My GPA is 3.D'oh!

I haven't been graded for a while, you know, like on the Grade Point Average Percent Letter Grade Equivalent Scale...0 to 49% is an F or a 0. GPA

so, when I got this e-mail, I decided to enroll.

Here is an invitation to participate in an online research study being conducted by Mr. Tal Yarkoni under the supervision of Dr. Simine Vazire at Washington University in St. Louis. The study investigates the relation between people's personality and the content and style of their writing, and has been approved by the Washington University Human Research Protection Office.

The study consists of a single personality questionnaire assessing your personality and background, as well as information about your blog (if you have one). You can choose to participate in either a short or a long version of the study, so your participation can take as little as 10 minutes or as long as 30-40 minutes.

This is a one-time solicitation, and you will NOT receive any further e-mail from us. We obtained your e-mail address from your blog strictly for one-time use, and we will not maintain any further record of your contact information.

Here is my report card. 

D (56%) in Neuroticism or Emotional Instability..that's good right? Isn't it? Oh gawd I hope so..it said instability didn't it? Now I'm worried. Damnit!

B (70%) in Agreeableness..sheesh what a sycophantic little suckup!

B (72%) in Openess to Experience..I'll try anything ..twice.

B (72%) in Consciencousness..how does one Blog whilst unconscious..duh!

A+ (98%) in Extraversion..who me? Go on! Truth be told this blog persona thingamabob really is an extraversion of me. 

So that gives me a 73% average or a solid "B"..my GPA is 3.D'oh!

Here is the test... 

http://e-xperiments.org/personality/

 I suppose the content and writing style kinda matches my personality..why wouldn't it? Most bloggers create a blog that reflects the dominant side of their personality, that's why it is so interesting.

I want to find a test that gauges how well a blogger's cyberpersona reflects their real world/true identity. My blog persona prolly reflects how I would like others to see myself but I'm certain that most of you can spot the "leaking" and can ascertain a fairly accurate idea of how mundane and pedestrian I really am.  

I'm all about learning..i'm just not that fussy about the content.
So for moi, Blogging is a great way to discover how others interpret LIFE and evaluate "your take". 

Did you take the test..What did you get?

I CARUMBLAH

I am still sick.

I started feeling crappy about two days after I returned from my vacation in Mexico...that was a couple of weeks ago! 

Which coincidentally, was the exact same day that I had to go into a hospital (which is no easy task for a germophobe) for a prescheduled annual checkup. 

 

I think that I picked up some superbug Flu in that godforsaken germ factory!

((shudders)) 

If I did contract the latest END OF THE WORLD PANDEMIC MEXICAN FLU THAT IS GOING TO ERADICATE MANKIND AS WE KNOW IT  I would be the first case in my part of Canada...so far. We all know that one of these days a viral strain will morph into a global killer and take out millions...but this one? Not-so-much.

 

Either way, I feel terrible. I am draggin' my ass,  feeling sorry for myself and you know what? It's not even worth it to get sick anymore.

When you are young being sick was awesome! 

Your Mommy let you stay home from school and pampered you. 

You got to watch TV in your pyjamas, read comix, have a nap. 

Mommy would make your favorite lunch...it was f*cking heaven.

Well, that was then and this is now. 

I am not getting much *sympathy from my good-lady-wife...even though she who-never-gets-sick had to deal with this very same ailment! 

She admitted feeling "a bit off" for a few days. 

So where is all that empathy?

Ladies, this, is not some MAN COLD

this is like a MAN FLU and it's one million times worse! 

If... I.... do... somehow...

make it through the night... 

I'll try.... to get over.... and read....

 your blog..

must... save... others

((cough cough sniffle))

QUESTION?

When your man is sick and the Reaper is knocking at the bloody door, why is it that you women express such utter revulsion at the mere suggestion of administering the miraculous healing powers of *sympathy you-know-what?   

PEREZ BUELLER'$ PAYOFF

Like many of you I have longed to just sell out and become a parasitic celebrity gossip whore.

After three years (DUH!) I finally realised that nobody wants to learn about how or why Humans are such self destructive asshats. Better late than never.

So in the interests of catapulting my cyberstock into the $trato$phere, I am bidding a fond adieu to recycling scientificky crap and concentrating on what people really want in their personal blogging experience..celebrity dirt!

