With the start of the New Year nigh upon us once again, it is altogether natural to become somewhat reflective concerning the passing of the years and the changes they bring to this world of ours.  Of course, it is even more altogether natural to become somewhat reflective concerning getting drunk off of cheap beer until you reach the point where a lampshade becomes a compelling sartorial choice before kissing a random girl who didn’t look all that attractive when you first showed up at the party that night, but hey, I’m sure y’all know all about that part firsthand and don’t need me to explain it to you.  So instead, I’m gonna take this opportunity to delve once more into the sock drawer of history, as we travel way back in time to learn about the first New Year’s ever.

            ‘Twas the year 785 B.C.  Indeed, it had been the year 785 B.C. since anyone could remember, because nobody had really gotten around to inventing the concept of New Years yet, which, needless to say, complicated things considerably.  Every single person on Earth was one year old; driver’s licenses were absolutely useless as a way of determining who was allowed to buy any of the fine prehistoric beers then available.  The calendar industry suffered terribly, as all you needed to do after December was flip it on back over to January and start again (this, incidentally, was what spawned the first off the wall calendar, when Gary Larson realized that there was money to be made off of nomads, monkeys, Paris Hilton, and other creatures that didn’t know how to use walls yet).  VH1 only had one show running at the time, “All About The 80s” and it encompassed all of human experience up to that point.  “Hey, remember Noah’s Ark?” people would say, “Yeah!  Man, the 80s were crazy back then!”

            Federal governments the world over were constantly in a state of abject poverty, having already collected all the income taxes for the 785 B.C. fiscal year many generations ago (they subsisted pretty much entirely off of speeding tickets and selling naming rights on the royal family to advertisers, a phenomenon generally held responsible for the hapless Emperor Bubble Yum of Rome and the widely forgotten Pharaoh Little Debbie of Egypt).  Time machines didn’t work properly at all, since all you had to do was punch in 785 B.C. as your destination year and the entire universe would implode in a shower of causal paradoxes and trippy special effects with melted watches and flying clocks and whatnot (fortunately, this only happened a couple of dozen times).  Time magazine had only had one Man of The Year ever (Bob Dole).  In short, it was a particularly silly time to be alive.  Science fiction writers had no way whatsoever of explaining how far in the future their stories were taking place, and had to rely completely on the novel innovations of hovercars and jackets with little shoulder fins on them to convey futurosity.

            This state of things however might have gone on far longer than it already had, had not a great and visionary man stepped forward and tripped over the ottoman of greatness in his quest to enlighten mankind.  That man was none other than Copernicus’s most august of forefathers, Carlpernicus, who, after failing in his quest to develop the wireless abacus, the three hump limousine camel, and Michael Jackson, finally hit upon the notion that the Earth was in fact forever circling the Sun and that it was conceivable that this new discovery might be used as a point of demarcation for something he called “The New Year.”  The rulers of the civilized world, giddy as a bunch of prehistoric schoolgirls at the prospects for increased taxation and calendar sales, agreed almost at once to this bold new proposal, and plans were made to usher in this new and wondrous thing with all the pomp and tackiness that it deserved.

            Preparations were made.  A young Dick Clark was brought onboard to be master of ceremonies.  A giant ball was manufactured by tying a bunch of sheep together and soaking them in pitch.  A forsaken swamp in central Pangaea was christened Times Square and humorous novelty glasses shaped like the number 784 were made in truly epic numbers (unfortunately, 784 is not a number which lends itself at all to glasses, and as a result most of the people who bought them ended up walking off cliffs or getting eaten by mastodons.  Scientists now refer to this great moment in natural selection as “The Culling of the Tards”).

            At last the blessed night arrived.  Dick Clark said some stuff, the sheep ball was set gloriously ablaze and hurled from the mightiest catapult in the land, and all three computers in the world crashed because their programmers had neglected to design them with an understanding of any year besides 785 B.C.  People drank large quantities of mead, lampshades were worn, Jimmy Stewart movies were watched, and all around the world, a good time was had by all (except in China, which had been out taking a leak when the news went around, so they didn’t get word of this whole New Year thing until around February; so they just decided to have their own New Years then, and make up for being late by having a bunch of dragons and stuff).

            And thus has it been every year since (except during World War II, when Dick Clark was needed for the war effort and his part was played by a herd of woodchucks in a leisure suit), and so may it be forever hence.  At any rate, however, have a happy New Year, and look out for those mastodons.

            Living in this trouble-fraught world of today, it’s altogether too easy to get caught up in worrying about the challenges and difficulties of the day to the extent that we forget to ask the big questions that really define us.  Why are we here?  What’s up with cars getting progressively uglier?  Did Josef Stalin ever try to create an unstoppable race of monkey men?  Well, if you were wondering about the first two, I’m afraid you’re out of luck, because while I, omnivorous demigod of eternal verities that I am, know the answers to both of them, I’m not gonna tell you tonight, maybe later, if you’re good.  But as for question number three, I can say with certainty and downright gleeful abandon that Josef Stalin was in fact responsible for what authorities are calling the most far-reaching and officially funded monkey man breeding program of the 20^th century (but not of all time, of course, if one takes into account Albrecht Durer’s monkey man program of the mid 16^th century, which for over a dozen years consumed the entire gross national product of the Holy Roman Empire).  So how did old Uncle Joe do this anyway?  Was it merely a case of keeping up with the Joneses after Adolf Hitler announced his plan to create a race of Frankenstein zombies with gatling gun arms and cheese helmets?  Or was there more here than meets the eye?  All these questions, except for the one about the cheese helmets, shall be explored here tonight.  So batten on your learnin’ trousers, its time for a magical voyage back to the heyday of the Soviet Union as we take a look at just a few of the possible scenarios that could have brought about Stalin’s monkey man plan.

            First, the Charleton Heston Theory:  It is possible, though not at all likely, that one night as he lay dreaming in his bed shaped like a fur-bearing trout, that Josef Stalin received a vision from the 70s, when a rift in the time-space continuum fortuitously beamed a late night showing of Planet of the Apes directly into his little commie skull.  Taking it to be a foretaste of things yet to come; an age in which apes would rule over men, Stalin decided that if apes were indeed to be the eventual masters of mankind, then at least they would be soviet apes.  So, after kidnapping a young Roddy McDowell, getting him really drunk, and putting him in a room with a bunch of chimpanzees dressed up like the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, Josef Stalin merely sat back and waited for nature to take its course.  Unfortunately for him, chimpanzees hate the Dallas Cowboys with a passion beyond all description, and instead of submitting to Stalin’s evil schemes, drunken Roddy McDowell and all the chimps hatched a brilliantly wacky escape plan, stole a jet, and proceeded to embark on a truly epic misadventure which was later turned into the motion picture, Titanic Saves Christmas.

            Next, the Christopher Lee Theory:  While we generally accept the fact that Tolkein (whose name Microsoft Word is too malevolently ignorant to accept as being an actual word) drew most of his storylines from ancient history and folklore, but what if in fact, he was merely harkening back to Josef Stalin’s monkey man project during WWII?  Perhaps Stalin in fact sought to cross orcs with goblin men deep beneath his magical fortress of Isengard?  They would not know pain, they would not know fear, they would taste man-flesh!  When his great monkey man army was at last complete, Stalin would gaze once more into his Palantir and then deliver a stirring speech to his assembled forces before marching off to assist the Dark Lord Sauron (Charles de Gaulle) in his quest to dominate all Middle Earth.  And he would have gotten away with it too, had not Winston Churchill carried Franklin Delano Roosevelt up Mount Doom and cast the One Ring into the unquenchable fires within, thereby saving mankind from the monkey man menace.

