Hammer Mill Days

What the hell, man. Are you sure this is the way to Neptune? I mean, I don't remember all of these asteroids. For chrissake, I feel like I'm flying through an eighties-vintage arcade video game. Oh, hi. Glad you decided to check in at this moment. Maybe you could help us with a little navigational problem we seem to be having. Our usually capable mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee seems to have gotten us a little off the beaten path between Saturn and Neptune. I think the explanation is relatively simple - Zenite snuff, helpfully provided by our perpetual sit-in guitarist sFshzenKlyrn . As mentioned previously, Mitch is - while brilliant - not the best space craft pilot even when sober. With a nostril full of that hot stuff from the Small Magellanic Cloud, I doubt he could find his way to the zero-gravity can. Anyway, he appears to have followed the wrong lode star or something on that order, and we are now dodging some of the biggest, lumpiest, nastiest looking asteroids I...

I've heard reports today (Thursday) that the Obama administration is looking very seriously at pitching the "public option" component of their health care plan over the side, possibly to gain a couple of (or, more likely, just one) Republican vote(s) in the Senate - votes that would probably be superfluous without the public option anyway. At this moment, I'm hoping this was just a trial balloon put up by an increasingly pusillanimous White House, but my common sense tells me that's not the case. The public plan was the ten-day-old soup bone tossed to the left in exchange for their acquiescence to the administration's decision not to even discuss adopting a single payer system; so, of course, the triangulators we've put in charge of our government consider this expendable, just as they consider progressives a block of votes they can take for granted. Stupid move, if true. The public option is all that's left of meaningful health insurance reform. With...

Did you call room service? Well, I sure as hell didn't. And what is this glorp, anyway? It looks like it's... it's.... IT'S ALIVE! Greetings from Titan, a dry alien moon orbiting the planet Saturn. We're taking a little break out here on what's described as "The Riviera of the Gas Giants" in all the travel brochures (my ass!) as we wait for the start of a second string of performances on Jupiter. I have to say, the accommodations are less than what we were encouraged to believe. For one thing, the hotel has no oxygen - it's bring your own here on Titan. That's probably because of the methane atmosphere - indeed, on this godforsaken rock they use bottled oxygen for blow torches. Freaky turnaround, dude. And the waterskiing! Not at all like the promotional DVD! They were showing black sand beaches and azure blue waters, and what do we find on the actual, non-promotional Titan? Liquid methane pools. Aromatic, to say the least. I am depressed. Stil...

I'll admit to being of an age that enables my most vivid memories of Senator Edward Kennedy to be those of his 1980 presidential campaign. I suppose that is because presidential politics tends to focus the mind, particularly during times of upheaval and uncertainty, which 1980 most certainly was. My late brother Mark, who passed away late that same year, took a keen interest in the campaign - he'd been a strong Kennedy supporter from his youngest days and particularly so with Robert Kennedy's 1968 run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Mark, Matt (my Big Green compatriot) and I supported the younger Kennedy against Carter for many of the same reasons I have had for backing the more left-leaning candidates in that party since working on the McGovern campaign as a pre-teenager. But there was also that Kennedy symbolism, the notion that they represented in the minds of so many a kind of liberal ideal and inside-the-system activism strong enough to attract people who m...

One and a half G's. Holding steady. Watch that panel, Mitch. Watch it... watch it.... Two G's. Two and a half. Fuel consumption ratio rising. Damn it, Mitch - the panel, man... keep watching! Oh, hi, reader(s). What's up? Not so much, what's up with you? Yep, just another one of those days. You've had 'em. Piling all your gear into a space ship, strapping the man-sized tuber into his humidity controlled terrarium, pumping the tank full of highly-explosive fuel, and then hurtling headlong into space... all this before it dawns on you that you need a qualified pilot. Oh, sure... I know we have our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee. Big Green relies on him for just about everything these days... even things that he can't, well.... do very well... like piloting a spacecraft. What the fuck - we've used him before. But I swear to you, five minutes after we clear the gantry, Mitch turns to me and says, "Okay, so you're taking it from here, right?...

I saw in our local newspaper this week that a bridge will be named for one of the guys from this area who was killed in Iraq. Understandable gesture, to be sure, and I hope it brings some measure of solace to his family. If it does, they should dedicate a bridge to every one of the more than 4,300 sacrificed needlessly in that seemingly endless war. I doubt we have enough bridges to name for all the Iraqis who've died as a result of the 2003 invasion. (I don't know - are there a million bridges in America?) Whenever I hear about these dedications, monuments, memorials to war dead, I can't help but think of that eulogy Marc Antony delivered in Julius Caesar : "I come not to praise Caesar, but to bury him." We always hear about how they died "protecting our freedoms," when really they died because of our ignorance as a nation and our inability to stop this travesty from happening. This has nothing to do with how soldiers and their families feel about the ...

Oxygen supply? Go! Inert substances containers? Check! Highly explosive fuel cells? Gotcha - right over there, on top of that stack of souvenir cigarette lighters. Well, I shudder to say it... because it usually ends up not being true... but I really think we're ready to lift off this time. We've got the ship all loaded up. We've got anti-Lincoln bailed out of jail and sober as a cowbird. We've got our maps unfolded and our compasses oriented true north. We've got our tent-pitchin' gear, our bottles of sterno, our pots and pans, our paper plates. Then there are a stack of pic-a-nic baskets, just in case Yogi drops by. Actually, Mitch Macaphee had ordered Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to load up a couple of cases of Spaghetti and meatballs, but my illustrious brother - no big fan of Chef Boyardee objected. And around here, what Matt says goes. (Unless he complains about my Rice A Roni. Then, fuck 'im. ) Hey, you know what it's like any time you go ...