Barry Parham's Blog: The Mooncalf Communion, page 49

Book Signings

2012-09-01

Bellacino’s, Greenville SC

2012-08-25

The Briar Patch on 34, Greenwood SC

2012-04-22

Greenwood County Library, Greenwood SC

2012-02-10

The Briar Patch on 34, Greenwood SC

2011-12-09

The Briar Patch on 34, Greenwood SC

2011-09-10

Fiction Addiction, Greenville SC

2011-04-12

Greenwood Community Theatre, Greenwood SC

2011-01-20

The Briar Patch on 34, Greenwood SC

2010-12-18

McCaslan’s Book Store, Greenwood SC

2010-12-05

The Briar Patch on 34, Greenwood SC

2010-12-04

Centre Stage, Greenville SC

2010-11-20

Fiction Addiction, Greenville SC

2010-11-12

The Bookstore, Greenwood SC

2010-11-11

The Briar Patch on 34, Greenwood SC

2010-11-09

Babcock Center Fundraiser, Radisson Hotel, Columbia SC

2010-10-24

Freeport Marina, Daufuskie Island SC

2010-10-23

Bluffton Seafood Festival, Bluffton SC

2010-03-20

Bay Street Trading Company, Beaufort SC

2009-12-11

The Briar Patch On 34, Greenwood SC

2009-10-09

The BookStore, Greenwood SC

The Briar Patch On 34, Greenwood SC

2009-10-08

Abbeville Opera House, Abbeville SC

Stuck in the Spin Cycle

(Look, if I’d have wanted the truth, I’d have made some up.)

“230 miles per gallon.”

That’s what I read on the internet. And just after reading that on the internet, it hit me. In this world, a whole lot of stupid begins with “that’s what I read on the internet.”

The quote was part of an online discussion about the Chevy Volt, that “hybrid” car that will run on gastricity, as soon as somebody invents some. (Okay, it’ll walk on gastricity. If you go by these consumer reviews, to claim that the Volt “runs” is to scratch a poetic itch.)

To be fair, though, the Volt is groundbreaking in many ways; for example, this is the first car in history that everybody paid for, but nobody bought.

And, of course, we have the wide-eyed Volt fan I mentioned earlier, who claims he’s getting 230 miles to the gallon. From such a statement, we can draw a few conclusions:

Somebody out there is buying electricity by the gallon
No, you can’t fix stupid, but you can medicate it into a stupor
There’s a reason we never get visits from intelligent alien life forms

See, one of the great things about the internet is that people can say whatever they want. And one of the worst things about the internet is that people can say whatever they want. Take, for example, another Volt owner who got so disgusted with what he called his “GM econobox POS” that he rushed out to a Ford dealership, bought something large, loud, and dependable that still runs on extinct Jurassic Park extras distilled down into black goo; then he shoved the Volt in his truck’s glove-box, drove home, cut the Volt in half with a grapefruit knife, and fed it to his two goldfish, Crockett and Tubbs.

Responsible Journalism Disclaimer: the previous paragraph is only partially true. No respectable goldfish would admit to being named after characters from Miami Vice.

But what’s even more fun to watch is how the “professional” news media have been handling the developing story of this hard-luck hybrid, with all its Gordian political coilings, its fable-worthy funding, and its pathologically unbalanced balance sheet.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say the actual news is this:

GM Announces Sale of Second Chevy Volt

Here’s what we might see/hear/read…

… from ABC: Hybrid Car Survives Conservative Counter-Offensive

… from NBC: Earth-Saving Technology Embraced by an Enlightened Few

… from Fox News: After the break – more of our interview with Chevy Chase!

… from CNN: White House Confirms Detroit Firmly On the Rebound

… from MSNBC: Volt Sales Double!

So let’s take a few actual headlines, and then hand them off to various news outlets for their “analysis.”

Responsible Journalism Disclaimer: the nouns in the following paragraphs have not been exhaustively researched, and may or may not represent actual facts. (Probably not.) The verbs, however, are all true.

Okay. Let’s begin:

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Here’s the actual headline:

GM’s Volt Sales Up in May

And the media says…

ABC: Volt Continues To Log Record-Breaking Sales Numbers

Fox News: After the break – more people who drove cars during May!

CNN: White House Denies Fleet Purchase of 10,000 Volts

(Glenn) Beck-TV: My next guest will analyze historical trends in auto sales on one of these blackboards.

MSNBC: Obama-Backed Wonder-Car Singlehandedly Revives US Auto Market

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Headline:

Surprising June Sales for Volt

ABC: GM Electric Car Exceeding All Expectations, Dealers Say

Fox News: We’ll be right back with June Lockhart, and more electronic gift ideas for Father’s Day!

CNN: White House Denies Leasing 10,000-Car Fleet from Itself

Beck-TV: My next guest has just written a fascinating book about clandestine electrocution.

MSNBC: Outdated ‘Adam Smith’ Theories Scrubbed From Textbooks, Replaced With Obamanomics

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Headline:

Volt Records Second-Best Sales Month

ABC: Volt Sales Skyrocket Despite Anti-Technology Legacy of George Bush

Fox News: After this commercial break, our list of the second-best movies of all time!

CNN: White House Points Out That Leasing 10,000-Car Fleet to Itself Saved or Created 10,000 IRS Jobs

Beck-TV: We should’ve seen this coming, as these assorted M&Ms clearly show.

MSNBC: Obama Administration to Fund Chevy Volt Ads in All 57 States

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Headline:

Chevy Volt Leading US Plug-In Car Sales

ABC: Chevy Volt Catapults to Insurmountable Lead in US Plug-In Car Sales

Fox News: At the bottom of the hour, we’ll talk to someone who’s pretty sure there is no other US plug-in car!

CNN: White House Announces Funding for Really Long Extension Cords

Beck-TV: Don’t miss next week’s show, when I plan to change tennis shoes and partially shave.

MSNBC: Poll Shows Joe Biden Leading Among US Plug-In Vice Presidents

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Headline:

Volt’s Power Source Compared to Electric Battery Technology from 1897

ABC: According to unconfirmed sources, Republican operatives may have a century-long record of secretly draining Democratic dry cells

Fox News: After the break, Geraldo Rivera will join us, because it’s been over an hour since he injected himself into a news story.

CNN: White House Denies Volt Battery Shortcomings; Responds to Controversy by Driving a Giant Gas-Guzzling Black Campaign Bus to Attend a Pro-Hispanic Gay Pride Rally at a Unionized Planned Parenthood facility in an Election Swing State

Beck-TV: Mark my words – it’s gonna blow up. I cover this and much more in my new book, Stuff I Said In My Last Book Was Gonna Blow Up, But Didn’t.

MSNBC: Vatican Admits to Obama Infallibility; Fannie Mae Announces Plans to Foreclose On Catholic Global Real Estate Holdings

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Headline:

GM Admits to “Little or No Profit” on Volt Project

ABC: Volt Sales Gracefully Plateau; Unconfirmed Rumor Points to Electricity Boycott by Tea Party

Fox News: In our next segment, we’ll take a look at all the successful Government investments since 1897. Should take about eight seconds.

CNN: White House Denies Exploratory Committee’s Plan to Outlaw the Term “Recoup”

Beck-TV: Did I mention I have a new book?

MSNBC: Tonight, on an all-new edition of “Slow-Pitch!” Join host organism Chris Matthews and his tingly leg, as we fawn over full-color shots of Barack Obama selecting a five-iron!

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Let’s do one more, shall we?

