Pictured, from top to bottom, Farmer John, Spike, and the Mad Hatter, all hammering out unsolicited opinions on their blogs. And I'm no better.

Last year, I made a resolution to blog here more often. I’d link back to it, but you can actually just scroll down a bit and find it, which speaks pretty well for the level of blogging I’ve done in the last year.

Well under 10 posts. That’s my big improvement. Even old standby topics I usually never miss, such as bitching about consumerism after Black Friday, have gone un-commented by Longboard University.

As a matter of fact, I’ve been way the hell out of touch since I started my new warehouse job. Y’see, the holiday season is a helluva time to buy stuff, and here we are in the 21st century, where that happens online, and here I am, at a niche company called All Things Jeep, popping out packages like tomorrow won’t exist.

We’re talking six-days-a-week, baby, which is good for the bank account but will promptly end post Christmas.  My company sells what might be best called Jeep paraphernalia — bumper stickers, t-shirts, tire covers and the like.

Three things about this: One, a lot of Jeep customers, for whatever reason, seem to be named Deborah.

Two, I’ve been out of touch. I glance at  a “Time” article every now and again, but by and large, I’m pathetically unaware about what’s going on. The Smurfs could have been discovered to exist, running violently amok whilst leveling Chicago, and I’d be clueless.

Three: For my lack of attention to anything except packing boxes, and the subsequent lack of blogging and writing, the world has, surprisingly, not crumbled into a neat pile of smoldering ashes.

Today, I unwrinkled a newspaper and turned on the computer to discover, in this order, that Russia is the worst oil polluter in the world and that Kim Jong Il is dead.

The Internet needs your review of the new Lady Gaga like it needs my (very) occasional yammering on current events, like it needs a hole in its imagined head.

“I know something,” I said to me, excitedly, “and can therefore blog.”

OK, blog what? According to the Merc article, Russia leaks about one percent of the crude oil it produces, causing much more long-term damage than larger-scale, explosive oil spills. What do I say, “Bad Russia?”

As for Il, there is no indication as to which direction North Korea will take after his passing. What good would my feeble-minded guesses do anyone? Or should I merely point out the aforementioned fact?

I finally decided that I would not blog. Nevertheless, here I am blogging. But why do we blog? The Internet needs your review of the new Lady Gaga like it needs my (very) occasional yammering on current events, like it needs a hole in its imagined head.

Why, indeed, do we blog? The story I read about Il’s passing was followed by buckets of comments, expressing thoughtful ruminations on the leader’s death, such as, “May you rest in Hell,” and “Is Hell hot enough for you?” and “Good riddance to this evil son of a bitch.”

Then, of course, responses to the comments follow, perhaps expressing discontent with the vocal opinion of AmerikaFUKyea70702. Then, long comes PEACEluvr9, using questionable grammar to express confounding attitudes at odds with those of GarthBrooks69.

Of course, I had to sit down upon reading some of these comments, as they struck me with the revelation that blogs are perhaps somewhere north of pointless, and that, by extension, so am I. OK, I was already sitting down, but if I hadn’t been at the computer, I would have sat down. Or might not have.

I digress.  But what does it matter that I did digress? I’m not educating you in any way. If anything, I’m causing confusion. In fact, I won’t blame you in the least if you click away from this here blog. Go on to your other Internet business. Google “Britney Spears nip slip.” I understand completely.

Still here? Godammit, I told you to go online and look at Britney Spears’ breasts! What, they’re not good enough for you anymore? They sure cut the mustard when you were in middle school, what the hell changed?

I apologize for the preceding outburst. I was simply stricken by the hypocrisy I’m expressing for blogging, at length, a piece decrying blogs as absolute hogwash.

The truth is, though, that those of you who did not follow my instructions will not be rewarded by an earth-shattering shard of intellect cleverly reserved for the end of this post.

I’ll tell you what: I’ll keep reading your recipes for fruitcakes if you keep reading my periodic ramblings about nothing much in particular. Blogs will exist simply because they do. Exist, that is.

The point is that there is no point. What a terrific revelation. I can think of no better reason to keep blogging, can you?

Even a few days after the 9/11 attack, people started getting goofy about it. This picture was mass e-mailed and taken, by many, at face value. It's a fake, dummy.