            And finally, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Theory: Deep in his Technodrome beneath Moscow, Josef Stalin schemed away looking for a way to augment his massive army of robo-ninjas.  As fate would have it, he stumbled across a supply of radioactive mutagen, a chemical capable of transforming any human or animal into an awesome premise for a cartoon series.  After an unfortunate series of events which culminated in Nikita Khrushchev getting turned into a bear that was also on fire, Stalin finally enlisted the help of Krang, evil brain from Dimension X and Lost Backstreet Boy, to help him concoct a diabolically stupid plan to make monkey men.  Unfortunately for him, the FBI was just then putting the finishing touches on their Army of Robot Richard M. Nixons and in serendipitously-timed battle involving a faming blimp, the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, and a basket of very distraught pygmy marmosets, Stalin’s monkey man army was no more.

            As long as there have been men, there have been monkey men, and indeed, who among us can claim to truly know the truth behind Stalin’s vile plans to twist nature into a tool of human suffering?  Actually, I can, because I’m pretty sure that what really happened was the second one up there, the one with the orcs, though I wouldn’t want to just rule out either of the others out of hand.  Really, the important thing is, that my internet connection is finally fixed, so instead of having to put this online at work, I’m sitting here late at night in my pajamas drinking Super Chill Cola and writing this, which, in the end, is really the most important thing of all.

While I was in China, we got totally lost once (well, more than once, but once in particular) and a nice earthquake prevention lady helped us find our way by writing us some directions. She wrote them, however, in the same notebook I write my blog ideas in, so the other day I sat down to write an article and found the Chinese directions, but I was really tired at the time, so I just ran with it, so I had a post that was going to start out, "You know what the funny thing about turning left at Qinghuadonglu is?" But then I realized that wasn’t a humorous observation that had actually occurred to me, but was rather one that had stealthily slipped into my humor repertoire unannounced.

It is a generally acknowledged fact that the richer and more hoity-toity among us regularly drive around in their fancy automobiles politely inquiring each to each about the availability of Grey Poupon. But what about us more plebeian types? Don’t we deserve a mustard commercial relevant to our unique socioeconomic status in life? Like how about if some guy is sitting at a stoplight and a dude pulls up in a Pinto, and says, "Hey, you got any French’s, sucka?" That would be a condiment advertisement for all mankind.

Whenever there’s a volcano-related article in the paper, they always mention the "red-hot lava." No offense, but I’m pretty sure that red-hot is the only flavor in which it comes. You don’t need to point it out again, like I’m not going to understand that its hot like that. "What, a Peruvian village was destroyed by lava? What a bunch of sissies!" "Oh, what’s that you say, it was red-hot lava, well, that’s an entirely different and more horrific geological phenomenon then, my bad," is not a conversational exchange I can imagine transpiring because the paper neglected to point out the red-hottitude of the lave in question.

Do you ever notice how the only section of the newspaper with women’s underwear ads is the front page? Why do they do that anyway? Is it because they want to balance out all the serious stuff that happens in that part of the paper with scintillating undergarments? Because it doesn’t work, it just distracts you. "Oh no, Nelson Mandela was enveloped by red-hot lava again; that’s not good at all. Oh, wait Victoria’s Secret is having a brassiere clearance event, come on Helga, we’re going shopping!"

In case you were wondering, it was established this past week to the satisfaction of all concerned, that Elmer Thudpucker, of New Weaselport, Connecticut, did in fact, let the dogs out. Which means that those of you who insisted on asking the now-infamous question regarding who did, in fact, let out the aforementioned dogs, may now rest easy that justice has been served and may cease asking it repeatedly and musically, at football games, Bar Mitzvahs, and State of the Union Addresses. Really, thanks for caring, but you can stop now.

I want to get a job at an aquarium in the eel department (The Eel Department, by the way, would make an aquarialicious name for a band), and then I want to work there every day as a tour guide until some guy comes in and asks, "Hey, what kind of eel is that?" Because then I can reply, "Oh, That’s a moray!" And then I’ll quit, because really, even the best of puns wouldn’t make it worth knowing that some of my coworkers of were seals.

I went to see the Narnia movie last week, bt before it started, they had a Coke ad where a bunch of polar bears were drinking Coke and mauling Eskimos and generally living it up in a wholesome and family-friendly fashion. But then in the actual movie, these same digitally-created polar bears showed up again pulling the sleigh of the White Witch, who is a total demon ho hellbent on stopping anybody in Narnia from having any fun or allegorical Jesus lions. So yeah, polar bears are now officially sellouts, soulless mercenaries willing to enlist in the vile ranks of whatever army of evil is paying this week, owing allegiance to none save for the almighty dollar and their overpowering addiction to quality soft drinks.

I love doing my Christmas shopping on Mongolia, because you can leave the price tags on and nobody knows how much you spent anyway. "Whoa, 45,000 Tugruks, you shouldn’t have!" Unless of course they checked online and got a conversion chart, which is why I’ve had to make sure that I only give presents to people who are either lazy, incurious, or have woefully inadequate math skills. Happily, most people are at least one of the above already.

Merry Christmas y’all, I hope everyone is having a totally awesome Christmas thus far, firmly ensconced amongst in some cozy home or another in spirit if not if not in actual physical form. Now this being Christmas and all, I thought I’d go and take the classical route by going all Biblical and doing the Christmas story, in proper teacupmammoths style. So sit back, stop playing your Xbox 360 (or your Xbox 359, for the less fortunate among you), a grab a nice refreshing novelty tumbler of one of the finer sorts of nog presently on the market, as we bust out some New Testament flava.

Way back in the day, Joseph and his espoused wife, Mary, who was totally about to have a kid, had to go to Bethlehem (not the one in Pennsylvania though, it wasn’t founded until like, 150 years after all this) to file their taxes with the Roman Empire IRS. Usually they just did it online like everybody else, but Roma Empire government tech support was almost as bad as ours these days, and so they had to go on down to the main office and straighten stuff out. "Dag, yo," quoth Mary, "it’s almost Christmas, traffic’s gonna be crazy!" Joseph, who never gets any lines at all, mutely agreed, so instead of taking their Subaru Outback, they just loaded all their stuff up on their magical talking donkey, and set out for the Holy Land.

When they got there though, they found that there was no space in any of the various fine Bethlehem Metro Area motels and Bed & Breakfasts. Finally, they found a Hampton Inn, which was also full up because they had complementary Biblical crullers there (and the Biblical Crullers would be a most triumphant name for a band). Fortunately, the kindly innkeeper ,Dick Cheney, was willing to help them out a bit. "Sorry we’re all full up right now," said the Vice-President, "but there’s a big Anime convention in town and all those guys kinda scare me so I can’t kick them out or anything." "Okay," said Joseph "I wondered why we passed like, fifty guys dressed up like Inu Yasha on the way into town. Also, this is my only line in the whole story, I certain hope they don’t end up cutting that part out where I fight all those ninjas." "It’s all good though," replied Senor Cheney, "because I just so happen to have an undisclosed location available that I can totally let y’all have for the night, at least until some of these freaks leave and I can hook you up with an executive suite with a minibar and stuff." "Word up," said Joseph, who’s ninja fight scene did indeed end up getting cut from the final version. And with that, they headed on out to the barn.

While they were there, Mary went ahead and had her baby, and since barns are generally not known for their exemplary nursery facilities, she went and wrapped him up in some swaddling cloths and put Baby Jesus in the manger, which, because he was all hardcore and stuff, didn’t really bother him. Joseph wanted name the baby Horatio Hufnagel, after his grandmother, but Mary, who is not all over Roman-Catholic screensavers and whatnot to this very day without good reason, shot that idea down straight off, because she knew that it was a dippy name, and Jesus fits a whole lot better in Christmas carols. Also, an angel showed up and was all hovering around, being radiant and stuff, and all the animals could talk (except for the cow, because as anyone can tell you, cows do nothing but swear the air blue and Mary and Joseph were planning on raising Jesus in a swearing cow-free environment). After a while though, the whole flying around, being radiant thing got a bit old, so the angel went out to get himself a coffee at Sheetz.