Responsible Journalism Disclaimer: the following paragraph is true. Well, right up to the part that says “Headline.” After that, you’re pretty much on your own.

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Headline:

Exploding Volt Battery Blamed for Over 10,000 Casualties

ABC: Battery Company’s Quality Assurance Inspector May Have Tea Party Affiliation

Fox News: After the break, Geraldo describes how he once blew up!

CNN: White House Claims To Have Reduced Highway Clutter By Nearly 11,000 Vehicles

Beck-TV: See? Told you it was gonna blow up.

MSNBC: Obama-Backed Wonder-Car Singlehandedly Revives US Fire Extinguisher Market

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Book Signings

2012-09-01

Bellacino’s, Greenville SC

2012-08-25

The Briar Patch on 34, Greenwood SC

2012-07-13

Homemade Genius, Abbeville SC

2012-04-22

Greenwood County Library, Greenwood SC

2012-02-10

The Briar Patch on 34, Greenwood SC

2011-12-09

The Briar Patch on 34, Greenwood SC

2011-09-10

Fiction Addiction, Greenville SC

2011-04-12

Greenwood Community Theatre, Greenwood SC

2011-01-20

The Briar Patch on 34, Greenwood SC

2010-12-18

McCaslan’s Book Store, Greenwood SC

2010-12-05

The Briar Patch on 34, Greenwood SC

2010-12-04

Centre Stage, Greenville SC

2010-11-20

Fiction Addiction, Greenville SC

2010-11-12

The Bookstore, Greenwood SC

2010-11-11

The Briar Patch on 34, Greenwood SC

2010-11-09

Babcock Center Fundraiser, Radisson Hotel, Columbia SC

2010-10-24

Freeport Marina, Daufuskie Island SC

2010-10-23

Bluffton Seafood Festival, Bluffton SC

2010-03-20

Bay Street Trading Company, Beaufort SC

2009-12-11

The Briar Patch On 34, Greenwood SC

2009-10-09

The BookStore, Greenwood SC

The Briar Patch On 34, Greenwood SC

2009-10-08

Abbeville Opera House, Abbeville SC

Also Sprach Bacon Bits

(A tale of pork, protests, and paranormal pari-mutuels)

Every now and again, some event will occur, a happening of such jaw-dropping significance that history is forever altered, plus there’s a spike in business for the struggling Jaw Repair market.

And if you’re the alert and lucky soul – if you’re paying attention when the window of opportunity knocks on the Cape Cod split-level of metaphor – you get to see it.

Last week, I was that soul.

It was beautiful. A headline for the ages. And if you were a humor columnist, or a diehard fan of the Psychic Friends Network, it was an absolute gift:

Topless Protest Spices Up Psychic Pig’s Feeding Time

Yes, I already had a column half-written. Didn’t matter. There are times when plans must be put aside. Tactics must be revised, adjustments must be made. Pigs must be consulted.

Here’s what we know, at its purest, most distilled level: somewhere in the Ukraine, there’s a pig named Funtik, and Funtik is a bookie.

I’m kidding, of course. As a rule, no self-respecting bookie (with or without cloven hooves) would accept wagers in Soviet currency. I mean, the pig’s not an idiot.

But these were odd days – all this was happening during the Euro 2012 soccer tournament, and Europe operates by a different set of rules (or symptoms) during soccer season. Picture, if you will, one those cheesy B-film horror movies, where all the residents spend the first half-hour modeling farm-labor fashions, strolling along the main street, and calling each other by their first names, and then suddenly they all contract some brain disease from the local water supply, causing them to set the town on fire, eat each other (by their first names), and re-elect Orrin Hatch.

It’s like some continent-spanning, multi-national group psychosis, compounded by people speaking 230 different languages, France surrendering to 229 of ‘em, and Greek politicians running around kiting checks.

So when a psychic farm animal started picking futbol winners, Europeans barely blinked.

BACK-STORY SIDEBAR: This extra-sensory-pig story comes to you courtesy of that international news giant, Reuters, which is not pronounced “rooters” for a reason. Reuters is not pronounced “rooters” because my humor column is about a pig, and the universe has a rigidly-imposed irony limit.

Say what you will about our universe – it knows when enough is enough.

According to Reuters, Funtik the pig was selected as the Ukraine’s unofficial Euro 2012 mascot because several largely unsupervised Ukrainian soccer fanatics believed Funtik could predict the winning teams in the Euro Cup finals.

BACK-STORY SIDEBAR: It was just this sort of moronic, out-of-control, free-style thinking that led to Vladimir Putin’s easy re-election as champion of the Semi-Naked KGB Agent Atop A Party-Sympathetic Horse Party.

Now, as far as we know from the Reuters’ story, Funtik had no particularly impressive curriculum vitae, nor did he present a list of stellar references during his interview, although he was once spotted having a light nosh in Laguna Beach with Miss Cleo. And during employee orientation, he did drop Dionne Warwick’s name several times.

BACK-STORY SIDEBAR: It should also be noted that Funtik’s record as a porcine prognosticator was not all that impressive, which would shock nobody, except maybe Miss Cleo, or maybe those investment geniuses at JPMorgan. (“Look! Our investors lost 2 billion dollars! No, wait! 4 billion! No, wait!”)

Twice a day, Funtik’s feeders would interrupt the slumbering fellow’s musings to bring him two bowls of whatever it is that supernaturally-endowed pigs eat. Each bowl bore the national flag of one of the two futbol teams playing each other that day. The crowd would wait for Funtik to tuck in, and the flag on the first bowl chosen identified that day’s winning country.

And don’t you dare start judging the Ukrainians. Remember, every February, American humans are perfectly willing to make six weeks of travel plans based on the meteorological expertise of a groundhog.

I’m still not sure how we got to the top of the food chain.

Still and yet, none of this could have occurred unless some local sports fans, gathered at some big-screen-infected post-Soviet saloon, had decided to go with a psychic pig instead of ESPN. Imagine that meeting:

Citizen A: I propose that, instead of reading sports column, we should buy pig.

Citizen B: That is brilliant plan.

Citizen A: All in favor, don’t say ‘nyet.’

Citizen C: But we are Ukraine! We have Chernobyl! Why we can’t get our own mutant pig?

Citizen B: That is brilliant plan.

Citizen D: Why are we all talking like Boris from The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show?

But on this particular day, says the Reuters report, things got weird, even by European standards. On this day, the Czech Republic squad was scheduled to face off against Team Portugal.

Now, in America, this would be a yawn-fest of channel-changing proportions; a wench-bring-me-caffeine-and-be-quick-about-it moment, the equivalent of a quark-sized college post-season game; say, the Bickering Bisons of Lower Tuna Chancre, Montana, pitted against the Congenital Gophers from Marginal Aptitude, Iowa, in a real nail-biter at the Supplementary Bowel Incision Bowl. (sponsored by the League of Frumpy Plus-Sized Women Voters)

But in Europe, the Portugal-Czech showdown was serious business.

Serious, yes. Not quite as serious, however, as the issues that were irritating a Ukrainian women’s rights group known as Femen. (literal translation: League of Frumpy Plus-Sized Women Voters)

And on this day, before Ukraine’s finest paranormal wagering pig could get a good aura going, he was interrupted by a Femen-backed dissenter wielding an encrypted brace of breasts. An impromptu push-up protest, if you will. A bare-your-grievances breast-in. A full frontal united front.

Suddenly, as Funtik was getting his slop on and his vibe on, the Femen protester busted up into the pigpen and started getting her strip on (assuming, of course, that they speak hip-hop in the Ukraine).

