The Unbearable Bobness of Being

The Levitational Toaster

I own the toaster of a dead man. Unlike my coffeemaker, it works flawlessly. Perfect toast all the time. I bought it at an estate sale of a recently (at the time of the estate sale) expired older gent. It isn't real old, but I couldn't tell you the age, as I am certainly not adept at toaster dating, maybe it is about a 2002. A simple toaster with two slots, not huge bagel slots but your basic bread slice slots. I acquired it because I needed a toaster and it was a great price and appeared to be in excellent condition. At the time I did not consider at all the fact I was buying an appliance of the dead. I had simply walked through the old fella's modest home perusing various items for sale and determined that the toaster best fit my needs at the time. And as I mentioned this toaster has never failed me, performing with an admirable uniformity of quality. Sometimes I wonder, though, if I fail my toaster, or more accurately, the memory and spirit of the deceased gentleman who owned it at the time of his departure from the corporeal plane. I mean, he may have been a horrid person, the type of cranky old man who kicks kittens and dumps out antifreeze for the neighbors dogs to drink and die brutal poisoned deaths. I don't know. He may have been the sweetest man ever or, like most of us, somewhere in between. I can only go by the operational dynamics of his toaster, my toaster, his used-to-be toaster, and as I've mentioned it works like a God - perfect, infallible, reliable, and demonstrating an absolutely stunning mastery of bilateral thermodynamics - leading me to believe that the fellow was also a highly transcended individual, perhaps one of the few standing at or near the pinnacle of Maslow's famous Heirarchy of Needs, breathing the rarified and dizzying atmosphere of the self actualized, the nirvana rangers, the pilots of the cloudships of the angels. It is not an accident he owned a pop up toaster and not a toaster oven. The pop up toaster launches the warm toast upwards, up to the heavens, out of the pits of flame, whereas the toaster oven traps the bread and burns it in an oven of the damned where only the intervention of man can withdraw it, and we all know the imperfection of man. So, I wonder sometimes, am I worthy of this enlightened and holy man's toaster? And even if I am not, and I believe I indeed am not, it would be acceptable to continue to deploy his toaster as my food preparation device because, afterall, how many of us are truly deserving of what Poseidon blasts upon the astonishing sea-stacked and driftwood-rimmed beauty of the wild Northern Pacific coast, yet we can visit and exalt in their stormy power and glory. No, it is something else. It is a stomach churbling fear that as the Angel of Death gently squeezed the hand of my toaster's father and lifted him, gently and perfectly, from his dying bed, that something went wrong, horribly awry, and my toaster daddy, infused with a majestic power that only the truly realized possess, was confused by the Angel of Death and as his spirit presence tugged away from Death's ruthless grip and wandered stunned and troubled into his kitchen that maybe he reverted to some long held routinized night time toast making behavior and put some bread in to make some peanut butter toast as his trusty late night edible hypnotic-sedative and during the insertion of the bread the Angel of Death caught back up with him and with his long bony fingers grasped this amazingly mortality-resistive and powerful old man, much unlike any Death had dealt with before in his earthbound existence-termination and soul-retraction tasks, and as he drew my toaster poppa away something happened - something like a little piece of the elderly man's soul was trapped in the toaster, perhaps a great fragmentary explosion occurred, a detonation of will, until the Angel of Death could reassemble the parts and complete his goal, that a little bit got left behind and that is what I sense and fear and respect and ultimately bridle under the impossibly tight yoke of perfection.  It is why I rarely make toast anymore, why I can't bear to walk by the frozen foods lockers at grocery stores with Eggo waffles of so many kinds staring at me through the quiescent frost. I can not have you, waffle! The making of you is too much to bear, too high of an ideal to wither under as I fail and fail again to meet his astronomical span of goodness and light.  These days I can only bear to live with the toaster as a testament to what man, or, and this is awful to contemplate, what only one man can become trekking along the  shining path to revelatory and supreme humanization. My raisin bran awaits me as if to say "it is better to be a king of a cereal bowl than a servant of a toaster."

Latest Lab-Grown Penis News

WASHINGTON - Researchers have engineered artificial penises in rabbits, using cells from the animals, who then used their new organs to father baby rabbits.

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A Mug in the Hand

My coffeemaker is the slowest coffeemaker in the world. But it isn't consistently slow like a garden slug making its slime trailing way across a brick patio after feasting on some gladiolas, no, it starts the brewing at a normal coffeemaker pace but after filling a couple inches of the pot with rich, dark coffee liquid it decides to almost completely stop. The red light is on, the partially filled pot squats over the hot plate waiting, waiting to be filled, yet the furnace and cistern, the very crucible of caffeine alchemy, do nothing. I am tormented as I wonder - is it dead now? Should I partake of what it has offered unto me before its premature expiration? I am thirsting for hot coffee, I need my caffeine, I need my morning routine to be preserved in a world of constant upheaval and random acts of horror, I need my steaming mugga! I get what I can. I take the coffee that exists rather than yearn for that which yet does not. After taking my cup,  the machine again, a few moments later, reinstates the brewing algorithm, reboots, and resurrects the blood of the bean. It will finally finish the cycle of life and death and rebirth. I wonder, why must it be like this? Does my taking of the early sacrifice, seizing the first heart tore out of the chest of an Aztec sacrifice and running with it still beating into the jungle somehow infuriate the machine to stab and dig again and again? How can I attribute these sentient emotional and cognitive qualities to a simple appliance, why cannot I just accept its eccentricities as falling within the normal limits of rational and logical electromechanical processes? The machine does not emote, it does not do this with a boiling malice and forethought to vex and annihilate my morning purpose. It is only a machine. Only a machine.

Ethical Dilemma: Saving Carmen Ollapi

We had landed safely in Orchid Zone - Alpha Zulu on Jungle Planet z-890.89 in the Gemmy Belt of Outer Horatio. Me and my crew disembarked and stood panting on the steamy, humid surface of Jungle Planet z-890.89. 

