in mad mexico the sunshine fools you.

"Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale." ~Gabriel Garcia Marquez

France invaded Mexico a long time ago. Mexico kicked them out. At some point in that complicated historical drama, the fifth of May became significant. From what I've been able to gather, it's not so much a Mexican national holiday as it is a drinking celebration in the United States because the Californian Mexicans in the 1860s swelled with pride when they learned the Mexican army held off the French advance at the battle of Puebla. That's fine by most folks, I'd imagine, libertados estados unidos. It gives the average family a reason to go Mexico it up for dinner. Soccer moms can get wasted off margaritas and for one day tequila isn't just something to drink when you're depressed. Well, I guess not everyone drinks tequila when they're sad, but I sure do.

happy arbor (trees!) day

"Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?" ~Walt Whitman

Today is Arbor Day! It's a holiday celebrating the significance of trees! In Pennsylvania they honor the great Eastern Hemlock, not to be confused with the Greek Hemlock which Socrates sipped on back in the day after the Athenians told him to go kill himself. In Japan this day is called "Greenery Day" and it's celebrated in May, but I have to assume something is lost in translation because that name is just stupid. The great dane is the official state dog of Pennsylvania* and this state celebrates Arbor Day on the last Friday in April. The second to last Friday in April, this year, was the national stoner day or whatever it's officially called, 4/20. Perhaps it ought to be called "Greenery Day". Anyhow, there's a great smoke-out on the lawn of Colorado University's Boulder campus every year for that event (whatever we're going to call it) and in order to deter the massive crowd this year, the school actually fertilized the lawn with fish guts. I imagine the sweet stank of thousands of marijuana sticky icky cigarettes would most likely prevail in a battle of the stinky with some lawn fertilizer, but I can't be sure because I don't do drugs.**

race war, riot in the streets.

"By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more." ~Albert Camus

 Everyone seems to know something about all the Trayvon Martin noise down in Florida. Basically: some half hispanic, over-zealous neighborhood-watch goon shot an unarmed black teenager. The problem at hand arose because the Florida state laws are kind of ambiguous over whether the hispanic fella, George Zimmerman, was allowed to kill the kid. It all seems to come down to a question of "racial profiling or self-defense"? As with all things, it's not quite as clear cut as all that.

too much free time

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal." ~Albert Camus

It is once again the time of year with no major holidays, only a bunch of ridiculous minor/made up ones. Today's festivity is "Bring your [child] to work day", It used to be either bring the boy or bring the girl, not the gender neutral "child" or "son or daughter" but I suppose some whiny little brat complained enough to get it changed and now we have a day at the end of April where children are encouraged to enter the workplace and muck up the gears of progress.

what beef is.

"I hate victims who respect their executioners." ~Jean-Paul Sartre

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy is Mad Cow Disease. It sounds much more impressive when you say anything is spongiform. It's just fun to say spongiform sometimes, try it. Beef from America is being pulled from the shelves in South Korea because it's tainted. The post WWII Asia was replaced by the 21st century Asia at some point in the past generation or so and it's funny (ironic? fitting?) that now in 2012 South Korea is turning away American beef. I kind of always thought beef came from here, out in the wide open pastures of the great mid-west and throughout the hills and dales of the east coast and in the rolling valleys near the pacific are millions and billions of cows all roaming free in their cages to be slaughtered and force fed to gluttonous middle America. Next thing you know, there will be a bunch of Asians running around with the gout. Welcome to the problems of the 1st world. Spongiform. I am also writing about this right now because google says it's a trending topic and people might want to learn. 

Mad cow comes from cow cannibalism, cows eating cows makes cows go mad. Cows are bad for you anyways, I stopped eating beef about 3 or 4 years ago and my doctor tells me about how I have "impressive cholesterol" for a fella my age. That's not really saying anything because I'm in such peak physical shape otherwise. See, I stopped eating cows long ago because of all the corn I heard they eat. Cows eat sick amounts of corn, the exact numbers are lost somewhere in this wikipedia page I didn't feel like reading in its entirety. Think DDT. It's that famous insecticide that everyone knows so much about, Joni Mitchell wrote a song about it and such, everyone's favorite insecticide. The story goes like this: bugs eat the insecticide, birds and critters eat the bugs, bigger critters eat the smaller critters, and eventually the levels of insecticide build up in the animal's system until they die. They paved paradise to put up a parking lot, remember?

