cnn has a new news segment called "...just sayin'". that's funny, i don't remember getting a paycheck from ted turner...

cnn, you filthy sons of bitches.

you know what? i'm not even going to get upset about this, for two reasons. one: it just goes to show that apparently, i already have what it takes to write for a major news network. two: it just goes to show that major news networks provide the caliber of reporting also being offered by an untrained, over opinionated, cynical, twentysomething, who is usually just fucking around to amuse himself.

so i am officially killing my segment, ...i'm just sayin'. mostly i'm doing this because one day i wish to be a respected member of society, not neccesarily because i behave in a respectable manner, but mostly because i bring something important and real to the world at large, and cnn filling a 24-hour news cycle with slanted text polls, "what do you think" segments, email responses, quoting uncompensated bloggers, and generally making up the "news" as they go, does not garner much respect from me, so how could i expect anyone else to respect it?

let me explain further. if there is no "news" to report, then i don't need some jackass pundit, or intern who sucks a mean cock, telling me their opinion, for the third time today, on michael jackson's death. this is not news. it's op-ed. if there is nothing of any great social and political import to discuss, report, or debate, then why not simply run a live feed of congress, the house, or even state government chambers in which an interesting debate is going on? or perhaps a glimpse into the supreme court, or perhaps the news, or government activity of other countries or organizations like the UN, EU, ECOWAS, OPEC, NATO, etc? or we could even show... gulp... live feeds from our military actions.

let me tell you why. it's because we as americans are not supposed to give a shit about real news. what happens in government chambers is not the concern of us rubes and peasants. let the grown ups hammer it out and they'll just tell us how they've decided we should be living our lives, or what we should be thinking about what happens within the halls of politic. nor should we be caring what other countries are up to, not, at least, until they do something that american pundits can criticize, then we hear all about it. i seem to know an awful lot about sergio berlisconi's erections, but why don't i know what is going on in italian parliament? i get up to the minute updates on castro's health, but why don't i know a goddamn thing about the state of the cuban nation?

what's even more baffling is that we essentially treat american news with the same disregard. i'll hear all about that kid in sheepfuck, connecticut who got swine flu, or how the iPhone is really going to blow my hair back, or what that fuck wad on youTube did that got so many hits, but when it comes to real events, and intelligent debate, where the fuck is it? all we ever hear about is what this network, or that dais of amateurs, or this pundit, or that a-hole who had a quirky, or obnoxious response at the last town hall meeting or whistle stop thinks about it.

are we not to be trusted? can we not comprehend and analyze for ourselves, the goings on of our own ruling bodies?

of course we're not to be trusted. if we were left to assemble our own attitudes about what goes on in our country would we buy so much useless shit? would we insist on diversifying our stock portfolios, or getting a flu shot, or buying tShirts that tell the world that we care about the sick african kids but not about the little asian kids who cut, stitched, and printed the shirt? would we really care about maintaining the "sanctity" of "opposite sex" marriage? would we be so stupid as to demand that we get raped by private insurers because we are afraid of a word, just sounds and audible vibrations, letters arbitrarily assembled into a representation of an intangible concept, (that dirty little $10billion word, "socialism")? would we be so stupid as to think that socialism is a cancer on our way of life, then collect social security, or join a labor union? i got news for you, rubes, our "democracy" is injected with socialist ideals. the fact that you pay taxes at all, transportation infrastructure, public schools, the fact that every member of a population should get equal opportunity, equal rights, and equal voice, are cornerstones of socialism.

wake up, fuckwads, we don't live in a democracy. sadly we don't live in a socialist society either. i've said it before and i'll say it again, and i'll keep saying it until everyone gets it: we live in a loosely socio-democratic, firmly aristocratic, plutocratic, capitalistic theocracy. and yes, i did add theocracy, because we cannot seem to pick a political representative that does not embrace a jesus based religion (and sadly the next step after that is not an atheist but rather a believer of some other asinine mythology).

well i'm fucking pissed off.

