Can We All Agree That Global Warming is Behind Us?

No one talks about this anymore, so I'm declaring victory, quietly.

Look out! They've got us surrounded!

I knew it was all baloney from day one, and I'm not ashamed to say it.
It wasn't always this way though. I used to have to "toe the line" like
everyone else. In fact here's an old email from work where I had to prove
my Green credentials to avoid being pointed at and pooh-poohed:

******
My loyalty to the company is beyond dispute and a matter of record. I have
already spearheaded an initiative to reduce carbon emissions not only at my
desk, but at every desk in the company. Here are the highlights:

1) Friction is a form of heat energy. If 1000 employees eat at their desks
the friction created by their chewing would be enough to power the
International Space Station indefinitely, and would be the equivalent of
cutting down an area of the rainforest equal to size of France every 22
minutes. Therefore employees may only chew twice during their meals- once
for the main course, once for dessert.

2) Every time an employee using a single Post-It an area of the Serengeti
Plain equivalent to the size of North America is burned to support it.
Therefore Post-Its are banned, and Tattoo machines will be set up in each
department so that notes can be inked directly onto employees skin, which
is a renewable resource.

3) The following items/foodstuffs will be banned as either causing an area
of the Ukrainian Steppe the size of Mars to disappear every 8 seconds OR as
being exploitative of insects and other critters:
Coffee
Bread
Honey
Chocolate
Salami
Gravy, Beef
Gravy, Pork
Gravy, Sawmill (Sausage)
Eyebrows
Polo shirts
Paper
Computers
Human Souls

Thank you for your cooperation.

-Mandrake

Does Texting Have A Future? Where Does That Leave ME?!?!?

Just call them, d*mn it!!!!!

Someone needs to make a distopic sci-future film built around the phenomenon of runaway texting, the thought of which will soon lead me to volunteer for Submarine duty in the Russian Navy.

The story would go something like this:
Avi Virgo (James Franco) is a registered 'Text Maniac' who is monitored by the evil 'Grandfathers Against Distracted Goings Everywhere Texting' (GADGET), a quasi-governement contract thought-police outfit what wants to abolish the new i-phone 87 (this is five years from now). Virgo tries to
gather all the Text Maniacs in Government Square to overthrow everything, but of course, being a product of the device, is incapable of setting a specific time or place to meet, figuring he'll just text everyone on the way 17 or 18 times and massage the deal until they bump into each other while texting. Tragically, his battery runs low after the 11th text and the Maniacs are helpless to assemble, leaving the governement and GADGET the simple task of rounding them up and taking their phones away.

Cut! Print it!

-Mandrake

Nah, it could never happen. They have to put down the i-phones to learn the instruments

I'm OK, You're JFK

"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade
and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they
are hard.."

Like you, I have spent thousands of hours trying to figure out what Kennedy meant by "do the other things". I have come to the conclusion that Kennedey just couldn't remember what other things he was thinking of. A little known fact I came across is that Kennedy wrote his own speech notes on the lid of a pack of smokes (Lucky Strikes) that was discovered in his suit the day NASA fired his body into the sun.

This is what he had written: (for full effect, picture him saying these in his speech)

Things to do in the next decade:
-Develop a stately US equivalent to "tea time" in Britain. Possible name/theme: "The Popeye Cigarette Hour"

-Carve Gregory Peck's face on the side of Mount Logan. Rename the mountain "Old Smokey".

-Destroy the coming "British Invasion" at the water's edge; promote Elvis to Major-General, and The "Commodores" to "The Admirals".

-Somehow discover the fate of the Robinson family, and Dr. Smith.

I had a thing for the wife, way back when

-Change all atlases and other references that have the name "Cuba" to read "Pee-Pee Land"

-Develop the pictures Francis Gary Powers took of Khrushchev sunbathing in the backyard of his villa near the Black Sea. Then invent the internet and post the pictures.

Shocking!

