Hammer Mill Days

No, I haven't seen your fork. What do I look like, the lost and found? Okay, don't answer that. Anyway, why the hell do you NEED a personal fork? Are you some kind of FREAK? Oh, hi. Jesus, the shit you have to deal with around this stupid hammer mill! Crikey... we've got songs to record, albums to hawk, hawks to feed, feed to store, stores to shop, shops to... store... just a whole lot of things to do, okay? The last thing I want to be stuck doing is hunting down lost silverware. But, of course, you've got to try to keep people happy, and Mitch Macaphee is one of those people. Believe me, it's not easy to find a really dedicated mad scientist who's willing to work with a hardly-working rock band. Most of them expect to be paid. (We always assume that to be evidence that they're just not "mad" enough for our purposes.) Some expect honorific titles and assorted baubles of scientific status. Still others will just as soon vaporize you for even talking...

This week there was a summit on health care reform. Last week was about the president's big, expensive budget. Through it all, and the concurrent crises unfolding in banking, unemployment, and investments, I keep hearing the specter of socialism raised by nervous acolytes of the imaginary purist free enterprise system we supposedly have now. Nationalize the banks? We can't go there - that would be socialism ! Single payer health coverage? Forget it, comrade - no socialized medicine here in the good old U.S. of A. Even though the Obama administration is nowhere near either of these propositions (alas), it seems as though the prospect of government doing anything remotely useful to the population it's supposed to serve always brings on this overblown rhetoric about sacrificing our principles, destroying our way of life, etc. Though I hate to use his name (because MSNBC and others have been doing so incessantly for the last week), Rush Limbaugh (that great hulking hippo of hat...