Hammer Mill Days

Not running again, eh? Try knocking it upside the head again. Harder. HARDER! Oh, wait ... you knocked its head off. That's probably too hard. Oh well.... Hey, welcome to the house of Big Green - that abandoned hammer mill we call home, because all of the groups live together. Just trying to get down to recording some new material, old material ... whatever! If we can just get our technology to work for five minutes. (Actually, three and a half minutes would do, since this is pop music.) Seriously, we've got some old gear, folks. It's almost as old as our asses. I'm not even talking tape recorders .... I'm talking wire recorders. I'm talking those wax record cutting machines they used when John-boy was being interviewed by a radio station on The Waltons after he got swindled by the vanity press dude. (Oh, you thought I forgot, didn't you? Mr. TV Swindler!) Ahem. Anyhow, we really are running on three cylinders down in Big Green's clubhouse recordin...

Another turn at the fire hose. Man, this is kind of dizzying. We've just seen a week in which the President has essentially undone the clean power plant rules, scuttled the Paris Accords on climate change, approved the Keystone XL pipeline project, and escalated his attacks on undocumented residents and on the poor miserable souls in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen who cope with our bombs on a daily basis. I could write five posts, but that would take the rest of human history, so suffice with this sorry tirade on foreign policy. I didn't want to let the week go by without saying something about the hundred-plus killed in a coalition raid in Mosul. Civilian deaths have been on the rise in that conflict since our military began its air assault on the more densely populated western side of Mosul. Well, that's predictable enough. We are fighting the legacy of the previous decade's catastrophic policy, which was itself a response to another previous decade's catastrophic polic...

Got this song running through my head. It's one of Matt's from some time ago. I get that a lot, actually. Our entertainment center hasn't worked in ages, so when we're not playing I have to rely upon the jukebox in my mind for my entertainment. And just now it's playing Big Green circa 1989, maybe. Couple weeks ago. The lyric goes like this: Thought we were madly in love but we were just plain mad I always thought we were in love But we were mad, just mad Under a Gothic sky we heard an ancient choir In an amphitheater we compiled notes and prayed aloud We held our breath and heard the voice of uncommon sense We dropped our eyes and saw the floor mosaic move We were in need of uncommon sense We met the face of foolishness In the torrential rain we still open the mail We still shake the pieces Still building boats unsafe to sail We were badly in need of some uncommon law We were sadly in need of some corrective lens We were in need of unc...

I'm undecided as to whether this is a great time to be a political writer or an abysmal one. There is so much going on every day of this new presidential administration, it's enough to fill a months worth of posts. It's hard not to return to the "drinking from a fire hose" cliche, frankly. Even so, I'll take a whack at some of what happened this week in my wobbly, amateurish way and we'll see where we end up. Russia and Germany. Trump's visit with German Chancellor Angela Merkel was odd and awkward. She had that kind of hostage video look, sitting there with Herr Mr. Hair, asking for a handshake and being rebuffed by the new leader of the "free" world. If she isn't uneasy about this president, I don't know what it would take; just listening to the press conference exchanges between Trump and the German press is enough to convince anyone that the man needs professional help. And the rebuff over the handshake will only feed the notio...

Yeah, it's up there. How can I tell? I just look out the window, dude. I look out and I see exactly nothing. That's how you know it's Snowmageddon. Simple, right? Trouble is ... I'm on the third floor. Yeah, the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill (our squat house) was buried in snow this past Tuesday night, and Mitch is responsible. I know it seems like I blame everything on our mad science advisor, but that's only because he's behind everything that happens, at least in some measure. Like that full moon we had last week. Did you see it? It was kind of ghostly, like the clouds had wrapped around it, but you could still see the full disc. Mitch's part in that? Not certain, but my guess is that he was working the cloud machine that night. (He should really be advising a 1970s arena rock band, but I digress.) The sad thing is that his cloud invention could be a boon to mankind and animal kind alike ... if he would only use it for good instead of evil. That's ...

I think Sam Seder on the Majority Repor t said it best this week: the core of what the Republicans are doing is not policy, it's ideology. It's obvious every time they open their mouths. The policies they are advancing can only be seen as efforts to implement their extremist ideas, regardless of how negatively they affect large swaths of the population. They try to hide behind bogus concern for the well-being and "freedom" of ordinary people and "businesses", but that's a thin disguise. Listen to them talk for more than thirty seconds and the real agenda comes through, loud and clear. Take Speaker Ryan (please). He seems dedicated to souring people on the very idea of insurance. Ryan repeats the claim that 1% of the insured incur 23% of the costs of coverage. Even if his numbers are correct, isn't that what insurance is supposed to do? The system is based on the notion that everyone doesn't typically get sick at the same time - everybody pays i...

Ridiculous. It's the 21st Century and we're still moving about like gorillas, feet peddling the ground in a manner similar to our shrew-like remote ancestors. Mitch: get working on that little problem, will you? There's a good chap. What's that? Ummmm ... I believe that would be a physical impossibility. Got any other suggestions? Like many of his frothy colleagues, our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee doesn't take direction real well. I've rambled on more than a few times in this blog about how sensitive he is, so I probably shouldn't bait him with idle requests about revolutionizing human locomotion or swapping meiosis with mitosis. The man's busy, god damn it! He cranks out inventions like brother Matt puts out songs. And when I say "like", I don't mean exactly like it. Mitch's battles are fought in the laboratory, not the prize ring ... I mean, not the wildlife sanctuary. But I digress. I don't know how my mind gets stuck...