Hammer Mill Days

Now, let's see... how does that song go? Hmmmm.... strike up the band, Johnny. One small step... for one bald man. Giant leap for all time. Christmas day, thank you, ma'am. I came in peace... and left my mind! That's an oldy. Oh, yes... Christmas 1996 - I remember it well. As soon as we get our thumbs out of our asses on this seemingly endless project, I'm going to trawl through the archives and dust off some of those recordings that have never before seen the light of day. Prepare to be amazed. (Did I say "amazed"? I meant "annoyed." Or perhaps "nauseated".) But before you get to thinking that I'm distracting you from our current lethargy with vague promises of archival releases somewhere down the road, let me assure you that your good friends in Big Green are looking over these old songs for some very, very good reasons. And no, I don't mean nostalgia for a past equally obscure as our present. No, no.... better reasons than that...

If the aim this week was to put Iran in the crosshairs, the Bush administration barely needed to lift a finger, it seems. People were climbing over one another to denounce president Ahmadinejad and none so much as those who invited him to speak at Morningside campus. Is it possible that his invitation was the result of some kind of clerical error? Perhaps they meant to invite some other president - someone committed to democracy, the rule of law, and the whims of the Bush clan, like "president" Pervez Musharraf. Whatever the case may be, Columbia was ground zero in the clash of civilizations for a few hours, with Ahmadinejad being decried as the "Hitler of the Middle East". (Hmmm... that has a familiar ring to it.) Hell, over there, you can hardly take a bath without six or seven Hitlers jumping in with you. I guess the standard for Hitlerianism has lapsed somewhat over the past few years. Used to be you had to, you know, invade someone. Now it's just saying a ...

Are you ready to rumble ? Not yet? Okay then. Just asking. Don't get upset, now. Put that down. I said PUT THAT DOWN! Do it or someone's going to get hurt. No. NO. NOOOOOOOO!!! Ahem. Well, we won't post any more of that exchange, as it may be upsetting to young children. (This is a FAMILY blog, friends. Fuck yes.) Welcome back to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, where band members are listless, robots are corroding, and plant creatures are setting down new roots as we speak. (The man-sized tuber has abandoned his terrarium for a patch of ground in the courtyard. Seems he's getting in touch with his inner gingko tree.) Yes, your friends and colleagues in Big Green have taken refuge in the same safe harbor, seeking shelter from the storm beneath the same perforated roof that has offered us a modicum of protection over the past seven years. No, it hasn't fallen in yet. And we have hopes that that will never, ever happen. (Well.... "never, ever" is a very l...

Well, it didn't take long for the latest Iraq fantasy to start falling apart. The so-called "Anbar Awakening", trumpeted by General David Petraeus as such an amazing success, is every bit the fraud you might have expected by this point. It took some intrepid reporting by people like Big Noise Films (featured on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! ) to get a closer look at what is actually happening in that unhappy province, and it isn't pretty. But then, ethnic cleansing never is. It seems some of the enlightened tribal leaders with whom we are now "allied" led an effort to drive more than 14,000 Shi'ite families out of Anbar and into some pretty miserable looking shantytowns on the outskirts of Baghdad - maybe 130,000 people in all expelled from their homes by the very people we're glad-handing. Did our people know of this? A little hard to imagine they didn't, since in one of the communities featured in the Big Noise report, the U.S. military grou...

Take five. One... two... three... quatro! No, no - stop. Wrong key, man. Totally wrong key. It's the one around the back of the horn. You're concentrating too much on those front keys. Greetings and welcome to the house of dung and smog. Did I say "dung and smog"? I meant, sun and fog. Yes, the misty environs of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill on a cool Saturday morn - ah, 'tis a sight to behold. A veritable feast for the senses, particularly the olfactory. That burning smell? That's just us burning up the tape down here in our dungeon-like studio. (Maybe I did mean smog after all...) Okay... I am playing a little fast and loose with the facts. In this digital, nonlinear age, we have abandoned tape altogether and taken up the cudgel of cutting-edge recording technology - wax cylinders! No wait, not wax. Wire . Wire recording. Wild, wild new deal in tracking songs, mate! I heard all about it from the dude on the corner - the guy with half-a-boot. On his he...

Dubya Bush likely received a valuable political lesson from his father, but may have been only half listening. "War will make you popular," I can imagine the old man saying, "...so long as it's short and successful." Junior probably wandered off about when he heard the "so long." As a result, the younger Bush shares his father's love of bombing and invading other countries, but lacks George Senior's horse-sense about picking the right fights - namely, easily winnable ones. Hence Operation Iraqi Fiefdom and, in effect, the war in Afghanistan as well, which by any reasonable standard is also a dismal failure in achieving the original stated objective (i.e. destroying al Qaeda and capturing/killing Bin Laden). So... how do you finesse such spectacular under-achievements? Well, if you're none too subtle and you have a very low opinion of the masses, you move the goal posts. And you do it again and again. That's certainly the modus operandi ...

Spread some oil on them sticks. That's good. Now bring a bundle of straw over here. In a bunch, in a bunch! Okay.... kerosene. Where'd I put it? What? You sure that's not Vodka? Well... take a glug and let me know. Now, who's got a match? Yikes - didn't know you were logged on. Again, I apologize. Keeping this place in order is a 24/7 kind of job, as you might well imagine. Yes, friends - the Cheney Hammer Mill may be a decrepit, broken down, fetid old ruin with rising damp and water snakes in the basement, but it's home and every once in a while you need to start a bonfire in the courtyard to let the place know you still care. Oh, you may laugh. You may laugh! But we have our traditions here in Big Green . One of them is making Marvin (my personal robot assistant) do all the heavy work. (Of course, that's more a habit than a tradition.) More to the point, another of our traditions is that of setting bonfires on alternate Saturdays during the growing seaso...