer near you (or not so near you ... check us out on the Russian mp3 download site Yanga.ru , which ranks us among "Best Artists" under Psychedelic Rock... and whose url sounds strangely like "kangar...

Bhutto has been dead only a couple of days, and already the demagogic politicians and would-be presidents are spinning damage control for ex-general and president-for-as-long-as-he-likes Pervez Musharraf. Having invested so bullishly in this coup leader, Bush and company are reluctant to see his fortunes fall alongside the corpse of his chief political rival. In Pakistan as elsewhere, we build today's disastrous policies on those of yesteryear, compounding tragedy with farce and playing with whole nations as if they were mere instruments of our global ambitions. For decades we've supported strongman military leaders in Pakistan because it served our purposes to do so (one-stop political shopping, in effect - less haggling with popular leaders). The rationale in the 1970s and 80s was the fight against the U.S.S.R. in Afghanistan, an effort that amounted to a kind of Ford Foundation for jihadist groups, funded in part by the Saudis and facilitated by the CIA and Pakistan's I....

What's that, tubey? Losing pressure? Damn shame, that. And the gravity control is malfunctioning? Criminy. Oh, heck... there goes our navigation console. Reduced to molten lead. Sometimes things just don't go right in deep space. Hi, Big Green fans. Yes, well... we've finally gotten off the ground, pulling away from the Cancri 55 solar system at 40% of light velocity. Only trouble is, those repairs that our old friend sFshzenKlyrn effected just prior to our departure are turning out to be of somewhat less than the highest quality. Damn if I didn't buy that service contract! I could have had the butt-crack guy from Sears up hear patching this decrepit ship together. Hindsight is 20:20, as they say. (What is that behind me? Looks like... an eye chart !) Feeling a bit of buyer's remorse out here in deep space, as it happens, our life-giving oxygen seeping out into the void, our hands flailing uselessly as our legs float towards the ceiling. This is just the sort of...

Here's an open letter to voters and caucus-goers in New Hampshire and Iowa. (Hey, it's Christmas - what the hell, right?) More than anybody anywhere in this vast country, your now have the ability to call the major party candidates on just about any topic, whether it's torture of detainees, the war in Iraq, health care, whatever. What's more, you have the opportunity to make a greater political impact than that of much larger populations in New York, California, and other major states. How so? Well, for one thing, you can choose from among nearly the entire field of candidates - by the time the race gets to New York, for instance, it will essentially be over. Sure, there may not be a lot of variety there, but it's better than a ballot of one. And you - particularly those folks in Iowa - can stand in a not-too-crowded living room with one of these fuckers, challenge them with non pre-fabricated questions, and go mano-a-mano politically with ordinarily very isolated a...

Back it up a bit. Bit more. Bit more. Good, good, that's it. Now make it smaller... much smaller. No, not that way. I mean by material transmogrification. No, I did not make that up. Just 'cuz you don't know how ... Bickering, bickering. Seems like that's all we ever do these days. That and sleep. No more oldies, though - we're off that particular plantation, thanks to the somewhat blurry-minded ingenuity of one sFshzenKlyrn , the creature from Zenon and Big Green 's perennial sit-in guitarist. How did we get him to use his enormous etheric brain? Elementary use of flapjacks - quite simple, really. Read last week's blog entry . Finished with it? Take your time. How about now? Jeezus, you read slow ! Too much Internet, young lady - it's rotting your brain! Got it now? Good, good. That's right - I threatened, and then I delivered on the threat. Our sFshzenKlyrn got a tall stack of buckwheat flapjacks just after I posted. Am I a liar? Huh ? What happen...

