Hammer Mill Days

Still hear it. Try again. Nope, that didn't work. I can still hear it. Try something else. No, no - that's worse! Oh, hi. Yeah, still working on mastering, but there's this bloody tick-tick-tick that's coming up through the floorboards or from behind the drywall (not that we have drywall) and it's seeping into the works somehow. Sounds like a freaking metronome, and god knows we don't use one of those . (I prefer to call it free-time rhythm, rubato, whatever.) Never realized how damned noisy this old mill was until I started trying to assemble an album within its dank, condemned brick walls. A word of advice: never master your own album! Hire some fucker. And here's some more advice, free of charge: don't live in a squat house (even if it was once a working hammer mill). You heard it here first. I think it's all this squatting that's wrecking my back. But anyway... Our dear friend, mad scientist Mitch Macaphee, is getting settled into his old ...

About 17 more U.S. soldiers were killed this week in Bush's splendid little war. They were no relation to Dubya, Cheney, or anyone important, so not to worry. I had to turn my local newspaper upside-down and shake it to find any mention of the deaths - they were buried (with full military honors) in the text of an article about some other grisly aspect of the Iraq enterprise, which itself appeared on the back page of the paper's main section. (It's kind of a general news section... though not really. These local papers are all about local news now, with a smattering of national and international stories dropped into the cracks, plus Krauthammer's column and other useless bilge... then there's the "local" section.) The 17 dead don't fit the narrative, so they must not be emphasized... or perhaps even reported , as in the case of the Winter Soldier testimonies, which never found their way into my local paper. No, this week was handed over to general Petr...