Hammer Mill Days

How long do we have to stay down here, man? It’s five below zero. Next time we’re bringing a can of sterno or something. Maybe one of those highway flares. Ah yes – blessed warmth. Hey, out there in internet-land. Yes, here we are at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, doing what we usually do – nothing much, interrupted occasionally by nothing whatsoever. We lead a sedentary life out here among the ruins of a former mill-driven regional economy, brought low by the greed of post-industrial corporate financiers. So I suppose it is they we have to thank for our adopted abode, right? I mean, if they hadn’t massively dis-invested in this community and moved all their operations to the Philippines ages ago, there wouldn’t be any abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill for us to squat in. So it’s an ill wind indeed that doesn’t blow someone some good, somewhere. Somehow. What’s the nothing that we’re doing today? Ah, nothing much. Just digging through our piles of junk in boxes, l...

A lot might be said of any administration’s first week in office, Because we’re coming off of a presidency like no other, and not in a good way, there’s going to be a tendency among members of the press to be more deferential than might otherwise seem appropriate. On a human level, that’s understandable – White House correspondents are happy to see the daily briefing return, and to see it managed with a lot less tone. After four years of being subjected to withering attacks from Trump and his crew, reporters are breathing a sigh of relief and, I’m sure, hoping that this signals a return to the normal routines of previous presidencies, when there existed a more generally congenial symbiotic relationship between the press and the press office. (There was symbiosis between Trump’s administration and the press, but it was of a more corrosive variety.) They want their cheap-glamor White House Correspondents Dinner back, roast and all. I’m not sure they’re going to get the...