St. Santorum & Pope Cliff Boost Semenhood

Newt Gingrich--so very yesterday--is about as much a papist as a post- Boleyn Henry VIII. Like Henry, Newt was a serial spouser, but went the opposite conversion direction. Newt became a Catholic for love but shucked  his death-do-us-part vow; Henry became a not-Catholic for love but stuck to his do-us part vow.

If you want a real Catholic for President—and who doesn't-- Newt would be pathetically lame in one of your New Year's mitres.

There are literally dozens who support Planned Personhood, the liberal offshoot of the Catholic Anti-Definition League, but damned few who pledge fealty to Pope Benedict XVI I, who played Aloisius Ratzinger in "Springtime for Young Hitler" and Cliff, the voluble Bull carrier, in “Cheers.”

Damned few even know what “fealty” means, but pledge away they do.

Not, not as in “touchy fealty”.

Pope Cliff controls the second best conservative definition of the beginning of life. The best, of course, was written by Moses when language looked a lot like Wingbats and was etched in stone by lightning.

Which brings us, however elliptically, to St. Santorum, previously known only as the Prince of Northern Virginia, which is where he lived while he was living in Pennsylvania. Being half viable in two places at one time is a sure sign on sainthood, beating the crap out of Schrödinger's cat, which only managed to be alive and dead at the same time, way short of qualifying for beatification.

St. Santorum was almost solely responsible for redefining life in 2005 and more recently redefining the life of a presidential campaign as only requiring a tortured smile, a wink and a nod, brain function or Lone Star Governorship optional.

St. Santorum must now be taken as seriously as any hat in the ring containing an Angel's Diary. He is in Iowa. The second best place for him. He has shocked even Ru Paul, which it pretty hard this side of eight- inch platforms and glitter for mascara. St. Santorum is going to win the Iowa Crocuses, granting him the more rights to the color purple than Whoopie Goldberg's.

Okay. Who? And how?

The “Who” is not important. He could be anybody who hasn't learned how to smile. The “How”?

Semenhood.

St. Santorum has more ideas than Rick Perry has oops, and they are better, but the winner is the Papal Decree of Semenhood.

To keep this part short, Semenhood means that no abortions are allowed after the semen comes out of the blender, like a pina colada but not as frozen, yet (more on that below). Semen is derived from the New England term “Seaman”, because the tiny—okay, okay, microscopically really big--semen floaters are crazy swimmers like the guys who were pitched into the ocean by Moby Dick. Only one, of course, ends up with the prized coffin, but that is one very long narrative away from the point, even for this Blog.

Semen is a tad of a misnomer. Semen is really just the way an Intelligent Designer always packages spermapaloza, which is where the soul really begins but sounds too laughable to support even bingo. St. Santorum believes Semenhood down to his every bone. To know this Semenhood theory, one need only study the Pope's Cliffmail on Semenhood Sanctity. Papist dogma requires that Semen be treated as containing millions of quantum tithers.

As such Semen is only to be time-regulated to a Katy Perry-beat mp3's; is not allowed to be detained on Saturday nights by terrifying French ticklers (uh... whatever those are); and is neither to be frustrated days before arrival by some forearm implant nor sunk downside-up--if there's got to be a the morning after--by the damned French again.

St. Santorum and Pope Cliff's fluidy dream has led them to whip out a master plan--know in the Latin as the Bull Semen--to protect Sememhood and they expect to expose themselves soon, probably in New Hampshire, unless it's not too frakkin' cold: American Males are to be herded together and interned (not the 1998 meaning) in an Vatican Naval base in Greenland until all their little semem-borne quarks can be granted proper legal representation and definitely long, long before the next Megan Fox film.

This Bull will accomplish two things: It will lower Greenland two-tenths of an inch and it will save the Pope the draining expense of busing to the polls a trillion trillion new little voters otherwise stuck to movie posters.

Here's to Semenhood! And its patron saint, St. Santorum! Off to Greenland!

Shocking! Devil Not Causing Earthquakes

And you have long thought Pat Robertson had proven that Haiti's pact with the Devil back in the 1800's caused their 2010 earthquake. That earthquake caused horrific effects, including a visit by Sean Penn and a photo of George Bush and Bill Clinton together.

