East of no North

Winter has latched on to the northern hemisphere and apparently isn't going anywhere.  Groundhog's Day, an annual event promoted by a town of total morons in rural Pennsylvania, turned out this year to be inconclusive. The groundhog emerged from his lair right on schedule, but did so armed with a semi-automatic weapon and several high capacity ammo clips. According to one eyewitness, he saw his shadow and just opened fire. No warning, no demands, no liberal-inspired animal rights rhetoric, no nothing.
Porky Patterson, local pig farmer, who had wheedled his way to the front of the crowd, was overheard shouting, "Who gave the damn beaver a goddam loaded rifle?"
Who indeed!
Mayor Reggie Stubs, speaking off the record, admitted that numerous death threats against the groundhog had prompted the town council to authorize arming the over-sized rodent,  but no one in his wildest dreams imagined that the critter would actually figure out how to use the darn thing.
A local newspaper summed it up best with the front page headline:
Groundhog instigates latest U.S. mass shooting, six more weeks of winter likely.

Things aren't much better in northeast Asia, where a combination of unrelenting blasts of arctic wind and incalculable amounts of Chinese air pollution have turned winter into a sticky, murky, oozing grey, frozen fun fest. There are apparently places in China where one can step outside and simultaneously experience the burning up and freezing over of one's eyeballs. People are literally throwing away their eyeglasses because a) the rapid accumulation of grimy soot makes it impossible to see, and b) it's so cold that the lenses instantly crack. This perhaps explains recent video footage coming from northern China, in which thousands of blurry people appear to be walking haphazardly, reminiscent of somnambulists or zombies, through falling black snow, bumping into things, occasionally into each other, prompting vague fistfights akin to shadow boxing.  
Meanwhile, during this week's New Year's celebrations an estimated 500 million Chinese are on the move, traveling to their hometowns in over-crowed, under-heated trains, in below zero temperatures and zero visibility. Try to imagine something worse than being in the middle of that. I dare you. Where any of them might actually end up is a matter of pure speculation. One Chinese official dismissed the possibility of mass panic, claiming that if enough of these people end up in the same place, the government will simply construct a prefabricated city around them and put them all to work shoveling soot.

Note: the average daytime high temperature over the past two weeks in Ulaanbaatar has been negative forty-five degrees Centigrade. That's right, -45C.

Of course no visit to winterized Asia would be complete without a stopover on the northwest coast of Japan, officially known as the Yuki Guni, or snow country, which gets more of the white stuff each year than any other civilized area on Earth. The problem, aside from the snow, is that the majority of the population in this area is elderly, i.e. really really old, which unfortunately is not a deterrent to them attempting snow removal. Hence a significant number die from heart attacks each year while shoveling snow. A comparable number also die from falling off roofs (also while shoveling snow), many of them disappearing into deep snowdrifts, where they tend to remain until the first spring melt.

In an effort to forestall this alarming seasonal increase in mortality, one local government came up with the idea of supplying portable snow blowing machines to residents, announcing that, "If you can push a walker, you can push one of our snow blowers ."
Turns out pushing them isn't the problem, slipping on the snow and being sucked into the rotating blades is. The solution: make an instructional video, complete with human facsimile dummy, demonstrating what not to do while removing snow. In one sequence the dummy gets an arm stuck in the blades, body thrashing around on the ground; in the next a leg is being devoured, arms flailing, followed by both legs, and finally the dummy somehow manages to get its entire head wedged inside the machine. It's hilarious in a macabre sort of way, and according to officials snow-related deaths among the elderly have decreased, although there have been reports of people having heart attacks while watching the video.

Alas, winter. I think of it more as a redundant aberration than an actual season. Still, you run across people who tell you straight-faced that winter is their favorite time of year.

"I love winter!"
"Really? Are you by any chance mentally ill? Or is someone paying you to say that?"

Sure you'd like to smack them, but you restrain yourself, and besides it's too cold to take your hand out of your pocket.

Wintering in the Balkans

Good news!

The end-of-year moratorium on blogging has apparently been lifted. I received word this morning from Blogger Overseer #11 (name omitted due to a surge in death threats e-mailed to Overseer headquarters in Vilnius, Lithuania, of all places). The following caveat, however, was included in the message:

Despite the lifting of this moratorium, usual exceptions continue to apply, specifically the prohibition of blogging activity in the following locations: China, certain African and the Middle Eastern countries, Taliban-held regions of Afghanistan and all those areas in the USA where literacy is virtually non-existent and reading is regarded as a form of devil worship.