As reported by Reuters, Femen had been scheming to organize this little pigpen protest with one of their own, a 31-year-old Femen-nazi named Olexandra Nemchinova, who barged in, ripped off her blouse, and bared her “protest placards.”

BACK-STORY SIDEBAR: See, Femen felt that the Euro soccer tournament helped promote the sex industry. So, naturally, their response was to interrupt a pig’s dinner and lob a half-naked woman into the argument.

Now, as we mentioned, Mizriz Nemchinova’s demands were encoded. Sort of. The activist’s sweater assets were protesting in a Cyrillic language. Fortunately, we were able to obtain a translation, provided by a roving reporter from Reuters Foreign Desk in Belarus (“The Bureau Best Abreast of Brest’s Best Breasts!”). According to the translator, the lady’s sternum-scrawled screed basically expressed a desire that the Euro 2012 tournament should go perform a highly improbable biologic function upon itself.

In case she hadn’t made her point, young Olexandra than began shouting similar (though equally unlikely) suggestions, all designed to crystallize Femen’s displeasure with the tournament and its sordid effect on the citizenry. For example, Femen claims the tournament’s “fan zone” is nothing more than “a cattle pen for deceived fans who are seduced by swill in the form of beer and mindless entertainment.”

As if that was a bad thing. They should see America during football season or, for that matter, at either political party’s National Convention.

Shortly, though, the whole thing ended as such things often do: police arrived and carted off the 31-year-old and her two equally 31-year-old, uh, pamphlets.

But for Funtik, life – and lunch – went on. No stranger to the media kliegs, Funtik took the whole thing in stride, assuming, of course, that psychic Ukrainian hip-hop pigs that have seen half-naked slogan-tattooed coed protesters during a Putin administration are allowed to stride.

Funtik sniffed the protestette’s discarded blouse, handicapped next year’s Kentucky Derby, and spotted Dallas 6 points in the NFL playoffs.

And then he ate Portugal.

The Stratocaster Effect

(My, what a large Hadron you have!)

Did you hear? They found God. He’s in Switzerland.

That would explain the chocolate.

Actually, they only found a piece (God, not the chocolate). What they found was some subatomic thing scientists are calling the “god particle.” And, based on all the high-fiving, toasting, and extremely lame dancing going on in scientist singles’ bars, this discovery is the biggest thing since monogrammed lab goggles.

With the discovery of this god particle, the scientific world looks to have confirmed four things:

1)      All matter was probably created by a subatomic scientist named Bo Higgs

2)      All matter is probably held together by an analogy starring Justin Bieber

3)      Probability Theory is probably 50% wrong, though they could be wrong

4)      Richard Dawkins just flat-out refuses to shampoo

But first, some background. We realize that not everybody speaks fluent scientist; besides, we’re talking about the theoretical existence of particles so small that it would take six of them to make France surrender.

For years, physicists had been trying to explain the subatomic world using something known as the Standard Model, so named because physicists, as a rule, don’t have very large Marketing budgets. However, the Standard Model had a gaping flaw, if we can use the word “gaping” to describe something smaller than Joe Biden’s collection of Pink Floyd albums. But Physics was stuck with the Standard (see Marketing budgets), so they needed some way to fill that gap.

See, their model had no mechanism to explain why some particles seem to be massless (like the photon, which is not only the quantum bit for light, but also our primary defense against Klingons), while other particles have varying degrees of mass (W and Z bosons, practicing Catholics, Marlon Brando).

According to Physics, all particles should be without mass, zipping around freely and unrestrained, like Justin Bieber or Joe Biden.

For years, physicists were at a loss to explain this subatomic weight gain, this one-off oddity, and most universities didn’t have the budget to spring for a hypothetical exception – what’s known as a ‘singularity’ (literal translation: ‘unmarried arity’).

And then, along came the Higgs boson.

The Higgs boson was hypothesized in the 1960s by two Brits, Peter Higgs and Eric Clapton. Theoretically, its mechanism set up a field (named “Sally”) that interacts with particles to endow them with mass, much like eating a meal prepared by Paula Dean. And the Higgs boson is the particle associated with that hypothetical field.

For over forty years, physicists had to simply assume that the Higgs field existed; meanwhile, there was overwhelming evidence to prove the existence of Eric Clapton. But in order to keep getting grant money from the Federal Stimulus Czars In Charge Of Stimulating Federal Stimulus Czars, the Physics departments had to either come up with a plausible explanation or start selling Buicks.

But because these theoretical particles were, well, theoretical, the desperate scientists had to settle for using analogies. And because I’m not good enough to make this stuff up, one of the analogies they came up with was…

Justin Bieber.

The analogy goes something like this: Imagine a cocktail party, but one that’s cool, not one filled with socially awkward scientists arguing over disparate lime covalent ratios in theoretical Mai-Tais. Normal sane guests and celebrity stalker guests easily move back and forth across the room, unimpeded by the presence (mass) of the other guests, unless one of the other guests is a singularity, like film-maker Michael Moore, who has such a mass of mass that other, smaller film-makers are trapped in an orbit around him. (what astronomers call ‘moons’ and what we call ‘sycophants’)

But, continuing with our cocktail party analogy, when a celebrity like Justin Bieber shows up, all the wide-eyed fame-stricken guests press around him so tightly that he can hardly hit either of his two notes … and then, once he and his hair begin to move, the crowd are bonded to him in such a way that the unified group become a nearly unstoppable force, like Al Sharpton when he sees a microphone.

And in case you’re still buying any of this analogy bilge, here’s the payoff: The crowd are massless particles, the celeb stalkers are Higgs bosons, and Justin Bieber is a massive Z boson.

And that, kids, is how everything in the universe was formed, except for Richard Dawkins.

Go ahead. Admit it. You just don’t get hard science like this from most humor columns.

Moving from the theoretical to the practical, however, requires the physicists to adopt a different mindset. And most physicists I know are guys. And most guys I know equate “practical” with one of four things:

1)      Women

2)      Food

3)      Women who brought food

4)      Blowing stuff up

So naturally, some guys decided that the best way to get a Higgs boson to behave, to get it to come when you called it, was to blow it up.

What this particular particle challenge wanted was a super-powerful particle smasher, something that would produce energies violent enough to knock a Higgs boson into existence. And since the Jerry Springer Show was already booked, the scientists rang up Switzerland, known for countless generations as the go-to country when one wants unbridled violence, or hot chocolate.

Nestled in a non-disclosed location outside Geneva is one of humankind’s crowning achievements: Brigitte Bardot. But in a tunnel nearby is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), Earth’s largest and highest-energy closed-loop accelerator, if you don’t count NASCAR.

A collaboration by the European agency CERN, the LHC hopes to answer some of the most fundamental questions in Physics by deploying the time-honored tactic of full-contact violence. The LHC is a 17-mile concrete-lined ring, specifically designed to accelerate protons and then smash them into each other, the quantum equivalent of a Three Stooges sketch.

When the LHC is running at its full design power of 7 TeV per beam, protons will excite at discrete intervals until they have a Lorentz factor of 7,500 and move at about 0.999 999 991c in a superconducting dipole magnet field of 8.3 teslas, as you would expect, and you probably figured that out already, and you’re lying.

The LHC gang had been slamming stuff into stuff for decades. They’d already defined the pro-Higgs scatter patterns that would match their theories. They’d already collected data for roughly a quadrillion proton-on-proton collisions. (they used really big legal pads) They’d been exciting protons at every opportunity, including some protons of questionable age.

And then, earlier this summer, all their efforts apparently paid off. Somewhere in that tesla-dripping tunnel, during one of those quad-whatever collisions, something ticked on somebody’s monitor.

