The Ol' Scam Mail Just Ain't What It Used Ta Wuz

Which is, I reckon, what a recent scammer thought when he received his email back.

*Nyuk*

Let's compare, shall we? Here's what the lil' bugger sent to yours truly:

Dear Friend,
I got your email on my search for a reliable business partner on theinternet.I am interested in establishing and operating a very viable business as ameans of investment abroad. I do not know too well how this is done inyour country,so I will need you to help me in this regard.My preference is any good profit yielding business and I would appreciate anyviable ideas you could come up with. I will also need you to help me look forproperties like homes and lands for sale as I am proposing to invest thesum of Twenty Million United States Dollars (20,000,000.00 USD) for this.

I do not know if you can and will be of help to me. For a brief on mypersonality; my name is Alhaji Hussain Ahmad, a Slovakian based in Libya.I am a retired Business man,formally into Oil and Gas business.I am 62 years of age,married with awife and 4 lovely kids. I have had so much problems with the LibyanAuthority just because am a foreigner I believe.

My need for this business propositionand to acquire these properties is veryurgent as I am planning to move out of this country with my family down toyour country. I want you to also help in finding a good home where my familyand I will live in. Please reply to my personal emailas soon as you receive this message so we can communicate further. bbhussain@gmx.com
Sincerely,
Alhaji Hussain Ahmad

Serious lack of imagination on his part, wouldn't you agree?

But with a little editing *presto changeo*, an otherwise bland email can become a cause de faux pas celebritee:

I got your email on my search for a person of dubious antecedence.I am interested in establishing and operating a movie making operation as a means of investment abroad. I do not know too well how this is done inyour country, so I will need you to help me in this regard. My preference is making home movies of me sodomizing pigs. I would appreciate any viable pigs you can get your hands on for me. You see, my religion forbids me to have
contact with pork. Well, they can kiss my ass. I want to sodomize pigs, so that's what
I'm going to do. AND, I want to make movies of me doing it, so I can sell them to other
pig f***ers here in the Middle East.

For a brief on my personality; my name is Alhaji Hussain Ahmad, a pig sodomizing lowlife based in Libya. I am a retired camel sodomizer, formerly into goats, too. I am 62 years of age, and I have hair plugs and false teeth. I have had so much problems with the Libyan Authority just because I love to buttf*** pigs. Asshats. My need for this business proposition and to acquire pigs to buttf*** is very urgent. I'm one pig-horny dude.

I want you to also help in finding a good home where I can sodomize pigs, videotape it, and
sell it to pig lovers of my former religion. Please reply to my personal email as soon as you receive this message so we can communicate further. bbhussain@gmx.com
Sincerely,
Alhaji Hussain Ahmad

I thought that this put some real pizzazz into his original email, didn't you? Sadly, he didn't think so:

blaspemy u will pay

Being the courteous type that I am, I had to respond:

What fiscal denomination is 'blaspemy' please? Which culture uses this currency?

Perhaps his silence only means he's trying to find out...can anyone help him find a currency stretcher, please?

Milestones Unrelated to Seymour

For my 650th blog post, I figured why not have a little fun with that which makes this blog the unique waste of time it's been for the previous 649?

First, to the title. It has nothing to do with my pet rock, Seymour.

"Phffffft!"

I guess he told me.

Next, to the photos h'yar. What a study in contrasts. More on that shortly.

Milestones. In a life, however lived, one cannot help but encounter milestones.

For some, life's milestones are important, defining moments on their journey from birth to weighing the marks they've made in their passage to the next phase of spiritual evolution.

Little of which has to do with me. From henceforth I'll digress.

Tomorrow, I hit a milestone. Since it's unavoidable, I checked my insurance, and find that I'm not covered for unsatisfactory results resulting therefrom. I have to accept that which tomorrow brings.

My life has not had all of the milestones one might associate with the average life. Yes, I was born. Yes, I got baptized. And perhaps defined at least part of my life's path, when I chose my moment of baptism to fill my diaper 'n attire in the hands of the baptizing minister.

