Amber Waves of Median Grass

On a recent road trip halfway across this vast nation, I was struck, as I always am, by the sheer emptiness of much of the country. We have huge uninhabited forests and expansive meadows; miles of desert and endless mountain ranges.

I understand that much of it is privately owned. Much of it, however, is owned by the federal government.

 

Now of course all I'm seeing on my road trip is the Interstate and the mostly private lands that border it. Here is the Interstate system:

 

It covers 47,856 miles. Most of those miles have a grassy, very pretty median in the middle, all of it federally owned. (By the way, that "fact" about every fifth mile of the Interstate needing to be flat and straight so as to be used as an airstrip in times of war? False. I was guilty of spreading that one for years.)

All of that was a set-up for a very simple (stupid) solution to the world's refugee problem. We could fit every single refugee - from every single country - into our medians. Give them tents from Walmart or affordable storage sheds from Lowe's. Power and water exist along most of the routes. Little refugee villages all across the nation, reminding us of where we all came from and how we all got here.

What would we feed them? Oh, I dunno...how about the leftovers from the countless Cracker Barrel restaurants scattered along the Interstates? Or the 40% of the food we waste in this country. 

Of course it'll never happen. But next time I'm watching hoards of beleaguered families wandering down dusty paths toward the hope of a better life, I'm remembering those vast swaths of emptiness, those dumpsters full of food and my own good life.   

 

Why Americans Fail at New Year's Resolutions

In a word: football. How am I supposed to quit smoking, cut back on drinking, ease up on the fatty snacks and grease-soaked goodness when there's a game on this weekend? All those things are as much a part of football as spoiled quarterbacks soliciting unwilling young women for sexual favors. The playoffs are in full swing as the new year begins and you expect me to abandon my season-long tradition of downing a shot of tequila when my team scores? You expect me not to go outside and light a cigarette in frustration when my team does something stupid? Or not go outside and light a cigarette in celebration of my team doing something awesome? Or not crack open a beer to get the taste of tequila out of my mouth? Or not have a cigarette with that beer. And there's half a beer left here; be a shame to drink it without some wings, pizza or nachos. Oh crap, there's more nachos here and my beer's gone; better open another.

Whoever invented the New Year's resolution could not have envisioned a nation whose vices went hand in hand with its national sport. We blame "the Holidays," for our ruined diets and excesses, but our real Holiday doesn't come until early February, when we can unite as a nation around one game. We aren't Christians, Jews, Muslims or atheists during the Super Bowl; we are Babylonian drunkards and gluttons, gathered at the arena's vomitorium so that we might purge ourselves and make room for more wings and beer.

So if you've already failed in your attempts to become a better you, don't blame yourselves, Americans. You belong to a unique place that worships a spectacle the rest of the world will never understand, try though they do. You're a football fan, even if you don't understand the game. The Holiday calendar still applies. Drink like a Greek God. Eat like a Roman Senator. Monday is the start of a New Year.

Forget Your Troubles

Click

Ripples of a Coming Storm

Backyard, Wekiva Springs, Florida, USA. 06/01/10, 8:15 PM.  (Click for the larger.)

It's Magically Delicious

So it's that mystical day on the calendar when we honor some guy who taught the druids to stop building stupid stone monuments to pagan idols. And how do we honor this man? With boiled cabbage and meat so salty you could leave it on the counter and come back and eat it in a week and suffer no ill effects.

Nonsense.

Here, for the first time ever, I will share a recipe that I'm about to create in my head. It's called Shepherd's Pie, American Style.

Ingredients

2 cans corned beef hash
1 onion chopped
1 can cheap green beans
1 bag frozen hash browned potatoes
16 tablespoons butter (8 sticks)
1/2 cup beef broth
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 graham cracker crust
1 cup Lucky Charms cereal, crushed

Method

1. Dump bag of hash browns into pan, salt them until all you see is salt. Throw some butter in there.
2. While the potatoes are cooking, melt 12 Tablespoons butter (1 + 1/2 sticks) in large frying pan.
3. Sauté onions in butter until tender over medium heat (10 mins). Dump the can of green beans in this.
4. Add two cans of corned beef hash and sauté. Add tons more salt and a shitload of pepper. Add worcesterchire sauce. Add half a cup of beef broth and cook, uncovered, over low heat for 10 minutes, adding more butter as necessary to keep moist.
5. Dump hash browns in bowl with remainder of butter, season to taste.
6. Place corned beef hash and onions in graham cracker crust. Distribute hash browns on top.
7. Cook in 400 degree oven until bubbling and brown (about 30 minutes). Broil for last few minutes if necessary to brown.

