Hammer Mill Days

Okay, listen up in there! By order of the local constabulary, you've got FIVE minutes to vacate the premises. FIVE minutes before we come in through the front door. You can bring your personal belongings. And I know you have to pack, so ... if you take a little longer than FIVE minutes, that's ... uh .... okay. Oh, shit - I'm no good at this, am I? Far too conciliatory. And I even forgot to turn the damn bullhorn on, so those shifty no-good upstairs neighbors probably didn't even hear me. Damn it, I asked Mitch Macaphee for some device that might shift these objectionable squatters from their perch on the third floor of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. I was picturing some kind of rocket or drone-like device, tipped with high explosives. Then he handed me a bullhorn, a used one at that, with some semi-embarrassing decal stuck on the side of it. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) thinks they're Grateful Dead-style dancing bears, but I think they're just dum...

If you're as obsessive about politics as I am, you probably watched the "CNN Democratic Debates" this week, brought to you by CNN, hosted by CNN, and did I mention CNN was somehow involved? What the hell ever happened to the League of Women Voters, anyway? This notion of presidential debates being treated like commercial media properties is beyond ridiculous. Debates should not be some pre-packaged product served up by powerful corporations who benefit from the free-for-all media environment our bought politicians have built for them over the years. As if that wasn't bad enough, the three purported journalists moderating the event were hell-bent on getting the various candidates to mix it up, posing questions that were, at worst, the equivalent of "Are you just going to stand there and let her say that about you?" and, at best, cheap rehashes of Republican party talking points. (Jake Tapper is such a freaking waste of space.) Night one had the two progress...