The Case for Obama

With the caucuses (cauci?) only a few days away, we figured we'd better make our endorsement official. Our reasoning is as follows:

1. Hey, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy...

(Editor's note-- wait a minute-- we don't want to plagiarize Joe Biden (of all people). Let us give it another shot-- we promise not to use the word "articulate")

1. Comes in without baggage or allegiances (read: no fathers/husbands to avenge, family legacies to polish, Vietnam War experiences/lack thereof to explain, Civil Rights experiences to retaliate for)

2. Admitted he inhaled because "that was the point."

3. Best arguments are the ones most criticized (would talk to enemies, would care for victims of terrorism before bombing random Arab country).

4. His obligatory follow-ups in which he is forced to say that he would bomb some country into sand in retaliation can be taken as just that, and not as his "gut reaction."

5. Only major Democrat with any credibility on the War in Iraq, having opposed it from the beginning.

6. His face alone would send a huge message to the rest of the world about who/what America is (and isn't).

7. His name might further confuse terrorists.

8. Doesn't come across as a used-car salesman

9. Presumably his haircuts cost less than $400 (see above)

10. Doesn't sound like Suze Orman (read: doesn't shout at you... unless the vibe calls for it)

(also see above)

11. That Monday Night Football ad (DUN-DUN-DUN!), and the fact that he only roots for one city.

12. Has got "game," at least according to the Sports Illustrated columnist over whom he drained a jumper after being told it was "for the presidency."


Oh, and the fact that as a black man, believe it or not, he bears a better chance of winning the undecideds/independents than a woman who is disdained by women who make the cookies... and those who disdain them for it, and a white Southerner who has reinvented himself as a populist taking on Wall Street... while living in a 28,000-square-foot mansion.

(Editor's note-- We do realize that our values might not coincide with those of the average Iowan...)

Pondering Pakistan

Well, the powder keg is starting to explode. Benazhir Bhutto has been shot and/or blown up (order not yet determined). We are not proud of our initial reaction, which took on a decidedly neo-con bent: That these motherf***ers are crazy and that maybe more extreme and draconian measures are called for (although we will stop short of saying that "it's Giuliani time"). Come to think of it, this plays right into Musharraf's hands-- he gets to get rid of one political opponent, and use it as fodder against the others. One has to wonder how hard he was trying to protect her.

It also made us question why, after ten years of relative comfort in England, one would want to come back to a place where one could be exchanged for 72 virgins at any moment.

(We understand that whole "pull-of-home" concept, but had a hard time just showing up for Christmas.)

Could parallels be made with the tiger mauling in San Francisco, especially with the speculation that the deceased may have taunted the tiger by dangling his leg over the fence?

(Editor's note-- We almost scooped the NY Times (they just updated their headlines))

Happy Boxing Day!

Do they know it's Christmas time at all?

Uh, no, Bob... matter o' fact, a large number of them ain't even Christians!

Welcome back to the 1/3 world...

that is NYC aka Nueva York, the perfect place to make the transition from the developing world to the (supposedly) developed one.

Fitting Finale

Added to graffiti on the walls of Cien Puertas:

Last day in Guate
[We] tore this motherf***er up!
--[HM] 12/19/07

Communing with Che

... over beers in El Portal, where Señor Guevara used to knock back a pint or two.

You gots to go with the "Moza."


items adorning the bar:

Che mug (on mug)

Che 3 peso(?) bill

Oversized bottles of Johnnie Walker (Red and Black)

Glass shaped like boot

Mug shaped like breast

Statue of dog screwing man (with moving phallus)

¡Viva la revolucion!

Feedin' Time

Belizability

Greetings from Belize, where they speak English... We've forgotten how nice it is to be able to express ourselves. We've realized the past 2 months we have been living essentially as a retarded person, if you'll excuse the political incorrectness.

Swam with sharks, stingrays, and turtles today, due to take to the high seas by sail in 2 days... hopefully the weather will be good enough to go. Land ho! (no offense)

BURN,

MOTHER-

F***ER,

BURN

What's the Latin root for "big-ass"?

Jungle Fever

Tomorrow, we, possibly being of unsound mind and/or body, will venture forth into the jungle of northern Peten, Guatemala, in search of El Mirador, the first and largest city-state of the Maya and one of the largest centers in all of Mesoamerica. Among the vast ruins lies the highest pyramid in the Americas, and possibly the entire world. This journey, since we chose to accept it, will involve 5 days of slogging through mud that is apparently up to knee-deep-- between the blisters from the rubber boots we will have to wear and the inevitable bug and insect bites we will have to endure, let's just say that it's a good thing that it'll be pant and shoe season when we return to the States. But fear not, dear readers, as we will be accompanied by 3 Germans, one of whom we saw in something today that resembled a Boy Scout uniform. Oh, and a guide or two. We will also be taking our malaria pills, hammock (with proper netting, we can only hope), and trusty camoflauged flashlight, not to mention our reporter's notebook and digital camera.

Afterwards, we shall return to Flores, an island in Lake Peten Itza where the Tayasal Maya held out against the conquistadoring Spaniards all the way until 1697. Then it will be onto Tikal, which, while not as old or as large as El Mirador, has a slightly better team of groundskeepers. After this Mayan oddysey, we plan to head straight to the beaches of Belize for some R&R, and S&S&S&S (sun & surf & snorkeling & sailing-- we will have hopefully left the "M" in the jungle) down the coast of Belize, where the showers are hot and you can flush the toilet paper down the toilet. That´s what sold us on it, anyway.

Over and occasionally down, but not out...

(Editor's note-- for security reasons, we could only publish this missive AFTER our correspondent had emerged from the jungle)

Fixer-Upper

Somewhere, a cereal box is missing its mascot

Monkey See, Monkey Do

... and then a Zeitgeist will fly out of our ass

OK, we just saw the "documentary" "Zeitgeist" we'd been hearing about, in a hostel in... an undisclosed location. The religion part made a fair amount of sense, but then part 2 went straight into 9/11 conspiracy theories, which in our mind are precisely the same as religion... YOU ARE ASKING US TO BELIEVE YOUR CONSPIRACY IF WE CANNOT PROVIDE PROOF THAT IT DID NOT HAPPEN, EVEN THOUGH THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO PROOF THAT IT DID.

We are fully ready to believe that conspiracies exist, especially within the current government, but these must be taken hand-in-hand with something else that should never be underestimated... GOVERNMENT INCOMPETENCE. Given a choice, we will generally run with the latter.

The 3rd installment, on the National Bank/ Federal Reserve/ Wealthy Elite Conspiracy, we were also fully prepared to believe, but it's hard to take the words of a raving lunatic and a narrator who doesn't seem capable of proper noun-verb agreement seriously. And William Jennings had a last name... Bryan. I thought he was the last one to argue for a gold standard, and even he was willing to include silver.

And finally, the "talk-u-mentary" links all the US wars together as premediated manipulated acts of aggression with the help of, uh, premediated manipulated choices of words and facts. It states that World War I began "shortly after" the sinking of the Lusitania, citing this as the sole cause of the war, despite the fact that it happened ABOUT 2 YEARS BEFORE war was declared. There were a few other factors that occured after, such as the Zimmerman Telegram (look it up), not to mention the resumption of U-boat activity, that played a larger role.

As for WWII, yes, the US should realize that it had pushed Japan into a corner, but it is rather convenient to fall back on "international law" on this one, and ignore what was actually going on. And if you think the governmant would be jaded enough to allow thousands of its citizens to die purely to instigate war and profits, you'd be... well, back to square one. Click below for further information.

Back to Top

Hey... we've been BUSY

... and been forced to go underground again as well. We fear we revealed too much in our previous postings, as we started to see the men with sunglasses again, and thus have had to "hit the mattresses." Fortunately, this has a different meaning for us than for Sonny Corleone...

Elvis Sighting

We are pleased to report that Elvis is alive and well down in Guatemala. In fact, he was the entertainment for our "graduacion" from our Spanish school last night. Unfortunately, we didn't have our camera handy, but the hair, the sideburns, and the girth were all there, along with a reasonable facsimile of the voice (especially if one takes into account the inevitable toll of highland living-- and the fact that the words were in Spanish). It seems that the "Vez" lived out the 80s in the Maya highlands before being drawn back into civilization by the not-fully-requited (?) lure of the stage. Last week, the King was wearing what appeared to be faux-snakeskin pants, but he topped that this week with a full-on cape featuring a bold stars-and-stripes motif. We gave him a shout-out in our speech, which followed a translation of the Vagina Monologues (we considered calling ours the "Monologo del Pene" before deciding to allude to such a possibility more subtly). He emerged to cheers as we did my best to put an Elvis lilt on our "Muchas gracias, senor."

P.S. We are prepared to accept that he was not the real Elvis-- he may well have been his twin Jessie, who we were never really convinced wasn't out there somewhere anyway.

Our New Undisclosed Location

¡?=)(/&/%&&%##"!_:;[Ѩ*

Just trying to figure out where the symbols are on this damn computer! (theres one!)

Rough Night

Gravestoned

It started out with a trip north to the town of Nebaj, a traditional Maya town ravaged by mass killings by the US-supported military in the 1980s. In the colorful graveyards you could find entire families that had been wiped out on a single day, at least in 1982 when citizens accused of aiding the guerrillas were hacked down with machetes in front of the entire village.

