Hammer Mill Days

I wish to hell this thing had an emergency call box in it. Or head cushions - that would be nice. Not to mention some kind of shock absorbing device on the bottom. Am I being to engineer-y? Sorry. Well, our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee has unveiled his concept gondola. He's calling it the "Giardiniera Twelve", but it beats the hell out of me why. I think that's what he had for lunch last Thursday. He's got some kind of naming system going, that's all I know. In any case, it's kind of a cramped little thing, taller than it is wide, cylindrical, made of some unnamed shiny metal that I will refer to as inobtanium. In all frankness, it kind of looks like an air drop bomb of some kind, without the tail fins. Coincidence? Anyhow, there's a pocket door on one side. The idea is that you climb into this thing, you lower it down the hole, and when you line up with some interesting subterranean stratum, the door slides open and you step out to take a lo...

As I begin to write this, I am hearing a TV commentator quoting David Brooks in writing that Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner is someone worthy "of some sympathy." You read that correctly - the impossibly wealthy protege of our phony-ass billionaire president, a man with zero qualifications or apparent ability to perform even one of the many portfolios handed to him over the past few months ... that man is worthy of sympathy. THAT'S the kind of week this has been. Nevertheless, I am not going to grab the low-hanging fruit of writing about the Trumpster fire, even though the fucker pulled out of the Paris Accords this week. I'll deal with his ass next time around. Talk about ungrateful. I heard a story this week on NPR about a loan the government of Cambodia owes to the United States, in the amount of about $500 million. There were a couple of remarkable points about this story. For one, the piece actually acknowledges that some scholars think the massive bomb...

I'm still not sure this is a good idea. The memory of the last time we tried this still haunts me. And that Morlock with the sandals never answers my postcards. And yes, I've been dropping them down the hole. Jesus! Okay, so someone, I won't say who (Mitch), thought it would be a great idea to do a second subterranean tour, since we now have the equivalent of a superhighway to the chewy nougat center of the Earth. Mitch plans to fashion some kind of urban gondola (very popular in small post-industrial cities these days) that will allow us to treat the mega-hole in our floor like a kind of futuristic cargo elevator. I don't remember where I heard this, but it seems like this mode of transportation might be problematic, to say the least, particularly when you're dealing with magma and other natural hazards. Mitch isn't worried, of course. In his world, there's a mad scientific fix for everything. That must be a nice feeling. When stuff goes wrong for the r...

Trump was on the road this week, touching base with traditional allies, shaking his fist at traditional foes, making occasional awkward statements and non-sequiturs but generally doing what is expected of him as official high protector of the empire. Amazing how quickly even a low-intelligence loose cannon like "The Donald" will snap into place when there are longstanding economic and imperial ties in play. Much as he criticized Saudi Arabia during the primary campaign and even the general election, it was all smiles and bows and the dangling of manly swords when he arrived in Riyadh, not to mention threats against Iran and its embattled Shi'a allies in Lebanon, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere. Then there's the humongous arms sale, allowing Saudi to continue the bloody Yemen adventure that Trump will not mention but can't stop funding with U.S. taxpayer dollars. (My money's being used inappropriately. Someone call Mick Mulvaney!) I have to think that ...

This place is a freaking mess. No, we still don't have garbage collection. You have to pay taxes to get that, Mitch, and we're off the grid - remember? Guess this lot will have to go down the tunnel to the center of the Earth. It's like having the world's biggest trash incinerator. Oh, hi. As you can see, we are making the kind of obvious mistake that protagonists in science fiction movies make all the time - abusing mother nature just to solve some petty human problem, namely, generating too much trash. That goes on for the first couple of reels, then some ungodly creature emerges from the bowels of the Earth and goes on a murderous rampage stopped only by some unexpected intervention by germs or gravity or something - a turnaround that redeems the value of nature in the eyes of middle class moviegoers. Yeah, well ... we are asking for that. The fact is, once there's a hole in the floor, you have an almost unstoppable urge just to keep dropping things into it. ...

It is astonishing to see how astonished people are at the President's last couple of weeks. Reality check: we elected Donald Trump President of the United States. That's why this administration is unloading like a clown car at a funeral. There's no other way for me to put this: the man is a hyper-narcissistic dolt with the emotional maturity of a 7-year-old. He is temperamentally unfit for this or any political office. He has not even a vague understanding of the structure or traditions of our constitutional system, and has no interest in learning. Verily, he has little interest in anything other than large piles of money. When he told the Russian ambassador about the intel on ISIS , that was probably the first time that information had offered any utility from his perspective - he could use it to impress someone, at least. Otherwise, he has no interest in intelligence briefings and confines himself to a single page of bulleted items that he proceeds to ignore. So, what ...

Well, if we needed storage space, it would be a good thing. Honest, Abe - where are you going to find enough junk to make it worthwhile? We can't even afford shoes, for chrissake. Oh, hi. Yeah, I've been having a little conversation with Antimatter Lincoln about an idea he cooked up this week. Let me see if I can explain. With the help of Mitch Macaphee's Particle Beam Generator™, we now have a tunnel to the center of the Earth in our basement. The downside of that, of course, is that it has the potential to act as a volcanic vent, sending an ocean of magma up from the planet's chewy center and wreaking havoc on our entire community. (Also, it tends to whistle as the world turns.) What's the upside of having Earth's biggest hole? We're still working on that. Antimatter Lincoln piped up with a suggestion that we put shelving units around the walls of the hole and use it to store nick knacks, junk, souvenirs, and sporting trophies. Capital idea, except tha...