House of Wachs

THE BRIDGE IN THE RIVER...WHY?

Like most of you, I have been in a funk ever since that bridge collapsed in Minnesota. It's sad to think that the ride at the Cumming Fair manned by the woman with 8 fingers and a mullet is safer than some of our nation's overpasses.

I don't know much about bridges except that they help people get from one side of a hole to another safely and dryly, and this one in Minneapolis did not, and therein lies the problem as I see it. I'm more of a tunnel person, so if a tunnel ever caves, I'm your guy. But common sense can help even a bridge naif such as myself to figure out how to prevent future tragedies.

First, let's blame someone. That always a good starting point. Many years working in a corporate environment has taught me to fix the blame and then the problem.

As the great Borat once sang, in my country there is problem. And the problem is transport. Therefore,  throw the environmentalists down the well. Their fanciful and self-congratulatory scientistesque theories have successfully allowed people to die. At least those people on the bridge had clean water to plunge into.Yay!

Where do you think all your gas taxes and carbon taxes and BTU taxes and luxury taxes and all the other punitives of transportation freedom go? I'll tell you. They pave the road to hell by spending those dollars on things like bike paths for people going to gay marriage ceremonies, and light rail to take oldsters and junkies to get their government-funded preservatives. To road maintenence? Oh, honey! I have a bridge to sell you in Minnesota.

Here in Atlanta, they only recently figured out that we need to build more roads to swiftly facilitate the spread of illegals and the high skills they bring to such fields as cleaning and folding. But it's been rather slow in coming since any politician who runs on a platform of "more roads, less talk" will be confronted by a mob of insufferable peasant wannabes with ethanol torches threatening to go naked unless tax dollars are instead used to build a steam-powered mag lev peace train system that goes from one impoverished scary ghost neighborhood to another. It's hard to get even a golf cart path repaved these days without some controversy.

Since Minnesota is virtually Canadian in culture and politics, it would not surprise me that the "Rot in Hell, Road!" mentality is even more acute up there than it is here. They like their weather cold and miserable. They NEED their weather to be cold and miserable. If they don't have that, they've got nothing. Mall of America? It's a mall! Except in this one you walk past a rollercoaster on your way to Hot Topic. Yah, big whoop.

Global warming would kill Minnesotans carefully nurtured image as hardy, stoic Nordics of uncompromising inner warmth and soul; the luddites luddite. Garrison Keillor would actually get some laughs.

Well, caring about preserving caribou habitats and ice fishing lakes is very sweet and all, but it's a luxury you can afford only if you are willing to see other people die for the cause. It's sure as hell not going to reverse the corrosive effects of 8-9 months a year of road salts used to de-ice their bridges, which, if I recall my road signs correctly, always freeze before the regular road surface. Only money paid to men who can fix and maintain bridges with icky things like tar and concrete and metal can do that.

I would also ban the ceremony of christening bridges and ships by busting champagne bottles on them. It can't help. Step on a glass like the Jews do. Kick off a lifetime of married sex/driving on a corroded bridge. No difference.

There. Problem solved.

SCIENCE!

How is it that it takes a film studio about 3 hours after a premiere to determine whether a movie stays or goes, a TV network knows within 3 weeks the fate of their new programs, but it takes a radio company 3 years and then maybe just one more quarter to determine whether something DOA will suddenly catch fire? The head. It is on auto-shake.

If that is not enough necksercise for you, CSPI, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the research and development arm of the Center for Cash Hungry Attorneys With No Discernible Plaintiffs has successfully threatened Kellogg's to back off of using Shrek and other cuddly characters in their ads for cereal.

Science. That's a word that means when you figure that cereals with sugar and cuddly characters endorsing them have been around since before the word obesity was invented, then maybe cereal characters should be thrown out as a suspect in child obesity cases. Science. It can tell you exactly how many households have obese children with incomes over $10 a year make purchasing decisions for the family.