We stayed at a rickety establishment called "Popi's Hostel"; when we asked the owner if he was Popi, he replied that we could call him Doug. He gave a vague outline of his life trajectory which had taken him from the States through Belize, El Salvador, and some other Central American republics before landing him in Guatemala-- it was only later that we learned that he had been a mercenary in various guerrilla wars before settling into the quiet life he now leads. Whatever his political leanings, the pasta dinner and apple pie a la mode marked a good send-off from (relative) civilization.

It was then up the steep (and muddy) trails north of town. We had a somewhat inauspicious beginning, as our sneakers soon became soaked and laden with mud and then we were confronted by a descending villager demanding quetzals (money) and/or food, with the explanation that "the gods were looking down on us." When we explained that we had neither (as we were going to eat with a family that evening), and wished him "buena suerte" (good luck), he merely answered "no hay"(there isn't any). Fortunately, this was the only real "accosting" (of this type, at least) that we encountered for the rest of the trip.

Soon after, we paused in a meadow to go over the history-- and effects-- of the civil war on the region. As the role of "civil patrols" was being explained, a local farmer walked up the path and proceeded to talk about the 14 years (?) he had been conscripted to walk the surrounding hills searching for guerrillas, all the while having to neglect his farm and family. Between the guerrillas and civil patrollers, there is virtually no fauna left in the surrounding woods.

Interestingly enough, we noticed at least one wall in Nebaj promoting the candidacy of Rios Montt for "presidente," despite the fact that he had been the dictator who presided over many of the worst years and had formed these very (un)civil patrols. The affects of time and/or ignorance are strong here; Montt was elected to Congress in September, and the front-runner and expected victor, Otto Perez Molina, of the "Patriotista" party, was also a military leader during that time whose campaign slogan is "Mano Dura" (Strong Hand), accompanied by a picture of a clenched fist.

Then it was down into the town of Acoma, which had been re-constructed in the 1980s and populated with 2 different ethnic groups (at least one of whom had been removed from their own village), both as a means of keeping an eye on them and showing the outside world the "benevolence" of the ruling regime.

We then stopped at a cheese "factory" on the outskirts of town, run by a 3rd generation Italian family. We had some fresh lemonade while looking across the surrounding valley. The cheese, along with tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, and carrots (?), were to make up the sandwiches that constituted lunch for the next 3 days-- the
combination of aging on both us and the cheese made for better and better lunch breaks each day.

Then it was up and on through another more remote town, where the children emerged from the cornfields to line the side of the trail and watch the hunch-backed/packed gringos march through town. Amidst the waving and holas, one little girl reached out to touch our hand. We resisted the urge to say that we came as liberators, not colonizers.

We spent the night in a tiny mountainside hamlet that had once been a main (undeveloped) base of the guerrillas-- as we trudged higher and higher, it was easy to see why they had been hard to find.


[in the interest of time/space/attention spans, we will pause here and attempt to conflate and fast-forward through the ensuing days]

The End is Neigh

Up at 3:30 AM the next morning to get to the top of the mountain for sunrise-- a decision we considered leading a mutiny against, but the sunrise did reward us with some oranges and reds before being submerged beneath the rising clouds.

Over the next few days, we crossed a broad variety of landscapes, including some that made us feel a bit like the Baggins family, and villages small and smaller before arriving at a final steep hill on the 4th day, when machismo took over and we all raced up the hill. A moral victory was declared after we came in 4th behind 3 skinny young whippersnappers who have yet to deal with the effects of metabolism, not to mention other things like gout and rickets.

After 2 or 3 more cheese sandwiches, we descended into a town with an actual road, where all 17 of us (and our backpacks) ended up piling into the back of a Toyota pickup for an exhilerating (and rather nerve-wracking) ascent to our quarters for the evening. There, we stayed in the casa of Don Jeronimo, who told us of his civil war experiences the following day atop the highest non-volcanic point in Central America. Amidst the blue sky, hot sun, and surrounding volcanic ranges, he told us of being forced to watch fellow villagers getting stoned (the bad way), hung, and eventually having their heads bashed in with rifle butts for collaborating with the guerrillas by blocking roads and destroying bridges and power lines.

His uncle unluckily had the same first name as one of the accused who had disappeared on his own-- he endured various forms of torture (such as getting his ears burned and back stabbed) before being left for dead. His family dragged his body back into the house after the army had left, also assuming him dead, but he started moving an hour later and is still living today.

A few days later the guerrillas came back to town and executed 3 villagers, whom they accused of revealing both the plots and the names of those involved-- Don G. saw this as the guerrillas way of "washing their hands" of responsibility for their (lack of) protection that they had promised the villagers, leaving the younger G/Jeronimo and his peeps understandably without faith in either side.

We descended along a(n almost( Chinese-ink-painting landscape and then through the afternoon mist to a small tienda where the nicotine addicts bought cancer sticks while the rest of us watched the storekeeper's wife lop the heads off of chickens. Then it was into Todos Santos and the madness therein. We wended our way through the weaving Todos Santerians, noting how almost all the men were decked out in their traditional red striped pants and Elvisian-collared patterned blue jackets.

[Most of who weren't dressed properly were sporting John Cena T-shirts; Senor Cena seems to have either a major WWF fan base down here, or at least cornered the used-clothing market.]

After leaving our packs in the "hotel," we descended back upon the town. Our reception was very good overall-- although we could have used a little less from some of the more inebriated/drooling Santerians-- but the following morning revealed that things had really only just begun to get underway. The collective inebriation seemed to reach its peak between 10 and 12 the next morning, when the streets were littered with both the prone bodies of those who had had a bit too much Quetzalteca (or its newest competitor, "El Machetero," which is 1 or 2 quetzals (10-15 cents) cheaper due to its plastic bottle) and the walking dead who had yet to fully succumb to the "rum"'s mind-shattering effects.

The horse race went on all day-- like the main street, it was simultaneously fascinating and depressing, low-lighted by a disturbing head-on crash between two horses, who had to be put down, while the riders, particularly the one going the wrong way, survived, most likely due to their high blood-alcohol levels.

Things got back on track a little slowly after that, but the riders (including one of those involved in the crash) eventually regained their form and were even joined briefly by some of my fellow trekkers, including one German nut whose high-pitched chortling seemed to be the highlight of the day for the locals.

[Never fear, ours truly had decided long before the crash that this was not the place to learn to ride.]

Day of the Living Dead

We made it through the rest of the evening (and past the drunken brawlers/slow-dancers) unscathed. We walked out of town at 5:30 the next morning through the streets and past the roadside bars still/already crowded with red-panted Santerians getting a head start on the final day of the festival, which culminated in the brightly-repainted cemetery, where ad-hoc bars were constructed amidst the monuments to facilitate drinking to and for dead relatives who, if they were fortunate enough to survive the horrors of the civil war, most likely passed on through drunken accidents or psoriasis(?) of the liver and/or brain by the very paint-remover they were being honored with.

Now we've returned to the "big city," where we're jumping back into Spanish classes and another homestay, resigned to the fact that it will inevitably feature meals based around bland tortillas along with luke-warm showers-- and yet, after the past week, that doesn't seem so bad.

P.S. We did attempt to but a pair of the red pants, but they didn't have our size... probably for the best.

Correcciónes

Our intelligence proved faulty as the iron fist of Otto Perez Molina went down to the two-handed dove of Alberto Colom & his "UNE" party. (It seems that the main parties all use hand gestures as their symbols down here, leading us to speculate that a large bulk of the advertising probably centers around the intermissions of slide shows). Colom has been called everything from a former Communist sympathizer to a neo-liberal to a conservative in bed w/ the FRG, the peace-sign party headed by the notorious Efrain Rioss Montt. While most of the folks we´ve talked to don´t get very excited about Colom (indeed, 5% of the votes went to both or neither!), his slogan of fighting violence w/ "inteligencia" instead of the "mano dura" of his opponent sounds a little more promising to us-- the lesser of two evils, at least.

As for Monsieur Montt, he ran for presidente in 2003, after overturning laws preventing him from doing so, and lost. However, he was elected to Congress this September, which gives him immunity from prosecution for another 4 years. Although their support is waning due to the corruption that seems to come w/ the territory, he & his party are still a force to be reckoned with.

Now, if you´ll excuse us, we're off to blot out the index fingers of all the FRG "peace signs" that seem to have been painted on every rock that has broken free of the topsoil.

The Patron Saint of Smoking and Drinking

... or something like that.

Last Sunday, we took a boat across the lake to meet this particular deity.

Before we found him, though, we stumbled through the pouring rain into a massive political rally, replete with an ear- (and mind-) splitting band, and then a church service bursting at the seams (and competing for souls with the politicians), all the while having to fjord overflowing streets-- we had to keep to the middle of the road to keep from being washed away by the white-water rapids cascading down the steep embankments (only a slight exaggeration-- it was rather apocalyptic).

We then hopped in a tuk-tuk to escape the rain and find el señor-- a deity revered in the Maya highlands who has been incorporated into the local Christian tradition. Each year one family gets the honor of looking after his wooden effigy, which mostly consists of keeping his cigar lit and his belly full of the good stuff. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived, he had already gone to sleep (or just passed out) on the rafters above, where he apparently is taken every afternoon to sober up for the next day. We left our bottle of the local firewater on a table next to all the other offerings, snapped a few pictures, and headed back to our hotel. By then, fortunately, the rain had stopped, and the gods were presumably on our side.

