Hammer Mill Days

He's about to pull the lever. He's pulling it. Grit your teeth! Oooohh, no. He's done it. Hmmm... I don't feel any different. Do you? Hi, folks. Back at the Hammer Mill again for some more off-season fun, eh? I'll tell you, never a dull moment around these parts. You'd think we'd have enough to do, preparing for our trip out to Aldebaran to debut the songs on our soon-to-be-released new album, International House . W.t.f., there's a ship to pack, instruments to lug about, Lincoln clones to verbally abuse... We've got to train a man-sized tuber in space-bound emergency procedures (his performance rating was very poor on our last outing). Matt and John are busily typing up lyric sheets to hand out as party favors at our first pre-concert reception. (I keep telling them... you don't have to type them all. Just use a photocopy machine .) That's what we call the personal touch around here. Customer service, that's what Big Green is all about....

I began writing this on the anniversary of that fateful day seven years ago when all hell broke loose and that psycho Bin Laden put a loaded bazooka into the sweaty hands of a dry-drunk frat-boy named George W. Bush. God knows, the ruins of the twin towers hadn't even stopped smoking before Dubya started blowing holes in everything pretty much at random. The war he started in Afghanistan - the "good war" as many see it - is nearing the end of its seventh year, still sowing death and destruction week after week, with no end in sight. This success story has become a dire failure, even in the eyes of military commanders, and our primary objective appears to have become one of staying there permanently. Not very different from our goal in Iraq, in essence. We allied ourselves with some of the most retrograde elements in Afghanistan, many of whom worked alongside the Taliban before our invasion (and in tandem with our own intelligence services two decades ago). These are the p...