How To Not Say Anything To A Wombat

1. Avoid eye contact.

2. Avoid nose contact.

3. Avoid contact with Australia.

How To Not Say Anything To A Cat

1. Avoid meowing.

2. Keep a dog with you at all times.

3. Do not sleep anywhere a cat may be able to "get at you".

The Silent Treatment, PART TWO: I Didn't Say That!

The Silent Treatment, PART ONE: I Say What I Mean

Chinese Zodiac, Lesson One: The Year of the Salamander

The Year of the Salamander is the shortest of the Chinese Zodiac years. It is not very well understood as it has only noticeably occurred once so far, from October 22, 1971 to October 24, 1971 to be exact. It is speculated that it might happen once every 10,000 years, but experts are still waiting for conclusive data to come in to support this theory. In addition to the generally accepted signs for given years in the Chinese Zodiac, there are also five regular elements and four irregular ones. So 1971, for example, is largely considered to be The Year of the Metal Pig. It is perhaps not surprising then that October 22, 1971 to October 24, 1971 is considered not just The Year of the Salamander, but The Year of the Dented Salamander.

DENTED SALAMANDERS have a questionable exterior, and an even more questionable interior. In fact, the only thing more questionable than their integrity is their existence. They are almost always born in water, but usually tire of it by their 30's and move on, although they never really stray too far from liquid of some sort or the other. Dented Salamanders generally get along very well with animals that don't try to eat them, but are especially drawn to the other really rare Chinese Zodiac signs, Sparkly Wombats, Crocheted Earthworms, and Velvet Devilfish.

Sitting At The Red Light Using My Inductive Reasoning

The other day I was driving and I came to an intersection and stopped for a red light. There were no other cars in sight in any direction and I wondered if I should just run the red light. I know that would be breaking the law, but the laws are only there to protect us and give us a more productive and efficient society anyway and in this particular instance I was at a perpendicular intersection with good sight lines in all directions in the middle of the day and there wasn't so much as a pedestrian around. I'm sure everyone who drives regularly has encountered this situation before. And it occurred to me that at some intersections this never really happens. At some intersections they have some sort of detector that knows your car is there and the light automatically changes. But how does it detect your car, I wondered. Thoroughly lost in thought at this point, all considerations of becoming an outlaw for the day faded. I imagined all sorts of sensors they might employ for such a task... lasers, pressure plates, leprechauns... I couldn't be sure... The light changed to green and I drove on, but the thought stayed with me so when I got home I was compelled to google it. I was surprised to discover that while there are a variety of techniques they use to accomplish essentially the same goal, by far the most common detection system they use is the inductive loop traffic detector. Briefly, it is a coiled wire embedded in the surface of the road that, when electricty is passed through it, creates an electromagnetic field. The inductance is constantly measured and any changes are detected. When a large metallic object, such as a car or truck is placed in close proximity (i.e., parked overhead), the inductance is greatly increased, the meter measures the change, and the traffic light turns green.

Later, while searching youtube for something entirely unrelated, I came across this video (THOSE WHO RIDE SCOOTERS, MOTORCYCLES, BICYCLES, OR SMALL CARS TAKE NOTICE!):

Hyper-Subjective Punctuation (PART ONE)

The semicolon ( ; ) is a punctuation mark with several uses. The Italian printer Aldus Manutius the Elder established the practice of using the semicolon mark to separate words of opposed meaning, and to indicate interdependent statements.[1] The earliest, general use of the semicolon in English was in 1591; Ben Jonson was the first notable English writer to use them systematically. The modern uses of the semicolon relate either to the listing of items, or to the linking of related clauses.



The colon (:) is a punctuation mark consisting of two equally sized dots centered on the same vertical line. Use of the : symbol to mark the discontinuity of a grammatical construction, or a pause of a length intermediate between that of a semicolon and that of a period, was introduced in English orthography around 1600. John Bullokar's An English expositor (1616) glosses Colon as "A marke of a sentence not fully ended which is made with two prickes."