There wasn’t a Sheetz in Bethlehem though, just a Wawa, and since the angel didn’t exactly feel like settling for less, he just lit out for the next town over. While temporarily landing however, in order to scrape all he bugs off his flight goggles, he ran into a bunch of monkey wranglers, who were out wrangling their monkeys by night and regaling each other with Parick Stewart impressions. "Dudes," saith the angel, "First, freak ye not out, I don’t bite, and I’m not gonna smite you or nothing. I just thought you might like to know that unto you is born this night in the city of David, a savior, so if you want to go hang out and ern yourselves a spot in creche scenes forevermore, hie ye hence and if anyone asks, just tell ‘em Bob sent you!" (It being the case that all angels not otherwise explicitly labeled, may be referred to properly as Bob, even in the most polite and formal of social circles).

Meanwhile, off in the Orient, three wise men were wisely avoiding their mother-in-laws by hanging out at the bowling alley. All of a sudden though, one of them got a text message from Bob, saying unto them, "Hey guys, we’re having a bit of a party for Baby Jesus over in the East Side, why don’t y’all come on over for a spell? P.S, we’ve got Doritos." Now the wise men, whose names were Mr. T, Batman, and Harry S Truman, all thought that this was a capital idea, so they saddled up their funky, pimped out two hump racing camels (with ground effects and those shocks that make them jump and stuff and all that) and headed off on a random late night yuletide road trip. On the way out though, Harry S Truman wisely pointed out that they should get some presents, so as not to just show up and be a bunch of Johnny-come-lately Dorito moochers. So they pulled in at the first Wal-Mart they passed and found to their dismay that, being as how this was the first Christmas ever, there wasn’t a whole lot of selection, present-wise. They were however, extremely glad that their wives weren’t there, since they knew that they’d have wanted to get Baby Jesus stuff like Halloween costumes that look like fruit, and tiny little boots he’d never wear anyway. Instead, Mr. T got him some badass gold chains, to symbolize badassitude and help to pay Jesus’s way through college later on. Batman got some myrrh, which isn’t really something that most kids want these days, but he said he had really loved it when he was a little tyke himself, and the other two didn’t feel like fighting about it. Harry Truman got him some Frankenberries, because marshmallow-based breakfast cereals are like Christianity, people who don’t like them go around pretending that they’re all extra grown up and stuff, but really they make life all sorts of more flavorlicious.

While they were following a conveniently appointed giant mapquest star to Bethlehem though, the three of them ran into King Herod, who for our purposes, will be played by Osama bin Laden. "Greetings, my infidel friends!" Said he, "Might you three blokes happen to be off on your way to see Baby Jesus tonight?" "Whoa, that’s creepy! Yeah, we are," said Harry Truman, who was in truth, very freaked out by this. "Good, good," said Herod, "I don’t suppose you guys could tell me where he is, because I too want to go and horribly murder, um, I mean, buy him a bed shaped like a race car." Batman however had gotten another angelic text message informing him of Herod’s true intentions, so he cleverly foisted a ruse off upon him. "Why certainly, said Batwiseman, Baby Jesus is um, right over yonder, in, um, City I Just Made Upsville; just head directly away from that big magical star in the sky, you can’t miss it." "Whoa, thanks," said Herod, "I’ll go see him directly. Also, I do hope than in the extended director’s cut of the Bible, I don’t get eaten by a giant sand worm later on." So the wise men went off along on their way, secure in the knowledge that Mr. T had already downloaded the director’s cut off the Internet and that whole thing with the sand worm so totally does happen later on.

Eventually, they found their way to Bethlehem, just as the monkey wranglers, the angel with his coffee, Dick Cheney, and a guy in a very distinctive red suit were arriving. So they all had a good old time, all going on about how Baby Jess was cute as a button and giving out presents and stuff, and while in the process someone did end up mooching all the Doritos, a good time was had by all, especially after they all got some music going on and sang themselves a few Jesus chanties. The angel then proceeded to settle on top of a conveniently located indoor spruce tree, and say a few brief words about how this really was a pretty epic day, and things were gonna change soon, and Joseph, please stop whinging about your stupid fight scene with the ninjas, peace on Earth, good will towards men.

And so the camera slowly panned back from the manger in which Baby Jesus lay, back until you’re just kind of looking at the whole scene from afar off with the star way up above, and then the score cuts in with that Silent Night Charlie Brown version that always sounds really cool at poignant moments such as this. So merry Christmas, and of course, party on.

Here is again, Christmas Eve, surely the one day of the year when incipient joy and presently-occurring exhaustion go traipsing merrily hand in hand through the mal at 11:00 at night as everyone tries to find that last minute gift for that last minute relative. Rather than expounding at greater length though upon the humorous and all-too-predictable situations which can arise in such an environment, allow me to instead trot out another old yuletide chestnut, which other writers, many more adroit than myself, have bated around before me for quite some years. I am referring, of course, to the fine and worthy tradition of bitching about how you can’t say Christmas anymore in the public discourse.

It is, of course, almost needless to point out all the traditional ways that our modern society of oversensitivity seeks to scrub the reason for the season from all communication, from Holiday Trees, to Winter Break, to the fact that Happy Holidays has, in certain sectors, so eclipsed more meaningful salutations that to nowadays to even utter the words, "Merry Christmas" is an act of an almost conspiratorial nature. As I said, none of this is new, and I therefore ask your forbearance, gentle reader, in permitting me this occasional foray into the realms of politics and curmudgeonitude (the two of them oft being more closely entwined than either is wont to admit to).

First off, a brief observation from my time in Mongolia (you know, I have always hated those people who go abroad and then act as if their travels have given them some magical and vast insight into everything under the Sun; should any of you see me becoming such a creature, do not hesitate to send me the most scathing of comments, I will take them to heart immediately), that there are, in the entire nation, something like half a dozen Christians; everyone there being Buddhist as a general rule. Nonetheless, just about every store, restaurant, and many a home, proudly bear banners emblazoned with the phrase "Merry Christmas." Amazingly, no one seems to be offended, no monks go about being scandalized at the insensitivity of their Christian brethren, the government sees no need to intervene on behalf of tolerance, indeed, to wish someone in Mongolia "Merry Christmas" is as noncontentious an act as may be imagined, save perhaps for commenting favorably on the badassitude of Genghis Khan. What is more, in China, a nation where Christianity itself is largely outlawed and those who adhere to it are flung into prison more often than not; yet even here, "Merry Christmas" is to be seen everywhere, usually even in English. In short, it would appear that those backwards fools in the East don’t even know that they should be mortally offended at the evangelical spirit which has so deviously infected their nations.

But back to the States. You know, never have I personally wished anyone a merry Christmas and had them react with offense. Now, it is possible that every single person I have ever thus spoken to is merely a Christian, or if they are otherwise that they merely bore with enviable stoicism the degradation of being publicly wished to enjoy a holiday of another religion. But I think it is far more likely the case that individual men and women (who are almost without exception far wiser in their dealings than governments and other such committee-infested things) are simply good enough to know that even if they are not Christian, I am offering the best of wishes in the finest of spirits, rather than engaging in a bit of cavalier Christmas imperialism, as the myrmidons of political correctivity would have us believe.

And also, can we please just ban the phrase "Happy Holidays" from the English language? It once was meant to bear good tidings for both Christmas and the New Year, but now has been stretched so far to contain the meanings of every conceivable celebration regarding the Winter Solstice that it has become virtually meaningless other than as a byword of banality. Indeed, I would infinitely prefer that a Jewish fellow would wish me a happy Hanukkah than that he merely offer me a happy holiday for fear of offending. Hanukkah is, after all, most likely a day close to his heart and of great import to his faith, and for him to wish me a good one demonstrates an incalculably greater measure of good will and brotherhood than does any catch-all saying bereft of any real meaning.

