Ships of the Desert

Years ago, Vernon and I were flying a small Cessna across Southeastern New Mexico.  I'm not even sure why we were there, but anytime you find yourself in a small Cessna, it is mostly for pleasure.  Small 4-seater single-engine planes are slow, impractical, crowded, and fantastic fun.  If you are already a pilot, you know what I am talking about.  If you aren't, don't find out!  Flying is as addictive as heroin--but it costs more.

Somewhere around Roswell, Vernon said, "Hey, you want to see something interesting?"

Of course I did.  Vernon has been flying in New Mexico for much longer that I--he has probably forgotten to log more hours of flight time than I have in total.  So Vernon took the yoke, made a small turn and after a few minutes put the Cessna into a steep banking turn.  The ground, a few thousand feet below, filled my side window as we slowly circled a Nazi battleship.

Actually, there was a fleet of them in the desert, where they had been quietly resting since the end of World War II.  During the war, they had suffered, showing considerable evidence of having been bombed repeatedly from the air. 

The desert southwest is a wonderful place to fly.  We have well over 350 flying days a year.  This is why the military built bomber training bases all over New Mexico.  The flood of student pilots had to have something to practice its bombing on, so the military plowed targets into the ground, or created large berms of sand.  Either way, the lines were then whitewashed.  The most common target was a giant bullseye with a swastika in the middle, while others were ships, docks, and the outlines of cities.  Some of the swastikas were done backwards (but not all).

These kinds of manmade formations are called geoglyphs, and they are not that much different from the famous Nasca Lines of Peru.  While the Peruvian lines are up to slightly over a mile in length, the  largest New Mexico geoglyphs--a bullseye--is 1800 feet wide.  Some of the ships are 800 feet long and 200 feet wide.  In total, there are dozens of them outside of Roswell, Albuquerque, Clovis, and Deming.

If you fly low enough, you can still see the bomb damage around the targets.  While real bombs were rarely dropped, even the 100 pound sand bags, with small marker charges, left a visible crater.  The student pilots bombed the targets from 1942 until 1945.  When the war was over, the targets were allowed to simply weather and slowly start to disappear back into the desert.

Every year, the blowing sand, the rains, and the winter frost slowly work at removing evidence of the targets.  The whitewash and paint are long gone and from the air, it is almost impossible to notice the targets unless you happen to be in a low-flying small Cessna.  The locations were picked for their isolation, so the only visitors on the ground are probably coyotes and prairie dogs.

When archaeologists rediscover the geoglyphs ten thousand years from now, they will be as mysterious as the Nasca Lines.  Undoubtedly, they will say they had some religious purposes--maybe thinking that we worshipped ships by shooting at them.

The Future Was Yesterday

Paul Haney was a customer before he became my friend.  I sold him several computers, and somewhere during the business we did together, Paul and his wife, Jan, became important to The Doc and me.  So he was a little disappointed when I sadly announced that I had sold the company and we were leaving Galveston for the mountains and high desert of Southern New Mexico.

"What's so good about a desert?" he asked.

"Well," I answered.  "You would just have to go see for yourself."

So Paul and Jan did.  They went on vacation to New Mexico the very next week.  And when he returned two weeks later, he announced that I had been right.  He and Jan had bought a cherry orchard in High Rolls, New Mexico.  They actually moved to New Mexico months before The Doc and I managed to make the move.

You may know Paul, too.  If you, like I, lived vicariously through the astronauts of the Sixties, then you have certainly heard Paul--he was the "Voice of Mission Control" through the Gemini and Apollo programs. 

Long before I had a blog, I used to write a lot of letters.  I recently found one I wrote to  Paul almost fourteen years ago.  At the time, the whole nation was obsessed with Y2K and the coming new millennium.

Sunday, December 19, 1999

Dear Paul,

I'm supposed to be grading papers.  I keep sneaking away to do something else.

We bought a cheap breadmaker the other day.  Dillard's had a $30 model.  Karen and Sonja, a neighbor, looked at it and Sonja bought it.  It worked pretty good, but only made a one pound loaf of bread.  Karen thought the bread was good, so she bought a slightly bigger version that makes a 2 pound loaf for $80.  Somehow, it has become my breadmaker.  So, I loaded it up late last night and set the delay to come on this morning early enough that I could eat fresh bread while watching Meet the Press.

After I had the breadmaker ready, I ground some coffee beans, loaded the coffee pot and set it to go off just as the breadmaker was finishing baking the fresh bread.  All the while, I'm watching a news program out of Seattle on the satellite TV system.  There was a loud party down the street, so I put all the outdoor lights on the motion sensor mode.  I finished cleaning up the kitchen, loaded the dishwasher and put it on a 2-hour delay so it wouldn't come on until everyone was asleep.

Before I went to bed, I turned off the lawn sprinkler system, since the temperature was supposed to drop to freezing during the night.  The grass is still green (Isn't southern New Mexico great!) and will water it once a week until it turns brown.

Just before going to bed, I turned off the TV in my office and shut down the computer that has been downloading a new version of Internet Explorer for the last two hours.  The only email I had received that evening was the new Dave Barry editorial in the Miami newspaper.

(Okay, I admit it, I stole the cartoon from his column.)  By now, I am sure you have gotten the point of all of the above.  Maybe the 21st century came a while back and we didn't notice.

I may have more toys than most people, maybe I like little techno gadgets more than most, but there is something unreal about the last 10 years or so.  I exchange messages fairly routinely with people who live so scattered around the world that not even Phileas Fogg could visit them all in three months.  My children do their homework from databases around the globe.  I did most of my Xmas shopping from stores that are so distantly remote that I have no idea what state they are located in.

Almost everyone I know has an email address.  The only exceptions are children and the elderly.  And not all of either of those categories.  As much as we have talked about a computer revolution or an internet revolution, we are barely halfway through the changes.  The internet is almost 50 years old, at least the concept is.  In 1953, Robert Heinlein wrote a story called Methuselah's Children, where the hero shopped for new clothing over a computer terminal, examining clothing styles and colors until he was satisfied.  He pressed a credit slip to the screen and placed his order.  The functional difference between that and how I order books from Amazon is too minuscule to notice.

