May 31, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 73
Control yourself. If you can't, there are many people who will be more than happy to do it for you. That's not exactly a fortunate turn of events.
CAN WE GET A DO-OVER HERE?
Remember kid's games? There was stickball, tag, marbles, red-light-green-light-1-2-3, and all sorts of stuff made up on the spot, rules and all. Of course the rules were somewhat elastic and many a time a child was granted a "do-over," another chance to try to get it right. Looking around at today's world, it seems like a lot of grief could have been avoided by the granting of a do-over here and there. Let's start with Africa, for example. Is there a set of nations and governments anywhere on the planet more in need of a do-over?
Africa is one of the most bountiful places in the world, blessed with fertile farmland, rivers, timber, minerals, diamonds, oil, seaports, fish and farm animals aplenty and for the most part a temperate climate. In other words, a living recipe for a set of successful and productive countries. So what happened? Well, there was the colonialism of Western Europe, for one thing, hundreds of years of divide, conquer, enslave and exploit. That sure didn't help anybody but the privileged elite of the Colonial Powers. The colonial masters are gone but the divide part of their scheme remains, seeing once peaceful neighbors slaughtering one another earnestly as one military government after another fails miserably before being taken over by some other set of corrupt louts in uniform.
On top of the slaughtered innocents, millions starve on this bountiful continent. It would be at this point where one of the kids in this game would call "Do-Over!" And then the other kids would figure out that they're going about this whole thing the wrong way, fighting with one another for no reason when they could be having a fun game, no matter what tribe any of the players come from. The kids would then decide that the best players should be included in the game, regardless of the accident of their birth. If a kid shows he's a good sport, he plays. If he's a selfish jerk who only wants to keep all the marbles for himself, then he sits down and watches how it's done right. Simple.
Too bad the world of grownups isn't that simple. Oh, we still love our games and want them to be fair and square and we cry to the high heavens when somebody cheats, but unfortunately we leave out the fair-and-square part when it comes to running our nations. Even America, a nation founded on being fair-and-square and giving everybody a shot to play in the game, has struggled with our failures along the way to include everybody. The idea of America is always a work-in-progress and the truth is we've given ourselves lots of do-overs in the form of Supreme Court decisions, landmark legislation and growing social awareness.
The USA is now poised to give ourselves another huge do-over by electing a black man to be our president. For centuries a black man couldn't be elected to anything around here, except maybe to get promoted from field hand to "house nigger." Not that electing a black president will be a complete do-over for our minority citizens, but it's one hell of a sign of human progress in a world increasingly taking giant steps backwards in the understanding-your-brother department. Too bad we can't have a do-over of the past 8 years of squandering our place of respect in the world. Our next president, black, white or turquoise, will have his work cut out for him in that regard.
Maybe a do-over of the United Nations Charter would help. For an organization that's supposed to promote unity and brotherhood among the diverse peoples of Earth, they've done a lousy job. On their watch the world has fallen into tribal warfare and genocide on a scale not seen since Hitler's Holocaust. The U.N. has shown itself to be an organization of small men with small ideas, as corrupt and petty as any tin pot dictatorship around. In their 63 years of existence they've been a toothless giant overseeing one human-made disaster after another, rarely having the nerve to condemn criminal and murderous regimes. LIke America in recent years, they have squandered their moral authority. Without these two strong voices and examples of right and good, the world is killing each other. All one can say is; Do-Over!
Africa is one of the most bountiful places in the world, blessed with fertile farmland, rivers, timber, minerals, diamonds, oil, seaports, fish and farm animals aplenty and for the most part a temperate climate. In other words, a living recipe for a set of successful and productive countries. So what happened? Well, there was the colonialism of Western Europe, for one thing, hundreds of years of divide, conquer, enslave and exploit. That sure didn't help anybody but the privileged elite of the Colonial Powers. The colonial masters are gone but the divide part of their scheme remains, seeing once peaceful neighbors slaughtering one another earnestly as one military government after another fails miserably before being taken over by some other set of corrupt louts in uniform.
On top of the slaughtered innocents, millions starve on this bountiful continent. It would be at this point where one of the kids in this game would call "Do-Over!" And then the other kids would figure out that they're going about this whole thing the wrong way, fighting with one another for no reason when they could be having a fun game, no matter what tribe any of the players come from. The kids would then decide that the best players should be included in the game, regardless of the accident of their birth. If a kid shows he's a good sport, he plays. If he's a selfish jerk who only wants to keep all the marbles for himself, then he sits down and watches how it's done right. Simple.
Too bad the world of grownups isn't that simple. Oh, we still love our games and want them to be fair and square and we cry to the high heavens when somebody cheats, but unfortunately we leave out the fair-and-square part when it comes to running our nations. Even America, a nation founded on being fair-and-square and giving everybody a shot to play in the game, has struggled with our failures along the way to include everybody. The idea of America is always a work-in-progress and the truth is we've given ourselves lots of do-overs in the form of Supreme Court decisions, landmark legislation and growing social awareness.
The USA is now poised to give ourselves another huge do-over by electing a black man to be our president. For centuries a black man couldn't be elected to anything around here, except maybe to get promoted from field hand to "house nigger." Not that electing a black president will be a complete do-over for our minority citizens, but it's one hell of a sign of human progress in a world increasingly taking giant steps backwards in the understanding-your-brother department. Too bad we can't have a do-over of the past 8 years of squandering our place of respect in the world. Our next president, black, white or turquoise, will have his work cut out for him in that regard.
Maybe a do-over of the United Nations Charter would help. For an organization that's supposed to promote unity and brotherhood among the diverse peoples of Earth, they've done a lousy job. On their watch the world has fallen into tribal warfare and genocide on a scale not seen since Hitler's Holocaust. The U.N. has shown itself to be an organization of small men with small ideas, as corrupt and petty as any tin pot dictatorship around. In their 63 years of existence they've been a toothless giant overseeing one human-made disaster after another, rarely having the nerve to condemn criminal and murderous regimes. LIke America in recent years, they have squandered their moral authority. Without these two strong voices and examples of right and good, the world is killing each other. All one can say is; Do-Over!
May 30, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 72
Botox is not made for any cosmetic benefit for wrinkled and sagging faces, but rather for the amusement of the rest of us. So if anybody you know is considering having their face injected with that stuff, don't let on. We can all use a good laugh.
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 72
Botox is not made for any cosmetic benefit for wrinkled and sagging faces, but rather for the amusement of the rest of us. So if anybody you know is considering having their face injected with that stuff, don't let on. We can all use a good laugh.
A NEW TRIBE DISCOVERED IN THE AMAZON- GOD HELP THEM
Maybe it's not such a small world after all. Deep in the Amazon rain forest in Brazil a previously unknown tribe has been discovered. So far the only contact has been limited to two fly-overs and a couple of photographs. In one photograph there are two men painted red shooting arrows at the airplane to drive it away while a woman who is painted black cheers them on. The name of the tribe, the language they speak and the religion they follow are mysteries. Not for long, though. Their lives will be completely ruined before the year is out.
Scientists, linguists, missionaries and government officials will be all over these people like white on rice pretty soon. Television crews are probably bulldozing a road to their settlement as we speak in order to entertain the world at the expense of their culture. They'll be wearing National Geographic T-shirts and baseball caps in no time. Brazil, being a Catholic country, will probably subject them to the inhumane torture of having to listen to the inane rantings of earnest young priests eager to save their souls.
Usually when this happens, the indigenous tribes sensibly cling to their own worship of celestial turtles spawning humanity rather than trying to wrap their minds around virgin birth, miracles, resurrection and a vast array of annoying saints whose lives no one wants to imitate. They will, however, accept those fancy crucifixes the priests hand out. You sharpen those bad boys and you've got yourself a handy little tool for skinning the animals they sacrifice to the celestial turtles.
They'll also welcome the doctors and scientists and the neat things they bring. Those electrical wires come in handy to tie up bundles of firewood. Their laptop computers make nifty targets for bow and arrow practice, and the metal they contain can then be used to make arrowheads. The medical bags of the doctors are chock full of neat little implements to be converted to fishing gear, food preparation tools and body decorations. Those steel bed pans make great cooking utensils too.
As far as the rest of what the world has to offer these people, well, once they get the drift of what people have actually done with the rest of the world, odds are they'll move even deeper into the Amazon to avoid us. A couple of viewings of "The Apprentice" or any show on Fox News ought to do the trick. Odds are the next time outsiders visit their settlement after the rainy season they'll find a deserted site with only a crude statue made out of the trash the camera crews left behind of a big human hand with its middle finger extended.
Scientists, linguists, missionaries and government officials will be all over these people like white on rice pretty soon. Television crews are probably bulldozing a road to their settlement as we speak in order to entertain the world at the expense of their culture. They'll be wearing National Geographic T-shirts and baseball caps in no time. Brazil, being a Catholic country, will probably subject them to the inhumane torture of having to listen to the inane rantings of earnest young priests eager to save their souls.
Usually when this happens, the indigenous tribes sensibly cling to their own worship of celestial turtles spawning humanity rather than trying to wrap their minds around virgin birth, miracles, resurrection and a vast array of annoying saints whose lives no one wants to imitate. They will, however, accept those fancy crucifixes the priests hand out. You sharpen those bad boys and you've got yourself a handy little tool for skinning the animals they sacrifice to the celestial turtles.
They'll also welcome the doctors and scientists and the neat things they bring. Those electrical wires come in handy to tie up bundles of firewood. Their laptop computers make nifty targets for bow and arrow practice, and the metal they contain can then be used to make arrowheads. The medical bags of the doctors are chock full of neat little implements to be converted to fishing gear, food preparation tools and body decorations. Those steel bed pans make great cooking utensils too.
As far as the rest of what the world has to offer these people, well, once they get the drift of what people have actually done with the rest of the world, odds are they'll move even deeper into the Amazon to avoid us. A couple of viewings of "The Apprentice" or any show on Fox News ought to do the trick. Odds are the next time outsiders visit their settlement after the rainy season they'll find a deserted site with only a crude statue made out of the trash the camera crews left behind of a big human hand with its middle finger extended.
May 29, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 71
Some people say you're only as old as you feel. Guess again, some people, and check your birth certificate. That's how old you are, no matter how you feel.
DOPOTO PLAGIARIZED BY SCOTT McCLELLAN
The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) has contacted our law firm, Dewey, Cheatham and Howe, to explore a plagiarism suit against former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan for stealing our format and publishing it in book form this week. Mr. McClellan, having very belatedly grown a conscience, decided to tell the nation what it already knew with his book of memoirs of his time as the Official Court Fabulist for Bush The Younger and his not-so-merry men. It is called "The Liars We Elected and Who I Lied For Again and Again and Again," or something like that.
In his book McClellen tells us all what we already know like it was some sort of revelation. Everybody and his cousin knows that Bush The Younger is Fredo Corleone, Shotgun Dick Cheney is the evil mastermind James Bond villain, Karl Rove is the poor man's Machiavelli and all of their associates both in and out of office are treasury-looting goons in the service of the nation's wealthy ruling elite. And we all know that the war on Iraq was illegal, immoral, ill-prepared and poorly executed, a horrible waste of our dedicated young soldiers and upwards of a million Iraqi civilians. Both sets of people were mere pawns to this administration, and as everyone with even a small familiarity with the game of chess knows, pawns are expendable.
Is McClellan telling us these things because he thinks we don't know them or is it an attempt to purge his own conscience and wash the blood off his hands? More likely, it's the cynical move of a man who sees the handwriting on the wall and can read a calendar. His is only the first book of many to come to cash in on the disgrace of the Bush The Younger Administration, and the timing is especially good for book sales, an election year. Why wait until Bush is out of office and be only one of dozens of similar books on the market?
Mr. McClellan proves himself to be a true Bush man with his cynical and predatory "confessions," too little too late to do anything about the vast array of crimes committed by the Bush the Younger Administration. He's been out of office for several years now, presumably busy writing his book instead of going to Congress, the FBI or the media with what he knew to try to stop these thugs before they inflicted more damage on America and the world. Think of the impact this information could have had three years ago.
And you just know the book is quite accurate judging by how the Administration doth protest too much. The ink is barely dry on the first printing and the attack dogs are unleashed with their usual ferocity, going all "disgruntled employee" and "he was out of the loop" on McClellan, and even questioning his sanity. That act is old and even more transparent than it used to be, especially now that common knowledge is corroborated by an Administration insider. Which is where his plagiarism of DOPOTO comes in. It is our job to point out the obvious to those who can't see the forest for the trees. And he'll be the one to get rich for doing so. Mission accomplished!
So buy his book if you must, but remember, it is just another one of Bush The Younger's thugs cashing in on an administration that attacked our own Bill of Rights as well as an innocent nation, let a great American city drown, tortured prisoners, exposed our own spy, let Osama bin Laden escape and oversaw a massive transfer of wealth from the working classes to the super wealthy to the point where less than 1% of Americans now control more than 90% of America's wealth. And that's only a small fraction of the crimes committed by McClellan's former masters.
He's telling us nothing that we do not already know and hoping to come up smelling like a rose instead of the pile of dung that he is. He did not resign in protest during his time as an accessory to high crimes, nor did he speak up in a timely fashion. Just one more heinous thug begging for mercy from the judgment of history. At least the original Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, stayed on message right to his miserable end in the bunker with his Fuhrer. McClellan wants his service as The Official Liar to the American People to be rewarded by millions of your dollars in book royalties. Count out The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious from his triumphant book tour.
In his book McClellen tells us all what we already know like it was some sort of revelation. Everybody and his cousin knows that Bush The Younger is Fredo Corleone, Shotgun Dick Cheney is the evil mastermind James Bond villain, Karl Rove is the poor man's Machiavelli and all of their associates both in and out of office are treasury-looting goons in the service of the nation's wealthy ruling elite. And we all know that the war on Iraq was illegal, immoral, ill-prepared and poorly executed, a horrible waste of our dedicated young soldiers and upwards of a million Iraqi civilians. Both sets of people were mere pawns to this administration, and as everyone with even a small familiarity with the game of chess knows, pawns are expendable.
Is McClellan telling us these things because he thinks we don't know them or is it an attempt to purge his own conscience and wash the blood off his hands? More likely, it's the cynical move of a man who sees the handwriting on the wall and can read a calendar. His is only the first book of many to come to cash in on the disgrace of the Bush The Younger Administration, and the timing is especially good for book sales, an election year. Why wait until Bush is out of office and be only one of dozens of similar books on the market?
Mr. McClellan proves himself to be a true Bush man with his cynical and predatory "confessions," too little too late to do anything about the vast array of crimes committed by the Bush the Younger Administration. He's been out of office for several years now, presumably busy writing his book instead of going to Congress, the FBI or the media with what he knew to try to stop these thugs before they inflicted more damage on America and the world. Think of the impact this information could have had three years ago.
And you just know the book is quite accurate judging by how the Administration doth protest too much. The ink is barely dry on the first printing and the attack dogs are unleashed with their usual ferocity, going all "disgruntled employee" and "he was out of the loop" on McClellan, and even questioning his sanity. That act is old and even more transparent than it used to be, especially now that common knowledge is corroborated by an Administration insider. Which is where his plagiarism of DOPOTO comes in. It is our job to point out the obvious to those who can't see the forest for the trees. And he'll be the one to get rich for doing so. Mission accomplished!
So buy his book if you must, but remember, it is just another one of Bush The Younger's thugs cashing in on an administration that attacked our own Bill of Rights as well as an innocent nation, let a great American city drown, tortured prisoners, exposed our own spy, let Osama bin Laden escape and oversaw a massive transfer of wealth from the working classes to the super wealthy to the point where less than 1% of Americans now control more than 90% of America's wealth. And that's only a small fraction of the crimes committed by McClellan's former masters.
He's telling us nothing that we do not already know and hoping to come up smelling like a rose instead of the pile of dung that he is. He did not resign in protest during his time as an accessory to high crimes, nor did he speak up in a timely fashion. Just one more heinous thug begging for mercy from the judgment of history. At least the original Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, stayed on message right to his miserable end in the bunker with his Fuhrer. McClellan wants his service as The Official Liar to the American People to be rewarded by millions of your dollars in book royalties. Count out The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious from his triumphant book tour.
May 27, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 70
There are such things as mojo, luck, and good karma. Some of us have them, some don't. If you are not blessed with these mystical gifts, well, you have your work cut out for you. You'll just have to work a little harder for the good things in life to come your way. And don't forget, Lady Luck has been known to switch partners frequently. Could be that she'll spend some time with you someday, but don't bank on it unless you're willing to take some big risks with your heart. That lady likes big spenders who don't hoard their spirit and their sense of adventure. Roll the dice.
THE PHOENIX HAS LANDED (ON A MARTIAN GRAVEL PIT)
So much for the "dramatic" pictures of Mars. The unmanned NASA Mars probe, The Phoenix, landed successfully on Mars and began transmitting photographs of the place back to Earth. Not so appealing so far. What you see is vast pebble-strewn plains of red soil. This thing is mobile so hopefully it will motor its way to a nicer location on Mars sometime soon, maybe some mountains or valleys or something remotely interesting. If we're going to eventually have a colony there, it looks like the only people who'd want to live there are the folks who thrive in places like the Sahara Desert or the barren wastes of Afghanistan.
