A Rock To Tie A String Around

I’ve long held the belief that Papua New Guinea is a land of horrors. Between the cannibals, the biting frogs and the over 100 species of poisonous flowers, it would give Neil Gaiman nightmares.

For the sake of comparison, however, I’ve been looking for local anti-tourist destinations that might be slightly comparable to Papua New Guinea, you see, I have no passport, nor do I have any time or money with which to travel, so if I want to spark my horror writing mind with new and horrifying venues…I better start looking locally.

Luckily, Arizona has been doing a bang-up job of making themselves horrible lately. Forget about the Stasi-esque immigration bill, Arizona has a lot more going for it than the distinct possibility that the next time you run a red light, you might have to prove your citizenship. Forget about the move by Governor Jan Brewer to bump out English teachers who speak with an accent – see my previous blog about Arizona for details on that one….no, Arizona has a lot more going for it, check these beauties out:

1. Whitewashing Elementary School Kids:

An elementary school in Prescott, Arizona has a mural that depicts the kids who attend the school running and playing. Most of the kids in this elementary school are black and brown, hence the mural…. Well, some local racists decided that a big mural that prominently featured black and brown children was unacceptable and began the really classy move of screaming racial epithets at the school and children therein.

The principal’s solution? Whitewash the mural. Yes, seriously, the school’s solution to raving, lunatic crazy people racists was to bow to their demands and lighten the skin of the children in the mural. Seriously.

As you can well imagine, there was public outcry and eventually the principal backed off and cancelled his whitewashing project.

http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/34838/arizona-principal-cancels-whitewash-of-controversial-school-mural/

Okay, so alright – they did cancel it. But the fact they even considered whitewashing it in the first place is so horrible, I can’t help but think all the damage has already been done.

2. Lion Patties:

A restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona decided to honor the World Cup by serving, yes; you guessed it – lion burgers. Actual burgers made out of lion meat. Before you get too upset, the restaurant wants you to know they were farm raised lions, not like those wild, noble, endangered ones in the wild in Africa that they were trying to honor by grinding them down and serving them with ketchup and cheese….

It was a one-week event; guess there wasn’t quite enough lion meat to stretch it out until USA beats Ghana….

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/06/25/restaurant-served-lion-burgers-despite-protests/

I think it’s probably a good thing that Chicago didn’t get the Olympics….lest the rest of the world decide to honor us by frying up Bald Eagles.

3. Scorpions:

Venomous Bark Scorpions in particular, also throw in that mix the Southwest Tarantula, which while decidedly less venomous is no less creepy. I realize that scorpions and giant fuzzy spiders live all over the southwest, but they have a special concentration in Arizona, specifically Phoenix.

http://phoenix.about.com/cs/desert/a/scorpions01.htm

I suppose it’s a matter of taste, I prefer tropical So Cal insects like cockroaches and brown widow spiders….wait, I think I’m losing my own argument here….well, the point still stands – they’re one creepy freakin’ insect.

4. Weather:

From May through October the average high temperature in Phoenix is between 95 and 105 degrees. I realize that ass hot weather is a thing that some people like, but really? 105 degrees? How can you like that?

I had a work buddy a few years back who moved to Phoenix briefly. In mid July he was crossing a busy street when his flip flop melted to the newly laid asphalt. He was forced to abandon his flip-flop and hop to safety. He then got a blister when his bare foot touched the 105-degree sidewalk.

I have no evidence that this story is true, but he looked really, really serious every time he told this story, and he told it a lot.

5. Speed Traps

AAA has labeled the entire state of Arizona a speed trap. Let me repeat myself, the entire state of Arizona is a speed trap. They issued a warning in their recent travel guide that due to the heavy handed use of speed cameras mounted along the freeways, not to mention hidden in vans that are scattered along the sides of the state highways….you are extremely likely to get caught speeding in Arizona.

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/21154

There are conflicting pieces of advice out there for drivers who get caught by these cameras. On his Consumer Watchdog Radio Show, Clark Howard recently fielded calls from people who had been nailed with hugely expensive tickets while driving through Arizona. Some said they had simply not paid the tickets, some had contested the charges, Howard said to ask a lawyer. I say drive through Nevada instead.

