Place Your Bets

Wagers anyone?

It’s almost time to put your money where your mouth is.

Who are you rooting for?

What are your thoughts on the season?

It’s been action packed.

Every week has brought heroes and villains.

I’m so excited to find out who is going to win I can’t wait.

There can only be one winner.

Pretty soon it will all be over.

I admit it, I’m pulling for Boston.

Mr. Boston.

What did you think I was talking about?

Get Your Bananas While You Can

This is one of those things that I never knew. (Like how I make that seem like a relatively small number?) The banana is not an original reproducing species. It’s a clone. A clone from bananas thousands of years ago.

So pretty much the bananas we eat today on our bowl of Grapes Nuts, or underneath an ice cream sundae, are the same suckers that they plucked out of trees thousands of years ago.

In otherwords, a banana is an old-ass fruit. And one that’s in danger.

Almost all the varieties of banana grown today are cuttings – clones, in effect – of naturally mutant wild bananas discovered by early farmers as much as 10,000 years ago. The rare mutation caused wild bananas to grow sterile, without seeds. Those ancient farmers took cuttings of the mutants, then cuttings of the cuttings.

Plants use reproduction to continuously shuffle their gene pool, building up variety so that part of the species will survive an otherwise deadly disease. Because sterile mutant bananas cannot breed, they do not have that protection.

Can you imagine a world without bananas? What sort of peels will cartoon characters slip on from now on? What will monkeys eat in the movies?

I knew that 80% of American avocados originated from an East L.A backyard avocado tree owned by a man named Hass. Thus the Hass Avocado. All that guacamole is the result of one mother tree from the 30’s that finally met its fate in 2002. She must have been a proud mother.

But I had no idea that bananas were clones and not originally-reproducing fruits. I guess I’m not shocked, there’s plenty of things in the world that I’m in the dark on, but I am surprised that they are in danger of being wiped off the face of the earth.

I always assumed that bananas would outlast mankind. They still might, but it’s a tough race now.

I can’t imagine a world without bananas, and I don’t even like bananas. I find them too smushy. I do like peanut butter and bananas in a blender with some milk, sugar, and ice. Makes a pretty good shake.

So eat em’ folks. They might not be here forever.

Two fungal diseases, Panama disease and black Sigatoka, are cutting a swath through banana plantations, just as blight once devastated potato crops. But unlike the potato, and other crops where disease-resistant strains can be bred by conventional means, making a fungus-free variety of the banana is extraordinarily difficult.

What are your thoughts? Does anyone care about the possible extinction of the banana? If not, which fruit would you be sorry to see go?

I would write more, but another episode The Bad Girls Club is on, so I gotta wrap it up.

Thanks for reading.

Inspiring Quotes

Some positive things to contemplate as we start the week.

“Life looks aflame from afar, but close up, it’s just fireflies in a jar.” – ArtofStarving

“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” -Guatama Siddharta

“There are no mundane things outside of Buddhism, and there is no Buddhism outside of mundane things.”

“Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.” – Guatama Siddharta

“Every night, I have to read a book, so that my mind will stop thinking about things that I stress about.” – Britney Spears.

Super Bowl in Iraq

I admit it. I’m tired of writing about this war. You’re probably sick of hearing it too.

Everyday is a a different version of the day before, just with more blood, more empty words, more no-end-in-sight. Bush can give all the speeches in the world but he never changes the script. He can’t. One thing I can safely predict is that Bush is not going to pull out of Iraq. He is going to hand that over to a Democrat to do. It’s in his nature to leave a mess behind. Just ask Texas.

Anyway. Another bloody Sunday.

More “Extremists” dead. Another helicopter crash in the desert. 2 more soldiers killed.

I began to write this post, thinking about the word “Extremist”. The concept. Who is an extremist?

From Wikipedia:

Or simply:

ex·trem·ist (ĭk-strē’mĭst)
n. One who advocates or resorts to measures beyond the norm, especially in politics.

If you had the luxury of being dropped on Earth in the year 2007 without prior knowledge of history, or being up-to-date with the rhetoric and development of the war. If you just arrived without knowing anything about America, or Iraq, or Saddam, or Al Queda; if all you did was land here and look at a picture of the war: who looks like an extremist?

The ones with IEDs, rags, and sandals?

Or the ones with aircraft carriers, unmanned spyplanes, and tanks?

Who’s taken the absurdity of war to new levels? Above the norm? The insurgents may be extreme in their religious beliefs, or their tactics, but we’re extreme when it comes to the art of warfare. We’ve perfected it.

