Billy Button

Do you ever see how far you can stick your finger down your bellybutton? I do. Last year, for some reason, I tended to accumulate a lot of bellybutton lint. Maybe it was Arkansas. Maybe it was a reaction against global warming. I don't know. For those of you with outies, besides scaring other kids at the pool, it must be hard to never feel comfortable in conversation about our bellybuttons, since you don't really have them, just weird smooth bumps. For you to jump in, you might have to say something like, "My dad had a big bellybutton," but nothing that would raise suspicion about your own lack of one.

This week, I wish some other things would disappear into that shallow abyss.

Mother Russia again. I tell you, I thought that wall came down along time ago. Some Ruskies seem to be acting like closeted racists, waiting for the time and place where communism and the Eastern Bloc will be chic again. You know the type, those guys that interject something so over-the-top racist you feel the back draft of the time warp vortex closing up. Some one mentions watermelon in the summertime and the racist grabs a rope and asks if that's the bait.

And yes, that is what I am saying about Putin, that he's waiting for the day where he can open the wardrobe with all of his USSR jerseys and march in high step around Red Square. Bill Murray will not make his country look like a fool again. If you don't know what I'm talking about, Russia is selling arms - fighter planes, surface to air missiles - to Iran and Venezuela.

I took the ladyfriend to a nice dinner last night to celebrate two years together. We had a wine expert put to rest those rumors you had been hearing about Two-Buck Chuck. My bride-to-be is guilty of spreading the rumor that they mistreat their workers, a la letting pregnant Mexican women die in the fields picking grapes. And for my brother's wine and spirits class professor, the beverage is not rebottled from restaurant wine backwash.

The truth is this. You pay for the packaging. The grapes used are surplus from vineyards and because of business reasons, vineyards would rather sell them than throw them out. Two Buck Chuck buys the surplus and makes wine. So they buy their grapes from others, eliminating pregnant picker possibilities, and they make their own.

His suggestion was to open the bottle in the parking lot and taste it. If it tastes good, go back and buy from the same box. If it sucks, you can still get drunk.

That's all for now. I could talk about how both campaigns are engaging in sixth grade student government politics, but you have probably witnessed that yourself. Also, Bill Richardson has proposed a plan to tie driver's licenses to a student's classroom performance. Dangle that carrot Bill.

As seen on TV

I received an email yesterday promoting a revolutionary enhancer to your kitchen. But first, news. Or maybe a few random thoughts.

I have been working the past few days, which means I sit at a desk and listen to tutorials online. I have never had a desk job. I was a bank teller, but that was more of a stool. I can see, after sitting at a desk for 8 hours, why someone would invent a chair that whirls your whole body around, as seen on tv. I was trying to find the name of that invention and came across the as seen on tv website. Never go there. I will tempt you with a link though.

Did you see the story about the 31 year-old woman who made the cheer leading squad posing as her teenage daughter? At the pool party, the other squad members noticed she had stretch marks. This was a released text message from one of the girls:
"OMG, did u c the baby escape route acrss her belly?"
Okay, that last quote is not real. However, I think "baby escape route"as a euphemism for c-section scar is pretty clever.

I can't seem to find a link for that either, so check out these people cashing in our stupidity. Also, the user comment about their NYC water flavoring everything - bagels, pizza, trash liquid -to perfection is ridiculous. Reserve that type of comment for Texans.

And now a person worthy of news.
Gene Sharp's pen has always been his weapon of choice. The king of nonviolent protest for regime change (that works!) was the subject of a terrific Wall Street Journal article. One idea in his 90-page breeze through "From Dictatorship to Democracy" is to adopt a color and use it in mass protests, like when the world witnessed the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. (Russia does not want the Ukraine to join NATO, by the way.) He is despised by autocrats in Iran and Venezuela alike. I'm a fan of anyone who can put a lump in Chavez's seat cushion. Why we don't hear more about people like him, I don't know. Now that you have, consider yourself enlightened.

For the finale, a combination that would make Remy of Ratatouille proud. I give you Bacon Salt.

You know my excitement.

Be Cool

I feel bad. For months, over a year now, the Obama campaign has been so cool. Suddenly, from Alaska ironically, the cool factor is up in the air. For everyone I believe, besides Matthew McConnaughey, being cool is hard work.

I remember trying to be cool, when all that pressure from the previous school year's annuals where kids signed, "Stay Cool," became more of a chore than a compliment. Middle school is the epoch of this time. I persuaded my grandmother to buy me Puff Daddy and the Family's "No Way Out" CD. I soon discovered it to be edited because we bought it at Walmart, which caused me to miss Busta Rhymes part completely in one song. Rap - cursing = not cool. I was still cool though, or trying, when I convinced my mom to get me a Tommy Hilfiger Logo Tee, the kind where the giant logo covers the entire abdomen and lower chest. When I got home, I put it on and as the shirt dropped past my knees, I realized that maybe this was not me, this was not my cultural fashion. My cultural garb was to be defined by Duck Head shorts and anything from The Gap. Despite my efforts to be desirable, none of the hot girls I liked liked me back. The problem lay in my image as a goody-good, and the bad boys smoking pot on the Double Churches playground after school were much more attractive than a guy destined for a medal in the Science Olympics.

It is such a struggle to be cool. How much money have I wasted on the idea? When my bride-to-be and I visited DC and New York last summer, we spent our days visiting monuments and museums and the nights taking tequila shots 'til dawn in Georgetown. That last statement is not entirely true. We usually ate dinner early, planned the next day's trip to the Air and Space Museum, and went to sleep by eleven, maybe ten-thirty. At the time, we were only one year removed from undergraduate Greek culture, where drinking on a Tuesday made sense because pitchers of Bud Light cost 2$. Two dollars! Of course, our first jobs after college consisted of teaching high school math in a blink of a town in the Mississippi Delta. As I rounded out sine curves based on the cracks in the sidewalk in DC, she could only laugh and roll her eyes at our combined dorkiness. I shed tears that trip because I thought we were going to miss a tour of the White House. Why am I telling you this?

Because cool doesn't matter. It is a state of mind. No matter what group of people you are surrounded by, they all have a standard of cool. Magic players may believe that your knowledge of Mana makes you the coolest Ajani Goldsmane in the Shadowmoor. Muscles and athletic ability be damned, tell them about your epic battles in Lorwyn. I may have no idea what that means, but you, the reader, might. And so it goes.

Current standards of cool may look like this:
1. iPhone - What, you don't own one?
2. Obama supporter - He has an iPhone, duh.
3. Hair product - Doubles as self-defense if spiked.
4. Hybrid - Oh, those environmentally-conscious bastards. More on this later.

Notice I did not put blogging on the list for obvious reasons.
It is too much hard work and too much money to be cool. When I was out west this summer touring the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone with a good friend, I looked around at all the families, America if you will, enjoying their vacation. As I stroked my day old moustache and counted rat tails, fanny packs, and smiles, I thought, "Man, cool is overrated."