Hammer Mill Days

Y'okay. I know. I'm still working on it, okay? What the hell are you, my mother? I AM WORKING ON IT. Leave me aLONE! Sorry, man. Catching me at kind of a sensitive time, let's say. I was just being grilled on where the June podcast (and its half-album of new material) is. Worst part of that whole thing is that, the person grilling me is not a person at all. It's Marvin (my personal robot assistant) ... sort of. I say "sort of" because the shaming tirade he just subjected me to was programmed into him by someone else. Who, exactly? Well ... apparently one of the few people who listen to our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN . So that narrows the possibilities a bit. Someone who has it in for me, big time. Okay ... obviously I owe someone an explanation, even if I don't know who it is. So here are my top reasons for not having our podcast episode ready at this late date: Solar Obstruction - At this time of year, the sun is between us and our podcast. What do...

The stars and bars are coming down all across the old south. High time, in my humble opinion. This does, however, represent a kind of gallows conversion on the part of many of the region's politicians who capitalized on this symbol of their racist past throughout their noxious careers. Now they're climbing over each other in a scramble to be out front on the flag issue. The political calculus has shifted with respect to the battle flag of the confederacy, and political leaders see the loss of this symbol as an opportunity to gain some easy points. No policy changes - just remove the flag and we're all good, right? It's vintage American political theater, kind of like the ubiquitous flag pin. (Pin on, hero! Pin off, traitor!) We are so obsessed with symbolism that we invariably miss the fundamentals. Reverend Barber was talking about this over the last few days, countering a lot of the happy talk about everyone coming together and pulling down that offending flag. Seri...