The Most Important Holiday Blog Post in the World

This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for the abundance that I have enjoyed this past year, but I am aware that many in this world go without. Thanksgiving also harkens in the Christmas shopping season, and many of you will spend a lot of money on stupid gifts no one really wants or needs. This Thanksgiving, I’m asking my readers to cut me a slice of that pie by supporting this important cause.

The Most Important Holiday Blog Post in the World

 

With the holidays rapidly approaching, a lot of us will be looking for gifts for people we don’t really like that much. If you’ve managed to avoid them all year, a gift is the perfect way to say, “Even though I hate your guts, I really can’t afford to have you talking shit about me.” This Holiday season, I offer you the perfect gift for people who you’d like to think well of you, but whom you don’t really know or like well enough to actually get them anything.

For these special people, a gift card from Helper International tells the recipient that you care more about some random, anonymous kids than you do about them. Helper makes sure that your money only helps cute, happy looking, photogenic kids, and we use the money you donate to give them cute, photogenic animals.

Your chosen recipient will receive a card with a beautiful color photograph so packed with cuteness and “Awwww”, that they will hate themselves, for being pissed that you didn’t really get them anything. Really, isn’t that what giving is all about, the feelings it inspires?

Sure, its awfully expensive for a greeting card, but you and your recipient will both know, that the kid in the picture really got to keep that cute little animal, gave it a name, took care of it, and bonded with it emotionally, before his parents slaughtered it and served it for dinner. That’s the kind of emotional enigma that makes the holidays so special.

Here at Helper International, our mission is simple, we use your donations to give highly prolific, and nutritious, live snails, to exceptionally cute children. Then we photograph the happy kids with their snails, print the photos on gift cards and send the cards to your specified recipient. That’s all there is to it.

Does it help? Sure it does. It helps us unload a bunch of snails, and puts money in our pockets. I can’t think of a more important cause than that, can you? You, and your chosen recipient get to share that “awwww” moment during the holidays, and some kid gets a snail. It’s a win win win deal for everybody.

So, please, give them the most important gift you can give. Give the gift of Escargot this holiday season. Help Helper International make the snail shepherding dreams of adorable children everywhere a reality. Only you can make make this miracle happen. No child should ever be denied the this exquisite delicacy and every child should have the opportunity to get to know the delightful little creatures that produce it in abundance.

Send your generous donations to Helper International, P.O. Box 2301, Redway, CA 95560 and make checks payable to John Hardin.  You’ll be glad you did, and so will I.  Thank you, for you support!

 

Doping Hurts Everyone, Especially Drug Enthusiasts

Doping Hurts Everyone, Especially Drug Enthusiasts

 

Well they stripped Lance Armstrong of his 7 Tour de France titles, leaving those races unwon in the annals of international cycling. As a recreational drug user, you might think that since I take drugs myself, it wouldn’t bother me so much that athletes use steroids, human growth hormone and god knows what else to improve their performance, but you’d be wrong. I find this explosion of the use of performance enhancing drugs particularly insidious, and it really pisses me off.

Like life doesn’t suck enough for people of normal abilities, now they have to worry about everyone else using drugs to edge them out of jobs, sports, college, game shows and even dates.  I remember cocaine as the first popular performance enhancing drug, and look at what a nightmare that turned into. I don’t think we have recovered yet, as a society, from the damage it caused.

Before cocaine, we took drugs to impair performance, or at least we accepted that side-effect as part of the experience. No one thought of partying as particularly competitive. We took drugs because they made us feel good, not because they made us feel better than other people.

Cocaine changed all of that. Suddenly, partying became a competitive sport. It wasn’t enough anymore, to smoke a joint, have a few drinks, relax and unwind with your friends. Instead, while you got quietly shitfaced, your friends all started talking faster than a caffeinated auctioneer. They were still dancing at 2:00 AM, when most decent people have already passed out in a puddle of their own vomit.

Most of them didn’t even dance before cocaine, but after the cocaine, if you wanted to hang with them, it was going to cost you. Then, all of these cocaine people started to get really competitive at work, because they needed more money to afford all of the cocaine they took. They started identifying with the boss’ greed more than with their coworkers interests.

