Neither, kudzu is a fast growing vine that has various nutritional and medicinal uses (it even helps with hangovers – I kid you not. Look it up!) the US Natural Resources Conservation Service encouraged southern farmers to use from 1935 -1950 for control of ground erosion. The problem is that this Japanese import grows completely out of control in the south-eastern US due to the friendly climate there – friendly to kudzu that is, less friendly if you’re not church-going. If you’ve been anywhere in the south-east, you’ve seen it climbing trees, poles, bushes, and just about anything that sits still for more than a day.
Now kudzu is creeping into Indiana, and they don’t like it one bit. Not only because they are afraid it might smother Dan Quayle, but because they are a proud midwestern, rust-belt state that is not going to let another Asian import take over American jobs. They have launched a campaign to eradicate it, because kudzu can carry a fungus that is a threat to an important local, all-American, red-blooded, Indiana-grown crop. The soybean.
Posted in Science | Tagged China, hangover |
Why does the US Government hate Americans? Apparently, Attorney General Michael Mukasey is preparing to give the FBI broad new authority to investigate Americans — without any clear basis for suspicion that they are committing a crime. Additionally, the rules may also authorize the FBI to use an array of problematic investigative techniques. Among these are pretext interviews, in which agents do not honestly represent themselves while questioning a subject’s neighbors and work colleagues.
Now, I know that it’s hard to follow in the footsteps of John Ashcroft’s spying on Americans and Alberto Gonzales’s quaint torture, it really is Mike, but I can’t tell if you’re doing this because you have a serious inferiority complex, or you really don’t trust Americans. Mukaseyism just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
You probably never hear of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, but you certainly know the opening line of his novel Paul Clifford from 1830 – “It was a dark and stormy night.” San Jose State University holds a contest in bad writing and this year it was won by Garrison Spik, a 41-year-old communications director and writer, with this opening from his non-existent novel:
Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped ‘Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.’
So, here’s the thing. What you have just read is truly terrible, awful writing, but it’s so remarkably good at being terrible that it’s fantastic. This is mediocrity at its best, and it brought tears to my eyes. Not the horrible writing, but that a California state university sponsors a competition in mediocrity. A genuinely American competition. More American than baseball.
You’ve all been to bookstores and browsed through the bestsellers. This kind of writing sells. If it sells, then it’s fulfilling our capitalist dreams. Mediocrity incarnate. In fact, Garrison Spik, short of having a bestseller of your own, you have come as close to the American Dream as anyone (meaning, not that close – you still need to write that bestseller).
AP reports that a 35-year-old woman was arrested in Longview, Texas after admitting that she had her twelve-year-old daughter drive her to a bar. Let’s see one of those Chinese gymnasts do that! Yeah! We still got it!
Posted in Justice | Tagged crime, cuteness, Texas |
Let’s say you’re the mayor of Rome and you are convinced that you need to attract more tourists. You don’t have much to work with, except the magnificent ruins of an ancient empire, the splendor of the Vatican, museums full of priceless art, amazing food and accommodations, fashion, you know, the usual. No, you need something really special.
I know, how about a theme park? It sure worked for Paris with Euro Disney. Tourists love theme parks. And the best part, is that you can will be able to see theme park versions all of the major attractions of Rome, without having to deal with traffic or reality. Genius!
But it looks like the mayor’s magnificent plan will be foiled by the evil Lazio Regional Government (of which Rome is the capital), because fun hating council member Claudio Mancini “says no to Americanization”. Either way, they are both paying us a huge compliment in proclaiming that the appeal of mediocrity is more powerful than the real remnants of ancient Rome.
With all of the attention on the Olympics, Americans are learning that China is more than something you register to get as a wedding gift. Previously, I ranted about how the Chinese are beating us at our own mediocrity game, and now they have gone and beaten us again.
According to the obvious physical appearance of the Chinese girl gymnasts and various evidence to be found on the Internets, many of these gymnasts are not sixteen – the age required by the International Olympics Committee (IOC) to compete. Yet their government issued passports all say that they are, and the IOC is accepting that at face value, despite the obvious.
Why, you ask, should we care? Well, it’s not the obvious fact that they cheated and therefore won the team gold meal from our deserving and aged women gymnasts, nor is it that their government lied to an international body and is getting away with it. It’s that they lied, got caught, and no one cares or dares to do anything about it. We just aren’t that good. The Chinese indeed deserve to win that gold medal.
