Bill Chabot
"On The Fence"
“You know, feelin’ good was good enough for me, Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee”—Janis Joplin, Me and my Bobby McGee
Isn’t that what movies should be all about—a happy memorable experience? For those who live on a masochist diet, a movie like Mosquito gives it to you right up front by spilling the plot, “Mosquito bites dead alien; mosquito grows; mosquito gets mad; mosquito attacks dumb people.” If going to this movie is your idea on how to impress a first date, and “How Come Your Dog Don’t Bite Nobody But Me” is your favorite romantic country-western ballad, you can probably expect spontaneous permafrost to settle in on your social life. This type of taste is so far off the wall that even the Trekkies would yank your membership and beam you off to some obscure planet. As one critic notably observed, “This movie hits you like an exploding cesspool.” Nowadays, it seems that the basic requirement for a screenwriter is to have some sort of delusional malfunction so as to make as many people totally depressed as possible after they watch a movie.
In today’s world we seem to want everything condensed. It started with Reader’s Digest taking full-length books and squashing them into mini versions so readers could rapidly digest them and return to their bug-infested reality programs. Hollywood is great at copying popular trends, and it did not take them long to mimic this craze, cramming a week’s worth of cheap TV movies into a two-hour grim reaper experience. Unfortunately, in the process, they added in a kicker by taking our action heroes and turning them into wimpoid karma dudes. With all our old “macho” heroes now trying to connect their internal dots and grasp their deepest feelings, we now see them watching their fiber count and guzzling organic quiche. No more roasting prairie dogs over an open fire or bunking under the stars. Who’s going to put the bad guys away?
The worst examples of this new genre of abridged programming come from copying the Lifetime Channel’s movies. Their relentless plots show every unbalanced woman in America having a complete breakdown and transmitting unknown contagious diseases, after being bitten by a pack of rabid aardvarks, while on a family picnic. All this is happening as she is fending off some bizarre male who discovered her cell phone number carved on an old pine tree, while protesting and running naked, through the Ottawa National Forest. These brainchildren take an entire month’sworth of Lifetime movies and boil them down into a wretched two-hour mini-depressant. In order to watch these movies and keep your mind off the grizzly plots, you need to develop a serious relationship with a six-pack of Prozac while testing the outer edges of your sanity.
There is a movie called “City of Angels” that will sucker you in just by the title. For two hours we watch Seth, a real Angel, fall hopelessly in love with his earthly ward, Maggie; so far okay. Seth pulls every string possible to become human, even going so far as to swear off watching Monday Night Football, giving Maggie complete control over the TV zapper, and swearing that he will take the garbage out every day, just so he can be intimate with his one true love. His wish is granted; he turns human, and marries Maggie. Do you think the sicko screenwriter ended it here? Of course not! He sends Maggie on an innocent trip up to the mailbox and, while returning to the house, with of all things, a pile of unpaid bills, she gets run over by a humongous truck; DOA. She now becomes an angel and has to watch this poor sap while away his life, gripped with remorse, and facing a lifetime of no Monday Night Football and meaningless trips to the garbage can, while the dog buries the zapper in the back yard. Isn’t Nicholas Cage the same guy who had his face replaced in “Face/Off,” sacrificing his family to catch a despicable criminal? What is going on with our tough-guy heroes? Why do they turn their careers over to directors who are riding high on melancholy? Bette Davis or Joan Crawford would have taken this character and either had him vacuuming their house, weeding their garden, or have tied him up in the back yard so he could chase squirrels all day long. The only time we ever saw Humphrey Bogart get misty-eyed was if someone watered down his drink or stiffed him in a poker game.
Then we have the movie “Sommersby.” This one is a real bummer. You start to watch it, thinking it is a Civil War movie with a lot of blood, guts, and tough guys flying around. But we immediately find out that one of the main characters, poor Laurel Sommersby, is being hounded by old Halitosis Whipsnade, the local banker, as he tries to foreclose on her property while her husband is off fighting. When her husband, Fungus Breath Jack, was home, he was a real louse anyway, ignoring her and boozing it up with his buddies every weekend, when he should have been home cleaning the chicken coop. The plot has old Jack getting his just do on the battlefield and someone with a shady past, but otherwise an all-around nice guy with manners, taking his place and arriving at Laurel’s front door posing as her husband. She is a little apprehensive as he doesn’t look exactly how she remembers old Jack. For one thing, he has more teeth than Jack ever had, but she takes him in, not so much because of this and the fact that he smelled like chocolate, but because he was wearing clean underwear. A beautiful love story developed until the hideous screenwriter figured that Laurel’s new perfect husband should be hung for something that happened twenty years ago, to the former husband (the louse). Being a true gentleman, he goes to the gallows with his secret intact so poor Laurel can tell Whipsnade to stick it up his inkwell. This particular screenwriter, being inebriated with mediocrity, could use a few sessions with LSD so he could focus a little better. This movie stinks so bad that even the kid’s pet hamster dies in a hay wagon accident. It’s no wonder we all admire the plot lines in Baywatch; you just know that no ugly corpses are going to wash up on the beach.
And then there is the granddaddy of them all. This thing went through about four re-writes as they tried to get every sick mind in Hollywood involved, and it started to smell bad right after the opening credits. “Legends of the Fall” is a classic emotional leper movie; it should be shipped off to some island so no one could watch it without a cud of locoweed and a case of hundred fifty-proof vodka. Old Colonel Ludlow, the patriarch of a really messed up family, settles in the beautiful Rocky Mountain area of Montana with his three sons. One of the sons, young Samuel, returns from college with his beautiful fiance, Susannah. The eldest son, Alfred, falls in love with his little brother’s girl. Then the hot-blooded Susannah starts to mess around with the other brother, Tristan. Susannah finally marries Alfred (after Samuel goes off and is killed in the war) and Tristan marries someone else who promptly gets knocked off by a ricocheting bullet that was meant for him.
Then Susannah kills herself while Tristan is eventually devoured in a fight with a bear. (How smart was this guy to pick a fight with a bear?) Watching this family’s disintegration is about as enjoyable as playing with a pack of hungry Rottweilers or getting pecked to death by a mad duck.
I can just visualize the next “message picture” from Hollywood; “Cujo and Lassie, a Love Story.” When asked, “What the hell kind of movie is that?” the screenwriter will reply, “It’s, like, Gidget meets Wolf Man.” No one will be allowed into the theater unless their tetanus shot is current.
It’s all in the delivery. What if you met up with those irritating TV talking heads and had to have an actual conversation with them. Wouldn’t you like to wash their mouths in a bucket of alphabet, swat them across the nose with a used thesaurus, and tell them they are no more than “Grandiloquent popinjays, nefarious miscreants, or worn out blatherskites”? On the other hand, if you wanted to just cut to the chase, you could tell them their mental litter box was beginning to clump and it was time to change the litter. A simple twist of fate, with the right words as ammunition, can have a chilling effect on the lives of many people.
Imagine that, through a quirk of destiny and too much to drink, history had given the world Elvis Carter and Jimmy Presley? Both would have ended up picking peanuts for a living. I shudder to even think about the repercussions of a Dweezil Hunter and a Catfish Zappa, or a Pee Wee Schwarzenegger and Arnold Herman. On the other hand, sometimes the wording accidentally falls into place, and can fit perfectly. Last year a bipartisan group of fourteen U.S. Senators had the tag “Gang of fourteen” pinned on them by the press. In looking up the word “gang” in a thesaurus the alternate meanings are “bunch of criminals, mob, rabble, swarm, and a pack” (like in dingoes). Obviously, the naming of this humdrum crew of pork-barreling wastrels fits like a well worn glove.
Scientists and bureaucrats like to disguise their lackluster works in Latin or Greek terms that no one can understand, while Microsoft has perfected the same thing by taking English on a bad road trip. Entire industries have sprung up as engineers and attorneys rush to interpret this bizarre new language so they can file lawsuits, befuddle juries, and use as passwords to get into Star Trek Conventions. With the advent of the Internet, the veil of secrecy that has surrounded their work may be coming to an end. Imagine what would happen if the local Corps of Engineers autocrat had to actually crawl out from under his rock and could no longer hide behind the disguise of a “spokesperson said.” What if he had to actually face the public and give an impromptu press conference on how he is involved in the important work of protecting the U.S. from devastating attacks by hordes of vicious Agropyron repins, Carex atherodes, and E chinochle crosgallis.
This fearsome group tries to keep us off balance by trying to flood the United States or wreck our inland harbors with their renowned engineering incapability to keep us from realizing that these Latin enemies are no more than quack grass, slough sledge, and plain old barnyard grass? The scary part of all this is when you realize that these amphibious-tongued bureaucrats can actually have you thrown in jail for inappropriate behavior with quack grass, and if caught nuzzling a cattail, you could be beheaded. Take away the scientific names and buzzwords that these people hide behind, and the U.S. would go on the largest laughing jag the world has ever seen and we could tell them to just “stick it up their philodendrons.”
Then there is the usual mumbo-jumbo about rescuing the Social Security Ponzi fund from ultimate bankruptcy. The newest Medicare rules were written by government employees who were promoted from being lab rats after they ate all their crayons while writing the new instructions. These people junket around the country giving seminars to senior citizens who don’t have a clue what they are talking about. Then, to confuse the issues more, they hand out pamphlets that are so puzzling that even graffiti artists can’t understand them. The second part of the plot now takes effect as the seniors, thinking they are losing their reasoning powers and becoming batty, check themselves into government-financed facilities that will take care of them. Then, when their Social Security check is issued, the facility automatically catches it at the front door and deposits it into their account, as the fee for taking care of the senior. From here the facility sends most of it right back to Washington, D.C. to reimburse Medicare for taking care of them. The paltry sum that is left is subject to the various payroll and pothole filling taxes of about 50%, which is also sent straight back to the mother ship in Washington, with the State stealing a few lifeboats along the way. Basically what you have is that for every dollar that the U.S. puts out in Social Security and Medicare probably gets, 80% of it boomerangs back to Washington. Even a sauerkraut and prune pizza doesn’t have that fast of a round trip.
If this won’t kill off the senior citizens fast enough, they are then subjected to the pharmaceutical version of “Kervorkian Caps.” These are the caps on prescription bottles that cause high blood pressure, burst blood vessels, angry drooling, and multiple trips to the basement for vice grips, all in a vain attempt to actually reach the medication before they suffer an attack from what the pills are supposed to prevent. When they finally do get the medication open, they are warned that although the medication will clear their sinuses they might experience cotton mouth, hair loss, dizziness, temporary jaundice, bloated stomach, excess gas, and an uncontrollable urge to eat parsnips. That warning pretty well scares them to death and stops their Social Security payment dead in its tracks.