Meanwhile....

If you doubt for a second that porn is completely accepted in the mainstream of American life for people under 30, catch the next ad for AXE Body Spray, or, if you're not a fan of "Adult Swim," "Scrubs" or "Kyle XY," as I am, click here to see.

Their current marketing campaign is summed up by the simple slogan, "Bom Chick a Wah Wah," which is the phonetic pronunciation of a classic guitar lick played during porn scenes. Does this work at all if the target audience doesn't know much about porn?

Big Cologne has always marketed it's products as lady magnets. But they drew the line at what would happen after you got the ladies by the nose. Hai Karate showed adult men fending off (and punching!) horny women in the 60s. Even Hai Karate men had traditional ethical and moral boundaries and they were enforced with a haymaker, if necessary.

The Old Spice Guy attracted women hanging about the wharf, but even they went off into the soft-focused distance, perhaps to a cozy chowder restaurant with a fireplace for some romance. He had a shot, but not a certainty.

"Bom Chick a Wah Wah." Whoa! The Axe people are betting the sex farm that their target audience of 16-30 knows plenty about porn, even it's musical conventions, thus guaranteeing them an encounter with women so sexually aggressive that one sniff of AXE will overcome any gestures of romance or self-defense by the wearer to create a real life porn scene. The floor may even sprout shag carpeting.

Keep chasing Tony the Tiger. He's a problem.

PALM OF HAND-APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD

Oy! As a top weekend athlete and big fan of pain relief, I was sad to see this news story that one of my favorite products has been unfairly charged in an overdose.

Girl Ben-Gays Self To Death

New York — A 17-year-old track star died in April from a rare toxic dose of sports cream, New York's medical examiner said Friday. Arielle Newman, a cross-country runner at Notre Dame Academy on Staten Island, died after her body absorbed high levels of methyl salicylate, an anti-inflammatory found in sports creams such as Bengay and Icy Hot, the New York City medical examiner said Friday. The medical examiner's spokeswoman, Ellen Borakove, said the teen used "topical medication to excess." She said it was the first time that her office had reported a death from using a sports cream.

Still, hysterics will call for endless legal tribunals to solve this burgeoning epidemic. Hundreds of morning radio shows will now have to cancel their "Sit in a tub of Absorbine Jr. to win an XBOX" contests, and the price of Icy Hot will surely rise as the legal fees and assorted crisis management costs are passed along to the achy consumer forcing millions of senior citizens to turn to the streets where shady figures are more than happy to addict them with Oxycontin.

Her mother, Alice Newman, said she still couldn't believe her daughter's death was caused by a sports cream. "I am scrupulous about my children's health," she told the Advance. "I did not think an over-the-counter product could be unsafe."

Um-hmmmm. Somebody's gonna have some sore muscles after laying the foundation for that lawsuit, and don't expect me to lend you any of my sports cremes that I've horded for the coming inquisition. No way. I keep them in a bunker in my backyard with supplies of duct-tape and Sudafed. You can easily take my sports cremes from my sore, tired hands, so I keep them locked tight.

I'd like to address the mother, and I want to select my words carefully and sensitively because she is experiencing grief and greed, either of which is very stressful alone....THE PRODUCT IS SAFE YOU...YOU...STUPID PERSON!!!! ...Forgive me. I am sorry. Wash my mouth out with hexachlorophene-free soap. What I meant to say is that the product is safe when used as directed...dumbass.

This may seem a minor point--in fact, it is a nit, but I feel compelled to pick it. It's creme, not cream. Creme is cream without any dairy origins. For example, Oreos are "creme-filled" because the filling is not made with any cream. But whipping cream is dairy hence the spelling. Right off the bat, the use of "sports cream" in the first sentence indicates the writer of this story is a sloppy half-wit. If you want to get your medical news from sloppy half-wits, well, go right ahead, but not me. And is something that has never happened before "rare?" The correct word choice would be "unprecedented." Rare implies precedent.

