Bring Me the Head of “Heraldo”

Bring Me the Head of “Heraldo”

 

Well the North Coast Journal finally published its annual “Best of Humboldt” issue, and once again, this blog, “Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do” made the cut. This year, my blog tied for fourth place with the Humboldt Herald.

 

Frankly, I don’t have time for, or much interest in, reading a lot of other blogs, and I’ve never heard anything good about the Humboldt Herald. So, before today, I’d never even glanced at it. I’d heard that the Humboldt Herald was a cesspool of moronic political bickering, so I assumed that it was Eureka’s answer to Eric Kirk’s blog, SoHum Parlance.

 

Sure enough, who’s name do I see at the top of the page at Humboldt Herald? Eric Kirk’s, but apparently some anonymous joker, who calls himself “Heraldo”, runs the Humboldt Herald. I wouldn’t put my real name on that disease either, were I responsible for it.

 

I didn’t spend a lot of time there, but it looks like the same kind of bland, self-important, rhetorical regurgitation you’d expect from Eric Kirk. I didn’t see one post that I really wanted to read, and what I did read, seemed to me the product of small, narrow minds, without much imagination, so I’m more than a little disappointed to have tied with them.

 

You’ll recall that last year we fought this campaign down to a tie, as well. In 2011, Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do tied with Chocolate Covered Xanax for 5^th place. Chocolate Covered Xanax rocks, at least it did then. Well written, with beautiful photographs, Chocolate Covered Xanax has style, humor and elegance. It’s a real class act. I was proud to tie with Chocolate Covered Xanax. Apparently Kristabel has better things to do these days. It’s been a while since she’s updated CCX, which, no doubt, hurt her in this year’s competition. We miss you Kristabel, but that was last year.

 

This year, NCJ readers cast more votes for Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do, and we took a bigger slice of the overall pie, up from 2.5% of the vote to 3.2%, which moved us up in the standings enough to tie for fourth. It’s just a shame that I had to tie with the artless, pointless, senseless idiocy of Eric Kirk, Heraldo and their ilk at the Humboldt Herald.

 

I’m better than that. I mean, I write drivel, but I don’t write that kind of drivel. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that vacuous political agita has a following around here, but the fact that the Humboldt Herald even placed in this contest speaks poorly of North Coast Journal readers.

 

Above us in the poll, no surprises. In first place: Lost Coast Outpost, the online hub of the Ferndale media empire, Lost Coast Communications. With four commercial radio stations feeding it traffic, former NCJ “Town Dandy”, and computer whiz Hank Sims aggressively building it into a local media powerhouse, and now with Redheaded Blackbelt Kym Kemp on the team, Lost Coast Outpost has become Humboldt County’s first source for news and information.

 

In the poll, Lost Coast Outpost took 34.4 percent of the vote, with Kym Kemp’s Redheaded Blackbelt taking another 6.8%, and coming in third on her own. That’s over 41% of the vote for Lost Coast Outpost. Yes, the Lost Coast Outpost, and Lost Coast Communications casts a growing shadow over the media landscape here in Humboldt County.

 

LCC’s KHUM, “Radio Without the Rules” took first place in the “Best Radio Station” category, and another LCC station, KSLG finished second. Both of these commercial stations beat out both of our beloved community radio stations, KHSU and KMUD, which polled third and fourth respectively. As a blogger, I don’t generally consider myself in competition with local news media outlets like Lost Coast Outpost, and LCC, but KMUD is, and I hope that KMUD is up to it, because LCC is clearly growing, and hungry.

 

I couldn’t believe Lost Coast Outpost’s new feature, as hyped by the NCJ. They now have an automatic feed from law enforcement agencies that posts an entry every time a cop arrests someone in Humboldt County. Each post states who got arrested, and what they are charged with. Now, if you get arrested in Humboldt County, Lost Coast Outpost readers will know about it, hours before you even get to make a phone call. Is that creepy or what?

 

I promise you this: if you get arrested in Humboldt County, or anywhere, for that matter, your mother is not going to find out about it by reading my blog. Who wants to monitor a feed of arrests in Humboldt County? What does voting for a site like that, say about NCJ readers? Speaking of which…

 

Second place in the North Coast Journal readers poll, “best blog” category, went to the North Coast Journal’s own “blog thing” which took only 9.1% of the vote. If the North Coast Journal can’t get at least 10% of their own readers to vote for their blog, even though they put full page ads for it in their paper every week, how lame is that?

