Hammer Mill Days

I got socks this year. Lots of socks. And a few discarded ties. Plus some bricks from the courtyard. No, they weren't loose - the mansized tuber just pulled them out of the courtyard and gave them to me. Yeah, I put them back. Now that's a holiday to remember. Well, I don't know what kind of a Christmas YOU had, but here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in upstate New York, we had a rousing celebration that quite nearly woke the dead. No, it wasn't well attended, but Marvin (my personal robot assistant) cranked up the stereo and started playing random sides from Sun Ra to Fountains of Wayne. It was Christmas in crazytown, and it didn't go unnoticed by our neighbors, who (I feel compelled to say) were ... ahem ... a bit LACKING this year in the HOLIDAY SPIRIT. ( You heard!) Then there were random fireworks. Now, I hate to be a spoil sport, but I don't like hearing explosions late at night. It makes me jump, and my mind goes straight to some imagined misha...

No, this isn't a post about the weather (though it is cold as hell out there). I just wanted to make a couple of points about the possibility of bipartisan cooperation in 2018 - something that's being kicked around the corporate media as if it were somehow desirable. This is consonant with the oft-stated desire to see "things get done" in Washington, as if the precise nature of the things being done was somehow irrelevant; that legislation passed is a good in and of itself, abstracted away from the substance of the bill. Another piece of conventional wisdom, served up daily. I expect I'll pass on this, and I would recommend my fellow left-leaning Americans do the same. As far as I'm concerned, the GOP has demonstrated its bad will in about as many ways as can be imagined. And before anyone gives me a lesson on how politics works, on how you can disagree from morning to evening but at the end of the day you need to work together, etc., let me just say that t...