Urban Iconoclast

Good Thinking

2008-01-29T09:50:11-05:00

This is the kind of thinking the world needs.

It seems we have a new contest that isn't "Let's see how many ways we can abuse a ball" or "Let's see how much of an ass we can make of ourselves on live television." (This is probably why it has received little or no national press coverage. After all, how can saving the world be half as important as which car can go around in a circle, burn the most gasoline, and pollute the environment fastest?)

This contest is the "Innovate or Die" Pedal-Powered Machine Challenge. According to The Future of Things: "Google, in collaboration with the bicycle maker Goodby Silverstein & Partners, held this competition in order to encourage innovative pedal-powered solutions to environmental issues." (And you thought Google never did anything constructive.)

This year's win went to Team Aquaduct who developed a pedal-powered water transportation and filtration vehicle designed to aid families in developing countries.

The video below explains how it works. And while there are a couple drawbacks--the vehicle will be out of the price range of those who most need it, and people in developing countries often get their water from rivers, streams, and holes in the ground instead of spigots--I think these people are on the right track.

Just imagine what we might accomplish if we spent one one-hundredth of the time we currently devote to celebrity gossip thinking about solutions to real problems.

Sex Is the Answer to Global Warming

2007-11-30T11:07:07-05:00

I've been giving global warming a lot of thought lately. From what I can gather, global warming is going to make a bigger mess of everything than George Bush has--maybe even cause coastal flooding of golf courses and ballparks. And although being able to fish for marlin from your suburban front porch might be kind of cool for a while, putting up with all those drowned people from Florida who wash up in your yard might get tiresome.

So I've decided to do what I can to save the world.

It seems the whole problem (unless you're a bury-your-head-in-the-sand Republican) is caused by our thirst for carbon-dioxide-emitting fuel to power our SUVs, ski boats, golf carts, etc.--all the life-sustaining necessities of modern life. Similarly, power plants that generate electricity so we can leave five televisions on while we sleep, manufacture sex toys, and get on line to read the latest news about Britney Spears contribute significantly to carbon dioxide emissions.

However, a handful of nonconformists out there who rebel at the idea of swimming to work and treading water during their coffee breaks, are working on ingenious ways to power everything electrically and to generate electricity without polluting the environment. They have come up with everything from solar-powered generating plants, to wind generation, to photovoltaic panels, to, and get this, electricity-producing paint. But the one that really got my attention was a plan to build a floor that generates electricity when people walk across it.

That got me to thinking. Anything that moves can generate electricity. Playground equipment, exercise machines, even rocking chairs could be used to generate electricity.

And if rocking chairs can produce electricity, why not a bed that converts mechanical energy into electrical energy? (Or for the kinky among you, a kitchen table, a back-yard picnic table, and/or a riding mower.)

That might not be very much generation for most married couples. (They usually only toss and turn in bed.) But I've known a few newlyweds who could power a small town. And, if the tabloids are accurate, Paris Hilton alone could provide all the electrical needs for a city the size of Detroit.

(We could even build electric cars that run off energy generated in the back seat. Or again for the kinky, electricity generated from the hood of the car.)

And, instead of guys at bars trying to pick up women with some lame pick-up line, they could simply ask if the women would help save the Earth. Who could say no to that?

Now I know that we couldn't generate all our power needs by turning our beds into generators. But by God we could work at it. It's the American thing to do.

And this is only my first contribution to saving the world. After I invent my generating bed, I'm going to figure out how to convert masturbation energy to electricity. Hell, with masturbation energy, one boy scout troop should be able to power all of Africa.

Marcus Brigstocke's Take on Fundamentalist Religion

2007-11-09T12:02:50-05:00

I had never heard of Marcus Brigstock before, but when I found this clip on Daily Grail I have to admit he has a lot to say and says it in a very humorous way. Remember, if God made us in His image, He must also have a sense of humor. Enjoy, or get pissed off, or enjoy getting pissed off. It's your choice.

