A few years back I attended my 25th high school reunion. People crutching along toward the hall, tired from the battle for the handicapped spots out front where the lucky few could park their vans.
I talked to a guy named Sergio. I know it sounds like start of a rent-boy story, but no. This man was the current honey of the estimable Liz Bock, divorced, 2 kids. I like these long 2nd relationships where the pretense of marriage is GONE. The guys never did want to get married, and the chicks are disabused of the specialness after the first one. Liz got the coveted Charles Bradsky Ex-Spouse Bitterness award by saying of her ex: "Yeah, I finally got rid of Curtis. That asshole."
Charles had the award named after him at the 10th high school reunion when he introduced himself as "Charles, happily divorced from that bitch wife of mine." I wish I had it on tape. It was bitterness incarnate.
The reason I treaded this tangent is to return to Sergio, actual cowhand. He works as a hard man around Newcastle. "Hard man" is how you say the term hired man.
He has a handlebar mustache. He wears Wranglers, mostly the MWZ line, the cowboy jean. He hasn't transitioned to the loose-fit, unless he was just dressing fancy for the anniversary show.
White wrangler dress shirts, starched. Now we're getting somewhere. Boots? Of course, and a belt with a big buckle. But the guy is nice and it takes all kinds. Pa showed me ranching could be done in running shoes, to the benefit of the foot, too. Costumes are good. At least Sergio didn't have spurs and a scarf. That is way Western gay. You shouldn't be spurring horses anyway. They behave better without.
I had to talk to Sergio about ranching. I'll hit anybody up for a fix. Going back to our place and talking to the cousins running it, that is happiness embodied for me. Sergio would do as a placeholder. Liz, too, who grew up on a ranch, and commented to me that I didn't say much about it at high school at St. Martin's. Probably because I thought no one gave a shit. Also I was in escape-pod mode and didn't think much about it.
I mooned about ranching buffalo. Of course I want to. He shook his head, unwilling to utter words. I followed, "What, you don't like the meat?"
Sergio: "They're just damned hard to work." He darts his head around the room after saying damned, knowing he's in a group of Catholic school graduates. I cuss the worst of anyone I know, and the rest of the group has to spend a long time at confession, if you know what I mean.
Sergio is a horseman, a cowboy. That means you ride hard and impose your will on the kittles (cattle). Buffalo are less prone to being imposed upon. Tamed, if you will.
They will flat out catch a horse in a sprint. Horses are terrified of them because they know it. Give a horse a lead (with a fat-ass guy on his back), and a buffalo, bull or cow, will catch it and hook it and the rider will go down in a dizzying pile.
Once in corrals and chutes, they will run and jump and climb and all kinds of shit. They are the nimblest things you can imagine. Fast, strong and smart. The chutes at Custer State Park are dented and bent up from assaults by buffalo who live wild and are culled once a year in the fall.
The day after the reunion, I related this story to Pa. Pa did a little ranching. He raked hay from 1942 through 1996. He did the concomitant hundreds of other jobs required of a rancher, too.
He inherited a trait from the original Dan Page, who I like to call "the real Dan Page". My grandfather. Don't make things hard. There are too many things left to do today to waste energy
doing things hard.
Like rounding up buffalo. My entire career as a young person was spent seeing dork-asses yippy-kai-yay around on their horses with the trimmed manes. Cattle are excitable, but also they are the most docile creatures imaginable if treated with some patience. Start yelling and pushing them, and they will bolt and fight you the whole way.
So I told Pa about Sergio's claim that buffalo were hard to handle. He half-chuckled - a virtual gusher of response from the often-staid Pa.
"What, what is it Paw?" I asked him in the Little House On the Prairie voice, the plaintive one Melissa and Laura used when asking "How come, Paw?" and "What happined, Paw?" What a douche-baggy show. We watched it regularly, for tips on how we should behave as ruralites.
Pa cleared his throat several times. A neighbor had called and said they were going to round up some buffalo, could he help? Well, I don't think I'm doing anything that morning, yah, not working at the YMCA until next weekend. Saturday, sure, I could come over and maybe help a little.
{Conversation shortened}
Pa had this clever little plan. He went over a couple hours before the riders were to assemble, walking out in the buffalo pasture, wearing running shoes. He carried a sack with him. A herd of 20-25 buffalo, and my 73-year-old Pa has a sack.
He walked over toward them, far away but just moving toward them, until they looked up and paid a little attention to him. He upended the heavy part of the sack a little, dumping bovine foodstuff on the ground. All pastured animals know this gesture. It's food time.
One animal took a step toward the little food line dumped from the bag. That was all it took. Herd animals have complete inertia. They will stay standing where they are, grazing, always grazing, until one of the herd moves with purpose in one direction. Then, the others respond as if in a molecule, being pulled by one moving atom.
When the lead animal (usually a cow) reaches the pile and begins feeding, the rest come jogging over to eat. With not much there, they get a lick or a couple bites, but at least the smell and a little feeding frenzy. Hey, it's boring out on the plains. We watched Little House on the Prairie, to give you an example.
Meanwhile, Pa has ambled another quarter mile farther, where he waits until the buffalo have eaten every grain of corn or cake and are looking at him.
"Then I poured out a little more, a pretty decent little pile." Sure enough, here came the buffalo at a fast walk. Again they cleaned up the feed and looked at Frank.
"Then I walked into the middle of the corral and upended the feed sack in a pile. In came every single animal, and when they were eating I went over and shut the gate. It wasn't really that hard. They weren't stirred up at all. Seemed to be happy in the corral.
So I went on down to Jerry's (or whatever) place where the cowboys were starting to gather. Jerry asked me, 'where did you come from, Frank, I didn't see you drive up.' I told him I walked through the buffalo pasture and picked up the buffalo along the way. He said, 'Oh.' "
Sometimes you pick the Buck horse - the buckskin one. Sometimes you pick the Paint horse - the dappled one. You won't do wrong with Tom or Joe, but in any event it isn't just cowboying. You've got to have a decent horse.
If you want something done, go catch yourself the Frank horse.
Claroofus Jones
Monday, July 26, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
Hammer on the Right One
"Hammer on the right one until you hammer on the left one."
Seemingly this is the motto for driving these days. Gas is cheap again, but oil is at $80 a barrel. Nothing says collusion like pump price being the same whether oil is $35 a barrel or $80.
$5/gallon gas would be the best thing this country could have. Vehicle sizes would shrink towards the average vehicle size in the rest of the world - tiny.
Gasoline engines are about 20% efficient. That means 4/5ths of the gas in your tank is wasted every moment the engine is running. It's not wasted - it's turned into heat, which we definitely need more of here in mid-July.
One solution to burning less fuel comes with our handy bipedalism. That means we can push 2 pedals. Our neighborhood sits on a long, straight road with a nice shoulder, and dozens of bikes go by every hour.
A few weeks back I was watching Book TV on C-SPAN2, and this ultra intellectual, ivory-tower hippy referred to riding to work on his bi-cycle, having done so for 30 years.
He prounced it Bi Cycle, like you would if "cycle" was alone. It got me to thinking. The word unicycle is pronounced with the long y, if you will. Bicycle is regularly pronounced like Bi Sickle. So is tricycle. I think the ivory tower liberal had something.
I always thought it was a great compliment, someone calling me an ivory tower liberal. Then I found out the ivory tower referenced ornate buildings at fine institutions of higher learning. I had always thought they were talking about my schwantz.
We're into vocabulary week. I continue to hear people refer to this year as "Oh ten". As in 0-10. Sorry, Charlies. It's "Oh nine", but this year is ten. I know this because the original Dan Page used to refer to '14 and '10 as fourteen and ten. This was all worked out last century, and I guess we've collectively forgotten.
We spent the whole first decade of the 21st century without having anything to call the decade. I'd prefer the "naughts" or "aughts", but those words are also anachronisms, except for old reliable, the thirty aught-six rifle.
The first decade, we should call it "The Eggs". As in, "Remember the TV shows we watched in The Eggs? Who could believe anyone watched 'Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?' It was like kiddie Jeopardy on quaaludes. Yes, asshole, that is my final answer."
Can we now start referring to Tiger Woods in the singular? It seems appropriate. He is a very horny guy. Then again, who isn't? I don't blame Eldrick. If pussy was flowing to me so regularly that I was a veritable pussy lake, I wouldn't be running a sump pump.
Gimme one more. In school, there are 5 grades you can receive. A, B, C, D, and uh, F? What happened to E? Is that like buildings that don't have a 13th floor?
Seemingly this is the motto for driving these days. Gas is cheap again, but oil is at $80 a barrel. Nothing says collusion like pump price being the same whether oil is $35 a barrel or $80.