A sense of timing has not been one of my gifts.

I was average in many ways. I went to school. Achieved puberty. Kissed my first girl. Contracted my first bout with cooties. Found I couldn't sustain it (the puberty or the cooties). Was a lackluster Boy Scout. Started drinking coffee, shaving, coping with zits and why my voice was changing. I even had time for pondering life's imponderables, like why I was stupid enough to believe, at a young age, that I could pee on an electric fence with impunity. And why dares of that kind are best blissfully ignored.

I learned about chivalry while losing a bout with 400 lbs of concrete, and how a chivalrous episode was not always appreciated. I learned about gravity while falling out of barn haylofts, trees, off bicycles, and from one exceptionally well-placed bird house, courtesy of a sister.

I graduated from high school, and learned a simple truth: cheerleaders were never easy, and only got harder thereafter. I moved onto college, wherein I proved the previous sentence. I never succeeded in dating another one. Not for a lack of trying; more a lack of confidence and resources.

Life in adultdom has had its moments. I think I had one in 1981. It's been long enough ago that I'm not sure.

But other milestones and I have not met on the highway of life: marriage was not in my cards. There were too many jokers in my deck. The one I have always referred to as "the one that got away", didn't really "get away"; she made a wise choice.

My one and only engagement was a loss, if viewed militarily. Perhaps if I had viewed it militarily, a timely withdrawal to protect my flanks would have been in order. At any rate, I have no kids to have cost me sleep at night, to have given me moments to remember, to have driven my hair gray, my bank account empty, or to take care of me in my rapidly approaching dotage.

Some egg is thanking me, somewhere.

I managed to avoid an affliction referred to as 'mid life crisis'. For the male of the species, this 'mid life crisis' oft-times took the guise of buying a toupee, a sports car, dumping the wife and getting a 20 year old girlfriend. All of this done under the auspices of proving to the world -- and ones' self -- that they could do in mid life, what they did in their 20s.

I had no need of such demonstrations. I never lost my hair, only its color. I never lusted for sports cars; I found I could get tickets in a simple 4 door sedan. And as for the last category, I had no wife to dump, and as I aged, I found that 20 year old girls scared the hell out of me.

In short, I didn't need to prove to anyone or myself that I could do in middle age, what I did at 20. I did little to nothing when I was 20, and in the years since, I've gotten better and better at doing nothing.

My chosen career field was never a particularly 'get rich' kind of field. Coupled with the fact that an old joke about how money talks -- mine only knows how to say goodbye. Not that I haven't helped it over the years. But at least my chosen career field keeps me employable at just-above poverty wages.

So I have missed a number of milestones that many of my friends, peers and colleagues, have not. But tomorrow is a milestone I cannot deny. Chronologically, I hit the low end of a western US interstate highway speed limit sign. Put another way, 37 years ago, I was a senior. 26 years ago, I was a senior once more.

Now I get to be a senior again. No diploma this time. Only discounts. Eh.

And now, back to the pictures. One is me, a few months after I got my start. The other is me, 53 years later.

Did I ever go downhill. Small wonder I'm still single. Well, okay...a few other reasons for that as well.

But this milestone does not signify that the End is near: I still have online email scammers to abuse. I still have a job that counts on me to show up, until they tire of my crusty curmudgeondom. I have a book project that might or might not eventually see the light of day. I might yet indulge in another storm chasing opportunity, taunting and tempting the tornadic gods to give me more than I bargained for.

And I have an unexpected milestone coming up this summer -- unexpected because I never got married and had kids, yet have been asked to play the role one would associate with a father at a very pivotal moment in another person's life. And perhaps I'll have more things to come along and cut into my hours of too much time on my hands, in the time left me.

What's more, I happen to have the benefit of knowing exactly how much time I have left. Yes, I do. I have 18 years, 9 months, and 26 days left. So says Deathclock.com. And that was on the normal setting. On the sadistic one, I died back in '93.

Since I'm still here, I reckon the latter date is still a 'go'.