 

So that’s it, Lost Coast Communications, The North Coast Journal, Heraldo, and me, the best of the blogosphere in Humboldt County, at least according to readers of The North Coast Journal. Besides trending towards the petulant, petty and prying, North-Coast Journal readership tends to skew towards the northern part of the county. They don’t cover us much down here, so we tend to ignore The NCJ in SoHum.

 

Nothing from SoHum won “best of” anything in the NCJ readers poll, and only four SoHum based things even placed in the top five, in any category. I already mentioned Kym Kemp’s Redheaded Blackbelt (third best blog), and KMUD (fourth best radio station). The Mateel Community Center placed fifth in the “best music venue” category, and this blog: Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do, placed fourth in the category of “best blog”, all proudly representing SoHum.

 

Thank you, dear readers, for voting for this blog, and supporting my work here. Enough of you believed in this blog enough, and stood up for what you believe in enough, to give Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do more votes than 99% of all of the blogs in Humboldt County, more votes than any other humor blog, more votes than any other personal blog, more votes than all but two local media outlets, and exactly as many votes as the single most popular political blog in the county.

 

That’s power, people. We went head-to-head against big-money media in cyberspace, and we made the cut. Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do is a player. So what if we tied with a sack of rancid troll bait.

Whippit Good

Whippit Good!

 

This morning I saw another pile of spent nitrous oxide cartridges alongside the roadway. Personally, I love whippits as much as anyone. Some of my most memorable drug experiences involve NO2. I saw God once when I inhaled a deep breath of NO2 while peaking on a strong acid trip.

 

If you read this blog regularly, you know that I make no secret of my enthusiasm for recreational drugs. I feel that drug use has been in the closet for far too long. It is time that this society learned to accept, tolerate, and celebrate, its drug abusers, and to make that happen, we need to come out of the closet.

 

Americans need to know that the people who prepare their food, fix their automobiles, and drive their kids to and from school, all take recreational drugs. The doctor who did your bypass surgery, the air traffic controllers who guided your flight, and the President of the United States… all stoned out of their minds. It’s time you knew, and its time we all stopped trying to hide it from you.

 

If major cities can subsidize massive sports arenas to encourage drunken hooliganism among sports fans, just imagine what they could do for drug users if we had social acceptance, big bucks and a few good lobbyists. Every American city could have a black light district where throbbing techno music and screaming electric guitars wail 24-7-365, beneath UV street lights. Someplace where even the poorest, dirtiest, hippie can pick up a sack of free, government subsidized, ganja buds, grown in prisons by former bankers, politicians, and real estate bloodsuckers trying to rehabilitate themselves.

 

Cities could take as much pride in their chemists, dealers and growers as they do in their sports teams, local delicacies or festivals. Yes, drug users deserve at least as much respect as sports fans, fat people, or festival fools, and we deserve to have businesspeople bribing government agencies to make our wildest chemical fantasies, real.

 

After all, drug users have money. Otherwise, they couldn’t afford to buy drugs. We all know that in this country, if you have money, people have to kiss your ass, no matter how evil you are. If I have to live in a country where we systematically reward greed and subsidize evil, I want drugs, lots of them, and plenty of time to enjoy them, and make it snappy!

 

I firmly believe in this dream, and have worked my whole life to make this dream a reality, mainly by getting high, and being stoned in public whenever possible. Whether I’m at work, in church, or behind the wheel, you can bet that I’m good and stoned, and when I’m stoned, I recognize that I am an ambassador for stoned people everywhere.

 

I realize that some of the people around me might not take drugs. They might not have spent much time around stoned people, or at least don’t realize how stoned the people around them really are. I want to make a good impression on these people. I try to set a good example for stoned people. I want them to see stoned people as responsible, caring, self-motivated people. I can only keep up the charade for a while, but I do my best.