Sprinkle with crushed Lucky Charms cereal and serve with side of strawberry jam.

Serves four.

Yeah - I Think That About Says It

Made a poster to amuse myself.

Tea Party (with Red Peppers and Dom Perignon)

 

I am offering, for a short time, limited edition prints of my latest composition. (Click image for larger.) As I am terribly modest about my own work, I can't really explain it to you, so I'll share this review from Red State Art Digest:

At once haunting and timeless, Tea Party (with Red Peppers and Dom Perginon) is a masterwork of unparalleled import. The artist speaks in this kitchen scene to the passions, the fears, the freedoms and the dreams of the modern patriot. A brick of gold, a bong, a refrigerator bedecked with ageless truths, the artist blurs the boundaries between Libertarian and Libertine, offering us a glimpse of a new Age of Reason, where a man can dress as an 18th Century militia member and not be ridiculed for his patriotism.

The review went on with endless embarrassing flattery, but my modesty prohibits me sharing much more. OK, just a little more:

The spicy scent of the peppers nearly wafts from the canvas, reds so brilliant and succulent, while framed in the dual and subtle yellows of melted butter and solid gold, over which the patriot stands guard. Or does he guard his lady, she of the alluring eye and come-hither stance, suggesting a Fox News weekend anchorwoman? She represents truth, and the patriot will protect her.

Colour prints

20" x 16" £6000
16" x 12" £4300
12" x 10" £2800


Lith Prints

20" x 16" £5500
16" x 12" £3800
12" x 10" £2300

(In truth: I saw this old kitchen at the always awesome Plan 59, and it begged to be messed with.)

Don't Be Left out - Order Your Tiger Woods Apology Plate

On February 19, 2010, a long and enduring public humiliation culminated in one historic event - the apology of Tiger Woods at a press conference at Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Introducing a defining Tiger Woods collectible that captures a landmark moment in the changing tide of the American media landscape. This Tiger Woods commemorative collector plate celebrates his contrite message of hope that his fans would "find it in your hearts to believe in me again."

Crafted in magnificent fine porcelain, this All-American limited-edition Tiger Woods collectible is available exclusively from The Jetpack Exchange. Featuring an image of his electrifying speech before a worldwide audience against a deep blue backdrop, this momentous Tiger Woods memorabilia signifies the changing power of the public apology. Own your piece of American history. Order now!

Our Annual National Feast and Holy Day of Obligation

Pardon us, world, but this is our religion, and this morning even the space shuttle decided not to take off in deference to the Mighty Game at Hand. And we don't care if you prefer your silly soccer that you jokingly call football over our game. You WILL watch our game. And your commerce shall cease as all your eyes turn this way to marvel at our ability to put on a giant show.

By now you should know the back stories. There's a guy who is helping survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Or maybe there are a bunch of those guys. There's another whose uncle recently died, and on his deathbed he told his nephew, "You must win the Super Bowl or my soul shall never be at rest." And he gasped his last and gripped the nephew's hand, pressing a special heirloom trinket into it, which the young player now keeps in his locker and kisses before every game. There's the quarterback hand-picked by God himself to deliver a city from its trials, and anyone who's ever been to Indianapolis knows what a trying city it can be. Then there's fate, destiny and many titles to be bestowed on various players by washed-up-jock columnists and cliche-spouting talking heads. Someone will be the MVP, another will play with more heart and soul and grit and temerity, (they love that word and once they love a word, expect them all to use it) and another will be carted off the turf, giving a guilt-freeing thumbs-up to us all as we applaud his sacrifice on the field of battle and the temerity with which he played the game, perhaps this being his very last, tragically. Now let's get back to smashing heads and finding out more about the breast cancer of the second string defensive end's mother-in-law. 

