UNREMITTING FAILURE

The Flying Pinto

Not content with the El Camino, the half car/half truck, in the early seventies Henry Smolinski set out to build a vehicle that was half airplane/half Ford Pinto.  Unfortunately he was killed while testing it with pilot Harold Blake.  We here at Unremitting Failure hereby induct Smolinski into our Hall of Futility, with full honors.  A Ford Pinto? You couldn't survive in one on the ground.  What made him think the air would be any safer is beyond us.   

Sorry We Haven't Been Posting

We've been tragically preoccupied by our attempt to go out on a date.  It's not as simple as it sounds.  There's the complicated matter of getting the woman's phone number, followed by the not simple matter of actually reaching the woman via the telephone, followed by the complicated mathematics involved in finding a night suitable for both people, followed by us, last night, getting stood up.

This was at an Asian tea house (Teaism, isn't that cute?) in Dupont Circle.  We ordered a pot of tea called Golden Monkey while we waited, and sure enough it had a delicious simian aftertaste that we unfortunately couldn't savor because we were too annoyed at getting stood up.  We sat around drinking our tea for well over an hour, thinking maybe we got the time wrong, but no go.  Occasionally we would go outside and smoke a cigarette, while striking lonely guy poses that we thought appropriate for someone in our unhappy position.

Which is part of the dating life, we guess, but for us it was the bitter end to several days of agitated waiting for the date to happen, which we spent thinking about nothing but the date, and imagining how we were going to explain to the woman in question that we are still cohabitating with our ex-wife. During this time we were far too caught up in this imaginary uncomfortable discussion to do anything else, much less post on this blog.  What a waste.  When we got home we thought to check our e-mail and sure enough she had written to say she wouldn't be able to make it, but by this time we were far too overwrought to take much solace in the fact.  A wise man once said that if an answer isn't simple it isn't spiritual, and actually arranging to meet with this woman seems far from a simple proposition.  So perhaps that tells us everything we need to know.  Or perhaps not.  Perhaps we should perservere and try our damndest to hook up with her, because she's funny and cute and we like her.  Who knows.  All we know is that we've wasted several days wandering aimlessly in our own head, having imaginary conversations with ourselves dressed in drag.  And waiting around to make another date seems like more torture than we can handle.  Still, we'll probably do it, if only because it gives our anxiety a focus, for which we are always grateful.   

By Popular Demand

Here's the sweet X-Mas card Martijn sent to Mrs. UF (ex) and yours truly.  Short of the card from our mom (which was stuffed with cash) it was the nicest card we received this year.  As you can see, it shows off Martijn's obsessive-compulsive side, which is also on display on his very fascinating blog.  Thanks, Martijn. You're the best.

We Didn't Do Anything Remotely Martin Luther King Jr. Related

On Martin Luther King Day, and we're roundly ashamed of ourselves.  We could have done something to honor the memory of that great man.  Instead we laid on the sofa and paged through Mrs. UF's "Victoria's Secret" catalogue, while sipping at a coffee.  That was in the morning.  In the afternoon we vowed to do something MLK related, but instead returned to the sofa and the "Victoria's Secret" catalogue, to see if there were any pages we'd missed.  There weren't.  Come evening we steadfastly resolved to see if there was anything about the life of MLK on television, but before we could pick up the remote control our attention was captured by the aforementioned "Victoria's Secret" catalogue, to which we returned yet again, this time to brush up on the buttocks we mightn't have paid sufficient attention to the first two times around. 

We don't know why we're such a bad American, we ignore MLK Day and we're opposed to the death penalty and we don't even fly an American flag from our balcony.  Of course there are lots of Americans who are far worse than us who don't think MLK even deserves a holiday, what a bunch of racist losers.  We know he deserves a holiday, a two-day holiday even, one for us to spend looking at the "Victoria's Secret" catalogue, and another one for us to actually get off our ass and do something that pays honor to the greatest American of all time.  Or to spend yet another day looking at the "Victoria's Secret" catalogue, that's what a piss-poor American we are. 

escalator of love

Everybody it seems has done it on an elevator, but we made love once on an escalator at the FAO Schwartz toy store in NYC.  Talk about your slow rides. 