The semisemicolon is a psedo-imaginative punctuation mark most often used in dreams (and sometimes in typesetting to express extreme displeasure when receiving too many commas due to a shipping error). The semisemicolon first appeared in the year 1552 when a young unicorn named Larry Fitzsimmons dreamed up the first of several never-ending sentences.



The supercolon is a punctuation mark mostly used by grammatical purists to point out their intellectual superiority. First use of the supercolon was noticed in Edward Hillwater's grammatical omnibus 'Twere I Dither, Wither Might I Roam? in which he explains it's usage as "...a bridge to span that mighty gap left yawing 'tween the grace of a colon and the loathsome finality of a period."



The supersemicolon is a punctuation mark first used by the famous grammar critic, Steed Fwarkbronque in his review of Edward Hillwater's grammatical omnibus 'Twere I Dither, Wither Might I Roam? The entire critique was considered rather rude, but it was Steed's choice to end it with a supersemicolon rather than a period that is generally considered the moment at which began the grammer-free, slangless, eye-twitching communication of the late 1970's which later gave birth to rap.

The Blog That Wouldn't (but probably should) Die

On a cool summer evening sitting around a crackling fire on a knotty old log, I was once told a story by a man of the most questionable repute. "Lean in", he said. "I have a tale that needs passing." He could have meant "I have a tail that needs passing", but when faced with semantic dualities I tend to choose the one that generates the more pleasant olfactory perception. "It was a violent night" he continued. "The clouds roiled, the rain pelted, and the wind thrashed. The lightning crackled and the thunder bellowed out in angry voluminous crashes. The ground was not big enough to hold all of the water and it choked and gasped desperately. And yet a small frazzled figure dashed through the typhoon. It made me think of a gnat crawling through a carwash. But then I realized that the scale of this was much greater. It was more like a gnat crawling through a typhoon. It slipped and it fell tumultuously into the churning pools of collected water. It thrashed and splashed and fought to its feet again and dashed along, so sure of it's purpose. It fell again. Again it rose. It fell. It rose. It fell. After a while, it seemed as if it might be dancing to a pattern or following some other unknown masochistic rhythm. It rose. It fell. It rose." And then the gentleman telling me the story (whom I assure you was no gentleman) paused. His eyes became glassy and he stared very deeply at nothing in particular. I can not state this as fact - I have no way to check it - but I feel confident asserting that myself and the others there to listen to his rants paused mid-breath and did not breathe for some minutes as he sat motionless. Time froze, or time passed differently anyway. Everything was still. The only things that moved - the flames of the campfire, the tree branches swaying in the dark, the wind - were all that was important I realized. And just as my epiphany settled in and began expanding into a life-changing explosion of sudden cognition, he said simply: "It never stops raining. But that little fragile figure - which is this blog... This blog, supported only by the frail spindly little legs of pessimistic self-observation, in that hellacious typhoon, THE typhoon of infinitum, refuses to die."

"I think that story is all just a bunch of bullshit" said Abraham Lincoln who was sitting just to my left.

"Let's kill it!" said Bambi, the deer from the Disney animated movie of the same name.

"Or at least torture it!" said Snoopy.

Just then the flying edifice of Charles DeGaul landed upon a nearby branch and shit itself.

The Wrinkle Monster and The Limitations of 4D

There is a great she-warrior who has travelled deep into the inky blackness of the night, fought inhospitable hospital-gowned phantoms and battled scrub-clad demons. She has trudged through her own fears like an insect refusing to be caught in amber. Fate cockily steps forward and tells her how it's going to be and before it can finish she has Fate scrubbing the floors clean. She has emerged on the other side with tales of a monster of incredible stealth and diabolical intent, a monster with such ferocity and persistence that there is no creature in the universe that can defeat it. Period. It is the paramount force. The monster which rules all.

The great thing about three dimensions is that if you take a wrong turn, you can divert, you can correct; You can detour, retrace your steps, lose the proper path and find it again. The fourth dimension, Time, is conversely very limited. There is only one direction. You can not turn left. You can not turn right. You can not backup. You can not stop. You can't even change your speed. How easy a target must we all be then?

