Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here

Simply saying “the holidays” can conjure up images of warmth and togetherness that are so necessary during these cold and lethargic months. Gatherings where the family awkwardly watches your uncle pour himself another double Old Crow into the mustard jar he’s been sipping from since 10 AM, all the time certain that the “turtleneck” he’s wearing under his off-white, cable-knit, reindeer sweater doesn’t extend past his shoulders. Images of the children, bathed in the yellow glow of the fire, as they sip hot chocolate and stare pensively at the smattering of wrapped gifts under the nearby tree, forcing you to fight the urge to smack them in their respective mouths for being so ungrateful for the food you put in their bellies, the roof over their heads, and the expensive methamphetamine-based narcotics you choke down their throats to dull their senses enough to make decent grades on their geography exams and make it into an ivy-league college, the cost of which will drain you of every last penny like some long-fanged vampire with a taste for retirement funds. The heart-warming memories of cutting into another of your wife’s bone-dry and flavorless turkeys, sawing back and forth at the breast like a hunk of granite, all the time dreading your auntie’s green bean casserole that every year tastes more and more like the cat urine in which her entire home is steeped, your vegan hippie sister’s curried cabbage casserole, which is at that precise moment filling the room with the unmistakable reek of backpacker’s crotch, and your mother-in-law’s fruitcake which, you’re quickly becoming certain, is made from some sort of fissile material that fell to the Earth sometime before life began to stir in the planet’s oceans.

Maybe your uncle doesn’t have such a bad idea after all.

The terrible food, the awkward family gatherings, the obligation to tell everyone that you know doesn’t give a crap “how you’re doing,” the cheap gifts, the uncomfortable silences after someone tells you you’ve had enough eggnog, the old people constantly talking about “waiting for the Lord to take them,” the malcontent teenagers that complain because grandma’s house doesn’t have HDTV and on top of all the personal struggles with which we all must contend during this most heinous of times, every manufacturer, retailer and street-peddler in the industrialized world is desperate to get everyone to spend money they don’t have, to buy shit they don’t need, to give to people they don’t like.

We can speak endlessly about the dangers of consumerism, especially during this time of greed and gluttony, but this ignores the basic tenet that every individual is responsible for their own actions, their own decisions and the consequences thereof. Take a quick look around eBay and you’ll see the new Sony video game console, the Playstation 3, on account of very limited supply, selling for $4,000 and up. Some have even sold in the $8,000 range. Sorry, the ones with auction end prices of $40,000 are just too high to believe, even this time of year when a human’s basic sense of self-preservation is casually thrown by the wayside as they claw a child’s eyes out to get at the last Elmo TMX doll.

In terms of hysteria, these things always have a way of combusting on a fuel of their own creation. Remember the mild hysteria when Microsoft released their next generation console, the Xbox 360? Pathetic losers camped out in front of department stores for days in advance, hoping springs eternal that they be given the opportunity to pay $500 for a few oddly shaped hunks of plastic so they can go straight home and sell it to some even more pathetic loser on eBay for $1000. Interest is peaked, more people see an even better opportunity now, least of all because of the growing holiday gift-chasing paranoia, so even more people can be seen camped out weeks ahead of time, which garners an obscene amount of media attention, both nationally and locally, because with the elections over there’s nothing else worth covering (except possibly the genocide in Rwanda, the Europe-shaking PM elections in France, record low gas prices, etc.) which fans even higher flames of interest, which makes the bidding for the pre-orders on eBay sky-rocket because the most pathetic of the pathetic losers (you guessed it: overpaid, absentee parents) are foaming at the mouth for this one material object they have deluded themselves into thinking will guarantee an intimate and deeply satisfying relationship with their alienated twelve-year-olds.

God, I need a drink.

Look, don’t get me wrong, stuff is cool, especially cool stuff, but there is a limit. Anyone willing to pay %1000+ over retail because your child MUST HAVE this doll or this game or this bike is doing no favors for anyone, let alone the kid. Sure, yours is the only kid on the block with a PS3 or that new at-home tattoo kit, but what has the young lad or lass learned about the most singularly important financial concept that can be taught to an individual that will soon enough be expected to freely participate in this most beautiful of concepts we call capitalism?

In case any of you misguided and self-absorbed parents are reading, the concept is called delayed gratification.

Wanting stuff is normal, don’t let the Commie anti-free marketeers convince you that you should feel guilty for wanting something that’s cool. The wanting is normal, the anger and the resentment and the aggression is not. Buddhists believe that all of life is suffering, and that all suffering stems from desire; that is to say, unfulfilled desires. The logic of the Buddhist is that suffering can only be assuaged two ways: get everything you want, or stop wanting stuff. Since getting everything you want is impossible, especially when you consider that most people don’t even know what they really want, the only achievable goal is to stop wanting altogether.

Of course, this is a lot easier when you live in a monastery in the mountains with no electricity and you’re brain is barely working correctly because all you eat is boiled carrots and no matter how many times you ask, they still give you that funny look when you ask if they have any coffee in the house. Clearly, the life of a committed Buddhist monk is not a realistic option for the typical citizen of industrialized Earth, but there are many lessons we can glean.

Getting everything you want is not a good thing. Aside from being pretty much impossible, it creates unhealthy expectations that can never be achieved, leading to disappointment, resentment and disillusion (read: Buddhist-style suffering). It also only serves to engender a grand disconnect from the other %99.9 of humanity that, not only doesn’t get everything they want, often don’t regularly get what they need. This disparity breeds animosity, discontent and envy. And let’s admit it, we’re a gregarious species, and despite what we tell ourselves, we really do care what other people think about us.

Just think about that douche-bag you went to high school with that drove the nicest car, got all the most expensive toys, and is now in prison for possession and distribution of child pornography. Sub-lesson: sky-high expectations also tend to warp one’s perceptions of behavioral boundaries. To illustrate that point, I recommend you all read The Dirt by Motley Crue.

Clark Howard, a nationally syndicated talk-show host and wildly successful author, speaks about people whose debt outpaces their earnings, a problem that is growing in magnitude in the United States, but also in Europe and Asia. His main point is that there’s plenty of money in the system, and average wealth is the highest it’s been since the economic boom after WWII, but in 2005, for the first time ever, for every $1.00 earned by the average American, they spent $1.01. Mr. Howard calls this a “wait problem.”

The problem is not that this person can’t afford that new car, or that new handbag, or that new computer, or that new PS3, (though, may times this is the case) they just don’t want to wait. That’s where the credit cards, the equity loans, refinances and debt, debt, debt come into play. After interest payments, that $6,000 PS3, paid off three years later (if you’re lucky) cost you $12,000.

Despite this Curmudgeon McScrooge routine, “the holidays” do have their limited charm. The annual box-load of underwear my mom gives me, despite the seventeen pairs she gave me last year have barely been worn, always reminds that she thinks about me all year long….while in the underwear department. The opportunity to buy the fetching Mrs. Sonnier another piece of dazzling jewelry, guaranteeing that tenuous affection she holds for me will last at least another six months (just until the anniversary) is also a bonus.

If you’re unfortunate enough to be watching television at any point during this time of the year, you’ll be bombarded by children’s specials and PSAs and the like explaining “the true meaning of the holidays” (on account of the PC Nazis having virtually obliterated the word “Christmas” from the routine vocabulary”) as a time of giving, and generosity, and family and all that horseshit. Just remember, there is a grain a truth somewhere in there, even if you have to get waist-deep to find it.

What the hell is an aluminum falcon?

Needless to say, it’s been an eventful and all-consuming week. Then again, if it’s so needless to say, why did I say it?

Because I’m complex.

The drive down was particularly uneventful. By “uneventful,” I mean driving for 14 hours a day for three days will cause a person’s brain to turn into a viscous goo, making it virtually impossible to retain any information input during that time.

A few items of note are the two piles of dog shit outside the hotel room in Evanston, Wyoming, the cows fucking in New Mexico, that decent fried okra can be had at the only gas station in Bellevue, Texas, and that my cat goes into the litter box to fart.

The offices of the OTR Institute are still in the transition period, and for the time being, will be making broadcasts from our secret remote location, that’s right, the same one where they send Dick Cheney when the compressor in the White House refrigerator clicks on and spooks the cook staff. We got our cans of beans and our potable water, try and find us you pigs!

Life is still somewhat surreal, and until I start my new job, I most likely will not be able to shake this feeling that I’m on vacation. However, much like vacation, the familial obligations seem to be piling on the Smurfs at Smuckfest. That’s right, I’m Smurfette.



In the meantime, I’d like to point the attention of my local readers to an organization in its infancy. The Young Professionals of Acadiana is a group that meets monthly to give the nubile corporate fodder in this town the opportunity to shake each others hands and talk about how great they are for a few hours while sucking down imported beers and using words like “litigationary.” All in all, the first meeting was a success, especially for an organization so young, and I wish the heartiest of congratulations to its founder and president, Captain Turdy McPoop-Bottom.

Way to go, Ace.