And have you noticed when taxpayers really get upset with the games that the Lansing groupies are playing, they go out and gather millions of signatures to put an issue on the ballot so all the citizens can vote for it, rather than just the clubby legislature? The issue is usually a common-sense approach to clear up some legislative mumbo-jumbo which, if enacted, will make some useless bureaucrat do some actual work. However, it is these same bureaucrats who design the wording to put on the ballot. So they confuse the wording so much that no one in their right mind (that is why only the Lansing people understand it) can understand it and then, they always make sure it is worded so that a yes vote is really a no vote for the initiative. No wonder the State is the only organization that will hire them.
“Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water.”...Jaws 2
Society might be better served if some braindead policy wonks wandered out into the desert and let the buzzards start nibbling on their ears. As an alternative they might have lunch with Hannibal Lecter. Maybe Tabasco would improve their flavor.
In Kansas, the legislature insists the state pay tuition for illegal aliens while the poor suckers (taxpayers) who are forced to pony up the money for this trick have to pay full tuition, if they can afford it, to further their own education. The Kansas State Legislature deserves the annual Mad Dog 20/20 award for their erratic reasoning. One connoisseur described the inferno of a Mad Dog 20 voyage with the critique, “[Its] taste is as majestic as the cascading waters of a sewer pipe.” Funny, I thought the description fit the Kansas Legislature perfectly. This is what is referred to as Alice in Wonderland legislation as the first chapter in that book is appropriately called “Down the Rabbit Hole,” (as in flushing money there). Legislatures continue to create laws that “coat society like a thick bathtub scum,” all to appease the lobbyists and special interest groups that they have sold their souls to.
I thought it would never happen, but rumor has it that Alfred E. Neuman may be replaced by someone with a lower I.Q. as the poster child of Mad Magazine. The new “What, Me Worry?” kid will supposedly be the Mayor of New Orleans. While many claim that the mayor and his gapped-toothed twin Alfred may have been “separated at birth,” no one has any definitive proof. Meanwhile the FBI is investigating the non-existence of seven hundred “phantom” New Orleans police officers that were funded by federal money. Instead of paying for actual police officers, apparently some glue sniffer came up with the idea to spend all the money creating a police force, in spirit only, to scare the criminals. The mayor compared it to George Washington lighting fake fires to lull the British troops before a surprise attack, but at least Washington had a few rounds of ammunition to back up his bluff. Apparently the politicians in New Orleans overlooked one little fact. It turns out that even hardened criminals will occasionally read a newspaper or watch the news, and as the word spread throughout the city about the “cyber cops” who were now enforcing the law, surprise-surprise, the crime rate went up. They quickly figured out that the caped crusaders weren’t going to swoop out of the sky and slap virtual handcuffs on them and, with Cleo in jail, her psychic hotline had been converted to a meteorologist hotline where, for $2.95 per minute a recorded voice would yell, “40% chance of sunshine.” Cleo had been the New Orleans version of virtual Pinkerton’s.
In the meantime an unconfirmed report had neighborhood watch groups throwing spears at passing UPS trucks in the mistaken belief that they were being invaded by big brown woolly mammoths. Oh yeah: the mayor wants the federal government to hand over forty billion dollars to New Orleans, no strings attached and no oversight, to rebuild the city. Why not just build a virtual city and convince everyone that it is real? No one except the criminals would know the difference. They need to send these people out to play in traffic, teach them how to hang glide or at the very least, give them some more Tinker Toys to occupy their little minds.
As the generation X’ers would say about the mayor, “That dude was at the wrong place at the wrong time.” But he had one redeeming idea. Suppose the government put him in charge of the Corps of Engineers? He could create a virtual Corps of Engineers with no employees. The only thing he would need to conjure up this mythical force would be to park shiny new green pickups in front of various donut shops during the day and periodically send out a computer generated letter to taxpayers informing them that the Corps now had complete control over all the inland waterways in the country, including household plumbing, and that in the future all taxpayers would need a permit to flush their toilets and water their lawns. For good measure he could continue to flood major sections of the country to keep Congressional funding coming his way. Think of the hundreds of billions of dollars taxpayers would save if there were no actual Corps of Engineers to screw things up and waste our money.
And now we have another Louisianan trying to get a class action suit against the manufacturer of iPod. He claims that it can cause hearing losses in people who use it but admits, through his attorney, that “...he does not know if the device has damaged his own hearing.” If this guy could actually read he would see that on every iPod sold there is a warning printed on the side that cautions, “Permanent hearing loss may occur if earphones or headphones are used at high volume.” I think this guy needs to take the suppositories out of his ears and put his hearing aids back in, if he can find out where he misplaced them. What do you want to bet that this may be the guy who mistakenly siphoned the holding tank of an RV, thinking it was the gas tank? His only comment was that it tasted terrible. He will probably sue the Olympic Committee for not having wet tee-shirt contests and Jell-O wrestling as Olympic sports.
And then we have those wonderful folks in New York who have made their political correctness an “international joke.” The state’s guidelines to language sensitivity say “We may not always understand why a certain word hurts. We don’t have to. It is enough that someone says, ‘That language doesn’t respect me.’” Whew! These birds wouldn’t last long in a U.P. hunting camp or a school playground. Clever New York cabbies have found a way around this political incorrectness by substituting some well known and notorious hand gestures to avoid using language of “ill repute” when they are cut off in traffic. Everyday New Yorkers also use creative hand gestures when their cars are stuck in snow drifts and when referring to their politicians, to avoid being fined by the state. Maybe this is why the New York Times has to make up so many stories as they are afraid that New Yorkers might find that the truth “doesn’t respect them.” To this day they probably don’t even realize that Boston beat the Yankees in the World Series a couple of years ago.
One thing that all of the above seem to have in common is a phobia that they were all ripped off. Face it; these are the type of people who put a tooth under their pillow and then wait patiently for the groundhog to see his shadow. If he sees his shadow they think he will leave a quarter in place of the tooth.
February 27, 2006
Vol. 7 Issue 9
“There’s a sucker born every minute”...Attributed to P.T. Barnum
If you combine the above quote with what is known as the Dopeler effect—“The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly”—you will be describing the latest literary victims who purchased a book called A Million Little Pieces. This supposedly nonfiction book is about an alcohol-and-drug-addicted member of society and has sold over three million copies. Now, it turns out that many of the purchasers feel duped and want their money back because the author took liberties and fabricated many parts of the book, unbeknownst to the publisher. Here we have a book written by some guy whose brain has probably been in a state of spontaneous permafrost for the past decade and can’t remember where the itch is when he needs to scratch. One day he awakens from his alcohol-and-drug-infested blackout and discovers that his two remaining brain cells are huddled in a corner of his frontal lobes and have started to twitch. The cells are plotting an escape route from their miserable surroundings and hope a wet sponge will pass by so they can hop a ride and upgrade their intellectual living space.
To salvage his reputation, this thirty-three-year-old author lugged his mother along with him to appear on the Larry King Show, where giant puff ball questions were lobbed at him by the host—i.e., “Do you think your early addiction to orange Jell-O had anything to do with the mole on your tongue?” I can only assume that mother and son had been drifting together on some ice floe in the Arctic and were rescued by a hung-over Canadian trapper who mistook them for mooselings. Oprah even called in to declare her support for this misfit and basically implied that the falsifications in the book were justified to make the truth seem more real. Did this woman even know what the phrase nonfiction stands for? In most circles this type of fraud would be called outright lies and, apparently, the public backlash forced Oprah to recant her theory that lies actually enhance the truth. I fear she has been interviewing too many Congressmen lately and cannot distinguish what is real and what is not. However, it is rumored that the New York Times was so impressed with this version of barf-bag novelizing that they offered him a job as their managing editor. They felt that anyone who could hoodwink Larry King and three million people, who they had assumed could not even read, had to be their boy. A vicious rumor had started to circulate that the family had accidentally killed their pet rock when they forgot to feed it but was quickly discredited when the rock appeared on Oprah’s next show, and appeared to have a higher I.Q. than the other family members. Meanwhile the rest of the clan thought they had hit the jackpot when they won three Happy Meals by having their DNA match Bigfoot’s. The story seems to have a happy ending when the family, including their pet rock, sold the list of people who had actually paid hard money to purchase the book, to the National Telemarketers Association, who commented, “This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to get some fresh sucker meat on the table.”
And then we have some guy suing AOL because someone hurt his feelings on one of their chat lines. I’ve heard of toadstools that had more backbone than this guy. Where do these people come from and who took their crayons away? Are there some unknown planets flying around that we don’t know about? It appears so, and where is Scotty when we really need him? This dough head needs to be beamed up quickly before he starts to infect the rest of society.
Except for the family mentioned above, most of us know without a doubt that Wile E. Coyote will never, ever, catch the Road Runner, even if the film is run backwards. Why then, do we watch all the specials on Amelia Earhart? Over three hundred hours of programming, including three Lifetime Movies, and the conspiracy theorists still don’t have a clue where she is. I hate to tell them, but if she was still living, she would be one hundred and eight years old, and the odds of finding her running a coconut plantation on some Pacific Island are not that great. They might try a nursing home, or maybe she is pumping gas with Elvis at the Kalamazoo gas station where witnesses keep spotting him.
I admit that I am no marketing expert, but maybe when the programmers at the major networks stumble off the tundra and warm up, they could explain something. Usually, when competing networks each have a runaway hit program, they start out on different nights. Each program attracts about fourteen million viewers and advertising rates are adjusted for their popularity. Then, the hundred-watt geniuses behind the original programming are replaced by drones operating on potato batteries and they decide to put the two programs head-to-head. This immediately cuts each program’s eyeball count in half, so instead of fourteen million people watching each one, only seven million are watching. We all know that anyone taping the other program is going to delete or skip over the commercials, yet the networks squeeze the advertisers and make them pay more money for fewer viewers. The advertisers gladly go along with this game and, just maybe, it is this type of reasoning that explains why both Ford and General Motors have recently had their bonds downgraded to junk status. Paying twice as much for half the viewers is like a yogurt enema—which end do you put the tube in?
And then the Beavis and Butthead award for flushing the most money down a toilet, without any residual value, has to go the organization that sponsors the football stadium in Denver. After “Mile High Stadium” was replaced with a new one, someone paid millions to have it renamed “Invesco Stadium.” I know of no one who still doesn’t refer to it as Mile High Stadium and, in fact, when I Googled “Mile High Stadium” I came up with the home of the Denver Broncos, with a small secondary reference to Invesco. I suppose I could do further research and find out what Invesco is, but I really don’t care as it will forever be Mile High Stadium, just as Lambeau Field would never be anything else if they attempted to rename it. Whatever this company is they were suckered into paying for something that flies right by most people. The movie “Dumb and Dumber 2” was a bad idea and tanked at the box office. They should have named it “Invesco 2.”