Well, forget that.

Unless Satan is a Capitalist (yes, yes, Barak), he did not cause the end-of-times-of-2011 earthquake that seems to have rattled a McDonald's near Youngstown, Ohio.

Hold on. Ohio? 

Ohio votes Republican!

More evidence that the Devil can not be involved.

The earthquake was not all that bad, a 4.0 on a 10.0 scale (unless Barak raises yet another ceiling). It probably didn't knock the tranche'd pickle off of a single Big Mac or jiggle a chocolate shake. People in Youngstown probably thought it more Walmart price rollbacks, you know, when the Zorro'ed price cards fall away from new, lower ones. Or maybe, Newt Gingrich's polls hitting.

Severity, however, is not the point. The point is what or who caused the earthquake.

Brine.

Wait. Don't flee to the nearest Ru Paul Iraq Indirectly Caused 9/11 Website. Real elucidation awaits. Here, not there.

Brine.

The stuff that makes Heinz pickles down I-76 from the quake?

Not really, although you may have just solved the pickle juice recycling crisis.

Brine is used in Fracking, which is the only way to profit from natural gas stored in the rock under Youngstown and other places. Fracking is all the rage, since it will make America the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. This even though nobody really wants to be the Saudi Arabia of anything, unless you think women drivers...

The United States can not long survive without Fracking. America needs to cook with gas. Figuratively and actually, too.

Natural gas burns cleaner than anything this side of, say, the Sun. It is a great way to make electricity and char Rib Eyes to Pittsburgh Rare. Had America used natural gas instead of coal to industrialize, there would be no Global Warming. Or Al Gore movies. Greenland would be 0.8 inch lower in the water, where it was when the Vikings first rammed a Dragon Head into it. Antarctica would cover Terra Del Fuego, which would just be mapped as Northwest Antarctica, Magellan having circumnavigated only the Falklands for all the damned ice.

Fracking is all about Brine and some benign chemical additives and their high-pressure injection into the gas-hording rock. The rock fractures and America gets gas for it pipelines and twelve fuel cells. Of course, to keep the gasless rock from collapsing, Frackers shoot in sand, long known as compatible with brine and little crabs, into the space where your new water heater fuel used to be. You know how well sand supports your sandal much better near that briny water?

That's the theory, anyway.

Some environmentalists, who obviously do not have land in Youngstown to license, decry fracking as certain to give you earthquakes as well the most environmental-friendly fuel this side of, say, the Sun.

Uh.

Turns out that, however dumb they look hum... hugging trees, these guys are right again.

Earthquakes. Not Satan, Pat. Brine.

So, Youngstown! American! Stop with the Pickle Fracking Juice already!

Not to be confused with Battlestar Galactia-speak. Although, thanks to a few little earthquakes, Youngstown, along with the rest of the now-former Saudia Arabia of Gas, are Frakking doomed.

Newt Decrees Ultimate GOP Fall Back

Over its entire personhood, this Blog has wondered how much further its Republican chum wanted turn back their clocks. Beyond, that is, the usual, depressing November hour.

For Pat Buchanan, it was surely back to beginning of “Father Knows Best”.  But back to the 1949 radio or 1954 TV version?

For Antonin “Scaly” Scalia, it was 1788, when the Constitution was being written without anyone's authorization.

For Rick Perry... Uh. (Whisper) The Magna Cum... Carter. 1215. That's it!

Anyway, the wonderment is over.

Relax. It's not that far.

In the eye of Gingrich, that time reboot is a relatively modern 1802.

Ever the historian of record for any Christian Family-After-Family Values Party, Newt pandered back to 1802, this during what was--you hope to God--the last Republican pre-Iowa posture test. The clock face cracked at 1802.  This date was necessitated by Newt's bold plan to place the Personhood Doctrine right up there with the Bible and the Constitution, no matter what Scaly and the Supremes may say.

The Personhood Doctrine, more liberal than that of Newt's new boss, the Pope would even consider, finally establishes for all-time that the right to a separate lawyer begins when an human egg is fertilized. Even on a unisex toilet seat.

