Hammer Mill Days

Well, it's finally coming down. The snow that is. And the lamp post. Yes, you heard me right - the lamp post came down ... and Jim Bob is responsible. Okay, truth is... I don't know for certain that Jim Bob is responsible. It may well have been Marvin (my personal robot assistant) who knocked the lamp post down during the first snow storm of the year. Here it is, the week after Christmas, and people are still driving like it's July. Spoiled by global warming, I suppose. In any case, I only have myself to blame. It was I who suggested that Marvin serve as our chauffeur until a suitable replacement might be found. What? You didn't know we had people driving us around? Well, that's because we haven't up until now. We've just recently adopted the Bowie-esque doctrine of acting successful to become successful. It's like priming the pump, man. Why this sudden obsession? Well, as you know, we of Big Green weren't exactly born with the word "success...

Lots of news about official enemies this past week. Plenty of footage from the funeral of Kim Jong Il, showing legions of North Koreans - many in uniform - displaying their exaggerated grief. (Hey... those folks know what they need to do to get ahead.) And of course the Iranian threat to shut down the Strait of Hormuz if the latest round of draconian sanctions recently passed by the Senate - 100 to 0, mind you - become law. The latter is, naturally, the primary obsession of our news media and our government; the former a mere source of fascination and amusement. Both provide ample opportunities to perpetuate the official line on each of these societies, about which the less we know the better. But let's look a little closer. Why is North Korea such a strange, strange place? Lots of reasons. The hermit kingdom is a major thread running through Korean history. More importantly, though, is the experience of the last century - namely, that of the thirty year Japanese occupation, follow...

Gather 'round the fire, folks. Everybody got their hot chocolate? Not too, hot, right? Make yourselves comfortable. Got some serious yuletide bloviating to do. As I mentioned last week, all of our little elves have been laboring under harsh working conditions in the basement of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, hammering together the disjointed fragments of Big Green's Christmas Podcast . A thankless job, to be sure, but somebody has to do it (at a substandard wage). Next year maybe we outsource to Sri Lanka in honor of Mitt Romney's eventual nomination. Or not. Anyway.... Christmas... It occurs to me, listening to our holiday audio extravaganza, that our explanations of the songs included in the podcast are, shall we say, somewhat wanting. So what the hell... I'm going to give you the low-down on all of them, just so that you can be a more informed listener. That's how we roll over here at Big Green - full disclosure at all times. Why, you may ask? Well... I'...

I'm hip-deep in audio editing right now, so again... forgive me for shooting from the hip. I didn't want to let too many weeks go by without commenting on the Durban Conference on climate change. I have to say, the Obama administration has gotten really good at acting as though they're doing something progressive when, in fact, they are doing next to nothing at all. What Durban demonstrated was that, more than any other nation, the United States is an obstruction to any action to alleviate the effects of climate change. Others are following our example, emboldened by our refusal to take this crisis seriously. Canada - currently headed by George W. Bush/David Cameron hybrid Stephen Harper - is pulling out of Kyoto while pulling strings to avoid (unsuccessfully, it appears) having its tar-sands oil appropriately labeled as dirty by the EU. Russia is balking at emissions reductions as well. The fact that we lead the denialist camp gives them lots of cover. There was a time, ab...

We don't have a garage. This is an abandoned hammer mill, built when people didn't have cars. There is no garage here, get me? Now DON'T CALL HERE AGAIN! ( Click ! buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.... ) Got to love these small town managers. It's bad enough that they pass an ordinance against squatting in abandoned properties (something Lincoln is convinced is aimed directly at us, lawyer that he is); now they've got one against all night parking. Thing is, we - that is to say, the core members of the musical collective known as Big Green - don't even have cars. We're not parking overnight on the street because we've got nothing to park. No, no - they're complaining about the big, blimp-like space vehicle we rented for our recent interstellar tour, which is still hovering over the mill like some kind of sales promotion. (The owner has yet to pick it up.) The town would hang tickets on the thing if they could find a ladder long enough. (They're talkin...

A little more off the top of my head. One of these weeks I'm going to take some pains over this posting, but... not this time. Don't worry, Kyoto. Canada's pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol (can you say "tar sands"?) and Durban was a bust. What's it going to take, people? We had massive tornadic storms this past year. We don't have the luxury of another decade of inaction and ignorance. See you in health. One of the issues that comes up in our perennial presidential campaign is that of health insurance, mostly in the context of so-called "Obama Care". What doesn't get discussed so much is, well, the only possible positive solution to the current situation, which is bankrupting individuals, bleeding businesses dry, and threatening to drown the government in red ink. The only constituency the current health insurance system benefits is private health insurers. Seems like we, as a nation, sacrifice a great deal to preserve their profitability....

