Dumb Turkey

Dumb people got nobody; dumb people got NOBODY. Wait, that's not how the song goes. The song's about short people. And this blog's about dumb people.

People are such idiots. They vote for the wrong person. They never understand stuff. The watch the wrong shows. They ELECTED THE WORST PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE U.S.

People are such idiots.

Well, idiots get to vote, too. In fact, I support idiots. Idiots are what make this country great. Here is a list of great idiots:

Homer Simpson
Charlie Brown
Gilligan
Barney Fife
Forrest Gump
Ace Ventura
Kramer
Shaggy (and Scooby, too)

Okay, none of them are real, but you get the point. These are decent people. Loveable boobs. These are the guys who voted for Bush. Or worse, Nader. Damn, we should kick them out of the country. Or off the show.

Why do we hate dumb people? Not their fault, any more that it’s YOUR fault you’re short. Seriously, think about it (all you smart people). Some people are born tall, and join the NBA. Some people are short and learn to bowl. Some people have beautiful voices and sing at the philharmonic. Other people are frogs and sing at karaoke. Some people are white and make a lot of money. Other people are brown and are bombed by the US Air Force regularly. Are the latter people lesser humans? So why do we dismiss people of a lower IQ?

Let’s take the case of Byron Headostraw. Byron came out of the womb a little on the blank side. As a kid, he took a little longer to tie his shoelaces than most. Tried hard. Sometimes got kinda grumpy when the other kids made fun of him, but it wasn’t too often because what he lacked in the brain dept he made up for in the bicep dept. Still, most people liked him. He helped out building treeforts and later fixing your car. Barely got through high school – had to work his ass off in Algebra. Got a job in a garage, married Melissa Hotchest, and coaches little league. Good fishing buddy, sixpack and bass boat, you didn’t even mind not catching anything if he was around. Oh sure, he had some flaws (to your way of thinking). He didn’t like all those illegal aliens moving in, but that didn’t stop him from jumping into the lake when it looked like that little Guatemalan kid was drowning. He doesn’t like gays, but cousin Bette’s all right, and he’s pretty sure about her.

When Bush said, “Fuzzy math,” he’s like Yeah, Right. He worries about doing the right thing, and this guy W seems the same way, too. Besides, Bush likes to fish. Not the best way to pick a president, but why should YOUR way be any better? The point of a democracy is that EVERYONE has their way of voting.

I don’t blame Byron for Bush. I blame the DEMOCRATS. After the election, I kept hearing from the left how STUPID these people were for voting for Bush. What a bunch of IDIOTS! MORONS! Yeah, that’s how you get people to vote for you. Call ‘em names. Meanwhile, Bush keeps on shaking their hands.

You know why Clinton won? He really LIKES people. He really likes Byron. Until the democrats learn to really like Byron, and understand WHY he voted for Bush, they will NEVER win another presidential election.

No matter how dumb the president is. Dumb people got nobody.

Turkey Cruise

Last night, Tom Cruise broke into my house and raped my ficus. And then he ate my favorite chocolates. I caught him in the hamper trying to mix colors and whites. He crouched and snarled like an injured ferret and sprang out the window.

Why is Tom Cruise the devil? (We all know Tim Curry is the devil.) Seriously. What’s he done to you? Sure, he’s a little whacked. He says dumbass things. He dances on Oprah’s couch. He made Vanilla Sky. The cruel bastard!

I know people who are more involved in Tom Cruise’s life than they are with the lives of their friends. The spend MONEY to buy MAGAZINES to tell them what Tom does.

Here are the complaints about Tom that I’ve heard:

1. He’s a Scientologist
2. He divorced Nicole
3. He married Kate, way too young for him
4. He’s gay, the marriages are bogus
5. He’s crazy

First, before all other things, why should we have an opinion anyway? It’s not like we KNOW the guy. He’s not our friend, he doesn’t live on our block, he doesn’t work in the next cube. If Tom Cruise wants to eat his socks with anchovies, why should it matter to us? Because we pay money to see his movies? That gives us the right to have opinions about HIS LIFE?

Okay, it’s what we do. We pretty bored people anyway. Clearly Tom Cruise is MORE IMPORTANT than the fact that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is trying to kill us all with nukes. More important than the fact that Greenland is about to dump so much ice in the Atlantic that New Yorkers will have to relocate to (gasp!) New Jersey! More important than the fact that over 25 million people are dead from one disease without a real cure in sight.

Back to Tom. Let’s take the complaints one by one.

1. Scientology. So what? Mel Gibson’s a Catholic. One man’s mumbo jumbo is another man’s… well, it’s all mumbo jumbo.
2. That’s because he’s number 5. We’ll get to that in a minute.
3. They are two of the best looking people in the world, no matter how old they are. So what if he’s 42 and she’s 16? (Yes, yes, count it up.) It’s not age, it’s screwability. And they’re both VERY screwable.
4. This assumption seems so weird to me on so many levels. First, it is just an assumption, no matter what the guaranteed rumors are. Second, even if the rumors are true, hasn’t ANYONE heard of bisexuality? Third, so what? YOUR marriage isn’t perfect, either.
5. He’s an actor. They ALL are. There are NO GROUNDED or DOWN-TO-EARTH actors. If they were NORMAL, they wouldn’t be ACTORS.

We stand in judgment of all this behavior. Tom Cruise, you have been JUDGED BY US and deemed UNFIT for our opinions. We’ll STILL SEE Mission Impossible III, but it’s NOT YOUR FAULT the film was a piece of squirrel excrement.

Gotta go. Marlon Brando’s ghost just ate my couch.

Flag of Turkey

The senate rejected the anti-flag burning amendment by one vote.

But the American Flag is a frail thing. Of COURSE it needs protection. It’s a little old lady trying to cross the street. It’s a chick that fell out of its nest. It’s a goldarn FIELD GOAL KICKER. Only something that’s strong, valuable, impressive and important can stand on its own. In football, we don’t pass rules to protect the linebackers, just the little guys.

"This doesn't have anything about the Bill of Rights in it. All it says is we're going to give power back to the people." -- Orrin Hatch, speaking for the amendment


The power to NOT burn the flag? I have been invested with an Amazing Power. The Power NOT to do stuff. I have the power to NOT leap tall buildings in a single bound. I have the power to NOT run faster than a speeding train. I AM invincible.

YOU CANNOT FORCE PEOPLE INTO PATRIOTISM. Let me repeat that. The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers. No one has ever won friends by beating them up.

The minute you pass an amendment to the CONSTITUTION, you weaken it. You say, gosh our government is wrong. Gosh it needs a band-aid. Gosh, the people of this country need a big-ass crutch.

Oh, wait. This amendment doesn’t do a damn-diddly bit of good for the PEOPLE. It protects a BIT OF CLOTH! The minute you pass an amendment to protect the flag, you WEAKEN THAT, TOO! In fact, you give SEVERE authority to the people who defy it. You EMPOWER them.

Imagine if we didn’t give a poop. (Please, I’m trying to write clean here. Somebody somewhere may want to put this shit in history books). Imagine we didn’t pay attention. Some Charlie Anti-State lights up a little cookout with his $1.95 Wal-Mart plastic flag out in the street shouting DOWN WITH NORMAN MINETA (Secretary of Transportation, read the older blogs), and you don’t even put down your beer to stop watching American Dimwit on Fox. The only people who win in that situation is Wal-Mart. They’re going to win anyway, so who cares?

So the next time someone blazes up the red-white-n-blue, remember – we have Oprah. The NFL. Hard-core pornography. We’re busy people paying attention to IMPORTANT things.

And if they do pass the amendment, I recommend we move all our flags to the MOON. Can’t light a fire there, can you, you turkeyheads.

Turkey Dough

Bill Gates was the Great Satan of the 90s. He acquired $50 billion dollars by either destroying his competition or eating them alive. The robber barons a century ago had nothing on him. Most people don’t know this, but Seattle used to be a nice warm place, located somewhere in the Pacific tropics before Gates had it relocated to the dreariest, coldest, bleakest place on earth where people by the dozens routinely fling themselves lemming-like into Puget Sound (previously Sunny Bubbly Bay) to escape the miserableness of their cracked and broken lives.

Gates can’t fool me by donating billions to help the world. He sits high in his tower while the orcs below toil in their madness to crush a few puppies so that he can drink his tea just the way he likes it. There is only one obstacle to total world domination:

Warren Buffet.