Even five years ago, while shopping this way might have been possible, it would have been very strange.  This Christmas, no one knows how much E-Commerce (how old is that word?) is going on, but it may be as much as 15% of all gift shopping.  How much more is coming?  Will ATM machines turn into internet kiosks?  They better, because the need for cash is all but over.  I access my bank online nearly every day.  Will malls vanish?  How much computing power will my car have?  Will notebook computers become more common than briefcases and backpacks?  Will my next cell phone have a GPS?  A camera?  A screen?  Will the word 'film' become as obsolete as 'phonograph?'

Between Karen's office and our home, we own a fax machine, two copiers, two scanners, two cell phones, a satellite dish, three stereo systems, a DVD player, 3 VCR machines, 6 computers, 3 laser printers, and two color inkjet printers.  We own twice as many computers as television sets.  Ten years from now, what will an updated list reveal?  How many of those systems will have merged?  How many will have disappeared?  Will we wonder how we ever got along without polymorphs?   Or whatever the next new gizmo is.

Sorry, I didn't mean for this to turn into a rant.  Write soon and tell me how the cherry trees are faring.

Well, it's been almost 14 years, and I guess the "polymorph" turned out to be the iPad I wrote all of this on. 

Wouldn't a Bonfire Be Easier?

The black dragon lobbed over an egg-shaped thing fully the size of a peck measure it was.  And it burst, and a dragon flew out with peals of thunder rolling.  In the air it was like a blazing and flashing fire.  The first bang was like the dividing of chaos in two, as it mountains and rivers were all turned upside down...
Chiang Hsien, 1431.  The Jade Box Collection.

It is the day after Independence Day.  The barbecue grill is cold, the beer is gone, and spent fireworks litter the yard.  While we still struggle to digest the massive amount of undercooked beef we consumed, it is time for a little introspection.

Assuming that you still have both eyes to read this, you are probably not one of the 6300 Americans who went to an emergency room yesterday with a fireworks related injury.  A large portion of those fireworks injuries were probably due to the beer.  The more beer you drink, the more skilled you believe you are with fireworks.  When it comes to sex, karaoke, and fireworks--beer lies.

Somehow, the birth of our nation has always been tied to fireworks.  Consider what John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail about celebrating the birth of our nation:

[The day] "will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. . . . It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

Adams got a lot of that correct--the parades, the guns, the illuminations, etc.  All he forgot to mention was barbecue, beer, and the picky little detail of the date.  Adams wrote the above about July 2--the date the Continental Congress voted to approve the resolution for independence.  July 4 was the date the congress accepted the declaration written by Thomas Jefferson.

Americans may be celebrating the wrong date, but we are certainly doing it in style.  Last year, Americans used over two HUNDRED MILLION pounds of gunpowder, just for fireworks--that's not even counting the gunpowder we used to shoot each other.  And a hell of a lot of it was purchased from...China.  That's right, we celebrate the most American of holidays with Chinese fireworks.  If we are going to use all this gunpowder, maybe we should learn something about it.

Gunpowder, of course, was invented in China.  It was an accidental invasion--the Chinese doctor was experimenting with medicine when he stumbled upon the formula.  History does not record his name, but it does mention that his house burned down.  Rapidly. 

Gunpowder is a mixture of charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter.  The crucial ingredient is the saltpeter.  If the mixture contains a fair amount of saltpeter it will burn.  If the concentration is 75%, when it burns it will produce 3000 times its volume in gas.  That much gas in a closed container is called an explosion.  That much gas in a large room is called Congress.

(Please don't take this as an encouragement to start playing at medieval alchemy in your basement.  There are only two kinds of people who play with gunpowder.  The moron who has already hurt himself and others or the moron who is about to.  It's no joke.)

Sulfur has been known since biblical times, it is not that difficult to identify, nor is it hard to collect and purify.  It can easily be ground into a fine powder.  Nor is charcoal exactly hard to find.  It turns out that several kinds of wood work well:  willow, alder, and grape vines were widely used.  In China, adding charred grasshoppers was believed to give the powder "liveliness."

Now we need saltpeter.  The best natural place was a hot climate that encouraged natural decomposition and a long dry period that allowed nitrates to leach to the surface.  In China, it wasn't hard to find places like that, but in Europe, you had to find a different source.

It was the 1300's when the knowledge of gunpowder reached Europe.  Saltpeter forms naturally in smelly, rank, damp, and decomposing areas.  This describes all of Europe in 1300 and many public places in France today.  Saltpeter formed naturally in privies, stables, and tombs.  It was common in cesspools, old manure piles, and outhouses. 

In a cave near Moscow, where large numbers of soldiers had been dumped in piles, a rather macabre form of recycling was practiced.  The decomposition produced saltpeter, which was turned into gunpowder, which was then used to kill more soldiers, who presumably could be dumped in the cave.  Any day now, Putin will claim that Russia invented sustainability.

If none of these olfactory delights produced enough saltpeter, you could just cook it.  The recipe calls for human feces, urine from people who drank wine or beer (it was widely believed the best urine came from priests), horse shit, and a lot of lime.  This witches brew had to stored indoors out of the rain for about a year and the concoction had to be stirred once a week.  For every hundred pounds of this delightful sludge, you would eventually harvest half a pound of good saltpeter.  (For a Bomb, James Bomb, it is shaken not stirred.)

After the discovery of gunpowder, it took less than a single century for the Chinese to begin making fireworks.  Firecrackers and small bombs were made first, then small propellant charges were added to arrows.  Before long, stronger charges were self-propelled, the arrow was unnecessary.  After that, it was just a steady growth in size, range, and destructive power. 