The only reason anybody lives in these godforsaken Earthly wastes in the first place is because their ancestors lost a war long ago, the victors talking control of the fertile and attractive portions of our world. Say what you will about "haunting desolate beauty," but find me a bunch of volunteers to leave their comfortable homes to go live among the barren wastelands of Earth and win valuable prizes. Nobody chooses to live in user-unfriendly environments. Either you flee there from conquering armies or you're unfortunate enough to be born there. Just like the Gobi Desert, few humans will choose to relocate to Mars when we get that far along in our space program.
It's not even a place that has "Vacationland" written all over it. If humanity is ever to expand to other planets, Mars doesn't seem like a good candidate. Any potential human-friendly planet is probably many light years away and many generations into our future. None of the other planets in our solar system seem to fit. Like the porridge in Goldilocks And The Three Bears, some are too hot, others are too cold. It's only Earth that's just right.
Which is not to say that we shouldn't send ships to Mars and learn as much as we can about it. We're humans and quite curious and that's what we do. Hell, we've got no end of people climbing up Mount Everest long after we've learned pretty much all there is to know about the place; it's cold, icy and rocky with very thin air. Sort of like Mars. So you move on to the next place, learning more and hoping there's some good stuff there that we can bring back to Earth. We've got a bunch of Moon rocks already, not really good for much besides souvenirs.
But who knows, maybe one of the nearby planets might have fields of gold or platinum or something we never saw before that will come in handy around here. Sort of like Marco Polo bringing spaghetti back from China so that Italy could make culinary history. You just never know what's behind Door #3. And just maybe the realization that all our nearby planets are poor escape hatches for when we ruin or own planet will encourage us to take better care of this place and one another. If we can send camera-wielding robots to Mars, we can at least try to do something about poisoned places like Chernobyl and New Jersey. We can learn some unexpected things from The Phoenix.
The only reason anybody lives in these godforsaken Earthly wastes in the first place is because their ancestors lost a war long ago, the victors talking control of the fertile and attractive portions of our world. Say what you will about "haunting desolate beauty," but find me a bunch of volunteers to leave their comfortable homes to go live among the barren wastelands of Earth and win valuable prizes. Nobody chooses to live in user-unfriendly environments. Either you flee there from conquering armies or you're unfortunate enough to be born there. Just like the Gobi Desert, few humans will choose to relocate to Mars when we get that far along in our space program.
It's not even a place that has "Vacationland" written all over it. If humanity is ever to expand to other planets, Mars doesn't seem like a good candidate. Any potential human-friendly planet is probably many light years away and many generations into our future. None of the other planets in our solar system seem to fit. Like the porridge in Goldilocks And The Three Bears, some are too hot, others are too cold. It's only Earth that's just right.
Which is not to say that we shouldn't send ships to Mars and learn as much as we can about it. We're humans and quite curious and that's what we do. Hell, we've got no end of people climbing up Mount Everest long after we've learned pretty much all there is to know about the place; it's cold, icy and rocky with very thin air. Sort of like Mars. So you move on to the next place, learning more and hoping there's some good stuff there that we can bring back to Earth. We've got a bunch of Moon rocks already, not really good for much besides souvenirs.
But who knows, maybe one of the nearby planets might have fields of gold or platinum or something we never saw before that will come in handy around here. Sort of like Marco Polo bringing spaghetti back from China so that Italy could make culinary history. You just never know what's behind Door #3. And just maybe the realization that all our nearby planets are poor escape hatches for when we ruin or own planet will encourage us to take better care of this place and one another. If we can send camera-wielding robots to Mars, we can at least try to do something about poisoned places like Chernobyl and New Jersey. We can learn some unexpected things from The Phoenix.
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 69
Life is not all about having sex. There's also thinking about sex, craving sex and trying to get more sex. Everything else we do, like eating, sleeping, having jobs, running nations, building skyscrapers, crossing vast oceans and sending spaceships to Mars is just stuff we do to keep us occupied when we're not having sex. We've got to burn off all that sexual energy somehow.
FINALLY, CANADA MAKES HEADLINES
Canada, our semi-anonymous neighbor to the north, finally made world headlines yesterday. Well, not exactly world headlines, but it was featured fairly prominently on the BBC News internet edition when you click on the AMERICAS box. When you're Canada, you take what you can get. Anyway, it seems that Canadian Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier was forced to resign when he admitted leaving classified documents in an non-secure location. That's very surprising. Who knew Canada had state secrets?
This Bernier guy also made some news recently when he tried to get the Governor of Kandahar province in Afghanistan fired and also urged NATO to intervene with Pakistan to "pacify" that nation and get them to stop harboring Taliban fighters. For his trouble and candor he was called a traitor by some of his fellow Canadians who were mortified that a Canadian would make such a public error in interfering with the domestic concerns of a sovereign nation. They figure it's best to leave those embarrassing gaffes to the American President, Bush The Younger.
Maxime Bernier was touring Afghanistan to oversee the efforts of the 5,000 Canadian NATO troops stationed there. The Canadian commander figures that 5,000 more Canadian troops ought to do the trick over there. What that trick might be is anyone's guess, but it would be nice if they could sort of try to track down Osama bin Laden. Perhaps they should send some of those red-coated Mounties over there. The credo of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is "We Always Get Our Man." Maybe Bernier should have thought of that before he decided to leave classified papers at his girlfriend's house and had to resign.
And speaking of his former model girlfriend Julie Couillard, she's also been the subject of controversy in Canada since she's a former biker chick and an ex-girlfriend of a Canadian organized crime kingpin. Canadian politicians feel this is yet another potential security risk. How exactly biker gangs would use sensitive Canadian government documents is unclear, but this Bernier guy is getting pretty interesting. He also racked up sky-high travel expenses as he toured foreign lands in his capacity as Foreign Minister, exhibiting a decidedly un-Canadian taste for the flashy life.
Clearly this guy had to go. Flashy, opinionated jet-setters with ex-model girlfriends with a past are definitely not Canada's style. Years ago they had a cool guy as their leader, Pierre Trudeau, who dated celebrities, used obscenities and spoke his mind openly on controversial issues. Canada is still traumatized by the memory of Trudeau and in the years since he held power has made sure that their leaders registered in no one's memory. They've done a damned good job of it, too. Outside of a small speed bump named Maxime Bernier nobody knows or cares much about what's going on in Canada. Except maybe Canadians, but who even can be sure about that? All the interesting ones have moved to America to work as entertainers or newscasters.The rest of them sure aren't saying much.
This Bernier guy also made some news recently when he tried to get the Governor of Kandahar province in Afghanistan fired and also urged NATO to intervene with Pakistan to "pacify" that nation and get them to stop harboring Taliban fighters. For his trouble and candor he was called a traitor by some of his fellow Canadians who were mortified that a Canadian would make such a public error in interfering with the domestic concerns of a sovereign nation. They figure it's best to leave those embarrassing gaffes to the American President, Bush The Younger.
Maxime Bernier was touring Afghanistan to oversee the efforts of the 5,000 Canadian NATO troops stationed there. The Canadian commander figures that 5,000 more Canadian troops ought to do the trick over there. What that trick might be is anyone's guess, but it would be nice if they could sort of try to track down Osama bin Laden. Perhaps they should send some of those red-coated Mounties over there. The credo of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is "We Always Get Our Man." Maybe Bernier should have thought of that before he decided to leave classified papers at his girlfriend's house and had to resign.
And speaking of his former model girlfriend Julie Couillard, she's also been the subject of controversy in Canada since she's a former biker chick and an ex-girlfriend of a Canadian organized crime kingpin. Canadian politicians feel this is yet another potential security risk. How exactly biker gangs would use sensitive Canadian government documents is unclear, but this Bernier guy is getting pretty interesting. He also racked up sky-high travel expenses as he toured foreign lands in his capacity as Foreign Minister, exhibiting a decidedly un-Canadian taste for the flashy life.
Clearly this guy had to go. Flashy, opinionated jet-setters with ex-model girlfriends with a past are definitely not Canada's style. Years ago they had a cool guy as their leader, Pierre Trudeau, who dated celebrities, used obscenities and spoke his mind openly on controversial issues. Canada is still traumatized by the memory of Trudeau and in the years since he held power has made sure that their leaders registered in no one's memory. They've done a damned good job of it, too. Outside of a small speed bump named Maxime Bernier nobody knows or cares much about what's going on in Canada. Except maybe Canadians, but who even can be sure about that? All the interesting ones have moved to America to work as entertainers or newscasters.The rest of them sure aren't saying much.
May 25, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 68
Seeking revenge and holding a grudge against some fool who did you wrong is a waste of time. There's nothing worse you can do to them than leave them alone to be the pathetic jerk they are for the rest of their life while you live like you want to live. That's payback.
SOUTH DAKOTA: GATEWAY TO NORTH DAKOTA (AND OTHER SLOGANS)
Ever get the feeling that you're living a nondescript existence, you've missed the boat and life is passing you by? What you might need is a snappy slogan. Nothing says "Here I Am!" like a good old slogan, telling the world what you're all about. It doesn't even have to be true. Look at New Jersey, who's State Motto is "The Garden State." Although I'm sure New Jersey is a fine and wonderful place, the term Garden State doesn't readily spring to mind when you enter that place from the New York side and travel trough miles and miles of toxic haze spewing from the countless industrial and chemical buildings lining the highways. But New Jersey called dibs on "The Garden State" and that's that.
But how can you get in on the slogan bandwagon? Simple, just invent one! New York State doesn't have an empire but we're called "The Empire State" and nobody questions it. Montana is called "Big Sky Country" even though the size of the sky over Montana is identical to everywhere else. Who's to say their sky isn't really big? Idaho's is more accurate, but hardly a slogan that will make you eager to visit there: "Great Potatoes!" Doesn't exactly make you want to load up the mini-van and embark on that dream family vacation. Looking at a map of the Western United States, maybe they should have called it "Idaho: Not One of Those Rectangular States" to at least point out one difference between Idaho and its nearest neighbors.
A good slogan accentuates the positive, but that's not etched in stone. There may not be anyting positive about you so maybe enigmatic is the way to go. Say you're a working slob with a nagging wife and a drinking problem with no discernible interesting traits. Try this: "Big Jim: Shut the Hell Up!" Sort of gives you that "Live Free or Die" mystique that New Hampshire stamps on their license plates, possibly the only interesting thing about that place. Or maybe you're a soccer Mom bored out your skull with your life. How about "Loretta- I Used To Be a Stripper!" Put that on a bumper sticker and see if it doesn't garner you a little more attention.
Or maybe you're a maladjusted teenaged punk with an attitude. How to stand out from the millions and millions of other maladjusted teenaged punks with attitudes? Simple: "Donny: I Know Everything And You Owe Me So Get Off My Back!" Mortgage bankers too can benefit from a slogan to try to remove the stink of their nasty reputations. "Mega Bank-Pre-owned Little Pink Empty Houses For Sale." Corporations too: "ChemCorp- Less Poisonous Than China!" Or New Orleans: "The New Venice!" President Bush The Younger could have benefited from a good slogan: "I'm Dumb, Okay, Cut Me Some Slack!" or "You Were Expecting Thomas Jefferson?" Or Senator Wide Stance Larry Craig: "That's Why It's Called The Men's Room!"
Similarly, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer could have saved himself a lot of grief with a good slogan: "What, Like You Never Paid 5 G's For a Happy Ending?" So get busy with your new slogan defining the new you. Mine is "Not As Dumb As I Look" so you can't have that one. There's always "Butch-Screwing Up My Life One Day At A Time!" Or maybe "Maxine- I Know What's Best For You, Fool!" Your life won't be a bit different but at least you'll have a snappy slogan. That said, "I'm Outta Here!"
But how can you get in on the slogan bandwagon? Simple, just invent one! New York State doesn't have an empire but we're called "The Empire State" and nobody questions it. Montana is called "Big Sky Country" even though the size of the sky over Montana is identical to everywhere else. Who's to say their sky isn't really big? Idaho's is more accurate, but hardly a slogan that will make you eager to visit there: "Great Potatoes!" Doesn't exactly make you want to load up the mini-van and embark on that dream family vacation. Looking at a map of the Western United States, maybe they should have called it "Idaho: Not One of Those Rectangular States" to at least point out one difference between Idaho and its nearest neighbors.
A good slogan accentuates the positive, but that's not etched in stone. There may not be anyting positive about you so maybe enigmatic is the way to go. Say you're a working slob with a nagging wife and a drinking problem with no discernible interesting traits. Try this: "Big Jim: Shut the Hell Up!" Sort of gives you that "Live Free or Die" mystique that New Hampshire stamps on their license plates, possibly the only interesting thing about that place. Or maybe you're a soccer Mom bored out your skull with your life. How about "Loretta- I Used To Be a Stripper!" Put that on a bumper sticker and see if it doesn't garner you a little more attention.
Or maybe you're a maladjusted teenaged punk with an attitude. How to stand out from the millions and millions of other maladjusted teenaged punks with attitudes? Simple: "Donny: I Know Everything And You Owe Me So Get Off My Back!" Mortgage bankers too can benefit from a slogan to try to remove the stink of their nasty reputations. "Mega Bank-Pre-owned Little Pink Empty Houses For Sale." Corporations too: "ChemCorp- Less Poisonous Than China!" Or New Orleans: "The New Venice!" President Bush The Younger could have benefited from a good slogan: "I'm Dumb, Okay, Cut Me Some Slack!" or "You Were Expecting Thomas Jefferson?" Or Senator Wide Stance Larry Craig: "That's Why It's Called The Men's Room!"
Similarly, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer could have saved himself a lot of grief with a good slogan: "What, Like You Never Paid 5 G's For a Happy Ending?" So get busy with your new slogan defining the new you. Mine is "Not As Dumb As I Look" so you can't have that one. There's always "Butch-Screwing Up My Life One Day At A Time!" Or maybe "Maxine- I Know What's Best For You, Fool!" Your life won't be a bit different but at least you'll have a snappy slogan. That said, "I'm Outta Here!"
May 22, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED-PART 67
It is said you can get an ulcer worrying about ulcers. If that's the case, maybe we should worry about having sex instead. It might not help the cause, but at least it's a more enjoyable preoccupation than thinking abut bleeding ulcers all the time.
DEJA NEWS-THINGS THAT HAPPEN A LOT
We all read the newspapers, or watch TV news broadcasts or hear the frequent radio news reports. Most of us do all three plus go on the internet and get even more news. So we develop a feel for the rhythm of news events and find many things unsurprising. For example, in France right now there's a massive strike. This time it's the railway workers striking over something or other and a lot of other labor unions walking out in sympathy. It's the usual drill in France, a "nationwide strike paralyzing the nation." Yeah, sure. Seems like France pretty much shrugs these things off and shows no sign at all of paralysis after many decades of this same old story. Light up a Gauloise, pop open some Merlot and enjoy another day off. Whether the strike lasts a day or a week, so what? C'est la vie.
There's lots of deja news. You can bank on a couple of entertainers a month making complete jerks of themselves with drugs, drink, sex or automobiles, or as is often the case, all four of those things at once. Three times a year some prominent politician somewhere in this great nation does even worse things than our decadent entertainers, no easy feat. About every eighteen months a rock & roll star dies in a small aircraft. You'd think by now these guitar slingers would swear off Piper Cubs and just die a respectable rock & roll death by drug overdose or cirrhosis of the liver.
In Africa you can always count on one country or another having their two main tribes slaughter each other with machetes and burning tires while United Nations troops count the bodies and recommend forming a committee to study the situation. And you can count on all the major oil producers in the Middle East to continue to run world-class tyrannies while the industrial democracies who buy their oil continue to apologize for their behavior. How many times can we hear "cultural differences" and "conservative religious values" to excuse the house arrest of all their women, public floggings, amputations and decapitations, the complete suppression of free speech, the brutal murder of practitioners of different faiths and the funding of worldwide terrorism before we figure out that these nations are really the enemy and our leaders are sucking up to human monsters?
We could all write this news copy ourselves. How much do you want to bet that some leader somewhere in Europe will very soon condemn the latest round of anti-Semitic synagogue attacks? How soon before Israel flaunts its own anti-Semitism by sending troops against their fellow Semites, some Arab group or another. And how many guys who don't live there will come up with another sure fire peace plan for the Middle East? And is any news cycle complete without the news of China building another dam or a chemical factory in a place where there's an earthquake every fortnight?
Does two months go by without some semi-literate TV preacher from the Heartland of America making news by saying that some horrible disaster or other is God's wrath on America because A.- There are gay people in America, B.- There's not enough of their brand of Fascist Christianity being practiced, or C.- We are not doing enough to wipe out Muslims? And how about another giant American corporation announcing that it is moving its operations overseas because American workers make too much money and then paying their CEO sixty million dollars a year for coming up with this brilliant deduction? We could write this stuff ourselves at this point. Wake me up when something new and different happens, like peace, understanding, fair play and brotherhood breaking out somewhere.
There's lots of deja news. You can bank on a couple of entertainers a month making complete jerks of themselves with drugs, drink, sex or automobiles, or as is often the case, all four of those things at once. Three times a year some prominent politician somewhere in this great nation does even worse things than our decadent entertainers, no easy feat. About every eighteen months a rock & roll star dies in a small aircraft. You'd think by now these guitar slingers would swear off Piper Cubs and just die a respectable rock & roll death by drug overdose or cirrhosis of the liver.
