United State Presidents, as a rule of thumb, generally do not rise from the dead and walk amongst the living (the improbable resurrection of Grover Cleveland not withstanding).  It is also most uncommon, in my admittedly limited experience, for them to forsake the laurels of retirement in favor of the lucrative field of real estate marketing.  It will not surprise you to learn that to the best of my knowledge no president has ever accomplished both of these most unusual feats simultaneously (it will also not surprise you to learn that to the best of my knowledge, The Improbable Resurrection of Grover Cleveland would be a totally sweet name for a band.  All the same however, it appears that at least one such President has indeed accomplished both of these exacting feats, if what I have recently observed is to be believed.

            As I drove along on my merry way home yesterday, returning from yet another wacky and toad-filled day at work, I passed a Suburban sporting one of those “Save the Realtors” vanity plates.  Now, this in itself struck me as rather out of the ordinary, as pro-realtor vanity plates are outnumbered by at least 10 to1 by the ever-popular “Beat All the Realtors Senseless with a Sack of Weasels” vanity plate.  Though I was already thoroughly amazed, you can surely only imagine my befuddlement when I drew nigh and read the plate more thoroughly.  On it was writ only this: IM LBJ.  It would seem that Lyndon Johnson walks among us once more.

            At once I rushed home (not that I wasn’t already doing that anyways) and donned my mighty thinking pants (they have ewoks on them, thank you very much).  After much introspection and the consumption of no small number of organically grown Doritos, I at last concluded that there were but three possible explanations for this most unlikely occurrence.  The first of course, is that the Suburban in question merely belonged to Linnaeus Bumwallah Jorblesnarf, one of the more famous realtors in Richmond who, for reasons plainly obvious, prefers to go by his initials only.  However, since he has in fact recently been revealed as nothing more than two pygmy marmosets standing on each other’s shoulders while wearing a long trench coat, it is unlikely that his vehicle would still be frequenting the highways of Richmond.

            The next possibility is that the message conveyed, IM LBJ, was not so much a claim as a command; that somehow from the great beyond, President Johnson had gotten himself a PC and a copy of Instant Messenger, and that this kind soul, in order to make up for a lascivious life of realty, had taken it upon him or herself to advertise the fact that old LBJ would really appreciate it if some of us here in the land of the living would please drop him a line.  With this in mind, I fired up my computer and sent him a message.  Alas, whoever it was that answered was clearly not Lyndon Johnson, though he did seem to share his aversion to Richard M. “Mo Better” Nixon.

            Thusly I hit upon the only other option which presented itself; that the fellow in the suburban was in fact, not LBJ, but something even more horrible.  It is my firm belief that what has obviously happened here, is that space aliens from the Glooptar Nebula have come to Earth.  As Glooptarians are wont to do however, they are bent on world conquest, and being both subtle and ridiculous to an exceptional degree, they have clearly embarked upon a fiendishly brilliant plot to accomplish their diabolical aims.  Inspired by the tactics of famed military specialist and comer-upper with of unnecessarily complicated and silly plans Cobra Commander, they have decided to collect the DNA of all of America’s deadest Presidents, clone them, program the clones with their own evil extraterrestrial agenda, and then send them out into Richmond (which, due to a typo some years back in an intergalactic tourism guide, is believed by space aliens to be the capital of Earth).  While posing as poorly disguised realtors, they hope to buy up all the real estate next door to the State Capitol, so that they can tunnel into it and mind control the General Assembly.  From there it’s only a short jump to Washington, and to their ultimate goal of gaining control of the Federal government, thus allowing them to finally make the House of Representatives their own private Pokemon collection (I choose you, David Wu! (Oregon 1^st District)).

            Clearly, this cannot be allowed to happen.  Therefore I exhort you, all citizen of Earth who might happen to own land near any governmental buildings, caves, or giant beehives, if any ex-President generally believed to be dead shows up and makes you an offer, it is totally your duty to mankind not to sell them anything.  What you can do, is go and tell a still-living ex-President, like Jimmy Carter, or Parallel Universe Bob Dole.

            With the 60^th Anniversary of us kicking butt in World War II upon us, I thought it might be an appropriate time to revisit one of the less well-known, yet often sensationalized facets of World War II history, that of experimental Nazi research.  It is, for example, a well-known fact that before the end of the war, the Nazis had developed jet aircraft and rocketry far superior to anything the Allies had yet invented, and had it not been for Hitler’s prejudice against atomic research (he was, it is now believed, somewhat confused as to what the “A” in “A-Bomb” stood for, and seems to have thought that it was a weapon somehow directed against aardvarks, which he loved with a not altogether decent passion), it is altogether likely that the Nazis might have developed even more horrible weapons than they did.  This is the story of one such project, declassified for the fist time ever, and brought to you, my readers, so that the truth may finally be known.  But first, a little history:

            Before World War II, of course, television was still a rather novel innovation.  Though Nazi scientists had experimented with it early on, “Hitler’s Big Adventure at the 1936 Olympics” had failed to draw the kind of rating that the Fuhrer expected from a major multimedia event, and especially after the smashing success of “Triumph of the Will”, “Everybody Loves Rommel” and the weekly kids show “Adolf n’ Friends”, the best minds of Germany knew that they were indeed onto something, and research was initiated to develop a television program that, while predicted by Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, had never been proven to exist in our plane of existence.  That program was, The Spin-off Sitcom.  It was theorized that well after a sitcom had exhausted it’s natural energy sources and potential plotlines, that the franchise could still be artificially perpetuated by infusing the beloved stars of the original sitcom into a new, yet highly derivative show, thereby giving them a weird, unnatural semi-living existence, as well as possibly up to five more seasons of zombie-like living death.  Though early results were promising, the tragic death of the entire cast of “Von Ribbentrop, Kraut in The City” during an early screen test prompted the Nazi government to mothball the project in favor of more promising avenues of development such as the infamous abomination “The Olsen Twins Stalingrad Christmas Special”, and the spin-off project languished deep within the catacombs of Hitleropolis (not Hitleropolis, Vermont; the other one, over in Germany), bereft of funding, deemed to dangerous and unpredictable for the war effort.

            As 1944 rolled around, and the once rosy fortunes of the 3^rd Reich began to take a turn for the worse after the loss of the Holy Grail to Harrison Ford and Gimli the Dwarf, it became clear that desperate measures were called for, and the spin-off program was resurrected.  Using recent breakthroughs in cryogenics and integrated laughtracks, the project was resumed with a vengeance, as Nazi scientists feverishly worked to ensure that even if Germany fell, Hitler would still have a spot in prime time.  As the Allies drew ever nearer to Berlin, the Nazis constructed vast subterranean studios where the first halting steps towards production of a pilot episode began, shielded from the prying eyes of American operatives.

            Originally, the idea was tossed around of having Hitler die and be reincarnated as a friendly and intelligent dolphin who would help to save retarded children from Dick Cheney (They call him Hitler! Hitler! Faster than lightning!  And we know Hitler, lives in a world full of wonder! Flying there under, under the sea!)  In a fit of rationality though, Hitler signaled his disapproval of this idea by dressing all the media execs responsible up as bumble bees and throwing them into a giant bug light.  It was only after this setback that a truly great idea was at last struck upon.  The premise of the show, while now far from original, was really quite revolutionary at the time.  Hitler and Tojo would find themselves sharing an apartment in Milwaukee (I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Tojo).  There, Hitler would work as a designer of window displays for Milwaukee’s many fine fashion boutiques, while Tojo would open a Laundromat, and spend his nights trying to break into the local theatre scene.  Hitler of course would be the obsessively neat one, always fussing at Tojo for leaving bourbon bottles laying around and having over all his old friends like Mothra and That Old Mogwai Dude.  Hitler meanwhile, would always be getting into all these wacky shenanigans in his endless quest to take over the world through a combination of viral advertising campaigns and shamelessly plugging his website at karaoke night every week.  Sometimes, Hitler would suspect that Tojo was plotting against him and would go and paint a big line down the middle of the apartment, only to discover that all the while Tojo was actually planning his surprise birthday party.  And things really get crazy when Lenny and Squiggy show up, and Hitler accidentally makes a casserole out of Tojo’s pet Komodo dragon while Tojo is out getting a makeover.

            In the end though, Hitler shot himself in the bonker before the pilot episode was complete, and the Nazi spin-off technology was divided up between the various Allies.  For years afterward, captured German scientists worked around the clock to complete the program, so that at last the fruits of this strange new science could be used to benefit mankind.  Unfortunately, other than “Mork & Mindy”, “The Gerald Ford Administration”, and “A-Team: The Next Generation” most of the resulting shows have been responsible for the horrible deaths of countless millions of innocent people, which is probably just what Hitler would have wanted anyway, because he was a buttweasel that way.

My fellow Americans, the shirts have arriven at last, and I can honestly say, with all due impartiality, that they are totally friggin' awesome!  They'll be $9 each, $14 if I have to mail you one.  Wear one today, cause otherwise you'll be topless, and banned from finer restaurants and Linens n' Things.

Next, it is my pleasure to announce that teacupmammoths.com is finally in the global search engine system, and may now be found via google or yahoo (if you go to yahoo, and search for Spanky's Daquiri Shop, we're hit #1).  While those of you who already frequent this little oasis of style and literary savoir faire don't need a search engine to find us (that's the royal us, lest you think I've gone all Smeagol on y'all), this is just one more milestone in my mad quest for global domination.

Finally, as always, I'm looking for new and interesting things about which to write, so feel free, nay welcome, to email, IM, leave comments, or stand on the roof of your house and yell at me if you've got anything you'd like to see appear here.

Well, that's the news.  Thanks again y'all for making this site a constant delight to work on.

Party On,

Ben

            Just as dead hadrosaurs and cavemen, when left underground for millions of years eventually turn into oil (which, purely out of spite, they appear to have done solely beneath dysfunctional buttweasel countries), old junk that’s left in your grandmother’s attic for millions of years eventually becomes antiques, which, like oil, command a hefty price, and are used to power automobiles while the money from their sales props up corrupt dictators.  It is entirely possible, gentle reader, that you yourself have lead a somewhat more sheltered existence than have I, and have little to no firsthand knowledge of the dark and seamy underbelly of commerce known to some as the antique market (and known to other more crazy people as Karl).  I however, have recently had something of a foray into this magical and dust bunny infested world, as this past week I was looking for some kind of weird-ass woodworking plane, and rather than just go Baron Von Snorkelbottom’s Olde Timey Toole Emporium, I decided to embark upon a mad and ill-conceived quest up to Fredericksburg (motto: just another suburb of Nova since 1997), home of the ten thousand antique stores.  In the course of this magical and learntastic voyage, it became horrifyingly clear to me, that all antique stores may be broken down into three different classes, which I shall now elucidate in unnecessary detail.

            First off, there’s the ever-popular lah-dee-dah fancy-shmancy antique store.  This kind of store is generally characterized by having a large number of uninteresting yet exotic-looking things in the front window, such as curly maple armoires and tiffany glass poodles.  As a general rule, if you happen to be both male and not Elton John, this kind of store will hold nearly as much wonder for you as does the Oxygen Channel (next up: The Baby Story 2: When Babies Attack!).  Nonetheless, in the interest of completeness and filling up valuable internet space, I braved a couple of these stores that I might decipher the lameness within.  Generally, they’re required by law to be staffed by some sour-looking old harridan, who will glare at you as you walk around the store, not so much because she expects you to steal anything, but because she knows that in some alternate universe, you already punched her off of a flaming blimp high over Berlin.  Also, everything in these stores comes with its own life story.  That’s not just a little ceramic baboon you’re looking at; it was commissioned by President Franklin Eleanor Roosevelt to commemorate the fact that we had recovered from the Great Depression well enough to start making useless crap again.  As such, it will cost you $150.

            Moving on, we get to the regular ol’ antique store.  This is the kind of antique store that’s always run by an old Chinese man who refuses to sell out to an evil corporation run by the holodoctor from Voyager, at least when it’s in a movie.  In real life, they’re usually run by a kindly husband and wife team, who sit there smiling benevolently at you, and ask if you’re looking for anything in particular (occasionally, there’s a chain-smoking harridan in these, who was probably just cast down from the Mt. Olympus of fancy antique stores).  I always hate to sound like I’m just drifting, so I try to ask for something that they’re sure not to have, that way I get to look all beneficent when I stay and wander around the place anyways (never ask if they have a scarf made out of dead weasel biting each other though, every antique store is required on pain of death to have at least 150 of these randomly draped over stuff all over the store, Salvador Dali style, as if there was a sudden dead-weasels-biting-each-other-scarf storm last week, and they just were too last to clean them all up so instead they’re just going to try and sell them all to you).  If you’re looking for something cool, this is probably the best place to find it; as long as by “cool”, you mean “something that some actual person might in fact have any use for whatsoever”.  Also, you’re finer antique stores of this sort, will almost invariably have a big Box Fulla Doorknobs that they apparently just found laying around after a Victorian farmhouse evaporated nearby.  They’re usually really cheap, but unless you happen to live in a Victorian farmhouse (which, to my knowledge, I do not) none of them will be any use to you whatsoever, unless you’ve at last discovered some kind of Doorknob Philosopher’s Stone, that allows you to turn them into gold, or an elixir of longevity, or better yet, ham biscuits.

            The last kind of antique store remained undiscovered by me until I was on my way back to Richmond, and I saw one squatting evilly by Route 1.  The sign said it was a “Thrift Antique Store” which is a dishonestly flattering way of saying “Perpetual White Trash Garage Sale”.  Seriously I was expecting to see a lot of junk, but this place seemed to be the legendary resting place of all the stuff that wasn’t classy enough to make it into a flea market and was too ugly for Goodwill.  Strangely enough, it was almost as if I had come full circle, for a lot of the useless junk they had there bore a striking resemblance to the useless junk they had back in the Uber-fancy antique store (at the very least, I’d say the percentage of their stock composed of butt-ugly Hummels was about the same) (Butt-Ugly Hummels, by the way would make a totally sweet name for a band, assuming that you were very secure with both your looks and your masculinity).  Now, in terms of trashy romance novels, it was an absolute Mecca, though I suppose that’s not really a very good metaphor, because if you actually took a bunch of trashy romance novels to Mecca, they’d probably stone you, or at least hurl a fatwa in your general direction.

            So, in the end, I didn’t find what I was looking for anyways, and had to go to Baron Von Snorkelbottom’s after all.  When all was said and done though, I think I’d learned a valuable lesson about life, as well as spending my time on the road learning all the lyrics to “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”, which is something I’d really been meaning to do for a while anyhow,

            There are certain things in this world, artistically speaking, which a fellow does not expect to see in his neighborhood as he’s out driving. One does not, for example, particularly expect to see Rodan’s The Thinker passed out drunk in his front yard, nor does one anticipate seeing Michelangelo’s David chasing a rabid possum with an electric cattle prod.  And most certainly, I did not imagine that I would encounter the American Gothic Guy out walking his two decorative yippy dogs while looking supremely malaise-stricken.  And yet, just yesterday, that is precisely what I saw as I zoomed along the scenic thoroughfare that is Melody Road.

            Nary an inkling of such curious goings on flitted through my mind that evening, as I drove along, my ears merrily flapping in the breeze, singing along with the melodic strains of 80s pop sensation (and professional ham wrangler) Sheena Easton (I was singing, of course, not my ears; that would just be silly).  And yet, all a sudden, there hove into view a sight to uncannily bizarre that I expect I shall remember it until next time I see something else weird and forget all about it.  But there he was, standing at the intersection by the counterintuitive stop sign, waiting as his matching pair of toy wiener dogs relieved themselves upon somebody else’s zinnias.  How could such a thing come to pass?  Here’s my theory.