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A Lesson in Fine Art

2007-09-07T11:23:47-04:00

I finally figured it out!

Like, perhaps, many of the rest of you, I've been wonder for years what makes one nude a fine art, and another just a dirty picture (like the photo at the left of one of my book covers which Blogrolling.com told me was too filthy to use as an avatar).

So here's what I've figured out. See if you agree with my conclusion (given at the end) by studying these examples of great art below, followed by a few of the dirty pictures I have posted on my Pretty Women Blog.

Olympia by Manet

Luncheon on the Grass by Manet

Ballerina Carlotta Chabert as Venus

by Francesco Hayez

Venus Anadyomene by Tizian

Katy from Pretty Nudes

Belicia from MC Nudes

Laqune from Just Teen Site

Alice from MC Nudes

My conclusion after studying these examples (see if you agree): If she ain't fat, she ain't art!

(Just thought you might want to know that.)

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Shift Happens

2007-08-30T08:16:55-04:00

In case you haven't seen this before, you'll find some pretty interesting facts.

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Interesting Statistics

2007-08-25T16:26:02-04:00

I found an article on AOL News that began with this:

She says she is the Democrat best equipped to fight terrorists, but White House hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton told New Hampshire voters Thursday that another attack on the United States would likely help Republican candidates at the polls.

Just below that there was an on-line poll asking:

Do you agree that a terrorist attack would help the GOP?

And Next to that another question asking:

Will Hillary Clinton's comments on terror hurt or help her?

What I find fascinating is that while 52% of 39,000 + who voted said they agree with Hillary's comment, 57% felt that it would hurt her campaign.

Whether you like Hillary or not, you have to ask yourself what this says about us as a country. Why do we feel that a candidate, any candidate, who says something that the majority of us believe to be true is hurting themselves?

Is telling the truth a no-no?

Weird!

Brazilian Solders Killed in Iraq

2007-08-14T08:40:41-04:00

I received this from a friend today and while it has obviously been around a while, I had not seen it before. Just in case you haven't either, enjoy.

(To enlarge image, click on photo.)

Proof Positive There Is A God

2007-07-25T08:57:20-04:00

In my ceaseless, self-sacrificing quest for fine art on the Internet, I ran across this landscape photograph at Body In Mind. I can't understand how anyone can look at this photograph and question that there is a god. Just look past the young woman, and pay attention to the cloud formation. (Yes, Virgil, I'm sure you hadn't noticed, but there really is a young woman in the photo.)

(To enlarge image, click on photograph.)

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Hell No, They Won't Go!

2007-07-12T10:06:03-04:00

Every neophyte writer is convinced every other writer lives only to steal his/her golden idea, when in reality every working writer has more ideas of his/her own than he/she can ever get around to scribbling out.

Consider this as one of those many, many brilliant ideas I'll probably never find the time to write. So if you want to steal it and get rich and famous overnight, go right ahead. (Lots of luck with that.)

It goes like this:

(Note: this is purely a work of fiction and any similarities to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental.)

The story begins weeks before the November 2008 election when those generals and admirals who support the U.S. Constitution are summoned to a secret meeting at Guantanamo Bay with the instructions to tell no one, not even their families, where they are going or how long they will be there. (End of story for these poor fools.)

Jump to the election.

After years of boring the hell of the the public with they-all-sound-alike speeches and after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into campaign commercials to vilify the opposition, (fictional) Calorie Hinton emerges from the election with a clear and fairly-won victory. (I told you it was fictional.)

However, just a few days after the election, terrorists, disguised as Texans, strike three major U.S. cities (in blue states) simultaneously.

While it is not immediately apparent to (fictional) dim-witted President Gorge Brush, or anyone else for that matter, that the terrorist attacks were orchestrated by Iran, (fictional) Vice President ~~Prick~~ Lick Chinny crawls from his classified lair long enough to set the world right (and to award another huge no-bid contract to a giant corporation named Halbiton) before slithering back to an unknown destination for his morning ritual ceremony of pissing on copies of the U.S. Constitution with his cronies.

