Takin' a Mark Twain break ...

These are rants from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

***

Whoo-oop! I’m the old original iron-jawed brass mounted copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw! Look at me!

I’m the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam’d by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the mother’s side! Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a bar’l of whiskey for breakfast when I’m in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I’m ailing! I split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according to my strength! Blood’s my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music to my ear! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen! – and lay low and hold your breath, for I’m about to turn myself loose!

**

Whoo-oop! I’m the bloodiest son of a wildcat that lives!

**

Whoo-oop! Bow your neck and spread, for the kingdom of sorrow’s a-coming! Hold me down to the earth, for I feel my powers a-working! Whoo-oop! I’m a child of sin, don’t let me get a start! Smoked glass here, for all! Don’t attempt to look at me with the naked eye gentlemen! When I’m playful I use the meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a seine, and drag the ..Atlantic Ocean.. for whales! I scratch my head with lightning and purr myself to sleep with thunder! When I’m cold, I bile the Gulf of Mexico and bathe in it; when I’m hot I fan myself with an equinoctial storm; when I’m thirsty I reach up and suck a cloud dry like a sponge; when I range the earth hungry, famine follows in my tracks! Whoo-oop! Bow your neck and spread! I put my hand on the sun’s face and make it night in the earth; I bite a piece out of the moon and hurry the seasons; I shake myself and crumble the mountains! Contemplate me through leather – don’t use the naked eye! I’m the man with a petrified heart and biler-iron bowels! The massacre of isolated communities is the pastime of my idle moments, the destruction of nationalities the serious business of my life! The boundless vastness of the great American desert is my enclosed property, and I bury my dead on my own premises!

**

Whoo-oop! Bow your neck and spread, for the pet child of calamity’s a-coming!

**

SANDCASTLE-AVERSION EXTINGUISHMENT THERAPY [Orig. 06-02-09]

Can one go through one's whole life without encountering sandcastles?

It's time to face up to the problem.

Wherever you go; job interviews, important new clients, people standing between you and the food you eat, the beverages you drink, and the air you breathe -- they'll be there, asking that you admire and appreciate the sandcastle, and everyone who gets along in this world knows -- THIS YOU MUST DO!

Without fear or hate in your eyes, without trembling, without a twitch of distaste, hesitation, or reservation, you must, to get on in this world, EMBRACE THE SAND!

That is why I recommend to you:

SANDCASTLE-AVERSION EXTINGUISHMENT THERAPY

I'm not saying it's easy; I'm saying avoiding the issue only makes one's life smaller and smaller, as you avoid a neighbor's BBQ, or eventually fear peering into your car because a flash of buff color makes you suspect a sandcastle has self-assembled in the backseat, and finally, die of fear one morning, the sheet pulled over your head, convulsing in panic that a sandcastle looms at the foot of your bed.

In a safe environment, with the volumes of water at-hand to destroy sandcastles if they become too unwieldy, you will conquer your fears through direct confrontation with sandcastles, on a growing scale, such that you can battle, observe your feelings, and process them. Millions have benefitted from this two-week program, often covered by employer or state compensation packages!

SANDCASTLE-AVERSION EXTINGUISHMENT THERAPY
Storm the gates -- Slay the sandcastle -- Make your dreams come true.

Wireless turtleneck pants [Orig 11-18-10]

