Hammer Mill Days

No WPIX? That's odd. Okay, then. Try WRVO in upstate New York. Nothing? Well.... that may not mean anything. Still.... you'd think there'd at least be static. Hello, friends of Big Green . Now, I'd like to be able to tell you that we managed to break out of the strange inter-temporal space warp we zagged our way into a couple of weeks ago. (Has it been a couple of weeks? Bobbing through a time warp, I tend to lose track of time.) And I'd like to be able to tell you that we flew our way over to Neptune for a string of highly successful and lucrative - yes, LUCRATIVE - performances to adoring crowds of seven-legged leviathans from the nether reaches of our solar system. I mean, what band wouldn't like to be able to tell you that? (Can't think of a single one.) Alas, it was not the case. Yes, we did emerge from the time warp... but apparently not in the right place at all. (I just hope sFszhenKlyrn is having a good time in our absence, playing those cushy gig...

As I write, the G-20 is gathering in Pittsburgh, ostensibly to discuss what measures they can all agree on that will prevent another global financial meltdown from happening (i.e. at least the kind that threatens the G 20). Money and power will be well-represented, and as much as the gathering is described as an expanded club of economic powers, there is one global economic power that is not on the guest list. Which one? To borrow a time-worn phrase, the workers of the world - all those folks in all those countries who make the whole thing run; workers that are paid, underpaid, and unpaid.... everyone from the office drone to the subsistence farmer to the domestic slave-spouse. The folks that carry all those wealthy people on their shoulders - they will be severely underrepresented in Pittsburgh, and with good reason. If they start informing global economic policy, well then.... that would be a different game altogether. You'll see some of these non-participants out on the streets,...