And then we have all the new bowl games that stumble off of our tongues like sour milk. When I saw the listings for the Vitalis Bowl, EV1.net Bowl, and MPC Computers Bowl and the second rate teams that were playing, I wondered who would even watch these teams, let alone remember who sponsored them. Most of these names will end up as footnotes in history listed right under the recipe for carp sushi.
January 30, 2006
Vol. 7 Issue 5
The Christmas season has always been a time of wonderful memories and long-established family traditions. In my own case I had nostalgic hunger pains for the French/Canadian Tourtiere (pork pie) that my grandmother used to make every Christmas Eve. I thought the old yellowed copy of her recipe that I had in my possession would give me a strategic advantage in re-creating this masterpiece. However, in looking over the recipe, it reminded me of the old George Carlin routine with the Hippy-Dippy weatherman. Carlin would stare into the camera and announce, “The temperatures are 10°, 25°, a shivering minus 15°, and for you lucky folks a balmy 80°,” but he would fail to mention which cities the temperatures belonged to. My Grandmother’s recipe was something like this as she started out with the proper amount of meat and then threw the list of spices up in the air, with a warning that using the right combination and amounts of cinnamon and cloves were the secret to the recipe!
She never did write down the exact measurements of any of the spices, but scattered throughout the recipe were old standby tidbits of cooking advice that had become a reflex in her mastery of cooking; “‘Season to taste’ and ‘adjust seasonings.’” These guidelines are similar to the undercurrent of impending danger your mother would use when she would flip out the old standby; “You know darn well what time to be in; I don’t have to tell you.” This leaves a lot of wide open spaces to roam through, and you don’t want to press your luck. I knew I was in further trouble when the recipe said to “keep adding bread crumbs until the mixture had the right ‘plop-plop’ sound.” After ten years of experimenting to find the right combination of cinnamon, cloves, plop-plops, and other spices, I did discover that too much cinnamon can be fatal to your tongue and the afterburn can cause a serious Maalox Moment. With the advent of the Internet I Googled the word Tourtiere and came up with about fifty recipes, and every one was slightly different. I narrowed my search down to only the ones that had the same ingredients as my grandmother’s and zeroed in on those that had precise measurements with quaint old phrases like “add one teaspoon, add one tablespoon, add one cup, etc.” Now I faced another dilemma. Even though I had a good rock-solid base of ingredients that originated in Lake Linden, the Tourtiere Capital of Michigan, the measurements were from cooks in Quebec. Would these measurements cause me to become a separatist? I proceeded with caution, and with a few tinkers here and there, I think I finally nailed the recipe on the head with the addition of one ingredient that no one had listed—I think they all keep it out so no one can really duplicate their mastery of the kitchen. As for the Quebecers, I think their problem is that they use too much cinnamon in the recipe, which not only leaves a bitter taste in their mouth but gives them a seceding headache. Then, someone called me for a copy of my own spaghetti recipe. The last sentence in my recipe was to “keep adding oregano, basil, and Italian spices until it tastes right.” I guess it must be hereditary.
With the advent of all the new cable channels, our traditional Christmas programming is also being challenged by some off-the-wall programming. Of course we can always find It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story, but I noticed on the Sci-Fi channel that their entire Christmas schedule amounted to a slithering carnivorous marathon. It started out early with Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla and then quickly deteriorated into a snake marathon with vipers, boas, pythons, and cobras pitted against each other in a desperate attempt to lure their crazed fans away from the combo instructional programming on the Animal Planet Channel, “Taxidermy-Self Taught—With Chitlins Au Gratin,” in one easy lesson. They borrowed their crocodile guy to teach both courses simultaneously. My first thought was that, if this was the typical Christmas fare for these “sci-fi” people, it makes me wonder how their children turn out and what types of pets they keep around the house. What do these people do for entertainment when the cable goes out and it isn’t Halloween? I did notice that the day after Christmas they had an abundance of Twilight Zone programming, no doubt to edge their flock closer to reality so they could again be safely herded back into society. At least I could understand a little of what these sci-fi people are like, as I have a family member who is both a Trekkie and a Packer fan, and sometimes I am not sure which part is further out in space.
On the other hand, the National Geographic Channel had a delightful little tidbit on during Christmas Day that centered on the investigation of a “Chupacabra.” This afternoon delight devoted a considerable time into looking for “the existence of the bloodsucking, reptile/kangaroo/vampire bat hybrid.” I guess this was supposed to be some sort of cuddly wildlife programming for the spotted owl and “happy holiday” people as they continue to turn the cranks of society backwards for their own narrow agenda. No doubt, if they ever find this hybrid bat, they will immediately crossbreed it with a piranha and petition to have it listed as an endangered species as the first rabid surf and turfer.
I even decided to check out the Lifetime Channel to see if they had their usual barrage of disease-laden fare or if by chance they had come up with something that had a Christmassy tint. The first thing I noticed was that one of their characters actually smiled, but on second thought, it could have been a nervous twitch from a botulism outbreak; it was hard to tell as he had already slipped into a coma. One movie actually had their version of a happy ending with the main character only losing one leg while, miraculously, they were able to stop the gangrene from spreading beyond his upper lip, allowing him to still whistle and blink. I suspect this writer was promptly shipped over to the Hallmark channel as his punishment for this “feel-good ending.” Lifetime promptly dispatched two turtledoves and three French hens to an isolation cage where they were wiped out by an outbreak of Asian bird flu, and eight maids a-milking lost their dairy farm because of their compulsive gambling habits. Finally, on a happy note, nine ladies dancing and a partridge, all high on holiday cheer, fell out of a pear tree and suffered nothing more than bruised egos. It wasn’t long before they returned to their trusty “milk carton” plot with a real heartbreaker. A teary-eyed abandoned wife spotted her missing husband’s and sister’s photos on the back of a gallon jug of chocolate milk. Years ago both had mysteriously disappeared when they went in search of some New Year’s Eve eggnog. Supposedly, an eyewitness had spotted them on a Caribbean Cruise line, dirty wrestling underneath the ship’s mistletoe arrangement. It had been such a long time ago that at this point in her life all she wanted was to know where he had hidden the key to the liquor cabinet.
One incident that went a long way in restoring my faith in the American justice system was a case where a camel escaped from a zoo and was loose on a highway. Some poor guy was driving home, and as the camel ran into the highway he, unavoidably, hit it. The police gave him a ticket for failure to have his car under control and he fought it with the defense that he had been surprised. His comment to the jury, I thought, was a classic. He told them, “In America when you are going down the highway at 50 miles per hour, who the hell expects a camel to jump out in front of your car?” The jury found him innocent.
January 2, 2006
Vol. 7 Issue 1
Why do year-end annual predictions have as much credibility as early morning pick-up lines concocted by snake-oil lotharios, blinded by their beer goggles? After howling all night, the forecasters try to round up all their loose mental shingles and boil the cotton from their mouths. If all the hindsighted mystics actually had any clue what they were doing, why would they tell anyone? Do you think if anyone actually had a clairvoyant view of the stock market, they would blab it about? Wouldn’t they be buying corn futures or pork bellies? The zero batting average I bring to the forecasting table is still better than living in the negative territory that these so-called mystics live in. I will give them a freebee prophecy for the new year; there will be a snowstorm in Buffalo this winter and it will be blamed for the high price of California raisins.
Airline mechanics and pilots will call a nationwide wildcat strike in 2006. An airline spokesperson will assure the flying public that they have not left anyone in the sky since 1956 and then it was only for a week. The bad news will be that frequent flyer miles will not accumulate while they are circling the Midwest and that only one movie will be available—“Dingo Bait” starring Paris Hilton and Ben Affleck as the bait. All passengers will need an emergency I.Q. booster immediately upon landing. The good news will be that they will run out of stale peanuts.
PBS will announce the cancellation of “Lawrence Welk” due to changing demographics.
After having new knees, artificial hips, and new false teeth implanted, Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones will be the new Saturday night special. The new underwriters will be the amphetamine and mushroom industries.
Krispy Kreme will come out with liquid donuts. They will have four thousand calories per cup and can be served either hot or cold. New York estimates that their police force will be able to work an additional eight hundred man hours per year with this new product. Weight Watcher executives will be seen “high-fiving” up and down Wall Street.
The FCC and SEC will block a merger between Disney Animation and Looney Tunes. They will rule that having Bugs Bunny and Goofy available twenty-four hours a day will distract viewers from C-SPAN, who will find the new programming more realistic. They will also dictate that the words “Looney and Goofy” are the sole domain of Congressional actions.
Law enforcement officials will capture a serial killer hiding in the Ottawa National Forest. He will be tried, convicted, and sentenced to the maximum six-month sentence under federal guidelines for multiple murders. However, he will receive a concurrent seventy-five year sentence for trespassing on government property and picking wild berries without a permit.
George Steinbrenner, the owner of the New York Yankees, after again hiring, firing, rehiring, and again firing the same manager during the baseball season will be named Secretary-General of the United Nations. He will immediately trade France to Iran for a bucket of pistachios and a thumbless banjo picker. He will spin North Korea off to Japan for a barrel of squid and two Toyotas. Timbuktu will be given to Puerto Rico for two future countries, and Cuba, like a squirrel burying his nuts for the winter, will be told to “get lost”—no one will remember what happened to them.
Martha Stewart and Donald Trump will be caught in a hotel room by the National Enquirer.
The first illegal alien will be elected to the California State Senate. He will speak no English, but his constituents will say he makes a lot more sense than his predecessor; they couldn’t understand him either. The constitutional qualifications for being elected to the California Senate will be changed. Candidates will have to have as minimum qualifications at least one pair of clean underwear, a driver’s license (legal or fake—makes no difference), have a minimum I.Q. of 40, and show no visible signs of acne.
The ACLU will announce an “Adopt-A-Criminal” program. For fifteen dollars a week, you will be able to help a career criminal avoid capture and provide him with an attorney and a hideaway at a local spa. The toll-free number will be 1-800-Ambulance-Chasers.
