Missouri OKs new state motto after killer bees swarm St. Louis

2012/05/10

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May 26, 1999

JEFFERSON CITY, MO–  After killer bee swarms blackened skies in St. Louis and sent thousands running for cover, the Missouri State Legislature passed a measure to change the state’s motto.

Last Tuesday’s hideous festooning of Africanized bees in St. Louis sent tens of thousands of sports fans running for cover at a St. Louis Cardinals levitation-ball game, destroyed several laser umpires, and shut down the city in the third such city-wide swarm in just over a year.  The city’s famous Gateway Arch buckled from the tremendous weight of impromptu hives constructed upon it, and authorities across Greater St. Louis confirm over 300 fatalities from the hideous onslaught.

The bee attacks in St. Louis are thus far the most northward push of the massive swarms since their arrival was predicted by tabloid science documentaries and cheesy sci-fi thrillers in the 1970s.  By 1985, Houston and New Orleans had been victimized countless times by trillions of angry bees, and swarms were ravaging Dallas and Miami by the end of that decade.

In 1993, killer bee swarms shut down hovercraft and jet pack travel in Memphis, Tennessee and closed the Elvis Presley Graceland National Monument for the entire summer.  In 1994, the fanatical bees shut down Atlanta, Georgia for three weeks and occupied the Georgia State House long enough to pass state laws banning the use of flyswatters, an offense punishable by death from a lethal injection of bee venom.

In the Missouri state capital of Jefferson City, lawmakers approved of a measure to change the state’s motto to commemorate the deadly St. Louis swarms and sent it forward to the governor’s office to be signed into action.  Replacing the previous Missouri State Motto, which cannot be remembered by anyone in the Missouri legislature, is the new motto:  “Ow, you bastard!  Ow, you bastard!  Ow, you bastard!  Ow, you bastard!”

“I think the new motto accurately reflects the mindset of most Missourians in the post-killer bee age,” said Eunice Barrett, a state representative from Nixa, Missouri.  “It’s rather inspirational.”

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How the new Canadian $20 note ruined my life

2012/05/10

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I used to be a level-minded, primly self-disciplined, and innocent lad of fairly pristine mind.  Those were the days!  My dirty shorts were always in the hamper.  My electric bill was always sent on time.  And I was trusted for my sterling sober judgement.

But now, my life has become a downward spiral of compulsive behavior, pornography, and depravity.  I’ve spent my life savings on prostitution, narcotic delights, and gambling.  I am a train derailment of moralistic failings, and it’s all the fault of the Bank of Canada, and their new design for the $20 note.

See, the new Canadian bill features some rather disturbing images, and I simply could not resist taking in some of the details.  And the worst part about it all was in that I knew that this new Canadian twenty was already a cause of consternation among certain folks in Canada, who worried that some of its imagery was deem-ably “pornographic” in some minds.  I foolishly ignored their warnings.

The $20 banknote looks innocent enough upon first glance.  A lovely portrait of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and a smattering of maple leaf emblems and,  naturally, a large number “20″ feature prominently on the bill.  Then, the eye wanders waywardly toward a disturbing detail:  The depiction of the Vimy Memorial in France, and the bare-chested maidens thereupon.

The Vimy Memorial was unveiled in France in 1936 as a monument to Canadian military lives lost in World War I on European soil.  It features two art-deco styled pillars that today can somewhat resemble the World Trade Center towers during or after their 9/11 destruction.  That imagery was disturbing enough.  Ooooh.

But one of the pillars is topped by two female “chorus” figures, both of whom are topless, and that imagery is clearly present on the banknote’s depiction.  Some observers in Canada worried that the nude women would be seen by some as pornography.  As one American I can certainly attest:  I’ll say it is!

