If Republicans Get to Run the World...

...for an extended period of time, we may eventually see winters when homeless people freezing to death in the streets all over the country, are rounded up and marched/dumped into furnaces to heat the homes of the wealthy.

Balancing Act

Fortune Cookie

I have a fortune cookie fortune tacked to my fridge.

It says: "Moderate your appetite so that with a little, you may be content."

Tacked to the fridge, it would seem like a good reminder for someone on a diet.

Or a budget.

Which is, like, nobody in America.

But probably should be 95% of the population.

Or more.

I kept it because I like applying it to other areas of life. Or trying anyway.

And, right... we should probably also apply the principle to society as a whole.

But of course, it has to start with individuals.

Enough individuals to reach a Gladwellian tipping point.

Feel free to use the term "Gladwellian" all you like (only for people familiar with the work of Malcolm Gladwell).

Once a tipping point of individuals with a new viewpoint is reached, society as a whole spasms forward. Then strides confidently. Then coasts for a bit.

In any case, I find that doing with less not only doesn't diminish my fun, it increases it. By maybe a lot!

Case in point: the immense blackout of summer '03. I ended up going to my roof where I met and hung out with some random neighbors from my building in dumbo. We'd all had the same idea: to watch the sun set behind a Manhattan skyline that wasn't going to light up. As if Christo, for the sake of Art, had covered all the windows of a normal Manhattan in heavy black construction paper. Just for one night. Just for the fuck of it. It was a pretty amazing sight.

In addition to their personalities, people brought things from their refrigerators/freezers to share. Spontaneously. And not just booze. Other stuff too.

Jeff contributed a hammock. I retrieved a lantern and an acoustic guitar. Various people brought varying ability to play guitar. There were cute girls.

It was the most fun I'd had in a while.

I'd like NYC to do that on purpose.

Every so often.

Regularly, even.

These 24-hour "electricity holidays" would of course be scheduled and announced well in advance, with plenty of reminders. Don't want people to have to climb up out of subway tunnels 'n' shit.

I could stand to do that once a month, possibly once a week. Would it kill us to go Amish one day out of seven? I think we might find we like it so much that some of us opt to get together for small-scale impromptu power-downs of our own. Though, it may be rough on gamers, geeks and internet-addicts (he typed into a blogger composition window).

It could become a tourist attraction too, but with no street lights, driving a car into/in town would have to be strictly forbidden. Well, maybe we would need minimal street lights, if for no reason other than to protect pedestrians from cyclists, who would most likely want to take full advantage of car-free roads throughout the entire city [viva la bicicleta!] Restaurants with gas stoves could still prepare candle-lit meals in candle-lit kitchens, and probably charge a healthy premium.

Street artists / performers covered in EL-wire and cool battery-powered blinky-tronic stuff would attract crowds, as would fire-spinners, drum-circles, little jazz combos, all over town.

Hospitals and all emergency response shit would of course still draw power as normal.

Dance club owners would be pissed.

So... clearly there are still a few minor kinks to work out.

I Love the Jungle

Jungle vs. Jungle

Here are some of my favorite differences between Peru's Amazon jungle and NYC's urban one...

PERU
Everybody I met seemed completely happy

NYC
Nobody I meet seems particularly happy at all

PERU
Nobody complains about anything, not even children

NYC
Everybody complains about everything

PERU
Most folks don't have a pot to piss in

NYC
Piss-pots abound (and come in many fancy styles and colors)

PERU
Sits on edge of largest expanse of wild nature on Earth

NYC
Has well-manicured, perfectly rectangular tree museum in the middle of it

PERU
Jungle rats are not only edible and delicious, but are even medicinal (cure bronchitis)

NYC
Rats must not be eaten under any circumstances, and their unstoppable army will one day rule the surface world

PERU
Totally worth learning Spanish for

NYC
Spanish can’t hurt you here either, actually

Thought of the Day

Here's how it all boils down:

The more we merge with what we create (products, fashions, entertainment distractions, etc.) the more stressed out and sick we become, on the individual, societal and environmental levels. The more we merge with that which creates us (each other, nature, a higher power/spiritual realm) the happier and healthier we become, on the individual, societal and environmental levels.

