Hammer Mill Days

Great... they're sending a radioactive microbot up my shirtsleeve. You think the TSA is tough? Try the customs line on The "Goldilocks" planet. I want to start this week's "usual rubbish" blog with a thank you to all of those who helped bail us out of the Kaztropharian jail. (You know who you are.) Not sure how everyone worked out how the bail-bond system works on Kaztropharius 137b - must have looked it up on the interwebs. (You have to put up at least three cases of cotton swabs per pound of body weight. It can get costly... so hey, thanks.) Well, as much as I like it on Kaztropharius , we left the moment they opened the cage door, overdue as we were for the next booking on our super-fantastic ENTER THE MIND: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE interstellar tour. A little place called.... The "Goldilocks" Planet. It was kind of a long passage, so we had some time to rehearse. Matt wanted to polish off some older material. We ran through a few n...

Couple of things to comment on this week. I'll be brief - it's a holiday, for chrissake. Unforced confession. George W. Bush has been hawking his memoir for the last couple of weeks, proudly admitting that he personally authorized the use of waterboarding - a torture technique he considers legal because his legal advisors told him so. "I'm not a lawyer," he told Matt Lauer in one interview. How far would that get any of us in front of a judge? No one seems particularly bothered about this, but Bush's proud admission, along with Cheney's, is basically a declaration that our justice system is in a shambles; that the law applies only to the powerless and that cruel and unusual punishment is acceptable. Torture is a violation of U.S. statute and of international conventions to which the U.S. is both a signatory and a primary participant. Waterboarding is torture; it has been recognized as such since the days of Torquemada and before, I'll wager. Bush and ...