As Captain, or as I liked to call myself, "Admiral Bucky Top Dog of the Seven Heavens," I was responsible first and foremost for the safety of the landing crew. Unfortunately, in almost no time flat after setting down, a giant cattleya lueddemannniana maximus jungle orchid, displaying behavior very unorchid like, swept its flower head down and gobbled up my Weight Transfer Management Engineer IV (i.e. Maynard Sandak) just like that. We all started screaming as nobody expected these peaceful jungle flowers which had been seeded on all the Jungle Planets in the Gemmy Belt of Outer Horatio as they were steamy carbon dioxide rich planets with suitable soils for massive fertilizer bomb attacks as well as favorable gravitational dynamics and hydrological metrics, to be quite so, unruly.

Upon rapidly reembarking in the landing craft and wondering out loud what hellish monstrosities had we awakened in our highly paid career trajectories working for the giant florists of Alpha Centauri Florists and Gifts Inc. trying to determine the most suitable extraction technologies for all the now mature and, as we were quite suddenly made aware, robust specimens of former gorgeous earth flowerosities, I realized to my sudden horror that not all of us had reentered the craft and that our Soil Density and Hydrological Surveyer Trainee, Carmen Ollapi, was still in the jungle in Orchid Zone - Alpha Zulu. I attempted to summon Carmen on my radio but heard nothing. Then there was banging on the door of the craft, banging with a tool,  likely metallic, I guessed a Soil Density Probing Auger by the ring of it, and before we could open the door to bring Trainee Ollapi in, the ship began to shake and shimmy as huge orchids and bougainvilleas and vines and many other kinds of plants encircled and attacked the landing craft!

I had a command level decision to make in that very moment, do I risk all of our lives, in the few seconds we had to restart the craft and blast out of there before we were ingested by insanely evil mutant jungle foliage, to save Trainee Ollapi who, I must now confess (although the crew knew it all along, the bastards) was my space squeeze, my interstellar love thing, and who was, at that very moment, tugging and stretching my heartstrings as though they were strings on a Zorakian Skin-Lute, as she pounded desperately, furiously, maniacally with her Soil Density Probing Auger against the only door in or out of the landing craft if you don't count the escape pod bay release hatches below, easily opened from the outside or in. There was, according to the post-incident administrative investigation exactly a 32.98% chance of successfully retrieving Trainee Carmen AND taking off.

What would you do? What do you think I did? 

Your Orange Juice Glowers

One day you wake up and the whole world around you has changed. What were once cloudless sapphire skies are now dirt brown skies with frowning clouds, what was once a glass of cold, frosty milk is now a mug of steaming mud-lava, what was once a refreshing shower in the morning is now an acid rain you hide from lest it scald the skin off your very body, what was once a happy, embracing family is now a bitter tribe of deadly foes.

What does it all mean? Probably that you've accidentally slipped through an interstellar wormhole and are now on an alien world.

Hurry Up, Baby

Any day now I will get the call. The call that my kiddo is in the hospital (or more likely, en route) to have her baby, my first grandchild and the first great-grandchild of my parents. I'm only 39 so it's kind of unusual for someone of my obvious youth and vigor to be a "gramps" and my folks are only in their 50s so you can imagine what it will be like for them!

I'm very excited and you should be too, because I know how many of you surf the rising and falling of my tides. Or maybe more like go clam digging on low tide. Anyhow, I'll keep you posted.

Winging It

Finally, a bat science story that isn't effing disturbing. Well, in a way it is, but mostly if you try to visualize the act or watch the YouTube, but just the notion of fruit bats using oral sex (fellatio) to prolong the sex act and being the first critters outside of humans to do so, well, it kind of makes the whole universe seem a little less random and monstrous. A little more orderly, a little more WELL THAT MAKES SENSE, MAN.  And, as always, I quote:

Now scientists find the short-nosed fruit bat (Cynopterus sphinx) routinely engages in oral sex, the first time fellatio has been seen in adult animals other than humans. The researchers argue the act likely has evolutionary benefits.

and from the Dept of Obviousities:

"We did not expect fellatio in fruit bats at the beginning," said researcher Libiao Zhang, a biologist at the Guangdong Entomological Institute in Guangzhou, China. "We were also surprised at how often it occurred."

Surprised because it's like so rare in humans? Well, maybe long term married humans, but I mean overall. OF COURSE THEY DO IT A LOT.

And how do they do it?

The investigators took digital videos at night of the bats having sex, with males keeping a tight grip on the females from behind by holding thumbs on the females' wings clamping down with their mouths on the females' necks.

Naturally, the bats copulated hanging upside-down.

Intriguingly, the female lowered her head to lick the male penis during 14 of 20 copulations recorded on video. The licking typically went on for some 19 seconds, or roughly one-twelfth the average time of copulation. The male never withdrew from the female when she performed fellatio.

INTRIGUINGLY! That line gets my nomination for "Best Use of an Adverb in an Online Science Story" award.

And like all good scientists they attempted to develop a mathematical formula, an algorithm, to determine the licking to sex effect and came up with the soon to be famous 1:6 ratio of licking to copulation.

The researchers found the longer the fellatio went on, the longer the bats often had sex, with each second of licking adding roughly six extra seconds of copulation. The bats spent almost twice as long copulating when oral sex was involved than when not.

"It was difficult to provide some hypotheses for the function of the fellatio behavior," Zhang said. "We held many meetings to discuss the functions."

They held "many meetings to discuss the functions." I can only imagine.

What I See At the Ryegrass Summit

After so many miles across the sagebrush scabbed desert of Central Wa, I begin to create images in my head, out of the boring, same, bleakness of miles and miles of highway and brown.

I see zombies yoked in a circle to a (formerly) horse drawn pump. In front of each zombie is a human head full of rich, tasty brains hanging from a hook. The zombies march forward trying to get to the brains, much like the carrot hanging in front of the horse. They shamble, grunting and moaning, so hungry, so very hungry, and move the pump wheel around and around.

For hours without end the zombies stagger and shuffle for the brains always out of reach. The pump pumps and into a deep irrigation ditch flows a sweet and crystalline water from cool vaults far under the basalt and volcanic topsoil. Flows and flows. Shamble and grunt. The undead creating life in the scabland. Then I stop in Ellensburg to pee and hit the McDonalds for a Big Mac Meal.