It’s been 10 years since Sept. 11 became an infamous date. Something about anniversaries that end in “0″ revive the vigor of memories, which you’re forced to relive.

Last year, it felt to me as if everyone had basically forgotten about 9/11. This year, on the 10th anniversary, it does not. Because it’s been 10 years, and everyone now remembers like it was yesterday.

It alternately seems as if it happened yesterday or a million years ago, depending on the moment. The fact that simply watching a television special about 9/11 brought me right back to the depressing helplessness of 10 years ago speaks volumes.

My post last year about 9/11 now seems silly, and I can’t imagine feeling as if the weight of the attack had been carelessly disregarded by the people. This year, a somber feeling permeates the streets.

The gloom is, of course, a pale reflection of the collective grief of 2001, but there’s no arguing a sense of reverence and memorial that seems to blanket the country. It’s almost as if we’re all putting on a community college reenactment, perhaps a musical with the inclusion of some tasteless songs heavy-handedly inserted.

So what was the big difference between 9/11/10 and 9/11/11? What made it seem forgotten in the first place?

Perhaps no one ever really forgot, but it was an easy mistake to make. When people bitch incessantly about invasion of privacy at the airport because of a new x-ray gadget that enhances security, or a YouTube search may yield a collage of 9/11 disaster footage with “Yakety Sax” playing behind it, it seems as if some reverence has been lost in translation.

Consider that 10 years ago, people would have gladly been strip-searched to avoid terrorism, and the only kind of montages we had involved violin music and lots of cuts to images of the wind-furled American flag.

Today, even as our leaders abuse their positions for the sake of political grandstanding and cannot agree on anything, any nostalgia for the unity the disaster brought us is gone.

If I’ve been repeatedly concerned that our iPhones and Facebook accounts have allowed us to forget the atrocity, what I’d like us to do with the memory of it is questionable at best.

What does it mean to “Never Forget?” Does it mean hold a grudge against a whole race and religion? Does it mean to reinvigorate hatred toward people involved in centuries-old conflicts on the other side of the world that no one over here could possibly comprehend?

One thing 9/11 did was give us Americans a quick geography lesson. Unfortunately, all it turned out to be was the general understanding that a country called Afghanistan exists, and that we can just generally hate everyone in all the surrounding bits.

Never forget? Just what the hell is it we should never forget?

When the attack came, we were fat and happy and invincible. As a result of the attack, we’re somewhat on-guard, but slipping. Maybe that’s what we have to remember — that we shouldn’t forget. We can’t afford to get that fat and happy again.

Hurry the hell up, 'cause I am NOT stopping.

When you get right down to it, transportation is all about A-to-B. The object is to get from one place to another in as little time as possible. It’s why speeding tickets exist.

It’s also why trains, planes and automobiles continue to get faster and more efficient. Simply, people only want to get to point B when they travel. Most people don’t want to dally, and no one falls for that “getting there is half the fun” crap anymore.

Perhaps that is the reason cars are so prominent in the bay area. Time is the most precious resource. Why spend an hour of it on public transit when, in a car, you can spend 20 minutes?

Therefore, we can expect people to pay through the nose for gasoline until transportation ceases to deplete their most valuable resource.

The Bart has the capacity to go 80mph. High-speed bullet trains are capable of going hundreds of miles an hour without batting an eyelash.

Not fast enough.

In an article(Non-stop High-Speed Trains Enabled by Docking Trams) for Mashable, Charlie White stated the obvious:

“No matter how fast a high-speed train travels, it still has to slow down to 0 mph to pick up additional passengers,” White wrote in the article.

The article goes on to explain UK Designer Paul Priestman’s solution for this little problem, which is to set the platform itself into motion.

The idea is that a high-speed train, sailing along at inhuman speeds, would, instead of stopping at a station, bullet on ahead.

If you don’t believe that your sense of time has been warped, dig your old computer, with its 56K dial-up modem, out of its landfill and plug it in.

A second, smaller train, which would depart from the station when the bullet train is in its proximity, would catch up to the larger train, and then they would connect, and then passengers on the small train (which is basically a moving subway platform) would board the larger train, which has just saved minutes by not stopping.

Then, the moving-platform train disconnects, returns to the station, and the process starts again.

This means one thing: James Bond is no longer the only guy who jumps from one moving train to another.

It also means that the human reluctance to wait is being not only directly acknowledged, but catered to.