And suddenly it was Party Time, in a sad, pathetic, smart-people-who-don’t-get-out-much kind of way.

Some threshold was achieved, some theoretical condition met. Some sensor chirped, some console lit up. A gauge red-lined, knocking a Brigitte Bardot calendar into an iPod’s ‘play’ button. Wailing riffs from Eric Clapton’s “Old Love” sparked through the tunnel.

Nobody moved, nobody dared breathe. Time stood still, although it can’t. And then…there it was.

Peeking out from behind a bruised, dizzy proton – there it was. The universal constant. The grail. The glue that binds our whole universe.

The Higgs boson.

And standing behind the boson, representing the other proton in the collision …

Celebrity attorney Gloria Allred.

Finals Week at Gitmo U

(A job interview primer. No, not that kind of primer.)

I have good news and bad news. Here’s the bad news: The Gitmo soccer league has disbanded. (I know, I know. It’s a crushing blow, but stay strong. The feeling will pass.)

As it turns out, when putting together a rehab program for violently self-destructive behavior, cleats and knee pads don’t cut it. The allure of team sports faded quickly for the more individually-minded detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Maximum Sports Facility For Terrorists Who Forgot To Light The Fuse In Their Underwear. So the “intramural” theory was scratched, behavioral sociologists hunkered down, scribbled for a while on white boards, and have now decided to have the “terrorist detainees” reclassified as “alternatively motivated students.” And, as a result, American taxpayers are being asked to pony up so the “students” can rehabilitate their careers, refine their social etiquette skills, and attend classes like How to Write a More Effective Résumé.

The good news? The students still want to blow stuff up. So at least they’ve not gotten demotivated.

Now, remember, this is classified information. Top-secret stuff. Gitmo internal details are matters of national security. So how did we get this scoop? We stood around outside the headquarters of MSNBC until somebody from the White House leaked the info.

We waited about eight minutes.

Here, then, are some excerpts from a Gitmo re-education brochure, entitled My First Interview. You’ll discover that job hunting is much the same for everyone. And you may discover that we have much in common … all except for that ‘blow yourself up’ part.

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Welcome!

Welcome to Gitmo U, brought to you by the American taxpayer! We’re glad you’ve elected to take a few moments off from your busy schedule of pacing and glaring sullenly!

Well, let’s get started, shall we? Let’s say you’ve been captured while trying to blow yourself up, you’ve completed Gitmo rehab, and now you have an interview for a mindless clerical job in suburban Indiana, where you’ll sit in a cube, day after soul-numbing day, reviewing bitter, misspelled emails from disgruntled customers of an American company that makes personalized calendars with little pictures of Disney animals on the cover and clever pop-up event reminders like “Oh deer, is it ewe birthday?”

Why, it’s a dream come true! So let’s prepare ourselves, shall we?

The Phone Interview

Employers may use telephone interviews for various reasons:

1)      As a tool to narrow the pool of applicants who will be invited for in-person interviews

2)      As a way to minimize the expenses involved in interviewing out-of-town candidates

3)      Because they are smug, self-important grimeballs who feed on false perceptions of power and like to waste your time by calling you from their car and then making comments like “Hold on, I have to park.”

During the Phone Interview

Don’t smoke, chew gum, eat, drink, or blow anything up.
Don’t hum, chant, ululate, or refer to any personal hearth deities by name.
Keep a glass of water handy, in case you need to wet your mouth, or you inadvertently blow something up.
Give short, concise answers; however, avoid expressions like “well, duh” and “nyet.”
Smiling during a phone call enhances the tone of your voice and helps project a positive image to the listener. So smile broadly, unless you’re in the middle of a sanity evaluation. Note: if you take the call from a public phone, be aware that smiling and talking to people that aren’t there may disturb the other passengers.
Remember: your goal is to set up a face-to-face interview, so don’t forget to ask if it would be possible to meet in person. And be sure to congratulate them on their parking skills.

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How to Dress for an Interview

Stick with tame, solid colors; a modest two-piece suit or business outfit, cleaned and pressed, will win the day. Avoid loud colors, tie-dyed shirts, spandex, ceremonial plumage and medieval weaponry.
Don’t wear buttons bearing political slogans, or t-shirts stamped with clever conversation starters like ‘I Heart Chaos’ or ‘Mao Lives.’ This is not the time or place for flaunting causes, regardless of your commitment to solar-powered undersea windmills, universal access to repressed literature about the gender inequality facing grafted roses, or having humpback whales admitted to the U.N.
For today, put aside that spiked leather collar, and anything else that involves a leash.
Perfumes and Colognes: simply put, less is more. Remember, it’s a nuance, not a marinade. The last thing you want to do is bust up in some poor interviewer’s office wrapped in a fragrance force field that smells like Tripoli looks. Plus, you’re walking into unknown territory, and you must take into account personal preferences, tastes, allergies, prevailing wind patterns – even personal histories! Your tastefully-applied eau du jour may be the very same scent worn by the interviewer’s recently estranged ex-wife, who just ran off with his mistress’ girlfriend and who, before leaving, spitefully filled his air conditioning ductwork with irradiated shrimp carcasses. Also, keep in mind that different cultures embrace (or eschew) different scents. Don’t assume that your potential employer is as fond as was your last boss of regional exotics like ‘Low-Tide Harem’ or ‘Southern Essence of Northbound Pack Animal.’
Pantyhose: the question of whether women should wear pantyhose on a job interview always generates a lot of discussion, and the collective answer is an overwhelming yes. For those of you who might be in a correctional facility for armed robbery, we should point out that we only endorse wearing pantyhose on one’s legs. (Pantyhose as ski mask is covered in our fine arts elective: Archetypal Career Decisions: a Raising Arizona retrospective” )
Tattoos and Body Piercings: far be it from us to judge, but look – if you’ve poked a bunch of holes in your own head, why should Human Resources assume you can be trusted with office supplies?

What Not to Wear at an Interview

Jeans, shorts, or short skirts
Jewelry that doubles as a roach clip, coke spoon, or igniter
Sneakers, flip-flops, or combustible shoe inserts
Very short fuses

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Phrases to Avoid During an Interview

Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Cut to the money.
That your daughter’s picture? Whoa. Nice yams, Pops!
Skills? Well, at the very least, I could do what you do.
You’re kidding, right? Long-term disability? Have you seen my résumé?
Show up whe … Seriously? Every week?
Dude, could we wrap this up? I’m supposed to meet my parole officer in fifteen.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Rehearsing For Your Interview

An often overlooked interview tactic is one that can make all the difference – practice. Here are some examples of questions you may be asked – think about how you would answer them!

Q) Give an example of how you cope with difficult clients or co-workers.

A) I blow myself up.

Q) Tell me about how you have worked effectively under pressure.

A) I blew myself up.

Q) Do you consider yourself a good listener?

A) I blew myself up.

Q) Have you ever dealt with a company policy you weren’t in agreement with? How?

A) I blew up the policy.

Q) Give an example of when you used logic to solve a problem.

A) Once, at a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, I challenged the claim that mathematics is an axiomatic deduction system, inferring rather that, due to its antecedent disjunction, it in fact lies somewhere between a modus tollens and modus ponens. Then I blew myself up.

Q) Give an example of how you worked as part of a functional team.

A) I blew myself up last.

Q) Have you ever not met your goals?

A) Never. But I have lowered my expectations.

Q) Give an example of a goal you didn’t meet and how you handled it.