Eventually I arrive and put my stuff away in my studio apartment. The raining has stopped. It rained like hell going over the mountains. From the sun to the rain and here again.

Silicon, Plastic and Meat, Oh My

There are really only two kinds of people in this world besides

• those who group people into two kinds and those who don't
• those who keep ERTPs at home and those who don't
• those who will stand against the rails on the outside decks of a Puget Sound ferry and those who won't

and that is those who think it will be a sad and beautiful thing when future humans are enslaved by a race of robots made of silicon, plastic and meat and those who won't.

Mark me up as one who won't be thrilled or wistfully taken with self generating robot amalgascum arising out of landfills and back alley dumpsters with brains made from old discarded computer components and ennervated by found batteries and broken pieces of solar panels, with bodies made from plastic and slathered and chunked with meat to give a loathsome and terrifying form and shape, to make themselves in the image of man but with horrifying, misshapen results.  They will form the Lumpenrobotariat and will crash their metallic hate whips upon our human backs. But some will find them deeply affecting, robots making themselves of the predominant substances of mankind in the postmodern world, that is to say, painting their self portraits with the primary colors of silicon, plastic, and meat upon canvases of pain and stupidity.

The Lumpenrobotariat will be admired and appeased by many but not by me. I will chop barrels off plasma charge hunting shotguns and saw the stocks into pistol grips and arm myself with the guns of resistance, I will create bombs made of plastic and meat destroying explosives like TNT or that gunpowder stuff, and I will blow these monstrous creatures straight to robot hell. I will resist this future with all my might if it like happens while I'm still alive. If not, then it's only an intellectual exercise at this point.

If after reading this you stroke your chin and gain a faraway look in your eyes and say to yourself "oh gosh ... sad robots creating themselves out of the detritus of the 21st century meltdown is so completely special and sweet ... plastic, silicon and meat! omfgz" then all I can suggest is wise up, buddy.  Get a clue.

Words I made up in this post just for you: Lumpenrobotariat, amalgascum

Me and Lindsey Buckingham Riding the Kingston Ferry, Sitting in my Truck, LIstening to Tunes and Eating Jalapeno Slim Jims

There are really only two kinds of people in this world, besides those who group people into two kinds and those who don't, and those who keep ERTPs at home and those who don't, and those are people who will stand against the rail on the outside decks on a Puget Sound ferry and those who won't. I most definitely will not. Part of it is related to my stomach quaking fear of heights and, more relevantly, most of it is related to my terror of falling into a deep, dark, frigid and bottomless sound of water teeming with vile, predatory life, octopi the size of fleets of school buses, sharks of every type, jellyfish with enough venomous nematocytes to glob onto entire gentle, cow-like herds of back floating, sunning sperm whales and paralyze them and drag them down to the loathsome and hell-like seafloor to slowly nibble away at their brains and leaving the rest to rot for a thousand frozen years.

I just can't do the outside deck thing, I remember doing it as a kid and being kinda scared shitless but wanting to appear brave and resolute mostly because my siblings were such a pack of hateful, howling wolves and any weakness, I mean, ANY WEAKNESS, was exploited with a vicious intent and deeply deadly engagement that can scarcely even be written by me, today, all these years later, without causing an involuntary fear-shudder to rumble through my body like a massive Lahar blasting down the sides of Mt. Rainier after its next volcanic detonation.  No, when I am on a Washington State Ferry as it plies the doom and dread-filled saltwater of the Puget Sound I can abide the inner decks and seating or to just stay in my effing car.

Did you know that there is a sub-species of halibut that lives in the Puget Sound and follows ferries for the garbage thrown off, and, most importantly, for the odd suicide or toddler that isn't watched closely enough? Yup. They are a mean and angry halibut and the local fishermen know there is a specific, highly specialized manner in which to bring one into a boat if you don't want YOUR FACE RIPPED OFF.  The Puget Sound is likely the most deadly stretch of ferry navigable water in the world. It is a killing pool for the unsuspecting, the unprepared, the unaware. There is nothing wrong with staying in one's car during the ride, except if the ferry starts sinking then you want to be upside near a life raft, but since these things almost never sink, play the odds, man. Play the damn odds. Remember, in Greek mythology you didn't enter Hades by swimming across the River Styx, or by rope swinging off some big oak tree and landing, giggling and screaming, on the soft sandy beaches of the underworld, no, no, no, YOU RODE AN EFFING FERRY with a ferryman guiding you across. Try to remember that next time you hop a ferry to the San Juans or whatever.

Now Testify, It's Right Outside Your Door, Now Testify

There are really only two types of people in this world, besides those who categorize people into broad types and those who don't, and those are people who keep emergency rolls of toilet paper in their homes and those who don't. And let me be clear, when I say "emergency rolls of toilet paper" I don't mean toilet paper for emergencies like you cut your finger off while chopping up elephant garlic, because a Brawny paper towel would be a better call but a big old bandage and bandage tape would be even better, no, I mean people who have the foresight and organizational abilities to separate out a roll of toilet paper from the others and set it aside, preferably in a place where someone won't grab it thinking it is part of the normal rotation of toilet paper. Think of it not as one of the regular pitching bullpen, warming up, getting ready to come in to the game and throw some hard balls, but as the relief pitcher ON THE OTHER TEAM that you wanna snag before the trading deadline.

So anyhow, you know if you're an emergency toilet paper roll kinda person or not. I, most definitely, am not. I have used coffee filters (not very absorbent but provide a nice sanitary shield to your hand), paper towels, napkins, David F. Oliveria newspaper columns and probably a few other paperish things when I've run out of TP. And I ALWAYS BAG THEM in plastic bags, tightly tied, and toss em into the garbage, I don't ever flush non-TP wipe down the toilet but that's less about me being environmentally sensitive and more about me not wanting to have my septic tank pumped out prematurely because it's clogged with coffee filters and clots of paper towels. Once I get the sewer hook-up this spring or whenever, it might change.