Yeah, there's some in here, too. Yep, all over the floor. Jesus Christ on a bike. Where are all the freaking buckets? Why don't squatters have landlords ... with buckets? Oh, hi... Yes, Big Green has made its triumphant return to Earth from its somewhat less-than-triumphant [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011, pulling our rental spacecraft into a low, low ... very low parking orbit (approximately 100 feet above the Earth's surface) over the Cheney Hammer Mill, our abandoned mill of a home in upstate New York. And, as will happen when one leaves one's home for a stretch of weeks, some maintenance issues have emerged to greet us, providing us with distraction even before we've had the chance to remove our tour galoshes. They say all roofs leak, but I doubt they all leak this badly. My converted hammer assembly room suite looks like a freaking swimming pool. I think I see fish. Right, well... that's the kind of problem you expect. What I didn't expect w...

Again, just some thoughts. I'm overloaded, as usual. Details at eleven. Cain's out. No more Herman Cain. That's disappointing in a way, though I can't say as I'm all that disappointed whenever a manifestly incompetent right-wing shill is deemed unfit for service as president. He would have been the conduit through which Randy Scheunemann, Phil Graham, and other luminaries would have run the country into yet another deep ditch. Of course, that would be true of practically anyone on the Republican deck right now, save Gingrich, who would likely insist on doing everything (badly) himself. I will, however, miss the Pokeman quotes, the seeming lack of conviction that a president actually needs to show any interest in politics or administrative policy, foreign or domestic. He's like the cut-out who can't hide the fact that he's a cut-out: there's obviously no other reason for him to even want to be president than to carry out the wishes of corporate Ameri...

Okay, then. Is that a wrap? What? It's already the holiday season? What happened to freaking October? Okay, then... so it's a Christmas wrap. Satisfied? Oh, hi. Yeah, I know. After ten weeks on the road, tempers wear a little thin. What, you got a PROBLEM with that? (Sorry. I'll start again.) Post Thanksgiving slump. This shipboard life is not for me; nor, apparently, is it for anyone else on board. Speaking of bored ... this business of bobbing around the solar system is bloody tiresome. I don't know how sFshzenKlyrn stands it, year after year, millennium after millennium. It's just as well that he's a transcendental etheric life form that ignores all boundaries between space, time, and whatever. (Especially the whatever. The man simply cannot take anything seriously.) And then there's Marvin (my personal robot assistant). He's bouncing around this tin can like... like a robot in a tin can. Of course, he always gets antsy this time of year, when the b...

Just a few hurried comments on the events of the day. (The events of the day are keeping me from the events of the day. Shall I say that a second time?) Cain Mutiny. Presidential candidate Herman Cain has some more difficulties maintaining his myth of marital bliss, and this may be a game stopper for him. Naturally the death knell may come about over something that doesn't matter a damn. Aside from his family, who the hell cares who he sleeps with, so long as it's consensual and doesn't involve minors, animals, etc.? Somehow this seems to bother people (and the mass media) more than the fact that the man has given zero thought to anything having to do with public affairs. He must be the first presidential candidate I've ever seen fail to give an opinion when someone asks him about something like the Libya intervention. He had to ask the interviewer what side Obama (i.e. the United States) was on. What the ... ? Has the man been living in a pizza box? He is running for ...

Season's greetings to you all. And we of Big Green say hello as well, whatever the so-called "season" may have to say. (Who ever heard of a talking season?) Just writing whilest we're having a little Thanksgiving layover on Titan, moon of Saturn, mother of all Tofurky. (Yes, this is where it comes from.) Taking a little break from the feasting, conversing, and pontificating (Anti-Lincoln is back on his Mexican-American War soapbox again), so this is a good time to open the mail, it seems. Most of our inquiries appear to be about our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, so let's start with this: Dear Big Green: On your podcast, I heard you read a bogus letter asking why so many of your songs are about war. You, of course, never answered the question to anyone's satisfaction. I now challenge you to do this thing. What is with the war kick? Sincerely, Gen. Douglas MacArthur (deceased) Well, General - thanks for listening to our podcast, first of all. Why do we write abou...