A) You’re not listening.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Well, there you have it, citizens. Your tax dollars at work! I’m sure the bad guys will think twice now, once they realize that here in America, we will not falter, we will not rest, until those who wish to do us harm have a full-time job, with benefits and paid holidays.

And the 12-15 million Americans who are unemployed? No worries.

I know where they can get a great deal on cleats.

You Gonna Finish That Dragon?

(Raw fish. I guess we should’ve seen it coming, after the hot wine.)

Here’s something you almost never hear: “Could I have some more eel?”

This past week, for the first time ever, I intentionally ordered sushi. (Yes, intentionally. Once, I ordered some raw tuna by mistake, but I was in some dimly-lit sadisti-cafe where the shameless proprietors called it ‘tapas.’ Fortunately, the foul place was pipe-bombed by a vagrant group of Metrogendered Vampire Bikers on Projectile Dancing Night. )

Now, I’ve lived a lot of years, and done a lot of things, many of them legal. But until this past week, I’d never tried sushi. Nothing personal, you understand. It’s mostly been a matter of Single Guy Ignorance, combined with a localized unavailability. See, here in upstate South Carolina, if the grocery advertises a special on sushi, that usually means the motor in their ‘Refrigerated’ section died again.

But last week, some friends invited me along for an evening at their favorite sushi eatery, and I wanted to go – I just didn’t know how to behave once I got there. All I knew from sushi was what I’d overheard: it involved rice and raw fish.

I had no problem with the ‘rice’ part. At rice, I sneer. I face rice like a man.

Crossword puzzles had taught me to expect eel and seaweed, too, which I unashamedly declare are two food groups I can do without, raw or otherwise.

So I’d been kind of a sushi agnostic … no real attraction or animus – I just hoped it didn’t exist. And I was clueless – I didn’t know the menu, the portions, the procedures, the prices. I didn’t know why people employed the phrase ‘sushi grade tuna’ instead of the perfectly functional word ‘raw.’ I didn’t know if they’d have forks, or if I’d be forced to figure out how to poke food at my face using a pair of those wooden knitting needles that severe women shove in their hair buns. I didn’t know how to say “Heimlich Maneuver” in Japanese.

Plus, I’d always heard that eating undercooked stuff could cause you to experience health insurance issues, like pre-existing conditions, or death. And I’ve just never been a huge fan of anything, food or not, where the primary goal is to not die.

But I still wanted to join my friends (and not die). So I decided to rehearse. I was travelling on business at the time, so I found one of the city’s sushi bars on the internet, spent a while studying the restaurant’s posted photos, looking for anyone doing the Heimlich, and then dropped in for a test lunch.

The restaurant I found online was named Tsunami, which I thought was an interesting marketing decision. I mean, you can search the Michelin Red Guide for quite some time without finding a five-star restaurant named after a natural disaster.

But, as I pointed out before, I fear no restaurant’s rice. I wade through rice like a Titan. So I lashed down my car, boarded up the windows, battened down the hatchback, and went in.

Thinking back, the restaurant’s online ad seemed to have been grasping a bit. Beyond the sushi-specific menu, they weren’t left with many bragging points:

Non-sushi menu
Waiter service
Parking lot

What they don’t tell you about their heralded ‘waiter service’ is that the person doing all the waiting is you. Good grief, what a wait! It was like dining at a chophouse staffed by the Department of Motor Vehicles. By the time they brought my lunch, I’d forgotten what city I was in. The food took so long, General Tso had retired with pension.

I still don’t know what the problem was; I mean, how long can it take to not cook fish?

Sushi, according to the internet, is an ancient Japanese word, complex in meaning, but roughly translated as “more stuff we can sell Americans for an 8,000-percent markup.” Sushi was actually developed sometime in the Eighth Century in Southeast Asia, before it got bought by Sony and imported to Japan.

The original concoction consisted of freshly-captured fish, salted and then wrapped in lacto-fermented rice, and may I say for the record that if you know a nastier food-related term than ‘lacto-fermented,’ please keep it to yourself.

Meanwhile, back at the practice restaurant: the food was very good, but the menu alone was worth the visit. It had obviously been written by someone for whom English was a second language, like Gollum, or Joe Biden. The word ‘special’ had been misspelled, and they’d managed to spell the word ‘sesame’ three different ways, which is hard to do on one sheet of paper.

I believe there should be some kind of qualifying test. I don’t think a person should be allowed to open a restaurant if they can’t spell the word ‘special.’ That’s like appointing somebody to run the Treasury Department who can’t fill out his own taxes. Okay, bad example.

From my brief experience with it, sushi is prepared as follows:

Flatten a seaweed leaf, or however you say ‘seaweed leaf’ in damp botany
Grab the nearest at-hand green vegetable and long-cut it into 3-4 tiny pole vault poles
Dice up a filet of fish so freshly dead that it could still vote in Chicago
Collect the tiny track-and-field veggies and the almost-probably-not-toxic fish parts and roll it all up in the seaweed frondifolia green cigar thingy
Knit a snug little rice sweater around it
Cut the concoction into small hockey puck portions, so they look like bone cross-sections that somebody nicked from med school on Spinal Cord Day
Serve with forty-two sauces whose names all end in the letter ‘I’
Charge $80

Other than the Daily Speicals (sic), the expansive menu also spoke of a tofu salad, made from ‘very healthy tofu.’ (Somewhere near the restaurant, I take it, there’s a high-impact bean curd gym.) And many of the menu items come with some side called miso soup, or you can opt for a house salad with ‘steam or fried rice.’

Now, I like a good salad, but I hate it when the ‘waiter service’ just globs dollops of steam all over the thing. I always ask if I can get the steam on the side.

One can also order, though not pronounce, a dish called Yaki Udon, which was described as ‘pan stir fried noodles with vegi.’ Interestingly, you can also order Vegetable Yaki Udon – kind of like asking for a salad salad with a side of salad. (“Hold the steam, please – I’m on a diet.”)

Another entrée, edamame, sounds tempting, but when you peel back the mask, it’s actually a plate of lightly salted boiled soybeans, which is why they call it edamame.

The menu referenced something called a Volcano Roll, which is the kind of stunt you could only pull off in a restaurant named after a tidal wave. But the menu made no mention of Godzilla, Mothra, or Rodan, though I did notice dragon. (At that point, of course, I signaled for my ‘waiter service’ and asked, “Is that free-range dragon? Or corn-fed?” No reply. Nothing. Death. The ‘waiter service’ must have left her sense of humor in the ‘Parking lot.’)

And leave room for dessert! For afters, you can finish up with some nice green tea ice cream. Mmm.

But I learned important lessons:

You can eat sushi and not die.
You can eat in a sushi restaurant and not have to eat sushi at all.
Everything on a sushi menu is not necessarily sushi, you backwoods troll, you.

In fact, as I learned from the internet, sushi really only refers to the rice. The actual rolls (the tubes inside those tight-fitting rice cardigans) are called yukiwa-maki. What sushi fans call ‘hand rolls’ are known as temaki sushi, fish served without the rice insulation is called sashimi, and fish that can surf the internet and wear cardigans on the beach are referred to as Franki Avaloni.

And in a related story – my lunch-time crossword puzzle this week led me to some interesting facts about other Pacific-Polynesian cultures, including Hawaii, our 57th State and one of the three birthplaces of President Barack Hussein Obama I.

As you probably know, the Hawaiian language is a Polynesian dialect, comprised of a collection of power vowels, with the occasional consonant thrown in to let you know a new word has started. With the exception of the odd ‘h’ or ‘m’, Hawaiian seems to consist largely of just the vowels a, e, i, o, and u. In fact, ‘aeiou’ (pronounced ‘ow’) is actually a word in Hawaii – it means “remind me next time to let that pork cool a while first.”