 

As stoned people, we have a lot of propaganda to overcome. For generations, the media has portrayed drug users as either lazy, stupid, irresponsible slackers, or crazed psychopathic killers. Drug users suffer tremendously from the prejudice these stereotypes create and reinforce. Worse even than the stereotypes themselves, is the pervasive attitude that drug use, and drug users should not be tolerated in society.

 

Look at how the media portrays sports fans. The media generally portray sports fans as affable morons. We expect them to drink at least a six-pack a day. We expect them to be stupid, and easily enraged. We expect them to beat their wives when their team loses the Superbowl, and we expect them to riot in the streets when their team wins the Superbowl, but by and large, they are nice, likable people. That’s how the media portrays sports fans.

 

As a result, we tolerate sports fans, we celebrate them, and we make substantial allowances for their eccentricities. If this country can embrace, celebrate, and subsidize people who admire adults who play with balls, this country can embrace, celebrate and subsidize its recreational drug users, but first we have to overcome this learned prejudice.

 

Because of all of the media conditioning, when people see a pile of empty beer bottles alongside the roadway, they think: “Oh, those affable sports fans, they’re just too stupid to know any better. That’s why we have volunteers who remove roadside litter.”

 

…but when they see big pile of spent NO2 cartridges laying on the road, they think: “Those goddamn drug abusers. They have no respect, no sense of decency, and all they care about is their next fix. That’s why we have prisons.”

 

So look, you kids who leave your spent whippit cartridges all over the roadside, I know whippets aren’t illegal, and you are still a kid, even if not an actual juvenile. I also know that whippets are hella fun, if you are careful.

I want you to have fun, and I want you to be careful, because I want all of your drug experiences to be injury, fatality, and arrest free, but mainly, I WANT YOU TO STOP DITCHING YOUR FUCKING NO2 CARTRIDGES ALL OVER THE FUCKING ROADS.

 

Those piles of cartridges make all drug abusers look bad. They set stoned/straight relations back at least a decade. I know its just good clean fun, but they look as bad as used needles.

Recycle them. Put them in the receptacle for “cans”, or barring that, the trash. If you are really into NO2, get one of those big 84 cu ft refillable tanks, put down the $150 or so deposit, and just buy the gas.

 

Those tanks hold a lot of NO2, enough to give you and all of your friends a few splitting headaches, with plenty to spare. So, share! That way, fewer people will have to buy those wasteful one shot cartridges, and you get your money back when you return the tank.

 

Please work with me on this. Let’s stop trashing the countryside with our spent whippit cartridges. Join the campaign to:

 

Just Say NO 2 NO2 Litter.

 

…And once in your life, preferably while you are still young, and your arteries are still flexible, sit down, take a great big deep breath of NO2, and hold it, while you are peaking on a strong LSD trip. It’s kinda like bungie jumping in reverse. Don’t forget to sit down first. Have fun kids.

A Cheap Map to The Gettysburg Address

A Cheap Map to The Gettysburg Address

I heard this morning that the large relief map of the Gettysburg Civil War battlefield, on display for decades in the visitor center of the Gettysburg Historic Battleground and Cemetery, is for sale, cheap! At a recent auction of government surplus property, the 29 foot square relief map, complete with all of the little lights that display troop positions, campfire locations, and other historical facts, failed to entice even a single bidder, even with an opening bid of only $5.

According to the report I heard, Gettysburg has a new visitor center complete with a great new interactive Battle of Gettysburg exhibit, but I, along with millions of other Americans, distinctly remember this almost-actual-size light-up relief map of the Gettysburg battlefield that dominated the visitor center for generations.

From my public school education, I remember three things about the Battle of Gettysburg. 1. It was incredibly bloody 2. Lincoln gave a memorable speech that began “Four score and seven years ago…, after they buried all of the bodies 3. The way those flickering lights, that symbolized the union and confederate campfires, looked on that huge relief map when they turned the lights off in the visitor center. I remember that map fondly. I remember thinking the lights were cool, and I think it is the largest relief map I’ve ever seen, so that map has some significance for me, even if the Civil War doesn’t.

George Rosensteel, Civil war scholar and collector of Civil War artifacts provided the Gettysburg visitor Center with much of its collection, including the big electric map which he created.

