Hammer Mill Days

Blowout. Another switch gone. Our gear is in the toilet, my friend. Aging, threadbare ... disgusting. Oh, well. Yep, we've got technical difficulties. Nothing new. Last week it was Marvin (my personal robot assistant) that went on the blink. No, I mean literally - he wouldn't stop blinking. I think it's all that time he spent taking phone calls when our voicemail broke down. Poor tin bastard. Then there goes another diode, and here we are on a tight budget, just like the rest of America. (Even Mitch, his creator, is too busy to tend to him.) Mother of pearl. Still, I suppose we can do without a power amp. We can just pretend we have active speakers instead of passive, and the power of imagination will carry the day. As it always does. The end. Right, well.... we're not typically given to wishful thinking here at Big Green . No, we are practical mofo's, not those flighty kinda imagineering mofo's you read about in the Sunday paper. Fact is, we're recordin...

The international consensus on forced austerity was soundly rejected this past week in both Greece and France. That's what happens when you let people speak their minds - they sometimes opt for inconvenient solutions. As much as I love Jon Stewart, even he got this one wrong - the Greeks are not political confusniks addicted to cradle-to-grave government benefits. Their financial train wreck is as much a function of wealth privilege over there as it is over here. When they went to the polls this past weekend, they chose the parties that opposed the Euro zone plan, both on the left and the right. That's not surprising; the bailout basically benefits that country's financial sector, at the cost of Greek workers. There have always been political groupings on the extreme left and right in Greece, so everyone went for the candidates who (a.) opposed the bailout and (b.) aligned with them politically, generally speaking. The bankruptcy of what Greek and French voters rejected c...