Perhaps it’s the fault of the Internet. Our one-click lifestyle has led us to believe that it is feasible to get everything instantly.

If you don’t believe that your sense of time has been warped, dig your old computer, with its 56K dial-up modem, out of its landfill and plug it in.

Now connect to the Internet.

Now check your mail.

Remember when it was reasonable to expect AOL to take a minute to load? And remember yesterday, when you started paddling on your computer monitor because Firefox didn’t pop up in fifteen seconds?

The need for speed is not a bad thing, necessarily. Inventions change expectations. If it takes your Ferrari a day to drive into town, you may as well just get a horse, as did your great (number of “greats” varies depending on your generation) grandad.

White’s article mentions the ability to seamless move from country to country, city to city, in record times.

But before you start packing a magazine instead of a novel for your train ride, ask yourself just how rapidly you really need to transit.

After all, the bullet train goes pretty damn fast, if you ask me. Do you really need it to continue on to the other side of the world at 300-mph, without stopping once? Further, you could feasibly doze off, miss six stops, and end up in the land of penguins.

In any event, what we have here is an enhancement of the current human tendency to, at all costs, avoid slowing down to smell the roses. Just how fast do we want this wacky world to revolve?

This is the sort of thing that could put an end to tea time in England.

Here's the Beatles. Some love them, some hate them. Who's right? Well anyway, here they are, Beatling their way into America for the first time.

OK, calm down. Put down the cricket bat. The Beatles don’t suck.

Or do they?

Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. Maybe I just want attention. It’s a debate for the ages, really. Ever since the early 1960s, when barbers first started losing money to Beatlemaniacal boys who neglected crew cuts in favor of moptops, there have been serious arguments about whether or not the Beatles do, in fact, suck.

Just recently, the fab four went on iTunes. If you live in a city, you saw one of the 50 billion billboards per city block that graced us.

If you live in a cave, you have no idea what iTunes is anyway, as you crank your phonograph, mono Beatles originals.

But, it is a little-known fact that there is a distinct part of the population that does believe that the Beatles … well, suck.

It’s true, amigos, it’s true. In the dark ages, before the Internet, they had no voice, and had to meet secretly in speakeasies under cover of the night in order to safely discuss what they believed to be the Fab Four’s lack of musical credibility.

But now, the Internet hath given them a voice. If you can listen to them online, you can also hear the naysayers. Read more here, in my brilliant article about how not everyone wants to meet the Beatles — even digitally.

As it happens, I don’t think the Beatles suck. Had a whole Beatles phase and everything. Got the CDs to prove it. But that is just one man’s opinion.

Mack Lundstrom, the Incredible Journaistic Hulk

It should come as no real surprise that the Big Kahuna of things I’ll miss about the Spartan Daily is Journalism Himself, Mack Lundstrum.

I’ve said before I’d like to be journalism, but I think I said it just to sound cool and probably didn’t mean it. Mack, on the other hand, is journalism — and, at that, he has accidentally become journalism itself.

We’re not talking Iron Man, who just decided to have powers and spend a week in the shop building a big damn suit. We’re talking the Hulk, who just happened to be hanging around the wrong type of radiation.

That’s right, Mack is the Hulk, and journalism is radiation. He just surrounded himself with journalism for so long he became it. How long, you ask, has Mack been surrounded by Journalism?

Try since the age of 5, working at his Dad’s newspaper. Just call him Journalism Man, bit by the radioactive newspaper bug at an early age — he never had a chance.

If you ask me, being in the news business that long is about as hardcore as wearing a cobra snake as a necktie.  As walking 47 miles of barbed wire.

How cool is Mack? Let’s start with the name. He goes by a name that’s not his real name, and that name is “Mack.” You don’t get much cooler than that, and consider that he started with “Charles.”

If he decided to, today, go with “Charles,” he’d spend the rest of his years (considerable, I’m sure — Mack is indestructible) sounding distinguished.

We haphazardly invited Mack, knowing that he wouldn’t show —Except that he did, in all his red-and-yellow glory, helmet still attached as he saddled up to the bar…

But not Mack. Mack will be called Mack, because Mack is his super name and Mack is the fucking Hulk.

Did you sell all your possessions in the 70s in order to ride your bicycle across the country? Mack did.