Cocaine had as much to do with the collapse of labor unions in America as Ron Reagan, and the two worked together, hand in glove. Instead of standing together, we were all too busy running back and forth to the bathroom, trying to get the edge on each other, selling each other out, and screwing each other over.

All of those cocaine idiots eventually crashed and burned, but we’ve never recovered, as a nation, from the moral decay we suffered as a result of the cocaine epidemic. To this day, we remain a nation of greedy, superficial, backbiting egomaniacs. That’s real damage, folks! Cocaine turned us into a nation of assholes who systematically exterminate human decency for profit.

It’s not enough just to show up for work anymore. Now, they expect you to push yourself to exhaustion, just like a coke-head, and they’re always pushing you to improve your performance, because everything is so competitive these days. Why, do you suppose, is everything so competitive these days? It’s because cocaine turned us all against each other, and we’ve never been able to trust each other since.

I still enjoy drugs, but I take them because they feel good, or because I want to have a drug experience, not because I think they give me an edge over other people. People like Lance Armstrong, who strive to be exceptional, and especially those who juice themselves with performance enhancing drugs, make life harder for the rest of us who just want to show up, go through the motions, and draw a paycheck. For that, they should be punished severely.

 

Word Power, Heliculture

Word Power

Building Your Vocabulary, One Word at a Time

Heliculture

heliculture (hell ih cult yer) n the art, science, practice and folklore of raising snails

Simon and Garfunkle as Adolescents (Helix Aspersa)

About a year and a half ago, we adopted a snail we found on a plant at Sylvandale’s Garden Supply here in Redway. They were going to kill it, so we decided to give it another lease on life, and took it home as a pet. For a while, we kept it in a big jar with cheesecloth over the lid, and fed it lettuce leaves.

Garfunkle, aka Snail Friend, shortly after he joined our family

Amy misted it with a squirt bottle every day, which usually motivated it to come out of its shell and climb around for a while. After a while, it seemed lonely. I don’t exactly know why it seemed that way to us, but we went back to Sylvandale’s to see if we could find another one. We did, and they hit it off immediately. We often found them resting right next to each other, shell to shell.

Simon whispering to Garfunkle

When we just had one snail, we called it “Snail Friend”, but when we added the new one, we named them Simon and Garfunkle. We chose those names because of how quiet our new pets are, which reminded us of Simon and Garfunkle’s hit song “The Sounds of Silence”. At first Garfunkle, aka “Snail Friend”, the one we had the longest, was much larger than Simon, but they both grew rapidly.

Simon and Garfunkle (Simon is the little one on top in this photo)

Eventually we found a nice little aquarium with a fitted lid and transferred the snails into it. They really seemed to like the new digs, which had a nice layer of soil on the bottom, a couple rocks, and a piece of bark to create a diagonal ramp from the bottom corner to the top corner of their enclosure. They continued to grow, and Simon eventually grew to be the larger of the two.

Simon and Garfunkle in their Mason Jar Home

One evening, about two months ago, we noticed them necking rather enthusiastically. We knew they liked each other, but this got to be embarrassing to watch, so we put their aquarium away and gave them some privacy. About a week or so ago, we discovered dozens of tiny gray ovoid shaped masses about an eighth of an inch long, all over the inside of the aquarium. Baby snails! We have dozens of baby snails. Now what?

Baby Snails!

We checked out a book from the library about raising snails for food, titled, cryptically enough, Raising Snails for Food by Jacques Baratou, subtitled, “How to Make Friends With Garden Pests and Develop Them Into The Darlings of the Gourmet’s Table. We’ve done pretty well at the “making friends with garden pests” part, but I’m not sure we’re ready to “develop the darlings”, so to speak. However, I did discover this great word, heliculture.

Tiny snails in Amy’s palm

So, as we weigh our options at this critical juncture, and decide whether or not to join the distinguished ranks of the world’s heliculturalists, let me share a few photos of the proud new parents, and their babies, as well as a few facts I’ve learned about snail ranching:

Garfunkle with offspring

Snails have the most complicated sexual apparatus in the animal kingdom, and they are all hermaphroditic

Simon with baby

Snail ranchers ride specially bred horses that don’t run very fast, but are very careful about where they put their hooves down.

Baby Snails!

In France, snails have the right-of-way. Occasionally, french snail herders will have to cross a major road with their herd. This can tie up traffic for hours.

