Hammer Mill Days

Electrodes to power, turbines to speed. Turn the key and .... nuts! Nothing again. Hey, Mitch - you're a mad scientist. Make yourself useful. Get this freaking car to run, willya? Oh, hi. Just working through the usual nonsense. Trying to get a car going. Working on a broken amp. Turning all the chairs in the house upside-down. (We do that to discourage visitors from staying too long.) There's never a lack of useful things to do, and lucky for us we have a lot of help. Mitch Macaphee, for one, can be counted upon to invent some new way of dealing with minor annoyances, like invasive insects or gravity. Ooops, did I say gravity? I wasn't supposed to mention that one. It's going to be a surprise. A BIG surprise. HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAA! Well, THAT took a dark turn. Anyway, aside from Mitch tinkering with ... uh ... continental drift, we have the able services of Marvin (my personal robot assistant) who can, among many other talents, life very heavy things. He picked up a who...

That was quite a convention, am I right? I'm just listening to what seems like the closing strains of Trump's acceptance speech, a veritable greatest hits reel of the more boring parts of his stump speeches. A lot more waving the bloody shirt, a full-throated exhortation of the new nativism, and a bizarre admixture of vague populist economic rhetoric (that is probably scaring the hell out of some in his own party) and core GOP positions on fossil fuels, school choice, military spending, etc. Over an hour at the podium and still going. Holy shit. I can't believe how badly they miffed that introductory video, though. An amazingly bad production, narrated by an ossified Jon Voight (last seen praising Giuliani), it seemed like a farce fit for John Oliver's show. I had to shake my head a few times - it was a jaw-droppingly lame attempt to make Trump's life resemble a Horatio Alger story, evidently written by someone in his inner circle, perhaps a family member. He real...

Did you feel that? No? Okay, check. How about that? Really. Right, then. Check again. Now let's try the pointed stick. You don't want to do it? Well, aren't you the sensitive one. Yes, we're back. I'm just interrogating Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to get some idea of the degree to which his primitive analog circuitry has the capability to emulate human emotions and mock the various senses we take for granted. So far, it's not going very well. His brass exterior seems impervious to brillo pads, water, even fire. Not sure about pointed sticks - that may be his Achilles' heal. (I guess I could wait until he's feigning sleep, then try it on his heel.) Why am I wasting my time in such a manner? Well, while I'm waiting for Matt to get here and start recording the next episode of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, I am consuming myself with summer projects, some of which I've blogged about over the past few weeks. Annoying Marvin is one, thoug...

No shortage of news this week, again. What the hell - is there something in the water? We just can't get through the week without some kind of disaster, and this time it was at least three kinds. First, another sickening attack in France. Horrendous loss of life, and from what seems obvious, almost completely avoidable. Forgive me, but is this what a state of emergency looks like in France? They know they are being targeted. When you have a mass attendance event like Bastille Day, and a huge crowd on an ocean-side boulevard, you need more than a few cops minding the traffic. Holland is extending the state of emergency, of course (you can see how well it works at keeping them safe) and will probably double down on their attacks in both Syria and Iraq. And the perpetrator? A Tunisian-born French citizen who thought it appropriate not only to kill people at random but to throw millions of French North Africans under the bus as well in the land of Le Pen. Nice freaking work. Second...

A little higher. Little more. That's it. Right, now ... slowly lower the winch. That's got it. Okay, a little too fast. Too fast. I said TOO FAST! Oh, Jesus. Right ... order another banner. No wonder I never get anything done. Oh, hello. Forgive me if I always seem surprised when you come along. I'm inclined to forget about the blogging version of the "fourth wall" and the fact that others can see what the hell I'm doing (or not doing). Today you've caught me and Marvin (my personal robot assistant) in the midst of constructing Big Green's new YouTube Channel , hot off the presses. You see, for the longest time we've been pointing our listeners/readers/browsers, whatever, to my personal YouTube channel, which has over the last few years become choked with political content, obscure linguistics and philosophy of mind lectures, comedic bullshit, and so on. It finally dawned on my dim little brain that the band needed its own space for video content...

Another one of those weeks when it's hard to know what to focus on. So many disasters and revelations in such a short time, I'm guessing that many of the media folks who took this week off (and you all know who you are) are chomping at the bit to get back. I, for one, am disgusted by what's happened this week, and frankly I can't find anything positive to say about it. It was a week that started with the obscene bombing in Baghdad, the death toll for which has exceeded 250. As has long been the case, this provoked some small response in American culture because of the magnitude of the crime, but the degree of "hair-on-fire" apoplexy about terrorism has been relatively minimal due to the cultural distance between Iraq and the United States. As these attacks move closer culturally to the U.S., our politicians get more worked up. Forget this export we call "freedom" - that bombing is our gift to the Iraqi people and it just keeps on giving. Decisio...

Damn it. Misplaced my breakfast again. Third time this morning. I definitely need more sleep. If anybody trips over some cold toast and a half-empty mug of tea, drop me a line. We keep odd hours here in the cohort of collectivists known as Big Green. Matt, the naturalist in the group, is up at all hours chasing after critters, feeding them, changing their diapers, keeping them safe from the elements. That's a slight exaggeration, but only slight - the guy is attempting to single-handedly make up for all of the injustices meted out by god and man. Kind of time-consuming. Me? I am the unnaturalist in the group. When I am outside, I think to myself ... "This is too strange for us, Hanar. We are creatures of outer space. We long for the comforting closeness of walls." Okay, if I'm paraphrasing classic Star Trek, I must be a little groggy. (Too much grog, perhaps.) I'm up late at night in the lab, sometimes. Did I say lab? I meant studio. Cranking up the keyboard, ...