I took one look at the Vimy imagery on that bill, and amid a chorus of wolf-whistles in my head, I was hurled over the cliff to my libidinous doom.  My mind filled with rampaging hordes of topless women with limestone boobies prancing around tantalizingly, luring me to my moral ruin.  I complied obediently by exchanging a large portion of my life savings for an endless harem of Canadian twenties, and lost thousands in the process, given the difference in the exchange rates.

I began gambling recklessly, drinking to horrific excess, and carousing like an animal.  I was repeatedly thrown out of strip bars, peep shows, gentlemen’s clubs, and gang bangs for carrying these pornographic bills, mistaken for counterfeits by some bouncers who have never heard of Canada, or laid eyes on any kind of a book.  I worshiped every idol in the form of a nude female figure, and treated myself to generous amounts of bestiality, narcotic delights, and gambling.  I littered the streets with torn-off mattress tags.  And my dirty shorts?  They became my new national flag.  But worst of all was the endless purchase of prostitution, and my new business motto:  “Your fee includes the cab fare.  Get the hell outta here!”

My life became a trail of unpaid gambling debts, embarrassing STDs, and frightful drug and alcohol withdrawals.  I was harassed in my nightmares by the maidens of the infamous Canadian twenty, who laughed at my torment, my physical shortcomings, and my hideously self-destructive lack of judgement.  I shamed everyone in my family with my many post-jail court appearances, and faced countless censures by judges bawling me out for my lack of moderation and proper direction in life.  I was a discarded shell of a man, and it was all the fault of those, those, those pornographers at the Bank of Canada!

The rest of my life will be consumed with my recovery and forever haunted by my epic plunge into the depths of immorality.  But you, dear reader, need not suffer a dire fate similar to mine.  Please heed my cautionary tale.  Be sure always to spurn harmful temptation; and particularly that of the dreaded Canadian $20 banknote.  I wish you luck!

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Wag-dogger update: Tom Brady unveils new hairstyle

2012/05/09

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I pose a question:  Does any red-blooded American football fan give a shit what Tom Brady’s hair looks like?

Apparently news is slow in the NFL sphere of things, even with the recent draft and the shocking suicide of legendary linebacker Junior Seau.  So slow, in fact, that various news outlets have to make a item out of the New England Patriots quarterback’s recently-unveiled coiffure.  It seems that updates about Brady’s hair status are more plentiful than, oh say, his exploits as a top NFL passer.  One might expect this to be an item in celeb news, seeing how he’s Giselle Bundchen’s gentleman caller.  But instead, it’s a headline of sorts in the various online sports pages, like Yahoo!’s Shutdown Corner.

Nicely done, guys.  You wanna know what I think?  I think Brady should give Kevin Kolb his hair stylist’s number, seeing how that hair looks like it was inspired most by the Arizona Cardinals helmet logo.  Beyond that, I could care less if Brady and every other figure in North American sports shaved his freaking head.

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NFL great Junior Seau trumped by Gingrich, author Sendak

2012/05/08

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Apparently, the “Breaking News” of Newt Gingrich officially dropping out of the race for the Republican candidacy for U.S. president was a real earth-shaker.  So much so, anyway, that it eclipsed the emergence of the news that NFL linebacker and first-ballot-Hall-of-Famer-to-be Junior Seau was found dead in his Oceanside, California home from a gunshot wound.

At least, that’s how Yahoo! viewed it.  Yahoo! gave Gingrich the yellow bar “Breaking News” treatment on their main page as Seau’s tragic story was emerging.  Even though Gingrich’s campaign was overspent by millions of dollars, and everyone with at least one functioning brain cell knew that Gingrich’s campaign was sunk, Gingrich’s official campaign resignation got “Breaking News” and live coverage treatment while the details of Seau’s death emerged with secondary importance.

Several television news outlets also carried Gingrich’s resignation speech live as the Seau story was emerging.  It was a matter of priorities, you understand.  It’s more important for us to know who wasn’t going to be president than to know that the greatest linebacker of our generation may have committed suicide.