How We Met Tu Madre

We recently caught a between the 2 largest cities in this Central American republic. During the game we learned lots of new words and phrases appropriate for excoriating and emasculating any future adversaries, most of which ended with "puta." At one point the crowd was chanting in unison and the band kicked in with a supporting beat. When we asked afterwards what they were saying, it was loosely translated as "Kill the referee by means of strangulation."

San Phang Ghan

... where the maxim, "One cannot drink, smoke, and watch The Big Lebowski all one's life" is proven wrong.

Some can dabble in this lifestyle, sure, like the young Europeans sporting wispy beards and or eyebrow piercings, and especially the Israelis, where it's almost a necessary remedy for the hyperstress of manning checkpoints or making secret forays into Lebanon or Syria. It's the older ones-- namely the ones, like us, who are "Older than Jesus"-- that we worry about. They seem a bit world-weary, astray, undone, almost as if hiding out in this twilight zone, this red-lit cornocopia of shoestring travel, where the divide between Asia and the Americas is blurred right down to the curry, can go on and on in a kind-of existentialist Groundhog Day.

Which, incidentally, we haven't seen yet, but are sure we soon will.

Then & Now

"Our coming is beneficial... because we bring tidings of the true God and Christian religion, sent by the pope... and the King of Spain, so that you may become Christians peacefully, of your own free will, but should you refuse the peace we offer, then the death and destruction that will follow will be entirely of your own account."

-- Gonzalo de Alvarado, 1525


"You're either with us or against us."

-- Jorge W. Bush, 2001

Those Charming Conquistadors

Herna´n Corte´s, 3 years after conquering the Aztecs, travelled into Central America with Moctezuma's successor Cuauhte´mec, all the while having him tortured with oil and the burning of his feet in hopes that he would reveal additional hordes of gold. When Corte´s discovered that the Aztec king had urged the Chontal Maya to kill the Spaniards, he had Cuauhte´mec thrown in prison. On the 3rd day, he was baptized, after which his head was cut off and nailed to a ceiba tree.

... and Those Quirky "Continuadores"

- 440 villages destroyed

- 1,000,000 displaced persons

- 200,000 refugees in other countries

- 100,000 political murders since 1954

That was the year, you may recall, when the US played a major role in ending 10 years of democracy.

These facts relate to the civil war which was still lingering in 1985. There may well have been more since then, but you get the point.

(Editor's note-- These, and the rest of today´s tidbits are courtesy of Ronald Wright's 1985 book, Time Among the Maya)

Eating Your Heart Out

"Fight Song" of the Kaibiles, or Guatemalan Special Forces. Get out the ol' Spanish-English if need be:

¿Que´ come un Kaibil? ¡CARNE!

¿Que´classe de carne? ¡HUMANA!

¿Que clase de carne humana? ¡COMUNISTA!

¿Que´ come un Kaibil? ¡SANGRE!

¿Que´classe de carne? ¡HUMANA!

¿Que clase de carne humana? ¡COMUNISTA!


While one could argue that this was just a case of "boys being boys," there are accounts of special forces recruits drinking the blood of torture victims as an initiation rite, as well as one soldier dining on fresh human heart, and another on presumably fresh human liver. Pass the fava beans... and the chianti.

The Ballad of Te´cun Oman

For I do not wish to turn Christian
Nor to be baptized
And I would rather die
Than renounce my faith
Tell this to Don Pedro de Alvarado...
Oh! Wake, my country, wake,
And from your volcanos hurl fire
Burn and destry the conqueror
Who came to put us in chains...

--Te´cun Oman, Maya king, shortly before being slain by Señor de Alvarado, after which Alvarado and his men raped and impregnated his daughters.

Tricky Dicks

Ricardo Nixon, Vice-Presidente de Los Estados Unidos, circa 1954:

"This is the first instance in history when a Communist government has been replaced by a free one. The whole world is waiting to see which does the better job."

This after a CIA-supported coup had overthrown a legally-elected government, and the new military dictator had been flown into the capital in the US ambassador´s private plane.

Pricking Pricks

In a related note, the ancient Maya kings used to honor the gods by sacrificing droplets of their own blood. This included jabbing their members with stingray spines.

Eddie the Eagle Has Landed

We have alighted, officially kicking off our "sabbatical" in a former Spanish colonial capital. Arrived late, and pretty much went straight to bed, but were awoken several times in the early morn by what we at first assumed to be vigorous lovemaking (but turned out to be the spin cycle of a washing machine). Whatever the cause, we have moved up to a nicer room on the third floor with a great view of the city.

Lots of crumbling cathedrals around-- while impressive, we can't help but be reminded of all the slaughter that took place in their names, so enter with decidedly mixed feelings. Less vexed about the market, right near our "posada," where we took in the sights/sounds/smells and hustle/bustle this morning (along with a mild case of claustrophobia).

So we´re off to more remote parts tomorrow, where we will set up shop for 3-4 weeks and try to make some headway on our español. Then it's onto the northwest hills for a festival that centers around drunken horseracing. Wee Willie Shoemaker, eat your heart out.

Hasta La Vista, Babies!

Well, we've done it--- to mix a couple metaphors, the heat in the kitchen was getting a little hot, so we've flown the coop. We can't tell you our exact location, but we can tell you that:

1. It is south of the border.

2. It is in a country that was raped, ravaged, slaughtered, and pillaged by the Spanish.

3. It experienced the same (in a subtler form) at the hands of the US under the name of the "Monroe Doctrine," the "Roosevelt Corollary," and the "Cold War Hysteria" of the 1950s, when the US was actively/covertly involved in trying to overthrow the government.

That should narrow it down a bit (¿!?).

Remembering Marcel Marceau

.







.

Radio Free Myanmar

As you may have read, the military junta of Myanmar (the country formerly known as Burma®) is cracking down on dissidents after weeks of widespread protests. Kicked off in reaction to spiking oil prices (food for thought), these protests have been led by tens of thousands of monks in their saffron-colored robes, escorted by hand-holding Burmese who have been growing bolder by the day. These people have been subject to the brutality and incompetence of the current regime for almost 20 years, which itself is the outgrowth of Ne Win and his honchos who filled the vacuum left by English colonial rule. Yes, you pale, pinched-nose types, it all comes back to you.

Anyway, we were in Burma in 1996, which was supposed to be “Visit Myanmar Year,” but the government never quite got its act together. This government is one of the most brutal and incompetent ever witnessed in the modern world. Supposedly, Ne Win once had a dream about driving on the opposite side of the road, and put it into law the following day—the commute was a little hectic for some time there as word filtered down to the people. He was also fond of the number “9,” and most of the bills had some connection to it (such as the 45-kyat note). Now, there had been a 50-kyat note, but this also was outlawed overnight. Of course, the people in the know (and in the government) were able to change their bills ahead of time, but woe to the rest (as Elmer Fudd would say).

While we were there we heard the story of another American who bore a faint resemblance to Chuck Norris. After a while, he started to sign in as Ted Norris, Chuck’s younger brother. Eventually, he was pulled aside by members of SLORC, the Draconian-named secret police, and asked what his intentions were in Burma. You see, they had seen the “Missing in Action” series, and wanted to make sure he wasn’t planning similar carnage in Myanmar.

Outside of SLORC and the military, the Burmese were among the friendliest people we had ever met, largely because they hadn’t been tainted by tourism. We remember a fellow on the street sewing up a hole in our backpack and having to insist on him accepting our payment. We did our part to rebel against the government, sneaking past the officially-inflated money-changers at the airport and the entrance-fee-chargers at the temples like Bagan—we could legitimize this, see, because we knew that all revenues were going to this corrupt government. We also went to Aung San Suu Kyi’s house to hear her speak from the gates—they tried this for a little while—and could sense the power of her presence and her words, even if we couldn’t understand them. When we sent some pictures home, they made us take out the ones of her.

We hope this groundswell of the masses can be bolstered by international pressure so that the Burmese people can get the “Freedom From Fear” that Aung San Suu Kyi has written about. In this call, we salute President Bush, who has condemned the oppressive government and called for increased international cooperation and a tightening of sanctions. Yes, you read that correctly: we are supporting President Bush in his advocacy for the spread of democracy— in this case, at least. We are waiting for the pigs to fly out of our ass.

Face/Off

...only this time, instead of Nick Cage and John Travolta, it’s Dubya and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. After watching Iran’s president being interrogated by Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes last night, we now understand why Georgie-Pooh has declined the request for a debate.

1. He has already brainwashed the media to accept his perspective and voice his viewpoints for him (We were already aware of this in general, but very alarmed to see it on 6o Minutes).

2. If they were to debate one-on-one, it’s pretty clear that Mahmoud would tear his ass up.

We say, let the man speak. And if the words do turn out to be idiotic, such as denying the Holocaust again, let the man dig his own grave. But this wagon-circling let’s-hold-everyone-responsible-for-9/11 blather we hear being trumpeted by politicians and the media alike is sickening.

For the sake of fairness (or handicapping), we’ll give the less articulate one the final word. These, according to Pelley, were Dubya’s exact words for his bearded rival:

You've made terrible choices for your people. You've isolated your nation. You've taken a nation of proud and honorable people and made your country the pariah of the world.

We can’t help but feel, of course, that he might just as well have been talking to himself.