i'm sick and tired of having to work to utilize the freedom of information act. what a crock of shit that is. first of all, freedom to obtain government held information "freely or at minimal cost [my emphasis]"? no, if the government is doing something, i demand that i be able to obtain full disclosure freely, period. and i want it all, fucking all of it, posted at one collective database, and i want it released on the "news", for isn't that what news is supposed to be? and i want it printed in the papers, and i want a published journal, at least weekly, of the most important government information, objectively expressed, and at their expense, for isn't their expense account paid by us anyway? i don't care if the health care bill is over a thousand pages long. for fuck's sake, i get a goddamn phone book on my front stoop every week, why can't i get the minutes of the senate? i'll even negotiate a bullet point here, the government and media don't have to provide this for everyone, regardless as to wether they asked for it. simply provide an easy to access place to subscribe to the journal, in fact that place should be located on the government free information database, and a lot of the lesser information could be left out of the journal by reason of assumption that it will be provided by the media, objectively. but bear this in mind, when i say the lesser information can be left out, i mean, i don't need the minutes of the debate on interstate monkey travel legislation (it happened), but i do demand every single word, punctuation, and line break of every thing that does get published. i don't want to receive a copy of the patriot act, or the torture memos with black bars all over it. fuck you. you're our government. we deserve to know every word of what goes on in our name and with our money, and especially with the military composed of our friends, family, and selves.

you know there's a theory that if you can't tell your girlfriend about it, it's probably considered cheating. well, if you can't tell the american people about it, then we probably don't want you doing it, and you fucking know that's true, because you are the ones censoring us from it.

on the subject of censoring us from it, i want live feeds, or at least uncensored footage from our military actions. i don't care how bloody, violent, unethical, or disgusting it might be. i want to know what is going on. you want us to support our troops? let them speak for themselves. let their actions garner our respect, admiration, and sympathy, and don't cut it off at the knees with reality shows about celebrities living in the jungle, or programs where r lee emrey yells at me about the new carbine armalite semi automatics that the marines are using. leave that shit to the infotainment assholes, the rupert murdochs and ted turners, the viacoms and GEs.

but until we can break through the firewall of the government censors, and the media filters, i urge you all, please, utilize what you can of the freedom of information act. find important documents like the healthcare reform bill, the torture memos, and the patriot act. watch c-span, not cnn. watch foreign news, deutsche velle, russia today, the cantonese news, multiple mexican news broadcasts, and bbc world news are all available on network tv, you don't even need cable, but if you do have cable why not c-span, or الجزيرة (al jazeera, there's an english language version), or bbc?

i know so many of us try to stay objectively informed, and i don't discount that, but let's face it, the powers that be intentionally make it as hard as possible to achieve and sustain this. so don't be afraid to turn your backs on cheesy crap posing as the news, or anyway to discount that as nothing more than extremely biased, revenue driven, entertainment, and seek things like npr, politico, pbs (and if you don't want to watch pbs, you can find all of their journalism streaming online), and smokinggun.com. the huffington post, and aclu(.org) are great places to find links to released government documents, but if you just google things, they are out there, even things like the health care reform bill. but you know what? that link is a good place to get a link to the health care reform bill, as well (pg 432 is the "death panels" page, as well as the portion of text that was debated on the daily show recently. and take it from someone who has worked in hospice care, what the text is saying is that if a patient should choose end of life care, which is hospice care, that the doctors and counselors will be monitored for quality and effectiveness by a government panel. this is to say, that if you are on your last legs, and want medical and emotional treatment for this, your doctors and counselors will be held accountable for their standard of service. it's actually the exact opposite of a death panel.).

so in light of the fact that when i'm not being an entertaining entertainer, i wish for nothing more than to be a respected informer, my ...i'm just sayin' segment is dead. in its stead, i offer this: i will do more to provide pertinent, objective information, and uncorrupted facts (though the comedy of course comes in skewing it, the facts are facts) that may be otherwise buried in the garbage gyre of the internet, or the bureaucratic red tape of the government.

so one last time, on the circus... i'm just sayin'... there's a lot more to being an informed and enlightened citizen than absorbing what cnn is just sayin...

ladies and gentlemen, chocolate covered bacon.

i thought i had heard of it all when i got word of fried pickles, battered mac and cheese balls, fried coffee, and fried coke. oh no. someone decided to cover fried bacon in chocolate. is it any wonder cynical bastards like myself find it simply beyond belief that the human race has survived as long as it has?

what is wrong with us?

i overheard the news of this fried dead animal confection at a bar where the clientele is comprised entirely of morbidly obese, chain smokers, who are only sober when they are hung over, and even then, it's not 100%. the lights stay off 24 hours a day, nothing ever gets cleaned, they have a shotgun hanging over the door, the bartender has less teeth than fingers, and emanates the distinct smell of cigarettes, BO, and soiled underwear, yet somehow he gets regular tail from the patrons.