In Africa you can always count on one country or another having their two main tribes slaughter each other with machetes and burning tires while United Nations troops count the bodies and recommend forming a committee to study the situation. And you can count on all the major oil producers in the Middle East to continue to run world-class tyrannies while the industrial democracies who buy their oil continue to apologize for their behavior. How many times can we hear "cultural differences" and "conservative religious values" to excuse the house arrest of all their women, public floggings, amputations and decapitations, the complete suppression of free speech, the brutal murder of practitioners of different faiths and the funding of worldwide terrorism before we figure out that these nations are really the enemy and our leaders are sucking up to human monsters?
We could all write this news copy ourselves. How much do you want to bet that some leader somewhere in Europe will very soon condemn the latest round of anti-Semitic synagogue attacks? How soon before Israel flaunts its own anti-Semitism by sending troops against their fellow Semites, some Arab group or another. And how many guys who don't live there will come up with another sure fire peace plan for the Middle East? And is any news cycle complete without the news of China building another dam or a chemical factory in a place where there's an earthquake every fortnight?
Does two months go by without some semi-literate TV preacher from the Heartland of America making news by saying that some horrible disaster or other is God's wrath on America because A.- There are gay people in America, B.- There's not enough of their brand of Fascist Christianity being practiced, or C.- We are not doing enough to wipe out Muslims? And how about another giant American corporation announcing that it is moving its operations overseas because American workers make too much money and then paying their CEO sixty million dollars a year for coming up with this brilliant deduction? We could write this stuff ourselves at this point. Wake me up when something new and different happens, like peace, understanding, fair play and brotherhood breaking out somewhere.
May 21, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 66
When somebody tells you it's not the money, it's the principal, they are lying. Of course it's the money. There's nothing wrong with wanting to get paid. Why call it something else? When we want other things, like food or sex, we don't say it's the principal of the thing, we say exactly what we want: Gimmee some. Why should money be any different?
YOUNG MACDONALD HAS AN AGRIBUSINESS, E-I-E-I-OH!
When a farm become an agribusiness, do they have CEO's instead in a farmer in charge? And how many Senators and Congressmen are getting in on the huge amount of free money the government hands out every year to subsidize agribusinesses, getting paid obscene piles of money not to grow alfalfa on their tennis courts? Maybe I can declare my little yard in Brooklyn a farm and apply for government aid since I don't grow a damned thing there. I'll assure the government they won''t have to worry about me producing a glut of soybeans on the world food markets.
But that's not the way it works in the food politics industry. The United States hands out over 300 billion dollars a year in farm subsidies, more than half of it going to 19 out of 435 Congressional Districts. And a lot of that dough (our dough, by the way, tax dollars) doesn't even go to farmers. There was that 93 million bucks in tax breaks given to horse breeders, even though most farms haven't had a single horse on their premises for generations. When it come to food legislation, business as usual in Washington produces many a back room deal so that timber companies, wealthy food conglomerates and other non-farmers receive a whole lot of our money.
Which comes as no surprise with a Congress that loaded the 9/11 emergency relief bill and the Hurricane Katrina funding bill with tons of pork barrel earmarks having nothing to do with those national disasters. Remember all those Dunkin' Donut franchises and tanning salons in the sunniest parts of our country funded by the 9/11 legislation? How having more Dunkin' Donuts equated to a serious response to the most devastating attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor is anyone's guess, as long as that guess involves criminal bribery and influence peddling at the expense of others. So when Congress gets near the national cookie jar for just about any reason, you can pretty much guarantee that they themselves will emerge from those sessions with sugar coated lips and cookie crumbs all over them.
Funny how with worldwide food shortages and 36,000 people a day dying from starvation we pay farmers not to grow food so as not to glut the market with one commodity or another. Not ha-ha funny either.You think some guy who lives half a world away in a tin hut would worry that America is producing too many soybeans? Not when he's watching his children waste away from hunger. So if you let the Dunkin' Donuts franchises, the horse breeders, the tanning salons, the timber mills and the giant food corporations fend for themselves, there would be many millions left over to ship the extra food to people who are dying.
But I suppose I'm being naive here, right? I'm just an unsophisticated observer who knows nothing about farming or the way Congress operates. Well, guilty on the lack of farming expertise, but I know pretty much how our Congress operates. Being from New York City I have long observed how the 5 Mafia families around here split up the turf and extract millions of dollars from the economy which they have not earned. Congress is pretty much ehe same, with "Made" men and women on the inside making deals with one another and lobbyists, who are basically their co-conspirators, siphoning off huge chunks of money earned by the sweat and smarts of somebody else.
All the while these made men and women rant and rave about waste in government, meaning of course, the money that doesn't go to their pet projects on their turf. Sometimes they have sit-downs like the Mafia bosses to hash out these territorial disputes, making sure the gravy train stops at every station, whether or not that station has plenty of gravy already. And if anyone calls for giving the president a line-item veto to pare the legislation down to it's original proposed purpose, they shriek like banshees that such a move would curtail their civil rights. What, their right to pass hidden legislation in an open society? Bullshit!
If some guy want the Feds to pay for a cheese museum in his state, let him propose a bill that states just that. If somebody thinks the taxpayers ought to fund a tanning salon in Las Vegas where's here's more sun than gamblers, let him put that proposal out in the open and debate its merits like any other law. And when Young MacDonald wants three-quarters of a million dollars every year to not grow food on his farm, let him explain exactly how that works. That ought to be pretty amusing.
But that's not the way it works in the food politics industry. The United States hands out over 300 billion dollars a year in farm subsidies, more than half of it going to 19 out of 435 Congressional Districts. And a lot of that dough (our dough, by the way, tax dollars) doesn't even go to farmers. There was that 93 million bucks in tax breaks given to horse breeders, even though most farms haven't had a single horse on their premises for generations. When it come to food legislation, business as usual in Washington produces many a back room deal so that timber companies, wealthy food conglomerates and other non-farmers receive a whole lot of our money.
Which comes as no surprise with a Congress that loaded the 9/11 emergency relief bill and the Hurricane Katrina funding bill with tons of pork barrel earmarks having nothing to do with those national disasters. Remember all those Dunkin' Donut franchises and tanning salons in the sunniest parts of our country funded by the 9/11 legislation? How having more Dunkin' Donuts equated to a serious response to the most devastating attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor is anyone's guess, as long as that guess involves criminal bribery and influence peddling at the expense of others. So when Congress gets near the national cookie jar for just about any reason, you can pretty much guarantee that they themselves will emerge from those sessions with sugar coated lips and cookie crumbs all over them.
Funny how with worldwide food shortages and 36,000 people a day dying from starvation we pay farmers not to grow food so as not to glut the market with one commodity or another. Not ha-ha funny either.You think some guy who lives half a world away in a tin hut would worry that America is producing too many soybeans? Not when he's watching his children waste away from hunger. So if you let the Dunkin' Donuts franchises, the horse breeders, the tanning salons, the timber mills and the giant food corporations fend for themselves, there would be many millions left over to ship the extra food to people who are dying.
But I suppose I'm being naive here, right? I'm just an unsophisticated observer who knows nothing about farming or the way Congress operates. Well, guilty on the lack of farming expertise, but I know pretty much how our Congress operates. Being from New York City I have long observed how the 5 Mafia families around here split up the turf and extract millions of dollars from the economy which they have not earned. Congress is pretty much ehe same, with "Made" men and women on the inside making deals with one another and lobbyists, who are basically their co-conspirators, siphoning off huge chunks of money earned by the sweat and smarts of somebody else.
All the while these made men and women rant and rave about waste in government, meaning of course, the money that doesn't go to their pet projects on their turf. Sometimes they have sit-downs like the Mafia bosses to hash out these territorial disputes, making sure the gravy train stops at every station, whether or not that station has plenty of gravy already. And if anyone calls for giving the president a line-item veto to pare the legislation down to it's original proposed purpose, they shriek like banshees that such a move would curtail their civil rights. What, their right to pass hidden legislation in an open society? Bullshit!
If some guy want the Feds to pay for a cheese museum in his state, let him propose a bill that states just that. If somebody thinks the taxpayers ought to fund a tanning salon in Las Vegas where's here's more sun than gamblers, let him put that proposal out in the open and debate its merits like any other law. And when Young MacDonald wants three-quarters of a million dollars every year to not grow food on his farm, let him explain exactly how that works. That ought to be pretty amusing.
YOUNG MACDONALD HAS AN AGRIBUSINESS, E-I-E-I-OH!
When a farm become an agribusiness, do they have CEO's instead in a farmer in charge? And how many Senators and Congressmen are getting in on the huge amount of free money the government hands out every year to subsidize agribusinesses, getting paid obscene piles of money not to grow alfalfa on their tennis courts? Maybe I can declare my little yard in Brooklyn a farm and apply for government aid since I don't grow a damned thing there. I'll assure the government they won''t have to worry about me producing a glut of soybeans on the world food markets.
But that's not the way it works in the food politics industry.The United States hands out over 300 billion dollars a year in farm subsidies, more than half of it going to 19 out of 435 Congressional Districts. And a lot of that dough (our dough, by the way, tax dollars) doesn't even go to farmers. There was that 93 million bucks in tax breaks given to horse breeders, even though most farms haven't had a single horse on their premises for generations. When it come to food legislation, business as usual in Washington produces many a back room deal so that timber companies, wealthy food conglomerates and other non-farmers receive a whole lot of our money.
Which comes as no surprise with a Congress that loaded the 9/11 emergency relief bill and the Hurricane Katrina funding bill with tons of pork barrel earmarks having nothing to do with those national disasters. Remember all those Dunkin' Donut franchises and tanning salons in the sunniest parts of our country funded by the 9/11 legislation? How having more Dunkin' Donuts equated to a serious response to the most devastating attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor is anyone's guess, as long as that guess involves criminal bribery and influence peddling at the expense of others. So when Congress gets near the national cookie jar for just about any reason, you can pretty much guarantee that they themselves will emerge from those sessions with sugar coated lips and cookie crumbs all over them.
Funny how with worldwide food shortages and 36,000 people a day dying from starvation we pay farmers not to grow food so as not to glut the market with one commodity or another. Not ha-ha funny either.You think some guy who lives half a world away in a tin hut would worry that America is producing too many soybeans? Not when he's watching his children waste away from hunger. So if you let the Dunkin' Donuts franchises, the horse breeders, the tanning salons, the timber mills and the giant food corporations fend for themselves, there would be many millions left over to ship the extra food to people who are dying.
But I suppose I'm being naive here, right? I'm just an unsophisticated observer who knows nothing about farming or the way Congress operates. Well, guilty on the lack of farming expertise, but I know pretty much how our Congress operates. Being from New York City I have long observed how the 5 Mafia families around here split up the turf and extract millions of dollars from the economy which they have not earned. Congress is pretty much ehe same, with "Made" men and women on the inside making deals with one another and lobbyists, who are basically their co-conspirators, siphoning off huge chunks of money earned by the sweat and smarts of somebody else.
All the while these made men and women rant and rave about waste in government, meaning of course, the money that doesn't go to their pet projects on their turf. Sometimes they have sit-downs like the Mafia bosses to hash out these territorial disputes, making sure the gravy train stops at every station, whether or not that station has plenty of gravy already. And if anyone calls for giving the president a line-item veto to pare the legislation down to it's original proposed purpose, they shriek like banshees that such a move would curtail their civil rights. What, their right to pass hidden legislation in an open society? Bullshit!
If some guy want to Feds to pay for a cheese museum in his state, let him propose a bill that states just that. If somebody thinks the taxpayers ought to fund a tanning salon in Las Vegas where's here's more sun than gamblers, let him put that proposal out in the open and debate its merits like any other law. And when Young MacDonald wants three-quarters of a million dollars every year to not grow food on his farm, let him explain exactly how that works. That ought to be pretty amusing.
But that's not the way it works in the food politics industry.The United States hands out over 300 billion dollars a year in farm subsidies, more than half of it going to 19 out of 435 Congressional Districts. And a lot of that dough (our dough, by the way, tax dollars) doesn't even go to farmers. There was that 93 million bucks in tax breaks given to horse breeders, even though most farms haven't had a single horse on their premises for generations. When it come to food legislation, business as usual in Washington produces many a back room deal so that timber companies, wealthy food conglomerates and other non-farmers receive a whole lot of our money.
Which comes as no surprise with a Congress that loaded the 9/11 emergency relief bill and the Hurricane Katrina funding bill with tons of pork barrel earmarks having nothing to do with those national disasters. Remember all those Dunkin' Donut franchises and tanning salons in the sunniest parts of our country funded by the 9/11 legislation? How having more Dunkin' Donuts equated to a serious response to the most devastating attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor is anyone's guess, as long as that guess involves criminal bribery and influence peddling at the expense of others. So when Congress gets near the national cookie jar for just about any reason, you can pretty much guarantee that they themselves will emerge from those sessions with sugar coated lips and cookie crumbs all over them.
Funny how with worldwide food shortages and 36,000 people a day dying from starvation we pay farmers not to grow food so as not to glut the market with one commodity or another. Not ha-ha funny either.You think some guy who lives half a world away in a tin hut would worry that America is producing too many soybeans? Not when he's watching his children waste away from hunger. So if you let the Dunkin' Donuts franchises, the horse breeders, the tanning salons, the timber mills and the giant food corporations fend for themselves, there would be many millions left over to ship the extra food to people who are dying.
But I suppose I'm being naive here, right? I'm just an unsophisticated observer who knows nothing about farming or the way Congress operates. Well, guilty on the lack of farming expertise, but I know pretty much how our Congress operates. Being from New York City I have long observed how the 5 Mafia families around here split up the turf and extract millions of dollars from the economy which they have not earned. Congress is pretty much ehe same, with "Made" men and women on the inside making deals with one another and lobbyists, who are basically their co-conspirators, siphoning off huge chunks of money earned by the sweat and smarts of somebody else.
All the while these made men and women rant and rave about waste in government, meaning of course, the money that doesn't go to their pet projects on their turf. Sometimes they have sit-downs like the Mafia bosses to hash out these territorial disputes, making sure the gravy train stops at every station, whether or not that station has plenty of gravy already. And if anyone calls for giving the president a line-item veto to pare the legislation down to it's original proposed purpose, they shriek like banshees that such a move would curtail their civil rights. What, their right to pass hidden legislation in an open society? Bullshit!
If some guy want to Feds to pay for a cheese museum in his state, let him propose a bill that states just that. If somebody thinks the taxpayers ought to fund a tanning salon in Las Vegas where's here's more sun than gamblers, let him put that proposal out in the open and debate its merits like any other law. And when Young MacDonald wants three-quarters of a million dollars every year to not grow food on his farm, let him explain exactly how that works. That ought to be pretty amusing.
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 65
Contrary to popular wisdom, men really don't want their women to have "Buns of Steel." A woman's bottom just feels fine, no, make that really fine, exactly the way it was designed, to say nothing of that annoying clanging sound made when a set of steel buns sits down. A little jiggle and jounce goes a long way.
NOTE TO SELF: DON'T ENTER THE DOG CLONING CONTEST
Our cruelty to dogs knows no bounds. We own them like slaves and selectively breed them for our own purposes to produce oddball creatures that have no place in nature. Would Chihuahuas make it in the wild? We confine them in small spaces, choke them with leashes, give them ridiculous names and in the case of Poodles completely humiliate them by giving them mullet hairdos. And those are not the worst mistreatments we offer these loyal beasts. We spay and neuter this captive race so they can't even hump anymore, the one solace you'd think we could let them have in their miserable existence.
And as cruel as that is, now some company in California is auctioning off the rights to clone 5 dogs, bids starting at $100,000. Now that's really rubbing it in. Dogs would be more than glad to screw one another silly to produce all the puppies you'd want. But no, these jerkoff scientists want to take over that function for them too. They justify this by saying that dogs are hard to clone since they have an unusual reproductive system, even more so than that of humans. Doesn't seem to have deterred non-altered dogs from doing the wild thing with one other since time immemorial. Now these scientists are looking to cut the poor sons and daughters of bitches about of the loop permanently!
So if this fiasco works now we'll have nothing but cloned, neutered dogs earnestly humping the neighbor's leg since they know they're supposed to be doing something with their altered organs besides peeing, but they're not quite sure what. And being clones, they'll all look alike. Great. And... it gets worse. The guy in charge of the project and his main colleagues are Korean. Sound suspiciously like these guys are looking to raise the perfect meal. Unreliable sources report that one of these Korean Scientists was the author of the cookbook, "50 Ways to Wok Your Dog."
So if you've got $100,000 to blow to reproduce your beloved Bootsie, maybe you should stop and think that you could have saved that hundred grand plus the 200 bucks or so you forked over to the veterinarian if you had just let old Bootsie keep his nuts in the first place. Odds are he and a mate would have provided you with no shortage of dogs that look pretty much like him. But knowing some of these so-called "dog lovers," they'll pay huge money for the clone and then have the new Bootsie snipped too, saying to themselves it's the responsible thing to do. Responsible to who? Surely not poor Bootsie. Don't tell him it makes no difference to an animal whether of not he gets to have sex or not. Tell that to the wild animals who quite often kill one another for the right to get busy.
So when Bootsie 2 nears the end of his miserable, captive and sexless days, do you clone and neuter him too for another small fortune? Because you love dogs, right? With friends like man, dogs don't need enemies. Probably a day doesn't pass that they don't curse their ancient ancestors for thinking what a good idea it would be to partner up with man for the hunt and get some warmth from his fires at night. At least the Koreans are honest about how they love dogs. Sauteed in soy sauce over a bed of rice, mostly.