Microsoft and Dell Computer will hire special interpreters to handle customer complaints. They will report that complaints have dropped significantly due to the three-hour wait for someone to answer the phone and the fact that when the customer finally gets through, they will hang up immediately when they realize they don’t speak the same language as the customer representative. Both companies will file lawsuits for copyright infringement against the three major networks for use of any variation of #@#^%$#$%. They claim that the origination of this type of language was aimed solely at the use of their products and giving it away free on the airwaves is in violation of their copyright. In addition, they are suing FEMA for unauthorized use of their trademarked catchphrases “I don’t know what the problem is” and “All of our customer representatives are busy—don’t bother us with your problem—call someone who cares.”
Lansing bureaucrats will be trampled while rushing madly at the end of the state’s fiscal year to capture any excess donut money that had not been spent and issuing redundant and obscure regulations that no one understands. They will plead that taxes need to be raised to fund their frivolous departments. Polls show that the taxpayers prefer that they do something constructive to raise money to fund their extravagances, like selling flowers at airports or washing windshields at busy intersections.
PETA will demand that the Detroit Lions adopt a new name. Detroit’s degradation of the ferocious and proud Lion name has demoralized the lion’s pride and made it a mockery in the jungle. PETA suggests that a more appropriate name might be either the Mutts or Edsels.
In a final peacekeeping effort, the U.N. will threaten to send the Corps of Engineers and FEMA personnel as a special intrusion force to North Korea. North Korea will refuse their admittance. The Koreans figure they will take their chances on getting nuked as there would be less damage and destruction than leaving those two organizations running loose in their country.
December 19, 2005
Vol. 6 Issue 51
An oxymoron is a combination of contradictory and inconsistent words but, when referencing TV anchors, most people just drop the oxy part and proceed with a grain of salt. I noticed a quote about a program called “American Morning” that stated their main focus would be “hard news.” The nano-minded hostess then went on to explain that “Soledad O’Brien told me recently, over a turkey-sandwich lunch underneath New York’s Rockefeller Center that, ‘No one loves shoe shopping more than me.’” The revelation from this veteran hard-news junkie was pretty heady stuff to digest in one sitting, as the audience waited breathlessly to see how turkey-sandwiches and shoe shopping binges would affect global warming patterns and disarm rebel soldiers. The people of New York deliberated this hard-breaking news for days and were left suspended on a scaffold of bewilderment, wondering whether the shoe-buying bender was a fetish or the early warning sign of something more sinister. The viewer was also left in doubt whether the one-dimensional anchor preferred Versace or Gucci implants, and if she could cover up her latte breath in time to meet her lone fan, waiting patiently for her in the neighborhood leather shop.
I have to admit that I am out of the loop on this one as I don’t have a clue who this Soledad person is, although her name sounds like she could be the offspring of a blackout-forgotten encounter at an old Grateful Dead concert. It sounds like this deep thinker will be gracing the airwaves with a lot of controversial recipes and enlightening her audience on how to best achieve inner peace with personal stories of her never-ending crusade in the elusive search for her inner sole. Meanwhile a tanker truck had exploded in the downtown area destroying numerous fruit carts and taco joints, police had fired warning shots over the heads of rioting underwear salesmen, and pigeons were cluster-dropping yesterday’s meal over every statute and bald head in the city. These fast-breaking stories were never mentioned as she was still visibly upset that, apparently, her sister had joined some sort of militant group. The family had overheard her bragging about going “commando style,” and they were worried that the authorities might be hot on her trail. Then, like an exploding bombshell, she blurted out that her computer artery thingies had clogged from a muscle overload, or whatever, while she was downloading jumbo gigabyte images from the Chippendale’s “Wrestling in Butter” site. At this point you realize that most of these “hard-breaking” news stories have about as much range as three-day-old deodorant.
With the advent of the many twenty-four hour news channels, demand for quality correspondents has exceeded supply with the result that too many people with plastic parts have been crawling out of the Max Factor tubs and now control the spiritual centers of hard news reporting. While listening to most of these correspondents you wonder if they are suffering the aftereffects of consuming too much sugar on an empty head or if their bottled water comes from an active lead mine.
The version of hard news that we are now subjected to has been become so dim that we now find some phrases have entirely new meanings. Just as “practicing accepted general accounting principles” is now interchangeable with “he is presently serving an eighteen-month prison sentence,” so has “I am retiring to spend more time with my family” become synonymous with “as part of his plea bargain he will be serving five years of supervised probation.” Trickery seems to be the mode for trapping viewers, and where do you draw the line on lurid headlines that scream out as decoys? Various metrosexuals by the names of Marty, Chip, and Katie scream out teaser headlines like, “Stranglehold puts woman in intensive care—tune in at six o’clock for details,” only to find out that the victim had, while scratching an itch, accidentally caught her spandex in the food mixer at high speed. The deceptive lengths they will go to to get our attention are beyond the bounds of decency. Can you imagine a loud-mouthed come-on of “Packers find lifeless mummies still breathing—tune in at 10 o’clock for details” as a perfect example of bug-zapper journalism? Excitedly, expecting an Area 51 moment, you tune in only to find out that the Packers arrived in Detroit to play the Lions.
With the stream of “news alerts” clinging to us like a bad case of dandruff, we tend not to get ruffled as we start noticing that they all seem to fixate on some obscure facts that no one really cares about. Every once in awhile we perk up when we overhear that a sewage disposal plant malfunctioned and the raw material has been diverted into some city’s water supply. As long as it happens in Trollville who cares; they have been drinking and bathing in the stuff for years and always complain that it tastes terrible. Every time they cross the bridge they are amazed that our iced tea doesn’t have any lumps.
Of course, along with the headlines, the proper body language is a must. The networks spend millions of dollars on research, spare body parts, and plastic surgeons to make sure the right visual message is reflected across the screen. The men reporters all sit glued neatly behind their desks so no one really knows what they are wearing from the waist down, if anything. Imagine that they are all sitting in their skivvies, with ratty old slippers, fungus feet, and wearing only tattered ankle garters? The women reporters seem to all have oversized collagen lips that, when moved, sounds like a plunger unclogging a plugged up drain. As a result, their assault on proper enunciation can cause serious ear whiplash. You immediately sit up and take notice when she blurts out “fornication like this” bounces off your eardrums and you notice her male cohort thrashing in his chair and slowly melting onto the floor with a look of horror etched on his face. As the camera is whipped away to zero in on an unobtrusive cobweb gathering dust in a lonely corner, a normal-lipped reporter rushes onto the scene to explain that what she actually said was “for an occasion like this” and also clarifies that the major erectile dysfunction catastrophe occurring in Italy is that the Tower of Pisa has tilted another inch—tune out at 6:02.
As for the cutting edge story, “Woman mutilates man’s self-respect—tune in at six for the full details,” don’t worry; she only used his chain saw to till the garden.
November 21, 2005
Vol. 6 Issue 47
“Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” —from the Wizard of Oz
As soon as I crossed into southern Illinois, the lonesome blues jumped on board and wrested control of my car radio from the easygoing northern airwaves and injected an aggressive and strange brew of country-western music that scratched the air and started to melt the wax on my eardrums. Songwriters who live below the Mason-Dixon Line seem to have a thirst for composing ballads that worship broken-down trailer parks, cheap whiskey, and little minds driving big diesel engines that are nestled lovingly between two old rusty fenders and an old hound dog. If you add a couple of missing tailpipes, a bad case of acne, braided nose hair, and an occasional broken heart, you have captured the soul of this type of music. It seems that the regional pastime in that part of the country is to take “Old Blue” fishing, sip some sort of homemade liquid jump-starter from a brown paper bag, and devise ways of sneaking past the “little woman” who is waiting irritably at home without getting creamed by an iron skillet. A song that was titled, “He's Got a Full 6-pack, but Lacks the Plastic Thingy to Hold it Together,” would pretty well sum up the way of life the songwriters are trying to describe.
Wouldn’t you love to tag along with some of these songwriters to see where they get the inspiration to develop their song plots? Many of these songs enter into the realm of public legend as the words become gospel to many of their listeners, taking on a life of their own. As they travel down the melancholy highway it starts to take over an individual’s life, myth becomes merged with a false realism, and it creates startling changes in a region’s lifestyle. As I was cruising along, a new song popped from the airwaves that subconsciously threw me into new territory and begged the question, “Did I actually hear that?” As I quickly jerked the steering wheel a hard left to get out of the gravel gutter and back onto the highway, I again heard the words from the song, “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off.” This song has singlehandedly changed the lifestyle of an entire section of our population. Ever since “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off” has hit the airwaves, scores of naive male teenagers have started to use hundred-fifty proof tequila as a cologne and underarm deodorant in the hopes that clothes will start littering the countryside like empty beer cans on an Appalachian highway. Sadly, as they woozily slather the stuff on their faces, they discover that the only thing it accomplishes is that their pimples are much happier, and a lot of drunken mosquitoes are fluttering around their ears, picking fights with each other and flying into ditches. Mothers now douse their children with lemon juice and salt before they are allowed to date, but one poor tequila-drenched soul hasn’t been seen since a giant worm dragged him off to a cave somewhere to mate. Even the Minnesota Vikings, not known as mental giants, swallowed the bait as they smeared tequila on their bodies for one of their infamous riverboat parties. However, at their probation hearings reality bit back when the judge asked them point blank, “Aren't you people a little old to believe in fairy tales?” On the other hand, southern women have found that dressing provocatively in leather will make a man completely helpless. The scent of fresh leather reminds him of a brand new pickup truck and he will follow the smell around like a contented puppy.
I also noticed that the further south you go, the citizens seem to take frugality to new depths. In one local municipality, funeral homes and taxidermy shops have been merging and now offer the ultimate “twofer,” a cost-savings combo of a warm remembrance that also keeps birds out of the garden. Everyone nowadays is looking for ways to save money, and one enterprising woman decided to employ her own brand of twofer by using Black Flag as a deodorant when she was invited to a picnic. She figured as long as she sat downwind, no one would notice and the ants would stay away. Unfortunately, she was seated next to an Orkin Man, and she had to fend off his advances all night.
Sometimes trying to cut corners and save money can actually be hazardous to your health. In one well known case, a noted cheapskate sought to save money on a car air freshener. He simply plopped his Renuzit bathroom air freshener in his car’s cup holder during the day and returned it to its proper place at night. Unfortunately, a few unforeseen problems developed from his penny pinching, and the side effects were not pleasant. He started to smell like a lilac bush to his co-workers. Allergy sufferers kept sneezing at him, and packs of dogs started to follow him around trying to fertilize his legs, while squirrels continually buried nuts in his socks. On a more serious note, every time he stepped out of his car he was attacked by swarms of honey bees, and on one occasion the bees sucked two quarts of blood out of him as they mistakenly thought they had discovered the mother lode: a giant pollen pond. To this day, the bee colony still buzzes about the experience and stays as far away from polyester and argyle socks as possible.
