Hammer Mill Days

Cold fingers? Rub them together. I know we're in a trackless void with temperatures approaching absolute zero - just rub a little harder. Just coming off of a ripping good string of performances on Neptune, mother of all Big Green fans in the outer rings of our solar system. (Good to know we're still loved by someone... or some THING.) When I say "ripping good", I mean it certainly seemed that way to us. As some of you may know, however, the atmosphere on Neptune contains many elements not prevalent in our own sweet Earth-bound air, so frankly, after a couple of sets breathing that stuff, I get a little punchy. You could tell me iron is chocolate and I'd believe you. You could tell me Carl Paladino is sane, and I'd buy it. It's just that crazy. So... we may have played well, but possibly not. Or "splunge", as Monty Python would put it. Some of you may remember the distinctly terrestrial phenomenon we encountered on Neptune last time out of peopl

No time to think, less to write, so this is right off the top of my head. Food Fights. Those are the words that come to mind when I think of this year's political campaigns. I remember 2006 being similarly acrimonious, but honestly, this year is worse. It seems like there are nothing but attack ads. Even the nice-nice "Hi, I'm blankety-blank and I want to be your blank" ads have a poison pill embedded in them for the opposition. The California gubernatorial race has descended to an exchange of "He's a liar!" and "She's a whore!" in something reminiscent of my junior high lunch room. The New York race is, if anything, even more surreal in its nastiness. I'm anticipating a crush of toxic direct mail in the closing weeks - lookout, mailbox! Imperial Prerogatives. There has been a lot of reporting on Pakistan the last couple of weeks. Their military closed a crossing to U.S. convoys on the Af-Pak border in response to a range of disagreem