I reckon the poisoning of the upper echelon predators in this scenario would be remarkably similar to the poisoning of the uppermost predator in the world, myself, with corn. See, I eat corn in other products; corn, tortillas, soda, anything processed, and also chicken and beef. Somewhere in the sand or dirt, a line needed to be drawn over this corn issue because the cows are fed corn, the chickens are fed corn, and I'm also fed corn so it's bound to negatively build up somewhere (most likely in the world's premier predator) and somehow kill or injure me. We can't have that, South Korea shelved American beef in 2012, I shelved it in early 2008 and haven't looked back much since except in those sweet and special instances where a slab of raw cow finds its way onto my plate. I'll eat beef if it's rare, only because I feel like a carnivorous beast when blood trickles down my chin. Try it some time, spongiform.

cincinatti sea beasts.

"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious." ~Oscar Wilde

The Hobbit is getting a re-start in super high definition, expect to see all those precious moments on the screen real up-close and personal. It's also in 3D or 4D or some such nonsense. I take this as a sign of the times, cameras and projections are better now than they've ever been and ought to continue to sharpen up and bring the audience into the film more and more until we see full blown immersion theater where the show-goer is neurologically transferred into the film. Someday soon I hope to be able to enter a film and engage in light saber duels with the main character and sex the heroine up after she wins the big battle. After all, who wouldn't want to jump in their favorite film and pilot the x-wing or feel the fire of the dragon under the mountain? It's human nature and the natural progression of film.

Along the same vein, The Great Gatsby by the illustrious F. Scott Fitzgerald, is getting a re-boot in 3D and I'm having a hard time trying to hide my erection because I'm so excited. How often does this movie get re-made? Once in a generation, maybe twice if we're lucky, Lifetime will pick up a made for TV version, but the bottom line is that this type of movie should be re-made much more often. It's a classic, unequivocally American and impossible to miss whenever it's on. With Leo Dicaprio playing the title character, Jay Gatsby, I can't imagine a loser in this scenario. Everyone wins with Leo as Jay Gatsby. Also, the Avengers is coming out May 4th.

The Cincinatti Sea Beast has been found!

no real point to any of this

"By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community." ~Oscar Wilde

I imagine the average reader of Fox news isn't the most intelligent in the world, but apparently the editors over there think their readers are among the least intelligent. I stumbled across an article about the cause of brain freeze recently, Fox News reports a Harvard Medical School study revealed the cause to be ... cold. I'm glad someone needed to dress up in a lab coat and spectacles to determine the source of brain freeze. Brain freeze is a natural reaction of the brain when exposed to cold. When the wisdom of the masses fails us, we'll always have the Harvard Medical School to solve the great mysteries of the universe.

On the other hand, some of the "high-end" research this medical yokel could be performing are only legal in the United States and Gabon. While reading this article about the good old chimpanzees and the misfortunes and pitfalls they must suffer through to bring us high quality make up and cancer drugs, I found out that America and Gabon are the only two nations that allow "invasive bio-medical research". My question for scientists is this: if you can experiment on monkeys like we're in a third world country, what kind of asshole can't cure cancer? Pump the chimps full of every known chemical until something sticks, if there's no rules, how can the medical community justify being so useless? A thousand chimps trapped in a room for a thousand days with thousands of chemicals could cure cancer on their own, I'd imagine though I'm no statistician.

Speaking of misconduct, there's another 20/20 investigation type story about rapes and such in the military again. It's all date-rapes from what I can tell and I'm more or less on the fence on that issue. See, I've been taken advantage of plenty of times in my life but because I have a penis and a drinking problem people write it off as if I'm some kind of drunken Lothario out and about on the town instead of an inebriated victim of predatory female sexuality. It's all a manner of perspective, though I suppose any unwanted advances are bad, some are more tolerable than others. The whole notion of "totally unwanted advances" is lost in translation after a few drinks. I like to play nice so I tend to chat up whoever is near, if that happens to be some wild vixen lady of the evening and she wants to bed me or wed me and it results in a feeling the next morning of quasi-self-hatred and regret, feeling used and unloved, who's fault is it really? It's not white and black, but generally speaking when someone says "Yo, get off me bro", it's a sign of violation. The violation is what makes the whole thing so wicked, it's the used up feeling that takes a long time to get used to.

No, there is no real point to any of this, I'm basically just typing words.

whoring around.

Churchill: "Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?" 

Socialite: "My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... we would have to discuss terms, of course... "

Churchill: "Would you sleep with me for five pounds?"

Socialite: "Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!" 

