richardcahill.net

Bond. The White James Bond

12/29/2014

Hey, but he's had a black girlfriend

"I know this is racist, but James Bond is white."

These words, uttered by the sage Rush Limbaugh, in response to reports surfacing out of the Sony hack that movie execs were considering replacing the current, Caucasian-as-always James Bond with an African-British actor, kick off this year's controversy over the race of an imaginary person. You recall last year's, when Megyn Kelly of Fox News proclaimed that both Jesus and Santa were white.

In this year of racial fraughtness, note that Rush frankly admits he's being racist, which is progress. The first step is admitting you have a problem, as anyone who has ever started drinking tequila shots in Del Mar and ended up in the Tijuana jail with a black eye and wearing someone else's pants knows. Rush acknowledging his may eventually result in his recovery. Megyn Kelly, as far as we know here, is still unrepentant, meaning she has fallen behind Rush Limbaugh in racial insensitivity, which is like falling behind Peru in the space race.

James Bond is not actually believed in by his followers, whereas Santa and Jesus are. This is a distinction that may be clung to by proponents of Bond's Caucasianness but really, the only difference between them is that we know James Bond was invented by Ian Fleming, whose descendants still eagerly cash a check every time a Bond movie is made with a Bond of whatever race, whereas we don't really know who invented Santa Claus or Jesus, or, in the interests of being slightly less offensive, who decided Jesus walked the earth as a long-haired European male.

A better model for James Bond is Batman. Bond is a superhero as sure as Batman is, since he also has an unlimited budget and an incredible array of cool gadgets at his disposal. Bond's even better, really, since he doesn't have to perform his heroics in his stretch underwear and gets to drink and get laid a lot more. Also, Batman has to save the limited environs of Gotham City on a regular basis, whereas unless the entire world is trembling on the brink of destruction, don't bother getting James Bond out of bed.

And you could make Batman any race you want. And don't start whimpering that multi-millionaire Bruce Wayne is white. Black multi-millionaires are hardly a novelty in today's America. Kanye West could decide to become Batman tomorrow, just because he can afford it, plus he often seems that detached from reality.

If you're a real-life person with superheroic powers, when a movie gets made about you, you're stuck with your real-life race. Take the American Sniper, who is portrayed by the European-American actor Bradley Cooper in an upcoming movie, because the original American Sniper was white. This guy had the power to kill people from a distance, over and over again. But because he was real, he ended up getting shot to death by a PTSD nutbar in a shooting range and getting sued by Jesse Ventura after he was dead. That's what happens to real people sometimes, even real people with superpowers.

It would never happen to a James Bond of whatever ethnic persuasion. For example, when James Bond is escaping a trio of assassins by skiing down a mountain ahead of their machine-gun equipped snowmobiles, he never thinks to himself, "Hey, while learning to fire every weapon ever made and pilot every kind of plane, helicopter, tank, submarine and space shuttle ever designed just in case I needed to operate any random one to save the world again, I was being so busy I FORGOT TO TAKE SKI LESSONS AIEEEE!" Then he would fall on his face in the snow and get run over by the snowmobiles for a thrifty savings in machine-gun ammo for his evil enemies. That could easily happen to a non-imaginary hero. But not James Bond.

Or take the scene where Bond is tied up on the back of an evil luxury yacht with some eye-popping beauty, about to be thrown overboard and dragged to his death in shark-infested waters, because James Bond wouldn't consider taking a dip in any ocean that wasn't shark-infested. The Bond in this movie was Roger Moore, the fattest and oldest and hence the most Limbaughish Bond, so Rush must have seen this one. Bond's evil nemesis has once again not gotten the memo about shooting James Bond repeatedly as soon as you capture him and burning the body afterwards, otherwise he is for sure going to escape and thwart your monstrous plans again, so the nemesis has devised this stupidly complicated plan to kill 007.