But the point is you should never have to use toilet paper substitutes if you're the kind of person who keeps an emergency roll aside for the occasions when you forget to pick up a big package of TP at the grocery store. I will say since I started buying my toilet paper at Costco it's less of an issue just because you almost never run out of those pickup bed loads of toilet paper, but there is a risk in becoming complacement just because you purchase 848 rolls per Costco package and don't have to replace them but seasonally.

So, the real question is, if you aren't a person who keeps emergency rolls of toilet paper can you become that type of planful person? Can you change? Sure, people are more malleable than they give themselves credit for, it's just as simple as getting up RIGHT NOW and walking to your toilet paper supply and separating one wild toilet paper pony from the herd and corralling him somewhere. Do it! Seriously, if I get hit by a lightning bolt flung angrily to earth by a God who's just had enough of my blasphemous and irreverent ways and am instantly incinerated into smoking ash in a hole in the sidewalk and I never blog again, at least I can know I changed someone. At least I can know that next time you run out of TP and are desperate and considering coffee filters you can go "OH SHIT I HAVE AN ERTP (EMERGENCY ROLL OF TOILET PAPER) in the TV cabinet!, thank you Bobness, restinpeace." Tell someone else too. Change the world.

They Knew When to Whisper

Many, many years ago, years before I was tormented so by the Haiku-Ninjas, I had two imaginary friends. I think I was like 5 or 6, maybe 7 but probably not.  Yes, they had names but I am not at liberty to share them. My two imaginary friends accompanied me to many places and were often playmates while I was playing with my younger siblings.  I'm sure there was nothing too notable about any of this except for one thing - they never attended church or Sunday school with me. For some reason, they could not enter the church building, or would not, or should not. I didn't know then and I don't know now. But I think it's interesting. I am certainly no biblical scholar, no theological whiz kid, no doctrinal student, but I wonder if God and his son, Jesus the Christ, have rules about imaginary friends not attending places of worship. I don't recall ever learning that in my catechism studies nor in the weekly sermons nor in my not at all regular or frequent contact with the word and teachings of the Lord outside of church. But for some reason I think my two imaginary friends knew they weren't supposed to be there, and when I say they knew I really meant at some level I knew or more interestingly there was some holy force field that prevented my two imaginary friends from entering. It's really hard to say. They only stuck around my life for a year or two and I only think of them maybe once every 5 to7 years or so, and generally only a glancing thought, a fleeting memory. These are the most focused and deep thoughts I've had in a million years about them, maybe one time before. I am curious as to my readers and two things:

1. Did you have an imaginary friend(s)?

2. Did they go to church with you?

I'd like to say I have a theory or hypothesis I'm working with here but that's not really the case. I am interested though and wondering about the whole intersection between imaginary friends and religion. Do you ever wonder if the little Jesus had imaginary friends? Or were they real, like angels and shit. 

In the end, when you gasp your last breath and the internal clockworks clunk to a stop, what does your consciousness see, hold, taste, touch, feel, hear before the lights go out? What if it was your imaginary friends and instead of being just made up imaginary friends from childhood per the Child Psychological Development Imaginary Friends Functional-Resolutional Growth and Maturational Matrix it was (they were) something else?  And there were fundamental and irresistible reasons they could not go to church with you? And that could be good or that could be bad, who knows, it probably just depends.

Mine used to call me and I'd talk to them on an imaginary phone and tell my siblings what they each wanted and what games they wanted to play. Sometimes, when playing hide and seek, a favorite game of me and my real life friends, I'd worry they'd give me away but they never did.  Not one time. They knew when to hush and keep it on the down low. 

I googled their names, which are unusual made up kid sounding names, and one was a name some 10 year old had given his ninja on some gamer forum with an elaborate biography and set of skills and weapons for his ninja, and the other came up as a Indian surname, in fact, both of their names together came up as a full name on a kids website in some Scandinavian language, probably Swedish.

None of this makes any sense, does it?

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough. ~Rabindranath Tagore

This is effing disturbing. Hideous, monstrous, and evil also come to mind. These beautiful blue winged butterflies with the strange almost steampunkish name  "Blue Morpho Butterfly" like some deadly butterfly brought to England in the butterfly cages of some Victorian era naturalist and now escaped and flying about London with its horrid wings with ears. "Lord Henry! The Blue Morphos have escaped! Oh Dear God!" Imagine the Blue Morphos flapping about London listening to things, listening with their wings with ears, listening to the grimy beggars, the sassy whores, the constipated nobelemen, the fish mongers and the purchasers of fish from the fish mongers.

What God of creation does this to a butterfly, or, more importantly, does this to the gentle balance of the natural aesthetic that is scarcely appreciated by postmodern man, indeed it is often mocked, but is increasingly critical to our continued existence on a world that superheats from the vile exhaust of our industrial and post industrial madness? Not a God I care to anticipate standing in judgment before awaiting entrance through the gates to a heavenly afterlife. Not that God, not a God that invents and accurses our world with butterflies with winged ears.

The simple ear of the blue morpho butterfly (shown here close-up) is oval-shaped with a dome at its center resembles the yolk at the center of a fried egg.

Hope you're not eating a fried egg for breakfast as you view this because it might make you vomit. It is as repulsive and darkly evil a failed experiment from the Island of Dr. Moreau as anything I can imagine nature to summon up. That swollen dome of an ear on the Blue Morpho's wing. It hears me type and it hears you gasp. It crouches hidden on the eaves and in the trees and perhaps even in the coat closet. Hearing everything and knowing nothing. It is a moth from hell clad in a brilliant blue cape with which to bedazzle us as it takes it all in.  Who does it tell it all to? Who does it tell it all to is the question. I fear the answer, yet I think I know it all too well.

"There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to bee kind."

