I spy with my little eye…. a breakfast nook. Yes, that’s it. I spy with my little eye… a seven-foot-tall solid iron anvil. Found that one too, eh? Hmmm… I’m going to have to make this harder.
Hello again, visitor(s). Yeah, just killing a little time on a holiday weekend. All the carolers have gone home, back to their cabins somewhere in the Adirondacks to stoke their hearth fires and peel their stocking-heel tangerines. Celebratory drinks all around! The place is as dead as a hammer head… and we’ve got a lot of those lying about the old abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. (Or, as some call it, the hammer mill of the imagination.) I’m looking out upon empty cobblestone streets in the old canal-side district of Little Falls, NY, watching the snowflakes drift lazily earthward, each one laden with icy cloud-stuff, little bits of frozen heaven dropped by the formidable gods of the great north. Sometimes it feels like we’re in the middle of nowhere. (I think I know why that is.) Always makes me think of Matt’s song “Ask For Leave”…
If you reversed your collar
and pulled a hood up over your head
and traveled north
You travel due north on any road
long enough
You will find an ice cave
Oh, isolation on top of the world
Maybe in twenty-five years
you can ask the lama for some leave
Hoo, man. We got to get the heat working! I’m starting to dream in sub-freezing Panavision (registered trademark). So anyway… what did you do this holiday? Assuming, of course, you observe any type of holiday, you likely consumed some rich fare, perhaps alcoholic beverages, maybe mingled with some close and not-so-close relations, imbibed more alcohol to help with the last item, then talked in circles with old uncle Farley until he was ready to retire. (Wheel him out, boys. That’s the stuff.)
Me? I worked my way down to the catacombs and played my antiquated Roland (registered trademark) piano until I started foaming at the mouth and falling over backwards. (That usually takes an hour or less.) Me need practice. Me no play so hot without plenty practice. (Me not play so hot ANYWAY… but with no practice, ME SUCK.) Why the primitive caveman jargon? Well, as you know, rock of pretty much every variety is, at its best, a minimalist art form. Very primitive music, played by very, very primitive people, many of whom scrape their knuckles over the strings, keys, skins, whatever, to make the requisite sounds.
Well, is that the time. Better get back to my Yuletide activities. What ho!
You’ve heard (way too many times) the facile comparison between legislating and making sausage. It’s the kind of analogy that obscures the spectacular level of dysfunction now most impressively on display in the U.S. Senate. This institution has always been a problem with respect to the popular will, but under the current circumstances, the “world’s greatest deliberative body” has become not the cooling saucer of democracy but a dousing bucket of cold water. There is, of course, no question that the Senate is an extremely undemocratic institution, according the same number of votes and, therefore, the same political power to every state, whether it is home to 36 million (California) or 500,000 (Wyoming). Even if the chamber’s arcane rules allowed for voting on a majority-rule basis, it would be intrinsically unfair to larger population centers – i.e. the kinds of communities that most rely on social programs administered by the federal government.
The current situation in the Senate is such that the filibuster is a constant, a given. So the notion that any meaningful action will take place within its walls – landmark legislation supported by a broad swath of the American public – is beyond contemplation. It would be difficult under majoritarian voting procedures, but the 60-vote minimum requires the inclusion of so many watery centrists and “Democrats in name only” that the guts are always ripped out of whatever is under consideration. This is certainly true of the health insurance reform legislation. This will also be true of any other major initiative. After this year’s experience, I am doubtful that they will even attempt to take up the Employee Free Choice Act… and I’m certain that, if they did, the Ben Nelsons (representing 1.8 million), Mary Landrieus (representing 4.8 million), and Joe Liebermans (representing 3.5 million) will easily thwart the will of members representing twice, three times, and even eight times as many people.
Hope you’re well. Things are okay here… about as okay as things can be. Actually, right at this moment, my knees are a little cold, but aside from that, all is well. (Bloody winter! It’s miserable even when it’s not here yet.) I suppose I should get our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, to look at the thermostat one more time. Seems like no matter how many times I turn that dial clockwise, the old Hammer Mill stays cold as a New England clam. And now that we’re on the subject, I notice that there are icicles hanging from Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Great Scott… it’s not just a little glitch in the temp control. This place is a block of freaking ice. What the hell – didn’t I bribe the oil man this month? Oh, right…. not suppose to say that on the Internets. (Please don’t let that get around, okay? There’s a good chap.)
what with all the nooks and crannies and outright gaps between the bricks. (Then there are the broken windows. Six or seven… dozen…) Fact is, even when we can fill the fuel tank, most of the heat goes straight outside. And fixing the windows would take effort … effort better spent on the things that only 
morning, my bedroom wall was glowing orange and white, like a creamsicle (except less awesomely delicious). Heat was just wafting off of that sucker. At first I thought the place was on fire, and when I realized it was the O.G.M., I thought it had somehow irradiated the wall, turning it into a molten mass of hell fire. Curiously, what had actually taken place was that Trevor James’s infernal contraption had created a space/time warp to somewhere in the tropics – it may have been Honduras, because I smelled cigar smoke. It was such a hot day on the other side of the warp that the heat was rolling into my bedroom in waves. Astounding phenomenon!