The full interview is available at http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=3289581n&channel=/elements/2007/09/23/60minutes/videoarchive3289424_1_videosection_page.shtml

Rock Out With Your Caulk Out

Such is the motto of our Canadian compadre, housepainter by trade, and such is the best summation we can make of a blowout weekend in Toronto CA (figuratively speaking, of course).

Actually, that is the best summation of the first night, a combined birthday celebration for three people celebrating a collective 110 years, an event which brought out numerous 80s classics and even had Ours Truly shaking a leg or two. The next two days were recovery, which included lots of carnivorous fare (and garlic-- and kim-chi) along with sun-basking on the beach. Who knew? We thought Lake Ontario was only good for ice fishing.

The Great White North

Off to our neighbor to the north... you see, we're scouting locations for when we eventually have to flee the country-- it probably won't be long now. Looking forward to polite people and some good clean fun (along with the crullers and the back bacon). Will file a more in-depth report on our return, in case you don't know what we are talking aboot.

Bush Endorses Giuliani

Much like his buddy Putin, Bush has handpicked his chosen successor, as evidenced by his choice of federal judge Michael Mukasey as attorney general. You see, Mr. Mukasey is an old buddy of Herr Giuliani, to the extent that Rudolph was sworn in as mayor by Mukasey in Mukasey’s own apartment. In a letter sent after the inauguration, Mr. Mukasey wrote: “Please also know that my admiration and love (and Susan’s,) for (both of) you and your family is without limit.”

I think you will understand why we used the parentheses.

This is not the first time Dubya has sought to intertwine his legacy with “Rubya’s”: remember the bungled appointment of Bernard Kerik as Director of Homeland Security? This is a clear effort by the man dubbed “the cockiest guy I’ve ever met” by former Mexican president Vicente Fox to further blur the lines between 9/11 and the War in Iraq. Our fear is that, despite his dismal approval writings, he has succeeded in terms of the collective subconscious continuing to conflate the two, and that Republican leaders still stand a good chance of winning with his policies, if not his name.

As for that “75-year-old package of waning testosterone”…

Donald Rumsfeld is holed up in Taos, New Mexico, writing his memoirs. Asked if he misses W., he responded, “Um, no.”

This apt description of Rummy is courtesy of GQ’s Lisa DePaulo, as quoted by Maureen Dowd in the NYT.

Another Raid on the Sun?

It now appears that an Israeli strike into Syria back on September 6th was a mission to take out a site perceived to have been a fledging nuclear program— supplied by the North Koreans. As you can imagine, this strike (and the (lack of) response that has followed it) has several implications:

1. If, in fact, the North Koreans are supplying nuclear technology, in the face of recent negotiations, all we can say is, “Kim Jung be Illin’.”

(Editor’s note—although, we must confess, much as when we first heard Run-DMC utter those words, we are not exactly sure what they mean)

2. Could this have been a trial run for an attack on Iran? If so, the lack of vehement response from the Arab world could have been the green light.

Israel has been down this road before, as chronicled in Rodger Claire’s excellent book Raid on the Sun: Inside Israel's Secret Campaign that Denied Saddam the Bomb. Whatever you think of Israel’s policy, it was hard not to come away from that one without some grudging respect for their military men… and the recognition that the strike did, in fact, waylay Saddam’s nuclear ambitions. Unfortunately, it also seems to have encouraged the Bushies. To a(n extreme) fault, the Bush administration has shown that it is perfectly willing to sit back and let Israel do its dirty work, even when, as last summer’s debacle into Lebanon showed, widespread killing of the innocent civilians is involved.

What are we saying? Well, that a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities has just become a more-likely likelihood. Especially if Cheney has anything to say about it.

Outsourcing the War (Continued)

In addition to the private contractors/mercenaries previously mentioned, the current US military also has another steady source of manpower: noncitizens seeking a green card. About 21,000 of them, according to the Defense Department. As the New York Times put it this morning, “Every year, some of these soldiers become citizens only after they have literally been wrapped in the flag.” While most are aware of how the armed forces cull the most destitute parts of the US, offering self-sacrifice to the “Rich Man’s War” as a ticket out, making the military an accelerated path to citizenship takes this to a whole other level.

Murky Water

This morning comes the news that Blackwater USA has been banned from Iraq after a gun battle that left 8 Iraqi civilians dead. We see this as a pivotal moment in the war, perhaps as a bookend to the company’s “Mogadishu Moment” back in March 2004, when four of its contractors’ charred bodies were hung in effigy from a Fallujah bridge, precipitating a brutal siege of the city and uptick in US aggression overall.

Hopefully this most recent incident will further shed light on the privatization of the Iraq War, in which private companies operate outside the law and even knowledge of the US government and its people (not to mention the Iraqis!). We’ve heard that 40% of the spending goes to such private firms, and that there are up to 40,000 private contractors operating in military roles, of whom around 800 have been killed (but not included in any official reports). Indeed, these private contractors are so entrenched that we are not even sure if such an order from the Iraqi government can and will be enforced.

Their founder is Erik Prince, a right-wing fundamentalist Christian who is almost exactly our age (which, for the record, is “Older than Jesus®”). Along with operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Blackwater has been pressing to get their “troops” installed in Darfur: noble, one would think, but since they have been pushing to get into a predominately Christian area, we fear this could become a “crusade” in the worst sense of the word.

Oh, and they were deployed in New Orleans (after Katrina) as well. Yippee-ki-yay, motherf***ers.

Much of our information was culled from Jeremy Cahill, author of the book Blackwater, who can be seen in the following clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqM4tKPDlR8

Warrus Interruptus

Bottom line: there are two ways this whole surge thing can end up. As Thomas Ricks, author of the aptly-titled Fiasco, put it over the summer, there are 2 basic scenarios:

1. The surge goes well: the downtick in violence is accompanied by political breakthrough, which allows the US to draw down its troops to the realm of 60-80,000 by 2009.

2. The surge does not go well: violence continues amidst political turmoil, and political pressure dovetails with logistical constraints, which forces the US to draw down its troops to the realm of 60-80,000 by 2009.

In the words of the Pentagon (apparently), “We’re out of Schlitz.” The decisions have already been made. Not only are we staying the course, but there is no real alternative.

To their credit, although they have been avoiding the details (such as the actual number of troops involved here), Senators Clinton and Obama seem to be recognizing this with their latest plans. It all comes down to semantics: what do you call it? “Withdrawal” has become equated with “defeat,” while “limited withdrawal”… well, guys, we don’t recommend it. Plus, if we do pull out, well, the movies we’ve seen usually don’t end at that moment.

Lipstick on the Pig

While some have used this term to explain how Bush & co. are reporting on the surge, we feel that this is not one of those relationships where you actually look at the pig in the face.

Hold still…

He’s Drunk the Kool-Aid

Amidst all this talk about the resurgence of John McCain’s campaign, we checked out the man himself on Meet the Press this morning with an open mind. After all, we had voted for him in Mississippi’s Republican primary back in the year 2000, albeit mostly because, in our words, “We disliked Bush more than we liked Gore” and had the option of voting for either party. The was something about his “Straight Talk Express” back then that was refreshing, although we were never comfortable with the way he pridefully referred to himself as “a Reagan Republican.” Did this mean that he was going senile? In favor of jacking up the deficit and letting future generations pay for it? Trickling down his economics? Undermining foreign governments as well as our own, as in the case of the Contras? Ready to declare the jelly bean a fruit?

Since then, of course, the “Straight Talk Express” has changed to the “No Surrender” Winnebago, and therein lies the problem.

Our summation: he talks too slow. And he’s old. These two overriding concerns are related: he speaks with a kind of paternalistic conviction that comes with old age, when one has it all figured out, to which events will inevitably fall into place and confirm … which is precisely what the overriding problem with the Bush administration’s policy (or lack thereof) has been all along.

It reminded us of McCain’s visit to the Potemkin village of Baghdad back in April (right around April Fool’s Day, as we recall), when he described it as a safe, bustling place full of warmly welcoming Iraqis, and a fellow Republican, Mike Pence, said it was “like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime.” Both, of course, neglected to mention the platoon of 100+ soldiers, three Black Hawk choppers and two Apache gunships which served as their escorts.

Now, General Petraeus is being heralded as the second coming of Christ, and his (carefully-edited) words are being prepared for inclusion in the “New and Improved Testament.” We wouldn’t be surprised to hear McCain refer to Petraeus as “General Resurrect Us.” You know you have a problem when your old buddy John Kerry out-debates you. Time to put down the plastic cup, Mr. McCain, and walk away from the oversized tin pail while you can still walk straight.

What Did You Expect?

We found the most revealing moment of the recent Congressional hearings on Iraq to have come after Senator John Warner’s question to Petraeus as to whether the strategy in Iraq was making America safer. After initially skirting the issue by sticking to his parameters in Iraq, he responded simply, “Sir, I don’t know, actually.”

And that’s our point: Petraeus is a good man who’s been given a job to do: win the war in Iraq by whatever definition he can muster. In that, he is not charged with determining whether or not US troops could be used more effectively in Afghanistan, or will soon be needed elsewhere. Whether or not overextended soldiers will just burn out, or the armed forces will simply run out of bodies. Whether the outsourced US army will be effectively taken over by private right-wing corporations like Blackwater. Whether the US reputation in the world will sink even lower. None of this is his immediate concern, and like Westmoreland in ‘Nam, he will continue to ask for as many troops and as many resources as he can get his hands on. To have expected anything else is naïve with extra-large umlauts.