I bought a pair of such pants at the Sharper Image, oh, years ago, the late 80's, when I was visiting San Francisco.
I could have gone to Sharper Image at the Montgomery Mall back home, and if they didn't have the pants on-premises, I could have ordered them from the catalogue, but that was the thing: It was an impulse buy.
When they said wireless, they really could have said wire-full; the antenna ran throughout the fabric of the pants to get the best reception; it was like a radio-wave skimmer. Truth be told, the novelty wore off pretty fast on wearing the pants, but I did drape them over the barbell and press bench in my room and listen to them every morning while I was getting dressed for work.
There was always the caveat that "WATER RESISTANT is not WATER-PROOF," such that, if it said "Water-resistant," it wasn't guaranteeing anything, they just didn't want you to freak out. Thing is, the most perfect place to have them would probably be the beach, if anyone ever really wanted to wear pants on the beach, especially turtle-neck ones. I did reserve them as my winter-hiking pants, and much enjoyed one afternoon of hiking along an Appalachain ridge, listening to some AM cowboy station out of Wyoming. When I recall the events surrounding the pants, the San Francisco visit, the hiking, the songs I heard once but never again, it seems I'm triangulating on heaven.
I took them around to the dry-cleaner a couple of times, but the cleaner always said they weren't sure how to clean them, and couldn't make any guarantees, so every time I left with them, not ready to give up their unique functionality for cleanliness.

Opening Day, excerpt [Orig, 11-22-2009]

Opening Day (3)

If you want to be successful, it is worth it to look into things, ask a question or two. One time when we were stocking the creek, I thought I’d just ask the man in charge just what these particular trout were used to eating.
“That’s not a question …” My father said, leaping in to defray the situation, and turned to the man, smiling an apology for my forwardness.
Uncle Bunny told me, a week and a half later on Opening Day, that he drove by the fish farm, and tossed in handfuls of Circus Peanuts, and the rainbow trout loved them, and here, he had some in a sandwich bag, which I could try. Imagine! Uncle Bunny having cheated this way! Not merely inquiring about the secret meal of farm fish, but actually going to the farm and getting the fish used to the bait of his choice! I didn’t like the idea of cheating, but I did want to hear more about the fish farm, how far away it was, and what it looked like, and where he parked his car, how he sneaked up on it, and whether there were fences or dogs, and how the fish looked when they came up to eat. He thought I had far too many questions. I suppose he would not want to implicate me, a good girl, in all of that subterfuge, but it seemed to me a fascinating thing to learn about, and if I knew what town it was near, maybe I could ride there on my bike and check it out.

Bird Wings, I, II, and III [Orig, Jan. 3-5, 2010]

Bird Wings

Bird wings apparently evolved first as thermoregulatory flaps, but as the birds still couldn't get cool enough, they started climbing up things and jumping off.


Bird Wings, 2

A goose could cook itself by simply refusing to flap its wings.


Bird Wings, 3

The phoenix, like the quetzel, has feathers that don't stop growing. When the phoenix's feathers get so heavy it can't flap its wings or fly, it also gets so hot it spontaneously combusts, either burning off enough feathers that it can, quite dramatically, fly away, or just turning the whole bird to ash. It is not true that the bird can reconstitute itself if it is entirely ash.

A Note on Altruistic Systems [Orig. 02-20-10]

A Note on Altruistic Systems, from On the Origin of Stories,
Brian Boyd; pg. 57.

For ALTRUISM to work robustly a whole suite of motivations
has to be in place:

SYMPATHY, so one is inclined to help another.

TRUST, so that one can offer help now and expect it will
somehow be repaid later.

GRATITUDE, to incline one, when helped, to return the favor.

SHAME, to prompt one to repay when they still owe a debt.

FAIRNESS, a sense to intuitively gauge an adequate share or
repayment.

INDIGNATION, to spur one to break off cooperation with, or
inflict punishment on, a cheat.

GUILT, a displeasure at oneself and FEAR of exposure and
reprisal to deter one from seeking the short-term advantages
of cheating.

Cheaters will thrive in exchanges with altruists unless altruists
discriminate against, refuse further exchange with, or actively
punish cheaters.