Jump to 24 hours later with bombs already dropping like confetti on Iran, while back in the U.S. throngs of cheering, flag-waving Americans huddle in front of their televisions reveling in the destruction of yet another evil-doer country and awaiting news from their leader.

(Fictional) President Brush's affable, almost-sober face appears on the tube where he sternly announces that there are still hundreds of thousands of terrorists on U.S. soil just waiting to strike and that as a result, he is declaring national Margaretta law. (Fictional) Vice President Chinny jerks hard on the marionette strings, and (fictional) President Brush corrects himself. "I meant national marshal law. And as your commander and stuff, I ain't gonna desert y'all in our hour national of greed...err... I mean need and leave my great country in the hands of a bunch a cut 'n runners. Screw the elections, God dam it, God wants me ta stay in the White House till all these do evilers are appended and brung to justice."

(Fictional) President Brush then turns to (fictional) Vice President Chinny. "Did I say it right? Did I do it the way you told me ta?"

The press conference is then unexpectedly interrupted with an urgent news flash that Paris Hilton has changed the shade of her lipstick. (Several chapters on this, along with detailed information on which brand of lipstick smears least when giving head.)

Jump to months later after the American public, preoccupied with the latest rumor that Britney Spears will be auctioning her panties on eBay, has totally forgotten about the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran; Congress has become gridlocked in a debate on whether or not to scold (fictional) President Brush and take away his crayons; the Speaker of the House has changed the brand of her lipstick; the U.S. Attorney General has been taped 1,718 times giving the finger to the American public while chanting "Hell no, we won't go;" and (fictional) President Brush has defended the country by sitting on the front porch of the White House with a shotgun and jug of shine, and we find (fictional) President-Elect Calorie Hinton banging futilely on the closed and barred doors of The Supreme Court screaming she is the rightful president. The Brush-appointed Supreme Court, however, dismisses her case by dropping piss-filled baggies on Calorie's head from a second story window while Abrams tanks, manned by Texas Rangers, NRA henchmen, and Right to Life volunteers...

Well, to tell the truth, I haven't gotten any farther with the plot. (OK, I have. But I'm just too damned lazy to write it all down here.) As Mark Twain once did with one of his unfinished works, I'll just leave it to the reader to figure out what happens next.

Besides, what's the point of finishing? Who could believe we would ever have a puppet president who would just refuse to leave the White House after his term of office was completed? (Maybe if he was never actually elected...)

It's just too ridiculous to even contemplate. Only in the mind of a very sick writer would any president or vice president try to circumvent our constitution.

(I did like the part about Britney Spears's panties, however. I wouldn't mind having a pair of those for a shop rag. Or whatever.)

No Hell?

2007-07-09T09:43:18-04:00

According to a recent ABC News report, the prominent Bishop Carlton Pearson, founder and senior pastor of New Dimensions Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has declared that there is no Hell.

This bothers me. (It also bothered most of his congregation who deserted him after this announcement.)

If there is no Hell, where do all those godless bastards who don't believe what I believe go after they die?

If there is no Hell, how does God expect us to scare the living bejeebers out of innocent, naive children and get them to cough up their comic book money for the Church?

If there is no Hell, where do all you other guys who masturbate go? Is merely going blind and growing hair on the palm of your hand punishment enough? I don't think so.

Bishop Pearson, suggesting that God is a loving and forgiving god, asks: "How can you love a god who tortures your grandmother for all eternity?"

Well, Bishop Pearson I tell you the bitch deserves it for all the times she made me scrub behind my ears and for always giving me sucky clothes for Christmas when I wanted toy weapons of mass destruction like all the cool kids had.

No Bishop Pearson, there is a Hell and I imagine it is just as Rowan Atkins outlines in this video clip "Welcome to Hell."

