Hammer Mill Days

Back it up a bit. Bit more. Bit more. Good, good, that's it. Now make it smaller... much smaller. No, not that way. I mean by material transmogrification. No, I did not make that up. Just 'cuz you don't know how ... Bickering, bickering. Seems like that's all we ever do these days. That and sleep. No more oldies, though - we're off that particular plantation, thanks to the somewhat blurry-minded ingenuity of one sFshzenKlyrn , the creature from Zenon and Big Green 's perennial sit-in guitarist. How did we get him to use his enormous etheric brain? Elementary use of flapjacks - quite simple, really. Read last week's blog entry . Finished with it? Take your time. How about now? Jeezus, you read slow ! Too much Internet, young lady - it's rotting your brain! Got it now? Good, good. That's right - I threatened, and then I delivered on the threat. Our sFshzenKlyrn got a tall stack of buckwheat flapjacks just after I posted. Am I a liar? Huh ? What happen...

Been watching the amazing caveman race-to-the-bottom that is election 2008, have you? Probably more than you like. In a way, it reminds me of that classic board game, Clue , where there are three groups of cards - suspects, weapons, and locations - and at the start of the game one card from each group is taken out and secreted away; ultimately the winner is the first one to surmise which cards they are. Colonel Mustard did it in the Parlor with the Candlestick Holder, right? Well, particularly on the Republican side, you've got maybe three issues that all the major candidates demagogue about, based on G.O.P. polling data - say, immigration, detainee abuse, and the broader "war on terror". So Rudy, Mitt, Fred, and Huck range about trying to guess what the winning positions will be. (Hmmm.... the Undocumented Mexican Gardener did it in the Anbar Awakening Council with Stress Positions.) They try to outdo each other to the point where it gets pretty ugly. Thus are major nat...

Circle Game? Done it. Keep the Ball Rollin'? God, yes. Lodi? Oh, Lord... yes. Fucking hell... Wait, I've got it. "Six drops of essence of terror. Five drops of sinister sauce!" No? Come on - it's from 196 4 , damn it! What a slog. Yes, my little friends... Big Green is still here, out on the third planet of Cancri 55, only just discovered and already giving me a major, major pain in the ass. I'm telling you this right now - these space aliens have an insatiable appetite for sixties songs (which they call... "new" music). And when I say insatiable, I mean they want new shit all the time. You can not play the same song twice down here, friends. No repeating, no pre-fab set lists... just new, new, NEW. Even with a forty-year backlog, quite frankly, we are running out of stuff to play. (Note to you bar bands down there on Earth: Don't come here. They will work you to death! ) Unfortunately, we reeled through the good stuff in the first few day...

I'm not sure if it was Bush's intention to come off like a paranoid lunatic last Tuesday when he commented on the national intelligence estimate on the non-existent nuclear (or "nuke-you-ler" in Dubya speak) threat posed by Iran, but he certainly succeeded in doing so. Iran "will be dangerous, if they have the knowledge to build a nuclear weapon," he opined, giving a shrug of clueless arrogance that so eloquently expresses the inner workings of his tiny mind. Facts don't matter - this much we know. And the facts have been problematic for our president and vice-president as they have tried to nudge the American people ever closer to the brink of another optional war. But they were just as problematic with respect to Iraq, remember - the administration had nothing and was working overtime to provoke some kind of confrontation, without success (to their quite visible frustration). They've been working up an alternative to the nuclear scenario for some t...

Couple in the next room, bound to win a prize. They've been going at it all night long. No, seriously - they're playing some kind of video game in there, and I think they may just be on the verge of winning a trophy. Believe it. Why am I reciting 36-year-old Paul Simon lyrics? Well, that story's seldom told. I am just a poor boy... No, no, wait. There is a reason (and not one that turns out to be yet another P.S. song). Seems the planet we have landed on (third planet in the Cancri 55 system) is home to a race that's real big on sixties acoustic folk-rock music. Of course, they think it's all new - smoking hot platters ripping up the airwaves, straight from planet Earth. That's 'cause Cancri 55 is 41 light years from Earth, and... well... those transmissions are just reaching them now, having crossed the trackless void of space these last four decades. Now revolution is in the air, my friends, and so is the Lovin' Spoonful . All these Cancrites are w...

When someone with a history like that of George W. Bush convenes a peace conference, it should inspire little more than joyless laughter. The fact that the focus is the middle east makes it doubly ludicrous. Dubya wants peace in the middle east? How simple is that? Just stop bombing the place, there's a good chap. If peace is so bloody important to the bugger, why doesn't he pull the troops out of Iraq and leave Iran the fuck alone? Simple answer - George Bush doesn't care about black people, or brown people, or pretty much anybody outside of his circle of millionaire cronies. So, why hold a mid east peace conference now? Well, I'm inclined to agree with Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery ( see his recent column here ). You have three leaders who are politically on the ropes. Bush's stock is pretty much in the toilet. Olmert is dangling by a thread, merely keeping the prime minister's chair warm for someone worse (i.e. Netanyahu). Abbas, at best an invented leade...

Hmmm. Looks like a good place to pound some stakes into the ground. No, sFshzenKlyrn , not that kind of steak. The pointy kind, typically made of wood. Wood . A hard, fibrous material that comes from large plants, like... like... Hey! Put the man-sized tuber down!! Oh, hi. Jeezus christmas - this is like herding cats! Worse... herding cats on Neptune , except without that nice comforting methane atmosphere. Well, anyway... your various Big Green type amigos have taken a slight detour on our way back from Mars... very slight... about 25 light-years off course, thanks to president Lincoln, in point of fact. In a fit of uncontrollable curiosity, Lincoln navigated us over to the solar system of Cancri 55 in the constellation Cancer. Far off the beaten path, to be sure, and here we are on a very tight budget for this trip. (No petty cash... just a stack of pre-signed checks from our label, Loathsome Prick records, in a galaxy that only takes cash or plastic). So much for the Lincoln navi...