Hammer Mill Days

  I could have sworn I left it right here. Sometimes I think I’m losing my nut. And sometimes I think I’m losing my soup. So I’ve got it covered, soup to nuts. What was I saying again? Hoo, man. Those squatters upstairs must be smoking the devil’s weed once again. I’ve got second-hand smoke brain. Of course, after having spent a third of my life with first-hand smoke brain, this almost rises to the level of clarity. No, there are many possible reasons why I’m thick as a brick today. Here’s one … Sleep is our friend Let’s face it. When you don’t sleep enough, you start getting stupid. Ask anyone who’s been up for five days. Rest assured, they will tell you that they cannot rest assured. And if you ask anyone who’s been up for a hundred days, they won’t answer because they’re busy being dead. In short, sleep is obligatory. Now, many of you know I’m a part time geezer. In fact, pretty much everyone in Big Green is exactly that. My illustrious brother M...

Has it been a year already? Mother of pearl. Election day is almost upon us, and the pundits are out in force, telling us what to expect, handicapping races, reminding us of historical trends, etc. We are defenseless against their onslaught of conventional wisdom! How can we stop the madness? Well, as you can see, I’ve been watching (or at least listening to) way too much cable television. Every election is unique, as much as the talking heads want us to think otherwise. And while I know many of my friends on the left don’t like to focus on voting, I still feel strongly that we need to take the time to do it if only to stop the reactionaries from running everything into the ground. Anyway, for those who are interested, here are my thoughts on this year’s elections. Ballot measures in New York Like most years, I wasn’t aware of any of the ballot measures in New York State this year until a handful of days ago. My sense is that three of them are no-brainers. Ba...

  Okay, back it up a little further. That’s it. Little more. Little more. That’s great, stop there. I said stop. STOP, DAMN IT! Bloody hell! Yeah, hey, everybody. Just attempting to wave a shipment of widgets into the loading dock here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. I have to say, it’s not working out very well. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) volunteered to drive the truck. Need I say more? (We’ll be needing to put a tarp over the loading dock, now that he’s punched a truck-shaped hole in the garage door.) What kind of widgets are we receiving? Not sure. This wasn’t my gig. Actually, Anti-Lincoln had the bright idea of getting an assembly line going here in the old mill. He is from the mid 19th century, and so a hammer mill from the 1890s looks quite modern to his eyes, particularly when he’s had some of his beloved absinthe. Unintended consequences So, I’m pretty sure I’m partly to blame for Anti-Lincoln’s new project. I told him to do s...

Former General Colin Powell died this week of complications from COVID-19. I’m sure you’ve heard this about a million times by now. You’ve probably also heard that he was a hero, a man of great stature, an inspiration, etc. I can tell you that a lot of hagiographic remembrances came floating up from the television on Monday and Tuesday. I don’t think it will surprise any readers of this blog that I was not a fan of the former Secretary of State. Yes, like many on the left, I never forgave him for his Feb 5, 2003 performance at U.N. headquarters in New York – a key moment in the rush to the Iraq invasion. (Some may recall that they draped Picasso’s Guernica during Powell’s presentation , which was just a little too on-the-nose.) But his career had a lot of bloody patches. Spinning from the beginning Powell was a Vietnam veteran. He did, actually, play a small role in concealing the My Lai massacre, suggesting that the story was unrealistic because Americans and Vi...

  Okay, here’s the thing. I’m too big in the frame. It goes against the theme of the series, dude. If there’s one thing Big Green doesn’t like, it’s inconsistency. Those are our principles. And if you don’t like them … we have other principles. Oops! Didn’t know anyone was reading this. You just caught me having a little disagreement with Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who is serving as my video producer this month. Nothing serious – just an obscure conceptual question that has vexed us since the beginning of this blog post: how nano is nano? What means this? Allow me to explain. A question of scale We’re doing a little side project called the Nano Concert. Perhaps you’ve heard us nattering about it in previous posts and on our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN . You haven’t? DAMN IT! Marvin, did you forget to publish the blog posts again? Why have I been wasting my breath? What’s that? You DID publish them? Uh, okay. Never mind. What was I saying? Ah...

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating. As a society, we appear to be stuck in a holding pattern, circling our somewhat fractured collective memory of the Cold War. It seems we long for the illusion of a simple, good guys v. bad guys conflict, and we will stop at nothing to conjure one up again. The echoes of the previous Cold War still reverberate, sometimes in odd and almost laughable ways. For instance, this week my Congressional Rep. Claudia Tenney called Pope Francis a communist . She is, of course, an unreconstructed Trumpist just visible under a faded coat of John Birch Society lacquer. But putting aside retrograde small-fry politicians mired in the failed policies of previous decades, we face a much larger problem. Paging Howard Phillips! Back in the days before the Internet, crazy people could only make their voices heard on radio and direct access cable television. One of those crazy people was the late Howard Phillips , co-founder of the Ameri...

  Well, blown me down. I appear to be talking like a pirate today. Why? Damned if I know. Maybe it’s the weather. Or maybe it’s that scurvy crew who’s planning to make off with my booty. (That’s treasure , by the way, not some part of my anatomy). Well, as you know, Big Green has never been the best pirate ship on the high seas. We have scuttled very few corsairs over our time, whatever the hell THAT means. I guess what I’m saying is that, well, we are somewhat remuneratively challenged. In other words …. we are a freaking financial flop, full stop. (Take that , full stop twitter bot !) A balance lower than whale shit There was a time in our early years when we sought some advice on how to manage our finances. We were putting the cart before the horse, in a sense, as we didn’t HAVE any finances at the time. But like most bands, we expected riches to fall from the sky. Our fear was that, if such riches came in the form of gold or silver pieces, we might be...