Hammer Mill Days

What the....? Marvin (my personal robot assistant), is that you? No, wait... you're over there . Well then, what the fuck is causing that glow if not your power-on indicator? Why it's... well... un earth ly. This started to be just another week here at the Cheney Hammer Mill. Giving rudimentary philosophy lessons to the man-sized tuber. Producing anvil-shaped holograms with Trevor James Constable's orgone generating machine. Playing Stratego with Lincoln and his evil anti-matter counterpart, anti-Lincoln. Mixing (at a snail's pace) our sophomore album. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then, out of nowhere, an unanticipated wrinkle in our otherwise smooth existence. It happened early yesterday morning, in fact. Matt heard it first - something that sounded like a laundromat dryer winding down. The power went out... and there was this... strange.... glow..... emanating.... from.... the... courtyard...... (*whew*) Are you sitting down? Okay, good. Clearly, someone needed to

Things heated up this week in our serial overseas conflicts, to be sure. As of this writing, Iran is still holding some British soldiers, and there appear to be some flourishes of diplomatic activity in and amongst the public posturing. Though Bush and friends (including the ever-reliable Joe Lieberman, peace be upon him) engaged in some highly qualified pre-gloating over the "progress" being seen in Iraq as a result of the "surge", people are still dying by the score over there. As Juan Cole points out , figures from the Iraqi government on February casualties ran somewhere around 61 deaths per day - that's just slightly fewer than in January. Progress, Lieberman style! (What have you got for the health care crisis, Joe?) It makes you wonder if any U.S. politician really has any idea what a statistic like 60 deaths a day means in human terms. As a consequence of this cock-brained optimism, the U.S. is alienating the few corruptible friends it has in the Arab w