Now I'll tell you about onion powder ... [Orig. 03-14-10]

RE:
"Around 1470, the Turks began disrupting the overland trade routes east
from the Mediterranean. In Western Europe, there were pepper shortages
and the price of pepper skyrocketed. So European explorers sailed West
and South in search of an alternate trade route. Historian Henry Hobson
stated: "The Americas were discovered as a by-product in the search for
pepper." "


The space race began over onion powder.
Mid-century, last century, there was a series of onion-crop failures around the world.
French's had just perfected freeze-dried onion soup mix, and had managed to create a world-wide ravenous hunger for this product, often consumed in off-label methods. This, atop the usual onion-lust of 20th century people, who considered the onion an aphrodisiac, as well as a spice, flavorant, and foodstuff.
The onion blight had sent nations on the run, looking for those bulbs of sweet potency. It was far worse than the Dutch tulip bulb bubble of 1637. Thing was, 20th century peoples were crafty -- no, innovative, no, they liked to think of themselves as agents of PROGRESS, and in truth, they reached the height of PROGRESS, 20th century people WON THE GAME of PROGRESS, but, as you see, there's never really only one game going.
It was rumored that the moon was made of onion powder, placed there by Marco Polo during his forays of discovery between the Orient and the Venetian Republic, over the turn of the 14th c.
The nations of the 20th century vied to cash in on that orbiting cache of the "spice of life," sent into orbit by means of a trebuchet, well on its way to perfection since the time of Archimedes ... sorry, I know you know some of these things, but I cannot suppose you know all, this is why I bore you with these things you know so well.
So, you know, throwing a thing up in the air is not nearly so fraught with peril as having a thing come down; thus a great deal of time passes between the perfection of the trebuchet and that of the rocket. By the mid 20th c., it came down to the Russians and the Americans, and the Russians were the first to manage rocket orbit, as I know you know, still not besting the accomplishments of Marco Polo.
With Sputnik orbiting, the Americans committed to make it to the moon first, and this was done in 1969! The astronauts scooped up a couple of shoeboxes of the moon powder, but they could tell already, they could feel, even with the sensory deprivation of bulky spacesuits and breathing apparati, that it was not onion powder.
Still, they had gone to the moon, and that was something.
In the spring of 1970, the onions came back full-force. No blight, no fungus, no mysterious sliming or withering. People simply didn't mention it after that, but I'm telling you now.

The Dirt on Nessie

Well, it's one of those things ... do I care too much or do I care too little? Is it her or is it me? Am I being deliberately jerked around or is it a case of someone just not having that much time or consciousness for me? Am I a whiny junior-high-schooler? Am I socially retarded when it comes to summing things up? Finally, some friends help me get a consensus on Nessie.


***

My Experience:

The Loch Ness Monster is always dogging me for a buck twenty she lent me in 1998, but I swear, I threw the money back in the lake the next day, and she knows it, so I don't know where she gets off. Our friendship is at a standstill, but truth be told, I felt it was me always bringing fresh and new material into it, her always asking me, over and over again, "What's new?" like it's wholly my job to entertain her (not that she cares what I say) and she thrives on everyone getting all excited when she almost-shows-up. She's kind of a sadist that way.


From TH:

Oh, don't worry. It's not just you. That bitch Nessie, I dunno. Had to cut ties back in 92. She acted all happy to meet me, then I saw her on the shore and waved and she just looked at at me like who the hell are you. And I said fine. Fuck it. Two days later she was calling me asking what was wrong. It's complicated, I said. What's that, she said. The "depth" of your sociopathy, I told her.


From Me:
I'm afraid my friends and I encouraged her. We threw a lot of monster parties in the late eighties, in ....London...., around ... told her to come on down, we'd fix her up with a great Thames-monster. She'd be all game, but got in the habit of disappointing us. We made light of it, thinking she was going through some rough times. Then it just seemed like she was making fools of us all.
When I stopped by privately, she always kept the upper hand. I remember she seemed to be saying encouragingly, "Neither a borrower nor lender be," when I asked if I could read her Patrick O'Brien series. It seemed like she was saying "Don't touch my stuff," and "My stuff is yours," at the same time, like it was some kind of challenge. Well, so I borrowed them one by one, and she was always calling me and asking if I had the book, and I thought maybe there was loneliness behind her pettiness, so I would arrange to bring the book back and have a visit, but by the time I got to The Reverse of the Medal, I couldn't take it anymore. She was trying to thrust it into my hand, and I set it firmly down on the table. She took me to the surface and handed it to me again, but I threw it right back into the water at her. It was bobbing back up to the surface and I turned on my heel and never looked back.
I haven't thrown any books into the water before or since.


