Nasty (Bacon) Bits & Pieces
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez told his people last week they better lose some weight if their glorious revolution is to be successful. ”There are lots of fat people,” said the not-so-svelte tyrant. He explained the solution during a televised speech. “Doing sit-
ups. Eating well. One has to learn how to eat.”
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| Will Michael Moore heed the diet call of his buddy Chavez? |
So what does a good revolutionary eat? Soy milk and rice pasta for starters. Such healthy dishes make Chavez feel “ready to continue commanding the Bolívarian revolution”. Unfortunately, most Venezuelans prefer coke, beer, and fried pork.
I’m sure the fact that Chavez is calling his people fat has nothing to do with their love for American-style food products. I’m further confident this speech has nothing to do with coming restrictions on the lives of Venezuelans. Riiiigggghhhht.
In other news this past week, pigs may not be as stupid as we thought. Actually, let’s face it, no one cares about how smart pigs might be except for misguided researchers intent on wasting millions of dollars so we can figure out how smart our food might be before it walks to slaughter. A study on pig cognition has shown that pigs must be quick learners. Wanna know what it is to lead an empty life? Become a scientific researcher that doesn’t benefit society no matter how “successful” they ever become. I wonder if this is a government-funded (our tax money) project.
Speaking of fat pigs, Rosie O’Donnell was back in the news last week. I guess 
pigs aren’t that smart after all. She managed to chortle out a couple swears before dropping an F bomb on Fallon’s audience. By the way, Fallon loses a ton of cred in my book for appearing to be so happy about her. I thought we knew you better Jimmy.
Rosie’s lone positive contribution to society is that she didn’t ruin A League Of Their Own. I still can’t believe she played Betty Rubble, beloved cartoon of my youth. She makes Miss Piggy look like Marilyn Monroe. I never thought twice about Miss Nasty until I happened to catch her ambushing Tom Selleck on her doomed show back in 1999. She’s been an abject failure ever since.
Maybe they can send some of these fools to the moon. According to NASA, there’s plenty of water there for them to drink. You may remember back on October 9th when some hopeful observers stood on their front porch or lawn to see the Lcross Centuar make impact with the moon. Apparently you can’t see a car crash 250,000 miles away. Shocker. Read more »
Veterans Day 2009
Thank you for your service. We don’t just say it because it sounds good, and you don’t serve just because it looks good. This site is about truth, and there can be nowhere on earth where the truth is as real and powerful as in war. Many men and women have served and are serving away from battlegrounds. They sacrifice so we can be safe. They are ready when we aren’t. They lose while we live.
Thank you.
D.C. Sniper Will Die Tonight
Imagine cruising down to the local car wash one mid-morning to vacuum your car out. Now imagine that’s the last thing you ever did because a bullet that seemed to come ou
t of nowhere took your life. Lori Lewis Rivera was only 25 in October of 2002 when she met that fate. Imagine if she were your child.
Tonight, John Muhammad–the monstrous coward who killed 10 people and injured more from a trunk in 2002–will be executed on purpose. The Supreme Court isn’t letting him off. He’ll be dead by the time the Pittsburgh Penguins finish up with the Boston Bruins. Read more »
20th Anniversary Of The Wall’s Fall: Thanks For Playing Communism
Let’s see if I can slip one past the censors here like Adrian Cronauer in Good Morning Vietnam. The Berlin Wall–the very symbol of the Cold War between capitalism and communism–came down twenty years ago today. You won’t hear too much about this monstrously historic day from media types hell-bent on leading America towards some of the same failed ideas symbolized by that wa
ll. You also won’t hear about it from President Obama who is skipping the international celebration of the event! What?
Well, forgive me if I’d like to celebrate the failure of the Soviet Union and the victory, yes victory, of America and the free world in the Cold War led by President Reagan. Such statements may shock your American sensibilities, so let’s check in on Europe where they are prominently celebrating this historic anniversary, the commemoration of the day freedom won out, when our open system conquered the veiled evil, yes evil, of the Soviet’s communist empire.