The night before her death, Arielle returned from a party and spoke with her mother for hours before going to bed.

What happened at the party? I saw "Grease" a few times and I know that some girls like to get together and eat snacks and apply anti-acne treatments while gossiping about boys.  It's not out of the question that there could have been some sports creme passed around at the party. My college buddies used to have Robitussin get togethers quite often. Perhaps a DVD of "Jackass" was being shown influencing the kids to eat some balm as a crazy stunt. Kids these days.

No one seems to be curious what exactly happened at the party. Attack of the sloppy half-wits.

Let me also point out that, whatever the toxicity possiblities that lie within topical sports cremes and gels, this kind of incident could never happen to men. Men have a built in safety valve that naturally curtails the excess use of sports cremes. It is alternately referred to as "the sack," "the brain," "the silk purse," "the tea bag," "the jewel pouch," "and the doodaddangler." Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the venerable scrotum!

All sports creme application stops at the point when creme touches the cream factory, and automatically limits the cavalier attitude toward sports cremes that may have gotten this young lady in harm's way.

Sloppy half-wits with penis envy. Is that who we want running America? At least we have this soothing balm to comfort us this weekend.

TO AIR IS HUMAN

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that  CO₂ gasses are pollutants and must be regulated, how far off until human breathing is subject to collection, measurement and taxation if not outright cessation?

And what about our trees? How will they be able to thrive without the garlicky output of our collective breaths?

Don’t worry. Those masks we will be hooked up to go through what was once our home’s central HVAC, retrofitted by each home owner, of course, with the help of a generous tax credit of 30 cents on the dollar by the omniscient Congress.

The noxious human pollutants will then be collected in a tank and hauled away by municipal gas workers to a central repository where unionized, and therefore, skilled and professional workers will spray the gases onto at risk forests and vegetative sites, targeted by environmental priests for help.

Holman Jenkins, in today’s Wall St. Journal, summed up our new national religion very well:

…it's perhaps sufficient to say that many people believe in manmade global warming because many people believe in manmade global warming; Al Gore believes in it because many people believe in it; many people believe in it because Al Gore believes in it; and so on, right up to the highest court in the land.

Here’s the article about the current climate psience.

(May need subscription)
 

YELLOW SUBDIVISION

Yay! It's March Madness in my head! Look at me. I'm wearing a yellow shirt in celebration!

Even I'm telling people, I Can't Believe It's Only March! And I'm not usually one for such inane small talk.

The Enemies of Wachs will be happy to know that I have been quite miserable lately. Today was probably the worst day yet, and no signs of bottoming out.

So there I was last week, on Memorial Drive. It's 91, and the natives are already restless and angry here at the DeKalb Traffic Court, but I still am convinced global warming is a good thing. Life is adaptation.

Your favorite petty criminal, me, was nailed doing 89 in a 55 a few months ago on 85. I'm sorry, is that too many numbers? I was going fast. Safe, because I'm a great driver, of course, but fast.

89 over the 55. Only 34 over the limit, just 1 under Governor Sonny's proposed "Super Speeder" category, so no trophy for me. And I was actually doing 94 as I recall, in one stretch of that soon-to-be criminalized journey. Must have been going up a hill at the speed gun.

I did not know this, but sometimes enterprising traffic court judges run what they call "courtroom specials." Today, the judge made note of all the speedy customers in his courtroom, and decided it was time for the wheels of justice to at least achieve the minimum speed.

"If you wanna skip your trial, just pay a fine, and have it changed to a non-moving violation, step forward, tell me your name, and go see the cashier downstairs."

But, speed kills, your honor!

"If you'd like to stay and get some points or go to jail, you are welcome to do so."

Bye!