Does your brother currently play in a damn accurate-sounding Django Reinhardt cover band? Further, did you know such cover bands existed?

Even the bright red-and-yellow rain-proof jumpsuit, coupled with the helmet that for Mack’s biking outfit (do you bike in your 70s? Mack do) makes him look sort of like a superhero.

There are more Mack stories than all the books in all the world can contain. There’s a fan site on Facebook — a fan site — on which can be found stories I’ve never even heard. Apparently, Mack once yelled “Stop the presses!”

And how do I know this? Because one of Mack’s many fans cited it as his favorite Mack story.

Any SJSU alums who have wandered into his office asking for a simple tense of a word knows what I’m talking about — you can be in there all day hearing the secrets of the world, and won’t mind a bit.

It’s surreal to think that it’s possible to know so much about the English language — every tense of every word, the most current AP style of said word, and even what old versions of style used to say about the word (style is ever-changing, for no apparent reason).

To know just about every paper in the country and have, at one time or another, worked on half of them, and have friends at the rest of them, and to remember long-gone papers and the role you served on ‘em is just beyond.

It’s absurd.

My first semester at the daily, we all did a big pub crawl to celebrate the last issue of the daily. It went Gordon Biersh, Cinnabar, Britannia Arms, floor. We haphazardly invited Mack, knowing that he wouldn’t show.

Except that he did, in all his red-and-yellow glory, helmet still attached as he saddled up to the bar and ordered what appeared to have been a neat double bourbon. After mingling a bit, he ordered another, then rode off into the night and left us to our eventual hangovers.

Mack, to me, represents one of the very few cases in which I’ve wished I could fast-forward to my 70s just in hopes that I might be half as cool and world-weary.

To say nothing of the coffee maker…

The coffee maker with the 'tude. "So you want some coffee or what, dumbass?" Photo by me.

There is no life before coffee. I can’t remember where I read that, I think it must have been the Bible. The Spartan Daily coffee maker is not just a coffee maker. It’s an oasis in the desert. It’s that realization that, yes, the first 75 (Daily alums know) has just printed, and it is 1am, and the printers are pissed, but I can stay awake.

As the immortal John Hornberg, helluva writer turned managing editor turned executive editor, once quoth, you can “taste the ghost of Spartan Daily coffee past, some 20 years” — and, it isn’t the same if you cannot.

This was going to be No. 1, originally, until I realized the strangle-hold Mack has on my journalistic soul. Nevertheless, as an honorable mention, the coffee maker did its part to keep me awake through late-night edits, after I began to realize the power the Daily had to keep me on, as one year became two and I eventually ended up in copy editorial purgatory.

All hail coffee! All hail Mack!

The other Seven Things I’ll miss about the Spartan Daily — Not that you care

#2: The Quote Board
#3: Morons asking, ”You’re not going to misquote me, are you?”
#4: Insane HAL 9000-like Dell computers
#5: Harold, the lush of a Drinking Bird
#6: Being the only sober person on the Drunk Train
#7: The great big suicide window in Fisbowl
#8: Weird blue, somewhat soothing, noise box

Note: This took me for friggin’ ever to complete. I’ m a lame duck. People should write in and yell at me for it.

Some guys can’t catch a break. First, Obama went and released his birth certificate, to finally shut up the paranoid delusion that he was born in Kenya.

Other republican officials said he had more important things to do, like fix the economy.

Or, Kill Bin Laden? Is that “more important?”

Yeah, most of us think so. It was more symbolic than anything.

So are Republicans adding Obama on Facebook and becoming bffs?

Well, actually, there is a belief circulating that his birth certificate, “illegible,” was a fake. And Rush Limbaugh is perpetrating an idea that Obama has some sort of secret agenda that makes Bin Laden’s takedown into proof that Obama is a socialist operative of some sort.

First things first, I’m talking about the way far-out, abortion-bombing fragment of the Republican Party, not my neighbors.

Second things second, Holly mittens! At this rate, Obama could buy a set of folding chairs from Wal-Mart and take up the guitar to learn Toby Keith songs and Republicans still wouldn’t like him.

The meat of what Rascally Rush is getting at has validity: officials can’t get their story straight.