It was wrong, we know.  Kids shouldn't have to witness that sort of thing.  Us with our pants around our ankles, shouting, "THIS is the toy we want for Christmas!"

Then again, Love makes you do crazy things.  Was it love? Our penis certainly thought so.  But then again, our penis is a very confused animal.  You would be too if you spent most of your time in utter darkness, emerging only to find yourself staring at blank white porcelain. Our penis is uneducated and inarticulate, but still manages to hold down two jobs.  So it's not doing too badly for itself.  And when push comes to shove, we still think it could beat Rick Perry in a Presidential debate. 

Speaking of sex, we're going to come right out and admit it--we've never done it in a car.  It seems downright Un-American of us.  Having sex in an automobile is a sacred rite of passage in the USA, which is perhaps the reason we've never felt really grown up.  We're unfinished, like a cartoon character who wears no pants.  Why don't they wear pants? Because they've never had sex in a car, that's why. 

We did have sex in an elevator once, but we found it nerve-wracking.  We've never had sex on an airplane.  We don't have time to join the Mile-High Club, we have responsibilities.   We're too busy staring at the wing, to make sure it doesn't fall off.  We're the plane's designated wing-watcher, whether the crew knows it or not.   We can only hope there's somebody like us watching the other wing.  We can't watch both wings at once, we're only human.  And a particularly lowdown breed of human at that, if you listen to the former manager of FAO Schwartz. 

Eagle on the Railing

Yesterday an eagle landed on our balcony railing, which seems like a portent of some kind, but of what?  That we shall be asked to join the Eagles, by Don Henley himself?  Or that we shall fly like an eagle, as Steve Miller said?  Not literally of course, but metaphorically, although we would of course prefer literally, we would love to plummet to the earth to seize our enemy in our fierce talons, if we had real enemies which we don't.  Instead we have imaginary enemies, or perhaps it would be better to say pretend enemies, like Oprah Winfrey for instance.  Or perhaps it would be even more accurate yet to say that while we have real enemies they're not personal enemies, but impersonal ones like cops politicians and the like. 

And we didn't even know there were eagles in the city, perhaps this one was lost or (more likely) sent as a winged emissary to our apartment to let us know we have an eagle-like mission of extraordinary boldness to perform in our life, although what that mission would be we have no idea.  We're more pigeon than eagle, we like to walk around on the sidewalk and voyeuristically check out what's going on.  No soaring for us.  But perhaps that's about to change.  Perhaps we shall be required to perform an all-out eagle-like act of heroism, unlike the other night in the alley where we saw two rats fall out of a garbage can and fled like a little girl, dragging poor Maddie on her leash behind us. 

Are we up to the challenge?  We shall see.  We have always thought that we had a little eagle in us, but that it was buried beneath many many layers of personal cowardice.  When it comes to fight or flight we have always chosen the latter, although flight might not actually be the right word.  Better to say we have always unsuccessfully attempted to fly from the danger, the way a chicken might, in eight to ten foot flapping fiascoes.  To think that now we shall be required to meet the danger, and swoop down upon it like an eagle upon its adversary, to do battle, is quite the daunting prospect, which is why we prefer to think that the eagle was there for Mrs. UF (ex).  Let her do the eagle fighting.  We'll stand by and watch like a pigeon, on our gaudy orange feet, while hoping that somebody will toss us a crust of bread, that's more our idea of action. 