Enjoy your day!

Ok, I Admit it...

... there are some TV shows that I genuinely enjoy.

I know, I know. That makes me a lousy leftist. And a less interesting person. But at least I'm honest.

One of the shows I like is this new, slightly overweening drama "Kings." Big budget, good acting, interesting characters, insightful writing with keen social commentary, blah blah blah. It doesn't hurt that the lighting, cinematography, sets and locations are all gorgeous either, with many of the exteriors and even many interiors shot in NYC, to great effect. I recognized the auditorium of the New York Times HQ building in a recent episode. It looked better in the show than it did in person.

The most recent episode was kind of a metaphor for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, centering on a land-for-peace deal, bitterly opposed by the people living in the area that would be given back to the enemy in exchange for an end to the violence. Except in this case, the land in question is, like, Seattle.

The other show I like is one that, by rights, I should loathe. Or at least seriously resent. It is a middle-brow work-place comedy, stupidly entitled "Better Off Ted." The first mildly irritating thing about the show is that its logo uses the exact same font as the TED conference organization, a truly important cultural force which no mere TV show would ever deserve to be associated with. But then, it's just a logo font and I should probably let it go.

The show is about a guy (obviously named 'Ted') who runs the research and development efforts of an amoral mega-corporation portrayed as something like GE and Monsanto combined. They make everything from light bulbs to genetically modified food crops to advanced weapons systems. Each episode begins with a promotional spot for this fictitious company complete with mellifluous female voice-over and slick production quality. The main character is a likable everyman, aware of the absurdities of his job while struggling to live up to the fairly basic moral code which he has instilled in his own 7-year-old (?) daughter. The other characters are all quirky and likable too and include an obligatory cute love-interest woman, two obligatory nerdy/zany lab-coated scientists who argue a lot despite being best friends, and then there's Ted's boss. She is the second thing about the show that mildly irritates me.

Ted's boss is basically (exactly!) a character I wrote as the boss of a giant cosmetics company in a zombie screenplay I've been working on (on and off) for, um, wow, a few years now, crap. Some of you might be familiar with it. Anyway, seeing what pretty well amounts to a character I created some years ago, fully realized in a mainstream network TV show today is... I gotta say... pretty fucking strange. I feel like I should be really pissed off, but Portia de Rossi does such a good job with the character (playing her as the single most comically icy and heartless person you've ever begrudgingly liked) that I can't really complain. If anything, it makes me want to submit scripts and force my way onto the show's writing staff.

The satire varies from pretty dead-on sharp, to not-edgy-or-scathing-enough, to satirizing something which is even more absurd/horrible in real life so you can't count it as satire. Obviously, I'd like to see the show take a meaner, darker approach, but even in its currently tame and whimsical state, I have to admit... it does kinda tickle me. Pretty consistently too. And yeah, if I wrote for it, it would be much harder to find sponsors and it would have to be on late at night (much less "family friendly") and would probably piss off a lot of decent salt-of-the-earth types. Oh well. I guess I'll have to be satisfied with it the way it is. For better or worse, it definitely reminds me of some of the actual jobs I've had over the years. Well right, I guess that would have to go in the "worse" column.

Of course, it is also possible that this piece of toothless fluff is completely lame, I'm losing my mind in my old age and am now way too easily amused. I really don't know.

Cheers!

PS: Sorry I've dropped off the face of the earth lately. I'll try to pay more attention to this here word thing again. I'm leaving for Peru on the 16th, staying in the jungle for a couple weeks, and may have some fun things to write about upon my return, so there's that.

The YouTube Mashup Bar Has Been Raised

Let's Play The Feud...

YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE MY ANSWERS! Copy this note and write a new note. Then erase my answers and fill in your answers. Tag your friends and don't forget to tag me too. Remember, you can't use the same answer as the person who sent it to you. If my answers are dumb, it's because the person before me had the good ones!

1. Name something you use in the shower: salad tongs

2. Name something a football player wears under his uniform: pantyhose

3. Name something people hate to find on their windshield: dead hooker

4. Name something a man might buy before a date: salad tongs

5. What is another word for blemish? Dubya

6. Something you cook in the microwave: chips ahoy cookies, seriously, 20 seconds, try it.

7. Name a piece of furniture people need help moving: man-sized safe

8. Name something a dog does that embarrasses its owner: puts the porn video they made on the internet

9. Name a kind of test you cannot study for: sobriety

10. Name something a boy scout gets a merit badge for: ratting out commies

11. Name a phrase with the word "home" in it: "play along with The Newlywed Game home version, only $19.95 available at Walgreens and wherever fine products are sold"

12. Name a sport where players lose teeth: The Sugar 5000

13. Name something a teacher can do to ruin a student's day: threaten to stop sleeping with him unless he murders her husband

14. What is a way you can tell someone has been crying? review the nanny-cam footage

15. Name something a person wears even if it has a hole in it: swiss cheese helmet

16. Name something that gets smaller the more you use it: global oil supply

25 fake things

In case you're not on the facebook.

(I would kind of like to see us lose our fascination with pseudo-obligatory nuisance chains. I mean, I thought memes were only supposed to spread via some sort of merit and not a misplaced sense of obligation/peer pressure. Having said that, yeah... I totally caved.)


1. I am fluent in almost 2 languages: English and Idioglossia.

2. Shortly after I was born, my parents were bitten by a wolfman. Raised by werefolk.

3. My boyscout leader taught me the proper way to smoke crack.

4. My favorite food is toast.

5. When I was in the 7th grade, I killed several prostitutes in dark alleyways of London and totally got away with it!

6. I am equal parts lizard, goat, soy and Rasputin.

7. As a small child, when adults used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always said the same thing... "The mayor of ho-town!"

8. Throughout the 70's, I commanded my own Army of God and led my men on a campaign of destruction the likes of which Ridgewood, NJ had never seen.

9. Sometimes, when I didn't know the correct answer in history class, I would save face by pretending to be my own twin brother.

10. I once invented a time machine and went back in time and stopped myself from being born, just to see what would happen, and I've been stuck in a paradox ever since. It kinda blows.

11. My first real job in NYC was for a large company owned by a 60-something British gentleman and avid mountaineer who had once summitted Everest. One time, while flirting with our receptionist, I jokingly said I suspected the owner was merely compensating for the fact that his parents named him "Leslie" and then I called the man a "pathetic little pansy" not realizing he was right behind me the whole time. He challenged me to a race up the entire staircase of the office building (32 flights) the following day at noon. At the starting gun, he elbowed me in the ribcage as hard as he could, knocking me off balance, then bolted, taking the stairs two at a time like they were nothing. As soon as I regained my footing, I followed, ignoring the pain shooting through my chest. He had a commanding lead, but I figured I'd make up some distance if I could keep a steady pace into the upper third. By around the 25th floor, I was right on his heels, though he was still taking the stairs two at a time. The blood was pounding in my ears, as was the sound of our breathing and our footsteps echoing down the fluorescent-lit gray and beige concrete stairwell. The pain in my side had increased considerably and was making it all the more difficult to breathe, all the more painful to use the banister to help hoist myself up. I couldn't believe a guy 40 years older than me was still ahead, seemingly fine. Two flights later he faltered a bit, tripping ever so slightly, but quickly righted himself and continued as before. But it meant he was getting tired. So I made my move. Leg muscles burning, I shoved past him on the outside as we were making a flight-turn. Between huffs and puffs I said "Take THAT old man!" (though it probably sounded more like "Tay... tha... oh... muh...!") and with renewed zeal I started taking the remaining stairs 3 at a time, opening up a decent lead. This proved unsustainable and on the last flight I tripped, badly. I was disoriented for just a moment, but it was long enough for the old man to catch up. He took the opportunity to stomp my left ankle which was draped from one step to the next. I felt, and we both heard, the bone crunch a little. The pain was excruciating. Still, I dragged myself the rest of the way onto the roof, emerging into the midday sunshine only two or three steps behind him. He turned, pointed at me and was about to tell me I was fired and what a loser I was when he suffered both a massive heart attack and stroke. He was dead almost instantly. Whew, dodged a bullet there!

