Hammer Mill Days

  Okay, let’s do your presents. Start with the big one. No, not that one – the bigger one. How can you not see that? It’s almost 3 centimeters across! Oh, hi. Just caught us in the middle of our annual Christmas ritual – gathering around the abandoned drill press in the Cheney Hammer Mill and taking turns opening our gifts from Satan …. I mean, Santa ! (Unfortunate typo, though one that may find a receptive audience among the fans of Pagan Christmas ). It’s Marvin (my personal robot assistant)’s turn, actually, but of course the order of the present-opening makes no difference. It’s the thought that counts, right? And well … a certain amount of thought went into this year’s pile of sugar plums. (Just to be clear – there are no actual sugar plums in the offing. That’s just a metaphor.) Not in the sense that they were well thought-out, but due to the fact that … well … we had very little cash to work with. Times being what they are, we haven’t been playing any gig

When I heard the news that Trump had pardoned the perpetrators of the 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Iraq, my first reaction was much the same as when I learned of Chelsea Manning’s conviction: If we’re waiting for justice to prevail with regard to our illegal invasion and wanton destruction of Iraq, we will be waiting a very long time. Of course, this is not the first time Trump has freed mass murderers from accountability. For someone who claims to have opposed the Iraq war (even though he really didn’t back in 2002-03), he never seems to extend that sentiment to entail sympathy for the victims of the invasion. He is, of course, a wannabe autocrat, so any display of weakness is to be avoided. Trump likes a “tough” guy, though how machine-gunning unarmed Iraqi motorists, including a young boy, or stabbing to death a prisoner of war in custody amounts to “toughness” I will never understand. More like cowardice. A lot more. I, like many, was appalled by the actions of