Hammer Mill Days

Aren't you sick of the Gregorian calendar? I'm thinking we should start calculating time on the basis of how long we've been blogging. So hell ... call this Year 17. Happy 17! Four more years and we can drink in front of our parents! (Four years of what we've got coming, and I suspect we will need to.) I know you're all wondering what we've got planned for the new year. I know this because I can read your mind like a billboard. Just call me Kreskin. Or Criswell. Whichever works ... just be sure to preface it with "THE AMAZING ... " or I'll have to bring my $3.95 magic set back to the toy store, top hat and all. (Some Christmas THIS turned out to be!) Anyway, as I said, I'm sure you're wondering, and if you are, well, you're not alone, because we're wondering what the hell Big Green is going to do this year, too. Maybe call a contractor to fix the leaky windows in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. (Question: Is a large, jagged hol...

So this week we were treated to Son of Cliven Bundy (Ammon) bringing his band of brothers up to Oregon to take a stand for freedom. The freedom, that is, to use public land as if it belongs to you and no one else. What these "patriots" are taking issue with is the jailing of these Oregonian ranchers who set fires on federal land, once to clear brush, the other time apparently to hide evidence of poaching. They were sent to jail on a relatively light sentence, released, and then ordered to return on the basis of a mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years for federal arson, the latter decision handed down by a higher court. Bundy the younger and his comrades apparently see this as the next chapter in the titanic struggle that began at old man Cliven's ranch, when the Feds impounded his cattle until he coughed up the $1million or more he owed the People of the United States for use of their (a.k.a. our) land. So they holed up in the office of a federal bird sanctuary, toting ...

Back to Earth with us, in a manner of speaking. Gravity always brings you home, right? Stupid ass gravity! Oh, well ... where would we be without it? (In space, perhaps.) While we were away on our interstellar trip to nowhere-ville, we dropped another THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast - our annual Holiday Extravaganza, as it were. (And it were ... oh, it were!) If you've listened to it already, then you are among the few who truly understand Christmas cheer, let alone Christmas pride, Christmas joy, and all those other seasonal soap products. (We were sponsored by P&G this year. The really took a gamble!) Anywho, without any further ado, here's what's inside the Holiday podcast: Ned Trek 26: A Very Neddy Christmas. The Ned Trek crew re-enacts Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol with a more modern sensibility. Unprecedented? Certainly not. Nor is it un-presidented. It in fact features cameos by no less than two ex presidents and probably at least one future president....

Here we go headlong into 2016. It feels as if we've already had the year, since pop culture obsesses over the horse-race aspect of elections even if it rarely delves into the substance of what's at issue. Truth be told, the talk shows have been talking about 2016 since 2012, the day after election day. Evidently, it's an eyeball magnet for them, so they'll never stop talking about it, particularly now that we've entered the age of Trump. Good television will always trump (no pun intended) good politics, hands down. So, what are the substantive issues that we should be grappling with in this election year? Same ones as in practically every other year, and you can name them as credibly as I can. Here's my list: Capitalism's Failure. This is an issue that touches on everyone, young and old, working and unemployed or retired, poor and not-so-poor. The internal contradictions of American and, by extension, global capitalism came to a head in the crash of 200...

Think of this as a slow-motion commentary on the Republican debate from last week. None of this is particularly in-depth, but I think it's worth raising a few points about certain participants. Lindsey loves Georgie. At the kid's table, Lindsey Graham got a little carried away over his bro-mance with ex-president and hopefully future convicted war criminal George W. Bush, saying in essence that he misses W and wishes he were still in office to handle the big-as-the-sky threat known as ISIS, which Lindsey previously said wants to "kill us all!!" Not hard to work out why Senator Graham's poll numbers, even in a highly reactionary GOP primary race, hover somewhere between zero and zero point five. Not a majority position. War of the Cubans. Whoa - someone waved a red rag between Senators Cruz and Rubio. Either that or somebody called somebody else's mommy a commie. Fascinating how the supposedly "establishment" candidate Rubio is working hard to o...

  Big Green disintegrates into uncontrollable celebratory joy with a special edition of Ned Trek: A Very Neddy Christmas, four new recordings, and crackhead conversation. Fa-la-freaking-la.   This is Big Green - December 2015. Features: 1) Ned Trek 26: A Very Neddy Christmas, loosely based on Dicken's A Christmas Carol; 2) Song: Christmas Past, by Big Green; 3) Song: McBridy, by Big Green; 4) Song: Romney in Reserve; 5) Song: 40s Guy Christmas; 6) Put the Phone Down: Everything is Peachy Fine (song for George Washington Carver); 7) Corn in my hands; 8. The Beavers' Christmas Tree; 9) Smiling Jack Washington; 10) Cruz vs Rubio: the relative merits; 11) Secretary of State Keema; 12) We'll have to cancel Christmas; 13) Talking entirely in quotes; 14) Time for us to go. Podcast Page >

Not a lot to say this week. Been kind of busy. Don't know where to start. Stopped using personal nominative pronouns. Don't know why. Yeah, it was a week spent in hospitals, rehab centers, etc., etc. - suffice to say that there were no terrible outcomes, but it was an engrossing and exhausting experience, nonetheless. I hope to be posting the holiday episode of our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN in the coming days, though I did get derailed this week, I will admit. We had a few mixes left to do, but Matt and I did them tonight and recorded the pointless voice track for the podcast, so .... it could happen. Miracles do happen. Anyway, keep your eyes open and leave some room in the stocking. Something tells me there'll be a podcast episode with your name on it dropping down the chimney. Or something. (I'll probably do a political rant as well, just because they're pissing me off so much lately.) More later, people.