*Author's note: To get an actual dog's point of view on all this, visit bobcrespo.com using the link on the "About Me" section on this page, just below this story on the right. Click on where it says bobcrespo.com, then when you're there click on the STORIES page and read "I'm Not Your Dog". Read a bunch of my stories while you're over there, on the house. -Bob Crespo
And as cruel as that is, now some company in California is auctioning off the rights to clone 5 dogs, bids starting at $100,000. Now that's really rubbing it in. Dogs would be more than glad to screw one another silly to produce all the puppies you'd want. But no, these jerkoff scientists want to take over that function for them too. They justify this by saying that dogs are hard to clone since they have an unusual reproductive system, even more so than that of humans. Doesn't seem to have deterred non-altered dogs from doing the wild thing with one other since time immemorial. Now these scientists are looking to cut the poor sons and daughters of bitches about of the loop permanently!
So if this fiasco works now we'll have nothing but cloned, neutered dogs earnestly humping the neighbor's leg since they know they're supposed to be doing something with their altered organs besides peeing, but they're not quite sure what. And being clones, they'll all look alike. Great. And... it gets worse. The guy in charge of the project and his main colleagues are Korean. Sound suspiciously like these guys are looking to raise the perfect meal. Unreliable sources report that one of these Korean Scientists was the author of the cookbook, "50 Ways to Wok Your Dog."
So if you've got $100,000 to blow to reproduce your beloved Bootsie, maybe you should stop and think that you could have saved that hundred grand plus the 200 bucks or so you forked over to the veterinarian if you had just let old Bootsie keep his nuts in the first place. Odds are he and a mate would have provided you with no shortage of dogs that look pretty much like him. But knowing some of these so-called "dog lovers," they'll pay huge money for the clone and then have the new Bootsie snipped too, saying to themselves it's the responsible thing to do. Responsible to who? Surely not poor Bootsie. Don't tell him it makes no difference to an animal whether of not he gets to have sex or not. Tell that to the wild animals who quite often kill one another for the right to get busy.
So when Bootsie 2 nears the end of his miserable, captive and sexless days, do you clone and neuter him too for another small fortune? Because you love dogs, right? With friends like man, dogs don't need enemies. Probably a day doesn't pass that they don't curse their ancient ancestors for thinking what a good idea it would be to partner up with man for the hunt and get some warmth from his fires at night. At least the Koreans are honest about how they love dogs. Sauteed in soy sauce over a bed of rice, mostly.
*Author's note: To get an actual dog's point of view on all this, visit bobcrespo.com using the link on the "About Me" section on this page, just below this story on the right. Click on where it says bobcrespo.com, then when you're there click on the STORIES page and read "I'm Not Your Dog". Read a bunch of my stories while you're over there, on the house. -Bob Crespo
May 20, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 64
Man's best friend may a dog but a dog's best friend sure isn't man. Your best friend doesn't neuter you or put a leash around your neck. Nor do they name you Fluffy.
LAPEL PINHEADS AND OTHER ODDITIES
Good thing all those politicians go around wearing American flag lapel pins. Otherwise you'd never know what country they come from. So you have to figure that the ones who don't wear them must be foreigners. Which probably explains why our 35th President, John F. Kennedy never wore one. He came right out and admitted he was a Berliner, even going so far as to say it in his native language, German, "Ich bin ein Berliner!" For 2 years and 10 months our nation was run by a Berliner with no lapel pin. So we should thank the Chinese people for making all these American flag pins so we know who's who. Plus, it gives the people who are too lazy to think a way of identifying the good guys. Lapel pin: good guy, no lapel pin: bad guy. Once again we are in debt to the Chinese for reducing our national emblem to a cheap wardrobe accessory and giving dumb guys a clue on how to vote.
People have finally figured out who the real American Idol is. Turns out it's that British sissy with the black turtleneck, Simon Cowell, the one who humiliates the emotional wrecks that appear on his show. Take careful notice that turtlenecks don't even have lapels, never mind lapel pins. So this foreign interloper somehow becomes a bigger star than any of the half-baked drama queens and kings featured on "American" Idol. Hiring these so-called entertainers is starting to seem like a clever ploy to make Cowell look like a genius by comparison. Imagine how much of a star he'd be if he had a personality or any talent.
In news from the science world it is reported that being forgetful as one grows older is a sign of a refined and broadly focused mind, a brain able to absorb and collate vast amounts of diverse information. The forgetting of names and phone numbers is merely the beneficial byproduct of a mind able to focus on many different areas and to make sense out them. The report states that retention of trivial details are impediments to the broader focus of a refined older mind. Now I don't feel so bad when I enter a room and forget why I came in there. Science is on my side. At least that's what I think it said. Being an Older Big Picture Guy with a refined mind, I forgot the trivial details.
People have finally figured out who the real American Idol is. Turns out it's that British sissy with the black turtleneck, Simon Cowell, the one who humiliates the emotional wrecks that appear on his show. Take careful notice that turtlenecks don't even have lapels, never mind lapel pins. So this foreign interloper somehow becomes a bigger star than any of the half-baked drama queens and kings featured on "American" Idol. Hiring these so-called entertainers is starting to seem like a clever ploy to make Cowell look like a genius by comparison. Imagine how much of a star he'd be if he had a personality or any talent.
In news from the science world it is reported that being forgetful as one grows older is a sign of a refined and broadly focused mind, a brain able to absorb and collate vast amounts of diverse information. The forgetting of names and phone numbers is merely the beneficial byproduct of a mind able to focus on many different areas and to make sense out them. The report states that retention of trivial details are impediments to the broader focus of a refined older mind. Now I don't feel so bad when I enter a room and forget why I came in there. Science is on my side. At least that's what I think it said. Being an Older Big Picture Guy with a refined mind, I forgot the trivial details.
May 19, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 63
You know those voices inside your head? There's two of them, actually, and they're both you talking to you. One's a shameless flatterer and a big time excuse maker. To that voice you're the best-looking, smartest and most perfect person in the world. We love hearing that voice. The other one, the sensible one we don't listen to all that much, that's the voice that knows exactly what's what, the pain in the ass voice we need to listen to a little more than we generally do. Not all the time, of course, since we need our egos stroked from somewhere, even if it's only inside our heads. But at least once in a while check out the reality reports from inside your skull. There's plenty of updates every day.
THE AMERICAN WAY
The news reports that such is our national debt, 57.3 trillion dollars, that every household in America is on the hook for half a million bucks. Well, fellow Americans, running up ridiculous amounts of debt is the American way, and this proud American is doing his part, thank you very much. My credit card companies didn't nickname me "Max" for nothing, I'll have you know. Another half a mil I'll never live long enough to pay off? Hah, I say! And Pish and Tosh and So-friggin-what? Just add add it on to the tally, right there with the mortgage payments, car insurance, utility bills, taxes, food, gasoline and cable TV.
As long as I have breath in these scarred lungs and red blood in these sluggish veins I'll keep on running on empty! They'll have to pry my credit cards from my cold dead hands. What's 57.3 trillion bucks anyway? Sounds like a made up number to me, sort of like bazillions and gazillions. I can see now that my government truly is a reflection of me; Johnny American, Man of Many Debts.
Do I worry that 'll be passing these debts down to my grandchildren? Of course not! I want them to be good Americans too, don't I? How can they live the American Dream if they're not up to their little eyeballs in hock? And their unborn generation will be the most American of all since the little tykes will be born in deep debt, to the tune of a couple of hundred grand apiece! Add that to the huge debt they'll run up on their own trying to get an education and you're talking John Wayne American, Charlton Heston American, Chuck Norris action-figure American!
What kind of ancestor would I be to deny my descendants the opportunity to participate in our great nation in such a meaningful way? I draw inspiration from our oil companies, fearlessly raising the price of gasoline and forcing more and more Americans to finance their fill-ups with their credit cards, many of them reluctant to do so, instead harboring unpatriotic notions about saving money and staying out of debt. Well, they're getting in line now, pulling out the plastic and joining the club. Go ahead, America, add on a few more trillion to our burden, we can take it. We're Americans, dammit, and we live beyond our means.
As long as I have breath in these scarred lungs and red blood in these sluggish veins I'll keep on running on empty! They'll have to pry my credit cards from my cold dead hands. What's 57.3 trillion bucks anyway? Sounds like a made up number to me, sort of like bazillions and gazillions. I can see now that my government truly is a reflection of me; Johnny American, Man of Many Debts.
Do I worry that 'll be passing these debts down to my grandchildren? Of course not! I want them to be good Americans too, don't I? How can they live the American Dream if they're not up to their little eyeballs in hock? And their unborn generation will be the most American of all since the little tykes will be born in deep debt, to the tune of a couple of hundred grand apiece! Add that to the huge debt they'll run up on their own trying to get an education and you're talking John Wayne American, Charlton Heston American, Chuck Norris action-figure American!
What kind of ancestor would I be to deny my descendants the opportunity to participate in our great nation in such a meaningful way? I draw inspiration from our oil companies, fearlessly raising the price of gasoline and forcing more and more Americans to finance their fill-ups with their credit cards, many of them reluctant to do so, instead harboring unpatriotic notions about saving money and staying out of debt. Well, they're getting in line now, pulling out the plastic and joining the club. Go ahead, America, add on a few more trillion to our burden, we can take it. We're Americans, dammit, and we live beyond our means.
May 18, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 62
There is no explainable reason for who you fall in love with. Who you lust after, on the other hand, is easily understood with a single glance. Beauty may only be skin deep, but hey, no one's looking to fondle anybody's lungs, liver and kidneys. Skin deep's plenty.
SHALLL WE TRY COMMANDING THE TIDES AGAIN?
Canute The Great was the guy who put it all into perspective. He was A Viking King, conqueror of England and most of Scandinavia and by all accounts a formidable commander and monarch. He ruled from approximately 1016 to 1035, just after the turn of the first millennium. As was the habit of those days, the people who lived under his rule tripped over themselves to attribute all sorts of omnipotent powers to their kings (hence the nickname "The Great"), figuring maybe on the one hand he'll favor them and on the other that some of those supernatural powers will reflect back on themselves. Pretty foolish notions, but that was the way of the world back then.
Either way, Canute was unimpressed by all this idolatry and invented glory for himself, who he knew to be just a man. To emphasize his point, he had his subjects take him down to the sea where he commanded the tides to obey him, with of course the predictable result of the tide paying no attention whatsoever to Canute The Great and rolling in and out right on schedule, proving themselves perhaps Greater Than Canute. His point made, he resumed his reign over men and matters in which he could make a difference. Who knows, maybe that symbolic act of demonstrating the limits of earthly royal power planted the seeds of doubt in men's minds that led to the social and revolutionary reforms of later centuries.
So now here we are just after the turn of the 3rd millennium and some people have their eyes on the tides again. Only this time, nobody's planning to order them around. You see, unlike in Canute's time, there's a bit of a shortage of energy in the world as we run out of things to burn. But some have noted that since Roman times the tides have been used to power mills. They were not harnessed or anything so dramatic or unattainable, just sort of tapped into while they made their way in and out of the shoreline. The tide rolls in, a wheel spins and crushes grain into flour, the tide rolls out, the same thing happens in reverse. Bingo, pulverized grain without having to have men or oxen walk in a circle pushing heavy millstones, the energy instead provided by the oceans; steady, reliable and completely predictable.
Now it's time for these tides to spin turbines and produce electricity. We've been producing power from waterfalls forever, but not every nation is blessed with a bunch of powerful Niagaras or Victoria Falls, and some rivers and waterfalls dry up to a trickle during dry seasons and prolonged droughts. Not so the oceans. You could set your watch to the coming and going of the tides and the power that propels them is immeasurable. Just as Niagara is not controlled in any way, the tides too can be tapped into for energy, lots and lots of it. And unlike other forms of alternate energy, the tides keep their appointed rounds whether or not the wind is blowing or the sun is shining.
So let's go down to the beach and do something besides getting sunburnt and building sand castles. We'll still be able to do plenty of that too, especially if the ocean is providing us with enough electricity to produce electric cars and trains and the like. And the beauty of it is that nothing needs to be invented to harness wave power. The technology exists, the tides exist and we exist. Time to put those ingredients together. Old Canute would be proud, maybe even say "Now, that's Great!"
Either way, Canute was unimpressed by all this idolatry and invented glory for himself, who he knew to be just a man. To emphasize his point, he had his subjects take him down to the sea where he commanded the tides to obey him, with of course the predictable result of the tide paying no attention whatsoever to Canute The Great and rolling in and out right on schedule, proving themselves perhaps Greater Than Canute. His point made, he resumed his reign over men and matters in which he could make a difference. Who knows, maybe that symbolic act of demonstrating the limits of earthly royal power planted the seeds of doubt in men's minds that led to the social and revolutionary reforms of later centuries.
So now here we are just after the turn of the 3rd millennium and some people have their eyes on the tides again. Only this time, nobody's planning to order them around. You see, unlike in Canute's time, there's a bit of a shortage of energy in the world as we run out of things to burn. But some have noted that since Roman times the tides have been used to power mills. They were not harnessed or anything so dramatic or unattainable, just sort of tapped into while they made their way in and out of the shoreline. The tide rolls in, a wheel spins and crushes grain into flour, the tide rolls out, the same thing happens in reverse. Bingo, pulverized grain without having to have men or oxen walk in a circle pushing heavy millstones, the energy instead provided by the oceans; steady, reliable and completely predictable.
Now it's time for these tides to spin turbines and produce electricity. We've been producing power from waterfalls forever, but not every nation is blessed with a bunch of powerful Niagaras or Victoria Falls, and some rivers and waterfalls dry up to a trickle during dry seasons and prolonged droughts. Not so the oceans. You could set your watch to the coming and going of the tides and the power that propels them is immeasurable. Just as Niagara is not controlled in any way, the tides too can be tapped into for energy, lots and lots of it. And unlike other forms of alternate energy, the tides keep their appointed rounds whether or not the wind is blowing or the sun is shining.
So let's go down to the beach and do something besides getting sunburnt and building sand castles. We'll still be able to do plenty of that too, especially if the ocean is providing us with enough electricity to produce electric cars and trains and the like. And the beauty of it is that nothing needs to be invented to harness wave power. The technology exists, the tides exist and we exist. Time to put those ingredients together. Old Canute would be proud, maybe even say "Now, that's Great!"
May 17, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 61
A famous man once said: "Never ask a barber if you need a haircut." That's not why he was famous but his sound advice seems to have outlived his name or anything else he did. Just goes to show you that good ideas are often as powerful as deeds. Provided of course, that anyone pays attention to those good ideas and put the words into practice. Otherwise we're just making noise like so many competing animals screeching in the jungle.
TOP O' THE FOOD CHAIN TO YA, MATEY!
Here we are in the 21st century celebrating ourselves as usual in one way or another, congratulating humanity for being smarter than than any other life form to have developed on this small planet on the remote outskirts of a smallish galaxy located somewhere in the vast universe, we're not really sure. But is that saying all that much? Was the evolution of developing these big old brains of ours meant for anything other than survival, climbing up a few notches on the old food chain? We just don't know, do we? Our various religions are of no help at all in figuring this one out, the creeds they espouse no more than a reflection of the sensibilities of the people who founded them.
How many Chosen People can there be? How many One True Faiths? All of them, if you read their manuals. The rise of mankind has been attributed by religions as everything from depicting God as a sort of mood-swinging tinkerer/inventor trying out two test models humans in the Garden of Eden that didn't really work so well but he sort of liked them and used them anyway to giant turtles giving birth to twins that spawned the rest of us before they devoured each other in some cosmic battle, and many variations on both those themes. So one supposes that religions are not exactly detached forums from which to observe and measure human progress.
But is science much of an improvement? In the 5,000 years or so that we've been keeping track of ourselves science has alternately been a blessing and a curse. While cures for smallpox and driving in cars are good things, what about the guy who squandered his education coming up with lemon-scented toilet paper? Doesn't seem all that far evolved, that guy. And now we advance to the nuclear age, maybe playing with toys a little too complex for us to master. We hear that China has located its nuclear weapons facilities in what is quaintly called an earthquake zone. An earthquake zone? Fissionable materials sitting on top of Mother Nature's cocktail shaker? Kind of suggests that our gene pool is not exactly the Pacific Ocean, no? More like a puddle.
What comes to mind here is a room full of chimpanzees escaping their cages, putting on white lab coats and messing around with test tubes and dangerous substances. We're just smart enough to know that we can do some cool scientific things with these dangerous substances but too dumb to stop ourselves from spilling it all over the place and poisoning ourselves. And so we blame the other chimps for doing whacky and dangerous things with science but figure that our chimps are the responsible ones who will lead Chimpkind out of the dark ages and figure this world out. Not so fast, Cheetah. Sounds a whole lot like religion.
Just maybe our larger brains were an evolutionary response to our slower reflexes, smaller muscles and lack of effective claws and fangs, a genetic adaption meant only for survival that sort of got out of hand and has us imagining we're all demi-gods and sorcerers. While these brains of ours have effectively removed us from the dinner menu of large predators, they haven't prevented us from slaughtering each other with an abandon that would appall any predator worth his salt as a shameful waste of good food, killing more than you can eat in one sitting and letting all that good meat rot in the ground for the bugs and worms to eat. And having a large brain sort of guarantees that we know how very wrong this is on so many levels, but the simple truth is, we can't help it.