OK, so in reality The Devil probably looks a little more like Dick Cheney. But you get the basic idea.

Silvia: Another Addition from My Fine Art Collection.

2007-06-29T10:20:22-04:00

I found Sylvia at Pretty Nudes - a great site not only for those of us who appreciate fine art, but also a great place for nature study.

When She's Right, She's Right

2007-06-27T12:17:54-04:00

I never thought I would find myself agreeing with Ann Coulter. But damn it, when she's right, she's right!

Yes, the acid-tongued, anorexic scarecrow who so rightfully pointed out to all us liberals that we are godless has brilliantly figured out how to win the war in Iraq.

All we have to do, as Ann explained last night on Hardball With Chris Matthews, is to kill a lot more innocent people.

It's so simple, brilliant, and effective I can't see how I've been so wrong about her for so long.

I know there are some Ann Coulter haters who will refuse to believe she actually said anything that insightful - that I am twisting her words to make her sound more intelligent than she truly is - but if you don't believe me, just listen to a rerun of last night's Hardball.

As she pointed out, our troops have just been too frigging cautious about causing collateral damage. Hell, as she explained, we slaughtered more innocent people in a single day during World War II than we have butchered during the entire war in Iraq.

And that just ain't right! (Merely killing only thousands of bystanders demonstrates a decisive lack of commitment.)

Again, to paraphrase Ann, if we simply massacre enough innocent people, the insurgents will lose their will to fight.

And again, she's right. Shit, there's nothing like forty-to-fifty thousand partial corpses of exploded babies to get the insurgents' heads straight.

But why stop with mere butchery? Unbridled raping, massive indiscriminate torturing, and wholesale plundering would tremendously facilitate our efforts to save the Iraqi people from the evils of radical Islamic fundamentalism.

(Sorry, I forgot. People who are not godless don't rape. So scratch the rape part. We'll have to settle for merely killing, maiming, and mutilating innocent men, women, and children. Since Ann's advocating that, that has to be okay with God.)

But, even without the rape, pillage, and plunder we should still be able to sufficiently dishearten the insurgents by turning all of Iraq into a bloody heap of lifeless corpses in just a couple months.

That will make everyone happy and enable us to bring our troops home and to place them strategically along the Mexican border. (If we build a wall of Mexican corpses ten-feet high running the entire length of our southern border it will destroy the will of would-be illegal immigrants to slither into our country.)

That will solve all our problems.

And the beautiful thing about Ann's kill-everyone-who-gets-in-our-path solution is that if our military troops don't have the stomach for wholesale, indiscriminate slaughter, (some of them are godless liberals) Halliburton will cheerfully do anything we ask for only a couple billion dollars a day.

The Best Reason for Supporting Our Troops

2007-06-18T10:05:24-04:00

One of the best reasons for supporting our troops in Iraq is that the job gets easier every day.

A couple weeks ago, our congress caved in to the maniacal right and passed a bill to continue "supporting our troops." Today, we now have a couple dozen fewer troops to support. (I'm confident the widows, widowers, and orphaned children of these fallen soldiers are pleased by how valiantly we "supported our troops.")

So you see, the job gets easier every day - the fewer troops we have the less we have to support. At this rate of attrition, we can easily do our patriotic duty and support our troops until there are none left alive and walking.

You see, we are not like Great Britain, Spain, and other allies who deserted their troops by pulling them out of Iraq and bringing them home to warm comfortable beds and loving families. We're more supportive than that. We support our troops to death. (Literally.)

A couple of years back, I heard one of Richard Nixon's aides say on television: "If you're going to fault Richard Nixon, don't fault him for Watergate. Fault him for the longest, bloodiest, costliest retreat in the history of the world."

This guy obviously just didn't support our troops. Neither did he understand all that we accomplished in Viet Nam.

Sure, in a couple of years, a couple hundred or a couple thousand more U.S. military deaths, and several billions more to Halliburton we'll eventually turn on our troops and pull them out of Iraq. But what does that matter as long as we show our support now?

