Hammer Mill Days

Stage props? Never really thought much of them, frankly. What the hell are we, summer stock? We're a bleedin' band , man! Oh, all right, all right. But just the enormous styrofoam sphinx. No pyramid. I SAID, NO PYRAMID! Oh, sorry, my friend. Hope that wasn't too loud. I was just trying to get my point across to Anti-Lincoln... the idea that Big Green is not a flash band with a truckload of stage props, seven costume changes, makeup, extras, pyrotechnics, fog machines, etc. Never part of that movement, frankly. No, no.... our roots go back to a simpler time, when the earth was new and the sky was darkened by flocks of cawing pterodactyls. Not that roots have a lot to do with it. Actually, our musical influences are the more pared-down groups of the 60's and early 70's, and plain-clothes alternative types from much later. Anti-Lincoln doesn't think that's visually interesting enough. He would sooner we change our names to, I don't know, "Great Speck...

Looks like even in Iran, sometimes elections don't turn out the way you expect. Been there, done that, right? At least our pundits can't say it never happens here. Fraud tends to happen around the fringes in our system, when the margins are relatively tight. Iran has much more serious, systemic problems. Even so, the people there obviously know what to do when things go badly wrong - get out in the street. These are the people we want to bomb so badly. I hope Americans are taking a close look at those folks out in the street, putting their necks on the line. This is the enemy, folks - the "axis of evil". Whatever Bush used to say about having no quarrel with the Iranian people, it is they who would suffer in the event of any confrontation between our countries, just as they have suffered in the past, when we overthrew Mossadeq in 1953, through the decades of rule by our ally the Shah, and under massive assault from our other ally Saddam Hussein during the 1980s. Just...

Lights are off again. I thought I just bribed that guy last week. Didn't I? What.... it was the wrong guy? His pushcart was decorated with a cardboard sign that had "electric company" written on it in crayon. Seemed legitimate to me. It seems I'm too trusting. We all are here at the Cheney Hammer Mill, Big Green's crap shack of distinction. Oh, we've had a lot of crap shacks through the years, from a tumbled-down house on Irving Avenue in Castleton-On-Hudson to the slightly less beat up place next door to it.... (and one or two others, if memory serves). Then of course there was the lean-to in Sri Lanka. (What happened to that? It leaned fro.) Anyway, next to all those joints, this abandoned hammer mill is the next best thing to being someplace decent. And yet, here we are... lights off, phone disconnected, water intermittent, gravity reversed (Mitch Macaphee's been at it again)... It all comes down to one thing: frankincense. No, wait. It's another wo...

I've been more than a bit irked with America's permanent ruling class just lately. You know the one - that core of political actors who operate in and out of government, keeping things from getting out of hand. I've talked about the foreign policy establishment in the Obama administration not being all that different from the late Bush II administration (or that of Bush's father, for that matter). On the domestic policy front, we see more of the same. All of the major economic decisions are being shaped by Wall Street types, focusing on the health of companies rather than the well-being of workers. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the auto company bailouts. Obama's automotive task force is made up largely of financial types, and their solutions reflect that experience. What the hell - we could have gotten THAT from McCain. Okay, here's what doesn't make any sense to me about this deal. We are literally pouring money into GM - not to the extent we...

Check the World Book. Not in there? Okay. Now check Britannica. No reference? Right, right. I guess we'll have to resort to Compton's. Pull out the 1963 edition, that ought to do it. Oh, hi. Good god, y'all.... this is a grueling task. To what do I refer, you may ask? No, I'm not making gruel, at least not this evening. (Tomorrow's menu, however, may include that dubious delicacy... who knows?) Lord, no... many of us here are engaged in finding evidence of the man-sized tuber in various historical accounts, including encyclopedias, history textbooks, comics, etc. After all, it is HE who saved the Republic from a fate worse than death. It is HE who rescued the honor of our most revered president and restored him to the exalted position he once held in the pantheon of the American story. And it is HE who introduced the chocolate cream pie to the post-civil war dinner table... and this BEFORE the invention of the refrigerator. Yes, this is one man-sized tuber that'...

I saw parts of the President's speech at the University of Cairo this past week and I have to say that the symbolism of the event was striking. This man whose personal history embodies a kind of cultural crossroads and an international experience previously unknown in the White House - to see him make reference to historic wrongs so seldom acknowledged by Americans really puts the lie to that old "only Nixon could go to China" conventional wisdom. Sure, the rhetoric was, well, just rhetoric, and even as such carefully balanced and qualified, but just the same... what an odd impression it must have made on an Arab world so accustomed to the condescending ignorance and arrogance of Obama's predecessor. I've got to think they think we're goddamned weird, veering our little electoral pinewood racer from one side of the track to the other (and, doubtless, back again before long). Not hard to see why we're hard to trust. And yet, through all that swerving, casca...

Mill boy to tuber, mill boy to tuber! Do you read, tuber? What's your position? Can't read. Can you turn up your gain? Roger. How 'bout this.... try turning down your lose. Ah... much better. Ah, you have returned. Good on you. Yes, as you may have surmised, the man-sized tuber... ahem , I mean the intrepid man-sized tuber has made his way into the remote past, fully 145 years ago or more, back to the time of Lincoln. His mission? Very simple... to apprehend the nefarious anti-matter Lincoln (one of our various hangers-on) who has somehow supplanted the actual president and begun to drive what's left of a Civil War-plagued nation into the sewer. Shouldn't be too difficult a task for a non-verbal overgrown root vegetable on a cart. At least, that's what our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee had assured me. He said that security was not as tight in those days as it is now, so it shouldn't be hard for the tuber to catch up with anti-Lincoln to deliver his ult...