Three-Day Weekend

Mrs. UF (ex) and yours truly both have a theory that it's 10 times harder to return to work from a three-day weekend than it is from a two-day weekend.  Why this should be so, we haven't a clue.  It should be otherwise, obviously.  But something about that third day off convinces your body and mind that you'll never have to go back to work, and that the long nightmare of cubicle bondage is finally over.  If only it were so.  Instead you have to return to work just like always, and not even the prospect of a shortened work week is enough to overcome the despair that comes of having had a taste of freedom from employment only to have to return to work after all.  To earn an honest living is dishonest, dishonest to your soul and to your sense of having been born a free man only to find yourself forced to slave away at a desk or wherever for five days out of seven.  And that's if you're lucky.  Some people have to work six days a week or even seven, how dreadful, to think they survived the horrors of childhood only to step on the landmine of gainful employment.  Perhaps it's different if you have a job you like, we hear some people do.  Professional masturbaters, for example. We might have pulled it off if we'd managed to work full time in journalism, but we blew that one and good. 

This weekend wasn't much, we took the dogs to see friends Saturday night and that was fun, our friends have a house at the edge of the city and our dogs can run from room to room chasing their dogs and vice versa, it's a real barkfest.  Then Sunday we just hung out and watched Final Destination 5 which was great, supergreat even, because not only does it have a bridge disaster, it has a plane crash too!  We'll watch any movie with a plane crash in it, plane crash movies are our favorite genre.   Hollywood (obviously) needs to make more of them, instead of all these animated films for children that never have a good gory plane crash in them, like where a section of the fuselage gives way and the people in rows 14 through 20 get sucked out still strapped into their seats, you'll never see that in The Lion King.  We were going to go see Mark Wahlberg in Contraband but it got rotten reviews, so we decided to see Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy except the plot is supposed to be superconvulted, so we decided to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie except we got home too late from the gym.  So we settled for Final Destination 5 on television, after walking the dogs and eating chicken soup from the Mexican restaurant down the street. 

Then yesterday we did nothing, except go running, and we were like the wind.  Like the wind.  We left Mrs. UF in the dust.  And we made chili which was pretty good if we don't mind saying so ourselves, and then we watched Ghost World which was great.  Afterwards we were too tired to even do yoga, tired and panicky about having to return to work, that great scourge, someday we're going to retire and move to Berlin and take lots of trips to Poland, we've always wanted to see Poland, someday we're going to go to Poland and say "We're in Poland at last!" and won't that be fine, if the bastards don't kill us off before it's time to retire and we never get the chance to see Poland at last, that fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine country. 

Footloose

Here's Unremitting Failure cutting loose, in a frenetic Watusi that caused Mrs. UF to flee the room.  Some people just can't handle "REAL" dancing.  We were listening to the Dandy Warhols' "Boys Better" when the spirit struck us.  It was Saturday night, we might've probably had a little way too much caffeine, and boy did we cut the rug.  Back in the day we could clear a dancefloor with our spirited improvisatory moves, and we just wanted to prove we still have it.  We still do.  People see us make our moves, and they don't walk, they run, away.  We're a one-person dance party, a disco Vietnam.  If you see us coming, make room, or we'll party all over you. 

The Song "Afternoon Delight"

Is, we're shocked to learn, about daytime sex.  Needless to say, this topic is disgusting to many, if not most, decent people.  Sex while the sun's still up?  Ignominious.  Immoral even.  The sex act should be conducted in utter darkness, darkness outside the home as well as inside the home.  The curtains should be drawn (there could be a moon) and no lights should be on, even in rooms other than the room the sex act is being conducted in.  If the sex act is conducted outside the home, which is madness but some of your lower orders (hippies, campers, teenagers) do it, say in the backyard or on a not currently in use football field or in the woods or in a flowery pasture while the birds look away in furious shame, darkness should again prevail.  There should be no moon, or a waning moon, and a very waning moon at that. 

All of this brings us, warily, to the subject of nakedness.  This is a subject that it's best to sneak up on, then throw a sheet over.  Suffice it to say that all rational people agree that nakedness is a form of madness, especially during sex.  Naked people are people who have completely lost their moral bearings, and are capable of anything, even sensual enjoyment with their shower fixtures.  If sex were about enjoyment, masturbation wouldn't cause blindness.  Sex is purely for procreation, and the mass production of future mass producers.  It's too bad that babies can't be pressed like CDs in factories under sanitary conditions; unfortunately, we have to wallow in filth to produce them, the squalling wretches. 