Ballistic Missile Defense In Thirty Seconds

2007-06-06T11:50:20-04:00

This pretty well explains it all.

I Never Served My Country

2007-05-30T10:37:23-04:00

I received an email yesterday from a friend who, as a quick side note, thanked me for doing my "military duty."

The truth is, I never did my "military duty." My military duty was to defend my country. Instead, I spent five and a half years defending my government's lunacy during the Viet Nam era.

There is a huge difference between serving your country and serving your government.

I spent a year in Viet Nam. And although I was never a combatant, it occurred to me a few years after I got out that I had voluntarily placed myself in a position where I might have had to kill someone for no better reason than that my government told me it was my job to kill its enemies.

That's not something I can ever take pride in.

You Have to Wonder

2007-05-22T12:20:10-04:00

I just read an article at Gizmag about a fiberglass automobile starting into production in India that runs on compressed air, is zero polluting, has a driving rang of ten hours, and a top speed of 68 mph.

The car comes with a slew of frills, including a GPS guidance system, needs an oil change (1 liter of vegetable oil) only about every 31,000 miles, and can be "refueled" at your home in 3 to 4 hours at night while you are sleeping. (Read all about it here.)

It ain't real pretty, but don't worry about that. I've lived too long to know the damned thing makes far too much sense for us to ever see one.

We're Americans! It's our responsibility to wallow in aggressive stupidity.

We need huge-engine cars that will go zero to 60 in 1.1 seconds (just watch the ads) and terrorize the community so we can wait, engines revving, at the next stoplight. And despite the fact very few of us drive more than 15 miles a day, we need cars that will go hundreds of miles before we stop to bend over and spreading our cheeks at the gas pump.

If we really wanted to do anything to save the planet, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, or act like we had half a brain, we'd all be driving golf carts back and forth to the store. (Instead, we made that illegal.)

As a result, every time I read about a new and practical alternative to gas-guzzling super monsters designed for ripping up the surrounding environment (how many SUV owners have ever taken their vehicles out of town, let alone off-road?) I've learned this is the stuff of Flash Gordon and inter-galactic space travel.

We'll see time machines before we ever allow an intelligent substitute for the internal-combustion engine on our roads.

We the Sheeple

2007-05-16T09:00:46-04:00

With the presidential campaign already tediously upon us, candidates are lined up at the microphones to tell us what they believe in, or what they think we want to hear - whichever is handiest.

But my question is: What do we care what they believe?

News flash: We're not electing a ruler (or at least we shouldn't be). We're electing a public servant.

It's time we pull these ruler wannabes aside, look them straight in the eye, bitch slap them, and say: "Hey, Shit For Brains, get this straight. We don't give a damn whether you believe in gun control, abortion, or public nose-picking any more than we care if our janitor is a Christian or a Jew. Don't try to tell us what you will do if we hire you. You're going to do whatever the majority of us tell you to do!"

Instead, however, we treat these usurpers like someone special, trip over one another for the opportunity to kiss their asses, vote for the one we believe to be the least offensive, and bend over in preparation for the inevitable ream job when they ignore our desires and do whatever they want.

And who do we have to blame? Ourselves.

We are so accustomed to being a nation of the sheeple, for the sheeple, and by the sheeple we never stop and say, "Hey, that ain't right! Employees don't call the shots."

(I picked up the word "sheeple" from RC Cunningham over at Untwisted Vortex.) But while the word's not mine, it pretty accurately describes what we've allowed ourselves to become by not forcefully making it absolutely clear to our elected officials that "public servant" means "public servant" and not "the anointed."

But can we blame these candidates? They are simply doing what is expected from them - telling us what they will do if elected.

And we, we the sheeple, are only doing what is expected of us - letting them get away with it.

That's what sheeple do.

