Hammer Mill Days

Get out of my room, Marvin (my personal robot assistant). You too, tubey. I'm having one of my captain sunshine days, as you can tell. In fact, I'm rear-admiral motherfucking sunshine today, mister. Oh, fuck.... I mean, fudge. Didn't know you were listening in. Sorry you had to hear that outburst. Nerves are getting a little frayed around the hammer mill just lately. What the hell, I've been sleeping in an abandoned hammer-stock storage silo for the last 10 years, springs poking out of my mattress like in those old cartoons, the windows leaky and cracked, the mortar crumbling to dust between ancient bricks. Not to put too fine a point on it - this place is a DUMP. Now I know why they abandoned the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. What's that? They condemned the place? What the hell, Marvin ... you had that in your memory banks all this time? Weren't you just dying to tell me at some point before this? Irrelevant?!? I've obviously got to talk to your inve...

My local newspaper (and I'm sure just about everyone else's as well) contained a minuscule item on the cremation of the body of Norodom Sihanouk, whom the paper described as being revered by his people as the "King-Father" of Cambodia. An AP story by Denis Gray was the source of this tiny item tucked away inside the Utica OD, which opened as follows: Cambodians bade goodbye Monday with tears, chanting and fireworks to former King Norodom Sihanouk, their revered "King-Father" who led them through half a century of political tumult that took them into the abyss of genocidal Khmer Rouge rule and back out again. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodians thronged the capital for the elaborate royal cremation of the maddeningly mercurial leader whose charm often overshadowed missteps that to most of his countrymen have faded away in a fog of nostalgia for a simpler time. While Gray's story went into a bit more detail, this was most of what my newspaper carri...