From Bosco:

the one thing you must learn is that the loch ness monster runs a small counterfeiting operation at the south end of loch ness. there have been reports that something fishy has been going on for years in that loch, but no one has ever been able to witness the printing presses, the specialized ink-dying machines, the digital color copying equipment, nor any of the several tons of palletable materials normally associated with a professional operation. but, several unreliable sources have suggested that there is no such thing as counterfeiting. it's a conspiracy brought about by the federal reserve bank and charles keating to dissuade the public from investigating the real crime: grunion are not freshwater species! in additon, they tend to flock in wild packs of curdled crab cakes, near transmission towers high above chiron.

..

My Experience:

I did read somewhere that the Loch Ness Monster is supposedly the Queen Mother of all grunions.

..

My experience:

Everybody's telling me how the Loch Ness Monster has been terrorizing them! It's really something! I thought I was the only one! I used to go to her house, and she'd put out a plate of really nice hard cheese -- but with a spread knife -- so I was afraid to even try to take a slice, because it would come out all crooked and crumbly -- so I'm sitting there, seeing and smelling the Loch Ness Monster's nice extra-hard cheese, and I can't have any! Did this ever happen to you?

The Stalking Koala

Just before my friend CK became such a big star that her handlers won't let us correspond anymore, we had this exchange of stories.


..............................

CK: So I'm at the gas station and this guy walks over and asks me if I've got a quarter. I said yes, because I did.

.. ..

ME: RE: Gas Station … So, were you there with your car, or just hanging outs? Did the rabbit food guys get a load of you yet, with wheels on?

.. ..

CK: Was I just hangin' out at the gas station? What kinda girl do you think I am? I'll have you know that when I wanna get gas, I go to Del Taco and order the 1/2 lbs. bean burrito.

.. ..

ME: 1/2 lb bean burrito! That's like 2/3 of the can !!! So, um, did you get up to ..Big Sur.. last weekend maybe? A little camping ??? ... Do you know there's a campground in ....MALIBU.... ??? Yeah! ... Or maybe WAS ... Camped there on spring break one time ...

.. ..

CK: Oh yeah, I used to go camphikin' around there - ....Will.. ..Rogers.. ..State Park.... - with The Ex. A can of beans and a can of chili make great campin' food.

.. ..

ME: RE: Will ....Rogers.... State Park; Didn't he say "I never et a canna beans I didn't like"?

.. ..

CK: Will ....Rogers.... loved Rosarita.

.. ..

CK: We never had none of those fancy campin' stoves or nothin'. Just a book of matches and a pile of rocks. Go get some wood for the fire, Cupid. How come I gotta go get the wood? Because building a fire is a man's job. Oh, really? Yes, really. I suppose you're gonna do all the cookin' then, too? No, cooking is a woman's job. Well, I can't cook 'cause I don't got a fire. You'd better hurry up and get that thing goin', fella. I will, just as soon as you go get some wood. Forget it, I'm not gonna gather no wood. Then we won't have a fire tonight. Fine by me. I'll just eat my beans cold.

..

ME: RE: Men's and Women's work, camping style

H'oh, boy, yeah, that's a hard dance. The worst is setting up the tent. It's a man's job to pick the level clearing and woman's job to clear the twigs, then the man's job to inspect the twig-clearing, then the woman's job to put all the pole joints, with the elastic running through them, together, then it's the man's job to check all the pole joints and make sure they're all fully seated, then it's everyone's job to thread the poles through the nylon pockets at once, and it's a race a girl does and doesn't want the man to win, because it blows, and then there's the simultaneous erection of the bubble with the tension of the poles, seated in the base pockets, then there's the woman staking and the man re-staking, then the woman rolls down the "windows" to air out the mildew, then the man is the crew captain of the setting of the fly ... oh, man ... I think I want to go home!