this is a clientele that's 3 cocktails deep by 5 o'clock in the PM on a slow day, only listens to country, or classic rock, because they consider hip hop "nigger shit" and new rock "kill yourself music", they all have at least a pair of chronic illnesses, or afflictions, most of them are on unemployment, and should a man enter in clean clothes, and not be grunting in pain, and generally odoriferous, he's not going to get a very warm welcome. don't even try ordering a mexican beer, talking liberal politics (if you're lucky enough to find someone who even wants to talk politics at all), or biding your time by reading a newspaper, doing a crossword, or playing with a rubik's cube.

ride your bike to the bar?

able to see your genitals?

able to use your genitals?

you're probably a queer, by their standards.

and where is this utopia, you ask? where can i get me a slice of that? what dixie-fried, moonshinin', cousin fuckin', appalachian, backwoods, country bumpkin' town do i have to hitchhike to to get me some?

try the san francisco peninsula. oh, yes. it's a spectacular place to see conservatives pretend to be liberals, simply because it's trendy, and this particular dive is a haven for this scene. it was here, in this dingy dungeon full of melting melties, that i first heard the words "chocolate covered bacon" uttered. and when i glanced in the direction of the siren's song, i noticed, as she tipped a tall jack and coke to her lips with her doughy limb, that a livestrong bracelet was struggling to hang on for dear life to that very same wrist.

and let us please be honest with ourselves, people. this does not surprise, does it?

how many livestrongers have you seen living anything but strong? using a yellow bangled hand to take a drag off a marlbroro light, or scratch at their sagging gut, or pull a belt off a gin and tonic? in the heyday of the yellow rubber band, how many did you see slobbing around the state fair, horking down fried twinkies and oreos?

we convince ourselves that "supporting" a healthy cause by making a $2 donation for a trendy tchotchke negates the greasy crumbs on our shirts, or the beer breath, or the tobacco stench in our hair, or the sugar coated fried meat product in our hand.

and yet we live on, and sadly, in the big picture, we humans are living strong.

this, my friends, is the epitome of surviving darwinism.

epilogue:

it bears pointing out, that while googling images for this post, "pig slaughter", "livestrong", "bar fly", "chain smoker", and "beer helmet" all eventually led me to pictures of naked women sucking cock. we are really on the right path here, people. i can just feel it.

in re:

must i go on?

this should, in all respects, be a surviving darwinism, so it will be short, but it comes so hot on the heels of my lambasting of "virtual exercise", that i can only assume it is the universe's response to my last post.

so there it is, people. science said it second: video games are not social activity, exercise, emotional enrichment, or a fountain of youth for your inner child.

for those of you who think that this is some USA today infographic, it is not. this is a study performed by the center for disease control, and it reiterates the point that video gamers tend to be 35+ years old, introverted, overweight, and depressed. in other words, gamers are middle aged, fat, lonely, and sad.

one step closer to the ill begotten, apocalyptic future predicted by, gulp, demolition man, in which we all copulate by putting on our virtual reality goggles, and drive ourselves to orgasm through a epileptic series of Mtv-esque, cyberotica, thereby achieving successful climax without ever exposing ourselves to anything more dangerous than a computer virus, and never enjoying the sins of the flesh.

well, all you fat, sad, lonely, middle aged gamer bastards will not drive me to substitute toilet paper for something called "the 3 shells" (demolition man reference, i am terribly sorry for the obscurity of this allusion... no, i'm not).

now, go outside and get some exercise! that's where i'm going right... now!

for only $49.99 take a staycation at the nintendo wii sports resort!

or, for free, take a trip to your very own bathroom, remove the blades from your razor, and please kill yourself, because if you really want to spend money on a video game staycation, you might be taking up space that other people could use for actual vacations.

right out of the gate, i refuse to accept the concept of the staycation. for one, its definitely just placation, and if you think that's a pun on play and vacation, please refer yourself to the opening sentence of this post, post haste. using the word staycation is just a way to convince ourselves that we are doing more with our days off than drinking michelob ultra at 11:30 in the morning, and masturbating to real housewives of [insert place that should be wiped off the face of the earth], before hitting the patio furniture sale at lowe's.

if you took time off work, and didn't do anything interesting, i don't need... nay, i don't want to hear about it. don't come back to work with a five day beard, and the collar of your shirt unbuttoned, and try to act like you really got out there and grabbed life by the horns. and as for you, mini-staycation? you're just a day off. i call you, playing hooky.

so you take some time off work, and you don't know how to use it awesomely. what's your next move? well, for most people these days, it means finally wearing the $45 campy pajama pants they treated themselves to during their whirlwind tour of the local strip mall on their last staycation, then slopping around their condos, or cookie cutter apartments, watching the 3 hour daytime loop of dirty jobs on discovery channel, until they realize that it is now almost 2 o'clock in the PM and they've already seen the one where he goes pig wrangling... twice.