Just a few scratched out thoughts, here. Working on a paper. WTF for? Just because. Bachman Overdrive. Heard Michele Bachmann on NPR this morning, hawking her book "Core of Conviction". It wasn't a hardball interview, but not the softest either. Her concept of governance appears to rest on the notion of electing a filibuster-proof GOP majority in the Senate. Short of that, um.... punt, I guess. Interesting, though, that the minimal requirement for running the country is now the achievement of a nearly impossible super-majority in the U.S. Senate. What she either can't (out of stupidity) or won't acknowledge is that any Republican majority in the Senate, be it 51 votes or 61 votes, will almost certainly do what the Democrats were too polite to do in January 2009 - essentially gut the power of the filibuster so that they wouldn't need a super-majority to pass every piece of legislation, no matter how inconsequential. Her party has made filibuster the default co...

A little colder than I expected for this time of year. Minus 254 degrees Kelvin. Crikey - better put on another pair of socks. Yes, friends - Big Green is spending another traditional family holiday a long, long way from home. It's Thanksgiving on Neptune, and I have to say, this holiday doesn't mean much to folks up here. The casinos are filled with punters, and I don't think they're shipping them in from Saturn. It's just another day to these creatures. And as we enter the final (turkey) leg of our [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011 , we have another succession of bizarre events to greet us. Here is the week that was: 11.14.2011 - Took up residence in the Neptune Hyatt resort. A bit seedy if you ask me. I think they stole the name, actually - everything's bootlegged up here. Even our albums. Hell, we're giving them away on Neptune and they still bootleg them. I think it's for the sheer joy of doing it. There is, I imagine, a certain satisfacti...

This has been quite a year. Who would have thought it? One that started with massive uprisings in the middle east and is ending with a major economic justice movement in the United States - perhaps even more unlikely than the popular overthrow of Mubarak. Now we've seen renewed attempts to evict the protesters from Zucotti Park and other encampments across the country, but as many have said, you cannot kill an idea. The Occupy movement has gotten people accustomed to standing up again. And to paraphrase Dr. King, a man - even if he's a millionaire - can't ride on your back when you stand up straight. And contrary to what is argued by Ayn Rand acolytes like Paul Ryan and (Ayn) Rand Paul, the wealthy truly do ride on the backs of working people. That has always been the case. Rand imagined the world being brought to a standstill by a wealthy, innovative class of overlords who withhold their beneficent participation in Rand's dystopian top-down economy. The truth is, they...

Merry Christmas, Children? Not sure I remember the parts. Besides, that's ... well ... challenging. Anything easier for the season? Jit-Jaguar ? That's a Christmas song? Oh, right. Hey, sorry. Just working out the set list for our next string of performances. We're not one of those groups that just gets up on stage in front of 20,000 people (or 20,000 amorphous blobs of protoplasm) and wings it, playing whatever comes into our heads. No, sir ... we plan out every inch of our stage show, from the song list to the dance steps to Marvin (my personal robot assistant) juggling torches. (Yes, that's right , Marvin - it's torches this time! Deal with it!) Right, well ... okay, we don't have dance steps per se. Nor set lists. But we do work up a vague idea of what we're going to play over the course of the next week. That's called planning, my friends. How does it work out in the specific context of Big Green's [INSERT NAME HERE] INTERSTELLAR TOUR 2011 ?...

As always, a bit pressed this week, so I'll keep my comment brief. Moving right along... The uncertainty principle. It can be said that the uncertainty principle is a major talking point on the center-right particularly, but certainly present across the political spectrum. Why is the U.S. job market so weak? Uncertainty. Why are global stock markets in turmoil? Uncertainty. Why does gravity hold down large rocks and trees? You know the answer. I hear this all the time - uncertainty is keeping businesses from investing in new capacity, new labor, etc. The operative question is, though, what is certainty? Since when do investors expect certainty? Don't we all deal with uncertainty every moment of every day, particularly on the margins of society where one's very existence is subject to it? When has that ever not been the case for either individuals or organizations? Invoking uncertainty is merely an attempt to shout down any thought of raising taxes on rich people, on profit...