In the battle of who is the most evil, Buffett comes closest to being the New Satan. This man actually bet $21 billion (that’s billion with a B) AGAINST the US dollar. And won. How much more evil can you get than that? It is certainly more evil than sucking up poor little Bob Codemaker and his little company DefenselessLambWare.com. Buffett tried to destroy one of the most powerful civilizations in history.

Good thing Gates controls all the information in the world. One day Buffett was typing at his new black hole-powered PC. He typed: “Now is the time for all good men to lay down and let me take their souls,” but what came out was, “I want to donate $31 billion dollars to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation because Bill is such a cool and understanding guy.”

THAT’S how Gates got Buffett to give him $31 billion. Then, the computer reached out, seized Buffett’s head like Shaquille O’Neal pulling down a rebound, and stuffed a microchip through his wrinkly old ear and into his brain. Now Buffett is saying that OTHER billionaires should give their money to Gates as well.

I mean, how else does the SECOND RICHEST MAN in the world give almost all of his money to the RICHEST MAN in the world? It’s the only possible explanation.

But what is Gates going to do with $81 billion dollars? Sure, he SAYS it’s to promote health globally, particularly in third-world nations. Get it? Third world. That’s where the populations are. He’s going to feed them, heal them, TRAIN them. He’s raising an army. They will deify him, create huge statues, and when he’s ready, they will strike.

And all I’ve got to say is, watch out Steve Jobs.

No Turkey

Ladies and Gentlemen

There are NO flying saucers. There is NO Bigfoot. There is NO Kennedy conspiracy. There is NO Loch Ness Monster. Ghosts do NOT exist. There is NO Devil’s Triangle. You DON’T have ESP. Your horoscope is WRONG. Rosicrucians are NOT hiding the identity of Jesus’ great grand nephew (Louie). The earth IS round. Paul is NOT dead (two down, two to go). You will NOT have bad luck, no matter how many emails you ignore. There is NO Chupacabra (except for the hot sauce). There IS a Roswell, but it’s just a town in NM. Dianetics IS a crock (but you already knew that). Plants do NOT think, feel or talk.

I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you. It gets worse.

You are NOT going to win the lotto. You are NOT secretly the child of royalty. You can not/did not/will not grow up to be President. Nor should you want to. There is NOT a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow – nor in your front yard, so STOP digging. Love does NOT always find a way. The American Dream is NOT real. Comic books are NOT art. Not GOOD art, anyway. You WILL get old. Your dog/cat/bird/goldfish does not love you unconditionally. If you don’t believe me, stop feeding your dog/cat/bird/goldfish and open the door. Only the goldfish will stay.

The Red Sea did NOT part. Moses did NOT talk to a burning bush. Well, maybe he did, but it did NOT talk back. Jesus did NOT turn water into wine. Eve did not sprout out of a rib in Adam’s chest (waaayyyy too much like Alien for me). You will NOT get 72 virgins in heaven no matter WHAT you do here on earth. You CAN eat a ham sandwich on Friday without mortal repercussions. COWS are NOT SACRED. Just tasty.

You DO use more than 10% of your brain (you use ALL of it), so you’re NOT going to get smarter. NOBODY understands why gravity works. Maybe it doesn’t. There is NO time travel. There will be NO interstellar space travel. We are NOT going to live on Mars. We will NEVER encounter space aliens – there aren’t any.

Even worse.

There is NO heaven. There is NO hell. There IS a Hell’s Canyon, and it’s HOT. God is NOT floating around watching everything you do. God is NOT real. Allah is NOT real. Vishnu is NOT real. Scooby is NOT real. There is NO good or bad.

There IS science, but it DOESN’T work. There is NO Yin-Yang. There is NO Karma. Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. OJ got off. If you’re mad about it, you don’t believe in Karma or the afterlife. If you think he’s going to get his in the afterlife, you’re wrong.

There’s just some giraffes, mulberries, badgers, granite and other things. And us. That’s a lot, though. You should be damn grateful. Especially for the Chupacabra sauce.

Turkey Scratch

Oh woe to the world, we won’t read. It’s the end of us. It’s the great tragedy. People would rather watch television, play computer games, or listen to their IPODs.

Poor us. We’re missing out on SO MUCH. It’s a whole different world in books. They can TAKE you places. FAR AWAY places. Romantic, idealistic, fantastic places. And we NEED to go there. ‘Cause this place stinks.

So we read. You know – writing. The act of putting down symbols so that they can be interpreted by others for informational or recreational purposes. We’ve been doing it ever since man could etch a picture of naked woman into his cave.

Wait a minute. That’s a picture. That’s not writing. Writing is letters. Letters are symbols. Symbols are images. Images are… oh, pictures.

Letters are symbols of phonemes representing parts of speech, WHICH IS WHERE LANGUAGE CAME FROM. Speech. We weren’t writing before we were talking. Everything started ORALLY. (Stop snickering Beavis.)

So I guess some time around 1450 (look it up), everyone started crying and whining about how we’re going to lose the oral tradition, only it wasn’t a tradition then. Oh no! they’d cry. Everyone’s doing this READING thing, and no one’s telling stories any more. No one’s TALKING. No one is RECITING. It’s the end of us.

We DID lose a lot of things, then. We lost memory. Didn’t need it as much. We lost respect for the elders. Since we had everything down on paper, didn’t need to consult them as much. Anybody want to go back?

But we GAINED the ability for ANYONE to look something up, educate themselves, and spread information. Sound familiar? Like the internet?

So we got writing hanging around for a couple millennia and printing for about 6 centuries. Symbols. Some of those symbols are bad. If you organize symbols to create the following set – FUCK – you could get into a lot of trouble. It’s not so bad if you write F*CK, though. So it must be the U that’s all the trouble.

Thing is, the symbols are ARBITRARY. One day, some guy came up with the idea for a symbol for the sound you make when you stick your hand in mud. Some people went EWW and other went UHH. One symbol. U. It could have been anything. 4 or & or #. But he went with U.

Then some other guy comes up with an arrangement to express his idea of intercourse. Only he came up with FIKKEN or FUKKEN (meaning to stick or stab) or something like that. Didn’t matter. WE knew what he meant. It’s the MEANING that’s so important. We assign a word to a meaning and we assigned letters to the word.

Good thing we have * around to fool people.

And now we’re heading INTO THE FUTURE. We don’t NEED words any more. We really don’t. We have ICONS. And ICONS are – oh, symbols. We have TV. TV is made up of images and sounds, which are also… symbols.

One day, a couple of centuries from now, when the new thing comes along, and all the younger generation start doing it, parents will be begging their kids to STAY HOME AND WATCH TV. They’ll cry and moan that we’re losing an art. It’s the END of US, they’d say.

Well, don’t worry. For those of you who still like reading, and for those of you who think this essay isn’t literate enough: a poem.

If Oliver Stone was a phone
He would play his own ring tone

If Samantha Bee was a flea
She would bite me on my knee

If Barnacle Bill was a pill
I could roll him up a hill

If President Bush was a bush
He’s so stupid

Split Turkey

The country is split right down the middle. Fractured. Deeply divided. Worse than the 60s. Left/Right. Liberal/Conservative. One state, two state, red state, blue state.

That’s what the pundits tell you. And they’re WRONG. This baloney started after the 2000 election. Half the people voted for the cokehead and half the people voted for the pothead. What really happened is ALL the people voted for an elite Ivy League rich kid from a political family with lots o money, and who also had a history of drug abuse with a tendency towards not telling the complete truth. About the only major difference between the two was that one went to school with Tommy Lee Jones while the WIFE of the other went to school with Tommy Lee Jones. And one of them is in oil and the other is in tobacco.

If there had been an option on the ballot that said “While I’m voting for one or the other of the major party candidates, I agree that BOTH candidates are Turkeyheads,” you would have seen the largest landslide vote in the country’s history.

Truth is we are a largely varied population with a wide array of interests, with general agreement on the major issues of life, such as beer = good and lite beer = lite good. Most of us (and by most of us, I mean the extraordinary VAST MAJORITY of us) believe in a working morality, fair play, security for our family, and just common decency. We try to be good. We don’t always succeed, but we try. It’s only the smallish, unimportant things (Yankees vs Sox, Red Vines vs. Twizzlers, soda vs. pop, soccer vs. football, metric vs. normal) in which we find true disagreement.