In short, if you can’t make it to Papua New Guinea this summer, try Phoenix. To be clear, I don’t necessarily blame the residents of residents of Arizona; I look to the systems in place. We could all be Arizona, and from the looks of the immigration bills brewing in places like Boise and Topeka….we might just soon be…..

Today is my tenth wedding anniversary. Which actually marks more like fifteen years of togetherness, which in turn inspires a sentimental blog. The Husband and I met on his first day of college back in 1995, I was his RA in the dorms, and he got me in a whole big bunch of trouble. Turns out you’re not supposed to be crushing on your residents when you’re an RA. Who knew?

But in honor of The Husband, who is beyond doubt the most inexplicably amazing man that I’ve ever met or hope to meet – I’d thought I’d let you in on our strange little world. Yes, we frequently communicate through movie quotes, and we still giggle like schoolgirls over our extremely old, and strange inside jokes.

Here are a few of our faves, in case you’re ever over at our house for boat drinks and wonder what the hell we’re talking about (incidentally ‘boat drinks’ come from Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead’ it’s part of the vernacular around the homestead)

Here ya go:

1. “I don’t know no loud crash….” Magnolia, from the scene near the beginning where they are searching the apartment of the woman who has her dead husband stuffed in the closet. Something falls over and when John C Reilly asks her what it was, she replies with the above.

We like to use this phrase anytime any unexpected noise occurs. It doesn’t have to be a crash, it can be a car horn, a loud belch, really anything. It’s become a little like slug-bug, we jump to be the one to say it first, then we usually have a gigging fit. Yes, we’re awesome like that.

2. “This one’s goin’ this way and that one’s goin’ that way, and there’s this guy in the middle sayin’ hey! whaddya want from me?” Goodfellas, when Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta are in Joe Pesci’s mom’s house and are admiring her newest painting while that guy in the trunk of Joe Pesci’s car tries to claw his way out….

We use this one every time we see an unexpected piece of art. We would probably say it every time we see art, but I think we are both afraid of overusing its funniness. I don’t know if that’s possible. No, it doesn’t make any sense, yet we laugh every time anyway.

4. “Don’t waste my motherfucking time…” Heat, Al Pacino says this in perfect Al Pacino accent, you have to really draw out the motherfucking part, and then when drop the I in Time, phonetically it sounds like: muthafucking taahhhmmee

The sentiment is obvious; I often want to start chanting this at faculty meetings and other events where someone is doing just this exact activity. The husband and I say it pretty often; not always appropriately, I think the appeal is mostly to do a bad Al Pacino impression.

5. “I’m on a mission from God.” Blues Brothers, classic, I can’t imagine we’re the only really awesome couple to use this in regular conversation.
We usually use this little gem to explain why we’re doing anything that is seemingly inexplicable. Why are you pouring dish soap in the washer? I’m on a mission from God sounds much better than ‘You mean this is bad?’

6. “Have you ever transcended time and space?” “Time yes, space no, Actually I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I Heart Huckabees, Jason Schwartzman and Dustin Hoffman discussing Schwartzman’s coincidence with the tall African guy.

I think we were the only people on the planet to like this movie, and we really, really like it. We use this to parlay our frustration concerning a conversation that we were forced to be a part of that made no damn sense.

7. “Gettin’ too big to cuddle” “Got a wart on my fanny givin’ me the fidgits” “Nothin’ more foolish than a man chasin’ his own hat’” “You two are dumber than a bag of hammers” “You know, for kids…” “All for a little bit of money..” “Gotta have a breakfast” “Go Bears” “I know it’s a lot! A hell of a lot!” “The Dude abides” “It really tied the room together.” “Leave my special lady friend alone.”

I know, it’s a whole Cohen Brother’s medly. We use these a lot. I mean, a lot. They usually don’t make sense, they usually only make us laugh. Although in the future, I imagine that our progeny, Mr. Adorablepants, will feign laughter for our expense.

We have what is known as Cohen Brother’s Induced Tourettes. We blurt out random Cohen Brother’s movie lines at random, in socially inappropriate situations and even without the assistance of box wine, laugh hysterically at our own inept timing.

Yes, we’re awesome.