To put the Supremes in their place, Newt harkens back to, perhaps, the most famous American Biblical editor and slave-owning race-blender, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson invented the razor cut and later added pasting, the combination of which he perfected, without an iPad, in rejiggering the Bible, along with any other books and documents that needed his help.

In 1802, Tom Jefferson and his number one Democratic-Republican--ah, the good old days, eh, Newt--flunky, Jimmy Madison cooked up a plan to extend the vacation of the Supreme Court way beyond two weeks and have their newly elected majority in Congress roll back the judicial clock to the the near- Scaly 1789. This very pre-Walmart rollback seemed fair to Tom since he and Sally Hemings were mostly in Paris and could hardly be blamed for that year's Judicial Act. Fair or not, there were, as there always are, nay-sayers.

One such was Billy Marbury, whom this maneuvering deprived of the political job he had been promised by John Adams, who ended up with a better TV movie than Tom or Jimmy ever got, unless you count when Yul Bryner proved he could do more than dance and tick off Moses by doing “The Buccaneer”, in which Jimmy let the British burn the White House. And the Capitol, not that he cared all that much.

Jimmy Madison, not Yul Bryner.

To Newt, Billy Marbury's annoyance with Tom and Jimmy is where time stopped. You have seen this time-freeze thing before on TV, all the way back in '61 when the next stop was “The Twilight Zone”. Newt, himself, manipulated time recently when he began ticking the Palestine clock with the day after the Ottomans took over Jerusalem's best parlors.

To Newt, Tom “De-Biblist” Jefferson and Jimmy “Burn Baby” Madison proved his concept that Congress can do whatever the hell the current President or Speaker (rarely both) wants it to do.

Sorry, Newt, but even your clock has to start again. When it does, Billy Marbury sues Jimmy Madison and gives Chief Justice John Marshall a really sweet case with which to smack Tom and Jimmy around... for a couple centuries. Marbury v. Madison is, for those other than Newt and, maybe, Scaly, the most important judicial document in American HISTORY.

Hey, Newt! Landmark!

Not the tour map.

History!

Okay, okay. Newt. Put down that razor.

Congressize Social Security!

There is currently much political ado about Social Security. It is called a Contract with Ameri...

A Ponzi Scheme. AIG for old people. A bankrupt burden on our please-be-generous-to-Grampie youth. A giant sucking sound. A Fannie Mae for mortgaging the House of O'bama Socialist Regime.

Basically, Social Security is an investment of the once-current payroll of potential retirees into O'bama's flimsy paper promises to pay out fat retirement income to anyone who can photocopy a social security card.

What do you expect? It was FDR's idea and FDR was no Ronald Reagan. Hell, FDR was no Rick Perry, madly consumed, as he was, with packing the Supreme Court way over its usual eight members. FDR held weekly fireside chats. With wood fires. And do you honestly think SUV's raised Greenland half an inch?

So, every politician this side of Sarah Palin has read that something must be done about Social Security. Whatever is done must be kept secret (this blog being a perfect example) or else FOX will need an army of Lars' Real Girls to handle the opposing views to Hannity 24/7/52.

The favorite solution of the Newts and the traders of Goldman Sachs is to privatize Social Security. George III pushed manfully hard for such an advance, but got himself bogged down in more important pursuits such as creating the Arab Spring and festering the Syrian Autumn.

Face the truth: Privatizing is a seductively simple concept. Just hand over your retirement savings to the bull artists on Wall Street. They will spin it into derivatives and Collateralized Retirement Security Securities and sell it to the Greeks and Icelanders. Again.

2008, you say? Economic Ash Cloud grounding your IRA's, you say?

Pessimists! Was not your glass 401K still half full?

Pumice aside.

Never mind. Who remembers that far back anyway? A brilliant new plan has emerged. Although this Blog cannot rightly claim full credit, it will anyway. "Pushing Daisies" was still of, for God's sake.

Flush that old GOP roasting chestnut. Give your retirement money to the we-can't-miss-crowd: Johnnie Boehner, Nancie Pelosi and Spencie Bacchus and their fellow revelers in Congress.

Super Committee Orgies?  Phooey.

This is the definitive retirement party.