It terrifies me how institutionalized war has become in America, everything Eisenhower warned against:

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

War has only touched American shores on 2 days in this last century, more than 50 years apart. Thus, we’re rather insulated, ignorant of its devastation. Its brutality. We talk of it as a concept, as an ideological and partisan argument, or as entertainment.

I also worry about how whitewashed and remote this war is.

It has been said that only 1% of Americans are effected by the war. The percentage of Americans either serving, or with family serving, in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’ve built the world’s ultimate army and we use it like a toy.

And we refuse to take our ball and go home.

Trivializing the horrors our soldiers face is not honoring them, any more than a magnet on the back of your SUV honors them.

The president and his men treat soldiers like they’re disposable, and in a sense that is what war is all about; they’d rather send 20,00 more troops than sacrifice their misguided beliefs and ideas that led them to this debacle; and have been proven to be, not only false, but dangerous. They refuse to learn from their mistakes and adapt. Instead of turning parallel to the beach and swimming out of the current, they continue to hopelessly struggle against the rip tide as it drags us out to sea and drags Iraq towards a Civil War.

Our soldiers don’t have the luxury of analyzing it, they don’t have the comfort of politics. They’re just trying to stay alive another day. We owe it to them to not whitewash the psychic and physical harm of what they’re facing over there. Not to talk of our soldiers’ lives in terms of numbers and tactics, and treat them like they’re disposable.

We shouldn’t let the president sacrifice more of our countrymen in his attempt at saving face and staving off the inevitable for some other president to figure out.

Sadly, war is something we legislate in America, vote upon, argue over, watch on TV, read about in the paper, on artofstarving. But it’s not something we have to fight. We hire others to do it for us.

We train these guys to be bloodthirsty killers.

We’ve built the largest, most-sophisticated military the planet has ever seen.

We have satellites in space watching them.

We can fire a missile from the deck of an aircraft carrier hundreds of miles away and guide it precisely to strike an outhouse in the middle of the desert, if we want we can blow that shit to smithereens.

Meanwhile, our enemies try to ram our Humvees with explosive-laden donkey carts.

We have long-established, celebrated organizations just to entertain our troops during war.

Comics and musicians and pin-up models parading about on a stage so the soldiers can escape the reality of their reality for a few precious hours.

War for us is an industry.

High School ROTC programs indoctrinate young men into our warrior culture.

Shinny medals.

Colorful flag guards.

Crisp uniforms that girls find sexy.

Fast-paced videos showing the fun and adventure of being a hired killer.

AN ARMY OF ONE.

Next week at the Super Bowl, you’re going to see super-sleek, fast, deadly jets fly over the stadium, accompanied by a sonic boom and the roar of the crowd.

People watching on TV will be filled with an intense swelling of nationalistic pride and not really know it as they pig out on chips and buffalo wings and wash it all down with Budweiser.

Then a famous Pop Star, known for driving his car while chugging on the juice inevitably winding up in trees and front lawns, the Piano Man himself, will sing the national anthem.

The stadium will be quiet, everyone on their feet, men holding their hats over their hearts, some young girl with a tear running down her cheek will be singled out in the crowd by the camera man.

The notes: “and the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air…” will then fly out over the airwaves to almost a billion people across the globe.

When he finishes everyone in the stands will break out in wild applause and the players on the field will begin to jump up and down and beat their chests.

And then they’ll inevitably show the troops in Iraq, sheltered in some desert tarp, dressed in their camoes. The troops will get up and cheer for the cameras, pump their fists in excitement, their adrenaline pumping, smiles on their faces, they might even look happy.

But when the cameras are turned off, they’ll probably look like this.

The announcer will then comment about what a treat it is for the soldiers. To be able to watch the football game. Grown men, dressing up in pads, pounding each other. Million dollar athletes going to war for a trophy while half-naked cheerleaders wave their pompoms and kick their legs in the air and a fat guy in a glass booth babbles about the pregame tailgate parties.

Then they’ll go to commercial and a duck will be trying to sell me insurance and I’ll wonder about the word “extremist” and what it really means.

Rubbish

File this one under horrible tales of the city.

A smoldering body, believed to be that of a woman, was found on a quiet Playa del Rey street after residents called to report a rubbish fire.

Los Angeles police spokesman Jason Lee said that the victim appeared to be an African American woman in her 30s but that her identity and the cause of death would have to be determined by the coroner’s office.

Humphrey said no one had come forward to give any information about what might have happened. Several people called the Fire Department to report a rubbish fire, he said.