Say hello to Perez Bueller..

I may be a scum sucking wannabe leach..

but I'm your scum sucking wannabe leach!

I shall endeavour to make up as much bullsh*t as is humanly possible about all of those ungrateful line memorisers who by sheer dumb luck, just happened to have parents whose combined genetic pools inadvertentally produced impossibly handsome or outrageously beautiful offspring.

These people don't deserve to have it all just because of some fluke of nature?

Hell no!

So it's up to no talent hacks like me, and that other Perez whatshizface, to drag these Stars nyeh and their sorry asses down into the gutter for some payback.

This is why the muthaflippin' Interwebs was invented in the first place.

Interwebs inventor Al Gore had the foresight to understand the most basic of all human qualities and allow us to get our fix on a global scale..

the need to feed our schadenfreude!

*photo removed due to expiration of pharmacological agents in bloodstream

Please forward your personal list of Celebrities who you would like to see cut down to size. I'll be more than happy to invent outrageous rumors and create photoshopped pictures in an attempt to ruin their lives and make us feel better about being average.

Dear Perez Bueller,

I would dearly love to see some ridiculous but nonetheless feasible sh*t on _____________.

IT'S NOT NICE TO F*CK WITH MOTHER NATURE

Do you remember this TV commercial?

Butter became a sinister artery clogging agent of death!

Fortunately we no longer care about what we eat.

Now margarine is evil and butter is back.

Back in the 70s the only thing that butter was good for was demonstrated by Marlon Brando in Last Tango In Paris.

"Pass the margarine" just doesn't sound as sexy does it..even if you mumble?



Thiry years later we are still quite glib about the whole Mother Nature/Gaia thingamabob...



'In James Lovelock's latest book, The Revenge of Gaia, he argues that the lack of respect humans have had for Gaia, through the damage done to rainforests and the reduction in planetary biodiversity, is testing Gaia's capacity to minimize the effects of the addition of greenhouse gases in the atomosphere.

This eliminates the planet's homeostatic negative feedback potential and increases the likelihood of positive feedbacks associated with runaway global warming.

Similarly the warming of the oceans is extending the oceanic thermocline layer of tropical oceans into the Arctic and Antarctic waters, preventing the rise of oceanic nutrients into the surface waters and eliminating the algal blooms of phytoplankton on which oceanic foodchains depend.

As phytoplankton and forests are the main ways in which Gaia draws down greenhouse gases, particularly CO2, taking it out of the atomosphere, the elimination of this environmental buffering will see, according to Lovelock, most of the earth becoming uninhabitable for humans and other life-forms by the middle of next century,

with a massive extension of tropical deserts.'




DESERT ANYONE?
'According to James Lovelock, by 2040, the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine. The people of Southern Europe, as well as South-East Asia, will be fighting their way into countries such as Canada, Australia and Britain.'

He says that "By 2040, parts of the Sahara desert will have moved into middle Europe.
We are talking about Paris - as far north as Berlin. In Britain we will escape because of our oceanic position."


Lovelock believes it is too late to repair the damage.

"If you take the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predictions, then by 2040 every summer in Europe will be as hot as it was in 2003 - between 110F and 120F.


It is not the death of people that is the main problem, it is the fact that the plants can't grow - there will be almost no food grown in Europe."

"We are about to take an evolutionary step and my hope is that the species will emerge stronger. It would be hubris to think humans as they now are God's chosen race."

Like I said, it's not nice to f*ck with Mother Nature.

THE FEUD CHAIN...

"CRAPPY EARTH DAY"

As you read this endocrine disruptors may be mutating your gonads while Government and Corporate Liewyers argue about who is "kinda" responsible for plopping PCBs into our water supply.

I call this the Feud Chain.

Back in 1970, 20 million Americans ( 1 in 10 the largest protest ever) gathered en masse to protest the polluting of the EnviWRONGment.

So how is the cleanup coming along?

Did any of you watch Poisoned Waters on Frontline?

It was a scary synopsis of what is happening to two estuaries located in the USA, on the Wet Coast, Puget Sound, and on the East, Chesapeake Bay...

here is a hint...

they are dying.