Yes, I know you can always find some extreme point of view somewhere as the exception to prove the rule. There ARE serial killers, there ARE con artists, there ARE Mormons. These exceptions will prove important when trying to take over the world.

So it only APPEARS that we’re divided on the big things. Take abortion. Everyone argues over LEGAL vs ILLEGAL, FUNDED vs UNFUNDED, 3 MONTHS vs 6 MONTHS. Here’s the thing: NOBODY LIKES ABORTIONS. Let’s repeat that . WE ARE BEING MANIPULATED.

One side says abortions should be ILLEGAL. They want to turn women who abort and the doctors who perform them into criminals. Problem is, if you illegalize it, abortions WON’T stop. The other side says, “Safe, Legal, and Rare” (sounds like fresh tuna), without an acknowledgement that abortion is an ugly thing, an undesirable thing, and – potentially – an unnecessary thing.

Both sides are actually on the SAME side IF you were to ask them this question: would you like a day in which there are NO abortions, there are NO unwanted pregnancies? If both side worked toward THAT goal – even if you never completely achieve it – there would be fewer abortions than if you made it illegal, fewer abortions than if you keep it safe, legal, and rare. It COULD be achieved through education, care, and prevention.

The more important question is: Why aren’t we working toward THAT goal? And the answer is insidious:



Karl Rove.

It's just so much easier to get elected if you divide the nation and pick the bigger side. You inflame the emotions. You stir up anger. You do everything but actually TRY TO SOLVE the issue. Just look at the congress and the senate RIGHT NOW. They squabble over a NON-BINDING resolution (def: non-binding = pointless), the only value of which is to separate sides and claim the bigger territory. No one in either house is actually DOING anything.

Then, after carving, Rove brings in those previously mentioned exceptions - extremists. Here’s Cindy Crackwhore. She’s had six abortions so far and preggers again. Here’s Adrianna Atheist-Agnostic. She works at a clinic and tries to get the word God taken out of the word Good in her spare time. Here’s Muffy Dollarlover. She sells aborted fetuses online to a Korean laboratory.

If you believe in abortions, then you must be ONE OF THEM. You’re not ONE OF THEM, are you? You’re one of US, right? Those are your only two choices. You are either a degenerate cross-dressing drugged out homosexual with AIDS trying to get married AT THE SAME ALTER as your daughter will one day, or you are one of us. You are either a flag-burning dirty hippy with gonorrhea collecting welfare, or you are one of us. You are either a God-hating child-molester who wants to ban school prayer and force everyone to speak Esperanza, or you are one of us.

In fact, let’s sponsor CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS as lines drawn in the sand. We want to know WHAT SIDE YOU ARE ON. Check out this list: http://www.usconstitution.net/constamprop.html. That’s 856 amendments proposed just by Congress. Something must be SERIOUSLY WRONG with our constitution to require so much change. For example, it doesn’t say you CAN’T BURN the flag. Better change that one right now. I mean, you don’t WANT to burn the flag, do you?

Wait a minute. It also doesn’t say you can’t carry a dead opossum around in your underwear. You CERTAINLY don’t want that. I propose a NO DEAD OPOSSUM IN YOUR UNDERWEAR amendment. We need to see, right now, on what side of the river you stand on that one. So which are you? Are you against dead opossums in your underwear? Or are you one of those people who worry about "rights" and "sense" and "dead opossums?"

That’s how you get a cokehead elected president.

Cut'n'Turkey

I want a congressional vote on a new non-binding resolution on Iraq. Resolved: that SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE tell us what OUR GOAL is.

You’ve got Republicans telling us not to “cut and run.” But wasn’t the “mission accomplished” years ago?

You’ve got Democrats trying to get out by the end of the year, leaving the need for some strong leader to take over the government. Some guy who can lay the law down so that everyone will have to listen up. Crack the whip. Anybody over there like that?

The problem is, it’s broken. We broke the country. Not that it was in all that hot shape to begin with. They’ve been fighting over there for over two millennia. That’s ten times longer than we’ve been a country, but we figure we can straighten them out. All we got to do is climb up on this rickety ladder here, reach up to that high shelf and…

Oops. Better get the glue. Lots of it.

They MUST have had a plan. They MUST have had at least one goal (which is more than the US have kicked in for the World Cup).

That’s right, a plan…

Step one – determine a sovereign nation is in such a state that it requires immediate and ugly overhauling. You know, something insidious, like capturing the citizens of another country and bringing them to your own to enslave them. That would require immediate military intervention by a foreign nation, such as, say, France.

Step two – invade the country. You would of course do this with a full complement of soldiers, something the generals like to call “Boots on the Ground.” And you would make sure your military was well equipped. And you would be careful not to celebrate too soon. The invaded nation, of course, would be HAPPY about it (because they didn’t like cotton shirts) and greet their French invaders with cheers and find stuff to name after them, like fried sticks of potatoes.

Step three – install a new government. Make sure it looks like your own. EVERYBODY wants to be like you. And do it at gunpoint. People love that. In the above "hypothetical" example, you would free the slaves, lock up anybody who disagrees, elect a Prime Minister, and force everybody else to agree to the government you required

Step four – hang around. And around. And around. Try not to get shot, though.

Step five – repeat.

TurkeyJet

Where’s my jet pack? I WANT my jet pack. Sean Connery had one in Thunderball. Prof Robinson flew around in one for Lost in Space. Those are REAL stuntmen flying around in REAL jet packs. Here’s a picture of some guy flying one in 1962. There was one shown off in the 1939 World’s Fair in NY. 1939! That’s over 65 years ago. 65 YEARS AGO!




Let’s count all the things that weren’t around 65 years ago. Color TV. Microwave ovens. Cell phones. Velcro. Diet Coke. The New York Mets. The state of Hawaii. That weird Segue thing nobody buys. Scientology. The INTERNET, for Paul Allen’s sake.

You’d think in 40 years, something that they HAD ALREADY INVENTED would be improved enough for people to use. And you know we’d all want one. Think about it. You could fly to work, the beach, the movies. HOW COOL WOULD THE DRIVE-IN BE? Mountain climbing? Some poor sap reaches the top of Everest after a week of brutal effort, and you’re hanging there just six feet away to greet him with a hearty, “Sucker!”

I bet Mark Cuban has one. Bill Gates has two. Oprah’s got one, in lipstick red. You can’t see them because they fly so high. There’s a little freeway up there and they’re all zipping along. David Beckham is waving at Warren Buffett as they pass by. Dick Cheney’s doing little wheelies. Madonna flies a little higher so people can look up her skirt. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have a tandem jet pack.

Bastards.

We need to all march down to the Dept of Transportation and demand our jet packs. We need to knock on that door like our teenage daughter is in there with some guy named Bando. And we need to ask for… ask for…

Who is the Secretary of Transportation? It’s THIS guy. Norman Y. Mineta.
He USED to be VP at Lockheed Martin (they make JETS), chaired the National Civil Aviation Review Commission (of course), and as Sec of Transportation gave funding to the FAA (see?). THIS is the guy who won’t let you have jet packs.

Write a letter now.

Dear Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta,
Where’s my jet pack?
Sincerely,
Gerald P. Fallenarch

Send it to:

U.S. Department of Transportation
400 7th Street, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20590

And see you can’t find out what happened to the submarine-car, too.

Aqua-Turkey

Someone please check the White House for pods. The president has obviously been replaced with a replica. Some kind of robot doppelganger who’s been programmed to *gasp* SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT.

Isn’t this the guy who wanted to cut down trees in order to save them? Isn’t this the guy who said his best day in office was catching a 7 ½ pound perch in his lake? Isn’t this the guy who rolled back pollution controls to the days of the industrial revolution?

Well, he’s now the guy who has created the largest wildlife preserve in the world. It’s larger than all the national parks in the US COMBINED. And do you know what I have to say to that?

Way to go, guy!

Seriously. This is the worst president of my lifetime, possibly anyone’s lifetime. This is the man who may be in your great-grandchildren’s history books as the president who started the collapse of the United States as a world power. This is the man who’s basically done EVERYTHING wrong, no matter what side of the aisle you are on.

But he’s done this.