The word Polynesian (literally, ‘many nesians’) is an ancient pre-tourism term, said to have been coined by the first foreigner to visit Hawaii, Captain Kangaroo, an unimaginably white man who also gave us the terms Indonesia (‘dog sushi’), Micronesia (‘Johnny Depp’), and amnesia (‘Richard Nixon’). The bold Captain wrapped up his wildly successful Hawaiian tour by getting eaten, after which historians Anglicized his name to Cook.

Like our other Polynesian friends, Hawaiians eat a lot of sea-harvested food, too, but they’re not in as big a hurry as the Japanese, so they usually take a minute to cook it first. But only a minute, because it takes them the rest of the lunch hour to pronounce the lunch. For example, the Hawaiian word for triggerfish is humuhumunukunukuapua’a. (Don’t even ask how they say ‘lightly salted boiled soybeans.’)

On the other hand, the Hawaiian word for fork is ‘o, which may help explain why cannibalism gained such a firm foothold in early Polynesian cultures. I mean, think about it. Here you are, an outsider from Europe, who hasn’t bathed since Martin Luther bought a hammer. You sail into the harbor, wearing knickers and a pony-tail, and you’re greeted by indigenous people who are starving to death because they can’t pronounce humuhumunukunukuapua’a. They stare at you as they might stare at a glazed donut, if glazed donuts had been invented and wore knickers. The natives sway and bob a bit, and start asking around if anybody’s got an ‘o handy. You don’t know what ‘o means, so instead of racing back to the boat, you start handing out mirrors and rum.

But there you go. That’s island life for you. Of course, you can’t take your cultural cues from the Hawaiians.

After all, they whacked Captain Kangaroo.

Abby Redux IX

(Our favorite grumpy advice columnist takes on facebook and other bacteria)

Well, I did it. It took some effort; after all, she’s pretty busy these days, and she doesn’t think much of me. (For that matter, she doesn’t think much of you, either. Or you.) But I did it.

Abby’s back.

For those of you who haven’t met her, Abby Redux is an advice columnist who pops round every now and again to share her column with us. Abby has several interesting characteristics:

She has the same first name as another famous advice columnist and the same last name as a famous John Updike novel
She has a seriously bad attitude and no patience whatsoever, which, you have to admit, is an intriguing approach for an advice columnist
She doesn’t actually exist

Some say Abby should work on her interpersonal skills – a tricky challenge at best, what with her being all, like, nonexistent and stuff. Others maintain that, given the caliber of questions lobbed at her, we’re lucky she’s not facing multiple indictments for felony assault.

I’ll let you decide.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Dear Abby Redux,

Today on facebook, I saw a profile of a young man who said he was a woman. Then he/she said she/he was in a relationship. With another woman. I’m very confused.

Signed, Dotty Frump

Dear Dotty,

This is why our parents always told us to go the bathroom before getting in the car.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Dear Abby Redux,

Remember those nuclear reactors in Japan that were damaged by earthquakes and tsunamis? Did you hear the Japanese government has decided it’s safe to turn them back on?

Signed, Rhett Allurt

Dear Rhett,

I wouldn’t worry about it. Hey – damaged nuclear reactors, tsunamis, Pacific Ring of Fire, Godzilla – what could go wrong?

But if I were you, I’d stock up on canned tuna.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Dear Abby Redux,

Looks like the election season’s reached the next phase. Somebody on the news said that Mitt Romney is spending the next few days on a bus tour.

Signed, Paul Stuhr

Dear Paul,

Must be an awfully big bus.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Dear Abby Redux,

Looks like the election season’s reached the next phase. The President keeps showing up on TV, saying illegal aliens are American citizens in every way except one: “on paper.” What’s that mean, on paper? What is he talking about?

Signed, Eileen Wright

Dear Eileen,

Let’s put it this way. Go to a car dealership, find a car you like, and take it home. Just drive it off the lot and keep it. Later, when the TV crews and the SWAT team converge on your lawn, just tell ‘em you own the car in every way except one.

And good luck in prison.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Dear Abby Redux,

The guys at work invited me to join them for lunch. But the place they chose was a strip-tease/pole-dancing club that has, if you can believe it, a lunch buffet. Do you think I should accept the invite? I don’t want to seem rude.

Signed, Maury Gretz

Dear Maury,

Go, go. Enjoy the buffet. Just avoid the food. And if your waitress is wearing a sneeze guard, run like the wind.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Dear Abby Redux,

Y’all gone love this. My old lady drove over by the Kwik Korner Mart to grab some beer, cigarettes, bait, and this month’s edition of Popular Quantum Mechanics. Then, I reckon, the cashier punched up some buttons wrong.

Haaaaw! Was the wife ever whiffed when the cash register displayed a total of $18,228! Why, it narrilly got ugly!

Signed, Parvo N. Sutch

Dear Parvo,

Eighteen large? Filled up with gas, too, did she?

~-~-~-~-~-~

Dear Abby Redux,

On facebook, I keep seeing profiles of young men wearing lots of eye makeup, and girls of an impressionable age sporting shaved heads, lizard tattoos, and full combat gear. Their faces all look like they were attacked by shiny napkin rings. It’s all very confusing. How many genders do we have now anyway?

Signed, Dotty Frump

Dear Dotty,

You might wanna give facebook a few days’ rest. Concerning your ‘how many genders’ question; well, that depends. On the East Coast, we’re still going with two. On the West Coast, the jury’s still out.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Dear Abby Redux,

I heard that the British Prime Minister left one of his children in a bar. Is the kid okay?

Signed, Roy L. Gokker

Dear Roy,

The kid’s fine. As it happens, that pub was a scheduled stop on Mitt Romney’s bus tour. He untied his dog from the top of the bus, strapped on little Britlet, and safely got the lad home. But Romney, in turn, forgot the dog at the bar.

Unfortunately, the same bar had been targeted by Michelle Obama’s “Schooner or Later Tour,” her whirlwind crusade to have draft beer replaced by a low-sodium vegetable medley. And at some point during the afternoon’s occupation of the pub, President Obama ate the dog.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Dear Abby Redux,

Here in South Carolina, a woman was accused of forging checks and then stealing over $100,000 in stuff from Home Depot. What an idiot! Didn’t even check the Lowe’s across the street for better prices!

Signed, Ida Shoptmore

Dear Ida,

It gets better. The forger was assisted by a newly hired clerk, an orange-vested octogenarian named Maury Gretz. Imagine Lady Forger’s conversation with that guy:

Maury: Hi. Thanks for choosing Home Depot, which you didn’t have to do, since for some insane reason we’re always located directly across the street from a Lowe’s. My name’s Maury, and I’m the only person in my family to have nearly completed the fourth grade.

Forger: Who are all those people lined up out front?

Maury: Illegal aliens.

Forger: Can we still say ‘illegal aliens?’

Maury: Sorry. Undocumented Democrats.

Forger: What are they doing out front?

Maury: Contractors drive up, the day-workers hop in, contractors drive off. It’s kinda like a makeshift employment office, but without that pesky “taxable wages” angle.

Forger: Ah. Hey, I’d like to buy all these stoves.

Maury: OK.

Forger: Do you have any more?

Maury: Yes.

Forger: Do you have any more?

Maury: Yes.

Forger: Do you have any more?

Maury: No.

Forger: Can I buy some illegal aliens?