October 24, 2005
Vol. 6 Issue 43
“There are thum weally stwange cweatures out there.” ...Tweety Bird
If you noticed the headlines in the past few months, one of the major concerns of academia was that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) went on the warpath in an effort to outlaw the use of Native American names as nicknames for college sports teams. Florida State University was one of the teams that protested this George Custer type of decision as, since their inception, the team has been named the Seminoles. This tribute to the unflinching spirit and bravery of the Seminole Tribe was perfectly okay with the Seminole Indians and with ninety-nine percent of the population who had their heads screwed on straight. So, who comes riding out of the sunset but a bunch of pinstriped Kansas City white guys from the NCAA, spouting to the world that the name Seminole was “hostile and abusive” to them. When did a few refugee white boys, who obviously spent too much of their childhood twiddling in a locked closet, gain censorship control over Native Americans’ use of their own name? One hundred and fifty years ago these deportees from the human race would have been scalped and hung out to dry for this insult, but now they have taken their nerf-ball personalities and settled in the center of dullsville, where their blank stares pierce the empty space of political correctness.
State and federal bureaucrats, like a bad set of tires that need to be constantly rotated, are hidden in different departments until a fresh mannequin can be found to replace them or they retire. These retreads are skimmed from the same pond scum that flies find so attractive as a natural mating ground, and no amount of DDT will inject any common sense into their heads. In Missouri a collection of “born losers” were caught in the glare of their own headlights when they were able to pork barrel some funds to form a group called “The Coalition for the Environment.” Their sole purpose in life is to degrade as many adjectives as possible while inventing monsters called “use attainability analysis” for various streams to determine if they comply with the Clean Water Act in the proper use of “whole-body contact.” Assuming the first four letters of the word “analysis” more properly describe their intellect and purpose in life, we find that some of these people are being paid six figures to determine if “whole-body-contact,” also known as swimming, is being done in accordance with government regulations. If they should catch you “doing it in the lake,” they simply shoot you on the spot. These goofballs have been smoking way too much okra while attending conventions where they learn the fine art of shoplifting gobbledygook phrases that no one understands so they can continue to pilfer funds from the public. Face it; these are the type of individuals who eat the banana, skin and all, because they cannot figure out how to peel it. Once they have spent what little common sense they had figuring out how to close a Ziploc bag, they shave the fur off their tongues, have their leisure suit dry cleaned, and surface as supervisors at FEMA.
Then we have people who have spotted cougars roaming about in the Upper Peninsula; however, the DNR is claiming that there is no definitive evidence to support the sightings. Like the search for the Holy Grail, the sole objective of these stargazers is to find proof that cougars exist in the in the U.P. so they can finally trump the DNR boys. Do they realize what they are doing? If they ever did find absolute proof that a cougar existed up here, it would give the DNR all the ammunition they need to hire another fifty troops, travel to China to find a mating pair, and introduce them to the U.P. as an endangered species. Combining the cougars with their fishers, mutant mosquitoes, and strain of fly-swatter-resistant black flies, the lone porcupine they have left here as bait could just kiss his sorry butt goodbye. The best thing these cougar hunters could do for Michigan would be to track down this beast, trap it, tie it up, and rush across the border to Wisconsin or Minnesota and dump it in their laps with an industrial size bag of catnip; let them figure out what to do with it.
And then we hear that the New York Times shelled out over one hundred million dollars for half ownership of a cable channel that bragged it was beamed into thirty-five million homes. Like their news sources, the Times did not check out the facts too well, as according to the Nielsen Ratings only twenty-seven thousand people tuned into the channel. More people attended the annual goat herders’ convention in Montana than viewed that dog of a channel.
I will close with two of the great unsolved mysteries of the world for you to try and figure out. Why is it that they can invent a toilet bowl cleaner that is good for two thousand flushes but gum loses its flavor in ten minutes? In addition, why can you open a Twinkie that has sat on a shelf for twenty years and it still tastes fresh, but when you open a vacuum-sealed bag of lettuce, it starts to turn brown in twenty seconds?
September 26, 2005
Vol. 6 Issue 39
Some people are destined to be the bug on the windshield of life and run on “Rocky Mountain Time” while the rest of the world marches to a normal beat. Like birds trying to fly through closed windows, these losers are destined to repeatedly slam their heads into reality’s window pane and fall straight into a garden of their own delusion. When they finally come to they are often too stunned to face the artificial world they’ve created for themselves. Convinced that Elvis is “still in the building,” they’ve camped out at the back door of their mental jungle for years, waiting to get a glimpse of the “King” if he should try to sneak out the back door.
Most of these people start out appearing normal, and then, sometime in their teenage years, they discover that certain over-the-counter medicines have ingredients in them that can be segregated and combined to make mind-altering fuzz. It takes a person with exceptional eyesight and a low threshold of intelligence to painstakingly separate these ingredients so they can experience a Beano high that instantly freezer burns any and all original thought before it parts their lips. I have read that some of these dullards actually make a type of ingestible concoction out of parts of battery acid, antifreeze, Drano, lantern fuel, and bat guano. Do you think this might provide a small clue why SAT scores are lower and “duh” has become part of our national vocabulary?
In order to detect if someone has slipped from the sober bonds of earth and posted a vacant sign between their ears, the police have abandoned traditional methods of detection like the breathalyzer, which melts when accosted by the dumpster breath these drugs create. Now, all they do is wave a Geiger counter over the suspect or have them breathe at a carbon monoxide detector, downwind. Drug enforcement officers have enlisted the help of specially trained K9 dingoes, but the fumes are so bad that with one sniff, they go cross-eyed and lose the ability to distinguish between a fire hydrant and a pair of checkered pants. The ultimate test is to stick a dead flashlight in their mouth and if it lights up with more than .018 watts and their tongue starts glowing, they are considered legally spaced out. In one instance a victim miscalculated the ratio of bat dung to lantern fuel, and the buildup and discharge of intestinal gas caused an outburst which reached a speed of Mach 1. His back pockets and wallet took off on a journey that shattered every window in the neighborhood and left a small mushroom cloud hovering overhead. The wallet was later spotted by NASA orbiting Saturn with Fruit of the Loom shreds clinging to it. On the bright side, at least these people won’t freeze in a snowbank some wintry night, as the glow from the purple snow will melt the ice and provide a beacon for the EPA. Parents have a tougher time trying to keep track of their teens as the old tried-and-true trick of smelling their breath will result in their eyebrows being severely singed or, in Michael Jackson’s case, melting his nose off. Reportedly, one of these zombies was seen stumbling around with a formaldehyde hangover and went on a three-day binge when he accidentally sniffed Barry Bond’s sweaty armpits. Unfortunately, a lot of secondhand stupidity is passed on by these people to innocent victims who accidentally inhale their vacant stares. The only high I ever remember getting from a battery was slapping it under the hood of a fifty-eight Chevy convertible and heading for the beach with a six pack of Bosch.
In the old days most people could achieve a natural high just by watching the Vikings lose another clutch game, but this switch to battery acid and lantern fuel has had some strange reverberations on the choices being made in society. The Attorney General of New York indicted an official of the James Beard Foundation for stealing. The Attorney General’s solution to the problem was to ban “...any food professionals from being on the board” as it would create a conflict of interest. This means that no one who even has an inkling of how to prepare food can have anything to do with researching food, but taxi drivers, panhandlers, and sewer workers are welcomed.
Then we hear that Harvard professors, those bastions of one-way thought, with their hide-under-the-desk philosophy, have chastised their president for giving some independent and off-the-cuff remarks in an attempt to get these same professors to come up with some original thought of their own. The academics were up in arms because someone actually experienced the wonder of free speech, but he had wandered too far outside of their academic circled wagons. The professors, like lemmings going over the cliff, blindly follow their inferiors, dropping ditto scat behind whatever shrub they can hide behind. The Druids at Harvard have sacrificed free thought on the altar of political correctness, while earning a BS in delusion. I would suggest that the professors spend a few days in a U.P. hunting camp if they want to experience free, uninhibited speech in its purest form. One exposure to camp would send them scurrying back to campus faster than a U.N. peacekeeping force in full retreat from a rambunctious Oktoberfest crowd being led by a pack of crazed accordion players hot on the trail of some fresh pickled herring.
Hitting closer to home, we discover that some things change because society changes and we wonder how far we have drifted out to sea. I recently read that Michigan Tech is dropping their degree program for becoming a mining engineer due to lack of students. However, they have added four new Bachelor’s degrees in the field of Fine Arts—or as they used to be called, pottery classes, poetry seminars, or summer camp. At least this helps explain what happened to their hockey team. If Einstein had gone to school in this environment, he would have ended up specializing in clay ashtrays with a minor in forest tidiness. I suppose the next thing to hit the sawdust trail will be the Popular Mechanics Swimsuit Edition and the stimulating centerfold page in Modern Diesel. As the graduates leave the hallowed halls of academia they will be armed with their new degree, a “Fine Arts in Engineering.” The occupational buzz words that will accompany this degree and make them a success in their chosen field will be, “Do you want French fries with your order?”
August 29, 2005
Vol. 6 Issue 35
“Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus”
—John Gray
Boy, he sure nailed that one on the head. The fact that men and women inhabit completely different planetary bodies is noticeable at a very young age. Boys join the Cub Scouts, a club named after a baby bear that will grow into a lumbering spiritual devotee of cold beer and big engines, while girls join Brownie Scouts, foreshadowing their lifelong addiction to anything chocolate. Boys earn merit badges for learning the correct way to crush empty cans on their forehead so they can be stacked neatly in recycling bins and how to deal cards properly. Meanwhile, girls discover the importance of spelling correctly by learning the difference between carrots and carats, and train intensely in the vital skills necessary in acquiring multiple pairs of shoes.
It only gets worse from here. Boys revel in chasing muskrats, wearing torn and weathered clothing, and using dust balls as door stops to their bedrooms. Girls, on the other hand, become obsessed with personal hygiene—collecting scented soaps, sparkly makeup, and flavored lip gloss. They spend their free time learning how to dance in frilly dresses and putting curtains on anything that light would venture through. When it comes to housing, all boys really need is some sort of roof over their head; whether it is solid or thatched doesn’t matter, and it adds to the charm if it leaks a little and has no floor. This housing has various names but “shacks” and “tree houses” are the most prevalent terms used. There is usually so little leg room in them that any gaseous discharge would explode if someone lit a match, and it teaches them the pleasures of earthy smells at an early age. In contrast, girls inhabit playhouses built by their daddies and which come complete with windows, screens, tablecloths, and, of course, curtains. Here they hone their social skills by serving tea and cookies to stuffed animals and Barbies.