            For many years, you see, Norbert “Slappy” American Gothic and his wife Shaneequa “The Bulgarslayer” American Gothic, seemed to have an ideal marriage.  Every day, they’d go out and stand in front of their house for eight hours while tourists went by and took their picture.  He’d hold the pitchfork and wonder inwardly whether he had remembered to water the tiny decorative cactus he kept on their porch; she’d sit there beside her husband and try not to notice the way one of his ears was a lot higher than the other one, while debating to herself the relative merits of just going out one day and getting a femullet.  It seemed like the perfect life, but roiling beneath the idyllic surface of there marriage like a sack of Vengarian thunder eels fighting over a chocolate-covered gerbil, trouble was brewing.  Norbert resented the way that she was always looking askance at his none-too-stylish overalls and black cardigan ensemble, whilst he seethed inwardly because she wore that damnably creepy looking Louis XIV curio pin every single day, and always looked at him like a beaten dog whenever the postman drove by.

            One day it finally happened, he woke up, threw on his usual shirt with a big unnecessary Dagwood button right in the front, and walked down to the kitchen to discover that instead of his usual wheelbarrow full of Pillsbury Toaster Strudels, there was naught but a note from his beloved Shaneequa, who, it seemed, had at last decided to forsake the company of humanity forevermore, and had gone off to live as a hermit in the frozen steppes of Delaware.  Distraught beyond words, Norbert did what so many other funny-looking white guys have done in the past, he tried to get a spot in the US House of Representatives, but alas, was denied admittance because he smelt of old ham and broken dreams.  With nothing else to do, Norbert sold his pitchfork for a brace of wiener dogs, and moved to Richmond.

            Now, as tragic as all this is in the telling, the fact of the matter is that we simply can’t be having great works of art dropping everything and coming to live in genteel Southside housing developments.  Imagine stepping out the door in the morning only to see the Dutch Masters tear by as they drag race through the neighborhood in a couple of souped up ricers, or having your kids come running into the house screaming in terror because while they were outside they saw some blue chick with three noses out mowing her lawn.  How’d you like to not be able to get into the ABC store because The School of Athens is hanging around out front, Socrates already drunk and leading Aristotle and Pliny the Elder in an elaborate armpit symphony (Okay, maybe that would be kinda cool after all).  But what effect would it have on the young’uns of the neighborhood, to have the Mona Lisa just hanging around outside of that house where the crazy old cat lady lives, casting that “Hello sailor” look of hers at everyone who passes by?

            Clearly the authorities are already in the pocket of the NEA, and the only way to handle this is to take matters into our own hands.  Go therefore, unto your nearest art gallery, and glare at a few masterpieces today (when the curator isn’t looking, feel free to shake your fist menacingly in their direction too).  If you’re out in the parking lot and you see Norman Rockwell’s Family Tree with Some Pirates in it trying to sneak out, then you just march yourself right over there and tell it in your most serious sounding voice that that sort of behavior might play well enough over in Europe, but here in America, we don’t cotton to these sorts of shenanigans.  Then, hit it on the nose with a rolled up newspaper, otherwise it won’t ever learn.

            Think for a moment, about some of the greatest men whom ever have lived, Jesus, Batman, and Genghis Khan.  What do they all have in common (aside from awesome crimefighting skills)?  The answer: they were all men of relatively few words, who knew when it was the right time to say something awesome, and were comfortable enough with themselves that nobody found themselves thinking “Jeez, Genghis Khan, if you don’t have anything to say, why not just shut up and let the rest of us get back to pillaging.” The lesson which I believe far too few people in the world today comprehend is this: Most folks aren’t gonna think you’re retarded for talking too little, but a lot of them are gonna end up reaching that conclusion if you never shut your yap.

            Take, for example, Arnold Schwarzenegger.  When he’s explaining the California tax code to people, he comes off as a really dull guy.  And yet, he’s one of the most recognizable state governors/killer cyborgs from the future in American politics today.  What I’m getting at here is that really, Arnold Schwarzenegger is at his best when, instead of monologging, he says something cool, and then a helicopter blows up.  Imagine that next time he were to go on the air and talk to the people of California about Proposition 507 (concerning what to do when two things on the Endangered Species List fight each other, and whether or not we’re allowed to place bets when they do), and instead of running on forever in that weird almost comprehensible langue he speaks, he just said “I like waffles.” “BOOOOOOM!!!!1!!” as he goes and throws a Sherman Tank full of Nazis (nevermind how Nazis got ahold of a Sherman Tank) through the wall.  That’s just be so much better for everyone concerned. 

            And what about Yoda?  Whenever he goes off on some kind of rant or another, it really just gives you the time to stop and consider how, in 900 years of living, he never learned how to talk like a real person, and you end up thinking about how goshdarn cute he is, despite being a being of awesome and otherworldly powers.  No, its far better when he just says something pithy and enigmatic like, “Too sexy for my pants, am I,” and then mud wrestles with R2-D2 (or Princess Leia).

Or consider Keanu Reeves.  If there’s one thing that human history has taught us, it’s that he’s at his best when he says something about some other thing, then kills a bunch of evil robots from the future (see Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, The Matrix, Constantine, and Keanu Reeves vs. The Tooth Fairy), and then says “Whoa.” And then some other cool stuff blows up.  Contrast this with the end of Matrix Reloaded, where he spends approximately 17 hours talking about the nature of free will with Sean Connery’s little brother, Stoatbuttocks Connery.  Having established then, a superior formula for making people who talk too much more interesting, let’s look at a few of its applications.

            Everyone loves Stephen Hawking, loveable scamp and famed astrophysicist that he is, but really it gets rather dull listening to him drone on about M-Theory for hour after hour.  I think most of us have heard enough already that nobody really disputes the fact that he’s smarter than anyone except for Mr. T, who has already stated that he is unequivocally finished with the field of quantum electrodynamics at least as long as Chia Mr. T heads are selling well.  So instead of doing a never-ending impression of a human Speak and Spell, what if he just said “I’m here to kick ass and Chew bubble gum, and I’m all out of gum,” and then shot a bunch of stinger missiles out from his wheelchair which, after turning into Volton, would do battle with a fearsome Ro-beast piloted by Nelson Mandella.  I think we’d all spend a lot more time listening to him, if only because he might come looking for you if he found out you weren’t watching him on TV (also, he really could use a good catchphrase, like “By the Hoary Hordes of Hoggoth, its time to get funky!”).

            And of course, there’s always Dick Cheney who, for all his good points and pant-burning skills, tends to run a bit long at the mouth now and then.  Rather, he ought to make the most of his frequent time in the senate, and instead of offering lengthy justifications of various and assorted policies, take a page from Yoda’s book and start using his awesome Force powers to fling Senators at whoever doesn’t agree with him after saying something appropriately cool like, “Fortune hast smiled upon thee, Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), thou hast found an ass-kicking!” and then hurling Ted Kennedy at him and setting some pants on fire (Saxby Chambliss and the Flaming Pants, by the way, would be a totally sweet name for a band).

            And finally, what about Kofi Annan?  I mean, clearly he’s actually played by renowned movie star Morgan Freeman, so why does he seem to spend all his time standing up in the UN, explaining why scandal #587 (somebody is still sending Saddam Hussein Doritos on the UN tab) when he’s been in so many other movies where he’s cool?  So how about if instead of explaining how, in spite of how everything looks, the answer is in fact to give the UN more money and ask fewer questions, why doesn’t he just say something like, “Been farmin’ long?… Bitch!” and then maybe hurling a steam roller across Manhattan, or possibly eating an entire case of Twinkies in less than five seconds.

            Anyways, next time you’re at a party, and you feel like you ought to be saying something, try and stifle that urge, won’t you?  And just scream, “Homercles cares not for beans!” and rip a manatee in half with your bare hands (they’re like phone books that way, it looks really difficult, but there’s just a trick to it).  Trust me, you’ll be the life fo the party.

            Anyways, moving on to the second day, I actually got to do some acting, mostly in the form of getting shot in the leg a bajillion times.  But first, a little history.  Those of you familiar with the recent research at Jamestown may remember the Head on a Stick Guy (probably not his actual name).  Nobody knows who he was, except for the fact that he was an early colonist who got shot in the knee, died, and was dug up back in the 90s.  Using the latest in modern forensic science, anthropologists have discovered that one, he was shot in the knee and died, and two, when they made a model of his head and put it on a stick it turned out to look suspiciously like world famous Shakespearean actor and breakfast sausage mascot Keanu Reeves.  Affectionately dubbed by leading historians (okay, just by me) “The Head on a Stick Guy,” it turned out that the National Geographic people were making a movie primarily about him, and wonder of wonders; I was the one who got the golden ticket and got to be him.

            So, that afternoon, we spent several hours with about eight guys out marching around in a little field like we were the Canadian Army or something, and while reloading our muskets, one guy shot me in the leg.  But since just seeing me get shot and die would have been a little dull, they decided to go for the whole Matrix things, where the camera zooms around in all sorts of weird slow motiony ways and I say “Whoa!” a lot, while fighting Elrond of Rivendale in a subway.  Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite that cool, but they did hang the camera from a tree and do that whole Bullettime thingie.  Also, I did say “Whoa”.  About this time, I figured that, having been shot in the leg already, my duty was done and I could go back to being the fire wrangler, like I had the day before.  Little did I suspect though, like Chewbacca in the garbage smasher, that the weirdness had only just begun. 

            You see, in the interest of making this the most confusing National Geographic Special since that one about understanding all the one way streets in Richmond, they had decided to make this some kind of Bizarro Choose Your Own Adventure shoot Ben in the knee movie.  So, after having me get shot by another militia guy, they also tried having me get shot by, in no particular order, a Spaniard, another and completely unrelated Englishman, and an Indian (who was really just a white guy who we put some Tan-In-a-Can on and accessorized with a bracelet made out of shiny objects.  Then, they had me get shot by Teddy Roosevelt during a hunting accident, and just for good measure, they found some other guy in a silly hat and shot him too, lest people watching the movie grow wroth at them for not shooting enough people.  I can only imagine how it all is going to turn out, “If you would like to see Ben get shot by Elian Gonzalez, turn to page 37; if you would like to see Ben get shot by the Doge of Florence, turn to page 64; if you would like to see Ben drive a semi full of weasels into the Grand Canyon, you are probably watching the wrong movie right now”.  At any rate, as night (and about a squintillion mosquitos) descended upon us, I was totally tired, and after securing permission from my boss, I proceeded to bail like a one-legged man with a sweater-vest made out of cinderblocks in a leaky rowboat.

            Monday, the final day of filming, was a nice change insomuch as it didn’t involve me getting shot in the knee (as much).  We did, however, get to do our dramatic rendition of the Starving Time.  The first order of the day then, was to go and get made up to look all malnourished and sickly; though upon stepping outside to show off my new cadaverous pallor, I was somewhat nonplussed when everyone kept asking why I hadn’t got my makeup done yet.  In the end, they didn’t even use me as one of the plaguey colonists (The Plaguey Colonists, might I add, would be a most excellent name for a band), though I suspect that there’s probably at least one shot where I’m lurching around in the background mumbling about brains, which, were it not for all the fog, would probably have looked somewhat out of place.  In the further interest of demonstrating how the Starving Time was really so much more than just a pretty name, they also did a number of shots of all of us laying about looking famished.  Unfortunately, since the average weight of our cast was likely somewhat in excess of 250 pounds, it’s probably going to end up looking more like The Bunch of Portly Middle-Aged Guys and Ben Absent-Mindedly Desiring a Ham Sandwich While a Couple of Other Guys Farm Dirt In The Background Time, which simply doesn’t trip off your tongue quite the same way.

            And so it ended, with all of us a little older, a little wiser, and a whole lot sweatier (it being the case that the temperature obstinately refused to dip below 105 degrees all weekend).  By way of conclusion, I found a picture of the Head on a Stick Guy, who is no doubt at this very moment, feeling ever so honored wherever he may be, knowing that my own august self was chosen to play him.  Now, other than the copious whiteness, and a certain lack of combing skills, I don’t see a great deal of resemblance between the two of us.  He rather looks like a combination of Sunday School Jesus and Keanu Reeves, and has, you might well note, a somewhat puzzled and weary look about him.  “*Sigh* I wonder where the rest of me has gotten off to again” he seems to say.  Or possibly “Don’t tell me my business Devil-Woman, go get me a beer!”  It’s tough to say which.

            Well, that’s about the end of that, though should October 30^th roll around, and you should happen to find yourself simultaneously sober and in front of a television (however unlikely that may be), by all means tune in, and watch what shall doubtless be merely the first film in what promises to be a long and silly cinematic career.

            It all began innocently enough.  Whilst manning the gift shop at work one day, as I am wont to do, I received a phone call from National Geographic.  Apparently, they had at last exhausted the world’s supply of cinematically interesting animals (Next Up: Gerbils of the Serengeti) and had decided to branch out into the lucrative and silly field of early colonial history (of which, in Virginia, we have an abundance).  It was soon decided that although our site was sorely lacking in lions (some accidentally ran our last one through the dollar slot on the soda machine back in April) the idea was soon hit upon to shoot a movie intended to educate the populace about life in early America.  And, after passing over Jamestown, owing to the fact that they aren’t nearly hardcore enough there these days, they came to us.  Now, with the 400^th anniversary of Virginia fast approaching with all the stealth of bulldozer being driven by fifty howler monkeys over a field of live mousetraps, it was thought to be a good idea to do a film about some of the things in early Virginia that a lot of people don’t remember these days.  Primarily, that it was really, really, hot, everyone died, and people got shot.

            So it came to pass that this last Saturday a crew of National Geographic people showed up, and though sorely lacking in pith helmets and elephant guns, they did bring a five pound carton of goldfish and a bottomless cooler of cool and refreshing sport beverages, so things got off to a smooth enough start.  Most of what they were working on the first day seemed to involve a bunch of Indians trapped in a longhouse with a massive bonfire, and, owing to my severe case of chronic whiteness, it was pretty much assumed that I would play no part in the matter.  Come evening however, we got the chance to reenact the historic groin injury of John Smith, which, though sadly left out of the Pocahontas movie (along with any semblance of reality) is really probably one of the wackier things to occur during the frequently dark and depressing early days (the only other high point, in terms of sheer ridiculosity, was the time that Christopher Newport tried to pick his nose with his hook hand and ended up in the hospital for a month and a half, thus earning himself the apt appellation “Johnny One Nostril”).  At any rate, we ended up spending the better part of three hours pouring gunpowder into a log, and then setting it on fire right next to John Smith, who was supposed to be asleep at the time, but really just looked moderately stricken with malaise, which was, in truth, rather surprising, since we kept setting off about half a pound of black power right next to his leg.  By way of a historical footnote, after being sent back to England, John Smith made a very comfortable living by writing a series of best-selling books about his experiences in Virginia (such as John Smith and the Sorcerer’s Stone and John Smith and the Enormous Royalty Check).

            Before I get any further though, I would be remiss to overlook one very important and completely unnecessary detail of the weekend, namely, the ubiquitous fog machine.  Seriously, just about every single scene they did, they had someone circling the site with an industrial-sized fog generator, spewing out a constant stream of fog that made it often seem as if we had accidentally stumbled into some kind of a B horror movie, and that at any moment Walter Mondale, or some other hulking, inhuman abomination would come shambling out of the woods and eat one of our militia volunteers.  Really, hardly a scene went by where we weren’t positively inundated with a nearly palpable pall of fog.  John Smith would be having his thigh sabotaged, and there, roiling about him would be an epic amount of fog.  I’d be getting shot in the leg for the 347^th time, and there, like a tiny little hurricane about me would be a ridiculous amount of fog.  There would be one of the chickens, just chillin’ out and hating me from afar, and swirling around it would be, of course, an ungodly amount of fog.  I honestly believe that I may have the dubious distinction of being involving in what is quite possibly going to be the spookiest looking National Geographic special ever.  Why did they decide to do this?  I theorize that they, like many novice historians, mistakenly believed that early Virginia was the site of nigh-perpetual raves, thus necessitating all the fog (in fact, recent archaeological evidence suggests that the first Virginian rave was not held until 1632 at Bermuda Hundred (where, due to an unfortunate paucity of glow sticks, it failed to really catch on).