This brings us to the touchy subject of touching during sex.  Needless to say it's a pile of oily rags just waiting for the lubricious match of lust.  First you touch a person, and the next thing you know you're groping them with your tumescent fingers.  It's horrible.  Sex should be a noncontact sport, like dodge ball or bowling.  Except that it isn't a sport, it's a terrible responsibility that weighs heavily upon us all, and causes us to weep, and destroys entire villages down to the last chicken, and makes God frown.  All that, and having it with siblings causes retards.   

The Desk Snorer

We seem to have nothing to say today, which is a pity, because we're dying. 

Not literally, we're never going to die literally (we've made arrangements), but figuratively we feel like we're going to die if we don't write something on this blog. 

We don't know why it's such a big deal that we write something today, except that we didn't write anything yesterday and that hurt, it hurts us to go a day without writing something, and we're talking physically in the gonads it hurts. 

Of course yesterday we had an excuse, we were superbusy, the boss came flying down the stairs cracking his whip and shouting, "Work, by God, you'll work or feel the sting of my lash!"  But today he's nowhere to be seen and so we've got the "leisure time" to write except we can't think of a thing to write about.  Everything bores us.  And our life is so boring we can't even begin to tell you, to the extent that we just took a little desk nap.  We're an adept desk napper, we don't snore or anything, or if we do all our coworkers are to polite to tell us about it.  For all we know we're a trumpeting snorer, and such a sound sleeper that all our coworkers caper about our desk laughing, and pinning signs to our back that say "Desk snorer." 

The other night our friend David told us a story. It's 1971.  He's a hippie in the wilds of California, and just wandering in the woods when a Charles Mansonoid type personage waving a big sharp knive confronts him and says, "How many eyes do I have?"  David of course is scared out of his wits, and is wondering just what kind of answer this crazy person wants to hear.  Finally he ventures, "Two."  And with that the hippie, looking wise and somber, lowers his knife and says "And so you live."

It's a crazy world, Newt Gingrich walks around with a big sharp knife saying "How many eyes do I have?", but still we're bored and we wonder why.  Perhaps we need to get laid.  It's strange living with your ex-wife and having no idea how to get laid, it's been so long.  We're rusty.  And we can't even invitee the potential layee back to our apartment because our ex-wife is there, which is guaranteed to make things awkward especially seeing as there's only one bed.  We love Mrs. UF (ex) madly and we'd go crazy living without our dogs, so living where we're living makes sense, although not to most people.  But it seems like a perfectly reasonable arrangement to us.  Still it's damned inconvenient in the sex department, which is to say that it's hard to imagine trying to explain to any potential sex partner who strikes our fancy that we're still living with our ex-wife but it's okay, it's not what you think, we're not cheating on her because, see, the two of us have an agreement.  No woman is going to go for a situation like that, which means we're doomed to celibacy for as long as we continue to live with Mrs. UF (ex). 

Anyway, it looks like we've written something after all, thanks to the tons of coffee we've consumed which is why we're writing this way, with the long run-on sentences and all, thank God for caffeine which we drink by the bucket and still we manage to find it within us to take desk naps, which are very restorative and good for the soul, and God knows we need them now that we're doing yoga at night, which energizes us and keeps us awake, we keep hearing Rodney Yee saying "namaste" every time we close our eyes, and the book we're reading is just so many empty calories and the chocolate we eat in bed doesn't help, and we love our life despite the fact that we'll probably never get laid again, not even in our dreams, which mostly involve us drinking lots of alcohol, and smoking lots of pot, to the extent that if you find yourself in one of our dreams you're virtually guaranteed to be wasted, lucky you. 

