Hammer Mill Days

Wait ... where the hell are my lyric sheets? I had a big stack under my piano bench since we occupied the mill. Marvin - did we go digital at some point without my noticing it? Yeah, so I'm just going over some old material, as I mentioned last week. Old videos, old audio tapes, old records, old robots. (Yes, robots - we have a roomful of toy robots in boxes, all acquired during our " Captured by Robots " obsession during the 1990s and 2000s. Evidence of misspent youth, except that we weren't young then. Misspent oldth.) Just reminding myself of all the songwriting Matt (especially Matt!) and I did back during decades past - a full canon of material. Wait ... that's where I put those lyric sheets! In that old cannon Mitch bought at a mad science garage sale! Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is lending me a hand (or a claw) as I sift through a mountain of discarded bullshit. Amazing how a band full of anti-materialistic, anarcho-syndicalist hammer mill squa...

Spent some time this week watching Democrats in essence occupy the floor of the House of Representatives in what looks like an unprecedented effort to force a vote on modest gun control legislation. Pretty amazing demonstration in response to the latest gun-related atrocity in Orlando, to which the official response of the Republican majority in the House has been zero. The protesters' chant of #NoBillNoBreak is a modest demand: bring three pieces of legislation to a vote, and let them stand or fall on their merits. Now I'm not crazy about the legislative approach, particularly with regard to the expansion of the terror watch list - I just don't think it's the best way to deal with this issue - but I think it's high time somebody occupied the freaking House. I tweeted my support to Barbara Lee and John Lewis on Wednesday night, attracting a flurry of ammo-sexual Twitter trolls. If these folks are willing to take direct action, the least I can do is give them some ...