This is effing disturbing. And before I illuminate this socio-entomological treatise with the twin candlelights of reason and avarice, let me state for the record I am not a fan of insects that fly, buzz with the buzz of a million tiny chainsaws, and are armed with deadly stingers that pump venom into one's body. But be that as it may, this is really fucked, and let me quote:

The problem is hardly trivial. A third of the total human diet depends on plants pollinated by insects, predominantly honeybees. In North America honeybees pollinate more than 90 crops with an annual value totaling almost $15 billion. Indeed, that importance lies at the root of what went wrong. In trying to make bees more productive, apiarists have torn the insects from their natural habitats and the routines they mastered over millions of years. As a result, today’s honeybees are sickly, enslaved, and mechanized. “We’ve looked at bees as robots that would keep on trucking no matter what,” says Heather Mattila of Wellesley College, who studies honeybee behavior and genetics. “They can’t be pushed and pushed.”

What is important about this statement? A bunch of things. But it even gets worse:

Whatever the proximate cause, it increasingly appears that the bees are succumbing to a long-ignored underlying condition—inbreeding. Decades of agricultural and breeding practices meant to maximize pollinating efficiency have limited honeybees’ genetic diversity at a time when they need it the most. Addressing CCD may therefore require more than a simple fix. “We need to have a diverse set of genetic raw material so we can find bees resistant to disease,” says Steve Sheppard, an entomologist at Washington State University. “Genetic diversity is an important part of the solution.”

Not only do we enslave them, treat them like robotic pollination machines, WE MAKE THEM SIT ON THEIR HIVE PORCHES PLAYING BANJOS.  Honeybees are dying of mites and things, icky disease things that infest their horrid hives and they are so weak from forced pollination of acres and acres of monocrops, they are just flat dying like flies.

Why does this matter? Other than the fact that a whole lotta your favorite food is made by the miraculous pollination magic of bees, the enormously important issue is that how we treat these honeybees in their robot hell-hives is EXACTLY HOW OUR ROBOT-ALIEN warlord masters will treat us when they return to earth and enslave us and force us to live in hives and do monotonous tasks that suck the life out of us. And when we beg, and WHEN WE BEG of our Robot-Alien warlord masters "oh please, Zoltran IV Supreme Commander of Hive 3899.9800 can we have more of our neighbor's excrement and vomit to eat, increase our excrement-vomit shares by 10% so we may produce even more high quality work and maintain 100% fidelity to the Work Output Directives of Hive 3899.9800!" and Zoltran IV, Supreme Commander of Hive 3899.9800 will simply shriek in his hellish robot warlord metallic shriek-voice "Remember the Honeybees, Humanolas! Remember the Honeybees! ahahahahahahahahahah!"

Let's save them. The honeybees. From us. For us. For them. For the almonds and honeycrisp apples of our future. For the grimy faced and fat cheeked toddlers yet to be born who will step on dandelions and get stung and scream and holler and know, in those painful burning moments, that we are all here on God's green earth to co-exist without species-specific dominance and without fire hoses pumping raw corn syrup into the exhausted hives of these overwintering honeybees gasping and twitching as they lay limp winged and stinger numbed, so desperate and sad, resignedly awaiting the arrival and world renewal of another deadly growing season in America. 

Influenzapalooza Vaccinoganza!

Me and the Brittster were at the cattle call early. We showed up at the Spokane Arena at 0500 for our shot at a VERY limited number of flu shots that began at 0900, although actually it was more like 0850. We were in the first 15 or so in line, sitting in camping chairs, freezing our asses off in the dark but all was good, we got in got our shots and got out. Britt is due in TWO WEEKS, so this was imperative at Swine Flu can be hell on preggos and infants.

I must say the Spokane Health District ran this massive public vaccination event like real pros. Heavily staffed, incredibly well organized, I was beyond impressed and, as the gentle and regular reader knows oh so well, I tend to be a bit of a skeptic of things like this. But this rocked.

Someone Get Me A Ladder

This is effing disturbing. So imagine you are a guy and you are standing in a field of flax. I don't actually know what flax is but it sounds fieldish. Anyhow you are standing in a field of flax and a gentle summer breeze warms the rosy cheeks of you and your 50 foot tall girlfriend. You check your watch, has it been 100 minutes? You look at the lovely blanket spread upon the ground and the Longenberger picnic basket and the bottle of Chianti. A few more minutes and you are SO getting lucky. But you get impatient and excited and give her a playful and loving little squeeze. She, in response, lifts you up with her gigantic hands and eats you.

That is sort of what it is like for a male Australian Redback Spider. It is a dread-filled experience of a courtship that must be 100 minutes long or the giant female Australian Redback will munch him. And if you get past the 100 minute threshold, she doesn't even care how puny of male you are, she'll do ya. 

And the lovemaking-death roulette? Let me quote:

A male first performs a lengthy "courtship dance," Stoltz said, where it vibrates the female's web and wraps it in his own silk to reduce the emission of pheromones that could attract other males.

He then drums on her abdomen with his palps, and may alternate between drumming and web dancing. If he does this for less than 100 minutes, Stoltz said that "the male will exclusively remain on the female's abdomen and then will insert his intromittent organ and perform a copulatory somersault and the female will begin consuming him."

Not sure what "palps" are but they sure sound sexy. And speaking of sexy, who among us has not imagined performing a "copulatory somersault" or two? The consuming part I'd like to imagine, in my world, can remain the occasional post-coital sammich or breakfast shared with a lovely lady who is like a little or a lot shorter and smaller than me!

The bizarre process may help to explain why male widow spiders are often so much smaller than females. For this species, males carry 1 to 2 percent of the body weight of a typical female.

Smaller males likely mature faster and can therefore mate earlier in life, Stoltz explained, and tiny males could be better equipped to scramble faster towards females and their webs. Bigger females, on the other hand, may have greater reproductive success, so the species winds up with enormous females and minuscule males.

This is why, in the end analysis, arguing over evolution vs creationism is ultimately so sad and meaningless when you consider that to choose evolution means to accept a natural and unremitting process in which women grow to giant sizes and eat their tiny little suitors or a world in which the God-Thing created such monstrous creatures FROM THE BEGINNING in a PURE and UNALIENABLE form. I don't know which is worse. But man, next date I'm definitely gonna watch the whole DVD with her first. 

