Hammer Mill Days

Hoo-boy, it's hot in here again. Marvin (my personal robot assistant)! Open a window. No, not with a chair. You don't open windows by tossing metal chairs through.... HEY! This is not good, folks. Marvin is doing the renegade robot from Mars bit again. It must be an errant line of code somewhere in his reams of programming. Every once in a while he gets ornery... I mean SUPER ornery. Starts breaking things, running things over, insulting people (including anti-Lincoln, who's sensitive, you know) and otherwise causing mayhem. I suppose I should count myself lucky that we're not on some interstellar tour with this happening. Living with a mechanical nutjob is one thing; sharing a cramped spacecraft with one is quite another. I don't have to tell you that.... HEY! PUT THAT DOWN! THAT'S THE ONLY ONE OF THOSE WE'VE GOT LEFT, YOU DOLT! Right ... so much for our last rotating clay bust of Roy Orbison (with glasses a slightly darker shade of gray). Very discouraging

Gingrich has thrown his hat into the presidential ring. That should go well. Not so long ago, he was the most hated man in America. I have to think he has moved up from there - perhaps that fact alone has encouraged him to try. Or maybe he's pulling a Buchanan and using it as a fundraising, image-building exercise. (Great way to sell books.) Either way, I can hardly imagine a less likely or desirable prospect, and I don't think I'm alone in this. It's no accident - the policies he has been most closely associated with over the years are wildly unpopular. The current crop of GOP congresspeople represent an odious distillation of his most extremist positions. What's not to hate? Back when the Newt was Speaker, I wrote a song about his crusade against welfare - one cheerfully joined by Bill Clinton and various other Democrats, eager to throw the poor over the side for a few cheap political points. Written like a bloodthirsty hymn sung aboard a pirate ship, the lyric we