Hammer Mill Days

Garbage out, garbage in. That's how that saying goes, right? Backwards? Are you sure? 'Cause around here, it's garbage out, garbage in. Well, friends, in preparation for our upcoming interstellar tour - ENTER THE MIND 2010: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE - we have hauled most of our moth-eaten possessions out to the curb (on Admiral Gonutz's orders). We have also begun to rack up commitments in the outer reaches of our galaxy (some "stellar" venues among them, I should add. Heh. heh. heh.). And, perhaps (but likely not) most importantly, we have identified a rent-a-spacecraft to replace our long since repossessed Jupiter 2 imitation craft. And hey, that ship, she's a beauty.... NOT. I should mention here that when I showed a picture of this moth-eaten craft to Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor (and the guy who makes every gizmo run), he turned a distinctly whiter shade of pale. Inside his enormous, distended brain, no doubt, flashed images of slee...

How are we our own worst enemy? So many ways, it seems. 9/11 - much referenced by conservative politicians - can be seen as an example of extremists using our own flawed technology and screwed up national infrastructure against us. (And with national assets like the Minerals Management Service and a toothless Securities and Exchange Commission, we hardly need Al Qaeda... As Richard Pryor might have put it, we're kicking our own ass.) Here are, it seems to me, a few obvious ways we facilitate those we are supposedly fighting: The "Ground Zero Mosque" Controversy. This is an unexpected bonanza for jihadi recruitment. It validates much of the propaganda about an America at war with Islam. It demonstrates the depth of our political pathology and our willingness to scapegoat more than 1 billion people because of the actions of a handful of criminally insane zealots. And it does so at the worst possible time, when expectations in the Islamic world are already being deflated b...