12. I like beagles.

13. My favorite diseases are the ones with the least clinical names: scurvy, scrapey, pringles, shegetz, exploding buttock disease, etc.

14. My favorite Star Wars character is the second Jawa from the left. I don't know his name, so I just call him 'Biff.'

15. I woud like to bring back names that have gone out of style, and so plan to call my male children things like: Smedley, Ozymandias, Abner, Agamemnon, Ivanhoe, Caligula and Kevin. My female children will be named: Bertha, Hecate, Lucretia -- wait a minute... those are actually kinda cool. Hmm. Female names not mockable. Never mind.

16. I have had lots of odd jobs: paperboy, rockboy, scissorboy, waterboy, astroboy, pickleboy, doorman, floorman, corpsman, manwhore, manservant, manager, ump, wimp, tramp, scamp, vamp, party clown, rodeo clown, subway clown, elevator clown, laundromat clown, sidewalk clown, crosswalk clown, urinal clown, fast-food restaurant employee, bookkeeper, bookloser, bookstealer, bookbanner, bookbinder, minderbinder, masterminderbinder, elf (x-mas), elf (regular), elf (high-octane), meal-replacement bartender and stooge.

17. Speaking of... My favorite of the Three Stooges is Shemp: the unsung stooge.

18. I was once bitten by a radioactive tree-sloth, giving me sloth powers, so I designed a costume and became Slothman, but nobody knew the difference so now I just hang out.

19. In the future, I will be Andy Warhol for fifteen minutes.

20. I am trying to get into the habit of... an attractive nun I met the other day. [rimshot!]

21. When future archaeologists unearth the time capsule I buried, the contents will convince them that every single other person living in this era has also buried a time capsule somewhere. I love messin' with future archaeologists.

22. I know the difference between your, you're, yore and yawer.

23. I blindly accept all cookies.

24. In all honesty, I can't be trusted.

25. Murly bok zaklompt feffen arungulous, pafto sherzen bejerzen. Oytag tatz? Totz. Tonkle totz. (See #1.)

25 Actual Things

Okay, here's the real list...

1. I was born 8 days early. This was the last time I was early for anything. Or on time even.

2. Around the age of 4, on a lovely suburban spring day, my mom told me to play outside (I think she just needed a little quiet time to herself). I refused. She shuffled me out the kitchen storm door. I opened it and came back in. She shuffled me out again and locked the storm door. I punched my fist through the window, cutting my soft little hand to ribbons. Blood and glass everywhere. What a stubborn little bastard.

3. My three most physically painful experiences so far: molar drilled with no novocaine, kidney stone, thumbnail ripped off. Of the three, I bet the one that made you wince was the thumbnail.

4. When I was a teenager, I never thought I'd live to see 30, partly because I expected Ronald Reagan, motivated solely by shits and giggles, to push The Button. But also because I assumed I'd do something really reckless at some point. These two things are of course related.

5. Even though I'm into health food and preserving nature all that good stuff, I have a secret perverse desire to create crassly commercial genetic abominations. E.g.: splice the gene that causes coffee beans to have caffeine in 'em, into cow DNA -- ladies and gentlemen, I give you... HyperBeef™!

6. Turning to sports... I peaked athletically at the age of 12. But back then (and I'm totally serious) I was pure poetry in motion. Okay, I'm still poetry in motion, only now the poet is Ogden Nash.