Or as an Alabama State Representative Buster Putz so succinctly put it: "We don't do no readin, we do huntin. Shootin animals for fun don't require no fancy book-learnin.  So take that there blog and shove it up your elitist East coast liberal-biased butt!"
No surprise that "Putz in 2016" is already being touted by halfwit right-wing radio hosts.
 Just what we need, another conservative Republican putz in the White House.

The Overseers go on to say:  We also strongly advise that blog content be restricted to what might be readily construed as family-oriented material, wholesome and upbeat in tone, while avoiding all subject matter of a prurient,  politically provocative or pusillanimous nature.

Pusillanimous?  Is that even a word?   

 Interestingly enough, based on fairly murky statistical evidence from anonymous sources, people in Alaska are reading my blog. At least one of them, anyway.  You can guess whom I hope it is. I have this recurring fantasy that Sarah Palin reads one of my blogs, has a spontaneous orgasm and almost bursts into flames. She then dons her body armor and rushes out to shoot a moose. Because despite all her ill-gotten millions, "the Palin family still hunts for food!"

And speaking of deadly weaponry and the culture of murderous freedom, it's heartening to learn that the American response to the recent mass killings has been to rush out and buy more guns.
Hey, I get it. Guns are pretty cool and fun to shoot. At inanimate targets, not at anything that breathes.  When I was a kid my father bought me a .22 rifle and took me hunting. I ended up shooting a chipmunk, the bullet separating its little head from its little body. That was the last time I went hunting, and I still have scary, guilt-ridden flashbacks about the chipmunk.

The latest spin from the far right gun brigade is that we don't need less guns, we need greater scrutiny of the mentally ill, because it's only the crazies who are doing all the killing.  "Normal" Americans apparently only want their guns to shoot helpless animals and call it sport, or if the opportunity arises, maybe an illegal immigrant or two, and also to be ready for the next inevitable insurrection against the federal government, which is clearly hell-bent on stealing all our precious freedoms. Yeah, these are the sane people, no question.

Anyway, here we are in 2013. Who could have guessed the human race would make it this far? Not me. Certainly not the Mayans.

Spiraling into the darkness

 So there you are, on the verge of writing something sardonic, possibly even lighthearted, about the whacky holiday season and then the good old USA once again raises its warped collective pysche, determined to inflict more horror and brutality upon itself. The mass killing extravaganza underway seems to occur once a week now (because, if nothing else, we Americans recognize the importance of staying on schedule), the latest one in Connecticut far beyond what anyone with even a smidgen of humanity can conceive, let alone somehow process. How is it possible, even within the twisted, fucked up recesses of a diseased brain, to decide upon murdering children?

Right on cue - after the shopping mall killings, but prior to the murder rampage in Ct. - the right wing moron battalion, armed with the usual semi-automatic platitudes, hit the news channels in defense of firearms. These people, some of whom we have to assume are not hopelessly retarded, are still capable of reminding us that 'guns don't kill people, people kill people,' with a straight face.
(the use of this particular cliche, in my opinion, should result in a mandatory one year jail sentence)
I even heard one of these assholes say that assault weapons were not the issue because, in lieu of a just squeeze the trigger and wipe out your entire extended family in less time than it takes to say Merry Christmas automatic rifle, a person bent of mass murder will simply use explosives or biological weapons.  Yeah, or maybe they'll just cobble together a nuclear bomb in the basement. 
Another favorite of the gun lobby lackeys is to drag out the second amendment which, in case you didn't know, was actually written in the blood of Jesus, rendering it sacrosanct and inviolable, apparently, until the end of time. God forbid that 200 plus years of social change (i.e. mutation) might lead one to question the continued relevancy of allowing the militia (i.e. nut cases) to bear arms.

So now we're going to be hearing about how this little prick living in upper middle class suburban Connecticut with all the creature comforts was troubled, how he had problems, which provoked him to crawl out from beneath the slimy rock of his self-important psychosis and start killing kids. Oh please! You have problems, deal with them. Take some responsibility for your own pathetic existence.  His mommy, it seems, handled things by giving him guns to play with, teaching him how to shoot.  Talk about responsible parenting.
Only in America, the self-proclaimed greatest country on Earth, is this stuff happening. What does that say about the 'Land of the Free?'  Too much freedom, far too little insight into how to use it in creative, life-affirming ways?

And while it may be justified for long-winded religious leaders to comfort the grieving parents by reminding them that their lost children are in heaven with God, let's face it ... if there was a God, wouldn't this have been the ideal time for Him to hop off his solipsistic high horse and intervene? A single, well-aimed lightening bolt to the head of this monster before he was able to get into the school would have gone a long way towards renewing my faith.

