Viva Loss Vegas

To back track a little . . . 

During my time in the US I was lucky enough to attend my niece's (now Goddaughter's) baptism in Las Vegas and unlucky enough to try my luck at slots, craps, black jack, poker, and sports betting.  On this holy occasion, I learned that I am the worlds worst gambler.  I lost at everything I touched.  Fast.  You'd be surprised how much you can lose at penny slot machines if you never win anything.  Still, I had plenty of free drinks, largely because I was the only non-AARP member in the casino, and I had a great vacation from my vacation.

I stayed at a casino/hotel on the edge of town called The Eastside Cannery.  The Cannery only opened a few months ago, and it was a very nice hotel and casino despite the terrible theme (and terrible odds, in my case).  Apparently, whoever designed the casino thought the patrons would want the feel of being in a modern canning factory.  Most of The Cannery patrons looked as if they already spent the lion share of their day in an actual canning factory, so I'm not sure why "canning" was picked as a theme, but it was.

The redeeming part of the "canning" theme was the Cannery's logo.   The logo looks like an early 1800's Betty Crocker if Betty had married an alcoholic and was forced to move west where she gave up her lucrative baking carrier to become the madame of a small but friendly town brothel.  This sly-eyed vixen beckons you into the canning factory.  Something we can all relate to.

Actually, being Vegas, brothel may have been an alternative service at the Cannery.  Frank, my one-legged Pai-Gow Poker dealer, told me that he would never sleep with the ugly cocktail waitress even though "she was begging for it."  Frank said that they went out once, but she got really, really drunk really, really quickly and then tried to wheel Frank back to the Cannery where she had stolen a room key.  I'm glad that while Frank took my money he and I grew close enough for him to share his romantic history with me.  I made sure not to tip the waitress too big, just in case she got the wrong idea.

Fact about me #58

I don't like gambling as much as the rest of my family.  I also find that I don't really care about wining anymore.  There must be something in this English water because that is just un-American.

My 3D, Wolverine, Lush Farmer Update

What's new with me, the photo essay . . . 

1.)  I saw My Bloody Valentine 3D which is one of the greatest films ever created, and I'm sure it will be up for a lot of Oscars next year.  The plot is well above average for a horror movie and the 3D is well above 2D.  Here's a picture of me looking stylish in my RealD glasses. (Seriously, go see a 3D movie ASAP).

2.) You may also notice the trendy beard I've sprouted in the new year.  I decided not to shave after my niece's Christening; however, after seeing the trailer for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, I was inspired to go with a more Hugh Jackman look.  Here's me doing my best Wolverine impression.

3.) My beard wasn't the only thing growing.  I'm a proper LUSH farmer.

That's what she said . . .

I'm sorry, Michelle and Barack do what now?

The Audacity of Rex Manning Day vs. Barack Hussen Obama Day

Things are going so well; I'm having my own personal Rex Manning Day.  But that could be because Barack Hussen Obama Day was the best day since Rex Manning Day, if not better.  We all love Obama, all 6.2 billion of us.  I got the same feeling on Obama Day that I get at Christmas when I watch the Grinch's heart grow three sizes and break the little heart measuring frame.  It was a day for breakin' all the rules.  A day when the president doesn't have to get all the words right in when being inaugurated, but at least uses words that actually exist.  A day when Tupac would change the lyrics to the song Changes because, "And although it seems heaven sent, the world ain't ready for a black president, uhhh" isn't quite as poingnet now, uhhh?  It is a time for change, and Obama wants to bring about change.

If you read Obama's second book, "The Audacity of Hope," you discover that change, is in fact why hope is audacious - sorry to ruin the ending.  From what I understand, Obama has already helped change the economy by selling popular Obama merchandise, and not just in the US, but on the world market too.  I've seen clever Obama t-shirts here in the UK, but for my contribution to the Obama-nation, I'd like to present the very best in Barak Obama merchandise on the Tanzanian Market.

In Tanzania, people use these large sheets of colorful fabric called kangas for anything they find suitable: a skirt, apron, hat, backpack, towel, banner, to carry a child, as a carry-things-on-your-head-thing, etc.  And the difference between a kanga and a normal piece of fabric is that a kanga has a message printed on it, usually something along the lines of "God gives me strength" or "Never lose hope" but also very specific messages like "Leave my man alone."  My kanga, as pictured above, is a Christmas gift from my friend Emelie and it says, "Love and Peace, He Grants Us Through God" in Kishwali.  Needless to say, this is tremendous.