$5/gallon gas would be the best thing this country could have. Vehicle sizes would shrink towards the average vehicle size in the rest of the world - tiny.
Gasoline engines are about 20% efficient. That means 4/5ths of the gas in your tank is wasted every moment the engine is running. It's not wasted - it's turned into heat, which we definitely need more of here in mid-July.
One solution to burning less fuel comes with our handy bipedalism. That means we can push 2 pedals. Our neighborhood sits on a long, straight road with a nice shoulder, and dozens of bikes go by every hour.
A few weeks back I was watching Book TV on C-SPAN2, and this ultra intellectual, ivory-tower hippy referred to riding to work on his bi-cycle, having done so for 30 years.
He prounced it Bi Cycle, like you would if "cycle" was alone. It got me to thinking. The word unicycle is pronounced with the long y, if you will. Bicycle is regularly pronounced like Bi Sickle. So is tricycle. I think the ivory tower liberal had something.
I always thought it was a great compliment, someone calling me an ivory tower liberal. Then I found out the ivory tower referenced ornate buildings at fine institutions of higher learning. I had always thought they were talking about my schwantz.
We're into vocabulary week. I continue to hear people refer to this year as "Oh ten". As in 0-10. Sorry, Charlies. It's "Oh nine", but this year is ten. I know this because the original Dan Page used to refer to '14 and '10 as fourteen and ten. This was all worked out last century, and I guess we've collectively forgotten.
We spent the whole first decade of the 21st century without having anything to call the decade. I'd prefer the "naughts" or "aughts", but those words are also anachronisms, except for old reliable, the thirty aught-six rifle.
The first decade, we should call it "The Eggs". As in, "Remember the TV shows we watched in The Eggs? Who could believe anyone watched 'Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?' It was like kiddie Jeopardy on quaaludes. Yes, asshole, that is my final answer."
Can we now start referring to Tiger Woods in the singular? It seems appropriate. He is a very horny guy. Then again, who isn't? I don't blame Eldrick. If pussy was flowing to me so regularly that I was a veritable pussy lake, I wouldn't be running a sump pump.
Gimme one more. In school, there are 5 grades you can receive. A, B, C, D, and uh, F? What happened to E? Is that like buildings that don't have a 13th floor?
Friday, June 25, 2010
Vuvuzelva
Quimulus the Devout, reporting from South Africa:
We are once again posting live from South Africa, as translated from Jonesville, Colorado. Rather than hue closely to defined regional boundaries, I am presenting a join-matrix teleprompt merging the World Cup and wherever I may be playing, a veritable world away.
Hey, Television for years had their broadcasters in a Miami studio, issuing their breathless exhortations to taped soccer games. My Spanish blows, but otherwise I am using a time-tested formula.
A common plaint from viewers of the World Cup: Vuvuzelvas. These regional fart-horns are the scourge of the games.
I am a relative newcomer to soccer fanaticism, despite having played and watched in recent years. My housemate, the consumate futboler Ze Mimpy, has effectively dragged me into this addictive cult.
The fart-horns are nothing new to me. At boring phases of matches, trumpets or monotonal fart-horns are deployed at Latino American games. It is the trumpeting of someone in a herd, longing to have fun, but stuck in a herd at a tepid futbol match. The fart-horns are America's version of the wave.
The wave is so yesterday, but bored weirdos still attempt it at games. Last time I went to a Rockies game, I stopped a wave consisting of 1/3 of 30,000 fans by cold-cocking someone who rhythmically stood up with the putative wave, right next to me, just as Jeff Francis threw the pitch.
Ushers saw me do it; 15 of the purple-shirted eye-stabbers came at me from converging vectors. Before they descended upon me, all 1050 years of usher, they received instructions in their headsets from the crew chief that I had punched someone trying to propagate an ass wave, therefore vindicating me.
Within minutes, the acting club president had approached me with an offer of 4 field-level seat season tickets for 2011. I thought it was a nice gesture, but I only tipped them 10% because my knuckles were sore the next day, and the 80-year-old woman that I punched went whining to the Denver Post. She'd better hope she never sits in section 237, row 15, seat 7 again.
Somehow I was the bad guy in all this. Fuckin' BP. It's been all downhill since mid-April. Fuckin' Obama. Do I have to pick up EVERYONE's slack?
Vuvuzelva is an interesting noun. It automatically contracts to Vulva for me, and I will not answer to things that happen for me subconsciously. People blowing on vulvas is okay by me, even if the rest of the listening world is distracted. I do the same thing every day.
When people are at a stop light next to me, talking on the phone, I turn my car stereo up all the way. If I can hear them talking through their open window, they will need to conduct their phone call over my vulva noise, which is usually some disgusting steel guitar country song.
I have this friend Bastiaan, a man who was annointed with vowels early, especially "a". His name causes confusion here, because it is not one of the univowel type of Amerikanski name - Rob, Vern, Dan, Jim, Tim, Rim, John, and the list is endless. All the whining white pieces of shit we know have such a name. The guys anyway. Norm, Mark, Bill. I get sick of looking at it. Damned univowelers.
Well, Bastiaan Cornelissen is quite a futboler. I hate him because he is better than me at futbol, and I have really tried. He is a Netherlander, not a Hollander, so of course he can kick my ass at futbol.
His name is a theme in the Copa Mundial. First, Michel Bastos, which is a bastardization of Cornelissen brothers Michael and Bastiaaan. He is Brazil's attacking back, and a quiet bastard at that.
Over in Germany, the erstwhile Lord of Netherlands, you have the star midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger.
My crack Euro-language reporter Bastiaan (blogging from Utrecht, Netherlands) reports that Bastian Schweinsteiger's name must be a joke. The English translation of his name is Hog Mounter. That is not a joke. In German, schwein is hog, steiner is mounter or climber. I respect Schweinsteiger's futbol acumen and care not what he does in his leisure time.
Reporting for ESPN is FIFA player of the year, Dutch futboler Marco van Basten. Is this the year of the Bastion at the World Cup? Stranger things have happened. I think it's my year, too. Danny Alves, Dani - the comparison names keep coming up.
The Chinese write that the signs find each other in their mates - the ox and the snake, the ram and the crab - whatever. In my own personal case, I think the Chinese have an inadequate description. I am the stool, she is the plow. How that fits together is another topic.
For Switzerland we have the futboler Lichtsteiner. Damn they are graphic in Europe. The head of FIFA is known as Sepp Blatter, which roughly translates as urinary tract infection. Swiss futboler Tranqillo Barnetta's first name means "peace". From Cameroon we have a Bong and a Song, and isn't that what makes a decent party? A bong, a song, and a black mouth - Carlos Bocanegra, anchoring the USA defense.
Reporting from Pretoria,
Quimulus the Devout
We are once again posting live from South Africa, as translated from Jonesville, Colorado. Rather than hue closely to defined regional boundaries, I am presenting a join-matrix teleprompt merging the World Cup and wherever I may be playing, a veritable world away.
Hey, Television for years had their broadcasters in a Miami studio, issuing their breathless exhortations to taped soccer games. My Spanish blows, but otherwise I am using a time-tested formula.
A common plaint from viewers of the World Cup: Vuvuzelvas. These regional fart-horns are the scourge of the games.
I am a relative newcomer to soccer fanaticism, despite having played and watched in recent years. My housemate, the consumate futboler Ze Mimpy, has effectively dragged me into this addictive cult.
The fart-horns are nothing new to me. At boring phases of matches, trumpets or monotonal fart-horns are deployed at Latino American games. It is the trumpeting of someone in a herd, longing to have fun, but stuck in a herd at a tepid futbol match. The fart-horns are America's version of the wave.
The wave is so yesterday, but bored weirdos still attempt it at games. Last time I went to a Rockies game, I stopped a wave consisting of 1/3 of 30,000 fans by cold-cocking someone who rhythmically stood up with the putative wave, right next to me, just as Jeff Francis threw the pitch.
Ushers saw me do it; 15 of the purple-shirted eye-stabbers came at me from converging vectors. Before they descended upon me, all 1050 years of usher, they received instructions in their headsets from the crew chief that I had punched someone trying to propagate an ass wave, therefore vindicating me.
Within minutes, the acting club president had approached me with an offer of 4 field-level seat season tickets for 2011. I thought it was a nice gesture, but I only tipped them 10% because my knuckles were sore the next day, and the 80-year-old woman that I punched went whining to the Denver Post. She'd better hope she never sits in section 237, row 15, seat 7 again.
Somehow I was the bad guy in all this. Fuckin' BP. It's been all downhill since mid-April. Fuckin' Obama. Do I have to pick up EVERYONE's slack?