We can no more stop killing each other than a walrus can decide to stop eating fish or a giraffe can decide he'd like to give flying a shot like those pretty birds he sees in the treetops. So we content ourselves with inventing stuff like asbestos so our sheltered lairs don't burn down even though we know full well it will kill some of us slowly and painfully later on in life. We form armies to kill one another but lock up other people in cages when they kill without wearing a uniform. We learn how to feed lots of people and cure lots of diseases but don't share that knowledge with those who need it most. We're a pretty interesting bunch of monkeys, no doubt, full of contradictions and surprises.
We create art, write poetry and show a great capacity for kindness towards our fellow man when we're not industriously shooting each other and claiming each other's hunting grounds. We've pushed a lot of our fellow creatures into the oblivion of extinction and at the same time worry about drowning polar bears, a creature that not so very long ago considered humans an easy meal. We argue over what is right and wrong and too often pick Door # 2. We're fairly obviously not the end product here when it comes to intelligence, just the most advanced model so far. It's been an interesting adventure putting on clothes and building skyscrapers and blowing stuff up, that's for sure. It hasn't often been boring. I wonder where we're headed. Hopefully that won't be decided by fissionable materials stored in an earthquake zone.
How many Chosen People can there be? How many One True Faiths? All of them, if you read their manuals. The rise of mankind has been attributed by religions as everything from depicting God as a sort of mood-swinging tinkerer/inventor trying out two test models humans in the Garden of Eden that didn't really work so well but he sort of liked them and used them anyway to giant turtles giving birth to twins that spawned the rest of us before they devoured each other in some cosmic battle, and many variations on both those themes. So one supposes that religions are not exactly detached forums from which to observe and measure human progress.
But is science much of an improvement? In the 5,000 years or so that we've been keeping track of ourselves science has alternately been a blessing and a curse. While cures for smallpox and driving in cars are good things, what about the guy who squandered his education coming up with lemon-scented toilet paper? Doesn't seem all that far evolved, that guy. And now we advance to the nuclear age, maybe playing with toys a little too complex for us to master. We hear that China has located its nuclear weapons facilities in what is quaintly called an earthquake zone. An earthquake zone? Fissionable materials sitting on top of Mother Nature's cocktail shaker? Kind of suggests that our gene pool is not exactly the Pacific Ocean, no? More like a puddle.
What comes to mind here is a room full of chimpanzees escaping their cages, putting on white lab coats and messing around with test tubes and dangerous substances. We're just smart enough to know that we can do some cool scientific things with these dangerous substances but too dumb to stop ourselves from spilling it all over the place and poisoning ourselves. And so we blame the other chimps for doing whacky and dangerous things with science but figure that our chimps are the responsible ones who will lead Chimpkind out of the dark ages and figure this world out. Not so fast, Cheetah. Sounds a whole lot like religion.
Just maybe our larger brains were an evolutionary response to our slower reflexes, smaller muscles and lack of effective claws and fangs, a genetic adaption meant only for survival that sort of got out of hand and has us imagining we're all demi-gods and sorcerers. While these brains of ours have effectively removed us from the dinner menu of large predators, they haven't prevented us from slaughtering each other with an abandon that would appall any predator worth his salt as a shameful waste of good food, killing more than you can eat in one sitting and letting all that good meat rot in the ground for the bugs and worms to eat. And having a large brain sort of guarantees that we know how very wrong this is on so many levels, but the simple truth is, we can't help it.
We can no more stop killing each other than a walrus can decide to stop eating fish or a giraffe can decide he'd like to give flying a shot like those pretty birds he sees in the treetops. So we content ourselves with inventing stuff like asbestos so our sheltered lairs don't burn down even though we know full well it will kill some of us slowly and painfully later on in life. We form armies to kill one another but lock up other people in cages when they kill without wearing a uniform. We learn how to feed lots of people and cure lots of diseases but don't share that knowledge with those who need it most. We're a pretty interesting bunch of monkeys, no doubt, full of contradictions and surprises.
We create art, write poetry and show a great capacity for kindness towards our fellow man when we're not industriously shooting each other and claiming each other's hunting grounds. We've pushed a lot of our fellow creatures into the oblivion of extinction and at the same time worry about drowning polar bears, a creature that not so very long ago considered humans an easy meal. We argue over what is right and wrong and too often pick Door # 2. We're fairly obviously not the end product here when it comes to intelligence, just the most advanced model so far. It's been an interesting adventure putting on clothes and building skyscrapers and blowing stuff up, that's for sure. It hasn't often been boring. I wonder where we're headed. Hopefully that won't be decided by fissionable materials stored in an earthquake zone.
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 60
Be patient with morning people. With any luck they'll die young. See how rosy and chipper they are then first thing every morning when they find out they're still dead.
WHERE ARE ALL OUR MAD SCIENTISTS?
There's problems in this world, folks. In case you haven't noticed, there's world food shortages, astronomic oil prices and imminent global warming where the new beach resorts will be in Pennsylvania and the old ones will be a deep sea divers' paradise. And all our scientists don't seem to be doing a damned thing about it besides appearing on CNN with graphs and charts and dire warnings. And they all seem so damned normal! They can't be real scientists! Real scientists are demented looking and ill at ease in public. I've got three words for these button-down regular guys with the charts and the patient bedside manners: Albert Friggin' Einstein!
Now there was a scientist, all freaky hair and distracted expression, a guy who could lose himself in abstract mathematics and solve some cosmic puzzle while his wife prattled on about the pain in the ass neighbor's kids trampling on their lawn and how her hairdresser's friend's cousin lived next door to a guy who knew Frank Sinatra's milkman, all the while never skipping a beat, pretending to pay attention to Mrs. Einstein, knowing instinctively where to throw in the "um-hums" the "really's?" and the "yes dears." He was like the Rain Man of Science, scribbling something illegible with a dull pencil on a paper napkin that would revolutionize an industry later that week.
What are our guys doing these days except predicting disaster, inventing tiny electronic gadgets to go along with the bazillion other tiny electronic gadgets we already have and making the world safe for sufferers of acid reflux? And even acid reflex is a new name they just made up for heartburn to make you think they've been up to something dramatic. They haven't cured a damned disease since polio or put a guy on Mars forty whole years after we landed on the Moon. There's not a bona-fide mad scientist out there! Was Boris Karloff's life's work all in vain?
Where are the laboratories in dank castles on mountaintops where lightning striking the tower is an integral part of the experiment while his hunchback assistant secretly pines for the love of the mad scientist's ward, the beautiful young blonde niece who secretly loves the duke in the castle next door even though he's opposed to her uncle's evil experiments? Boris showed them the way. Where are these guys when the planet needs them? Seems like they're all working for corporations now, perfecting the annoying little cutesy noises our computers make, inventing even more absorbent paper towels and dreaming up phony diseases and the pills that cure them. The same corporate goons intent on wringing every penny out of this planet no matter how many people they kill and poison. It's like the roles are reversed nowadays and the scientists are the bland button downs and the corporate people are the evil mad ones. That's backwards!
There's not a decent death-ray guy among them! Not a one of them is working on sucking all the water out of one of the Great Lakes and irrigating their own personal desert in order to make a vast fortune. There are no secret projects involving gigantic magnets aimed at jet planes and foreign armies, pulling all their tanks and guns right out of their hands onto that big-ass magnet. Didn't these guys watch "Million Dollar Movie" after school? Every other day there was another primer on how to be a mad genius working on outlandish projects. Did they forget all the James Bond flicks too? The scientists on both side were demented! None of these guys reported to anybody in a suit! They had big plans!
They didn't give a rat's ass about putting four blades on a disposable razor. They were lucky they remembered to shave their own faces every few days, so distracted and consumed were they with their mad scientist work. And have you heard our modern so-called scientists laugh? Please! They laugh just like any other person, not a decent sinister "Bwoo-Ha-Ha-Ha" to be found in a convention full of these drab losers. Without that laugh it's almost a guarantee that their work involves nothing more earth-shattering than improving micro-wave popcorn bags or making all-day lip gloss.
And for that last one we men hate them. There's few things sexier for a man to observe than a woman applying her lipstick and now these killjoys who don't even realize that are taking that away from us. Thanks, nerds. What's next, a pill that takes away the effects of the five drinks we just bought that beautiful lady with the ruby-red lipstick? Try that one and we march on your corporate offices at midnight with torches, pitchforks and dogs and force you to work on global warming and alternate energy sources. And teach you all the proper mad scientist laugh. Bwoo-hah-hah-hah, bwoo-hah-hah-hah...
Now there was a scientist, all freaky hair and distracted expression, a guy who could lose himself in abstract mathematics and solve some cosmic puzzle while his wife prattled on about the pain in the ass neighbor's kids trampling on their lawn and how her hairdresser's friend's cousin lived next door to a guy who knew Frank Sinatra's milkman, all the while never skipping a beat, pretending to pay attention to Mrs. Einstein, knowing instinctively where to throw in the "um-hums" the "really's?" and the "yes dears." He was like the Rain Man of Science, scribbling something illegible with a dull pencil on a paper napkin that would revolutionize an industry later that week.
What are our guys doing these days except predicting disaster, inventing tiny electronic gadgets to go along with the bazillion other tiny electronic gadgets we already have and making the world safe for sufferers of acid reflux? And even acid reflex is a new name they just made up for heartburn to make you think they've been up to something dramatic. They haven't cured a damned disease since polio or put a guy on Mars forty whole years after we landed on the Moon. There's not a bona-fide mad scientist out there! Was Boris Karloff's life's work all in vain?
Where are the laboratories in dank castles on mountaintops where lightning striking the tower is an integral part of the experiment while his hunchback assistant secretly pines for the love of the mad scientist's ward, the beautiful young blonde niece who secretly loves the duke in the castle next door even though he's opposed to her uncle's evil experiments? Boris showed them the way. Where are these guys when the planet needs them? Seems like they're all working for corporations now, perfecting the annoying little cutesy noises our computers make, inventing even more absorbent paper towels and dreaming up phony diseases and the pills that cure them. The same corporate goons intent on wringing every penny out of this planet no matter how many people they kill and poison. It's like the roles are reversed nowadays and the scientists are the bland button downs and the corporate people are the evil mad ones. That's backwards!
There's not a decent death-ray guy among them! Not a one of them is working on sucking all the water out of one of the Great Lakes and irrigating their own personal desert in order to make a vast fortune. There are no secret projects involving gigantic magnets aimed at jet planes and foreign armies, pulling all their tanks and guns right out of their hands onto that big-ass magnet. Didn't these guys watch "Million Dollar Movie" after school? Every other day there was another primer on how to be a mad genius working on outlandish projects. Did they forget all the James Bond flicks too? The scientists on both side were demented! None of these guys reported to anybody in a suit! They had big plans!
They didn't give a rat's ass about putting four blades on a disposable razor. They were lucky they remembered to shave their own faces every few days, so distracted and consumed were they with their mad scientist work. And have you heard our modern so-called scientists laugh? Please! They laugh just like any other person, not a decent sinister "Bwoo-Ha-Ha-Ha" to be found in a convention full of these drab losers. Without that laugh it's almost a guarantee that their work involves nothing more earth-shattering than improving micro-wave popcorn bags or making all-day lip gloss.
And for that last one we men hate them. There's few things sexier for a man to observe than a woman applying her lipstick and now these killjoys who don't even realize that are taking that away from us. Thanks, nerds. What's next, a pill that takes away the effects of the five drinks we just bought that beautiful lady with the ruby-red lipstick? Try that one and we march on your corporate offices at midnight with torches, pitchforks and dogs and force you to work on global warming and alternate energy sources. And teach you all the proper mad scientist laugh. Bwoo-hah-hah-hah, bwoo-hah-hah-hah...
May 16, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 59
Beware of trick questions. When someone asks you if some article of clothing makes them look fat, think fast and be wary. Odds are this is a good time for a lie. If you are a religious person with issues about uttering untruths, not to worry, God will definitely give you a mulligan here. Be very clear about these situations; you are not being asked to tell the truth. Honesty may be the best policy, but don't go overboard.
BUSH THE YOUNGER: APPEASER-IN-CHIEF
Okay, now Bush The Younger, so stupid that he does his farewell tour in the Middle East, the site of the greatest failures of his completely failed presidency, goes on record as comparing Barack Obama to NevIlle Chamberlain. As everybody knows, or should know, Chamberlain was the failed Prime Minister of England who attempted to appease Adolph Hitler before the onset of World War 2. For a hint as to how that turned out, check out the History Channel's riveting new series about the frequent serious lapses in judgement by world leaders: "What The Hell Was I Thinking?" Bush The Younger was referring to Senator Obama's willingness to negotiate with our enemies before sending our armed forces into battle, a step in the process ignored by our mildly retarded president.
Well, at least Senator Obama doesn't walk around kissing and holding hands with representatives of one of the world's foremost tyrannies like a couple of same-sex high school sweethearts. That would be Bush The Younger and the long-gowned princes of Saudi Arabia he frequently entertains in the White House and at his ranch in Texas. Saudi Arabia, in case nobody noticed, supplied 15 of the 19 hijackers for the 9/11/2001 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. Saudi Arabia provides millions, if not billions to fund world-wide terrorism and their own radical interpretation of Islam. Saudi Arabia also provided the world with one Osama bin Laden, the famous killer and video star whose family has been in business with the Bush family for generations. Saudi Arabia is widely regarded as one of the most repressive regimes on the planet, but apologists and appeasers refer to their rule as "conservative." Conservative? That's like calling Adolph Hitler "irritable." And these are Bush The Younger's asshole buddies, the Saudi Royal family.
Never does a discouraging word about these pampered silk-robed monsters escape his lips, never does it cross his addled mind that this is not the sort of nation the world's leading democracy ought to be embracing, literally or figuratively. Which is not to say that no dialogue should be undertaken with this enemy of humanity. Sending soldiers in anywhere must be the last, worst resort in any conflict of interest. Neville Chamberlain was wrong not because he spoke to the Nazis, but because he capitulated. The British at that juncture were negotiating from strength and Hitler's position was comparatively weak. The allied French and British armed forces at that moment in time were superior to Germany's and could have easily enforced the will of their respective leaders in regard to Hitler's military adventures in Europe. World War 2 was not written in stone until Britain and France relaxed after handing Hitler a huge propaganda victory and turning a blind eye to his war plans.
Sometimes negotiating, especially from a position of overwhelming strength, is merely a warning to upstart warlords to back off or face the music, that music being the whistling of bombs and bullets. Negotiations with Hamas or Hezbolla or Saudi Arabia for that matter won't be anything approaching a level playing field. And sometimes the opposition is not even threatened with the outcome of invasion or war. No need. One needs only to threaten to fund, arm and train the warlord's enemies who would be more than happy to annihilate them just for the fun of it. That sort of thing has been going on since even before Machiavelli wrote it into textbook form in "The Prince."
Cynical? Manipulative? You bet. But that is the world of international hardball diplomacy, a down and dirty skill requiring brains and balls, two qualities Bush The Younger lacks. Don't forget, this was the guy who deserted his military post during the Vietnam War, a stateside National Guard position in which he was in no danger at all. Also the guy who can't put two coherent sentences together. So expecting him to understand much of anything more challenging than clearing brush from the prairie is asking a bit much of the man, especially in the complex and treacherous arena of international relations. Hardball is best left to Major Leaguers, not spoiled rich boys who have failed at everything they were handed on a silver platter, including the presidency.
Let the new president, whoever it may be, think first, talk second and shoot later. Much later, if at all. And let the new president appease no one, like Bush has done with the Saudis. How do the appeased treat appeasers? As door mats. With the U.S. economy tanking, Bush visited the Saudis this week hat in hand to beg them to raise oil production to relieve record high global oil prices. Of course they turned him down flat, having long regarded him with contempt as a sandal-licking sychophant. Let our new president help us wash the taste of the Great Appeaser Bush The Younger from our mouths. And let that person be addressed as President Obama.
Well, at least Senator Obama doesn't walk around kissing and holding hands with representatives of one of the world's foremost tyrannies like a couple of same-sex high school sweethearts. That would be Bush The Younger and the long-gowned princes of Saudi Arabia he frequently entertains in the White House and at his ranch in Texas. Saudi Arabia, in case nobody noticed, supplied 15 of the 19 hijackers for the 9/11/2001 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. Saudi Arabia provides millions, if not billions to fund world-wide terrorism and their own radical interpretation of Islam. Saudi Arabia also provided the world with one Osama bin Laden, the famous killer and video star whose family has been in business with the Bush family for generations. Saudi Arabia is widely regarded as one of the most repressive regimes on the planet, but apologists and appeasers refer to their rule as "conservative." Conservative? That's like calling Adolph Hitler "irritable." And these are Bush The Younger's asshole buddies, the Saudi Royal family.
Never does a discouraging word about these pampered silk-robed monsters escape his lips, never does it cross his addled mind that this is not the sort of nation the world's leading democracy ought to be embracing, literally or figuratively. Which is not to say that no dialogue should be undertaken with this enemy of humanity. Sending soldiers in anywhere must be the last, worst resort in any conflict of interest. Neville Chamberlain was wrong not because he spoke to the Nazis, but because he capitulated. The British at that juncture were negotiating from strength and Hitler's position was comparatively weak. The allied French and British armed forces at that moment in time were superior to Germany's and could have easily enforced the will of their respective leaders in regard to Hitler's military adventures in Europe. World War 2 was not written in stone until Britain and France relaxed after handing Hitler a huge propaganda victory and turning a blind eye to his war plans.