Romney Wins Again

This time in New Hampshire.  We have mixed feelings about this, as on the positive side Mitt is the only Republican candidate who doesn't set off a Geiger counter.  On the negative side, he's a soulless vacuum and the only Republican candidate with a breath of a chance of defeating Obama, who we prefer despite the fact that he has consistently disappointed us as President, reaffirming our belief that voting for any American politician is a great way of making a fool of yourself.  Anyway, the great charade of participatory democracy now moves on to South Carolina and its wealth of religious nutters.  We can hardly wait to hear the gibberish and swill that comes out of the mouths of the candidates trying to mollify that mob of cretins.  What a great year for politics, that most useless of sports, 2012 promises to be!

Why We're Closeminded

We haven't always been closeminded.  When we were born we looked at the world with eyes of wonder, receptive and open to all the stimuli that came flooding in.  We were a little growing flower, and the world was our sunshine.  We were curious, that's the truth of it, and we couldn't learn enough about all the exciting things that were happening all around us.

Then came 1963, and the Great Littlestown Flood.  It took our mother and father, and our sister and brothers, and our house and our car, and even our dog, Flopsie.  We were left to wander the devastated flood plain in our underpants, shivering.  People, our mother and father, and our sister and our brothers, and even Flopsie, say it didn't happen.  But what would they know?--they all died, Flopsie included, after falling into a crevasse in Switzerland during a ski vacation in 1966, which they also claim didn't happen.  Some families are happy families and some families are sad families and some families just refuse to give up the ghost, no matter how convenient it would be in explaining our subsequent problems adjusting to life. 

The truth is that due to our family's stubborn refusal to become collectively deceased in a tragic accident or act of god, we have no idea why we are the way we are.  Their selfishness denied us a good story to hang our dysfunction on, and we have never forgiven them for it.  If they'd only all fallen into that crevasse in Switzerland, we'd have a stranglehold on the pity of our fellows and the ideal reason for being the self-pitying wreck we are.  Instead, they're all around to call us a liar whenever we try to bring up the terrible crevasse tragedy at the Thanksgiving table.  It still works with shrinks though.  We tell them both stories, to make them feel doubly sorry for us. 

Anyway, that's why we became closeminded.  Our whole family died in the Great Littlestown Fire of 1967, which was started by Flopsie, who accidentally knocked a can of propane into a pile of oily rags during that dry tinder summer when we still believed in everything and all of life seemed like an open book, say the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Eleventh Edition page 447, upon which you will find the definition of the word "fabulist".      

Yoga (Again)

Last night we tried yoga for the first time, and God help us, we liked it.  We were ready to assume the corpse pose on the sofa while Mrs. UF (ex) did her yoga when the imp of the perverse struck and we thought, Why not give it a go?  So we did.  And it was fun, like the Wii "Dancing with Abba" we tried when we were at our sister's house for the New Year. 

Now, of course, we're confounded.  We have staked our entire reputation on hating yoga and now to turn around and say we like it, well, it's cause for much moral confusion.  What if something similar happens vis a vis our relationship with Sting?  What if we suddenly find ourselves singing along with "Living in the Material World"? Should we surrender to it? Or set ourselves on fire, the way a righteous Buddhist monk would do?   

And who knows whether yoga isn't just the tip of the proverbial Titanic sinker?  What if we one day develop a yen for a neti pot?  Or develop an unsavory interest in mandalas?  We pride ourselves on holding to certain opinions, developed over the course of an ill-spent and unhappy lifetime, and we'd hate to have to abandon them just to find peace of mind.  There's such a thing as contentment, we think, and we have successfully evaded it only with constant effort, by effectively ducking anything that carries even the whiff of self-improvement.  To perversely turn our back on that principle reeks of treason.  We've built a perfectly precarious life for ourselves by assuming the posture of the self-helpless, rightfully or wrongfully assuming that people who seek to improve themselves are like ducks trying to be tigers.  You are what you are, i.e., somebody you're wise to run away from.  But you always catch up to yourself, and nothing, not even books or chocolate, can help.