Vuvuzelva is an interesting noun. It automatically contracts to Vulva for me, and I will not answer to things that happen for me subconsciously. People blowing on vulvas is okay by me, even if the rest of the listening world is distracted. I do the same thing every day.
When people are at a stop light next to me, talking on the phone, I turn my car stereo up all the way. If I can hear them talking through their open window, they will need to conduct their phone call over my vulva noise, which is usually some disgusting steel guitar country song.
I have this friend Bastiaan, a man who was annointed with vowels early, especially "a". His name causes confusion here, because it is not one of the univowel type of Amerikanski name - Rob, Vern, Dan, Jim, Tim, Rim, John, and the list is endless. All the whining white pieces of shit we know have such a name. The guys anyway. Norm, Mark, Bill. I get sick of looking at it. Damned univowelers.
Well, Bastiaan Cornelissen is quite a futboler. I hate him because he is better than me at futbol, and I have really tried. He is a Netherlander, not a Hollander, so of course he can kick my ass at futbol.
His name is a theme in the Copa Mundial. First, Michel Bastos, which is a bastardization of Cornelissen brothers Michael and Bastiaaan. He is Brazil's attacking back, and a quiet bastard at that.
Over in Germany, the erstwhile Lord of Netherlands, you have the star midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger.
My crack Euro-language reporter Bastiaan (blogging from Utrecht, Netherlands) reports that Bastian Schweinsteiger's name must be a joke. The English translation of his name is Hog Mounter. That is not a joke. In German, schwein is hog, steiner is mounter or climber. I respect Schweinsteiger's futbol acumen and care not what he does in his leisure time.
Reporting for ESPN is FIFA player of the year, Dutch futboler Marco van Basten. Is this the year of the Bastion at the World Cup? Stranger things have happened. I think it's my year, too. Danny Alves, Dani - the comparison names keep coming up.
The Chinese write that the signs find each other in their mates - the ox and the snake, the ram and the crab - whatever. In my own personal case, I think the Chinese have an inadequate description. I am the stool, she is the plow. How that fits together is another topic.
For Switzerland we have the futboler Lichtsteiner. Damn they are graphic in Europe. The head of FIFA is known as Sepp Blatter, which roughly translates as urinary tract infection. Swiss futboler Tranqillo Barnetta's first name means "peace". From Cameroon we have a Bong and a Song, and isn't that what makes a decent party? A bong, a song, and a black mouth - Carlos Bocanegra, anchoring the USA defense.
Reporting from Pretoria,
Quimulus the Devout
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Who Else?
I'm in the computer industry. The rectangular, 6-outlet blocks I call plug-ins or power strips are correctly known as surge protectors. Hmm. Surge protectors. Sounds like a euphemism for condoms. Phrasing is so important in product branding.
Speaking of genitals, I can't help notice my own proud, handsome... No, that's not what I'm after just now. I'm here to report on the World Cup, one of those behind the scenes, hard hitting documentaries about life in South Africa. Like something Bryant Gumbel would do on HBO.
Life as a woman is hard. Ask any of the worldwide representatives of this condition - there are right at 3.5 billion of them. They will document at length how bad it is, any of them.
Life in Africa is berry hard. South Africa's AIDS cases make that country (and the rest of the dreaded sub-Saharan Africa region that you always get asked about when you donate blood) a desperately difficult place to live for many, many.
They're poor. Good shit, I'm going to drop $400 for a set of tires and I won't even blink. Well, maybe once or twice as the asshole, 24-year-old, slicked-back douche tries to sell me more expensive tires and rotation warranties.
$400 would be a stellar half-year's wages for a large segment of South Africa.
Okay, you understand, it's hard to be a black woman in South Africa. But listen to this.
From Sweden, a Dr. Sonnet Ehlers has invented a device known as the Rape-aXe. Rape is so prevalent in South Africa that the darkness of night creates curfew for women. Better to be where you must go 2 hours before dark, and even then it is about as safe for a woman as being held hostage in a maximum security prison riot.
Rape is epidemic in South Africa. I'm not talking about date rape or regret rape or spousal rape or any of the ways that rape has become a teddy bear for U.S. women. I don't minimize these categories; I just want to define what rape we are talking about.
I'm talking about grab her on the street rape. Often from gangs; a disturbing amount of the time with vicious beating and scarring and humiliation rituals beyond the terror of gang rape.
Poor women can't afford a doctor, or anything for that matter. They drag themselves home and try to get back going soon, because any woman who doesn't is no more than a bug in South Africa. She may get AIDS from the assault. She may have one of the rapists' children, pregnant in addition to the soul-shattering. And on and on. They'll all be hungry tomorrow.
Rape-aXe, a physical deterrent to screwing. This a device combines two concepts: a flexible rubber tube and an iron maiden.
The iron maiden is a medieval torture device that stands you up in a suit of armor, effectively - like an upright metal cabinet. Copious holes in the metal enable the sticking of knives and needles and anything that you fancy into the victim (I mean, the interviewee - sorry, Uncle Dick Cheney) to torture and murder said potential Al Qaeda #3 candidate.
Rape-aXe fits inside the excitement chamber and does not hurt the woman. Seemingly, it would be an untenable solution wearing a small culvert inside you, until you (the guy reader or the guy writer) consider this:
Women wear tampons periodically throughout their fertile years. They roll around with diaphragms and other IUD's. Lest we forget, with movies to remind us, their turnstiles are spun many times in and around the fertile years.
Sometimes the molehill expands to add a new room, the result of an infant coming through. The Rape-aXe is just another carry-around twat utility, if you will.
When a woman deploys a Rape-aXe, a man's meat-pile inserted into the Venus Homey Trap gets seized, like shit you owe taxes on. Grabbed like Palestinean land with an Israeli house on it. Like avoiding the fee at the anachronism known as drive-in theaters, going in the exit lane and popping tires.
More like it, from my younger days, like a raccoon in a steel trap. That garden is OFF LIMITS.
The Rape-aXe stays hooked on a cock even more effectively than, say, a 70-pound snapping turtle. It's not that the force is so great, like the jaws of a large snapper, but the makers of this device describe the experience of a cock-affixed Rape-aXe as akin to accidentally zipping Mr. Johnson in one's jeans.
I would like to know how they did the testing on this. "Okay, Paul, now that we've adjusted the device not to penetrate your urethra, how would you describe the pain?
1. Pain of sitting in a room with orange walls.
2. Pain of the daily alarm clock.
3. Hurts, but life hurts, so go talk to some sissy if you want a bunch of whining.
4. Hurts like being a Boston Celtic fan (in other words, being a whiny pussy).
5. Hurts like classic country music lyrics.
6. Hurts like falling off your bike.
7. Hurts, don't it?
8. Pain. Ow.
9. Listening to Wham!
10. Getting stuck in a car that flipped upside down, trapped for hours listening to a Wham! tape repeat.
11. Admitting in any way that you enjoyed the music of Wham!
12. Bully-punch pain.
13. Getting laughed at by cute chicks pain.
14. Dad whipping you pain.
15. Parents getting divorced pain.
16. Dick in a zipper.
17. Rape.
18. Stage 4 bone cancer.
19. A pack of rottweilers chomping my dick.
20. An eternity of custom-designed torment in hell.
20. Watching the Sex and the City sequel.
Note that the 2 #20 entries are not tied for 20th - they are the same thing.
The clamp stays on your cock. You cannot have it removed without surgery, and if you decide to tough it out, there is unpleasantness. You won't be able to piss. It comes in handy to piss, let me tell you.
That's our story from Soweto, the brutal underbelly of South Africa, which is dubbed "The Rape Capital of the World". Hey, we're number one! Not like the Bafana Bafana are going to do anything worthwhile in the World Cup.
I'm Claroofus Jones, reporting from South Africa. And yes, I am wearing a Rape-aXe in my ass right now. An empty one, so far.
Here's the thing. Such a device has been around for ages - a simpler model, but without moving parts and no literal teeth on your dick, just a piece of paper.
It's called the m-ARRiage. If you happen to sink into the wrong punani, you can't get out unless you go to a lawyer. You may never use Mr. John Henry in the same way again, after m-ARRiage is removed.
Appealing to women, the guy usually pays for the m-ARRiage device, whereas women have to buy the Rape-aXe (aka, the Jaws of Wife).
As usual, South America is way behind in culture and technology.
Claroofus Jones
Speaking of genitals, I can't help notice my own proud, handsome... No, that's not what I'm after just now. I'm here to report on the World Cup, one of those behind the scenes, hard hitting documentaries about life in South Africa. Like something Bryant Gumbel would do on HBO.
Life as a woman is hard. Ask any of the worldwide representatives of this condition - there are right at 3.5 billion of them. They will document at length how bad it is, any of them.