Been watching the amazing caveman race-to-the-bottom that is election 2008, have you? Probably more than you like. In a way, it reminds me of that classic board game, Clue , where there are three groups of cards - suspects, weapons, and locations - and at the start of the game one card from each group is taken out and secreted away; ultimately the winner is the first one to surmise which cards they are. Colonel Mustard did it in the Parlor with the Candlestick Holder, right? Well, particularly on the Republican side, you've got maybe three issues that all the major candidates demagogue about, based on G.O.P. polling data - say, immigration, detainee abuse, and the broader "war on terror". So Rudy, Mitt, Fred, and Huck range about trying to guess what the winning positions will be. (Hmmm.... the Undocumented Mexican Gardener did it in the Anbar Awakening Council with Stress Positions.) They try to outdo each other to the point where it gets pretty ugly. Thus are major nat...

Circle Game? Done it. Keep the Ball Rollin'? God, yes. Lodi? Oh, Lord... yes. Fucking hell... Wait, I've got it. "Six drops of essence of terror. Five drops of sinister sauce!" No? Come on - it's from 196 4 , damn it! What a slog. Yes, my little friends... Big Green is still here, out on the third planet of Cancri 55, only just discovered and already giving me a major, major pain in the ass. I'm telling you this right now - these space aliens have an insatiable appetite for sixties songs (which they call... "new" music). And when I say insatiable, I mean they want new shit all the time. You can not play the same song twice down here, friends. No repeating, no pre-fab set lists... just new, new, NEW. Even with a forty-year backlog, quite frankly, we are running out of stuff to play. (Note to you bar bands down there on Earth: Don't come here. They will work you to death! ) Unfortunately, we reeled through the good stuff in the first few day...

I'm not sure if it was Bush's intention to come off like a paranoid lunatic last Tuesday when he commented on the national intelligence estimate on the non-existent nuclear (or "nuke-you-ler" in Dubya speak) threat posed by Iran, but he certainly succeeded in doing so. Iran "will be dangerous, if they have the knowledge to build a nuclear weapon," he opined, giving a shrug of clueless arrogance that so eloquently expresses the inner workings of his tiny mind. Facts don't matter - this much we know. And the facts have been problematic for our president and vice-president as they have tried to nudge the American people ever closer to the brink of another optional war. But they were just as problematic with respect to Iraq, remember - the administration had nothing and was working overtime to provoke some kind of confrontation, without success (to their quite visible frustration). They've been working up an alternative to the nuclear scenario for some t...

Couple in the next room, bound to win a prize. They've been going at it all night long. No, seriously - they're playing some kind of video game in there, and I think they may just be on the verge of winning a trophy. Believe it. Why am I reciting 36-year-old Paul Simon lyrics? Well, that story's seldom told. I am just a poor boy... No, no, wait. There is a reason (and not one that turns out to be yet another P.S. song). Seems the planet we have landed on (third planet in the Cancri 55 system) is home to a race that's real big on sixties acoustic folk-rock music. Of course, they think it's all new - smoking hot platters ripping up the airwaves, straight from planet Earth. That's 'cause Cancri 55 is 41 light years from Earth, and... well... those transmissions are just reaching them now, having crossed the trackless void of space these last four decades. Now revolution is in the air, my friends, and so is the Lovin' Spoonful . All these Cancrites are w...

When someone with a history like that of George W. Bush convenes a peace conference, it should inspire little more than joyless laughter. The fact that the focus is the middle east makes it doubly ludicrous. Dubya wants peace in the middle east? How simple is that? Just stop bombing the place, there's a good chap. If peace is so bloody important to the bugger, why doesn't he pull the troops out of Iraq and leave Iran the fuck alone? Simple answer - George Bush doesn't care about black people, or brown people, or pretty much anybody outside of his circle of millionaire cronies. So, why hold a mid east peace conference now? Well, I'm inclined to agree with Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery ( see his recent column here ). You have three leaders who are politically on the ropes. Bush's stock is pretty much in the toilet. Olmert is dangling by a thread, merely keeping the prime minister's chair warm for someone worse (i.e. Netanyahu). Abbas, at best an invented leade...