As the Captain and I were chatting on the sidewalk after the “event,” we were approached by strange-looking fellow in a baggy hoodie. He immediately began to mumble incoherently and hand Luke his driver’s license. I managed to glean a few words from Mush-Mouth, and pieced together that he’d been in prison for something and would like some money, or at the very least a cigarette. Luke gave him some change, and as he turned away, we both immediately left the scene for our respective cars, parked in opposite directions.

About a block away, I began to replay the encounter in my head. “Did he say what I think he said?” I asked myself. I thought about calling Luke as I fingered my cell phone.

Suddenly it rang.

“Did that guy say he was in prison for assault for putting a stick up someone’s ass?” asked Luke.

“Yeah, I heard that too. I think he said he went to prison for sticking something up someone’s ass because ‘that’s how they fuck with you up there’” I replied.

“Yeah. That’s what I heard too.” Luke agreed.

So, who knows what colorful characters you’ll get to meet at the next YPoA meeting. A drunken sailor bent on fondling your kneecap? Perhaps an insane ex-toll booth worker who wishes to extol the group with his fascinating collection of memorabilia from the set of Biodome? I have my fingers crossed for the guy that gets paid to watch paint dry.

In any case, our pirate broadcasts of the OTR Institute’s brainwave patented brainwave-altering info-tainment will be erratic in the coming weeks, until we can find a legitimate base of operations from which to unleash our wretched and rancorous musings on the unsuspecting internet.

Until then, in the immortal words of Wilford Brimley, “Check your blood sugar, and check it often.”

America's Poop Idol

As much as those kooky Libertarians might like to think that we human are beholden to no one, we do, in fact, live in a land (and by and large, a world) that is goverened by basic rules of behavior and standards of law.

There are those, however, that would say that these standards have become so lax over the years as to have lost virtually all of their meaning. Their logic is that with each explitive ridden t-shirt or scantily-clad bimbo, we lose a little bit of the groundwork that holds this whole thing we call society together and takes it one step further into the darkness of chaos and despair.

They might have a point, especially in the legal sense. The limp-wristed, namby-pamby judges we have in this day and age, the very gatekeepers of that rule of law, are letting the baby-boomer "I'm okay, you're okay," "wheatgrass before my morning meditation" mentality seep into their professional lives and ruin it for the rest of us.

I refer you to the case of a Vermont judge who sentenced a man to 60 days in prison for the repeated rape of a seven-year-old girl. According to Judge Edward Cashman, "The one message I want to get through is that anger doesn't solve anything. It just corrodes your soul."

Yeah, thanks. I'm sure that's gonna help that little girl sleep at night.

As it turns out, there a whole shitload of things you can get away with, even if you do them RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE JUDGE.

From Brietbart.com

A Chicago man apologized for spreading his feces around a courtroom during his trial on drug charges.

Vandale Amos Willis, 28, apologized Wednesday before being sentenced to more than 10 years in prison. Willis was convicted earlier of importation of a controlled substance, cocaine, and two other charges.

"Im going to take full responsibility for everything I did in Duluth," Willis told the court. "I want to apologize for everything I did in court. Im sorry, your honor."

He asked Judge David Sullivan to put him on probation. Sullivan told Willis his actions wouldn't be held against him, but there was no reason to depart from sentencing guidelines.

Ladies and gentleman, we have officially reached crisis point. When a man can smear his own feces in a hall of public justice, and have the judge, or any human being, offer him a shred if sympathy, we have crossed the raging river of despair and entered into dark, dark territory.

An Invitation

Dear Friends,

You are cordially invited to view and contribute to the latest collaborative effort of Misters Scott and Zachary Sonnier, The Salt Makers.

The Salt Makers is a discussion forum, open to any and all, to discuss the topics of politics, pop culture and any other items of interest. You are invited to contribute to any discussion by responding to a post by any of our members, or by posting to the blog yourself. You may simply post a link to a news item you find of particular interest, or regale us with your opinion on the current farming techniques of Indo-China.

To become a contributing member, simply send a message to the site administrator at scott.sonnier[at]gmail.com.

All opinions are welcome, as are any disagreements. The purpose of this forum is to promote discord and discontent through rigorous debate.

"Debate and divergence of views can only enrich our history and culture." -Ibrahim Babangida

Thank you,

The Salt Makers Team

Darth Vader is an Asshole

I swear every time I watch this, I laugh a little harder.

Ely (noun): The first, tiniest inkling you get that something, somewhere, has gone terribly wrong.

I can still remember the day vividly. I came into work on the morning of May 11, 2001, sat down at my desk and powered on the shitty terminal (not computer) I used to enter data for eight hours a day into a database system that was perhaps three generations from punch cards and beads on string. Howie, the raggae-junkie-jew that sat across from me had been staring at me like a freshly packed gravity bong from the moment I walked in.

This, however, was not unusual.

I ignored Howie, hoping like hell he wasn’t trying to clean up again (he tended to get either violent or extremely emotional) and sipped the muddy water Dunkin’ Donuts calls coffee. I could feel his bugged out eyes on me like two balloons being rhythimcally smashed into my face.

I was really not in the mood for this shit.

“Did you hear?” Howie asked. “Hear what?” I responded, dreading the response.

“Douglas Adams is dead.”

You know that camera trick they do in movies when they move the camera closer to the subject while they zoom out with the lens? It makes the subject zoom closer, while the background zooms backward, giving the illusion of time and space bending slightly along the edges. As a viewer it gives you that feeling of vertigo and dissolution. That’s what it felt like.

I went to the nearest actual computer, (that douche-bag Marina was out again with a coke hangover or maybe another STD) and looked it up. It was true. He’d had a heart attack. That blonde California cunt he’d married, the one that got him to quit drinking and smoking and start exercising, she did this to him. He started feeling chest pains while on the treadmill. He was dead by the time they got him to the hospital.



I was devastated. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I really was. I had read Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy at the tender age of thirteen and had since acquired and devoured everything he had put his name to, including some very rare and limited titles like A Last Chance to See and The Meaning of Liff. The man was an icon, a demi-god. He smoked and he drank and he slept late, he was funny as hell and he was the picture of half-drunk effort transmuting into incredible success, a trait I find extraordinarily endearing.

Of all the reasons I was so distraught, the ones that really got to me were the most selfish. Sure, the world had lost an incredibly intelligent, amiable and hilarious writer, and little Polly had lost her father at the tender age of seven, but all I could think about was the fact that I would never read another work by Douglas Noel Adams. This later turned out to be false, but unfinished The Salmon of Doubt, posthumously published, made the void of his absence in this world just a little darker, not brighter.

What affected me the most was that I was never going to meet him. I know it sounds weird, but I had always assumed that one day, somehow, I would get to meet him, shake his hand, and let him know how important his works were to me as a developing self-loathing alcoholic and under-achiever.

But it will never happen.



In deference to the great loss I was feeling, that very weekend, Elise and I bought a adorable gray and white dwarf hamster and named him Douglas. The cat, however, promptly drowned him in the toilet.

Anyway, the reason I’m regaling you with this tear-drawing narrative, is to punctuate precisely how I did not feel when I came into work on the morning of September 4, 2006. I was in the kitchenette making a pot of coffee and Perry, the coffee freak I made fun of a while ago, now our administrative guru (read: secretary) came out of the bathroom. As he wiped his hands on his jeans he said, “Hey, did you hear Steve Irwin died?”

“Yeah.” I said, as I tried to figure how the damned pot turned on. I mean, there were three buttons, and none were marked. Who the hell designs a coffee pot with three unmarked buttons? How many things can a coffee pot do that it needs three buttons?!

Needless to say I was not devastated. No offense to those of who will sincerely miss the old Crocodile Hunter, but I always thought he was a bit of a joke, and frankly, seemed to take great pleasure is annoying dangerous creatures by smacking them in head and shaking his kakhi-clad bottom in their venomous faces. Fortunately, this made watching his television specials kind of enjoyable. After dinner one night at the mother-in-law’s house, we found ourselves rolling on the carpet, watching Steve Irwin repeatedly slap a black mamba in the face, warning the viewers at home (on account of Black Mamba’s being so common in the Detroit area) to never attempt such a thing.

As it happens, last year, my mother-in-law was in Australia visiting a friend, and got me some Steve Irwin postcards from a local Toyota dealership. They pictured the Croc Hunter jumping into the air like a Kansas City faggot next to a Four Runner with the word “CRIKEY!” hovering above his head. They were great fun, and the three days the fetching Mrs. Sonnier let me keep them on the fridge were equally so.

Yesterday I got an email from the mother-in-law. The email stated that, in addition to the postcards, she’d coerced the guy at the dealership to give her some promotional posters picturing Mr. Irwin wrestling stuffed animals for the sake of letting everyone know that genuine Toyota parts were vastly superior (crikey!) to non-genuine Toyota parts. In light of Mr. Irwin’s untimely demise, she thought that they might be worth some money, so she looked online and found a signed Croc Hunter poster on eBay that sold for over $3,500!! ($3,500 AU = $2,600 US)



Now this is about the time my skepticism takes front seat, sticks his thumb in the belt of his trousers and says “bullshit” just loud enough for everyone I the room to hear.

The question is: Did this transaction actually take place? Or perhaps is this just a ploy to generate freakish interest in other posters this guy has listed?

