Hammer Mill Days

I don’t get it. How come the top string is bigger than the bottom string? And what are all these little machine knobs for? My fingers hurt! Oh, hey. You know, you’re never too old to learn in this crazy world we live in. I like to think of every day as a journey of discovery. Just this morning, I lifted myself out of the sack and discovered that someone left the bathroom tap running all bloody night. Then I waded into the kitchen and discovered a three-foot gap in the floorboards, big enough to drop a pickle barrel into. And I don’t mean one of those consumer-style barrel-like jars they sell in the specialty shops … I mean a real goddamn hogshead. Almost fell into the son of a bitch. Now THAT would have been some discovery! Well, in these days of social isolation, when you’re locked up inside your domicile for days at a time, you need to find distractions of one kind or another. And it tends to go that the longer you’re locked away, the more elaborate the distract

Sounds like a Bruce Willis movie from 1987, right? Well, it might as well be. The president appears to be okay with the notion of thousands upon thousands of us impaling ourselves on the altar of a boom economy; this after he left the door wide open to COVID-19, taking cues from the likes of Mick Mulvaney and John Bolton and other reactionary conservatives bent on shrinking the administrative state to a size that can be easily drowned in a bathtub, as Grover Norquist was fond of saying back when he was relevant-ish. Congratulations, America! Guess what? You’re all warriors now! Time to take a bullet for President Little Lord Fauntleroy, whose idea of sacrifice is taking uncomfortable questions from a relatively supine White House Press Corps. Seriously, does anyone want to die for Donald Trump? Does anyone want to sacrifice a parent, a sibling, a child, a grandchild, an aunt or uncle, a neighbor … anyone for the betterment of Trump’s political fortunes? Because make no m