Hammer Mill Days

Stage props? Never really thought much of them, frankly. What the hell are we, summer stock? We're a bleedin' band , man! Oh, all right, all right. But just the enormous styrofoam sphinx. No pyramid. I SAID, NO PYRAMID! Oh, sorry, my friend. Hope that wasn't too loud. I was just trying to get my point across to Anti-Lincoln... the idea that Big Green is not a flash band with a truckload of stage props, seven costume changes, makeup, extras, pyrotechnics, fog machines, etc. Never part of that movement, frankly. No, no.... our roots go back to a simpler time, when the earth was new and the sky was darkened by flocks of cawing pterodactyls. Not that roots have a lot to do with it. Actually, our musical influences are the more pared-down groups of the 60's and early 70's, and plain-clothes alternative types from much later. Anti-Lincoln doesn't think that's visually interesting enough. He would sooner we change our names to, I don't know, "Great Speck...

Looks like even in Iran, sometimes elections don't turn out the way you expect. Been there, done that, right? At least our pundits can't say it never happens here. Fraud tends to happen around the fringes in our system, when the margins are relatively tight. Iran has much more serious, systemic problems. Even so, the people there obviously know what to do when things go badly wrong - get out in the street. These are the people we want to bomb so badly. I hope Americans are taking a close look at those folks out in the street, putting their necks on the line. This is the enemy, folks - the "axis of evil". Whatever Bush used to say about having no quarrel with the Iranian people, it is they who would suffer in the event of any confrontation between our countries, just as they have suffered in the past, when we overthrew Mossadeq in 1953, through the decades of rule by our ally the Shah, and under massive assault from our other ally Saddam Hussein during the 1980s. Just...