God Has to Be Laughing

2007-05-14T09:45:43-04:00

While in Thailand, I dated a girl whose mother seemed to be Super Woman. I never met the lady, but my girlfriend was constantly telling me that her mother went here and did that, then went over there and did something else, frequently sounding as though she were in two places at once.

Being a young, corn-fed Hoosier bumpkin with no discernible sophistication, it never occurred to me that her "mother" was quite literally in more than one place at the same time.

One night after a movie, my mind strayed from thoughts about my friend's breasts long enough for me to ask her how her mother could accomplish so much. She told me it was simple, she had four mothers - one also being her aunt. (My heart went out to her. Having one mother constantly nagging me to become a responsible citizen was a little more than I could abide most of the time. Having four would have been unimaginable agony.)

It seemed her father, a rather affluent gentleman before his death, had four simultaneous wives who raised her.

One, she told me, not her natural mother, ran off with another man when she was young, but was still a part of the family and still considered a "mother." As though adding spice to the meatloaf, my friend went on to explain how it had taken her father a couple months to hunt down the wayward spouse.

"So he forced her to come back?" I asked, with typical American logic.

She looked at me as though I were the dumbest thing since the invention of the string tie and said in a disbelieving voice: "Why would he do that? He could get all the wives he wanted. Why would he want to be with a woman who didn't want to be with him?"

"Then why did he chase her?"

"For the children," she informed me in complete exasperation. "She could do whatever she wanted to do, but the children were his. He wasn't going to give up his children just because she wanted to live with another man."

"Oh!"

I should have figured out long before that conversation that her father was a polygamist. (But there is something so tenacious about deep-seated, bred-in stupidity that the mind is frequently forced to reject the obvious.) My neighbor there in Bangkok was a polygamist, and I should have realized things also weren't right in my friend's family.

My neighbor had two wives, and although all three of the parties involved had horns and cloven hooves, they were otherwise normal people who caused no trouble and went about their business with the arrogance of people who thought they had a God-given right to love whomever they chose.

I hadn't thought anything about this incident for years. But I was reminded of it last night as Mike Wallace interviewed Mitt Romney on "Sixty Minutes."

Now I know that Romney is a presidential candidate and is therefore required by law to lie like hell at every available opportunity. But Romney said that although his great-grandfather was a polygamist, polygamy is a terrible thing and shouldn't be tolerated.

And I couldn't agree more.

I mean, what right does anyone have to defy strongly held prejudice and live by their own belief system and answer to their own god? Where do these people think they are? Do they think they are in "the land of the free?"

Hell no!

Just because polygamy was widely accepted and commonly practiced for a million years or so doesn't make it natural or acceptable. In the late nineteenth century, we recognized that Abraham, Solomon, et al were low-life, godless fornicators, and passed a law here in this country making it illegal, immoral, and downright impolite to enjoy more than one woman without cheating on your wife and/or going to a whorehouse.

I know there are a few satanic liberals (is "satanic liberals" redundant?) out there who would ask: "If they are all consenting adults, who are polygamists hurting?"

But I ask you, could you really sleep easily at night knowing your children are growing up in a country that actually practices religious tolerance? (My god, our forefathers came to this country to firmly establish their own, unique brand of religious bigotry. We can't summarily reject all they accomplished.)

But, although our government refuses to do its duty and declare an open haunting season on these evil doers, God has devised a warped poetic justice for all those who flagrantly ignore that particular law.

Imagine having twelve wives. Then imagine, as nature has decreed, all those wives being PMSy at the same time.

God has to be laughing.

My Best Idea Ever

2007-05-10T08:37:29-04:00

I've been paying close attention to the upcoming presidential race, and I've learned two things. One, I don't like anybody very much. And two, these bandits are going to spend, collectively, more than a billion dollars to get themselves elected.

That got me to thinking, and thinking is what I do best. (I'm not real good at doing.)

With all that money, we should be able to hire someone who actually knows what he/she is doing.

And with outsourcing the latest rage, why not outsource the job? I mean, if outsourcing works so well for business, why shouldn't it work for government?