Life in Africa is berry hard. South Africa's AIDS cases make that country (and the rest of the dreaded sub-Saharan Africa region that you always get asked about when you donate blood) a desperately difficult place to live for many, many.
They're poor. Good shit, I'm going to drop $400 for a set of tires and I won't even blink. Well, maybe once or twice as the asshole, 24-year-old, slicked-back douche tries to sell me more expensive tires and rotation warranties.
$400 would be a stellar half-year's wages for a large segment of South Africa.
Okay, you understand, it's hard to be a black woman in South Africa. But listen to this.
From Sweden, a Dr. Sonnet Ehlers has invented a device known as the Rape-aXe. Rape is so prevalent in South Africa that the darkness of night creates curfew for women. Better to be where you must go 2 hours before dark, and even then it is about as safe for a woman as being held hostage in a maximum security prison riot.
Rape is epidemic in South Africa. I'm not talking about date rape or regret rape or spousal rape or any of the ways that rape has become a teddy bear for U.S. women. I don't minimize these categories; I just want to define what rape we are talking about.
I'm talking about grab her on the street rape. Often from gangs; a disturbing amount of the time with vicious beating and scarring and humiliation rituals beyond the terror of gang rape.
Poor women can't afford a doctor, or anything for that matter. They drag themselves home and try to get back going soon, because any woman who doesn't is no more than a bug in South Africa. She may get AIDS from the assault. She may have one of the rapists' children, pregnant in addition to the soul-shattering. And on and on. They'll all be hungry tomorrow.
Rape-aXe, a physical deterrent to screwing. This a device combines two concepts: a flexible rubber tube and an iron maiden.
The iron maiden is a medieval torture device that stands you up in a suit of armor, effectively - like an upright metal cabinet. Copious holes in the metal enable the sticking of knives and needles and anything that you fancy into the victim (I mean, the interviewee - sorry, Uncle Dick Cheney) to torture and murder said potential Al Qaeda #3 candidate.
Rape-aXe fits inside the excitement chamber and does not hurt the woman. Seemingly, it would be an untenable solution wearing a small culvert inside you, until you (the guy reader or the guy writer) consider this:
Women wear tampons periodically throughout their fertile years. They roll around with diaphragms and other IUD's. Lest we forget, with movies to remind us, their turnstiles are spun many times in and around the fertile years.
Sometimes the molehill expands to add a new room, the result of an infant coming through. The Rape-aXe is just another carry-around twat utility, if you will.
When a woman deploys a Rape-aXe, a man's meat-pile inserted into the Venus Homey Trap gets seized, like shit you owe taxes on. Grabbed like Palestinean land with an Israeli house on it. Like avoiding the fee at the anachronism known as drive-in theaters, going in the exit lane and popping tires.
More like it, from my younger days, like a raccoon in a steel trap. That garden is OFF LIMITS.
The Rape-aXe stays hooked on a cock even more effectively than, say, a 70-pound snapping turtle. It's not that the force is so great, like the jaws of a large snapper, but the makers of this device describe the experience of a cock-affixed Rape-aXe as akin to accidentally zipping Mr. Johnson in one's jeans.
I would like to know how they did the testing on this. "Okay, Paul, now that we've adjusted the device not to penetrate your urethra, how would you describe the pain?
1. Pain of sitting in a room with orange walls.
2. Pain of the daily alarm clock.
3. Hurts, but life hurts, so go talk to some sissy if you want a bunch of whining.
4. Hurts like being a Boston Celtic fan (in other words, being a whiny pussy).
5. Hurts like classic country music lyrics.
6. Hurts like falling off your bike.
7. Hurts, don't it?
8. Pain. Ow.
9. Listening to Wham!
10. Getting stuck in a car that flipped upside down, trapped for hours listening to a Wham! tape repeat.
11. Admitting in any way that you enjoyed the music of Wham!
12. Bully-punch pain.
13. Getting laughed at by cute chicks pain.
14. Dad whipping you pain.
15. Parents getting divorced pain.
16. Dick in a zipper.
17. Rape.
18. Stage 4 bone cancer.
19. A pack of rottweilers chomping my dick.
20. An eternity of custom-designed torment in hell.
20. Watching the Sex and the City sequel.
Note that the 2 #20 entries are not tied for 20th - they are the same thing.
The clamp stays on your cock. You cannot have it removed without surgery, and if you decide to tough it out, there is unpleasantness. You won't be able to piss. It comes in handy to piss, let me tell you.
That's our story from Soweto, the brutal underbelly of South Africa, which is dubbed "The Rape Capital of the World". Hey, we're number one! Not like the Bafana Bafana are going to do anything worthwhile in the World Cup.
I'm Claroofus Jones, reporting from South Africa. And yes, I am wearing a Rape-aXe in my ass right now. An empty one, so far.
Here's the thing. Such a device has been around for ages - a simpler model, but without moving parts and no literal teeth on your dick, just a piece of paper.
It's called the m-ARRiage. If you happen to sink into the wrong punani, you can't get out unless you go to a lawyer. You may never use Mr. John Henry in the same way again, after m-ARRiage is removed.
Appealing to women, the guy usually pays for the m-ARRiage device, whereas women have to buy the Rape-aXe (aka, the Jaws of Wife).
As usual, South America is way behind in culture and technology.
Claroofus Jones
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Community News
"A friend received tutelage at the Page residence for 3 weeks." This sounds straight out of a small-community newspaper. Such publications are frugal in budget, the community they report on more frugal yet, on toward austere, in the way of events. "Dale Guptill reports a lot of grasshoppers around his place."
The small newspaper relies on articles from people who write community news. A volunteer from each community calls neighbors and finds out what they've been doing, regurgitating the information in print, without embellishment, garnish, or prose style.
Community news is pure drivel, trivia below the repeat level. Events not worthy of being recorded, devoid of substance. Such dross threatens to lower the reader's biorhythms so low their reptilian brain starts to shut down.
"Jeremy Case spent most of Wednesday getting his cows back in the pasture. The recent snow pushed the fence down and sure enough, the cows found that down place and went right through."
"Bonnie Cecil made brownies for the Legion fundraiser."
I sniff my nose at such rint, but him are the liar that says him don't read the news from each and every community - Vetal, Long Valley, Green Valley, Interior. Even Tuthill, I'm sad to confess.
Aren't these personal writing sites, so-called blogs, just community news with updated technology?
-------------------
"A friend received tutelage at the Page residence for 3 weeks." I invited my friend Drizzel Phume here for resume boot camp, 3 weeks of intense, focused work on his resume and how to pursue the elusive job. Common theme last year; I really felt that Phume could land a job even in this turd job market. I worked with him roughly 1 epoch ago at Lockheed in Sunnyvale, CA, and though he is a math major, he does a passable imitation of a software engineer. Believe me, that is better than a lot of the sad sacks in the IT (information technology) industry.
It was grueling. We must have spent close to 7 minutes a day on the getting-job pursuit.
This is what came out of it:
Top 15 accomplishments of the trip:
15. Walk to the store to get bread, eat good chicken parm, walk home
14. Pizza and massage to break out of a persistent dual hangover
13. Toilet kit replacement
12. Colombian hats!
11. African band at the St. Juliens
10. Intro to SQL Server class
9. Haute cuisine on the high plains, home cookin'
8. The Great Fire of Congo Jones' Back Yard
7. Resume update
6. Billiards and hot tub. Billiards and hot tub. Billiards and hot tub.
5. Jonesing on Jones' music
4. Talking to lissome, earthy, appealing young chicks at the St. Julien
3. Drizzel file-sharing his collection of movies. Hard drive!
2. Tet! Unbelievable food, reunion with Tuna, another pool tournament victory.
1. Kansas game.
As to #7, Drizzel got a job. He's been at it for almost 2 months.
--------------
About 4:07 PM at work every day, I get the feelin'. Like a 2.8 Richter-scale rumble.
I don't like making my drop at work. You've got these Larry Craig types who sit in the middle stall, so you're likely to encounter the wide stance, the foot tapping, the absent sounds of crapping.
Who sits in the middle one when 3 are available? Are you that starved for male love? Just ask me out! Damn, you don't have to sit in the middle stall.
One guy uses the sanitary seat covers. I won't kid you, I have scant time for that level of hypochondria.
A sign in the bathroom reads, "Restrooms are for your convenience. Please help to maintain a germ-free environment."
Now we're in a clean room. People, we're going to have to realize something. We're taking a dump. We're washing our hands. We have our hands on our genitalia. Germ-free is a little naive, given the reality of the proliferation of germs.