“Well, er.. I thought we engaged in a firefight, with Bin Laden fighting fiercely and using his wife as a human shield. Oh, I just remembered, he was sitting there, watching ‘Dancing with the Stars.’ He resisted, though. His wife wasn’t a human shield, she just went for the fridge at the wrong time.”

Where Rush goes from there, though, with the insidious hidden agenda of Obama, is ludicrous. You’d think a far-out  pill-popping republican like Rush would be enamoured with a president who had a terrorist mercilessly mowed down.

No such luck.

Holly mittens! At this rate, Obama could buy a set of folding chairs from Wal-Mart and take up the guitar to learn Toby Keith songs and Republicans still wouldn’t like him.

And the birth certificate thing. Half the nut jobs who believed that he was some terrorist from Kenya aren’t going to be swayed anyway, this whole deal just gave Donald Trump an excuse to shove his rich foot in his mouth and pound his chest that he “forced Obama’s hand” — which he did, although Obama used the political circus to equate Trump to a sideshow barker — which he is.

An easy analogy is to pretend that Obama is not a president named “Obama,” but a roofer named “Harold.”

Harold, you said you were going to take this leaky old roof and make it as good as it was back around 1800.

So, Harold, re-shingle the roof, already, and cut out all that self-righteous talk of yours.

Every time you ask for my co-operation, I’m going to tell you I hate what you’re doing and will perform every action in my power to ensure the materials you need to re-shingle this roof are not received, when you don’t agree with me.

You are a wood shingle kind of guy, and I’ve always liked those pink, rounded tile things. Until you come around to my way of thinking, the hell with you and your efforts.

Also, I’m going to make fun of you, fabricating stories about where you’re from, political groups you belong to, and your dirty, dirty insidious motives. I’m gonna call you the only worse name than Harold: Hitler.

If you ignore this mocking, me and everyone who listens to me will accept it as confirmation. Any mascots of terrorist organizations you kill just make you look even worse.

If you address my rabid suspicions, I’ll ask you why the hell you aren’t re-shingling the roof.

While you’re re-shingling the roof, until you decided to agree with the type of shingles I prefer, I will perform every action in my power to obstruct …

I’ll end that before it starts looping and becomes “Green Eggs and Ham.”

Is it any surprise that Republicans, some of whom upheld this absurd ideal, essentially told him he ought to go back and re-shingle the roof?

It’s probably too late to open as few cans of worms as possible. I’m not saying Obama is a great president. I’m not saying his detractors are racially motivated. I’m not even saying I agree with his gesture to send his birth certificate rocketing out of left field.

The fact stands, though, that anyone with an e-mail address has heard an earful about Obama and his sinister past, and those who disagree with his politics are generally not all that reluctant to believe them.

Think about it — there are more crap rumors about Obama than the total number of rumors belonging to Clinton and Bush Mark II combined. The administration, generally trying to meet their promise of — er — getting the roof shingled, has ignored the majority of these claims.

Now, Obama comes out and offers this personal information. Not because he’s in the wringer at  the moment, but, I suspect, as a symbolic gesture.

When the public really dogpiles you like that, and talking heads, such as Glenn Beck, suggest that the whole reason you became president has to do with some oddball conspiracy that you are seeking reparations from slavery in what would have to the most roundabout and unrewarding way …

Well, when that happens, and also, your approval rating has slipped down farther than it’s ever been, you might call that a bad couple of years.

Mario and Kong find a way to toast the new year in without blowing cash in a bar. "You're beautiful, man. I *hiccup* can't believe I threw so many barrels at you." Illustration by Bob dob.

Here we are in a new year, most of us dusting off a decidedly tattered set of resolutions to be broken sometime in the near future.

Did you spend your New Year’s Eve in a bar?

I did, just as sure as you’re going to be in the gym every day for about two weeks.

It seems like bars close at 1:30 on New Year’s, which is an odd thing to do to a bunch of extra-happy people who have thus far been drinking all year in your establishment.

Seriously, at 1:30 in the morning, at Britannia Arms, the lights were on and employees were singing a highly original song about how patrons who didn’t necessarily have to go home nevertheless could not stay there.

Where besides home they would go is questionable, as reports tell me that just about every tavern did the lights-on holler-oo at 1:30 on the dot.

So, as some buffoon started yelling at my quartet and they tried their damnedest to instantaneously suck down drinks whose ice had not yet begun to melt and beers whose glasses had not yet begun to warm, I decided that bars must resolve to have better communication within themselves.

