Hammer Mill Days

Did you hear that? Hmmmm.... no, neither did I, I guess. How about that ? You too? No. No, I didn't either. Okay, nevermind. See, here's the problem with trying something new - you just don't know how the hell to do it. I keep telling my colleagues this all of the time, but do they listen? No. Oh no, Joe, they tell me, I know just what I'm doing. And besides, bungee jumping off the Eiger doesn't seem all that challenging to me, at least from the comfort of my easy chair . You try to help a brother out, and that's what you get - a load of attitude, special delivery. I am depressed. I might have mentioned last week how, out of desperation, various members of the greater Big Green cohort have been ranging around this backwater town, looking for means of gainful employment, no matter how demeaning. Well, as you might expect, WAL*MART and Home Depot were not hiring our kind, so we've been forced to apply some creative thought to the problem. As it happens, some...

This week will really be short swipes at various topics. I'm utterly up to my eyeballs... so the rascals are safe! State of It. Republicans and Democrats sat together, nice-nice, during the State of the Union address. Such an endearing sight, was it not? In some cases, it seemed like something they may actually have wanted to do; others seemed pressed to do so by a sense of the public mood, perhaps. Either way, it's a bit like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic or spec'ing new curtains on the top floor of the Towering Inferno. (Name checking Irwin Allen here.) Congress is poised to choke ordinary Americans off from a range of federal benefits and services, just as they are dealing with similar reductions at the state and local levels. They have the votes to do it. Sad thing is, Obama seems ready to assist them in this. His somewhat schizophrenic SOTU lurched from major investments to multi-year spending freezes. Domestic spending kept level for five years? Sounds like...