As for the inauguration, which was equally as tremendous, here are my thoughts:

1.) Chaney looks extra old in his wheelchair.  And while I'm sure he's hell on wheels, this would be a damn scary inauguration if Palin was pushing Chaney to the podium.

2.) It looks cold.  I hope Obama doesn't pull a Harrison, get pneumonia, and die.

3.) Was Martin Luther Kings dream to have a black president?  I need to reread that speech.

4.) I can't decide which name is funnier: Barack Hussen Obama or Yo Yo Ma.

5.) It seems strange that after the inauguration, it's traditional to read poetry.  But keeping with this tradition . . .

America 

by Tony Hoagland

From: What Narcissism Means to Me

Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud

Says that America is for him a maximum-security prison

Whose walls are made of Radio Shacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes

Where you can't tell the show from the commercials,

And as I consider how to express how full of shit I think he is,

He says that even when he's driving to the mall in his Isuzu

Trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them

Like a boiling Jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels

Buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds

of the thick satin quilt of America

And I wonder if this is a legitimate category of pain,

or whether he is just spin doctoring a better grade,

And then I remember that when I stapped my father in the dream last night,

It was not blood but money

That gushed out of him, bright green hundred-dollar bills

Spilling from his wounds, and-this is the weird part-,

He gasped "Thank god-those Ben Franklins were

Clogging up my heart-

And so I perish happily,

Freed from that which kept me from my liberty"-

Which was when I knew it was a dream, since my dad

Would never speak in rhymed couplets,

And I look at the student with his acne and cell phone and phony ghetto clothes

And I think, "I am asleep in America too,

And I don't know how to wake myself either,"

And I remember what Marx said near the end of his life:

"I was listening to the cries of the past,

When I should have been listening to the cries of the future."

But how could he have imagined 100 channels of 24-hour cable

Or what kind of nightmare it might be

When each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you

And you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river

Even while others are drowning underneath you

And you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters

And yet it seems to be your own hand

Which turns the volume higher?

Fact about me #2

I didn't realize Obama's middle name was Hussen.  How'd I miss that?

My Bathroom is Rad-ish

As of Friday my life has changed.  I now belong to a brotherhood shared with the likes of John Deere, my grandfather Sylvester "Butch" Bordewick, and Jennifer Gardner . . . I think.  For I am now a farmer.

On Friday I threw out my old, dead Ikea hanging plant I'd previously killed despite it's "easy to care for" label, and planted fresh, nubile radish seeds.  Now, in 4 short weeks, I will be feasting on - or at least garnishing drinks and dishes with - tasty radishes like the kings of ole.  I'd post pictures, but at this point it just looks like a pot of dirt.  This is one of the cases when a picture is not worth 1000 words.  Imagine a pot.  Now imagine that the pot is full of dirt.  That's exactly what it looks like.

I've placed my pot-o-dirt in the bathroom so it's now self-watering via reverse osmosis of shower steam (Thanks 10th Grade Biology!)  I realize that "Bathroom Radish" doesn't sound like the most appetizing dish.  In fact, "Bathroom Radish" sound more like a slang term for an STD you'd pick up from a public toilet seat than something you'd eat, but the thought of eating a non-bathroom radish is not very appetizing either.  Radishes are always the last thing left on the vegetable tray at a party, and the vegetable tray is always the last thing left after the other food is eaten.  The radish is the last of the last.  Poor Radish is the last kid picked at recess.  Or worse,  Radish is the kid who's last picked and then the captain of the team who should have him says, "You can have Radish"  like he's doing the other team a favor.  In reality, he knows that his team is stronger being one man short than having even numbers if one of them is Radish.  Poor Radish.

Really, the only redeeming quality of the radish is it's name.  Rad-ish.  I bet a lot of unfunny-funny people in the 80's used that as a regular pun.

For my astute readers, you may have noticed that I have already killed a plant this year.  True.  Apparently, if you have three plants and you leave them unattended in a freezing cold, dark flat for three weeks while you gallivant around the United Sates by the time you get home: one of them will commit suicide, another will look fairly sick, and the third will not have noticed you've ever left.  It's okay though, these circumstances will most likely lead you to being a popular radish farmer.

Fact about me #66

I've never grown anything . . . before now.