Tune in tomorrow for the thrilling conclusion!

            We live in a world fraught with a veritable plethora of technological marvels.  Space shuttles, Bagel Bites, nuclear weapons; all these things contribute to making the world a better, safer, and wackier place than it otherwise would be.  Among all these modern innovations, however, there lies one other, which, though lacking the raw destructive power of Bagel Bites, is nonetheless an absolutely crucial technology in the modern world.  That technology of course, is the humble and delicious blog.  But from whence did this marvel of the internet come?  Was it given to us by space aliens (as were boy bands and the metric system)?  Was it found in the aeon-forgotten libraries of ancient and ill-fated Herculaneum?  Was it handed down from on high by the very gods themselves?  Nay, twas none of these things.  The true history of the blog being altogether more bizarre than any might imagine.  Come with me then, gentle readers, as we embark upon a magical voyage through history, and delve into the ancient and forgotten depths of the mid 20^th century.

            Back in the 1960s, we were in the midst of the Cold War.  Lyndon Johnson had already been poisoned by the Canadian government and replaced with a robot, Capri slacks were fashionable, and Dick Cheney still had hair.  Despite these wondrous occurrences, it was still a dark and threatening time for our great nation, and deep within the very pancreas of the Pentagon, secret research was going on to develop something that would enable America to beat Nikita Khrushev like a red-headed stepchild.  Many avenues of research and technological development were pursued, from sneaking into his closet every night and replacing all his clothes with slightly smaller ones so that he’d think he was shrinking to calling him at all hours of the day and night asking if he, perchance, kept Prince Albert in a can.  Ultimately however, these were all abandoned as being far too silly (tying tiny landmines to specially trained flying squirrels and dropping them over his house from a passing SR-71 had already been stopped after preliminary tests proved that squirrels are less than durable at Mach 3).  At last the idea was hit upon that computers might be somehow employed to overcome the Red Menace.  After early versions of Oregon Trail failed when programmers neglected to program in enough wagon tongues, the idea was struck upon that perhaps it might be wise to make use of America’s most boundless natural resource (no, not ham), people thinking up dumb things and publishing them so that other people make fun of them.  Thus was the blog first dreamt of.

            Feverishly, a team of scientists and Trekkies (who, since Star Trek was still a year away from existing in the first place, had a lot of extra time on their hands) worked in a secret government testing facility hidden far beneath Mount Rushmore (accessible only through Teddy Roosevelt’s left nostril, if you were wondering).  For weeks they toiled, subsisting only on Dr. Pepper and Cheese Nips, until at last, in 1968, the first blog was complete.  It was programmed into a computer which took up over half an acre of warehouse real estate, which required over a million vacuum tubes to operate, and which had a screensaver composed of only one flying toaster.  The blog, a scant two paragraphs long, was a list Richard M. Nixon’s twelve favorite breakfast cereals, and took up over fifty pounds of computer-read punch cards.  The first test, observed by top military commanders from behind a thick leaded glass window, was a complete success, destroying an entire city, and receiving over a dozen hits, and one comment.  The President immediately OK’d manufacture of a portable version of the blog, which was to be a page long Jeremiad about how lame summer school is, with a reader capacity of over 30 hits, with the possibility of kudos, but sadly, Nikita Khruchev was forced from power before it was ready for battlefield use, and this awesome new technology sat unused for over 30 years.  Decades later, it is determined that the Soviets had also been working on a blog of their own, but a massive lab disaster had stalled the project, which was intended to be a  list of all the things that made Josef Stalin cute as a button and the bestest boyfriend ever.

            Fast forward to the late 90s.  The “Internet” is now a household word (as are “spatula”, “weaselboogers” and “L337”).  Deep within the Pentagon, hidden in Henry Kissinger’s old sock drawer, the lost blueprints for the prototype blog are discovered, and though the Cold War is long over, the military immediately recognizes the potential of the blog for civilian application.  Within weeks of FDA approval, the blog becomes a near universal commodity, allowing people as never before to post lengthy screeds condemning their Exes, write complicated arguments extolling the virtues of Captain Picard as opposed to Captain Kirk, and compose vapid humor columns which never could sell in the real world.  The world is transformed overnight, as Gummi Bears rain from the sky, and talking ponies arrange a historic peace summit which unites all the nations of the Earth and finds the long-sought cure for ugly people (other than a paper bag with two holes cut in it, of course).  The planets are at last perfectly aligned in harmony, and a pound of gourmet jelly beans costs less than a buck fifty, as heaven on Earth is at last a reality.

            Okay, not really.  But still, it’s pretty cool.

Hey everyone, the shirts, if all goes well, should be here by the end of July.  They'll cost $9 apiece, $14 if I have to mail your to you.  Anyways, just wanted everyone to know, so that they could start getting totallt excited now.  Also, as you've probably noticed, my website has, for reasons wholly eluding me, dedcided to put my Friday's article at the top for all eternity.  While I'm working on getting this fixed, just know that all my new stuff seems to be coming up about halfway down the page.

Party on,

Ben

            Fashion.  For good or for ill, it is a thing which most of us, at some point, take into account in deciding how we want to present ourselves to the world on a daily basis.  Unfortunately, my own timeless sartorial sense aside, most things that were fashionable in the past, now look incredibly dorky (remember pet rocks, hammerpants, and international communism?), just as most things that are fashionable now, will also someday provoke nothing but snickers from our generation’s hypothetical grandchildren.  Now, perhaps you might be thinking that I’m about to go and write about the materialistic perceptions which so often shape our people’s understanding of different eras, and make Ashton Kutcher-infested shows a terrible reality.  In fact, I’m going to take you on a wholly different fashion odyssey, and take a look at all the various different permutations of fashion that that greatest of all trendsetters has gone through, Cobra Commander.

            Cobra Commander, who according to his official bio website was once a used car salesman, and eventually worked his way up to being part of a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world (much like Osama Bin Laden, who, early in his career, was CEO of Manny’s Used Camel Emporium, before Shipwreck and Snake-Eyes accidentally blew up the cave his office was in during a pick up game of yak polo).  Being self taught and all, it’s no wonder that Cobra Commander didn’t get his fearsome look down perfectly on the first try.  The look he decided to go with as he set out on his desperate bid for world domination, was really kind of derivative, being a cross between the “I’m a Klansman, sheet over your head” look and the “Oh no, there’s an octopus trying to eat my brain again” look.  While this was a great way to go for the aspiring warlord on a budget, it also made it terribly obvious whenever he sneezed (which was a lot, owing to Destro’s penchant for really strong, really bad cologne), not to mention that all it took was a gentle breeze to completely blow it off his head, thus pretty much destroying his aura of badassitude right when he was in the middle of menacing a Denny’s or something.

            Realizing the weaknesses inherent in his choice of masks, Cobra Commander decided to take a cue from two of the scariest things ever to exist on Earth, Nazis, and Easter Eggs.  By combining these two terrible things, he managed to craft a big, blue “gonna go invade France any minute” helmet with a faceplate that made him look like part of a traveling Faberge exhibit.  While this didn’t solve his sneezing issues completely, and tended to make it more difficult to him to regale the Cobra armies of doom with impromptu ventriloquism sessions with his dummy, Senor Battlepants, this was definitely an improvement in Cobra Commander’s appearance, and consequently, his awesomeness increased in spite of the fact that everybody still thought he sounded incredibly shrill and geeky.

            After the entire Serpentor debacle however (don’t ask, all you need to  know is that to this day, duct tape, marshmallows, and Backstreet Boys records are all banned from the Terrordrome), not to metion the time that he was turned into a giant, retarded snake with stubby little tyrannosaurus arms while rolling down a hill in a blizzard while wrestling with Roadblock (I don’t have to see clear, to fracture your rear!), and developing a first class case of athsma, Cobra Commander felt that it was time to make a fresh start of things, a goal he undertook to once again design a new helmet for himself.  Taking into account the ever-changing ideas of awesomeness and scaritude of the 90s, Cobra Commander decided to go with a look based on a stormtrooper helmet, a ping pong ball, and his new inhaler he needed to keep with him at all times.  The result was, to say the least, incredibly lame looking, because while the new helmet did have a certain cache if he was wearing it in conjunction with a jetpack, battle armor, or clown suit, if he was just ambling around the Terrordrome at night in his cashmere jammies, mug of hot chocolate (sans marshmallows, of course) in one hand, creepy headless teddy bear in the other, passed out on the employee lounge sofa with a half empty jar of Cheez Wiz blanced precariously on his knee, it tended to give him more of the “I’m Captain Doofus, the five year old Space Cadet, Whee!” look, which did nothing at all to improve his chances of successfully making out with the Baroness.

            Happily, this particular fashion faux pass didn’t last too long, as after one hectic day involving getting his head caught between the banister posts on the Terrordrome staircase, and getting the helmet turned around backwards while trying to put on a bowtie, Cobra Commander decided that really, something different was in order.  Therefore, he decided to go with what he knew best, the “cover your whole face so that Destro can’t see you sticking your tongue out at him” look, as well as involving elements from samurai helmets, that thing Luke had to wear when Obi Wan was making him fight that little flying waffle ball, and of course, going with a garish pimped out color scheme that threw all caution to the wind, and really made him look, if possible, even dorkier.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

            Whilst driving to Fredericksburg, this weekend last, I passed, as all who travel Route 1 these days are wont to do, any number of housing developments under construction.  Without exception of course, they were all drearily similar and you would be completely reasonable in assuming that no sane fellow would try and write a blog about them.  You would also, it so happens be completely right in this regard.  What did however, attract my attention along the roadside was something altogether different, unusual, and groovy.  A thing so very steeped in mysteriousity and enigmaticity that I felt it necessary to make up a couple of words merely to describe it (though, since I have been known to make up words merely to describe man-eating bacon, that’s not nearly the mark of distinction it might otherwise be).  At any rate, what I saw, or think I saw, was nothing less than what promises to be the most fabulous ziggurat in Nova.

            A ziggurat, as many of you may know already, is a rather biggish sort of a pyramid thingie, only with a nice sort of terrace effect on the way up, which would, come to think of it, lend itself to planting a nice roof garden, were it not for the fact that ziggurats are rarely the sort of place that a person thinks about planting zinnias (much like the entire state of New Jersey, or in amongst William Shatner’s toupee).  This, as you have no doubt learned from personal experience is because (also like William Shatner’s toupee) ziggurats are almost without exception a source of awesome unearthly dark power or at the very least a gateway to things not meant for the world of man (now and then though, you find an old one in which they’ve put in a Dairy Queen).  A strange thing indeed to have here in Virginia, eh?  All the same though, its foundation already looms up by the roadside as one passes by the frozen passes for Zolnar (which, for those of you Mapquesting it, is just North of Ladysmith) (can a foundation really loom, anyways?).  At any rate, knowing that my first duty is to y’all my readers, and my second to guarding the safety of the Old Dominion (my third, in case you were about to ask, is to President Grover Cleveland, who once had his jaw surgically replaced whilst on a riverboat; or possibly to ham, it changes from day to day), I have wracked my little Ben brains in an effort to figure out what this new ziggurat may portend.  My theories here follow:

            It could be that in an effort to balance out the karmic blanditude of building a squintillion houses that all look alike, the zoning gods have decreed that something completely awesome must be built to keep the universe from going all askew on us.  However, knowing as we do that the zoning gods (who all, by the way, are the most insufferable of tools) are in fact in league with Spanky, Lord of the Mole People (as well, it is rumored, with the Sentient Bacon Rebellion, a name which would make a truly awesome band name), we may safely assume, I think, that this particular ziggurat is really intended to be Spanky’s gateway to the underworld.  You see, this ziggurat is most suspiciously close to the Stonewall Jackson Shrine, where the eternally vigilant spirit of Stonewall Jackson grants insight to all those brave and/or dumb enough to survive the Gauntlet of 1000 Spatulas, and it is well known that Spanky has long quested for some knowledge which may enable him to at last overthrow his nemesis, Doug Wilder.

            Alternately, it could be that space aliens have bought this particular piece of real estate as an early step in their abominable plan fro global conquest.  However, since their observation drones last visited Earth thousands of years ago, and then only went to South America, they still believe that a big, awesome-looking ziggurat is the way to go, if you’re trying to blend in as a casual Earthling (or, as the more sensitive aliens are wont to say “Terran-American”).  One suspects that in their mad quest to pass themselves off as humans, they will likely try to say that the ziggurat is merely a garage for their Buick Skylark, or possibly a Nacho Den.  In reality, however, it is most assuredly a beacon for calling in the mother ship when they are at last ready to conquer the one city that stands between them and global domination (Don’t be silly, Washington DC, they’re going after Richmond).

            Finally, and I believe most likely, is Dick Cheney.  You see, as the War on Terror continues to rage on, our government has been looking into ever more creative means of combating the evil minions of Osama Bin Laden, the robot containing the brain of Ayatollah Khomeini, and Ashton Kutcher.  At the forefront of this movement is, of course, Dick Cheney; who, my sources tell me, spends at least two nights a week at the only Chuck E. Cheese’s in Tehran, frying mullahs with his electro-glove and playing in the ball pit.  It would be an altogether likely thing then, to believe that this ziggurat is in fact Dick Cheney’s new Dark Temple of Awesomeness (his old one having been wrecked last year after Bob Dole had too many Jello shooters and hulked out).  As one might well expect from a Dark Temple of Awesomeness, this one is likely to be a gateway to some alternative dimension of power, from which Dick Cheney will summon forth creatures not seemly to describe and even less seemly to go on an extended road trip with, as well as studying his many tomes and grimoires of eldritch power.  Also, unless he’s been slackin’ it, it should shoot thunderbolts at people who drive by playing rap music way too loud.

            Which of the above is true?  No one can be certain, but I’m sure that at least one of these highly plausible theories is more or less accurate.  Meanwhile, judge for yourself and be vigilant; and if you drive up to Fredericksburg, do turn the radio down.

Greetings and Felicitations, faithful blogfans.  I just wanted to let y'all know that I know that I've been kinda slack with my daily posts the last few days.  Mostly, there's just been a lot of drama going on in my life and stuff, and while I'm sure that it'll all sort itself out soon, I just wanted to beg your indulgence lest I seem remiss in my blogging this week.  Fear not though, come this weekend, I'll be back to my usual schedule, and (ooh) Tshirts ought to be arriving within the next two weeks.  So anyways, thanks for bearing with me.

Party on

            T.G.I.Friday’s, as most cultured people are aware, is among the classier locations where a bloke (or dame, as the case may be) can go to get a basket of buffalo wings (you shot 978 pounds of bufalo wings, but were only able to carry 100 back to your minivan), a strawberry daquiri the size of Gary Coleman, or even an exotic beer, like Sam Adams.  Yes, whether you’re Hulk Hogan, returning from a busy day of politicking, or merely Bob Dole, chillin’ after doing some phat crowd surfing at Wal-Mart, Fridays is the place to be.  And speaking of poorly crafted segues, Friday’s is exactly where I happened to find myself last night, when a party happily occasioned my presence thereat.  Where am I going with this?  Allow me to answer your question with another question, not just because I’m feeling snarky, but also to illustrate a valuable point, or possibly a metaphor.

