Hammer Mill Days

That looks like my first pair of Chuck Taylors. Always wondered what happened to them. And there's that bike that got stolen when I was twelve. And some pocket lint that looks very familiar. Oh, hi, friends of Big Green . Glad this is getting out to you. WiFi is a little unreliable out here in the midst of the Kuiper Belt... all these particles and planetoids cause a boatload of interference, as you might well imagine. Yes, we did manage to navigate our way through the black hole that had parked itself next to that annoying Goldilocks Planet our label talked us into playing. (We now know why the Gliesians call the black hole "Papa Bear"). The advice we'd been given took us right into the old vortex. Turns out it's just a transdimensional expressway back to the Kuiper Belt. Bit of good luck, that. So, yeah... we're here for the final leg of our somewhat anti-climactic ENTER THE MIND: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE interstellar tour 2010. Why anti-climactic? ...

I've heard a kind of depressing story the last couple of days about a bureau of the Postal Service tasked with opening letters to Santa Claus. Here's a somewhat strange version from NPR's All Things Considered in which Robert Siegel tries to lighten things up with some lame quips. They've been finding that, this year, kids are tending less to ask for gaming consoles and the like than stuff like warm coats, shoes, etc. Just a hint of how rough people have it these days - a peek into the Dickensian hellscape inhabited by the millions upon millions of children (and their parents) living in poverty. Our top-down economy is literally killing hope before it even has the chance to learn how to express itself. I'm not a practicing Christian, nor am I big on organized religion in general, but if there's one thing valuable about the Christmas season it's the sense of possibility it can engender in people - not so much the expectation of personal gain, but more the no...