And it may turn out to be really important. Perhaps more important than half the damage he’s caused. Especially for those of you who believe the future of the earth in its oceans. This will create a major oceanic generator of life. There are several of these “no fishing” zones in the world, the largest before today at the Great Barrier Reef off Australia.

What fishermen are finding is that previously depleted stocks are growing within the zone. They know this because they’re fishing just outside the zone, and are doing better as a result. Naturally, they are against the zones, because IT MAKES SENSE.

These zones produce massive amounts of sea life. Not just Nemo and his friends, but important-to-the-planet stuff like plankton. And kelp.

So three cheers for the worst president in the history of our country. That’s our Bush!

Free Turkey

I just heard on NPR (nipper) that this was the best week of GW Bush’s second term. I know they nailed a noted terrorist, so that counts for something. (A lot, actually. Zarquawi was a cruel and remorseless bastard who deserved only a lot more than he got.) But thrown into that good week was the fact that Karl Rove got off. Scott Free. No prison time for the man who revealed the name of a CIA operative.

Now, what does that say about the current administration? It was a good day, today. Nobody got indicted. It was a pretty good day, yesterday, too. What’s next? Let’s throw a party because we didn’t accidentally bomb Topeka?

Here’s a quote from the day’s events:

Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman: "What people like me said during this whole investigation is: Let's not presume his guilt or innocence, let's let the facts get out.”

But the facts are NOT out. We don’t know Rove’s entire involvement, only that he was involved. We know that Scooter Libby did the actual leaking, but we don’t know how it came about. BTW – Scooter was indicted, not for leaking, but for lying.

There has been NO administration explanation of the administration’s actions. Why was she outed? No one will say. Of course, the OTHER SIDE has their theory. They say Rove did it because Plame’s husband wrote some unkind (but true) things about our war in Iraq. In other words, they did it because they’re jerks. Isn’t that what you’d call a kid on the playground who ratted you out because you didn’t say nice things about him?

If it’s not true, then – Karl – just come out and say it, man. Why’d you do it? At least deny it, you bald-headed pork-bellied turkeyhead bastard sir.

Here’s what we have: What Rove did was not against the law. Perfectly legal, Karl. Thanks for playing. But there is another jury. You folks. There’s still a penalty, IF you find him guilty. If you simply decide – IT AIN’T RIGHT.

Here’s another quote:

From Rove’s lawyer: "This has taken an enormous toll on him and his family.”

Amazing, isn’t it? Poor Karl Rove. It’s been SO hard on him. Almost as hard as it was on Dick Cheney when he shot his friend in the face. Judy Plame, though – that’s okay. It’s not a big deal to lose your career just because some JERK is being a JERK.

Maybe Karl Rove should start giving away US positions in Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or maybe a few nuclear launch codes. Bush could use another “good week.”

Turkey Loot

$1.4 billion dollars.

That’s the amount of fraud FEMA let go in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Does is bear repeating?

Yes.

It bears tattooing the butts of every official representative of every state.

$1.4 billion dollars.

Vacations. Wine. Resort hotels. Sex-change operations. Okay, only one. Still.

$1.4 billion dollars.

That’s YOUR money. Next time your kid gets a D on a report card because there are 40 kids in his classroom and the teacher had to spend seven days making sure Johnnie Assbritches doesn’t get “left behind,” you remember where your money went.

And I’m not even mad at the government. FEMA, as ridiculously inept as they may have been, was in a position where they could help people and be screwed or not help people and be safe. And they said, I will help, and many will benefit, but I will accept some measure of bendover.

And the people said, bend over more. This is like the guy at work who takes all the bagels from the honor box, and then takes the box.

I said many time over how the people of the south were the best people you’d ever meet. I met a man who loaned his truck to two complete strangers so they could collect a few things out of their aunt’s house. I met a woman who drove a 90 year-old woman she had never seen to a pharmacy for her medicine (and some hair dye, don’t tell anyone). I met a family who were selling their house in Gonzales (away from the destruction) after the hurricane, and refused to raise the price EVEN THOUGH THEY COULD HAVE MADE A FORTUNE.

And still, there are these people. The ones who took the money out of the hands of poor families. The ones who took the money YOU GIVE so that all can have a little security.

I try to hope that some of these people were so distraught that they used the money as some kind of breather. I hope that some man who lost his house and his dog, and watched while the US govt did zip, and saw that the TOURISTS were rescued before he was, and found out that GW Bush promised to rebuild TRENT LOTT’S house before his, and three months later STILL doesn’t have water or electricity or even a goddam street, said – Screw it all. I’ve got nothing, I’m going to buy a bottle of decent wine.

I don’t want to hate people who took the money. Maybe they lost more. But – you know there were some jackals out there. And for those bastards, I wish… I wish…

Enlightenment.

All right, jail time with Billy “Two Knives” Blunthead.

But I really don’t want to feel that way. And I’ll tell you why. This is a photograph of all the belongings my aunt has after Hurricane Katrina left her house under water for 2 weeks.Call it the “after” picture.

It’s pitiful, and remarkable at the same time.

Please look carefully at the picture. The floors are swept, the items are stacked neatly. You can’t see it, but there’s jewelry in some of those drawers. Photographs. Even some money.

Before I tell you how it came to be this way, I want you to look at another photograph. That’s what my cousin and I found when we first stepped into the house in October. We scrounged around. We had to clear a path through part of the house. It LOOKS bad. It WAS worse. I thought I was prepared, but you can’t prepare yourself for the smell, the rot. EVERYTHING in the house was floating around for two weeks. Everything.

Think about your home. Not just furniture and clothes. Everything under your sink. All the food in your cabinets. All the food in your refrigerator, which would probably (as here) open and spill all its contents to rot. Everything in the bathroom, including medicines and soaps. Everything in your laundry room. Electronics and broken pipes. Then all the stuff from the outside would seep in. Gas and oil from the cars. Rotting material from all the dead plants. Stuff in the lake and canals that were already toxic. Then the rotting begins. All paper, fabric, wood, and carpeting would rot. Mold would climb up throughout the house. Any animals? Ants, termites, roaches, worms, rats, gophers, squirrels, raccoons. THEN, the ceiling collapses and covers everything in a very moist shroud. For weeks.

That’s what we found. It was all I could do to haul out the few bits of china that remained.

So what happened? Did we clean it? Nope, I wrote the whole thing off as a total loss. Did the government clean it? That’s about the dumbest question anyone will ever ask. Then who did?

The Mennonites. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonites. Check them out. They volunteer in disaster relief. They went into this place and for no other reason than they are DECENT people, they cleaned it out. They threw out everything that was unsalvageable, and they kept ANYTHING that might be of value. And they left it behind.

I’ll say this, even though I’m not a religious person: God bless the Mennonites. They made me cry.

So this is who we have in the world. People who steal from the most needy… and people who give to them. Maybe the jury’s still out on us. Maybe we have a chance. Or maybe we’re just more complex than we pretend.

In any case, to the Mennonites who cleaned up my aunt’s house, my most heartfelt thanks. And to those people who stole from her – and us – please acquire bird flu.

Turkey House

Poor you.

That’s what Livia Soprano used to say to Tony when she wanted to make him feel small. Only it came out “Poah Yew.”

I’d feel small. I’d feel poah. I AM poah. I make something-mumble thousand dollars a year, and I can’t afford a house. At least not one that doesn’t come in a game of Monopoly. I make more than the combined income of both my parents when they were my age. Of course, they were teachers, so golf-ball retrievers made more, but they STILL HAD A HOUSE.

What went wrong? Why are we so houseless? (Well, not everyone. Some folks live in the middle of Iowa in a nice home. But they live in Iowa.) First, of course, is the cost of the house. In Venice CA, in 1968, you could buy a small house for about $2,000. You could buy a lot on a big stinky canal for about $25k. 1968! That’s not THAT long ago.

Except, it is. Right around that time, the film Bonnie and Clyde came out. The story took place in the early 30s and it was about depression-era folk WHO ALSO HAD HOMES. But we are now more years FROM the release of the film than the film is FROM its subject. Same thing with The Godfather. Same thing with GONE WITH THE WIND. Well, almost.

So, now those $2k houses in Venice sell for $800k and the canal houses are $1.5 mil. Those $2k houses are CRACK HOUSES. The only people who can afford them are… oh. Crack dealers. Never mind.