            Remember how on those old creepy shows like The Twilight Zone, or The Outer Limits, or Laverne and Shirley, occasionally someone would get sent to another parallel universe and everything would be exactly like it is in our world, but with one horrible difference?  You know, like where the guy (Spiro Agnew) is sitting at the breakfast table with his family, and they’re all really lizards.  Or the one where Godzilla is sitting at the breakfast table with his family and they’re all really people.  Or the one where Dick Cheney is sitting at the breakfast table and it’s raining crullers outside.  Something like that seemed, much to my initial horror, to have transpired at Friday’s, though at first I was unable to figure out whether the damage was intergalactic or merely confined to the West End Hull St. subspace domain (either way, it looked like things were gonna be messy).  What had happened was simply this: rather than wearing their customary goth-lite black Friday’s shirts, all the waitpersons were wearing brightly-colored and cheerful Hawaiian shirts.  Though it took a few minutes fro the gigantitude of the situation to sink in (like when your house burns down, and the first thing you think is “Damn, I forgot to vacuum it this week too”), it soon became obvious to me that something was horribly awry.  Eventually though, using my keen and similar-to-some-object-renowned-for-its-pointiness-like mind pieced together what had really happened.

            You see, at some point in the past, all the Friday’s employees and indentured servants had decided that, edgy and hip as black may be, it really tends to bring a place down, in terms of being a universal fashion statement (much like brown geezer suits during the Ford Administration).  At first, it was merely an implacable lack, a want of something not to be named, but in time it grew to a very pining, a yearning for some coloration in garb which eventually became almost palpable, until it hung over the restaurant like the pall of chromatic famine that it was.  As it grew, it drew sustenance from the tortured souls of all those who have perished at Friday’s over the aeon-fabled millennia, until at last it become a living thing all its own, with but one quest in it’s hideous half-sentient existence- to get some decently flashy clothing for the employees of the Hull St. Friday’s!  Long did this preternatural presence bide it’s time, until one day the opportunity came along which could not be passed up.  Kreldar Zuckerman, famed deliverer of brightly-colored Hawaiian shirts was driving along on his was to Maurice’s Fashion Paradise (note: not a real store) when, seizing upon this one best chance, the great shirt-hungering force which dwelleth ever in Friday’s reached out and pulled his truck off the road and crashing it into a nearby tree.  Senor Zuckerman was killed instantly, and upon searching through the wreckage, the Friday’s employees realized that it was as if all their inmost unspoken prayers had at last been answered.  They buried Kreldar out back with all the misshapen buffalo wings that they have to throw out, and took his precious, precious supply of Hawaiian shirts for themselves.  Here endeth the tale.

            By the way, if any of you out there happen to be the gal who was our waitress last night, I’ll bet you think I’m even crazier now.

            Tune in tomorrow, when I’ll either bask in the awesomeness of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, or try to elicit some hate mail from the fragile bitter people of the world.

            We live in a world fraught with mysterious things.  Is there life after death?  What do you call that little stuff on the end of fancy cocktail toothpicks?  How does Canada stay in business anyway?  Are UFOs really the hockey pucks of the gods?  What about monkeys?  All these questions have puzzled man since first he grunted inquisitively up at the night sky back during the Johnson Administration.  One question that seems ever-tantalizingly near at hand though, is the question of Bigfoot.  Not the monster truck, mind you; for as enigmatic and otherworldly as it is, I think I’ll have that one for another blog sometime.  No, today we speak of Bigfoot the hirsute megapod of popular myth and lore.  But first, a little history:

            Like many of the stranger things in our world (such as Boy Bands, popsicles, and those really big trees that you’re legally obligated to drive through if you ever go there) Bigfoot is apparently a native of California, where he was first sighted back around the time of the Civil War.  Though tracks have often been found and documented, sightings are relatively rare in most parts of the country, and videos even rarer (autographs, of course, are nearly nonexistent).  Scientists with nothing better to do with their time speculate that there may be as many as 6,000 Bigfeet living in North America right now, though it’s possible that there’s just one who really gets around.  Lest you think that Bigfoot would never dare to set foot in such a staid and straitlaced state as our own (Virginia), you ought to know that there have been no fewer than 19 different sightings in Virginia alone, over the past seven years (don’t feel too badly about it, Delaware only got 2).  Anyways, however many of them there are, how come we don’t see Bigfoot more often?  There are a number of theories, all of which I shall now make fun of before offering my own terrifyingly insightful theory.

            Leading Bigfoot experts say that Bigfoot, much like Richard Nixon, prefer to stick to secluded rural areas where they live a nomadic lifestyle, fleeing from any humans who do happen to approach, and mostly being active during the night.  But so what?  Gary Coleman does all that and he’s always being sighted by TV shows that seek to capitalize on the lameness of 80s pop culture icons.

            Some say that Bigfoot is at least as intelligent as humans, which while not much of a compliment, allows him to cleverly elude all those who would hunt him down, which they would because, as everybody knows, the more rare and exotic an animal is, the tastier it is too (the one exception being unicorns, which taste like crap).

            Finally, some believe that Bigfoot is actually in cahoots with Dick Cheney, who uses his awesome media spin powers and awesome kung fu skillz to cover up any evidence of Bigfoot that finds its way to the news.  Bigfoot, much like Oprah or Tom Cruise, is in fact always killing hookers and tearing up nightclubs, but he’s got enough money and power to buy off all the witnesses and destroy incriminating evidence.

            The truth however, is far different, but oh so very obvious to anyone who takes a minute to look at the evidence and consider the facts.  Bigfoot, you see, being as smart as a human (Henry Kissinger to be exact), is also just as psychologically well developed as a human, and therefore, unlike soulless beasts such as slugs and Rosie O’Donnell, has feelings, just like you and me.  As a result of years of being called ”Bigfoot” however, he’s developed a severe self-image problem surrounding the uncommon bigitude of his feet.  Every time he starts to get tired of just wandering around in the woods eating puppies and Ho Ho’s and finally ventures into a city, all of a sudden everybody is all like “Look, it’s Bigfoot!” And he starts crying like a little girl and runs back to his secret fortress of doom underneath the Statue of General A.P. Hill on Monument Avenue, where he cries himself to sleep in front of the TV, drowning his sorrows in a bucket of Chunky Monkey ice cream, and watching “Harry and the Hendersons.”  The next day he wakes up, swears he’ll never mess with humanity again, but then relents because he needs to go down the City Hall to pick up his welfare check.  He can’t get a job you see, because “Sasquatch-American” isn’t an officially recognized ethnicity on job applications (no one believed him when he tried to pass himself off as an Inuit), and since all he’s got is a B.A. in History, it’s not like there are all these high-paying jobs he can take anyways.  So meanwhile, he just hangs out, reading Better Homes and Gardens, trying to meet girls on Yahoo Personals, and dreaming of the day when his people will at last be granted the same civil rights as all other Americans.

            So keep an eye out, when you’re out in the forest, or even if you’re just out on Grace Street in the middle of the night, maybe you’ll catch a fleeting glance of that greatest of this world’s mysteries, Bigfoot (just be sure to bring some Ho Ho’s).

            I’ve decided to take a break from writing just about the history of our great nation, partly because I’ve realized that it’s going to take me like, three months to get through it all, and partly because large sections of our nations history are kind of dull (I’m looking at you, The Gilded Age).  Also, I feel like if I don’t make fun of Skeletor again soon, he’s gonna start feeling all high and mighty, and start slapping Beast Man around altogether more than usual.  I could not though, let this one most awesome period in our nation’s history pass unnoticed.  That period of course, is the time of Oregon Trail.  Now, I suppose I could go and read all about it in some stuffy old book, but really, how can the mere printed page compare to a fast-paced computer simulation of the real thing.  And, since I probably have played about 3 zillion games of Oregon Trail over the years, and only read about it while I was in history class, I think it’s safe to assume that the game was pretty much a completely faithful representation of history in every possible way.  So without further ado, let’s get going.

            Back in 1848, many different kinds of people went on the Oregon Trail.  Okay, I lied, three kinds of people did, bankers, carpenters, and farmers.  All of them were exactly the same except for the amount of money they had, and how likely they were to trade their children to the Indians.  In any case, most families would start out in Independence, Missouri, where they’d all sorts of logical things like food, and all sorts of things that make no sense whatsoever, like wagon tongues.  Also, since this was the Old West, you needed ammunition, lest you fail in your quest to shoot every single buffalo in the Great Plains.  And so, thus supplied, the settlers would head out, with their poorly rendered wagon being pulled along by a single hideous blob ox.  No matter how many oxen you took, you could only ever see one.  Where were the others?  Were they all standing in a big line to disguise their numbers?  The world may never know.

            Once out on the prairie, the settlers encountered many hardships.  First off, there were rivers.  The people of 19^th Century America, you see, were hardy and fearless, but also not the least bit buoyant.  As a result, whenever they came to a river more than six inches deep, their wagon would usually overturn as the mighty currents lapped about their ankles.  To make matters worse, such an accident usually resulted in the death of at least three family members.  This is part of the reason that the West is relatively unpopulated even today, half the people who go out there still get washed away by tiny creeks, so be grateful you live in Virginia (if you do actually live out in Kansas or something, you have my sympathy.  My grandmother grew up there, and said that people got washed away on a pretty much daily basis).

            Next, there was the continual threat of injury.  People back in the day were also extremely brittle and prone to falling off the wagon, and it was not at all unusual for Little Elmer to break three or more arms in the course of a month.  Disease was also always a threat, and rare was the caravan master who didn’t dread waking up one morning and getting that most dreaded of messages, “Myron has Dutch Elm Disease.”  None can say where all these illnesses came from, seeing as how you were out in the middle of nowhere with just four other people, but somehow, anyone could spontaneously be infested with beetles or catch Ebola at any time.  Years later, medical science would discover that this was, in fact, impossible, after which time such incidents dropped off sharply.

            Food was another constant worry, as a ready supply of Moon Pies and Hamdingers was difficult to come across out on the open range.  One popular option was hunting for meat.  Alas, people back then, though courageous, were retarded, so whenever they wanted to go hunting, they’d park the wagon about fifteen miles away from where they actually wanted to go, thereby assuring them that no matter how many animals they killed, they’d only be able to make one trip back.  As a result, many settlers would kill upwards of 5,000 pounds of buffalo in the space of a minute, only to discover that they could carry but 100 pounds back to the wagon.  Sadly, the idea of taking a second person along to help carry some of it was not invented until 1853.  If however there were no buffalo to be had, or if a certain person (Rutherford B. Hayes) had just wasted all his ammunition on squirrels, there was always the hope of finding some friendly Indians, who, if you were fortunate, would just let you eat them instead.  Alternately, sometime they would get a message that said, “Find wild fruit.”  It was never really clear just who this wild fruit was, way out alone in the middle of the desert, but I have always personally suspected that it was Elton John, or maybe Fred, from Scooby Doo.  Whoever it was, he was edible.

            The worst thing that could happen though, was dying.  Not just because it meant that you and all those whom you cared about had perished in the wastelands of Nebraska, but because you had to plan it out beforehand.  You see, after all your family members had died, and you too felt the icy hand of death upon you, you couldn’t just lie down and wait for death to take you.  No, you had to go out and quarry a gravestone from the very living rock, and then carve some words of warning into it, lest other adventurers meet your fate as well (if memory serves, these timely warnings were usually something along the lines of: “I farted” or “Toby is a butthead”).  Then, you had to carry this thing along with you, until you realized that your time had come, and would dig your own grave, plant the tombstone on it, and then finally, with your last ounce of strength, bury yourself.  Times were tough back then, no doubt.

            But if you made it to Oregon, at least then you were rewarded with some guy at the border calculating how well you did, so he could sit in judgment of you (Well, while you did make it here with five people in good health, you only had 15 sets of clothing, so I’m gonna call you a Greenhorn).

            So there you have it, one of the greatest and most silly periods in American History, demystified at last.  Meanwhile, if you want to experience the magic for yourself, click here.

                        Thomas Jefferson was swept into office by a tide of public opinion which believed that it was high time that the nation had a Republican for a President (Of course, just to mix things up, sometime later the Republican Party decided to change it’s name to the Democratic Party, which, though I’m sure it was a terribly good idea at the time, makes all this history all the more confusing).  Jefferson believed that men were inherently reasonable.  Of course, since reality television had not yet been invented, this was a far easier belief to sustain than it is now.

            Among the most memorable event of Jefferson’s Presidency was the Louisiana Purchase.  Louisiana, you see, was back then totally huge (states are of course, much like goldfish that way, if you give them enough room they grow really big, and then when they die you just flush them down the toilet), and also, unfortunately, owned by the French.  Napoleon, who was the Emperor of France that week, didn’t really like Louisiana that much because it reminded him how short and French he was, and he needed some fast money to finance a new war with England and pay off his enormous silly hat-related debts, so instead of merely selling the port of New Orleans, as Jefferson had asked, he told the American envoys that they could just have the whole thing for the low, low price of $15 million.  This was a real bargain, but of course, back then a dollar could still buy you New Jersey, so it was a bit more than they had been looking for.  Still, since Napoleon offered to throw in a free salad shooter if they bought it right then, they, like so many great Americans since, just decided to go ahead with it and apologize later.

            Remember when you were a kid, and your mom sent you down to the store to get some tapioca pudding flavored popsicles, and instead you came back with the Louisiana Purchase?  It was kind of like that.  Jefferson now found himself in a bit of a bind, having somewhat exceeded his constitutional authority, and broke the news to Congress as best he could. “Bad news y’all,” he began, “I wrecked the company car, ate all our jelly beans, spent all the money in the national bank on Cheez Doodles, Transformers, and erotic massages.  Also, I think I might be pregnant again.”  Congress, still annoyed from that time that Thomas Jefferson had made a big fortress out of all the sofa cushions in the White House, was less than impressed.  “Just kidding,” quoth Jefferson, “though I did spend $15 million on Louisiana.”  Congress was simply relieved that Jefferson had not once more been frittering away the treasury on fripperies and doo-das (which he was wont to do) and let Jefferson off with a stern warning and a good Dutch rub.  His ingenious ploy had worked, and everything was once more peachy keen.

            Not knowing what was in most of the Louisiana Purchase, but hoping that it contained a passage to the Pacific Ocean, or better yet, gumdrop trees, Jefferson put together the Louis and Clark expedition.  After loosing several weeks arguing over which one of them would get to fly around in his underwear and which one would have to be played by Teri Hatcher, someone finally pointed out that they were both retarded for even thinking that, and they were off on their merry way.  Thus was born that noblest of American traditions, the ill-conceived road trip.  For a while they followed Creedence Clearwater Revival, then they did a stint as sumo roadies out in Kansas, finally their canoe broke down and they had to enlist the help of Don Knotts and the Harlem Globetrotters to hunt down the taffy monster of Colorado.  They were also the first white men to discover that the state of Wyoming does not, in fact exist.  A few years later, Jefferson commissioned a second expedition to the West, this one preferably to be lead by a man named after both a fish and a lost tribe of Israel.  As it turned out, Zebulon Pike was in the neighborhood, and owing to the appropriate silliness of his name, the job was his for the asking.

            After Alexander Hamilton was shot during a duel with the Vice-President, whose name, if milk commercials have taught me anything, was Aaawwwon Buuuhhhh, Thomas Jefferson needed to choose a new running mate for reelection.  Happily enough, George Clinton was close at hand, (the Parliament Funkadelic, still suffering from anti-Parliament prejudice, could not run for national office until 1834, when a special joint session of Congress decided that the Constitution really didn’t mention bands anywhere after all) and with him, Thomas Jefferson handily defeated his opponent, Wendell Wilkie.