Roger Moore turns to the EPB and says bravely "We're not dead yet." We at this publication remember hearing that line and thinking bitterly, "Jesus, somebody got paid to write that?" Then the evils toss Bond and the beauty overboard by a towline and gun up the yacht to put an end to him. Somehow Bond persuades one of the sharks to bite the towline clean through, then he and the beauty swim to the bottom of the ocean, where Bond just happens to have buried an oxygen tank within breath-holding distance. They finish off the evil nemesis and save the world as easily as Rush Limbaugh finishes off a box of popcorn chicken, and go back to the spot to have triumphant underwater sex.

It's just as believable that a black guy could do this as well as a white guy is what we think here. We're waiting for Rush's response. We're pretty sure it's going to be "I know I'm being racist here, but black guys can't swim."

0 Comments

A Very Baja Christmas

12/25/2014

2 Comments

The girl and I decided we’d avoid all the packed malls and bitter parking lot spats of the Christmas season in San Diego and head to Mexico for the week before Christmas.

I don’t mean to brag here, but Christmas is easy for me. My mother lives on the East Coast, my son is in Australia and my Significant Other is Jewish. An hour on Amazon and I’m done. I’ve put up enough trees and hung enough mistletoe in the past to consider my Yule dues paid up for life. If I want to bolt the country for Christmas, I’m entitled to.

In Mexico they don’t do lights and malls for the season; they do parties and poinsettias. Every hotel we’ve stayed at has hosted party or two while we were there. We just wander around the edges of them.

The news of the US is viewed at a distance here. I know that the FBI has positively identified North Korea as the source of the Sony hack, and subsequently that country’s Internet was subject to a hack back, presumably by US cyberforces. Good for them, although the general impression I had of the North Korean Internet was that it maybe consisted of four computers plugged into the same power strip, so not what military types would call a high-value target.

My girl and I share a bathroom on the road, which we don’t do at home. This requires some adjustment for me. The toilet seat rubric has to be obeyed, and matches employed for the mitigation of offensive odors. I am so careful of her bathroom space that when I accidentally clipped a fingernail into her makeup bag, I spent enough time poking around among the lipsticks and eyelash shapers in it to retrieve the errant clipping that she inquired “What are you doing in there?”

“Nothing,” I said, because explaining to your girl that you are digging through her makeup bag looking for a lost fingernail clipping is even more embarassing than actually doing it.

I suffered a wardrobe malfunction in San Quintin. My belt broke. Charitably, she did not ascribe the incident to me being several days into a regimen of three solid Mexican meals per. “It’s because you buy cheap belts,” she said. Which is true. I consider most belts overpriced, and hold my pants up with the least expensive ones I can find. And don’t ever try to sell me some kind of gigantic Texas belt buckle. Not interested.

The shorts I was wearing sagged alarmingly when worn beltless and I was holding them up with one hand while carrying my laptop in the other when she missed a step going back to our room. “Wow, I nearly fell over backwards just then,” she said.

“Just yell out,” I told her. “I would drop my pants to save you, darling.”

She snorted. “That’s good to know, I think.”

But I think it’s absolutely true. And I also think it would make a great title for a country-western song. Just strum a guitar and sing it softly to yourself.

Feliz Navidad, everybody.

2 Comments

Words from the Wise, or Just Old Fartings?

12/22/2014

0 Comments

In this column's Wisdom of the Ancients department, I take note of 99-year-old Grandpa Cheese, whose 25 Life Lessons were recently publicized in a Huffpo post.

Over here, we do not necessarily feel that it takes 99 years to learn something worth repeating, but people get sentimental about near-centenarians, especially ones that aren't in Depends yet, and can still occasionally remember some important things, like their kid's names and the fact they aren't allowed to drive anymore. They come flocking to the extraordinarily aged for wisdom like pigeons flocking for Bacon Bits, even though everybody knows at least one person who could live to be a thousand and still wouldn't be any smarter than brushing your teeth with a handgun.

Grandpa Cheese came to public note because his great-granddaughter writes for PopSugar, an Internet organ whose headline at this writing was "Find Out What Sofia Vergara Is Giving This Holiday Season."