In short, after ten years of marriage, and fifteen years of friendship and dating – I am madly, deeply and incredibly in love with my husband. Thank you for getting me, thank you for laughing at all my ridiculous jokes, and thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for being my north star.

It should be an interesting election, the primaries sure were. California primaries were pretty much as expected; we took down our yard signs for Winograd and Kate Anderson discreetly. One of the many reasons I support yard signs over bumper stickers, you can easily remove yard signs…bumper stickers…not so much. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: you don’t want to be the guy with the faded, peeling Gore/Lieberman sticker hanging by a thread to the backend of your car. Not that you should be ashamed of voting for the losing candidate, although in that race, the ‘losing’ status was certainly debatable. Rather, it just reeks a little of desperation after awhile, plus it show how long it’s been since you really washed your car…

So no, California was no big surprise to me. I hope Jerry Brown beats out Meg Whitman, although I know that won’t save me the next few long months of suffering through her ad campaign, which, if it’s anything like the ridiculously annoying banter she kept up with Steve Poizner, will prove to be nail on chalkboaresque.

What was fun about the primaries as they unfolded around the country, however, was watching the comedic fodder that is the tea party take seed.

Harry Reid must be stoked. I would be. I mean c’mon, Sharon Angle? She’s an incumbent’s dream opponent. She’s radical in a totally off her rocker kind of way. Any reasonable republican and all democrats, moderate or not, will run screaming from this one, leaving only the small, crazy hoard. I suppose that crazy hoard could grow, and she could win Reid’s seat, and I will certainly eat my hat if she does. But, I have to say for a state like Nevada, it seems startling unlikely.

For those who haven’t been following this bag of wind, here’s a little breakdown: she’s the tea party favorite who supports cutting off funding to the Department of Education, wants doctors to have to inform women seeking abortions about a controversial (and proven false) link between abortion and breast cancer. She also supports prohibition, which in a state that houses Vegas, the city of free-flowing alcohol, is pretty amusing. And finally to add a cherry of crazy – she’s not just a tea partier, she’s a scientologist who supports therapeutic, touch point, massage for violent criminals as a major part of their rehabilitation and integration back into society.

Nevada, listen to me for a minute, please vote for Harry Reid. He may be deeply flawed, but he certainly hasn’t threatened those margarita stands in the Vegas malls. I get very protective about margaritas.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/09/sharron-angle-nevada-cand_n_605754.html

Sharon Angle isn’t the only tea party candidate out there. You’ve all certainly read about Rand Paul in Kentucky. Son of Ron Paul, the infamous libertarian, he is not named after Ayn Rand, contrary to the popular rumor, but that really doesn’t make him any less loony in my book.

Rand Paul made the infamous gaffe to Rachael Maddow a week or so ago when he spoke about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He believes that private businesses should have the right to discriminate against patrons based on race, religion, ethnicity, gender, age….you name it. He stated to Maddow, that the government should not be dictating how a private business owner runs his or her operation.

Okay….but, I think we saw how that turned out, right? I’d like to think that we’d all just inherently do the right thing and not discriminate. But anyone who’s spent any amount of time in the deep south will support me when I predict that within a month of Rand Paul’s disintegration of the Civil Rights Act, we’d have segregated lunch counters and bathrooms marked for ‘colored’. I wouldn’t even limit that to the south, there are racist wingnuts all over who’d love nothing more than to tell a person of color that they had to get the hell out of their establishment.

Rand Paul also supports rewriting our current immigration laws to state that children of illegal immigrants born in the United States should not be granted citizenship. I know there are those who agree with him on this, but I just don’t understand the logic. Actually, that’s a lie. I do understand the logic. It’s the logic of angry, small-minded people. If we can focus all our anger and rage on innocent victims of our broken immigration system, get all our venom out on those who can’t fight back – then we feel like we win a small victory.

The problem is that victory is nothing more than an illusion. Sending a family and their American born babies back to Mexico doesn’t solve anything. But it takes far too much energy to get angry at the appropriate targets: businesses who take advantage of cheap, illegal labor. Politicians who have supported our broken system of indentured servitude in this country, making our agricultural industry reliant on illegal immigrants who will work sixteen hours a day for pennies on the dollar.