Hmmm. Looks like a good place to pound some stakes into the ground. No, sFshzenKlyrn , not that kind of steak. The pointy kind, typically made of wood. Wood . A hard, fibrous material that comes from large plants, like... like... Hey! Put the man-sized tuber down!! Oh, hi. Jeezus christmas - this is like herding cats! Worse... herding cats on Neptune , except without that nice comforting methane atmosphere. Well, anyway... your various Big Green type amigos have taken a slight detour on our way back from Mars... very slight... about 25 light-years off course, thanks to president Lincoln, in point of fact. In a fit of uncontrollable curiosity, Lincoln navigated us over to the solar system of Cancri 55 in the constellation Cancer. Far off the beaten path, to be sure, and here we are on a very tight budget for this trip. (No petty cash... just a stack of pre-signed checks from our label, Loathsome Prick records, in a galaxy that only takes cash or plastic). So much for the Lincoln navi...

The holidays are upon us, and the news outlets are obsessing about "Black Friday" - good thing? bad thing? - to the point where no other news really seems to matter. It was a lead story on NBC and PBS evening news, I'm certain, and my morning newspaper is chock full of nuts waiting in long lines at 6:00 a.m. for the doors to swing open on the cultural utopia that is Best Buy. Just doing their patriotic duty, as defined by our commander-in-chief. It's not really just about fighting and dying... They also serve who borrow and spend, right? Float the economy for Dubya. Fight a short, sweet, victorious war for Dubya. (Hurry up... only 14 months to go.) Still the pavlovian networks pump out the pabulum, and if you don't listen too closely it can almost seem like things are just as right as they need to be. War is over (if you want it), NPR - just don't report on the sucker and it will go away. Fact is, it's really more about how the story is reported on. Fo...

Damn... dropped a hammer around here someplace. Now what the fuck happened to it? Marvin (my personal robot assistant)? Have you....? Wait, there it is on the ceiling, right where I dropped it. Sheesh. Ah, it's you again. Welcome, welcome. Just another brief peek into the wiggly world of Big Green and friends, now en route home from a brief Martian engagement to promote our yet-to-be-released second full-length studio album (that is to say, the album it self is full length, not the studio.... the studio is quite short), a feast for the ears we trust (not quite finished) and for the eyes, as well (not designed). Did I say "en route"? Well, I was taking some liberties there. Actually, we've gone on a bit of a detour, thanks to the boundless curiosity of President Lincoln (the positively-charged one), one of our erstwhile hangers-on, who decided to wrest the controls away from no one in particular and send us careering off into an entirely different celestial direction ...

The military establishment went to Congress this week to argue for that fat supplemental spending package Bush requested for the Iraq and Afghan wars. The air was thick with dire warnings. We don't have enough troops to defend the nation against attack. Half of the army's equipment is tied up. Without some $200 billion more in supplemental funding, civilian workers at military bases all across the country will be laid off for the holidays. How's that for rattling their little brass cup? I'll tell you, $470 billion per annum just doesn't buy what it used to. Seriously... you'd think with a budget of that magnitude, the Pentagon could find a way to keep both of Bush's phony wars going and still send all those defense department civilian employees home with a holiday bonus. So cancel a couple of useless weapons programs - you could do it with your eyes closed. I mean, isn't this exactly why you don't start wars for no good reason - because they're ...

What is this? An oth er one? And wait... there's one more! Can't you see it there, behind the gaseous cloud formation? Oh, right... that's sFshzenKlyrn . Step aside, will you? I'm trying to make a point here... Ah, yes... the blogosphere. Nearly forgot. Sorry, friends. I've taken to having Marvin (my personal robot assistant) take dictation on this page, so very often he'll pick up stuff I don't actually want him to transcribe. Sometimes he starts a little early and some times he just fails to exercise common sense. Okay, like now , Marvin. Stop typing for a moment... I've got to use the can. I said stop. Did you type that? Stop, damnit! STOP! Oh, Jesus... never mind. I'll just continue - it's simpler, really. Anyway... I suppose I should explain. I was just commenting to my colleagues on the hitherto undiscovered planet around star 55 Cancri in the constellation Cancer. Damn, just wait until we get news of this back to planet Earth! People in t...