I've never seen so many people move so quickly to throw cash at the government. We all piled into the narrow stairwell to the cramped cashier's lobby downstairs, where makeshift security equipment is crammed into the foyer, no more than 10 yards from the cashier window. Very little security advantage as I see it. A dude with a decent shot could rob that place from the front door, it's so close.

Well, anyway it is still a great deal this judge had going. Even for me in my "Up and Coming Super Speeder" category, it's worth it. No points!

I called my wife.

"Hi! I got fined $295, stood in line in 90 degree heat for an hour with overweight, impatient 3rd worlders, and sneezed my head off. But good news! I saved 15% on our car insurance.

She wasn't thrilled, but women rarely see the long view of finance.

I aborted my 3.5 mile walk/run today, so, I guess I am pro-choice after all.  I passed a car down the street that has been parked for 4 days and someone with really neat handwriting had written"pollen" in the pollen parked on the hood. Today, the letters are nearly filled in so you would have to look carefully to see the word "pollen" on the car. The fates were sending me messages in the spores, but I kept going, which was a huge mistake. The bubble boy and those photo-electric kids, who explode if exposed to sunlight, have it easier going outside. Sangina Malinkar feels more virile. So I shut it down after just 2 miles.

The big problem with allergies, besides the anti-social fluids running down one's face, and smelling like egg salad, is that the only sure cure is temporary dehydration. Even with a good antihistamine, the sufferer is too dehydrated to run well, and then more pollen gets all inside everything with a hole in it as exercise continues, sucking more moisture from the victim. Then comes the loginess as if one was running through a field of poppies, and...can't...go on.

Claritin is no match for these days of the Chartreuse Menace. I take three at a time because the recommended OTC dose may do wonders for the drug companies' legal fees, but it doesn't stop my allergies for more than 2 hours indoors, 8 minutes outside.

Now that I have a lot of freer time, I long for the days when allergy pills were big and beefy and they knocked you down like a taser and put you to sleep for 16+ hours. I remember being dragged to dog owner's houses by my parents when I was a kid for Passover Seder. They tanked me up on in the car on anti-histamines...70s-style anti-histamines...and I would fall face first into the bitter herbs before I could utter another word of the 3rd question.

Now they have pills for adults that once were the realm of mere children.  They dry you out and keep you wide awake to enjoy the parchiness of it all. We are forced to sacrifice health and happiness all in the service of preventing a few White Trashians, and Hillbilly-Americans from getting meth mouth and giving BJs on Craigslist. I've taken the initiative in finding alternatives for all of you sufferers out there who need a knight in yellow armor. My research indicates that the cannabis plant is a terrific anti-histamine. Not only that, it's legal when used for medical purposes such as this.*  Plus....just pennies a serving.

Thinking quickly before the total apathy that accompanies a rough sneezing jag kicked in, I captured the aftermath of today's aborted jog around MILFville for your listening pleasure, recorded live in my restroom. That's a shower droning in the background. Sorry.

Pollen: Seeds of Destruction.

*_{Check your local laws. Not all jurisdictions participate in this program.}

SPACE AGE ROMANCE, LOW RENT RENDEZVOUS

The story about this killer astronaut chick has been like a fly buzzing around my head all day. Media is more fly-like these days, I've decided. Nervously darting from interest to interest, looking for fresh carcass, stirring up shit, never remembering anything that happened more than a second ago.

In the accused killer astronaut's favor, I have heard from top astronauts such as David Bowie,  Elton John, and Stanley Kubrick that it gets mighty lonely up there and oftentimes our spacepeople see other beings from other galaxies who have a different and, sometimes, superior moral code than ours on Earth, so who's to say violence wasn't the right choice in this case?

If I were her lawyer, I'd claim that ET told her it was the right thing to do. It would outrage many because ET is, after all, a pillar of our society and seemingly unimpeachable due to his tireless emotional appeals for love and unity, but it may work.

