Hammer Mill Days

Damn it. What the hell is up with this amp, Mitch? It's ticking like a bomb. You didn't, um ... turn my amp into a bomb, did you? Did you? Och, the challenges we face! And this hammer mill in the Winter, full as cold as a north wind blowing across Loch Lomond. What the ... look at me! I've got foreign accent syndrome, the Scottish variety. How the hell did that happen? Where's the justice, damn it? And I don't mean the town justice. I know right where that dude is. Now ... where was I ... ? Oh, right. Let me say up front - and this won't be surprising to longtime followers of Big Green - that this band has always been technologically challenged. Back in the day (1980s and '90s) it was because we had no money. Our PA was held together with duct tape. We used so much of the stuff that there was none left to plug the holes in our duct work. Pretty soon we had to start calling it gaffer tape so that the ducts wouldn't feel left out. But then the gaffer...

Another new year, but still the same bullshit: Trump wants to make one of his rhetorical flourishes a reality because he's afraid of losing his base, and he wants us to pay for it. Welcome to sunny Mexico, my friends. The various pundits and politicians go back and forth on whether Trump's wall is actually a wall (as the president has said many times) or a metaphor for something called "border security", which everyone seems to agree with but no one can define. I think they're missing the obvious answer - Trump is talking about a real "wall", but the fact that he talks about it is itself a metaphor. He wants to build a big wall that will represent the separation barrier between white and brown people. This is the program Trump inherited from other Republicans like Tom Tancredo, Mitt Romney, and many more. Obama's first term, in particular, was an extreme accommodation to it as well. That's likely because the big lie about invading armies of da...

It can't be morning yet, right? It's still freaking dark outside. What? Oh, right. My night mask. I'll just pull it off and ... OH MY GOD ... IT'S MORNING! Well, that's my revelation for today. What have you got? Hope you're having a great holiday season, whether or not you celebrate any of the various commemorative feast-days that fall sometime around now. Like Trump in the White House, we've been staked out here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in upstate New York (a.k.a. that farm upstate that every alt band goes to eventually) waiting for someone to tell us it's safe to venture outside without proper shoes. That's right - our shoes are a disgrace, my friends. No bones about it. And when you've got substandard shoes, Spring can't come soon enough. And while we've been cooped up in this drafty old barn, we've tried to busy ourselves with some low-budget Kringle-ing, sending out some old recordings via social media to our gagg...

As you know, this is the week when every news and opinion broadcast, podcast, etc., typically does their year in review. There are, of course, economic reasons for this - they basically run clip shows or pre-taped round tables, which can occasionally be worth watching (Chris Hayes usually does pretty well with these) but are mostly pretty dull and awful. So, inasmuch as this is not, repeat, NOT a news blog or, really, an opinion blog in the traditional sense, I am breaking with this obnoxious practice and running with something I think is more useful .... the century in review. Meaning stuff that happened over the last 100 years, selected at random, and by "stuff" I mean historical and political stories that are, in essence, lost to history, particularly in the United States. One such story is the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88). which I have mentioned previously in the blog over the years. This, in my opinion, is one of those seminal conflicts that set the stage for much that foll...

Hmmm, let me see. Nicely wrapped. Let's see what's inside. Okay ... huh. An empty bubble pack that used to contain a ballpoint pen. Nice. So .... who amongst you could have known that that's something I've always wanted? Oh, hi, everyone. Yeah, it's that time of year again, and Big Green is celebrating the holidays in the usual way. We put on a bunch of cheesy records. We make a little extra rice and mustard greens. And then there's the Secret Santa exchange of gifts, which we do in the traditional way ... one gift at a time, and the recipient tries to guess who the giver is. How exciting. Someone bring me my sodium bicarbonate. This could be a long night! That's not to say that the holidays are any less problematic in our makeshift home than they are in everyone else's. There's a lot to look out for here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill - a lot going on beneath that cool, clammy exterior. For instance, if you're stringing the lights on t...

Well, I was half prepared to do a post on General Flynn this week, but with the advent of Trump's apparently unilateral decision to pull U.S. forces out of Syria and the nearly apoplectic response, it seems more appropriate to concentrate on the broader matter of our foreign policy and how it plays out in what passes for our national conversation. I think it's worth saying at the outset that I have no idea of what our military's mission is in Syria. I keep hearing that it's essentially the same as the one we're pursuing in Afghanistan - training and equipping a local force to fight the war for us - but that doesn't exactly inspire confidence. It is, in fact, a formula for another unending deployment, one that has the support of most of the foreign policy voices in the media. Much of the criticism of Trump's abrupt decision has been from a right militarist perspective, though one that is broadly shared, much like the criticism of his Korea policy. The only ...

Seems like old times, Marvin. You know what I'm talking about, right? Well ... then load up some of your old data cassettes. I have that tape backup deck sitting around here somewhere. Or did I use it for an ideas tape ... ? Ah, yes. 'Tis the season for looking back ... something I always look forward to. (Yes, I did just say that.) And this year I'm looking back on what a hack I've been for the last nineteen years. This is the nineteenth anniversary of this humble blog, which first made itself known under the questionable moniker "Notes From Sri Lanka" back in December of 1999. Even to call it a blog was kind of questionable - I wasn't using Wordpress or Blogger at the time, just flat html pages that I would post via Frontpage. What's the difference, right? (Attn: web developers: pretend you didn't hear that.) So we're walking into the twentieth year of this phase of Big Green's existence, and really ... not much has changed since 1999...