Johnnie, Nancie and Spencie can do something with you money you can't do without sharing a fallen bar of soap with Bernie Madoff. Even Goldman Sachs can't do it without feeling remorse.

Congressional Insider Trading!

Or the new investment grammar: “I before E; when E is everybody else not in Congress.”

These keen-eyed Congressional investors can use any insider information that they themselves generate or even hear from Lobbyists over Christal and caviar to sell everyone, repeat, everyone, else short.

How? Well, you're a Congressperson, named, say, Johnnie or Nancie or Spencie, and your committee tells AT&T that it can, FCC be damned, buy that pink cell phone outfit that looks so nice on that very slim not-Catherine-Zeta-Jones. With that super secret information, you can buy sadly depressed AT&T stock and shares in anything not-so-hot pink, well before the Market opens or is fully occupied.

Oh. You're Shocked! Shocked! Your once limp stocks doubled in price by Noon and you--Johnnie, Nancie and/or Spencie--just made more money than Mitt can gamble away in a thousand debates.

Think of it. You—you're not Johnnie, Nancie or Spencie, anymore, and, like, really you're not--you can not execute the above strategy because you are not otherwise busy writing laws to exempt you and your fellow sharks from being harpooned for stock fraud. But glug not. Give your money to Johnnie, Nancie and/or Spencie to invest for you. And promise not to watch "60 Minutes" and absolutely guarantee you will keep your eyes off anything they do...

[Okay, okay. That was mean.]

Who needs Social Security's investment in 0.01% Gilt Edge Barak-o'bonds?

You won't be needing no measly Social Security Administration less Part B charges direct deposit. Not a one.

Hey, Paulson, Bernanke, throw a wet TARP over this one, baby!

Newt Invents Ottoman For His Feet

Newt Gingrich is a man with two left feet stuck permanently...

[don't go up there!]

Newt Gingrich is an historian. Of all the Republican presidential aspirants in 2011-2040 campaigns, only Newt knows history. All other Republicans except maybe Mitt, know history through the best of all Republican historian known as Moses. Newt, alone, makes up his own.

Lately, Newt has disturbed Proximanians with his scholarly declaration that someone else  made up the Palestinian People (now known as the Proximanian "Laterians"). Now, he is himself disturbed, probably because these Invented People were not a concoction of one of his books, which you can have him sign.  Pretty much anywhere near an early primary.

Still, thanks to Newt, everyone knows that the outmoded term “Palestine” (ingeniously supplanted by the historically better Proximania^tm) never really existed. Palestine was never a state, like, say, Rhode Island, just a part of the Ottoman Empire.

Newt, being an historian, did not bother to define the Ottoman Empire, but it is probably a furniture chain in Georgia accenting the accent pieces that are big footstools. It is hard to establish the origin of the padded footstool, but the chain seems to have started in Eastern Turkey in the 1300's. By 1517, Ottomans were in every master bedroom in Jerusalem and probably the suburbs, like Tel Aviv, and any pubs named Beer-Something-Or-Other.

But it seems Newt dozed off with his feet stuck up on an Ottoman before finishing his Levant 101 syllabus.

Newt makes no reference to what came before the shepherds around the Jordan River began relaxing with their Birkenstock Gizehs up on those cushy stools. Perhaps, Newt believes that the Earth, or at least, the Mideast, was created in 1517, but, as a historian, he knows Irish Archbishop Jimmy Ussher proved that Creation predates Newt's implied date by 5521 years, squarely on a pre-NFL Sunday in October, with that famous bye after the ensuing and busy week.

This kind of confusion can spell doom for any presidential campaign. This is not like guillotining the overcrowded Supreme Court down to eight; or mixing up Iran and Iraq, which will happen in a few years anyway; or abolishing the Department of Oops, which everyone favors no matter what it means.

This is the most fundamental of stuff, especially to Republicans who need to know just how far to turn back the clock.

So, for the next debate, maybe, the Donald can ask Newt to clarify the defining foreign policy issue of the Republican Presidential campaign of December 2011: Did Ottomans, or even feet, exist prior to 1517 AD in Proximania? And who the hell owned them?