I don't care what Sofia Vergara is giving this holiday season, unless it's her phone number to me. So keep in mind the 25 Life Lessons endorsed by Grandpa Cheese and PopSugar are exactly that, life lessons put forth by people named Grandpa Cheese and PopSugar, not people named Hegel and Kant, or Faulkner and Hemingway, or even Penn and Teller, and that does show.

Grandpa Cheese starts off nicely. Number 1 is "Always have a sense of humor about everything." I would amend this to "nearly everything." If you have been attacked by terrorists and are watching your major organs from some distance away, failing to find humor in the situation is allowed here, although you may hear some tut-tut-ting from Grandpa Cheese as your life drains away.

Number 5, "Drink orange juice every day," sounds good, from a vitamin C perspective, but number 10, "Eat sausage every day," isn't getting a thumbs-up from the people who built the Food Pyramid, and number 8, "Eat around the mold; don't go wasting food," is just disgusting. Other food-related advice is contained in number 11, "Your life is delicate, and if you neglect yourself, you'll spoil. That's what cheese taught me."

This ability to listen to cheese must come at a more advanced age than I have yet attained. What I have learned from cheese is that when you open your refrigerator after being away for three weeks, the cottage is going to be a lot hairier than the cheddar.

What I have learned from cheesesteaks, on the other hand, is that if you hold one too perpendicularly, some of its nutritious grease is going to start dripping down your arm.

Does that count as wisdom? I don't know. All of my life has been lived in the silence of the cheese.

Number 17 is "Find something comical in every single situation." I would add to this "And then keep it to yourself." Nobody likes a smart-ass.

Number 7 is "Having a bad job is better than having no job at all." Well, not for everybody. Paris Hilton seems content just having a dog and a chauffeur. Don't expect her chanting "Welcome to Walmart" in lieu of shopping in London anytime soon. Leonardo DiCaprio, whose employment status can best be described as a part-time contract worker, recently broke up in public with his girlfriend and every single other woman in the restaurant where the breakup occurred followed him out of it, presumably with an eye to shagging him during the hour or two that was bound to elapse before he got another. Trust me; the guy is not logging onto Craigslist every day to see if he can better his situation.

Number 13 is where Grandpa Cheese falls completely off the bandwagon of wisdom and into the muck of common idiocy, as he asserts "Everyone has too many clothes. Wear what you have and quit buying more." This works fine for us guys, unless we happen to own clothing mills staffed by slave labor in the Far East, but apparently even at 99, Grandpa Cheese has failed to figure out we are only half of the human race. It says in Huffpo that he was married for seventy years before his wife passed away, so he must have noticed at some point that no woman ever has enough clothes, particularly if you let her leave the house. So I'm thinking that Grandpa Cheese allowed Mrs. Cheese to update her wardrobe periodically, otherwise he wouldn't have any grandchildren to pass his wisdom to at all.

He's just forgotten. He's 99, after all. And he still has enough of his marbles left to know better than to say "Everybody has too many shoes."

For the complete list, click here

0 Comments

Don't Hack For Me, North Korea

12/18/2014

0 Comments

Police sketch of suspected Sony hacker.

This column had not been following news of the Sony hack too intensely, until the theory that it was perpetrated by the North Korean government in revenge for Sony's upcoming release of "The Interview," a movie in which Kim (Fat Kid) Jong un, the leader of that malnourished nation, is portrayed as a blustering, spoiled, corpulent sadist, became widely accepted.

Before that, I just regarded it as a tremendous boon for Entertainment Tonight. We have found out some interesting things, but they were things we suspected all along, like George Clooney being a pretty cool, funny guy and Alex Trebek being a dick, and that many high-powered Sony executives can't spell.

We also found out that when you are a white big shot and make mildly racially insensitive remarks about Obama, you have to apologize to Al Sharpton. The President is too busy being the leader of the Free World to be apologized to. We understand that, but when did he appoint Al Sharpton to be his Apology Czar? And why? Al does have the wardrobe for it, I admit, but why couldn't Obama get someone a little warmer and fuzzier to accept his mea culpas? Although not Bill Cosby anymore.