Sometimes negotiating, especially from a position of overwhelming strength, is merely a warning to upstart warlords to back off or face the music, that music being the whistling of bombs and bullets. Negotiations with Hamas or Hezbolla or Saudi Arabia for that matter won't be anything approaching a level playing field. And sometimes the opposition is not even threatened with the outcome of invasion or war. No need. One needs only to threaten to fund, arm and train the warlord's enemies who would be more than happy to annihilate them just for the fun of it. That sort of thing has been going on since even before Machiavelli wrote it into textbook form in "The Prince."
Cynical? Manipulative? You bet. But that is the world of international hardball diplomacy, a down and dirty skill requiring brains and balls, two qualities Bush The Younger lacks. Don't forget, this was the guy who deserted his military post during the Vietnam War, a stateside National Guard position in which he was in no danger at all. Also the guy who can't put two coherent sentences together. So expecting him to understand much of anything more challenging than clearing brush from the prairie is asking a bit much of the man, especially in the complex and treacherous arena of international relations. Hardball is best left to Major Leaguers, not spoiled rich boys who have failed at everything they were handed on a silver platter, including the presidency.
Let the new president, whoever it may be, think first, talk second and shoot later. Much later, if at all. And let the new president appease no one, like Bush has done with the Saudis. How do the appeased treat appeasers? As door mats. With the U.S. economy tanking, Bush visited the Saudis this week hat in hand to beg them to raise oil production to relieve record high global oil prices. Of course they turned him down flat, having long regarded him with contempt as a sandal-licking sychophant. Let our new president help us wash the taste of the Great Appeaser Bush The Younger from our mouths. And let that person be addressed as President Obama.
May 15, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 58
There are people doing all sorts of important and unusual jobs in this world. For example, there are people who stick tiny little labels on every piece of fruit and vegetables in the supermarket, pronouncing that your lemons and peppers are products of California or Mexico or Montana. Makes you glad that someone's on the ball with that while you get on with your life.
SEE INDIA ON LESS THAN FORTY CENTS A DAY!
The above offer isn't a travel agent's spectacular bargain offer for tourists. Forty pennies a day is the figure at which the Indian government defines poverty (!). You have to figure that the people who run the government over there are educated people, no? Maybe their area of expertise is not mathematics, but even a rudimentary education includes basic addition and subtraction, and India boasts very many institutions of higher learning, more than many Western nations.
Lately India has been enjoying unprecedented economic boom times. They are even manufacturing their own cars, tailored to the needs of their swiftly growing middle class. Well, you say, don't most nations build cars? No, they don't, but you'd expect a nation of 1.132 billion citizens to have all sorts of industrial capacities. And India does have a robust and growing economy, just not robust and growing enough for all those people. 27% of them live below the poverty line. Which means, in Indian government terms, that well over three hundred million people somehow get to see India every single day on less than forty pennies.
Can that be possible? This is a world power we're taking about, a nuclear-armed, high tech society that graduates the highest amount of PhD 's in computer sciences in the world. It is at the same time several large Third World countries teeming with starving people. Maybe their universities might offer some courses in agriculture? Instead of this option, Indian experts blame the United States, one of their greatest benefactors, for the high prices and shortage of food. The same United States that produces more food more efficiently than any other nation on the planet. America exports more food each year than most nations manage to produce in 5 years. And, by the way, so does india. They've got to pay for those nuclear bombs and large army somehow.
But it's easier to blame a successful nation located half a globe away for the hunger of your own people than to solve your own domestic problems. India is physically about half the size of America and has more than 4 times the inhabitants. India's climate is in large part wet and hot, ideal for growing just about anything. Look at all the humans it has cultivated in such a climate. Maybe now it's time to try to feed them and let that high economic tide lift all their boats. And let some of their agricultural ministers tour America and notice that exactly nobody here dies of starvation other than anorexic entertainers. Maybe get a few pointers before they start pointing fingers. Just a suggestion.
Lately India has been enjoying unprecedented economic boom times. They are even manufacturing their own cars, tailored to the needs of their swiftly growing middle class. Well, you say, don't most nations build cars? No, they don't, but you'd expect a nation of 1.132 billion citizens to have all sorts of industrial capacities. And India does have a robust and growing economy, just not robust and growing enough for all those people. 27% of them live below the poverty line. Which means, in Indian government terms, that well over three hundred million people somehow get to see India every single day on less than forty pennies.
Can that be possible? This is a world power we're taking about, a nuclear-armed, high tech society that graduates the highest amount of PhD 's in computer sciences in the world. It is at the same time several large Third World countries teeming with starving people. Maybe their universities might offer some courses in agriculture? Instead of this option, Indian experts blame the United States, one of their greatest benefactors, for the high prices and shortage of food. The same United States that produces more food more efficiently than any other nation on the planet. America exports more food each year than most nations manage to produce in 5 years. And, by the way, so does india. They've got to pay for those nuclear bombs and large army somehow.
But it's easier to blame a successful nation located half a globe away for the hunger of your own people than to solve your own domestic problems. India is physically about half the size of America and has more than 4 times the inhabitants. India's climate is in large part wet and hot, ideal for growing just about anything. Look at all the humans it has cultivated in such a climate. Maybe now it's time to try to feed them and let that high economic tide lift all their boats. And let some of their agricultural ministers tour America and notice that exactly nobody here dies of starvation other than anorexic entertainers. Maybe get a few pointers before they start pointing fingers. Just a suggestion.
May 14, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 57
The truth is, most snowflakes are identical, just as most Oriental people look exactly alike.
THE DEPARTMENT OF POINTING OUT THE OBVIOUS WORKS OVERTIME
DOPOTO, the handy acronym for the Department of Pointing Out The Obvious, has been busy as a teenage boy with a new copy of Playboy magazine. Reports of the Readily Apparent Variety keep flooding our inbox as we endeavor to remain in the forefront of pointing out the obvious. First up is the Roman Catholic Church weighing in on a subject that has no bearing whatsoever on anything that concerns them, the possible existence of extraterrestrial life forms. In a reversal of their public humiliation of the astronomer Galileo who had the unmitigated gall to point out that the earth revolves around the sun and not the opposite, the Catholic Church has admitted that there just might be other intelligent species out there. Not content to bow to mathematical probabilities, they further speculate that said beings could perhaps be without original sin, that their Adam and Eve never went apple picking on God's private orchard.
To further muddle their message in inimitable Roman style, they go on to speculate that these theoretical creatures could indeed benefit from a visit from Jesus Christ, except that his short sojourn on earth in the flesh and blood of an earthling was a one-time phenomenon never to be repeated. How's that? The good clergy at the Vatican have come up with some really dense reasoning, now declaring that their all-powerful God can't repeat the performance of sending Junior to some other species for the purpose of their redemption. DOPOTO salutes the Vatican for simultaneously embracing science and attributing magical voodoo to its application. As far as their belief in alien beings, has anybody taken a really close look at the new guy in charge over there, Pope Benedict? Do not attempt to resist, remain in your homes, we come in peace and brotherhood...
In an update of an earlier DOPOTO report on the new president-elect of the nation of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, we are still unable to corroborate his claim that Paraguay was once a great nation. He promises to return Paraguay to its former greatness, perhaps figuring that no one outside of Paraguay would hear that statement. This is a flagrant underestimation of The Department of Pointing Out The Obvious, which knows no borders and leaves no stone unturned in our investigations into the readily apparent. Senor Lugo, a Catholic bishop, will be sworn in on August 15 of this year and will preside over the second-poorest nation in South America.
If he can improve that number to third or fourth poorest, he will certainly usher in A New Golden Age of Paraguay since exhaustive research thus far reveals that their previous Golden Age consists of having been handed a humiliating defeat in The War of the Triple Alliance in the 1860's. So perhaps Bishop Lugo has a pretty low bar set in the Paraguayan Greatness department. DOPOTO wishes him and his soon-to-be-great-again nation all the luck in the world. The world looks to Paraguay with bated breath as it tries its darndest to recall exactly where it is located.
DOPOTO has found numerous reports of various activities emanating from the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, thus refuting the widespread claim that "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." Did they really think that they could hide a major American city from DOPOTO? Especially a city that specializes in relieving the residents of other cities of their money. Hey, we're all over the Paraguay story and the Vatican alien life form controversy. How could we possibly ignore a giant neon-lit circus in the middle of a desert? There's few things in the world more obvious than Las Vegas.
DOPOTO notes that President Bush The Younger is currently touring the Middle East in these, the waning days of his presidency. Isn't that sort of like Napoleon doing a triumphant tour of Waterloo before being ushered to his retirement home on the island of Elba? DOPOTO would recommend that a president wrapping up his term in office would do better to visit the sites of his greatest successes. Let's see, New Orleans is out of the question, as is the American base in Guantanamo, Cuba, so what's left for this man? That would be his extensive ranch in Crawford, Texas, as clear of brush as any ranch could possibly be. If you've ever seen Crawford, Texas, that's actually Bush The Younger's most impressive accomplishment. As to the actual national usefulness of clearing brush on a ranch where exactly no ranching activity goes on, well, we'll leave that judgement to the historians. Our job is merely to point out what everybody already knows.
To further muddle their message in inimitable Roman style, they go on to speculate that these theoretical creatures could indeed benefit from a visit from Jesus Christ, except that his short sojourn on earth in the flesh and blood of an earthling was a one-time phenomenon never to be repeated. How's that? The good clergy at the Vatican have come up with some really dense reasoning, now declaring that their all-powerful God can't repeat the performance of sending Junior to some other species for the purpose of their redemption. DOPOTO salutes the Vatican for simultaneously embracing science and attributing magical voodoo to its application. As far as their belief in alien beings, has anybody taken a really close look at the new guy in charge over there, Pope Benedict? Do not attempt to resist, remain in your homes, we come in peace and brotherhood...
In an update of an earlier DOPOTO report on the new president-elect of the nation of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, we are still unable to corroborate his claim that Paraguay was once a great nation. He promises to return Paraguay to its former greatness, perhaps figuring that no one outside of Paraguay would hear that statement. This is a flagrant underestimation of The Department of Pointing Out The Obvious, which knows no borders and leaves no stone unturned in our investigations into the readily apparent. Senor Lugo, a Catholic bishop, will be sworn in on August 15 of this year and will preside over the second-poorest nation in South America.
If he can improve that number to third or fourth poorest, he will certainly usher in A New Golden Age of Paraguay since exhaustive research thus far reveals that their previous Golden Age consists of having been handed a humiliating defeat in The War of the Triple Alliance in the 1860's. So perhaps Bishop Lugo has a pretty low bar set in the Paraguayan Greatness department. DOPOTO wishes him and his soon-to-be-great-again nation all the luck in the world. The world looks to Paraguay with bated breath as it tries its darndest to recall exactly where it is located.
DOPOTO has found numerous reports of various activities emanating from the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, thus refuting the widespread claim that "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." Did they really think that they could hide a major American city from DOPOTO? Especially a city that specializes in relieving the residents of other cities of their money. Hey, we're all over the Paraguay story and the Vatican alien life form controversy. How could we possibly ignore a giant neon-lit circus in the middle of a desert? There's few things in the world more obvious than Las Vegas.
DOPOTO notes that President Bush The Younger is currently touring the Middle East in these, the waning days of his presidency. Isn't that sort of like Napoleon doing a triumphant tour of Waterloo before being ushered to his retirement home on the island of Elba? DOPOTO would recommend that a president wrapping up his term in office would do better to visit the sites of his greatest successes. Let's see, New Orleans is out of the question, as is the American base in Guantanamo, Cuba, so what's left for this man? That would be his extensive ranch in Crawford, Texas, as clear of brush as any ranch could possibly be. If you've ever seen Crawford, Texas, that's actually Bush The Younger's most impressive accomplishment. As to the actual national usefulness of clearing brush on a ranch where exactly no ranching activity goes on, well, we'll leave that judgement to the historians. Our job is merely to point out what everybody already knows.
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 56
Don't panic. As long as nobody's bleeding and nothing is in flames, odds are the situation isn't all that dire. Relax and deal with it.
LIBERALS GAVE CONSERVATIVES THE RIGHT TO BE SELFISH ANTI-AMERICAN FOOLS
You have to wonder how the term liberal came to be such a bad label here in America. Liberals founded the place and made all the good improvements. The dictionary defines liberal as, among other things; favorable to or respectful of individual rights and freedoms, favoring maximum individual liberty in political and social reform, open minded, generous, open to change. None of these definitions are of the negative variety. According to the dictionary's completely neutral description, liberalism is depicted as a virtue. So how come so many people go out of their way to condemn liberals?
Perhaps it is because they can. In America it is their inalienable right to openly speak their minds, a right bestowed upon them by liberals. Maybe they always vote against any candidates for public office that they deem "too liberal," whatever that means. And by the way, they have liberals to thank for the right to vote, which in the early times in America was not a universal right. Only males with property could vote. Liberals also instituted compulsory education so they could read the ballot and write their names instead of making their mark with an X.
Many conservatives have also built substantial fortunes, once again thanks to liberals who insisted that in America everybody has a shot to fully participate and compete in our society. And for many years that right was denied to a significant portion of our society until liberals got busy and freed the slaves, gave women the right to vote and passed the Civil Rights Act. Many conservatives also got screwed over the years by rapacious corporations and robber barons, that is until liberals instituted safety and social safeguards for American workers. A pair of allied ultra-conservative governments in Germany and Japan once threatened to dominate the entire world with tyranny. They were well on their way to doing so until the Japanese made the grave error of bombing a liberal nation led by a liberal president, the United States of America.
Three and a half years later these two nations were completely defeated and their fascist policies repudiated forever. This liberal nation then proceeded to rebuild our former enemies' devastated nations, and today Germany and Japan are solid world citizens trading honestly with nations they once met on the field of battle. And these things mentioned here are but a few of the solid accomplishments of liberals, accomplishments that benefitted all Americans; liberal, conservative and middle-of-the-road alike. What history-making words and deeds can conservatives claim? What great leaders and statesmen come from their ranks? What movement for the advancement of humankind have they started? What noble ideas do they claim? You tell me because I can't think of a damned thing that conservatives have done except to block human progress.
Their tenure in the halls of power has generally been unremarkable, producing no great leaders or inspiring ideas, instead tending to suppress them. Possibly the most talented of the conservative American Presidents was Richard Nixon, a man of considerable intellect and ability but a paranoid nut who would disgrace his office and his nation. His many accomplishments were overshadowed by his foolish prosecution of the senseless and interminable Vietnam War, his pursuit of imagined domestic enemies and his unprecedented resignation from office. And he was the best of them. Where are the conservative Jeffersons, Washingtons, Lincolns and Roosevelts? You know, the guys who ensured at great personal and professional risk the right of conservatives to blow and blather and complain about the liberals. Liberals have always been the backbone and the best hope of America and humanity. You can look it up if you like.
Perhaps it is because they can. In America it is their inalienable right to openly speak their minds, a right bestowed upon them by liberals. Maybe they always vote against any candidates for public office that they deem "too liberal," whatever that means. And by the way, they have liberals to thank for the right to vote, which in the early times in America was not a universal right. Only males with property could vote. Liberals also instituted compulsory education so they could read the ballot and write their names instead of making their mark with an X.
Many conservatives have also built substantial fortunes, once again thanks to liberals who insisted that in America everybody has a shot to fully participate and compete in our society. And for many years that right was denied to a significant portion of our society until liberals got busy and freed the slaves, gave women the right to vote and passed the Civil Rights Act. Many conservatives also got screwed over the years by rapacious corporations and robber barons, that is until liberals instituted safety and social safeguards for American workers. A pair of allied ultra-conservative governments in Germany and Japan once threatened to dominate the entire world with tyranny. They were well on their way to doing so until the Japanese made the grave error of bombing a liberal nation led by a liberal president, the United States of America.
Three and a half years later these two nations were completely defeated and their fascist policies repudiated forever. This liberal nation then proceeded to rebuild our former enemies' devastated nations, and today Germany and Japan are solid world citizens trading honestly with nations they once met on the field of battle. And these things mentioned here are but a few of the solid accomplishments of liberals, accomplishments that benefitted all Americans; liberal, conservative and middle-of-the-road alike. What history-making words and deeds can conservatives claim? What great leaders and statesmen come from their ranks? What movement for the advancement of humankind have they started? What noble ideas do they claim? You tell me because I can't think of a damned thing that conservatives have done except to block human progress.
Their tenure in the halls of power has generally been unremarkable, producing no great leaders or inspiring ideas, instead tending to suppress them. Possibly the most talented of the conservative American Presidents was Richard Nixon, a man of considerable intellect and ability but a paranoid nut who would disgrace his office and his nation. His many accomplishments were overshadowed by his foolish prosecution of the senseless and interminable Vietnam War, his pursuit of imagined domestic enemies and his unprecedented resignation from office. And he was the best of them. Where are the conservative Jeffersons, Washingtons, Lincolns and Roosevelts? You know, the guys who ensured at great personal and professional risk the right of conservatives to blow and blather and complain about the liberals. Liberals have always been the backbone and the best hope of America and humanity. You can look it up if you like.
May 13, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED-PART 55
Here's another tip to enjoying a long and healthy life: When earthquakes, cyclones, tsunamis or volcanos strike, it is always best not to be in the immediate vicinity. Similarly, avoid war zones. It seems that many people perish in these calamities.