Late At Night, In the Crisper, They Whisper

This is effing disturbing. And I quote:

Back in 2007, Canadian researchers discovered that a common seashore plant, called a sea rocket, can recognize its siblings — plants grown from seeds from the same plant, or mother. They saw that when siblings are grown next to each other in the soil, they "play nice" and don't send out more roots to compete with one another.

But as soon as one of the plants is thrown in with strangers, it begins competing with them by rapidly growing more roots to take up the water and mineral nutrients in the soil.

What is this hellish world we live on, anyway? A world where plants fucking recognize their siblings? Where they fight against strangers? They compete! Plants are high school football players! Fourth and one, Carrot, it's a tie ball game and 32 seconds left in the game, THROW IT LONG CARROT!

I don't like feeling, suddenly, because of something I read on the MSNBC.com Science section, a section that deeply horrifies me just about every time I read it, that I am an alien on my own planet. A planet that is now otherworldly, comprised of warrior plants and family plants. I don't want to feel shitting damn guilty when I mow my fucking yard! I don't want to subject entire families, clans, moieties, tribes of grass to pain! Because that's next now, the discovery that plants feel.  Maybe we already knew that, the whole talking to your plants and playing sweet loving music for them, the whole 70's excess crap with plants in macrame hangers listening to Dan Fogelberg all day. God. Maybe the hippies knew this. But, clearly, the effing vegans DIDN'T KNOW THAT THE PLANTS THEY EAT ARE SMART. Did you, veggie head? 

Further, when sibling plants grow next to each other, their leaves will often touch and intertwine, while stranger plants near each other grow rigidly upright and avoid touching, the authors say.

Plants can love! And hate or at least display a willful detachment from those outside their immediate gene pool. 

"It's possible that when kin are grown together, they may balance their nutrient uptake and not be greedy," Bais speculates.

Plants share! And act in the best interests of their groups. Kin stick up for Kin and repel outsiders and intertwine a lot. Plants are North Idaho!

And the most chilling of all? Read this:

"Often we'll put plants in the ground next to each other and when they don't do well, we blame the local garden center where we bought them, or we attribute their failure to a pathogen," Bais said. "But maybe there's more to it than that."

But maybe there's more to it than that. BUT MAYBE THERE'S MORE TO IT THAN THAT. This is what will wake me up at night, shrieking soundlessly, my down comforter soaked with my cold, cold sweat, my eyes wide open and seeing a disorienting world of  only intelligent plants, all waiting for their day in the sun, so to speak.

There is nothing safe to eat anymore. Science is not our friend, science is our hated and most bilious enemy, the scientific natural world contains more evil and destruction than all of the hells our God-Myths can churn up from the fevered imaginations of a gatrillion priests and shamans. Plants are the new warlocks and witches and the rules of science are their codes, spells, verses, and commandments writ large and green in their tomes of hatred and obliteration.

Do you use Miracle Gro to get those huge tomatoes you ask? NOT EXACTLY.

Hatez Helium Filled Creep Zeppelinz

Just got back from Spokane where everyone has the H1N1 flu.  Here too. It's everywhere. I expect those of us who don't have it might get it but some of us who don't have it and won't get it will walk this earth like Gods, commanding abject fealty from whom I am now calling "the piggies."  The piggies will obey us and mark our words and meet our every whim even if they are febrile and barking like seals with their hideous respiratory destructions.  It'll be like The Stand but even better.

I drove over Snoqualmie Pass last night and while THE GLOAMING had passed, there was a weird light to the clouds in the dark and they looked like swollen molten snowcaps over the mountains and they roiled in the sky with amazing texture and form. I felt like I was driving to Valhalla, whatever that means. Definitely traveling to a mountain kingdom!

Speaking of Snoqualmie, I pronounce it Snow-Qual-uh-Me. I'm not sure if that's standard or a Washingtonian's affectation. I heard the male radio voice on 1610 am the traffic advisory DOT station pronounce it Snow-Qual-Me without the extra uh syllable. How do you say it? Also, some natives say WORSH ington for WASH ington, our state. My mom says WORSHington. I always thought it hickish and backwards and refused as a young lad to ever call it WORSHington. My mom would sneer and say WAAAASHington was how southernerners talk. Whatever.

As if Oregonians could be any more uptight and full of Oregon shit, they totally get their hemp panties in a twist if someone says Ore-GONE instead of Ore-UH-GUN. Except, those Prius driving bark huggers also accept Ore-EEE-GUN.   But not OREGONE. Oh Noes, he said OREGONE, oh noes! I can't fucking stand that shit.

Was I right on Balloon Boy? Yes, I was damn right on Balloon Boy. Dad is a helium filled creep zeppelin and I hope Johnny Law pops him a good one. Horrid parents, just hideous. I was thinking, though, while driving to Valhalla, whatever that means - what if Balloon Boy's dad had tried some other terrifying hoax? What would the blogosphere and media have named the kiddo?

"Runaway Rotary Blast Hole Drill Bit Boy"

"Dynamite Dandy"

"Anthrax Laden Experimental Glider Guy"

"Nuclear Fission Failure Falcon"

I don't know, is it too soon?

Anyhow, I sat down this morning with my cup of coffee and my laptop and thought you know I don't have a damned shitting thing to blog about this morning but made myself just start typing and  can you believe it?

Suckers

Hey Gas Siphon Boy!

I know you're a boy by the way, not an actual man, probably a near toothless 20 something tweaker with an old POS minivan with a DARE sticker on its rusted bumper .

So there my jeep was on a lovely Sunday morning in October, sitting peacefully at the trailhead to Dishman Hills on 12th and Siesta and me up in the trails hiking and digging nature and you, you vile scumbag, sucking unleaded out of my jeep with your grimy piece of garden hose, you giving those rotten teeth of yours the best anti-bacterial wash they've had in, well, since the last time you sucked someone's gas.

Anyhow dirtbag, I only had an eighth of a tank so you didn't get much, maybe enough gas to get your old lady out to the Sprague Lake rest area on I-90 so she can turn 40 dollar bj's with the long haul truckers and work up enough scratch to score you both another bag of meth.