Okay. Housing prices go up. All the time. That’s what they do. They were going up when my parents bought in, and they’re going up now. What’s the REAL difference? Any guesses? Some kind of government conspiracy? Some kind of mass brainwashing? TV?

Here’s a hint. Just reading this blog probably contributes to your financial standing. If you’re paying for DSL, that is. What? DSL is keeping you out of a house?

Could be.

DSL is about $20 a month. If you shop. That’s $240 a year. The standard home loan is 30 years. That’s $7200 over the life of your mortgage THAT YOUR PARENTS DIDN’T HAVE TO PAY. Or you could have bought 3 houses in Venice in 1968 and had a lot left over to kick out the crackheads. Or buy some crack.

But it isn’t just DSL, is it? It’s a lot of other things. Let’s add them up together, shall we?

Cable $50 a month
Cell $40 a month
Netflix $20 a month
Tivo $13 a month
Gym $40 a month


And the biggest one of all, because you’re probably not paying attention to it, your credit rate. Let’s say you’ve got a balance of $5k. That’s not so high. At a rate of about 12%, which is pretty good. That’s $50 a month that didn’t use to have to be paid.

Let’s add that all up together, and include DSL. That’s $233 a month that people DID NOT PAY in 1968. That’s about $2,800 a year. About $84,000 over the life of your mortgage. And that doesn’t include what you paid for your computer, your IPOD, your DVD player, your cell phone, etc. Oh, sure, they had a stereo system, a phone, maybe even a walkman. Compare the total prices, AND THE FACT THAT YOU HAVE TO REBUY THEM EVERY 3 YEARS.

Let me tell you a story. It sounds, at first, like one of those Hollywood insider stories that crops up on E! Entertainment. But it’s not. As Michael Corleone would say, “It’s strictly business.” A few years back, a large Japanese corporation came to the US and ate a small but notable film studio. Sony bought MGM. Still, somehow MGM managed to hang around. EVEN THOUGH THEY’D BEEN ATE. I mean, eaten.

Then it happened again. Last year. Sony bought MGM. AGAIN. And yet, MGM is still running around loose. And still distributing movies. Sony keeps eating its own crapped-out companies.

Why?

Because Sony DOESN’T REALLY MAKE MOVIES. Sony makes DVD players. And you have one. You don’t need another. Or do you?

I used to have a phonograph. Then a cassette player. Then a DVD player. Then an MP3 player. In my lifetime, I’ve owned 4 different technologies to listen to music. Ask your folks if they did the same.

Sony needs you to buy another DVD player. EVEN THOUGH YOU ALREADY HAVE ONE. THAT WORKS. Here comes Blue-Ray. Another technology. And how do they get you to buy it? Change the product. Sony already has the world’s largest film library, and they buy MGM (for a few minutes anyway) to make sure that all the MGM stuff comes out on Blue-Ray. Between the two, 40% of everything comes out on Blue-Ray (I just made that percentage up, but you get the point). Everybody else has to change just to keep up.

Then they go to Green-Ray. Or Aquamarine-Ray. In that span of the 40-year mortgage, you’re going to buy probably 20 TVs (assuming you want one for your bedroom), 10 DVD/VCR players, 15 Gamethings, 8 PCs, and all the money to get stuff to put ON IT. That’s another $10-20k that could have gone into your house.

You are going to spend $100k on things your predecessors did not have. $100k! If you had $100k, you’d buy a house. A nice one, too. But you don’t have $100k.

Poah Yew.

Cup o Turkey

The World Cup now – anyone care? I used to watch it on KMEX on our LOCAL station, even before I had cable. I’m not a soccer fanatic (note – I used the word “soccer” so you know I’m not a Eurosnob). I just enjoy a good sports match like most people (who drink beer), and I can actually root for the USA because in this sport they actually try.

As in any sport, soccer fans are rabid bastards who would sell their children to that strange man who lives down the street and lights small fires in his unmowed lawn for a last-row ticket behind the urinal in a championship match loyal. Many need some kind of therapy.

I saw Brazil beat Sweden 1-0 in the 1994 cup at the Rose Bowl. It was friggin’ hot in Pasadena, and the Brazilians were at least smart enough to lay in the shade of the few California Live Oaks along the Arroyo Seco in the hours leading up to the game. Except for the few who carried around a giant puppet of the WORLD’S UGLIEST CHICKEN (some kinda mascot?) on ten-foot poles, chanting the famous OLE OLE anthem.

Meanwhile, the Swedes, who apparently have never seen the sun, basked almost naked in its glorious radiance. For about fifteen minutes. Then, they began to turn a hideous radiation-poisoned red which caused ME to burn when I walked near them. Then, they burst into flames, which made them hard to look at.

While I’m not suggesting that soccer is a better or worthier sport than any other, despite its worldwide popularity, I’m annoyed at the intellectualized AVERSION the US has to it. There are actually articles written by PAID media trying to explain to you why soccer is stupid.

Well, here’s a flash bulletin: ALL SPORTS ARE STUPID. Think about it. You pay large sums of money to see outrageously well-paid athletes playing a GAME. It’s a GAME! They’re playing a GAME! Like Trivial Pursuit. YOU are not even playing. Someone else is.

So while the sportswriting PUNDITS plow on about why soccer will never catch on in the states, let’s see why US sports will never catch on in the world.

Football
Probably the greatest piece of marketing in the history of game was the decision of some mad crazy genius to count a goal as SIX POINTS. And then add an extra point, plus a couple of other ways to score if you don’t score the main goal. It’s brilliant because you THINK they’ve scored a lot. Last year, in the Super Bowl, Pittsburgh beat Seattle 3 to 1½, they just called it 21-10. Germany just beat Costa Rica 4-2 in the World Cup, but people still insist there’s more scoring in football. Since Americans are traditionally bad at math, we can’t figure this out. It’s not going to fly overseas.

The other piece of brilliance was to wrap up the players in bubbles and plastic and saranwrap. That way, they can run full speed at each other without mussing their hair. They don’t have injuries so much as malfunctions. Try watching rugby one late night on one of those cable channels you didn’t know you have. Those poor bastards only have their skulls to protect them from severe brain injury. And for most of them, it’s too late.

When people tell you football has a lot of action, try this one out. In the last Super Bowl, teams combined for a total of 133 plays. At an average of about 6 seconds a play, you wind up with a little under 13 ½ minutes of actual action. Or about $75 a minute for a scalped ticket. Or a ratio of about 1-8 game vs. commercials. The World Cup involves 64 games, each watched by roughly three-times the audience of the Super Bowl, and each runs 90 minutes with ONLY ONE BREAK. That’s 96 HOURS of actual playing gametime. With a ratio of about 5-1 game vs. commercials.

Baseball
At least they count their scores by one, but no one’s keeping track because we’re all asleep by the time someone scores. Baseball is the only sport where the action is about as boring as the in-action.

But it’s really the RULES that keep it from any real success overseas. I mean, you don’t watch cricket do you? Because those rules are STUPID. While baseball is merely STUPID. Think about it. Soccer = put ball in net, don’t use hands, don’t kill. Baseball = throw ball into a zone near a batter, batter hits ball or misses ball or doesn’t swing, and they count those up to an arbitrary number unless he hits the ball (in play) and then he runs to a safety zone if the ball touches the ground, but if it's caught first, he’s out, but if he doesn’t swing enough times and the ball isn’t in the zone, he gets to go to the safety zone anyway, unless he swings enough times and doesn’t hit the ball, then he’s still out, unless he swings and hits the ball but out of another zone, then he gets to keep swinging…

Damn, we haven’t even got a score yet.

It’s also the only sport where seriously out-of-shape athletes are allowed to play. The greatest of them all was named BABE (after the pig), and achieved his fabulous physique on hot dogs and beer. That’s why they HAD TO (secretly) legalize steroids and human growth hormone so that they would at least LOOK competitive. Tell me if you think 1990s star Cecil Fielder (picture below) could run for 90 minutes without depositing his lunch on the field. Hell, even Barry Bonds couldn’t do it.

















Basketball.
Score. Score. Score. Score. Score. Call me back in the fourth quarter so I can see who shot last and won.

Hockey.
It’s not on TV anymore, so I can’t write about it.

Golf.
Shhhh.

Bowling.
At least they let you drink beer while you play. But you still won’t watch it. And it’s a good thing because everyone looks like the Pillsbury Doughboy’s ugly cousin.

