Hammer Mill Days

What are you talking about? I was very careful in my deliberations about this get up. If someone's feathers get ruffled, well ... it's not on me, man. Folks got to just calm down. Yeah, it's Halloween again, everyone. Kind of a big holiday around these parts. Why, I've known these quiet suburban moms and dads to take their kids out in gale force winds, forcing them against the elements to have a good time, damn it. That's how memories are made, my friends. Here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, we try to make this old barn of a place seem inviting. We can't afford pumpkins or corn stalks, of course, so we just slip the mansized tuber a fiver and ask him to stand by the front door with a citronella torch. He looks, uh, kind of autumnal ... if you squint. Now, I'm not a big one for dress-up, as you know. Never liked it, never. That said, I did put on some old jeans and borrowed one of those blue denim shirts, then combed my hair forward and put on a fa...

ISIS has lost its leader. So ... that's that? When are the leaders of my country going to work this decentralized model of resistance out? It's not that these are leaderless movements per se. Al-Baghdadi was a founder and a leader of his grisly movement. But the relationship between his organization and the broader base of jihadists across the region and around the globe is loose at best. As Ted Rall once put it, it's a bit like the relationship between a Rolling Stones tribute band and the Rolling Stones themselves. And like Warren Zevon's Roland, cutting off the head won't kill it: The eternal Thompson gunner still wanders through the night Now it's ten years later, but he still puts up a fight In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine and Berkeley ... I feel somewhat the same way about the Trump presidency. Getting Trump out of office is not going to be some kind of magic bullet. I keep hearing pundits talk about people wanting to return to normal, go b...