Hammer Mill Days

Where did those scissors go? Right ... I'll just use my teeth then, shall I? What the hell. I hate the freaking holidays! Especially when they get this close. Christmas looks a lot better from a distance. Yes, my friends, you caught us in the middle of another Cheney Hammer Mill meltdown. They're becoming more frequent in this new era, I must admit. Still, I have cause - trying to wrap up another holiday extravaganza, and it's not going all that well, frankly. I've got a em-effin' cold, for one thing. What's the other thing? Huh ... Don't remember. I always forget shit like that when I have a cold. One thing I'm having trouble wrapping is this year's Christmas show. It's a little hard to voice these things without a voice. It's like playing sousaphone parts on a tambourine. So the choice is either, croak everyone a merry Christmas, or .... we'll have to cancel Christmas. There's nothing I can do - it's this weather. (Okay, now...

Looks like somebody won the war on Christmas - I'm just not sure who. Talk about pushing on an open door. Every year, from about Halloween on, we are inundated with Christmas messaging, pressing us to shop, shop, shop, borrow, borrow, borrow, and so on. If someone's been waging a war against this hyper consumerist Christian Saturnalia, they haven't been very obvious about it. The right, of course, likes to hang this phony "war" on the left, but what they describe as an attack on them is really just another component in their ongoing efforts to push their religion in all of our faces. It's like when they whine about the "liberal" media - just a slight variation on the thief who cries "Thief!" Well, now the "war on Christmas" crew has a prominent new spokes-moron: President-elect Donald Trump, who has made a point of pushing Christmas at all of his victory tour rallies across the country. You've probably seen it - big "M...

Man oh man. Put another log in the furnace, Anti-Lincoln. Drafty old barn of a place. Are you sure we weren't somehow transported overnight to one of those Kuiper Belt planetoids? I'm freezing my ass off in here. Oh, hi. Yes, we're in the midst of another cold snap here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. Our local gas an electric company discontinued service here years ago, as you might suspect. The hammer forge has been pretty quiet since the 1940s. You might think, well ... burn the furniture, right? Well, we did that YEARS ago. I'm sleeping on a mattress on the floor, and no, I'm not burning that. (We're always looking for kindling. After almost twenty winters of this, the mansized tuber is looking pretty nervous.) Okay, so we have to break the ice in the bathroom sink every morning - is that anything to complain about? We have a roof over our heads ... or most of a roof, anyway. More importantly, we have a floor beneath our feet. I say that because, if...

The Syrian meltdown is horrible to watch, and thanks to the fact that much of the killing is being done by official enemies of the United States, we are actually able to watch it. The Syrian regime is doing the only thing it knows how to do - killing and torturing those who oppose it. The Russians, too, have only one speed on their killing machines. Lebanese Hizbullah fighters are there to support the regime, just as the regime and the allied government of Iran was there to help them in their time of need - it's hard for me to blame them, frankly. But the true crime of Syria is that there are many players involved in this senseless war and their all pursuing their own agendas. The United States has had dogs in this fight for years, despite what you'll hear on bullshit broadcast outlets like Morning Joe . They have provided covert support to rebel groups in Syria since before the uprising, so there's little doubt that some of those fighters assumed - as Chalabi did with r...

I don't know, I'm thinking it's time. What do you think? Not sure? Okay. When do you think you'll have an answer? I don't know about you, but ... I'm thinking it's time. Okay, well ... I'll be frank with you. (Just call me "Frank" from now on.) We are grasping at straws here in Big Green land, now that our interstellar tour has been scuttled. And here it is, the holidays. We were thinking that we'd be traversing interstellar space when Christmas week came, but no dice. Trouble is, that was going to be our excuse for not getting anyone presents - sorry folks, we're headed to a big gig on planet KIC 8462852. No time to shop! Well, THAT'S out the window. Any other good ideas for cheapskates? Marvin (my personal robot assistant) humbly suggested we hand out signed copies of our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas , which appropriately follows a theme somewhat tangentially related to the holidays. Of course, we've resorted to th...

I suppose I may as well work the same furrow as the mainstream media does and talk about President Elect Trump's cabinet choices. It's a bit like drinking urine, but here goes. The list thus far seems custom designed to irritate centrists and liberals. That's only to be expected, right? People who didn't support Trump, people who said bad things about him, people who worked for his opponent - their attitude is, well, fuck those people. And since they have no philosophical commitment to making government work effectively, the vengeance factor is of greater relative importance than it might otherwise be. Still, it is pretty stunning to see them assemble such a wrecking crew. We knew that a Republican win would mean hitting the ground running in January, and it looks like that's going to be the case. So what the hell - Trump has hired three generals so far: Flynn, Mattis, and Kelly, in order of crazy (most to least). Mattis seems problematic in that one might pref...

Did you guys hear that sound last night? Maybe about 3 a.m., I don't know. It was raining like hell, I think - pounding on the windows like a freaking hammer. At least I think that's what it was. Either that or a ... a ... rocket lifting off ... Well, that last paragraph is a depiction of what I sounded like when it first dawned on me that our leased Plywood 9000 rocket was hijacked in the middle of the night. As some of you recall, just before Thanksgiving we were preparing for a brief tour of some lesser known planets that don't get a lot of respect, like KIC 8462852. That appears to have been, well, scuttled. And while the Plywood 9000 is not what you might call luxury transportation, it apparently was functional enough to be stolen. Who is the thief? Can't be 100% sure, but the fact that Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, has disappeared probably isn't a coincidence. I think he was getting a little tired of our antics, or lack of same - it's been w...