well, nintendo wants you to know that they are here for you. no longer need you loaf around on your strangely undersized, matching, ikea living room set, accomplishing nothing more than any other skin bag full of protein rich, gelatinous goo. yes, nintendo brings you, wii sports resort. a set of games that i guess are supposed to be reminiscent of things you would do on a resort vacation.

ugh. resort vacations. i don't want to be a me monster here, but this one time, while i was living in a remote village of a third world country, i made a comment in passing to a companion of mine about how cruises and resort vacations were such stupid things to do with your time. instantly i realized, oh no, this woman is a bit older than i, and of the age group that more than most, frequent lame resorts and cruises. as i bit my tongue, she replied, "oh gross, who wastes their time with those goddamn things?" that's when i knew, this woman, she was my kind of woman.

so without even delving into the nuts and bolts of this sports resort game, nintendo is already promising you a fake and distant facsimile of a fake a distant facsimile of activity.

need proof? one of the activities on sports resort is frisbee.

need more? for $2 you can play as much real frisbee as you want, outside, in the sun, and fresh air, with other human beings... and actually get some real exercise.

another activity offered in this package is "swordplay", which sounds like something senators get busting for playing in airport men's rooms, but is somewhere between stick fighting, and fencing, i guess. but the beauty of "swordplay" is that, once you've finished watching a very special episode of kendra, you can segue into the days next activity with grammatical flair.

...and now for a different kind of swordplay, altogether.

see? it's so easy, you didn't even have to put down your low-carb beer, or haul your ass out of the recliner. just tuck the flap on your "john deere" lounge pants, and pick up your substitute phallus, aka wiimote. but what if you fancy a friend for this kind of swordplay? no problem, says nintendo. simply, purchase the nerf sword wiimote attachment set for $19.99 a pair. next, call up a friend, and carefully explain to him, "i was hanging out at home, in my underwear, and felt like a little swordplay. well, i don't think i need to tell you, i got tired of playing with myself after a while, and of course i thought of you. would you like to come over for some swordplay?" what's great about this is that, once you convince your friend to put his dick away, the two of you can actually fight with actual nerf swords, and for some reason simultaneously watch your miis mimicking you on tv.

it's funny. when i jump around in my living room, playing samurai, people call me immature, childish, crazy, or sometimes they just call me, "jesus christ, you could have killed me, you maniac!" but when we spend $50 to make a computer generated avatar with hands and feet but no arms and legs, do it for us, suddenly we are cool?

negative.

look, if you want to take some time off from the grind, and you can't afford to do anything spectacular, fine, but before you tell me you can't afford to have any real fun, keep in mind that there are plenty of awesome things to do in the world that are free. what's more, try not spending so much money having fake fun. if you do that, then maybe next time you have a vacation, you can do something i'll give a shit about when you come back to work. let me tell you, when you start a story with, "dude, i was playing a crazy game of ultimate firsbee," that twinkle in my eye means i'm excited to hear this story that might be going somewhere awesome. when you start a story with, "dude, i got this crazy frisbee game for my wii," that glazed over look in my eye means i'm fantasizing about choking you to death with your own tie.

if only you were wearing one.

damn you, stayCATION!!!!!!!!!!!

brainCandy

canada fears zombie attack more than i do. see? i'm not crazy!

a group out of canada used the most common factors associated with theatrical zombies, to assemble a "study" about potential future zombie attacks.

sadly, the brits are taking the "results" of this "study" seriously. using the "data" to assemble an attack plan if a real deadly, previously unknown, plague should hit the human population, and begin to spread out of control. so, as long as we're using hypothetical scenarios, to find hypothetical solutions, does anyone over on that side of the pond think, perhaps we should consider using hypothetically "possible" concepts to work out the kinks? i'm not sure i want to get some new strain of swine flu, and have some cheeky british comedian come at me, trying to cut my head off, because england is using blood and guts movies to plan out their new extremely liberal healthcare plan.

hmm, well guv'nah, i don't fancy i've seen a mole quite like that before. the nurse will be in directly, to shoot you with a silver bullet. nice knowing you, mate.

says the BBC, "if zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilization unless dealt with quickly and aggressively."

well, i think we can all agree with that, but what's more troubling is that, apparently in countries where healthcare is handled by the government, there is serious concern about zombie attacks! good god, what are we in for, obamacare? mothers in texas have already started eating the heads off of their zombie babies, for lack of proper biological, or ballistic defenses, and we haven't had nearly as much time to dedicate our sharpest minds to the zombie defense concern.

