Hammer Mill Days

Auckland, do you read me. Come in, Brazzaville, come in . Are you receiving me, Des Moines? Is there anybody out there, for chrissake? Well, now we've done it. Golsh dang-git. I mean, god damn it... I may as well swear again, since Gizmandiar and his entire extraterrestrial junta may well have been atomized by deadly keltone rays, fired at city hall by our somewhat intemperate sit-in guitarist from Zenon, sFshzenKlyrn . What the fuck... if only that were the end of it. As many of you know, we called sFshzenKlyrn in to help us deal with these foul usurpers, who had deprived of us squathouse, livelihood, and even language. And as I may have mentioned before, our Zenite friend is a little hard to stop once he gets going. And friends, old sFshzenKlyrn got going all right. He certainly hasn't lost his touch with concentrated trans-dimensional matter disruption beams. Okay, here's what happened, judge. First the man from Zenon smashed city hall to smithereens. Gizmandiar had e...

It's only June and we're deep into presidential debate season. Did I get my years wrong? I thought this was 2007, not 2008. Fuck a duck, we've already got close to 20 presidential contenders hurling platitudes at us and competing over who can be the biggest caveman on camera. I think this week's prize might have to go to G.O.P. longshot congressman Duncan Hunter, who advocated using "tactical nuclear missiles" to destroy Iranian centrifuges. (There's a man of conviction!) That'll teach those Iranians to threaten ... people with... nuclear ... weapons.... (irony). Christ, they'll probably kick up their uranium enrichment just on the basis of his little demagogic tirade. Then there's the god-stakes, which was a bit more of a laugh than usual since the very same day I heard a political commentator on NPR opining that the Republican candidates were shying away from openly religious rhetoric to distance themselves from Dubya. Right on the money once...

Don't tell me - let me guess. It's big. It's dense. And it's very, very attractive. Ummmmm... that could be almost anything that fits those criteria. Am I getting warmer? Well, am I? Crikey. Sometimes Marvin (my personal robot assistant) takes his programming far too seriously. I've asked him to help me with a little problem I'm trying to work out... namely, what inhabitable planets can we sail off to in case the titanic struggle between sFshzenKlyrn (trans-physical etheric energy being from Zenon) and Gizmandiar (lawn-obsessed, power-mad space creature now occupying the seat of our local government) renders the earth un inhabitable for a brief time (perhaps six or seven million years... which passes quickly if you are made of feldspar). Matt heard recently that the astronomical community has identified another 28 planets circling distant stars they've observed, and I'm sure at least one of them has our name written on it. If I can just get Marvin to ...

Clinging to their precious terror war, the Bush administration now cannot stop talking about al Qaeda, as if Bin Laden were running a kind of Wal*Mart of terror as opposed to serving as inspiration to hundreds and perhaps thousands of self- directed extremist organizations. It's the last rhetorical refuge for a president who has lost the support of the vast majority of his countrymen and is now hunkering down to ride out the last 18 months of a particularly septic tenure. If we leave Iraq, Bush cautions us, we will be hit again. What he doesn't tell us is, if we stay, we are just as likely to be hit again, if not more so, thanks to his war in Iraq, which has spawned a new generation of terrorists and significantly destabilized a region already boiling with hatred and injustice. Alas, there is no "undo" button on this war, which is why so many of us opposed it most strenuously before its start. We have set into motion a catastrophe the repercussions of which will be w...

I know, I know. I shouldn't-a dunit. But I dunit. They left me no alternative. Do I suck? Maybe. But at least you know where I stand. (Am I standing? Feels like sitting...) Howdy, friends. Expect you recall last week's tiresome debacle and the intolerable acts of our extraterrestrial overlords, as they came to occupy our humble city hall. Who could forget the arrogance of a certain Gizmandiar? A gentleman he is not. (Neither gentle, nor man... nor any other species I've ever come across.) I am not being ungenerous. Consider, if you will, the bill of particulars with regard to said Gizmandiar . He and his minions hath: deliberately and wantonly, with malice aforethought, driven us from our ancestral (relax - that's just the paint color) home and consigned us to a life of enhanced beggary (that's like the beggary we enjoyed previously, only with 65% more cat's pee); issued the intolerable and wholly despicable decree known as "Special Order 14-2007" w...

Question: how long does it take for the Democratic Party leadership to cave in on issues of life and death? Answer: less time than it takes to ask the question. Yep, old "Give 'em hell" Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and kin have signed away the farm to mister 28% himself, Dubya Bush, who is now bound by no restrictions - fiscal or legal - in his prosecution of the disastrous war he started more than four years ago. This in the wake of yet another 9 U.S. service members killed and god knows how many Iraqis - scores over the past few days. I know I'm not the only one saying W.T.F., though it's not so much out of surprise as it is just pure exasperation. I mean, a watery timeline for withdrawal with a plethora of caveats - that hardly constituted a radical departure from Rumsfeldian warmaking (precisely what we need). And yet that has morphed into a no-strings-attached allocation of billions for the continued occupation of Iraq. Is that what people voted for last Novembe...

Why, I'll moiduhlize 'em! Dose lousy no-good s.o.b.'s! What duh "f" do those "a" holes think they're doin', handed us this pile of "s"? Dey got no "effin" principles, dat's what. What's up with all this? Don't ask! You in sist ? Rrrrrr.... okay, then. But you asked for it, friend. First of all, welcome once again to the general vicinity of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, where we have availed ourselves of those alleys not already occupied by creatures significantly more fierce than ourselves. (Mice? They tolerate us. Rats? We surrender. Simple rules of the unforgiving streets.) Dislocated and made homeless by that extraterrestrial usurper, Mayor Gizmandiar (formerly of the planet we know as "New Earth"), we have applied every legal remedy we can think of to reclaim our squat house. And all it has earned us is a gag order... and a bitter betrayal. Oh, yes.... betrayal! First, the gag order. Actually, it...