It wouldn’t be unheard of for some guy to create an account just to “buy” his own poster to freak people out and make them think his other posters are worth more money. I find it extremely dubious that since the slae of this poster, two more have sold in the neighborhood of $2,000, and the next most valuable signed poster sold for a paltry $800.

This is where I run into questions about my implacable love for the human race. Could someone really be this stupid? I mean, this is not John Lennon or even JFK Jr., this is a friggin’ Aussie hillbilly with a mullet and penchant for reptiles.

In any case, the listings I made for the mother-in-law’s posters was removed, presumably for a violation of terms and conditions. The listing stated that a “portion” of the proceeds would go to conservation charity (I just cut and paste the item description she emailed me) which apparently is against the law.

Is my skepticism getting the best of me on this one, or do you think some asshole might really be willing to pay $3,000 for a signed poster of the sexiest man in kakhi?

I must admit, however, that with just a little digging, one can find innumerable examples of Steve’s death sending shockwaves throughout the world. The guys over at Super Awesome WOW have concocted (by that I mean cut and paste) a list of Chuck Norris-like facts about Steve Irwin. My favorite is “Steve Irwin took revenge on the stingray by piercing its heart with his penis.”

A flash game by the title of “Terri Irwin’s Revenge” has been making its way around the internet. The purpose of the game is to guide Steve’s widow (a native of Eugene, OR, if anyone cares) through a sea of stingrays, blasting them with her trusty shotgun and a handful of “croc-bombs.” There are few things more endearing than tasteless humor.



And on the subject of revenge, fans of the work of Mr. Steve Irwin (which, if you’ll remember, was conservation) having been smiting stingrays on the coast of Queensland. According to the authorities, since Mr. Irwin’s death, at least 10 stingrays have been found dead with their tails chopped off at Dundowran Beach and Deception Bay. This is, of course, equivelant to burning down rum distilleries after the death of Ernest Hemingway, just because you loved him so much.

So maybe people really are that stupid. Maybe that same guy that brutally murdered those stingrays is the same guy that bought that damned poster for $3,000. Maybe he dresses up like Terri Irwin and wrestles with his life-size Croc Hunter doll. Maybe he plays hours and hours of “Terri Irwin’s Revenge” with tears streaming down his face. Hell, maybe it is Terri Irwin.

Can You Hear Me Now?

September 07, 2006 12:00am

FOUR prisoners in an El Salvador jail hid mobile phones, a phone charger and spare chips in their bowels so they could co-ordinate crimes from their cells, prison officials said today.

The men, all gang members, wrapped their phones and accessories in plastic and inserted them into their rectums "far enough to reach their intestines," Ramon Arevalo, director of the maximum security Zacatecoluca prison, said.

Mr Arevalo said the ruse was discovered during X-ray examinations following six weeks of investigations.



The men, members of the ultra-violent Mara Salvatrucha street gang and the first in El Salvador known to go to such lengths to make phone calls in jail, used the mobile phones to manage robberies, blackmail and murders outside, Mr Arevalo said.

The Zacatecoluca prison is also known by the nickname "Zacatraz," after the US island penitentiary Alcatraz.

Zacatecoluca is about 65km east of the capital San Salvador and currently home to 337 inmates.

The Land Down Under, A.K.A., The Bush

There are those that would refer to our current global situation as an "energy crisis." I find it flabergasting that people can so quickly forget even recent history and all the damage Jimmy Carter did during his term, specifically the oil embargo crisis of 1973.

If we were to learn anything from that fiasco, it's that the more the government gets involved in trying to solve problem of supply and demand, the worse that problem will become.

On the other hand, the beautiful mechanisms of capitalism allow responses well beyond the confines of even the specific industries affected by "crisis." In Japan, for example, the crisis of the mid-Seventies caused major industry to recuse from global petroleum and invest heavily in another fast growing and potentially profitable industry: electronics.

Well, as the the giant said, "It is happening again."

From Reuters:

Brothel owners claim the system works much the same way as supermarkets which offer shoppers discounted gas prices by presenting their grocery bills when they fill up their tanks.

"If you come in and spend time with one of our lovely ladies, we'll give you a discount of 20 cents a liter," Kerry, manager of Sydney brothel The Site, told Reuters Wednesday.

There is no link between brothels, petrol providers or supermarkets but brothels like The Site and Madame Kerry's say the system is simple.

Once you've filled up your car, bring your receipt to the brothel and they'll discount the price of your visit.

The bill for a full 50-liter tank at 126.9 cents per liter comes to A$63.45 ($48.22). With the offered 20c a liter discount, the petrol bill would have instead come to A$53.45.

That A$10 difference is taken off the A$150 cost of a 30-minute session with one of the brothel's "service providers."

That's one of the innumerable beauties of capitalism. You don't even have to be a part of the affected industry to try and make a difference, to help people, and to make money doing it. Of course, the down side is that, in order to take advantage of the money-saving offer, you have to sleep with an actual Australian woman.

It Is Happening Again...

Dr. Richard Dawkins, British zoologist, famed anthropologist and expert on Darwinism, took on the hefty task of discussing design vs. evolution in his 1996 collection of essays Climbing Mount Improbable. In these essays, Dr. Dawkins illustrated the differences between things that had clearly been designed by intelligent beings (his example is Mount Rushmore) versus singularities he called “designoids.”

“Designoids,” to quote Dr. Dawkins’ text, are “artifacts of the natural world that appear to be designed, but have in fact been shaped by a magnificently non-random process which creates an almost perfect illusion of design.” The obvious response to that statement is: what the hell does that mean?

“I chose Mount Rushmore, because to live in a country where you can take an ugly old mountain and put faces on it, faces of great Americans, who did so much to make our country super great, well that makes me - Rebecca Leeman – proud to be an American!”

Let’s return to Mount Rushmore for a moment. When you gaze upon the faces of those national figures protruding from the face of the mountain, never for a moment would anyone entertain the idea that these detailed visages were the work of anything other than the hand of the eccentric Gutzon Gorblum. It’s clear to anyone that even the combined and indomitable forces of wind and rain could not be responsible for something so precise and unique.



“Designoids” fall somewhere outside this realm. At first glance, they may seem like natural occurrences of rock or trees or whatever, but after a closer inspection, things that are familiar and strange become clear to the viewer, and it’s about this time that we start looking around for the hidden camera.

Take, for example, the samurai crab. Called “heikegani” in Japanese, these small crabs, like most crabs, feature ridges and bumps on their carapaces where muscles attach to the interior of their exoskeletons. By a strange evolutionary accident, the bumps and ridges on the back of the heikegani resemble the typically stylized face of an angry and determined samurai warrior. Imagine yourself as a Japanese fisherman about a thousand years ago, pulling up a net full of delicious crabs, only to look at their backs and see a whole phalanx of samurai warriors staring back at you.



Another fine example of a “designoid” is the famous basalt rock formation in Hawaii that strikes an eerie resemblance to the profile of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.



The point is that the formations on Mount Rushmore were clearly designed to resemble human faces, while the heike crab and the JFK basalt cliffs were not, though our brains process the images in much the same way. That is to say, humans are hard-wired to see human faces everywhere.

The unique combination of eyes, nose, and mouth is easily the most important and distinguishable feature for the human eye and that of our close primate cousins. When we encounter another human being, we look them in the eyes and we examine their face, this is how we determine the mental and emotional state of the person with whom we are interacting. An unfortunate side-effect of this psychological focus on the face is that humans see faces in everything. Any pattern that remotely resembles the arrangement of features or shading on a human face will trigger that same psychological response. Even when we’re babies, we look to human faces for comfort and cues, and by extension, we look for, and see them, everywhere from grilled cheese sandwiches to Chicago underpasses.

This common psychological fixation becomes a problem when a person’s spirituality, already an exercise in masturbatory self-delusion, takes them from perfectly functioning human machine, to the poster boy for “this is your brain on Jesus.”

In case you hadn’t heard, Jesus and his mom have been spotted again. In fact, Jesus has been quite busy recently, his holy visage appearing in everything from dental x-rays, to shower curtains. Mary, on the other hand, has maintained the good taste only to appear in delicious chocolatey treats. I suppose this is the closest we’ll ever get to Tom Waits’ “immaculate confection.”

Over the years, I’ve come to terms with my implacable atheism. I no longer feel the urge to throttle that guy that tries to give me pamphlets explaining how I’m going to suffer for all eternity in “the fires that burn but do not consume” because I won’t kneel in front of two sticks nailed together for an hour once a week. I’ve relegated myself to a combination of quaint understanding and pity. This man truly believes that the holy bible is the inimitable word of god and that if he does not follow its tenets, he will be punished. Frankly, if I truly believed that, then it would only seem logical that I would try and save other souls from perpetual suffering, right?

But when I read about these fucking morons that see Jesus in apartment windows and chocolate drippings, however, it just makes me want to spit. I cannot imagine how brain-dead, deluded and childishly ignorant someone must be to entertain the thought for even a second that the lord and savior of all humanity, the lamb of god, the son of the almighty creator would show himself to his faithful subjects in a dental x-ray.

