Hammer Mill Days

Well, shut my mouth. There appears to be some kind of celebration taking place up the street from the Hammer Mill. Maybe we should mosey on over there. Or maybe not. This street's getting a little rough. (I don't mean crime-wise. I mean the pavement's in pieces, as in potholes the size of a Buick ... some with Buicks stuck in them.) It's a natural fact - we need to get out more. Big Green is getting house bound, or mill-bound, if you will. Part of it is our reluctance to play gigs anywhere on planet Earth. That is, admittedly, a failing of ours. Mea culpa. I don't know why we don't perform on our mother world. Maybe it's the gravity. My keyboards weigh a ton on earth, but when we play, say, Phoebos, I can pick them up with one hand. Sure, there aren't a lot of music fans there ... none, in fact, but setting up is a breeze! We've been asked to consider playing a club or a college here on Terra. Why, just last week, Marvin (my personal robot assist...

I sometimes forget how Bill Clinton turned my parents into hawks. In these troubled times, it's worth remembering the degree to which people's political affiliation determines their worldview. If George W. Bush dropped bombs on Serbia, mom and dad would have been against it, but Bill Clinton ... he must have had a reason. We're seeing some of the same effect with Obama. His new policy on Iraq and Syria differs from George W. Bush's Iraq policy mostly in its implementation. Bush trumpeted his intention to go in strong, drop a bunch of bombs, "shock and awe" them. Obama is incrementalist - we'll do A but not B, then a week later, we're doing B and C with promises (soon broken) that we won't move on to D. Ultimately this ends up with regime change, as it did in Libya with disastrous results. What's the difference? Psychology. Obama knows marketing. He knows that we'll only eat one or two of those big cookies, but a boat load of those little...