Hammer Mill Days

Damn, I always forget how big this place is. Who the hell knew all this junk was in here? I didn't. Maybe Mitch knew, but he's in Sao Paolo, noodling around with deadly lasers and the like. Hi, everyone. Yeah, we're stumbling upon all kinds of trash/treasure, now that the local realtors have us on our toes. They held an open house here last Sunday, for chrissake. What's next? Shooting an episode of House Hunters in the courtyard? I mean ... is anyone going to want to open a store in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill? Anyway, back to our find. There's this little room on the east side of the building. We pulled the lock off with a crowbar and found all these old hammer handles. It looked like Lester Maddox's closet. (Ask your mother.) That got me thinking: If we could sell the handles, we could pay rent on this place. Then I realized how stupid that idea is. Now, well ... I'm fresh out of ideas on how to stay in this squat house without opening a boutique ...

After a week like the one we've had, I feel like I have to write this quickly. We are literally on the brink of a major power conflict brewing in Syria, and it's hard to see how it can effectively be prevented. An apparent chemical attack has, once again, triggered the Pavlovian imperial response from Washington - namely that no problem can't be solved by dropping high explosives on it. The trouble is that the Syrian conflict is so complicated, with major regional and global powers backing different factions in pursuit of their own narrow interests (and civilians be damned). So while the Trump cabal claims to want to strike at Bashir Al Assad's government, they can hardly do so without hitting Russian personnel. Threats are being exchanged, partly via Twitter, and this is becoming a very volatile situation. A situation like this makes clear why the Democratic/Liberal approach of blaming everything on Russia is short-sighted and foolish. Trump is now under pressure to ...