Hammer Mill Days

Hmmm. What's the capital of Missouri again? Was it Kansas City? Can't remember. I'll just enter "undecided," that will suffice. Okay, next question... how much does the moon weigh? Full moon or half? Oh, yes... the blog. As you can see, I'm at loose ends here. Just killing a little time between sessions. Matt put down a vocal the other day. (I wish he'd stop putting me down, man. I'm trying my BEST!) Next it's my turn, but first Marvin (my personal robot assistant) needs to go in there and clean up the tracks a bit, do a little of his magic. (What kind of magic? Can't say. It's magic, damnit!) So while I'm just sitting here, I'm filling out crosswords, completing puzzlers, and... well... opening our overinflated mailbag. Some of these things have been sitting in there for six months or better. (I think I spy a christmas present.... from 1970...) Here's one from Osmond of Reno, NV: Dear Big Green: I understand one of you lived o...

There's a t.v. ad that runs almost constantly in my area featuring a "regular-guy" type grocery store owner (not many of those left) complaining about the proposed soft drink tax in New York State. At some point in the ad he says, "Taxes never made anyone healthy." Interesting statement. I guess he's never heard of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, various Health and Human Services programs, and any number of other government services, from OSHA to the FDA, that in some respect help us stay healthier as a result of tax revenues. Yeah, I know the ad is about a "sin" tax, but you can also see how taxes on cigarettes and alcohol have had a positive effect health-wise. In a sense, it's just a way of having the price of something reflect the true cost. Sure, we want people to be healthier. But we also want to recover some of the cost of their NOT being healthy, like emergency care costs for people who sugar themselves into heart disease, stroke, ...

What'd you say? Huh? Yeah, I just woke up, too. Oh well... looks like another one. Sunrise, sunset, blah blah blah. What's been happening around these parts? Let's see, now. A thing or two. We've got a crack in the earth going, as you know. Straight down to the chewy center. Less said about that the better, frankly. After all, we're still officially squatters here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, and if the actual owners of this renowned property had any idea of the shape it's in (let alone the fact that there is a major crack in the Earth's crust contained within), they would see us evicted, convicted, etc. Then there's those mongooses again - you remember them, don't you? We had some problems with mongooses some years back, taking over our beloved lean-to, then invading the mill and trying on our galoshes while we were gone. Very pesky fellows indeed. Well, they're back. C'est la vie. (I think it's all the greasy cooking the man-siz...

Decisions, decisions. My area congressman finally came around to making one on the health care legislation, and it was to vote with Boehner, Cantor, and Pence. I could see if there was some strong principle behind this choice - for example, the fact that the bill is flawed, that it gives too much to the insurance companies, that it doesn't have a strong public option, that it is not a single payer plan, etc. But his reasoning appears to be based solely on political calculus. He's reading the polling, and it's showing a large majority of his district turning against the bill. Now, this isn't too surprising, since the airwaves have been flooded with attack ads over the past month in particular, many sponsored by the national Chamber of Commerce (the folks who helped bring you our lack of a national health insurance plan in the first place). And, of course, they've stripped out some of the most popular aspects of the original plan in an attempt to please people who wou...

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...