Yes, you can probably find one or two countries that might go nuts over these sports. You can always find somebody to like something. Japan likes karaoke. France likes Jerry Lewis. Brazil likes small-breasted women. But you won’t find a world to do it.

Well, the US lost 3-0 to the Czechs. I’m sorry. 21-0. Sounds like the 49ers were playing.

Golden Turkeys of the Silver Screen

Go here.

http://www.thedescentfilm.com/

See that? Kinda cool, huh? Kickass horror movie about – what? Some chicks who form themselves into a skull. Can’t wait to see that.

What’s that bit of business at the top? “THE BEST HORROR-THRILLER SINCE ALIEN.” Really? Then I GOT to see some of that. Because YOU KNOW that can’t put it up there unless it was true.

Or this:




















There – at the bottom. “A HIGH-FLYING FAST-ACTION THRILL RIDE!” You know, I think they left off the exclamation point on The Descent poster. Hell, maybe they should put three or four.

Hollywood execs want to know why we're not to movies like we used to. Well, they were worried until we started going to movies like we used to last month. Now they’re worrying that we’ll stop again. They’ve got all sorts of theories. Video games, bigger televisions, commercials in theaters, dumb-ass patrons, dumb-ass movies.

Here’s what I think – You can’t tell if the movie is good before you see it? You can’t even guess. Not a clue.

You know the posters are baloney. Best horror-thriller since Alien? Why not just say GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE? Stick it on all the films. Fire the marketing department, and make another movie with the savings.

Read the critics? Where do you think those quotes on the poster are coming from? There are hundreds of critics in the country, and thousands more wannabes, and most of them are dying to be quoted on a movie poster (one-sheet – let’s use the industry term).

The DaVinci Code got a 23% fresh rating on http://www.rottentomatoes.com/, which means that 77% of the critics gave it a thumbs-down. However, exit polling showed (coincidentally) that 77% of the audience liked it. How’s that for being out of touch with your readers? Or if you want to experience first hand the disconnect between critics and audiences, simply read Manohla Dargis in the NY Times. Just once ought to do it.

So forget the critics. What about the trailer or the TV spot? Just like the one-sheet. Find some guy with a voice like rusty trombones and dusty scotch and have his voice on the trailer: “Mog Fabriz of the New York Mail and Coupon hails ‘A Bullet Full of Love’ as A NEW MASTERPIECE!” Make sure you stick the words on the screen in case all those deaf people are watching. Then edit the shit out of the trailer to get 3/10 of a second of EVERY SHOT in the movie, play a kickass song – no, three kickass songs – and stick something cool-looking at end after everyone thinks it’s over. Like a fast car or a dog’s butt, depending on whether it’s a comedy or a tragedy.

So what do we have? Everything looks the same. King Kong looks like Stealth looks like Snakes on a Plane. One of them might even be good, but the only way YOU’RE going to find out is to lay down $10 of that major paycheck you get every week. Or you could wait for your friend Gorhar, who goes to see EVERY DAMN MOVIE FIRST SHOW, to text you his review (which you definitely trust more than Roger Ebert or that other guy).

And it’s not $10. One night four of us went to one of those fancy schmancy ci-ne-mas where they serve bad wine in the snotty cine-file café, and your seat is leather and has your name embossed on it. That was $14.50, PLUS the service charge to buy them over the internet (making the tickets an even $60), PLUS the parking, PLUS the popcorn and soda, PLUS the real drinks before the show. The whole evening cost us $100.

There’s a theater in Cleveland that sells tickets to second-run films on Tuesday for 50 cents (have to stop a moment to make an IMPORTANT OBSERVATION: Our economy is such that they’ve take the ¢ symbol OFF the computer keyboard because NOBODY uses it anymore as it’s an ARCHAIC symbol. Screw you, George W. Bush, you Turkeyhead.). So, for the $60 ticket cost we spent for our fancy schmancy seats (for which we should get to KEEP them), 120 people in Cleveland could see a movie.

At even $10 a ticket, the movie had BETTER BE GOOD. And since it’s no longer possible to tell, I’ll wait for the DVD. Because I’m NOT moving to Cleveland.

Turkey Lurkers

Who's reading this? You are. Who else? Probably nobody. What if I wrote:

Osama Bin Laden.

Now who's reading this? Maybe somebody else. Maybe not right now, but perhaps a little program set off a little bell somewhere, and someone who works in Virginia will have to check it out. Probably not, though. Not for just writing Osama Bin Laden.

Praise Allah! A Jihad on George W. Bush. And his little dog, too.

Better? Someone checking this out now? Someone checking YOU out, too? Since you're reading this. Maybe you should look over your shoulder, just in case.

Free Hot Wet Naked Virgins.

There we go! Welcome everybody. Take a seat. Keep your pants on. Hope you notice the rest of the blog. Brad Tapplephone's got your names now. He's keeping a list and checking it twice.

Of course it's illegal GOOD that the government taps our phones. We’ve got nothing to hide. Only terrorists have something to hide. We’re fine, upright citizens. We’re not going to let something like the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES get in the way. You know, that thing our “president” keeps trying to change.

That’s right, it’s UNCONSTITIONAL to tap a US Cititzen’s phone without a warrant. But, you say, a warrant takes too long. By the time they get a warrant, the terrorist will have hung up the phone.

That’s absolutely true, and I as much as anyone understand things are a bit different now. (BTW – I said a bit. It’s a little scarier, yes, but have you really changed your life much? Are you covering your windows with black drapes and dousing the lights when the sun goes down? Have you started building a bomb shelter in the backyard? Are you teaching your kids to duck and cover?) I know life changes, but I’m talking basic things here. Things we learned in Junior High Civics.

Checks and Balances. Remember that? I don’t either, but it had something to do with preventing one branch of government acquiring too much power. There were three of them, weren’t there? Legislative, Executive and… and… Louie. Wait, no, that’s ducks. Judicial. That’s the other one.

Right now, they’re pretty balanced (we hope). I mean the “president” can’t just start a war on his own, can he? He has to ask the legislative branch. Of course, we haven’t had an “official” war since 1941.

Then, there’s those pesky Judicial guys. Judges. They’re the guys we put in charge of warrants. The Executive branch of the government has to convince them their cause of investigation is worthy. And those judges evaluate the situation and say yea or nay.

Bastards.

They keep making decisions that the people don’t want. Like that time we voted everyone in Utah has to pay everyone else in the US three dollars. They said that wasn’t “Legal.” This country is a democracy. If the people vote to set fire to Tom Cruise, we should plug in the coal starter right away.

But the Judicial also functions as oversight. They’re here to make sure the Executive branch doesn’t go wild with power. Maybe it’s not such a concern with such an honest upright citizen such as W in office, but imagine what might happen if Martin Sheen became president. I don’t mean that decent and wise President Bartlett. I’m talking about the crazy Martin Sheen that Christopher Walken had to put down before he launched all the nukes.

That Martin Sheen would tap all the phones (because there was no one to stop him), put whoever he didn’t like in Gitmo without a trial (because that’s apparently legal now, too), hook up a Delco Yellow Top to his or her privates, and dance the hoochie goochie around the metal chair. All nice and legal.

And all because we didn’t have the foresight to allow the Judicial Branch ACCESS to check out what kind of sick crazy perversions the Executive Branch was up to. You never know with those bastards. Next thing you know, the Legislative Branch will try to stop the cops from searching their offices just because they took a $90K in bribes.

So I’m all for capturing terrorists. I’m all for keeping Tony Soprano from building the Boston Tunnel. I’m all for nabbing crooked congressmen who’ve been ripping off the public for a few jet trips to Havana with Fredo Corleone. I just bet we can do it by letting two people in on it instead of one. Leaving me free to type things like

Anarchists Unite!!

Uh-oh. Someone’s knocking at the door. Gotta go.

Taxing Turkeys

In San Francisco, they want to spend about a half-billion dollars more than necessary to build a PRETTY bridge to replace the earthquake sensitive Bay Bridge. Everyone who is paying for it vote for that right now. Everybody in SF votes yes, and the rest of us SANE people vote for GO TO WORK ON UGLY BRIDGE. We’ve got better uses for half a billion dollars than to make a bridge look pretty.