I find it interesting to call a restroom a convenience. I thought it was something a little bit more than that. If you think about it, a restroom is an expensive attempt at a healthy, disease-free workplace. More than a convenience, I would think. Legally mandated, also. I believe something that is required is above the convenience level. I hate to say it, but I NEED it.
I would gladly take a dump in one of the deserted hallways of the 3rd floor, if the management company chose to remove our conveniences. Buncha clowns down there, playa-hatin' on 4th floor. I'd just as soon leave yesterday's burrito outside the abandoned Countrywide Home Loans office, an utter sham and ripoff of a company, defunct on our taxpayer dime. I should behave like I'm a dog that smells another dog's piss and reflexively lets loose his own sef. Every time, I see the Countrywide logo, I vacate bowel.
I love talking about the human condition. I'm waiting for some university to grant me an honorary Doctor of Scatology award.
Every day at work, right around 4:07, I get the feelin'. I drink water, walk around. I don't want to deal with the Larry Craig types on the 3rd floor or leave my signature of gastrointestinal distress with one of my co-workers in the 4th floor Juancho. The situation is not resolved easily.
Air fresheners are scant help. That air ain't fresh; I just made sure of that.
However, once I'm home, I relax 20 minutes and smile. A different feeling occupies me. "I'm gonna send one on down to Civil."
Less than a half mile away sits the Boulder Wastewater Treatment Plant. That's where our treasure goes. The convenient restrooms in the convenient office buildings end up right over there, lovingly tended to by a civil engineer. All the stuff from my house. My neighbors' houses. Anyone who doesn't battle the late-spring mosquitoes for a sylvan release.
Civils like their jobs. People who work at Checkers and Pep Boys like cars; Civil engineers like _____. This type of question is why I did so well on standardized tests.
In college, one of my classmates was a Civil. He had a textbook for a senior-level class. One day he was carrying it, and I read the spine. "Rates of Solid Waste". Here before me was a trained shit counter. I had never thought much about my dung, and right beside me were people aspiring to count it, handle it, manage it, earn from it.
What a learning experience, college.
Civil engineers are the dung beetles of superfauna. They're waiting on it. Civils loll about aimlessly until the folk upstream do the Bad Burrito Water Slide. Then it's up-and-at-'em, the work has just begun.
I am happy to accommodate them. Is the root of "accommodate" in fact "commode"? I had never thought about that, either.
Now it makes sense, thinking about how Tom Horan used to ogle me lustfully. I always thought he was a major league gaylord, but now I realize he was after something else. He'd always give me a quick once over and gesture with his eyebrows. His thought bubble was:
"Well, how about it? Are you in the mood?"
Quimulus the Devout
The small newspaper relies on articles from people who write community news. A volunteer from each community calls neighbors and finds out what they've been doing, regurgitating the information in print, without embellishment, garnish, or prose style.
Community news is pure drivel, trivia below the repeat level. Events not worthy of being recorded, devoid of substance. Such dross threatens to lower the reader's biorhythms so low their reptilian brain starts to shut down.
"Jeremy Case spent most of Wednesday getting his cows back in the pasture. The recent snow pushed the fence down and sure enough, the cows found that down place and went right through."
"Bonnie Cecil made brownies for the Legion fundraiser."
I sniff my nose at such rint, but him are the liar that says him don't read the news from each and every community - Vetal, Long Valley, Green Valley, Interior. Even Tuthill, I'm sad to confess.
Aren't these personal writing sites, so-called blogs, just community news with updated technology?
-------------------
"A friend received tutelage at the Page residence for 3 weeks." I invited my friend Drizzel Phume here for resume boot camp, 3 weeks of intense, focused work on his resume and how to pursue the elusive job. Common theme last year; I really felt that Phume could land a job even in this turd job market. I worked with him roughly 1 epoch ago at Lockheed in Sunnyvale, CA, and though he is a math major, he does a passable imitation of a software engineer. Believe me, that is better than a lot of the sad sacks in the IT (information technology) industry.
It was grueling. We must have spent close to 7 minutes a day on the getting-job pursuit.
This is what came out of it:
Top 15 accomplishments of the trip:
15. Walk to the store to get bread, eat good chicken parm, walk home
14. Pizza and massage to break out of a persistent dual hangover
13. Toilet kit replacement
12. Colombian hats!
11. African band at the St. Juliens
10. Intro to SQL Server class
9. Haute cuisine on the high plains, home cookin'
8. The Great Fire of Congo Jones' Back Yard
7. Resume update
6. Billiards and hot tub. Billiards and hot tub. Billiards and hot tub.
5. Jonesing on Jones' music
4. Talking to lissome, earthy, appealing young chicks at the St. Julien
3. Drizzel file-sharing his collection of movies. Hard drive!
2. Tet! Unbelievable food, reunion with Tuna, another pool tournament victory.
1. Kansas game.
As to #7, Drizzel got a job. He's been at it for almost 2 months.
--------------
About 4:07 PM at work every day, I get the feelin'. Like a 2.8 Richter-scale rumble.
I don't like making my drop at work. You've got these Larry Craig types who sit in the middle stall, so you're likely to encounter the wide stance, the foot tapping, the absent sounds of crapping.
Who sits in the middle one when 3 are available? Are you that starved for male love? Just ask me out! Damn, you don't have to sit in the middle stall.
One guy uses the sanitary seat covers. I won't kid you, I have scant time for that level of hypochondria.
A sign in the bathroom reads, "Restrooms are for your convenience. Please help to maintain a germ-free environment."
Now we're in a clean room. People, we're going to have to realize something. We're taking a dump. We're washing our hands. We have our hands on our genitalia. Germ-free is a little naive, given the reality of the proliferation of germs.
I find it interesting to call a restroom a convenience. I thought it was something a little bit more than that. If you think about it, a restroom is an expensive attempt at a healthy, disease-free workplace. More than a convenience, I would think. Legally mandated, also. I believe something that is required is above the convenience level. I hate to say it, but I NEED it.
I would gladly take a dump in one of the deserted hallways of the 3rd floor, if the management company chose to remove our conveniences. Buncha clowns down there, playa-hatin' on 4th floor. I'd just as soon leave yesterday's burrito outside the abandoned Countrywide Home Loans office, an utter sham and ripoff of a company, defunct on our taxpayer dime. I should behave like I'm a dog that smells another dog's piss and reflexively lets loose his own sef. Every time, I see the Countrywide logo, I vacate bowel.
I love talking about the human condition. I'm waiting for some university to grant me an honorary Doctor of Scatology award.
Every day at work, right around 4:07, I get the feelin'. I drink water, walk around. I don't want to deal with the Larry Craig types on the 3rd floor or leave my signature of gastrointestinal distress with one of my co-workers in the 4th floor Juancho. The situation is not resolved easily.
Air fresheners are scant help. That air ain't fresh; I just made sure of that.
However, once I'm home, I relax 20 minutes and smile. A different feeling occupies me. "I'm gonna send one on down to Civil."
Less than a half mile away sits the Boulder Wastewater Treatment Plant. That's where our treasure goes. The convenient restrooms in the convenient office buildings end up right over there, lovingly tended to by a civil engineer. All the stuff from my house. My neighbors' houses. Anyone who doesn't battle the late-spring mosquitoes for a sylvan release.
Civils like their jobs. People who work at Checkers and Pep Boys like cars; Civil engineers like _____. This type of question is why I did so well on standardized tests.
In college, one of my classmates was a Civil. He had a textbook for a senior-level class. One day he was carrying it, and I read the spine. "Rates of Solid Waste". Here before me was a trained shit counter. I had never thought much about my dung, and right beside me were people aspiring to count it, handle it, manage it, earn from it.
What a learning experience, college.
Civil engineers are the dung beetles of superfauna. They're waiting on it. Civils loll about aimlessly until the folk upstream do the Bad Burrito Water Slide. Then it's up-and-at-'em, the work has just begun.
I am happy to accommodate them. Is the root of "accommodate" in fact "commode"? I had never thought about that, either.
Now it makes sense, thinking about how Tom Horan used to ogle me lustfully. I always thought he was a major league gaylord, but now I realize he was after something else. He'd always give me a quick once over and gesture with his eyebrows. His thought bubble was:
"Well, how about it? Are you in the mood?"
Quimulus the Devout
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Front Range
A long time ago, in a faraway place, Mike Gutierres said something to me. Faraway might be exaggerating, but 415 miles is a long way on foot.
He said, "You ought to quit your job and focus on writing. Then again, you seem to draw a lot of inspiration from frustrating work situations."
Boredom is writing fuel. Frustration. I wasn't feeling frustrated enough at work, so I went and got myself elected to the Homeowners' Board again. Some smart-ass nominated me, and seeing as how there were 3 seats and 3 candidates, I was voted in (with fewer votes than either of my competitors). I could have told them to go bugger, but I crave boredom. I chose this boredom because it is a nice, local source.