I love football. It's a fun sport. But I hate the Super Bowl and what it has become. I will probably laugh at a few commercials and cringe at others that involve Danica Patrick and that smarmy GoDaddy CEO. But as in the past, I am not engaging in what has become as much a part of this game as a sad old band playing their greatest hits at halftime, the business of reviewing Super Bowl ads. That will be handled on countless blogs by more accurate and fairer reviewers. I will enjoy some wings and beer though, I'm pretty sure. My country expects no less from me.

Oh Yeah - He Just Said That

While today is the day that we all like to recall the wonderful, dreamy things MLK said, let's not forget that he had the title "Reverend" in front of his name.

What Do You Do on The Top Side of My House, Fat Man?

I enjoy language. And I enjoy foreign languages, not that I can speak any. And I enjoy taking words in English, dropping them into a translator, converting them to another language, and then converting them from that language back into English. Why? Because I can. And because something always gets lost or found in the translation.

And now, courtesy of Babelfish and Xtranormal, a German guy who speaks passing English (learned in the Oxford tradition, as Germans tend to do when learning English) will recount a thrilling, snowy evening in which he encountered a jolly man in a reindeer-driven sleigh who entered his home and put gifts around the fireplace. Or rather, he will recite for us, "The Night Before Christmas," by Clement Clarke Moore, as translated from his native tongue.

Don't You Make That Indian Cry

In the past, when we had friends and family over for parties or meals or to watch a game, they'd stand in the kitchen with an empty beer bottle and look around, asking, "Do you guys recycle?" We'd say, "No, just throw it in the trash." Eventually, we learned to say, "No, we've been meaning to, and we really should, but just throw it in the trash."

Some of our relatives lived a long time in Germany, and they had adopted the insane recycling techniques of that country, where you separate your potato skins from your cabbage cores, your brown glass from your green glass from your clear glass, your clean cardboard from your printed cardboard, and so on. If you do not do this in Germany, the town's Burgermeister or Magistrate or some such official will put one of those real estate agent locks on your front door and mark off your yard in caution tape, your children become wards of the state and you are sent to do community service at the shipyards in Bremerhaven.

Another of our relatives is simply a do-gooder lefty, who went about changing all of our lightbulbs to the new florescents on a visit a year ago. He's been a crazy recycler since the invention of the 2-liter Coke bottle, and he would always seem disappointed when he stood there at the trash can, empty beer bottle in hand, asking once again, "You guys don't recycle, do you?"

At school, the kids are made to think that families that don't recycle are just like those factories in China, bellowing smoke and ash into the atmosphere and requiring that citizens walk the streets in dust masks. This form of education goes hand in hand with the other programs that tell children that people who keep wine or beer in their homes are only steps away from heroin addiction.

I finally gave in. I started recycling. And now when I find an empty water bottle or a cardboard box in the trash, I fish it out and track down the offender, demanding of them, "Do you HATE the PLANET?" They know I'm joking, but the household is having a hard time adjusting to my new Nazi Recycling Regime. And I'm having a hard time justifying it. I hear it requires an insane amount of energy and money to convert used materials into new materials, and I feel like an idiot standing at the sink trying to coax a lime wedge out of a Corona bottle so that it doesn't attract the raccoons and bears once it's in the garage along with smelly old bean cans, stinking milk jugs and not-quite-rinsed jam jars.

But hey, they made me do it.

The Google Street View B Team

As in most workplaces, where the choice assignments get snapped up by the ass-kissers and those with seniority, I know there's a crew of Google Street View Roamers out there hoping that someday they get a decent task.

big

Original image from Shorpy.

The Virtual Vacation

Also known as the "See America Randomly" time-waster game.

Summer's almost over. Were you deprived of a vacation due to unemployment or other economic woe? All is not lost, Citizen!

See America from the comfort of your computer or smart phone! No bags to pack, no tickets to buy, no kids in the backseat crying, "Are we there yet?"

Start at Google Maps with a wide image of the US.

Drag the little yellow guy (that Google stole from AOL) to the map.