Churchill: "Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price” 

― Winston S. Churchill

The United States Secret Service is the "security branch" of the security branch of the government, the Department of Homeland Security. They have an annual budget of over $1.5 billion and seem to be up to the same kinds of shenanigans the rest of the government is into these days. A scandal (gasp!) of epic proportions broke when a secret service agent (or more) started haggling with some Colombian whores over the price of some "dirty dish rags" and "bumper cuddlies" (gasp? whatever those maneuvers are). Well, one thing leads to another and the next thing the Secret Service knew, they were getting slapped with child support paperwork. This teaches us all a valuable lesson in whore haggling: don't expect deep discounts when the pimp's around.

In addition to all this whore haggling, Ted Nugent recently made some disparaging remarks about his confidence in the current administration as well as indicating some possible actions he may take in the event of a leftist win in November. Consequently, the good folks at the old secret service are gonna be keeping close tabs on this asshole. Read more about that here because I fear the reprisals of our skynet overlords.

I do not always have one, but when I do have a point, it's nice to really drive it home. We're all just human beings, maybe if the secret service offered some type of training program for their folks, they could have better navigated the world of whore haggling like a pimp. They would strong hand their way to an acceptably compromised dollar amount and give the Colombians something to think about the next time they heard an American dignitary was headed their way. No, the department of homeland security instead decides to spend their significant budget on "safety" and such and not "practical training". Buying a whore seems like it'd be included in the first semester manual for working overseas.

Rule number one in this manual: Do not attempt to get $800 worth of sexual favors for $30. This is a starting point for haggling, maybe, but you don't end here. Keep in mind this is $800 dollars worth of favors from a Colombian whore. Your imagination isn't ready to get into the depths of depravity experienced spending $800 on a Colombian whore. There aren't even names for the things you can do to those girls.

I'm not sure what rule number two should be in this manual because it's for overseas conduct and I'm about to discuss Ted Nugent and my ire at the media because he's sitting back, making chatter about offing folks and getting real paid. Nugent is all washed up, he's a joke of a has-been even less relevant or amusing than Brett Micheals. Ted Nugent is a wanna-be Gary Busey and he's failing even at that. His only income source is fans and his popularity. He's into some reality television hogwash but, as previously mentioned, Ted is a wanna-be Gary Busey. Everyone knows there's only one of those, the original Gary can not be copied or cloned so old Teddy needs to back the fuck up. Old people need to know when to retire and when their time comes some of them need to be forced into retirement. At gun point, if need be. In summary; I'd like to congratulate those fine Colombians for not taking shit from some under-prepared foreigners, I'm wagging my penis at the folks over at Homeland security for their lack of training in their officers overseas, and finally I'm suggesting Ted Nugent just go away.

sweet southern belles

Farva: Give me a double bacon cheeseburger.
Burger Kid: [into mic] Double baco cheeseburger. It's for a cop.
Farva: What the hell's that all about? You gonna spit in it now?
Burger Kid: No, I just told him that so he makes it good.
[into mic]
Burger Kid: Don't spit in that cop's burger.

This weekend past while all were reveling in the spirit of the spring season, one young man was less than spirited. A pair of southern ladies wanted to get a couple glasses of that finest of beverages, McDonald's Sweet Tea but they didn't like the taste initially. I have to assume since this all went down in South Carolina that only a half pound of sugar was used in their beverage. At any rate, these young gals sent their tea back, demanding "MORE SWEETS, SWEETS!" from their server. This would be the last straw Marvin from McDonald's was ready to take that day so he turned around, added the extra half pound of sugar and some spit, like any normal McDonald's employee would. Is this sweet justice or an example of an angry young man going too far?

I think of my times spent slanging pizza part time during college. I was a delivery driver so spent as little time in the kitchen as I could but when I did, this type of thing wasn't entirely unheard of. I don't recall ever spitting in some one's food, even if they were a total dick when ordering, but I do recall a laissez faire attitude towards "floor food". I'd expect that to be just as much of a health code violation as hawking a bit of phlegm-y special sauce in a southern belle's sweet tea but when I stop and think about it, it's clearly not. The floor was cleaned every night and I never put cooked "floor food" on any one's plate, "floor food" was only acceptable if it were going into (or back into) the oven. The oven killed all germs, it was hot and germs hate the heat, "floor food" is an acceptable edible in my home and I don't see a problem with it in the restaurants around America, either.

On the other hand, the phlegm attack by young Marvin from South Carolina was a bit over the top. What if he had mouth herpes? Worse, what if his halitosis had Ebola? The herpes could have ebola halitosis and anyone could catch it through their sweet tea addictions.

modest proposals