Clearly, no one told the gorilla standing over me that the bar had sold another round not five minutes before, and the bartender who closed out my tab and received my generous, holiday-spirit tip, didn’t see fit to mention that in minutes, someone was going to be threatening to take them away.

A dude with a black-and-white security shirt glowering over you means perhaps not as much as it should to people who have spent the last few hours drinking liquid courage and parting with cold hard cash.

Earlier, at a neighborhood bar, I encountered a barkeep who seemed to have had an extra helping of bitch, revealed when I was admittedly supernaturally slow in my ordering. The ‘tude was odd, as the bar was only as crowded as an average night.

"What the hell do you want?"

Then again, no one likes working holidays, and I’d be remiss not to add a note that I haven’t always been Barney the Dinosaur every holiday I’ve had to work.

I never took an extra helping of bitch, though.

Anyway, we should all resolve to drink less. The neighborhood bar where everybody knows your name really only gives a hoot and a half about you. Friendly when being tipped, as are we all, the truth comes out after they’ve pumped you with enough alcohol to officially dub you incompetent to, say, stand.

Then, you’re not profitable anymore.

That’s when you get the boot, and, with any luck, arrested for being drunk in public, a real common tale in San Jose.

What you’re really doing, then, is paying an egregious markup on drinks for the illusion of a community of drunks.

And I love it. So do a lot of people. Bars are good atmosphere.

Yeah, we all know your name. Now get the fuck oudda here.

But who’s to say a couple of drinks in the evening after work, even though the sun is still up, is an inferior time to going out at 9 and pounding liquid until closing?

Brother, that’s got to be the least cost-effective way to inebriate.

Believe me, I know.

So, my resolutions, along with all the other ones I never meet, is to drink less in the nighttime, more often in the daytime, and, finally, to tie up all the loose ends on this blog.

I need to hammer out “The #1 thing I’ll miss about the Daily,” about a semester too late, and about a year too late, I’ve got to tie up this Cracking the Sirenia Code business.

Believe it or not, the next in these series’ are eagerly anticipated by a couple of people, and I offer my apologies to the assortment.

So, Longboard University undergrads, keep logging on for some home cooked, Longboardu catchup.

And don’t drink so much.

Santa in his mid-life crisis, dead sure that "Jingle Bell Rock" actually rocks. Well, you can't be right about everything.

Yeah, that Christmas thing happened again. Unfortunately, I had to go to the mall.

Doesn’t sound so bad? What do you mean, “That doesn’t sound so bad?”

Perhaps you’re not familiar with my position in regard to malls.

They are the devil. Materialistic, cultural sinkholes that use the lowest common denominator to bring as large a volume of people as possible, cattle-like, into its walls.

I detest malls with the sort of passion normal people typically reserve for Top 40 musical acts whose rubbish hit has finally been overplayed enough for the public to turn on it. 

OK, the mall isn’t that bad, say, in — oh, I don’t know — fucking MARCH, but during the holiday season, I steer clear.

Not possible this time ’round.

I went into that mall, oh yes, I did. The minute I entered its large, Satanic double doors, I felt the wave of evil flow over my body.

But something was wrong. Something in the air didn’t match up with the last forced trip I had taken to Holiday Hell. I listened, doing my best to perk my ears as I did so.

The sound of bustling shoppers? Check.

The chatter of teens in their natural environment? Check.

Tired, monotonously re-treaded holiday tunes?

No check.

That’s right, friends, Romans, and countrymen, there was no vomitous yuletime soundtrack for my Holiday Hell.

I would have thought the sound sounded glad.

I was wrong. To me, the sound sounded sad.

"No Christmas music?" asked the Grinch, "That sound is a sound that I simply must hear."

Allow me to clarify the weight of this revelation. I complain incessantly about the general insistence that Christmas music begin playing throughout our collective cocoon the minute Thanksgiving quits.

Usually, I cite examples that curdle my stomach — “Jingle Bell Rock,” for example. Sure, at a time it was a perfectly acceptable song, but, like a pre-teen in the late ’90s with a Ricky Martin single and a “repeat” button on her CD player, society used it all up – and now, I must carry a vomit bag during December, just in case it pops up and I’m not near a proper washroom.