Drop him randomly and thrill at the purple mountain's majesty or amber waves of grain.

Ahhh. Look at that! A mountain road in California! Friggin' beautiful!

Take screenshots of each of your map-drops and put them in an album on Flickr to share with your family.

Bonus! Works in parts of Europe, Japan and most of Australia & New Zealand!

What Does Obama Want?

Depends who you ask.




More alarming, what should Obama do?



Oh, this is getting interesting. Let's let Magic Google finish this statement:



It's worse than you thought, people.

We're All Deranged

If you enjoy satire or if the recent election left you spinning in a dizzy way, you might like Matt Taibbi's book The Great Derangement.

Going undercover in a Texas church, the author gets baptized, fakes speaking in tongues and makes friends with some lonely folks. While I found this technique evilly deceptive, the author balances his right-wing exposé with one as equally indicting of the left. Infiltrating some 9/11 Truth groups, he cleverly debunks their theories with an imaginary scene involving Cheney and crew as they mastermind an impossible scheme to take down the twin towers.

Taibbi is a bastard, but he is a truthful bastard, and this book, while disheartening, is also enlightening. In an outing to the mall with his church friends to "witness" to the masses, he is appalled at the desire of random strangers to unload their troubles on him, surmising:.

"No creature on earth is more inclined to public verbal diarrhea than a modern American; whether it's the AA culture, or the post-Me Generation emphasis on "finding yourself", or all those new-Woody Allens confessing to their therapists, or just too many damn people fantasizing about telling the audience of Oprah what influenced their latest album ("In the fourth track, I'm trying to share the sacred message of His Holiness the Dalai Lama..."), we live in a country where people believe implicitly in their right to bore the living shit out of absolutely everybody within haranguing distance with tales of their miserable, lonely, and inevitably self-deluding searches for personal fulfillment in the emotional desert that is our crass commercial culture."

In between ranting at (and sympathizing with) the hard left and the hard right, Taibbi skewers the process we call government, showing it for the back-room, lobbyist-driven sham that it is, regardless of which party is in power. The paperback edition has a September, 2008 afterword in which the author is even more disgusted at the tone of the McCain/Obama contest than he was with the do-nothing Democrats who took power under Pelosi.

He concludes that this fractured nation, and our ability to pick and choose and create our own customized news tailored to our prejudices and fears, has turned us into haters. We go to the polls to vote against someone, not for someone, and that person we vote against is the embodiment of all that is evil and corrupt - and we do so in the name of patriotism. Whether you're a Texas Christian convinced that Pelosi and Obama are tools of Satan, or you're a 9/11 Truther convinced that Cheney is the evil Illuminati's instrument for a new world government, you're both on the far fringes of reality, and you might do well to shut off your Internet for awhile and stop attending meetings that reinforce lies.

With a new cover by hipster illustrator Shephard Fairey, he of the iconic Obama art.

Crossposted to Radio Free Babylon.

OMG, That Was Sooo Hard - A Course in Journalism

The Fringe Right is becoming the New Right, and the "journalists" among them (namely WND, the nauseating, faux-Christian brainchild of Joseph Farah) are bent on proving that Barack Hussein Obama is the Muslim love-child of Malcolm X or a Kenyan Superman engineered by the Illuminati to bring destruction to Liberty and Freedom in order to pave the way for the One-World Government that will rape your women and take your guns and put you in jail to become the lobotomized, branded slaves of the Antichrist. (The raping, of course, will be done by bio-engineered Super Negroes. 666, don't ya know.)

They like to claim that Obama has no right to be President, since he, according to them, has not produced a birth certificate that passes their scrutiny, and most of them are experts in old documents and antiquities, of course. So it only stands to reason that any law that Obama passes is not law, since he is an illegitimately elected head-of-state. Soldiers do not have to carry out his orders, since he is a fraud. These people have come to be known as "birthers," and they are not going away anytime soon.

I'm not a journalist, but I can do a Google search and very quickly find the following August, 1961 birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser. Maybe the fine citizens waving flags and shouting shit should go home and do some research, instead of getting all of their "facts" from echo-chambers of like-minded fear-mongers pretending not to be racists. ("Don't call me a racist! Some of my best friends are black!")

click for the larger

I of course can already predict that the birthers will call this a forgery as well; some hastily manufactured, Photoshopped fake ordered by the fast-acting spin-doctor tools of Obama and the One-Worlders.