..

RE: Gathering wood

I remember gathering chapparel in ....Malibu..... Smelled great. We also stayed on the ..Mill.. ..College.. campus in ....Oakland.... that trip, and it's in a eucalyptus grove. AHHHH!

..

CK: Fully seat the pole joints? Simultaneous erections and setting of the fly? You sure you're talkin' 'bout campin', girl? Tee hee!

..

ME: Camping is one big damp spot.

.. ..

CK: That's what you get for pitchin' your tent in a puddle.


I'm just glad you didn't get attacked by any koalas while you were in that eucalyptus grove, girl. They're killers. One time I was watchin' Animal Planet and this koala jumped outta a tree right onto this guy's back, bit his finger off, and ran back up the tree. They had to shoot it to get the finger back.

..

ME: RE: attacked by koalas


In fact, I was attacked by koalas right there. It was on the return trip, so it didn't ruin spring break so much as put me in the infirmary for the rest of the semester. They bit off all my fingers on my right foot and toes on my left hand, and ten koalas had to be shot to retrieve my extremities. There was only one koala left, and he's stalked me ever since.

.. ..

CK: Good thing they weren't hungry.

..

ME: RE: Hungry koalas

Well in fact they WERE hungry ... as you may know, koalas only eat one thing ... and that's CANS OF BEANS !!! ....Mills.. ..College.... had the same spring break as us, and someone neglected the arrangement of a can-opening enabler to make the precious koala food accessible to the ravenous beasts ... when I strolled under that canopy of eucalyptii, I was a SITTING DUCK !!!

.. ..

CK: Maybe you should've used a spoon to eat your beans, instead of your fingers. No comment about your toes.

..

ME: RE: Maybe you should've used a spoon to eat your beans


Well, sometimes roughing it is pretty rough ... especially with koalas around.

I have to say I was a little bit embarrassed by the event, and as a consequence, developed impeccable table manners, which I fastidiously maintained until recently. The whole while I was hoping to win back some dignity and wholeness I might have never even had (except physically, because of the torn-off fingers thing), and that might be entirely unattainable, or not.

..

CK: I'd say. You can never be too careful around those little marsupial bloodsuckers.

..

ME: RE: those little marsupial bloodsuckers


After all the miscellaneous mishaps and tragedies, I would say it is untrue that koalas only eat one thing.

Well here's the thing, like there's a controversy over pit bulls being violent, but people keep them as pets, and then the controversy about koalas, which no one would ever keep as pets, not that they don't give it a thought, but they imagine the shipments of fresh beans coming in all the time, and the cost and the mess, and decide it's not worth the hassle, and HEY, aren't koalas and pit bulls the same thing, like, have you ever seen a koala and a pit bull in the same room at the SAME TIME ?!?! ... RIGHT ???

.. ..

CK: Nobody keeps koalas for pets 'cause they're just too vicious. Duh. And they had to outlaw Pit Bull / Koala fights 'cause the dog lovers got all freaked out when a cute little koala wiped the floor with a supposedly mean beast. Yeah, right. Like a Pit Bull could ever take a koala in a fair fight. Not even in an unfair one, either. Koalas were specially bred by Aboriginal Witch Doctors for pit fightin'. They only way you can really control one is with a plate of refried beans, and even that's an iffy situation.

..

ME: OMG, when I was in junior high, all the tough girls had these koala clips -- you could clip them in your hair or on your lapel or on your girl scout kerchief or on your purse strap -- or on your finger, except they had a totally deadly kung fu grip! One time a bunch of mean girls held me down and clipped a bunch of them all along my forearms! Damn, I'm glad they're finally outlawing bullying! (They should call it KOALAing !!!)

.. ..