Scientists at the University of Reading in England have created a robot that receives input to, and processes responses from, a brain made of rat brain cells. The robot knows how to steer to avoid colliding with objects.
I don’t really understand what all the hoopla is about. Americans did this in the 1980s. Doesn’t anyone remember Ronald Reagan? Regardless, anyone that has watched (the best show on TV) Battlestar Galactica knows that biological melding with machines can’t end well.
W’s third Attorney General, Michael Mukasey must be very proud. After all, following John “Tap that Wire” Ashcroft and Alberto “Geneva = Quaint” Gonzales is pretty intimidating. Still, he’s off to a great start in making sure the Justice Department is looking out for justice department.
Mukasey announced that there will be no criminal prosecutions for former Justice Department officials accused of allowing politics to influence the hiring of prosecutors, immigration judges and other career government lawyers. He told delegates to the American Bar Association annual meeting, “Not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime. In this instance, the two joint reports found only violations of the civil service laws.”
I’m no lawyer, but my understanding of English tells me that if you violated the law, you committed a crime. What I get from all of this is that the Attorney General’s job is to create new definitions to commonly accepted principles, not uphold justice. Let’s review:
- John Ashcroft – civil liberties do not mean freedom, rather that the government knows things it can’t tell you and therefore knows better than you what’s good for you.
- Alberto Gonzales – torture is humane brutality.
- Michael Mukasey – criminal activity is only when you break a law that conflicts with administration interests.
Michael Mukasey has finally lived up to his predecessors and earned a nickname (and not a cute W. nickname, like “Brownie”). What about Michael “Tow Toe* the Company Line” Mukasey?
* Thanks to David Tuffy for the edit. See David’s comment for more.
No, I’m not referring to Britney Spears, or Ashlee/Jessica Simpson, I’m referring to nine-year-old Lin Miaoke who lip-synched a great performance at the Olympic opening ceremonies. According to Reuters, US bloggers are enraged that the Chinese swapped out Yang Peiyi, the real singer, because she had crooked teeth. How dare the Chinese ruin such a beautiful moment with such beauty!
You’d think that I’d be annoyed with the self righteousness of American bloggers for making such a fuss over something that we do all the time. Have any of these furious bloggers ever watched TV news? The reporters/anchors are HOT! As Samantha Bee calls them – NILFs. Are they the best journalists? Who cares. That’s what the off camera writers are for. No, I’m not annoyed with the cited bloggers for their double standard, I salute them. Here’s why:
- The Chinese have taken our talent to manufacture mediocre crap and raised it to an art form
- The Chinese are opening a new coal power plant a week, and are now better at polluting than us
- The Chinese execute more criminals than we do
Our noble bloggers should be seething. The Chinese are overtaking the US at everything that we do best, and now they are overtaking us at our prized
mediocrity. If they can manufacture cuteness better than us, where will it end!?
For years, truckers have been urinating in bottles and throwing them out of the window to save time as they speed to their next job. With fuel prices so high, a trucker’s priorities have changed from saving time to saving fuel, but the methodology stays the same.
Everyone now knows that slowing down will save gas, but more importantly, you get better gas milage on highways that in the city, because accelerating burns more gas than holding momentum. If you don’t stop, you don’t need to start again. As proof of this ingenious trend, police in Ontario, Oregon say there’s been an alarming rise in urine-filled plastic containers found along a slow moving three-mile stretch of I-84.
Truckers know that if faced with a new problem, use the tried and true solution that has always worked for you. Truckers call that “staying the course”. Peeing in a bottle is the best answer to every trucker’s problem, just like more drilling is the answer to our country’s every problem.
Posted in Energy | Tagged drilling, gas, oil, truckers |
Neither, kudzu is a fast growing vine that has various nutritional and medicinal uses (it even helps with hangovers – I kid you not. Look it up!) the US Natural Resources Conservation Service encouraged southern farmers to use from 1935 -1950 for control of ground erosion. The problem is that this Japanese import grows completely out of control in the south-eastern US due to the friendly climate there – friendly to kudzu that is, less friendly if you’re not church-going. If you’ve been anywhere in the south-east, you’ve seen it climbing trees, poles, bushes, and just about anything that sits still for more than a day.
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