Our brains are not as developed as, perhaps, other beings. I read where we only use 4% of our brains on any given day. We're not nearly as advanced as we think. No, as long as this stays between astronauts, we civilians should stay out of it, because it's not "our thing." 

Nowak raced from Houston to Orlando wearing diapers in the car so she wouldn't have to stop to go to the bathroom, authorities said. Astronauts wear diapers during launch and re-entry...

Obviously the woman is nuts, but I've gotta give her some respect on this one. How embarrassing it must be to government officials who must now explain how they spent our tax dollars to train a woman how to diaper herself, so she could drive non-stop to kill the competition for some cock?

So, how good and charitable and saintly do you feel now after seeing the effects of dumbing down entry standards in the military, good-intentioners? I'm sure her government evaluators were in on the fix to characterize her borderline personality as "strong-willed," so that equally nutty and gullible women could join up for the military and send their votes to their pure-hearted benefactor, Senator Lesbian McVictim.

Outside of political gain, women currently have no business being in space. There's simply nothing for them to do.

The woman's big mistake was not doing her deeds up in space. I don't think there are any laws in space yet, so you can do pretty much what you want. The only reason nothing goes wrong up there is that the astronauts are lied to and told that there are laws in space, and that they're going to count the number of astronauts on the way up and if the number coming back doesn't match up, they will be punished. If I'm wrong about this, please show me your source for the official laws of Space, written by someone not named Roddenberry or Wells.

How far do our laws go? Anyone know? Discuss. As far as a rocket can take us? What if someone killed someone a light year away? By the time you hear about it, everybody's dead anyway. It's unenforceable.

What if we get out of the rocket on the moon? Who's call is it? Right now, as you read this, people on the moon are allowed to kill each other, which is why we've seen fewer moon landings of late and no one is currently there. That's why we need to establish before our sworn enemies do, our way of life on the moon. We need to get up there, kill every sentient being we find and start fresh. Because they won't accept our laws of decency and justice. They are lawless. We have no time to waste. The Muslims are almost finished building their giant ladder to the moon.

WHAT GLOBE ARE YOU FROM?

The global warming crowd is going to run into great difficulty getting their totalitarian agenda across because they seem to have a knack for asserting that the world is burning up during the time when every person in the US is freezing their ass off. Are they that greedy and impatient for political power that they can't wait another 5 months when everybody is fried and cranky? How arrogant is that?

"I'm cold."

"That's because of global warming."

"But, I'm cold."

"That's because the globe is getting hotter."

"But, I'm cold."

"That's global warming for ya."

"What if I'm hot?"

"Third base!"

"Yiiii Yiii Yiiiii!"

BEING JOE BASTARDI

I'm a little weary lately because I keep having this recurring dream that wakes me up and pisses me off for an entire hour before I settle down and fall back to sleep. In the dream, I'm just walking along minding my own business when some dude comes up and kicks me in the back of the head. Sometimes I'm at the car wash. Sometimes I'm at the circus. A mall. Doesn't matter. The plot is the constant. Walk. Mind business. Get kicked in head. Three nights so far this week of this current dream genre that is sweeping the box office of my subconscious.

It really feel like I've been kicked in the head, too. I'd find this physiological phenomenon of phantom kicks to the head very interesting if it wasn't happening to me so routinely. This is the first cousin of the dream where I feel rather certain that someone big is pinning me down so....WAKE UP! And then I awaken and I still can't move for what seems like another eternity due to the fact that the only thing on top of me is my nightmanstink.^TM

What is this self-paralysis phenomenon called? No, you don't get a free shirt. I just want to know. Tell ya what, if you start a support group for people who have paralyzing dreams, I'll make an appearance and waive my fee as long as one of you buy the lemonade and cookies.

Except, don't schedule any activities on Thursday for me. Nosireebob! There's a storm a-comin' to these parts. This groundhog is staying in the hive...or...whatever. I do not want to get stuck in the trace amounts of sleet that are 75% certain to hit our zip code according to our computer models here at the Storm Trooper Action Center Alive!