But I digress. My point is this folks, while I will certainly find the silver lining in the comedic material that these two would provide, let’s please not encourage the crazy. I would like to make fun of these nuts from a distance, not while their reeking havoc in Washington.

Most of my fun Rand Paul facts came from here:

http://blog.buzzflash.com/dailybuzz/943

and

3D makes me feel old. I saw no fewer than five movie billboards on my drive home today, and all of them advertised ‘3D!!!’ I gave the 3D movie thing a chance, I went to see Avatar, in fact I wrote a whole blog about it if you dig back a ways. But my 3D problem with Avatar has nothing to do with CGI super-effects, nor does it have to do with overly elaborate sets and flimsy plotlines.

It’s the principal.

I remember 3D back in the old days. You could buy get those blue and red glasses from McDonalds with your Happy Meal back in the 1980’s, and then they would play the black and white monster movie on Saturday night and everyone would crowd about and gawk and the 3Dness of The Fog or Creature From the Black Lagoon.

My point is that it was unusual. I didn’t need special glasses just to watch television, and I certainly didn’t have to wonder how I was going to get my two-year old to wear them in the event that I decide to try to take him to Toy Story 3. So far, I’m opting out of even trying. One factor is that he screams ‘BUZZ!!! BUZZ WHERE ARE YOU?!!!!” at top of his toddler lungs whenever he sees anything Toy Story related. But the bigger factor in this is that I know for a fact that he will never wear those 3D glasses, and I have not found a theatre that is premiering the 2D version.

I feel like Andy Rooney grouching about how many varieties of fruit are sold in the grocery store….back in my day we only had apples…green ones, and we liked it…..

This could very well be me in a few very short years....

But five movie billboards, all of them 3D? Really movie people? Another issue I have with the 3D revolution is that it necessitates super big, CGI, action blockbuster, special effects marvels. Sometimes I just want to go see a movie with actors, and a good story, and great dialogue….like the green apples…..back in my day….

Samsung is even marketing 3D televisions. So many problems with this – for one, I can’t be the only one who has absolutely no time to watch television. I watch TV while I’m doing other things. I can’t cook dinner in my 3D glasses just so I can glance at the TV every once in awhile. I can’t even remember the last time when I was able to sit down on the couch and watch TV, just watch TV.

Clark Howard, consumer advocate for thrifty living and good investments on Air America and elsewhere recently discussed the warning that Samsung has put on its 3D television sets, not here in the US, but in Australia.

“If you suffer from, or have a family history of epilepsy or strokes, please consult with a medical specialist before using the 3D function..”

Call me crazy, but I don’t think I should have to worry about my television giving me an epileptic seizure.

This is even better:

“Those who are sleep deprived or under the influence of alcohol should avoid utilizing the unit’s 3D functionality.”

I have a toddler, I am in law school, and I work full time at two different jobs. Sleep deprived is my constant state of being. Under the influence of alcohol? Does box wine really count as alcohol? I think not.

Here’s the last warning that Clark Howard posted:

“Children and teenagers may be more susceptible to health issues associated with viewing in 3D and should be closely supervised when viewing these images.”

http://clarkhoward.com/liveweb/shownotes/2010/06/02/18539/

Ooh, I really want one now. Not only may it harm me, but it’s much more likely to harm your kids. Who’s going to buy this thing? Seriously?

Part of my 3D issue is that I don’t generally like action/super-effect movies that aren’t called ‘The Matrix’. Maybe I’d get into this new way of viewing movies if they started 3Ding things that were more to my taste….like ‘Sabrina’ the Audrey Hepburn version, of course. Maybe they could 3D ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ I love that one….or ‘Muriel’s Wedding’….Australian, Toni Collette masterpiece….

Something tells me I just won’t be going to movies until that Australian warning kicks in worldwide and we drop these new-fangled ideas and get back to our green apples.

*shakes cane at laptop and plucks out a handful of gray hair….*

It’s official that Top Kill didn’t work. Did we really think it would? Evidently, we need stronger stuff to fill in the gaping hole in the bottom of the Gulf and stop the flow of oil that is threatening to end life as we know it not only for millions of marine animals but also the human inhabitants that depended on the fishing and water industries. I can’t even think about what will happen once the oil reaches the loop current and starts traveling up the east coast.