POPULAR WISDOM
Always question popular wisdom. It turns out that the term is somewhat misleading. Oh, it's popular alright, in the sense that it's widely accepted. It's the wisdom part that doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. Like drinking all that water we American people have become accustomed to in our Quixotic quest to live forever (not going to happen, by the way), imagining we are doing something right and good for ourselves. Turns out there's really no discernible health benefit at all to carrying around 2 liter bottles of water like we all live in the Gobi Desert. In fact some authorities are saying too much water is harmful to our health, washing essential vitamins and nutrients from our systems. One can only hope these scientists discover similar findings about all the manic exercising people seem to be doing lately.
It's hard to say how some things become part of the fabric of popular wisdom, especially things like paying a couple of dollars for a bottle for water when it's always been readily available and free. It seems someone just has to say something loud enough and long enough and people think it's a good thing. The notion that we are all infected with various ailments not diagnosed by medical doctors seems to be pretty entrenched, along with the notion that buying some expensive pill will remedy the situation and we can all be happy and carefree once again. Placebos for imagined ailments. Not exactly a new idea but sill a very profitable proposition for giant drug companies. And it beats riding around the countryside with a horse and wagon selling snake oil to farmers, people who carried pitchforks and always seemed to have a shotgun handy.
And how about the notion that violence solves nothing? What could be further from the truth? While it's not the recommended course of action in most areas of life, it sure comes in handy from time to time and often decides an issue quite effectively indeed. For example, what stopped Hitler from exterminating all the Jews instead of 6 million of them? That's right, violence on a grand scale. What is football but controlled violence? And nobody gets to be the Heavyweight Champion of the World without beating the holy hell out of the former Heavyweight Champion of the World. That announcer guy Michael Buffer doesn't dramatically announce before a title fight "Let's get ready to negotiate!"
So you question these things. Indeed some bits of popular wisdom do stand up to scrutiny. There really isn't any plausible reason for running with scissors. Unless of course they introduce the Scissor Race in the Olympics, which would seem rather silly but no sillier than Synchronized Swimming. Or how about that winter sport where you ski around in the woods firing a rifle? Now there's a sport that flies in the face of any sort of wisdom, popular or otherwise. If you did that outside of Olympic competition you'd be hunted down and slain by the authorities for terrorizing regular skiers, and rightfully so. You wonder where these people train for that competition, if only to cross off that location for that ski vacation you always dreamed of for you and your family. Nothing ruins a good family outing like little Billy getting shot with a high-powered rifle.
But I digress. What were we talking about? Popular Wisdom, right, all the accepted notions that we take for granted but really shouldn't. At one time popular wisdom recommended bleeding sick people to rid them of "ill humours" or "vapours." And always popular wisdom included the assumption that one type of people or another were inferior beings, and everybody knows where that train is headed. Christopher Columbus had so much contempt for popular wisdom that he risked falling off the edge of a flat earth to sail to Cuba for a good cigar, or whatever the hell he was looking for. He probably noticed that nobody ever explained exactly what you would fall on or into if you fell off the edge of the earth. Or perhaps he just wanted to get away from the quacks who wanted to drain half his blood to cure a head cold.
It's hard to say how some things become part of the fabric of popular wisdom, especially things like paying a couple of dollars for a bottle for water when it's always been readily available and free. It seems someone just has to say something loud enough and long enough and people think it's a good thing. The notion that we are all infected with various ailments not diagnosed by medical doctors seems to be pretty entrenched, along with the notion that buying some expensive pill will remedy the situation and we can all be happy and carefree once again. Placebos for imagined ailments. Not exactly a new idea but sill a very profitable proposition for giant drug companies. And it beats riding around the countryside with a horse and wagon selling snake oil to farmers, people who carried pitchforks and always seemed to have a shotgun handy.
And how about the notion that violence solves nothing? What could be further from the truth? While it's not the recommended course of action in most areas of life, it sure comes in handy from time to time and often decides an issue quite effectively indeed. For example, what stopped Hitler from exterminating all the Jews instead of 6 million of them? That's right, violence on a grand scale. What is football but controlled violence? And nobody gets to be the Heavyweight Champion of the World without beating the holy hell out of the former Heavyweight Champion of the World. That announcer guy Michael Buffer doesn't dramatically announce before a title fight "Let's get ready to negotiate!"
So you question these things. Indeed some bits of popular wisdom do stand up to scrutiny. There really isn't any plausible reason for running with scissors. Unless of course they introduce the Scissor Race in the Olympics, which would seem rather silly but no sillier than Synchronized Swimming. Or how about that winter sport where you ski around in the woods firing a rifle? Now there's a sport that flies in the face of any sort of wisdom, popular or otherwise. If you did that outside of Olympic competition you'd be hunted down and slain by the authorities for terrorizing regular skiers, and rightfully so. You wonder where these people train for that competition, if only to cross off that location for that ski vacation you always dreamed of for you and your family. Nothing ruins a good family outing like little Billy getting shot with a high-powered rifle.
But I digress. What were we talking about? Popular Wisdom, right, all the accepted notions that we take for granted but really shouldn't. At one time popular wisdom recommended bleeding sick people to rid them of "ill humours" or "vapours." And always popular wisdom included the assumption that one type of people or another were inferior beings, and everybody knows where that train is headed. Christopher Columbus had so much contempt for popular wisdom that he risked falling off the edge of a flat earth to sail to Cuba for a good cigar, or whatever the hell he was looking for. He probably noticed that nobody ever explained exactly what you would fall on or into if you fell off the edge of the earth. Or perhaps he just wanted to get away from the quacks who wanted to drain half his blood to cure a head cold.
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 54
If you're really dumb, try wearing a monocle and using a phony upper-class British accent when you speak so you'll seem smarter. Maybe even go so far as carryng a fancy walking stick and wearing an ascot. People will still know you're stupid, but at least you'll be amusing. Give it a shot. It's not like you've got some great reputation to uphold or anything.
FILLED WITH WONDER
My brain won't cooperate and shut the hell up. No, I don't hear voices or have visions or stuff like that, it's just that I'm real curious. Maybe too curious sometimes, one of those people who's mind races all the time, trying to figure stuff out when there's really no logical explanation for a lot of the things that go on. Take that Congressman, this Vito Fossella guy. He gets arrested for drunken driving down in Florida, tries to pull the I'm-a-Congressman-so-let-me-go card, that doesn't work, then blurts out he's gong to visit his sick kid, and still gets arrested. These things happen. Especially to drunk people who are driving cars on public thoroughfares. Not good, but so far not too catastrophic. Like any other celebrity, you take the bust, issue your mea-culpa, maybe go to rehab and do some public service commercials warning the kids not to do what you did. Everybody knows the drill.
But who does he call to bail his drunken ass out of jail? His wife? No, she's back in New York with their three kids. His legislative assistant, one of that breed of people whose job it is to clean up politicians' messes? No he doesn't, nor does he call an attorney, the normal thing to do when you screw up big time. The lawyer waltzes in, tells you to shut the hell up already and fixes things. A smart attorney spins the incident into an overworked public servant getting sleepy at the wheel after working so hard for the fine Americans he represents in Congress. A hard working man of the people making a regrettable, but minor mistake, a lapse in judgement that won't happen again.
But no, Vito Fossella takes none of the above options. He picks Door #4 and calls his secret mistress with whom he has a love child and a double life, and before you can say Eliot Spitzer he's he latest poster boy for stupid politicians shooting themselves in the foot. So you wonder what this guy was thinking, and just how drunk he was. This time around it seems the famous culprit won't be able to do the public apology bit with his wife standing by her man while he says I've made a big booboo but we'll work through it and we're a strong family with strong family values and I regret this breach of my sacred vows and my public responsibilities and all that usual politician horseshit
Mrs. Representative Fossella doesn't seem to be amenable to any further public humiliation. Good for her. She's not going to be that grimacing wife on the podium while Congressman Dumbass tries to cut his losses at her expense. They've been married 17 years so you'd think Representative Vito would know his wife by now, and even when he's drunk would figure that the best course of action when you're in jail is not to ring up the secret mistress and baby mama. He had to know that Mary Pat Fossela is one of those hell-hath-no-fury types, so tread lightly whatever you do. So you wonder why these guys do the things they do with so much to lose. Now it's bye-bye marriage, bye-bye political career and bye-bye to the lion's share of his wealth and property.
Not that I'm feeling sorry for this clueless asshole, it's just that I wonder what gets into people in powerful positions. This past year or so we've all been hearing way too much about Senator Wide Stance Craig, Governor Gay Threesome McGreevy, Governor Crash Test Dummy Corzine and Governor I Can Screw Hookers But You Cannot Spitzer, to name just the most prominent scandals. Now add Representative Vito Fossella to this not-so-exclusive fraternity. Makes you wonder what these clowns had in mind when they earnestly started dismantling their careers by practicing the exact opposite of what they preached.
Most of us figure that if a guy is gay, or likes to play with prostitutes, or wants to maintain a mistress in addition to his wife that's his own business and his cross to bear, don't bother us with your personal baggage, just do your damned job like we all do. But when you make a lot of loud ugly noise about other people being gay, screwing hookers or having a mistress you'd better not be doing those things yourself. But there it is, one loudmouth after another caught in the act that they publicly crusade against. So, after all the head scratching and wondering what can one conclude from all this? There is a God and he's got one wicked sense of humor.
But who does he call to bail his drunken ass out of jail? His wife? No, she's back in New York with their three kids. His legislative assistant, one of that breed of people whose job it is to clean up politicians' messes? No he doesn't, nor does he call an attorney, the normal thing to do when you screw up big time. The lawyer waltzes in, tells you to shut the hell up already and fixes things. A smart attorney spins the incident into an overworked public servant getting sleepy at the wheel after working so hard for the fine Americans he represents in Congress. A hard working man of the people making a regrettable, but minor mistake, a lapse in judgement that won't happen again.
But no, Vito Fossella takes none of the above options. He picks Door #4 and calls his secret mistress with whom he has a love child and a double life, and before you can say Eliot Spitzer he's he latest poster boy for stupid politicians shooting themselves in the foot. So you wonder what this guy was thinking, and just how drunk he was. This time around it seems the famous culprit won't be able to do the public apology bit with his wife standing by her man while he says I've made a big booboo but we'll work through it and we're a strong family with strong family values and I regret this breach of my sacred vows and my public responsibilities and all that usual politician horseshit
Mrs. Representative Fossella doesn't seem to be amenable to any further public humiliation. Good for her. She's not going to be that grimacing wife on the podium while Congressman Dumbass tries to cut his losses at her expense. They've been married 17 years so you'd think Representative Vito would know his wife by now, and even when he's drunk would figure that the best course of action when you're in jail is not to ring up the secret mistress and baby mama. He had to know that Mary Pat Fossela is one of those hell-hath-no-fury types, so tread lightly whatever you do. So you wonder why these guys do the things they do with so much to lose. Now it's bye-bye marriage, bye-bye political career and bye-bye to the lion's share of his wealth and property.
Not that I'm feeling sorry for this clueless asshole, it's just that I wonder what gets into people in powerful positions. This past year or so we've all been hearing way too much about Senator Wide Stance Craig, Governor Gay Threesome McGreevy, Governor Crash Test Dummy Corzine and Governor I Can Screw Hookers But You Cannot Spitzer, to name just the most prominent scandals. Now add Representative Vito Fossella to this not-so-exclusive fraternity. Makes you wonder what these clowns had in mind when they earnestly started dismantling their careers by practicing the exact opposite of what they preached.
Most of us figure that if a guy is gay, or likes to play with prostitutes, or wants to maintain a mistress in addition to his wife that's his own business and his cross to bear, don't bother us with your personal baggage, just do your damned job like we all do. But when you make a lot of loud ugly noise about other people being gay, screwing hookers or having a mistress you'd better not be doing those things yourself. But there it is, one loudmouth after another caught in the act that they publicly crusade against. So, after all the head scratching and wondering what can one conclude from all this? There is a God and he's got one wicked sense of humor.
May 11, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 53
Life really can't be fully explained. If it could, we'd know exactly why other people get to sleep with beautiful celebrities, have tons of money, live in fantastic homes and live carefree lives and we don't. Then we could take steps to correct the situation. Alas, much of life remains a mystery, perhaps mercifully so. Deep down, there's some things we simply don't want explained. Sometimes the truth hurts.
I'M STARTING TO UNDERSTAND PEOPLE WHO DON'T READ THE NEWSPAPERS
So there I am at work yesterday, doing whatever it is I do at a work and chatting with the lady who hired me to run her party. She's a good customer and a person I know fairly well and a very nice person. Very bright too. So when I mentioned recent events in Myanmar I was surprised to learn that she had heard nothing of the devastating cyclone and the subsequent suffering of the Myanmar people under their military government that has refused most of the international disaster relief aid offered by the United Nations and the world at large, leaving almost two million people literally drowning and in imminent danger of starvation and disease. I figured that in this day and age you'd have to be living under a rock not to have heard at least something about this horrible story.
So we went back to passing the time talking about our families and different recipes and the weather while we prepared food for her guests. She explained that she had ceased reading newspapers and listening to news broadcasts and was happier for it. Instead of being surprised or impatient with her I figured maybe this lady's on to something. She didn't have to waste any skull space pondering the great evil permeating much the world and the incomprehensible reports of corruption and incompetence about the current administration of our own country. Like I said, this is a bright lady, not the sort of airhead you normally associate with beng clueless about world events. She had made a conscious decision to divorce herself from what she felt was an increasingly traumatic and confusing part of her life.
Well, sometimes I wish i could join her. Think of the things I wouldn't have to know. Take Myanmar, for instance: I could still have it pegged as Burma, a slice of tropical paradise bordering the South China Sea filled with happy and friendly people, no head scratching involved over the horrid turn of events there. I could think of the United Nations as an effective and well-meaning association of all the nations on this earth woking to promote global understanding and congeniality, all sweetness and light. I could blithely assume that my own nation continued to enjoy its world status as a beacon of liberty and moral goodness, an example to all nations of peaceful prosperity, human rights and humanitarian intentions. I could ponder Africa and think how wonderful a place it must be to live in with it's beauty and diversity, emerging nations finding their way peacefully out of their colonial past side by side in brotherhood and cooperation.
I could imagine the peaceful bliss of Islam, that religion bringing inner peace and tranquility to its followers all over the world. I could figure that China left her oppressive ways in the past and is now pursuing the sort of peaceful prosperity sought by many nations, respecting international law and embracing friendly relations with her ancient neighbor Tibet. I could think of India and imagine that her new prosperity extends to all of her billion citizens, a nation on a journey out of the Dark Ages, the high tide lifting all boats. And in Mexico I could guess that the several dozen families who control the entire nation's wealth have had a change of heart and that the incredible bounty of that nation is now being shared with all Mexicans, their revolution of the early 20th century finally bearing fruit and all corruption at every government level a thing of he past.
I could imagine that in our next presidential election Americans will all vote for the person they feel will best run our country according to the idealistic blueprint that is our Constitution, and no candidate will play on racial fears. I could see the performances of some of our talented singers and actors and enjoy only their work, assuming their personal lives are in order and none of our business anyway. I could imagine that our own Christian preachers are busy spreading the joyful word of the Gospels and promoting peace, tolerance and love as always, wisely eschewing the worldly temptations of politics and power. I could ponder the great corporations of America, providing decent jobs to our citizens, paying their fair share of taxes and taking great pains to wield their power responsibly.
Wow, I'm really liking this new world in my head! Without news reports, athletes are all talented hardworking competitors dedicated to fair play, let the best and or woman win in honorable competition. Cable TV news commentators are thoughtful intellectuals seeking to broaden understanding and good will among Americans. Our elected representatives in Congress are earnest public servants seeking the betterment of all our nation's citizens, with no thought of partisan bickering or looting of the treasury for vanity projects at the expense of others. New Orleans is rising majestically from near disaster with a united and inspiring national effort to help rebuild the shattered lives of the victims of Hurricane Katrina, a new Golden Age looming for the Crescent City.
In my new world, water boarding is a new sport for the kids to enjoy by the ocean. In France and the rest of Europe, anti-semetism is a thing of the past and in Israel anti-arabism is not happening. Russia is completing the peaceful transformation from the USSR to become a peaceful neighbor trading fairly with the world community, no longer feared and mistrusted. Pakistan is educating all her children, not just the privileged minority. The world is cooperating on dwindling oil resources and working feverishly together to find new sources of energy and to cease the pollution of our environment. The entire world is mobilized to end starvation in every corner of the planet, no matter what the brand of politics being practiced in the stricken regions.
Like the old song says: "And I say to myself, what a wonderful world..." Or the beautiful new song by John Fogerty: "Don't you wish it was true." Yeah, I do, I do wish it was true. And so I understand the motivation to ignore the news of this world. Lollipops and roses are wonderful things to contemplate and we should never lose our ability to focus on what's beautiful and good and worthy about humanity and this world around us. But unfortunately, I'm one of those people who has to know, and so I read the newspapers and listen to the news broadcast and surf the net for information, and sometimes get pretty peeved that here we are in the 21st century still pissing all over the house and each other.
So we went back to passing the time talking about our families and different recipes and the weather while we prepared food for her guests. She explained that she had ceased reading newspapers and listening to news broadcasts and was happier for it. Instead of being surprised or impatient with her I figured maybe this lady's on to something. She didn't have to waste any skull space pondering the great evil permeating much the world and the incomprehensible reports of corruption and incompetence about the current administration of our own country. Like I said, this is a bright lady, not the sort of airhead you normally associate with beng clueless about world events. She had made a conscious decision to divorce herself from what she felt was an increasingly traumatic and confusing part of her life.