So maybe, just maybe, there is a dusty old copy of this rag in someone's garage, basement or attic in Hawai'i. How about it, ancient Hawaiians or children/grandchildren of Old Islanders? (White Kansan wives of guest-student Kenyans accepted.) We need to put these idiots out of their misery and let them find a new rumor to hang their hopes on.

Losers never looked so sore.

UPDATE: As expected, the WND Birther Brigade says the above announcement proves nothing.

Put Her in the Backseat and Drive Her To Tennessee

Just got back from Tennessee, where I wish I was still. I can't say I missed blogging for one minute. Here's a shot taken during what photographer Ross Halfin calls "God's Light" one evening. Not a single thing was done to this image in Photoshop. Straight from the camera to here. (Click it for the big, screensaver version, free of charge. Hurry while supplies last.)


I'm so enamored of Tennessee, I even love their state flag. Understated, tasteful.

We didn't watch TV for a week, only checked Internet for emergency work emails and only on the computer that had a barely passable connection via Verizon. AT&T was out, as was Sprint. No cell phone service. We just hung out on a porch in the woods in the north central mountains of the state, went swimming and boating (Where's My Jetski?) in a lake and had three great meals a day, no between-meal snacks.

And yes, I've posted this cringe-inducing video before, but it's always worth a second look, especially since Prince sings about Tennessee. In that funky Prince way.

Submitted for Banning - With Footnotes

These things:
While we're at it, let's get rid of silhouettes of your child/teenager's sport, with their name (invariably "Ashleigh" or "Hunter") underneath.¹ Also, (respectfully) might we consider getting rid of tributes to Dale Earnhardt on the back of your car/truck/SUV?²

I predict that in the future, people will simply have their twitter handle on the back of their car, so you can message them while driving down the highway: "@jetpacks: saw you getting pulled over this morning on I4 by cop on motorcycle.³ Too bad you're not a chick and couldn't cry your way out of ticket⁴. Haha!"

1. Attention American Parents with Sports-Playing Kids: It's the family car, not a shrine to your overindulged child.

2. Attention Dale Earnhardt Fans: He's dead. I'm sorry. What is your point?

3. Attention Motorcycle Cop on I4 This Morning: Thanks for the ticket. I will definitely heed your advice and start driving 55.

4. Attention Angry Feminists: Please keep in mind that most women have at least one story of getting out of a ticket, whereas few men do.

Graphic Designer Turned Celebrity is Poster Boy for Intolerance

The guy who created the Obama poster everyone raved about is mad at Barack Obama. Shephard Fairey, pictured here looking like a pouting child, is pissed off that Obama has chosen celebrity pastor and writer of schlock religious pulp, Rick Warren, to deliver the invocation at the inauguration. Warren has said some things that have angered the gay community. And because he chose him to recite a prayer at his inauguration, Obama obviously agrees with Warren's views.

Hey, Shep; I've got an idea:

Why don't we just take all the people who don't think exactly like us and put them on trains to reeducation camps?

Were you not listening to Obama when he was campaigning as a uniter? Was the Hope that everyone would suddenly get along and our differences vanish under the new black president?

Hey, Fairey; you are being as intolerant as you claim Warren to be. Where were you when Obama was branded as a terrorist because he brushed shoulders with some hack radical from the 60s? Where were you when the far right was accusing Obama of thinking just like Jeremiah Wright? I only ask because you are doing the exact same thing now.

It's the fucking invocation - not a cabinet position - not even the benediction, which will be delivered by an 87-year-old black preacher named Joseph Lowery. And I would bet a good sum of cash that you could find things in Lowery's belief system that you don't agree with.

Get over yourself, Fairey. You got the guy you wanted in power, now let him do what he said he was going to do. Just because your Che Guevara rip-off poster got you some press and your own Wikipedia entry doesn't make you the spokesman for a generation.

Who do you think you are? Bono?

Via Animal New York.