Anyway, it appears that Christmas this year is among the casualties of the season's insane violence.
We'll try again next year, assuming any of us are still around to celebrate.


   

Neanderthals Don't Shop

Sad to say, but based on the available evidence the human species is most likely doomed. We're all going down fast, to the tune of 7 billion skulls screaming with senseless, self-involved noise. Observing human behavior can be a real bummer ( a sixties term recently experiencing a kind of renaissance), and trying to isolate oneself from it isn't all that easy. Sure, you can stay indoors with the curtains closed, unplug the phone, turn the flat screen into a postmodern hotplate; the weirdness still somehow finds a way to creep in. It sneaks up and grabs hold while you're sitting there staring at the wall, humming a mantra taught to you by an alcoholic Buddhist priest with an affinity for Playboy pinups and ping pong. There is no escape.

So how bad is it, really?
Consider that average human intelligence is in decline; inversely proportional, as it turns out, to the average increase in human body mass. Basically, the more you eat the less you know.
Primary causes of intelligence deterioration: TV and organized religion.  Those who spend their time watching religious TV are obviously at greatest risk. Sitting on a couch somewhere in Kentucky, a bag of chips and a can of coke within chubby arm reach, watching the Reverend Billy Joe Bombast proselytize Jesus for profit. Ever try shouting Hallelujah! with a mouthful of potato chips? It ain't pretty.

 Goodbye brains.

But it even gets worse.
Probably my own fault for watching the apparently interminable number of news broadcasts on the sheer shopping savagery associated with 'Black Friday'; appropriately named, by the way, as it's apparently the perfect medium for bringing out the darkest aspects of human nature. I mean, people beating each other senseless to save 30 bucks on a thousand roll super jumbo pack of toilet paper (made in China, needless to say)? Any wonder no alien race has yet seen fit to contact us? Assuming of course that after picking up a latent transmission of Leave It To Beaver from 1957 an extraterrestrial species would even be inclined to make the 100 light year trip (for those interested in the unfathomable distances of interstellar space, one light year is equal to 9 trillion 500 billion kilometers).  A long drive no matter how you slice it.

All of which possibly explains why I'm feeling suddenly nostalgic for that neglected, often misunderstood sub-genus of so called modern humans, the Neanderthals.
And no, I do not refer to the large, hairy guy with the narrow forehead and highly questionable bathing habits you once agreed to date (hey, you were in a dark place, readily conducive to acts of masochism and self-loathing). The Neanderthals were a hearty band of tough bastards who managed to not only survive but thrive for 250,000 years, a large portion of which was serious ice age. By comparison, the dubious human experiment is a mere 50,000 years old. The Neanderthals had bigger brains than we do, inflicted zero damage on the environment and, according to certain interpretations of the geological record, generally formed orderly lines outside caves; the reasons for which are not entirely clear, but some sort of Paleolithic Super Sale cannot be entirely ruled out.
Unfortunately, the Neanderthal ran into early human Cro-Magnon and subsequently went extinct, quite likely from human germs their immune systems couldn't tolerate. (Flash forward to the 16th Century, the Spanish Conquistadors come ashore in the New World and similarly wipe out entire native Indian populations.)

Too bad, really.  How cool would it be if the Neanderthal had somehow survived and were with us still; assuming, of course, they were able to deal with the whole "don't wear fur" thing. They could have their own continent, Antarctica, for example; live in stylish ice caves and, when absolutely necessary, shop online for Eddie Bauer down jackets. They could work as tour guides for humans visiting the South Pole.

Human tourist: "So hey, Neanderthal guy, I really want to see the ice. You got any of that around here?"

Like I said, smaller brains.

Hail To The Chief

A collective sigh of relief. Obama wins re-election and in the eyes of the world the USA redeems itself. There is still a glimmer of hope. Tea Party efforts for a constitutional amendment to ban intelligence and imagination have failed miserably. Dour-faced Republican strategists must accept  blame for their inability to anesthetize enough of the electorate with mindless propaganda to ensure a Romney victory. Privately, they curse the evil east and west coasts, fantasizing the possibility of somehow physically separating these areas from the heartland, turning the country into the bright red blob that God originally intended.

Speaking of which, even Evangelicals are taking heat for not making enough of an impact at the polls. No big surprise, considering the choice was between a shallow, flip-flopping, closet-moderate Mormon and a smart, black, gay rights-supporting closet-Socialist. One Christian "think" tank (emphasis here on the blatant use of euphemism) has been floating the notion that roving bands of atheists breaking into Born Again households on election eve and shackling occupants to 100 pound Bibles at least partially explains the low voter turn out.