            Four years later, realizing that this blog had already run on far too long, and Ben needed to get some sleep if he was going to work tomorrow, Jefferson thoughtfully decided not to seek a third term, picking James Madison, father of the Constitution and celebrity hobbit to succeed him.

            John Adams became President in 1797, and was the first President to live in the White House, which, at the time, was still paisley with electric orange racing stripes, as it would remain until the 1817, when it was burned by an unusually tardy English navy as part of the War of 1812.  He was also the first of many Presidents to look like he was a hobbit, a similarity he made the most of by wearing lots of little frock coats, knee britches, and pushing balrogs around whenever his busy schedule permitted.

            Unfortunately, early on in his Presidency, he and his old friend and fellow cow-tipping aficionado, Thomas Jefferson, stopped getting along.  Historians generally believe that it all stemmed from a misunderstanding that occurred in 1798, when he asked a mutual acquaintance (Dick Cheney) deliver a letter to Jefferson, but Cobra Commander, John Adams’ oldest foe, switched it for another letter while Dick Cheney was off getting a delicious ham and koala gyro at the Capitol Deli.  Thus, the letter that Jefferson received read as follows:

             “My dearest and most annoying cousin Sam,

            I think Thomas Jefferson smells like a basket of dead ferrets.  Also, his haircut   makes him look like a girl and the Declaration of Independence wasn’t all that good either.  In addition, UVA is a really preppy pretentious school that no one with a lick of sense would ever want to go to.  Don’t let Thomas Jefferson see this letter, you know how pouty he gets.

            Awesomely Yours,

            John Adams

            P.S. I hope I didn’t accidentally send this letter to Thomas Jefferson.”

            As a result, Thomas Jefferson was promptly and appropriately outraged (all the more so because of his long and unsuccessful battle with chronic Dead Ferret Stinkosis).  Many humorous situations arose afterwards from this, like the time that the two of them painted a big white line down the Capitol, but John Adams had the side with the only bathroom and Thomas Jefferson had the side with the TV (or, as the Indians called it, “Maize”).  Years later though, John Adams told a friend, “Thomas Jefferson?  Why, ever has he been my main honky!”  These fateful words were soon relayed back to Jefferson, (whose response, “Well slap mah fro, that’s good enough for me!” remains largely unremembered by history, which is probably for the best).

            John Adams, much like George Washington and Joe Namath, despised political parties, but was, it is recorded, definitely not above indulging in the occasional political soiree or even a political rave now and then.  He was also the first President to realize the seething evil of our nation’s oldest enemy, (aside from Canada) France.  France, as you may recall, had done us a good turn or two during the revolution, especially the time that they slipped King George III a cruller filled with rabid wiener dogs.  By the time John Adams took over though, the French, like Michael Jackson at a day care center, had begun to show their eviliciousness once more.  You see, the new American government, in the interest of building up trade, had decided to give no nation any greater favor than any other in such mercantile relations (save perhaps for Djibouti, not that they actually made anything there, or hand any money, American shipping companies just thought it was fun to run around Boston shouting, “I’m going to Djibouti!”).  The French, as they are over most things America does, such as holding Presidential elections, having an economy, and bathing, were outraged, and John Adams, ever mild in temperament, sent John Marshall, Green Lantern, and some guy from Massachusetts to go and smack some reason into the French (he sent all three of them having wisely supposed that the French were liable to take a great deal of smacking before any reason found it’s way into them).  At any rate, when they got there, they learned from the boringly named Monsieurs X,Y, and Z, that they would have to pay Mr. Fancy-Shmancy La de da Talleyrand (note: not a made-up name) a bribe of a gazillion Scooby bucks simply to negotiate with him.  John, Marshall, as one might imagine, hulked out immediately and promptly gave King Hoity Toity XVIII an atomic wedgie.  Upon hearing of these things, the American people were outraged and for the next two years, we whomped mightily upon France both on the high seas and whenever it came to impressing the ladies.  As they always do, the French eventually grew weary of being constantly conquered by us and eventually the whole problem just went away.

            The election of 1800 was the first truly close one in our nation’s history, as John Adams fought to retain the Presidency from Thomas Jefferson.  In the wake of the election, there was some question as to the efficacy of the Electoral College, with some critics arguing that it was an outdated system designed to simplify the election process in more primitive times.  Others argued that really, it had only been around for about ten years, and the two guys running for President had both helped put it together.  Finally, it was agreed that John Adams had had his turn, and he ought to let Jefferson take a crack at running the country, especially since he was already on the Nickel, and John Adams wasn’t even on a beer bottle like his cousin.  What Jefferson did, however, shall remain shrouded forever in mystery (at least until I write about it tomorrow).

            With their newfound independence, the founding fathers ran amok, like a bunch of kids who grew up with really controlling parents who, upon finding themselves in college start living off beersicles, nachos, and stuff they can shake out of the computer keyboard.  After a month or two though, when midterms rolled around, they realized that they needed a government of some sort.  A Constitution was drafted by the greatest minds in the land.  Benjamin Franklin, grateful to George Washington for saving his life in my last blog, took time off from setting up a chain of home craft emporiums and sitting around on the front porch naked to offer his wisdom.  Massive quantities of onion rings were consumed, and many a burping contest was held. 

            When the smoke cleared however, he had a Constitution at last and had but to get it ratified by all the states.  To this end, John Adams and his wacky, underachieving cousin, Sam Adams went on a totally sweet road trip across the country, trying to get people to vote for the Constitution.  Everywhere they went John Adams would make impassioned arguments in favor of a strong federal government, and Sam Adams would get drunk and hit on the womenfolk (my, Betsy Ross, but you’re looking totally hot today, why don’t you help me make the first American flag of, um, making out).  This of course, while teaching them a lot about respecting people who are different than you as well as the value of teamwork, also made them hate each other a lot.  So, they decided to write the Federalist papers, along with Batman, and Alexander Hamilton (who would eventually found the Oink of America, but more on that later)(I need not even draw your attention to the fact that The Oink of America would be a totally sweet name for a band).  These papers, which were published in the various newspapers of the nation, were an effort to sell the American people on the idea of the republic.  Even after more than 200 years, they still ring true today, as we can see from these totally not made-up excerpts:

            John Adams:I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind   all over the earth.

            Sam Adams: Woo! Spring Break! Yeah, the US Constitution!  Dolly Madison, you are looking totally hot tonight!  King George III is a complete tool!  I love ham! Woohoo!

            As you might imagine, such impassioned writing totally won over the American people, and in short order they ratified the Constitution.  Tired of being upstaged by his goofy and uncultured cousin however, John Adams decided to go to France for a while where he was certain that his urbane wit, mastery of classical languages and literature, and flawless usage of the French language would make him a big hit.  Unfortunately for him, Benjamin Franklin was already there.  Knowing not a word of French, Franklin communicated only through clever aphorisms.  “A stitch in time saves nine,” he would say, which made just as much sense to the French as it does to us today.  Or, “Don’t light a match ‘til you know which end of the dog is barkin’,” not to mention the ever popular, if little-remembered epigram, “I’m gonna get you, bitch!”  Franklin also dressed as a Quaker because it so impressed all the ladies, and would frequently serenade the aristocracy with impromptu armpit symphonies.  John Adams’ only party trick, alas, was his most impressive Smeagol impression. Unfortunately, since Lord of the Rings wasn’t written until Madison was President, Adams was left with nothing to do but go and be George Washington’s Vice President, though George frequently made light of his diminutive stature by putting all the mayonnaise jars up on the top shelf of the cupboard and always asking for a high chair whenever they went to Denny’s (which was often).

            Now, they just needed a President, and they looked to George Washington.  “Aw, c’mon y’all, I just finished planting my hemp field.” said George Washington when they first asked him to lead the fledgling nation once more.  But eventually he relented and agreed to be President.  Some wanted to make him king, but since there was already a King George over in England, he would have had to change his name to King Betty, just to avoid confusion.  So in the end, he just went with being President.

            Not only was he the first President, but also the only one ever to be elected unanimously.  It took Florida election officials nearly four months to call their state for George Washington anyways.  During his presidency, Washington lived in a secret fortress 20 miles below the surface of the Earth, whilst he waited for the White House to be built.  Meanwhile, he put down the Whisky Rebellion, continued to crack walnuts with his toes, and tried unsuccessfully to get his wife to stop wearing hats that made her look like a 2,000 year old cleaning lady. 

            After two terms though, George Washington had had enough of politics, and went back to Mt. Vernon, where he resumed his efforts to breed better and more effective hemp, as well as eating a lot of submarine sandwiches and listening to the Grateful Dead.  John Adams, having narrowly defeated Alexander Hamilton (who nonetheless had his most important part in our nation’s history yet ahead of him) now became our second President, in an administration so fascinating and awesome that I’m going to really annoy you by not writing about it until tomorrow.

            It is a well known fact that America has contributed innumerable things of value to human civilization.  The airplane, the telephone, hammerpants, Dick Cheney, all thse things came from America.  Why, were it not for us, everyone in the world would still have to get up on their roofs and yell at people when they wanted to talk to someone across town, while contemplating a three month voyage to pretty much anywhere.  There would be no choice in pants whatsoever, and the French wouldn’t have anyone to compare unfavorably to Hitler (whose brain would probably still be ruling Europe and kicking puppies from within some kind of giant Nazi battle cyborg with like, chainsaws or bratwursts for arms and a big helicopter shaped like a swastika on his back).  Not to mention the fact that without America to anchor it, Canada would have long since floated away and been eaten by penguins.  In short, America rules, and in light of this being the 4^th of July, I’m going to spend a couple of days retelling the great narrative that is the history of our nation (America).  And since the only comprehensive book on American history within 2 and a half feet of my desk is the Saturday Evening Post, Book o’ Presidents, I’m gonna being doing this one from a kind of Presidential point of view.  Come with me then, won’t you, as we mosey back through the mists of time to the foundage of our country.

            It all started way back in the day, before Thomas Edison had even invented the 8-track, in 1607, in Virginia.  But I’ve already gone over all that already, so we’re gonna fast-forward to the Revolution, in 1775.  The English you see, had been getting on our nerves for quite a while, by eating all sorts of weird foods like “bangers and mash”, and the dubiously-named “spotted dick”.  When they tried to get us to call potato chips “crisps” though, we decided that we’d had enough of this silliness, and decided to form out own country.  Having already mustered an army, and having found a congress of some sort laying around in Philadelphia, all that our founding fathers needed was a general to command them in battle.  Though James Madison was briefly considered, it was soon realized that even on horseback, he was still shorter than everyone else, and would likely have great difficulty overcoming his addiction to hobbit-weed in a time of war.  Therefore, everyone decided to just go with George Washington, owing to the fact that he could crack walnuts open with his toes and since King George III was already his nemesis from back when they were both on the yak polo team in middle school (or as the Indians called it, “Maize”).

            For years the epic battle raged on as the outnumbered Americans fought the nancy-looking British.  We were helped immeasurably by Baron Von Chomps-Alot, some German guy who taught us how to fight, and introduced the idea of taking the bayonet off your gun and putting on top of your hat (this never really caught on over here, though it later became rather popular back in Europe).  We also benefited from the assistance of Lafayette, the only courageous Frenchman in the last 300 years.  After this however, the French figured that they had already done their part to help out America, and to balance out the universe must be surly and churlish to us forever afterwards, even though we still bail them out whenever there’s a world war or a spider in the bathroom.  Eventually, with both sides getting tired of missing Howdy Doody every day, George Washington challenged King George to an epic battle between champions, by leaving a flaming bag of horse poop on the steps of Buckingham Palace.  King George flew into a rage, and grabbing his sledgehammer made out of a cinderblock and saddling up his giant fire-breathing pterodactyl, he set out for America to wreak some serious monarchy upon our ancestors.  While still over the Pacific Ocean though (King George, alas, was not the best of navigators) he got hungry, and being a man of great appetites and little foresight, he ate his pterodactyl.  So fast was he going though, that he continued to hurtle on through the ether, eventually landing like a big royal meteor in what would someday become Washington D.C. (the force of his impact, however, was such that it killed all vegetation and cute fluffy animals in all of Northern Virginia, leaving it much as it is today).  Knowing that the day of reckoning had at last arriven, George Washington hurled a cherry tree across the Potomac in an effort to impale the monarch before he could do any more harm, but it bounced harmlessly off of his big fluffy king robe.  For days the battle wore on, as the king tried to subdue George Washington by levying onerous tariffs on him.  George Washington responded by putting in his metal teeth and trying to gnaw his face off.  At last, when King George stopped for a moment to shoot some Force Lightning at Benjamin Franklin, George Washington picked him up and threw him into a conveniently located bottomless pit nearby.  Though he would eventually emerge safely in Australia, where he would found another English colony, King George III never again would menace our nation, and George Washington took the opportunity go to a totally bitchin’ rave at Independence Hall, though there was a minor incident when he tried to catch some monkeys under the Liberty Bell.

            At last though, our ancestors were free, and all they needed was a constitution and a bunch of big white neoclassical buildings.  Tune in tomorrow to find out how these, and many other less relevant and more made-up things happened as we continue “The History of America”!

            In American cinema, there are certain oft-reused plot devices which, though perhaps a little clichéd, are nonetheless ever welcome because they somehow, in a very real way, make us feel comfortable, even if the rest of the movie sucks like whatever movie Ashton Kutcher is in this week.  Yes, the unnecessary car chase, the training montage, the part where Legolas hits on some other dude, Mel Gibson getting really angry and blowing something up, or even just Keanu Reeves being some kind of chosen one, all are things without which movies as we know them could not exist.  But there is one other great filmamatic institution that has, in recent years, fallen by the wayside.  No, I’m not talking about the making of movies that star both Fred Savage and Andre the Giant (not that we don’t need more of them too), but rather the ever awesome Muppet Dance Party.

            Seriously, for a while back there in the 80’s, just about every movie except for Jaws and the Reagan administration ended in a Muppet Dance Party.  You know, like where the hero, or possibly Jennifer Connelly would have had all these wacky adventures and then ended up having to back to the real boring world and she’d be sitting there and all of a sudden a Muppet would jump up out of somewhere and be like, “Woot, Party Tiiiiiime!” And then every single Muppet in the entire movie, whether good, evil, or beyond all moral categorization, would just show up and start getting their respective groove on.  It always made the movie end well, no matter what might’ve been wrong with the story up to that point.  There was honestly no such thing as a bad movie that ended with a Muppet Dance Party.  Return of the Jedi? Muppet Dance Party.  Labyrinth?  Muppet Dance Party.  Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey?  Pseudo-Muppet Dance Party (Pseudo-Muppet Dance Party, needless to say, would make a totally excellent name for a band).  Star Trek IV?  Muppet Dance Party.  The list goes on, but I believe I’ve made my point.  Indeed, it became so much a part of our national psyche that after the fall of the Soviet Union, what did Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev do but throw a totally awesome Muppet Dance Party in celebration of the end of decades of nuclear terror.

            Sadly, with the advent of computer-generated talking animals as well as your more run-of-the-mill freaks, Muppets have been getting less and less play in the movies; a development which, in addition to causing an unprecedented Muppet unemployment epidemic, has resulted in a drastic reduction in the number of movies which end with the ever popular Muppet Dance Party.  Sure, “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” kind of had one, and “Star Wars Episode I” (The Revenge of Jar-Jar) did too, but how many others did?  Did “Spiderman 2” (never mind “Spiderman 1”, that didn’t count)?  Did “War of the Worlds”?  Did “Muppets from Space”?  Hell, No!  And really what the world needs now more than ever is a good Muppet Dance Party.

