Hammer Mill Days

One day you're up, the next you're down. As true in outer space as it is back on terra firma. Take it from one who knows. (Or from Juan, who knows... because he knows, too.) Just found our way over to Kaztropharius 137b in hopes of finding some Big Green fans. (Seems like that quest takes us farther and farther with each passing year.) Not a lot of love to be had in the Great Magellanic Cloud, but the Kaztropharians are reasonably congenial ... if a bit super-sized. Jesus christmas, what an enormous crowd of revelers we had that first night! It was like being in the outer-space version of Gulliver's Travels, not the Lilliput journey but that other one. (No, not the horse people. The other, other one... with the big people.) While giants tend to make me a little nervous, most of my colleagues seemed unperturbed. Mitch Macaphee just worked on various science projects, off in a corner some where. The man-sized tuber practiced his saxophone backstage - a bit distracting, bu...

A lot of explosions are taking place in the imperial hinterlands these days. No matter how optimistic you might be, it's a little hard to convince oneself that things are moving in anything like a positive direction. Of course, we live in an era when people point to Iraq as if it were some kind of success story. The truth is, that country is simply blowing up a bit more slowly than it was a couple of years ago. I suppose you could say that the success of counterinsurgency strategy was to help bring a full-scale fratricidal war down to 2003-04 levels of killing. That is a bit like an arsonist taking credit for helping to put out a house fire he himself started - one that resulted in multiple fatalities. (Note to our "leaders": Don't expect a good citizenship award any time soon... aside from the Nobel prize.) I must admit, I find the "the surge worked" crowd more than a little nauseating - most of them were in favor of this disastrous war in the first place. ...

Got another pencil? This one's a little scratchy. You know - dull. And there ain't no pencil sharpener on this here space ship. Hmmm.... could be a lyric. Got to write that down... if I just had a PENCIL. Oh, hiya. You've come upon us in mid-passage, once again. We're meandering our way into deep, deep space, heading for some place a bit more congenial to the particular brand of music we've dedicated ourselves to. (What brand is that? Not sure how to answer you. Try my brand.) Having left Neptune under something of a cloud, Big Green is setting its sites on the mysterious deep space object known as Kaztropharius 137b , where we had a substantial following a few tours back. (You know... way back in, what, 2003 or 2002? Can't rightly recall. Do a Google search on Kaztropharius and then tell me .) Now, I don't think I have to tell you that Kaztropharius 137b is quite a long ways away from here. It's actually close to Zenon, the home planet of our sit-in...

There's a pretty strong essay by Andrew Bacevich in the November issue of Harper's ("The War We Can't Win") that looks at the impasse of the Afghan war and the fallacy of believing we can make America safe by continuing to occupy a foreign land. One would hope that Obama reads it - I have my doubts he's hearing this point of view with any regularity. Bacevich observes that Obama is carrying forward the legacy of failure his predecessor established in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and while I don't agree with every nuance of his analysis, he's spot-on when questioning the general approach to the "War on Terror" that Bush took and which has since become a matter of conventional wisdom (or lack of same). The impetus towards revenge, stoked by the Bush team, that swept us into both wars has proven a dismal failure, as Bacevich points out. It is also a criminal abuse of power that has sowed the seeds of future disasters. The September 11 attacks rep...

Try reversing the cabin pressure. That's right - send it all out into the void of space. Oh, wait... we probably need the oxygen, don't we. Scratch that. I said SCRATCH IT! NOOOOOO....!! Oh, hi. Wow, THIS is embarrassing. Didn't know anyone was listening/reading. I was just having a heated word with our navigator, the man-sized tuber. (Yes, that's right - we have a plant for a navigator.) Got a little technical issue that needs some attention, that's all. Wouldn't want you to think that Big Green is hard on the help - no, sir... we treat them like KINGS. Emperors, really... especially the cruciferous ones like Tubey. He needs a little extra consideration, given his mobility problems. (Though the cart has helped these past few years, I must admit.) Don't want to sound like I'm hyper-critical, but occasionally tempers wear a little thin in the vacuum of space, especially when you have some kind of deadly space virus loose in your vehicle, and the only thi...

I suppose on some level I must be an optimist because I can't seem to dispel the notion that something good might come out of the health care debate, even when confronted with such a hopeless legislative clusterfuck as the Baucus bill. Maybe it's our recent experience with the topic of global warming that nudges me in that direction. Think of it - a few short years ago our leaders were disputing the science of climate change with some confidence. Now that skepticism is the province of the tin hat patrol and the policy debate is over how much (or how little) to do about the problem. Too little, too late? We did lose precious years during the Clinton and Bush administrations (particularly the latter) when fundamental changes might have been set in motion, but were stonewalled. Those changes will come harder now, and perhaps to insufficient effect. Nonetheless, there was a kind of sea change in 2007 and I suppose something like that could happen with health care in America. If we ...

Be the king of the clones you can, you can have a mother ship up in space. Drop me off at Atlantis, man. Look there - red Mars has a face! Oh, hi, folks. Just reciting a few of Matt's lyrics in advance of the next performance. Perhaps you recognize the song - a little number called "Volcano Man" from our last album, International House . (You don't? Well... perhaps you haven't gotten round to picking up a copy. If so, you are proudly walking with the majority.) Actually, it's quite apropos of our current circumstances. We have, in effect, lifted off from the bizarro planet Earth (that home of many time zones) thanks to Ben Franklin's electrical advice, and we have made our way back through the equally strange time wormhole to present-day Neptune, which offers volcanoes very similar to those found in Matt's strange, strange song. Seems to me this would be the ideal place to film the video for "Volcano Man" (about time we got started on that li...