“You know, dad, Javier has been a faithful subject for his whole life. He’s a good man that keeps your word to heart, follows my earthly example and cares for his family and his community. He is truly of the faithful flock. I think I’ll show myself to him, this day, to show our appreciation for his virtue and faith. I know, I’ll put my face in the x-ray his dentist took to see if he need a root canal!”

And why is when these people see Jesus in their omelet or on the mud pattern on the bumper of their '89 Buick Skylark, it’s always the stylized, western Christianity’s version of Jesus with the pale skin and well-combed beard that you see on candles in Mexican restaurants? If Jesus really were making his face known to his flock, wouldn’t he actually use his real face?

First of all, we know Jesus of Galilee was real because he’s mentioned in several Roman historical records, most importantly, that of the great Herodotus. Secondly, fossil records, realistic portraits and description along with anthropological and ethnic evidence, historians have a pretty good idea of what most people from that are, and by extension, what Jesus looked most probably looked like.



The amusing possibility is that the real face of Jesus, the one pictured above, could be appearing in milkshakes and oil stains around the country, but no one is recognizing it!

I keep thinking about that part in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, when Ford Prefect is explaining to Arthur Dent how he got to Earth in the first place:

“Unfortunately I got stuck on the Earth for rather longer than I intended," said Ford. "I came for a week and got stuck for fifteen years."

"But how did you get there in the first place then?"

"Easy, I got a lift with a teaser."

"A teaser?"

"Yeah."

"Er, what is ..."

"A teaser? Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets which haven't made interstellar contact yet and buzz them."

"Buzz them?" Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him.

"Yeah", said Ford, "they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor soul whom no one's ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennae on their heads and making beep beep noises. Rather childish really."

Perhaps these appearances of Jesus’ face in fruit salads and tattered car upholstery are actually elaborate practical jokes by aliens. But then, of course, that would get all of these brain dead assholes off the hook.

The fact is that it’s normal to see faces everywhere, but to twist that strange psychological tendency into a spiritual manifestation, you’re doing more to slow the advancement of your cause than anything else. Seriously, would you convert to a religion whose singular epitomic symbol of humanity and divinity kept saying “hey!” to his followers by showing his face in sandwiches and on the bumpers of cars that never get cleaned? Not likely.

I could end this blog with something thoughtful and poignant, like “look for salvation in yourself,” or “the face you should celebrate every day is the one in the mirror,” but Vinay would just make fun of me for it. So if you see Jesus, or Buddha, or Ganesh, or whomever, in your tomato soup at lunch tomorrow, tell them I said they’re a pussy, and if they don’t like it, you tell ‘em to come see me. I’ll be having roast beef with extra horseradish. They’ll know where to find me.

OTR Institute Sociological Survey #6

I remember waiting in line at the USL bookstore to get all the texts I would need for my first semester in college. Two anthropology books, three for british literature, two for philosophy, and more I can't remember (mostly, because I never went to those classes). Of course, I had gotten drunk the night before (read: Donovan brushed his nipple with Luke's toothbrush), and though I lived only a block away from the bookstore, I still got there too late to get any of the used books.

I still remember looking at that first anthropology text, seeing the price tag of $74.00, and promptly shitting in my pants. If memory serves correctly (which it rarely does when when I'm trying to remember anything that occurred between 1998 and 1999), I spent about $200 on books that day, and I got off easy.

While this is not a new discussion, retailers and service providers have been trying to further saturate the college markets for decades, but with the rising cost of education, perhaps it is time to re-visit this issue.

Query: If it would reduce the cost significantly, and in some cases entirely, should advertisements be allowed in college textbooks?

If not, why? If so, with what restrictions, if any?

For centuries newspapers, magazines and innumerable other publications have survived solely on adevrtising revenue. It allows retailers, etc. access to the intelligent and literate market, while the newspapers can provide their product at little or no cost to the comsumer. It's win-win.

From the Associated Press:

New idea to cut textbook costs — sell ads

Minnesota firm will offer more than 100 titles this fall — completely free.

Textbook prices are soaring into the hundreds of dollars, but in some courses this fall, students won’t pay a dime. The catch: Their textbooks will have ads for companies including FedEx Kinko’s and Pura Vida coffee.

Selling ad space keeps newspapers, magazines, Web sites and television either cheap or free. But so far, the model hasn’t spread to college textbooks — partly for fear that faculty would consider ads undignified. The upshot is that textbooks now cost students, according to various studies, about $900 per year.

Now, a small Minnesota startup is trying to shake up the status quo in the $6 billion college textbook industry. Freeload Press will offer more than 100 titles this fall — mostly for business courses — completely free. Students, or anyone else who fills out a five-minute survey, can download a PDF file of the book, which they can store on their hard drive and print.

I pose the question to you, my savvy and attractive readers (except for you Vinay, you are neither savvy nor attractive). What do you think?

How Sweet It Is

The fetching Mrs. Sonnier sent an email to me this morning asking for my impression. The email is reproduced below, unedited.

From the June 2006 Idaho Observer:

Aspartame - The World's Best Ant Poison

contributed by Jan Jensen of WELLthy Choices.

We live in the woods and carpenter ants are a huge problem. We have spentthousands of dollars with Orkin and on ant poisons trying to keep themunder control but nothing has helped. So when I read somewhere that aspartame (Nutrasweet) was actually developed as an ant poison and only changed tobeing considered non-poisonous after it was realized that a lot moremoney could be made on it as a sweetener than as an ant poison, I decided to give it a try. I opened two packets of aspartame sweetener, and dumpedone in a corner of each of our bathrooms. That was about 2 years ago andI have not seen any carpenter ants for about 9 to 12 months.

It works better than the most deadly poisons I have tried. Any time theyshow up again, I simply dump another package of Nutrasweet in a corner,and they will be gone for a year or so again. Since posting this information I have had many people tell me of their success solving antproblems with this substance, when nothing else worked. We found laterthat small black ants would not eat the aspartame. It was determined that if you mixed it with apple juice, they would quickly take it back to thenest, and all would be dead within 24 hours, usually. I have found thatsometimes it will kill them, and sometimes it does not. Not sure why, may be slightly different species of ants or something.

Fire Ants: We got our first fire ant hill about 2 weeks ago. Poison didnot work. We tried aspartame and the ants ignored it until we got a lightrain. It was just a sprinkle, enough to moisten the Nutrasweet and ground,but not enough to wash it away. They went crazy, hundreds of them grabbingit and aking it back into the mound. When I checked he mound 2 days later, there was no sign of the fire ants. I even dug the mound up some, and still saw none of them.

How does it Work: Aspartame is a neuropoison. It most likely kills the ants byinterfering with their nervous system. It could be direct, like stopping their heart, or
something more subtle like killing their sense of taste so they can't figure out what iseatable, or smell, so they can't follow their trails, or mis-identify their colonies members, so they start fighting each other. Not sure what causesthem to end up dying, just know that for many species of ants it willkill them quickly and effectively.

As with any poison I recommend wearing gloves and washing any skin areas that come in contact with this poison, and avoid getting it in your mouth, despite anything the labeling may indicate.

I read this email with my usual mixture of amusement, remorse and rage. As if there isn’t enough bullshit, misinformation, propaganda, sophism and fraudulence out there that we need some douche-bag making stuff up to try and cause hysteria about something as inconsequential as Sweet N’ Low. In preparation for the post that I would write about this, I started looking on some websites that deal specifically in debunking the hoaxes that get emailed to us by our gullible and overly concerned mothers. My first stop was Snopes.com, a personal favorite, but aside from an email hoax about aspartame causing cancer and multiple sclerosis, there was nothing about carpenter ants.

Curious, I thought, and dug deeper into the miasma that is the Internet. I found the original article, indeed printed in the Idaho Observer in June 2006. Just to give you a quick impression of this publication, you’ll find other articles with names like ""The Tyranny of Modern Medicine," "Foreigners Buying Up American Roads & Bridges," "The Miraculous Healing Power of Oak Bark," "America: Freedom to Fascism," "Chemical Control of the Mass American Mind," and many more. We can safely assume this monthly newsletter is printed on an Epson Stylus 860 in the underground bomb shelter of a man that possesses an extensive aluminum foil wardrobe.

Having determined that the Idaho Observer is your run-of-the-mill, brain-dead conspiracy theory/ alternative healthcare drivel, I delved further to find more info on the article’s author.

Ms. Jan Jenson is a "health coach," whatever the fuck that means, and operates a blog called "Wellthy Choices" where pretty much all she does is try and whip up aspartame hysteria and hock a dietary supplement called "E3: The Most Vital Wild-Grown Superfood on the Planet!" In case you’re wondering, it’s seaweed.

Well, not much interesting info there, so I jumped back into the deep end, where all I found were endless "modern health" discussion forums where asshole after asshole had simply cut and past Ms. Jenson's article (spelling errors and all) into a post, which was followed by endless antecdotal responses like, "My dog one ate a packet of Nutrasweet and vomited up a tennis ball! I’m never drinking that stuff again!"