There are a cut of people who function only to yawp at the board. One shrill shrew almost induced me to loosen the honesty valve. She is the torchbearer of the torches-and-pitchforks crowd, which is effectively a teabagger party within our Condoplex, dissent as their primary mission.
They don't run for the board, ever. No new excuses for years, only the one: "I don't have time." Time to kick my balls each and every meeting, but not time enough to sit at the meeting table.
After the minor flare-up from Shrill Shrew, we waded through triviata for 55 more minutes. A pitchman for a local solar firm presented a solar panel rental solution for our rooftops, replete with long-term figures for how much we would benefit.
As he presented his crafted bullshit, my mind wandered. How could we not do the bidding of a man who looks so much like Larry Bird? Salesman didn't have a Terre Haute, Indiana accent, nor was he 6' 8". I'll bet my Cadillac (oh, wait, already pawned that), okay, my Civic, that I could beat him in a H-O-R-S-E contest.
Question from someone: "Can you give us references for work your company has done in this area?"
A: "We have installed units up and down the Front Range, and we have a list of people who will be happy to tell you their solar systems... blah blah blah....."
Jones looks out the window, listening only somewhat more than during sleep. A window in the conference room - bad idea. Distraction potential.
Women playing tennis on the courts tonight, shunting all future words from Larry Bird into the bit bucket. Jones can still hear the mellifluous voice of Can't-Carry-Jones'-Jock-At-Hoop in the background but focuses on the visual stimuli.
Jones' thought bubble: "Oh, yeah, honey, I'd like to install my unit up and down your front range. C'mon, go to the net! Go to the net!"
-----------
My longtime classmate, nemesis and friend Sean Casey is on the verge of accepting customers to Bearizona, a tourist dairy on State Highway 40, Williams, Arizona. Caution: before visiting Arizona, cut a thin strip from a plain sheet of paper. Face your right palm downward and lay the paper strip over your right forearm. If you cannot distinguish where the paper ends and the skin begins, you are good to go!! If not, make sure and take papers!!! And backups!!!! Practica su Ingles!!!!!
Willams, Arizona is the turnoff point for the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, which is the side nearly 85% of tourists visit. Mainly this is because of demographics, with populations distributed heavily South.
Most don't go via the scary Northern Rim entrance. This entrance passes through FLDS country. LDS stands for Latter Day Saints - Mormons. The "F" stand for Whackjob. National Geographic did an article about this most culturally bizarre place in the United States, the community of Hilldale/Colorado City in Southern Utah/Northern Arizona.
Not mentioned in the Nat Geo article are all the technically single women there who draw welfare. They are plural wives, but since that isn't allowed by law, they declare as single and draw welfare, food stamps, any handout available. White welfare at its most glaring. You don't hear a lot about that on the 24-7 Republican propaganda vehicles.
Meanwhile, in Williams, Arizona, not much is going on. Rather, not much WAS going on.
The new drive-through wildlife park is big news in this 3000-person villa of nowhere on the highway.
Bearizona was scheduled to open in bare bones fashion May 22nd, several days ago. This reporter has been too lazy to find out if the first paying touri have matriculated through the park, where they have the potential of seeing bears, goats, rabbits, grasshoppers, cats, rodents, deer, dogs, and foxes; all shitting copiously. Sort of like my front yard.
The grand opening is later in June. News is scant from that remote part of the world, but I understand road construction is somewhat behind schedule. Currently, access to this wildlife park requires a Class IV climber's license. All climbers must undergo a rigourous equipment check before being allowed in to the park.
Well, maybe it's not quite that primitive. When Sean described to me a bare-bones opening, I envisioned something else.
You notice I fail to quote any of my idioms? Bare bones, no quotes. Rigourous, intentional England mis-spelling, no quotes. This is a writing rule: Don't put quotes around common references. It makes it appear that you, the writer, are VERY proud of having used a clever idiom. I'm here to tell you, idiots can use idioms. Save pixels, omit quotes.
I envisioned the bare-bones opening as being Sean sitting by Highway 40 in a lawn chair under a shade umbrella, handing out fliers at a stop sign. "Wanna see my chicken? Only 75 cents. I got me a REAL fine chicken on a tether right back chur and all you got to do is pay 75 cents. Whole family, only a one dollar fifty. Who wants to see 'eem? He's a good one, I tell ya."
www.bearizona.com
I hope no immigrants ruin this thing for Sean. You know, the wave of anti-immigration laws in Arizona. Okay, 2 laws, not a wave.
As Wanda Sykes riffed, "Why do they call them illegal immigrants? Illegal makes it sound like they're doing something bad. If somebody broke into my house - and started cleaning it? I don't think I'd call the cops."
Members of the Williams-Grand Canyon Chamber of Commerce prepare to cut a ribbon during a ceremony to mark Bearizona’s opening May 22. Pictured center are owners Sean Casey, Dennis Casey and Williams Mayor John Moore.
This photo is from the Williams News, a quasi-newspaper.
http://www.williamsnews.com/
Just for clarification, the guy in the center of the photo who appears to be attempting to chop off his own dick, that's Dennis Casey. Looks like he rode a motorcycle sans helmet to the event all the way from Rapid City, South Dakota.
The reverent-looking kid holding the purple rectangle (to the right of Dennis) is Sean Casey. Sean did everything on this project; Dennis is the figurehead, party-boy executive producer, the ilk that wear sunglasses with blue bows, like you would buy at a flea market for $3.99.
To the left of Dennis (reverse of the order listed in the photo caption) stands mustachial mayor John Moore. I hope that's the mayor. Otherwise, the mayor is the guy in the watch cap standing behind Sean. "Dude, as Mayor of Williams, I am proud to say that I think you're going to kick some serious ass, man. Party on!"
No, but really, judging by the crease in the Wranglers, the photo's tallest cowboy hat is mayor. He is wearing boots as part of his costume. Dennis is wearing boots for no discernible reason. Sean does not wear boots.
ROAD TRIP!!
Quimulus the Devout
He said, "You ought to quit your job and focus on writing. Then again, you seem to draw a lot of inspiration from frustrating work situations."
Boredom is writing fuel. Frustration. I wasn't feeling frustrated enough at work, so I went and got myself elected to the Homeowners' Board again. Some smart-ass nominated me, and seeing as how there were 3 seats and 3 candidates, I was voted in (with fewer votes than either of my competitors). I could have told them to go bugger, but I crave boredom. I chose this boredom because it is a nice, local source.
There are a cut of people who function only to yawp at the board. One shrill shrew almost induced me to loosen the honesty valve. She is the torchbearer of the torches-and-pitchforks crowd, which is effectively a teabagger party within our Condoplex, dissent as their primary mission.
They don't run for the board, ever. No new excuses for years, only the one: "I don't have time." Time to kick my balls each and every meeting, but not time enough to sit at the meeting table.
After the minor flare-up from Shrill Shrew, we waded through triviata for 55 more minutes. A pitchman for a local solar firm presented a solar panel rental solution for our rooftops, replete with long-term figures for how much we would benefit.
As he presented his crafted bullshit, my mind wandered. How could we not do the bidding of a man who looks so much like Larry Bird? Salesman didn't have a Terre Haute, Indiana accent, nor was he 6' 8". I'll bet my Cadillac (oh, wait, already pawned that), okay, my Civic, that I could beat him in a H-O-R-S-E contest.
Question from someone: "Can you give us references for work your company has done in this area?"
A: "We have installed units up and down the Front Range, and we have a list of people who will be happy to tell you their solar systems... blah blah blah....."
Jones looks out the window, listening only somewhat more than during sleep. A window in the conference room - bad idea. Distraction potential.
Women playing tennis on the courts tonight, shunting all future words from Larry Bird into the bit bucket. Jones can still hear the mellifluous voice of Can't-Carry-Jones'-Jock-At-Hoop in the background but focuses on the visual stimuli.
Jones' thought bubble: "Oh, yeah, honey, I'd like to install my unit up and down your front range. C'mon, go to the net! Go to the net!"
-----------
My longtime classmate, nemesis and friend Sean Casey is on the verge of accepting customers to Bearizona, a tourist dairy on State Highway 40, Williams, Arizona. Caution: before visiting Arizona, cut a thin strip from a plain sheet of paper. Face your right palm downward and lay the paper strip over your right forearm. If you cannot distinguish where the paper ends and the skin begins, you are good to go!! If not, make sure and take papers!!! And backups!!!! Practica su Ingles!!!!!
Willams, Arizona is the turnoff point for the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, which is the side nearly 85% of tourists visit. Mainly this is because of demographics, with populations distributed heavily South.