Now I have 650 uniquely time wasting blog posts. Maybe I'll try for 700. After all, with now 55 years of practice, time wasting is what I seem to do best ;-)

Tofu is Evil

This is all because my pet rock, Seymour, had to pontificate on the substandard accomplishments of the Roman Empire, when it came to pizza restaurant chains. And how one tofu-loving cousin reacted to it.

Now we're in mortal danger.

After reading an excerpt of Seymour's rant about how the Roman Empire could not have been such a big thang, what with their total lack of pizza restaurant creation, a cousin of mine decided to go one step beyond, and throw tofu and anchovies on a pizza.

Isn't mixing tofu and anchovies kinda like having PETA costar on Roland Martin's bass fishing show? I rather thought so.

But there was, apparently, some chemical reaction to combining tofu, anchovies, mozarella cheese and tomato sauce. Once it manifested, the pizza took the combination and went....zombie. And now we gots problems.

Reports of pizzas 'free' if not delivered within 30 minutes, were misreported by militant pies on the ZPNN* as "liberated pizzas running free". Especially those laden with the trigger ingredients, tofu and anchovies.

A wilding, stampeding herd of 'flash mob' pizzas were illicitly born, fueled by some zombification process that was chemically triggered by the very unfortunate combining of tofu with anchovies and tomato sauce.

Survivors at one southwest Denver suburban intersection reported being blocked and pelted with anchovy and tofu bits, whilst being verbally taunted by the 'flash mob' of wilding pizzas. One survivor swore he heard the raging pies chanting, "I've got your pizza pizza...BITE ME!", in a credible imitation of the late comedian Paul Lynde's voice, through the veritable blizzard of flying anchovy and tofu bits. Another swore that she heard an almost Soprano-esque voice proclaiming " 'Ey....youse ordered dis? Youse want somma dis? Fuggetaboudit!!!"

Local officials are nonplussed.

Since Seymour made hisself unavailable for comment, wanting no part of the blame for having started this mess..("Did NOT!")..this blogger tried contacting several reputable pizza delivery chains, to ascertain if any of them were responsible for combining tofu with anchovies on their pizzas, perhaps contributing to this sudden onslaught of pack herd wilding and zombified pizzas. A typical telephonic inquiry went like this:

Papa Murphys: How can we help you?

Me: I'm inquiring as to whether or not you folks offer a tofu-anchovy pizza, and if you realize that you've created a pie that chemically goes zombie, runs in malevolent packs, and is now attacking drivers and pedestrians in assorted metro Denver neighborhoods?

Papa Murphys: *said to someone in background* "another crackpot", followed by a *click*

The response was the same at every pizza chain this blogger tried to contact. Except Dominos. There, the voice laughed in an eerie, nostalgic manner, before hanging up on me.

I swore it sounded like the Noid, with a mouthful of tofu.

An hour later, a strange 'knocking' at my door -- which I didn't respond to -- was followed by a sound not dissimilar to a wind-blown, pounding summer rain which lasted for 15 seconds or so. And then, an ominous silence. Armed with a shotgun loaded with anti-zombie rounds, I cautiously opened the door.

The outside of it had been 'flash mob' tofu-ed.

If this happens to you, it's my pet rock's fault.

"Is NOT!!!"

* Zombie Pizza News Network...cable and satellite have a little too much bandwidth on their hands...

Seymour On The Roman Empire

Seymour, the all-knowing pet rock, came to me with the most ludicrous of ideas.

"Is NOT!!!"

Seymour wanted to have me tell all of you good readers and Seymour-the-pet-rock fans, that he has some very astute and practically unheard-before complaints about a time in human history that was, in many ways, seminal to the growth and evolution of what we know of today in our forms of government, justice, politics, education, arts, entertainment and culture.

I told him that most folks aren't interested in his opinion of the very irreverent Comedy Central hit, South Park.

"Not THAT!!!"

Seymour was also not amused by my using the picture above, as an illustration for his subject of discussion. A man-bunny with a silly looking moustache, and a dog what looks very embarrassed to be in the same photo as the man-bunny of very dubious history. But I digress.