All we have to do is hire some other country to run ours for us.

I don't think England would work out very well. They're as dumb as we are and we don't need anyone dumb enough to get messed up in the Iraqi war running our country.

Germany wouldn't work out. They all spend the entire month of October drunk. I think Ireland spends the entire year drunk. The Italians would be too busy arguing to get anything much done, and the French take three-month vacations.

Of course I could be wrong. (One of the big advantage to being an American is that you don't have to know anything at all about the rest of the world and nobody around you notices.)

However, it's not in the human nature to allow ignorance on any subject to interfere with a stubbornly held opinion.

So here's my idea. Let's hire Switzerland to run our country for us.

Look at the money we'd save. Surely Swiss army knives can't cost as much as tanks. The Swiss could bring our military spending down to about $35 a year.

And the Swiss wouldn't send us off to start wars that don't need to be fought. Did you see any Swiss soldiers in Viet Nam or in the Middle East? (You can't go that far on a bicycle.)

They also know how to handle money. The Swiss wouldn't authorize wasting our taxpayer money for pork barrel projects in Kentucky or Alabama. No, they would keep our money locked up in their banks where it could earn interest.

And as far as national security goes, look how successfully the Papal Swiss Guard has defended the Vatican. Have you ever heard of a terrorist attack on Vatican City or hordes of illegal aliens slipping across Vatican borders and flooding into the Sistine Chapel to find work? No! And that's because the Papal Swiss Guard in their snappy outfits know how to defend the borders. (We could line them up all along our southern border and, as they must glow in the dark in those uniforms, no self-respecting alien would want to enter a country with that fashion sense.)

I know a lot of mommas' babies out there are going to scream, "Hey, we can't have a bunch of foreigners running our country!" But I ask you: When has Texas ever really been a part of the rest of The United States?

Dinosaurs and Me

2007-05-08T10:45:28-04:00

I never met a dinosaur, but (call me a species-ist) I don't think I could get too close to anything that indiscriminately expels house-sized turds.

I know dinosaurs were cute and cuddly creatures that came in pastel colors and that everyone else wants one for a house pet, but I'm personally suspicious of anything that can eat a large assembly of children for a mid-morning snack.

I've always felt that way about dinosaurs. Even back in school when all the other kids were salivating over dinosaurs, I couldn't see what all the interest was.

Dinosaurs, at least many, were huge, ugly, flesh-eating creatures that in all probability smelled like filthy outhouses, passed enough gas to wither a good-sized forest, and could crush small buildings with a single step.

They had no art; they had no science; their table manners were atrocious; and they couldn't play a guitar. All they did was eat, screw, shit, terrorize, and die.

So why is everyone so fascinated with these big, ugly, smelly monsters? (Rhinoceroses are big, ugly, and smelly. No one is very interested in them. You'd probably shoot any rhinoceros who showed up at your house for dinner. And they're herbivores.)

Yet, about every month or so, headlines in the news announce that yet another paleontologist has discovered a new species of dinosaur.

Why don't they just stop looking? What do we need with more frigging dinosaurs?

But more important, what of value are we going to learn by investing millions of dollars and thousands of man hours in researching these odorous extinct monsters?

Are we going to learn there were a whole bunch of them that lived a very long time ago and roamed the earth for millions of years? We already know that.

Are we going to learn that we can kiss our butts good-bye if a meteor the size of Texas slams into the earth? I think the word's already out.

So what are we going to learn?

I mean, if we knew so much about dinosaurs that we could name every one that ever lived, tell you what he/she had for breakfast every day, and at what age and from what he/she died, would all that knowledge stop one war, cure one disease, save one starving child, or even be instrumental in creating a widget? I don't see how.

The truth is, dinosaurs weren't cute. They weren't cuddly. They didn't sing and dance. They didn't write any great rap music.

So I say, just let the damned things die already and get on with something important - like finding out whether or not Paris Hilton will actually do time in the slammer.