still more troubling is the fact that, if we are basing this potential disaster on the most common factors associated with theatrical zombies, then the black guy dies first. great! so obama socializes our healthcare system, then dies in a zombie attack, leaving us all to deal with our zombie problem by waiting in ungodly lines for generic anti-zombification pills! thanks, obama! what's next? you gonna cure cancer by unleashing the vampires on us? solve the auto crisis by genetically mutating us all into centaurs? bring peace to israel with a diplomatic team of hyper-intelligent wolfmen?

i didn't vote for wolfmen, obama! down with barack ozomba! no more ozombacare!

oh, wait, did that quote say, "if zombies actually existed"?

my bad, i guess i should make sure i have all the facts before i start yelling my head off about things in a public forum. boy, if i had, like, gone to a town hall meeting and yelled out crazy stuff like that, i'd probably look like a total idiot...

christian wingnuts blow my freakin' mind! if the right won't listen to them, then god might as well just rapture us all right now.

what?!

christian church disciples of christ in the united states and canada ("jesus freaks" or "bible beaters" to the uninitiated) held a candle light vigil on august first, for healthcare, and it's not what you think. no, they were not mourning the death of healthcare as we know it, they were pushing for universal healthcare reform.

i don't know if i have a tumor, or maybe i put too much turpentine in my ovaltine last night, but keynote speaker t garrott benjamin jr made some points that had me rethinking my desire to crush their blind faith in a nonexistent giant old man (until we get healthcare reform, anyway). said benjamin, "what kind of people don't take care of their babies? what kind of people buy houses, cars, and spend their money on all sorts of things when their brothers and sisters are sick and need their help?"

preach on brother!

"for 70 years we have been debating this, and we still don't have it... we are caught in an urgent crisis. really, what the healthcare issue is all about, is what we christians are about. it's about caring for the least, the last, and the lost. it's about caring for each other."

well, jesus, now i just want to hug a filthy bearded man in sandals. where's my hippie neighbor when i actually need him?

benjamin went on to say, "if we can put a man on the moon, surely we can have healthcare for all."

not only should this put to rest the argument that the logistics of this thing are too complex, as we all know that once compared to rocket science (or possibly brain surgery) anything can be made, suddenly, elementary. however, the all mighty jerry seinfeld says it best,

we never should have landed a man on the moon. it's a mistake. now everything is compared to that one accomplishment. i can't believe they could land a man on the moon . . . and taste my coffee! i think we all would have been a lot happier if they hadn't landed a man on the moon. then we'd go, they can't make a prescription bottle top that's easy to open? i'm not surprised they couldn't land a man on the moon. things make perfect sense to me now. neil armstrong should have said, "that's one small step for man, one giant leap for every, whiny, complaining, S-O-B on the face of the earth."

so is that it? is that how it is? is that how the right wing ultra conservatives feel about those of us who want healthcare reform because we feel empathy for our fellow humans? just a bunch of whiny, complaining S-O-Bs?

now, i've not converted to some kind of cross huggin', jesus freak or anything, but everything i hate about modern organized religion was rebutted, and my faith in the redeeming qualities of faith stoked, by the news of this vigil. religion is supposed to be a moral barometer, a cultivator of empathy for the human condition, and an architect of community and compassion. although i might certainly be wrong about that, given the fact that, 99.999% of religion in the last 5,000 years or so has been amoral, unethical, ignorant, violent, greed and hedonism. so maybe when i read the allegories and the fables and anecdotes of books like the bible, the gita, the qur'an, etc (and i do read them. i find them fascinating, and fantastical, if nothing else), i'm reading too much into the extremely overt allusions to good will, and peace, and love. but when i hear a man, who has aligned himself with nothing less than an international representation of religion, pleading for healthcare reform on the grounds that it is the right thing to do, not just because it is the right path for human decency, but also because jesus said so, i have to wonder, where lies the logical foundation of the opposition to this movement? (of course, i already know the answer to this question, and it lies, as usual, in the green, which, ironically bears the phrase, "in god we trust" on the insistence of the conservatives).

on as little sleep as i got last night, i don't dare attempt to wrap my head around explaining the hypocrisy, the irony, and all those other dirty little nouns, of a group of people that claim to follow god, but prefer to follow money, which is itself a visual testament to their faith in god, but a tangible affront to everything "god" stands for... better just stop, i'm feeling lightheaded.