No, these decisions are all in the incompetent hands of our Commander-in-Chief, who has made it clear that he will not adjust on any of them. Like the whole decision to invade, the Democrats are being played once again. The fact that the hearing took place on September 11th should tell you something: the Bushies will keep blurring that line all the way to the end. Face the facts: the war is not going anywhere until a Democrat gets into that office. Once they do, they may find it difficult to undo what they are partially responsible for.

Move On, MoveOn

Eli Pariser is a partisan jackass. We used to subscribe to MoveOn.org’s updates back in the day, as they were right on Iraq back in the beginning. We soon soured on them, though… in the California recall election, they started a campaign of personal attacks on Ah-nold, which turned us off right away. We ended our subscription by saying that it was pretty sad that they couldn’t provide a single positive reason to vote for a candidate (in that case, Governor Gray Davis). And now he/they are going after General Petraeus (aka General Betray-Us)? The small-town boy made good? He used to be known as “Peaches,” for Chrissake! Stick to the issues, and stop making these inane personal attacks that will only undermine your position, you self-indulgent piece of… uh, um….

Flashback: 9/11/01

We had just come out of a graduate seminar, and our Commander-in-Chief was speaking to the American people from the TV screen, or at least those uncomfortably milling in the hallway outside. We took one look and declared, “Oh, that fills us full of confidence!” We got a lot of evil stares, and slinked (slunk?) away.

Give Britney a Break

We must say, we were caught a bit off guard by all the “hatin’” going Britney Spears’(s?) way. We caught a clip of her performance and, well, it wasn’t good, but we found the response downright cruel. The NY Times, supposedly a bastion of decency, referred to her “muffin-top abs” and her “bleachy bedhead” wig… we must confess, we didn’t think she looked that bad, albeit a shadow over her former self, but our main point is:

People, this woman is SICK. She is not right in the head right now, which probably had something to do with her shaving it. Dr. Phil even got into the act on Letterman, saying that she should have worn a sweatsuit.

Hell, we taught kids as recently as last year, yet if we went in a classroom today, we’d probably fall flat on our face. Clearly, she’s done. As Sarah Silverman (apparently) said, “She is amazing! I mean, she is 25 years old and she’s already accomplished ... everything she’s going to accomplish in life.” That’s a lot to live with.

But then again, we suppose that that’s the American way: maximize their utility, chew ‘em up and spit ‘em out. Who’s next?

Borax

No, we are not referring to your favorite Kazhakistani, but the heavy-duty cleaner, which we recently learned from our sister-in-law can take that edge off those workout clothes that (apparently ) you/we never quite get out with the non-industrial-strength stuff. When we looked it up online we found its official name to be "20 Mule Team Borax"... which sounds about right.

Hidin’ Out Like Osama

If you’ve been wondering why you haven’t heard from us for a while, it’s because we are on the proverbial lam. Seems as we left a few too many clues about our undisclosed offshore location, and we could feel the Fed-heads closing in; apparently, they weren’t overly fond of our “Un-American activities,” and were making full use of the eavesdropping powers the Democrats have rubber-stamped. As the saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you. So, we’ve fled like Osama without the IV. Like the most recent “intelligence” indicates, we too have decided not to go subterranean, and are instead holed up on the top floor of a house in a semi-populous area. We’ll play it by feel, but may have to leave the country on short notice (undisclosed international location, anyone?). Stay tuned.

Homosexuality Is the New Communism

It’s true, just listen to the words of Larry Craig: “I am not gay; I never have been gay.” Sounds like he is testifying before the McCarthy commission.

We also must say, we really don’t understand why this foot-tapping business is even a crime at all. While we aren’t advocates for anonymous sex no matter what the coupling (at least, not when using our own name!), it seems to us that the Senator’s two-step was merely a prelude to consensual sex, in which no one would have been the victim and no child’s behind was, um… you get the idea.

In our eyes, the real victim is the senator himself, the victim of a right-wing agenda he has been co-opted by in a 27-year effort to suppress and hide his inner urges to support a platform that doesn’t allow his true self to be considered an equal to the likes of, say, David Vitter.

"Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you."

It’s a little-known fact that Alexander Graham Bell first attempted to foot-tap this message to his assistant in the neighboring water closet. Due to Mr. Watson’s unfamiliarity with the limp-ankled “code,” Mr. Bell ended up inventing the phone instead. Notice how no one knows what Bell’s second words were?

Foot-Tapping From Toilets

Alright, fellas, how many of you, after learning about Idaho senator Larry Craig’s escapades, thought back to the last dump you took in an airport terminal? Were you listening to your iPod— and, if so, were you tapping your feet to the rhythm? How about those with “restless-leg syndrome” in the proverbial house?

As for Senator Craig, this gives new meaning to the phrase “his seat is up for election,” especially when delivered in a strong Japanese accent.

(Editor's note-- We hear his seat is now open)

Trans-Testicle Nation

Having recently adopted a new health insurance plan, we were somewhat flustered by having been charged the female rate of an additional $19. When we called customer service about this error, we asked for the standard male rate “unless the surgery would be covered.” We think we even detected a slight chuckle from the other end before the opposing voice processed our request.

Despite all this, however, we just received the bill, sent out a week later, which remains at the female rate. While initially considering the possibility that the surgery was, in fact, covered, we can only assume that this is another example of attempted buggery on the part of the American consumer services industry. To wit--

Corporate America-- Screwing Us Softly With Their Scams

Why do companies:

Only have to refund the money due if they “accidentally” overcharge you?

Have the ability to “automatically” re-bill you without consent?

Not have to publicly post their inflated “Shipping & Handling” Rates?

Let you get right through if you’re trying to start service, but keep you on hold for hours if you’re trying to end it?

Oh, wait a minute, we’re starting to see a pattern here. Maybe that Marx character was onto something after all.

Let Them Grow Opium

According to the New York Times, opium cultivation in Afghanistan has reached record levels for the second year in a row, despite a $600,000,000 US counter-narcotics effort. Having previously clamped down on poppy production, the Taliban is (are?) apparently now encouraging farmers to grow opium in the areas they control. US efforts to eradicate the crop have (obviously) been ineffective and only served to radicalize the local population.

Which brings us to our somewhat radical proposal: pay Afghan farmers market rates for their poppies, which would then be destroyed. “Buy it and burn it,” we say, and in the process give the Taliban a dose of their own medicine, as it were. We would even allow the Incompetent-in-Chief’s speechwriters to issue said policy in his next presidential address by having him look directly into the camera and declare, “Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

Turning Wine Into Water

Amidst the forest fires that have been ravaging Greece, we found the following story rather heartening. It seems that after running out of water with which to battle the blaze, a certain George Dimopoulous, of Makitos, Greece, filled his copper hand-pumped crop sprayer with his homemade wine. With the help of 200 liters of vino, he was able to save his house and neighborhood. While we would have been more impressed if Mr. Dimopoulous had miraculously produced enough catfish for a block-party fish-fry, we are duly impressed nonetheless.

(Editor’s note—this information also came from the New York Times, circa Tuesday or Wednesday. You see, here on our undisclosed offshore location, when you go to the “paper store,” they ask you if you would like yesterday’s or today’s edition. If you answer, in a huff, “Well, today’s, of course,” they will tell you, in a deliberate manner, “Come back tomorrow.”)

Putin’s Posse

No story here; we just like saying the word “Putin.” We also wonder how he resisted the temptation to name his firstborn “Razz.”

It’s About Freakin’ Time!

At long last, Alberto Gonzales has resigned as Attorney General. Like Senor Rummy before him, the administration has once again exceeded our (admittedly high) expectations in its inability to deal with political realities for months on end. As demonstrated in our earlier postings, Project Democracy (1-3), this combination of audacity and incompetence is nothing new, but never before has it been so out in the open and on such a large scale. Which brings us to our central thesis for the reasons behind the abysmal failure of the “Neo-Incompetents” and the unprecedented damage they have done to the US reputation in the world: Pride and Loyalty have run rampant over any form of job performance. This approach is best summed up in six words: Harriet Meiers as Supreme Court Justice.

Of course, Alberto was high on that list as well...

(Editor's Note-- the plural form of Attorney General is “Attorneys General,” rather than “Attorney Generals”; we used to have a problem with that, but that was before the terms of Messrs. Ashcroft & Gonzales, neither of which we would want to have giving any sort of orders to troops)

For our next president, above all, we are looking for somebody who is not afraid to change course and admit mistakes. Most of the inane decisions made by administrations past were made in the cloud of blind loyalty. Look at RFK’s attempts to take out Fidel in order to make up for his brother’s failure in the Bay o’ Pigs. Dubya’s to both finish what his father started, and to avenge his attempted whacking. Carrying such baggage means that the agenda is no longer your own. As previously noted, this ties into our fears of a Hillary presidency as well: we fear she may do something like outlaw blue dresses (or, at least, those with polka dots).

Call us paranoid, but our biggest fear is that this type of blind obedience, taken to its most extreme form, could morph into martial law. Which brings us to Rudolph Giuliani. We are intrigued by the man, and want to give him a fair shake, but here’s something about that second syllable of his first name that makes us a bit uncomfortable.

As for Rapmaster Rove, we can’t get as excited over his departure, as we are sure that he is still working behind the scenes (the whole “official” rationale of “devoting more time to his family” rings more hollow than usual, especially since his only son has just gone off to college).