            With all these things in mind though, I believe I’ve finally come up with a way to get Muppets back on screen and out of our nation’s welfare offices and crackhouses, while at the same time, making full use of recent breakthroughs in going back and putting a bunch of extra crap in movies to make everyone buy the DVD all over again.  Where am I going with this, you may ask?  The answer, you see, is as simple as the humble Special Edition.  Everywhere you look these days (but especially in stores that rent, sell, or otherwise promote video sales) some tired old B-Movie is being made into a “Special Edition” now with all the junk that wasn’t good enough to be put in 137 years ago when they first made it, but has since magically transmogrified itself into quality entertainment.  All we have to do is capitalize on this phenomenon by getting future special editions to include among their countless hours of mindless drivel, a digitally remastered Muppet Dance Party scene.  What movies could possibly benefit from such a treatment?  Here’s a few I thought might be good candidates:

            First, Revenge of the Sith.  Now, I don’t know about you, but after the Ewok party at the end of Return of the Jedi, I was hoping for something that, if not equal in greatness to the immortal Yub Yub Song, would at least be in the same vein.  Man was I ever disappointed by all the sappy meaningful glances and foreboding evilosity.  Let’s see how things could’ve been a little better:

            And what about Return of the King?  Sure it had a happy ending insomuch as evil was vanquished and good carried the day, but were all the tearful farewells really necessary?  I think not.  Honestly, if ever a movie cried out to have some Muppets in it, this was it.  But did we see so much as even Gonzo dancing with Gollum?  Nope.  How about if instead of spending the last three hours of the movie being all sad and angsty, Peter Jackson had taken the opportunity to liven things up a bit?

            And finally, Adolph Hitler’s masterpiece of self aggrandizing Nazi propaganda, Triumph of the Will.  Despite being brilliantly made, the fact that this movie is in fact all about how awesome one of the most evil, twisted, and fruity men who ever lived tends to take it off the list of rentals you’re thinking about for watching with your family.  But what if we tried to make things a little more kid-friendly?

            Well, there you have it.  The future is now y’all, so write to your congressmen and/or Chewbacca and ask, nay, demand that all future movies will contain at least one Muppet Dance Scene.  Do it for the children.

            Richmond is home to many strange and unusual things, it is generally known.  Mole people, our wacky and fun-loving city council, a road with 382 statues of Confederate generals and one tennis player, numerous small groups of while squirrels, and myself.  What many people do not know about Richmond is that it also happens to contain a zoo.  I know what you’re thinking here “C’mon Ben, what kind of lame zoo could Richmond possibly have?”  Well, my friend, your doubts would be most unfounded, for the Richmond zoo is indeed a thing to be both beheld and besmelled.  As luck would have it, I traveled there this very afternoon past, and thanks to my digital camera and the fact that I have nothing better to write about tonight, here follows a brief summary of the zoo’s awesomeness (and by awesomeness, I mean monkeys).

            First, a little background about the zoo.  It is, I am told, it’s a family operation, run by Mormons.  Now, I’m cool with Mormons, lest any Latter-Day Saints amongst y’all take umbrage, but it was totally weird to go around the zoo and find that all the Coke machines didn’t sell Coke (it was surreal).  In the interest of further research, I checked to see if the animals were Mormon too, by offering a giraffe a Jolt Cola.  “Bite me,” the giraffe seemed to say, suggesting that all the animals there do indeed abide by the strictest of moral statutes (although, I did get a pygmy marmoset to smoke a cigar, so some work remains to be done).

            The first thing inside of the zoo is the duckatorium, a fenced-in sort of a dealie where, upon the Great Duck Altar of Doom, the most exalted of waterfowl pontificates to all his lower brethren.  What mind-boggling and eldritch secrets of the universe did he have to impart to those who cared to listen?  What aeon-storied tales had he to share with us?  Don’t be silly, he was just a friggin’ duck, and a silly looking one at that.  In fact, I have come to suspect that said altar was in fact, not built by the ducks themselves, but by someone who was sacrificing and/or using them to play badminton at night after the zoo closed.

            Next, we came upon the jewel of the zoo’s collections, a bajillion different monkeys.  Seriously, I think that something like half the zoo was devoted to monkey real estate (Monkey Real Estate, by the way, would make a totally sweet name for a band).  One of the first great apes we came across was Bonzo, Chimp of Insanity.  He was the probably the best argument in favor of not giving chimpanzees free access to crack that I have yet come across.  Pretty much, he just spinning around and kicking stuff around.  Also, just to provide a little contrast, he had this gibbon for a roommate who was clearly suffering from ennui or trying to compose a haiku or something, but not making much headway due to the antics of his roommate.  I suppose that a lot of your higher class monkeys really hate it when other monkeys go and just reinforce traditional monkey stereotypes by flipping out and hurling poop around.  “Jeez, Fred, I just spent all morning trying to impress all the humans with awesome origami skills, but you just had to go and lower the glass ceiling again by going ‘Eep eep’ and flinging a cantaloupe at the wall,”they often say amongst themselves.

            Then we came to the Lemurs of Madness.  Lemurs, as you probably already know, are all that remain of the once-great Lost Continent of Mu (if you’ve never heard of it, that just goes to show how lost it really is).  As a result of this fall from glory, many lemurs seem to have coped by going mad.  Most of the ones we saw would just lie around for a few minutes, as lemurs are wont to do, but then all of a sudden get up and start snarling at everything, like Kevin my roommate used to do when he was drunk.  After a while though, they’d realize again that honestly, none of it even mattered, and collapse back into their former torpid state.

            After passing a monkey who looked like a rather smallish ewok, as well as a chicken whom had the most delightful barbecue-sauce colored plumage I’ve ever seen, we found the camels.  Coming in both the one- and two-hump varieties, they were about as one would suspect, save for the fact that each of them had this big PVC didgeridoo in with them.  Now maybe I’m just the last one to pick up on some new fad or something, but I had no idea that camels had any musical aptitude at all, much less concert-quality didgeridoo skillz.  Try though I might though, I was unable to coax him into playing anything for me (when I offered him a cigarette, he just got indignant) and we had to move on.

            Then, just beyond a cage full of invisible monkeys, we got to the organ-grinder monkeys, who in addition to having totally phat dancing abilities, also demonstrate their unswerving dedication to Roman-Catholicism by wearing those little monk haircuts all the time.  At first I was all sad because there weren’t any organ-grinders in there, but then my patience was rewarded by the site of one climbing out of the monkey house and brachiating merrily through the trees, fat-guy hat firmly planted upon his head, with his hurdy-gurdy clutched in his prehensile tail.

            Later, we found some rare white trash monkeys, who were busy sitting around eating a salad made from those weeds that grow on the median strip.  With an old tire swing propped up on cinder blocks in their front yards, and a broken washing machine on the porch, they were the very picture of genteel Southern decay.  Indeed, about the only kind of monkey I didn’t see was the delicious rhesus monkey (There’s no wrong way to eat a Rhesus).

            At last we reached the lion.  But alas, all my attempts to engage him in conversation came to naught.  “What puts the ape in apricot?” I asked him, but he just didn’t seem to care.

            So yeah, if you’re in the Richmond area and want to spend three hours looking at monkeys with neon-colored buttocks and not drinking anything with caffeine in it, I highly recommend the zoo.

            The swamps of Ghraaladon, by the winding coasts of the mighty Seas of Golmar, from whence the undulant River Okrug snakes its sinuous way across the steaming plains, are not a setting altogether likely for the birth of a hero to take place.  But then, back in the day, all the smart money said that Canada was going to soon emerge as the world’s sole superpower, so we see that it is often the most unlikeliest of things which eventually come to pass.  In any case, it was here, (not in Canada, the other place I said with all the funny names in it) that Jason hove into the world.  In years to come, many would dispute from whence he came.  The nomads of Unglaar say that he born to a poor yet honorable clan of weasel wranglers, while the sky-dwellers of the City Oobadooba, say that those who raised him found him in a fortune cookies which the gods themselves dropped from the heavens (an exceptionally large fortune cookie to be sure, a small one would be just plain silly), though the bratwurst-worshipping lizard men of Hoboken say that he just showed up one day selling band candy, which is probably closest to the truth.

            At any rate, he rose from near-complete obscurity to gain great fame amongst the weasel wranglers of Ghraaladon, for studying under the tutelage of Dick Cheney, he grew wise in the arts of war and local wireless network installation.  Oft did young Jason roam the plains, slaying the corpulent Kormadons which dwell therein with his trusty +7 two-handed Broadsword of Sundering (which had +3 against Kormadons, happily enough).  In time though, a new darkness fell o’er the peaceful lands, as the wretched dominion of Timmy the Defiler swept across the kingdom, like some kind of thing that sweeps across something else.

            At a loss for what to do, Jason hewed from the very living rock of Mt. Velveeta, a hydroelectric Volkswagen minibus, which, as luck would have it, was capable of time travel (it was totally groovy too, like you’d hit the time travel button, and everything would go all “BWoauauauaOOOM” and you’d see all these far out morphing colors and stuff and some melted clocks and maybe Henry Kissinger, the keeper of eternity).  Armed with this mighty tool of mightiness, he traveled back (or possibly forward, I’m not gonna box myself in by saying exactly when all this happened) and met with that most excellent philosophizer, and founding father, John Adams.  John Adams, grateful that someone finally liked him more than his brother, (for reasons to become clear later this week) granted him such enlightenment as he was able.  “First, you must go slay Timmy the Defiler, for he is a complete butthead,” quoth John Adams, “Then you must date, like, a hundred and fifty different girls, each crazier than all the others, until you finally find one who’s cool, only then will your destiny present itself.”  With this new knowledge in hand (metaphorically, of course, it was actually in his head, one imagines), Jason went forth and girded himself for battle.

            Taking only his geekily named broadsword and a hubcap smeared with citronella juice, Jason went a-venturing to the Fortress of Timmy.  There he slew the seven dragons of ennui, and crossed the frumulous River Zoob, and snuck by Timmy’s mom’s room, for she was taking a nap and looked epically scary with her curlers on.  At last, he arrove at the lair of Timmy, whom he smacked soundly about the cranial regions with his citronella-imbued hubcap.  Timmy, who was completely freaked out by this total stranger coming into his fortress on a Tuesday afternoon and beating him with this slimily pungent auto component, just up and left, having decided that it was all just too much trouble (he now owns an ice cream stand out in Iowa that’s shaped like a bulldog).  Emerging victorious, Jason found that he had all the same incurred a great price for his victory, as the cops had towed his legendary time mobile whilst he was inside wreaking justice upon Timmy.  “Oh well,” he thought, “now I can at last go to Meadowbrook High School in Richmond, center of the universe and home of the goofiest city council this side of the Mississippi.”

Okay all you faithful readers of mine, I've got a shirt design all set up, and a place that'll make them up for me at a decent price.  But, the more shirts I get, the cheaper they'll be, and I'm not wealthy enough to just buy a gazillion of them in advance, and the more I get, the cheaper they are.  So if I get 10, they'll probably be about $12, and if I can sell 30 of them, they'll be closer to $7.  So yeah, go check out the pic in my gallery, and then send me some feedback, be it in comments (I've got anonymous turned on), AIM, or email.  if I can get a rough idea of how many pre-orders to do, it makes it cheaper for everyone. Also, I was thinking of doing it in grey, but if you've got a favorite color you'd want yours in, the shirt company can do that for no extra cost, so let me know if you've got a favorite color, or need one in a size with more than one X in it.

            Of all the barbarians who have ever conquered the world, Genghis Khan is without a doubt, the most excellent.  Why, you ask?  Well, clearly his expert utilization of furry hats played a major role, as well as his love of gadding about the steppes of Mongolia on his Vespa.  I would of course be remiss in my geekly duties as well, were I to omit the fact that he played a significant role in what is probably the defining cinematic event of the 20^th Century, “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”  In short, until recently, I thought I had a pretty good appreciation of Genghis Khan.  But nay, verily was a very fool to have believed so, for there has recently been published a new book of Genghis Khan-related awesomeness.  It’s kind of long though, and it doesn’t have any pictures, so for the benefit of all you out there who might not already have a great yen to learn all about the man who is generally credited as making yak-riding cool (some few on the fringe of such studies would instead grant that most august of honors to Chester A. Arthur) I present the following brief (and pop culture reference-infested) biblogrophy of Genghis “Is That My Waffle?” Khan:

            Like so many other beloved Charles Dickens characters, Genghis Khan had a rough childhood.  When he was little (or possibly not yet born) his parents were attacked by robbers and totally conquered.  Never one to cry in his Spaghetti-O’s however, young Genghis chose to take the Batman route, and to become awesomely rich and someday star in one of only two good movies Keanu Reeves has ever made.  After this, he found himself alone with his mom, Jemima Khan, and his three brothers, Smacky, Greldar, and Carl Khan.  So, he got a job in a soot factory, and had many wacky and musical adventures with his new friends Huck Finn, and the Artful Dodger.  At length, he finally got his family a place in a small starter tribe, where, after correctly pointing out that the chief was, in fact, merely a walrus with uncommonly good delegation skills, he was forced to go around all day wearing one of those big wooden thingies that you put on an ox (no, not a credenza, that other big wooden thingie you put on an ox).  In time though, a kindly family of dirt miners realized that young Genghis wasn’t really an ox after all, and therefore making him wear one of those things was just plain silly.  So, one night, they cut him loose, give him a bag full of peanut butter sandwiches, and sent him on his way.

            Eventually, after he had many wacky misadventures with his nerdy younger brother (here played by Harold Ramis) he, much like Sam Walton, created a sizeable empire from nothing by conquering all the tribes on Mongolia.  Now despite what you may of heard about him (from those anti-Genghis Khan partisan attack dogs on all the mainstream networks), Genghis Khan was really a delightful chap to be conquered by.  You see, he had a very simple plan whenever he took over a new city, province, or fashion park.  He’d just say, “Okay y’all (he did say y’all), you’re part of my empire now, if you’re all cool, I’ll let you go on doing pretty much whatever you were doing already; if you go and act like a bunch of big ol’ tools though, I’m gonna come back and turn your city into a forsaken wasteland.”  Then according to how the city acted, he’d live up to his promise.  So, by the time he was sixty, Genghis Khan ruled all of Mongolia, had al the Twinkies his little barbarian warlord heart desired, and just kinda wanted to enjoy his retirement.  But such was not to be.

            You see, next door to Mongolia, lived the Middle East, where, at the time, they still had some cool stuff, this being before either oil or terrorists were invented.  “Mayhap they have awesomeness that I can trade from them,” thought Genghis Khan with a good-humored twinkle in his eye, “I shall send them a trading party and see if they want to be my friends.”  And so he did.  Alas, while his merchant party of awesomeness was traveling through a Middle Eastern town, that town’s mayor, Optimus Toolbox, thought it’s be funny to kill them all and take their stuff.  Genghis Khan was not pleased, but hey, he was old, and rich, and didn’t want any trouble, so he sent some ambassadors to try and straighten things out.  Unwisely, the incorrigible Mayor Toolbox messed them all up too.

            You ever have some kinda thing going on, where like, someone was doing something really annoying, and you were just trying to turn a yam into an artillery piece or make a topiary shaped like Martin Van Buren, but they just wouldn’t quit being annoying, no matter how nicely you asked, so eventually you just freaked out and took over the world?  That’s pretty much what happened here. “C’mon, you guys,” said Genghis Khan at the very apogee of exasperation, “I really just wanted to have my empire and trade with y’all, but you had to be a bunch of buttweasels and mess it all up.”  And with that, Genghis Khan started taking over the entire world.  In fact, he will probably go down in history as the only global dominator of note to have conquered the world mostly because his neighbors were just that annoying.

            As it happened, he ended up conquering all of the Middle East (They still hold it against him there today.  Saddam “More Cheetos Please” Hussein, for instance, personally blames Genghis Khan for our recent butt-kickage of himself).  Everywhere he went, he introduced all the awesome things that he’d found in other countries.  In Europe alone, he was responsible for the introduction of the math, pants, and being really angry at the Middle East.