So…

Let's stop paying taxes. No more taxes. Right now. Death is no longer a sure thing, so drop the taxes part. And I'll tell you why: Toll Roads. You may think you’ve ALREADY PAID money for the highway system and you should get to drive on ANY DAMN STREET you want, but the government in its stupidity brilliance built exclusive highways on which you stop your car every 300 feet to pay a dollar to use a road because it's CONVENIENT. It’s called screwing the taxpayer pay as you go.

Pay as you go. Let’s do that with everything. Like garbage collection. Instead of the government forcing me to give them money so they can haul away my garbage when THEY feel like it, I could pay a service tohaul it away when I want it gone. If I’m on vacation, I could skip a couple of weeks and do something crazy like NOT PAY for a service I’m NOT EVEN USING.

Or I could pay little Johnnie Dolittle down the street. He cuts old Mrs. Warwidow’s lawn with his dad’s Electro 9000 Lawndonkey. Little bastard charges $18 and then runs down the gophers as a game.

Or I could DO IT MYSELF. But that would mean I might have to be efficient about my waste because I’m to damn lazy to trek down to the dump twice a week. I’d have to start being ENVIRONMENTALLY CLEAN. Ick.

And screw the environment, because I’m planning on buying the new 2006 Canyonero (Simpsons fans, calm down) because there will be no money to repair the roads. Which will be AWESOME off-roading every day to work.

I could finally stop paying for water I DON’T DRINK to be delivered to my home.

No more court system = no more lawyers. Sweet.

Howard Stern anywhere you want him.

And we’ll end programs we DON’T use, like social service programs, because we’re smart upright citizens who don’t have diseases, crack babies, or drug problems. Of course, I’m going to have to exercise my ex-constitutional right to by a couple of pistolas, 16 semi-automatic guns, a box of grenades, some TNT, and a small nuclear device. That’s because it will be my responsibility to defend myself against the huge wave of crackheads and assistant crackheads bearing down on my house since the police disbanded.

There will, of course, be no agency to help anyone out when the next hurricane hits. Like there is now.

We’ll finally be out of Iraq. With no taxes to pay them, we’ll have to bring our boys and girls home. Of course, we’ll have to develop our own personal army to protect the homefront. There are a couple of guys down the street who seem interested. They like weapons. We’ll have to pay them, though. We might need a system to do it. Maybe a penny out of every $20 so that we can get enough of these guys to keep the Mongolian Hordes from sneaking in over the border.

You don’t mind, do you? It’s just to make sure you don’t die. Small price.

Maybe we should do something to stop MicroSoft while we’re at it. I mean, with absolutely no controls, they’ll take over the earth. Every time someone comes up with a great idea, they’ll either buy it or give it away free after reverse-engineering it. Unless you don’t mind Bill Gates in your living room, bedroom, bathtub. How about a penny to stop that from happening?

And maybe it's worth a penny to keep a couple of parks around. Because I might like to take my date/kid/old mother to some place where there are a few trees, stream, rocks, and dirt instead of the Hair-n-Nails-n-Mufflers Plaza.

And one more penny to be able to send a letter to Aunt Totter without having to give FedYucks $8.95.

So, a few pennies here, a few pennies there. We should have a group of people who watch out for how it’s spent. We could elect them. Most of them will be turkeyheads, since most of us are turkeyheads. But we’ll hold them accountable. Maybe even put in some kind of RECALL vote if we need to.

Shoot, we may need a lot of money. Some way to take care of sick people. Because it's better to keep people working than have them get sick and die while they're trying mow your lawn. And some way to educate people. Because it's better than having a bunch of dumb people trying to rob you rather than mowing your lawn. And somebody to put out the fires. Because the guy who does your lawn keeps his equipment in a wooden shack.

That will be expensive. Maybe we should pay MORE than we're paying now. And maybe we should have a word for the money we give them to spend. A word for paying out a little bit to make sure we don’t get eaten by a bear, or don’t get beat up by an anarchist, or have a football team that sometimes wins.

How about Baxes?

Fried Turkey

Do you remember watching those old Sci-Fi films in which the earth was coming to an end -- either by comet, asteroid, fallout, or killer bees -- and the powers-that-be decide not to alert the public to avoid world-wide panic? It's even in the new ones. Some turkeyhead politician says, "You yell barracuda, everybody says, 'Huh? What?' You yell shark, we've got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July." And, of course, the panic happens anyway, or why did you pay your $8.50?

Well, it's happening right now. I don't know what it is. It could be anything. Global warming. Bird flu. Mad cow. Don't tell the public - they can't handle it. There would be rioting, looting. MAD CHAOS.

So they have a plan. I fully expect to be walking past the White House one day, and a large rocketship suddenly leaps out of the front lawn blasting for the sky, with Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld (not Chertoff, screw him), the joint chiefs, a handful of Supreme Court, and Bush at the helm, tipping his big ten-gallon cowboy hat and shouting, "So long, suckers!"

And we'll all be staring up at them thinking, "Uh-oh."

Meanwhile, Al Gore has his little Prius-Brand Rocket Ship (tm) ready, but it won't go because he doesn't have enough Canola to put in the tank. Which is a shame, because he apparently knew before everybody that someone left the earth-oven on, and that makes him mad because he INVENTED ice.

Everyone on the left is up in arms because we're RUINING THE EARTH. Everyone on the right is up in arms because everyone on the left won't let them RUIN THE EARTH. Well, of course, we aren't ruining the earth. The earth is doing just fine. What's getting mucked up is an infinitessimal portion of it called the biosphere. And we're not even worried about the biosphere - just the portion of it known as the Charismatic Megafauna.

After Hurricane Katrina hit, volunteers put together serious rescue efforts to save the now homeless PETS. Mostly dogs, but I suspect there were a few cats, gerbils, and maybe a goldfish or two. We didn't see anyone rescuing beetles, snakes, toads, or for that matter, moss, lichen or ragweed.

No, when it comes to things like global warming, nuclear fallout, or world pestilence, we're just concerned with Charismatic Megafauna - whether it's us or Fido or Whiskers. And that's a very small portion of the earth.

We're even concerned with Charismatic Megaflora. In Chicago, they're trying to save the oak from the Asian Longhorned Beetle. We've picked one life form, an oak, and we kill millions of life forms, the beetles, to let it live. Kind of strange, numerically.

So here's a guess - the beetle can't wait for global warming. He wants all us meddling turkeyheads gone, and then he's going to chow down like there's no nuclear winter. And he's probably got some friends, a few arachnids, some penned up cows, the tuna, mosquitos, who CAN'T WAIT for man to get off their backs. Heck, maybe they started the whole thing. And when they finish, they'll probably put the air conditioning back on.

Talking Turkey

My grandmother was born in Mexico City and my father, her son, was born in Havana. The family moved to New Orleans in the 1930s. My grandmother's native tongue was Spanish. She spoke English with some difficulty, but well enough to get by. My father, despite having been born in another country, spoke English without a hint of an accent, be it Cuban, Southern, Cajun or any other. He is now a retired teacher in Florida.

When immigrants move to the United States, they learn English in one generation. Let me repeat that: When immigrants move to the United States, they learn English in ONE GENERATION. Your ancestors did, my ancestors did. Everybody's did. The first ones off the boat didn't arrive speaking English, but I guarantee you most tried and all wanted to. And I'm talking about you, buddy. When your great-great-grandfather first arrived from the old country (you know, that heritage that you're so proud of, the one that you insist on wearing the "Kiss Me, I'm [insert country of choice]ish" whenever that cultural holiday that allows drinking rolls around), that distant relative did NOT come equipped with the New American Heritage Dictionary.

So when Jaime, your gardener, or Mrs. Wen, your dry-cleaner, or Nicolas, your baker can't quite get the exact three words placed together for your benefit, don't act like it's the greatest affront to anyone's life since Jesus came back to find (gasp!) a BANKER setting up shop. And, by the way, I'm pretty sure Jesus didn't speak English either.

So when the public seem so rabid in the need for a NATIONAL LANGUAGE, I sort of wind up on the side of confused. Or maybe disgusted. It sounds like such an arrogant thing - an act of superiority bordering on Nietzcheism - Let's get rid of those brown people who don't speak like us. You worry it will be - Let's get rid of those homosexuals who don't have sex like us. Let's get rid of those religious people who don't worship like us. Let's get rid of those Jews.