And to all of you who might go about this time of year, whatever your ostensible religion may be, just hoping that someone will, in the best of spirits, commend to you a good day in the tradition of whatever particular faith their people observe, only so that you might take umbrage at them and mount up upon your high horse of tolerance whilst truly proving yourself the most intolerant of wretches (not that any such person would be reading my site here anyway, I suspect), then only know that you are in truth, the worst of creatures imaginable so far as Christmas is concerned. Even Scrooge, old miser that he was, was not offended by Christmas so much as he merely considered it a waste of time, an unfortunate belief which has the lone virtue of being honest with itself. Far more evil is the idea that by squelching the souls of those who wish you nothing but the best, delighting in it, and all the while pretending that you are somehow the noble one in your little morality play of lametude, is indeed immeasurably more reprehensible in each and every way; to you, I have nothing to say, but "Merry Christmas!"

And to y’all who happily have escaped this modern cancer of the soul which plagues so many among us, take heart and do not give in, but rather rebel against the demons of the day in what has long been proven the most efficacious of means, by ignoring them at all times except for when actively making light of them in snarky blog columns and other such shout outs to the world at large. Be sure to tune in tomorrow then, as I shall be back away from politics and more in the proper spirit of Christmas.

Whether you’ve picked up a newspaper today, or are simply an omnivorous telepath forever aware of the slightest will and whim of all humanity, or even if you’re a little bit of both, you’ve probably already read/perceived with your awesome mind reading powers about the woman in Mississippi who was mauled by a kinkajou. Now, for those of you who hail not from the land down under (not the one with Mole People, by the way, but the one with all the kangaroos and Subaru Outbacks), a kinkajou is a smallish marsupial (I am of course using the "royal" marsupial here, rather than the more common "botanical" meaning) or possibly some kind of reptile, insect, game show host, or breakfast cereal that looks kind of like a raccoon, but more like the embodiment of all the unknown terrors ever dreamt of by the fevered minds of man.

Anyway, this 82 year old woman down in Mississippi, home of great authors Mark Twain and Samuel Clemens, was getting out of her car when this wlatsome hell beast leapt down upon her from a nearby tree, gibbering and gnashing its many worpulent teeth, landed on her, wrapped its tail around her arm, and bit her on the hand. This, of course, sounds bad enough, but the kinkajou is also known, not without good reason, as the ankylosaurus of the furry arboreal mammal world. Its tail, you see, is covered with dozens of venomous death spikes, which it can shoot over half a mile away with deadly accuracy. And on the end of it, it has this big spiked ball sort of a thing that can generate enough electricity that if you were to catch a barrel of kinkajous and plug them into an electric car, you’d never have to stop and recharge until they all went mad and ate each other fifteen minutes later. So anyway, this bloodthirsty ravening kinkajou (you know, a lot of Biblical scholars think that the second beast of Satan in the Book of Revelation was really a kinkajou by the way) gets the drop on this poor old gal, starts kidney punching her with his tail, and were it not for the fact that all old ladies in Mississippi are required by law to carry harpoon guns around, she’d probably not have survived.

The article also stated that the offending kinkajou had recently escaped from someone in the neighborhood who had been keeping it as a pet/demonic sacrifice (the very word, "Kinkajou" being, after all, from the Ancient Sumerian for "Snack of The Dark One"). Which leaves us at something of an impasse, since we don’t know for sure who would keep such a vile creature around. But wait, it just so happens that I recently read in a seemingly unrelated article this very week that She Who Giveth All Skanky Ho Slut Women a bad name, Paris Hilton, did, in fact, recently buy a kinkajou of her very own.

You may of course be shaking your head at this point whilst making some derisive sound of dismissal, and I know the scenario I’m painting seems somewhat outré. But wait, there’s more to this grisly little morality play that we see unfolding before us here. For you see, Paris Hilton who, if you’ve been watching the news these past two weeks or so, has recently been set on fire by a bunch of militant Islamic rioters, recently acquired a pet kinkajou of her own, after her seventh Chihuahua perished deliciously in an unforeseeable taco-related accident. Now, I’m really way past the point where I’m even going to doubt that someone like Paris Hilton (whose very name connotes almost as much evil as that of her twin brother, Normandy Motel Six) would seek, nay, demand a creature so full of vileness and evilosity as a loathsome and repellent kinkajou. But still, the question remains, why? Now for all we know, (and I’m not assuming anything here) it could just be for something kinky (please take a moment here to let your imagination out to play for a spell), or one of those weird Scientology things where she has to run 3,000 volts through it to cleanse her aura of toxicity, but I suspect that she’s actually been collecting a bunch of kinkajous with the twisted goal in mind of using them to create a hideous, ravening, old-lady-eating army of kinkajous, each more evil than all the others combined, with which she will lay the world (and anyone else she meets along the way) to waste, establishing a dark and tyrannical slutocracy with which she shall rule o’er all the Earth, ushering in 1,000 years of darkness (or 50,000 miles, whichever comes first).

What can we do to stem this dark and skanky tide? First, write your congressbeing and tell them that if they don’t start wearing a tutu made out of bagels, you’ll vote for Nader next time around. This won’t help with Paris Hilton any, but it’ll look funny, and that never fails to improve even the most dire of situations. Then, build a giant paper mache old lady and hang it from a helicopter. Then, just fly over Paris Hilton’s Fortress of Skankitude (also known as Hollywood) and get all the kinkajous to follow you. From there it’s just a short flight out over the Pacific Ocean where the briny deep will melt the unholy kinkajou army and all their beautiful wickedness, thus saving mankind from a fate worse than death itself.

So, watch the skies, carry a harpoon gun at all times, and if you’re a little old lady, you’d better go get a baseball bat. Now.

With the recent success of such epic films as Passion of the Christ, Lord of the Rings, and the release of C.S. Lewis’s beloved children’s story of Christian allegory, King Kong, it can come as no surprise that Hollywood is looking with new earnestness and unbridled avarice at overtly religious movies. Unfortunately, most of the stories worth telling have already been done by Charleton Heston (such as the Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, and Planet of the Apes Saves Christmas). Therefore I offer up, in true Hollywood fashion, a number of cinematic notions which I believe would be just the thing for the theologically-minded movie-goer of toady, while at the same time not descending into the festival of sucky hackitude like Armageddon did, departing almost completely, as it did, from the Book of Revelations (except for that bit about the space shuttle that they kept in).

First, since if there’s one thing that always brings down the house and sends a crowd home feeling that all is right in the world, it’s watching Egypt get their ass handed to them, it’s time for "The Eleven Commandments." Young Moses (Brendan Frasier) learns of his Hebrew heritage, and soon sets out to deliver his people from bondage. But what kind of wacky shenanigans get going when his brother Aaron (Chris Tucker) shows up and brings his own brand of in-your-face blackitude to everyone’s favorite exodus? Can his life in the hood help him to get his people let go? Will the Egyptians, led by Pharaoh Ramses (Ellen Degeneres) back down in the face of old favorites like the blotting out of the Sun (Rosie O’Donnell) and the new, CGI-enhanced plagues, like the plague of retards (Aston Kutcher)? Will Moses learn not to touch the radio on his brother’s golden calf? Thou shalt tune in this holiday season and find out!

And watch this Summer as worlds collide in "Abraham Meets the Jetsons!" Badass monster truck driver Abraham (Christopher Walken) and his smart ‘n sassy wife Sarah (Christopher Walken) are the founders of the Israelite race, but what happens when a wacky rift in the space-time continuum catapults them forward into whatever stupid century the Jetson’s are supposed to live in anyway (I want to say, the 19^th, but I’m sure that’s not it)? Will Abraham get George (Tim Allen) fired from Spacely Sprockets? Will Jane (Pope Benedict XVI) and Sarah go on a musical shopping montage where they try on lots of funny hats and drink expensive future coffees grown in Neo-South America? Will Elroy (Mickey Rooney) have to be sacrificed to appease the wrath of a vengeful god? I’m certainly not going to tell you, because it’s clearly a dreadful enough idea that you probably aren’t going watch it anyway, and if I spoil the ending now, you’ll only go out and see "The Care Bears vs. Gorbachev" instead.