Earth IS the water planet..as Carl Sagan would have nasally proclaimed it's where Life began billyuns and billyuns of years ago. Like it or not when the Oceans and Rivers die, and they are all connected, we all die.

PROFIT BEFORE PEOPLE

Our North American model of Government (which in theory is us) is chickensh*t about dealing with the millions of tons of phosphorous and nitrogen laden chicken sh*t, swine crap, and bullsh*t that is flowing into culverts to streams to estuaries to the Sea.

Phosphorous and Nitrogen are sucking the life-giving oxygen out of the water and creating dead zones.

Agriculture seems to be the number one enemy of the EEK-oh!-system. Factory farming and it's present economy of scale model has replaced the traditional Ma & Pa farm that Clark Kent grew up on. Most Pig, Poultry, Dairy and Beef operations are now massive incorporated entities.

Robert Kennedy Jr. called Corporations "externalising machines" because they shirk responsibility for their operations by offloading the cost of doing business onto the government (Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!= Votes! Votes! Votes!) which is funded by taxing the public...

so we are paying for it in more ways than one!

Sadly, little Piggies which are destined to go off to market, no longer prance about the farmyard like Babe.

Why are we so casual about what happens to all of the crap?

One factory farm can produce as much crap as a medium sized city.

Why do we tolerate this bullsh*t!

The damning example cited on the show highlighted how the Processor owns the chickens from the time they drop off the chicks to the time that they are loaded up...except they don't own the sh*t..that is the suppliers problem.

Some of it gets spread on neighbouring fields as fertilzer but much of the toxic ooze (filled with chemicals to speed up the growth of franken food species) runs straight into streams and makes it's way to the Ocean.

Industrial PCB laden waste is still gushing into the watershed from Factories and urban runoff. A double whammy..we get crap killing the oxygen and contaminents infecting OUR food chain.

After the get tough start spurned on by the Eco movement of the early 70s, the 80s became the deregulation corporate asskissing era under Ronnie Raygun who of course wanted the Government to do what it is supposed to do...protect Corporations and defeat those Godless Communists.

THE FEUD CHAIN

The program presented a prime example of the Feud Chain; Boeing and the City of Seattle are arguing in court about who was responsible for the PCB runoff...basically re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

On the other coast, the Chickensh*t Lobbyist argued that the so-called contaminated waste might be coming from all of the wild Fox, Geese, and Deer that live near the barns!!!

Those barns contain half-a-million f*cking chickens!

Hel-LO!

How does that Poultrygeist sleep at night?

The Orca population off Seattle may become extinct in about 20 years. As the top predator in the food chain, the PCB levels of the world's largest Dolphin are now so high that young Orcas are dying off at alarming rates.

There are only 86 indivduals left and they are now on the endangered list.

We (Me) are all polluters..we (me) live and support a profit before people society and our suburban sprawl has created millions of miles of impervious surfaces. Whenever it rains, an average sized city flushes an Exxon Valdez worth of crap into the rivers every two years.

We (me) all need to become Sea-huggers as well as tree huggers. We need to stop building McMansions out in the middle of nowhere that are dependent on driving cars and paying a few more bucks for buying food that isn't produced on factory farms. If we stop supporting them they will quit...

and no doubt start screwing us in other more creative ways but what-are-ya-gonna-do?

We also need to elect officials that aren't "chickenshit" about standing up to the Corporations..HAHAHA! good luck with that.

We have a small window of opportunity in which to change the way that WE live before the Biosphere reaches the point of no return. Mother Nature may have already started her plan to eradicate us by sterilizing Humans with our own PCBs.

Here endeth today's preachy sermon.

LOVE LAFFGHANISTAN STYLE

A new LAW in Laffghanistan declares that men can now demand sex from their wife(s) every four days. True story.

There are two exceptions that allow for a reprieve under extraordinary circumstances. If the woman is ill (headaches are exempt) or would be harmed by intercourse..which is ironic because if a wife refuses, her poor, blue-balled, husband may divorce her that afternoon, and have her stoned or decapitated.

This law only affects the minority sect known as the 4th Day Conjugists.

In a move designed to show how concerned they are about womens' rights, the government sprang into action and immediately introduced a PR program that would train young girls how to conduct themselves according to the new law.