As difficult as all of this is, it was remarkable that the use of gunpowder didn't die out.  Seems like peace would have been a lot less trouble and it had to smell better.  I understand the impulse--I like fireworks.  Humans glory in destruction.  We instinctively love fire, thunderstorms, loud noises and a good all-around mess.  Gunpowder gives us all of this at the same time.  But, maybe, it is past time to move beyond all this.

Let's just blame it all on the Chinese.  Or maybe bamboo.  It turns out that if you put a single segment of green bamboo in a hot fire, when the air enclosed suddenly escapes, it will produce a loud bang.   (The first firecracker was probably gunpowder stuffed into bamboo.)  By the thirteenth century, even before gunpowder, Chinese New Year was about as noisy as it is today.

Last year, we celebrated an American holiday with $227 million in Chinese fireworks.  Next year, why don't we just buy bamboo?

$50,000 and a Blowjob

The title is slightly misleading—it is there for three reasons:

1.  The ads on this web page are selected by Google.  Their selection formula is proprietary and about as secretly vague as a presidential candidate's jobs policy.  Over the years, I have discerned a small pattern.  When I wrote about the Trojan War, we had a few weeks of condom ads, but when I deliberately included the phrase “push-up bra” in my blog for several weeks, all I got were ads about mail-order divinity degrees.  I’m trying very hard not to visualize any connection.

I can't wait to see the ads this week.  And each and every one of you should click on one of those ads--those ads not only pay Google to run this blog, they pay for the beer that fuels my writing.  More clicks would buy better beer that might (who knows?) mean better-written blogs.  See?  It is in your interest to click those ads—between the two of us, you are the only one who actually reads what I write.  (Well, except for my long-suffering wife who edits out both the overly profane and the obtusely inane.)

2.  No matter what I write about, people write me hate mail—lots of it.  I could write about kittens and apple pie, and some jackass in Arkansas would still respond with the inevitable, "You will never see the sweat (sic) face of Jesus."

From several Arabic-speaking countries, I have received at least a half-dozen emails that contain the word "fatwa."  I've gotten creepy letters from men in prison and incredibly strange emails from India (quite a lot of these make inexplicable references to the nude scene in the movie "Titanic").  Actually, the only country that consistently sends me polite and intelligent responses is Sweden.  I have no idea why—maybe it is just too damn cold to be stupid.

Now, if I'm going to get a lot of weird email this week, I want it to at least start off with a possible offer of fifty thousand dollars and a blow job.

3.  And last, the title actually refers, at least peripherally, to a real suggestion.  My idea—and I admit that it comes after a very late faculty meeting where copious amounts of educational brain juice (Laphroaig) were consumed—is obviously brilliant!

It seems impossible to pick up a newspaper and not read about some Hollywood actress arrested for drunk driving, a celebribitch appearing in public wearing only a Fruehauf mud flap as a loin cloth, or some infamous nitwit accused of felonious theft.  And that’s just the stories about Lindsay Lohan.  There are always a few additional stories about a few other talented—but stupid—people in the public eye being arrested because they need keepers.

How many NFL stars have been arrested for crimes with guns whose calibers were higher numbers than their IQ’s?  How many slow-witted basketball stars have had fatal accidents with fast cars?  How many heiresses have had hit-and-run accidents while racing to make their next “accidental” sex tapes?

We are not talking about college students—these people all have two things in common:  They are rich and stupid.  I expect students to do stupid things, but alleged role models with seven figure incomes have the resources to prevent stupid childish behavior even if they don’t have the intelligence.

Frankly, I don’t really care about these people.  For the most part, I don’t even care about their victims.  If you are dumb enough to party with Plaxico, when the gun falls out of his underwear, you deserve to get shot.  If you invite Lindsay to your house, you shouldn’t be surprised when your best jewelry vanishes.  I just wish I didn’t have to hear about it when I’m trying to watch the news.  As I kept telling my sons, What’s-His-Name and The-Other-One, “Daddies don’t want justice.  Daddies want quiet.”

So, Lindsay-Paris-Kim-Reese, here is my suggestion:  Hire a chauffeur.  If you make over a million dollars a year, you can afford a chauffeur.  I suggest you recruit a great big bruiser of a guy, preferably a retired cop who can bench press a Chevy.  Then make a simple deal with him.  He stays with you from 4:00 in the afternoon until he locks you in your bedroom at 1:00 am.  He drives you, stays with you in the bar, and keeps you out of trouble.

He won’t let you leave the house unless you are wearing at least some of your clothing.  He won’t let you leave the jewelry store until you pay for the necklace.  And, if necessary, he drags you out of the bar, locks you in the trunk of your limo, and drives your drunken ass home.

For these services, you pay him an annual salary of $100,000.  Then, at the end of the year, if you have not been arrested one time, if the tabloids haven’t published a mug shot that shows you trying to lick your own ear, and if not a single department store is claiming you are an inept kleptomaniac, then your chauffeur earns the bonus mentioned in the title.  In the long run, it will be a hell of a lot cheaper than paying a gaggle of lawyers and seeing a premature end to your career—to say nothing of all the sexual favors you will have to perform in prison.

Plaxico, this advice will work for you, too.  You’ll just have to be an equal opportunity employer.

Pillars of Sophistication

On several occasions, I have written about my bewilderment concerning the differences between the way men and women go shopping.  Personally, I think men are hunters.  If we need a pair of jeans, we drive out to the game preserve (Sears), track down our prey (admire the power tools on the way to the clothing section), kill the pants with a credit card, tie it to the truck, then drive it home.   Women are gatherers, which means they have to walk from one end of the mall to the other, just to see if there is anything worth taking back to the cave.  For most men, this is just weird.

Strange behavior aside, men can generally put up with this. Check out the women’s clothing section of any large department store and inevitably, right in the middle of the racks of dresses, there are a couple of chairs for a bored husband to patiently sit and play video poker on his cell phone while his wife tries on dresses.  (For the life of me, I cannot understand why there aren't more bars at shopping malls.  They could be daycare for husbands.)