And then I found this on Spoof.com:

(In case you are not aware, TheSpoof.com is very much like The Onion)

FDA Certifies Aspartame as Ant Poison

WASHINGTON (AP)—The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has certified the popular sweetener aspartame, also known as NutraSweet, as an ant poison."Aspartame was originally developed as an ant poison and it was only changed to being non-poisonous after it was realized that a lot more money could be made on it as a sweetener," said FDA chief Ralph Roachman. "We are just notifying the public and industry about the original and best use of this stuff."He continued, "That crap kills ants dead. It works on carpenter ants, silverfish, roaches, and almost anything in fact. You just gotta open a coupla packets of aspartame sweetener and dump them in a corner of each of the rooms with the infestation. It works better than the most deadly poisons we have tried. Any time they show up again, simply dump another package of NutraSweet in a corner, and they will be gone for a year or so."

The FDA found that certain types of insects like small black ants will not eat the aspartame, but scientists determined that if you mix it with apple juice, they would quickly take it back to the nest, and "all would be dead within 24 hours."Aspartame is also effective against fire ants, but the poison may not work until it is lightly sprinkled with a light rain or a garden hose, with just enough water so as to not wash it away. One FDA technician observed, "After I wetted the NutraSweet the fire ants went crazy with hundreds of them grabbing it and taking it back into their mound. When I checked the mound 2 days later, there was no sign of the fire ants. I even dug the mound up some, and still saw none of them."FDA scientists know that aspartame is a neuropoison which kills ants by disrupting their nervous system and their hearts and their senses."Ants start acting weird, they begin fighting and having wars, and they end up dying," noted an FDA research paper.

An FDA consumer guide on the use of the poison recommends wearing gloves and washing any skin areas that come in contact with it since it is so toxic, and avoid getting it in your mouth, despite what consumer labeling may indicate. Aspartame is also effective against other insects such as yellow jackets, wasps, praying mantises, and certain other higher lifeforms.

In case you haven’t realized, or maybe too much saccharin has affected your attention span, Ms. Jan Jenson plagairized, virtually word for word (with the addition of numerous, unforgivable grammatical errors), an article from TheSpoof.com, without realizing that it was a joke.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you believe just anything that you read in the mass emails that are forwarded to you by your nervous Aunt Tilly, you are dumber than even the OTR Institute can assuage. You’re the kind of person that buys those curly shoelace things because you can’t remember what hole the rabbit goes into. You’re the type of guy that keeps a lot of rubber coated spoons in the house because if you lost another eye, they would fire you from the Sierra Club board of directors.

You define stupidity, and you have an obligation to kill yourself immediately, if only to spare the rest of us from having to change your diapers and explain to you where toast comes from.

To you, Jan Jenson, I call you to the carpet to answer these allegations. You are an fool because you thought no one would ever find out what you did, and you are a fear-monger because you try to take advantage of people’s lack of information to sell them grass in a capsule. Unfortunately, the type of people that read publications like the Idaho Observer are not interested in truth, only the twisted bits of fabricated bullshit that people like you disseminate, and would never think to check your facts, or even questions your motives.

And to you, the editors of the Idaho Observer, the tracking device was implanted inside of your eyes, see if you can guess which one!

As an aside, I would like to state that these bloodsuckers find it so easy to spread this misinformation simply because this is such an inconceivably inconsequential issue. If you're interested in reading some actual facts about aspartame (and god help us if you are) you can find them here:

American Council on Science & Health

United States Food & Drug Administration

Health Canada

Toilet Humor

Luke is totally right. YouTube is the coolest thing since BevMo.com (except for the teenage morons that think we want to watch them breakdance in ther basements).

Case in point:



I can't decide which is funnier: The fact that these poor people are exposed to the public while relieving themselves, or the fact that Japanese men apparently straddle fruit bowls with their pants around their ankles in order to pee. That's just not right.

Help a Brother Out...

Woody Allen has been trying to figure out women, and making movies about it, for about the last 300 years. Instead of getting any closer, I think it's obvious that he's pushed us, as a gender, further into the abyss than ever before. That Men Are From Mars... fancy lad John Gray certainly didn't get us any closer. He used to live under a vow of celibacy, for god's sake!

And don't even get me started on the myriad of daytime messiahs like Dr. Phil and Montel. Their respective loafer lightness is more likeley to get us an unwelcome green room cop-a-feel than any meaningful advice on relationships.

Ladies, we just don't get you. Some would say that it's this very inability for the the sexes to comprehend each other's motives and desires that makes relationships so interesting in the first place. Like most men, I fall somewhere in between the "vive la difference" camp and the "why do I have to put the toilet seat down, but you don't have to leave it up?" alliance.

One sure thing, however, is that we need to stick together. That being said, I hope someone out there, who can actually use it, will buy this. I mean, there are limits to what even liquor can impart the ability to endure.

Of Apologies and Rotten Meat

First of all, allow me to apologize to you, my small, yet dedicated corps of readers (especially you, Mom) for my recent absence. The reasons include hail storms, car trouble, cross-country treks, and sectarian unrest in the Middle East, just to name a few. In any case, I would like to announce my triumphant return.



In case the word has not spread to the outer reaches of the galaxy as yet, myself and the fetching Mrs. Sonnier, have determined to uproot ourselves from our quiet, comfortable lives in the temperate Pacific Northwest to relocate in the muggy, moist and humid climate that bore us: Louisiana. This was not an easy decision, given the multitude of wonderful friends, sweet house, great jobs and smelly hippies at our disposal here in The Rose City, but it was inevitable. Who wants an easy, non-eventful life, anyway? Especially one that could potentially involve a firebrand like Jillian?

So, the house is on the market, the resumes are in the pipeline, and between keeping the house immaculate for potential buyers and stressing about job prospects in a much smaller town, the fetching Mrs. Sonnier is on the verge of mental breakdown, and by extension, so am I.

In case you guys have yet to experience this little slice of hell, selling a house is like selling a child: you can’t imagine how ANYONE could look at it and not fall in love immediately, and if you were to hear anyone say anything less that wonderful about it, you’d be fully prepared to belt them in the mouth. The act of belting a potential buyer in the mouth, however, has been known to have detrimental effects on the ability of a house to sell (or a child, for that matter), so our agent politely requested that we not be home when the house is being viewed by the general, punch-me-in-the-mouth public.

Last Tuesday, the first day Casa de Awesome was available for purchase on the market for an unreasonably low amount of money, our agent hosted what she described as a “broker’s open.” This is an open house intended specifically for other real estate agents in town to get to know the house so that if they have clients that think might be interested, they can bring them by at a later date. I was not allowed to attend, and resigned myself to chew on my fingers as I sat in the office and pretended to work (a skill at which I excel).

The broker’s tour ended at 1:00 PM, and so around 1:30, I made my way over to Kanda’s house to collect our cats from their play date. Once home, I got to work upstairs in my office (where, interestingly enough, I’ve gotten good at pretending to not work). A few minutes later a knock came on the door.

It was an agent named Sandra. She had fully intended on coming to the broker’s open, but had gotten caught up and could she take a look at the house now? Sure, I said, and ushered her into my unnervingly clean home. She ooohed and aaahed at the boxed ceiling and the laminate floors (total bullshit: no one ooohs at leminate floors, no matter how nice they are) and commented on how nice the house was and how appropriately priced as well (sneer). We made our way upstairs and then back down, and then she asked to see the backyard. I opened the door and showed her the fetching Mrs. Sonnier’s painting studio and the excellent fruit trees, and blah blah blah.

Oooh and aaah.

She made her way back toward the house, and, being the perfect gentleman, I stepped forward and opened the back door for her, ushering her back into the house. As I stepped in, I noticed something on the floor that had not been there only minutes earlier. The bigger (and stinkier) of our two cats had dragged a fresh cat turd from the nearby litter box and deposited it directly in front of the back door. To make matters worse, it had a foot print in it.



Oh crap, I thought, too shocked to savor the pun. I checked the bottoms of my Birkenstocks (no, I’m not a hippie) and verified no poop. Oh no, she must have stepped in it! I looked, and she was walking in the kitchen admiring the cabinets, with a wad of fresh cat shit stuck to the bottom of her espadrille (no, I’m not gay).

What do I do?

Shit, think, shit, think.

Do I tell her and clean it off for her, bringing unnecessary attention to the presence of cat shit on my super clean floor, or do I hope that she just doesn’t notice? Of course, in the mean time, here’s this pretentious real estate agent using words like “boxed ceiling” and “crown molding” while tracking cat shit all over my freshly mopped (ooh!) laminate floors.

Before I could decide how to react, she shook my hand, wished me luck, and was gone, a thin brown trail of leavings from the back door all the way to the front, the only evidence of her presence. Truly absurd, I thought as I scrubbed poop off my floor.

It seems that I am surrounded by absurdity. I experience it on a daily basis; the only reprieve is the variance of its severity. This morning on the way to work I saw a crazy man doing a jig around a telephone pole while singing to himself. A guy in my office buys green coffee beans from Vietnam and roasts them at home in a popcorn popper. My boss just got a package from England that was shipped in box labeled “Mr. Brain’s Fresh Faggots.”

I often wonder if I’m simply statistically more prone to experiencing absurdity, or am I simply more keenly aware of its presence.

In that vein, I would like to tell you all about the most absurd story I have ever heard. The story of the exploding whale.