Well, sometimes I wish i could join her. Think of the things I wouldn't have to know. Take Myanmar, for instance: I could still have it pegged as Burma, a slice of tropical paradise bordering the South China Sea filled with happy and friendly people, no head scratching involved over the horrid turn of events there. I could think of the United Nations as an effective and well-meaning association of all the nations on this earth woking to promote global understanding and congeniality, all sweetness and light. I could blithely assume that my own nation continued to enjoy its world status as a beacon of liberty and moral goodness, an example to all nations of peaceful prosperity, human rights and humanitarian intentions. I could ponder Africa and think how wonderful a place it must be to live in with it's beauty and diversity, emerging nations finding their way peacefully out of their colonial past side by side in brotherhood and cooperation.
I could imagine the peaceful bliss of Islam, that religion bringing inner peace and tranquility to its followers all over the world. I could figure that China left her oppressive ways in the past and is now pursuing the sort of peaceful prosperity sought by many nations, respecting international law and embracing friendly relations with her ancient neighbor Tibet. I could think of India and imagine that her new prosperity extends to all of her billion citizens, a nation on a journey out of the Dark Ages, the high tide lifting all boats. And in Mexico I could guess that the several dozen families who control the entire nation's wealth have had a change of heart and that the incredible bounty of that nation is now being shared with all Mexicans, their revolution of the early 20th century finally bearing fruit and all corruption at every government level a thing of he past.
I could imagine that in our next presidential election Americans will all vote for the person they feel will best run our country according to the idealistic blueprint that is our Constitution, and no candidate will play on racial fears. I could see the performances of some of our talented singers and actors and enjoy only their work, assuming their personal lives are in order and none of our business anyway. I could imagine that our own Christian preachers are busy spreading the joyful word of the Gospels and promoting peace, tolerance and love as always, wisely eschewing the worldly temptations of politics and power. I could ponder the great corporations of America, providing decent jobs to our citizens, paying their fair share of taxes and taking great pains to wield their power responsibly.
Wow, I'm really liking this new world in my head! Without news reports, athletes are all talented hardworking competitors dedicated to fair play, let the best and or woman win in honorable competition. Cable TV news commentators are thoughtful intellectuals seeking to broaden understanding and good will among Americans. Our elected representatives in Congress are earnest public servants seeking the betterment of all our nation's citizens, with no thought of partisan bickering or looting of the treasury for vanity projects at the expense of others. New Orleans is rising majestically from near disaster with a united and inspiring national effort to help rebuild the shattered lives of the victims of Hurricane Katrina, a new Golden Age looming for the Crescent City.
In my new world, water boarding is a new sport for the kids to enjoy by the ocean. In France and the rest of Europe, anti-semetism is a thing of the past and in Israel anti-arabism is not happening. Russia is completing the peaceful transformation from the USSR to become a peaceful neighbor trading fairly with the world community, no longer feared and mistrusted. Pakistan is educating all her children, not just the privileged minority. The world is cooperating on dwindling oil resources and working feverishly together to find new sources of energy and to cease the pollution of our environment. The entire world is mobilized to end starvation in every corner of the planet, no matter what the brand of politics being practiced in the stricken regions.
Like the old song says: "And I say to myself, what a wonderful world..." Or the beautiful new song by John Fogerty: "Don't you wish it was true." Yeah, I do, I do wish it was true. And so I understand the motivation to ignore the news of this world. Lollipops and roses are wonderful things to contemplate and we should never lose our ability to focus on what's beautiful and good and worthy about humanity and this world around us. But unfortunately, I'm one of those people who has to know, and so I read the newspapers and listen to the news broadcast and surf the net for information, and sometimes get pretty peeved that here we are in the 21st century still pissing all over the house and each other.
May 10, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 52
When catastrophe strikes others, always remember it could have been worse. It could have happened to you. Now, that's a catastrophe.
MYANMAR ENTERS WORLD'S WORST GOVERNMENT SWEEPSTAKES
So, the military junta of the Myanmar (not really a) Republic throws their hat into the ring this week for the coveted prize of World's Worst Government. Stricken by a cyclone that killed upwards of a hundred thousand people right off the bat, they now have to deal with almost 2 million displaced people. Huge swaths of the nation are destroyed and under water, the capital city is paralyzed and without utilities or transportation and starvation and plague looms for the stricken nation. So of course the United Nations, The Red Cross and many nations acting on their own send massive amounts of emergency relief to Myanmar in the form of food, medical supplies, generators, earth-moving equipment as well as teams of doctors and disaster response specialists.
So what do the tin soldiers running that country do? As everybody knows by now, they've refused to allow "outsiders" into their little slice of devastated paradise, thus far probably causing hundreds of thousands of further deaths that could have been prevented by timely action. They've taken a lot of the supplies at gunpoint, however, vowing to do the job themselves, but they know and the whole world world knows that is bullshit, they simply cannot and what's worse, will not save their own people.
Myanmar was approaching an important election day next week when the cyclone hit. No public offices are at stake in that election. Those are already taken on a permanent basis by members of the military. The election is only a cosmetic ratification of changes to the Myanmar constitution to give the military even more power. They already control the press, the banks, industry, farming and transportation, making Myanmar basically a prison with the military as the prison guards. What further power they seek is anyone's guess. Maybe they want the power that Chairman Mao had in China to force the entire country to dress in drab grey suits and funny little caps. At any rate, they figure that their rubber stamp election is more important than saving the lives of their own people and they don't don't want any inconvenient foreigners around to notice what a shit hole they've created in Myanmar, even before the cyclone hit.
So, my vote for World's Worst Government goes to the good generals of Myanmar. And once again the United Nations is exposed as the toothless giant that it is. One supposes that a peace organization like the U.N. rightly has no effective troops to force unwilling nations to accept aid for disaster victims, or for the victims of a the daily disaster of starvation that claims 36,000 lives every single day, one every 2.4 seconds. Seems like a change in the U.N. charter is in order to temporarily deputize some of the world's armies instead of the blue-helmeted U.N. troops to help persuade the likes of Myanmar's government to let their people be saved. Those guys think will twice about turning away humanitarian aid with an aircraft carrier and a couple of divisions of Marines parked in their neighborhood.
Nobody wants to invade Myanmar or declare war on them. They're just not that important on any level. But their citizens are human beings who are suffering horribly and so they are important, not the pride of those human failures who need to hurt and control others in order to feel important. When nations keep foreigners from traveling freely in their countries that's always a indication that they have something shameful to hide. Ask anyone going to the Summer Olympics in China this year how freely they were allowed to explore China as tourists. Odds are they won't get to go where they want. These sort of nations employ a lot of people to "check papers" and prevent people from seeing the truth.
What to do about this situation is a hard problem. Do you boycott them and let their innocent citizens suffer, and maybe add to the daily toll of starvation deaths you are seeking to relieve in the first place? Do you strengthen the U.N., hoping it will be less corrupt and inept and biased? And how many nations, our own included, are liable to bow to the authority of the United Nations on their own soil? Tough questions, these. Too bad the people of Myanmar who are watching the bloated bodies of their loved ones floating by don't have all that much time to relax and ponder these questions. But there will be a next time, another Myanmar, another disaster in some hapless nation ruled by secretive tyrants. What will be the story then? Most likely the same story with the starvation disaster, all talk and hand wringing and committees formed to study the problem and a painful death every couple of seconds. Shame on us.
So what do the tin soldiers running that country do? As everybody knows by now, they've refused to allow "outsiders" into their little slice of devastated paradise, thus far probably causing hundreds of thousands of further deaths that could have been prevented by timely action. They've taken a lot of the supplies at gunpoint, however, vowing to do the job themselves, but they know and the whole world world knows that is bullshit, they simply cannot and what's worse, will not save their own people.
Myanmar was approaching an important election day next week when the cyclone hit. No public offices are at stake in that election. Those are already taken on a permanent basis by members of the military. The election is only a cosmetic ratification of changes to the Myanmar constitution to give the military even more power. They already control the press, the banks, industry, farming and transportation, making Myanmar basically a prison with the military as the prison guards. What further power they seek is anyone's guess. Maybe they want the power that Chairman Mao had in China to force the entire country to dress in drab grey suits and funny little caps. At any rate, they figure that their rubber stamp election is more important than saving the lives of their own people and they don't don't want any inconvenient foreigners around to notice what a shit hole they've created in Myanmar, even before the cyclone hit.
So, my vote for World's Worst Government goes to the good generals of Myanmar. And once again the United Nations is exposed as the toothless giant that it is. One supposes that a peace organization like the U.N. rightly has no effective troops to force unwilling nations to accept aid for disaster victims, or for the victims of a the daily disaster of starvation that claims 36,000 lives every single day, one every 2.4 seconds. Seems like a change in the U.N. charter is in order to temporarily deputize some of the world's armies instead of the blue-helmeted U.N. troops to help persuade the likes of Myanmar's government to let their people be saved. Those guys think will twice about turning away humanitarian aid with an aircraft carrier and a couple of divisions of Marines parked in their neighborhood.
Nobody wants to invade Myanmar or declare war on them. They're just not that important on any level. But their citizens are human beings who are suffering horribly and so they are important, not the pride of those human failures who need to hurt and control others in order to feel important. When nations keep foreigners from traveling freely in their countries that's always a indication that they have something shameful to hide. Ask anyone going to the Summer Olympics in China this year how freely they were allowed to explore China as tourists. Odds are they won't get to go where they want. These sort of nations employ a lot of people to "check papers" and prevent people from seeing the truth.
What to do about this situation is a hard problem. Do you boycott them and let their innocent citizens suffer, and maybe add to the daily toll of starvation deaths you are seeking to relieve in the first place? Do you strengthen the U.N., hoping it will be less corrupt and inept and biased? And how many nations, our own included, are liable to bow to the authority of the United Nations on their own soil? Tough questions, these. Too bad the people of Myanmar who are watching the bloated bodies of their loved ones floating by don't have all that much time to relax and ponder these questions. But there will be a next time, another Myanmar, another disaster in some hapless nation ruled by secretive tyrants. What will be the story then? Most likely the same story with the starvation disaster, all talk and hand wringing and committees formed to study the problem and a painful death every couple of seconds. Shame on us.
May 8, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 51
When you are very angry at somebody, beating them with your fists is not the answer. Some people are really big and strong and will pummel you severely if you hit them. Look instead to history and the steady progress mankind has made in the resolution of our personal differences. There's all kinds of very effective weapons available these days. Why get your hands dirty and risk a beating? Arm yourself.
IT'S ISRAEL'S BIRTHDAY! LET'S BRING BACK PHOENICIA TOO.
So Israel turns 60 years old now, still a newbie compared to places like China and Greece but older than many of their fellow nations that have sprung up from the ruins of colonialism. Yes, Israel, like many nations in Africa and the Middle East, was created from a former British colony. Before Israeli independence in 1948, that territory was known as The Mandate of Palestine, a British protectorate they wrested from the Ottoman Empire after World War 1. The whole world was feeling guilty over the Holocaust so they figured give the Jewish people the homeland they'd been clamoring for in Palestine for a long time. Usually starting a nation based on religion is a recipe for disaster but other than a few wars here and there Israel's still standing. Things have worked out for them pretty well except for being surrounded by millions and millions of hostile Muslim Arabs sworn to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.
That's got to be a bit traumatic, which probably accounts for Israelis being a pretty hard-nosed bunch. I know a lot of Israelis, and for the most part they're pretty likable people once you get past their aggressive pain in the ass personalities. But they do seem to love their country, and I suppose that's all well and good but it doesn't go that far in explaining why they came to live in Brooklyn instead of staying in the country they love so very much. Hey, I love my country too, but I don't think I'd prove my love for America by moving to a foreign country and bragging about it from very far away. But that's just my take on things. Far be it from me to question somebody who thinks Israel is the 51st American State. It's not and we both know that it's a foreign country given not by God but the British Empire to the Jews and generally I refrain from arguing with delusional people anyway.
There's about 7.5 million people in Israel, 80% of them Jewish. The other 20% are Arabs and are treated pretty much like blacks in America prior to the 1960's. That is to say, as second class citizens with no shot at a full measure of participation in their own society. If that sounds like a racist country, well, yeah, it is. Anyone who claims otherwise will have to come up with a better argument than those I've already heard (see above, delusional people). That always puzzled me about Israeli Jews, their racism. I grew up among Jews in Brooklyn and found them to be among the least racist and most tolerant of Americans. The long and traumatic history of Judaism made them well aware of the end result of racism and they vowed they'd have no more of it, because when you hate another human being, even one who hates you, then nothing separates you from them. A lot of Israeli Jews didn't get that memo and are world class haters that would make a White Supremacist proud.
Which doesn't excuse the surrounding countries from their own crazy murderous bigotry against the Israelites. Their wild theory of Jews running the world and making things hard for Muslims doesn't hold water when you realize that there are only 14 million Jews in the whole world as compared to around a billion Muslims. No, nobody's buying that whole scapegoat deal. If the Muslims want to blame somebody for the general misery in which they seem to live perhaps a mirror is the best place to look. They won't see too many joyful faces looking back at them. Maybe they should tear a page out of Judaism's book and recreate some of their own ancient civilizations to feel better about themselves. They could declare new states of Moab, Canaan, Philistia, Phoenicia and the granddaddy of them all, Babylon.
And if they want to be as successful as Israel they might think of going with a democracy and lose the kings and tribal leaders that have mired the Muslim world in a sort of Middle Ages time warp. Even the oil rich Arab nations are not exactly beacons of joy and decency, especially if one is unfortunate enough to be born a woman in one these places. So maybe if they try to go with the Biblical nations like the Jews did with Israel, they'll enjoy life more and hopefully lose their obsession with destroying Judaism, the faith of Islam's founding father Abraham.
So happy 60th birthday to the neo-Biblical nation of Israel. Better luck this time with keeping your nation intact than in the Biblical era, when they split into two kingdoms of Judea and Israel. After that a long succession of one foreign power after another kept sacking their cities and dragging off the Israelites into slavery, making for some of the great epic dramas in the Bible and creating huge gaps in history when the Israelites were located somewhere else other than Israel. They've done well with their New Jersey-sized oasis of democracy over there in the hostile Middle East, planted trees in the desert and generally prospered. And if it doesn't work out this time there's always Brooklyn to move to where some new chapters to the Bible can be written about the latest Exodus. Meanwhile, keep on keeping on.
That's got to be a bit traumatic, which probably accounts for Israelis being a pretty hard-nosed bunch. I know a lot of Israelis, and for the most part they're pretty likable people once you get past their aggressive pain in the ass personalities. But they do seem to love their country, and I suppose that's all well and good but it doesn't go that far in explaining why they came to live in Brooklyn instead of staying in the country they love so very much. Hey, I love my country too, but I don't think I'd prove my love for America by moving to a foreign country and bragging about it from very far away. But that's just my take on things. Far be it from me to question somebody who thinks Israel is the 51st American State. It's not and we both know that it's a foreign country given not by God but the British Empire to the Jews and generally I refrain from arguing with delusional people anyway.
There's about 7.5 million people in Israel, 80% of them Jewish. The other 20% are Arabs and are treated pretty much like blacks in America prior to the 1960's. That is to say, as second class citizens with no shot at a full measure of participation in their own society. If that sounds like a racist country, well, yeah, it is. Anyone who claims otherwise will have to come up with a better argument than those I've already heard (see above, delusional people). That always puzzled me about Israeli Jews, their racism. I grew up among Jews in Brooklyn and found them to be among the least racist and most tolerant of Americans. The long and traumatic history of Judaism made them well aware of the end result of racism and they vowed they'd have no more of it, because when you hate another human being, even one who hates you, then nothing separates you from them. A lot of Israeli Jews didn't get that memo and are world class haters that would make a White Supremacist proud.
Which doesn't excuse the surrounding countries from their own crazy murderous bigotry against the Israelites. Their wild theory of Jews running the world and making things hard for Muslims doesn't hold water when you realize that there are only 14 million Jews in the whole world as compared to around a billion Muslims. No, nobody's buying that whole scapegoat deal. If the Muslims want to blame somebody for the general misery in which they seem to live perhaps a mirror is the best place to look. They won't see too many joyful faces looking back at them. Maybe they should tear a page out of Judaism's book and recreate some of their own ancient civilizations to feel better about themselves. They could declare new states of Moab, Canaan, Philistia, Phoenicia and the granddaddy of them all, Babylon.
And if they want to be as successful as Israel they might think of going with a democracy and lose the kings and tribal leaders that have mired the Muslim world in a sort of Middle Ages time warp. Even the oil rich Arab nations are not exactly beacons of joy and decency, especially if one is unfortunate enough to be born a woman in one these places. So maybe if they try to go with the Biblical nations like the Jews did with Israel, they'll enjoy life more and hopefully lose their obsession with destroying Judaism, the faith of Islam's founding father Abraham.
So happy 60th birthday to the neo-Biblical nation of Israel. Better luck this time with keeping your nation intact than in the Biblical era, when they split into two kingdoms of Judea and Israel. After that a long succession of one foreign power after another kept sacking their cities and dragging off the Israelites into slavery, making for some of the great epic dramas in the Bible and creating huge gaps in history when the Israelites were located somewhere else other than Israel. They've done well with their New Jersey-sized oasis of democracy over there in the hostile Middle East, planted trees in the desert and generally prospered. And if it doesn't work out this time there's always Brooklyn to move to where some new chapters to the Bible can be written about the latest Exodus. Meanwhile, keep on keeping on.
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