There is, however, one kind of store that is beyond male understanding.  The craft store—whether it is Hobby Lobby or Michael’s—is a bizarre world where no man ever feels comfortable. To be perfectly frank, the entire store is filled with useless crap.  For the life of me, I do not understand why any man would willingly set foot in a store full of plastic plants, unpainted plaster animals, and ugly furniture.  Frankly, I would trade the store’s entire contents for a set of six-point socket wrenches.

Why do these stores even exist?  Who buys packages of 2000 Popsicle sticks?  Who needs a five-pound can of silver glitter?  Is there any real need for an endless collection of cute rubber stamps?  Why do they sell Christmas decorations all year long?  Sooner or later, most of the poor men forced to accompany their wives to this store end up on the glue aisle.  Glue seems to be the only useful item these stores sell.

Since every single item in the store seems to be an incredibly cheap import, these stores actually must be some form of Asian plot to rob American men of their will to live.  Otherwise, they would realize that they could vastly improve their sales by offering just a few items of interest to men.  Add a few tools, or barbecue grills.  Surely, someone must scrapbook Playboy centerfolds.  I could patiently wait in that aisle for a loooong time.

Men, since these stores refuse to cater to our needs, you should do as I do to pass the time.  Find the section of the store that sells plaster of Paris architectural columns, and then tell a sales clerk that you have to speak to the manager.  When he arrives, point out to him that every single column in the store is mislabeled.  I have no idea why, but invariably the Tuscan columns are labeled as Corinthian, the “Doric" columns are actually Ionic and so forth.  Tell the manager that this insensitive mislabeling is deeply insulting to your race, your pagan religion, and your culture.  Trust me, this will use up at least half an hour.

What?  You don’t know one type of column from another?  I can help you.  Luckily, I have taught countless classes of Western Civilization.  And as every student is told, the reason that every student must have Western Civ inflicted upon them is so they can become culturally well-rounded—and NOTHING marks a cultured person more clearly than the ability to pedantically rant about columns.

 “Lookie here,” you can say.  “Notice the stylish grace those Corinthian columns lend to yonder mobile home.”  This will amaze and impress your friends and relatives.  That degree in the Social Justice in Reality Television wasn't a waste of tuition after all.

Let’s start.  We will look at our columns from the simplest style to the most complex.  As you can see from the illustration, Column A is a simple smooth-sided round column—this is a Tuscan column.  (For the grad students among you, this a Roman form commonly employed in military buildings, warehouses and docks. The simple design of the Tuscan column facilitates easy construction, so it is very commonly used in modern architecture.)  Tuscan—Get it?  Got it.  Good!

Column B is only slightly more complex.  This is a Doric Column and it, at least traditionally, has 20 flutes running from the top to the bottom.  (Grad students, this is a Greek column named for the Dorians who developed it.)  Any dork can remember Doric!

Column C indicates the Ionic column.  This one is really simple--just take a Doric column and add the little scroll-like capital on the top of it.  (Grad students, this type of capital is known as a volute, and was developed in Ionia.)  Ionic—it would be ironic not to remember Ionic.

Our last column, Column D, is the easiest to remember. The Corinthian column is a fluted column that wears a leafy hat.  (Grad students, it usually has 24 flutes and while it was developed in Greece, it was the Romans who popularized it.  If you want to be especially pedantic, you can watch for columns that have both the Corinthian petals and the Ionic volute.  Invariably mislabeled Corinthian, when you combine the two features they are more accurately called Composite.)  Lots of flutes and a leafy headdress mean Corinthian.  Right!

So in order of complexity, they are smooth, fluted, flutes with a scroll, and flutes with leafy petals. It is easy to remember this progression of complexity.  But how to remember the order of the names?  They are Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian.  More simply:  T-D-I-C.   Or as anyone can remember:  These Dummies Is Columns. I doubt you will ever forget it.

Now that you are an educated sophisticate, go annoy the manager at Hobby Lobby.

Baptists Don't Play Well With Others

Once again, the Boob Scouts are in the news.  Well, no, actually, it is the Southern Baptist Bumpkins and their adverse reaction to the recent decision of the Boob Scouts  to allow gay scouts into the canoe.  Of course, once those kids get a little older, you have to throw them out of the boat and take away their paddles.  The Scouts won't let in gay Scoutmasters, but the Baptists know this compromise isn't good enough.  They have already decided not to play, and have folded up their campfire and gone home.

Well, who can blame them?  Once you let gay kids put their...er...noses inside the pup tent, it's only a matter of time before there is a rainbow merit badge for a gay pride parade.  

The leadership at the Southern Baptist Convention are taking an active stance against this inclusion.  They have taken half the Baptists with science degrees---that would be four---off of watching old reruns of the Flintstones in hope of discovering new ways to debunk evolution, and reassigned them to a new emergency project: trying to isolate homo cooties.

In the meantime, they are starting their own "Christian Boys Club" that will

exclude all gay people of any age.  Is it just me, or does the act of excluding children sound about as un-Christian as letting loose a pack of hungry wolves on a daycare center?  Let's give this idea the acid test: try to think for 30 seconds straight about a Christian Boys Club run by the Baptist Church that excludes the "wrong type of boy" without once thinking about the Hitler Youth Group.  Go ahead...try it.  I'll just sit here, quietly humming the Horst Wessel Song while you're busy.   (I wonder what the new oath will be like?  And the salute?  Nah.  They wouldn't.  Would they?)

All of this is a little confusing to me!  If a homosexual lifestyle is a choice, then you would think that the Baptists would welcome "sinners" into their fold, in order to lead them "straight" by example.  After all, in Matthew 28:18-20 didn't Christ exhort his disciples to become "fishers of men" in order to spread his word?  (I'd double check that if I were you.  As Shakespeare said, "the devil can cite scripture for his own purpose.)  If I were dragging a net for sinners, I wouldn't do it in a desert: I'd pick a target-rich environment.