In the hollow inky thick blackness of the night, The Wrinkle Monster comes and dances on our faces with his little wrinkle-making feet. He dances a timeless dance and we get older.

I would like to thank my she-warrior for pointing this out as I was sure that the wrinkles were actually just an illusion caused by the tiny bumps on her eyes, but I stand corrected.

Who Ate All My Readers?

Smiley Jones had no way of knowing that his destiny was to become breakfast.

Once upon a time, this blog was visited semi-regularly by six, maybe even seven readers. That time has passed. What once was an extremely arid, bleak landscape is now an extremelier aridier, and far more bleaky landscape. The succulent ideas still live here though, patiently waiting for the day when the rains of readership will return and they will bloom in an egotistical flurry. The no-humped camel lives here too (An evolutionary dead end, the no-hump camel is a purely fictional animal that wanders through my mind occasionally, drearily wondering why it can't get any satisfaction). And also The Dreaded Ravenous Gila Bunny lives here. In a cave, actually. In a cave with blind fish that have evolved very thick foreheads due primarily to the extremely painful cave forewalls to be exact. The Dreaded Ravenous Gila Bunny is a beast of such ferocity and tenacity, that it's gaping maw of slathering fangs frightens even the Abnormal Lizard-Pig of Blog Posts East-West! A renowned biologist by the name of Smiley Jones once found the cave by chance and was shocked to discover that the blindness in the fish wasn't due to the complete darkness of the cave and the lack of need for eyes, it was in response to a beast so fearsome that to see it was to die. Even in the dark. Of course as soon as he realized this, Smiley Jones was very quickly eaten along with some eggs and toast. Although The Dreaded Ravenous Gila Bunny normally feeds on no-humped camels, it "delights in the eating of anything brainy", it is purported to have said in its only known interview. Curiously, the interviewer survived the interview and it has been widely speculated that this was some sort of effusive derogatory remark towards the interviewer though the point was obviously missed at the time.

So here, in this cave with no light, in this desert with no rain, sits The Dreaded Ravenous Gila Bunny. Waiting for something. Anything.

Does This Blog Need Metamucil® To Make It Regular?

There once was a blogger who was far more likely to be attacked by a badger outside of a dimly lit Seven-Eleven due to a case of mistaken identity,1. than to than make a concerted effort to post a blog. But this person had a blog never-the-less... well, actually he had several blogs... umm, okay, technically he can think of at least 22 blogs that are still currently active under his pseudonym and password combinations,2. although it is important to make the distinction that only 17 or so have actually been logged in to and fiddled with in the past 6-8 months. What I'm trying to say is: Why is it that the sun continues to rise and set each day? Has it no shame?!? At least the moon disappears once a month.3. I mean, come on.

TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR: The Silent Treatment, Parts One & Two and Ten Ways To Not Say Anything To A Cat!

___________________________________________________

1. This, hypothetically, would be because the badger was operating primarily on scent-related data and the victim may (or may not) have been wearing an article or two of clothing belonging to someone other than himself/herself, who might (or might not) have been in some sort of pseudo-drug trafficking/gun running altercation with the previously mentioned badger, three rather beefy looking groundhogs, and, allegedly, at least one well armed beaver. Helpful note: It is highly recommended by hospital staff and/or lawyers that the badger, if still attached, be decommissioned prior to entering the emergency room waiting area.

2. For this statement the author was not required to prove that he could recall all 22 pseudonym and password combinations to the degree that such accounts could be accessed. He was taken at his word that given a few days, he could work it out. Plus we concede that there could be as many as a dozen additional blog accounts that he can not recall at the moment.

3. The Moon, in my opinion, is the sexiest of all the planets. Conversely, I think the sun is the least sexy of all the light bulbs. I mean, great big lollipops people, can't we find a more efficient light source? Do you have any idea the sort of electric bill that thing causes.