Our great ally in the "global war on terror" and Cheney's favorite military dictator Pervez Musharraf declared emergency rule last week, just ahead of a ruling by his nation's supreme court on whether or not he could remain both president and army chief at the same time. (Hey... he's multi-tasking. What's wrong with that?) Before they could rule against him (as they were expected to do), he dissolved the court and appointed puppet justices in their stead. Case dismissed! Or rather, Court dismissed! Musharraf's placing his political opponents in fetid jails (or under house arrest for those of a more lofty social rank) and general (no pun intended) heavy-handedness sufficiently embarrassed the Bush administration (to the extent that it is capable of being embarrassed) into pressing for Pakistani elections and a call for Musharraf to "take off his uniform," in Dubya's words. Sure, it took a few days for them to react, but then it always takes a...

Ant lers? Not ant lers. That won’t work at all . You need something more simian looking. A chimp’s muzzle, perhaps, or lemur tail. Prehensile, yes… that’ll do the trick. Oh, it’s you again, mister Spindle-legs. (A quote from Lost In Space , sorry to say.) Welcome back aboard the S. S. something sacred, where yours truly is coughing up copy for the commodore. Who’s the commodore? Well, that’s the guy in charge of Loathsome Prick records – the fellow who sent us off on this fool’s errand to planet Mars, where Big Green is slogging through some promotional performances to support the release of our next album… the one that ain’t done yet. Want a good time? Try careering 143 million miles through interplanetary space in a converted piece of playground equipment piloted by a crew of genetically modified, oversized root vegetables. You don’t know the meaning of the word “excitement” until you’ve done that once or twice. (Frankly, once is enough for me.) As many of you will have surmised, ...

The casualty numbers are in for October, and man god damn things are going swimmingly over in Iraq. Only 34 U.S. dead - that's just a little more than one a day (a bitter pill for someone to swallow, but no one who counts, apparently). I don't recall what the Iraqi corpse figure was - it had four digits, for sure - but (and this is important!) the first digit was smaller than last month's. Progress! Or so we're told by the administration, the "commanders in the field", the mainstream press, and supporters of the "surge" in general. This is, after all, best framed (from their point of view) as some kind of ball game wherein the winning team is the one with the highest (or lowest) score. It makes the war easier to sell, report on, and defend. But war differs from sports in one very important respect - in sports the object is simply to win, so numbers count; on the other hand, there is typically a strategic or tactical purpose to any war, and this one ...

Trans-Martian insertion commence... four... three... two... one... one ... ONE! Commence, damnit! What's the matter with you clones? Geebus! I'm telling you, my friends - you just can't get good help these days, not anywhere. Not on Earth (our home planet). Not on Mars (our current place of business). Not in deep space (which separates Earth from Mars). As you may recall from our previous Web-based utterances (known as blog entries), we're running a little short-handed here in Big Green -land, particularly owing to the recent "brain drain" at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. The more knowledgeable (and higher-paid) members of our contingent - mad scientist Mitch Macaphee and etheric energy specialist / inventor Trevor James Constable flew the coop, having grown tired of our slovenly ways, our peasant fare, our... general ripeness, if you will. Anyway, they lit off for Rio, Monaco, Paris, and pretty much anyplace better than the mill. So what the hell , we ...

These are unnerving times. I feel as though, once again, we stand at the edge of catastrophe and yet we are unable to summon the will to stop it. I don't mean to depersonalize that observation - I include myself in that broad "we". Sometimes I wonder whether, years from now, I will look back on these days and curse myself for being so limp and impassive in the face of disaster. For the second time in just a few years, we seem to be sleepwalking into war. Our lame duck leaders, eager to demonstrate their relevance, are almost certain to bring about some kind of attack on Iran. Many in the Democrat-led congress are walking in lock-step with them (and sometimes a step or two ahead), particularly those with presidential ambitions. At the same time, Israel has struck a site in Syria, raising the question of what will come next (and from where) and Turkey is poised to invade northern Iraq. With all of this (and quite a bit more) seemingly going septic at once, our ever-trusty m...