This is fantastic news and gives girls something to do all day since they are not allowed to go to school. Girls are usually married around the age of 11.

On Wednesday a few dozen, brave, women boldly protested in front of nearly 1,000 angry, burka'd ladies and bearded guys who fervently support this new law.

The protesters were jeered with chants of "DOGS!" and "Slaves of Christians!"..how rude.

Outrage from the West was immediately apparent, including a protest from President Barrack Obama who deemed this law "abhorrent". The First Lady also jumped into the debate and is seen here at a women's conference discussing the impact of her husband's... er..impact.

Western men are naturally appalled that Laffghani men are gettin' mo' nookie than they are.

North American tradition dating back to the Puritannical invasion dictates that married men in the West can at best "hope" to "beg" their wives to tolerate the act of beastliness a paltry 3 days a year! Every fourth day sounds like crazy-talk!



These 3 mountumental occasions are the gentleman's Birthday, Valentine's Day, and Wedding Anniversary.

Single men are not bound by this "understanding" and are free to enjoy sexual favours from married women whenever possible.

As of Thursday, there are reports of men congregating in the thousands outside of mosques throughout North America demanding to convert.

WOULD ALIENS BE ANY SCARIER THAN OUR OWN MONSTERS?

Since the beginning of time, shamans, philosophers, science fiction writers, and even ex-President Ronnie Raygun, all understood that the only thing that could unite Humans, would be a universal threat from an extraterrestrial or supernatural being.

As we watch the Polar Ice Caps melting on the nightly news, it is quite apparent that even the prospect of our planet reverting to it's watery origins, will not be enough to unite Mankind.

In fact, this will only force powerful nations to conquer more territory in order to gain access to whatever resources will remain available.

Have you ever noticed in Sci-Fi movies how all of the countries put aside their petty squabbling in order to unite their efforts in destroying the Aliens or Killer Comet? Which they always do in the last 20 minutes HOORAY!!

So, don't be surprised if signs of a cosmic bogeyman are discovered one of these days..oh it will be subtle at first..
NASA satellites mysteriously explode after sending vague images of something out there.

Before we know it some guy with more degrees than a thermometer will be on a CNN breaking news special hinting that something unspeakably large is out there, we don't know what it is, but it's heading our way.

A few days later that something will have a catchy name (and it's own theme music on CNN) and then the tall foreheads will be speculating about whether it's intentions are peaceful or malicious.

The stock markets will start spinning out of control, church attendance will skyrocket, panic starts to set in. Politicians and Military staff at the Pentagon discover that they don't really have a contingency plan for an all out Alien invasion..other than the scorched Earth plan.



(Awesome hilarious 3D movie btw)

With the prospect of the Human Race being annihilated or becoming enslaved by Intergalactic Alien Insect Overlords, the one consolation will be, that the asshats who went out of their way to make this world such a miserable, f*cking, place will either die or become slaves like the rest of us.

Who would you help the Aliens eliminate first?

SUMMER GUMMIN’

WARNING. The following contains sexual content that is intended for an adult audience with a sense of humour. These events occurred, to the best of my recollection, sometime during a summer in the early 70s…I think.
May contain nuts.



Now there comes a time in every young man's life when he reaches the natural conclusion of his dry-humping tether. As most of us are well aware, this societally-condoned, alternative to ‘really doing it’ is universally accepted as the primary weapon in the war on teen pregnancy…after abstinence pffft!

Junior High “SEX “can at best be described as a nasty, thankless, business, which, by all accounts, is merely a rudimentary form of mutual masturbation.

Following hours of promissory pleas to love, cherish, and adore his girlfriend until the end of time, a process that can take a young lad weeks, even months to finalise, preparations for the securing of the perfect, parentless, location is essential. This arduous journey could, in theory, zap the ‘magic’ were it not for the testosteronic flooding of the near-dormant, reptilian, brain of a teenage male.

Once the perfect-parentless place has been located and all of the prerequisite promises of the contractually-obligated, never-ending love ‘crapola’ have been fulfilled, it is now time for the curious, young, lovers to explore the exciting, mysterious, world that consumes their lurid machinations.

The road from chaste to chafed may now begin.