But as we all get older, we become more refined. Our shacks turn into clubs as the weapon of choice to engage in camaraderie, while a slumber party is the traditional route that women take for the same reason. The big difference at this stage of life is that slumber parties tend to smell nice and are more cultivated, while clubs specialize in spilling drinks, putting cars in ditches, and perfecting the art of scribbling graffiti on bathroom walls. Sometime in the teen years, the discrepancy between the two makes a major shift as the clubs suddenly become camps, while the slumber parties become tutorials on the significance of silk lingerie and round table discussions on ways to hide Ghirardelli Chocolates from their families. The camps take on an aura of their own as soap, clean underwear and any form of water in general is forbidden, unless it comes in a tab-top can. The lingering smell of sweaty humans, idling diesel engines, and 120-grit toilet paper, combined with an abundance of BS, make the experience all the more enjoyable until the day they need to be hosed down so they can be accepted back into society. In the meantime their female counterparts are lapping up the luxury of cleanliness, shopping to their hearts’ content, sharpening their skills in the art of gossip, making unlimited telephone calls to their friends, and airbrushing their nails.
The two bipolar groups also greet each other with a completely different spin on life. The women’s groups use refined greetings like “How are you?” “Have I shown you pictures of my grandkids?” or “Have another piece of chocolate,” while at the men’s camp the simple salutation of “Shut up, deal the cards, get me a cold beer,” and “I get first dibs on the La-Z-Boy” is all that is needed. The strong sense of bonding is the same but in two different tongues, and the women don’t have to worry about staying one step ahead of the local game warden or losing their clothes in a game of chance.
As the two sexes get older, they make another sharp turn in divergent directions, with the women taking on a more mature attitude. The men have this biological urge to go deeper into the woods and establish bigger camps with more friends and to get as far away as possible from civilization and decent plumbing. The little bit of melted water they can scrounge from their ice chests will sustain them for days. After years of bonding the regular greeting has mellowed into “Whose turn to deal?” “Get your own damn beer” and “Where’s the remote?” What more could a guy ask for?
While the men play their games and lurk about the woods in their camouflaged hats, the women start to outflank the men in a flamboyant show of solidarity by donning red hats and forming a new society called the “Red Hatters.” Men don’t have a clue what these Red Hatters club meetings are for. The women start by sending out scouting parties in search of the best restaurants while the men are busy setting bait traps. However, this is where their interests diverge. The women don their red hats and invade their chosen restaurant for a fun-filled gabfest. The Red Hatters’ strategy of enjoying “the wild” is to leave home and go out to eat a good meal with friends. Someone else does the dishes, waits on them, cooks the food, and they have plenty of time to chat and renew acquaintances with everyone. Some are even known to take side trips to shop, gamble, and teeter to the edge of their credit card limits. They come home clean and refreshed, bearing no mosquito bites—and their cars very seldom go into the ditch. They are usually exhausted from laughing and having a good time and they tell their male counterpart that it would be a good night to renew their acquaintance with the microwave oven. The men are dumbfounded. What kind of club is this? With military precision, these females scout rendezvous locations that have running water and soap, use napkins and tablecloths, and operate under some sort of hygienic code. Men are amazed that their spouses can actually have fun under these primitive circumstances. Admittedly, washing dishes at camp is not that high of a priority, but no one is the worse for wear since the invention of the Pink Russian (Vodka and Pepto Bismol).
On one occasion the men had a sober reminder of how far they had fallen as the tranquility of the camp was shattered. Like a tornado whistling through Oklahoma, the incident was gone in a flash but left a devastating wake behind. There is always one untrained oddball in camp who leaves the toilet seat up, and like a repressed memory of your mother scolding you for leaving your socks lying on the floor, every male in camp started chipping away at the poor guy, telling him what a total animal he was. By the time it dawned on them what happened, they came to the realization that they had been totally brainwashed by the women in their lives and it was time to go home, take out the garbage, feed the dog, and mow the lawn. What a sad state of affairs.
If this was not enough, total chaos erupted with the arrival of the notorious Husqvarna Nell who asked if she could join the camp. Even though she could beat most of the men at arm wrestling, they had serious misgivings about allowing a woman to join. With the advent of the new Red Hatters group they had already hacked their way deeper into the woods and built bigger camps. The group debated, “What kind of woman would put up with all the cussing, spitting, card playing, sweaty smells, drinking beer out of a longneck, and living with ripe breath for days on end? In addition she would have to put up with listening to off-color jokes, repeated time after time, and still laugh like she heard them for the first time. She would have to know how to fillet a fish, gut a deer, know the rules of pro football, and love the smell of diesel fumes.” She never made it into the group but she received five marriage proposals from the guys in the camp.
August 1, 2005
Vol. 6 Issue 31
America really needs to get a grip on itself as the reality TV fetish has finally gone over the edge. It has become a desperate world where contestants stoop to new lows in an effort to completely humiliate themselves, throw their dignity out the window, and prove to the world that they have no life at all. These flat-headed offspring from the reality show “This is your brain! This is your brain on drugs” prove that you can drive a square peg into a round hole if you pound it hard enough.
The latest shot out of the “Look at me Ma! I been on TV” [sic], cannon is a show called “Who Gets the Dog?” My first thought was that this was a new dating game show from Iran. Instead, three ditsy couples who did not have enough personality to make it past Dr. Phil’s doorman were picked at random from a pool of other apparent losers. The theory behind this new reality show is to drop off a well-groomed and well-trained homeless mutt for an overnight stay of bonding so he (the dog) can determine which couple has the best table scraps and flea removal program. Somehow, by the end of the show, the dog will be able to communicate with the judges (using a secret woof-woof that only the judges understand) which one of the couples is best suited to be his new parents.
These people are so desperate for something to love them that they go to extremes trying to convince the dog that they would be fit parents. Certain rules must be followed to be eligible as contestants, and the first thing the judges did was to disqualify the couple dressed as a pair of shiny red fire hydrants. The owners of the egg roll shop who were hungrily eyeing Rover were also shown the door, but the guy with the two-week-old dead squirrel hidden in his pocket managed to sneak through the screening process. Once the contestants are chosen, Rover is then dropped off at each house for a one-night stand, along with his overnight ditty bag. Rover’s bag contains all his personal belongings including his toothbrush, tongue scraper, his favorite pair of floppy-eared bunny slippers to chew on, and an old used jock strap that can be used as a muzzle when turned inside out.
The hostess, who looked like either a leftover hunkette from the Baywatch show or a Hooters waitress, quickly managed to narrow my viewpoint until I suddenly realized I did not really give a damn who the dog picked, and in fact, it could go out and chase cars as far as I was concerned. Anyway, this big furry thing kept bounding into the scene running back and forth, gnawing on anything in sight, and remarkably, for three days it apparently did not have any type of bowel movement unless you count that little incident in the begonia patch, which was quickly edited out. And then, horror of horrors, the dog somehow found the only open tar pit in the middle of Los Angeles and came home looking like a large wet licorice stick. After traipsing over the white linoleum and splattering the kitchen walls with black gooey lumps, the hostess informed the beaming wannabe parents that the best way to clean the hound up and make it presentable would be to take it out in their yard. It was at this point that the couple decided to finally return their neighbors’ tools that they had borrowed a couple of years ago and sneak Rover into their swimming pool, along with a bucket of Clorox. Who knows? Maybe the neighbors would borrow the dog and not return it.
After performing a series of stupid pet tricks, the importance of individual bonding was reviewed. One set of prospective parents thought they had tucked the dog safely into his bed surrounded by x-ray negatives of cousin Bubba’s gout episode, but when Rover discovered he couldn’t bury them, he promptly shimmied out the window and took off to raid the neighborhood garbage cans for some real food and to chase skunks for excitement. Well, they definitely lost points for that one. Couple number two appeared to leap into the front when the judges noted how passionately they kissed the dog. Here are these two people locking tongues with this dog, never giving it a thought where and what that tongue had been cleaning out lately. Do they even realize what dogs use their tongues for? As for the dog’s nose, I wouldn’t even hazard a guess what strange places it had been sniffing around in. Couple number three (the Dufus family) made a fast start as the husband still had the dead squirrel stuffed in his waistband, and the dog thought he was pretty cool because his underwear actually smelled a little like he did after an afternoon of chasing hummingbirds and swimming in swamp water.
The heartbreaking finale came down to the panel of judges who would determine (with the dog’s help) who would get an additional ten seconds of TV infamy to further embarrass their immediate families, force them to change their last names, and have them beg to get into the witness protection program. One of the judges, an animal behaviorist and a walking advertisement for successful plastic surgery, looked like she had just walked out of a Victoria’s Secret catalog. Three truck drivers called in during the show and mistakenly wanted to adopt her and when asked which couple should get the dog, they replied, “what dog?” The other two panelists looked like they had spent a little too much time at the other end of a leash and they were still speechless by the quick-thinking postman who sent Rover dashing madly after an extra set of postal trousers that he had attached to a Harley Davidson that had gone speeding by.
At the end, all three couples were lined up while the hunkette held Rover tightly on a leash. She released him and he rushed to the joyful winners, who again French kissed him passionately. In addition to taking old compost breath home, the winners received a pearl-handled pooper-scooper, Lassie’s original flea-and-tick collar, and one of her preserved stool samples. The losers, dabbing tears from their eyes, were given their consolation prize, a giant rawhide bone to take home so they could gnaw their sorrows away.
The only fitting way to describe this show is to say it was a cross between David Letterman’s Stupid Pet Tricks and the Gong Show. Overall, it wouldn’t be that bad of a show if they would get rid of the goofy dog, the weird couples, and add a few surfboard scenes.
When people with common interests band together with a passionate belief in what they are doing, they usually gather at the birth center of their movement to enjoy their passion to the fullest. Thus, you have Civil War buffs donning replica uniforms, getting together at real battleground sites, and in general, experiencing the genuine smell and feel of the battleground while tramping through the woods. While engaging in these activities, they suffer the indignities of rank sweat, the smell of musket powder, a scant diet, and multiple chigger bites that will drive them nuts for weeks. You talk to these people and they will happily tell you what a great time they had because they have experienced the compassion of reliving what they truly believe in. Campers load up their gear, hop in their RVs, and head out to various natural wilderness sites to enjoy the camaraderie of their fellow campers, and rendezvousers sit by their campfires swapping tall tales and paying no mind to the mosquitoes, flies, and other vermin that might be a distraction to mere mortals. These people are tough as nails. They use fly swatters as kindling, gargle with Deet, and can make a four-star meal out of a mangy muskrat. Occasionally one of the group will sleep too soundly, and by morning the only sign of life will be a wrinkled human skin lying on the ground as the now obese mosquitoes will have sucked all the blood out of the victim. The other rendezvousers merely give the skin a transfusion of strong coffee, spray some BS repellent on it, and they are up and on their way. Even Ottawa National Forest officials will occasionally swagger into a swamp to post a “No Trespassing—Taxpayers Will Be Shot On Sight” sign, all because they fervently believe they own the land and it is their own private domain.