7. I am a perfectionist. I'm also a lazy slob. These sound completely incompatible, and they are. When I was young: torment. Now: meh.

8. In elementary school, my favorite subject was math. But in 7th grade, I decided words were more fun than numbers. Been paying the price ever since.

9. At 13, I was one of the first kids in my town to convince his parents to get a computer for the home. My dad, whose giant multinational pharmaceutical company had a Honeywell 6000 mainframe taking up half the corporate campus, wanted to know: why on god's green earth would we ever need a home computer? What the hell are you going to do with it?!? "I could do my school homework!" I said, by which I meant play games. The computer was an "Apple 2 plus" -- apple ][+ -- and it came with 48K RAM (expandable to 64K) at which my father was completely astonished. So much memory! How could you possibly ever NEED that much!? To put that in perspective, it might be enough memory to hold a second or two of an mp3.

10. I played the sousaphone in my high school marching band. Clearly, I thought I was this guy:


But everybody else probably thought I was this guy...


Really, I was probably closest to being this guy...


11. When I was at the height of my teen angst and confusion, I had a dream wherein all the mystical secrets of the Universe were revealed to me. I remember being so blissfully happy in the dream, to finally have the answers! It was all so simple. It made so much sense. I had understanding! It was genuinely wonderful. Then I woke up and was helpless to stop it from all slipping away, leaving me with an incredibly profound sense of loss. A cosmic tease of infinite bigness!

12. Whenever someone I grew up with finds me on the facebook and asks if I "remember when we did that thing by the place where we went that time? That was so much fun!/I was so mad at you!" I almost never know what they're talking about. So I ask, "Are you sure that was me?" and they're all like, "Totally sure! Don't you remember? That song by [80's pop group I swear I've never heard of] was playing on the radio and you said something funny about goats! Remember?" Um... I got nothing. This makes me feel slightly stupid. But in my defense, it was the 80's and I was in a state of fairly constant background-level existential itch, so for most of the time I just wasn't paying attention, even when it looked like I was. I usually joke that I've long since killed the brain cells that stored those memories. But I'm sure it's all in there somewhere.

13. Supposedly, my first word was "shit."

14. I never acquired ability to sight-read music because I memorized everything by ear long before figuring out what all the dots and squiggles were. Thus, I never became a musician. If I didn't believe in reincarnation, I'd probably regret this.

15. I occasionally talk to myself. For a while, this took the form of pretend conversations as a guest on Letterman. But not anymore. Now it's Jon Stewart. No offense Dave.
"None taken Jonnyboy. If you ever feel like paying us another visit, the door's always open."
"Thanks Dave, I'll try to pretend to make it back from time to time."

16. There are two babysitters from my childhood who stand out in my memory. One was Eddie, who could draw really cool-looking rocketships, and would let us build couch-cushion fortresses. The other was a girl whose name I've forgotten, but who we found incredibly entertaining because of this thing she could do with a ping-pong ball. (Haha, no. She could keep it bouncing on a paddle hundreds of times without missing. Impressive to a 6-year-old. Her record was over 700 hits I think. Come to think of it, that's impressive to me now! My brother and I were truly amazed but she must've been bored to tears. Yet, she indulged us, applying zen-like concentration to the super-repetitive, utterly pointless task.)

17. I was more of an adult 20 years ago than I am now.

18. I used to chop wood and carry water. Now, I chop wood and carry water. (In the future, I will use lasers!)

19. I can fall in love with a woman based solely on the sound of her voice/laugh. This has backfired on me.

20. Corollary to #19: If her voice doesn't do it for me, I could find a woman super-attractive in every other way and still not be able to -- ahem -- consummate. The attempt to ignore this has backfired on me.