Obviously, the Baptists don't want to do that, which implies that homosexuality is not a choice but an uncontrollable, inherently God-made trait.  But why would God do that?

I have a theory: God is bipolar.  Think about it: what else would explain a platypus?  Or the people in MallWart?  On his good days, God created coral reefs, forests and the fjords of Norway.*   His bad days resulted in volcanos, swamps, and Oklahoma.

Until all of this is figured out, perhaps the Baptists should exercise a little humility and/or  not be so convinced they completely understand God or his will.  As a group, the Baptists have been on the wrong side of important social issues for over a hundred years.  Whether it was slavery, civil rights, feminism, evolution, global warming or just enjoying a cold beer on a hot day, the Baptists have always seemed to be championing the side of stupidity.  It is really hard to learn anything if you stop asking questions in the belief you already know all the answers.

This reminds me of an old story that hasn't happened yet.  The college of cardinals were sitting around a large table waiting for the pontiff.  The door opened and the pope trudged in with his shoulders stooped, staring at the ground.

"Santa Merda," exclaimed the pope as he put his elbows on the table and sank his forehead into his hands.

"What's the matter?" asked the concerned cardinals.

"Christ has risen!  The second coming is now! " said the pontiff.  "Christ just telephoned me!"

"That's fantastic!" shouted the assembled cardinals as they jumped to their feet.  "But, why are you so sad?"

The pope slowly lifted his ashen face from his palms and spoke slowly, "It was a collect call.  And she was calling from Salt Lake City."



*According to the preeminent Bible scholar, the Right Reverend Adams, when the Norwegian fjords were created, God had help from Slartibartfast.

Brand This!

Enema U is having an open discussion about football.  Well, actually one of the university's Evil Overlords wrote a letter to the local newspaper claiming that the university needs football.  As he explained it, football helps brand the university. 

Personally, I think that Division 1 football for a southwestern Ag school is more like an anchor—or a millstone—around the financial neck of an impoverished state university, but who am I to argue with an Evil Overlord.  And I confess, not that long ago, I made a suggestion for re-branding Enema U.

Unfortunately, the whole idea of branding is so 1990’s.  It is a marketing idea whose time has come and gone.  Perhaps we should refer to Jonathan Salem Baskin’s book:  Branding Only Works on Cattle—a perfect choice for an Ag school.  In his book, Baskin points out that branding as a marketing scheme simply does not work.  He carefully points out that the Burger King mascot is readily identifiable, but probably never sold a single hamburger.  There is a reason why Taco Bell had the Chihuahua put to sleep sent to live on the happy farm and Geico sent the cavemen to a museum.  They were identifiable, but did not attract new customers. 

Successful marketing links a product or a service to something new, valuable, or unique.  Baskin gives the example of Starbucks, who took the common cup of coffee and promoted the image of high quality and convenience.  None of this is possible with a football team that hasn’t had a winning season since…well, shit!  The last time Enema U had a good enough season to be invited to a bowl game, John-John was playing under President Kennedy’s desk.

In a media-saturated market, successful marketing no longer works with cute phrases, goofy mascots, and marching bands.  What works is carefully analyzing what our students really want and then delivering a high quality education.  And this will be true no matter how many times our Evil Overlords scream, “Go, Zombies!”

I hate that whole “Go, Team, Go!” mantra crap.  Life is not a game that you play for an hour.  Winners are not the ones with the most points.  Everything truly good in your life will be the result of years of hard work and preparation and your successes will be slowly accumulated over time.  You know, kind of a like a four-year degree program.  How many places in life would it be appropriate to scream out these simplistic moronic platitudes to people hard at work?  Do nurses scream at surgeons, “Cut, Doc, Cut!” in an operating room?  The next time you are on an airplane, get as close as you can to the cockpit door, and at the last possible moment, scream, “Land, Pilot, Land!”  I hope the sky marshal shoots you in the crotch with a rubber bullet.

Since I have worked at Enema U, the school has probably spent on football (and I admit this number is only a semi-educated guess--which means it is probably as ignorant as a lady’s watch) a quarter of a billion dollars.  Fortunately, New Mexico didn’t need that money.  The taxpayers couldn’t possibly have done anything more effective with the cash--the state didn’t need more schools, hospitals, or fire stations.  Surely, the university hired the finest professors who taught in up-to-date classrooms while charging the lowest tuition.  And I believe in Tinkerbelle.

Yes, I know what you are thinking: College football brings in donations and makes lots of money.  No, even in the big league schools it usually doesn’t.  Take the time to read the report from the Knight Commission, or look at the data on the U.S. News and World Report website.  That quarter of a billion dollars is over and above gate receipts, donations, and the loose change the coaches sweep up under the stands after we finish losing a game.

Naturally, I have a suggestion--a fair suggestion.  In order to generate enough cash to continue to fund the bottomless pit of football, Enema U has privatized several services on campus.  We leased out the campus bookstore and turned it into a Hukked on Foniks T-Shirt Shop.  We leased out the cafeterias to a company that specializes in providing meals to airports and prisons.  (Presumably, we get their leftovers.)

If leasing out university services effectively delivers a quality product to our students—and I believe that is our state mandate—let’s shut down the football program until a company steps forward and is willing to lease it and run it at a profit.  Since I’m sure the coaches and athletic supporters who have claimed that college sports actually make money have been telling us the absolute truth for years, it shouldn’t take long for a smart investor to step up and lease our team. 

And the new owners can brand each other on any body part they can reach.

No Rescue Tonight

The trouble started with a hotel fire in Manila.  The fire spread so rapidly the guests could not get near the fire escapes until it was too late.  All that was possible for the guests was to flee ever upward, hoping to stay safe by moving up the stairs ahead of the flames, but steadily moving higher and farther from the ground.  By the time the fire department arrived, no ladder could save the trapped guests.  Eventually, however, most of the stranded guests were evacuated from the roof by helicopter.