As you all know, Seymour the pet rock has been around a long time. A very looooonnnng time. Like, from the Beginning.

As such, Seymour has been witness to more history than is recorded. Certainly he has seen his share of pre-human history. To hear tell it, Seymour was once a kidney stone to a triciploplotz. "Was NOT!!!"

He mighta been.

At any rate, Seymour was there for the entirety of one of the most pivotal epochs in human history: the Roman Empire. From approximately 753 BC -- the founding of Rome -- to sometime in the sixth century AD, when pressures from within and without eventually brought a practical end to what had been a ranking world power, controlling much of the Mediterranean, and well into northern and eastern Europe, for hundreds of years.

Seymour freely acknowledges the contributions the Romans made to human history. And Seymour freely acknowledges the contributions the Romans made to today's world. Seymour once served as a paperweight for Polybius. Livy. Sallust. Cato the Elder. Cicero. And a chariot wheel chock for Sulla.

I can't write what Seymour has to say about Sulla.

But for all that the world -- and certainly the western world -- has gained from the ancient Romans, Seymour remains critical of the Roman Empire.

And it's not just because that on more than one occasion, Seymour found himself as ballast in a few Roman naval vessels, called quinquereme, which is Latin for "a big boat with oars and rocks in the bottom", or being used as a weapon by Roman legionnaires against a host of different adversaries, from Carthaginian heavy infantrymen, to wild Gallic and Germanic tribesmen who caked their hair in clay, wore little more than paint, and smelled (badly) of sauer kraut and improperly-aged lager.

Granted, Seymour was not much amused by moments like those.

But what Seymour found dubious..inexplicable...incomprehensible..and totally unforgiveable, was the complete lack of creativity by a supposedly mighty and advanced empire, as the Romans were reputed to have been.

Apparently Seymour wasn't impressed with aquiducts, reservoirs, coliseums, calendars, roads, written alphabets, books, contributions to the sciences, the arts, technology, education, astronomy, and the foundations of modern day legal and political philosophies.

"Oh, phfffft...just incidentals!"

No..what Seymour is critical of the Romans of is what they didn't do:

- for the hundreds of years of their ascendance, and at the apex of their power and creativity, not one Roman created, nor franchised, a pizza restaurant chain. Little Caesar's didn't come along until the 1970s or so!

Seymour has this "WTF?" look over that.

- and even more important: with all the migrations, invasions, et al taking place along pretty much the same routes, decade after decade, century after century, why didn't one Roman with more than four brain cells, envision the obvious and build a chain of 7-11 convenience stores? What with all those hungry, thirsty, weary migrants and invading armies, what 7-11 franchisee wouldn't have prospered?

You just know that Hannibal would have had to of stopped off at one for a slurpee, in advance of Cannae. And don't forget that Hannibal had 40,000 or so men along for the ride, with double that number of Romans awaiting them.

Did one Roman think to seize upon this economic goldmine of an opportunity?

"Phfffft! Not a one!"

Obviously, the idea of a 7-11 being pillaged by a horde of Vandals, never crossed Seymour's mind.

- and finally, to Seymour's supreme annoyance with that epoch, not one single solitary Roman entrepreneur ever bothered to come up with the idea of a chinese restaurant that took telephone orders and did delivery.

I did try to point out that telephones, and the technology for them, did not exist in the Roman Empire, nor for about 1100 years afterward.

"Phfffft...if they were so smart, why didn't they just invent them themselves? Hmmmm???"

So I tried to point out to a very obstinate Seymour that even had the Romans somehow figured out a very rudimentary telephonic communication system, I did not believe that the Romans ever ventured far enough eastward to meet and pick the brains of an early chinese restauranteur.

"They could have looked them up in the phone book!!! They had books, right? They knew what books were, right? They coulda looked them up IN A PHONE BOOK, COULDN'T THEY? HUH??? COULDN'T THEY???"

Those of you with kids can appreciate where I was getting with this discussion. It just became easier to make notes and give you what Seymour wanted.