Lightweight Rocks, Narcoleptic Birds, and A Little White Lie

Okay, so what exactly is my fascination with narcoleptic birds anyway? I shall attempt to explain from the other way round: insomniac earthworms = not very interesting.

I think I built a new clear bomb out of cranium-235.

The other day I went to a flea market where I stole upon a peddler who was selling chickens. In a small stall were stacks of cubed cages with a variety of types of chickens; red ones, orange ones, white ones, black ones, ornate ones, dull ones. I engaged him in conversation hoping to discover what would possess someone to become a flea market chicken salesman and was quickly spellbound by his mysterious and exotic tales. After we chatted for several minutes he paused. "I have something you might like," he said, properly concluding that I was unlikely to buy a chicken. From the rear of his stall, he pulled a cage out from beneath a canvas sheet. Inside the cage was the most amazingly majestic bird I have ever seen. If you were to ask me what it was about this bird that was different from all of the others, I couldn't say. But from the first sight it was clearly something more. "This chicken is special," he said, understating the obvious. "Do not be alarmed," he cautioned, "but this chicken can talk." I laughed out loud. Suddenly the spell was broken. I had followed this serious little man through tales of his travels believing every word. What a sucker I was. "Not only can it talk," he continued, "It can not tell a lie." He said it with such confidence, I caught myself wishing it were true. What a strange experience. But the strange little man just pushed on. "You do not believe, but you will," he said, "Ask it a question." I felt foolish, but for some reason I played along. I got down to eye level with the magnificent looking bird and said "Okay, Mr. chicken, tell me something that is true."

"You are about to steal me," the bird said.

I have named him Larry. Anyone wants to know anything about anything, all you have to do is ask. Larry knows all.

Another Logomaniacal Brain Squirt

Fred tried to be different, but it was virtually impossible due to the fact that he was afflicted with severe normalmania. Sometimes he would just become overwhelmed and not doing anything out of the ordinary for months at a time. His wife Lucinda was excruciatingly worried that she might be paranoid. She wanted to believe she was a skeptic, but she just couldn't convince herself. Their son William was just fine.

They all sat and watched the cat onomatopee-pee-pee all over the floor floor floor.

One of the Many Horrific Discoveries Upon Waking Up

OH MY GOD! I CAN'T SEE MY EYES!!!

BAD SPELLERS OF THE WORLD UNTIE!!!

While spellcheckers are ubiquitous, the inclination to use them is apparently not. I personally appreciate and advocate individuality and originality in general, and if one is creatively inspired to rail against the illogical, if steadfast, rules of English spelling, then all power to them, but please, in order to willfully deviate in a conscionable and responsible manner, musn't one first know from whenst they might have begun?

Spell this, you motherflappers!

Hey, why is my spellchecker underlining "whenst" and "musn't"?

Derelict Brain's First Annual Wordless Writing Competition - UPDATE

!!!

SIGN UP TODAY!!!

DERELICT BRAIN'S FIRST ANNUAL WORDLESS WRITING COMPETITION 2008!

ENTRY RULES:

1. Wordless essays or stories must be 1,000 words or less and must be submitted to derelictbrain@gmail.com in Microsoft Word, Mac TextEdit, or .txt format with "WORDLESS WRITING ENTRY 2008" in the subject line.

2. All essays or stories must be titled and/or otherwise labeled in a somewhat reasonably applicable way.

3. All authors retain copyrights to original works, but by submitting for consideration do hereby grant the moderator of http://aderelictbrain.blogspot.com the rights to publish submissions on this blog.

4. Please be sure to include your name, age, and an email address or phone number if you wish to be eligible for prizes. Prizes and distribution of prizes will be determined by quantity of submissions, quality of submissions, timing of submissions and the size of my bank account at the time prizes are arbitrarily awarded.

5. All genres will be accepted, including but not limited to fiction, non-fiction, and/or not-non-fiction.

6. All entrants who provide an email address, whose entries are rejected for not meeting the proper requirements set forth in this list of rules will receive a good scolding.