North Korea officially denies involvement in the hack, but the Guardians of Peace, the name the hackers give themselves, have threatened next to launch terror attacks against all American movie theaters that screen "The Interview,' despite there being more of them than I have dollars in my IRA, just to prevent American film audiences from seeing the Chubby Leader portrayed as a hapless, violent fat-ass who deserves to die. It doesn't take a CIA torture-fest to figure out who benefits from that.

What troubles me is could I be next? There has been no shortage of cheap shots at the Great Grain-Fed One in this column over the years, like this one and this one. The GOP (another indication that the Guardians of Peace come from far away—you'd have to be from North Korea not to realize that there was already a fairly well-known political organization that already went by that acronym here) could be parked in the driveway as I type this, hacking into my router and preparing to do an info dump on my personal scandalous behavior all over the Internet. There's only one thing to do—damage control. Many public figures follow this route, on the theory that if you admit your personal foibles freely, they can't be held against you. Here goes:

I pay my cell phone bill at least a week late every month, just because they let me get away with it.

I have never affixed the front license plate to my car, as required by California state law.

I am Facebook friends with seven ex-girlfriends, which is one number higher than the number of women I have officially admitted to my current girl that I have ever been with.

I broke a mouse by throwing it against the wall the last time my computer told me my password was "weak."

If I can't quite remember how to spell a word, I sometimes type in an approximation of it and let spell-check take over. Later, I hate myself for it.

I feel intense shame for all of these failures and I apologize to everybody, everywhere for them. I hope the North Koreans will see that there is no point in spreading my biz all over the Net after those revelations. I am more worried about a terrorist attack. Even if it fell short of attempted murder, it could damage my interests. Just slashing the tires on my car would represent a serious financial reversal.

And now, more breaking news from the Sony hack. Apparently Channing Tatum wrote an email that consisted of little more than the expression "F-you," followed by fifty lines of the onomatopoeic expression for laughter, "haha," unspaced, in all caps. This is a distinct intellectual underachievement, Channing, even for someone who has to stop thinking and have sex with yet another person who wants him a couple times an hour.

You need to be more like George Clooney. But then, don't we all?

0 Comments

Will My Dog Get Into Heaven Before I Do?

12/15/2014

0 Comments

Feeling numinous

Now that the Pope has announced that dogs go to heaven, nearly twenty-five years to the day since Hollywood announced it, the question for dog owners everywhere is whether their dogs are spiritually fit enough to pass through the Pearly Gates? The answer, in my case, is a resounding "I don't know," as befits my status as an agnostic amateur theologian.

First off, this is Catholic heaven, a place I was made aware of at an early age. Even as the nuns told me about it, they assured me I was unlikely to get into it, and people to this day who have boned up on the admissions requirements are certain I haven't fulfilled them. But there is no higher authority on your spiritual SAT's than the Pope, and when he allowed atheists in, I figured he was giving agnostics a pass, too, since we are their less angry, less proselytizing, less litigious cousins.

And Catholic heaven is the best, as anyone who has studied afterlife realms knows. It's better than Protestant heaven, where they're not allowed to drink, Muslim heaven, which is crawling with surly, unfulfilled virgins, Jewish heaven, which is chorus after chorus of bickering rabbis and Buddhist heaven, which is basically a recycling plant, but hopefully without all the attendant smells and truck traffic. In Catholic heaven, we start the heavenly day with a hosanna or two, then we knock off early and start drinking. It's the same thing as a regular Catholic Sunday, only it lasts for all eternity.

I am haunted, however, by the suspicion that my dog is more spiritually precocious than I am, which wouldn't take much. Commandment by commandment we come out pretty evenly, though. I use the Lord's name in vain far more expertly than he does, but I don't use it when our neighbor is stacking paint cans in his garage, which sends the dog into a prodigious, pointless barking fit that is no doubt the canine equivalent of a string of obscenities. I don't worship much, but my dog engages in the much more heretical (and dubious) practice of worshiping me, especially if I am bringing in freshly barbecued meat from the grill.