-Mandrake

When Emoticons Just Aren't Enough

The internet age is one marked by misunderstandings in the realm of communication. Indeed, though man has split the atom, gone to the moon and made Anime available to every human on the face of the planet,  it has also become easier for simple comments like "Nice work" to lead to the personal equivalent of World War Three (did Ham radio users ever suffer from this? There's a thesis paper in there somewhere) . To avert relational Armageddon, clever people came up with "emoticons". Initially simple ascii text symbols such as the 'smiley face' shown here, : ) and the enigmatic nerd in the toupee who thinks he's cool but is actually clueless ?8^), these eventually developed into graphic symbols such as these:

I'm sorry, but this doesn't tell me anything

We are anything but a static society, and things that may have worked in the past have become obsolete, the way toaster ovens were replaced by things like i-phones (I guess- I'm not very tech savvy). It should also be kept in mind that we are as a society getting "stupider" by the minute, and less capable of interpreting the subtleties of emoticons. I therefore propose switching to Imagicons™, a new and more expressive form of communications where tiny images at the ends of sentences are replaced with large pictures at the end of paragraphs.

This one says, 'I KNEW I should have shot that guy'

I have included an extended example below. I heard today that someone named Dionne Brand won $75k for some poems at a competition. Being a fan of old skool poetry I took a look at some of her work. See if you can guess how I felt about her 'work' by looking at my Imagicons™:

'Thirsty'
This city is beauty
unbreakable and amorous as eyelids,
in the streets, pressed with fierce departures,
submerged landings,
I am innocent as thresholds
and smashed night birds, lovesick,
as empty elevators

let me declare doorways,
corners, pursuit, let me say
standing here in eyelashes, in
invisible breasts, in the shrinking lake
in the tiny shops of untrue recollections,
the brittle, gnawed life we live,
I am held, and held

why, the touch of everything blushes me,
pigeons and wrecked boys,
half dead hours, blind musicians,
inconclusive women in bruised dresses
even the habitual gray-suited men with terrible
briefcases, how come, how come
I anticipate nothing as intimate as history

would I have had a different life
failing this embrace with broken things,
iridescent veins, ecstatic bullets, small cracks
in the brain, would I know these particular facts,
how a phrase scars a cheek, how water
dries love out, this, a thought as casual
as any second eviscerates a breath

and this, we meet in careless intervals,
in coffee bars, gas stations, in prosthetic
conversations, lotteries, untranslatable
mouths, in versions of what we may be,
a tremor of the hand in the realization
of endings, a glancing blow of tears
on skin, the keen dismissal in speed

 See? It works great!

-Mandrake

Auf Wiedersehen Machos!

From SPIEGEL ONLINE

A new manifesto from the German Green Party aims to banish macho men for good. It has stirred debate among men, even if a number of female Green politicians remain unconvinced.... The signatories include several Green politicians from the European parliament, the German Bundestag as well as local Green leaders. "We no longer want to be macho," it declares, "we want to be people. You are not born a man, you are turned into one."

* * * * *

I don't think even Dieter saw this coming.

I didn't have time to read the whole article, because I was too busy wrestling bears and alligators. "Who won, Mandrake"? I'm glad you asked me that! I beat the Alligator best two-out-of-three falls, but the bear was really giving me a hard time up until I shot him.

The German Green Party: Never have so few done so little for so many.

Will they manage to turn REAL men into Non-Macho men on a global scale? Maybe. They've already got to Harrison Ford and Ryan Reynolds, though I doubt they'll get the likes of Nicolas Sarkozy or Baron Meinster, unless they turn out to be the same guy. I guess I'll have to retreat to my Bunker I dug in the backyard sooner than expected.

The contents:

-DVD box-set of Rachel Welch films
-Fridge
-No.1 Hatchet
-No.2 Hatchet
-Combination Hatchet/Philips Screwdriver
-Swiss Army Hatchet
-10 Beef carcasses
-600 pounds salt
-2 tons of Harmless Tobacco
-Pipe
-Emergency Pipe
-Copy of Robinson Crusoe
-Tricorne Hat
-Omega Bomb from 'Beneath the Planet of the Apes'

Mandrake

* * * * *

Additional- Know Your Enemy

The New German Male™
   Size: Moderate to Swabian
   Weapons: Whining, followed by angry Haiku-Storm on Twitter
   Fear Factor: Unbelievably Low
   Likely Outcome of Hand-to-Hand Struggle: Unconscious non-Macho man sprawled on the floor. 
   Likeliness of Attack: Surprisingly high. Just fail to put enough cinnamon in his Latte and stand back.
   Defense: Taking away their hand lotion and lip balm will render them helpless.
   Bad Move: Hiding out in a woman's lingerie section of a department store.