It is a regrettable fact that the entire process from start to finish can be measured in nanoseconds. Let's face facts, after all is said and undone, dry-mounting is a roughshod-ride performed with enthusiastic determination but executed at a woodpeckerian pace.

And so it came to pass after having survived this awkward, chafing, stage, I was now enrolled in High School and it was high-time to make the paradigm shifting move to really doin’ it.

My opportunity arose one Summer’s night while partying in a resort-town bar in a neighbouring country. Despite being under the legal age to get laid or drunk in the State of ______ I had little choice but to ignore the statutes.

I was competing with older dudes for the attentions of the scantily clad, OLDER, girls who were old enough to go all the way, I knew that my only option for ‘scoring’ was through the miracle of alcohol.

Not only must I raise the level of my boom-chaka-laka to new heights, it would definitely help if my intended victim of lurve was totally hammered as well.

After several hours of intense oral injections of cheap, Yankee, beer, I was ready.
I lurked about the perimeter of the dance floor looking for the perfect gal who had the ideal combination of being classified 3H: hot, hammered, and horny.

There she was...a vision…and a perfect triple H vision at that!
But she was dancing with an older guy who could grow real sideburns!

Carpe Dayam!

I had waited until the last dance and it was now or never. I mustered all of the testosterone and liquid personality available and pumped it into the understaffed PR department of my brain.

I marched over and brazenly stood between her and her startled suitor and yelled in her ear in a nervous, woodpeckerian, cadence…

"HI! YOU ARE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN HERE AND I WANTED TO ASK YOU SOMETHING WHO DO YOU THINK IS GONNA BE MORE FUN ME OR THAT GUY?"
True story.

Her glassy eyes tried to focus on me..yep here I am, over here, the guy in the middle...and she somehow managed to adjust her staggering dance style in order to tip her head in my general direction and pulled me close like it was V Day 1945!
JACKPOT!

As her head slumped onto my shoulder I was half expecting a sucker punch in the back of my head from her newly redundant suitor. To my utter shock and relief, he simply spun around and continued dancing with the nearest female.

THIS IS HOUSTON CONTROL ALL SYSTEMS ARE GO!
We held each other up for a few moments until the music ended and the lights went up..closing time. Following a brief explanation of my immediate plans to my mates I carefully pored my prize into the vehicle..
my mates could bloody well walk back to the motel.

I slowly drive the vehicle (I know I know but it’s the 70s) into what I believe is a private, secluded, wooded, area nearby. It turns out, of course, that I had plowed though some bushes and stopped about 50 feet behind the bar but whatever.

WE HAVE LIFT OFF!
We zip through the small talk, yada-yada-yada, and it turns out that my intended victim is a 2nd Year University student about 3 years older than I was.
I 'm pretty sure that she had blonde hair.
HUGE BONUS POINTS!

We then fastrack the foreplay, rubba-dub-dub, and furiously removed our clothes just like they do in the movies. I race to tear open the dangerously sharp packaging on the prophylactic…
geeze..you’d think that the manufacturers would be conscious of this bio-hazard?

“WAIT,” she blurts out,
“Is THIS (hic) your first TIME?”

“Pfft no!” I lied.
Obviously unconvinced she speed-uttered,

“Thannnn lat’s make this a (hic) night to ramambur!”

To my astonishment, she began to pleasure me in a manner that I had only read about in the hallowed pages of the Penthouse Forum.
I was getting some you-know..marble gargling.
MORE BONUS POINTS!

Perhaps now I would get my own letter published in Penthouse, just like John Candy did in Splash.

Musical interlude courtesy of that "movie" starring Olivia Newton John Travolta:

“Summer Gummin,’ had me a bla-ast
Summer Gummin’ happened so fa-ast
Met a girl, who went down on meeee”

I sort of remember laying back to savour the moment and gazed up at the stars through the steamed windows.
TODAY I SHALL BECOME A MAN.

The pleasuring continued for at least 10 minutes…maybe 15…
I dunno? It was tantric OK?
I do remember that it eventually dawned on me that I wasn’t, well, really feeling much of anything. What the hell? I didn’t even know that that was even biologically possible?

NOOOOOOOOO!

