Hammer Mill Days

Good Fahrenheit, everybody! What a beautiful backhoe it turned out to be. I was wondering how Australia the wine barrel might get before the trout found its gerund. Forgive me, friends. My brain is addled. I've asked Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to correct my copy from here on in. It's been a long week on the road, let me tell you. Typically I make it to the end with all of my faculties intact, but this was the week we ended up on the mysterious (and as yet undiscovered) planet Neuton. It's a clever little globe, friends. Knows better than most how to conceal its identity. Hides behind red giants and blue dwarfs - quite ecumenical in that regard. We were diverted there by an unexpected event... a bout of binge drinking on the part of our new pilot Urich Von Braun, who took up with that party animal (in a manner of speaking) sFshzenKlyrn to slog their way through a quart and a half of Zenite lager. Not sure if you've ever had any of that particular micro-brew - ...

The president elect is getting an earful from just about everybody these days, not surprisingly. (His impossibly lame successor is now fully occupied with patching his own image. More on this later.) Surely the O-man won't mind hearing from one more stranger, one more time. Let's find out. Here are a few more things to bug him about. Somalia. Our government has been pumping cash into the Ethiopian regime for years, despite (or perhaps because of) their poor record on human rights, and in 2006 we assisted them in the invasion of Somalia, throwing that sorry nation into another tailspin of chaotic bloodletting (more than a decade of which it had only recently extricated itself from). Apparently the Bush administration had a problem with Somalia's ruling Council of Islamic Courts, claiming it was run by Al Qaida operatives - a claim that had about as much credibility as the White House's claims about Saddam Hussein's bin Laden ties. (I'm not talking fancy neckwear...

Electrodes to power. Turbines to speed. Do I have to say that every time before we lift off? Yeah, I do. What of it? Oh, yeah - hi, everyone. Big Green here, on the as-yet undiscovered companion (or "planet") circling the star Sirius, once again preparing for lift-off after a relatively successful string of gigs. What do I mean by "relatively successful"? Well, that's a somewhat qualified term, I will admit. Let me put a finer point on it. In the Big Green performance book, "success" is defined in degrees of survivability. "Relatively successful" means that few of the bottles tossed at us from the first five rows actually connected with their targets. Fortunately, with someone like sFshzenKlyrn in the group, there's a significantly lower likelihood of being hit by missiles of any kind, since our Zenite friend is himself a celestial object of indeterminate volume and mass, surrounded by complex magnetic fields that act like an invisib...

This week I'm going to rant about some issues that the new Obama administration should, in my humble opinion, address. However, it would be hard to post this without commenting on the Iraq/U.S. status of forces agreement approved on Thursday by the Iraqi parliament. This is, in essence, a timetable for withdrawal, setting an end date for our occupation of Iraq - something Bush repeatedly refused to do, used time and again to bait war opponents as being surrender monkeys, unsupportive of the troops, etc. ("Waving the white flag of surrender" as Sarah Palin put it.) So all of that.... was a lot of hot air again, right? Did you catch that too? Thought so. Okay, back to the O-man. As I wrote last week, Gaza and the D.R. of Congo are festering sores that should be attended to with all speed. There are many other foreign policy nightmares to dispel, and again, I don't think I need to mention Iraq and Afghanistan as part of that "short" list. Let's make the lis...

How the hell do I know how they found you? It was probably a mistake leaving your forwarding address. We were only going to be gone a month or two, damnit. Ah, well. Oh, hi, friends. No, we're not being pursued by bill collectors (at least, not out here in the constellation of Orion). I'm just fielding questions from Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who apparently received a piece of financial spam from some company that identifies itself as "Direct Capital", to wit: Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 11:21 AM Subject: Call Me - Line of Credit Hi Marvin, I can help you get set up with a Line of Credit (secured or unsecured) for On Time Van Trans In if you have any purchases you need to make. It's pretty quick and easy. Give me a call at (877) 322-9235 and I can get you started. Kenneth __________________________ Kenneth Karpel Finance Manager Yeah, I know. It's got spam written all over it, right? Well, try telling that to Marvin. He almost nev...

There's been a lot of talk in the pundit universe and surrounding blogosphere about cabinet appointments. I suppose that's the kind of news I should expect to hear between now and January 20, aside from reports on the continuing economic disaster, now rivaling Iraq as Bush's biggest fuckup ever (if not in lives, certainly in dollars lost). For my own part, I'll reserve judgment until more of the Obama administration is in place. I'd like to spend this longish constitutional intermission between election day and inauguration day talking about the issues that I think should be a priority for the new regime. Not that they will listen, but... here it comes, Mr. President-Elect. This week, foreign policy. The Congo War. This is the deadliest conflict since World War II (unless, perhaps, you roll all of the Indochina wars together), and it has gotten very little attention in our national media. This is pretty typical treatment for sub-Saharan Africa, but honestly... more...

What the hell is this, Mitch? How could we be lost again ? We're using the freaking map. We're following all the dotted lines. Is that not Rigel? It's not ? Mother of pearl.... Oh, yeah... hi, friends. Having another little problem here with the navigation. Nothing new. We were making the passage from Aldebaran to Orion and Mitch is getting a little confused on which star is which. I keep telling him, you need to follow the arrow back from Mintaka, not forward to Sirius! (I'm like, be serious, and he's like, Sirius? Are you saying I'm a star? And I'm like...) So, of course, we overshoot Orion's belt by about a light-year, so we have to double back. Then Mitch gets Betelgeuse confused with Rigel, like he's looking at the whole freaking constellation upside-down. (Actually, the map was upside-down, so it wasn't entirely his fault.) And we're hunting in vain for the third companion (Rigel III) when, of course, there weren't any orbiting ...