            These days, Genghis Khan remains the one native superhero of Mongolia (unless you count Andre the Giant or Aquaman) as well as being their version of George Washington.  In conclusion, Genghis Khan is not only awesome, but worthy of emulation in all things either conquesty or sartorial.  So when ever you find yourself in a quandary (or even an enigma) ask yourself, “WWGD?”

            In trying times such as these, what the world needs now is something that really brings people together, something that unifies folks in spite of their differences, and something I can write a blog about without having to do any research, studying, or preparation of any sort whatsoever.  What, you ask, could do all these things?  The answer of course is, Global Domination.  Yes, ever since Grover Cleveland first climbed out of the primeval muck that spawned him, man has wanted to take over the world.  Taking over the world however, is a lot like regrouting the floor in your shower, it all seems straight-forward enough, until you actually try it.  Next thing you know, you’re sitting there with all this grout and flamboyantly thematic henchmen (The Flamboyantly Thematic Henchmen, by the way, would be a totally sweet name for a band, but not one I’d want to be involved in) and spackling knives without a clue as to how you got there (don’t be ashamed, we’ve all been there before).  With that in mind, I’d like to take this opportunity to help you on your way to becoming a dark overlord with a few quick pointers often missed by even the most assiduous of noobs.

            First, you need a cool name.  The nations of the world shall never quake in terror at the mention of the name Herman Finklemeyer, which, I am foolishly assuming, is what most of you are, in fact, named.  Brevity is your friend here.  So take something impressive and fearsome like “Doom” or “Evil” or “Timmy” or something exotic like “Fu Manchu” or “Smackypants”.  Then, if you so desire, slap on a cool title like “Dr.” or “Empress” or “Funk Master Shizzle-mah”.  By simply combining words from these two groups, you too can come up with awesomely evil names such as “Empress Smackypants” (You can’t have that one though, I just called dibs.  You can still be Funk Master Shizzle-mah Timmy though, if you want).

            Now that you’ve got a name, you need a place from which to hurl your evil, like flaming rolls of toilet paper at the passing cars that are the puny nations of the world.  Volcanoes are always good, though you’ll spend a fortune on air conditioning, and if you need to launch a weather control satellite or just send a monkey into orbit, it’s tough to find a location better-suited to the job.  A tropical island is also one of the all-time favorites, owing to the plethora of beaches and villainous skanks that abound upon them.  If you’ve got the capital to pull it off though, you might want to consider a base on the moon (real estate is mighty cheap there right now), especially if you’re plans involve menacing Earth with a giant space laser (and these days, who isn’t?).  But for the aspiring mastermind on a budget, you just can’t beat a fortress twenty miles below the surface of the Earth, accessible only through the service entrance at Stuckey’s.

            Also, you should probably pick up a few quirks and eccentricities, if only help you stand out from all the other wannabes out there, as well as helping to explain you’re frequent and merciless bouts of capriciousness towards those who fail to serve you well.  Maybe you’d like to develop an irrational fear of dirt, like Howard Hughes?  Or possibly an addiction to some bizarre and exotic drug that grows only in the steamy jungles of your homeland?  Perhaps a propensity towards fits of boundless rage followed by a listless fuguelike state would be more your cup of tea?  And failing all those, you can always just talk in rhyme, like Roadblock from G.I. Joe (I don’t hafta see clear, to fracture your rear!).

            Next, you’ll be needing a few henchmen to lead your armies of mindless goons, as well as to keep any pesky heroes out of your hair (though if you lost it all in a disfiguring lab accident that you happen the blame on the father of your nemesis, that’d be cool too).  A short guy who throws something is a perennial favorite amongst many of your higher class overlords, as well as someone with a turban, and one of those villain bombs.  It’s tough to go wrong with a heat-packin’ gangsta from the city streets with some phat kung fu skills, or you could always just get a really enormous guy who never talks because he’s probably retarded or something.  Some hot girl with epic foxy boxing abilities and a thing for evil overlords is always a plus, but if you’re interested in site security, you might just want to invest in a big guy with metal teeth, like Dick Cheney.

            The last real thing you’ll need is a good characteristic villain catchphrase.  Something like, “No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!” or “Fools, I’ll destroy them all!” are good if you want to emphasize you evilosity.  If you’d rather try something more “outside the box” though, you might want to try one of the following phrases, “Soon the weasels of power will be mine, Beast Man!” or “Look out, he’s gonna beef!” or even “You hate pants, don’t you!?”  These phrases, while not quite so scary in the traditional sense, will help you to foster an aura of apprehension around yourself, as everyone you meet quickly conclude that you are, in fact, a flippin’ loony (c’mon, you know you are).

            After that, all that’s left is getting a good nemesis, and that’s something I’ve already covered (quite bad-assedly, I might add).  So there you have it, everything you need to start taking over the world with the best of them.  Soon your global domination dreams will come true, and you too will be ordering Big-Head Muckety-Muck of the U.N. Kofi Annan (disclaimer: not his real official title) around as if he were your own personal Wesley Crusher.

            For many of us, out of sight is out of mind, and those things which do not daily impress upon us their nearness are oft quickly consigned to the great heap o’ crap we don’t remember any more.  And when it comes hammerpants. Martin Van Buren, and sitcoms involving the late Tony Danza, this is perhaps a merciful thing.  Some things however, it is not seemly to forget so quickly, for they go silent not because they slumber, but merely because they seethe and scheme beneath our very feet, like Gary Coleman, or International Communism.  Almost as bad as the former though, and certainly worse than the latter, is the menace which yet lurks beneath the streets of our fair city.  Yes, Richmond, which has been called Emerald City of the James (by me anyways) is, I fear blithely ignoring a terrible evil which draws ever nearer than most of us suspect.  But first, a little history:

            It was late last year (on election night, actually) that the first of a terrible series of subterranean explosions rocked Northern Richmond.  Houses shook, knickknacks fell from china cabinets, old people fell, and could not get up.  Chaos ensued, as the powers that be (now the powers that was) sought to find an explanation for the continuing episodic reverberations (The Episodic Reverberations, might I add, would make a totally sweet name for a band).  Some blamed it on the ghost of J.E.B. Stuart, who walks Hollywood Cemetery and orders the occasional pizza, others blamed the City Council for neglecting the pieties of our ancestors and incurring the wrath of the elder gods (General Robert E. Lee and Frankenberry), yet others simply blamed it on the hordes of  white people who infest the suburbs of Richmond.  In the end though, the police arrested a couple of kids who had been putting dry ice in soda bottles and casting them upon the sidewalk (it being an undisputed fact that a soda bottle of dry ice call certainly cause a massive explosion shaking things for miles around) and declared the matter closed.

            Or so they thought.  For some weeks later, the rumblings again resumed at intervals, once more puzzling the best minds of Richmond.  I however, delved into my innumerable tomes of eldritch lore, and discovered that this phenomenon was not altogether unprecedented.  Indeed, in the town of Moodus, Vermont, similar rumblings had plagued the countryside since long before the arrival of the Pilgrims and their silly, unnecessarily bebuckled hats.  It was not until the 1800’s that a man of science who claimed to be from England came and unearthed in the hills nearby, amidst the most thunderous quaking ever to there transpire, an enormous red pearl of fire, which was the source of power to the devils who dwelt beneath the Moodus mountains (This really all happened, actually).  With his prize in hand, this mysterious stranger set sail for England, but his ship was sunk by a rogue storm en route, and save for the occasional seismic peep, Moodus has be silent ever since.

            With this knowledge in hand, as well as my storied mastery of the lore of the endless catacombs of Richmond (as well as the forgotten and myriad mines of Midlothian), I have deduced that in fact, the recent Richmond rumblings are the fault of none other than Spanky, Lord of the Mole People (don’t laugh at his name, he’s sensitive).  Long has Lord Spanky made his abode beneath the city, causing little trouble to us surface dwellers ever since the time back in the 80’s when, by their powers combined, Dick Cheney and Doug Wilder overthrew his last great scheme (none know all the details, but I have it from a reliable source that it involved Tony Danza and the global cheese supply (Tony Danza and the Global Cheese Supply would be a totally sweet name for a band, you know)).  Since then, Lord Spanky has limited is evil to making a lot of potholes in the Boulevard, and financing a controlling share of the Stony Point Fashion Park, but on election night, when his two most ancient nemesis were elected once more, his wrath waxed strong, and he sought to wreak destruction again upon all those who love the light of day.  Now though, he bides his time, amassing a giganimous army of mole people, robots, trolls, and, uh, The Jeffersons, awaiting his time to strike at the good yet unsuspecting people of Richmond.  Doug Wilder and Dick Cheney are both far too busy at the moment to combat this threat though, so the task falls to us!

            Here are a few ways that you can turn the tide against the armies of Spanky, Lord of the Mole People:  First, stomp around a lot, get some big ol’ pumpkin boots too, it’ll only make it work better.  Also, get a big pointy metal thing, and randomly jab it into the ground wherever you go (if you actually get one of them, you’ll hear a gurgling scream or anguish and rage).  Every time you pass a storm drain, stop and yell down it, “Curse you Spanky!  Victory shall be mine!”  Finally, get a Doug Wilder mask and one of those little helmets with alight on it, then hang out in the sewers a lot.  Yeah, people might look at you funny while you’re doing it, but hey, they do the same to Batman, and you’re no less important than him when it comes to saving Richmond.

            Of all the natural drives with which mankind is naturally imbued, there is one perhaps both stronger and more enduring than all the rest.  Indeed, it is a rare man indeed, who does not, at some point in his young life, realize that what he lacks is a counterpart, someone who’s existence completes his own, someone he can build his life around, while still remaining true to himself, someone he can do things with, and share all of life’s adventures.  Unfortunately, these days what with feverous madness of daily living, there seems to be so very little time to find such a person, and as a result, all too many us seem to chronically find ourselves lacking a nemesis.

            Yes, a nemesis, whatever side of the grand scheme of things you happen to fall on, we all, deep down in our heart of hearts, know that what we need is an arch-foe, a sworn adversary, one who’s very continued existence is an affront to all we hold dear.  Like Superman and Lex Luthor, Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty, or Dick Cheney and Cookie Monster, none of us are ever truly happy until we have someone we have sworn to destroy, whatever the cost may be (I used to have a nemesis back in college, but after a few years, we just kind of lost touch and drifted apart).  With these difficulties in mind, along with the paramount importance of finding a nemesis that suits your personal needs and personality, I would like to announce the launch of the official Teacupmammoths.com Nemesis Online Matching System.

            Yes, your days or sitting at home alone on Saturday night because there was nobody who you could punch off of a flaming blimp or throw over a waterfall are over.  No more will you will have to face the continual disappointment when you schemes either nefarious or heroic, go off without a hitch because nobody cares enough to throw a monkey into your plans.  No longer will you have to spend your valuable time just hanging out in bars, buying strangers drinks in the vain hope that one of them might be plotting against you.  No, I have seen a dire need for a service such as this, and that’s why I have taken upon myself to make sure that no one in the Richmond Metro Area go nemesisless.  Here’s how you can get in on the action:

            Just send me an email with a little basic information about yourself, and what you’re looking for in a nemesis.  I’ll correlate your personal information and profile with my vast database of other eligible nemesi, and start sending you people who you might want to battle to your mutual destruction!  It’s that easy!  Just answer these simple questions, and email them to me here at ben@teacupmammoths.com

Which of the following describes you best?

A: My calling in life is to make the world a better place by using my awesome powers to battle the forces of darkness wherever they may lurk, while saving puppies and building orphanages for clinically ugly children.

B: Diabolically evil, I seek to usher in a new and terrible age of darkness at every turn.  All those who dare to oppose me shall be cast into the weasel pit of eternal suffering! Mwahahahaha!

C: For countless aeons, I have wandered this world, ever standing astride the gulf betwixt good and evil.  Your puny human morality means nothing to me, I seek only to maintain the balance of power in the universe.

D: An utter loony, I’m not so much concerned with either good or evil, but merely throwing pies at all those who vex me, like Jimmy Carter.

Your approximate level of mightiness is:

A: Mere mortal, driven by my own reasons to seek to make the world more as I believe it ought to be.

B: Meta-human, imbued with awesome powers by some experiment gone-awry or cosmic accident, I have abilities far beyond those of most men, and am more than a match for average SWAT Team or terrorist cell.

C: Demi-godlike, I walk as a titan amongst the human gerbils who surround me.  Nations rise or crumble at my word, I am destiny incarnate.

D: William Howard Taft

What nature of relationship are you currently looking for?

A: Recurrent foe, someone who, while not asking for a whole lot of commitment, is still up for foiling my schemes now and then, with the occasional epic battle for the fate of a suburb.

B: Sworn Enemy, though my life is by no means defined by someone else, it is nonetheless the case that whenever I see they’re back in town, I feel the need to smite them to ruin and gloat over the ashes of their broken dreams.

C: True Nemesis, I’m looking for someone to really go steady with, where even if they aren’t working to bring about my downfall at the moment, I’m already planning ahead for the inevitable battle that will likely spell doom for us both.

D: Bane of my existence, for countless generations before had dragged itself to brutish sentience, I have been awaiting the one whom the gods themselves have decreed I must destroy utterly!

E: Dave Coulier and Alanis Morisette

What kind of date would you take your new nemesis on?

A: A pitched battle on top of a flaming Nazi blimp involving an experimental pack.

B: An epic and continuing war to see who will have control of the city.

C: A race to uncover and master the powers of an ancient artifact of awesome powers.

D: An apocalyptic duel between immortals, vying to see who shall control the future of the very human race!

E: Slapping each other around in the parking lot outside of Donut Connection.

So there you have it, that nemesis you’ve always dreamed of having is but an email away, so get started now, and meet your new nemesis today!

            There are in this ancient world of ours (Earth) certain great evils which were first spawned way back in the day, when Dick Cheney still had hair, and when Canada was still a paradise, before the malignant evil of Quebec turned it all into an accursed morass of eternal night.  Some evils however, are older even than that; older than fat people wearing spandex, older than the Metric system, older than even Ted Kennedy.  What, you ask could be so ancient and twisted?  The answer of course is, Michael Jackson.  Yes, ever since he cut off the heads of the rest of the Jackson Five in order to steal their powers for himself, Michael Jackson has grown with ever-increasing rapidity to be the living incarnation of evil.  While once upon a time, he actually looked like a normal black man, after his evil began to run amok Mace Windu had to go and reflect his own negative vibes back onto him, thus revealing Michael Jackson’s true hideous space alien-cave fish form for all the world to see.  But much like Emperor Palpatine or Rosie O’Donnell, those who were already within his thrall were unshaken in their devotion to his diabolical schemes.

            After briefly marrying Elvis’s daughter in order to at last get his revenge on the King, he also bought up all the rights to the Beatles’ music, in order to mooch off their greatness.  He had been planning to infuse himself with the Elephant Man’s DNA, thereby making himself even freakier looking than even modern plastic surgery could make him, but happily, cooler heads prevailed, and the world was saved from almost certain grossed-outedness.  So, having not had a hit record in over seven trillion years, and having spent all his money on nose jobs, ferris wheels, and monkeys (not that there’s anything wrong with spending all your money on monkeys, mind you, as long as they’re evil) he decided to become a complete sicko, a move which, in retrospect, appears to have only helped his career.  Now, except for the occasional use of the words “ass” and “weaselboogers” I try to keep this site pretty family-friendly, and since we all know what Michael Jackson is into, I’ll let it suffice to say that Michael Jackson’s song “I’m Bad” has an entirely deeper and disturbing meaning to certain people who are, in fact, Macauly Culkin.