Ok concentrate..concentrate…
I can still see, through my thickening beer goggles, the top of the head of the gorgeous OLDER creature.…whose name to this day escapes me..yeah, she was definitely blonde.

Since this is all blurry to me I can only assume that I started to daydream…probably about where my buddies ended up?...and hoping that it’d be hot tomorrow so that I could sleep it off on the beach.

HEL-LO! HEY DUMBASS CONCENTRATE!

Oh no, despite having my manhood meticulously manipulated by an OLDER chick I was losing my mojo.
Wait what was that?
It sounds like..like..snoring?
NO NO NO NOOOOOOO!

The stark realization that my now flaccid friend had nestled beside the lovely face of DESTINY now snoring on my lap, is a moment in time that I shall never EVER forget.

My attempt to reinvigorate her passion while simultaneously summoning a ressur-erection proved futile.
THE SHOW IS OVER.

I learned a valuable lesson that night.
In the matter regarding the intricacies surrounding successful teenage sexual activity we find these inalienable truths to be self evident: There is a delicate, finite, balance between;

A. the amount of alcohol required to muster the initial resolve required to procure a suitable object for self gratification,

B. lowering the inhibitions and standards of your intended victim, in order to penetrate their defenses and

C. somehow retaining the ability to participate and remain moderately cognizant of experiencing the act of frightfulness.

You live and you learn.

THE EASTER FUNNY

Yesterday was spent in the bosom of my gatherii familias and was a predictably raucous occasion of Dyonisian proportions. Yes the Greek God of wine, festivals, madness and merriment was kind enough to bless us at Easter.

According to Wiki: Dyonisus represents not only the intoxicating power of wine, but also its social and beneficial influences.

His presence became self-evident during a well intentioned slip of the tongue which somehow escaped the filtering process just before we began a splendid meal. A veritable event horizon.

An event horizon is a boundary in the space/time continuum, most often surrounding a black hole, beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer.. ya had to there!

Light from beyond the horizon (out of left field) passes through the horizon from the observer's side and appears to freeze in place...in this instance, through the miracle of alcohol, the moment became forever frozen in time and arrived during the prerequisite, calendaric, recitation of grace..and it wasn't me!

"Heavenly Father...

we thank you for everyone who is gathered here today and bless this food for chrissake*.

Amen."

*exact moment of event horizon followed by a nanosecond of awkward silence.

Hurrumph!

Somalia Later

SOMALIA LATER!

Irate aboot Pirates

The ongoing standoff in the Gulf of Aden has many perplexed. How can there be Pirates in the 21st Century?

First of all we need to remember that SOMALIA

is number one on the failed state index which measures the worst conditions for humans to live in. Sudan is number two.

When I hear the name Somalia the first 3 things that come to mind are the movie Black Hawk Down, super-model Iman, & Somali Pirates.

#1 Black Hawk Down

This is one of my favorite soldier flicks. It depicts America's last military encounter with this "failed state"...Somalia hasn't had a government since 1991!

During this collision of cultures, 19 Americans and over 1000 Somalis died. The caption Leave No Man Behind eerily mirrors the current situation that the world is watching. Somali Pirates have abducted the civilian Captain of a merchant cargo vessel, the first act of piracy on an American vessel in 200 years.

The Captain bravely offered himself as a hostage to the Pirates in exchange for his crew. Leave No Man Behind...especially a good, brave, man like Captain Richard Phillips. There are about 250 other hostages from other countries being held by Somali Pirates.

#2 Iman

Yes indeed, Iman, the uber-elegant, super-model and spousal unit of David Bowie, is from Somalia. For whatever reason, Mother Nature has nurtured and molded a gene pool in the horn of Africa that produces the most beautiful and handsome homo escapeons on Earth...atleast imho.

When you look at pictures of the pirates you cannot help but notice that these are not the usual suspects...those half-crazed, bearded, desert worn, thugs dressed in nightgowns...but Somali people are extraordinarily good looking homo escapeons.

Thanks to the ubiquitous influence of Television and Movies, most of us in the West have been trained to expect the bad guys to be U G L Y!

We must also bear in mind that these Somali Pirates have no philosophical illusions of perpetually penetrating 72 nymphomaniacal-virgins in paradise when they volunteer to expire in some glorious cause. Nope.