Neo-Incompetence

The policies of the Bush administration now have a name. We toyed with the label “Compassionate Incompetence,” but in the absence of foreplay or even a “sweet nothing” or two, it would be more apt to call it outright buggery.

How About a Little Haiku?

Sometimes on-island
We have wine and cheese for lunch
Just because we can

Such is life upon our undisclosed offshore location, which may explain why our postings have become fewer and further between. After the requisite cutting and clearing of brush (we haven't fully overcome our ancestor's Puritanical nature), the days are intermixed with kayaking, quarrying, acting as ballast on sailing sloops, reading, (occasionally) writing, and taking delicious afternoon naps.

This regimen is occasionally interrupted by forays into the "big town," such as the one we undertook a fortnight or so ago, which included a meal in the rusticated inn. After the meal, we shook hands with a gentleman in salmon slacks(the standard genteel flatlander's uniform), in which we alleviated the guilt of our respective parties in detaining the overworked staff until past 10. I learned later that he was, in fact, the brother of a former president. While we were both ignorant of each other's identity at the time, only one of us, still, remains (blissfully) so.

33 ½ Signs That You’re Older Than Jesus

When you pass that perilous threshold of 33, it is time to take stock of your life. That’s what we did, uh, fairly recently, and, needless to say, our accomplishments did not quite measure up to the Big Guy’s. If nothing else, however, we decided we would no longer ask ourselves “What would Jesus do?”, because at our age he was dead (and resurrecting yourself is not an option). If you, like us, occasionally lose track of your age, here are some signs that you may have already passed that milestone:

1. Hair has started growing out of your ears.

2. You have bald spots along your sock line.

3. You no longer tell your story about learning about John Lennon’s death on the school bus (when you thought they were referring to Jack London of White Fang and Call of the Wild fame—you were crushed)

(Editor’s note—the last time you told this, someone looked at you strangely and asked, “How old are you?”)

4. You still quote lines from Caddyshack, but only in the right company.

5. You are finally fully cognizant of the fact that NCAA athletes are younger than you.

6. You have finally accepted the fact that you will never be a professional athlete.

(Editor’s note—Well, maybe not—see 756* below)

7. You get sore after a round of croquet.

8. You have quit trying to cut out the “stray” grey hair along your temples.

9. You occasionally try to cut out the stray gray hair on your chest.

(Editor’s note—note, young metro-testicles, that a real man does not wax)

(Additional editor’s note—we noticed in the pharmacy the other day that there was an Australian waxing product for men named “Nads.” In our day that meant something else)

10. You remember, somewhat guiltily, making jokes about the space shuttle Challenger, and what color the astronauts’ eyes were.

(Editor’s note—Blue. One blue this way, and one blue that way)

11. You have accepted the fact that you didn’t accomplish most of the things on your “To Do Before I Turn Thirty” list—but have given yourself an extension on the ménage à trois.

12. When watching the news about Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan, you have a greater urge to help them than take advantage of them.

(Editor’s note—unless it would help check off #11)

13. You no longer try to watch the squiggly channels on TV.

(Editor’s note—this has more to do with modern technology than any sort of maturity)

14. You have no interest in men’s magazines like Stuff and Maxim.

(Editor’s note—this also might have something to do with technology)

15. You actually buy Playboy for the articles too (well, you would, but you still can’t work up the courage to actually buy it).

16. You’ve become more of a “butt” than “breast” man.

17. White women bore you.

(Editor’s note—nos. 16 & 17 are related)

(Additional editor’s note—this is not, in fact, completely true—but we have inspired at least one white woman to go out and buy a drill bit)

18. You no longer experiment with facial hair.

19. You have acknowledged that you were never intended to have long hair, and have foresworn any future attempts to grow some.

(Editor’s note—to put 18 & 19 more succinctly, you have decided that you will make no more attempts to look like the white European Jesus—or the real one, for that matter)

20. You remember when you first learned that “bitch” could be a verb—when listening to Billy Joel’s Big Shot on your red-checked Fisher-Price stereo.

(Editor’s note—while you are not overly proud of 52nd Street being your first album, you are glad that you chose that over its main competition, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack)

21. You get misty-eyed—or, at least, your nose starts to flare—when watching families reunite on the Maury show.

22. You sometimes buy yourself flowers.

23. You still haven’t forgiven yourself for not learning the guitar in elementary school.

24. You still haven’t forgiven your parents for throwing out your baseball cards.

25. You have forgiven your parents for throwing out your old Chuck T’s.

26. You sometimes wear your sunglasses when it’s not that bright out—to cover up your crow’s feet.

27. You understand why Bono wears his all the time.

28. You have discovered embarrassing paraphernalia in your parents’ bedside table—and still are unable to face it.

29. You sometimes size up a woman by imagining what physical traits she could pass on to your sons.

30. You’ve learned to like wine—and pretend to like martinis.

(Editor’s note— shaken, of course, not stirred)

31. You’ve become a snob about coffee—or, at least, have finally realized that Starbucks just tastes burnt.

32. You no longer throw darts at a picture of the pope.

(Editor’s note— you were young. And—we must clarify—never at pictures of Jesus)

33. You keep telling yourself that one of these days you’re going to learn how to type.

33½. You see the glass as half empty.

(Editor’s note—you also realize, at this point, that 33½ (or 33 1/3 ?) is also number of RPMs on all those LPs you saved from your childhood, which are undoubtedly warped by now, especially since you stored them on their side)

How Would Jesus Have Deteriorated?

If you are in the 33-40 range, and have other notions as to what defines this era, give us a shout-out at hypomaniacal@gmail.com (we might get around to checking it this time). We will post any worthwhile responses (and we all know how painful that can be!).

Election ’08—Why Hillary Should Not be President

The main reason we feel that Hillary Clinton should not be elected president has nothing to do with the fact that she used to wear big glasses, her baking ability, or her cleavage. It actually deals with her main asset—her husband. Now don’t get us wrong— we like the guy, and would probably vote for him again if we could. But we can’t. You see, there’s this little thing called the 22nd amendment which restricts a president to two terms of office. This was designed to keep any one individual from having too much influence on the US government. Let me tell you, right now, we are damn glad there is such a thing in place, 28% approval ratings notwithstanding. But anyway, if Bill Clinton became the first First Man of the United States, he would be in a position that would violate the core principle of this amendment.

Of course, there are other reasons as well.

1b. As a further “amendment” to the above, let’s let some other families in on the act. The whole Bush-Clinton “double helix” is getting old. Look around you—that royal family/ monarchy thing isn’t working out too well for anyone else.

2a. That lame “Sopranos” spoof …

2b. and that Celine Dion theme song.

3. She has sold her soul politically. While we were impressed by her ability to veer across the political spectrum in order to be elected to the Senate, and think these abilities would help make her a fine majority leader, such chameleonship is not what the presidency needs. The aptly-named “Bush-Cheney lite” is not the answer.

4a. She doesn’t talk, she shouts.

And, related to the above:

4b. She is starting to sound (and look) more and more like Suze Orman.

‘Nuff said.

Election ’08— The Bitch Factor

We worry that some might see our perspectives on the HC as sexist. A woman should be disqualified from the race—because of who her husband is? Shouting? Isn’t that better than being “shrill”? Aren’t these all double standards? Isn’t it just as bad when a female teacher sleeps with her students?

In regard to the last question… uh, no.

And in terms of our original concern, to quote Nigel Tufnel, “What’s wrong with being sexy?”

We also must make a disclosure— at this point, we are an Obama Girl.

Election '08-- (Dis)Qualifying Questions

The first question that should be asked to each and every presidential candidate was the one asked in the Republican debate on May 3rd, 2007: “Do you believe in evolution?”

An alternative way of asking this question would be, “As president, if you were presented with concrete evidence that went against the faith-based scenario you had conjured up in your mind, would this affect your judgment of the situation or the actions you would take?”

Three people answered “no” to the original question in the debate: Sen. Sam Brownback, Gov. Mike Huckabee, and Rep. Tom Tancredo. They should be eliminated from any further consideration for the post. One person has clearly answered yes to the second; thanks to term limits, he is already ineligible.

The Democrats Are To Blame (Again)

Re: FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act)

Thanks to the efforts of 41 House Democrats and 16 Senate Democrats, the White House & their Republican lackeys have been handed another part of their right-wing agenda. After all the clamor over illegal wiretapping, these 57 have allowed the practice of conducting wiretaps without a warrant to be officially approved, putting such decisions exclusively in the hands of the administration (gulp) and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (double gulp). Undoubtedly, they caved in the face of selective and fear-mongering intelligence, enhanced by a healthy dose of their own spinelessness. In a way, this was actually worse than the Democrats’ complicity in the decision to invade Iraq: this time, the numbers were on their side.

We would like to take this opportunity to change our official political affiliation from “Independent” to “None of the above.”

756*

(Editor’s Note—you will have noticed by now, we are sure, our fondness for aster**ks)

For all the negative press Barry Bonds has received over the course of the year, we would like to counter by giving the guy some credit—he succeeded within the confines of the system, and persevered through it all. If he was allowed to do what he appears to have done, isn’t the system itself to blame? The closest analogy we can make is to Bill Gates and Microsoft—his/their use of predatory market tactics, intimidation, and manipulation got him/them where they are today, and now he’s saving babies in Africa.