My feelings towards my neighbors aren't hostile, but they don't amount to love in any spiritual (or erotic) sense. I don't try to bite them, however, which he does, occasionally. Fortunately, he is a Chihuahua, so no legal problems have resulted so far. We are both killers; me of fish, him of lizards that infiltrate the condo's tiny back yard. We both sleep with our woman without benefit of matrimony.

Neither of us has any plans for spiritual advancement. Offers come our way very occasionally, in the form of Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormon missionaries knocking on our door. I dismiss them with wisecracks like, "You're both named Elder? What a coincidence!" or questions "Don't you see the little Jew-thing by the door?" I can never remember the name of that thing under pressure--it's a mezuzah--which makes my defensive attempt to claim the mantle of Judaism less than completely convincing. Meantime, the pooch gets busy chewing on their pants legs.

We don't need to. We're in. Ask the Pope, in his capacity as God's doorman. And if I am already sitting in the Great Beyond when my beast breathes his doggy last (which is actuarially unlikely but hey, you never know) I'm sure I'll be the first one to hear him scratch, scratch, scratching on Heaven's screen door. And I'll let him in. Watch him around the hems on your robes is my advice.

For more spiritual balm by me, consult Heaven for Dortguller or Mistake

0 Comments

Go West, Poo Man

12/11/2014

0 Comments

It's not what it looks like. It lives in what it looks like

If there is anyplace this column likes to be on top of, it is the latest developments in science. Mostly I concentrate on two scientific fields--science that holds out hope for longer, healthier lives for most of us, and also science that predicts the entire human race is doomed to violent extinction. This post is about the former. It seems that fecal transplant technology is a movement that cannot be stopped. Many modern illnesses are now thought to be caused by their victims having insufficiently hard-working digestive tract bacteria, and if your intestinal bugs are defective, there is only one way to get someone else's.

I say this because of my recent perusal of an article in the December 1st issue of the New Yorker. Titled "The Excrement Experiment," the article not only touts the virtues of virtual coprophagia in the treatment of all gastrointestinal disorders, but makes public the existence of a gray market in medicinal feces. The project, Open Biome, described by the magazine as a "non-profit stool bank" currently ships to 36 states for the purpose of life-giving fecal transplants. And they need donors. They want to buy your stools, for forty bucks a poop. For me, a person gifted with a life of regularity in the elimination field, this gives a whole new meaning to the expression "flushed away a fortune."

The stool bank obtains its donations just like a sperm bank, by giving its contributors a magazine and a bathroom. Open Biome does have a sense of humor about itself. It gives its regular donors not only numbers, but cute nicknames like Winnie the Poo and Albutt Einstein. The article does not say if the nicknames are racially coded, i.e., donors of color being given noms de merde like Kanye Flush or Dr. Martin Pooter King, Jr. Perhaps that would be considered politically incorrect, for one thing that is made clear by science is that all poo is brown. In fact, researchers have gone to Mother Africa, the continent of our evolution, in search of the perfect fece, on the theory that the most curative lumps would be found there, in tribal toilets, produced by humans who still live as hunter gatherers, a poo product unaffected by civilization's discontents, which these researchers think are white bread and antibiotics. And they found them, pieces of crap still crawling with the gut bacteria of Eden.

Unfortunately, they cannot bring it all back and let us all partake of it, because transplanted poo, like all transplanted organs, must be installed fresh. This has temporarily stalled my career as donor, as Open Biome is in Massachusetts and I live in San Diego. I just don't think that these poo pioneers can ignore the untapped potential of the San Diego field for long. We San Diego producers are obsessed with fresh vegetables, free-range anything and the many delicious frijole dishes prepared by our Mexican neighbors. Our feces are bound to be free-flowing and firm textured in contrast with East Coast poop, which is composed mostly of pizza crust and hoagies, or biscuit-and-gravy infused Southern stools.

