Hammer Mill Days

Where the hell is that thing. It looks like, I don't know ... a futuristic space gun, or someone's concept of what a 1980s weapon would look like back in 1953. Yeah, that's the ticket. Oh, hi. Just digging out the old technology here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, which (oddly enough) appears to contain every object I have ever owned and then some. It's like that house you keep returning to in your dreams - you know ... the one that looks kind of like the house you grew up in but that has a whole extra wing built onto one side that you never knew existed. You've been there, right? Or is that just me? I think it must be me. (I've been answering that very same question for decades now.) Okay, so today, I asked Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to dig up my old demagnetizer. It's a plastic thing that looks like a cross between an electric iron and a glue gun, and it's used to service the heads on analog tape recorders, which tend to get magneti...

Three big Supreme Court decisions this week, all stemming from one big electoral decision we all made two years ago. If one were to make the point that elections have consequences, one could hardly do it more effectively than by offering these disastrous judicial outcomes as evidence. For the life of me, I will never understand why Americans on the left side of the political spectrum do not consider the makeup of the Supreme Court (and the federal judiciary more broadly) as a voting issue of primary importance. I may be thinking about a lot of things when I mark that ballot, but no single item more than that of who will be deciding these cases for the next 30 years. This fact is about to be brought home to us all in a far more profound way: Justice Kennedy has announced that he will retire at the end of next month, and I have no doubt that Trump and McConnell will ram a nominee through the confirmation process faster than anyone can imagine. That will lock in a 5-4 reactionary majori...

Are two wells better than one? Depends on how thirsty you are. Oh ... you're talking about CASSETTE recorders. Right, well ... I have no position on that. No, wait ... play one tape at a time, that's my position. The Joe has spoken! Caught me in the middle of a little philosophical discussion with one of Big Green's longest standing advisors, Antimatter Lincoln (or Anti-Lincoln, for short). Why he's been standing so long, I don't know. I think it's because when he was a kid he saw the audio animatronic Lincoln try to sit down and fall on his robot ass. (The other presidents assembled on stage nodded approvingly as the techs carried Abe away.) In any case, we're hashing over the fine points of obsolete technologies, particularly in the audio sphere. (Hey ... there's a band name for you. Audiosphere. No? Okay, then.) My little summertime project is well underway. As I mentioned some time back, I have set myself to building a digital archive of most if ...

It took more than a week of growing pressure, but it appears Trump has blinked on the policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S. border. That hasn't stopped them from using these people as hostages in an effort to pass draconian revisions to the country's immigration laws. More than 2,300 minors, including many under 5 years old, remain in detention facilities across the country, under separate administrative jurisdiction than the entities that are holding their immigrant parents. Very little has changed, in effect, for these families that have been dismembered by this bigoted administration, acting out the fever-dreams of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions and would-be school shooter Steven Miller (a.k.a. worst speechwriter in the history of the profession) in an effort to seem "tough" on those dark foreigners their constituents love to hate. As reported by Chris Hayes and commented on by the folks at The Majority Report , more than 90% of the adults w...

The Show So Far: First there were two guys talking, then we saw some cartoons, then a fully dressed naval officer jumped into the North Sea, then there were more cartoons, then some guy told us about what happened so far, then .... Oh, wait ... that was another show. Sorry. As some of you may have noticed, we dropped the June 2018 installment of our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN , which breaks a kind of long hiatus. Still, it's 2-½ hours of stuff, including eight new songs, so hey ... that took some time. We may reside in a hammer mill, but we're not running a factory here, man. Unless you count the robots Mitch Macaphee plugs together in the basement. (He's considering establishing an assembly line. Not sure where that's going, exactly.) Anywho, if you haven't listened to it yet, here's what to expect: Ned Trek 37 - Return to The Carl. This ludicrous musical episode of our Star Trek parody Ned Trek is based on the classic Trek episode entitled Return to Tomo...

Trump finally did something constructive - met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un - and the chorus of protest is deafening. I'm not a deep-state conspiracy theorist, but that broad consensus around our imperial foreign policy does not look favorably upon this development. Readers of this blog may recall that I have occasionally wondered aloud (or in html text) whether there are deeper motivations behind this 70-year-old war that never ends. The U.S. relationship with South Korea is one part alliance and perhaps two parts lord/serf. That second component became more evident when Trump announced that there would be no more "war games" - just the use of that term alone exploded heads throughout the talk-show tele-verse. As Bruce Cumings and others have pointed out for many years, the South Korean military is essentially under the command of U.S. generals. That is, in the event of a war, South Korean commanders would take orders directly from our military. Add to that the...

What the hell's that sound? The street sweepers again? Probably a lawn mower. Lawn mowing! What the hell is this neighborhood coming to? Well, here I am, down in the basement of the Cheney Hammer Mill, tapping away at my keyboard as I often do this time of week. Strange how you can hear everything that's going on outside from down here. Of course, there are probably mouse holes in this place you can drive a front-loader through. Though I have to admit - I myself have never seen a mouse drive a front-loader. It would be one way to defend themselves from those awful snap traps. Diabolical contraptions! Anyway, summer has kind of arrived here in upstate New York, now that we're on the climate change calendar, so naturally my mind turns to more leisurely pursuits. I know what you're thinking - what on Earth could be more leisurely than being a member of a band that never plays anywhere? Well, you might be surprised by my response to that question. I find all kinds of po...