Then we have something called the Society of Wetland Scientists who flaunt their biotic duplicity and vertebrate whatevers while scattering a collection of Latin terms on various vermin and weeds in their efforts to convince everyone that species like the “Taraxacums” (Dandelion) belong to an elite species that need protection. Supposedly, these closet bug zappers also believe strongly in their crusade or at least on ramming it down the throats of mankind. You would think that if these people really believed in their vocation they would set up shop in some squalid swamp so they could celebrate the grandeur of their cause and enjoy nature in its purest form! But noooooo—these wetland people swarm into plush hotels to practice their deviltry and watch slide presentations on the best way to devour public funds, presented by government employees who excel in attending multiple funerals for the free lunches. Do you think these “warriors of nature” really want to be around mosquitoes, flies, and other creatures that they are trying to protect? No! They want to sit in a nice easy chair and watch tapes of people being mutilated by killer bees and putrid swamp water reeking up against stands of tag alders and clumps of rotting cattail fur. They delight in viewing piles of leftover skin and bones where industrial-sized flies have driven cows mad with their piranha appetites and kamikaze tactics. Why don’t they go where the action is and set up camp in the middle of the Florida Everglades so they can experience the thrill of crocodiles eyeing them eagerly and snakes slithering over their sleeping bodies while hordes of endangered species hungrily drool over every pore in their bodies, anticipating the feast that awaits them. If they truly believed in their flimsy cause, wouldn’t the thrill of scratching chigger bites for weeks on end only add to the pleasure of their societal bender? Is it because they see how the rest of the world suffers from their efforts that they want nothing to with the squalor they create? The highest award they have ever given out was to the creator of the West Nile Virus. This person singlehandedly accomplished what one hundred million automobiles have been unsuccessful in doing—leaving dead crows lying along the side of highways along with anything else that possesses a pair of lungs. One wetlander was trying to explain to an innocent bystander the seriousness and dangers associated with their communal gatherings; at the same time the victim was choking hysterically with laughter. He was recounting how one society member barely escaped with his life when, while taking a nap in the hotel lobby, he was viciously attacked by a potted, carnivorous snapdragon that had been lying in wait for him. It devoured his shoelaces and was feasting on the hems of his checkered pants before a fellow wetlander finally rescued him. On another occasion, the hotel staff had laced their lattés with real caffeine, and the bluster-binged crowd suffered pulled muscles when they tripped over a piano stool trying to get to the front of the sushi happy hour line. And then there is the ever-present hazard of getting hors d’oeuvre stains on their bow ties and confronting their spouses when they come home reeking of daffodils and sweaty Naugahyde.
An offshoot of this organization is the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust (WWT). In this program you can actually pay fifteen dollars per year to adopt a duck. Once you become a sponsor, you get an official adoption certificate which you can meekly show to your buddies at the next NASCAR convention. You also get a color photograph of your new dependent, a drawing of its unique beak pattern, a personal history, and an authentic paw print of your adopted fowl. Now, this has got to be a stretch. What type of individual sneaks around ponds, tracking down the mating habits of every duck to insure that little Daffy is really your adoptee? Do they pounce out of the weeds and surprise the amorous ducks while they attempt to capture a DNA sample so they can include it with the shell fragments of your newborn? What about the occasional Casanova that jumps into a strange nest and tempts a hot-blooded mallard all juiced up from fermented berries by offering her a beak full of fresh minnows as “Aphrodisiac No. 9”? You can bet that it won’t be a “Yes, I will respect you in the morning” encounter as he will be making a run for Ottawa before the morning worms come up, leaving behind a nest of fatherless eggs. What types of blue-blooded papers are supplied for these offspring? Legend has it that for many years one compassionate and caring civic-minded fraternity went out of its way to adopt three of these homeless ducks, and each year they had them over as guests for their annual Thanksgiving Day celebration. However, the duck society became highly suspicious when the guests of honor did not return home after the holidays and disappeared from their radar screen. The fraternity was thrown out of the program when beak prints were found on the inside of the refrigerator door, the global positioning foot tags were discovered in a pan of leftover stuffing, and a down-filled pillow was on prominent display in their trophy room. The incensed society officers told the fraternity if they were going to have that type of attitude, they would be better off adopting a mile or two of some highway to take care of, or anything that was not digestible.
It can only be assumed that the Wetland Trust officers are named Huey, Dewey, and Louie.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a man by the name of Aesop was blackballed from the Fablers' Society for making up stories that were beyond the realm of imagination and stretched the boundaries of fantasy. Too far out, they said.
He conceived a wild story about what would happen if mankind took all of the rules and regulations of the Michigan DNR and combined them with all the commands and restrictions of the Corp of Engineers, to create a more perfect society for the benefit of mankind. The fable people sadly informed Aesop that such a society already existed and it was called Cuba and citizens were risking their lives to leave their squalid living conditions behind. Aesop's story also had a large national forest, controlled by three or four mysterious people from the Land of Oz, and state authorities would keep their citizens in line by creeping around and occasionally shooting tame deer out of neighborhood yards. This was strike one against Aesop as the society felt no one in their right mind would ever believe the citizens of a democracy would put up with crap like that. After all, the taxpayers elected and sent their people away to work at a castle in the sky called Lansing, hoping they would not get their heads stuck in the clouds, so they could protect them from bureaucratic horrors. They suspected Aesop of rubbing too close to the edge of a bad LSD trip to even imagine people living in such a society. The citizens would have to be under the burden of a serious bondage relationship with their legislators, and be serial masochists, to put up with this sort of constant beating.
Strike two occurred when Aesop tried to tie all the loose ends together with a wild story of how this racket would work. He came up with the theory that the state would take money in the form of taxes from the citizens and give it to the DNR to buy their land from under their noses. Then they would mumble some vague ambiguity about paying something called “Payment in Lieu of Taxes” to lull the people into a false sense of security. They nicknamed this hocus-pocus “PILT,” as in “Piltdown Man,” the biggest hoax ever pulled in the archaeology world, which supposedly was the missing link between man and monkey. As it turns out, PILT is actually the missing link between ethical behavior and state bureaucratic bungling. Once the people had been snookered with this hokum and the DNR had clear title to the land, they would declare that the law did not apply to them and they did not have to pay the taxes that they had promised because they needed the money to go out and buy more of the citizens’ land, and take that off of the tax rolls. Then, once they had all this land tucked safely away, they made up more rules and regulations that would prevent the citizens from using their land, and in some instances they would actually throw them in jail if they trespassed on it. The end result of all this sleight-of-handedness was that the school districts and local governments throughout the land would have to pink-slip many teachers and everyday workers to keep feeding the state bureaucracy so they could hire more able-bodied guards to keep the citizens at bay and away from the state’s fiefdom. Do you realize that if Jesse James was living today he might be qualified to be near the top of the DNR’s and state government’s hierarchy? Talk about someone being born before his time.
Strike three occurred when Aesop had a white knight, in the form of a Federal Appellate Court appointee, ride to the rescue and try to stop the madness of this land grab by the Lansing robber barons. She rode out of the west and declared that, “Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates. . . . The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible.” She had observed that hordes of brand new little green pickups roamed over the land, gathering like a mass of locusts out to destroy a corn crop, to enforce the Wizard’s grand idea of how society should be run. The legislature fought the Judges’ nomination as they were incensed that someone had finally figured out how degrading government can be when they claim to represent the taxpayers. Many argued that Congress had experienced an “out of body” spiritual thumping and while prancing about their hallowed halls, started singing and speaking in forked tongues.
Aesop was awarded a bonus strike four that is only available to a politician on the run for office. By defying logic, he said that politicians and bureaucrats are like dogs spraying their territory; every time a new free lunch or special interest group comes to town to peddle their booty, they shoo away their constituents by giving them an old bone to chew on. The society could not conceive of any people living under these primitive feudal conditions as they felt the people would finally get fed up and demand that their legislature inject some common sense into their thinking. They felt no one would put up with a state that allowed their deadbeat agencies to make promises and then with the flick of a tongue and a no trespassing sign, just go on their merry way adopting rules and regulations that were supposed to be prohibited by the Bill of Rights and a Constitution. How could anyone trample on these without the consent of the people?
Aesop had had enough. He decided that his fable was a realistic fantasy and pleaded his case to the society members and told them to just look at how the Michigan DNR operates. The society was amazed that such an outfit could actually operate under a constitutional government, “Of the People.” They not only reinstalled Aesop, they made him the president of the society; it was the wildest story they had ever heard.
“With Congress, every time they make a joke it’s a law, and every time they make a law it's a joke.”—Will Rogers
“The more things change, the more they stay the same” came to mind when I decided to revisit some of my past columns to see if the daring forecasters had their cracked headlights balanced yet or if they were still on high beam and shining into the woods. Sometime in October, weather forecasters are usually locked in a gorilla cage with bales of mistletoe and bananas hanging from the ceiling and then a month later, like the groundhog, they come stumbling out bleary-eyed and confused and make their winter forecasts.
I happened to run across this chance government explanation of how the winter was going to pan out in the Upper Peninsula this past year. Scientists at the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center, after numerous taxpayer subsidies, wasted man hours, and too much cough syrup, finally revealed what the weather would be like so we could plan accordingly. They came to the conclusion that “in Upper Michigan, residents can expect equal chances of above or below normal temperatures for the months of December through February.” (Translation: There is a 50% chance that winter will be like last year and a 50% chance that it won't be.) This was on the same day that they informed us that “Areas that normally receive larger accumulations (of snow)...could still see significant accumulations...” (Translation: We think it will snow in the U.P. this winter, as it has for the past billion years.) Talk about going out on a limb with their forecasts! This is a prime example of what happens when individuals make a sudden career change and jump from cleaning stables to weather forecasting without taking time to change their underwear or trade in their leisure suit. From this point on the forecasts get so blurred that by spring you feel like you had spent the winter crawling around in the liquor cabinet of a bad country-western song. Using pollster jargon, when meteorologists cough up their forecasts, doesn't this mean that there is a margin of error “plus or minus 50%”? Where else in America can you get a good paying job where you are considered a success if you hit your mark less than 40% of the time and don't play professional baseball? The only lasting thing that came out of the Woodstock Festival is the Doppler Radar System, and the only time it works is when it is experiencing a psychedelic experience while getting high on old disco tunes.