So, you’d think I’d be doing Snoopy dances when I set foot into the mall and didn’t hear the drizzle of nausea invading my ears.

Strangely, you’d be wrong. Somehow, I never realized that, during the Holiday season, house music is next logical choice, in lieu of Christmas music.

That’s what the mall says, though.

“They don’t like the Christmas music,” the mall said. “They complain, complain, complain. So let’s give ‘em some pumping bass and grinding keyboards.”

Holy holiday hangover, Batman.

Somehow, I always thought that, if they weren’t playing Christmas tunes, malls would do the next logical thing, like play the first album by the Dead Boys, or the Who box set. Soundgarden, Glenn Miller — hell, the last thing I expected was the sort of crap that usually comes flying out of the sort of toolish hangouts I vigorously avoid.

Society, we have brought this on ourselves. We complained, complained, complained, and the mall, eager for our dollar, finally listened, and changed it for us.

And now it sucks.

Because it’s just not the holiday season if you can’t complain about the Christmas music. And now, I’ve got to listen to techno instead.

What have I done? What have I done?

Christian America was all set to get some sweet revenge. You know, just like it says to in the Bible.

When Roosevelt delivered his speech on Dec. 8, 1941, about the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, he described the day as one that would live in infamy.

At the time, Facebook didn’t exist and the people’s news source was more pure, because Paris Hilton and Sarah Palin hadn’t even been born yet.

It’s impossible not to acknowledge what a drag it is that most people have forgotten this day. After all, we Americans are a forgetful people, with minds that become more slippery by the day. As I’ve mentioned in earlier rants, many honestly believe that Saddam Hussein attacked America on 9/11.

Thus, what chance does this Pearl Harbor thing have of being retained as a clear, realistic memory? That happened when film was black and white, people.

Besides the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, it’s also December, which means people are gaining weight with cookies and eggnog again, and that’s terrific. In the Christmas spirit, I found myself full of enough eggnog (read: brandy) and, therefore, tolerance, to watch “Holiday Inn,” starring Bing Crosby and that Fred guy.

"Holiday Inn" features a tribute to the U.S. war effort, but no anti-Japanese sentiment. The reason? They used up all their "anti-P.C." points on this blackface routine, and didn't have enough racist quotient left to mention "those filthy Japs."

This flick was released in 1942, just a hop and a skip away from 1941′s infamous day. Thus, suddenly and unexpectedly and within a song, a tribute to America popped up in the film, complete with flag waving and a collage of war planes being built.

It was interesting because it shows the times — contrary to now, at that moment, people had absolutely not forgotten.

In fact, they were pissed.

It showed in our media. The Batman serials from the early ’40s, which ran before feature films alongside newsreels and cartoons, were scattered with anti-Japanese racism.

In one scene, a panorama of an empty street in a Japantown made empty by the internment, a narrator mentions the “wise government” that “rounded up the shifty-eyed Japs.” 

Even ambiguously gay superhero duos hated the Japanese in the early '40s.

Holy mittens, Batman!

Elsewhere  in the serials, there are slurs galore (something to the effect of “get that through your twisted oriental brain”), and several round-eyes offensively made up with slanted eye paint, speaking in broken english using their best Japanese impersonations (which aren’t very good).

Of course, we now know that the internment was unnecessary. The Japanese-Americans on the West Coast were just that — Americans, and citizens, no less. They were just as bent about their country’s property being bombed as we were.

Sure, everyone got all mad, and made the mistake of assuming an entire race was guilty.

Fortunately, we’ve improved, but only inasmuch as we have no internment camps for Muslims.

Other than that, it’s the same good old American stereotyping, culminating now in a debate about a possible mosque in the vicinity of what is now called Ground Zero.

Article and caption from a great Cracked article. Click to read.

Today, of all days, I received a forwarded e-mail, originally composed by some anonymous asshat, that made a bit of a joke about tolerance. It suggested building the mosque and surrounding it with gay bars, pork slaughterhouses and the like, and “letting the Muslims be tolerant.”

Other than a good sense for puns (one gay bar would be called “The Turban Cowboy”), this numbskull has nothing going for him/her/it.

For one thing, the mosque would be blocks away from Ground Zero, a fact all but obscured by all the rabid press the proposal has gotten, which would have you believe that it is being built ON Ground Zero.

