Before we get started on the main subject of this post, a shout-out to teen American athlete Virginia Thrasher, who won the first gold medal of the Zika Olympics in her event, the women’s 10-meter air gun competition. Many Americans reacted with pride to this event. Others reacted by saying “Who cares?” And “Who cares about air guns? I’ve got a closet full of real AR-15’s and enough ammo to last me through a double dose of Doomsdays,” but these people are not aware of the significance of Thrasher’s achievement, as they are Americans and do not know the metric system. A ten-meter air gun is a pretty unwieldy weapon, and it is quite an accomplishment for a teen girl to lift one, let alone hit anything with it. But it is the Olympics, and it is time for us to get patriotically stoked over winning competitions in sports that we had no idea existed, and to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with sports fans from other nations and shout together our love of competition with them, while privately thinking they smell bad and dress funny. The other big sport of the summer is election 2016, and while we have spent months detecting the character, or lack of it, in the two surviving candidates, the question of who is better qualified to be First Spouse has been examined far less exhaustively, and this past week the spotlight shone on Melania Trump, who stands to become the first FLILF* since Jackie Kennedy should her husband win the election, but not for such great reasons. It was revealed that Melania was probably working illegally in the United States in 1995, since nude photos of her, both solitary and locked in embrace with another nude female model person, have surfaced from that year, and they were probably paid for posing for them, since in 1995 the nude selfie posted for free on Instagram had not been invented. Plus, the pictures were taken by a French photographer. Asking women to get naked was not invented by the French, but when Frenchmen do it, in their greasy, unwashed language, women seem to comply unquestioningly. Which might be excuse enough for Melania, except that her husband has been going on about illegal immigrants taking work away from natural Americans, and there were certainly plenty of legal Americans willing to rip their clothes off and pose for the camera in 1995. Also he's mad about them raping us and being criminals besides. Now it is obvious that Melania was no rapist, just an alluring European with an overweening desire to expose all of her luscious young body to the fresh air of freedom, and get her personal parts next to another liberty-loving young woman’s, probably for cash. That’s the criminal part, because apparently Melania was here on a tourist visa. Which meant she legally had to get naked for free, and while she probably has on numerous occasions, back then when you were photographed nude and the country gawked at your firm young flesh, you got paid for it. Nowadays you have to do it without charging, and then beg for money on GoFundMe, but it was a better world then. So Melania is probably lying. I hear you saying “Who cares? All she has to do is keep the White House silverware clean while her husband gets laid by other women just by asking “Hey, baby, do you want to have sex with the Leader of the Free World?” or "You can touch me anywhere except the hair." That’s true, but what else has she been lying about? Apparently having a degree in architecture, but that’s something America has never required in a First Lady. And she says she speaks five languages, but since we Americans only speak one, how can we tell for sure? Besides, she comes from a part of Europe that is so linguistically messed up that you have to know five languages just to get all the people on your block to put out their recycle bins on the same day. But when January rolls around, we are going to have either the first First Dude, a guy who unquestionably knows his way around the White House, including the secret closets where they keep the best interns, or the first First Lady who is a professional nude person. Great country or what? *First Lady I’d love to have intercourse with I was tweaking the car radio dials while I was stuck in traffic the other day, and paused on a station that was playing what seemed at first to be Sir Mix-A-Lot's rap classic, "Baby Got Back." Then I realized that someone had re-written the lyrics for the upcoming election. This is how it went: I like babies and I can not lie, You other politicians can't deny, That when a baby gets in your face No matter what the race, You wanna kiss her, not diss her, 'Cause her mama's gotta vote with yer But if dat baby's Spanish My love for it gone vanish Anchor Baby go back! Anchor Baby go back! Ask my homie Trumpie Or Teddy Cruz, or Chrissie Dumpty, Dat baby's got dat brown skin, Dat child's kiss gone do you in, If dat rugrat is Latino, It just another bean-o With the bathwater throw it out, 'Cause white folks like to shout Anchor Baby go back! Anchor Baby go back! You say that makes me meana Than Paul or Fiorina I don't care what you say, Give that chile the boo-tay Give that nino the heave-ho Back across the Grande Rio We ain't gonna let you in Least till you learn to swim, Anchor Baby go back! Anchor Baby go back! Yer