7. This contest is open to everyone and is free to enter.

8. Entries will be accepted until they are no longer accepted which will absolutely be December 31st, 2008 or sooner.

Le Boom

The following is excerpted from the unpublished script, Le Boom, penned by the mysterious writer/lothario, Hugh Manzuno.  All rights are maintained by the author.

No one suspected that the red ball was a bomb powerful enough to destroy all of France and part of Canada.

No one paid much attention to the red player, the mysterious Clint Eastwood-Poppins. This was France after all.

But the cigar smoking Mr. Eastwood-Poppins was full of nefarious thoughts.

The lone tree on the hill trembled with anxiety.

Even amongst the tree huggers, Lucian was considered very passionate.

Armed with a croquet mallet of death, the nefarious Clint Eastwood-Poppins was borne aloft by a menacing Southeasterly breeze. Meanwhile, Charles de Gaulle placed third.

Searching For Thoughts In An Abandoned Mind Shaft

So, there I was on Planet Noggin searching for cranium and other precious mentals, when suddenly I went out of my mined.

The Super Objective Present Tense

"When I was in school, I didn't fare so well in History class. In fact, I didn't do so well in Future class either. So I concentrated my energy on studying the present, which, as it turns out, is one of the more dull and boring of the time classes. Eventually I would discover Alternate Past Futures and the rest, as they say, is history"

Dr. Tom Standsteel, Professor Laureate of Chrono-temporal Studies, Cambridge University, England

Ex-Stink, Shunned

The smelly business of perspective:

There have been six mass extinctions in the history of the earth that have accounted for more than half of all species living at that time disappearing. The End Ordovician, Late Devonian, End Permian, End Triassic, and End Cretaceous (the one that got the dinosaurs) are five of them. The current ongoing mass extinction is the other one.

Endiving Pictive of the Elusure Creative

Simon the Worm Monst (he was neither the worm monstest or even worm monster) pointed the witches broom in the wrong direction and quickly learned how to not fly which was really much safer anyway.

Sense and Senseless Ability

"Is a funny thing, life. No one is getting to choose to be born. Is just poof! and there you are. After a while you are feeling pretty stupid if you are just sitting around like a lump fruit. So you go out into the world to discover all of its icy horrors. But just when you are getting used to the disappointments, you get bit by Armand there behind the elephants and you have a whole new set of troubles. But I get ahead of myself. What I mean is, life is strange, no?"  --  Mihal, the vampire whose fangs didn't grow in, from Flying Backwards, an unpublished script.

My cell phone just rang and I ran to get it because I thought it might be somebody. But it wasn't. It was a wrong number. 

Like eleventeen.

The suffixes "-ure" and "-ive" have very similar definitions. For example, the word "capture" refers to the actual catching of something, while the word "captive" refers to the one who has been caught.

Interestingly enough, in the picture above, I have drawn a strange creative, not a strange creature.

LEGEND of the HONEY YETI

My mind is very much like the opposite of the Magic 8-Ball. Shake it up a little bit and instead of getting answers, it spits out questions. I am then left in a state of nervousness and anxiety until I can track down at least a reasonable hypothesis. The burning question this week was: Do bumble bees make honey? Wasps don't, I was pretty sure, but bumble bees seem to me very much the cousins of honey bees, so I suspected they might. And after a ferocious amount of research (i.e. one well executed google search), I have confirmed that (1) Bumble Bees do produce honey, (2) but not in sufficient quantities to be commercially viable, and (3) that it has been described in taste from "nasty" to "sweet". 

BZZZZZZZZZZ... err, I mean BUMBLEBUMBLE...

I have also heard whispers on the wind that tell of a giant bumble bee that lives only in the most remote mountain ranges and feeds exclusively on the honey of peasants! The ABUMBLEABLE SNOWBEE!

Saying "Tweet!" Faster Than The Speed of Normal

There is no hidden message here, but I LOVE you for looking!

I should be working, but instead I am alive.