I have always been impressed with the self-help channels like HGTV and the Food Channel. They actually teach you how to do many things that actually improve your life. I don't think many wives have a full appreciation of how husbands constantly try to improve their abilities, as they are too busy learning to quilt, decorate, and cook from watching their own educational shows. I knew one fisherman who painstakingly watched Baywatch for eight years in an attempt to learn how to swim, in case a family member ever needed to be rescued. After watching the show faithfully for eight years, the poor guy couldn't swim one stroke, and he accused his family of spiking his beer with Ritalin to slow down his learning process. However, he had mastered the ability to drown gracefully should the occasion ever arise so as not to disgrace the family. Do you think his family appreciated the extra effort he put in to improve his life and protect them? Not a chance! When he started to take side trips to Hooter's in an attempt to learn roller skating and their secret recipe for chicken wings, they ridiculed his efforts. His final shot at self improvement failed when he claimed the Playboy Channel improved his eyesight and taught him aerobics. The added heart medication and the freezing temperatures in his garage, where he now had to spend his leisure hours, made it difficult to follow the instructions and he reluctantly returned to Baywatch for a refresher course.
And then, in my never-ending curiosity, I find that really good cooks continue to throw a ringer into the food chain by camouflaging squashed vegetables in Jell-O. I have come to accept this mutilation, but I do have a hangup on any food group that is the same color as a frog or a DNR pickup. Lime Jell-O is the Rustoleum of the gelatin world, and covering up vegetables with green is a form of Jell-O vandalism. The entire dish would be more at home in a solid waste facility. Years ago the only way you could buy this stuff was to visit your local pharmacist, who would reach under the counter, put it in a plain brown paper bag, and scoot you out the back door. I once heard of a group of Girl Scouts who innocently purchased the ingredients for making green Jell-O from their local hardware store, thinking they could make some clay ashtrays out of the stuff. However the Attorney General had them arrested on suspicion of attempting to poison the nation's food chain when they tried to check out a green Jell-O aspic recipe from their library. I know of one person who screwed up a casserole so bad that the dog would not even take a sniff of it. She merely whipped up a batch of lime Jell-O with a ground up air freshener hidden in it, dumped it over the top, covered it with a tinted mayonnaise concoction, called it Montezuma's revenge, and disguised it in a molded shape. When no one would touch the stuff, she put a wick in it and placed it on the back deck. It burned for a week without any oxygen, and it killed every mosquito in a ten-mile radius. Have you ever noticed how cloudy that stuff is? Many people looking at this concoction think they have developed glaucoma, but it is purposely made that way so you can't see the lumps that are breeding on the bottom of the pan. If the gunk starts to ferment on its own, some cooks plop a big pear in the middle to smother it. You need to paste a hazardous warning on it if you try to mail it, and compost piles need to have the Heimlich maneuver applied to them when they have come in contact to start burbling again. One scheming Floridian threw a leftover lime Jell-O mold into the everglades, and three thousand alligators immediately moved to Kentucky, while the ones that survived were not even fit to make a decent wallet out of. Most state parks won't allow any form of this stuff on their campgrounds as it is believed to belong to the same carcinogen family as mercury, with one exception; it sinks faster than mercury.
There is only one recipe in the world that is more uncivilized than lime Jell-O concoctions and that is Haggis. This is a Scottish dish that starts out with a sheep's lung and stomach and then degenerates into a version of a porno food recipe. All you need to know is that while cooking this thing you have to keep poking it with needles to prevent it from exploding and to make sure it is still dead. The Scots did get one thing right, though, as it is recommended that Haggis be eaten with “plenty of whiskey.” You would have to be half drunk to even consider putting something like that in your mouth, although I understand it makes wonderful pothole filler and crow repellent.
Benjamin Franklin felt it was an inalienable right of every American to haggle and nibble around for the best deal they could find. His slogan “A penny saved is a penny earned” has been the rallying cry for bargain hunters since 1776 and was even considered for inclusion in the original Bill of Rights. You would think that the bureaucrats and lobbyists would pay attention to this inherent right and take a lesson from history on what can happen when you start to tinker with these basic liberties.
It all started with the word "freedom." Americans were sick and tired of the European version of “taxation without representation” and the high tariffs they had to pay, only to see all of their hard-earned money go to England to support a pious, overweight king who cared nothing about them. This was the catalyst that started the independence movement, as the colonists revolted to form their own domestic version of “taxation without representation” in an effort to keep the money floating around within their own borders. They developed a more sophisticated system with the creation of Congress and a network of special interest groups, neither of which felt they had to pay much attention to the taxpayers. By sending the money to Washington D.C. rather than England, not much changed except the potholes got bigger, the king’s private domain, Sherwood Forest, was renamed the Ottawa National Forest, and they started collecting taxes before you earned your money. These guys would tax the free air we get for our tires if they could figure out a way to do it. The forms of torture for nonpayment of taxes became harsher as they did away with debtor prisons but created government regulations and bureaucrats to drive the populace nuts and keep them jumpy. The similarity between this new type of torture and a lamprey sucking all the blood and life out of any living creature is striking, the only difference being that the lamprey leaves a skeleton behind.
They still don’t get it, though, as the government continues to fight a losing battle in their attempt to change the forces of nature. Americans invented the rummage and yard sale and were born to shop and hunt for the best deal, even going so far as to drive a hundred miles to save a dollar. The multitude of infomercials selling 14 plastic products for one incredibly low price of $14.99 plus $15.00 shipping and handling should be further proof of what we will buy if it is cheap enough. Congress has been so engrossed in its own free lunches that it doesn't have a clue how ingrained our society has become in protecting their right to find the best deal. It would be easier to scare Godzilla out of the Tokyo suburbs than to stop Americans from finding the best deal.
Canada sells American-made drugs cheaper than we do in our own country, and some members of Congress are trying to stop this practice. This comes from a group whose only exposure to prescription drugs came from watching the Lassie episode where she was taken to the vet for her annual deworming. What a lost cause they have taken on. As Americans flock across the airwave borders to fill their prescriptions, the government steps in and tries to stop it. Have these birds ever seen a sale rack at a department store or witnessed someone getting up five hours early to save fifty cents on a pair of socks? They should observe the poor trampled employees who hold the "red light special" torches as they desperately crawl out from beneath the crowds with their clothes torn off their backs and large patches of hair missing. One poor soul even had the dentures ripped from his mouth and all his nose hair pulled out by the roots. The only thing that saved him was that there wasn’t any bar code on the teeth and the checker was able to catch and release them. If Congress keeps insisting on this foolishness, bands of marauding, camouflaged senior citizens will sweep across our great northern plains, invading any Canadian town that has a pharmacy. If the two people guarding our southern borders think they have problems, wait until the Canadian invasion starts. The citizens of both countries have blond hair, freckles, speak pro hockey, eat French fries, and talk the same language, except for those oddballs in Quebec. The last time these glow-in-the-dark theorizers came up with a bright idea, it was called prohibition. During its brief experimental run, the citizens of the United States smuggled in and consumed so much Canadian booze that it allowed Canada to buy the northern half of England, purchase two Russian hockey players, and put a hefty down payment on a large brewery in Germany.
Congress really needs to send an expedition out into the field to see what is actually going on in society. Do they know the traffic jams that an early-bird special causes? They need to see the chaos that explodes when a two-for-one sale is offered in a crammed store, as ugly encounters erupt and man becomes beast and devours any innocent bystander in his way. Emergency rooms are overrun on weekends treating bargain-lashed wounds from yard sales, and yelling ‘two-for-the price-of-one’ causes as much pandemonium and confusion as dropping a three-syllable word into the middle of a Hollywood think tank. In the real world, under certain circumstances, any mention of the word freebee in any form can cause riots. If you take the simple word grouping of “it’s on the house,” combine it with any form of the word beer, and throw in a few complimentary pretzels, you will have a stampede that would trample and flatten an elephant.
The judicial system in this country should take note of the word “free.” One of the most popular T-shirts being worn in the past couple of months simply said, “Free Martha.” I guess people just got tired of the government stacking the witness pool with "expert" witnesses who could perjure at will, and nothing would happen to them. I think they said “it was an oversight” that the witness testified about something he had never seen.
Things are finally starting to get back to normal in America. Recently I was watching some breaking news and a furry-looking thing flashed across the screen. Not paying too much attention, I only noticed the yellow-toothed sorrowful look on its face, and my first thought was that this was either the ugliest looking guy I had ever seen or it was someone who was suffering from a horrendous Rogaine hangover. It turns out that the big news of the day was that a locked-up chimpanzee had developed a smoking habit, and they were trying to figure out some way to wean him off his nicotine addiction without disrupting his lifestyle.
First, this chimp was probably torn out of its jungle environment and away from his buddies through the bravery of a tranquilizer gun, fired by some lowlife poacher hiding behind a tree. When he woke from his drug induced stupor, he found himself behind bars with all sorts of funny-looking humans staring at him, making stupid faces and gestures. It probably did not take long to register that he was trapped in this small chimp cage for the rest of his life with not much chance of seeing any of his own species again, except for the occasional professional hockey player that would shuffle by. People started to flick their lit cigarette butts at him, and mimicking them, he started smoking, even going so far as to hide the cigarettes when his guards came looking to take them away. So, the do-gooders put their heads together trying to figure out the best way to wean this lifer off of nicotine so he could get back into his normal routine of walking around his small jail cell, giving his human jailers various contemptuous hand signals that they had taught him. If that is all this poor chimp has to look forward to for the rest of his life, why not throw a couple of bottles of Jack Daniels into the cage and see if he can figure out how to get the caps off? They even went so far as to engage an animal psychologist (I am not making this up) and he was trying to explain to his listening audience the most humane way to straighten out this wayward chimp. It never seemed to cross the minds of these pompous do-gooder talking heads that this poor creature is a prisoner of his human captors with nothing to look forward to but his daily ration of bananas. When you really think about it, how many patients do these gorilla psychiatrists have, and who in their right mind would walk through the front door of their office? I suppose the next logical step they would take would be to have his teeth capped, his lips collagenized, and take away his one real pleasure in life, watching Ben Affleck movies. It seems strange to see the airwaves filled with all these so-called "chimp experts" telling the world, based on their own personal experiences, how to cure the chimp and again make it a contributor for their amusement. I have a simple suggestion. Release it in the jungle some Friday night with a bottle