mom's from Tijuana That means we don't want ya Just cause you were born here Don't mean you belong here, All us love America a lot, Get out that Home Depot parking lot I know you used to own it But guess what—we rezoned it! Anchor Baby go back! Anchor Baby go back! Yer pappy's work ain't crappy He makes his bosses happy Yer mama cleans my shower Fer just eight bucks an hour But your stay here ain't permanent When it my turn at President And I'll be getting cracker votes When your brown ass waves us "Adios!" Anchor Baby go back! Anchor Baby go back! Anchor Baby go back! Bass line continues, while other voices say "Get out!' "Beat it!" and "Amscray" in the background. The DJ samples the Beatles "Get Back" (Back to where you once belonged) and the song fades out. Now that illegal juveniles are no longer flocking in vast numbers to our southern border under the mistaken assumption that the United States likes brown kids and wants to help them, it is time to point the cop flashlight of fate into the dark corners where other illegal aliens lurk. I'm not talking about raiding some poorly-lit factory saturated with dangerous chemicals, or hitting a boring barrio and checking ID's. I'm talking about taking action against illegals living brazenly and openly in our country, often earning plaudits from grateful citizens who don't seem to be aware that their presence here flaunts our laws. I'm talking about investigating the Justice League of America. Don't get me wrong. Most superheroes are here legally. Batman and Spiderman are native-born Americans with inspiring backstories. Batman, born into wealth in America, nobly chooses to spend it gearing up and fighting crime instead of going to an Ivy League school on a lacrosse scholarship and then operating a series of hedge funds like all his friends did. Spiderman, born into more modest circumstances, but a native New Yorker nonetheless, gets bitten by a radioactive spider and swings around skyscrapers instead of going to a community college and repairing air conditioners. Other superheroes operate in grayer areas. The Green Lantern is native born, but he got his ring of power from an illegal alien who crash-landed on the planet, totally evading Customs and the federal excise tax on superhero accessories. Wonder Woman? She's from Amazonia, which is in Brazil. If you look at a map, you see that Brazil is the country that seems to have successfully, quietly occupied most of South America, pushing all the other countries to the edges of the continent. Nobody takes exception to this. "Wow, Israel could take a few lessons from Brazil," is what you're thinking, but that's not the point. Most women in Brazil are content to seek fame locally by trying to become Miss Bumbum Brazil, but not Wonder Woman. She's here, tiara, Lasso of Truth, invisible airplane and all. "But she saves us from sinister villains all the time," you protest. Sure she does. But is that her real motive? Or is she really just looking to have an anchor baby? But the biggest and most obvious illegal migrant flying around in American skies today is Superman. If you recall, his parents put him on a spaceship and shot him towards Earth to save him from his home planet's explosion. If that's not the moral equivalent of sticking your little Juanita on the Beast Train and telling her Obama will be waiting for her at the border with free tacos, I don't know what is. The baby Supe is found by Ma and Pa Kent. Do these natural Americans notify the INS and the Border Patrol when they find the Super infant crash-landed in their cornfield, as they properly should? No. They clap their hands and say joyfully "Now we don't have to go to Russia to adopt a white baby!" And here he remains, taking work and movie deals away from other, native-born superheroes. Oh, I know. Superman doesn't actually get paid for saving the Earth time after time again. But Clark Kent cashes his check every week, depriving some real American mild-mannered reporter of work. Don't forget the economic ripples that Superman being here sends through the economy. The price of Kryptonite remains out of the average villain's reach, and every time Superman defeats another enemy, the bottom falls out of the evil lair market. I'm not saying that we ought to deport the guy, especially since his home planet is now a smoking hulk of ashy death. But he ought to get in line, take a citizenship test, pay his back taxes and otherwise jump through whatever humiliating hoops we can think of to remind him that while we'll let him live here, he'll never really be one of us. Of course, he probably realizes that every time he leaps over a tall building in a single bound. CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE DEPT: This blog post was inspired by this blog post by Nina Flores. Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine I am traveling in Baja Sur with my Significant Other. I constantly tell her how safe this area of Mexico is, safer probably than being back in San Diego. Usually she believes me, but as we ambled down the Calle Domingo in Los Barriles the other day, she pointed out that all of the properties on the street were gated. Even empty lots were fenced in by barbed wire. “If it's so safe, why is everything so fenced in and locked up?” she said. I didn't have an answer. I said something generic, like, “Well, there's problems everywhere,” and changed the subject. Later that night, and I mean much later, when we were finishing off all my cervezas Pacifico on the balcony of our hotel while hanging out with a cowboy turned commercial fisherman from Humboldt County, who was sharing some entertaining tales from his work at sea and his abused childhood, we spotted the criminal culprit of Los Barriles stampeding down the calle. It was a cow. It was easy to see the beast had mischief on her mind. If it weren't for the barbed wire and the cattle guards (which I had noticed earlier, but had thought that they were a vestige from an earlier, more bucolic Los Barriles, but apparently the town is still as bucolic as it wants to be) she'd be hopping in everybody's front yard , chomping on everything from weeds to potted flowers to carefully planted vegetables. I noted that while we Americans often fence in our livestock to keep them from roaming wherever, the Mexican practice is to let them roam wherever, but fence in the places you don't want them to roam. This isn't necessarily a defective practice. It takes less fence. My S.O. told a tale from her summer ranching in Oregon. One of the cows in her charge learned to tiptoe over the cattle guard at her place of employment. As soon as the rancher observed this, he cursed and said he'd have to sell that beast, because one the cow learned how to get past the cattle guard, she would not only keep doing so, but would teach the other cows how to as well. This sort of reverse Darwinism, culling the most intelligent members of the herd and its natural leaders as well, is fine for cows, but we should probably refrain from doing it ourselves. Often we can't resist, however, and pick our leaders from the thick-skinned and loud-mouthed, who trip over themselves to tell us what we want to hear. "Why would you want to go over the cattle guard?" is what these guys would say, if they were cows. "We're the best herd in the best pasture. Those other cows out there could be dangerous. They don't moo our language. What we need is a bigger, better cattle guard to keep them out." "That makes sense," we say to ourselves, as we huddle with the rest of the herd. "They're right about us being the best cows, so they must be right about those other cows." So we get rounded up and milked for tax money by politicians who think like cows in favor of cattle guards, instead of finding the leaders who can help us step carefully over the barriers of the unknowable future. But if you want to learn to step carefully on your own, a good place to practice is Los Barriles. All-but-certain Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz has made his candidacy even more likely by renouncing his Canadian citizenship, which he claims he didn't know he had in the first place. He got it by being born in Canada, to an American mother and a Cuban father. It's the first time a Presidential contender has announced by renouncing his allegiance to a foreign power. Senator Cruz burning the bridge to the nation of his birth was treated indifferently here in the US, where many Americans regard Canada as merely a handy way to keep Michigan from bordering on the North Pole, just a vast tract of tundra thinly populated by freezing, gravy-slurping drunks who talk funny. I figured that the reaction had to be more heated in the Great White North, though, so I contacted a Canadian, Peter "Petey" Peterson, who happened to be hanging out at the barbecue grill at my condo complex in California, where many Canadians go to temporarily escape Canada. "Well, mostly we feel slightly depressed about it," Petey said, "but that's the way we Canadians feel about almost everything. They say it's the lack of sunshine, eh?" If Cruz is elected President, do you think Canadians will feel proud of him like Kenyans are proud of Obama, despite the fact that he just gave your whole large cold nation the back of his hand? "Oh, sure. Most Canadians come to the US just so they can star on Saturday Night Live, yunno, and we think that's great, so having one as the President is even better." Did you know Ted Cruz during his Canadian years? "Sure. Even after his mom and pop took him back to the US, he used to come back in the spring when the snow melted and help us drink those cases of Labatt's we'd forgotten in the yard in the fall. And we'd go out and club a few seals together before the ice broke up. One time he tried to club a seal with his big Texas belt buckle. We told him not to. 'Use a bat, Ted,' we said. Well, that seal turned on him and broke his leg, yunno. We had to take him to the hospital. 