Playa Del Rey is a tiny beach hamlet with a lagoon, a little league baseball field, and some restaurants and bars that has always held a special place in my heart for being a salty, low-key, loose part of town.

Watching fireworks on the Fourth of July. Eating a hamburger and sipping a beer at The Shack. The Christmas Boat Parade. Playing frisbee next to the Lagoon. There’s even a basketball court, you can play hoops and watch the sun set into the great blue Pacific.

Playa Del Rey is somewhat a secret, an isolated island in the sprawling sea of cement that is LA. Buffered from the East by the Ballona Wetlands. The Marina cuts off PDR from the North. LAX leaves a swath of empty space and long stretch of beach to the South. And, of course, to the West is the ocean.

Thus, it feels more secluded, more carefree than other beachside towns in LA. PDR doesn’t have the hipsters of Venice, the yuppies of Santa Monica, nor the snobs of Manhattan Beach. People seem to know each other’s names. Sandals are welcomed, so are dogs. It’s laid back.

But shit happens everywhere. That’s what I’ve learned lately.

No place is safe.

Still… as cynical and news-saturated as I am, certain stories grab your throat more than others.

They hit a raw nerve.

For some reason, I think of the people who walked by and saw the dumpster on fire, smelt something funny in the air, but didn’t look inside, assumed it was a trash fire, saw the fire department coming and went on with their day. This may sound weird, but I would have wanted to know the truth.

If I saw that, flames, a fire engine, a police car, and shrugged my shoulders; and then later that night turned on the news to see my neighborhood from a helicopter and the words underneath: Body Found Burning in Trash Bin, my heart would be pulverized.

The shock would be greater for my initial encounter of apathy.

I would be crushed by my own indifference.

Not that you could do anything had you’ve known. And to be there, to smell the fumes, to look at the smoke, that would be harsh, unbearable, possibly worse.

But I would rather know the horrid truth, that a tragedy happened, that a life had ended there, than to pass nonchalantly, thinking it was only “rubbish”, only to find out later it was a body, a woman.

I’m weird like that I guess.

I wonder: If you could make the choice to remain in the dark completely; say you drive by, see the cops, an ambulance, news crews, everyone focusing on the dumpster, later that night the news comes on and you hear a lead-in to a story in your neighborhood; how many people would turn the channel?

Not many.

Most people have a curious nature. They will wait to hear what happened, and then they’ll shake their heads, and then probably say aloud to themselves, “what the hell’s going on in this crazy city.”

Mr. Fartypants Doesn’t Have to Hide No More

Have you ever had an idea, an invention you might say, and you knew it supplied a giant need, and seemed simple enough to produce; but the pure silliness of it prevented you from thinking further about it, you might have laughed and then forgot all about it?

Well, amid my great Internet exploration, my daily wanderings, browsing, infiltrating, dissecting, and digesting – basically farting around – I came across one of my past ideas and was delighted to find that it is now finding actualization.

Mankind will never be the same.

From Ananova:

A US underwear manufacturer has invented pants designed to hide the smell of farts.

The Under-Ease pants have an in-built multi-layered, replaceable filter, made of felt, charcoal and fibreglass wool.

To prevent gases escaping without passing through it, the underpants are made from air-tight fabric and completely sealed with elastic around the waistband and legs.

Under-Tec president and inventor Buck Weimer said: “Under-Ease are underwear for protection against bad human gas.

They say necessity is the mother of invention, well then it was just a matter of time until these came along. The world had suffered from cut cheese for too long.

Finally the world’s greatest minds got together and found a solution.

My only complaint is these just hold the gas inside like a baby diaper. I always imagined my pair of fart-proof underwear releasing a potpourri scent. Say you drop a burrito bomb, a co-worker might sniff the air and say, “do you smell pine?”

Despite the inherent humor involved in such an invention there are probably a lot of older folks out there and unlucky people suffering from ailments that cause them to unintentional crop-dust supermarkets and shopping malls. It’s not their fault. They’re not rude teenagers trying to prove a mentally stunted point, their insides just don’t work quite right.

Skip the embarrassment, no need to blame it on the dog anymore: Gas-Eaters are here!

They’re offering a 50% percent off coupon on their website.

The underwear are $25 dollars apiece and a replacement filter is only ten bucks, a small price to pay for clean air.

Get yours today!

Gay Bands?!

This has got to be a joke. A parody. Right? Someone hopping on the Stephen Colbert bandwagon?

This Internet preacher from a site called Love’s God Way has released the official list of bands that will make you gay. These are the bands that you’re going to want to keep your kids from listening to, in case you don’t want them turning out a little fluffy, if you know what I mean, my good man.

