Hammer Mill Days

There it is again. Hear it? That creaking noise. Yeah, yeah... that one. Is that your astronaut couch or one of the main support beams holding this clunker together. Don't be in a hurry to answer that. Oh, hi, Web-based readers, listeners, and curiosity seekers. It's your old pal Big Green , out here in deep space, fresh off a thrashing series of gigs on Kaztropharius 137b - one of the few places in the known universe where our music gets played, bought, and reviewed - and headed in the general direction of home. Yes, we've had it for the time being. After all, the holidays are coming, daylight savings time has ended (spend all that saved-up daylight yet?), and darkness is falling across the northern hemisphere of our tattered planet. It's at this time of year, more than any other, that the sojourner's thoughts turn to hearth and home, and certainly we of Big Green are no exceptions. Many's the time I've repaired backstage (what the hell, you can hardly re...

Well, I don't know if any of you were following it, but my neighboring Congressional District - New York's 23rd - just experienced a national political dogfight reminiscent of the one we were treated to three years ago. In some ways, it was worse, actually. You may know the story. Long time Republican Congressman John McHugh was tapped by Obama to be Army Secretary, opening up a special election to replace him. Instead of being in essence a regional race for a national office, this became a clusterfuck grudge match between two wings of the Republican Party - the moderate-conservative and the lunatic-conservative. And the actual fighting took place not so much between office holders in the G.O.P., but among retirees, resignees, also-rans, and professional bloviators like Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson, Newt Gingrich, George Pataki, Rush Limbaugh, Dick Army, and so on. The G.O.P.'s-nominated candidate was apparently not conservative enough to please these... these.... objects, so...

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...