Hammer Mill Days

The studio is stuffed to the gills already. Yes, it has gills! How do you think it breathes underwater? Didn't you go to grammar school? Oh, right. Sometimes I forget that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) isn't an undereducated human like myself. He is, in fact, a mechanical man. Much must be explained to him, and what can't be explained must be programmed in by force, if necessary. That's the lot of a robot assistant, I'm afraid. Work, work, work. Anyhow... the quintessential American holiday is now over. (We also survived that day that comes before Black Friday ... what do they call it? Thanksgiving?) Time to fold up the balloons, disassemble the parade floats, and send the marching bands marching home. While many find the Macy parade enjoyable, it is not a simple matter to serve as the end point of that annual extravaganza. Just finding enough space to store deflated Spiderman is proving more challenging than you might imagine. Sure, without air in his a...

The fiscal cliff is just ahead. Be afraid, be afraid! Are you afraid yet? Well, you're supposed to be. Going over the "fiscal cliff" is the worst thing that can possibly happen - worse even than ... I don't know ... losing your Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. Friends, this is the oldest trick in the book. Our leaders have done their best to bankrupt the government over the last decade and a half, coupling undeclared wars with massive tax cuts, crashing the economy through their vaunted hands-off approach to the financial sector, etc. Now when it comes time to pay the tab, guess who's picking it up? Not a big surprise that they're running out on the check. They only do it every freaking time. Listening to the series of Republican interviews that is NPR the other day, I heard some talk of raising the Medicare eligibility age as one means of covering their failed fiscal policy decisions. That has to take the prize as the stupidest idea ever proposed...