Hammer Mill Days

What's this one for? Cabin pressure? Kool. And this one? Get out! What the fuck, this thing is like something out of... I don't know... fantastic voyage or something. Oh, hiya. Hope all is well out there in monitor land. Things are going okay over at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, more or less. We're getting our ducks in a row, for sure. (It's hard to get ducks in a row, actually... kind of like herding cats.) Tubey seems all psyched up for his new customer service job. (He's never without that headset. Haven't the heart to tell him it isn't plugged into anything.) Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been doing a prolonged inventory of our supplies, starting with anvils, atlases, and a few other things that start with "a". (Last I looked, he was counting paper clips... could mean good progress, unless he's inventorying them under "clips, paper"). So hell, everybody's got something to do. Mitch Macaphee (the temperamental

As I write these words, Senator John McCain, F.O.B. (Friend of Bush) is delivering his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. (I think I hear him yelling "Fight with me!" - watch out!) I have to say, just having had a good look at his audience, that is one of the whitest gatherings of people I have ever seen, and I grew up in the suburbs. After listening to bits and pieces of what has been said over the past few days, I'm getting a pretty good feel for what will be the overriding themes of the G.O.P. general election campaign. A bit different from 2004, it seems. That year, "service" was largely vicarious - i.e. honoring our people in uniform in the abstract (from 5,000 miles away) while denigrating the service record of the opposing party's nominee quite shamelessly (recall the band-aids with purple hearts printed on them being sported by the smirking manatees on the convention floor, almost none of whom had ever heard a shot f