Hammer Mill Days

Hmmm. I thought Mitch was looking a little depressed. Are you sure that's the reason? Wow. Who knew? Oh, hi. Christ on a bike, sometimes living in this abandoned hammer mill is like working in a clinic for the chronically depressed. What a bunch of moody Melvins! Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been giving us all the silent treatment for about a week. My brother keeps saying he needs a charge-up, but that's just making apologies for the fucker. (Stop defending him!) Every time there's a new episode of "Mercy Street", old Anti-Lincoln goes all pear-shaped, starts drinking and cursing at us like we're General Grant or General Sherman (with our inimitable bow-ties snapping). Insufferable. And then there's Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser. Though to be fair, his depression is usually rooted in mad science. Anyway, his smile turned upside-down earlier this week, and we had to start rooting around for the cause. (You don't want to allow M...

There are a lot of things to write about this week, to be sure, but I just wanted to get something down about Bowe Bergdahl and the political shit storm that erupted around his disappearance and release from his imprisonment by the Haqqani Taliban network. This is prompted in part by the current season of the Serial podcast , which is focusing on Bergdahl's case, but also by the fact that Republicans - and particularly Donald Trump - regularly hold this guy up as emblematic of everything that's wrong with America. (On this they appear to be in agreement with the Haqqanis.) I won't run through the particulars of the story. For that, I suggest you listen to the podcast. Suffice to say that Bergdahl suffered grievously over his five years as a guest of the Taliban. He attempted to escape several times, once for as long as nine days, escaping barefoot into the Hindu Kush, injuring himself severely, eating grass, etc. He was beaten badly, cut with razors, kept in a cage not fi...

What the hell. Did I get that wrong, too? Jesus Christ on a bike. Just make a freaking list, okay. And no, I'm not making a special effort to be polite today - that's just the way I talk ... every day. Oh, hello. Didn't know you were reading what I appear to be typing in my sleep. Yes, just spending a day exploring my human failings, which appear to be depressingly similar to those of other humans. No, I didn't think of myself as somehow elevated above the herd. It's just that I can SEE all of them, whereas I can't see MY ass unless I'm looking in a mirror. And there are no unbroken mirrors in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. (That should come as no surprise.) What was I "effing up", as they say? Well ... a couple of things. Last night I left Trevor James Constable's orgone generating machine running at full tilt. Mitch Macaphee says it came up as a blip on his stellar infrarometer, whatever the hell that is. I apparently created an anom...

Lots going on this week, so I'll comment on a few random things. Stop me if it gets confusing. Cuba vs. Cuba. The spectacle of Cruz and Rubio spouting anti-immigration rhetoric in a kind of xenophobic pissing match is hypocritical beyond belief. Here are two examples of the offspring of Cuban exiles, their parents having arrived in the United States under the extremely preferential terms that have been in effect for Cuban immigrants since the early 1960s, an experience nothing like what immigrants from other Central American nations have to deal with. When you leave revolutionary Cuba and go to the U.S., you have a golden ticket. You're practically guaranteed a green card and a place in the exile community. Compare that with what you face when you run here escaping the drug gangs in El Salvador - a cell in an outsourced cinder-block detention facility and an eventual boot out the door. The Cuban exile policy is the perfect illustration of what these GOP pols complain about...

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....