And now, you get the picture: Seymour didn't like the Roman Empire. Because they didn't have, or deliver, pizza and egg rolls.

"PHFFFFFFT on them!"

Perhaps Seymour will favor us with his views and lengthy list of grievances with the Jurassic Period, when I am sure that, at one point or another, he was a kidney stone to a triciploplotz.

"Was NOT!!!"

Believe What You Will

This picture might not make any sense now. It might not make any sense by the end of this short post.

Or it might. It's all about what you believe.

At the start of this lockout-affected NFL season, who woulda thunk that religion and faith would have combined to drive professionals, progressives and sports prognosticators, just about nuts?

If you've been a fan of the Denver Broncos, you know the trials and travails of this team since the last season of Mike Shanahan, the arrival of Josh McDaniels, and all that transpired up to the end of last season.

And it didn't get any better, what with Denver's abysmal 1-4 start this season.

What it did was get a fan movement chanting for a change, just as it had late in the disaster that was last season.

The fans -- not all of them, to be sure -- wanted Tebow. Tim Tebow. The second of our first round draft picks in '09, by then coach Josh McDaniels (the first round pick ahead of Tebow was wide receiver Demaryius Thomas, fyi, the other hero this past Sunday).

I can add nothing to what Tebow's accomplished prior to his NFL career; he QBed Florida to two national championships, and won himself a Heisman. He was apparently a champ with his high school team as well.

Followers of football know that those accomplishments, stellar though they be, do not always translate into comparable success in the NFL. A long list of number one draft picks and Heisman winners, who turned flops and duds in the NFL, are out there to be named.

And plenty of NFL pundits -- players and not -- claim that there is a lack of the next level in Tim Tebow.

But Denver had an obligation, in the wake of Kyle Orton's subpar performances in '10 and the first five games of '11, to find out exactly what Denver had spent a first round draft choice on. Certainly first year head coach John Fox, and the new Broncos executive staff, which now included Bronco legend John Elway, needed to find out what they had, so they could start making plans for the future.

To be honest, it's been a mixed review. To say that Tim's a slow starter is...supremely understated. And that Tim's passing game has been largely understated as well.

But in a season that had disaster written all over it, he took Denver to six wins in seven games, and almost without exception, in cardiac-inducing fashion. Last minute heroics, made possible by a stellar defensive team effort, has been the mark of a Tebow-led team. Then he and the team appeared to fizzle in the last three weeks of the regular season, making it into the playoffs because the entire AFC West was high-centered on mediocrity, and Denver managed a tie breaker to help them rise to the top of the AFC West's mediocrits.

At any rate, prior to and during the run, Tim has not been shy about his religious values and faith. Even in the face of reactions varying from "yeah, whatever" to outright condemnation and ridicule from assorted persons of dubious antecedence and personal philosophy, like "progressive" mouthpiece Bill Press, TV ratings road kill Bill Maher, or the NY Times, among others.

Tim doesn't let the ridicule, criticism and insults take one thing away from his faith. He believes. Simple as that.

Now, I'm not much of a church goer myself. I know what I believe, and that is pretty much between me and the Almighty. What anyone thinks about what I believe, doesn't amount to spit in the river, at least to me. At the same time, I don't go out of my way to put my beliefs out there. I don't wear my beliefs on my sleeve, as Tebow does.

That said, I don't care that Tim does so, either. Doesn't bother me one bit. Tim Tebow's openness in faith is a nice change from the Charlie Sheens, Kim Kardasians, Mel Gibsons, Bill Mahers, Roseanne Barrs and persons of that ilk, who like to parade their lack of ethics, morals and preferences to -- in a lot of cases -- bash Christianity.

I think it annoys progressives like those named above, that a fair cross section of America would rather hold Tim Tebow up as a role model, than Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan.

At any rate, I'm a Broncos fan. I've been one since the early '70s. I still follow my original team as well, the Green Bay Packers. A team I do expect to see in the 'Big Show' again this year, though they don't have a cakewalk to get there.