Well, you're a good friend and all, but if there were ever pit-koala/pitbull fights, even if they were mega illegal, like, a cardinal sin illegal, they would be on the Youtube!
... Hmm ... but ... yeah ... um ... ergh ... I'll be back ...

.. ..

CK: That's don't call it finger food for nothin' Koalas, I mean. You were lucky to get away with your life, girl. They used to throw people into koala pits as a form of capital punishment in ....New Zealand.....


.. ..

ME: RE: lucky to get away with your life ... Lucky to have two friends right there, both with 5-shooters, to take out those koalas like that!

.. ..

RE: They used to throw people into koala pits … I'll tell you what's unbearable about that; the way their fur tickles! And the static charge! They're like the eels of the forest, the way they're all shocky!


.. ..

CK: Yeah, but at least koalas aren't all slimy the way eels are. You see, that's the way they trick you - with their unsliminess. Then, when you think it's all okay and stuff, they pounce down from their eucalyptus nests and bite off all your fingers.

..

RE: that's the way they trick you - with their unsliminess

OMG !!! ... I never thought of that! You are right! ... I touch everything that doesn't look slimy! It's important; helps me keep the nerve endings alive in my formerly severed fingers! ... But I hate when it's an electrical transformer or both terminals of a car battery at once!

... Then the other thing, koalas are like venus fly traps or moths that look like butterflies, or rattlesnakes that look like corn snakes and hold their rattles pinched so you don't even know their attacking! OH! That's why koalas look like pit bulls! They're trying to get us to cuddle up with them and let them in the house!


.. ..

CK: Unfortunately, there's no Venus fly traps big enough to catch a koala. On second thought, maybe that's a good thing.


..

RE: there's no Venus fly traps big enough to catch a koala


I was killing time in Glasgow, Scotland one time ... and I had visited all the known Charles Rennie MacIntosh buildings ... and so I walked over the hill from the place I was staying, on Hillside by Glasgow University, and I found a big park with a giant greenhouse in it, like the Crystal Palace that was built for the World Expo in 1851, and for a fraction of a pound I could walk inside, so I went inside, and it had several sections, even underground sections, and the most amazing collection of begonias, which when you think about it, have the most amazing genetic variation of leaves and flowers, and I found this immense venus fly trap, but it was only big enough to trap a hamster, not a koala.


.. ..

CK: Yeah, but did you go down into their secret underground genetics lab? That's where they hide the special koala eatin' fly traps. One day they'll unleash them on the unsuspectin' koala populace, just you wait and see.

.. ..

ME: RE: Yeah, but did you go down into their secret underground genetics lab?

Uhm, no ... for 20 pence apiece I could buy a hamster from a gumball-like machine and feed it to the venus fly trap. I feel a little bit guilty about it now, but I bought seven hamsters and stuffed every trap the plant had ... when I got bored with that, I left and went to the transportation museum to look at wooden bicycles and models of camoflaged ships.

.. ..

CK: Underground genetics labs and transportation museums? Wow, ....Glasgow.... must be a really swingin' place.

..

ME: RE: ..Glasgow.. …

....Glasgow.... is fantastic. Tho I don't know who it might have been who was working on the special koala-eatin' fly traps ... I believe the kaleidoscope was invented there, along with a lot of other optics stuff ... the Scots invented all kinds of cool stuff like steam engines and stuff ... Paisley is right next to Glasgow, and there are bunches of looms there -- hard to say which invention parts are the Scots and while are other countries ... except they did the steam-driven automation ... but 'we' were there for a computer audio conference. Hey, maybe the kaleidoscope could mesmerize the koala and make it fall into the trap ... and the plant can have like, a steam-driven wheelchair to get koalas !!!

..

CK: Now you're thinkin'. Good thing ..Scotland.. is part of the British Commonwealth, like ....Australia..... That way they can share inventions and stuff. Like steam driven Venus fly traps.

.. ..