but you know what? i thought perhaps the smattering of anti-healthcare folks (about 25% of americans, say many polls) were roaming around a howard johnson's, or a cracker barrel, out in the midwest somewhere, scratching their asses, but, here is a group of bible beaters, holding vigil in indiana, to change the system. this gives me faith. today i have faith that change is coming, and it's coming on the demands of people who take all different gods' names in vain, and even those like me, who just borrow your god's name every once in a while, when i really feel like cursing (fun fact: did you know jesus' middle name was "fuckin"?).

so if the right is made up of good hearty christian stock, then prick up your fuckin' ears, because the boss man sayeth, let there be healthcare reform, and he saw that there was, and it was good!

in re:

two heavenly bodies bang each other really hard in front of young starlet

well, ask and ye shall recieve. yea, good readers?

i demanded to know why we were still fucking around in space, and what it could possibly be that we were looking for, and NASA comes back with a resounding, "ya know. whatever".

recently, using NASA's spitzer (really, spitzer?) telescope, researchers have found evidence that two planetary masses, one roughly the size of mercury, and one roughly the size of our moon, collided some time in the last few thousand years, in a system orbiting a young (12 million year old) star in the pavo constellation. ironically NASA claims that pavo means peacock, but in modern spanish, pavo real means peacock, simply pavo means turkey, which is what NASA seems to be making out of us regular citizens, by using our tax dollars to intimately explore a whole heaping pile of who gives a shit, like this late breaking news from three thousand years ago, that in no way affects our lives.

incidentally, some stars in the turkey constellation are less than 20 light years from the boundaries of our own solar system, meaning that if we left today, every one on the mission could die many times over before the shuttle ever even came anywhere remotely close to halfway there (i've done the math many times over, with many numbers, from many sources, and it all comes up different, but suffice it to say, it's longer than you've got to hang around and see what happens).

so what have we learned from this latest discovery? that a few thousand years ago, two planets that are relatively close to us when you consider that the universe may in fact be infinite, but fucking far away from us when you consider that we don't have the technology to send a manned shuttle much farther than our own moon, ran into each other real hard, and it was probably really hot, and catastrophic for both parties involved. we've also learned that the smaller of the two bodies may ultimately become a moon of the larger body in much the same fashion as our own moon became a satellite of earth, a process which we already presume to know, or how else could we presume the similarity, so ultimately who cares, since we apparently already know how our moon was formed and thus the only logical reaction to this discovery cannot be, "wow, now we'll finally know how it happened, you know, within the next couple million or billion years, give or take", but rather, "what a coincidence! who wants chinese? anyone? i'm gonna make a run."

give me back my money, rocket scientist sons of bitches!

on a lighter note, tomorrow night (wednesday 8/12) will be the peak of the perseid meteor shower, so please, find a nice dark place to fornicate with someone you love, or whatever, and enjoy the awesome beauty of the universe's random and unfathomably violent ballet, for free. why not? you already paid for it.

ladies and gentlemen, i present to you a segment that i hold near and dear to my heart, for it has been a part of my life since before the circus, and even before dave's raves.

while this segment is called question of the day, it may not be done everyday, but never fear, the threat level hot sheet changes daily for those who need their fix of my cheesy punnery.

as with all questions of the day, please take a moment to file your response in the comments section, whether or not you took a moment to actually ponder said response (the unedited answers are often best). also, as with all of questions of the day, it is spawned from my own bizarre brain, or that of one of my bizarre brained friends, and may in fact bear no foundation in current events, or even reality, or it might be quite apropos to the times, therefore they will come with a short explanation of why this thing is on my mind in the first place, as well as many other related questions that don't necessarily require an answer. so, doing away with all further disclaimers and formalities, today's question:

do you think the amish are pissed off at the rest of us for fucking it up for them?

i ask because it occurs to me that, in these desperate times of attempting to green everything up, and shrink our carbon footprints, and eat organically, and live cooperatively, and all these things, the amish have been doing this for years, yet they are basically prone to the same pitfalls of modern society as the rest of us, because the rest of us are destroying the whole world. i mean, do you think that if we all suffocate in a carbon cloud, or some country or group declares war on the US, that the amish will just continue to live happy and free in their little communities? hell no. they'll choke to death on smog, or have to kowtow to our new foreign overlords just like the rest of us.

so i ask, do you think they are pissed off, because they have been, and are living the way we can't seem to figure out how to, and consequently we are destroying the planet we all live on? do you think they will eventually snap, and be, themselves, the ones who declare war on the US? if so, how long do you think it will take for the US military to slaughter the entire amish population? a month? a week? if they declared war right now as you read this, would the war be over by this time tomorrow? would it be over before you finished reading this post? would we also accidentally attack the chasidic jews, simply because we never respected either religion enough to figure out the visual difference between the two?

