Hammer Mill Days

Every man is the captain of his soul, sure. But what about every robot? And every root vegetable? I mean, how many captains can this unseaworthy scow handle, eh? Cheeez. Ahoy, mateys! Yes, it's your old friends in the calamitous band Big Green shouting out to you from the high seas, somewhere east (or perhaps west) of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in sunny upstate New York. As you may have surmised, we.... um, excuse me... Hey Matt - ask one of the Lincolns to put his finger up in the air and get a check of our wind direction. No, no - not THAT finger! Mother of pearl.... As I was beginning to say, you have probably surmised that we made it through re-entry okay. A bit touch and go, though it helps to remember that we have had much, much more experience with the terrifying phenomenon of re-entry than practically any rock band in business. (Except perhaps Captured by Robots - they've got us beat, for sure.) Yes, the strange craft we borrowed from Gizmandiar lacked compre...

The "new" Middle East is emerging, and it isn't at all pretty - a child, in fact, that only its mother (the Bush administration) could love. When a massive military presence on main street Ramadi is considered freedom, you know something is dreadfully wrong with this picture. But then freedom is a very malleable word, one that enables scoundrels to sound high-minded while in fact speaking a portion of the grisly truth. "Freedom" may sound like human rights, but what they're really talking about is the freedom to apply power at will. Pirates' freedom, or perhaps more accurately, the freedom of the mafia don. Our standard is clear: a regime loves freedom if it is compliant with our directives. If not, it is radical, dictatorial, extreme. Uri Avnery, the great Israeli peace activist, sums it up quite neatly in a recent column . Palestinians are "moderate" if they follow U.S. orders and "pragmatic" if they follow Israel's orders. Clea...