Here's the fourth installment of our vaunted tour diary. Anybody got a pen? How about a knife? I can just whittle the words. A pen knife? Even better! Where have all the good tours gone? This one has gone a bit flat, though I will say that we did manage to get the rent-a-ship rolling again, thanks to sFshzenKlyrn . I know what you're thinking - he probably used some kind of trans-temporal presto-digitation to conjure us up a new ion drive servo chip. No such thing. He just waited until Marvin (my personal robot) was in sleep mode and plucked the chip out of his sorry hide. (Marvin lists a bit now. Not that that's a bad thing... I have him doing our set lists. Boom- crash .) Here's the lowdown on Big Green's [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011 : 10.31.2011 - Hallowe'en on Betelgeuse. Surprisingly, this is kind of a big deal up here. Not that they do the costumes or the trick or treat. In fact, it's kind of an interstellar anti-gravity day - the Betelge...

My brother Matt was complaining about NPR today. I guess they were talking to one of the fifty generals they have on tap; a guy named General Mills. ("What the hell, does he command Cap'n Crunch?" said Matt.) We groused about this a bit for the podcast . NPR and PBS have always been heavily freighted with retired generals, like the commercial networks and cable channels. But because they have been erroneously described as "leftist" or somehow associated with an elusive liberal elite, they go overboard to disabuse people of that notion. They fired Soundprint's Lisa Simeone for her association with Occupy DC, apparently fearing that her defense of the 99% would cloud her journalistic objectivity about opera, which is mostly what she covers. Call them National Paranoid Radio. I'm thinking about NPR particularly because of the president's declaration that the Iraq war will be drawn to a close at the end of this year, despite the administration's effo...

What is all the ruckus about? I told you we were bringing equipment with us. And no, we don't need unicycles. We can get around on our own two feet, thank you very much. That's the problem with interstellar tours, my friends. A billion opportunities for misunderstandings. No shortage of those, particularly when you're traveling with the two Lincolns (posi- and anti-), as we appear to be out here on Big Green's vaunted [INSERT NAME HERE] INTERSTELLAR TOUR 2011 . Anyway, here's how it went down this week: 10.25.2011 - Our first full night on Kaztropharius 137b . If anything, it's quiet - too quiet. Keep forgetting that there's no atmosphere here, ergo, no sound. (Or is it "air-go; no sound"? You decide.) We strummed our way silently through about a dozen tunes. The denizens of this strange little rock appeared partial to "My Bed", one of Matt's dream-sequence numbers. They pick up vibrations from our instruments via the floor of the ...

It's almost November, and the occupations are continuing. With so much bad news on so many fronts, this is a little bit of good. Movements often emerge at the most unexpected times, in the most unexpected ways. And while the titanic unfairness of our economic system (as currently operated) should lead us to expect a massive uprising, I think we have experienced so many years of seeing so little reaction to outrageous assaults by the powerful that we have come to believe the response will never come. Well, the occupation movement is a response; how broadly it will resonate has yet to be seen. I think it's worth remembering that in Egypt, in Tunisia, and likely elsewhere, it was economics that really lit the fire under people. Torture in police custody, exclusion from meaningful political participation, persecution of minorities ... abuses of every kind and character were endured by Egyptians - not without resistance, mind you, but without broad outrage. It wasn't until Mubar...

There are not filling stations out yonder. Just ask Warren Oates. If you can't find him, seek out another character actor and ask him or her. You may be surprised by their answer. (Or not.) Here's what happened on the "road" this week: 10.15.2011 - Pulled into Neptune, was feeling 'bout half-past dead. Our rent-a-ship has been sputtering, so we brought it into a Neptunian garage for service. The cost? Full proceeds from our three performances on Neptune, plus 9% excise tax. (Looks like Herman Cain is having an impact up here, as well. The craters tell the tale.) sFshzenKlyrn practically melted his Telecaster on the fourth song (Why Not Call It George?), then settled down for a succulent Neptunian roast. (Roasted crater peat. This is important: Neptunian is not ... repeat, not ... one of the great cuisines.) 10.17.2011 - Strange how Polaris looks like downtown Rochester. Could be worse. We set up on a suspended platform - one of those anti-gravity jobs you see ...

I'm not a big fan of the notion that people in custody should be abused, beaten, or killed. Once you have them restrained, if circumstances warrant it, that should be enough. Seeing Gaddafi beaten and bloodied, then expired with a bullet hole in his head was kind of sickening, frankly. Sure, he was an autocratic asshole. But he was also defeated and in custody. If the Libyans are starting their brave new future with extrajudicial killings, it doesn't sound too promising. But then, I suppose, that would put them in the same league as their sponsors ... particularly, us. It's been said that the Libya intervention is Iraq done the Obama way. Today kind of underlines that notion a bit. We didn't get all arrogant about it or act unilaterally. We pushed through a UN resolution - something Bush couldn't have had and probably wouldn't have wanted, since his administration was actively trying to sideline the UN. Obama is a true imperial internationalist, and the product ...