Make sure you don’t miss the musical hit of the season though, when bumbling cops David and Goliath (Gary Coleman and Rick Moranis) have to put aside their differences and find some Rich Lady’s (Sigourney Weaver) annoying little yippy dog (Matt Damon). Can the two of them solve the case while also winning back David’s estranged wife (Queen Elizabeth II) and patching things up between Goliath and his father (Morgan Freeman)? Will David win the Crazy Rich Lady’s heart? And make sure you don’t miss the uproariously uproarious scene where our two protagonists accidentally pick the wrong bar in Sodom. It’s a recipe for wackiness in "Honey I Smote the Apostates" (with new soundtrack by Elton John).

And finally, it’s the sure-fire hit romantic comedy of the year. He’s an escaped government cyborg raising a precocious youngster; she’s an Israelite princess and kung fu master. Together, they’re King Ahasuerus of Persia and Esther (Meg Ryan). Can Ahasuerus’s son Destro (Robin Williams) bring the two of them together? Can Esther fall in love while keeping the wicked Haman (Zombie Gregory Peck) from committing genocide on her people? Camp out in front of the theatre like a complete doofus now, for your tickets to, "Sleepless in Shushan!"

As I have oft remarked before, few cultural phenomena, past or present, offer us the same veritable cornucopia of cultural introspectivity as does He-Man (laugh now if you must, but some day I’ll write a terribly silly thesis paper and get nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize or something, like Jimmy Carter, The State of Missouri, and the Snufalufagus, who, in case you haven’t been reading the papers, has recently made great strides in bringing peace to the Middle East through an innovative fusion of interpretive dancing and punching people in the face). Today, we’re going to take a closer look at an issue that He-Man always dealt with this surprising and brutal yet refreshing frankness: The place of giant talking cats in society. Okay, not really, that one’s for later. In truth, we’re taking a look at the eternally aggravating and befuddling generation gap.

Seriously, no show ever dealt so honestly and openly with the inevitable frictions which arise when children choose a radically different path than their parents did. For instance, He-Man’s parents were King Randor and the ever memorable Queen Whatsherface. One imagines that they expected their only son to grow up to be a king (or, barring that, a tolerably butch queen of some sort). Much to their certain disappointment, he spent most of his days wearing tights and a pink sweater vest around the palace while hanging out with the Cowardly Lion’s brother and some kind of a faceless wizard in a giant monogrammed tube sock. And you thought your parents were dismayed when you came home sporting a mullet that one time (assuming, of course, that a person truly can, in any real sense of the word "sport" a mullet).

And what about Teela’s mother and adoptive father, the Sorceress and Man-at-Arms? I’m sure that between the two of them, they expected her to spend all her time mumbling incoherent prophecies, wearing a suit of armor with a built-in feeding trough while frequently turning into a bird and getting captured by Skeletor. Instead she goes gadding about Eternia all whored up with some skanky valkyrie armor on, beating all manner of things with her energy staff and maintaining an on-again-off-again relationship with a large, deeply tanned man who goes about in his underwear and talks like the god of monster truck announcers.

But that’s just the beginning, for I find it extremely doubtful that Fisto’s parents wanted him to buy a wife-beater off a dead pirate and start a career in the lucrative field of having a giant metal hand that looks silly and makes you walk in circles like Grover Cleveland. They wanted him to be an accountant with a giant metal hand that looks silly and makes you walk in circle, like his father, Carl Fisto. And of course Spoutsnout’s mother was absolutely apalled when his guidance councillor steered him into the field of having an aluminum elephant for a head; she wanted him to be a rabbi like his Uncle Mordecaisnout.

Last of all, we come to the saddest of tales, that of Beast Man and his estranged but ever beloved son, Bob Dole. Beast Man, who had always hoped young Bob Dole would follow in his footsteps as an evil comedy relief flunky was terribly disappointed when his eldest son enlisted in the armed forces instead, but what really drove them apart was when Bob Dole decided to run for the Senate as a Republican. Beast Man, of course, was a stalwart pro-union, yellow dog Democrat through and through, just like his coal mining forefathers back in Eternia City, West Virginia had been before him. Of course, for his son to throw his lot in with the GOP was simply too much for him to bear, and aside from getting the occasional tear in his eye when a Viagra ad comes on TV, Beast Man denies to this very day that he ever had a son at all.

Take note then, lest any of you fall to similar fates, for if tragedies such as these can strike such noble souls as Beast Man and Spoutsnout, just think what may befall us lesser mortals. To close with the immortal words of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (Young not available in Alaska, Hawaii, or Puerto Rico), "Teach your children well, otherwise they’ll turn into Bob Dole."

When I was getting off my flight in Newark, we passed a bunch of other planes arriving, one of which was proudly emblazoned with the Hooters logo. Needless to say, from here on out I’ll be making my own plane reservations rather than letting my sister do it for me.

Why is it that they always have shoe shine guys at airports? I mean, if there’s one thing in the world that won’t scuff up your shoes, it’s being on a plane. The whole notion really, is about as useful as selling lawn mowers on the deck of a cruise ship. Now, if they had a chainsaw kiosk at the airport, that would totally rule, because when I get off of a plane, what I really want to do is go deforest something or kills some zombies, and then maybe get a duty-free burrito.

Okay, this whole thing with sticking a lower-case I in front of things and pretending that makes them magically cool has got to stop before it goes too far. It was cute for a while when Apple started doing it, but now it’s starting to give boy bands a run for their money in the Dumblympics (which aren’t really an officially sanctioned sporting event so much as a thing I just made up to be the metaphorical embodiment of dumbness). What’s next, a vacuum called the iSuck? A new line of caskets call the iContain A Dead Guy? How about something called the iCan’t Think of an Original Name for My Lame Product?

You know astronaut pens? Those ones they always sell at science museums that write upside down and all that? Why does anyone who isn’t an astronaut need one of those? And don’t go and say that science museums are just marketing to astronauts but eight-year-olds are buying them instead, because astronauts already get them free from businesses that cater to astronauts only, like Big Ed’s Space Shuttle Transmission Shop or Neil Stretch Armstrong’s Cold Stone Astronaut Ice Creamery.

You know how all toilets North of the Equator turn one way and the ones South of it go the other? Well, what would happen were you to flush a perfectly equatorial toilet (The Equatorial Toilets, of course, being a perfectly awesome name for a band)? Would it even work? Would it open up a rift in the space time continuum like it does when you tie a piece of buttered toast to a cat or when you go back in time and give Hitler a wedgie? I hope so, and that’s why I am presently in search of massive government funding for a fact-finding voyage to carry out this experiment.

When you go to China, they make you sign off on a list of things that you’re not supposed to be bringing into the country. Opium is still #1, well above wildcats, the black plague, and Far Side calendars (which the government rightly believes would undermine their soulless communist regime with cow-based humor). I’m kind of surprised that they’re still bitter about the whole opium thing. It’s not like when people come to America from Japan and we make them fill out a "What is the purpose of your visit?" card, the number one reason is "To Attack Pearl Harbor". C’mon China, move on, it’s been way too long already.

Did you ever really think about Jolly Ranchers? I mean, it’s all well and good if he wants to be jolly, but what does being a rancher have to do with making brightly colored candies that melt in your bookbag and stay there forever in a perpetual semi-molten gloplike state? Ranches are for just three things, cows, salad dressing, and monkeys, and unless I’m horribly mistaken, none of those things go into making candy, unless it’s some kind of hideous salad dressing beef monkey flavored candy, which they probably would eat in China anyway because they’re weird like that here.

In Beijing, all the phone booths are shaped like Pac Man, and to use the phone you have to put your head inside his mouth, and that’s all nice and whimsical and whatnot, but what about for me, because I’ve always been afraid of having my head bitten off by Pac Man? Perhaps I was a piece of fruit, or a ghost in a past life (can you even be a ghost in a past life?), but next time I’m in China, I’m just going to take a cell phone, or a tin can on a really long string.