so, today, i ask you, dear readers, do you think the amish are pissed off at the rest of us for fucking it up for them?

fun fact: the notion of going to war with the amish was first pondered, in great detail, by myself and a hare krishna friend, while smoking hash on the roof of a tea shop, overlooking the ganges river during india's festival of colors. i hope this piece helps you assemble the puzzle that is me.

on the heels of the success of "doctors without borders", africa experiments with "unstable war torn dictatorships without borders"

i smell another "journalists without borders".

ahhh, i love the smell of empire building in the morning. i think that we have a skewed view on the subject. for one thing, our history classes frame the ancient empire builders (the persians, the greeks, the romans, the egyptians...) as though they were hollywood movies, and who are we to know the difference? we take our teachers to be vendors of the objective truth, and how many of our hollywood movies are based on the stories we hear in social studies and history class?

as for the modern empire builders, well, we sort of gloss over the british and the dutch. i'm not sure why. at one point the entire indian subcontinent was owned by a british import-export company. not to mention the disasterfuck that was made of the african continent by the brits, the francs, and the dutch. then there's the pathetic attempt at an arian empire by the germans, which often gets overshadowed by the holocaust that ensued. then of course, there's the USSR, which will always live on in american history books as a faulty, illogical, and oppressive regime of maniacal james bond villains.

but what of the existing empires?

what about the good ol' US of A-holes? who, of course, are never even whispered about as an empire, for fear of being strung up on charges of treason, or domestic terrorism. but given the facts, who could deny that we are the classic empire builders in the vein of the romans, or the east india trading company? and are we not failing? i find it hard to swallow an opinion to the contrary.

then there's the EU. which is so trendy nowadays, as to never be referred to as an empire, but essentially pushes around smaller european economies by denying them entry into the union until their economies are of a certain standard, or face the fate of being crushed under the weight of a booming economy based in seemingly fabricated monetary values (if the euro is worth 1.5x the dollar, and a candy bar costs $1 why would it cost €2.50? secondly, i don't care if the entire continent has the same pictures on their valueless paper and metallic baubles, each country is still an independent economy, and thus the euro should be far more volatile).

there is a lesson to be learned in all this: empires fail on the grounds of a basic human lack of empathy for the population as a whole. the building of an empire in and of itself breeds a lack of empathy in those lucky enough to be on the builders team, and not one of the populations being bowled over. meanwhile, the people being absorbed (to put it lightly) by the empire, are prone to a bitter resentment for the culture that annexes them like so much consumer inventory, if they even survive the ordeal.

so who will africa look to, when workshopping their new borderless empire?

granted, they've already got a few groups of cooperative nations. take ECOWAS (Economic Community Of West African States), for example, a place i recently visited, a place that it's citizens hardly know exists.

upon arrival in accra, ghana, i found that the immigration checkpoint was broken into three lines, "foreigners", "citizens of ghana", and "citizens of ECOWAS". as it was very early in the morning, only the "foreigners" and "ECOWAS" lines were open, yet there was much confusion among those of us offloading from the flight. there were people i knew to be nigerian, togoan, and côte d'ivoire(ians?) waiting in the foreigners line, when, in reality, only myself, and perhaps two others actually needed to be in that particular line (ECOWAS includes those countries, as well as ghana, and 11 additional countries in the "armpit" of the african continent). in addition, there was some confusion among the ghanaians as to how they would get back into the country, there being no line open for them. if the citizens of ECOWAS don't even know that they are citizens of ECOWAS, how can we consider it a successful union of nations? perhaps on the grounds of the philosophy, "a job well done, is a job you didn't know was done". but that hardly seems appropriate when dealing with overt international political and economic relationships.

during my stay in ghana i discovered that there were many people who had a particular kind of tattoo. the lucky ones had them on their arms, but i was told of some unfortunate enough to have them on their faces or necks. the tattoo was of the individual's name and village, and it wasn't so much tattooed on them as westerners would think of a tat, but stitched through their skin with ink soaked needle and thread. why would they do this? well, one of the reasons we might be more comfortable with is that children are often expected to be independent much younger there, and given that people will make mistakes, or forget things, and that children often simply don't have the life experience to work through a problem caused by a mistake they've made (a wrong turn on the way home, a missed curfew, etc), the tattoo would hopefully help the child find help getting back to a family member. the more disturbing reason for the tattoo is the human trade industry. in the bitter irony of a group of nations once victim to european and american slave trade, the international human trafficking business is still booming in africa, especially amongst neighboring nations (ghana and togo and nigeria, for example). the tattoo could be seen by a border official checking a car for contraband, who could then arrest the smuggler, and return the child to his or her home. as disheartening as this is to think about, i think it is absolutely something that needs to be considered when discussing the dissolution of international african borders.

