Hammer Mill Days

Let the eagle soar! Higher than it's ever flown before! From sandy beach to rocky shore ... let the mighty eagle soar! Oh, hello. Didn't know you were there. I was finishing up my morning shower just then. Why am I singing John Ashcroft's signature composition? Well, you know how they tell you that the best way to ensure proper hand washing is to sing "Happy Birthday" while you're doing it? Well, I thought I needed a song to sing while I wash my ass. And that was the first song that sprang to mind. Just thought I'd share that. (Hiya, Mr. Attorney General!) So what have we been up to lately? Well, bits and bobs. You know the drill. Everybody's got their onerous responsibilities to discharge, and Big Green is certainly no exception. Brother Matt has been up to his eyeballs in animal related work, of course. I have been toiling away at my nine-to-five, pulling what's left of my not-yet-gray hair out. (In bunches.) We've got a lot of parts to p...

I'm going to light on a couple of issues this week. One is a certain loudmouth real estate developer / reality television start that has been in the news a lot lately. The other is a bunch of poorly acted television ads that had me scratching my head over the last week. First, Trump. As someone who was once a contract employee of this individual (yes, he can say that I too took money from him at some point), I know this guy is more than just a cartoon show for our amusement. What he says and does can have real consequences for people who don't ride in limos and private jets. So when he talks about forcing 11 million people to leave the country, understand that he is articulating a point of view that is held by a very vocal, substantial minority of Americans. There's nothing 'silent' about this 'majority'. They want ethnic cleansing. Consider it for a moment. What would removing 11 million undocumented immigrants look like? It would involve massive police...

You may say I've got a lot to learn. Seems like this is the perfect spot to learn. No, I'm NOT playing Vegas ... not yet, anyway. (Though I did spend a summer in Reno once. Long story, which I'll spare you.) Raining like hell here at the Cheney Hammer Mill. Wish we had invested in that new roof a few years back, when we were overflowing with Neptunian shekels from our last interstellar tour. Those were the days .... NOT. Yeah, the water is coming in like ... well ... water from the sky. The mansized tuber is loving it. Not Marvin (my personal robot assistant), though. His brass finish is getting tarnished in the humid summer weather we get up here in upstate New York, and this is certainly not doing it any good. (Kind of vain, actually, that robot. I think he sees himself as a Tyrone Power lookalike. He needs to download some newer movies.) Over the last few weeks the humidity has been rising. Our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee, inventor of Marvin, insists that it i...

Pressed again this week, so I'm going to comment briefly on a few topics. Stop me if I get ahead of myself. Eliminate the middleman. I guess it's official: Donald Trump is a phenomenon. Of course, in a field of seventeen candidates, all you need for first-tier status is to poll in the double digits. It's not surprising that a quarter of the Republican activist electorate find his brand of arrogant, reality-star crackpotism attractive. He does make one valid point, I will admit - he doesn't need another billionaire to bankroll him, unlike his 16 rivals. That's because he's his own billionaire. So that's his competitive advantage, right? No middleman necessary. Let the rich rule directly. Let's hear it for feudalism! Submit yourself to the will of the landlord! Schumer's gambit. Senator Schumer has defended his decision to oppose the nuclear deal with Iran by suggesting that a deal more favorable to the U.S. and Israel can be forced through ext...

Okay, so we posted a cheap-ass podcast for July. So sue me. Go hire Mr. Simon's lawyer and sue me. Things went all pair-shaped this summer, what can I tell you? The fact is, we did produce a new episode of Ned Trek. I wrote the script, with Matt's able help, we voiced it, and Matt finished editing it ... and then his computer blew up. So he's reconstructing it, in between the fifteen thousand other things he's responsible for. And it has taken longer than anticipated, right? You know the drill. Even more galling in a way is the fact that this was one of our musical episodes, which means that we produced no less than 6 original songs for the sucker. A lot of production for an episode that never got posted. Still ... it will go up, eventually. Just wait and see. (Or hear.) Anyway, we thought we'd take this opportunity to re-run one of our favorite Ned Trek episodes, called The Wrath of Carl, in which Carl Sagan decimates the Free Enterprise crew through the awesom...

Doing something a little unusual this week. I'm going to consider watching the first G.O.P. debate, hosted by Fox News in Ohio. Granted, this will be a partial forum, leaving out seven of the magnificent seventeen. Amazing that the also-rans in this particular event almost outnumber the entire Republican field in 2012. This crowded clown car is such a stunning illustration of the extent to which the national Republican Party has lost control of their own electoral process. Either that or they have completely lost their minds. There was a day when the party could take someone aside and say, "No, no. Not this time. Next time, maybe," and the ambitious pol would refrain from competing. Now the process is being driven from the outside; it's being pushed by talk radio, conservative bloggers, and Fox News, as well as foundation-funded think tanks and 401(c)3's and 4's. If I were a Republican, I would be disgusted by this lack of discipline. There is no way to fost...

They say that Pluto is a big surprise. That may be true for most people, even rocket scientists, but not for the interstellar collective known as Big Green. Ha, ha! I mean, that stuff about surface features suggesting frozen bodies of methane - um, we knew that. What the hell, you don't even have to GO to Pluto to know that much. All you need is Mitch Macaphee's trans-dimensional light-enhancement planetometer. He showed me the gizmo just this past weekend. It looks strangely like that old oscillator we picked up at a garage sale. I guess he probably hollowed it out and filled it with some of that mad science technology. Now it flashes on and off like a ... uh ... like a flashy thing. Well, Mitch can tell a lot about distant, frozen planets just by looking at those little lights go on and off. When I tell him about NASA's revelations, he just rolls his eyes, then mouths the word "NASA" while he makes a face. I know, you probably think he's still sore over...