So, craphead, next time I'll be driving my other vehicle and parking it at the same trailhead and I'm going up the hill a bit and sitting behind a pine tree and snacking on some trail mix and waiting for you and your lot lizard old lady to make a return visit to your self styled self service suckage station, then I'm going to quietly hit 911 speed dial for a fuel theft in progress and if a Sheriff's Deputy doesn't roll on time then I'm traipsing down the hill to say howdy.

So keep on sucking, Gas Siphon Boy. We'll meet again.

Balloon Boy Bides Bad Break in Box!

Long time readers here know I am a big fan of a good hoax having authored a couple myself, including deadly Labradoodle menaces to society and Sarah Palin's Lizards of Satan. But those were in good fun and didn't really hurt too many people. But this shit with Balloon Boy was very uncool. Faking out all of America and causing people to stare at their computer screens at work, stalling out entire networks watching live video, blasting work productivity, but most importantly, freaking our shit out as we watched this runaway foil big mylar party balloon zipping through the sky WITH A LITTLE SCARED SIX YEAR OLD TRAPPED IN IT. Except. He was home in a box hiding where dad told him to hide so they could scam America and get crazed dad the attention he so obviously craves. They've appeared TWICE on Wife Swap, a truly execrable TV show if I've ever seen one, and they gallivant off storm chasing - dragging their kids into tornadoes. What shits for parents.

During a live interview, Falcon said he had heard his family calling his name.

"You did?" the boy's mother, Mayumi Heene, said.

"Why didn't you come out?" Richard Heene said.

Falcon answered, "You had said that we did this for a show."

These are such hideous parents. Forcing their kids to lie, including the little six year old, getting on the TODAY show and lying some more to America. The poor six year old vomited TWICE during interviews yesterday each time when the Dadhole was asked if he had made this up. Out of the mouths of babes.

I want this dad charged under all relevant criminal statutes, I want him held liable under civil statutes and I want him paying every damn penny of the rescue and tracking costs. Then I want him duct taped to a big mylar balloon and let loose over the Mojave Desert or maybe BAGHDAD. What a mean hearted stunt to pull just to get more TV time.  What a vile human.*

*disclaimer: in case he is innocent of the mounting charges of being a sick hoax-monster - well, nevermind.

Bugs in the System Restore

After his soul rebooting and psychic interfacing with the grand network of the universe, Bob returned to Spokane a changed man. There remained many critical and fundamental "spirit journeys" left for him to engage, endure, and accomplish, e.g., the discovery of his French-Canadianhoodness, but clearly, after years lost in the frozen wilderness of Finland teaching distance killing arts to young and deadly Finns, he was holding the most peace in his heart-place as he'd ever known.

Until the day he was escorting federal prisoners through the Spokane International Airport (International, mind you, because it flies to Canada sometimes and Mexico) and he met the ghost of ACDC lead singer Bon Scott in the men's restroom on Concourse B.

It should be noted, for some narrative continuity, that Bob occasionally picked up some contract gigs to make a bit of the dirty dollar that allowed him to continue his burgeoning role as an unpaid community organizer in Spokane, and on this momentous day he was independent contracting for the US Marshal Service who tended to call him in for the real bad asses they had to transport (think: Hannibal Lector meets Ted Kacinzki types).

Bob's partners, three straight up US Marshals, were minding the two detainees while Bob went into the restroom to "drain his lizard" as one of the detainees mockingly smirked, and was standing over the stainless steel urinal when he noticed a disheveled fellow to his immediate right, a man in tight, ratty, faded blue jeans, python skinned cowboy boots, a black Guiness ale t-shirt, several brightly covered wool scarves with tartan patterns draped loosely around his neck and down his chest, and a mop of uncombed brown hair. The man stunk of booze, like a tw0-legged distillery.

"I did a fooking version of Maggie May that made me mates cry, man, it fooking ruled." he said in a slurred Australian accent.

Bob glanced again and gave a slight nod, enough of a nod to validate  he'd heard the statement but not that particularly invited further conversation.

"Fookin' A, Angus refused, fookin' REFUSED, to release it, it fookin made Stewart's sound like fookin' dogshit, like fookin' dogshit. Fook him."

"Well, we are all sometimes victims of our molds, how we are both cast and how we cast ourselves, even considering the assumption that we are capable of casting at all, of changing the design, the form and ground, the signal and noise, any of it, you know? Predestination vs salvation, man." Bob replied, instantly regretting he'd engaged the ghost of Bon Scott.

"Awww, fook. I pissed me boots, FOOK."

Later that night, in his hotel room in Denver, the two detainees successfully loaded onto a highly modified US Bureau of Prisons transport van to take them to the Supermax Prison, Bob shivered, not because of the room's air conditioning even though Bob had set it at max cold and jacked up the fan full bore, but because he realized, to his chilling horror, that he was seeing ghosts now. That something was amiss in his psychic filtering, that before he passed over to the other world where ghosts piss on their fookin' python boots, he'd better get his bad shit together. This was non-negotiable Bob mused as he stubbed out his smoke and asked Janis Joplin to get off his bed and go clean herself up, please.

3 AM Rises Wanting

The dread rises in me like a hungry and monstrous fish of unknown species but known parentage. A fish thrown years ago down a wishing well by a small child. This is a fish now grown huge and voracious by a regular diet of wishes and wants. This is a fish that rises with a gaping mouth opening and closing rhythmically, robotically. Rises soundlessly. Rises with a slow sinuous arc of her long muscular body, full of angry unfertilized eggs. Rises wanting a rain of milt but only showered with more requests and hopes. She gobbles these. Inside her the newest wishes swim against stomach walls confused and trapped until they exhaust and her juices dissolve them. This is the dread in the dark waters at the bottom of the wishing well that swims inside me.