Whew! Personhood Still Months Away

Haley Barbour is a Person. He is also governor of Mississippi, rightly famous for supporting a redo of April as Not-Winners Month.

By the way, if you have read this far, you are a Person, too.

Oh, no, not a Political Correctness diatribe! No, but you know you are sick of addressing the Chairperson; honoring Joe Paterno as the Sportsperson of the Year; pointing skyward at Superperson;; hiring a Handyperson; spicing things up with a French Person's Outfit and six-inch heels.

(Ignore that last thought. That's just weird.)

Some group named something like Planned Personhood came up with this whole personhood thing and tried, successfully, to get Gov. Haley's vote for an amendment to Mississippi's constitution that may soon be coming to a state near you.

Is Planned Personhood trying to pull a Bill Clinton and redefine “Personhood”? Does the answer depend on what “is” is at the moment is is uttered? Kinda.

Maybe, in Mississippi everyone says “Personhood begins at conception”, but that pretty much has to be it. Sorry, but it sounds forever like a majorly liberal conception, so why did Planned Personhood expect to get more than 43 votes for their amendment in Deep South, Deep Red Mississippi?

In fairness, Planned Personhood looks mighty liberal from here in Naples Bay Village. They only want constitutions and texting conversation to say “life begins at the very moment of fertilization.” Leftist talk, if ever you heard it, at least here. Maybe Planned Personhood is more afraid of Italy than your average investment banker. It is the Catholic Church that has staked out the most right-wing claim: Life begins before birth control is applied or even conceived of, probably in a slightly darkened Walgreens aisle. However that may be translated into English.

The combination of two very liberal-sounding ideas is surely what convinced more than 55% of Mississippi voters who cast ballots to cast out the Personhood amendment. 45% voted for personhood, so give Mississippi credit for some liberalism.

First of all, everyone hates the whole “person” initiative because it was a purely girly idea even before the liberals got a hold of it.

But truthfully, even a layperson's gotta go with the Pope's “life” definition to be really conservative.  Mostly because it is in Latin, the best language for those wanting things the way they used to be.

PIG Baby to Doom Naples Bay Village. First.

Subtitle: Oh, Never Mind.

Lately, there has been much ado about the mythical Naples Bay Village that, really, defines South Naples, Florida. The Brigadoonish Naples Bay Village has been the subject of budget-stressed political infighting so fierce that makes national campaigning look like Herman Cain with his hands in his pockets at all times.

No, wait, lest that sentence be parsed by Rick Perry's campaign, substitute “elbow deep in pizza dough at all times.”

For Naples Bay Village, though, it has been all about evaporating budget dollars, daunting debt refinancing, juicy director salaries and a collapsing hooker-based economy. Forget all that.

Baby PIG is coming.

No, not some County Commission-sponsored Bayshore Road farewell block party with hogs on spits over mortgage bonfires .

This PIG baby spells D O O M.

Antarctica seems pretty far away from a toasty place like Naples, especially when you don't keep a decent-sized globe in your living room because the kids hands get stuck in the frame. You know that Antarctica has penguins skating on it. Maybe some poor navigated alien spacecraft buried two hundred miles down. Nice place to visit, not so much, unless you like to look up at nights for holes in the Ozone. In three layers of nano-polyester-filled body-length parkas.

The omnipresent “Scientists” are touting the new PIG baby as bigger than New York or Berlin, depending on where you banked your Greek bonds. Birthers, forget Hawaii and Indonesia, this is bigger than any lineal descendant of Kenya. It's bigger than Al Gore pushing a book on Letterman.

PIG stands for Pine Island Glacier, Antarctica (there being no Counties or Commissioners in Antarctica, that's the pettiest political subdivision available). Again, far, far away and too frakking cold to even think about. Really?

PIG is calving an iceberg as big as any metropolis this side of Oklahoma City. PIG's baby should crack off by Pi Day or April 1^st of 2012. These Scientists probably hope it crashes into the ocean by New Year's Eve, so they can dual-purpose the champagne.

To quote Al Gore, “Can you say 'Global Warming?'”

Well...