Despite the islamist influences in the political spectrum of Somalia, and the fact that these pirates live in a moral vacuum where human life has no value, they just want money.

#3 SOMALI PIRATES

Most of us scratch our heads when we read about these third-world, gangsta-pirates. It is hard to comprehend how a seemingly rag-tag group of heavily armed, stoned on Khat asshats can manage to somehow capture HUGE cargo ships from small boats with outboard motors..hundreds of miles out-to-Sea...and then force Corporations to cough up million$ in ransom?

The Pirates are actually quite well prepared. They travel out to Sea on large "Mother Ships", locate targets using modern technology, and then launch small attack squads with just enough firepower (rocket launchers) to actually sink the cargo ships.

Don't ask me why merchant vessels, manned by unarmed crews, haven't been travelling through the Gulf Of Aden in convoys with military escorts?

Instead they play the odds.

We also need to remember that there isn't a functioning government on shore so these pirates can do whatever they like. So far the Corporations seem willing to dish out $2M in ransom in order to rescue $20M worth of merchandise..

it's the just the cost of doing business in the new global economy.

A new book by Dambisa Moyo titled DEAD AID

outlines the failure of the West to ease their conscience and help Africa by just throwing tons of money at it.



Post Colonial Africa seems hopelessly trapped by millenia of tribal/genocidic hatred. The modern (meaningless?) borders are constantly being transgressed by vicious military-gangs who torture, rape, pillage, and murder, members of other tribes. These armies serve warlord thugs who are sponsored by the booty they pirate from well intentioned Western Aid.

These despotic tyrants "pirate" the aid, siphon the proceeds, and purchase modern weaponry for their private armies.

It's an unmitigated disaster for all of those emaciated mothers and children that we see on televsion BUT for the warlords and despots it's like winning the lottery! The African people aren't getting it and obviously we in the West aren't "getting it" either.

I wrote an overview of the continental struggle of nearly 1 Billion People on March 08, 2009 entitled AFRICkAn MESSage for all of us.

SO...What will happen?

This is an international problem that affects the globalization of the world economy. Now that the Pirates feel bold enough to take on the USA they may be in for a surprise. All wars are related to economics and this new aspect will be tagged on to the War On Terrorism.

The root of the problem, a failed state, needs to be dealt with by a coalition because of the impact on the human lives that are being tyrannized under the lawlessness that prevails in Somalia.

The other thing that needs to happen is for the Pirates to hand over all of the hostages. Then their land bases need to be monitored and secured so that they can't launch.

My guess is that the American Navy will need to hold off from delivering an appropriate response until the Captain is released via a secret ransom and subsequent safe passage of the Pirates. He did try to escape but was recaptured and now other pirates are on en route to bolster the resolve of their fellow extortionists.

Unfortunately the "lifeboat" in which Captain Phillips is being held, is a covered craft and that makes it difficult to "take out" the bad guys without endangering his life. It is unknown how much food and water is onboard. The US Navy circling the scene could wait them out and sink any approaching vessels.

Following that event, any vessel bobbing about in that part of the world will be strafed, torpedoed, and sunk on sight without prejudice.

Yo-Ho-F*cking-Ho, Somalia later!

Mexcellent Adventure

DONN'S MEXCELLENT ADVENTURE

Hola! I am back from Vallarta..h'eemayeen ocho days without blogging?

The 4 hour flight was mercifully uneventful and I didn't perish in a ball of flames.

We arrived late in the evening and once my son and esposa were settled in our room, I ran down to hear the sound of the Pacific Ocean.



Naturally I wouldn't go in past my ankles because I knew that THIS would happen.

So to relieve the stress of my fear of flying, and now sharks, I started consuming copious amounts of ALL-INCLUSIVE-RUM

No problemo...the next day I regained consciousness and found myself in paradiso!

I began looking and acting like a typical touristo..

which of course entails flagrant displays of conspicuous gluttony and sloth interspersed with wanton acts of unacceptable behaviour and disregard for traditions and customs as you periodically wander about town annoying the locals.

VallARTA has muchos ARTA.... so there is muchos to see and do.


Of course you can always make your own art too..

not bad eh?

I had an awesome time and I will discuss the weirdness of it all in greater detail when my brain starts working again.