Hammer Mill Days

Who said an elevator has to go up? It could go down, even sideways, if the spirit moves it. Just ask any mad scientist. Well, friends, in case you're still curious (and I know you're not), yes, we are still trying to work out a way to get to Aldebaran without trooping on board the same old leaky spacecraft and taking the same old petrifying risks we always take in the name of science... I mean, music . ( Arts and sciences, as it were.) This is proving a major pain in the Aldebaran, quite frankly. Don't know if I've ever seen Mitch Macaphee in a fouler mood. He's really stuck on this project, and like a temperamental post-impressionist painter, he sometimes suffers through every second of the creative process. Why, he's out in the courtyard right now with an airgun, popping holes in our wooden outbuilding. And in the man-sized tuber, I suspect, since that's where he sleeps. (We call it the "Root Cellar.") His starting point in this strange endeavor...

I guess by now everybody knows about how many houses John McCain owns, even if he seems to be a little unclear on the subject. And it's likely that even I know by now who Obama's running mate will be (my guess: Pat Paulson). Call me morbid, but my mind is more focused on what appears to be a strong indication of how a President McCain might be expected to rule the American empire. His stance and rhetoric on the Georgian conflict have been jaw-droppingly bellicose - torn as they may be from the playbook of paid Georgian lobbyist (and former Rumsfeld advisor... and former Chalabi promoter) Randy Scheunemann, one of McCain's chief advisors, they represent a side of the candidate that has been chillingly consistent for as long as he's been in public office: a knee-jerk preference for military force. As much as he's milked his own wartime experience and mouthed platitudes about the horrors of war, McCain has been fully on-board with virtually every invasion, attack, bomb...