The Berlin celebration will balance glitz with sobriety. World leaders such as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Sarkozy, Russian President Medvedev, and more will be there to speak. Yet Obama won’t. As the German news publication Der Spiegel put it, “Barrack is too busy.”
Obama has already made more international trips in his first year than Bush and Clinton combined, yet he doesn’t have time to go to Berlin. Now, thanks to a little something called high school, I know a thing or two about getting blown off. I’ve heard plenty of excuses in the “I have to wash my hair all weekend” mode. So I feel qualified to say that Obama is full of it. Sorry Berlin. Like Molly Ringwald in Pretty In Pink, you can keep putting on all the makeup you want, but sometimes he just isn’t going to show no matter what he says.
This just in from the Not Speaking Of Makeup department: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is attending in Obama’s place. Oh goodie. Read more »
Wanna Fix The Economy? Start With Gym Class
You’ve probably heard by now that Americans of today are the fattest civilization in world history. Those extra pounds come at a cost to our health
and pocketbooks. We need to help set our kids on the right track to avoid some scary trends in their future.
The NFL Network got me curious about all this with an ongoing advertising blitz to keep gym in school. Kurt Warner smiles and tells us our kids aren’t getting enough exercise. Okay, I think. Then I see Hines Ward, Super Bowl hero and newly elected “Dirtiest Player In Football” by his peers, along with other football stars running in thirty-second slow motion chunks with a bunch of kids. I wonder, have schools really been eliminating gym class and physical exercise? I process. This is the American public school system. Congress is involved. I conclude that yep, if there’s a wrong option to be pursued, our politicians will run that sick rabbit down like greyhounds on a fast track.
I hear you already, oh defender of government. Here he goes again, connecting fat kids with government while bashing politicians. You’re right. I’ll spare you my tales as a No Child Left Behind contractor and the pros and cons of that legislation. I’ll also try to tread lightly over our government in school is destroying our future pamphleteering. It’s really quite simple though, and it goes like this.
Call it EduClaytion’s Razor. Maybe you’ve heard of Ockham’s Razor, that medieval scholar who decided that if you have two or more alternatives when trying to figure out a solution, just pick the simplest explanation. Well, with EduClaytion’s Razor, whenever you have to figure out what went wrong in a particular situation, and the government is at all a character in the story, then go with the politicians involved (they’ll be the ones telling you they can make things better) and figure out what they did this time.
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The NFL Network’s site for the Keep Gym program clearly lists some facts about the importance of this drive to keep kids active. You don’t have to be a child psychologist to know that video games (and I’m a big fan) and computers have kept a lot of young people (old peeps for that matter) indoors. But consider these lowlights.
- Childhood obesity has tripled since 1980
- “Health care providers are finding more and more children with type 2 diabetes and other conditions stemming from obesity and inactivity that were previously diagnosed almost entirely in adults aged 40 years or older.”
- “Current annual medical costs related to obesity total $147 billion nationally…”
- Unfit and overweight kids perform worse academically than students who score well on fitness tests.
There’s a ton of meat (forgive the pun) in those four points, but consider that while as calories increase:
“The percentage of students who attend daily PE dropped from 42% in 1991 to 28% in 2003. Fewer than 8% of U.S. middle schools provide daily physical education for the entire school year.”
If anybody needs to run it’s junior high students. In America, health problems equal money problems, but moral and monetary issues are also connected. Develop these thoughts on your own, but obesity is only one side of this story. We aren’t even mentioning consequences of hormonal frustration and pent-up aggression. Maybe you’ve heard about increasing violence in our schools. It’s almost like our political and educational leaders want kids to be as screwed up as possible heading into life. Read more »
Obama’s Uh-Oh Of The Month
The results are in. For those of you unaware, yesterday was actually an election day. If you missed it, don’t worry. It’s only the staple of our entire republican way of life in which we give all power to elected representatives in a free and fair process that is the hallmark of democracy. Whew. Where was I?