This morning, Yahoo! posted with “Breaking News” treatment that 83-year-old Maurice Sendak — the author of “Where The Wild Things Are”, among other children’s titles — had died.  Tragic, yes.  But the man was 83-years-old.  There’s not much cause for shock here, seeing how a lot of people die at age 83.  Most people die before age 83.  Even in Japan, where life expectancies are the longest in the world.  Look it up.

So let’s see:  When a bloated, apology-demanding gasbag officially ends a presidential campaign everybody knew was finished over a month ago, it’s “Breaking News”.  When an 83-year-old author dies, it’s “Breaking News”.  When the longtime face of the San Diego Chargers — and perhaps the most dominant NFL linebacker of his era — dies from a gunshot wound at age 43, it’s not “Breaking News”.

Junior Seau, you deserved better.

I understand not everyone in this country is a fan of the National Football League.  But even when one sets aside Junior Seau’s on-field accomplishments, he was well-ascended in importance off the field, too.  Seau donated millions to various public projects in his hometown of San Diego and played thirteen years with the San Diego Chargers.  He especially loved reaching out to kids.  For him, it wasn’t just a publicity exercise or a tax write-off — it was a genuine passion borne from his own humble beginnings.  In a sport dominated by spotlight-chasing super-egos, Seau played with fearsome intensity on the field and represented his team and sport off the field with the utmost class and proper decorum.

Seau had every reason to hold his head high for the 19-season career he had.  The only accomplishment that eluded him was that he had never collected a Super Bowl championship ring — a karmic oversight he could have easily corrected as an NFL linebacking coach or defensive coordinator.  Seau was the pride of an already proud Samoan football tradition, and he was beloved as a leader and as a teammate by fellow players.  For such a man to commit suicide — to view himself, at the young age of 43, as unworthy of life even after all these great achievements –, that is truly breaking news.  And for it not to receive “Breaking News” priority over Gingrich, that is truly tragic.

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Domino tumbles: I have to ask, “What’s the point?”

2012/05/06

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Apparently, the domino tumble art form is still vogue, and perhaps becoming popular again.

This is referring to the art of setting up rectangular dominoes on end in chains in such a way that, when the initial tile tips, it touches off a dynamic chain usually in some sort of catchy design.  It’s known by several names — “domino tumbles”, “domino art”, “domino chains”, “domino creations” — , but to all of them, I have to ask this:  What’s the point?

Domino tumbles are one of those things that’s cool for most people until puberty settles in and diverts our attentions more toward our genitals.  But for a select few for whom getting laid seems boring, domino tumbles continue to be an all-consuming passion.  Every so often a CNN clip shows you a domino tumble sculpture that took weeks to prepare unfold in motion in a matter of seconds.  If I want to see something collapse in seconds that took a painstakingly long time to set up, I’ll just watch the latest economic figures.  Because of our current wonderful economy, where stagnation is occasionally broken up by frightful volatility, watching “domino creations” is a redundant non-temptation.

Instead, I find it more interesting to watch a similar process involving American society.  It’s the one where tens of millions of people in this country are so compliant with working their asses off for nebulous rewards that they rely on others (usually in the profit sector) to tell them what to value, who to admire, what to approve, and what to condemn.  As a result of this vacuum of individual thought, an America that took upwards of 250 years to create comes crumbling down because it created a society filled with ignorant dipshits who are thoroughly unworthy of the great nation they’ve inherited.  The collapse of a Superpower — that’s far more intriguing.

I call it the “Latter Day Pompeii” effect.

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CFNS: Update: “Grizzly Adams” star’s son confirmed dead

2012/05/04

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BOULDER, CO–  Authorities in Colorado have confirmed that a bear struck by a motorist on U.S. Highway 36 Thursday was indeed Glenn Rurrurro, the troubled son of reknowned bear actor Bozo Rurrurro from the 1970s television drama The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams.