Good evening, Mr. Phelps. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to read this blog entry from top to bottom without falling over backwards. This blog will self-destruct in ten seconds. Good luck, Jim! Don't mind that first paragraph. I sometimes rent my blog space out to sixties television shows. Has something to do with the space-time vortex through which we ordinarily travel when on these interstellar tours. Don't ask me to explain - I'm not an actual scientist. And unlike some of my blog renters, I don't even play one on television. Anyway, here's a rundown of how Big Green's [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011 is going so far, ripped straight from the pages of my log book. 10.08.2011 - Negotiated our way through the asteroid belt. We needed to lighten our load somewhat, so we tossed a few things overboard, like Marvin (my personal assistant)'s Lowery organ he borrowed from our one-time promoter and second keyboard player, Tiny Montgome...

Can't call me a cynic quite yet. The Occupy Wall Street movement seems a very positive development to my jaundiced eye. Hell, there were reportedly 400 people at the rally in Utica. When we brought out more than 200 for the big demo on the eve of the Iraq war, that seemed amazing for a place like this. 400 is practically unheard of. There is a strong undercurrent of resentment about the financial crisis and the fact that virtually none of the large institutions that caused the meltdown have been held to account, just as no executive in any of those firms has faced the threat of prosecution. Nay, they have continued to receive obscene bonuses, showboating their excess as if to flaunt their immunity from the restrictions of either the law or the marketplace. Like Dick Cheney bragging about his support for torture, they seem to be daring us to do something - anything - about their transgressions. You can't touch me, they laugh. Well.... maybe we can. There seems to be an overwhelm...

Better take this slow, Mitch. Those suckers look sharp, real sharp. Sharp as a ... a very sharp thing. Got a thesaurus? No, it's not a creature from the Cretaceous. It's a book with.... oh never mind. Well here we are, on the first leg (or arm, perhaps) of Big Green's much anticipated (by us) [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011 - an aimless romp through the chewy center of the galaxy and from one end of our voluminous songbook to the other. Oh yes, we're going from A to Z on this one. That was something we settled on in the rehearsal cellar, mainly because we couldn't decide what the hell to play. So Matt pulls out this massive loose-leaf tome of songs from hell, arranged alphabetically, and we started paging through. From All Saints Come to You're Dripping ... it's a veritable cornucopian magnum opus of Big Green numbers from back in the day. Our set lists are the stuff of nightmares, frankly. (And who's this Frank Lee you keep speaking of?) ...

The Pew Research Center released a study this week examining attitudes about the ongoing wars, one of which is celebrating a grim little birthday this week. The war in Afghanistan is turning ten, and showing no signs of letting up. Yet the study shows that maybe a third of the American public is actually following the wars. For most people, it's like a reality show that has lost its luster; there is really no more profound an investment in the enterprise than that. This is, some have pointed out, the longest continuous conflict the U.S. has ever been involved in, and certainly (I suspect) the most serious war "we've" ever fought that didn't involve some kind of conscription. Less than one percent of Americans have fought in these wars, and none of them have paid any higher taxes to underwrite them. It's hard to imagine how a war this difficult to justify could last a decade or more on the backs of anything other than an all-volunteer force. If there'd been...

Electrodes to power. Turbines to speed. Vector diagrams to light board. Finger fins to the driver behind. Quarter to three in the afternoon. What am I saying? Doesn't matter, really. We're getting close to the departure date on Big Green's [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011 , our hotly-anticipated romp through the musical hinterlands of outer space, with planned stops in the Jovian system (Jupiter for you space travel novices), Betelgeuse, Kaztropharius 137b , Sirius, and the planet Zenon in the Small Magellanic Cloud, home base of our sometime-guitarist, sFshzenKlyrn . Yes, I know - last time we stopped there we took a few lumps, but they've since healed up, and hey - never let it be said that we let experience stand in the way of a good lapse in judgment. Still got it, baby. Anyhow, we're just running through our confusing array of pre-launch checklists. Can't be too careful these days, particularly when your vehicle has such a spotted past as the one ...