Millions of foreign tourists, and hundreds of millions of Americans have gazed at that map, and marveled at the dozens of lights that illustrate and illuminate it. No one really understands the Battle of Gettysburg any better as a result. Still, that map never fails to make an impression, and many of us saw it for the first time at an impressionable age. For the living population, that one relief map amounts to at least 30% of our national memory of the Civil War. Why doesn’t anyone want it?

Thousands of people spend lots of money on period costumes and weapons, so they can spend their weekends reenacting grisly Civil War battles. Surely, one of those nutjobs wants a giant relief map of the Gettysburg Battlefield. Apparently not, I guess watching blinking lights on a big map just doesn’t compare to the thrill of shooting your own gun and bayoneting your buddies on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

Still someone ought to know what to do with this one-of-a-kind classic piece of Americana. Off hand, I suggest slot car racing. Think about the road course you could build on an 851 square foot relief map. You could set up a huge eight-lane Grand Prix style slot car track on it. Call it the Gettysburg 500 Speedway.

These days, kids seem to like those radio controlled cars more than slot cars. Wouldn’t it be fun to race your radio controlled dune buggy all over the Historic Gettysburg Battlefield and Cemetery…in your own basement? Ask your parents to buy it for you. It’s only $5.

Maybe a shopping mall could use it. They have the space, what with all of the store closures and everything. They could dress it up as “Santaland” for Christmas. They could glue on a few miniature Christmas trees, candy canes and animatronic elves, and cover the whole bloody battleground in a thick layer of phony snow. Santa, in his reindeer-drawn sleigh could fly around on a wire overhead. It’d probably be the best $5 they’d ever spent.

I wonder how the Gettysburg relief map would stand up to the elements. I mean, you can hardly buy a plastic tarp for $5. I’d think an imaginative homeless person could make some kind of temporary shelter out of all of that material. So what, if it’s all bumpy like Gettysburg. They might even be able to use the little lights for household illumination, but no, not one bid, not even for $5.

Apparently nobody cares enough about this icon of American history to fill it with human excrement and used syringes and abandon it by the river. Is that a tragedy or what?

You Call That Cooking! Herr’s New Hi-Tech Cheese Doodles

You Call That Cooking;

How to Make Not Quite a Meal From Stuff That is Not Quite Food

Herr’s New Hi-Tech Cheese Doodles

 

These things have saved my life on these long blog days. Usually, on the days we come to town, we have breakfast between 9-10am. Then I usually spend 3-4 hours looking up photos to go with the essays I have written, and putting together each weekly blog post here at http://www.lygsbtd.wordpress.com. We then have at least a half a dozen other chores to do before we head home.

 

Of course, the last place we stop, before we head for the hills, is the grocery store. By this time, it’s 5 or 6 in the evening. I haven’t eaten anything since 10 am, and my brain is fried. I’m tired of being in town, too hungry to think straight, and we have to decide on our weeks menu, before we can go home and eat. This is a recipe for disaster.

 

Lately however, Shop Smart in Redway has put out sample bowls of these new high-tech cheese doodles with a sign saying “Take Some”. The ingredient list looks about as long as facebook’s user agreement, and was written in print too fine for me to read without a microscope. I’m sure I don’t want to know what’s in them, but the free samples of these new cheese doodles have pulled me out of some very dark places, and may have prevented several grisly crimes.

 

By now, cheese doodles have been around for a long time, and I’ve never had any complaints about them. In fact, I’ve never met a cheese doodle I didn’t like. Cheese doodles and I go way back, and although I eat them less often, the older I get, I’m always happy to see them. Baked or fried, name brand or generic, cheese doodles have always been there for me, and never let me down. It would have never occurred to me that they needed improvement, but these new high-tech cheese doodles represent a major leap forward in doodle technology.

 

The first thing you notice is that these new cheese doodles come in a myriad of new flavors, like pizza, jalapeno poppers, or bacon cheddar flavor. They look different too. These new doodles resemble conventional cheese doodles as much as Doritos resemble tortilla chips, or a McRib resembles a rack of spare ribs.

 

Superficially, they look similar, but one looks like it came out of a kitchen and the other looks like it was developed by NASA. Besides the other-worldly texture and the blast of space-age MSG based flavor engineering, these new cheese doodles are larger and straighter than their conventional counterparts, further emphasizing their snack potency. They taste good, dangerously good.