Rurrurro was in the news earlier this week when pursuing authorities removed him from a tree with tranquilizers on the campus of the University of Colorado in Boulder.  Rurrurro was sought in connection with a spree of ransacked Winnebagos at various locations in the inter-mountain Western U.S.

Rurrurro died after he was struck by a vehicle following a daring escape from a holding facility some 50 miles west of Boulder, according to local sources.  Security cameras confirm Rurrurro escaped while dressed as a member of the lunchroom orderly staff.  The uniform was not found at the scene of his death, according to reports.

Friends say Rurrurro had a troubled upbringing as the son of a former celebrity and as a product of an inter-species union.  His father, Bozo Rurrurro, played Ben, a grizzly bear companion to actor Dan Haggerty on the two-year television drama The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams.  His mother, Hilda, is a black bear from Eastern Canada.

Like is father, Glenn Rurrurro frequently ran afoul of law enforcement authorities.  His life was a litany of arrests for vandalism, theft, and criminal trespass.

“He had addictions, and he trusted the wrong social elements,” says one anonymous friend.  “He was humiliated once wen he got his head stuck in a honey jar.  It just seemed like he was unluckier than most bears.

“Glenn deserved better,” the friend stated.

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Maybe America needs to say “no” to tipping practice

2012/05/03

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In America, we’ve all experienced it.  You go to a restaurant.  You order a meal.  You pay the tab afterwards.  And then, you throw some extra money down onto the table before you leave.

It’s called a tip, and it’s part of America’s consumer culture.  It began with good intentions.  It was a way to extend generosity to entry-level servers in the customer satisfaction industries, but now it’s become bastardized and exploited.  A growing number of restaurants are taking advantage of your generosity and turning in it into a shakedown.

The question stands:  Why tip?  Why is it customary to pay extra money for a restaurant meal?  If it is expected, then why is it an option?  And if it’s an option, why are we jerks for not participating in the practice, or for tipping too little?  And if it is notionally an option, why do many restaurants automatically calculate mandatory tips into their restaurant tabs?

For several reasons, I think it’s time to discuss eliminating the practice of tipping from American consumer culture.  To support the endeavor to end tipping practice, I submit the following:

It’s antiquated.  Tipping started prior to the 1900s and became standard in the early 20th Century.  Because there were no minimum wage laws in place, patrons at hotels, restaurants, salons, and other service businesses gave money to their servers that those servers didn’t have to forward to their bosses, as an act of generosity.  Since the onset of that practice, minimum wage laws have been put into place, and it’s about time they were applied to everyone in the patron service industries.

It’s confusing.  We tip at some restaurants, and not at others.  We tip at “sit-down”, full-service restaurants, but not at fast-food joints, mainly because of their self-service nature.  Okay, fine.  But what about all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets, for instance?  Do we tip or not?  Nowadays, we’ve seen an emergence of restaurants that blur the distinction between where we tip and don’t tip.

The amount keeps changing.  Prior to the 1970s, 10% was the standard tip rate.  The rate of 15% emerged in the 1980s, and today it’s rumored to be even higher.  Some restaurants expect a 17.5% tip.  When the tip rates keep going up, that’s an indication that the wait staff isn’t keeping the tip money.  That brings us to . . .

Many staffers don’t get to keep what they’re given as tips.  Tips are considered taxable income by the IRS, even though many staffers don’t report the income, which is technically illegal.  In many ethnic restaurants, staffers are forced to forward the tips to the owners upon threat of dismissal.  The process is familiar in a growing number of corporate “chain” restaurants.  This practice is impossible to police, and it spoils the intent behind tipping.

The concept of “mandatory tipping”.  A growing percentage of restaurants are now automatically factoring the tip in with the bill, making it impossible for you to not pay the tip.  When you’re forced to pay it, that’s not a tip.  That’s a heist.  Tipping is supposed to be the prerogative of the paying patron.  It was meant to give you, the patron, two means of veto power:  One, the satisfaction of rewarding the server with something they don’t have to forward to their bosses, and; two, a veto in case the meal or the service is objectionable.  Mandatory tipping takes both of those rights away from you.