what about the civil rights issues? not just among countries that have known human trafficking issues, but toward countries that still enslave their own for diamond, coal, and gold mining? for those that kill their own over tribal and cultural schisms? what about the sanctuary of refugees? what about countries that are "functioning" democracies, and those that are functioning democracies, and those that are still essentially under dictatorships? what about the arab nations, who exist on the african continent, but are light years apart from the majority of african tribal cultures? what about countries that are considered international threats? do those hoping to affect a change in a particular african region through military action risk going to war with every nation on the african continent? if so, do those african nations who wish to remain neutral, or who agree with the foreign opposition to a region's actions risk forced enlistment? civil war? internment camps? holocaust? how does such a large population of people reconcile the differences between tribal and urban life? what sort of representation would they receive in the UN? what would come of the representation that already exists within each of the existing nations? could bono kiss that many babies?

what of the war? how many would have to be fought before any sort of settlement could be reached?

what about the economy of a nation like zimbabwe? who's dollar is trading today (8/7/09) at 0.00000003 US dollars. meaning that if you went to the forEx in zimbabwe and handed them one US dollar, they would hand you 37,410,030 zimbabwean dollars. so for anyone that still has an unfulfilled fantasy of rolling around naked in a million dollar bills, you could make that happen for 2.6 cents american, if you don't mind those dollars having robert mugabe's face on them (just kidding, they don't have a $1 bill, how pointless would that be? they do however, have a $100billion bill, awesome!)

this is not even to speak of the horrible schizophrenia that has festered in a group of cultures rocked by western religious missionaries for so long that they give their children names like prosper, godson, godwin, verdict, and virtue because they read them in the bible. this group of people has arguably the most adherent populations of any in the world to both christian religions, muslim religions, and tribal religions. how does this play out in one united africa? religions are notorious for killing each other for no good reason (religion, itself, is not a good reason). nor does this post speak to the language barrier in a place where within on small country like ghana there are 13 completely different languages (let alone dialects). how does that play out in one african parliament (or council, or congress, or what have you)? nor does this post speak of the great number of nations on the continent, and the individual governments' international relationships within and without the continent with things like ECOWAS, SADC, EAC, the League of Arab States, OPEC, WTO, the UN, the EU, UNICEF, FIFA, and various other international organizations, as well as specific, individual non-african countries.

i will say it again: disasterfuck.

you know, it might seem quite to the contrary, but i hate to bring this downer stuff about an idea like continent-wide african prosperity. and what would be better than one world population living together as one? imagine all the people...

but humans have faulty wiring. it takes far too much resistance to inborn tendencies simply to get a family of 3 or 4 to live together in harmony for the standard 18 years or so until the kids move out, or the parents just say, fuck it, i want a divorce. we've had great ideas before, democracy, communism, socialism, moral barometers through ridiculous religious stories that are accessible to children, free market capitalism, free education. but what happens? money gets in the way, power gets in the way, fear gets in the way, people start touching kids, greed breeds deceit, law breeds lawlessness, desire breeds immorality. we just don't have what it takes right now, as a species, to pull off something with this kind of scope.

it would take not only an organized, pure, functional, prosperous, and peaceful society in each and every last african country. it would take an age of enlightenment so massive, and sweeping, that there was an absolute and impenetrable wall of virtue surrounding each and every african individual's life. what's more, it would take an age of enlightenment so massive and sweeping, that every last one of the world's nations outside of the african continent would be able to just leave africa the fuck alone, if they succeeded in doing this. for non-african nations too not cower in fear, encroach upon them, or threaten to cripple them or shut them off from the rest of the world because we felt that their way of life was a threat to our way of life, because an entire continent of once disparate nations, now prosperous and at peace, somehow posed a threat to all-you-can-eat salad bars, 15 minute oil changers, and designer jeans, or to wine appellations, organized soccer, and men wearing scarves, or to smog choked industrial districts, seizure inducing commercials for happy good time shrimp flavored soda drink, and the eternal oppression of tibetans.

yes, i think that one world at peace is a fantastic idea, but i leave you now with the words of a great poem (translated to modern english), words that have inspired one of my favorite books (you'll figure it out), words that have inspired this post, and my life in general:

In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leaves us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!

Still you are blest, compared with me!
The present only touches you:
But oh! I backward cast my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I cannot see,
I guess and fear!

-from to a mouse, on turning her up in her nest, with the plough by robert burns