On the morning of November 12, 1970, a cool wind swept across the beach in Florence, OR, a quiet little beach town near Astoria. That wind wasn’t just cool, it smelled really bad. At first, it was assumed that the Vietnam protestors had made their way from Portland, but they soon realized even this smell was too much to be attributed to even those stink-monkies.

The smell was emanating from a very large, and very dead, and very rotten sperm whale that had washed ashore after floating at sea for god knows how long. Weighing in at 8 tons, the small town of Florence was perplexed as to how to get this big, rotten whale carcass off the beach.



At this point in Oregon’s history, one can only assume that the city council of Florence, the management of the Oregon Department of Transportation, and the Governor’s office were all staffed with boys between the ages of 7 and 13. The unanimous vote: Let’s blow that fucker up!

Half a ton of dynamite was packed into the rotting carcass of this huge mammal; one can only imagine the ODOT engineers giggling and elbowing each other like a little boys while stuffing black cats into a dead frog’s mouth. They stepped a safe distance back and....boom.



When the sand settled, the air was still. The whale wasn’t gone, but a huge chunk had been blown out of its mid-section. Oh, well, they must have thought, it must have vaporized the stuff, let’s do it again!

It was then that it started to happen. Splat here, smash there. Plop, plop, plop. Blubber came falling from the sky. Golf ball sized chunks, baseball sized, grapefruits, basketballs and bigger began to pelt the onlookers from the sky. As they ran for safety from the rotten animal fat, they realized they had bigger problems: their town.

As the rancid blubber rained from the sky, like the smiting hand of some angry whale god, it tore through roofs, it smashed through windows, it blocked traffic, it broke windshields, and there’s even a story that one piece of blubber was so large, it literally flattened a Volkswagen beetle.

According to Paul Linman, an eye-witness to the explosion, “the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds.”

By the time the shower of rotten whale parts stopped, the damage to the town was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. According to Paul Linman, “The humor of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival as huge chunks of whale blubber fell everywhere."

Everywhere, indeed.

Oregon is a very unique place, and I’ve seen some pretty amazing things here. Met some great people, and met some people I’d like to stab in the face. Above all, I will miss the absurdity that seems so commonplace in Oregon, especially when Jillian’s in town.

If you’d like to learn more about this totally absurd and very true story, and even see the video, check it out here.

An Open Letter To My Jump Drive

Dear Jump Drive,

I suppose you probably think the worst part is that I didn’t even notice when you left. By the time I realized you were gone, there’s no telling how long it had been. Does this make me a negligent asshole? Probably, but after all, you’re the one who left without a word.

Okay, I’m sorry, I don’t want to make you out to be the bad guy in this. I know we had some rough times, but we had some good times too, right? Every time I had an idea for a story or a blog, I’d just pop you into the nearest computer and type a short note, then when I wanted to write a new entry for On The Rocks, I’d just pop you in again and have a wealth of ideas stored all ready to go. But now you’re gone, and you’ve taken all my ideas with you.

No, you were right that night you came home drunk. I know you apologized the next morning and said you didn’t mean what you said, but you were right. They really weren’t very good ideas, and it was too much to ask for you to schlep them around for me all the time. For that I’m sorry.


I never meant to hit you. You just pushed and pushed and pushed until I couldn’t take it anymore. You didn’t have to bring my mother into it. I know they all say that if he hits you once, he’ll hit you again, but I can promise, in the deepest cockles of my heart, perhaps in the sub-cockle area, that I would never lay a hand on you again, except in love and respect.
I know what you’re thinking. He just wants his blogs back, he just wants his work files and photos back, he just wants the 187 pages of that book he was writing back, but you’re wrong. I want you back. I want you back more than anything else. What I want back is the jingle you made as you knocked around on my keychain as we traipsed around town. I miss going everywhere with you, I mean, we were inseparable!

But now you’re gone, and you took with you not just a part of my life, you took a part of my heart as well.

So to you, my dear 512 Megabyte Relay Jump Drive, forget the problems we’ve had. Just remember the day we first met, at the Staples store in McMinnville. It was raining that day and I let you hide under my coat as we went to the car so you wouldn’t get wet.
Remember the love, and please, come back to me.

With All I Have,

Scott

What Hippies Have in Common With Child-Molesting Nazis.

There’s a kid in my Judo class named Ezekiel. If you are, perchance, asking yourself why someone would name their child "Ezekiel," all you need is one look at this poor kid’s ropey, granola-fed, patchouli-funk parents and it would all become painfully clear.

Ezekiel is about five years old, and is what can only be described as a joyless child. I know it sounds harsh, but there’s really no better way to put it. Before class starts, when all the other kids are burning off the energy from those afternoon cookies, he can generally be found sitting in the corner trying to keep his shoulder-length hair out of his eyes, hiding behind his mother’s vastly oversized, hand-knitted, fair-trade wool maternity tarp. We can presume he didn’t get any Chips Ahoy! when he got home, his parents most likely opting for the whole-grain, "celebrate diversity" rice cake with soybean butter, or something equally inappropriate and sad.

In addition to being the smelliest, Ezekiel is one of the more timid kids in the class. As such, the requirements are put upon us, the senior students, to engage the poor bastard and try to force him into having some fun and not dwelling on the four-hour speech about "sustainable living" his dad gave at the dinner mesab the night before. In Judo, the easiest thing to do to engage someone on the mat is to open your arms and ask, "Onegashimas?" (Roughly translated: "Will you teach me?).

I was tying get Ezekiel to play with the rest of us, when the instructor noticed that he wasn’t really responding. He immediately came over to Ezekiel and asked, "Onegashimas?" Ezekiel, being not only a white-belt but a five-year-old, had no idea what this meant. Seeing an opportunity to make the kid laugh, I tried to inject a joke and said, "He’s asking you if you want some french fries!"

I know, it’s not very funny, but the kid is five, should I have tried my Benny Hill routine?

Ezekiel paused, thought on this a moment, and in a very serious and practiced tone said to the both of us, "I don’t eat that kind of food."



Now, there is no doubt in my mind that this poor bastard’s parents have him practice that response on a nightly basis. "Now Ezekiel, what do we say when someone offers us food that isn’t green and organic?"

"I don’t eat that kind of food."

"Now Ezekiel, what do we say when someone insinuates that free markets and unbridled capitalism is the best avenue for freedom and individual rights?"

"You’re a fascist!"

One of the many things that makes this country the greatest on Earth, and the reason just about everyone else in the world wants to come here, is that fact that everyone has the right to live in any way they see fit, barring minimal restrictions involving property damage and public decency laws. By extension, you also have the right to raise your children in any way you see fit, barring child welfare/ endangerment statutes (or as I like to call them, the "Leonard Maltin laws). If, by some strange and cruel sociological experiment, I wished to raise my son to believe that he’s the bastard child of Jesus Christ, Garth Brooks, and a cheddar cheese log with almonds, that’s my right to do so, as long as I feed the little bugger and clean out his litter box every now and again.

The downside to this virtually inexhaustible loveable fuzzball of freedom is that, yes, in fact, everyone gets to raise their children anyway they see fit. Ezekiel’s parents have decided to shield their child from the joys of empty calories, and we can presume, Saturday morning cartoons, which no matter how bad they are these days, is tantamount to child abuse. This is, however, their right. Take for example, the dynamic and inimitable musical powerhouse known as Prussian Blue.




Prussian Blue consists of sisters Lamb and Lynx Gaede, from Central Valley, CA. They write catchy tunes, are said to have angelic voices, and are described by their manager (their mother) as "White Nationalists." In case you haven’t gotten the memo: Intelligent Design = Creationism, White Nationalism = White Supremacism.

An excerpt from PrussianBlue.com: (grammar has been unaltered)

"Recently they received international media attention because Prussian Blue is a White Pride band. The songs they the girls sing reflect their White Nationalist beliefs. Today, if you are White ,and proud to be White , it is considered Politically Incorrect by the media. The music that Prussian Blue performs is intended for White people. They hope to help fellow Whites come to understand that love for one’s race is a beautiful gift that we should celebrate."

One point of contention: these girls did not receive "international media attention" because they’re white supremacists. They received "international media attention" because they’re cute, thirteen-year-old-girl white supremacists.

One must, of course, question the origin of these beliefs. Are we to presume they sprung from the womb with the "beautiful gift" of "love for one’s race?" Of course not, just watch five minutes of video of the girls’ mother and you couldn’t pity these sweet darlings more if she was wearing a cucumber mask with metal coat hanger in one hand and a scotch in the other.



I find it particularly amusing that the fans of Prussian Blue denounce claims that they’re racists, when manifestos like "Defensive Racism" and "Dissecting the Holocaust" are proudly promoted on their website. Oh, yeah, and the Hitler t-shirts don’t help, either.



A debate that’s been raging since time immemorial is the question of nature vs. nurture. Is Arland gay because of his genes, or because he was raised with three sisters? Did Yanni hit his girlfriend because he’s "programmed" that way, or because he was hit when he was a child? Does Linsday Lohan not respond to my letters and telephone calls because she’s a lesbian? There’s a very good chance that we may never receive satisfactory answers to these questions.

