Hammer Mill Days

Avast, me hardies! Full astern. Hoist the mizzen-mast. Lower the, I don't know... gang plank. Do something nautical, for chrissake. We've got some timbers to shiver. Sound like Treasure Island to you? Hah - if so, you've got a bad memory. Here in Big Green land, we don't know jack about literature. (We don't even know "Jack" about Jack and Jill , quite frankly. Feverishly undereducated lot.) And still we try, oh we try... as needs must. Just attempting to entertain the natives, and they're getting restless, my friends - restless as a slice of capicola on Super Bowl Sunday. That's right... the man-sized tuber's various and assorted relatives are still amongst us - putting down roots, you might say - and they have a healthy appetite for musicals. (Especially ones that feature pirates.) In as much as they now find themselves in a cultural backwater, they must satisfy themselves with our feeble attempts at melodrama. So we're putting on a lit...

We're dropping bombs on a ghetto. That is the kind of triumphant mission the Iraq war has devolved into - using high-tech air-delivered munitions on people who live on less than a dollar a day, hitting hospitals, killing children, all by accident (of course), though how you can drop bombs on a densely populated slum and not presume that you're going to kill innocent people is beyond my understanding. (By the standards established at Nuremberg, this doesn't hold any water as an excuse.) We're also dropping bombs on Somalia, the other other war - the one in which we took the side of an invader, the repressive government of Ethiopia, and played a key role in bringing Somalia back to the brink of famine and chaos. The UN and NGOs are issuing warnings about hunger in that sorry object of our attentions. They are also putting out grim advisories on Gaza, where relief programs are being stymied by the siege Israel is imposing on that territory's citizens, cutting off fuel...

No I can't get the phone. Can't you see I've got my hands full? It's a shovel, you idiot - what do you think? I've been using it all morning. And I don't know the first thing about kneecap replacement surgery, so bugger off. Oh, I'm sorry. Didn't know anyone was reading this blog at [INSERT CURRENT TIME HERE]. Just fending off requests from the various minions at large here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, where Big Green resides. It happens that I'm a bit indisposed at the moment, shoveling up another cubic yard of dirt to make way for the spreading tendrils of the man-sized tuber's many relatives. They've become something like permanent residents here over the past week. You know the drill - shirt-tail relative drops by for a couple of days, unpacks the suitcase, and next thing you know, you've got a lifer. That's right, friends - tubey's kin are putting down roots. (In this case, literally.) So naturally, those of us who h...

Anyone not hear about the Reverend Wright this week? I don't see any hands (except my own, on the keyboard, of course). This campaign is beyond inane - too insipid to even qualify as absurd. Does anyone really, really, really care about what Barack Obama's former preacher thinks? Is Wright running for president? Is anyone taking a microscope to the sermons and unrelated public statements of any other politician's spiritual mentors, friends, associates, neighbors, etc.? Has anyone, for instance, taken a close look at Franklin Graham, who offered prayer at Bush's inauguration and lectured us all on being squeamish about the use of nuclear weapons? No controversy there. And if Obama's time on a board with Bill Ayers is fair game, why not Hillary's time on the board of Wal-Mart? After all, Bill Ayers just talked about demolishing things - Wal-Mart has demolished hundreds of small town shopping districts and driven virtual slave labor in the countries that produce th...

There's the old lumber storage shed. Then there's that ancient grain silo - hasn't been used for years. Oh, yeah... and that little room in the north corner of the foundry - forgot about that. Oh, hi. Welcome to the land of a thousand compromises. (Notice that the word "promise" is embedded in "compromises" - coincidence?) What is it this time, you may ask? Well... just trying to accommodate a few visitors. Actually, more than a few - a whole herd of visitors. No, the mongooses have not returned... they've clearly found richer fields of breadfruit elsewhere. This has more to do with the various negotiations we have to engage in around this place to keep all of our constituencies happy. (It gets goddamn tiresome sometimes, I can tell you, but would you want to listen? Be honest!) You got to give a little to get a little, right? That's our credo. I know what you're thinking. (I'm quite gifted that way, actually. Your favorite fruit is cant...

Well, the Clintons won Pennsylvania by nearly ten points, so I guess all that slamming, sliming, and race-baiting was well worth it. Or sort of, anyway... since it's still hard to see how Hillary can walk away with this nomination short of spontaneous combustion on Obama's part. No matter - the race continues. In a year when a Democrat should certainly walk to victory in November, the party is inventing a way to lose against a pretty lame candidate on the G.O.P. side. Start with two parts ambition - the kind the Clintons pursue at the cost of all they claim to believe in. Certainly, I've never been a fan of theirs, but I would dislike them a whole lot less if they simply stuck to articulating their positions, outlining policy differences with their opponent in a civil fashion, and refrain from all the exaggerated accusations about sixties radicals, anti-American (Marine veteran) preachers, and out of context remarks worthy of Sean Hannity or Matt Drudge. Are the Clintons cr...

Here, boy. Heeere, boy! That's a good boy.... come on, got a little treat for you. Over here, boy. That's right. Over.... oh, goddamn it! Oh, hi, friends. (And I mean friends in the Facebook / MySpace sense.... in other words, total strangers.) Caught me at a bad time, actually. No, I'm not trying to coax a stray dog out from under the tool shed. It's the man-sized tuber.... he's gone all reclusive on us. I think it's a "back to nature" kick of some kind. Here tubey's been as mobile as a biped these last seven years, and he seemed quite content, really... especially since we procured that ergonomically designed go-cart for him some time back. Of course, appearances can be deceiving, and apparently (or non-apparently) our man-sized tuber has been harboring some regrets over his life with the humanoids. Pining for the fields of home, it seems. He misses his fellow tubers, and who can blame him? (They make such good companions...) Anyway, he took his ...