Perhaps you know this about me, but I've never been one to associate support for official Israeli government policy with support for Israelis. There is plenty of dissent in Israel around the conflict with the Palestinians, so I don't know why anyone on this side of the ocean should feel reluctant to criticize actions that merit criticism. There is such demagoguery on this issue in the U.S., though, that very few people speak their minds, particularly those in the political class. However, to the extent that words and actions matter, I would have to say that Barack Obama has been at least as big a booster of the right-wing Israeli government as his predecessor, and in concrete terms - military aid, security coordination, etc. - arguable and even bigger one. That's why the hue and cry over Obama's Israel policy, initially aimed at procuring a Republican victory in Anthony Weiner's old Brooklyn district, seems so unmoored from reality. Where did they get this idea that...

Turn the first little knob on the top. Yes, that one. Turn it. A little more. More. Right, now back it off a little. Good... now the next one - turn it clockwise. I said CLOCKWISE! What do you mean you're from the land down under? What's THAT got to do with ANYTHING? Ho, man. Just getting ready for BIG GREEN'S [INSERT NAME HERE] INTERSTELLAR TOUR 2011, and as you can see, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) will be the guitar tech again this time out. Thought it might be wise to go over the basics, just one more time, before we really need his help. No, he can't tune a six-string guitar all by himself. He needs someone to hold the fat end while he turns the tuners - but that's not the main drawback. You see, Marvin is made of bits left over from other experiments, in essence, including machine parts from Mitch Macaphee's shop - air powered tools, drills, vise-grips, sanders, and the like. Sometimes when you ask him to do an open tuning on the Martin, he turns t...

The killing of Troy Anthony Davis has demonstrated one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt: that we as a people cannot be trusted with the death penalty. To that I will add my modest opinion that no people can be trusted with this brutal and most final punishment. I am not suggesting that that is the most compelling reason to abolish the death penalty. I think the reasons are legion. The first should be no surprise to anyone who calls themselves religious in any major monotheistic tradition - killing is morally repugnant, particularly in a situation in which the intended victim is powerless, such as someone who is incarcerated and therefore a danger to no one. Beyond simple humanity, it is legally and ethically indefensible - the ultimate denial of due process under the law. So long as you may be proven either innocent or not as guilty as first thought, there is no justification for execution. Also, in a nation so fraught by its racist history; a nation whose justice system is shot throug...

The good news is, we've scored a ride to the stars. The bad news is... it's aboard a doomed ship sent from hell. Not the kind of luxury we're accustomed to, but hey... we'll manage. Big Green will be departing for Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, and points east (I believe it's east) on September 29 for our [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011. Not that the date is much of a concern, now that Mitch Macaphee has a tenuous hold on the time-space continuum. If we miss our launch date, what the hell, we just have Mitch send us back a few days. Depending upon what kind of a mood he's in, that could be easy or hard, very hard. (Actually, Matt thinks that if you run backwards really fast, you will go back in time. Call me a skeptic... though I've noticed that when you run forward real fast, time seems to move forward . If this were an elegant universe, the converse would be true. And no, I don't mean the sneaker.) I should mention that, as we wait for our depar...

I'll just do short takes today. No, not shortcakes ! Short TAKES , damnit! Ten and Counting. I find it hard to mark the anniversary of 9/11. I've always kind of bridled at the idea, pretty much since the first six-month anniversary of that awful day. It's a thing that's always with us, seared into our consciousness, a pall cast over our democracy. Do we need a ceremonial reminder? I don't know. If it brings people solace in some small way, it's worth it. For myself, though, it feels superfluous. Every day is a reminder. There are enduring monuments to that day. Probably the most imposing are our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, still going after the death of Osama Bin Laden. What a legacy, eh? All the more bitter, really, since we still have malevolent actors like Dick Cheney running around, peddling their twisted rationales for atrocities they played a central role in committing. Even with all this, I spent a good amount of time watching that film by those French...

Our rocket test failed. Only two weeks to launch date and the thing can't get off the ground. Some kind of rust blight has destroyed our food supply. And the gravity in the Hammer Mill (at least around Mitch's lab) is intermittent and untrustworthy. Sounds like a good time to open the old mail bag! Here's one from fairly close by - a little town called Philadelphia. Dear Big Green: Your music is full of obscure references to old television shows. Why don't you work more historical subject matter into your songs? That might attract a higher quality listener (like me). Respectfully yours, Horton Pompideau (signed in what appears to be grape juice) Well, Horton. I'm glad you asked that question. In fact, if I were to make up a phony listener question, it would likely be something very much like that. (Fortunately, my strong ethical sensibilities keep me from stooping that low.) Actually, we do reference historical events, such as in the song Quality Lincoln, which was ...