How to Make It in Life

If I ever have kids, and then my kids have kids, and their kids have kids and on and on, and then I die and I'm later reincarnated and then I happen to meet my great great great great granddaughter, but not know it, and then I happen to hump her and have a baby with her, would that be considered inbreeding? I certainly would think so. See, people need to consider these types of scenarios before they get all excited about reincarnation.

Beware. People may mistake it for a weapon.

In the year 7000, I shall be reborn a Siberian Tiger. I will be known as Owa Tana Siam and I will prowl my jungle domain, menacing all who dare cross my path with my fearsome teeth and deafening roar. One fine day I shall devour the last living human being alive, and it will be a most satisfying meal for this most fiercesome hunter. But until that moment of glory comes to pass, I shall be apartment hunting, and right now, it's not going so good.

Sunday. It's always been a day to look forward to, especially in the middle of a horrible school or work week. It's a time to relax, lounge about, and have butt sex while church bells ring in the distance. Sunday is a day that holds boundless promise. Newspapers are bigger. The air is crisper. The chalupas at Taco Bell taste better. The inevitable diarrhea you get afterward is not as explosive. One could say that Sunday is the best day of the week. It's rumoured that Jesus Christ rose from the dead on a Sunday just to take advantage of a JCPenney two for one sale.

But for all the good things that Sunday brings, as Sunday evening rolls around, one is filled with a creeping dread. For the setting sun reminds us that we are being pushed inevitably towards Monday. Homework needs to be done. Toys need to be put away. Sleep needs to be gotten to earlier. The promise of the new day leads to an evening of anxiety -- that oh-crap-I-forgot-to-build-my-science-project feeling. What a let down. One could say without exaggeration that Sunday night is the worst night of the week.

When I was a little kid, one of my favorite things to do was to jump into piles of dirty laundry my mom had set aside for washing. With a running start, I'd pretend to be Superman and dive fearlessly into the huge fluffy piles. I'd also bury myself in the dirty clothes and pretend to be the trash heap from Fraggle Rock. This was in a more innocent time before I learned about skidmarks and dingleberries.

I've heard good things about the Volkswagen Passat.



But I'm not sure I'd want to own a car that sounds like someone passing gas.

Lady Gertrude: Care for more tea?
Lord Henry: Why certainly.
Lady Gertrude's Bottom: Passat.
Lord Henry: Pardon?
Lady Gertrude: Sorry?
Lord Henry: Were you trying to whisper something to me?
Lady Gertrude: Heavens no. You're hearing things.
Lord Henry: My apologies.
(short pause)
Lord Henry: Dear Lord, has something died in here?

Actually, I think my next car will be a hybrid. Not necessarily by choice mind you, because by the time I get around to buying a new car, all cars will probably be hybrids.

And by "hybrid" I mean a car that's part machine, part animal. In the near future, bioengineering will advance far enough so that scientists will be able to breed powerful beasts capable of being fused to metal, circuitry and rich Corinthian leather to create the next generation of automobile. This will reduce the amount of gasoline you'll have to use because you'll be able to refuel your car by feeding it scraps from the butcher. (Just don't let the kids get too close.) The next generation of automobile will anticipate and avoid accidents, roar when it is stuck in traffic, and always be loyal to you. The only drawback is that your car will crap like an elephant and spew out "exhaust" like there's no tomorrow. Passat indeed.

I went to a Chinese restaurant last night with a few friends. It was great even though I was really in the mood for Mexican. So I compromised and had the moo shu pork, which is basically a Chinese burrito.



At the end of the meal we all broke open our cookies and read our fortunes. Here's what mine said: "A gambler not only will lose what he has, but also will lose what he doesn't have." A very sage observation about the evils of gambling and its effect on society. It warns the reader that if you gamble, you will lose not only your money, but perhaps your very soul. Or it may just mean you will start charging your losses to your credit card. In any case, this warning is somewhat undercut by the lucky lotto numbers listed right below it.

James Wolcott can write. Read this insightful essay about Rush Limbaugh and BJs.

Today is tax day. I hope that's not a surprise to you. It was almost a surprise to me. I filed my federal like two months ago, but I totally forgot about my state until someone mentioned filing theirs last week. Well anyway, I was lucky enough to get a refund this year. And I'll be spending it on seeing Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the movie version of my favorite book of all time. I saw the trailer and it actually looks like a good movie. Let's hope I don't speak too soon.



Opening April 29th!

Last night I had a dream about Henry Rollins.




Contrary to what you might think by this, the punk rocker/actor/poet/TV host's natural expression, in my dream he was not screaming and beating me into submission while demons feasted upon my soul. It was somehow a little stranger than that. In my dream, Henry actually looked somewhat like this:




Which is to say he kinda looked like this:




And even a little like this:



In my dream, Henry Rollins had become a raspy-voiced Top 40 singer from the 80s, though he didn't quite have the Richard Marx hair. Rollins was singing a power ballad that's still stuck in my head about how he used to laugh at guys like Richard Marx and Don Henley for being such unbelievably sappy sell-outs until one day he realized the pain that these MOR singers had tucked away inside them. So Henry identified with them and soon became one of them, singing in a very non-Henry crooner sort of way and making black and white videos about regret.

One day scientists have to invent a machine that downloads dreams, because this one was very interesting, to me anyway. And the song was quite catchy as well.

If Jesus died for our sins, then why did he come back to life? I think that's cheating.

No, it's not the hot new trend in L.A. cuisine. It's what I saw in my backyard.



I'm not sure if this is a Painted Lady Butterfly, which seems to be swarming California in large numbers, but I did see this guy sitting on the flowers of one of my green onion plants. I had no idea green onions produced such cool looking flowers. Anyway, so this is a nature scene from my backyard, one of the many of which I'll soon have to say goodbye to because the landlord is selling the house =( Perhaps I will find an aparment with lots of roaches instead. *Cue mournful violin music*

Does soy milk come from the nipples of soybeans?

I see nobody wants to do my research for me. Oh well, so I went and did it. And so here's the origin of "turd burglar": Back when the early white settlers headed west to settle the American frontier, they needed fuel for their nightly camp fires. Dried buffalo dung was plentiful and burned quite easily. But as the buffalo was hunted to near-extinction, their poop understandably became more and more scarce. Buffalo dung became a rare and highly sought after commodity. And in the Wild West, this meant the outlaw element soon got involved. Bandits would hold up stage coaches for the sole purpose of robbing innocent folk of their buffalo chips. Frontiersman would curse these purloiners of poo, these dung desperados, these... "turd burglars". And thus the term was coined. But wait, you say, robbery is not the same as burglary, is it? Shouldn't it be "turd robbers"? Indeed, you may be right. But in the Wild West, no one cared for such semantics. So don't be an a-hole about it.

What is the etymology of "turd burglar"? I have a pretty good idea what it means, but I'd like to know the origin of it. Anyone who answers satisfactorily will get a flattering poem written about them by Archibald von Archibald.

Thanks!