So, we finally get into Newark at about 6:10, and my flight out of Newark, from a completely different terminal is at 7:00, all of which means I have to hurry. So I’m completely booking through Newark, dressed like a Mongol raiders, sweaty, unshaven, reeking of airline peanuts, and flying on nothing but caffeine and my boundless rage. So first there’s a big hold up even getting the baggage off of the plane and I’m just standing there, watching the precious seconds slip past like some kind of thing that slips past some other thing, until finally my bags show up, after which point I get into a lengthy and heated altercation with Manny, the vicious baggage gnome who wants to eat my shoes or ship me to Houston or something. All I know for sure is that he’s very short, very bald, and very shrill, and that never have I more missed the quaint charms of Virginia than at this instant.

And of course, at every point along the way here, my somewhat manic and extremely odd appearance is making every possible security obstacle in my path into a veritable morass of confusion and wasted time. Then of course, I have to catch a monorail all the way across Newark while sharing a car with no one save for an elderly Asian man who keeps looking at me the whole time like he expects me to zark out and conquer him, which I, considerate even in extremity, refrain from doing. And my luggage is already in the system, so I need to catch the plane now more than ever, lest my suitcase find itself alone in Dulles like Babe, Pig in the City or something, so my mad dash continues, much like Lola’s, in that movie where she runs a lot, only I’m pretty sure that even if I miss my flight, nobody is going to be gunned down by the cops after robbing a German grocery store. Still, better to be safe and not risk it.

Finally, I get to the gate, ticket in hand with what is, I might add, a fairly impressive margin of time in my favor, come running up to the ticketmeister, and learn that the flight has been delayed for an hour anyway. Which is still waaaay better than missing it, especially because over the next 20 minutes, people keeps running in all freaked out because the think they’ve missed their flight, while I’m sitting there boldly feigning calmness and collectitude, sipping my preposterous airport beverage of choice (a viente jamocha carmel latte) and pretending that I know what’s going on while laughing with dark and inner fiendish glee because I beat them all there and, had there actually been a plane leaving, I would have been the only guy on it. Kudos to me. So, in brief, Newark is no longer the capricious mistress of my heart, that honor now being reserved for ham danishes and Lt. Uhura.

Okay, so now our plane has been delayed because there’s primordial muck on the DC runway, which means that now our plane won’t even be getting here until 9:00, which is a less than completely thrilling development, but okay, because at least it’s finally on the way here.

Okay, 9:15, and I am on a tiny plane bound for DC. Really tiny, like flying on a school bus with wings and less headroom. So tiny that instead of a jet engine, it runs off of a rather large rubber band and happy thoughts. Half the people on this place have both a window seat and an aisle seat, so tiny is it. It is very tiny. Even the Wright brothers would be put off by it’s utter minisculity. Very small. Also, I have now been continuously wearing my pajamas under my clothes for three days now, ever since we left Mongolia. Just in case you were curious about that. So, back to the smallness of our plane; if the engine failed, we could all just roll our windows down, put our arms out, and flap furiously, and the plane would likely stay airborne.

9:50, we’re up at last, hurtling along at a speed almost certainly in excess of 40mph. It is very dark and rainy outside, and our plane remains very tiny (in case you thought it was made out of the same stuff as those rubber dinosaurs that grow when you put them in the water).

Well, here I am again back in Virginia, home safe and sound, very, very tired, but still very much alive. I’ll start posting normal stuff again (normal being a highly relative term) on Monday, meanwhile, I’m going to sleep and hope I don’t dream of Tom Hanks.

After a refreshing night’s sleep, we rose early in the morning to do a little more touristing before our afternoon flight back to sunny and ignominious Newark. Our goal for the day was to hit up the world famous pandaquarium, home of pandas and other such fantastical aquatical beasts. So we bought our tickets, found the map that came with them to be thoroughly useless while still being visually impressive, and headed off to see the panda, exotic and delicious creature that it is.

Okay, everybody knows the pandae are all extra endangered and rare and that we all need to feel exceptionally guilty about not doing enough to find homes for them all and recycling and blah, blah, blah, but what a lot of people (including myself until just this very second), don’t know is that the panda is in fact amongst the animals most spectacularly ill-suited for continued existence (being narrowly edged out by the play-in-trafficasuarus and the now extinct delicious-no-leg-gazelle). For instance, there are about 1,000 different kinds of bamboo native to China, and of those 1,000 varieties, pandas eat precisely three. Honestly, if there’s one thing no one can stand, it’s a choosy panda. Remember that kid you knew in first grade who would only eat Spaghettios, fruit roll ups, and bologna with the edges peeled off? And how he was all like, extra anemic and broke his arm more often that Little Timmy did in Oregon Trail? And how years later when you heard from a friend of a friend of a friend that he died from starvation while in a functioning Arby’s, you didn’t feel all that bad about it? That kid was a panda, in spirit, if no by unhappy accident of birth, and ought to be mocked accordingly. But wait, there’s more! Pandae also usually just have one or two cubs (or as the Indians call them, maize) at a time, and when they have two, the standard panda practice is to sit on one of them until it attains the shape of a beer coaster and the consistency of a melted Snickers bar, and thus is no more. So, in short, pandas really aren’t all that brilliant, and they smoke way too much and swear whenever there’s kids around, and I for one wouldn’t mind too terribly much if they’d all just shuffle off this mortal coil in the form of panda cordon bleu and trendy totebags.

The aquarium part of the zoo was much better, with all the various freaky things like sea lions, regular lions who were just really good at swimming, those goldfish with all that crazy mess growing out of their heads (What is that anyway? Is it some kind of mutant super brain thing? And if so, shouldn’t we stop them before they o’erthrow mankind?), and a big funky Legends of the Hidden Temple Olmec Indigenous American Head (also, over 750 little nautical gift shops selling 2008 Olympic Aquarium doohickeys). Now finding ourselves inexplicably in the mood for seafood, we all went to the Indonesian Giant Gourd Bug Restaurant and slaked our thirst for some marine life (except me, I got a pork chop, which is not without good reason oft known as the pileated rockfish of the land).

After a quick trip back tot he apartment where I packed once more with far more haste than care and made our way past the Chinese Door Nazi, who makes you sign a paper for the bags you take out, but not the ones your bring in (which means that he probably gets in trouble every month when it turns out that his total of bags is something like -937 in arrears), it was back to the airport where they have approximately 7,000 ticket counters for all sorts of made-up red-herring fictional Chinese airlines that they only put there to deter the impure of heart and those wanting in courage and chutzpah. We finally found our way to the Continental gate (Continental: where the stewardesses are dudes, but the food is pretty good), checked our 28 pieces of luggage, and boarded a 777 capable of leaving Beijing at 5:00 PM and arriving at Newark at 5:30 PM, a mere half an hour later. I’m not entirely sure how this is supposed to work, but I can only hope that something in our transwarp matrix or our dilithium crystals will go wonderfully awry and hurl us back into the 80s. Meanwhile, the in flight movie is A Christmas Story, that one about that kid having a mystical vision quest for a BB gun back in the 50s and where it ends up, appropriately enough, with the family in a Chinese restaurant where the waiters speak pidgin English and they get a duck with the head still on, much as I myself had had not 24 hours ago. The only porblem is, I laughed uproariously at this particular comedic juncture and our Chinese stewardess shot me a really dirty look. I can only hope that none of the other movies they show accurately make light of the foibles of other ethnic groups, because then I’ll have to laugh at all of them too, unless I want to look like some kind of anti-Chinese only guy. Also, the fact that my Genghis Khan hat wouldn’t fit in my suitcase and I had to wear it on the plane probably didn’t do anything to improve her opinion of me, since wearing a Genghis Khan hat in China is kind of a bad historical reminder to them, like wearing a Ronald Reagan shirt in Moscow or driving a lawn mower through Mexico.