You might tell me “horse apples, music doesn’t make anyone gay.” Well the good Pastor Donnie Davies disagrees. Here are the bands you’re going to want to stay away from.

• Scissor Sisters
• Rufus Wainwright
• Merzbau
• Ravi Shankar
• Wilco
• Bjork
• Tech N9ne
• Ghostface Killah
• Bobby Conn
• Morton Subotnik
• Cole Porter
• The String Cheese Incident
• Eagles of Death Metal
• Polyphonic Spree
• The Faint
• Interpol
• Tegan and Sara
• Erasure
• Le Tigre
• The Gossip
• The Magnetic Fields
• The Doors
• Phish
• Queen
• The Strokes
• Sufjan Stevens
• Morrissey(?questionable?)
• The Pet Shop Boys
• Metallica
• Judas Priest
• The Village People
• The Secret Handshake
• The Rolling Stones
• David Bowie
• Frankie Goes to Hollywood
• Man or Astroman
• Richard Cheese
• Jay-Z
• Depeche Mode
• Kansas
• Ani DiFranco
• Fischerspooner
• John Mayer
• Angel Eyes
• The Indigo Girls
• Velvet Underground
• Madonna
• Elton John
• Barry Manilow
• Indigo Girls
• Melissa Etheridge
• Eminmen
• Nirvana
• Boy George*
• The Killers
• Lou Reed
• Lil’ Wayne
• Motorhead
• Jill Sobule
• Wilson Phillips
• DMX
• Lisa Loeb
• Ted Nugent (loincloth)
• Dogstar
• Thirty Seconds to Mars
• Lil’ Kim
• kd lang
• Frank Sinatra
• Hinder
• Nickleback
• Justus Kohncke
• Bob Mould
• Clay Aiken
• Arcade Fire
• Bright Eyes
• Corinne Bailey Rae
• Audioslave
• Red Hot Chili Peppers
• Panic at the Disco
• Elton John(really gay)

In Our effort to keep this list up to date we’d appreciate your help. If you know of a band that is Gay or propogating a Gay message please email us so we can update.

As you can see the list is growing. It’s amazing how many gay bands there are out there!!! I’m truly frightened now. Oh, Jesus, why must you tempt us into sin with such well crafted pop music?

Like I said, this guy can’t be real. Can he?

If you ask me, he’s sitting back and watching all the hits on this website and laughing. Right?!

Not a Puppy?

This is is some sick shit, no doubt.

ATLANTA (AP) — Two teenagers accused of duct-taping a puppy’s snout and paws and cooking the animal alive in an oven pleaded guilty Friday to animal cruelty and other offenses.

But I found myself more horrified that it was a 3-month old puppy and not some old mangy stray with lungs showing and his tongue lolling out of its mouth delieriously. Not that that would be acceptable, just more understandable. No, this was a 3-month old puppy. A warm-nosed, furry, bundle of cuteness.

One of these guys.

This brings up the question that religion and philosophy has tried to solve for thousands of years: what is the nature of evil?

Certainly Hilter was evil.

Jim Jones.

Same for any kids that cook puppies.

John Wayne Gacy was evil, but at the same time he was friendly with all his neighbors and even volunteered his time dressing as a clown to entertain little kids. He was considered a nice guy until they discovered 21 bodies lying beneath his floorboards.

But I have a feeling Gacy killed a puppy when he was younger, that’s how it starts, they say.

That’s why there’s a new public service announcement campaign from SPCA LA that has aired commericals and plastered billboards all around town that feature an adorable puppy staring at you and the words: KILLERS AREN’T BORN. SOMETHING SMALL GOT THEM STARTED.

The idea is that abusing puppies is a gateway to serial killing. They’re trying to nip evil in the bud.

Back to the brothers in Georgia. Whether they were born bad, or faced a tough childhood that turned them violent, something in their souls made them evil, demonic. If you don’t believe me, here’s more:

The brothers then brought neighborhood children to see the dead puppy and threatened to kill them if they reported it, prosecutors said.

Reading stories like this I wish I had some explanation, some fancy historical reference against which to deconstruct this. I try to have all my posts wrap up in a nice little bow. A snarky one-liner.

BUT I CAN’T. There’s nothing to tie this one together and that’s the point. People just don’t make sense sometime. They do wicked shit. They hurt puppies. They make other kids watch. That’s the way the world spins.

Wobbly.

Follow the Leader

Wonder Showzen is a great kids’ show.

Just don’t let your kids watch it.

LA Sunflowers

Allyn Mejia sent in this beautiful pic.

Enjoy…