Voodoo Time Dot Com

I’ve never been a conspiracy theorist. I believe that human beings have walked on the surface of the moon. I believe that the Earth is round and orbits the sun. I do not believe that there are cures for cancer and AIDS sitting in secret government warehouses. I do not believe that extraterrestrials live among us.

But I do suspect there is something sinister going on with Christmas. With each passing year, Christmas slowly creeps up on the calendar. The Christmas lights appear earlier and earlier. Eggnog season gets longer and longer. I’ve never really complained much. When the neighbors put up their lights on November 1st, I shrug it off. And in September, when they start advertising the George Foreman Grill as “A Great Holiday Gift Idea!”, I don’t bat an eye. But this year, Christmas has gone too far. This year, Christmas ate Halloween.

I don’t have all of the data yet, but as far as I know, Halloween did not happen this year. I did not get a single trick-or-treater knocking on the door that night. I did not see a single person wearing a costume all day. And perhaps most startling of all, the “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” Peanuts Halloween cartoon was nowhere to be found on TV. No Great Pumpkin, ergo no Halloween. As Americans of the TV generations, we know that if there is no Peanuts holiday special, then said holiday does not exist. I wouldn’t even know Thanksgiving was coming up this week if I hadn’t seen the commercial for the Peanuts cartoon special. Really, all I need now is “It’s Daylight Savings Time, Charlie Brown” twice a year so I know when to change the clocks.

So Halloween is gone now. Alas, we hardly knew ye. And don’t bother buying a costume next year, because it’s not coming back. And now, Thanksgiving is coming up for those of us in the United States - in theory anyway. Now, surely, you must be a bit anxious about waking up on Thursday only to discover that Christmas has eaten your turkey dinner as well. Not to worry. Americans consume about 535 million pounds of turkey for Thanksgiving - not to mention all the trimmings. A major economic event like Thanksgiving won’t be going anywhere. The cranberry farmers will make sure of that. They’ve been stockpiling weapons for years now, and they’re militant.

But Christmas is coming and you can’t stop it. From now on, it will never be anything but Christmas time. So don your gayest apparel, get a second job, and get ready. George Foreman’s got a lot of kids to feed.

Bye for now.

One in seventeen (1/17) people worldwide will die of a mosquito-bourne illness - especially malaria.

The Dingo Fence in Australia is the longest continuous man-made barrier in the world, spanning some 9600 kilometers between New South Wales and Queensland. It was erected to keep dingos (the native wild dogs of Australia) out of sheep-herding areas of southeastern Australia while still preserving their habitat. China’s Great Wall is longer overall, but it’s longest continuous lengths fall far short of the dingo fence.

The jury seems to be out on what is actually the longest man-made structure on Earth. Depending on who you ask, the winner is the Dingo Fence, the Great Wall, or the Trans-Siberian Railroad. But it appears that the longest man-made structure on Earth is probably an underwater cable system. One of these, connecting the UK and Japan spans approximately 28,000 kilometers.

Today I learned that owls have extremely large eyes relative to the size of their brains. An owl’s eye is roughly the same size as a human eye, though their facial feathers make them look slightly smaller.

If humans had the same eye-size/brain-size ratio, our eyes would be the size of grapefruits and weigh about five pounds each!

The following are some common flowers that are edible. If you ever find yourself locked in the botanical garden after hours, you might make a salad of these:

Carnations - Petals are sweet.

Crysanthemums - Petals are tangy and slightly bitter. Leaves are allegedly edible as well.

Clover - Tastes like licorice.

Dandelions - Petals taste like honey when picked young.

Roses - All roses are edible. The darker flowers have the most pronounced flavor.

For a longer, more detailed list, check out this site.

Today I learned about limburger cheese. If you’ve never had the pleasure, limburger smells like really bad flatulence. It’s uncanny.

Anyway, it gets that way due to the fact that it is injected with Strep bacteria! These “starter cultures” are streptococcus lactis and streptococcus thermophilus.

In fact, people with compromised immune systems are warned to stay away from limburger as it is liable to cause infection.

“This is a test. This station is conducting a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is only a test.”

– MUTE –

And so it’s been for my entire life. I have been seeing and hearing the EBS tests on television and radio since I was a kid, but never ever in my quarter-century on this earth have I ever seen the EBS announce a real honest-to-goodness emergency - ever.

Think about it, have you ever heard the EBS go off without the whole “this is only a test” bit? And if you have, don’t go posting a comment to tell me about it because then this whole rant ceases to be relevant.

I look on the Emergency Broadcast System much like the cold war nuclear duck-and-cover drills we did in elementary school. Anyone who went to school between the 1950s and the 1980s probably did this. Your teacher says that there’s been an A-bomb detonation and would you all please crawl under your desks and cover your head. Even though it’s completely inconsequential what you do in the moments before your disintegration, it makes you feel good to know that someone’s got a plan for these kinds of things.

Since the ear-splitting horror of an Emergency Broadcast System alert seems to be reserved for nuclear holocaust and alien invasion, it seems to me that we need a way to disseminate information for the things which are almost emergencies - the little things like earthquakes, wildfires, terrorist attacks, and riots.

A complaint without a suggestion for reform is meaningless. Therefore, I propose a three-tier Emergency Broadcast System.

Level 1: Highest danger. Level one means that people are dead or are about to die on a prodigious scale. Pure duck-and-cover Armageddon stuff. This warning will sound off with a frequency above the human-audible range to as not to panic anyone who’s about to die. Dogs, however, will be scared shitless.

Level 2: Dangerous. This is stuff that sucks pretty bad, but is probably escapable. We’re talking hurricanes and violent civil unrest.

Level 3: Silly. A level three alert is used for national cheese shortages, computer viruses, and when George W. Bush insults another foreign nation.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!!!!!!

“This has been a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. The broadcasters of your area in voluntary cooperation with the Federal, State and local authorities have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual cheese emergency the Attention Signal you just heard would have been followed by official information, news or instructions. This concludes this test of the Emergency Broadcast System. Bye for now.“

Well it’s been nearly two weeks now since I’ve put anything new up. If you’ve been visiting for a while, you’ve come to expect my little AWOL periods from time to time. But this time I’ve got a good excuse. See on Halloween, I lost my job.

So now I’m spending most of my free time on the job search, plus I’m all pissed off and having a hard time thinking of funny things to write about. So bear with me. I’ll be back soon.

In the meantime, watch this Flash cartoon a friend sent me.

Today I learned that there are two types of killer whales - residents and transients. Resident killer whales are the cute, friendly ones we see on tv, happily splashing about and snacking on fish and squid. Transient killer whales travel far out to sea in pods of 1-7. Transients are hardcore. They hunt as a pod and dine on marine mammals as big as blue whales - the largest animals on earth.

Incidentally, killer whales (orcas) are not whales at all. They are actually a variety of dolphin.

I just realized I got all the way through last month without ever hearing anyone say the word “Rocktober” on the radio.