The meaning is lost.  Let’s face it:  The reason why most of us tip is because we don’t want to look like assholes.  Each of us has a fear that we’ll be scorned as cheapskates if we don’t leave behind a suitable gratuity.  It’s a convenient consumer guilt cultivated by the customer satisfaction industries, and I, for one, am sick of being forced to feel guilty.  If I volunteer to enter a certain restaurant, consume a meal, and pay my tab, I’ve fulfilled my generosity.  Period.  If the wait staffers aren’t earning enough, the fault of that should belong to that restaurant and to standards within the industry, not to me.

Now, I understand that to some, these reasons sound the the rant of a cheapskate.  It’s not the money I object to.  It’s the hassle.  And it’s also the violation of principle.  Why should I give money to a staffer if I can’t verify that they’ll be able to keep it?  Restaurants should pay their staffers something dignified to circumvent the necessity of tipping.  And tips really should be weeded out of America’s consumer culture.

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CFNS: Wayward son of “Grizzly Adams” star nabbed again by law

2012/04/26

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BOULDER, CO–  The troubled son of television bear actor Bozo, best known as “Ben” from the NBC television drama The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, was apprehended by authorities on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder, Colorado, after a lengthy stand-off.

Glenn Rurrurro, the inter-species son of television grizzly bear actor Bozo Rurrurro, was removed from a tree with tranquilizer darts and taken into custody by police, campus security officials, and wildlife and game authorities.  Rurrurro had been the subject of an interstate pursuit by authorities in connection with a series of ransacked Winnebagos in and near California’s Sequoia National Park.

University of Colorado security officers defended their drastic measures to bring Rurrurro into custody.  “We did it mostly for his own safety,” one officer was quoted.  “We had to get him outta there before he ended up as a necktie rack somewhere out on Fraternity Row.”

This is but the latest brush with the law involving the wayward Hollywood son.  Rurrurro was convicted in 2007 with the armed theft of a freight truck hauling gallon jars of honey to a bakery in Fresno, California.

Glenn Rurrurro was born in 1980, two years after the two-season run of The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams.  His mother, Hilda, is a black bear from Eastern Canada.  Friends say Glenn experienced hardship during his youth, scorned by other bears for his parents’ mixed marriage and for his father’s celebrity status.  In the 1980s, Glenn acted out his resentments by chasing hikers, dumping garbage cans, and printing counterfeit campground passes.  He was expelled from Yellowstone National Park in 1995 after attempting to cork several of the park’s geysers.

Bozo Rurrurro, Glenn’s famous father, ran afoul of the law himself during the 1980s.  Bozo did correction time in 1984 after looting a general store in Mount Shasta, California, and fleeing authorities on a stolen bicycle.

Other cast members of The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams saw arrests in the 1980s.  The two skunks MaryLou and Dan’l were arrested in 1986 for marijuana possession after stealing a police car in Los Angeles and abandoning it in the Mojave Desert.

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CFNS: Donald Trump predicts doom for Scotland

2012/04/26

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Scotland is a land and a people threatened by catastrophe, and only American entrepreneur Donald Trump knows what it is.  Unfortunately for the Scottish people, no one is heeding his warnings.

In February, Trump warned Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond against being “hell-bent on destroying Scotland’s coastline and therefore Scotland itself.”  He also said, “You will single-handedly have done more damage to Scotland than virtually any event in Scottish history!”

If is sounds serious, it is.  Trump is talking about wind turbines.

The British realm plans to construct 11 200-foot-high wind turbines in the North Sea, in an effort to help position Scotland as a world leader in renewable energy.  The problem is that the turbines are in clear view of where Trump just ripped out dunes and habitat for rare wading birds and replaced them with a $1.2 billion coastal golf resort north of Aberdeen.