I am alive in Birmingham, Alabama to be exact which is very much an oxymoron. In Birmingham, the radio stations in particular are an exercise in... what exactly is the word for the opposite of imagination? Anyway, those of us who drive around without satellite radio or the forethought to burn a few groovy CDs have two choices: die inside a little more or constantly switch the station. Which often leaves me listening to NPR which has, on occasion, interesting programming. From 9-11 Monday through Friday for instance, there is a program on called The Diane Rehm Show. Diane Rehm seems to be a delightful, intelligent and engaging person and on occasion I have found the subjects she discusses interesting. But she talks in a slow grating difficult to listen to voice that is like fingernails on the blackboard to my ears. In 1998 she was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological condition that causes strained, difficult speech. Today the discussion was, perhaps ironically, about birdcalls. Not exactly a subject I'm dying to learn more about. But I didn't change the station. I just listened and instead of thinking about birdcalls, I thought about her voice. I hate her voice. It's a diabolical assault on my ears. The trip in my car was brief and I didn't learn much about birdcalls. I did learn that grackles are more or less thugs to other birds though. It's probably a good idea that someone in my condition (a deeply caring, misanthropic, post-neo-luddite, schizoleptic with tendencies of pointlessness) ask themselves occasionally while writing what their point is exactly. And to be truthful, I'm not sure I have one (hence the tendencies of pointlessness). But I have decided that lackination might be a good word for the opposite of imagination since there doesn't seem to be one already. And maybe the point is just that I am alive. Maybe this is just my birdcall. Who can say?

As Rag Man

MITTENS: n. Coverings for the hands that encase the thumb separately and the four fingers together.

WHIT: n. A tiny or scarcely detectable amount.

NUN ALE: n. Beer made from Holy Water.

<3

Goldfish Doping

click here

Tied To The Whipping BlogPost

when i began this blog and the Fluvio Nortnoodle companion blog, I intended to pay them a lot of attention and hopefully grow a faithful audience that i could entertain endlessly. but then my life got unexpectedly highjacked. These terrorists have demanded that i focus my energies and are threatening to make me happy, so please forgive the sparsity of posts this past week. i am currently pursuing with singular vision, the writing and illustrating of a picture book about a one-eyed pirate. the above sketches were preliminaries that have been cut. i will try to maintain both blogs, but please have patience with me for the next month or two!

This Just In!!!

When asked for his opinion concerning drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Ningakpok the bear said, "What is your opinion of me looking for salmon in your shower?" and then promptly mauled and ate a cameraman.

Doppel-er Radar

Doppelganger. That typically refers to your look alike. Some stranger out there who bears an uncanny resemblance to you. But what about an inner doppelganger? Someone who thinks similarly, and acts similarly? since Doppelganger is the combination of the german words "double" and "goer", perhaps "double be-er" ("be-er" as in "one who is busy being") would be a good translation? and since "be-er" is really just one hyphen away from "beer", might I be so bold as to suggest doppellager? So, I would like to propose a toast to my doppellager: "What an incredibly lucky person you are to think like me!"

Oh, Those Silly Chimerical Humans

When I was younger, 12 or 13 maybe, I was fascinated by unproven but seemingly plausible phenomena (well, plausible to a preteen mind anyway). I bought books about Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and UFOs. Though I didn't know it at the time, I had already begun to filter out things that I deemed less likely (fairies, trolls, and dragons for example). There is an actual place you can search for Nessie.

Anyway, I think that process is part of growing up, part of maturing; our ability to distinguish likelihoods should increase with age as our experiences grow and our intellects become more sophisticated. So, it's easy to be an adult and realize that all the Bigfoot footprints and Nessie photos are more likely to be hoaxes and that militaries around the globe are responsible for at least the majority of UFOs. But what is difficult to see are the beliefs that we still hold on to irrationally.

I want to believe I'm a skeptic, but I'm just not convinced.

This Just In: This blog was ghostwritten by Champ!

When Technology Goes Bad

ummm.... 

secret message #337:

when life smells of poo,

wipe off your shoe!