Actually, PIG gave the world a big iceberg back in 2001 when there hadn't yet been an inconvenient hysterical warming movie to carpet in a suitably warm red. And it has happened plenty in the past, but dinosaurs were notoriously uninvolved in the whole greenhouse gas thing, except, maybe, for contributing a few tons of methane after a late dinner.

For Naples Bay Village of South Naples, Florida, though, both political heat and global warmth will probably be watched through the wavy lens of a yard or two of Bay. Baby PIG is going to melt before long and sea-, Gulf- and Bay-levels will all rise. The Republican Economists (they don't actually have scientists anymore) pooh-pooh such concerns, saying that this happens all the time when the Democrats are in power. Democratic Scientists (they don't actually have economists anymore) say “run like hell to Denver... Uh. Wait, run like hell to Pittsburgh! They have more hills inside their city than fries inside their sandwiches!”

Villagers threatening to Occupy Bayshore Road should calm down. Since the 2007-08 credit freeze, Naples Bay Villagers have been treading water, figuratively, awaiting the return of liquidity, living on hope and unpaid condo fees. Now, the flash political threat to its existence and the negative equity of its real estate is meaningless to the Village. Baby PIG is going to melt and... 

You know that liquidity you Villagers so desperately wanted? Over your already upside head.

Brigadoon, at least, got to disappear, neat as an 18-year Scotch, into the romantic mist.

A Mythical Village in South Naples

A couple of Collier County Commissioners, Tom Henning and Georgia Hiller, are rightly skeptical of the very existence of the Bayshore area of South Naples, with its fancy new name, Naples Bay Village. Many are doubtful about the whole South Naples thing, too, assuming south means swamp.

To be fair, many world travelers and Naples residents are confused by the term South Naples and simply reject reports of a place called Naples Bay Village or Bayshore or even of a street by that name. These folks know of a place long-called Kelly Road, famed for its many indoor and outdoor drug marts, cheery red lights and ready bail loans. You can look it up in any Fodor's or follow it on any bargain vacation AAA trip-tik that drops you off at the Naples Botanical Gardens.

To the mind of most of Collier County and the world, there is no Bayshore. They've never seen a Naples Bay Village, unless you mean the nearby near-bankrupt Naples Bay Resort, where you can still get Bang-Bang Shrimp at Bonefish for five bucks on Wednesday; which means you are not at Naples Bay Village. So turn right out of Bonefish and keep going swampish on the Tamiami Trail for a couple miles.

Keenly aware of this recognition problem, a group of Villagers have heroically worked up plans to repurpose the neighborhood as an artsy beatniche well worthy of the name Naples Bay Village: A place where creativity can blossom and live performance centers can rise, unless, of course, it rains a lot. They have done wonders visually, too, for those who eyes do not roll into their heads at the sight of a Big Lots.

To the rare visitor who can actually experience Naples Bay Village, its residents do not mention--much--their one true curse: With real estate values stuck deeper than the bottom of Naples Bay itself, the Villagers can never leave their Village.

The H-monogrammable County Commissioners have certainly visited the region, missed the street signs, the landscaped boulevard and the modern empty lots and found nothing that looks remotely like a Naples Bay Village. All they see is Kelly Road, right where it has always been, running between the Tamiami and a mixed six-pack of Budweiser and night-crawlers from Del's. It is as Kelly as always, conclusive evidence that Naples Bay Village and Bayshore Drive, after the least-noted and briefest of appearances, have disappeared, along with their tax rake-off, for another 100 years.

Longtime residents of the mystical and missing Naples Bay Village, of course, view this disappearance as the blessing of sorts, an escape from petty politics and endless rebranding. They alone know that Kelly Road was probably named for the legendary performer Gene Kelly.

And the Village's real name has always, surely, been Brigadoon.

Global Warming Causes Piracy

If you could believe an outfit with the name “Woods Hole”.

A bunch of oceanographers up there in Massachusetts are in a tizzy over Carbon Dioxide in the salt water.

Like it can taste any worse.

These scientists published their worried study this month in the Journal of Fish and Fisheries. Care to guess whose side they come down on?

Nope.

Not fishies.

Mollusks and crustaceans. If you graduated 6th grade, you know these things are not fish. So, why not the Journal of Mollusks? Maybe, that journal was full up with dazzling photos of wet shells.