21. When I was in the 5th grade, for Halloween, my elementary school had a "crazy hat contest." I figured all the other kids would come to school dressed as normal Halloween-ish things, with the addition of a hat with all sorts of wacky crap glued onto it. To counter this, and in an early manifestation of my love of efficiency, I decided to simply dress up as a hat for Halloween. I fashioned a crude giant wizard hat shape out of chicken-wire, and my mom helped me cover it in a dark fabric (all she had was purple) to which I hastily attached yellow stars and crescent moons an' shit. Even with the little eye holes we cut, it was difficult to see out of, and nearly impossible to climb stairs in. And even though it probably made me look more like a giant magical purple condom than anything else, I won the hat contest. (From this I concluded that 'concept' took precedence over 'execution', and that's why I've never achieved anything in life. Wah wah.)

22. I used to think that logic, reason and the scientific method would lead us to all knowable knowledge. I don't think that anymore.

23. As much as I consider myself a "word guy" linguistic precision doesn't really matter to me. And I'm not very good at scrabble™ -- I can't help wanting to make up my own words ('spaloney' should totally be a thing). I do take special notice whenever I, or someone else, utters a phrase or sentence which I can't imagine has ever been uttered before. One recent example: "Oh no, I spilled the oat-bran into the laundry basket full of garden hose."

24. Whenever I go for any length of time without a steady 9-to-5, I become completely nocturnal.

25. When I was 4 years old, I was in a pre-school class at our local synagogue. One day while the kids were all sitting on the floor listening to the teacher read us a story, a really tall girl named Sarah-Jane trapped me under her dress/skirt/thing. I struggled and crawled out only to have her trap me under it again. It was yellow, and allowed enough light in so I could see the floral pattern on her underwear. I remember being glad I didn't have flowers on my underwear. Anyway, as humiliated as I thought I should feel at being trapped by a girl, under her dress, I didn't want to do anything particularly drastic to change the situation. I didn't want to interrupt the teacher or the story-time, so I didn't yell. And I guess I figured it would be wrong to hit a girl, especially, you know, in the crotch. So, I just sat there, listening to the slightly muffled sound of Sarah-Jane trying to contain her giggles, and looking at her long, smooth legs. I sometimes wonder what happened to her. Probably a lawyer now.

Meme memed.

A New Era of Honesty and Transparency

After I became an absurdly and unalterably happy guy about 12 years ago, I found myself bereft of the perverse joy of angry cynicism and mean-spirited dark humor that had nurtured me like a criminally insane mother's love for so many years. Despite the fact that this perverse pleasure was replaced by genuine joy, and thus has long been rendered utterly obsolete, I still crave it on occasion, and depending on how much caffeine I've ingested, am still capable of conjuring up some seriously cynical, though hopefully funny, shit.

And even though an honest man is finally -- finally -- sitting in the Oval Office; and even though that pilot did an amazing job landing that jet a few doors down from my apartment; and even though, thanks to the combination of corporate layoffs, a "warn notice" and a little thing called "severance" I get to be a man of relative leisure for a time; and even though the TED conference videos consistently reaffirm my faith in humanity... there are still at least a few things worth getting psychotically enraged over.

Like the fact that while I've been quietly expecting a major melt-down of the global economy for 14 years (ever since my first real corporate job inadvertently taught me that our entire economic "system" was built primarily on... absolutely fucking nothing) the "experts" were all caught with their pants down, shocked and awed. This is so infuriating it makes me feel like the Napoleon Dynamite guy at his most exasperated: "IDIOTS!" Why, only a few months before the market first crashed, I was telling a co-worker how I occasionally fantasized about one day owning an energy-independent off-grid home up in the woods somewhere, with a greenhouse to grow my own vegetables, allowing me to cut all conceivable ties to "the system." She asked why I would ever want to do something so extreme, and, among other things, I mentioned how it was so patently -- painfully -- obvious to me that our current practice of capitalism was inherently unsustainable and doomed to fail.

Ta da!

For my next trick, I'll guess the number of jelly beans in that giant jar: zero! (You can no longer afford jelly beans.)