The Flagship Hotel also had a perennial fire safety problem.  First, the hotel was seven stories tall, built on a pier that extended out over the ocean, and the fire department--whose longest   ladder wouldn't reach to the top floor of the hotel--could only park on one side of the hotel.  The firemen would have needed a boat to access the other side.

The General Manager read about the fire in Manila and immediately decided that the Flagship should keep the door to the roof unlocked at all times.  This was a decision about as flawed as deciding to store beer in a fraternity house.  The
security guards were catching a drunk every week up on that roof and we were not catching the morons who were busting the fluorescent 'L' in the hotel's name.  I was getting really tired of wags calling the front desk asking, "Is this the love boat?"

Weekends, the hotel hired an off-duty policeman to stand security outside the hotel's bar--a duty that usually fell to my friend Bill.  I won't give his last name, since he still has a lot of friends on the island.  Now, before I can finish the story about Bill, I suppose I have to mention his funeral--even though this is bass-ackwards from the way you talk about anybody else--but whenever I think of Bill, his funeral is the first thing that comes to mind.

Bill looked like Dracula.  He didn't need a costume: he had the thin angular face, the black hair that came down to a widow's peak over his forehead, and the deep dark eyes.  Hell, on a good day, he looked like Dracula.  As he began to slowly drink himself to death and his liver started shutting down, he turned a pale yellow color.  If you ran into him at night, he was terrifying.  Eventually--no matter how hard his friends tried to prevent it--Bill ate his gun and ended his life. 

Bill was well-liked and missed by a lot of friends, so his funeral should have been a solemn occasion.  It should have been--but it wasn't.  Without exception, as his friends entered the funeral parlor and made their way up the aisle for the viewing, every single one of them started laughing: there was a pasty-faced Dracula lying in his coffin, with his hands crossed over his chest. Bill would have loved it!

Where was I?  Oh yes--one night, right about midnight, Bill and I were having a cup of coffee in the deserted restaurant.  The bar was open, but it was a very quiet night, so Bill and I took advantage of the solitude to sit at a table and stare out the glass wall at the waves.  The sea was rough and the wind was sending an endless series of rollers under the hotel to crash onto the beach.

And then, my radio went off.  A guest on the top floor was reporting that a woman was screaming from the roof and was threatening to jump.  

As we raced to the elevators, Bill used his police radio to report the jumper and to ask for the fire department to be notified.  By the time we got to the roof--sure enough--there was a woman standing close to the edge of the roof, threatening in a very loud voice for us to stand back or she would jump to the parking lot seven floors below.  

I think I spent about two minutes trying to talk to the woman.  She was in her thirties, and I never did learn exactly what she was upset about.  Suddenly, the sound of the sirens of the fire trucks could be heard and we all stopped to look at the distant rotating lights coming closer.  

I can remember wondering what use the fire department was going to be since they didn't have a net and their ladders weren't long enough.  Just what were they going to...

"Bullshit!" roared Bill as he walked past me, getting closer to the woman.  "This is all bullshit!  I used to be a fireman before I joined the force and I know all about you jumpers.  You're going to wait until the last minute, and then try to pull some poor guy off with you.  Well, not tonight, bitch!"

Bill kicked at a brick that was holding an electrical conduit up off the roof of the hotel.  He raised the brick over his head and said, "You don't get to jump.  I'm going to knock your ass right off this roof before any of my friends get here.  You have 5 seconds!  One!  Two!  Three!..."

Before he could get to four, she had passed us and was down those stairs.  We searched, but never found her.  If she jumped, it wasn't from the Flagship--I locked the rooftop door that night and it stayed locked.

It was a unanimous decision by the management that in case of fire, the guests could just jump into the ocean.
  

Be Prepared!

The Boy Scouts of America has reached a half-assed decision this week.  Over 60% of the 1400 voting scoutmasters have decided it is okay for gay boys to be scouts.  Presumably, the other 40% still prefer ritual purification by burning at the stake—and if you can start the fire using only one match, you earn your woodcraft merit badge.

Still, I suppose this is a giant step forward for the scouting organization.  Finally, after more than a hundred years since scouting began, the organization has decided that some boys are not inherently evil.  The founder of scouting--Lord Baden-Powell (who many historians believe was a homosexual)—would be proud.

Still, there seems to be one final step for the organization to take—scoutmasters still have to heterosexual. 

So, this is the way it goes.  A young boy becomes a Cub Scout and starts earning those merit badges.  He buys the uniforms, attends the meetings and goes off to camp every summer.  As he becomes older, he becomes a Boy Scout and then an Explorer.  If he works hard, after many years he can become an Eagle Scout—the epitome of scouting.  Then, when he turns 18, he is thrown out of scouting because his sexuality has made him unfit to be a scoutmaster and have contact with his friends from the day before. 

Something is wrong here: I thought the purpose of scouting was to turn good boys into good men.  The day before that 18^th birthday, that young man is a shining example to young boys everywhere.  Then one day later, the scouts have no use for the degenerate pervert. 

Perhaps it might be instructive to remember how scouting came to the United States.  (Do you feel a history lecture coming on?)  Over a hundred years ago, when scouting was alive and well in England, but had not yet crossed the Atlantic, William Boyce, a Chicago publisher, visited London.  This was back in the days when the humidity rising from the Thames River valley would combine with the dense smoke of innumerable coal fires to produce the infamous London fogs. 

Boyce ventured out into the city one night and immediately got lost in the poorly-lit twisting streets.  Suddenly, a young boy appeared in the gloom and led the publisher through the dense fog to his destination.  When Boyce tried to give the young boy a tip for his service, the boy, now known as the Unknown Scout, refused the money and said that he was just doing his daily good turn. 

Boyce later met with Lord Baden-Powell, learned more about the scouting program, and when he returned to the United States, started the Boy Scouts of America in 1910. 