I do not expect to see Denver there. Tebow and faith aside...I just don't think Denver is good enough to make to the 'Big Show'.

Fact is...I didn't expect to see Denver make it past the Steelers. My assessment was based in large part on what I've heard described as Denver's "prevent offense" that Tebow, faith aside, couldn't seem to stimulate in the crunch, as he appeared to do during the middle of the season. Perhaps the critics were proving right, after all: Tim didn't have the skills -- especially in the passing game -- to make a credible, long-term NFL QB. His 6-of-22 performance against Kansas City didn't help his defenders win any arguments. Even the venerable John Elway -- ol' "Cannon Arm" -- appeared to be losing faith on that score.

The Bronco's offensive performance in the first quarter against the Steelers seemed to bode very ill for the balance of the game, too.

Then came the second quarter. And Tim Tebow took his game to a new level others claimed he didn't have in him. He was throwing. Down field. And he was connecting. Down field. Four pass plays of 30 yards or more.

Where had this been all season? Then again, who cares, if it's here when it's needed.

Things seemed to cool down in the second half, and it took a couple of stellar defensive stands -- coupled with a couple of badly-blown calls by the officiating crew -- to send the game into overtime.

Luck -- or faith -- was with the Broncos on the coin toss. I just wasn't sure which Tim Tebow would take the field.

The 'down field throwing with accuracy' Tebow did. One play, one pass, and 80 yards later, Steeler Nation was stunned. Bronco Nation was ecstatic. And Tim Tebow was thanking his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to the joy of many and the angst of others.

Faith is what it is, to each and every one of us. You believe in it all the time, some of the time, or none of the time. Tim Tebow believes in it apparently all the time. He lives his life thus.

There's not a whole lot wrong with that. Except to persons like Bill Maher, who, at least to me, doesn't amount to a fart in a hurricane.

Now, to Saturday. Stats-wise, I don't think Denver has much of a chance in Foxboro this weekend. New England pretty well stifled Denver in Denver three weeks ago. Tom Brady is in the elite of the AFC. His receiving corps tore up Denver's secondary. It will be a home town crowd for the Patriots. The oddsmakers will have the game heavily weighed New England's way.

Despite the odds and opinions of his antagonists and pundits, Tim Tebow will go in there and put his faith and his trust in his God-given abilities, his teammates, and his coaching staff. And win or lose, Tim will make no excuses. Win or lose, he'll thank his Lord and Savior. Win or lose, he'll thank his teammates for their efforts, and continue to set a standard that many, with faith and without, will respect and admire.

Tim will be a winner, regardless of the outcome of the game. Never underestimate faith over the long haul (now you may refer to the photo, above). Tim does it with faith, grace and class. The nun in the picture does it with faith and firepower.

And that being said by one who doesn't always have faith: me.

Conventional thinking tells me that Denver hasn't got a prayer in New England on Saturday. That same thinking told me the same thing this past Sunday, against the Steelers.

Choose to believe what you will or won't. But we in Denver have come to know what Tim Tebow believes in. He's up front about it. He's unashamed about it. Up to this point in his life, he appears to walk the walk by it.

And beyond the game of football, in the game of life, there's just not a whole lot wrong about that.

Seymour on Sucks

My pet rock, Seymour, announced via email that he had an important announcement to make, and asked that he be allowed to make it h'yar.

A disclaimer will follow*.

"Will NOT!!!"

And with no further adieu**, take it away Seymour:

I am here to announce that after extensive studies of the subject material herein, I am here to present my findings to the internet world, so as to be included in this year's Nobel Peace Prize nominations for scientific research for the betterment of something, somehow, in some fashion. I mean, the president won one for doing nothing...

My research has led me to conclude, with out hesitation or mental reservation, that it sucks to be an anaconda.

Why, might you ask? Allow me the pleasure of elucidation, which I am assured will not violate the new energy CFL laws pertaining not whatsoever hereto that what's herein***.

Anacondas can't:

- play an oboe or a tuba

- eat peanut butter and laugh at the same time

- milk a chicken...(..uh...)