Continental, much to their apparent credit, gives out free headphones for the in flight movies. Then, however, you realize that these are the most legendarily sucky headphones ever. Imagine that instead of headphones at all, you’re listening through an eight foot long toilet paper roll tube, to a tiny man with a bad sinus infection inside of a minifridge who doesn’t speak English but is trying to perform the musical score to your movie with nothing but a piece of moldy wax paper and a handful of squirrels. Actually, that would be a lot more entertaining than these headphones, and a whole lot funnier to visualize. Alexander Graham Bell’s first call home to his mom had better sound quality than these headphones. In fact, I suspect that the only reason that they’re free is that ten years ago, Continental foolishly bought a jillion and a half of them off the internet whilst in a drunken stupor, and after discovering that federal law forbid them to just bury them all in the deserts of New Mexico like so many E.T. Atari cartridges, were forced to just pawn them off on unsuspecting customers for the next thousand years.

You know how they always say that planes fly over the North Pole because it’s shorter? I don’t think that’s it at all; I think it’s just because when you flush the toilets on a plane, it all just falls out and plummets to the Earth below, and they thought they’d get fewer complaints if they dumped on penguins than if they were always bombing Iowa. But this can backfire, because Santa lives at the North Pole and I bet nothing gets you on his naughty list faster than dropping a chunk of frozen poop on his head from ten miles up. And at what point, exactly, did naughty stop meaning "bad" and start meaning ""delightfully skanky"? Or is Santa really just a somewhat jollier fellow than we tend to believe and all those switches in your stocking were really more of a twisted reward than a punishment all a long.

There’s some show on right now about a bunch of nurses, a nun in love with chewing gum commercials, and a loveable Donald Sutherland Hobo who all live in a hospital and kill people. Everyone around me is watching it raptly; I think it’s some kind of mind control thing or something, like that time Wesley Crusher brought that weird alien stereo opticon game to the Enterprise and Data had to save the day by building a funky strobe light and throwing a rave to make everyone chill out again. I can only hope that my stores of willpower and raveability are up to the challenge. It has now been 37 hours since last I slept; I wonder when I’m gonna start getting punchy and imagining crazy stuff. So far, so good, I suppose.

Now watching the Polar Express; this is the most messed up movie I’ve ever seen, at least while riding on an airplane, and the fact that we just passed the North Pole only makes it weirder. Remember the Final Fantasy movie and how inescapably creepy everyone in it looked? Imagine that Tom Hanks took a whole lot of acid and decided to make a sequel. If he did, that sequel would be the Polar Express. This movie is like scientific proof that there is no Santa, because if there were, he would never have allowed such a freaky movie to have been connected to his noble franchise without taking out a full-page ad in the newspaper denouncing and disavowing any connection to this completely bizarre and unnatural film where all the kids sound like grownups and Tom Hanks is bald. Way. Too. Weird.

Okay, now Santa looks like Moses, and sounds like Abraham Lincoln, I mut be hallucinating this. And now the dude beside me is watching me write. Yes, dude, you, I’m on to your little game. And now Santa has a whip. Okay, Santa’s sleigh just took off with those fire tracks that Deloreans leave behind when they go back in time, this movie can’t be real. Man, I hope that nerdy kid gets eaten by velociraptors or something equally ghastly.

Man, I hope I don’t go back and read all this tomorrow morning and have no idea what I"m taking about here.

Oh crap, it was done by the same guy who did Back to the Future! It all makes sense now! Horrible, horrible sense. I wonder where I left that ice cream cup they gave me when we took off in Bejing. Oh well, here comes Newark.

So, at last, after any number of adventures and travels in Mongolia, the time arrived at last to make my way back to America, this time with my sister safely in tow. So, after rising early in the morning and catching a ride to the Ulan Bator International Airport (though really, since it’s just about the only airport in Mongolia, it pretty much has to be international if you want to go anywhere from it) we got to spend a last couple of hours in Mongolia lounging about the concourse looking at all the famous Khans (Genghis Khan, Shakka Khan, Wratha Khan, etc.) and doing a bit of last minute duty-free yak wool Christmas shopping, we embarked upon the Kubla Khan (appropriately enough) and set out once more for Beijing.

The Beijing airport being altogether uneventful and uninteresting, we caught a shuttle bus in accordance with our instructions and it thoughtfully deposited us in the middle of a freeway in the middle of Beijing, a city of some fifteen million people who don’t speak American, with all our luggage. Things looked bleak indeed, our only map of the city shoed only where all the Captain D’s in China were located, and someone had already solved the Jumble shaped like a lobster. For a few brief and terrible minutes, I considered doing a British and French Allied Army of 1860 thing and wreaking a bit of unspeakable havoc upon the unwitting metropolis, but happily, a woman who had just gotten back from preventing earthquakes in India (home of Hinduism, Kwikimarts, and America’s finest tech support) was there to call Meg and Bryan on the phone and sound incredibly intense as if Liz and I were in the very extremity of peril, thereby freaking them out and getting us some taxi directions which ultimately brought us safely to our destination. All in all it was kind of like that Bill Murray movie where he’s over in Japan and nobody speaks English and everything is weird and he gets all angsty, Ghostbusters.

Beijing being our home for the next day and a half, we decided to go out and take in a few of the local sights. First up was Tiananmen Square, which is kind of like the Mall in Washington D.C, the primary difference being that the government never ran any protesters over with tanks on the Mall. Anyway, the whole square is surrounded by all the various things you might expect, governmental capitol buildings, national museums, and the Chairman Maonument, where the Great Leader is kept pickled in an old mason jar for the enjoyment and worship of onlookers. Also included is one building which you might not expect, the world’s largest Kentucky Fried Chicken. No, seriously, its like, a three-story department store with a big glass front and café seating and a huge picture of the Colonel the puts even the giant one of Mao across the square to shame. It is nothing short of absolutely awe-inspiring on so many patriotically deep-fried, eleven different herbs and spices levels. And the thing is, it’s not the only one; there’s hundreds of KFCs in Beijing, the Chinese absolutely love them, it’s the most awesome thing ever. Also, Beijing now has a Wal-Mart, which pretty much means that communism there has maybe ten years, tops, before it falls before an unstemmable tide of Dale Earnhart memorabilia and 67¢ pizzas.

We stopped for lunch at a place offering such delicacies as "roast uncooked cow-tongue-shaped object (mmm) and then at a little coffee shop where I made a most amazing discovery. The Chinese have invented the uber-danish. Okay, we all know that danishes are already one of the most highly advanced snack foods in the galaxy, being as how they have that croissanty outer crust, that delicious frostingy mantle, and finally a molten core composed of jam or cheese or something. What could possibly be better than this, the very pinnacle of pastry evolution? In a word: ham. It’s that simple, and that diabolically brilliant, a ham danish. But that’s not all, they also do Kielbasa danishes, and even the rarely attempted pizza danish, a pastry which defies all the laws of nature and good nutrition as mankind understands them. They also had something on the menu called "Sea World Pizza" which makes me kind of wonder if anyone’s seen Shamu lately.

And of course, there’s the 2008 Beijing Olympics coming up too. You remember how when you were a kid there’d be something cool coming up, like the Transformers Movie or the fall of the Soviet Union or getting a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas or something? And you would dedicate every waking moment and bend every fibre of your very being, mind, body and soul to wanting it to get here as soon as possible? And finally your mom would just get tired of you being such a little spazz about it that she’d flip out and be all like, "Dammit Ben, Christmas isn’t for another two weeks abd for crying out loud you’re 25 years old anyway why do you need a BB gun anyway?!" That’s how excited Beijing is about the 2008 Olympics. Like, everything in China say 2008 Olymipics on it, whether or not it’s even remotely Olympically oriented, like car keys and door knobs. They have a giant Dick Clark clock right in Tiananmen Square counting down the very seconds until the Olympics. They’ve already chosen five cute little repulsive teletubby/enraged Buddhist diety mascots symbolizing diversity and the inexorable progress of socialism. They’ve even started a program encouraging all the cab drivers to learn English (rumor has it that if it works well, they might even try it in New York next). So yes, Virginia, China is totally psyched about the Olympics, one might say with some justification.

