Hammer Mill Days

Hmmm... I know I left that lying around here somewhere. Ah, here it is. Not sure where I'm going without this little number. No, it's not my brain. It's my list of songs. Sixty five songs and counting. Shoo-wee, right? That's enough songs to fuel the enormous asbestos-clad boiler of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill for a hundred years. (Well, that may be a slight exaggeration.) What was it I heard Lincoln (or anti-Lincoln) saying the other day? Oh, yeah. "A chicken'll make you a meal... or it'll lay enough eggs for a thousand breakfasts. A lamb - that's about two weeks worth of mutton. Or you can have warm wool coats from now until doomsday..." That Lincoln- just brimming with frontier wisdom. (Actually, I think he borrowed that from Royal Dano in one of his more nefarious incarnations on The Big Valley , Lincoln's favorite T.V. drama.) Where was I again? Oh, right. The songs. Yeah, we have an enormous backlog of songs, some never recorded, man...

Short takes again. Damn, I'm lazy! Lie down, dog, you are tired . Bread heel. We're always told that it's better to settle for half a loaf than no bread at all. Well, that may work for bread. I'm not so sure about anything else. I mean, if you need a car, and you ask your spouse to go out and find one for you, and s/he comes back with one axle, a steering wheel, three tires, and a seized engine, you still are not going anywhere. Same deal, it seems to me, with health care. For all the cautionary comments about "not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good," we really do not have a whole car here, so far as I can see. For one thing, they stripped out the most popular provisions, namely, the public option and Medicare expansion - features that would benefit people immediately, save money, and make for a much more reasonable system. Don't get me wrong. I'm for single payer, always have been, always will be. It's the only thing that makes sense in...

Holy hell. Is that thing on again? Well then, what's that little red light for? And the countdown box.... Twenty-five, twenty-four, twenty-three.... Oh well. While we're trying to figure out what's going on there... What's been happening here at the mill? Usual stuff. Keeping the roof on, as they say, and the fridge stocked with lunchables. (Or, at least, snackables.) You have to be versatile to please the mix of tastes we have around this joint. Take Lincoln (please). Now, he's a fan of chicken fricassee. Of course, being a vegetarian, I won't have anything to do with the stuff, but that doesn't stop him. He keeps putting it on the shoplifting... I mean, the shopping list. And I keep coming back with tofu. (He's no happier now than he was in 1863.) But it takes more than food to make a life. We've been working on the next album, as you know. Quite a process. Some of you have been on the inside of our album construction activities, some not. For tho...

Was listening to NPR the other morning, much to my annoyance (no, I'm NOT going to contribute anything, thank you very much!) and I heard a story about a former high official of the Siad Barre regime in Somalia facing possible war crimes prosecution in the United States (where he now resides). Some of his torture victims now live in the U.S. as well, and would like to get some justice. Fair enough. While the correspondent took the time to describe how heinous that regime was, she neglected to mention the fact that our government had sent them something like $1 billion over the Carter, Reagan, and Bush I years. Small detail. Also heard reports about Radovan Karadzic's trial for war crimes. I have to admit, the first thing that came to mind was the happy accident of Dick Cheney's having been born in the United States. What a pity that Karadzic hadn't started the Iraq war instead of killing tens of thousands of Bosnians! He would be enjoying his comfortable retirement righ...

What was that sound I heard, coming from down below? Some kind of tectonic activity? A passing subway car? Or could it be..... a tuber in distress? Tubey and Marvin (my personal robot assistant) are still exploring the inner bowels of the Oit. I would post images they've sent via their cell phones, but you would hardly believe your own eyes if you saw them. Crikey, there's a lot going on down there - much more than when we did that Jules Verne-like tour to the center of the Earth a few years ago. Amazing... but then, there's a lot of space below us, if you think about it. (Even if you don't think about it. ) So take my word for it. Don't go there. Just don't. It's hot. It's mean. It's just plain dangerous. So, what does this have to do with you? Well, not much. That's the nature of the internets as we know them. A lot of random, stupid detail about people's personal lives of interest to no one other than themselves. We are certainly guilty of...

More short takes. I'm beat to a pulp this week, quite frankly. My brain is still working, though... I just don't have a lot of endurance. Health care summit. Why bother, right? When are the republicans ever going to agree to anything that even resembles comprehensive health insurance reform? Never. Rebuild the entire thing to suit them, and they'll still vote against it purely for spite. The problem here is, of course, the democrats themselves, who can't seem to recognize when they've got something that's both popular and worth defending. I'm referring to the public option, Medicare expansion, and other measures denounced as "socialism" by the other side (and conservative dems) but which the general public is strongly in favor of. The reason why people aren't fired up about the current plan is that they stripped those measures out to please conservatives. Obama - congress - get a clue! Pass something that will make a real positive difference i...

Down and down and down we go, round and round and round we go... Ah, I forgot what comes next. Oh yeah - it's either "ker-splash!" or "crunch!" Hi, friends. If you're just tuning in (or browsing over), we're working on a little under ground expedition. That crevice that opened up in the foundation of the Cheney Hammer Mill (our adopted home) apparently goes down to the core of our humble planet, and we've taken it upon ourselves to determine just how goddamned deep that actually is. First we sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) down there, with less than his full cooperation (we had Big Zamboola give him a shove of encouragement). Our latest foray is actually tasked with finding out what happened to Marvin. This consists of the man-sized tuber with a flashlight and a web cam attached to his... well... head (or anterior protuberance, whichever you prefer). Dropping him into the crevice is like dropping a potato down a well. In fact, I don't k...