Proud Parents Simon and Garfunkle

Snail rodeos, where snail ranchers show off their snail-handling skills, and compete for prizes, have become high-stakes sporting events that draw competitors from all over the world. However, few spectators have the patience to sit through a snail rodeo, and as a result, the sport remains extremely obscure, outside of helicultural circles.

Simon with two babies

 

On The Money; Standard of Living

On The Money;

Economic Advice for the 99%

Standard of Living

 

People make a big deal about our “high standard of living”. Just last week local blogger Eric Kirk invoked the “high standard of living” in western Europe as evidence of the unrivaled superiority of the democratic system, as though democracy were an economic system rather than a political one, and completely ignoring the environmental impacts of the European lifestyle. Apparently, to Kirk, a high standard of living, regardless of how fleeting, or how high the price paid by the rest of the world, is the sole measure of success, but what do we mean by “standard of living”?

When was living standardized? Can’t we customize our lives individually? Do we have standardized tests to measure our standard of living? If so, how much do we “live to the test”, so to speak, just to artificially elevate the results? …and what do we mean by high? I know how high I have to be to reach my standard, but that’s a very personal thing. My partner Amy hardly smokes any pot at all. Does she have a lower standard of living than I do? If so, I think we’d all be better off with more people like Amy and fewer people like me, rather than the reverse.

Amy is a smart attractive woman who takes care of herself, me, two cats, two snails, our home and a few non-psychoactive potted plants that I would never bother with. She takes no drugs, has no interest in mass media, the internet, or fashion. She cherishes her interactions with wild plants and animals, enjoys living close to the earth, and has learned to do so responsibly.

I, on the other hand, am a fat, bald, multi-drug addicted middle aged white guy who spends his time thinking unclean thoughts about Bratz dolls, playing with electronic children’s toys and filling web servers with pointless blog posts about it. I can’t wait to try those new “bath salts” I’ve been hearing so much about, and even though about 80% of my waking thoughts revolve around sex, I still find it easy to blather endlessly on subjects I know nothing about, and I expect everyone to listen. Clearly I exemplify a higher standard of living than does my partner Amy, but who would you rather spend your time around?

While raising our “standard of living” has opened a Pandora’s Box of previously unimaginable new opportunities for fat, bald, sex-obsessed, drug-addled white guys with huge egos, like myself and Eric Kirk to amuse ourselves, those gains have come at tremendous cost to bright, good-looking people who know how to live on this planet without fucking it up, like Amy.  In fact a rising standard of living is always marked by the extirpation of healthy good-looking people who had quietly lived, in the same place where their ancestors lived for tens of thousands of years, without depleting their resource base, and by the rise of fat, bald, white egomaniacs who shamelessly exploit everything, and for whom, sustainability is, at best, an abstract concept.

Fat, bald, white egomaniacs, around the world, all live pretty much the same way. We all want anything we see any other fat, bald, white guy with. We think its great to live in a world where every fat, bald, white guy gets to have anything that any other fat, bald white guy has, so long as he has enough money. That’s what we mean by “high standard of living”.

On the other hand, the people who inhabited this world before this new “high standard of living” all lived differently. They all developed cultures adapted to the peculiarities of the places they lived. Nothing about human culture was standardized, but all of it was sustainable.

In the “high standard of living” world of fat, bald, white sex-obsessed egomaniacs, we have building codes, a general plan, and college educated, taxpayer funded eggheads who are full of advice, but none of it is sustainable.

This is why we should value our “high standard of living” over the rich diversity of our human cultural heritage. For unless we exterminate what remains of human cultural diversity, exploit the Earth’s natural bounty, and sacrifice generations of our own progeny in the name of our “high standard of living” fat, bald, white egomaniacs with money will not be able to use economic extortion to compensate for being so sexually repulsive.

There’s a view of our “high standard of living” that’s On The Money.

 

Word Power, Jeroboam

Word Power

Building Your Vocabulary One Word at a Time

Jeroboam

jer o bo am (jer eh bow em) n, an oversize wine bottle that holds about a gallon. Named for King Jeroboam I, who ruled the Northern Kingdom of Israel at about 912bc. I don’t know anything else about this king, but I like him already. Obviously the guy knew how to party.