During that conversation, my coworker didn't agree with me. She didn't see things the way I did. Nor did I expect her to. The patterns, the connections. But the fact that the professionals, the people who supposedly devoted their careers to studying every little detail of the corrupt, unregulated house of cards vapor and make-believe we call The Market, couldn't see what was so unavoidably clear to me, a nobody, was really rather frustrating. Or maybe they just refused to see/admit it. I mean, it does make a lot more sense that it would really be collective denial instead of collective idiocy.

But... it is now the dawn of a new era. The Obama era. The era of leaders who might actually do stuff that makes sense. The era of leaders who will base their decisions on "reality" and the good advice of people who know what the fuck they're talking about. The era of leaders who, when asked simple direct questions, will give simple honest answers. The era of leaders who might actually give a shit about the people who elected them. The era of leaders who can admit it when they make mistakes and accept responsibility for their actions/decisions like any normal adult. The era of leaders who don't have their heads up their asses. The era of leaders who aren't in it solely for the money (since there won't be any). The era of leaders we can actually respect.

Goodbye to the time of unbridled stupidity and greed! Hello to the time of unbridled... um... horniness!

Best of all, I've got my next project lined up, and I couldn't ask for a better one. It's in its embryonic stages right now, so I'm not going to say anything else about it. Just, you know, send me good productivity vibes. Yeah... just like that. Ooh... yeah, vibey.

Of course, there might someday come a time when I'll need to return to playing the role of drooling lackey to some corporate ogre, combing the help-wanted ads like everybody else. And I hope that if that day does come, this era of openness and honesty will be at its full flower. Imagine the types of job listings there could be...

DETAIL ORIENTED
Hyper-organized anal-retentive mouse-person with no life whatsoever wanted for extremely abusive department assistant position. Very long hours of high-stress low-paying drudgery peppered with occasional verbal/emotional torture. Those with friends, self-respect, need not apply.

SALES $
Relentless amoral asshole wanted to SELL SELL SELL! Do you have what it takes to convince poor people to spend what little money they have on nonsensical garbage nobody would ever need in a thousand years? Can you ignore the fact that rapacious consumerism will bury civilization under its own flatulent bulk until it chokes itself completely to death? Do you often feel like a hungry shark in a tank of bleeding pudgy children who never got past the doggie-paddle? Do you like feeling that way? (Do you love it?) If you answered yes to these questions, we want to hire you, you magnificent piece of shit!

EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT
Hot girl wanted for position as executive assistant to Senior VP of Marketing for a successful alcoholic beverage company. Must be exceedingly hot. Must have tastefully office-appropriate, yet totally hot wardrobe. Knowledge of and enthusiasm for alcoholic beverages a big plus. Good phone manner a plus. Anything less than top-tier hot need not apply.

HAZARD PAY
Extremely desperate individuals wanted for highly dangerous work with little chance of survival. On the job training. $1000 for every full week of service. Poor sense of smell a plus. Always plenty of positions to fill. Call any time and ask for Bob.

Stop Light Pollution...

... or else images like this one will no longer be possible to capture (it's a 360 degree panorama flattened out into a rectangle, showing our galaxy in the night sky over Death Valley).

Something I'd Like to See

I just came back from the dentist. Routine cleaning/check-up. Everything's fine in there.

My dentist happens to be a really hot woman (married, alas) and all her hygienists are also really hot. Walking in there reminds me of the purple-roofed ethical suicide parlor from the Kurt Vonnegut short story, "Welcome to the Monkey House" except instead of the hot women in their white clinical outfits putting you to death, they simply inflict pain and discomfort on your tender teeth and gums for a while after which you emerge with cleaner, smoother choppers. That metal claw? The suction tube? The rotary grit-scrubber? That ultrasonic torture needle? The stuff of nightmares! Except, wielded by a pretty girl, so how bad could it all be?

Personally, I think that instead of white lab coats it would be more appropriate if they were dressed in full-on dominatrix gear. More appropriate and hotter.

That's all.