The act of Scotland — a country with more golf courses per capita than any other on Earth — spoiling the view of where Trump has installed yet another golf course is an unprecedented disaster, in Trump’s premonition.  Worse than, say, 400 years of Viking incursions from the Eighth to Eleventh Centuries.  Or worse than centuries of wars, reprisals, and invasions from powers in neighboring England.  Or centuries of clan wars, famines, and disease through to the onset of the Industrial Revolution.

A desperately concerned Trump showed in person to warn the Scottish Parliament against building the turbines.  “Scotland, if you pursue this policy of these monstrous turbines, Scotland will go broke.  They are ugly, they are noisy and they are dangerous. If Scotland does this, Scotland will be in serious trouble and will lose tourism to places like Ireland, and they are laughing at us.”

When challenged to produce evidence of his assertions, Trump responded, “I am the evidence.  I am a world-class expert in tourism.”  Snorts of laughter echoed throughout the Parliamentary setting in response.

At present, Scotland is challenging Trump’s warnings of doom and proceeding as scheduled with the installation of the turbines.  Hopefully, Scotland will adhere to Trump’s concerns for preserving the coastline.  After all, Donald Trump as a deep respect for preservation and tradition.  The man has been wearing the exact same hair style since 1979.

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New superspecies of sea barnacle threatens earthquake-submerged Hollywood Sign

2012/04/25

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April 25, 1999

SAN BERNARDINO BAY, CA–Ocean biologists at University of California’s Riverside Marine Laboratory have confirmed a new superspecies of sea barnacle whose populations are exploding all throughout the Greater Los Angeles Underwater Historical Site.

The new barnacle species, cirripedia non-dilecti, has been nicknamed the tiger-striped barnacle.  The stationary underwater shelled arthropod was first detected in 1994, some six years following the devastating earthquake that plunged Greater Los Angeles into the roiling Pacific and sent 11 million South Californians to a watery grave.  Diving archivists found several colonies of the barnacle while excavating the burial vault of iconic actress Marilyn Monroe.

In the four years since, the barnacle has collected in massive clusters on many of the submerged archaeological sites, including the Capitol Records Building and the famous Hollywood Sign, which sank on one singular, mile-long slab of land when the quake struck on May 5, 1988.

“It seems that the highly-imbedded smog sediments in many of the Los Angeles submerged ruins and landmarks provide a uniquely beneficial source for the tiger-striped barnacle,” says University of California oceanologist Nick Imiori.  “They collect and multiply in droves because of the sedimented smog residues.”

Imiori has been tracking the growing barnacle populations in the vicinity of the Hollywood Sign, and says that the threat to the once-hilltop monument is very real.  “Pretty soon, the letters will fail structurally from the weight of all the collecting barnacles.”

The Hollywood Sign is among the most visited archaeological sites of the entire San Bernardino Bay region, drawing some 800,000 tourists annually in touring submarines.  Only the remains of the Los Angeles Coliseum, Dodger Stadium, the Playboy Mansion, and late night talk show host Jay Leno’s Classic Car Collection draw more visitors.

Imiori says that regular relocation of developing barnacle colonies will be required to protect the archaeological sites, which are still settling 11 years after the magnitude 8.4 seism.

“We’re in the process of organizing a synthetic habitat for the barnacles near the San Gabriel Sea Cliffs,” says Imiori.  “It’s likely a similar reserve will be needed out by the Santa Monica Islands to keep the populations across the GLA Site.”

Imiori says the tiger-striped barnacle is probably the largest ecological issue to face the Greater Los Angeles Underwater Historical Site since the newly-formed beaches and coastlines were inundated by millions of saline breast implants and syringes of botox washed in by shifting ocean currents in 1989.  “We’ve got a lot of sea creatures in the region who have never looked better, I admit,” says Imiori.  “But we barely averted a mass biological die-off there.”

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