But what if we were wrong all that time?  What if yoga, and everything that goes along with it, really does lead to peace of mind?  All I want is my peace of mind sang the singer from Boston who ended up gassing himself with his propane grill in his bathroom, and what horror to think that maybe it was as close as the Self-Help section of his local bookstore.  We hope to never end up a browser there.  But the way things are going, that may just be our fate.                         

corpse pose 

We Thank God We Have Good Fashion Sense

Unlike the rest of our family, who wear hats they bought at Pottery Barn, we've always had good taste in clothes.  We were a sartorial Wunderkind, the first kid in our third-grade class to sport a paisley dicky.  True, we had a dark period in the mid-seventies when we took to wearing bib overalls and a biker beard in imitation of our pig farmer friends, the Harrisons.  We loved pot and placidyl but the combination turned us into a sloven.  We no longer wore a flower in our buttonhole, so to speak.  But we repented of our ways when we met our first wife, who was from that fashion citadel of the world, New Jersey.

We say all this because lately we have been suffering a relapse into poor fashion.  Lately our idea of a happening outfit for walking the dogs is a pair of track suit pants and a sweater.  We look like a Bulgarian black marketeer in Marlboros.  Mrs. UF (ex) has commented on this decline in our usually dapper appearance, but the fact is we like looking like a Bulgarian black marketeer, it makes us feel dangerous.  We're even growing sideburns, and thinking of dying our hair jet black and then slicking it straight back with the kind of pomade that comes in a tin, and is usually purchased only by old black guys named Early. 

We know we're headed downhill, but we also know that there are bottoms beneath bottoms we hope never to reach.  For example, we ask you, loyal reader, to shoot us in the head should we ever be seen going about town in a rugby shirt.  Or a pair of fucking flip flops. 

A Bright Morning Thought

We really wish people would stop repopulating the Earth.  It's chockful of people already, certainly too many to send birthday cards to, and so far as we can tell the only reason many of them exist is to run us (the perpetual pedestrian) over with their cars. 

Everywhere we go we see couples pushing strollers, and they all have that smug look like they've done something special.  They have. They've virtually guaranteed, since there isn't enough food to go around, that somebody else's baby will go hungry.

The only way to stop the endless cycle of birth, suffering, and death is to cut out the first part.  But people don't care.  They blindly go on procreating, ruining a perfectly good sex act and virtually guaranteeing that we'll never have a quiet meal in a restaurant.  Somebody's kid is always causing a scene.

Our own personal feeling is that there shouldn't be more than six babies on the face of the Earth at any one time.  We were going to say five, but we're feeling profligate. 

Man is a failed experiment, as history shows.  We've brought nothing but misery to ourselves and to all the species around us.  All our much touted achievements are as nothing compared to our track record of war, genocide, rape, environmental depredation, and reality shows.  Every time we think of having a kid we remind ourselves that she'll most likely end up being murdered or, even worse, as a contestant on The Bachelorette.  

We realize that babies will always be born, because blind instinct always trumps rational thought. We're here to procreate, and by God we'll do it no matter who gets hurt.  We look at babies and we try to imagine their futures and all that comes to mind is that, if they live long enough, they can look forward to working until they're 80 before they'll be able to retire.  Then they'll go senile and their own children will abandon them.  Because that's human instinct too.  We were young once, and lacked the good sense to die in an automobile accident.  Now we have to go to work every day, and wonder what the point is.  Well, the point is there is no point.  We're the species whose highest achievement is to realize the point is there is no point.  We're here to watch cooking shows, if we're lucky enough to live in the First World, or to die at 3 of malnutrition, if we're even luckier and live in the Third World.   