I can hardly wait to start making poopies for profit, because I need the money. And while fece donors are tested for the medical usefulness of their specimens, I feel confident mine will pass. I have mentioned my opinion of their quality previously here, and once Open Biome screens my stool, I'll be entered proudly on the roster that many have already mentally placed me.

The shit list.

0 Comments

NYPD Suggests Diet, Exercise Before You Mess With Them

12/8/2014

0 Comments

What really killed Eric Garner

Defenders of the New York Police Department's actions in the case of the chokehold death of Eric Garner, including a local Republican congressman, have pointed out that Garner contributed to his own death by being overweight and having asthma. A spokesman for the police union was quick to agree on condition of anonymity.

"This wasn't about racism," he said. "This was about a guy who was not following police orders. He wasn't following the Food Pyramid, either. If Eric Garner had a diet rich in whole grains, fresh vegetables and legumes, plus carefully controlled portions of fish or animal protein, he would probably be alive today in spite of having resisted arrest."

So you're recommending a program of diet and exercise to everyone considering becoming a minor lawbreaker in the Big Apple?

"I'm glad you mentioned exercise, because that's important, too. If you're planning a misdemeanor-rich criminal career, an exercise program is key to avoiding chokehold death. First, see your doctor. Then start by walking, then a little gentle jogging. You can work up to a full running program, but be careful to shoplift the correct shoes for it. Then Pilates or yoga to keep your muscles, especially those all-important neck muscles, stretched and limber. Stay in shape, and the next time you're choked out by a cop who's fed up with your fat ass selling loose ciggies on his turf, you'll wake up in Rikers with nothing more than a sore throat."

Unless you have asthma, which Garner did.

"Sure, but what gave him asthma? Food allergies are a major cause of asthma, you know. My bet in Garner's case is gluten sensitivity. If you look at that video without being influenced by the liberal media chorus that claims it shows Garner being choked to death, you'd probably agree that it was him irresponsibly packing his body full of gluten before breaking the law that killed him, not a member of law enforcement."

Well, yeah, you can see he's not in shape in the part of the video before all the cops jump him..."

"Jiggling with deadly gluten is the way the grand jury saw it. They're the ones who realized Garner being strangled on live video had nothing to do with the color of his skin. It was the amount of puff pastries and Baby Ruths he had packed inside of that skin. There's the one important thing that critics of the grand jury and the NYPD have to realize."

What's that?

"Cops don't kill people. Doughnuts kill people."

0 Comments

Gas Prices Plummet, Obama Declared Greatest President Ever

12/4/2014

2 Comments

As the opposition party prepares to take control of Congress, Americans are belatedly discovering that Barack Obama may be the greatest president of all time, thanks to falling gas prices.

"I just filled up my Hummer for a hundred bucks," gasped one delighted man in El Cajon, California. "Praise Obama!"

"That's nothing," said an individual a pump away. "I have two cars, two ATV's, a pickup truck, a ski boat, a fishing boat, a riding mower and an RV the size of Willie Nelson's medical marijuana bill. I'm filling every gas tank on every one of them to the brim. Thank you President Obama!"

A more cogent analyst had this to say "I give credit to Obama's fight to combat global warming and reduce our carbon footprint. The treaty with the Chinese, the constant side-stepping on building the Extra-Large Pipeline to whoosh in more gas for us from Canada—all this has resulted not in six-buck-a-gallon gas like we were warned about, but in oil prices like 2007's. How did he do it? The man is an energy policy genius is the only possible answer."

"ISIS, schimises," said another newly-minted Obama fan. "The only fair measure of a President's Middle East policies is the price of gas at the Kwik-Mart is what I say, and this morning I gave the clerk there a twenty and got six gallons of gas and a two-pack of gooey chocolate cupcakes besides, so in my opinion the actions Obama has taken in Syria, Iraq and Iran have succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. In addition, the cost of keeping my mini-van topped off in case a pandemic occurs and me and my family have to flee for our lives from a spreading contagion has dropped precipitously, so I think the President has the Ebola crisis well in hand, too."