Oh yeah, the Democrats got trounced. Not surprising if you read history books. This trend is common. As a matter of fact, you’ve perhaps heard that in all America’s history, each time a political party takes the White House (i.e. Dems in 2008), that party loses the following midterm elections. The only two exceptions are FDR and George W. Bush. Roosevelt had the country’s attention during the Great Depression while Bush rocked America’s approval following 9/11.
So independents in key states broke for the GOP last night. That simply lines up with our history, a two century string of checks and balances where the winners eventually lose and the losers can usually make a comeback.
You can read any of a thousand articles for details, but here’s the important basics you should know to gather the meaning of these elections.
- Obama ‘s influence takes a hit. He personally campaigned a good deal for his party, most notably Democratic gubernatorial candidates in NJ (Corzine) and Virginia (Deeds). They both lost even with the president’s backing. Read more »
Monster Cereals And The Aliens Of “V” or Childhood In The 80s
We’re in the home stretch of the year, a time that pumps more nostalgia through our work-addled minds than ever. Sure, Thanksgiving and Christmas play a big part in those memories, thick as eggnog, but in this changing season, the flip from October to November, memories really start to pile up 
like leaves on a frosty lawn.
I think a big part of this nostalgia has to do with Halloween. Let’s face it, you’re likely to remember dressing up as a superhero or monster or princess only to slither around in the dark receiving freebies from strangers. You see yourself behind those masks as the years pass, each pillowcase wielding visitor another spark for stagnant brain files. Autumn is filled with powerful imagery–the death of nature which is strangely attractive, leaves to be piles and jumped on, and festivals that draw us from the gut over our inborn need to harvest.
Maybe I’m over thinking this. Maybe it’s just about monster cereals.
You can make a lot of money selling people their childhood back. If you don’t believe me, drop by eBay later and search vintage toys. I may know when I’m being had, but sometimes it just tastes too good. So the other day I was stopped undead in my tracks by brilliant marketing at the grocery store. Piled in neat pyramids adorned with WOW-shaped sale signs were three of my old friends–Count Chocula and Franken and Boo, the Berry brothers. I bet you forgot about Yummy Mummy.
I spent many mornings with those three, especially Boo who I must confess was my favorite. They’d play games and quiz me and even slip me a few surprise gifts buried deep beneath their bounty when mom’s back was turned. You could always position their faces just so, diagonal at a forty-five degree, so no one could see you ducked below their faces in an imaginative discussion. I guess Casper was okay, but I much preferred friendly monsters to friendly ghosts.
It’s a great way to stay young, you see. While most people are fretting over the problems of the universe, I wax nostalgic about breakfast. Careful though, nostalgia comes with risks. Feelings of loss will try to seep into fond moments of memories, so you must keep moving and opening drawer after drawer in the dusty file cabinets of your mind.
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Now in the midst of this time machine of a season, network television is dropping a massive memory bomb on me again. Tonight, a new pilot for an old show is airing on ABC. The show is V. That’s V for Visitors, not a Roman numeral for five. That’s also a big one to cross of the list of the Old Stuff That Somebody Better Bring Back For Movies Or Television list.
If you’re not familiar with V, you’re missing out. The original version aired in 1983. The cast included more familiar faces than names, but you might know Robert Englund just before he became Freddy Kreuger, Michael Ironside, and The Beastmaster himself, Marc Singer. It’s your typical aliens are here, end of the world unless humanity sticks together tale. Read more »
Welcome To Here
In The Matrix, Morpheus tells Neo he can take the blue pill and go on believing whatever he wants to believe. Or he can take the red pill to stay in Wonderland and find out how deep the rabbit hole goes.
This is a red pill type site with a weekly column (and some extras in between) that provides information in an entertaining way. It’s about clear thinking and good writing. It’s about truth.
I’m a writer/speaker who teaches history and political science at a local college by day. Where is local, you say? Well, that would be Wonderland of course.
From pop culture to pop politics, this is my column.
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