ME: RE: Good thing ..Scotland.. is part of the British Commonwealth, like ....Australia..... That way they can share inventions and stuff. Like steam driven Venus fly traps.


Bah! ..Glasgow.. probably had closer ties to ..France.., and even the ..Near East.., on account of the textile trade on the River Clyde. At least until the steam train was invented [and it was just as easy to go long distances on land as by sea]. Ha! People were probably trying to go to the ....Netherlands.... from Gibralter, and got lost ... But yeah, if it wasn't for wanting to make koala-eating fly traps on wheels, our entire combustion-engine-on-wheels transportation system would not have been invented!


.. ..

CK: So basically what you're sayin' is - koalas are responsible for our modern transportation system?


.. ..

ME: RE: koalas are responsible for our modern transportation system

I guess that's what really gets my stalker-koala totally cheesed off, the irony that I can drive and fly and ride the rails with ease, and he's afraid to get out of a tree on account of a venus fly trap in a Hoverround is circling the tree trunk all of the time!

KAPOW! Bah-dum-dumt!


CK: [Pic of koala]


ME: ... That's one CHEESED koala! PERFECT! Thanks for the FUNS!

The Dinosaur Queen

So, then Dinosaur Queen came to me in a vision and said,

"Now you're having so much trouble with the space aliens, don't you regret killing and eating all the dinosaurs?"

I shot her and set up a fire for a big a barbecue.

On Bees Giving Up on Hive Living

I am reading this morning that too many bees have taken to divorcing the hive and going their own way, largely in favor of academic pursuits, abandoning the old bee ways, letting hives fall apart. Some people say it's a neurotoxin causing it, and that it's a disaster for the food chain, but I am confident the bees will come up, through their studies, with a good way to automate and off-shore pollination.

Hornet Chrispies

One time? I had this popcorn popper?
The kind with the plexiglas top with a spout, and the spinning and heating thing, and the horseshoe-shaped butter tray?
And instead of putting popcorn in it I put a hornets nest in it?
And I plugged it in?
And the hornet's nest whirred around?
And the hornets started to pop? And a bowl full of hornet chrispies tumbled out of the spout?
And they were like all crispy and slightly sweet and a little venomous?
And I guess they were kind of a hallucinogenic ...
and certainly addictive ...
you can never eat just one.

RE: Birthers

Pish-posh!

If a non-natural born citizen were elected president, the original constitution would catch fire and burn a red, commie flame, shooting high above the Capitol, for 50 nights.

The Pope would have to be summoned to reset the unitedness of these United States, and then a quest would have to be made to find the ONE TRUE AMERICAN PRESIDENT, someone whose ESSENCE was TRULY AMERICAN, and that quest would have the House Ways and Means Committee scouring every mountain village of THIS EARTH to find the child whose eyes shine with that particular glow, who, with his or her tiny fingers, demonstrates Presidential dexterity and mein.

Beginning at that moment, the Living Document would begin to heal from the ravages of the 50 days of flame, and we would know for certain we had found the One True President. Then the child would have to sleep on soil extracted from the west side of the North Bridge at Concord for 13 days.
After that, our nation would be returned to its rightful glory. Every schoolchild knows this. It exhausts me to have to recall these early grammars for you here.

If any of this were true [Birthers], the whole world would know. The whole world would hold its breath ...

08.09.10: RE: Simply throwing off of cliff

Ah! Our Orville Brothers used the throwing-off-of-cliff technique to make the first popcorns, served with BBQ turtle wings! The air friction as the kernels accelerated in their downward fall caused water in each kernel to heat up and then POP!

But the popcorns were made soggy by the waters of Atlantic Ocean!

So, it was many more years before Orville Brothers' invention was made useful! They developed a bicycle-powered popcorn dryer, and that was a BIG DEAL! ... Except that it tended to fly up in air, lifted by its big fan-propeller, and crash! BIG PROBLEM!

But we have American Ingenuity! And know how to use a power ratchet!

... Problem BOLTED DOWN! HOORAYS!