Most don't go via the scary Northern Rim entrance. This entrance passes through FLDS country. LDS stands for Latter Day Saints - Mormons. The "F" stand for Whackjob. National Geographic did an article about this most culturally bizarre place in the United States, the community of Hilldale/Colorado City in Southern Utah/Northern Arizona.
Not mentioned in the Nat Geo article are all the technically single women there who draw welfare. They are plural wives, but since that isn't allowed by law, they declare as single and draw welfare, food stamps, any handout available. White welfare at its most glaring. You don't hear a lot about that on the 24-7 Republican propaganda vehicles.
Meanwhile, in Williams, Arizona, not much is going on. Rather, not much WAS going on.
The new drive-through wildlife park is big news in this 3000-person villa of nowhere on the highway.
Bearizona was scheduled to open in bare bones fashion May 22nd, several days ago. This reporter has been too lazy to find out if the first paying touri have matriculated through the park, where they have the potential of seeing bears, goats, rabbits, grasshoppers, cats, rodents, deer, dogs, and foxes; all shitting copiously. Sort of like my front yard.
The grand opening is later in June. News is scant from that remote part of the world, but I understand road construction is somewhat behind schedule. Currently, access to this wildlife park requires a Class IV climber's license. All climbers must undergo a rigourous equipment check before being allowed in to the park.
Well, maybe it's not quite that primitive. When Sean described to me a bare-bones opening, I envisioned something else.
You notice I fail to quote any of my idioms? Bare bones, no quotes. Rigourous, intentional England mis-spelling, no quotes. This is a writing rule: Don't put quotes around common references. It makes it appear that you, the writer, are VERY proud of having used a clever idiom. I'm here to tell you, idiots can use idioms. Save pixels, omit quotes.
I envisioned the bare-bones opening as being Sean sitting by Highway 40 in a lawn chair under a shade umbrella, handing out fliers at a stop sign. "Wanna see my chicken? Only 75 cents. I got me a REAL fine chicken on a tether right back chur and all you got to do is pay 75 cents. Whole family, only a one dollar fifty. Who wants to see 'eem? He's a good one, I tell ya."
www.bearizona.com
I hope no immigrants ruin this thing for Sean. You know, the wave of anti-immigration laws in Arizona. Okay, 2 laws, not a wave.
As Wanda Sykes riffed, "Why do they call them illegal immigrants? Illegal makes it sound like they're doing something bad. If somebody broke into my house - and started cleaning it? I don't think I'd call the cops."
Members of the Williams-Grand Canyon Chamber of Commerce prepare to cut a ribbon during a ceremony to mark Bearizona’s opening May 22. Pictured center are owners Sean Casey, Dennis Casey and Williams Mayor John Moore.
This photo is from the Williams News, a quasi-newspaper.
http://www.williamsnews.com/
Just for clarification, the guy in the center of the photo who appears to be attempting to chop off his own dick, that's Dennis Casey. Looks like he rode a motorcycle sans helmet to the event all the way from Rapid City, South Dakota.
The reverent-looking kid holding the purple rectangle (to the right of Dennis) is Sean Casey. Sean did everything on this project; Dennis is the figurehead, party-boy executive producer, the ilk that wear sunglasses with blue bows, like you would buy at a flea market for $3.99.
To the left of Dennis (reverse of the order listed in the photo caption) stands mustachial mayor John Moore. I hope that's the mayor. Otherwise, the mayor is the guy in the watch cap standing behind Sean. "Dude, as Mayor of Williams, I am proud to say that I think you're going to kick some serious ass, man. Party on!"
No, but really, judging by the crease in the Wranglers, the photo's tallest cowboy hat is mayor. He is wearing boots as part of his costume. Dennis is wearing boots for no discernible reason. Sean does not wear boots.
ROAD TRIP!!
Quimulus the Devout
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Lemmings Myth Akilter
Friends, lend me your ears. You enemies, too, listen up. Lemmings do not follow other lemmings over a cliff. They do move quickly, and they move as a herd, a flock. At times the flock veers near a cliff adjacent to a coastline, and members on the side of the flock go over the edge.
Prey animals move in herds to increase the safety of the individuals. Even in the worst position, on the side or in the back, they still have areas blocked from possible predators by other members of the herd. The herd loses very few to falling off a cliff falls, very occasionally, but it doesn't hurt the overall health of the population. For lemmings to have sufficient numbers to herd, they must be in a boom cycle.
Arctic animals work in boom and bust cycles. Good year? There are lots of lemmings, and as a result owls and hawks and foxes have bigger nests or litters. How the predator parents anticipate this is unknown. Humans do it, too. We just aren't aware of it. We fuck less and have fewer kids in hard times. Which, for males, means we have fewer hard times in hard times. Less up time. I could go on for hours.
Fewer lemmings, smaller number of offspring from the predators. This is repeatable throughout the Arctic, no matter if it is North of the Western Hemisphere or the Wrong Hemisphere.
Lemmings feed like American bison. They graze as a herd in one area until it is mowed, then move double quick to the next feeding ground, pursued frantically by the owls, foxes, hawks and other feeders.
So please, don't make me overhear another reference to lemmings, as if the whole herd runs straight off the edge of the cliff, following Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Hairpie, whoever may be lead lemming at the time, the fat little follower lemmings with symbolic teabags hanging from their tri-corner hats as they waddle off the ledge in turn.
Prey animals move in herds to increase the safety of the individuals. Even in the worst position, on the side or in the back, they still have areas blocked from possible predators by other members of the herd. The herd loses very few to falling off a cliff falls, very occasionally, but it doesn't hurt the overall health of the population. For lemmings to have sufficient numbers to herd, they must be in a boom cycle.
Arctic animals work in boom and bust cycles. Good year? There are lots of lemmings, and as a result owls and hawks and foxes have bigger nests or litters. How the predator parents anticipate this is unknown. Humans do it, too. We just aren't aware of it. We fuck less and have fewer kids in hard times. Which, for males, means we have fewer hard times in hard times. Less up time. I could go on for hours.
Fewer lemmings, smaller number of offspring from the predators. This is repeatable throughout the Arctic, no matter if it is North of the Western Hemisphere or the Wrong Hemisphere.
Lemmings feed like American bison. They graze as a herd in one area until it is mowed, then move double quick to the next feeding ground, pursued frantically by the owls, foxes, hawks and other feeders.
So please, don't make me overhear another reference to lemmings, as if the whole herd runs straight off the edge of the cliff, following Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Hairpie, whoever may be lead lemming at the time, the fat little follower lemmings with symbolic teabags hanging from their tri-corner hats as they waddle off the ledge in turn.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Because I Wanted To
"I've got to stop telling people I'm a writer," the former writer said, hating that the comma is supposed to go before the end of the double quote. It seems more appropriate after the quote.
I took down the Daily Bessemer in 2007 due to some production issues. I wanted to switch it to the Mac and make its management a little more mainstream. It is so web version 0.0 to have a home-grown navigation system, with no comments area where my different groups of friends could insult each other. That was leaving money on the table.
It was scarcely an HTML bang, the framework of the old Daily Bessemer. I tried to upgrade, but to quote the writers of the Simpsons (as spoken through the animation Bart, regarding the subject of playing guitar) "Dad, to tell you the truth, I tried it, and it was hard, and I didn't try it much longer before I just gave up."
Yes, I'm a Computer Science dude (capital letters, bub; we ain't civil engineers), but I'm a specialist. Yeah, that's it.
The Bessemer ceased for another reason. I started having trouble writing, because I was fixated on that single-vector malo piece of shit Dick Cheney.
They have this thing every year in Boulder, the Conference of World Affairs, a three-day panel-o-rama on subjects of intellect and art and ideas and issues. A symposium of the interested. The other end of the spectrum from gun shows.
I went to an hour-long presentation featuring a panel of 4 people in the journalism industry. The subject was Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon for Nixon's dictatorial criminal acts. I was shocked to hear the credentialed panel say it was such a good thing, and it helped us move on as a nation, "heal the rifts created by Vietnam". Within families, the young hippy sons wouldn't talk to their staunch, retarded, pre-tea-bagger dads because of the generational difference of views about the Vietnam war.
The conference took place right at the time I. Lewis Libby (Scooter Libby) was being prosecuted by Larry Fitzgerald. Libby exposed a covert CIA agent as retribution for her husband speaking truth to government. If you are unfamiliar with this recent U.S. history and I have to lay it out more than that, do some research and come back to the article.
The panel unanimously lauded the blessidity of Gerald Ford's pardon. One guy, a long-time writer for Sports Illustrated, pulled a Hunter Thompson quote about Nixon from his wallet and read the quote. Have you ever met guys who do that? Pull memorable quotes out of their wallet? I'm struck by the idiocy of the practice. You can't remember the quotes you find most memorable? Thrall me with your acumen, Mr. Read-Quote-From-Scrap.