But poor, deluded Mitt. One has the sense that he actually believed he would win, that blathering vaguely and exclusively about the economy was enough, that the American people would simply forget about all the other equally important issues, that a man willing to abandon whatever real principles he might have once had in order to pander to the lowest common denominator of strident conservative imbecility could actually become President.

Election highlights:  One certainly has to be having the opportunity to watch those two pasty-white, jowl-jiggling, ego-bloated, right-wing ideologue dough boys - of course, I refer to Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove - gagging on their own bombast. Newt on CNN pontificating that not only would Romney get the electoral victory, but a 'significant' electoral victory. Karl - fondly remembered as the man who cobbled together George Bush from used parts in his weekend hobby shop - in total denial at the election's outcome, muttering on air that obviously the entire population of Ohio had somehow been secretly replaced by demonic democratic operatives.

Karl:  Who the hell leaked it that minorities can actually participate in the democratic process?
Newt: What are you complaining about? I actually have to walk around in this body. My wife insists on wearing a blindfold before she'll even consider ... well, you know.
Karl:  Yeah, women. The ultimate betrayers, if you ask me. Giving them the vote was a Big Mistake.
Newt: Couldn't agree more. The last woman I trusted was my mother, and only because she never left the kitchen.
Karl:  Remember when the only world that mattered was male and white, when the ability to lie well still counted for something, when whatever wacky, right-wing nonsense we dreamed up was taken as holy gospel?
Newt:  Don't be too down, Karl. We'll just hide out under our rocks for another four years and try it again.
Karl: Damn straight, Newt.

One sad note: Michelle Bachmann, Tea Party pin-up girl, a woman who in unguarded moments, usually during one of her delusional rants, resembles nothing so much as a whinnying horse, was narrowly re-elected.

Can't win em all, I guess.


  



   

As the baseball season winds down, baby season kicks in with a vengeance

What is it that guys talk about? Assuming guys actually talk to each other and not just mumble incoherently, attempting, for reasons cultural anthropologists are at a loss to explain, to imitate their hominid ancestors, grunts over beers in a bar somewhere, Patti Smith on the sound system reminding guys why they're so often hopeless dicks, some girl sitting in the corner savoring a mostly incomprehensible novel by Kathy Acker, in which men are brutally deconstructed at near the speed of light, their true natures as callous, unfeeling, grunting morons revealed.

Typical Guy A:  "So, like, how's it going?"
Typical Guy B:  Grunts, gulps beer noisily, assumes deadpanned expression.
T. G. A: "How's, uh, you know, what's her name?"
T. G. B: Sucks in air, rolls eyes. "She stopped talking to me about a week ago."
T. G. A: "Bummer. Hey, what do you think that chick over in the corner is giggling about?"
T. G. B: "Who the fuck knows? Maybe she just metaphorically offed her boyfriend."
T. G. A: No clue what that means, but grunts and nods head, because in the usually deluded haze of male discourse some sense of mutual understanding appears to matter. "Anyway, did you see the game last night?"

And there it is, the way through the wilderness, the one topic to successfully navigate the maze of damaged male ego, elevating the conversation to a level where something at least simulating rational dialogue can occur.  The game.  Baseball.
You don't even have to be interested baseball, or know anything about it to have the conversation. Baseball is mostly intuitive; it neutralizes typical male obstinacy, facilitates an easy suspension of disbelief, while promoting a vaguely satisfying sense of camaraderie. 

So the revised conversation goes something like this:
"Anyway, did you see the game last night?"
"Need you even ask?"
"How about that ninth inning?"
"Amazing! Cabrera does it again, huh?"
"I'm telling you, the guy is incredible."

(Note: Even if you haven't watched the game, invoking the name Cabrera is a safe bet, owing to the fact that there are like 47 guys named Cabrera currently playing in the Majors. Chances are there's at least one of them playing in every game on any given day. There are also 28 guys named Josh, making it not only a good second choice, but also lending an air of first name familiarity that will no doubt impress your friends.)

And this is how it should be, smooth, precise, emotionally non-threatening. In a perfect world all male conversations would be about baseball.  But then most of know through bitter experience what buying into the 'perfect world' scenario generally leads to.
Occasionally guys go off the reservation, a tiny, seahorse-shaped wrench is tossed into the works, baseball fades into mere background noise and all of a sudden all they can talk about is babies. You think maybe it's a virus, or something they ate, that it'll pass, but it doesn't. They've boarded the baby boat and there's no turning back. You want to talk playoffs, they want to talk sonograms; you've got tickets to a game, they'd love to go but they're flying to somewhere in the former Soviet Union to buy diapers in bulk (hey, it could happen); you grunt, growl primordially, they goo-goo, gaga; in desperation, you start reading Kathy Acker, they're busy studying the New Father's Survival Guide. 