I watched intently last night as the local, swashbuckling meterologist who is an enjoyer of large vegetables, Fox 5's Ken Cook, spent the first 15 minutes of the news constantly checking the Mellhish Meter and explaining all the possible weather scenarios that we could see in the next 36 hours and that computer models were being updated throughout the day. What struck me was the uncertainty of it all. Here is a killer storm on the loose, for all we know, with over 2 hours of freezing rain and sleet poised to kill and inconvenience for hours on end, and you, Ken Cook, certified meteorologist and king of large vegetables, you say YOU DON"T KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN FOR SURE?

But..but...but...

I was just watching CNN a moment ago, and there was Almost President/Chief Scientist Al Gore telling me that he knows for a fact that our great-grandchildren will all be dying of bad environment 60 years from now, and he didn't need to check for no damn updates on his mad computers. Maybe he's using a better model computer than the TV weathermen do. Maybe because he has the government on his side and they do everything first class, Al Gore got a Mac, and people like Ken Cook are stuck with Windows Vista/Large Vegetable Lovers Edition.

There's actually a real heated battle going on some weather-related websites between broadcast meteorologists and environmentalists. I don't know if fisticuffs have broken out yet, but this is threatening to get Attican.

It seems the core of the problem is that most meteorologists, such as, perhaps, our own swashbuckling appreciator of large vegetables, Fox 5's Ken Cook, have taken a stand of doubting global warming and it's political agenda and this is driving environmental activists, such as Witch Doctor Heidi Cullen of the Weather Agenda Channel, completely batshit to the point that she proposed revoking the certification of any meteorologist who dares disagree with the oxymoronic "consensus science" on global warming. This would have the desired effect of having said TV weatherperson effectively blackballed from broadcasting his brand of weather shockery over our public airwaves. Next thing you know, he'll be telling people it's OK to participate in water-drinking contests for Nintendo games, or something dangerous like that. What a bum.

If you're interested in the real storm of the century, click the links above and make sure you read the howls of rebuttal in the comments section of each blog, like this one from "Judy."

Please stay with Storm Stories and leave politics out of things.

You go there, Judy.

Yeah, Weather Channel. That goes double for me. Stick with Storm Stories and The Rainy Day Puppets and The Drainage Show and The SPF 30 Variety Hour featuring the Eve Plum Dancers. Don't be getting all political.  Just tell me what clothes to pack for Mississippi when I drive there to grab me a few cases of black market Enfamil so I can afford Mommy some new Grillz. Thankz.

Remember the Johnson

There is a preview currently in theaters and on TV for the latest Bruckheimer (the people who brought you the forgettable Remember The Titans) formula film about 40 year old social issues.

This one is about how Texas Western University, the current UT-El Paso, the future University of Mexico-El Paso, was integrated in 1966 by coach Don Haskins and came from nowhere to win the NCAA championship.

It was a great moment...then. But I ask the marketplace of ideas, is anyone really fascinated, in 2006, with how blacks are really good at basketball and don't enjoy racism? We'll see.

Also, note to Hollywood: Please subtract $25 from the box office tally of "Walk The Line" and add it to "Chronicles of Narnia." I bought tickets to "Walk", but my family changed it's mind and we went into Narnia instead because it was starting immediately instead of an hour and 15 minutes later. Sorry for the mix-up.

In this the season of donning gay apparel, here is a shirt for sale at Barney's Co-op at Phipps Plaza:

No, this is not Team America merchandise. According to the display, it's to "create solidarity with AIDS sufferers," for the everyday Barney's low price of $35, of which perhaps 2 cents will go to "research."  It only took most of America about 10 minutes of "research" to figure out that the best way to minimize AIDS was to manipulate yourself instead of the public's emotions. The shmata trade still is stuck in the 80s. Can a timely Bruckheimer film about Magic Johnson be far behind?