In the end, we can’t help but feel that there is a bit of a racist element here. For all the praise heaped on Hank Aaron these days, one can’t forget all the threats and hate mail he received back in his day, and the subtler disclaimers to games played (compared to the Great Bambino) that we even found ourselves making. We felt this in an even subtler form when Mark McGwire came off as the popular favorite when battling Sammy Sosa for the single-season crown back in 1998. And remember, McGwire not only had the muscles and overgrown head, but the acne too.

In a way, Bonds is the manifestation of the “big black negro” that the insecure white man has always subconsciously feared will ravage his women, rendering his respective “tools” and “skills” worthless; only this time, he has not only been bred for the task, but also chemically enhanced to take it to the next level.

It should be remembered, though, as it was once explained to me, that steroids “turn your grapes into raisins.”

Upon further reflection, perhaps our sentiments are merely a reaction to the insinuation that the only way a post-35 year old can perform significant athletic feats is through the use of such chemical “enhancers”… we aren’t quite ready to face that fact yet.

If We Want Your Opinion, We Will Give it to You

If you feel like trying anyway, we can be reached at hypomaniacal@gmail.com (that’s right, some sumbitch stole our prospective e-mail address as well).

We'd also like to give a quick shout-out to Rodrigo, the sole person to contact us so far (twice). However, in his own best interests, we have decided not to hawk his Camisetas Personalizadas on this site: believe you me us, you have no idea what our clientele could come up with. Let's just say that it could well violate state, national, and/or international laws, and as far as the penal codes go for such infractions, well, they are rather stiff.

If Cold Guinness is Wrong, We Don’t Want to be Right

Despite vehement declarations by certain people that a proper Guinness is served warm, all the Guinni that we received while in Dublin were cold… and we received many. Even if every single pub (including the brewery itself) did so merely because they detected our American accent and thus concluded that we were a ‘Mary’, frankly, my dear, we wouldn’t give a damn.

Dublin(’) Down

Despite that bastard Murphy, things picked up once we entered Davy Byrnes’ pub, where a certain Leopold Bloom had once washed down a gorgonzola sandwich with a sherry. They didn’t have any food, but they did have Guinness, which is basically a liquid manifestation of the food pyramid.

This was the first step in our attempts to trace the steps of Msr. Bloom, which we cannot, unfortunately, give away for free, but plan to recount in an upcoming essay entitled ‘Reading James Joyce in Dublin’, in which we will attempt to connect Faulkner (and, subsequently, incest as it relates to quests for racial purity), Joyce’s influence on Mr. Bill, their respective uses of the c-word, a few more of Joyce’s words from Ulysses, the physical setting of the book today, and the transcending powers of a settling Guinness with our own personal vision quest.

(Editor’s Note— Our would-be author reports that his task may have been somewhat compromised by the fact that, in hindsight, he realized that he never read any of Ulysses while actually in Dublin, and, uh, isn’t quite finished with it yet. Stay tuned)

Murphy's Law

We entered Dublin to the smell of shite… literally, there appeared to be some sort of frothy liquid spewing into the water from a processing plant along the narrow channel that leads to the port, causing our nostrils to flare.

Upon docking (next to the Ulysses), we had to wait a good twenty minutes for a 2nd bus to arrive to take us to the terminal.

Then, the ATM would not accept our card, leaving us Euro-less. We were forced to go to the upstairs café and change our pounds sterling one-for-one.

Following which, we had to wait a half-hour or so for a 2nd bus to take us into the city.

As we wrote in our journal at the time, ‘Irish eyes may be smiling, but we are pissed off’.

Murphy was an Irishman, don’t you know.

The Whole Ffamn Damily

Our scribbling scribe went on to report that, after leaving ‘Shakespeare Country’, he scaled the highest peak in Wales, which isn’t exactly Everest/Chumolungma… but he did stay at the lodge where Hillary & co. trained before they ‘knocked the bastard off’. In his words, ‘You gotta love a place where the ‘reception desk’ features 6 taps of ale’.

T’was after dinner, after retiring to the parlor with some far more serious climbers (amidst photos and paraphernalia from the Everest expedition and, incongruously, a shrunken head from Peru), that he learned that the ‘f’ sound in Welsh is produced by a double ‘f’, leading our fearless protagonist to speculate that this might be groundbreaking insight into the roots of his paternal ancestors, who had originally used the ‘Ff’ (not to be found in old English).

For the sake of anonymity, we will henceforth refer to them as the ‘Fudds’.

Anyway, growing up, the lads were always told by their patriarch that, when confronted with an interview for job or school, to ‘just tell ‘em you’re a Fudd’. With the initial discovery, the saying became, ‘just tell ‘em you’re a Ffudd’. Naturally, this extended to other ‘f’ words; in the words of one, ‘If you don’t ffind it ffunny, you are ffree to ff**ck off’.

Bated Breath...

probably doesn’t smell very good. For those of you who have been anxiously awaiting our fearless reporter’s update on his lineage, however, your prayers have been answered… while recuperating back at his undisclosed offshore location, he dictated the following updates.

The Royal Wee

(Editor's note-- We refer here not to our reporter’s unusual manner of referring to himself in the collective, but to the current state of British lavatories)

Alternate titles:
Royal Flush
Skip to My Loo

When it comes to water closets, the British are retarded.

Case in point:

1. It takes at least two flushes to swirl away anything of substance. We came upon this realization after finding a Lincoln log or two during our first relief efforts in a Cambridge dormitory, leading us to realize that we may well have left a present or two behind as well and, subsequently, needed to amend our own flushing practices. The above dictum held true for the duration of our stay.

2. While designing said dorms without a rest (and relax) room ‘en suite’—our attic room did not even have one on the same floor—they have installed sinks at just about the same height as your average urinal.

Rather convenient, actually.

Whilst dictating the above screed, we came upon a thought: if the empire’s Labor & Conservative parties chose to unite, they’d become the Labor-Tory party— go (un)Espanol with the ‘v’ (and Bostonian w/ the '-or') and ve’re right back ve’re ve started (some would say ve nebah left).

Homeward Bondage

By rail and coach, we managed to make it to our mother’s land. Ignoring all our usual instincts, we headed straight for the church. After meandering through the surrounding graveyard, we found a collection of familial gravestones in a little grove tucked behind the back corner of the building. Lots of fallen stones, one more recent (and intact) one listing the 15 or so interred there, which we took as an indication that somewhere, at some point, some members of our family actually attended church.

As we took our final picture, we heard a ‘caw’ from above… so quoth the raven (on commands from further above, we imagine).

Conveniently, there was a pub across the street (‘The King’s Head’). We strolled in and ordered a pint of the local ale (Lady Godiva—with a label very risqué by British standards). T’was a magnificent pub, resplendent in deep varnished wood, stone tile, and patterned maroon carpet, featuring a glorious set of juxtapositions: a pinball machine flashing the phrase “Bling Bling” among the aged pool tables and dart boards on the upper floor, a widescreen plasma TV above the fireplace below. There, we watched the races with the locals, who peppered the action with insights such as, ‘We’re getting lashed’ and ‘A horse farted’.

We got one more pint and summoned up our courage to ask the barmaid if she had heard of the family farm (under its most recent name). Stating that it sounded familiar, she proceeded to poll the other patrons, and a consensus was reached: we’d need to go to the top of the hill and turn right, but it was a little late and a little far to get there this particular evening. Stating that we’d just go and get a look-see, we strode to the top of the hill, knowing all the while that we’d be heading there posthaste.

After trudging along a ‘country road’ (read: no sidewalks), passing some other farms, and an ancient church bearing our given name, we reached another village and another glorious country pub. No one there had ever heard of it, so we decided it wasn’t meant to be (answering that age-old question) and got another pint from a tap adorned with a horseshoe.

We never did find the Stud Farm either, leading us to believe they may have been one and the same.

Effingham

We also must report that this quaint little nook of England, proclaimed ‘Shakespeare Country’ by the brochures, must feature the most ‘F-bombs’ per capita in the entire world. Upon disembarking from the train at Royal Leamington Spa, we had a young couple in our right ear & a group of high-schoolers in our left letting them fly in all forms. In Cubbington, several bus riders and even the bus driver got into the act. Seems they did not heed the call to get thyselves to a local nunnery.

As for ourselves, we have come to prefer the phrase ‘Bloody Hell’, partly because we don’t feel the need to use aster**es.

Roots

Prior to the aforementioned mission to Dublin, however, our roving
reporter will be embarking on a private, and admittedly
self-indulgent, quest to find the farmhouse of his English ancestors,
which dates from the 16th century and is apparently still intact. He
reports that he will set out for Cubbington, Warwickshire, tomorrow,
armed with the knowledge of its being 'about a mile north of St.
Mary's church' (?).

He will travel northwest by rail before transferring to bus no. 68,
which runs to Cubbington from the alternate terminus of Leamington Spa Stud Farm.

We could not, as they say, make this stuff up.

Hyperliterature

No, we refer not to our own prose, but that of a certain James Joyce
(the original JJ), whose writing has been referred to as such. Our
roving reporter reports that he has followed through with his threat
to purchase Ulysses, despite being forwarned that it was unreadable
(he took this as a challenge). Critics have deemed said tome as
'literary Bolshevism', while Joyce himself first referred to it as a
novel, then 'epic','encyclopedia', maledettisimo romanzaccione
(roughly, , damnedest monstrously big novel'), finally settling simply
for 'book'.

The novel takes place over the span of a single day in Dublin, circa
1904. When 'our man' realized (when drinking Guinness) that this day
coincided with his birthday, his mission/fate was sealed.