Okay, so it won't go that far - probably. And some of you are saying that these immigrants SHOULD learn English. That it's good for them. That it's the smart thing to do. Well, there are many things that are good for us, smart for us. We should all lose weight - should we have a national weight limit? We should all save money - should we be forced to have national mandatory savings accounts? We should all be nice to one another - should we all have national politeness limits?

Yes, it is the smart thing, but aren't we, as PROUD AMERICANS, allowed the right to be dumb once in awhile? Especially after a couple of beers.

So now you say, It costs us money! We pay taxes signs in English AND in Spanish. It will BANKRUPT the country! Well, let me ask if the following scenario is better - Mrs. Moreno's son has just saved up enough money repairing mufflers for the last fifteen years to bring his mother here from Sumuther Country. After a couple of weeks, she is going to school afternoons to learn how to be an American accountant and working evenings in YOUR OFFICE BUILDING cleaning up all the coffee cups you leave on the counter below the sign that says "Please Clean Up After Yourself." One evening, you're working late (you are a dedicated employee, after all), when the fire alarm goes off. It's a malfunction, it always is, but you (being dedicated and having read all the fire drill material, and even having acted as floor warden a couple of times) head for the nearest exit and calmly descend the four floors to ground level. Unfortunately, Mrs. Moreno is not sure what to do. She's a bit frightened. She knows she should get out, but she also knows there are two exits, one for parking and one for the main entrance and she's on the parking level. There's a sign right there, telling her what to do. It used to be in English AND Spanish until, in all the wisdom of the US Senate, they took a circular saw to it and sliced off the offending portion. She becomes very frightened ("Who would cut off half a sign?") and starts to run UP the stairs, misses the exit and runs smack into your hip, whereupon you fall down the stairs and break your left ankle and chip a tooth. Being decent, you limp back up the stairs, calm Mrs. Moreno, and take her outside where there are NO emergency vehicles to help you out because this was, after all, a false alarm.

ALL BECAUSE YOU DON'T WANT A SIGN WRITTEN IN ANY OTHER LANGUAGE BUT THE ONE YOU KNOW.

It's not for them -- It's for YOU! For YOUR safety. For YOUR benefit. It's the SMART thing. It's not just emergency signs, but safety signs, educational signs, informational signs. What, you want them VOTING for tax breaks for the rich?

In Quebec, they have a dual national language - English and French. What happens there is that everything signed must be in both languages. The result was that a shop-owner was CITED and FINED for having a post-it note on his fan saying not to turn it off in English only! (Watch 60 Minutes.) Do you really want the language police handing you a ticket because you wrote Tacos are Bueno! on your new fast food franchise. There would be no more Theatres, Boutiques, Trattorias. We would have to rename San Antonio (St Anthony), El Paso (The Pass), Virginia (The Virgin), Baton Rouge (Red Stick). Our tourist destinations would get makeovers - Presque Isle (Almost an Island), Grand Tetons (Big Boobs), The La Brea Tar Pits (The The Tar Tar Pits).

Of course, if we DID decide to make English the national language, we'd have to settle on which English. Southern? If we didn't, "Ain't" and Y'all" would be crimes. Bronx? "You'se" and "Terlets" are out. Maine? "Ayuh" and being silent would be illegal. We'd have to send sweeps of the grammar police through Alabama, Minnesota, and the Appalachians. Whoops! I forgot - Appalachia is where the ORIGINAL ENGLISH is STILL BEING SPOKEN. In the deepest, oldest parts of the mountains, they still speak English the way it was spoken when Shakespeare was still alive. So if anyone has a right to complain about language, maybe they do.

Language is communication, and sometimes that doesn't happen. Unfortunate, but we don't have to PASS LAWS to enforce it. That would be silly. And you want silly? Between the mayor of Los Angeles, the governor of California, and the President of the United States, who is the Latino and who speaks the best English. Turns out it's the same guy. Maybe WE ought to learn how to pronounce HIS name properly.

A Turkeyhead is a Turkeyhead

Last year. October.

I am sitting at 4:30 in the morning in a borrowed truck at a Walmart near Gonzales, LA, with my cousin, who I haven't seen in decades, and we are waiting for the most important business in America to actually open (because God forbid they should actually spend a dollar more than they need to) so that we can buy some key items that will help us when we reach the houses of our aunts (that we do not know if they'll actually be standing, flooded, looted, or razed) when I realize I wish John Kerry had called GW Bush a Turkey Head. Or a Butt Head. Or something, anything, because that's what he thought the sonofabitch was.

As you may know from the text on the main blog page, Huey Long mixed it up with the mayor of New Orleans over the mayoral race of 1934. T. Semmes Walsmley, the mayor, went as far as Washington DC to shove a knuckle sandwich in Long's face. Long, of course, was hiding out in the bathrooms of DC trying to avoid the fist full of lesson because in those days, in politics, IT MEANT SOMETHING to be calling people names and IT MEANT SOMETHING if the mayor of an important city hit you in the face.

Walmsley won the election against a Long croney whose name has since been forgotten. But by God, those days you knew who stood for what. Now, when Howard Dean calls Republicans a bad name, you have seriously important democrats (such as Nancy Pelosi) trying to disavow anything that might be said with passion, instead of saying, "That old Howard - you know Howard."

Maybe if we had people like that in public office, I wouldn't have to be spending eight times my tax credit (that "President" GW gave me) to find out if the houses of my family are still standing. Because it's time to call names. It's time to punch somebody in the face. It's time to say what you mean.

That's what I felt watching five days of governmental impotence in action following the damage of Katrina. I kept having two competing thoughts -- (1) I have to get on a plane and help everybody becauase the government appears to be unable to do something as simple as get a can of food a few miles over a bit of standing water to a starving refugee and (2) No, no - they'll get their act together so it's pointless for me to leave, especially since I've heard from all my family and they are safe in Baton Rouge.

In the end, I stayed, to my own shame. I just could not believe that I, as an individual, could do more to help people than the entire weight of the government of the United States of America. In the end, I realized that I should just have shown up, bought a couple dozen cans of Chef Boyardee, thrown them in a backpack, and walked or waded into downtown. But I kept believing that the entire weight of the government was more capable than myself or a couple hundred seriously-minded individuals with hard-core intent.

That was until I heard that the CANADIAN MOUNTIES were in New Orleans on DAY TWO. For some people in the Ninth Ward, the first rescuers they saw were the Mounties. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The first people into New Orleans after one of the worst disasters in the history of the country were from another country?

By now you probably can guess that I'm not all to sympathetic to the current administration. You may even guess that I'm partial to the left side of the aisle. Still, I have a hard time grasping any support of those in power now. I know that good old liberal Jimmy Carter was one of the first people into Three Mile Island, but I bet that even Ronald Reagan would have climbed up on a Sherman Tank and hauled in supplies. Eisenhower would have choppered them in. Even Nixon would have joined in, as he did with the protesters in outside the Lincoln Memorial. And he probably would have brought a few cans of food.

GW? He just supported those in charge. As though the response to this disaster was ACCEPTABLE. As though the response to this disaster was PLANNED. He put his stamp of approval on a massive failure of bureaucracy.

OKAY. Done with ranting for the moment. I want you to LAUGH at the idiocy of people who think they are smarter than you, not rage. My personal philosophy is that smart is overrated. What we need is GOOD. Decency. Respect. Alcohol. In moderation.

In case you wanted to know, all my aunts are okay. One lost her house, two had serious damage, and one had moderate damage. But they are all safe. Three of the four are out - they're moving to Baton Rouge. The fourth wants back in. She's the one with the lost house. It's amazing, really. Just walls and struts, but she's 90 and she's going to get a trailer. I think she'll succeed. Because she loves the house. And the life. And I wish her all the best. I wish all of them all the best. I wish everyone in New Orleans all the best. Because they need it.

So I wrote about it all. I really don't know what I'm doing. Blogs are a strange burning bush to me. But they are basic. Really. Dennis Miller on HBO. Howard Beal from Network. Archy at the New York Sun (look it up). So I hope I can keep this up. I hope I have the energy. Because Ray Nagin won re-election, despite the hard weirdness of his statements. The guy can say "chocolate city" all he wants, but he's a passionate man in an ugly place. Passion counts.

And if T. Semmes Walmsley was in Nagin's way, I hope he'd call him a Turkey Head.