Even in the decidedly un-P.C. “Holiday Inn,” Bing croons about the freedom to worship as we please. Mr. Anonymous Asshat’s proposal, which echos many Americans’ thoughts on the subject, suggests a right to freely worship only non-Muslim religions.

Frankly, I don’t think spammers are in any position to amend the constitution, but Asshat suggests the erection (no pun intended) of gay bars on either side of the theoretical mosque. Thus, Muslims will need to be tolerant.

Fine, by the same token, let’s put an adult bookstore next to a Christian church in a neighborhood where an a right-wing nut bombed an abortion.

If I’m being unclear, my bottom goes as such: You cannot form your only idea about someone else’s religion, which you know nothing about, based on the radical destruction of a group of insane individuals who pervert and corrupt that religion.

By that line of logic, you may as well base everything you know about Christianity on people who think the purple Tellytubbie is gay.

It’s that simple. Let’s let the day live in infamy. Let’s not forget. But hell, man, let’s learn something from these tragedies.

Wonder if Jello changed his mind? What would DK have written about Whitman?

Hello, lovelies. Did everyone vote?

Of course everyone did. That’s what we do in America, right?

Chances are, you got a little caught up in the stress of the election ordeal — it’s no one’s idea of a good time to become unable to cross the street without catching wind of some type of mudslinging.

This time, we had a race between a rehash and the highest bidder, once again prompting Californians with the question, “Who do I not want the most? I’ll vote against him/her/it.”

Poor Whitman ended up using up all the money from the coffee can she throws change in at the end of each day ($140 million) just to lose an election.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, us normal hundredaires were wringing our hands, trying to decide whether we wanted the millionaire to essentially buy the position.

Of course, we didn’t have to go through any of that. There’s a simple process I like to call “voting by numbers” that can totally save you time next election. In fact, most of us already do it to some degree.

Before we get to the step-by-step, let’s look at what goes on in your typical election.

First, we have the weeding out of candidates of either side. Oh sure, there are several parties, but — well, let’s be honest, we just have the two, and neither wants the other around. Apparently Americans would love a dictatorship.

Digression. So we have the two parties, here represented by boxes with eyes. Red is republican, blue is democrat. Both start stomping around and pandering party lines, using their best approximation of what they think their half of the population wants to hear.

The two most eligible boxes are selected, and the mudslinging begins.

Eventually, campaigning starts. But, rather than tell you what they are actually going to do, candidates generally prefer to demonize the opposite party, with subtle negative campaigning that voters may notice in their living room.

Blue box's campaign subtly enters your living room.

Without ever really reading the sample ballots, voters begin to form opinions about candidates and propositions. I was assailed in a bar by a drunk guy who demanded to know whether I was voting for Meg Whitman. “It’s OK if you’re not, but I need to know why.”

As the election nears, hand wringing by the public picks up when they begin to realize they don’t read the news, and that in fact that, while the population is, in the case of California, well in the millions, only about nine people know what’s going on and are sure to turn out to vote.

Thus, if five, just five, of those nine Californians vote for Ringo, then we’ve got Ringo, baby. For years. Which actually might be cool, but that’s not the point.

Holy broken system, Batman!

Yes — quick, Robin, to the Googlemobile.

(In the Googlemobile) What? This proposition will do WHAT? Why wasn’t I told?

The debates are watched by the public, each of whom generally respond precisely in line with the party lines of the individual. Viewers are occasionally upset by viewpoints opposite their own.

Clearly a blue voter.

Then, on election day, we all hoard out to the polls and cast a vote for whoever sends us mail. If you like, you may instead cast a vote for a minority party, say, the Green Party. This is known in the mainstream as wasting your vote.

Then, after leaving the polls, voters exhale heavily in unison, made lighter by the realization that they don’t have to hear any more bullshit on the TV about how the opposite candidate will sneak into your grandmother’s house and kill all her cats with a meat tenderizer.

“I need a drink,” we all say in unison.

This is where voting by numbers comes in.

It is very simple, and beats the hell out of all that hand wringing you did.

1.) Check your mailbox.
2.) Leading up to the election, imply that the candidate who didn’t send you mail will reduce the world as we know it to a pile of smoking rubble.
3.) Vote like your mailbox tells you to.

I know I sound like a snide bastard, but it’s pretty much what all of us do, isn’t it?

-Angelo Lanham