 

I have hurt myself in the past, binging on conventional cheese doodles. Once, in the middle of the night, on a long road trip, I found a great deal on 3 lb of cheese doodles in a 24 hour Safeway store. Individually, cheese doodles do not weigh much, and 3 lb of them takes up a surprising amount of space, but I was traveling alone, so I strapped my newly purchased golden booty into the passenger seat, and got back on the highway.

 

About an hour later I saw flashing lights in my rear-view mirror. I stopped, and the cop told me that he pulled me over because he thought I was molesting the fat lady in the orange dress sitting next to me. When he saw my lips, hands and steering wheel deeply encrusted with florescent orange doodle-funk, sitting next to a half-eaten garbage bag of cheese doodles, the cop told me I was even more disgusting than he first imagined.

 

Ultimately, he let me go with just a beating, but that was the first time I ever saw cheese doodles tinted red, with my own blood. I still ate them. Years later, however, when I discovered Frito-Lay’s “Flamin’ Hot Cheetos” they gave me a bone-chilling flashback, as well as ass-searing diarrhea.

 

Yes, I have suffered as a result of my weakness for cheese doodles, but I never blamed the doodles. They always seem so innocent. So light and airy, with that sunny orange color. They couldn’t hurt anyone, could they? Even so, as I age, more and more, I learn to keep my distance.

 

In a bowl, in a public place, like at the grocery store, I can control myself. I’ll take a few, maybe a handful or two, just enough to take the edge off. That is, just enough to get past “Wow, these taste unbelievably good!” to “Whoa, there’s something just a little nauseating about these.” Once I get there, I’m ready to face the reality of grocery shopping.

 

The problem is, I want real food to taste like these new high-tech bacon cheddar cheese doodles, and to require no more preparation than opening the bag. The fact that real food still requires effort and time to prepare, and that it yields less than junk-food-sensational flavor, attests to the ultimate failure of our technological society. There’s nothing like feeling slightly nauseous on junk food to remind you of the emptiness of the modern high-tech lifestyle.

 

As far as I’m concerned, for all of our global cooking traditions, our haute, and nouveau cuisines, and the modern world of high-tech prepared foods, cooking comes down to knowing which plants are good to eat, and knowing how to hold a dead animal over a fire without burning yourself.

 

Science and technology have completely failed to change this equation. For all of the resources we devote to science and technology, the best it can do for us is cheese doodles, emptiness made irresistible. Just a few of these new high-tech cheese doodles, not only revive me when I’m tired and hungry, they remind me of these facts of life about food.

Thank You for Supporting Like You’ve Got Something Better to Do

Thank You for Supporting Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do

To everyone who voted for Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do in the North Coast Journal’s “Best of Humboldt” readers survey, thank you for supporting my campaign. I really appreciate that you took time out of your day to cast a ballot for this blog, and I will continue to work hard for you, delivering the same caliber of pointless drivel that you’ve come to expect from me here at: www.lygsbtd.wordpress.com.

 

I don’t know why it takes the NCJ two weeks to count the ballots, but they can take their sweet time if they want to, after all, its their newspaper. I’ve already gotten more ink out of the NCJ than I expected. The words, “Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do is the funniest blog in Humboldt County” appeared in the North Coast Journal two weeks ago, so the truth is out. Despite their vote rigging shenanigans, the NCJ just couldn’t hold this blog down.

 

As far as I’m concerned, we’ve already won this contest, but we’ll see how the vote comes out on Sept. 20. After the “voting irregularities” the supporters of this blog experienced in the balloting phase of this contest, who knows what the NCJ will do, now that they have two weeks alone with all of the ballots. They’re certainly not above suspicion, considering the circumstances.

 

Humboldt County’s world famous Transparency Project doesn’t apply to private surveys like this, and the NCJ rejected my demand that I personally be allowed to monitor the entire ballot sequestration and count, almost as soon as I set up my sleeping bag in their office. With no election observers, we may never know the true will of the people, but on September 20, the NCJ has promised to publish some results, and I’m sure I’ll have something to say about them.

 

Until then, Thank You for reading Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do, and Thank You for voting for Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do as Humboldt’s best blog. You Rock!!!!