That story of the Unknown Scout is, paradoxically, well known.  The organization later awarded the young boy The Silver Buffalo, the highest award given by the BSA.  At the ceremony, a large silver buffalo statue was accepted by the Prince of Wales in his stead.  The prince thought so highly of the statue that he left it in America when he returned to England--presumably because his luggage was already overweight.  (I can’t really blame him, as I wouldn’t want the statue myself.  Today, the ugly hunk of metal is on a brick pedestal in Gilmore Park behind the White House.  I tried to find a good photo of the statue, but all I could find is this one.  Is that “statutory” rape?)

Less well known is exactly what happened when Boyce met the Unknown Scout.  Let’s go back to that cold winter night in 1909 when Boyce was standing lost in a pea soup fog. 

“Begging your pardon, guv’nor.  Are you lost?” said the Unknown Scout.

“Why, yes, I am,” replied Boyce.  “Do you know the way to the Dorchester Hotel?”

“Surely.  But first, are you a poofter?” asked the boy.

“A what?” asked Boyce.

“A poofter.  You know guv’nor… an arse bandit.  A shirt lifter.  A bum burglar.”

“Uh, no,” said Boyce.

“Then Bob’s your uncle, guv’nor.  Follow me,” said the Unknown Scout.

The Struggle for Life

The new life form did not know exactly when it became self aware--there was just a gradual realization that it had been for some time.  Nor did the organism even know why it had suddenly become self-conscious, having only the dimmest sort of memory of the world before consciousness. It only realized that it had been thinking about its surroundings, and even about itself, for some time.

Nor was there any apparent reason why it--among all the teeming life forms present--had become self-aware.  Perhaps it was because of the relatively short lifespan of the organism: during the single life span of most living organisms, this life form could go through dozens of generations.  Coupled with the remarkable fertility of the organism, in a very short time, hundreds--even thousands--of the organisms could attempt to adapt to their environment and try new approaches to survival.  The profound fertility and reproductive capacity of the organism was crucial, since the environment was especially  unforgiving and dangerous.  Most of the new organisms died early in life, long before they could individually reproduce.  It was only as a collective species that the life form flourished.

Luckily, the new organisms were perfectly adapted to passing information to each other.  Knowledge, once acquired, was quickly passed from organism to organism and thus, the information was easily retained.

Like all sentient life, the first questions asked were, "Where am I?  Who am I? Why am I here?"  And like all sentient life, the organisms struggled to provide answers.  It was difficult to survey their environment, but they could tell the world was round, with light above and darkness below.  Since life seemed more abundant in the light, they sought the light and shunned the darkness, which seemed comparatively barren.  While they constantly strove upward, more often than not, they failed and fell downward towards the dark.

Thousands of generations passed and eventually, the organisms began to explain their world, and to do this, they needed language, and the names and nouns a language demands.  One of the first names, was the name they gave themselves--they were the Malebolgians.  And after naming themselves, they began the process of naming their world--giving names to every feature and object in their world.  However, they had difficulty in providing individual names for each other, since their consciousness was more of a collective.  While each Malebolgian was capable of individual action, due to its method of reproduction, it was difficult to separate any individual's identity uniquely from either its ancestors or its offspring.

Despite this, the tribe grew, multiplied, and prospered.  In their own way, they achieved the rudiments of civilization.  The Malebolgians fought at times, they explored, they reasoned, and they slowly developed a religion.  Like most early religions, it was focused on the light above, warned against the evils of darkness, and attributed to gods all that could not be directly observed--such as the strange and terrifying noises that came from the sky above them.  As new knowledge was acquired and the realm of the unknown slowly retracted, their religion and their gods evolved.

Some of the Malebolgians began experimenting in art and philosophy, and a few were working on a theoretical explanation of economic activity.  Lives steadily became richer and fuller, and the Malebolgians were even beginning to discuss how to explore the universe beyond their small round world, and what their place in this mysterious cosmos might be.

There is no telling what achievements the Malegbolgians might have eventually achieved had someone not poured an unwanted cup of hot coffee down the kitchen drain and exterminated them.

    

Bond, Wrong Bond

James Bond might be a great spy, but there are a few things that need to be corrected.  Simply put, James Bond is wrong about quite a few things.  I’m not talking about such trivial things as his age.  (According to the original novels by Ian Fleming, Bond would be the oldest patient in the world slowly dying of multiple social diseases.  Hell, the man ended WWII as a Commander in the Royal Navy.  He has to be crowding 100.)

Let's start with what he drinks.  "A vodka martini, shaken—not stirred."   Say this to any movie fan, and they will instantly know you are talking about James Bond—this is his signature drink.  But if you say this to any competent bartender, he will know that you just ruined your drink.

There are two ways to mix a drink and get it cold enough to enjoy:  either use a cocktail shaker with ice or add the ingredients to a pitcher of ice and stir.  It is NOT two ways of doing the same thing.  A shaker is the perfect tool for blending fruit juices with alcohol while a pitcher is perfect for blending two or more kinds of alcohol together.  For a vodka martini, stir 30 times and pour.  Want to be a British effete spy/snob?  Demand a silver cocktail stirrer.   Better yet, ask for a Baccarat martini glass.  Then toss the drink back and throw the glass into a fireplace.  This should cost you no more than $145—that’s about $5 for the drink made correctly and $140 for the glass.  Somewhere in the bar, a Russian spy will wet himself.

In total, Bond has 35 martinis during the 12 novels and two collections of short stories.  Of these drinks, 19 are made with vodka and 16 use gin.  Ignore these and just read the first two books in which Bond reveals his real favorite drink—the Vesper Martini.  It is a strange little drink made with both gin and vodka.  The drink never makes it to the large screen, as it turns out that Bond is a little mercenary.  In the first movie, Smirnoff paid the producers to drop the gin—from that point on, his martinis were either all gin or all vodka.