My boss is a CASA here in Portland. As a Court-Appointed Special Advocate, he is injected into the lives of troubled families to make common-sense suggestions regarding the welfare of the children. Over the course of the last few years he’s been involved, he’s seen some fucked up shit. The other day, while detailing his newest case file involving a horribly abusive, pathetic excuse for a man, he mentioned that the man’s parents had been overly protective and routinely dismissive of his abusive behavior, making it easier for him, as an adult, to use violence to exact control over his wife and children.

My problem with this analysis I this: Who gives a fuck?

The debate of nature vs. nurture doesn’t even enter into this conversation. It doesn’t matter if his daddy touched him or if he was born that way, any man pathetic enough to physically and emotionally abuse his wife and children the way this man has, deserves to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Case closed.

We can talk about genetic vs. environment until we’re blue in the face, but one thing we have to be very careful to avoid is the common pitfall of moral equivelancy. Hitting your children is wrong, and is against the law, and there is simply no justification for that type of abuse. It may be helpful in the long run to determine why he hits his kids with extension cords, but no amount of reasoning can change the facts of what he did. A half-assed reason like a history of negligence in his own childhood is no excuse and should not be viewed as one.

The fact of the matter is that we, as citizens of the greatest representative republic in the world, have the right to raise our children in virtually any way we see fit, the same way our parents had the right to raise us in any way they saw fit. Granted, some people do better jobs than others, but regardless of how it went, there comes a time when you, as an adult, have to assume respobsibility for your actions and your behavior. You can’t beat your wife just because Uncle Joey touched you in the back of his Buick back in 1958, it doesn’t fucking matter, and no amount of limp-wristed psychobabble can make it matter, at least not to this guy's wife and kids.

At thirteen years old, those poor little Gaede girls can’t be held responsible for being held hostage by their parents’ twisted views of the world. There will come a time, however, when they will be responsible for what they do with their talents, and what they choose to offer the world.

Lamb, Lynx, if you happen to be reading this, "Defensive Racism" is not the way to make your mark.

Little Ezekiel came to class recently and all his hair had been shaved off. Not only did I notice he was having more fun, he was talking more and running around like a five-year-old supposed to. I mentioned that I liked his new haircut and he looked at me and said, "I was tired of everybody thinking I was a girl."

Ezekiel: 1
Hippy Parents: 0

Update on the End of the World

Taken from Eric Julien's website:

UPDATE MAY 27, 2006: A clue to the timing of the anticipated event

Many people undoubtedly think that the announced event has fizzled and may be readjusting their outlook on life and returning their lives to normal.

I have trouble doing that when I think of all the dreams and other signs which I have witnessed that point to this event. What would otherwise be the purpose of all these warnings? (emphasis added -ed.) I know the window cannot be extended indefinitely into the future. Two of the people whom I have seen moved out of harm’s way under the pretext of a social gathering are to return home Sunday night. So I would expect Sunday to be the last possible day.

Today I made a review of all my own dreams about the event, using a chronicle written exactly three weeks ago, which has now been on the English website for two and a half weeks, to see whether there was any pattern that could be discerned.

All my dreams about this event happened on a Sunday.

Sunday Jan 18, 2004: I see planes falling from the sky and cry out to God in anguish “Do we really need to go through this?” (123)

Sunday Jan 25, 2004: The race to the closing gate dream. Also most likely date for my vision of the Texas coast red-lined to indicate danger, in direct answer to a question in prayer. (122)

Sunday Apr 04, 2004: Dream of a 500m high wave. (112)

Sunday Feb 19, 2006: Simultaneous clairvoyance and clairaudience of the words “unexpected attack” in answer to a question about what the event would be. (14)

Sunday Apr 30, 2006: Dream confirming that Eric Julien’s message, discovered the day before, would be fulfilled on the same day that it was predicted. I dreamt this on the last Sunday of the month, and tomorrow is the last Sunday of the month. Another way to look at this is that a day represents an entire month. (4)

The number in parentheses represents the number of weeks remaining before Sunday, May 28, 2006. Numbers 123, 14 and 4 are particularly interesting. Note that May 28th is the first day following 21 full weeks in 2006. (okay, seriously, what the fuck is this guy talking about? -ed.)

For more details on the dreams involved, see article below entitled "Why I think there is something to Eric Julien and his message".

(okay, seriously, you have GOT to read this article, I laughed until I puked. My favorite part is when the author cites his friend's dream about buying a new car and then just heaps it on the nonsense pile of "dream evidence" that the end is nigh. -ed.)

Note that Eric Julien received the date of May 25th in meditation two days shy of the seven week mark, which was on April 9th, 2006. (?!?!?!?!?! -ed.)

"Assuming the chain of events is completed on the 28th, I suspect that there is additional significance at various levels in the disjunct between the two dates. Several of the dreams in my account occurred on the 25th of the month, and that number also seems significant. It is possible that the comet has already struck -- Eric Julien saw it slice through the atmosphere, the ocean and the lithosphere without there being any conflagration. His original vision did not involve an immediate sequential link between the fragment and the wave; the comet was rather given subsequently as a cause of the event. I could imagine that ET's using comet fragments as weapons might have ways to send these directly through a medium such as water."

-Craig Boswell, Asshole (title added -ed.)

The End Is Near (The 711 On Powell Blvd. Near The Seafood Market )

Folks, I've got some bad news. No, Prince hasn't mentioned anything to the press about what hapenned between you two last weekend, It's much worse that that. In case you didn't know it, today is the last day in the world.

Today, March 25, 2006, is the last day of our collective lives.

Former French military air traffic controller and senior airport manager, Eric Julien, several years ago completed a study of the comet “73P Schwassmann-Wachmann” and warned us that a fragment of this "perambulating ice-ball" is highly likely to impact the Earth on or around Thursday, May 25, 2006. The cpmet, discovered by Arnold Schwassermann and Arno Arthur Wachmann in 1930, has an orbital period of just less than 5.3 years and comes nearest to the Earth every 16 years.

It has followed this five-year orbit intact for centuries, but in 1995, it mysteriously fragmented. Sure, you might say, that happens all the time, right? Yes it does, but Mr. Julien reeeeeally wants us to worry about it. He says that some fragments are too small to observe (duh. -ed.) but while astronomers have predicted possible meteor showers as some cometary debris enters the atmosphere, they tell us that the comet poses no direct threat.

Mr. Julien, however, has real evidence for his Doomsday scenario. He chooses not to rely only on paltry facts and figures, and statistics for his conclusions, he has employed the latest, greatest, and most advanced technology availbale to mankind.

This very year, a “crop circle” appeared showing the inner Solar System with the Earth missing from its orbit, he concludes that this was a message from higher intelligences warning humanity of the consequences of its destructive nuclear policies, all of this tied in to the Bush administration's policy of preemptive use of nuclear weapons against Iran and the effect of nuclear weapons on the realms of higher intelligences, blah blah blah addicted to oil blah blah blah 2/3 of the world's resources blah blah Kyoto treaty blah blah blah.

According to Mr. Julien, “We have to save lives when we have such information to share with the public."

The question you must ask yourself is, when have the crop circles ever been wrong?

Mr. Julien assures us that the comet-fragments will fall into the Atlantic Ocean between the Equator and the Tropic of Cancer, though he says that will generate 700-foot waves, so let's not start craking open the cold ones just yet. He tells us that "each person with this information has to take responsibility to warn potential victims."

Check out his article "May 25, 2006: The Day of Destiny"

Doomsayers have been around for as long as man himself, and, much like virtually every other form of hoo-ha and codswallop that people constantly fall for, they have always employed the same basic tactic: predict something catastrophically horrific that will more than likley claim millions of lives, or perhaps all of them, a reeeeally long time in the future to scare the pants off people and get the to buy your books on how to stop it. Then, assuming your even alive by the time this date rolls around, make sure to have dropped the subject and moved onto something even more catastrophic and horrible, so its not a big let down when you refuse to aswer inane questions from your detractors like, "what the fuck were you thinking?" and "can I have my eight dollars back?"

I can't decide if I feel pity for this poor French sap because he missed Successful Doomsaying for Fun and Profit 101, or if I feel slightly more respect for this guy than all the other toe-heads because even on this very day (according to him 48 window of possibility) he's still sticking to his guns

Nope, still pity.

Chuck Norris is Allergic to Doorknobs

The following list, or numerous incarnations thereof, have been circulating around the Internet for years. The other night, my good pal Luke mentioned one of the items from this list and I was reminded how much I enjoyed it the first time I'd read it. He hadn't actually ever seen the list, so I was emailing it to him, when I thought I should just post it in case any of my seven regular readers hadn't seen it. (Thanks for the cookies, Mom. - Ed.)

When searching for the list I'd read lo so many years ago, I stumbled upon numerous versions. I took three of them, pasted them together, and deleted some of the not-so-funny facts and ones that contained words like "ninja-kick" and "beard-a-licious."

After all, I have standards in this forum.

Little Known Facts About Chuck Norris:

Chuck Norris does not require oxygen to live, oxygen requires Chuck Norris.

Achilles was supposedly the greatest warrior of all time, but he died because of his weak spot, his Achilles heel. There is no Chuck Norris heel.

Chuck Norris once ate three 72 oz. steaks in one hour. He spent the first 45 minutes fucking the waitress.

