Hammer Mill Days

Hey, what can I tell you? I didn't intend to piss him off, guys. Not my intention at all. Nor was it my intention to destroy the planet Jupiter. Furthest thing from my mind. Oh, hi. Just caught me in the middle of a little band meeting. (Bret? Here . Jermaine? Here . Murray? Here .) I'm being raked over the coals by my fellow Big Green members and our various hangers on - Mitch Macaphee (our mad science adviser), Lincoln, anti-Lincoln, Marvin (my personal robot assistant), the man-sized tuber... even Big Zamboola has chimed in. What's the "issue", as they say? Oh, hell... it's about our perennial sit-in guitarist from the planet Zenon, sFshzenKlyrn . He's been a house guest here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill for the past week or so. That is to say, he was our guest, up until he departed yesterday in a bit of a Zenite huff. (How do I know? His radioactive vapor trail was tinged orange around the edges. Sure sign.) So, why the hurried departure? Was ...

Now, I try not to rant too hard on Krauthammer, but he's leaving me no choice. A couple of weeks ago it was the oil spill in the Gulf. That was the fault of environmentalists, by the way. (You didn't know there were environmentalists working at B.P. or in the Minerals Management Service, did you?) Krauthammer's argument on that score was essentially, shit happens - oil drilling is risky, get used to it. Moreover, those pesky greens made the government prohibit "safe" drilling on land and in remote places like the Alaska Wildlife Reserve, forcing those poor oil companies far out to sea and into deep water drilling in the Gulf. They couldn't help it - the greens made them do it! How else are they going to make piles of money other than by weaseling their way around our porous minerals management regulations and knowingly putting the entire southern coastline of the United States at risk? Oh, the awesome power of environmentalists! How the government and the o...

Turn it on, the fan. The BIG fan. Broken? Okay, then turn it on, the smaller fan. No smaller fan? What the hell. Right. Then just turn it on, the radio. Another hot one here at the Cheney Hammer Mill. Global warming at work, no doubt. Whatever the cause, it's sweltering in here. I spent the morning hanging my head into the primitive air shaft at the center of this unused pile of industrial masonry - it seemed strangely airless. That's why I'm asking Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to break out the fans. It's times like this when any performer turns to his/her biggest fans. (Boom-crash!) How are ya, how are ya, how are ya! Anybody from Detroit in the audience tonight? Anybody? You in the back? There you are. Gotta' love the motor city! Ooops. Heat prostration briefly turned me into a Borscht Belt comedian. (Shecky Green, perhaps.) Must be incoherent thinking that Marvin would help me out, considering how I failed him last week during the inaugural performance of...

Just a few random thoughts in the wake of this grim Memorial Day week, with many young people still staked out in harm's way in Afghanistan and Iraq. I'll start with the way our public figures memorialize dead servicepeople. They employ verbal false limbs, as Orwell called them, that are almost as autonomic as that ubiquitous closing remark Reagan added to every succeeding president's speech - "God bless you, and God bless the United States of America". But embedded in these solemn pronouncements, mouthed in large part by people who have never heard a shot fired in anger, are implicit endorsements of some very bad policy. Politicians of both parties have a sickening tendency to hide the moral bankruptcy of their foreign adventures behind praise for the valor of those who carry them out. Conversely, any attack on the policy is treated by them as an attack on the troops. Such obfuscation is more effective with today's all-volunteer military, but back when the dr...

Want the mic a little higher? Okay.... that's the works. Too short still? Let me put it on a milk crate. There - how about now? STILL too short? Ooooooooohhhh! If it sounds like I've been reduced in rank to roadie status, that's because it's true. Just call me Spike or Lenny - you know, one of those roadie names. I've considered investing in a carton of muscle shirts, but I don't have any muscles, so... what's the point, right? (How do I lift those heavy bass cabinets? Tendons only, my friend.) There are worse things to do for a living, only up to now I haven't had to do any of them, so... this is rock bottom. The things we do for friends! And by "friends" I mean robot friends. As I mentioned last week, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has mustered a small army of robots to do his bidding. He started with a landscaping enterprise, but found that putting lawn mowers in the hands of automatons is kind of a bad idea. (They tend to be a bit mo...

Now hear this - this is a four-star freaking disaster. We need Superman... or Aquaman, perhaps. It is possible - just possible - that by the time I post this screed, the "top kill" method BP cooked up out of last-minute desperation (to save their skins) will have stopped the oilcano. It is also possible that it will have done nothing. In the mean time, millions upon millions of gallons of oil sludge and other chemicals (including dispersants) are sloshing about the Gulf, invading wet lands, fouling beaches, destroying underwater biosystems, and otherwise making life impossible for people and other creatures along the Gulf coast. It's clear that the environmental consequences of this spill will be with us for a good many years. It's also clear that this spill was the result of negligence in the extreme; of greed carried to a fatal crescendo. BP and its hirelings were in a tremendous hurry and cut corners drastically. Combine that with the obvious fact that these people...

It's not just the noise, man. It's just a stupid thing to do. For one thing, we don't HAVE a lawn. For another, it's three o'clock in the freaking morning! Oh, hi. Sorry... I was reading Marvin (my personal robot assistant) the riot act. Not that he needs to be reminded of its contents - It's been posted on a spike inside his memory banks for a good many years now. Nevertheless, I felt he needed reminding because he's been unusually disruptive of late. Sure, there have been times when Marvin's programming has gone south or when he's unduly under the influence of nefarious telemetry from alien planets (don't think it doesn't happen, because it does!). Only recently he's been trying his hand (or robotic claw, more properly speaking) at a number of different small enterprises, hoping to make a marginal living in these hard times. (What exactly he needs money for, I don't know. Perhaps some kind of automatonic inebriants.) I don't kno...