Maury: I’ll have to ask.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Dear Abby Redux,

OMG. My BFF read a facebook post that said Hawaiian natives used to kill sharks by boiling coconuts and then throwing the boiling hot coconuts at the sharks!

Signed, Hannah Lou Lewe

Dear Hannah,

And some still say there’s no scientific proof for global warming.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Dear Abby Redux,

My doctor just switched one of my meds, and it’s causing some unexpected side effects. I find myself madly attracted to any man dressed like Thor, the god of thunder. What do you advise?

Signed, Tia Neigh

Dear Tia,

I just ran your question by the guys on my staff, and they asked me to ask you: what’s the name of that medication?

~-~-~-~-~-~

Dear Abby Redux,

Did you see that amazing video of the tightrope walker? The one who walked across Niagara Falls from Canada to America? Wow!

Signed, Esa Lee Amuste

Dear Esa,

It gets better. Now that they guy got across the border in to America, he’s instantly eligible for health care, in-state tuition, and provisional membership in the Elks. Afterwards, he’ll be driven by an ACORN staffer to either a voter registration office or an abortion clinic.

Then, in return for registering as a Democrat voter, he’ll get to have dinner with the President, both Arlen Specters, and either Sarah Jessica Parker or Seabiscuit.

Of course, depending on the cognitive and observational skills of our new friend, he may realize that, technically, he can’t have an abortion because he’s not a she. Not a problem! Planned Parenthood will take care of the sex change operation, arrange for him to get pregnant, take care of the abortion and all the paperwork and, for a small fee, set up His and Her facebook accounts.

Dotty’s gonna love that.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Dear Abby Redux,

Maybe you can verify this for me. Somebody on facebook said one of the fast food chains is gonna add bacon sundaes to their menu! Can you imagine such a thing?

Signed, Anna Richsia

Dear Anna,

Wouldn’t surprise me at all. Apparently that tired, boring health food craze has died of malnutrition. I heard that Dairy King will soon be offering drive-thru cholesterol injections, and Burger Queen is test marketing something they call the Triple Blockage With Cheese. The Hard Rock Café is looking to debut a “Kevin Bacon Burger” that actually includes Kevin Bacon.

Next thing you know, we’ll be seeing “I Dare You To Eat All This” ads from Five EMT Guys, Jack-in-the-Pine-Box, and Taco Knell.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Dear Abby Redux,

I’m at my wit’s end. My husband got on facebook and fell in love with my therapist’s ex-husband. What do I do?

Signed, Senator Clyde Stale

Dear Senator,

Can’t talk to you right now, dear. I’ve a bit of an office emergency. All my staff just showed up dressed as Norse gods.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Dear Abby Redux,

On facebook, I got a friend request from a group of Vegan Cambodian Transgendered Vampire Nudist Bikers. They’re trying to raise money to stage some kind of “Four Horsemen” protest near a nuclear reactor somewhere in Japan. Should I accept the friend request?

Signed, Dotty Frump

Dear Dotty,

Shut up.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Suspension of Belief

(Life imitates art. Art retains counsel, sues life. Film at eleven.)

Sometimes it’s awfully hard to write satire. Why? Because I’m not fast enough.

It’s crazy. And it’s scary. I’ll dream up something so ridiculously ironic, so deliciously stupid that there is NO WAY it could ever actually happen. No way anybody would do it.

And then, before I can grab a pencil and paper, I hear on the news that somebody did it.

Here, I’ll show you what I mean. Pretend for a minute that I was ever clever enough (I’m not) to conjure up any of the following absurd scenarios:

A celebrity attorney will agree to represent the girlfriend of a guy who ate another guy’s head.
Team sports will begin to bore the detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Maximum Soccer Field Facility For Terrorists Who Forgot To Light The Fuse In Their Underwear. So American taxpayers will be asked to pony up so the detainees can attend classes on How to Write a More Effective Résumé.
China will launch its own space station, and release a political prisoner who, apparently, is a blues singer.
A government spokesman will argue that a teenager working part-time at a record store qualifies as a “green job.” The spokesman will say this while under oath, and with a straight face, and nobody will tackle him, clap on restraints, and ship him off to Gitmo.
Two words: Cat seatbelts.

Now suppose I came to you two weeks ago with even one of those ideas as the basis for a humor column. You’d nod politely at me, excuse yourself for a moment, then grab the phone and call one of those shrubberied, gated facilities with a name like Somnolent Green and a discreet fleet of steel-reinforced vans, with the cup holders and seatbelts replaced by handcuffs and jaw restraints. (It’s a special after-market option package: the passive-aggressive restraint system. Additional options include a full-moon roof, Thorazine mini-bar, and a set of floor mats that must be seen to be believed.)

But this is not fiction – this is the news. This stuff is actually happening. Take, for instance, the “green job” story.

In reports and at hearings, deeply-flawed federal flunkies are thrumming their harps and claiming that the Obama administration has created something like 467 contraskillion “green” jobs. Apparently, they’ve not only managed to gainfully employ every mammal in our galaxy, they’ve also managed to put all those mammals to work watering windmills and harvesting solar-powered soy burgers. And having done so, they’ve now pushed on out, creating jobs in previously uncharted universes, which might explain where they got their hyper-math calculator.

But when asked for the proof behind the numbers, they begrudgingly admit to playing a bit loose with the statistics. For instance, when counting their way up to “green,” it turns out they were counting:

Janitors who worked at Solyndra
People who eat salads
Employees of book stores that carry Dr. Suess’s Green Eggs & Ham
Mr. Greenjeans, Graham Greene, Kermit the Frog, and the Incredible Hulk
The staff at amazon.com, and their entire customer base, since they still stock VHS copies of Green Acres
People who are supporters of Greenpeace, or supporters of whales, or supporters of athletics, or supporters of athletic supporters
Anyone who’s ever read Mill on the Floss, or visited a mill, or reminded their children to floss
People who have envy issues
Six beauticians who visited a Georgia theme park and had a bad experience involving a roller coaster and some undercooked pork
Cartoonists who draw the Green Lantern comic strip (they’re awarded double liberal points for that one, now that the Green Lantern’s gay)
Ireland

And then there’s the news from China (or as they’re now known, Bank of America). While our own government was busy running for re-election, running from responsibility, and running around emasculating NASA, the Chinese arced their own space station into Earth orbit, to see if their Manhattan real estate purchases were affected by zero gravity. Crew members from the International Space Station immediately called over to say ‘hi,’ and to order some carry-out.

Reliable sources say the Oriental orbiter will be named either Panda Garden, Great Wall Garden, Happy Panda Garden Wall, or Tibet North. And the folks at Guinness claim it’s the only man-made all-you-can-eat buffet in outer space that can be seen from Earth.

Currently, the station is unmanned, but China has plans to send up some astronauts very soon, who will do a good job or else their relatives will be executed. This was corroborated by the Chinese dissident and blues singer, Cheng Melon Chitlin. Cheng was just granted political asylum in the United States, which qualifies him to run for President, and in-state tuition. Cheng, now a resident of New Jersey, is best known for his soulful rendition of the Percy Sledge classic, “Tiananmen Loves A Woman.”

Speaking of the Garden State – if you’re driving in New Jersey and your pet isn’t wearing a seatbelt, you could face a $1000 fine. But if you or some other insignificant human is caught not wearing a seatbelt, the fine’s less than fifty bucks. So your best bet is to buckle up, kick back, and let the dog drive.

(By the way, it occurs to me that ‘if you’re driving in New Jersey’ may be the most redundant remark ever made.)