Chuck Norris ordered a Big Mac at Burger King, and got one.

They once made Chuck Norris toilet paper, but it wouldn't take shit from anybody.

As a teenager, Chuck Norris impregnated every nun in a convent tucked away in the hills of Tuscany. Nine months later the nuns gave birth to the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the only undefeated team in professional football history.

Chuck Norris has already been to Mars, that's why there are no signs of life there.

Chuck Norris has counted to infinity - twice.

Outer Space exists because it is afraid to be on the same planet as Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris is not hung like a horse, horses are hung like Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris sleeps with a night light. Chuck Norris is not afraid of the dark, but the dark is afraid of Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris likes to knit sweaters in his free time. And by "knit", I mean "kick", and by "sweaters", I mean "people in the face".

Chuck Norris is 1/8th Cherokee. This has nothing to do with ancestry, the man ate a fucking Indian.

Someone once tried to tell Chuck Norris that roundhouse kicks aren't the best way to kick someone. This has been recorded by historians as the worst mistake ever made by a human being.

Chuck Norris died ten years ago, but the Grim Reaper can't get up the courage to tell him.

Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer, too bad he has never cried.

Chuck Norris doesn't sleep. He waits.

Chuck Norris doesn't go hunting because the word hunting infers the probability of failure. Chuck Norris goes killing.

Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs.

The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain.



Chuck Norris is allergic to doorknobs, that's why he always kicks doors down.

To prove it isn't a big deal to beat cancer, Chuck Norris smoked 15 cartons of cigarettes a day for 2 years and aquired 7 different kinds of cancer, only to rid them from his body by flexing for 30 minutes. Beat that, Lance Armstrong.

When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris doesn't have any hair on his balls because hair doesn't grow on steel.

Chuck Norris has to maintain concealed weapons licenses in all 50 states so he can legally wear pants.

It is impossible to be raped by Chuck Norris because that would mean you didn't want it to happen.

Chuck Norris is allowed to talk about Fight Club.

Chuck Norris only has one hand: the upper hand.

Chuck Norris always clogs the toilet. Even when he pisses.

Similar to a Russian nesting doll, if you were to break open Chuck Norris, inside you would find another Chuck Norris, only smaller and angrier.

Chuck Norris doesn't use pick-up lines. He just says, "Now."

According to Einstein's theory of relativity, Chuck Norris can actually roundhouse kick you yesterday.

A handicapped parking sign does not signify that this spot is for handicapped people. It is actually a warning that the spot belongs to Chuck Norris and that you will be handicapped if you park there.

The quickest way to a man's heart is with Chuck Norris's fist.

Chuck Norris does not teabag the ladies. He potato-sacks them.

Filming on location for Walker: Texas Ranger, Chuck Norris brought a stillborn baby lamb back to life by giving it a prolonged beard rub. Shortly after the farm animal sprang back to life , Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked the animal, killing it instantly. This was to remind the crew that Chuck giveth, and the good Chuck, he taketh away.

A recent poll discovered 93% of women think about Chuck Norris during sex. A similar poll revealed that, during sex, Chuck Norris thinks about Chuck Norris 100% of the time.

Chuck Norris thought about submitting more facts about himself to this website, but he doesn't believe in any form of submission.


Mr. Norris, a great sport, has posted a short response to these lists. Check it out here.

Cabbage Is Next To Godliness

Speaking to a vegan a few years ago, I asked flatly, why? She told me that she liked the way the shoes looked with the skirt. I asked again, but specified that I wanted to know why she chose to live a life absent of cheese and worcestershire sauce. She told me that, while health was certainly a component, the primary reason was that she was unwilling to support an industry that was cruel to animals, and impacted the planet in such a profoundly negative way.

The litany of complaints about the meat industry being touted by people in this group range from animal cruelty (eating them is cruel, right?) to the environmental impact on the vast areas of land required to grow the corn and grain that are needed to feed these animals, to the contamination of the earth where these animals are raised. They march and they protest, they cover themselves with red paint and stick “meat is murder” stickers on the backs of their mid-80’s Volvos and Subarus (all the while sneering at the “abortion is murder” on the family sedan in the next lane).

Lately, it would seem that the anti-meat industry has gotten pragmatic, if such a word can be applied to people that equate chicken yards to concentration camps. They seemed to realize a long time ago that trying to get people to stop eating meat “just because” wasn’t going to work. The goal now, is to hilight the evils of the industry that provides this meat, its cruelty and its souring effect on our oh-so-fragile ecology. It would seem, even, that the soy-dog-eating masses have all but left the “inhierent cruelty of meat” argument by the wayside for another argument they feel has a chance of “playing in Peoria.” One might even say, they may have put all their eggs in one basket.



What would happen if that basket was gone? Instead of harvesting meat from the corpse of an animal, what if we could grow meat, like broccoli? What if the environmental impact of meat production dropped to zero, animals were no longer “born just to die,” and a delicious rib-eye could be made to have all the nutritional value of a bunch of spinach, a bag of sweet potatoes and a watermelon all in one.

What if?

The obvious answer is that they wouldn’t care. When one part of their argument fell apart, they’d just fill it one with a new one. They would protest, in typical Luddite fashion, that this new meat was unnatural (even though they claim that eating meat itself is unnatural) and dangerous (like feeding starving Africans) and then they’d just descend into aimless ranting about all the wrongs and injustice they see in the world and blah blah blah George Bush blah blah blah organic blueberries blah blah blah healthcare for everyone blah blah blah oh sure I’ll give you a ride home, my BMW is parked over there, yeah it’s the one with the dancing bear sticker over the Tookie Williams for President sticker blah blah blah.

While I will always respect anyone’s right to eat whatever the hell they want, I find “eating as protest” about as is idiotic and vacuous as “back window of Subaru as protest.” People become vegetarian or, god help us, vegans for various reason. Some for health reasons, some commit to a life that doesn’t exploit animals for food, and some suffer from dangerous, brain eating viruses. In any case, what you put in your mouth is entirely your business, but things are never that simple.

Saying, “what you put into your mouth is your business,” is like saying, “what you like to do on Sunday mornings is your business.” While both statements are true, both betray a naïve delusion that all our lives are lived privately and what we do privately doesn’t bother anyone else.

The unavoidable equation: Food-Nazis = Jesus-Freaks.



August 2nd, 2005
Salt Lake City, Utah.
Demonstrators from organizations like PETA and the ALF (but they’re not related, not at all. Nope. Not one bit) performed “direct action” (read: chanted like crazed, meat-starved orangutans) to protest the treatment of chickens by fast-food giant KFC.

Net result: Busiest day that KFC location has seen in months.

Best line from the article: “I think there’s a place in this world for all God’s creatures, right next to the mashed potatoes.”

March 22, 2005
Washington, D.C.

Christians protest the film "Kinsey" as a "Hollywood whitewash of the man they hold largely responsible for the sexual revolution and a panoply of related ills, from high divorce rates to AIDS and child abuse."

Net Result: While I would love to say that the Christians protesting “Kinsey” made this film a hit, that would be far from the truth. The movie simply wasn’t that good. On the other hand, I guarantee about 6 of the 18 people that did see the film would not have if not for the mildly publicized discontent of some “believers.”

I’m not trying to say that everyone that protests or publicly and loudly complains about something is the same as a jesus vigilante fighting for some falsely perceived purity of culture, or some animal rights moonbat with no job. All I’m saying is that it’s high time the phalanx of morons on both sides realize that every time they speak out against something, all they’re doing is increasing awareness, and thereby increasing its sales.

There’s no such thing as bad publicity.

To be so committed to a utopian ideal that no one eats meat or no one talks about sex is idiotic, but these people will never realize it because they’re crazy, and they’re so committed and blinded by some bizarre ideal that they believe that anyone that doesn’t see things their way is simply not able to see the big picture.

Ladies and gentelman, the big picture is of a fat guy eating an eight piece bucket with extra skin and an extra large mashed potatoes while watching porn on his 52” plasma screen. Anyone that doesn’t see this is simply fooling themselves into thinking that they’re fighting war they can win. This is a cultural war, and the culture of porn and fried chicken will always win, because it's more fun than drum circles and prayer sessions.



It’s like the creationists. How can they think they’re going to win? While recently they’ve attempted to swathe their god-based creation idea in the blanket of pseudoscience, anyone with enough vitamin D can see that intelligent design (ID) is the same fucking thing. They have a pre-conceived notion, and are attempting to make the peg of all past scientific research fit into the limited confinces of ID’s poorly misshapen hole. The problem is that while ID freaks attempt to rewrite history to fit their thinly veiled ideas, science is still moving forward at an exponential rate, uncovering new evidence, and making new ideas, that are every day forming a more complete picture of the evolution of our species. Science is always moving forward, while ID has, since its inception, been backward looking. They can never possibly catch up, so what can they hope to accomplish?

Back on point, I'd merely like say, that you go ahead and eat whatever you wanna eat. Go ahead and do whatever you want with your Sunday morning. All I gotta say is that Schumacher Furs is doing better business than they have in 30 years, and I'm sure the weekly protests , and inevitable media blitz over those protests, have had nothing to do with it. Fucking morons.