Still, lots of people like mollusks, but only because no one in the restaurant or Publix calls clams and oysters such an unattractive name. And Crustaceans sounds like some dead ethnic group who preceded the Romans. Who wants to eat one of them with drawn butter?

So, were those ancient Crustaceans wrecking piracy of the title? No, they are lobsters and crabs and lots of poor countries rely on them for their Gross Domestic Product and exports, too.

All of that carbon dioxide you exhaled during your workout and driving to the gym or overheating China’s economy? That’s somehow turning the oceans into some sort of acid that these poor creatures don’t like. The Mollusks, not the cranky diggers or the lobstermen chasing touristy swimmers from their pots.

The Woods Hole experts use Somalia as an example, however inappropriately. Somalia, they say has been over-fished—not over-not-fished— to scaly extinction and the fisherman with all those diesel driven boats and AK-47’s have to fill their holds and time with something. Hence, “Let’s go rob a Super Tanker.”

Sure, the poor guy who used to dig clams out of the mud flats with a stick may have two oars and boat. An ex-lobster fisherman may have an AK-47 to pot those tourists,, but chances are his boat goes put-put on a good day.

Of course, everybody feels bad about the pH of the ocean reaching Coke Zero levels and the disappearance of the pretty color coral. Who won’t miss the occasional crab legs or trip with Megan Fox to Red Lobster for Oysters Rockefeller?

They don't?

But, really, heavy breathing just thinking of Megan dooms some poor Malagasy kid to a life with a talon-scared shoulders and a patched aye?

Apparently, melting icebergs and coastlines farther underwater than Arizona and Nevada, those horror stories are no longer enough for the eighteen leftovers in the Al Gore crowd. How many more Prius can one liberal drive?

Still, aside from the economic collapse of Maine, what's the worst that can happen? The Mollusks from the vinegary surf simply evolve and adapt to land life, just like the rest of us had to.


Stop fretting about the planet and think. No more losing Mojito-time scraping barnacles from your yacht. They will dissolve away into the sea without you. Mostly, we upgrade from Clams Bruschetta at Olive Garden to Escargot en croute at pretty much any Bistro this side of PF Chang's. 


Let there be Pirates.

What's in a Kingdominium?

What do you call a Kingdominium that isn’t one anymore?

Transparency Falls Kingdominium had many important issues, but the Privies spent much of their time debating a new name. Not the Transparency Falls part. That they were stuck with, as it was entrenched in Google and Bing. And the King part was long gone.

But “Kingdominium” seemed out of step with the Privies view of themselves as the permanent representatives of the Fallguys.

The latest Rave, called by the Principal, got off to a bad start.

“We could call it a Republic.”

“But then we might be known as Republicans.’”

Upon which much retching and a break to clean up.

“How about ‘Prividom’”?

“Not bad. It really represents what Transparency Falls has become.”

“It is too hard to spell. What is in the middle there? A ‘y’, an ‘i’?”

“And we might want to change the ‘Privy’ title to something more in keeping with our view of ourselves.”

“True, again.”

"How about 'Portominium?'"

"Not bad. We do border a cascade-less canal."

"Ports are great if you're looking for a hookers and peg-leg."

"Hey, I know her."

“’Dominium’. It almost sounds like ‘Dominion’ which was good for Canada for a while.”

“Yeah. They liked it so much they just call themselves Canada now.”

“’Dominium’ was an ‘Exorcist’ prequel. Do we want to be named for a prequel?”

“What’s next?”

“Very funny.”

“If Canada is just Canada, why can’t we just be Transparency Falls.”

“Is your ambition to be just like Canada?”

“Their ‘dollar’, maybe.”

“I can’t believe we’re undecided.”

“There’s always ‘The Democracy of Transparency Falls’”.

Laughter.

“You do recall that we fill out the ballots before we send them out to the Fallguys.”

"We don't have to; it is just more efficient."

"We send them out?"

“Back to Prividom. It’s the most descriptive.”

“Yes, it is the best, but this is too important to rush. Let’s decide in a couple years.”

“And I won't be able to spell it then, either."