The Tea Party officially disbanded. "We call ourselves the Unleaded Party now," a spokesman said, "and we're burning all of our silly tricorner hats with cheap, abundant gasoline. We need more Presidents with funny names and questionable birth certificates because they've shown they can keep the gas pump primed. Thank you, Obama! And thank you, Kenya, for giving him to us!"

Further to the right on the political spectrum, opinions on Obama hadn't budged. "We still hate the guy," a sovereign citizen in Idaho grumbled, "but I have to admit, the cost of making fertilizer bombs and burning crosses is way down from last year."

Only liberals were sour on the Obama energy successes. "I miss the feeling of superiority my Prius used to give me," one whined. "And my solar-powered house and my shares in a windmill company—what status do they have anymore in a country where everybody's too busy tanking up and rolling to admire them? I'm way disappointed in Obama."

2 Comments

Putin's Hobbit Army Poised to Conquer Europe

12/1/2014

0 Comments

One of Putin's war hobbits

Military experts have seized upon this photo as proof that Russia's warmongering leader is assembling a hobbit army to conquer the rest of the European continent.

"Hobbits have a long history in the Russian military, going all the way back to Catherine the Great, whom many scholars now feel was suffocated under a pile of sweaty hobbits she was attempting to have sex with, instead of being crushed when a horse she had suspended over her for the purpose of intercourse fell on her. The horse story was just circulated around Moscow because it was considered less disgusting than the truth. Hobbits fought in the Crimean War on the side of the Tsar and were instrumental in enabling Leningrad to survive its siege. They fell into ill favor with Stalin, but then, who didn't? They were confined to a part of the Gulag so frigid many of the survivors stated they missed the volcanoes of Mordor for their warmth," said one expert this journalist met at a local restaurant. "They were rehabilitated under Gorbachev, and resumed their traditional occupations in Russian society, leading quests and selling foot-hair styling products. But when Putin took power their stock soared. No one can say for sure why, but Putin doesn't exactly tower over anyone, and rumors that he is half-hobbit abound, though repeating them can get you a nice stretch in Lubyanka Prison, licking icicles off the community toilets for nourishment."

This picture is pretty convincing. But how does an army of half-pints help you conquer Europe?

"It's Putin's best chance. I know you've seen all the stories about him modernizing his nuclear strike force, but mostly that consisted of trimming back the vines that were growing over his missile silos and sweeping up the empty vodka bottles in his launch control centers. The only nuclear capability the Russians have clearly shown they have is roasting one of their own cities. Putin's got a great new fighter plane, but the fact is he's only got two of them and he's the only one allowed to fly either one. So hobbit power is about all he has left. But don't discount that. Just look at the literature. Hobbits conquer all-seeing empires of pure evil every time, so Angela Merkel probably doesn't scare them. They kill poisonous spiders the size of three-story condos, so send in all the geared-up Navy Seals you want, and they won't blink.

Wow. Is there any way to stop the hobbit threat?

"The only thing that stops hobbits is food. You can surround a besieged city with all the barbed wire, machine gun nests and land mines you want and hobbits will still break through and kill everyone, but surround their target with a sumptuous buffet, steaming with hot food and cold desserts, and hobbits will drop their weapons and stuff themselves until they fall asleep every time. You can build a POW camp around them before they wake up. So what I say to American military strategists is, don't bother spending 8 billion to upgrade our nuclear strike force, or build a bunch more highly advanced military aircraft. What you need to spend your military billions on is really a lot of buffet tables and food, especially a delicious variety of soups and a lot of mouth-watering muffins. That's hobbit bait."

Wait a second—is that a Souplantation apron you're wearing?

"Yes, but that doesn't mean we're not absolutely serious about the Russian hobbit menace. If working overtime on bloated military contracts baking our fudgy desserts and drowning raw vegetables in blue cheese dressing is the only way to save the American way of life, we're willing to make the sacrifice."

Just leave me some coupons and go away, for God's sake.