            But now, after what was probably about the fourth trial of the century so far this century, Michael Jackson is back on the streets, wearing pajama pants and talking in a tiny little voice with reckless abandon.  How then can you protect yourself and those you love from the greatest abomination created by the music industry since Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch?  Let’s look at a few of the ways that our experts here at teacupmammoths.com have come up with.

            First, use common sense.  Like if you’re walking down the street, and one of those dust-buster-shaped child molester vans pulls up, and a really pale guy offers you a ferris wheel or a monkey if you come with him, Just Say No.  Then fake a seizure, so he’ll think you’re crazy and leave you alone (hey, it worked in the Bible).

            Look out for white guys in sunglasses.  You see, most white guys in sunglasses are either Michael Jackson, an evil computer-generated FBI agent from the Matrix, or one of the Blues Brothers.  Therefore, upon seeing a white guy with sunglasses, run up and unleash your awesome kung fu skillz upon him.  Really, the odds are two to three in your favor that it’ll be either Michael Jackson or an evil computer-generated FBI agent from the Matrix, in which case, you’ve made the right decision.  Don’t worry about accidentally getting a Blues Brother though, they’re tough, and they’ll probably teach you some hot guitar licks for taking the initiative to start a sweet kung-fu battle right there in Arby’s anyway.

            If Michael Jackson invites you over to his house, say you’ll go, but later, and then send a robot gorilla with a bomb in it that’s just wearing your clothes.  Michael Jackson will never know the difference (unless, of course, you’re one of those unlucky people who doesn’t look like a gorilla).  Then, when he tries to touch the robot gorilla, it’ll just beat the white right off of him, and then explode in a gigantic fireball visible for miles (so if you do try this plan, keep an eye out for the mushroom cloud).

            Finally, you can just call Batman.  You see, Michael Jackson is really not that much different from the Joker, and as such is the case, Batman is more than capable of taking him down.  Even if Michael Jackson has a giant clown mallet, or a funhouse of doom, Batman’s seen it all before, and can beat him like the proverbial red-headed stepchild that he isn’t.

            So, in conclusion, don’t let the fact that Michael Jackson again walks the streets keep you from going out and doing all the things in life that you enjoy.  Rather, think of it as an opportunity to cause some mayhem, and maybe even see the Batmobile (or go to the Science Museum in Richmond, cause they have one there too).

            There are few among us, I think, who have not at some point in their life, wanted to do something totally cool and popular, but have no idea how to do it.  Hitler, for instance, wanted to be an art major, but his mastery of crosshatching was laughable at best, and so he went and started the Nazi party, as well as Hardee’s.  Napoleon just wanted to play ball for the Lakers, but owing to his tinyness, they didn’t let him join up and he ended up conquering Europe.  I myself once wanted to learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons, but Kleebdar the Dungeon Master just laughed at me, so I had to club him senseless with my +7 Truncheon of Nerd Vanquishing.  By such examples, I think we can all see that not knowing how to do cool stuff can lead to all sorts of genocide, conquest, and sucky fast food restaurants.  In the interest of averting further human suffering then, I have decided to go you, my readers, a bit of a leg up on doing something that just about everyone seems to want to get in on these days, Japanese Cartoons, or as our friends in the land of the rising sun call them, Anime.  Let’s take a quick look then, at some of the elements that help to contribute to a successful Anime movie, show, comic book, or shamelessly over-marketed trading card game.

            First, it has to take place in Neo-Tokyo.  For whatever reason, good ol’ Tokyo original recipe is never around anymore in Anime.  Maybe it was destroyed in World War III, maybe Rodan ate it (the giant pterodactyl, not the famous sculptor), maybe it just fell down behind the sofa and by the time Japan found it again, they’d already gone and bought a new one; in any case, Neo-Tokyo it is.  It usually looks a lot like regular Tokyo (like I’ve ever been there to know what I’m talking about) but with a lot of neon signs, and people addicted to weird sci-fi anime drugs that turn you into a monster, and a lot more cyber-hookers then there are these days.

            Next, giant robots.  Seriously, in Anime, giant robots are like cell phones, everyone has one, and all they ever do is fight with them.  Nobody ever says “See you tonight Hon, I’m taking the kids to school in my giant robot!” They just run around the city, knocking over hotdog carts, fighting either A: other giant robots, or B: giant freak-beasts from some other planet or dimension bent on destroying Neo-Tokyo, which, much like Original Tokyo is built on top of some kind of weird cosmic giant monster bug light that just brings them in like boring people to a quilting convention.  Also, most of the time, the main giant robot has this one totally awesome super attack where it like, combines with other robots, or creates a sword made out of antimatter, or unleashes a maelstrom of atomic awesomeness, that invariably completely destroys the other giant robot.  The only thing is, it takes like, five minutes for it to power up and look all cool while it’s doing this, but it’s okay, cause the other robot/monster is always either too polite to interrupt, or is just so completely tripped out at the very sight of it that its unable to rouse itself adequately to go on fighting.

            Then, we have the invariable progression from lighthearted, happy plotlines, to unbearably dark, depressing, Ashton Kutcheresque plotlines.  It doesn’t matter what the show is about, saving the very world from hideous space monsters hell-bent on the annihilation of mankind, or maybe just about the wacky exploits of a bunch of middle school kids, one of whom is a robot, and another one of whom has a pet bunny that turns into a starship, the show starts out all light and happy with humorous romantic tension and wacky situational comedy, and by the end of the second season, the entire world has become a fiery pit of doom and everyone’s family is dead and for about the last five or six episodes, everyone is just hanging on as things get worse and worse and death draws inevitably nearer, and then everything just gets really weird and bizarre, like a Tom Green movie.

            Creepy androgynous arch-villains.  Now, usually your anime sub-villains are normal enough, but there’s always the one totally evil mastermind villain, who is usually a guy who looks like he might be a girl, and all he wants to do is destroy everything.  Not take over Neo-Tokyo, not get revenge on those who wronged him, but just wipe out all of existence for weird and ill-explained reasons all his own.  Then, when he’s finally within striking distance of annihilating the world, the hero finally confronts him and he always does something completely surprising but also utterly nonsensical, because Anime writers have only the vaguest of notions about what constitutes a good plot twist and what just confuses people.  Like a normal arch-villain plot twist would be like this: “Luke, I am your father!” While an Anime plot twist is more like this: “Aha, in truth, I am not the evil ninja emperor, but rather some weird combination of a benevolent nature spirit and a self-aware computer program who was in fact created from your very DNA and a pile of burritos ten thousand years before you were even born come at last to wreak fiery vengeance upon the great and immortal yak-spirit who sired you!”  And after that, things get weird, and you have all this impassioned shouting and people start to just up and melt, or catch on fire, or both, and then there’s like, a huge floating eye up in the air, and then they have some weird, out of context Christian imagery, like Jesus in a Waffle House, and it all just gets too bizarre to even think about and then the world explodes and you hear a little girl recite a haiku about springtime and your just sitting there going, “Huh?”

            Finally, you must have Pikachu.

            So there you have it, a handy and easy to follow guide to making your own hit anime series, so you won’t screw it up and end up becoming an inhuman dictator or something.  All you have to do now is throw in a ridiculously big sword, and a few scenes in a bath house with a panda, and you’re in business.

            Most of us, I believe, prefer to go through life feeling secure in the knowledge that we are, for the most part, safe.  Of course, life can never be completely without danger, the mafia might put a hit on you, or you might choke to death on a rutabaga, or maybe a giant quetzalcoatl will pick you up and take you back to South America for some sinister yet boring purpose.  Most of us, however, never suspect the hideous violent death that may await us in our very own kitchen, where there often lurks a grisly and inhuman nemesis of all humanity, awaiting only its chance to strike and punch you in the face like Ike Turner.  I am of course talking about bacon.  What’s that you say, you already knew that bacon is bad for you?  Slow down there Mr. Speedy McFastington, it’s not what you think at all.  No, the truth is far darker and greasier than you could possibly imagine.

            Far from being bad for your heart, as conventional wisdom holds, bacon is actually one of the best foods for your circulatory health, owing to the way it slicks up your insides and makes it more difficult for stuff to get stuck in there (kinda like that motor oil with little bits of Teflon in it).  The negative and unfounded rumors to the contrary, were in fact started during the World War I (or as it was called back then, The War of Jenkins’ Ear) when the German inventor of bacon, Count Otto Von Bacon himself, defeated the president of the American Medical Association, Rex Morgan M.D. in a heated 77 hour game of Dungeons and Dragons, thereby bringing shame and dishonor to the House of Morgan for ten generations.  By way of revenge, Morgan dedicated the rest of his life to starring in a boring comic strip about inadequate medical insurance, and also to ruining the previously pristine good name which bacon had enjoyed up to that point.  This, however, is all beside the point.

            Bacon, in truth, is in reality far more horrible than even the wildest accusations of the AMA.  You see, in recent years, bacon has ceased, to a great degree, to be a stand alone food, and has been ever more frequently bound to otherwise prosaic foods to create such things as the bacon-cheeseburger, the salad with some bacon on it, and of course, bacon-heroin.  Thusly stripped of its place of honor amongst pork products, bacon has at last gone rogue, and started punching people in the face.

            Scoff if you will, but just this past week, Twitch, a friend and coconspirator of mine fell victim to such and attack when, as he unsuspectingly sat down to eat a plate of delicious bacon, it rose up all a sudden, a seething, undulant, gibbering mass or bacon  with eyes like smoldering embers from the very pits or Tartarus and punched him in the face knocking out one of his fillings and necessitating an emergency trip to the dentist this week.  Lest you fear that this cowardly attack went unanswered, Twitch’s wrath was kindled against this militant bacon (Twitch and the Militant Bacon, I might add, would make a totally sweet name for a band), and with berserker-like fury he devoured it, lest other bacon feel at liberty to get uppity without consequence.

            Now, you might be forgiven for thinking that this web of lies and intrigue goes far enough as it is, but you would be wrong to so believe, for the proverbial rabbit hole goes far deeper than that.  It is the case, you see, that bacon is in fact in cahoots (cahoots, I tell you!) with the American Dental Association, lead of course by the devious criminal mastermind Doogie Houser M.D, who, like Saruman and the mountain men, or Dick Cheney and undead chimpanzee army, has been whipping the international bacon community into a bloodthirsty frenzy to further his own vomitous schemes (you have of course, probably guessed where this is all going by now).  You see, the more bacon punches innocent aspiring warlords in the face, the more business it creates for the American Dental Association which, owing to the fact that it shares its acronym with the far better known Americans with Disabilities Act, will seek to eventually besmirch the name of the ADA forever, resulting in a public outcry the likes of which has not been heard since it was revealed that Big Bird is, in fact, a Communist.  This will of course throw our very nation into chaos, imperiling all that it awesome.  So my friends, I exhort you to take up arms against bacon!  Eat a lot of it, but punch it first so it can’t get you so bad, and if you see Doogie Houser, punch him too, he’s got it coming.

            Mongolia.  Its name is synonymous with yaks, global conquest, and totally sweet hats.  It is also, serendipitously enough, where my sister is spending most of this summer whilst she furthers her jedi-like mastery of journalism.  Now, were I the cautious sort, always taking care to painstakingly document my sources and get all my journalist ducks in a row, I might find it difficult to write an entire blog about a country with a very different culture from our own (except concerning table manners and the awesomeness of Genghis Khan, not to mention the mutual appreciation for Dick Cheney) to which, I have never, in fact, even been.  Fortunately though, I’m more like Newsweek, and I’ll just make any old thing up if I think it’ll be funny.  Therefore, based upon eyewitness accounts and firsthand experience from my sister in the Orient, I give you this brief description on all the ways to get around in Mongolia (lest when you yourself travel there, you find yourself like Aquaman, who, not knowing that Mongolia is a landlocked nation, was unable to secure any fish to ride around on and had to take a unicycle everywhere):

            First and most important, we have the noble yak.  Nearer and dearer to my heart than most other Mongolian beasts of transport (owing, in no small part, to its close kinship with the wooly mammoth), the yak is, foremost, totally friggin’ awesome.  How, you ask?  First, they don’t have ‘em here in Virginia (an acute shortage of yaks is really the only thing that keeps us from being the all-around most awesome place on Earth), and since anything you have to import from far away is magically and automatically better, yaks are epically keen.  The very work “yak” lends itself to verbification marvelously (“Sorry, your Holiness, I fear I have yakked in thy sock drawer”).  Try doing that with “horse” or “Hubert Humphrey”, or some other form of transportation, it’s just not the same.  Finally, they’re edible, so if your yak breaks down out on a steppe somewhere, miles from the nearest Coldstone Creamery (of which there are many in Mongolia) you can just eat it while you wait for AAA to get there and give you a ride.

            Next we have Mongolian Battle Ponies.  It is both bone-chillingly fearsome, and cuter sack full of baby koalas (or ought that be koali?), rather like a kitten with a flamethrower.  They’re really good at climbing mountains (at least the one my sister rode on didn’t fall off a cliff…much), and like yaks, they make a delicious side dish to any Mongol meal.  Also, unlike our big sport utility ponies over here, Mongolian ones are compact and environmentally friendly, running as they do solely of bio-diesel, and being made entirely from recycled soybeans.

            Then we come to the camel.  While most of us here in the states are probably used to riding those uncomfortable, precarious one hump camels, in Mongolia, they have the kind with a bonus hump.  This, of course, gives them twice the range, for those long road trips and beer runs across the Gobi Desert.  Also with the whole two hump setup, you get a much lower ride, with far superior high-speed cornering.  Really, the only reason not to go with the camel option is if you’re trying to quit smoking, in which case spending all day riding around on a ubiquitous reminder of cigarettes mightn’t be the best of ideas.

            Getting away from the animal kingdom for a while, Mongolians also have the perennially awesome Crazy Bus.  If you’re not familiar with this particular fixture of transit in developing nations and school systems, the Crazy Bus is a big ol’ bus with a dubious repair record, about twice as many passengers as it has seats, and a clientele that sees nothing wrong with bringing goats as carry-on luggage (to be fair though, the goat is not without reason often called “The Palm Pilot of the East”).  Also, owing to their chronic shortage of guys in orange vests, Mongolia really doesn’t have particularly good highway coverage, meaning that if your bus is going from say, Ulan Bator to Genghisburg, the bus driver just follows the nearest old timey big pointing hand sign and takes off over across the wasteland towards wherever it is you’re going.  Thisd sounds kind of dangerous at first, but if you just make sure to bring a leather jacket and a kid with a boomerang, you can pretend that you’re Mad Max (though really, you should probably pretend you’re Mad Max more often even if you’re not going to Mongolia).

            Finally, they’ve got sand worms.  Now I know you’ve probably heard that sand worms are just made up, even though Patrick Stewart rode one in Dune, but in the magical kingdom of Mongolia, anything is possible.  They mostly live in the desert (duh) and taking them into the city is generally frowned upon owing to the damage they do to the sidewalks, but assuming you’re planning on putting a lot of highway miles on one, they’re really a pretty good way of getting around.  Also, they always make a totally awesome entrance, like, if you’re going to a block party, and you take a sand worm, you don’t just pull up to the curb and park the thing.  No, you dramatically and awesomtastically burst out from beneath the very earth itself, causing all sorts of destruction and probably eating any yippy little dogs or fat kids who were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time (though if you already filled up on Pork Cracklins™, you might want to just let your sand worm eat them instead).  According to my sister, she hasn’t ridden one of these yet, but I’m hoping that when she finally does, she’ll bring me a picture or a coffee mug with a humorous message referring to like, sand worms, and maybe, uh, bad traffic or something.  Meanwhile though, here’s a computer-generated artist's conception of what one of them looks like (the sand worm, not the coffee mug):