 

Think about it, when you see a comically oversize joint, you call it a “Cheech and Chong” joint. King Jeroboam I must have been the “Chech and Chong” of the ancient world.

 

 

I Report From the Paris Air Show

A Report From the Paris Air Show

The Future of Air Travel

I took a flight to France last week to attend the Paris Air Show. Not because I’m in the market for an aircraft, or even find them that interesting, but just to get my junk touched.

 

I love Paris, especially in the summertime. While I’m not very good with the language, I always find the French very warm, friendly and welcoming, at least compared to SoHum. Sipping a Pernod at the Brasserie Balzar on Rue des Ecole in my red Nebraska Cornhuskers sweatshirt, I feel completely at home.

 

“Qui a laissé que étron dans mon café? “” I hear one patron say to another, motioning towards me.

I smile, wave and respond “Je ne sais pas, comme la plupart des étrons, j’ai été abandonnée par ma mère à la naissance.”

”Et telle une odeur horrible” he continues.

“Vrai”, I say, “Je ne sens rien puisque comme un enfant une fusée a volé jusqu’à mon nez.”  Like I said, I’m not that good with the language, but that seemed to work. I return to my writing. Much as I love France, the French people, and Paris, I have a job to do.

 

Every two years, at the historic airfield where Charles Lindbergh landed the Spirit of St. Louis. Aircraft manufacturers around the world bring their latest creations to dazzle the public and write some contracts. From Mercedes’ newest corporate helicopter, to the giants of the skies from Boeing and Airbus, at the Paris Air Show we see the future of air travel on display. At least a future they’d like us to believe.

 

From what I saw at the Paris Air Show, the future of air travel looks very bright indeed. They showed a magnificent plane with a transparent fuselage and a wide, spacious cabin. Roomy seats with ample armrests, reclined all the way back, to form flat cots. With wide aisles, panoramic views and plenty of leg room, the inside of this very luxurious plane looked more the lobby of a resort hotel, than any airliner I’ve flown in.

 

From what I experienced on my flight to Paris, however, the future of air travel seems quite bleak. I don’t really think that technological hurdles prevent airlines from providing amenities to air travelers today. In fact, airlines have cut many more perks than they’ve added in recent years, a trend I think likely to continue into the future. How will airlines treat you, the flying public, in 2025? I shudder to think.

Boeings new 800 passenger Jumbo Jet

After stripping, and submitting to a full body cavity search, you board the plane nude, where a flight attendant will shackle you to your seat. The flight attendant will hang a large ziplock bag, emblazoned with the airline’s logo, around your neck, containing your (or more likely, somebody else’s) clothes and shoes. Flight attendants now demand strict discipline. You will obey them, or they will punish you.

Flight Attendant of the Future

A string of airliner hijackings and bombings in the late twenty-teens, led to these invasive new security procedures, but not a single airliner has been hijacked since the mandatory “strip, shtumpf, and shackle” policy took effect in 2020. However, since the new system went into effect, thousands of passengers suffer long term symptoms of PTSD as a result of routine flights.

 

Very few people fly anymore with out the aid of significant medication, making in-flight conversation much more surreal. Air sickness remains a problem, complicated by medication and increased stress. Flight attendants provide a complimentary sani-wipe, in a foil envelope emblazoned with the airline’s logo, to every passenger when they release the shackles at your destination.

 

Dazed and disoriented, you wipe yourself off, struggle to put on whatever clothes you find in the bag, and try to remember who you are and where you are going. Smart travelers long ago learned that they could avoid a lot of trouble and expense by simply buying new clothes at their destination. But you, the inexperienced traveler, proceed to the baggage claim carrousel in hopes of finding your luggage.

 

By the time TSA screeners have have examined, and pilfered the contents of your bag, and airline baggage handlers have manhandled, dropped and run-over your bag with a forklift, what you see on the carrousel looks more like a giant pile of dirty laundry, with a bunch of open suitcases thrown in. after an hour or so of picking your belongings from the ever revolving heap, you feel you’ve found enough of your wardrobe to get through a few days. Then you collapse, sobbing, and curl up into a fetal position on the floor of the airport terminal for a few hours. You’ll probably be OK… eventually. Thank you for flying the friendly skies.

 

I think I’ll walk next time, thanks anyway.

See you back in Humboldt!