Nightime in the Switching Yard

After my stint in WHIOPSARCSNI, sickened of shooting, of ice, of vodka hangovers, I returned to my beloved Spokane, the hub and jewel of the inland transition zone between the basaltic scablands of Central and Eastern Washington and the forested foothills of the Rocky Mts of North Idaho.  I wandered in a near bliss-state amongst the ubiquitous Norway Maples and Ponderosa Pines and Chinese Restaurants of my hometown. It was 1981 and America was still loving itself again under the grinning tough-guy leadership of Cowboy Ronnie and make no mistake, America had rolled up its sleeves and was ready to slug it out with anybody, we were bad asses and we were read to rumble. It, of course, sickened me, and trust me, a man of my many, shall we say, "skills," was in great demand for illegal warfaring and advising amongst the jungles of Central America and the mountainous shooting galleries of Afghanistan. But no mas. No mas, dammit. I was through.

I began to grow restless in my hometown, as much as it comforted me and welcomed me back, I was disconnected, a sparking wire loose in its conduit unsure of the pathways of my electricity. So I did what thousands of drifting American men did before me - I hopped the rails and got outta Dodge.

I ended up in a strange yet wondrous place called KANSAS. I sprinted out of the switching yards after my freight train came to a jangling stop, and with the Great Northern bulls shouting and popping off rounds over my head I didn't even duck, I just ran and ran. In KANSAS you can find yourself and lose yourself simultaneously.

In KANSAS there are vast fields of corn, miles and miles of monochromatic fields of corn, and, besides the blue empty sky, there is nothing else.

Experiencing being and nothingness in the corn fields of KANSAS, and truly, it's not a volitional act it just is, allowed me the moment I needed to reboot my system, to reconfigure my wet drive.

The last day I stood in the corn fields of KANSAS, after weeks of being in them, sleeping in them, wandering to town for food but always returning to the fields, I stood still one day at dusk as the summer KANSAS wind blew over the corn and me and at first the breeze seemed to surround me and if it was visible it would look like tendrils of smoke slowly circling me and trailing off me as though I was flying, flying through the corn, then the breeze encircled me and passed right through me, and the corn field wind embargoed my heart and ransomed my soul and it was in that moment of pure giving up of myself to the winds and swaying corn and the growing season, I was finally freed and free.

I left KANSAS after that, hitchiking and train hopping back to Spokane. Back to the Transition Zone where transcendence is possible, just a bit more complicated in the finding.

Watching Ice Cubes Melt in Vodka While the Reindeer Hurt

When I was a White Ops Arctic Snipery (WHIOPSARCSNI) adviser to the Special Forces of Finland (SO-FIN), me and my charges, deadly earnest men every one, would often lounge around in our boxers in our tents drinking excellent Finnish Vodka and eating herrings packed in oil and tasty wheat crackers imported from the Ukraine and we'd bullshit about life, death and everything in between.  Although this was in the late 70s, when most climatologists were predicting global cooling, some of us were going the other way - wondering if the industrial and post-industrial carbon vomitings would instead warm the earth. I remember, quite fondly, brawling with several of the lads over my insistence that one day the Northeast and Northwest Passages would be ice-free and look, now they are.  My prediction that followed from the prediction of ice-free Arctic passages was the one that invoked the most vicious and rageful brawlings and that was that once passage could be made by boat, ship, or submarine that the Laplanders would leave Finland in great hordes to live elsewhere and we'd be forced to see their unique and ancient culture destroyed by the howling dogs of the post-modern world. The Laplanders or Sami as they prefer (except in Finland where Laplander is still accepted) are one of the oldest indigenous peoples of Europe and were descended from the original homo sapiens that entered Europe as the glaciers receded and probably killed off the somewhat less evolutionarily equipped homo neanderthalenis. But be that as it may, I could scarcely bear the thought of the reindeer-herding and fishing Laplander people being dispersed so I raised my objections on many of those drunken nights out on the ice. Now, I can only wonder if it will happen, if they will sail away across the Northeast and Northwest Passages, sail to find their fortunes but most likely only sadness and disappointment awaits them. I don't know, but I cannot forget what one of my best Finnish Sniper-Trainees told me, he said "you know, sir, you have the physical appearance of a Laplander with that shock of beautiful blonde hair and those high cheekbones and piercing eyes, are you sure you don't have a bit of the Lap in you?" And while I can hardly even imagine the shock of discovering, right after uncovering my French-Canadian roots, that I am also of Laplander stock I sometimes wonder why I am so protective of them and so interested, is it some deep seated genetic tuning fork that vibrates in perfect pitch to these wondrous people whenever I recall them or think of them? Is it any accident that I've long thought Renee Zellweger was a stunning example of someone with non-traditional looks, even looks that some find unattractive, yet in my mind is almost EXACTLY WHAT AN ANGEL looks like? And that Renee Zellweger, who is a clever and powerful actress who commands cinematic attention whenever she's on the screen has had a personal life of horror-filled failures with men, men who are not Lapplanders and who are even gay country singers like Kenny Chesney who lied when he married poor Renee, that Renee Zellweger is ACTUALLY of Sami descent? It's no accident in a world that is melting the North Pole away and causing the wholesale fleeing of a great people of the frozen north. No accident at all. Renee, if you stop denying your Sami blood so will I. I would love to meet you at a Reindeer petting zoo, even a roadside one in some hideous state like Texas or Oklahoma, to have some vodka and pet the Reindeers and let our hot Sami blood again rise like a narwhal to the harpoon of a hungry man of the North.  The antlers are in your court now, Renee. You know where I blog.

Imagine There's No Teabaggers, It's Easy If You Try

President Barack Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize, a talking Unicorn and three hovering Archangels announced today in Oslo, Norway.  He is now the third sitting president, along with Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, to bag one. The controversial part, and the one that will set teabagger heads exploding all over America, is the fact he'd only been in office two weeks before the Feb 1 deadline.So, it's not like he'd accomplished, you know, a lot. But he had one very very important peace-resounding thing going for him - he was replacing those fuckshit war mongering hatecraps Chimpy McStupid and Uncle Evil. I think the Nobel Peace Prize Committee (and the rest of the civilized world) was so relieved that those two demons were being sent back to hell that they just got all, like, excited!  Well, good for you Prez, now let's live up to this awesome and inspiring award and get our boys and girls the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan.  Time to close the book on this hellishly vile and deeply evil chapter in our history. No more killing.