'Now that you've gotten the socialist medicine, does that make you a socialist?' we teased him. He got pretty mad." I'll bet. Do you think it's even going to be an issue when Ted runs, now that he's released his birth certificate? I mean, no one ever claimed Obama's mother wasn't American, but Ted's friends tried real hard to keep him off the ballot anyway. Will the other candidates call Ted 'the Canadian candidate' or do you think the other Republicans will let Ted slide on not being native-born? "Oh, they let him slide, for sure. But, yunno, what might be embarrassing for him is if the other candidates start releasing the medical expenses their ma and pop had to pay when they were born. You Yanks think there's something character building aboot getting those surprise six-figure bills along with your little bundle of joy, but Mr. and Mrs. Cruz didn't pay nothing when little Ted decided to be born in Canada. That could hurt him in the primaries." Sure, I could see that. I can almost hear zingers like "Freedom isn't free, but being born in Canada is." But I'm glad Canadians are good with one of their own being President of the US. "Ya, mostly. There's some grousing, yunno, that he could've waited until after hockey season to renounce his citizenship. Some people in the border provinces are worried, too. They want to make sure we beef up border security." Um, Petey, looking at the map of Canada, they're almost all border provinces. That's a lot of worried Canadians. What for? "Oh, they're afraid Ted might try to get back in." La tarjeta del Grupo Armad Stuck by myself for a day in La Paz, by mid-afternoon I have located a seat at Mariscos El Dorado, a nondescript restaurant facing the bay, with a view of the water and the mountains of the Baja mainland on the other side. The angle of the sun and the slight mist off the Sea of Cortez combine to produce the tranquilizing illusion that the ships anchored far offshore are defying gravity by floating a few meters in the air above the surface of the water rather than directly on it. I order an Indio, one of the few Mexican dark beers generally available and contemplate the bay. A mariachi band comes in to take a look at the crowd. They are late middle-aged men who nonetheless look far younger than their battered instruments. The bass in particular looks like it has been tossed carelessly into the cargo hold of every bus in North America, its wooden surfaces scarred at every seam. The old guys look at the crowd. Besides myself, there is only a family gathered at one table and a pair of young guys at another. Mariachis like couples or large parties for their audiences. There are none here, and the band departs without offering their services or playing a note. I order, camerones la diabla con queso, shrimp in hot cheese sauce. A second mariachi band stops outside, finishing their cigarettes out of respect for el Dorado's non-smoking policy, before marching up the steps to survey the crowd. This band has four members. Two play accordions, one a tuba and one merely sings. Both the tuba and the soloist are unusual for a mariachi band. The men are much younger and they are here to work. They launch into song despite the unpromising audience. The accordions are fairly new but the tuba appears to have been on the same bus tour as the bass. The tuba player looks older than the rest of the band, but maybe that's just because he is bulkier, a fleshy counterweight to his instrument. I have never been this close to a tuba player in the act of tuba-playing, and I find it interesting. Playing the tuba looks like hard work. His cheeks puff and he bounces rhythmically. His eyes bulge with the effort, and he is just producing a series of similar notes, the equivalent of a bass line. He is the only band member sweating when the song ends. Another Mexican working hard at a thankless job, like all of the immigrant housepainters, landscapers and tomato pickers that have tiptoed across the border to the United States to take jobs away from all the Americans who want to mow lawns, paint houses or pick tomatoes for a career. Then it strikes me: THE TUBA PLAYERS ARE NEXT! PRETTY SOON, THERE WON'T BE A MARCHING BAND WITHOUT A MEXICAN TUBA PLAYER IN THE UNITED STATES! THAT'S WHY WE NEED TO BUILD THAT WALL! Puffing harder and working cheaper, willing to sneak across the trackless deserts of Arizona, risking death by heat stroke or dehydration and carrying some pretty weighty instruments besides, Mexican tubanistas are bound to drive American-born tuba players out of the trade. Our kids will end up as flautists or piccolo players while the sound of Spanish tuba fills the land. Playing tuba, like finishing cement or hot tar roofing, will soon be an impossible dream for American youth. The band finishes and passes out cards. They are a norteno band, the cards say. Some norteno music is said to glorify the leaders of Mexican drug cartels. Another reason to ban the tuba player! Unlike American popular music, which often glamorizes criminals and crime, norteno music glamorizes criminals and crime in Spanish, a language most of us don't understand. Obviously, that makes it worse. The camarones a la diabla arrive, twenty or so medium fresh shrimp accompanied by Spanish rice and roasted vegetables with baby potatoes. As I eat, the sun gets lower and the ships in the bay seem to slowly settle back to the surface of the water. The meal and three Indios run about eighteen dollars American, including tip. I recommend the place, if you get down to La Paz before the Mexicans get wise and build a wall of their own. |
THE BIG NEWS!
PINEAPPLE CRUSH, my second hard-boiled mystery novel, has been released as of October 12th, 2017 by Black Rose Writing. You can order here and on Amazon To read Chapter One, click here
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