- date Sandra Bullock

- operate a TV/DVD remote control

- call to order Chinese derivery

- figure out place bet odds on craps

- understand one word of what Cartman says on South Park

- vote****

- get an MBA or PhD

- text

- get their genitals pierced

- program an ipod

- get a medicinal marijuana prescription

- walk their daughters down the aisle at a wedding...(my note: "DUH")

- ride a horse

- play an accordian...(and why would they WANT to?)

- throw a touchdown pass (there are some who argue that makes anacondas on par with Tim Tebow)

- become a lawyer, doctor, police officer, fireman or gynecologist

- dunk a basketball

- count to five

- pick their nose

- use a vibrator

- compete on Dancing With The Stars

- give a sh** about Dancing With The Stars

- learn proper tea etiquette

- light their own farts...(deterioration was inevitable and began several "can't"s ago)

- redefine what "is" is

- eat Debbie Wasserman-Schultz..(maybe a little steak sauce would help..? Okay, a few hundred gallons of it)

- slither after ingesting Viagra...(I think they'd find it hard to do much of anything..*ducking boos and whatever Seymour can find to throw*)

- talk 2012 politics on The Factor

- win a marathon...(unless they compete with a python..*ducking more boos and whatever's left for Seymour to throw*)

- shop online

- beat the pepper spray-wielding shopper to the Wii in Walmart on Black Friday

- drive a cat nuts with a laser pointer

- explain Rachel Maddow

- host a debate any better or worse than Donald Trump

- balance a budget, either

* Disclaimer: the so-called 'research' reported herein has not been independently verified by the NEA, FAA, WPA, NRA, NPR, UN, or any other acronym. However, most of it AlGore claims to have invented after Tipper took him to the divorce court cleaners. Seymour the pet rock is not a trade mark, but I'd consider a quart of ice cream in exchange for him ("Will NOT!!"). This blog post only happened because your regular host had a writer's block.

** Gesundheit

*** Seymour tells me that he's studying to be a congressrock to decompose legislation, legal-style...looks like he wrote NobamaScare...("Did NOT!!")

**** except in Chicago, San Freakcisco, or parts of NYC and Wisconsin, where anything is allowed to register and vote repeatedly

Veg Amore

Whether this is a fitting way to ring in 2012, or ring out 2011, I'll let you readers be the judge.

A very recent holiday weekend rendered up this brief anecdote from a local gendarme during a visit to my place of employ: in another facility, on a visit for reasons unrelated to the photo at the right, this local representative of law and order was on an elevator with a female of the species. One who appeared to be feeling no pain as a result of some form of artificial ingredients that, among other things, render standard inhibitions in an 'un' mode.

For this female of the species remarked to our local gendarme, that she was "asparagus".

Okay, fine. We all have our veggie moments in life.

But then she followed this revelation up with a suggestion that she was going to indulge in matters of sexual promiscuity. She was just more abrupt and to the point about it.

The local gendarme was not sure if he'd been propositioned by an chemically amping stalk of asparagus with a strong 'un' attached to what might have been her more normal hibitions or not.

It does tend to toss out all of my pre-conceived notions about photosynthesis, which I hadn't pre-conceived until I heard the word in school, along with an explanation of what it was. What I recall of it is something akin to it being a chemical process initiated in plants by energy from sunlight, that converts CO2 and H2O into organic compounds that plants store as sugar.

I must have missed the biology part of class, where in a specific kind of artifically stimulated "photosins-n-such" causes an asparagal chemical process converting something into orgasmic reactions that are treated as another kind of 'sugar'. These can, I suppose, wind up as viral images on FB, YouTube, and Maury Povich.

Thus explains the 'photo' part, I reckon.

And since PETA is pushing veg amore as their latest effort to stop people eating tasty animals, perhaps our local gendarme missed out on a true asparagal orgasmic moment in vegetable phallic-ces.

Perhaps that's why I never took to asparagus in the dietary sense. I was never propositioned by it.

Happy New Year. Or good riddance to 2011. One or the other. I think.