Our Finest Hour

Our Finest Hour

My Fellow Americans,

 

Today, we face challenging times. Economic malaise, global environmental meltdown and worldwide political upheaval threaten everything we hold dear. Some would say that times like these demand strong leadership. I say, “Hogwash!”

Strong leadership got us into this mess. Self-confident liars have used our instinctual trust, cooperative nature, and natural compassion against us, and we have paid dearly for our willingness to believe in them. It’s high-time we learned our lesson from those mistakes.

 

We don’t need leaders anymore, because we are not followers. We are not sheep, and will not be led hither and yon by a well-funded political class with its own agenda. We reject the voice of authority, and scoff at the voice of reason.

Instinctively, we know how to navigate these rough seas. We know what to do in a cultural dead-end, like the one we currently face. When things fall apart, and nothing makes any sense anymore, we turn to the things we can count on; drug abuse, kinky sex, and stupid humor, the things we get from each other.

You can count on me for stupid humor, just like I count on you for sex and drugs. We need each other, but today, I need more from you than sex and drugs. Today, I need your vote. Please vote for this blog, “Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do” in the North Coast Journal’s “Best of Humboldt” reader survey. Today is our last day to inundate the NCJ with votes for this blog, so please, do it right now.

Cast your vote for stupid humor and fresh perspective, today! Go to the NCJ website. Click on the long skinny bar near the top of the page that takes you to the ballot. Click through all of the categories until you get to the last one, number 40, “best blog”. Type in (or cut and paste) “Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do” into the space next to that category. Then click through the remaining pages until you see the winged kitten. It’s that easy, and takes less than a minute. You’ll be glad you did, but DO IT NOW!!

Don’t throw your vote away on one of the news blogs. Don’t you get way too much news? Isn’t it sick the way they compete to be the first to tell you about the latest grisly traffic fatality or police shooting? Like you don’t have enough trouble in your life, that you can’t wait a few hours, or even a few days, to learn of the death of a stranger.

Yes, journalists like to quote Thomas Jefferson to justify their existence, and hide behind an air of professionalism, but these low-lifes chase ambulances simply to bait the rubbernecker in us with the freshest blood. Journalists pimp human suffering purely for the purpose of indulging our prurient curiosity. Don’t fall for their ruse, and don’t encourage them by voting for a news blog. Instead, vote for “Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do” in the NCJ “Best of Humboldt” readers survey.

Political blogs are even worse. The idiocy that passes for political debate in this country, and the horse-race style coverage of political campaigns should provide anyone with a gnat’s wit or better, plenty of evidence that democracy has failed. Still, Humboldt’s political blogs, full of pitifully dull posts and littered with moronic comments, continue to fester. I don’t know why anyone would sip the puss from those infections. If I were you, I wouldn’t admit to reading these blogs, let alone vote for them.

Besides news and political blogs, blogs that revolve around recipes and human interest stories suck too. If you read a recipe on line, it might look good, but to really enjoy it, you still have to buy the ingredients, and prepare the dish, and even then, you might not enjoy it. You have to spend the money. You have to do the work. You have to follow their instructions, like some indentured servant, before you get to enjoy anything. They get to tell you what to do. You just do what you are told and eat what they tell you to eat. How pathetic!

Reading a blog is enough work, I say, and I expect something for it. I should get a laugh, a chuckle, a grin, or at least a fresh, if somewhat twisted, perspective, and I shouldn’t have to make a mess of my kitchen in the process. If I spend my time and energy to read something, dammit, I better enjoy it, right now! I write “Like You’ve Got something Better To Do” for people like me; people who hate to read, love to laugh, and demand immediate gratification. If you read “Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do” regularly, you know that I deliver the goods, week in, and week out.

Today, I ask you to give back a little. Please cast your vote for “Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do” in the North Coast Journal’s “Best of Humboldt” readers poll. We have entered the very last hours of this campaign. Today, Weds. September 5, at 4pm, the NCJ will close the survey, and they will accept no votes after that time, so please, do not delay, do it today. Cast your vote now.

If you’ve already voted for “Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do” as Humboldt’s best blog in the 2012 NCJ readers poll, I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. Thank you and God Bless America!!!