Holiday Post-Mortem

Well, the Holidays are good and dead.  Christmas trees are piling up in the streets, tossed to the gutter by their ungrateful hosts like the bodies of plague victims in earlier times.  True, you still see the occasional tree illuminated in a window at night, plugged in by people desperate to squeeze every last Yule out of a dead log.  But nobody plays Christmas songs on the radio anymore.  And all the kids' presents are either broken or forgotten.  We haven't experienced an attack of the Christmas Spirit for ages, but it's still sad to watch the holly jolly time of year get dismantled, one decoration at a time, as if nothing ever happened.  The people we like are the ones who leave the colored Christmas lights on their house lit up until March.  Or the plastic Santa and reindeer sitting on the front lawn until July.  True, they tend to be either pathologically lazy or terminally drunk, but say what you will, they are the True Faithful. 

                                    "Hey buddy, could you spare a dime?"

Yoga's Not Really What You Think It Is

For instance, "namaste" really means assume Joyful Baby pose and take it like a man.

We Think We're Ready for "Supine Pigeon" Even!

We've decided to embrace yoga--as a spectator sport.  Last night Mrs. Ex-UF decided to "wind down" with some late night yoga, and we decided to lie on the sofa and watch.  It was very calming and soporific.  The ethereal New Age music, the soothing voice of the guy on the DVD doing the yoga--it all made us feel so serene it was almost like we were doing it ourselves.  We unglued ourselves from the sofa afterwards and we felt sore, but all loose and stretchy good at the same time.  It's as rigorous a nonworkout as we've ever had and we'd recommend it to anybody looking to enjoy the benefits of yoga without having to make a fool of themselves in the process. We hope to do it again tonight, only hopefully we''ll try something a tad bit more advanced.  Downward Dog is nice, as is Man Eating Pretzel While Flat on Back (our own original contribution to yoga choreography) but we think we're ready for some of the more difficult poses.      

Rodney Yee is Mrs. Ex-UF's favorite yogameister

Cows (Twenty Lines)

Thanks to crystal meth and guns, once boring corners of America are now tremendously exciting.  Time, which once moved very slowly, now moves very fast.  The same goes for the people.  This is called progress.  Mobile meth labs, parked in the boonies, produce a jet age merchandise that people simply can't get enough of.  This is called capitalism.  The only things that haven't changed are the cows.  They still mosey along, and haven't succumbed to the latest fad, burglary.  Cows defy progress, they stand in the way of progress, they're not interested in crystal meth or robbing houses to get the money to pay for crystal meth.  Cows are reactionaries.  They stand in the same fields they've always stood in, munching on grass or just looking off into the distance.  The same thing happened in California in the seventies.  Cows weren't interested in cocaine.  They didn't grow pony tails.  Put a cow in a hot tub, and that cow was not happy.  Cows did not sing along with Steely Dan's "Black Cow."  Cows are moveable hamburger.  They deserve an award.  Cows are even better than the Amish at resisting the lures of modernity.  Cows are great. 

A Brief Political Digression

It breaks our heart that Michelle Bachmann has dropped out of the Republican race for President.  Her alarming pronouncements on social issues never failed to remind us that America is filled with people who think the country's been going downhill since we gave up witch-burning.  Fortunately, Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum has leaped in to fill the nutball void.  He's just slightly to the right of Hitler, and has singlehandedly turned the sweater vest into a symbol of Mayberry-era sexual intolerance.  Santorum's basic position on sexual issues is, If it would shock Aunt Bee, it should be a felony. 

Our personal favorite amongst the Republican candidates is Ron Paul.  He's crazier than a river running backwards, but you won't catch him trying to legislate what goes on in the bedroom.  Compared to the rest of the Republican candidates, he's a wild man.  He never has sex in his bed, because (a) he prefers having it on his front lawn and (b) the gold ingots he has hidden under the mattress make for an uncomfortable lay. 

We're not going to lie to you--it's been amusing watching the Tea Party contingent switch its allegiance from one candidate to the other, like a drunk man trying to pick a prostitute in a whorehouse.  Now it's Santorum's turn to bare his tits.  And all because their ideal candidate--the clearly insane man who stands outside your local 7-11 shouting "The darkies have ruined everything!"--refuses to man up and run.