Major Matt Mason vs Bullet-Man (for the over-40's)

Major Matt showing off his impressive Aikido Skills

Why aren't we all driving one of these NOW?!?!

Remember these Toys from the Old-Daze? Major Matt Mason had a squared-away haircut to differentiate him from deviated preverts and Hippies like Al Gore and Susan Sarandon. The figure was made of rubber with metal wires in the arms and legs for posability. Sometimes they would break and poke through his skin like green-stick fractures, and even with such unbearably painful wounds his facial expression remained a determined "America First". The Walker was cool with an automatic cable-retractor. The jerky walking-motion is probably what eventually drove the Major crazy- that and two tours in Central America.

Do you remember that squeeky sound his limbs made when you bent them? I think all the internal wires snapped after 3 days, leaving him permanently rubber-legged, like he was on a eternal Jovian malt liquor-fueled bender. But that walker was certainly the coolest toy of the 20th century- way better than BulletMan and his shiny bullet helmet and velour undies. And the string he rode in on.

Snappy outfit, shiny metal arms- what's not to like?

Insert thought image of your choosing

Bullet-Man's arms squeaked too. And remember the hooks on his backs, that allowed him to slide on a string, and ram headfirst into his target? Now in retirement, he can't remember who was president after Woodrow Wilson. He had shiny metallic-looking plastic arms and legs (Bullet-Man, not Wilson). Also the joints on the wrists and ankles were useless, to the extend that he couldn't stand up under his own power. You had to prop him up between two books or put him into some kind of balsa-wood wheelchair you made for him. No wonder he wore that fruity helmet- he was too ashamed to be seen in public.

Take a look at Bullet-Man's head. It immediately answers the question "What was George Lazenby doing in the late 70's?". He was modeling for this plastic toy, or was perhaps himself the real Bullet-Man.

The name is Man ...... Bullet-Man.

It's all true- I was there. What was my point? I can't remember- it was a long time ago.

Mandrake

The Taming of the Shrimp: 'Be Prepared' to Avoid Mirrors!

From Cool to Fool; from Oh Wow! to Chairman Mao

Looks like the Scouts have got a new look... a wrong look, but one that matches the general slide into the boring, grey universe we call the 21st century, where Indian-Fighting Cardinals and Dynamite are not welcome (even Godzilla needs a special visa to get in). See, Scouts is not supposed to be about making sugar-free Jello out of mulberry leaves or writing your congressman about saving wetlands.

It's supposed to be like when I was in Scouts- half-starved kids jumping out of trees onto ferocious jaguars armed with pen-knives (the Scouts, not the jaguars), battling for their meat and skins for our lives, or making campfires so huge you could see them from the latest Apollo mission in space. OK, maybe we didn't do that kind of stuff, BUT WE DREAMED ABOUT IT. Our heroes were Chuck "Chunk" Yaeger and maybe Zorro- men of action. Some of us liked Abe Lincoln, because he freed the slaves AND invented Graeco-Roman wrestling, or so we thought at the time.

Listen, Scouting was started out as a way to turn boys into men, get them to be self-sufficient and active-minded, and maybe backup the Cops, at least in the schoolyards. Also they were meant to be custodians of the various knots you can make with rope.

"See Billy? Use the sheet-bend to tie up Vampires, and the clove-hitch for Werewolves"

See, the old uniform says 'hand me a broken broomstick and I'll start ferreting out commies and their jaguar allies when the balloon goes up'. Just what does the new uniform say to you? Be honest! It says something like 'We're collecting cardboard to make a shanty-town for retired Manatees', or 'Hurray, just I got my badge in software installation!". They've already taken away their knives for pity sake (see previous posts), now the cool uniform that made you look like some kind of explorer in the Amazon, the stuff dreams are made of. Next they'll come for the snappy salute.

Baden Powell once said "A Scout is never taken by surprise; he knows exactly what to do when anything unexpected happens." I'm pretty sure he never saw this coming.

Suffice it to say Baden-Powell is spinning in his grave. In fact he's so upset he totally missed having tea with Gordon of Khartoum this afternoon.


Mandrake