What’d you say? Huh? Yeah, I just woke up, too. Oh well… looks like another one. Sunrise, sunset, blah blah blah.
What’s been happening around these parts? Let’s see, now. A thing or two. We’ve got a crack in the earth going, as you know. Straight down to the chewy center. Less said about that the better, frankly. After all, we’re still officially squatters here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, and if the actual owners of this renowned property had any idea of the shape it’s in (let alone the fact that there is a major crack in the Earth’s crust contained within), they would see us evicted, convicted, etc. Then there’s those mongooses again – you remember them, don’t you? We had some problems with mongooses some years back, taking over our beloved lean-to, then invading the mill and trying on our galoshes while we were gone. Very pesky fellows indeed. Well, they’re back. C’est la vie. (I think it’s all the greasy cooking the man-sized tuber has been doing. More on that later.)
Of course, we’re still working on the new album. Tracking the second song right now, as we speak. I’m putting down a keyboard part as I type these words, in fact. (I’ve got this splitter that allows me to send the signals of my keystrokes into both a computer and a sound module, so that I can make the most of my severely limited time. Pretty clever, huh?) We’re getting a little boost from Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who has been good enough to put down some reference percussion parts while John is out exploring the mountains of Central New Jersey. This has allowed us to make more progress than we should, by rights, have made by now. Which is, of course, considerably less progress than any normal band would have made by now.
What about the man-sized tuber? Well, he’s given up politics. (It’s just too damn cynical for him.) He relinquished his post at the head of the town board and has decided to do cooking lessons out the back door of the mill. At first, he tried to keep us out of the loop on this, thinking we would want a cut of the profits. But you can’t keep us in the dark for more than a month or two, particularly when something is happening right under our noses. And I mean literally. The tuber has but one cooking implement, and that’s a frying pan. So whatever he’s showing people, it usually involves open flame, the pan, a gob of butter, and a whole lot of smoke. If he burns it to a crisp, he just cracks an egg over it and calls it done.
Feeling hungry? I envy you! Sadly, the man-sized tuber has gotten some takers, so we’re likely to smell the aroma of fried shoe leather for a few weeks yet. (Until he discovers another occupation. He’s had almost as many as Homer Simpson!)
principle behind this choice – for example, the fact that the bill is flawed, that it gives too much to the insurance companies, that it doesn’t have a strong public option, that it is not a single payer plan, etc. But his reasoning appears to be based solely on political calculus. He’s reading the polling, and it’s showing a large majority of his district turning against the bill. Now, this isn’t too surprising, since the airwaves have been flooded with attack ads over the past month in particular, many sponsored by the national Chamber of Commerce (the folks who helped bring you our lack of a national health insurance plan in the first place). And, of course, they’ve stripped out some of the most popular aspects of the original plan in an attempt to please people who would never vote for the legislation in any form.
Mike’s take on this as that it should be done incrementally. Note to Congressman Arcuri: this is doing it incrementally. It would be a mistake to think of this bill as the last word on national health care. It is merely a stake in the ground, establishing the principle of a national system. Yeah, I think it’s a mess, and I’ve said so. It excludes far too many people. It preserves the profits of large sectors of our money-obsessed health care delivery system. It lacks the virtue of a public option for people who simply cannot get a decent plan in the private market. But the alternative is the wild west system (or lack of same) we have now. That is clearly unsustainable. Voting against an admittedly imperfect solution simply to please people like Don Jeror and other “tea party” basket cases is farcical, at best. 
No, it’s not my brain. It’s my list of songs. Sixty five songs and counting. Shoo-wee, right? That’s enough songs to fuel the enormous asbestos-clad boiler of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill for a hundred years. (Well, that may be a slight exaggeration.) What was it I heard Lincoln (or anti-Lincoln) saying the other day? Oh, yeah. “A chicken’ll make you a meal… or it’ll lay enough eggs for a thousand breakfasts. A lamb – that’s about two weeks worth of mutton. Or you can have warm wool coats from now until doomsday…” That Lincoln- just brimming with frontier wisdom. (Actually, I think he borrowed that from Royal Dano in one of his more nefarious incarnations on The Big Valley, Lincoln’s favorite T.V. drama.)
Sure, there’s that. Then there are the songs that are complete and yet still in the can, never released commercially. Mostly these are recordings that have no proper album to call home. They are made in the usual Big Green way – lay out a polymer disc, slather it full of mastic, add music and apply pressure… much pressure. Then toss. Well… we tossed them a little too far, perhaps, and no one has had the energy to go and pick them up. Those will likely see the light of day at some point, though I don’t know exactly when. (Let me consult with my fellow nut cases and get back to you.)