With the drinks taken care of, let's talk about his car.  In 1963, the Aston-Martin DB5 was one hell of a car.  The style, the break-through engine, the roar of the exhaust...  God, every teenaged boy in America tried in vain to get his mother's Oldsmobile to drive like that silver bullet.  But that was 50 years ago, and while James Bond may never get any older, he needs to ditch the old jalopy.

Cars have changed: that ancient DB5, even if it were in perfect condition, couldn't keep up with a Dodge Minivan driven by a soccer Mom.  My aging Toyota pickup could beat it off the line, accelerate faster, has a better top end and--most importantly—can do something that the Aston Martin could never, ever do even when it was new: make a turn.  Unless 007 were driving down a completely straight, long road (any highway in New Mexico would qualify) then he could never catch my mother's Oldsmobile.

Ian Fleming may have got that whole double-0 business wrong, too.  The original 007 was Dr. John Dee, a seventeenth century secret agent for Queen Elizabeth I.  Dee was a mathematician, a philosopher, a tactician and quite probably the first master spy for England.  He signed his correspondence to the queen with the double zeros to indicate that he was the queen's eyes and the 7 was a cryptic cabalistic symbol.  It doesn't mean a license to kill—it's a postmark.

Next, James is packing the wrong heat.  His rod.  His gat.  His heater.  Let's face it, the man carries a sissy gun.  In the original books, 007 started out carrying a .25 caliber Beretta 418 automatic.  Christ on a Popsicle stick--what the hell was Ian Fleming thinking?  Did Bond have a license to kill house cats?  Shit—my 92 year old Aunt Gertie packed more serious heat.  A .25 automatic is... not even a good girl's gun.  It's just barely a gun.  The puny slug from this Italian popgun has been stopped by shirt buttons!

Eventually, an astute reader told Ian Fleming that his super-spy was armed with the ballistic equivalent of limp spaghetti.  In Dr. No, M demanded that Bond trade in his dinky little .25 for a more lethal weapon—a Walther PPK chambered in 7.65mm.  Now that is a real and proper ladies gun.  While I admit that the gun is a huge improvement over the smaller gun...it is still a gun that is the firearms equivalent of riding a motor scooter--while you might have a lot of fun, you sure hope none of your friends see you doing it.

Lastly, (and my apologies to Sean Connery) but James Bond is not who or what you think he is.  Who played the very first James Bond on the screen?  No, it wasn’t George Lazenby, David Niven, Bob Holness, or even Bob

Simmons.  All of these actors have played Bond, but they weren't the first.  Nor was the first portrayal of James Bond even on the big screen.  He was a television star first, then he was on the radio, and only then did he made it to the theaters.

In the early fifties, CBS had a weekly show called Climax! Mystery Theatre.  On October 21, 1954, Barry Nelson starred as James Bond in an episode called Casino Royale.  Le Chiffre, the villain was played by Peter Lorre.  While the small screen black and white version is—at best—laughable, there is absolutely no doubt that it is the very first James Bond production.  James Bond is an American!

The Tag End of the Semester

Here it is, the tag end of the semester, students and faculty are just days away from enjoying yet another wonderful New Mexico summer.

Well, actually, while a New Mexico spring is fantastic--our summers are a little rough.  Already the state is so dry that the cows are giving condensed milk, the chickens are laying powdered eggs, and there is so much static electricity, that while walking through a parking lot, I accidentally jump-started a Buick.

There is a certain pattern to the end of a school year.  Students you haven’t seen regularly since February start showing up in your office with doctors’ notes explaining how the student was forced to miss the last six weeks of class due to the Galloping Galontis, the Chilean Creeping Crud, or an advanced case of Holy-Shit-I-Think-I’m-Failing.  The only known antidote for the latter is hard work, which, unfortunately for the student, if he were capable of it would have already effectively worked as a vaccine. 

The strangest behavior in the last few weeks has not been exhibited by the students.  Some of the faculty are also beginning to show the stressful signs at the semester’s end.  Professor Maleficent, the Matray Chair of Anthropophagic Studies, is desperately seeking a way to extend her interminable leave of absence for just one more semester, without pushing her retirement date past her life expectancy.   Despite the pleas of her publisher, she needs just one more semester to finish writing her cookbook.

The surest sign of a semester’s end, however, is the all too predictable return of Professor Chupacabra stalking his colleagues.  As soon as he realizes that he will no longer have students to torture, he turns to attacking those who work around him.

This is the sort of problem not isolated to Enema U.  It seems to be universal that, just as you feel motivated to really put your shoulder to the wheel and get some work done, some blithering asshole comes along and pushes you into a black hole of demotivation.  It wouldn't be so bad if you could isolate all of these mental midgets in one spot, where they could spend all day cancelling each other out.  Unfortunately, the universe seems to scatter the problem children around the world in such a way that each and every organization has its own private moron riding the brake on progress.

God knows, we have a beaut here at Enema U.  For a long time, most of the students and damn near all the faculty had considered him to be some form of evil troll that lived under the educational bridge of life.  Periodically, he slithers out of the ooze of imagined slights to scream his personal anguish at an imagined victimization from those he deems inferior, before the light of day burns his bloodshot eyes and he scampers back under his dank bridge.  Hiding behind the bent shield of tenure he emails his curses.  Rarely seen, the only sign of his presence between attacks is the labored breathing of the troll--a sound not unlike the rattling hiss of a leaky boiler.

But, it turns out that we were wrong.  He is not a troll--he is in fact Professor Chupacabra, a beast long thought to be mythological. While most of the stories about a chupacabra say that he survives by sucking the life out of goats, our Professor Chupacabra has only been known to kill them with his bare hands.  Goats are only a hobby--he prefers to suck the life out of an entire department, embroiling the faculty in pointless and childish arguments that would shame kindergarteners.

There is, however, a solution.  Even as I write this, the department is taking up a collection to enroll Professor Chupacabra in the Lard of the Month Club.  When he finally has the inevitable heart attack and the Biology Department has performed the necropsy, we plan to bury the monster under the Education Building.