"So, an actual, real-life baby, huh?"
"Yeah."
"As in miniscule quasi-human who miraculously appears one day and then runs roughshod over your life for the next twenty years."
"I can hardly wait."
"A baby, lest we forget, who can't even pick up a bat, let alone hit for a decent average."
"Great, isn't it?"
"Wait a minute. If you're going to be a Daddy, that means I'm ..."
"Ah, the penny drops."
"But ..."
"Welcome to the brave new world, Grandpa."
"Shit, I've got to sit down, get my breathing under control."
"What about the game?"
"The what now..?





 

Disconcertingly Random Bits of Questionable Data

The fear of hearing disembodied voices in his head is one of the reasons he never answers the phone.

"She said she was thinking about going back to the planet from which she came, but she changed the subject whenever alien abduction came up."

Turns out the presumed barrier between the mind and the so-called external world is actually a porous membrane. Impossible to tell if something is simply being observed or imaginatively conjured, or if it even makes a difference.  UFO encounters are a good example of this.

Say there's this guy and his girlfriend and they're camping one early summer on a very large lake in northern Canada and not particularly satisfied with the standard definition of reality at the moment they decide to take some LSD 25 (aka Orange Sunshine, the connoisseur's  psychotropic of choice) and then some unknown time later they have a very 'real', exquisitely palpable, terrifyingly close up and personal run in with multiple, apparently alien spacecraft.
Are they hallucinating? Manifesting irrational forces from a temporarily shared unconscious? Projecting unresolved emotional issues towards their parents, from whom they feel alienated?  And then suppose it turns out there are two other people camping nearby who, while not actually having visually witnessed the event, confirm that the 'terrible noise' of it woke them and, they frankly admit, scared the bloody hell out of them. How do we explain that?

"The past is a schizophrenic ghost who refuses to move on."     

Another guy, at random, heading into the shower, ostensibly to do the things people normally do in the shower, except he suddenly slips out of the showering moment and starts having crazy flashbacks, stray memories of things that may or may not have happened, becoming intensely focused on seemingly insignificant events from a remote past which can no longer be verified, standing there under the water for twenty minutes and suddenly realizing he has no idea what he's washed, if he's washed, what it even means to wash.
Have you washed?
Have I what? 
And then it's like, wait a minute, washed or not, who am I?
 
It's not just the re-experiencing of past events, but multiple variations of these events; a single word, perhaps, which either was or was not said at precisely the right or wrong moment, that shifted the event, the experience and subsequent memory of it, from outcome A to outcome B. And we're somehow convinced that both occurred. Furthermore, we suspect that outcomes C, D, E, F, etc., as unimaginable as they may be, also occurred.
This, of course, corresponds to the 'Multiple Worlds' hypothesis in physics, by which the quirky, out of time, multiple reality of the quantum world is extrapolated onto the macro-world of people, planets, trees, cats, dogs, etc.  The thinking being that if electrons can do it, why can't we?

So anytime a choice is made and A occurs, all possible variations of A simultaneously occur.

Example: There's this girl (or guy) you're attracted to, but you never talk to her and regret it for the rest of your life; you do talk to her and she sneers contemptuously at you and walks away; you talk to her and fall instantly in love; you talk to her, go back to her place and she tries to kill you; you don't talk to her, but begin stalking her and eventually try to kill her; you don't talk to her and she ends up marrying your best friend; you talk to her, end up in bed with her and discover she's actually a guy, or, worse case scenario, an alien guy pretending to be a human girl. 

 Talk about things you might later dwell upon in the shower.
At the very least, it certainly renders irrelevant the concept of 'making the right choice.'

"Anything is theoretically possible, so be careful. The next time you walk through a door you could find yourself standing on the moon."

Somewhat more likely, there's a one in a million chance of being struck by lightning (in any given year) In the same time frame, there's a one in seven billion chance of being struck by a meteor.
With approximately 7 billion people on the planet, we can logically infer that within the next year one of us is going to have a spectacularly unusual and, considering the average meteor whistles in through the atmosphere at 30 kilometers per second, extremely bad day.

I thought losing my job, wife, house and dog all in the same week was as bad as it could possibly get. Then the poor bastard next door gets hit by a fucking meteor. Really helped put things in perspective.