The panel's take on Ford raised my hackles; they were wearing rose-colored glasses. I rang in from the audience. "The pardon of Nixon simply set the stage for what's going to happen to Libby. He's not going to jail. I predict Libby will be pardoned."
The journalist-biz panel acted shocked, like I was being a demagogue. They pooh-poohed that stance, then harumphed again about healing the rift. I can't believe that things like pooh-pooh and harumph are part of our dialect, but they are. Do you realize that things like "achoo" are pronounced differently in the rest of the world when people sneeze? That is insanely fascinating. Women express themselves differently during the libidinous acts, depending on the country where the movie was made, or whence the models moved to Los Angeles.
I'm wondering how salaciously I should express myself here. Here on the Big Web. Obviously I'm not going full-valve-open in saying "libidinous acts" and the like. For the first post, I'll stay clean. Reading backward, I think "shit" is the only scat word in the article so far. Writing this way feels like I'm still at work, prettying up and gaying up everything. OMG LOL. There. I've modernized my shizzit.
You can't even refer to something as "gay" anymore, like a plant or an idea, something that is clearly not homosexual. If you screw a male plant, does that make you gay? We know about the term bestiality. What do you call sex with a plant, foliagio?
In America, the coitus-receive sound is "oh oh oh oh". In Brazil, "Ai ai ai ai ai ai ai ai". They enjoy it more. In Western Hemisphere Spanish-speaking countries it is "Oi Oi Oi Oi Oi".
This knowledge is at once fascinating and titillating, informational and libidinous.
I left the feel-good, intellectual hand-job, glory-hole Nixon-pardon session feeling angry. Were these journalism industry people dupes, simply desperate dead-end-career capitalists, what? I self-tested my bona fides: "You, sir, are a self publisher. By dint of what, sir, are your opinions of value?" No answer. Time would tell.
I had a leaking suspicion that my opinion was sound, was prophecy. I wrote an article about it, Cheney cutting his teeth in Ford's cabinet, seeing Nixon pardoned, realizing the American political system would never prosecute their leaders, never roll those fuckers up in a carpet and dump them in a river. What did Cheney have to fear in putting David Addington and Scooter Libby on point, pulling a Washington-insider career hit on Joseph Wilson's wife? None. They could always pardon them.
Missed it by a technicality. Libby was convicted, but not pardoned. His sentence was commuted. I thing that's the right term. I'm trying to say "richboy-goaway-ed", the magic cure of many a moneyed white man. Somehow Libby was to suffer no rehabilitation time, as is regular for those convicted of a crime.
When I wrote the article, the Daily Bessemer was effectively at an end. It never hit the web site. The article just froze me. I had reached a place where I was ahead of myself, too involved in writing. Consumed by it. If you aren't in the business of journalism, such obsession is a bad thing.
I'm sorta revived. Maybe it's time to talk again; three years is enough, and forgiveness is a part of moving on. Forgiveness for what, you ask. Mostly that thing with the goat, okay? It's not like the goat agreed to it or anything. Even if it did (Blaaah!!! Blaaahhh!!! means yes, right?), the goat was well under the age of consent. That goat was at most 4 years old, and a billy to boot.
Does it make you gay if you soil a male animal? Just wondering.
Quimulus the Devout
I took down the Daily Bessemer in 2007 due to some production issues. I wanted to switch it to the Mac and make its management a little more mainstream. It is so web version 0.0 to have a home-grown navigation system, with no comments area where my different groups of friends could insult each other. That was leaving money on the table.
It was scarcely an HTML bang, the framework of the old Daily Bessemer. I tried to upgrade, but to quote the writers of the Simpsons (as spoken through the animation Bart, regarding the subject of playing guitar) "Dad, to tell you the truth, I tried it, and it was hard, and I didn't try it much longer before I just gave up."
Yes, I'm a Computer Science dude (capital letters, bub; we ain't civil engineers), but I'm a specialist. Yeah, that's it.
The Bessemer ceased for another reason. I started having trouble writing, because I was fixated on that single-vector malo piece of shit Dick Cheney.
They have this thing every year in Boulder, the Conference of World Affairs, a three-day panel-o-rama on subjects of intellect and art and ideas and issues. A symposium of the interested. The other end of the spectrum from gun shows.
I went to an hour-long presentation featuring a panel of 4 people in the journalism industry. The subject was Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon for Nixon's dictatorial criminal acts. I was shocked to hear the credentialed panel say it was such a good thing, and it helped us move on as a nation, "heal the rifts created by Vietnam". Within families, the young hippy sons wouldn't talk to their staunch, retarded, pre-tea-bagger dads because of the generational difference of views about the Vietnam war.
The conference took place right at the time I. Lewis Libby (Scooter Libby) was being prosecuted by Larry Fitzgerald. Libby exposed a covert CIA agent as retribution for her husband speaking truth to government. If you are unfamiliar with this recent U.S. history and I have to lay it out more than that, do some research and come back to the article.
The panel unanimously lauded the blessidity of Gerald Ford's pardon. One guy, a long-time writer for Sports Illustrated, pulled a Hunter Thompson quote about Nixon from his wallet and read the quote. Have you ever met guys who do that? Pull memorable quotes out of their wallet? I'm struck by the idiocy of the practice. You can't remember the quotes you find most memorable? Thrall me with your acumen, Mr. Read-Quote-From-Scrap.
The panel's take on Ford raised my hackles; they were wearing rose-colored glasses. I rang in from the audience. "The pardon of Nixon simply set the stage for what's going to happen to Libby. He's not going to jail. I predict Libby will be pardoned."
The journalist-biz panel acted shocked, like I was being a demagogue. They pooh-poohed that stance, then harumphed again about healing the rift. I can't believe that things like pooh-pooh and harumph are part of our dialect, but they are. Do you realize that things like "achoo" are pronounced differently in the rest of the world when people sneeze? That is insanely fascinating. Women express themselves differently during the libidinous acts, depending on the country where the movie was made, or whence the models moved to Los Angeles.
I'm wondering how salaciously I should express myself here. Here on the Big Web. Obviously I'm not going full-valve-open in saying "libidinous acts" and the like. For the first post, I'll stay clean. Reading backward, I think "shit" is the only scat word in the article so far. Writing this way feels like I'm still at work, prettying up and gaying up everything. OMG LOL. There. I've modernized my shizzit.
You can't even refer to something as "gay" anymore, like a plant or an idea, something that is clearly not homosexual. If you screw a male plant, does that make you gay? We know about the term bestiality. What do you call sex with a plant, foliagio?
In America, the coitus-receive sound is "oh oh oh oh". In Brazil, "Ai ai ai ai ai ai ai ai". They enjoy it more. In Western Hemisphere Spanish-speaking countries it is "Oi Oi Oi Oi Oi".
This knowledge is at once fascinating and titillating, informational and libidinous.
I left the feel-good, intellectual hand-job, glory-hole Nixon-pardon session feeling angry. Were these journalism industry people dupes, simply desperate dead-end-career capitalists, what? I self-tested my bona fides: "You, sir, are a self publisher. By dint of what, sir, are your opinions of value?" No answer. Time would tell.
I had a leaking suspicion that my opinion was sound, was prophecy. I wrote an article about it, Cheney cutting his teeth in Ford's cabinet, seeing Nixon pardoned, realizing the American political system would never prosecute their leaders, never roll those fuckers up in a carpet and dump them in a river. What did Cheney have to fear in putting David Addington and Scooter Libby on point, pulling a Washington-insider career hit on Joseph Wilson's wife? None. They could always pardon them.
Missed it by a technicality. Libby was convicted, but not pardoned. His sentence was commuted. I thing that's the right term. I'm trying to say "richboy-goaway-ed", the magic cure of many a moneyed white man. Somehow Libby was to suffer no rehabilitation time, as is regular for those convicted of a crime.
When I wrote the article, the Daily Bessemer was effectively at an end. It never hit the web site. The article just froze me. I had reached a place where I was ahead of myself, too involved in writing. Consumed by it. If you aren't in the business of journalism, such obsession is a bad thing.
I'm sorta revived. Maybe it's time to talk again; three years is enough, and forgiveness is a part of moving on. Forgiveness for what, you ask. Mostly that thing with the goat, okay? It's not like the goat agreed to it or anything. Even if it did (Blaaah!!! Blaaahhh!!! means yes, right?), the goat was well under the age of consent. That goat was at most 4 years old, and a billy to boot.
Does it make you gay if you soil a male animal? Just wondering.
Quimulus the Devout
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