I Am The Whisper Whisperer

First there was the horse whisperer, a guy who could get horses to behave. Then there was the dog whisperer, a guy who could make dogs behave. Now there's me, The Whisper Whisperer. If your whispering is out of control and you don't know what to do, call me. I can get your whispers back under control. I can make life for you normal again. And I only charge $10,000 per hour!!! Plus, I work weekends! But I'll have to charge overtime. I'm also the blog whisperer. And the white type whisperer...

The Piscine intellect

So, at the beginning of the summer, I built my mother a garden pond complete with a waterfall and stream, right? (I'm such a good boy). Shortly thereafter we bought a half dozen tiny little goldfish (maybe an inch and a half long). Of the original half dozen, only two have survived the whole summer but have grown to a staggering 6+ inches long already. I was able to train them to come to me for feeding time very easily in a matter of three or four days. Having observed them for the whole summer though, I have been very surprised at how seemingly intelligent they are; how quickly they seem to learn new things. And these are not exceptional fish bred to perform circus tricks either. These are the common 28 cents each Wal-Mart variety goldfish. So, if you would like to help me decide what I should train them to do next, please take the accompanying survey on this page. And for those of you who don't believe goldfish can be trained, I am including the following video that should set you straight.

The Problem With Canadians

So, I put a ridiculous survey on this blog (just over there to the right) and have been pleasantly surprised to discover that five whole people have actually taken the time to vote. That's tremendous! However, I have been greatly disturbed that no one has chosen the last answer, which was to blame it on those sneaky quiet Canadians. Can't anyone besides me see this is exactly what they want?

I am sure the American Empire will fall. Just like the Roman Empire did. Just like the British Empire has waned. America (and when I say America, of course I mean just the United States of America, not our bitches, South America, Central America, Canada and Mexico) too will fall. Today there are numerous credible threats to our domination: China, Russia, Islamic Fundamentalists, rogue nuclear states, dumpy North Korean leaders. But there is one in particular which is more threatening than the others; one that is successfully undermining our superiority without us even noticing: The Canadians. Those sneaky, underhanded, insidious, clandestine, Machiavellian, serpentine, furtive, slippery, vile, iniquitous, wicked, sinister, but very polite Canadians.

Have they brainwashed us so completely, that we refuse to even pick on them in a meaningless blog survey?

So, I just want you to realize that when a good ol' ham sandwich becomes a Canadian Bacon sandwich, you'll have no one to blame but yourselves. It may already be too late, eh?

Fun With Politics

Hello boys, girls, and androgynous rock stars! today we'll be talking about politics. Yes that is one of the four taboo subjects we're "not supposed" to really be honest and talk about (the other three are religion, sex, and race of course). But today it's politics. Traditionally, political labels have been either "Conservative" or "Liberal" (or "Moderate" if you're a fence sitter), but over time those labels have shifted completely. What was once called a "Liberal" is now called a "Conservative" and vice versa. It can all be so confusing. Plus, what if you're social views are liberal and your fiscal views are conservative? Fortunately, our good friends over at the internet have a wonderful solution to help you see where you stand. Down at the Political Compass ( http://www.politicalcompass.org/test ), you can answer a few questions and they will show you how you're political thinking compares to Hitler! (and others). So come on down and give it a try! I scored a very Gandhi-like -3.75, -2.62. "Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth." woohoo!

Thoughts in the key of Sea

There once was a ship. A pirate ship no less! And nary here was there a scallywag. Arrrggghh! but wait! It was also a ship of fools! And the fools played Split Some Skulls (a very popular pirate game). And it was whenst a skull had gone splitting that a brain squirted out onto the deck. The pirates were all aghast! Gasp! "What it be?" one bellowed. "Arrggh!" said the smarter of the two. So, like any good pirates, they kicked they bloody thing overboard.

Last week I created a wholly satirical blog about the slightly brain-damaged, 17th century Flemish artist, Fluvio Nortnoodle. This week I have created a space to plop thoughts that don't belong on Mr. Nortnoodle's page. Here is where the thoughts that wander too close to the edge of my brain will land when they fall. Splat! See.

Well, the spooky thing between my ears says "eat", so temporarily I bid you adieu.