He did not realize at the time, however, that it would be 980 pages.

The Word from Cambridge

from our roving correspondent:

Went to a concert at the famed King's College Cathedral yesterday, which was bloody awful-- we felt like we were in detention. The structure is beautiful, of course, and organ and trumpet were charming, but an hour and a half of looking at the ceiling and watching other people grimace was rather unnecessary.

We realize that could be misinterpreted.

(Editor's note-- it sounds like "our man" is turning Continental)

Overt Operations

Our features editor will be on assignment the coming week. While, for reasons of national security, we cannot provide more specifics at this time, we are authorized to disclose that it will involve rogue Americans, Russians, a couple Swedes, and a Scandinavian socialist named “Odd.”

Fiddler’s Farts

Upon conclusion of said conference, he is reported to be en route to Dublin, where he will attempt to read James Joyce and/or find the lost river of Guinness. He is under specific instructions not to try to talk like an Irishman when inebriated. We are not overly optimistic.

Project "Democracy"

After extended research, we are pleased to announce that this country of ours will not be forever scarred by the current debacle in Iraq (or, as John Stewart aptly calls it, "Mess-O’-Potamia"). Turns out this country has a long history of presidentially-ordained “with-us-or-against-us” regime-changes-cum-quagmires in which the Hypocrasizer-in-Chiefs have supported colonialist and dictatorial interests in the name of spreading democracy… and the majority of the world seems to have, if not forgiven us, at least forgotten about it. The following is this reader’s digested list of the ones we know about:

1953—Iran (Project “Ajax”): Prodded by British oil interests, “Kim” Roosevelt (grandson of TR, the “Original Colonizer”) and others engineer an overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, propping up the Shah in the process. Gee, that worked out well.

1954—Guatemala (Project “Success”): Representing the interests of the United Fruit Company and freedom-loving people everywhere, the US covertly overthrows elected President Jocobo Guzman Arbenz, sinking a British merchant vessel in the process. Inaugurates a series of brutal dictatorships through the 1980s, with residual corruption and human rights abuses continuing to this very day.

1956,1957—Syria (Operations “Wakeful” and “Wappen”): US attempts to trigger coups to forestall the “leftist” Ba’ath Party. Both fail miserably. Pass the So’oap.

1957-1958—Indonesia (Operation “Archipelago”/ Project “Haik”): USA assists and conducts unsuccessful paramilitary operations against the government of Achmed Sukarno in reaction to his non-alignment strategy, under which he had proposed such inflammatory ideas as an American-Soviet summit (Hey, like we said, you’re either with us or against us!).

1959—Iraq (Codename unknown): US sets up interagency group to consider covert operations to prevent a Communist takeover. Six months later comes the attempted assassination of the Iraqi leader Abdul Karim Qasim by a young up-and-comer named Saddam Hussein.

This and the following have been gleaned from Safe For Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA, by John Prados… who gleaned them from the extensive research of unclassified documents we don’t have the means (or energy) to access.

Project "Democracy," Part Deux

1959-1965—Cuba (Bay of Pigs, Project Mongoose, etc.): Includes extensive bombings of Cuban infrastructure and the failed invasion at Playa Giron, which was waylaid by insufficient intelligence, planning, and support (sound familiar?) and only served to radicalize Castro, driving him into Soviet (nuclear) arms. Afterwards the Kennedy administration escalates efforts to take down el barbudo, targeting him with such thoughtful gifts as radioactive shoes, a scuba diving suit inlaid with tuberculosis and fungus, poisoned pens and cigars, and visits from Mafia hit men.

1960—the former Belgian Congo/ Zaire: the US, along with the Belgians (whose history of oppression here is a whole other tome), overthrows the democratically-elected government of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. The target of documented US assassination plots, he is eventually beaten and killed.

1963—Guyana: with the help of former colonists Great Britain, the US removes the legally-elected Cheddi Jagan from power. Guyana does not have another free election until 1992.

1964—’Nam: LBJ gets his Gulf of Tonkin resolution (in lieu of a declaration of war) in response to an attack that never was (although, in fairness, there was a real one two days before). You know the rest.

1968-1973—Chile: After the Nixon administration escalates covert operations to include the manipulation of world markets (in order to destabilize the country), they get the coup they wanted. Prime Minister Salvador Allende Gossens is overthrown and commits suicide. General Augusto Pinochet declares a state of emergency and begins a campaign of repression that will kill thousands.

1972-1975—Iraq (again): US provides covert support for the Kurds to help their ol’ buddy in Iran— until His Shahness works out a deal w/ Saddam and leaves a pile of steaming Kurds. As Henry Kissinger explains, “Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.” Or the missionary position.

Project "Democracy," San-Ban

1975-1976, 1980-1988 Angola (Project “Feature,” etc.): The US gets involved in another post-colonialist morass (somehow, that word seems fitting), bankrolling the group that instigates the violence and consequently undoes any potential political solution. Becomes another Cold-War hot war with Cubans and Soviets supporting the opposition, and the South Africans on “our” side (that played really well in the rest of Africa!).

1979-1991—Afghanistan: US provides intelligence and weapons for the mujahedeen, who successfully repel the Soviets after a decade of resistance. Afterwards, over half of the “Stinger” missiles provided by the US are unaccounted for, even when they offer to buy them back at over four times the initial cost ($150,000 each). A young Saudi engineer by name of bin Laden gets involved in the latter stages of the war, and while not (apparently) benefiting directly from US aid, takes advantage of the post-war climate to set up training camps for global jihad.

Incidentally, it was during this war that President Reagan first uses the term “freedom fighters.” In his defense, though, do you remember what he did when 200+ marines were killed in Beirut? He pulled the troops out.

1980—Cambodia: US bankrolls allies of Pol Pot & the Khmer Rouge, known for fighting the Vietnamese and, oh, yes, killing up to ¼ of the Cambodian people.

1980-1988—Nicaragua (Project “Democracy”): Yes, that was its actual title. In the name of Lady Liberty, US revives economic destabilization tactics, illegally arms, funds, and trains the contras, and mines Nicaragua’s harbors, blowing up a Japanese and a Soviet ship along with those of Nicaraguan fishermen. When funds for the covert operation dry up, someone gets the bright idea of using the money from Iranian arms sales (another day!) to fund the project. Major players get off scot-free, and several are surfacing again under the current administration.

2000—USA: United States installs George W. Bush as the 43rd president of the United States.

There may well be more, but we are tired.

(Editor’s note—this should help explain why we are in (on?) a undisclosed offshore location)

Deja Nang

“We are not the French—we are coming as liberators, not colonialists.”

—McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor for the Kennedy administration, on whether the US would succeed in Vietnam.

source: Harvard Magazine, July-August 2007

(Editor’s note—we can not claim to have gotten access to said periodical through legitimate means)

Free Willies

This past Friday the 13th, 4 lobsters escaped from a holding tank in a remote part of the Atlantic Ocean, where they were awaiting appeal before being boiled alive. They were big and active, while the nails on the crate were rusted and the wood rotting. May they live long and prosperous lives.

We had green chili stew instead. The chicken wasn’t so lucky.

Ocean's 360

According to the May, 2003 issue of Boating magazine, the average blue whale produces over 400 gallons of sperm for each act of coitus; with only 10% making it to its mate, that means each time it, shall we say, unloads, it deposits 360 gallons into the ocean.

(Editor’s note: the fact that we are quoting from a four-year-old boating magazine, featuring the main heading, “What Women Want: 10 Ways to Make Her Love Your Boat,” gives you a hint of the dearth of reading material in (on?) our undisclosed offshore location)

Cuidado, Motherf***er! Rebel Music, 2007.

"Cuidado"— Slo-Mo: not what would traditionally be considered a rebel song, but the f-bombs are delivered with a crispness and alacrity that we can only strive for. Plus, we have a soft spot for (read: compassion towards/understanding of) bad Spanish.

"Uncle Sam Goddamn"— Brother Ali: our current favorite, the man tells it like it is.

"What’s Going On"— The Dirty Dozen Brass Band (featuring Chuck D.): while updating Marvin Gaye’s classic, they may make some wish the senior Mr. Gaye had turned his gun on someone else’s son.

"Welcome to Jamrock"— Damian Marley: Jr. Gong, carrying on the tradition.

"Downpressor Man"— Sinead O’Connor: say what you will about Ms. O’Connor (and cover songs, in general), she holds her own here (her own what, we can’t say). Besides, she drops an f-bomb right where we used to when singing along to the original (and untouchable) Peter Tosh version.

"Kalukata Show"— Mixmaster Mike, Lateef, and the Gift of Gab (of Blackalicious): from the album “Red Hot + Riot,” which resonates even further today.

"Clandestino"— Manu Chao: se habla espanol.

"We Don’t Stop"— Michael Franti & Spearhead: Bush War I and Bush War II, a war for me and a war for you.

"Song for the Apocalypse"— Daniel Sharp: it’s coming.


CLASSICS

"Killing in the Name"— Rage Against the Machine: the “F*** You I won’t Do What You Tell Me” song. Our anthem. After this, the group had no more reason to exist.

"By the Time I Get to Arizona"— Public Enemy: the gov’t got smart & changed it (the lack of an MLK holiday) before they got there.

"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"— Gil Scot Heron: no, but you will read it here first.

available on iTunes at http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewIMix?id=259689195