So anyway, for dinner, Avian Flu be damned, we went to a Peking Duck restaurant way back in what appeared to be Beijing’s mogwai-infested Chinatown. There they brought out the duck (head still attached so we could tell that it, indeed, a duck and not merely some hapless midget or a plague marmot or some other such simulacrum being culinarily foisted off upon us) and proceeded to carve it for us right there at the table, which was very nice indeed (the carving, I mean, not the table, though it did match the decor nicely, I might add). Also we got a side dish with Chinese cabbage (or as the Chinese call it, cabbage) and some Chinese Death Peppers. You see, they put these insanely hot peppers in the dish while they’re cooking to give a bit of kick to the rest of it, but really they’re like tea leaves and cauliflower and not intended by any stretch of the imagination for human consumption, a fact which nobody alerted me to until I foolhardily ate one and spent the next three hours feeling it burn its wicked death peppery way through my upper digestive tract like a tiny little porcupine made out of lava and jujubes.

After this, we caught a taxi back to the apartment and had some ice cream, and sat around chatting amicably until my radical and partisan political beliefs about terrorism (kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out) put everybody else off, leaving us with no recourse but to discuss baby names and kittens, until my radical and partisan political beliefs about kittens (kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out) put everybody off and it was time to simply call it a night.

Seeing as how it would indeed be a terrible thing to come all the way to Mongolia and not spend a night in a yurt, my sister, a couple of her friends here and I travelled out of the city yesterday to pass the night in true Mongolian style at the Mongolian National Park and Xtreme Offroad Thunderdome of Terelj. So we packed up some overnight things (including a decent quantity of Mongolian beer and long underwear; both of which are absolutely essential for passing a night in relative comfort) and, before you can say Bogd Khan, we were on our way out of the city in a thoroughly Road Warrior Japanese SUV with the steering wheel on the wrong side, about a half dozen little mirrors around the front to compensate for said steering wheel anomaly, no functioning seatbelts, and an excellent onboard cassette collection featuring the greatest hits of the 80s.

Now, it happens to be the case that while the city streets of Mongolia are far from the best graded and surfaced in the civilized world, once you get to the countryside you soon realize that the Mongolian definition of "flat" is more along the lines of the American definition of "pock-marked cratery wasteland of death and devastation", because honestly the whole thing is so full of moon craters, nooks, crannies, gaping abysses, and a healthy sprinkling of good old-fashioned potholes large enough to lose a yak in that the only way to stay anywhere close to upright is to simply drive in the least devastated part of the road, which is of course, always in the oncoming lane, the sidewalk, or occasionally the fifty feet of open desert on either side of what, strictly speaking, is actually the road.

Which brings me next to the observation that while it is the case that back in the States, a road is generally considered to be a sort of a long, straight, asphalty kind of a thing with a nice little line down the middle and a good distribution of dead possums on it, in Mongolia a road is more rightly designated as whatever piece of real estate (or, in some not uncommon cases, whatever inland sea or frozen river) happens to be beneath your car at this particular instant. Out on the steppes in fact, the roads are often the worst of possible driving surfaces, and many wisely elect therefore to just go traipsing off across the open fields.

So anyway, there we were, cruising along at some speed which sounds absolutely fantastic because its in kilometers and I never could figure out what those are, small boulders merrily hurling themselves at our transmission case, avoiding perhaps an even half of the innumerable yawning fissures in the road and occasionally slipping, for but a moment, the surly bonds of Earth and soaring a bit skyward. Really, it was almost like driving on the Boulevard back in Richmond. Once we finally made out way into the park, we successfully negotiated a number of bridges which had more waves to them than the rivers they spanned.

Finally, we made it to the hotel (such as it was) checked in to our yurts, and went to find the horse-riding guy that we might rent ourselves some acceptably noble steeds. Five minutes later, there I was, astride my +60% Mongolian War Pony kind of bouncing along in the most biting extremity of cold and wondering why God saw fit to design horses without suitable handles, or at least making out of something compatible with Velcro. All of a sudden, with a great and lusty shout, two crazy drunk pony-wielding madmen hove from out the darkness and charged up to me, rammed into my pony, shouting and carrying on all the while, and generally making navigation (which was already far from a certain business for me) altogether worrisome. I (who haven’t been on a horse that wasn’t made of plastic with a pole through it for over twenty years) finally manage to get my pony into something vaguely resembling an equine holding pattern until our two drunken commando pony-master wannabe crackhead guys are properly shooed away, at which point I can safely resume my previous activity of looking uncomfortable and trying to avoid fatal thigh chafage (at which I was moderately successful).

It was now, the Sun having long since passed o’er the horizon, very cold indeed, and it is likely that it would have been very unpleasant were it not the case that apparently all the horses in Mongolia are kept to a strict diet of tacos and petrochemicals and are more or less jet-propelled. So, by the time we made it back about an hour later, we were all nearly frozen to death, the ride in the land rover seemed upon reflection to have been the very pink of comfort and security by comparison, and our horses had caused something like a 20% increase in the methane levels over Outer Mongolia (indeed, it is a good thing that we didn’t get our campfires going until a good bit later on or all the horses would likely have gone up in a massive fireball visible from Borneo).

The yurts were really very comfortable after they got comfortably warmed up (though all the coal we burned left me smelling quite bituminous the next morning) and after a supper of deep-fried Mongolian hot pockets and 14 proof philosophical discussion, it turned out to be a most comfortable night after all.

The next morning we struck out for town again, stopped by Turtle Rock (thus proving once and for all the ages yet to come that Legend of Zelda did indeed take place in Mongolia), all froze half to death one more time for good measure, and drove past one of those shamany totem thingies that you walk around three times and throw rocks and empty beer bottle at to appease the local spirits, who all seemed like nice enough ethereal beings since they had seen fit to not let my horse burst into flame while I was riding it the day before. And so, without further incident or accident, we returned home aside from the occasional brief episode of being airborne.

            So, after all manner of unquestionably interesting journeys, voyages, tribulations, Chinese breakfast cereals and so forth, here I am at last in that very cradle of awesomeness, Mongolia.  I am staying here at a rather well-appointed apartment (or, as the Mongolians call it, a flat) here in the heart of Ulan Bator, capital city of Mongolia, with my most excellent sister, Liz (coconspirator and originator of the entire “Bring Ben to Mongolia” plan) and her housemate Daniela (who is from Australia, land of shrimp, barbies, Vegemite, and is an all-around nice gal herself).

            Mere words (not even really big, impressive ones, which almost invariably do the trick in ineffable situations such as this) cannot even begin to convey the inexpressible awesometude of this nation.  Therefore, by way of one very poor segue and a few similes of greater quality, allow me to endeavor to impress upon y’all, Gentle Readers, how absa-freakin-sweet it is here.  The people here are a hardy and robust lot, and rather like Klingons in the best of ways (pointy boots, funky language, forehead ridges, etc.).

            Now imagine, if you will, that in all of America’s history that George Washington was our nation’s only founding father, national hero, and wearer of wooden teeth (of course now we have Gerald  Ford and the Squirrel Nut Zippers, but that is neither here nor there to us in this instance).  Imagine that he was practically the patron saint of our fine nation, and the least inkling that he might have any done anything less than quintessentially awesome would unthinkably impugn his universal badassitude.  Imagine then, that even now, centuries after his death, his is still the name to conjure with, and that to name a ritzy hotel, coffee house, beer, pants cartel, or pug after him is still the very apogee of eponymous approbation.  It is in this way that the Mongolian people think of Genghis Khan.  He is, quite simply, the very quintessence of all that is worthy of exultation and emulation to them.  What Mr. Spock is to trekkies, thus is Genghis Khan to Mongolians.  He is, in brief, uncommonly popular here.