Just make sure Lassie has all her papers (sorry), license and registration, and no priors. You don’t want any legal trouble. All the non-indicted lawyers are busy suing the Governor of Wisconsin for getting elected. Twice.

And of course the celebrity attorney in the story … in every story … is that ubiquitous, permeating pain in the nexus, Gloria Allred. Of course it is. That woman’s chased so many ambulances, her nose has tail-light burns. She’s the only human in history to have her teeth registered as a trailer hitch.

Mizriz Allred, who was recently inducted into the Real Yellow Pages Refrigerator Magnet Hall of Fame, has a gift for starring in unusual stories. She’s like Johnny Depp, but with less eye makeup. Her latest crusade appears to be a nosy, dilettantish diatribe to remind everybody that cannibalism is bad, a claim that was immediately refuted by Fred Txltetloptltxan, chief counsel for the Dade County Mayan Anti-Defamation League.

Had you heard? Cannibalism is bad.

According to several news reports, the valiant Litigatrix hustled up a news conference and made the following observation: “Cannibalism is a serious issue and is very dangerous to the health and the well-being of the cannibal and the victim.”

Cannibalism is dangerous to the health of the victim.

Go ahead. Admit it. Hadn’t thought that through, had you? The legal lady’s pronouncement is one of those tired, obvious, I-Did-Not-Need-To-Be-Told-That klaxons, like “Do not use this vacuum cleaner while sleeping” or “Friends don’t let cats drive drunk.”

On the other hand, let’s not be too hasty. Think Green. Between cannibalism and all the Chinese going to outer space, we could solve overcrowding in no time. And now that pets are driving, they can jolly well go pick up their own Alpo and Kal Kan, so we’re no longer needed there. A bit of controlled cannibalism might just save the planet.

Besides, it’s the absolute last word in recycling.

Auto Suggestions

(Car: a $30,000 box used for storing two bucks in loose change)

I’ve never been the type that gets excited about cars. I realize that confession could jeopardize my standing as A Guy, but there it is. In my opinion, automobiles have a very short ‘What Good Are You?’ list. For me, a car is:

A device for getting to food, or for getting food brought to me
A way to irritate rabid environmentalists
A ‘fast food packaging’ museum with wheels

Once upon a time, it’s true, cars came in handy when you needed to go buy something you weren’t planning to eat, like furniture, or cauliflower. But ever since Al Gore invented the electron, we don’t have to actually go to stores to buy stuff, we can enjoy vacations virtually, and for communication we can chat, text, Skype, IM, email, poke and tweet. (Heaven forbid we should have an actual face-to-face conversation with a person. We might have to make eye contact!)

So cars don’t do much for me, personally, although I do understand the huge role that cars play in our economy: we buy cars, so car dealers can buy boats, so boat dealers can buy cars. It’s like the circle of life, but with less raw meat.

On the downside, however, cars have lots of drawbacks:

Cars are insanely expensive, but don’t let that put you off. After you own it, only the parts are insanely expensive.
The parts have mysterious names like the differential, the alternator, the terminator, the heir filter, the wallet extractor, the static impotent bombastic emissions desculptifier, and the limited warranty.
The parts break.
The parts that break are usually expensive. If they’re not expensive, they’re not in stock. If they are in stock, there’s another minor catch. (see ‘limited warranty’)

And the cost of cars, the ceaseless spending, hits you everywhere. Parking, for example, which is an absolute racket. Recently, a traveling friend asked me to pick up her car at the airport and keep it at my place. No problem! So a friend from work drove me to the airport, less than two hours after her flight flew, to pick up her car.

Less than two hours, mind you.

Nice Parking Lady: Ten dollars, please.

Me: Shut up.

Eternally Smiling Parking Lady: Ten dollars, please.

Me: Did the car commit a crime or something?

I ponied up, paid off the pleasant extortionist, and moved along, trying to remember why I’d ever wanted a driver’s license in the first place.

The first car I ever owned was a second-hand Buick Electra 225 – the legendary Deuce and a Quarter – the safest civilian vehicle ever invented. Driving in a Deuce was as close as any youngster would ever get to being bulletproof. That car weighed more than my current house.

And then, one day, as I was driving along a neighborhood street and trying to kiss the defenseless girl in the passenger seat, the car drove into a ditch for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

Looking back, though, there might have been other fates at work. Cosmic forces. Kismet. On another moonlit evening, as I attempted again to kiss the same girl as we sat in her car, a large tree branch fell through her rear windshield. (That was around 1972. Oddly, she hasn’t returned any of my calls since.)

And despite all the annual screaming about “this year’s model,” cars haven’t really changed much since then. Shorter, lighter, a few more toys. Generally speaking, cars are quite standardized, so that any idiot with a pulse can drive one in several lanes at once while eating fast food and sending text messages and not noticing that his turn signal’s been blinking since the Korean War.

I don’t want to get overly technical here, but at its core, a car has a door, a seat, and a place on the steering column to insert a key. (Although I was once stymied by a Saab. I nearly starved to death before I spotted the sadistic center-console keyhole. But the day wasn’t a total loss – I did learn how to curse in Swedish.)

Beyond the seat and the key, and maybe the radio, it’s probably best if you don’t think too much about how a car works. Probably best not to dwell on the details, like the fact that you’re barreling down the freeway in a device that has more than 10,000 moving parts, powered by what are, in essence, liquified dinosaur parts that participate in over one hundred explosions every second, all enclosed in an aluminum box built by bitter Union workers who smoke pot at lunch and can’t be fired.

But for a piece of metal that explodes for a living, cars evince odd emotions in people. For example, a person you’ve never met will actually walk up to your car and finger-spell “WASH ME!” on one of the windows. Only cars can get humans that fired up about filth. Nobody ever paws “POWER-WASH ME!” on your house, or wipes “WASH ME LOL” on your workstation monitor. People don’t run around crop-circling “MOW ME!” on unkempt exurban lawns.

Speaking of filth – ever been to the car wash and had to make that toughest of all decisions? You know the one: when you pull your car in and the Car Wash Option Lady – that leathery, raspy matron with the peroxide updo, the bangles and the dangling cigarette – when she asks you what après-wash ‘scent’ you want?

And it’s always the same three olfactory options: Pine Forest, Pina Colada, or New Car. Why don’t they offer more realistic (or better yet, more adventurous) aromas?

Toxic Melted Dashboard Ornament
Morgue Elevator
Recirculated Hirsute Wrestler B.O.
Incontinent Elder Relative
East German Olympic Locker Room
Potentially Fatal Gas-line Leak
Windowless Downtown Cigar Bar
Mid-August Post-Soccer Carpool
Yes, I Believe She Did Use The Entire Bottle Of Perfume
Stale Child

Who are they kidding? Who, do you suppose, is ever fooled by New Car Smell? Picture it: you pull up at your date’s house in your 1984 Dodge Dart, a car that’s spewing more foul smoke than a Middle-Earth Balrog. You haven’t changed the oil in this road whale since Captain Kangaroo was issued his first odd little conductor’s jacket. There’s duct tape on the upholstery and masking tape crisscrossed on the ceiling. A sun visor pendulums as you open the car door with a pair of adjustable pliers. And then, as you shoehorn your date, Totie, through the plastic-patched hole that once was the passenger-side window, she inhales a cloying nostril-full of New Car Smell and fawningly sighs, “Ooh! New car?”

Okay. Maybe Totie’s fooled. If so, take it as a sign. Call the caterer, scribble up the pre-nups, and I hope you two will be very happy together.

Hmm. And you thought cars were expensive…