Instead of curling up in a dark closet somewhere and trying to drown out The Hollow Men that keep echoing in my ears, I’ve been reading about all the other possible solutions that we might just want to start consider trying, despite the crazy and politically jarring consequences they might have.

I’ll start with my favorite:

1. Waterworld and Titanic Collide:

Back when Kevin Costner was filming his epically terrible dystopia Waterworld, he began to get interested in water saving environmental technology. Around that time he started investing in Ocean Therapy Solutions, a Louisiana based company that works to create water therapy systems that can separate water and oil, as in the instance that say, a huge oil rig explodes and threatens to turn the world’s oceans into a toxic stew.

He has invested over twenty-four million dollars into this technology, which is run by private contractors and scientists over the last fifteen years. Now enter James Cameron – remember the Titanic submersibles? Those deep diving contraptions they used to make the Titanic documentary that accompanied the hackneyed Leo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet saga? Well, Cameron has offered his submersibles to accompany the water therapy gizmo that Kevin Costner has offered our government as a possible solution for the problem.

Am I crazy or should maybe we think about this? I mean, really, could it hurt? I’m a fan of trying everything, even if you aren’t sure it’s the right answer in lieu of sitting around talking about solutions while all the fish die a slow death and dead dolphins continue to wash up on beaches.

The government hasn’t responded to their offer…yet.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/05/which-celebrities-should-follow-kevin-costners-lead-in-the-oil-spill-cleanup-efforts.html

2. Nuke, Baby, Nuke:

You’ve all heard about his one by now. But the idea is basically that we surgically position nukes deep within the hole, we set them off and the sheer power of the blast causes a massive cave-in, which seals the geyser.

There are obvious problems here, the best of which can be thought of as an analogy to chemotherapy on a cancer patient. Yes, chemo works to kill the cancer cells…it also kills everything else around it. The patient gets sick; sometimes the patient dies from the therapy instead of the cancer. The sicker the patient is with cancer, the weaker they are, the less likely they are to be able to withstand a strong bout of chemo, so you have to weight the options. Do you risk a cure on a weakened patient that will mostly likely kill them? Or do you figure that you’re probably going to die from the cancer, so might as well try?

The nuclear option is a little like that. There are perks though, for one, it’s been done before – the soviets have nuked five similar geysers back in the cold war days, with an 80% success rate, roughly the same as chemo. Plus, the faster we plug this hole, the faster we can actually figure out how to clean up the spill. Most of the pro-nuke crowd touts that the oil spilling into the ocean is far more harmful than the effect that the underwater nuke would have.

Now as you can probably guess, BP doesn’t exactly have nuclear warheads on hand, and despite the change in the political climate, I’d be pretty surprised if we allowed them to use a dirty, commie soviet nuke to do the job. So that leaves us…we have approximately 5,113 nuclear warheads that belong to the United States.

But, can a president who won the Nobel Peace Prize and demanded for us to disarm our nuclear weapons ever use one for any purpose? What if the consequences of not using one meant we will all die a slow death as our food and water sources are turned into a toxic sludge? What if the consequences were a potential planet ending geo-political war caused in part by a wave of oil washing over coasts worldwide?

What then?

http://www.oil-price.net/en/articles/use-nukes-to-contain-the-oil-spill.php

3. Hay!

Two southern farmers have come up with what might be the most elegant and simple solution yet. Now, to be fair, they don’t know how to cap the geyser…but they have come up with what appears to be a pretty good bet on getting the oil out of the water.

Hay. Evidently hay soaks up oil like a sponge. In the link below, you see their demonstration, but for those who can’t watch the video, I’ll explain. They dump oil into a bowl of water, and then top it off with plain old hay. They swish it all around for a few, simulating waves and then lift it off and tada! A clean bowl of water and oily hay.

They go on to say that shrimping boats could go out and skim the oil soaked hay off the surface, or you could even wait till the hay hit shore and haul it away then.

Watch Demonstration Here

I don’t know the effects that hundreds of millions of bails of hay would have on the eco-system, but I’m pretty sure it’s better than oil.

Heard of any other solutions? Tell me about it!