Save The Manatees

The following column was originally published in March of 2007. 

While editor of a news organization (sort of), we got lots of press releases from nearly every publicity-hungry collection of political zealots known to mankind.

But I remember one I received that really caught my eye.

It was from the “Save The Manatees” group.

At first, I thought it was somebody pulling my chain, because people who know me know that I’m the only guy on the planet who hates manatees.

Everyone loves them because they’re like Jessica Simpson:

Cute and stupid.

But for me, it’s a personal grudge that dates back to my time in Florida.

You see, the manatee is to Florida what the desert tortoise is to Nevada:

A slow, outdated, annoying critter that has outlived its evolutionary usefulness but is protected by Federal law the way we WISH we were protected against Muslim terrorists and Amway distributors.

In fact, I believe manatees and tortoises both continue to exist solely to spite Darwin.

Like the problems caused here by the desert tortoise, huge whacks of rivers and lakes in Florida have been designated off-limits because somebody spotted something playing in that section of water that could have either been a manatee or Rosie O’Donnell on vacation.

In those few remaining inland waterways where boats are still permitted, the speed limit is set at five miles per hour in order to protect these poor creatures known as “sea cows.”

“Sea possums” would be more accurate, since the darn things tend to wander out in front of speeding boats for no apparent reason.

As is indicative of these feel-good but brainless animal-rights zealots, apparently nobody at “Save The Manatee Central” bothered to notice that we don’t have a lot of manatees out here in the desert.

I stopped by the bridge on Riverside Road and peered into the Virgin River recently, just to make sure.

I could tell that there weren’t any manatees in the river, not because I didn’t see their lumbering brown backsides breaking the water’s surface, but because I didn’t see 47 signs saying “No Humans Allowed – Manatee Zone.”

This is good news, since it may be the last tributary in America where you can run your 42-foot cabin cruiser at 30 knots without getting a ticket from the “carp cops” (what we used to call the marine police).

If you’ve ever seen the Virgin River, you know that I’m joking.  Except for that brief period known as “the Floods of '05,” the river rarely gets deeper than 12 inches.

The press release went on to explain that a horror has befallen the poor manatees which needed to be exposed on the pages of our desert newspaper.

The manatees are being:

Harassed!!!

That’s right, those evil bipeds known as, ugh, humans (yuck!), have been filmed doing such terrible and degrading things as (please take the young children out of the room when you read this), TOUCHING the manatees!

Some have even been videotaped swimming with them and even RIDING them!

We must stop this insanity!

Um, yeah.

I saw the video.

Nobody was torturing, beating, or harming these lumbering creatures.

In fact, throughout the video, divers were petting the manatees and rubbing their bellies.

I wish someone would torture and harass ME like that after a big meal!

The captions on the video also referred to them as “cold and hungry manatees.”

If you’ve ever been to the Sunshine State, you know that there are hot tubs and spas in Beverly Hills that aren’t as warm as a Florida river.

Also, manatees feed on underwater vegetation.

Have you heard of any big seaweed shortages in the south lately?

The only reason I bring this up is that I wanted to show that we in the desert haven’t cornered the market on environmental lunacy.

There are human-haters all over the country.

Eventually, there will be a video on YouTube showing the horrors of someone trying to pet a desert tortoise.

You’ll know those petters immediately.

They’ll be the ones with three missing fingers, wearing a t-shirt that says “I love turtle stew.”

Reverse Bank Robbery

(Photo by Ambro)

The following column was originally published in January of 2007.

Back in the old West, it was pretty easy to spot the bank robbers.

They were the guys on horseback wearing bandanas to cover their faces, brandishing shiny six-shooters, and shouting “yeehaw” a lot as they raced out of town.

At least that’s what Hollywood has taught me.

Today, the robbers wear suits and ties or business skirts (the latter reserved mostly for females).

They also reside on the opposite side of the teller’s cage.

I’ve learned that today’s “bank robbers” are actually the banks themselves.

I recently began shopping for a new financial institution where I could deposit the huge profits earned by this newspaper over the last few months.

Okay, the battery-operated coin sorter we use for counting our profits broke after the 82^nd roll of pennies.

In any event, I have been looking at the rates charged by some of our local banks, and I’m beginning to think that Jesse James wasn’t such a bad guy after all.

For example, I can almost understand banks wanting to pop their customers for taking money out of the bank.

Using per-check charges, they can make you think twice about whether you really needed to eat this week, since they’ll hammer you for up to 40 cents per check, plus the cost of printing the checks.

(I swear it costs less to print actual money than what they charge to print a book of checks!)

But again, they didn’t get to be suit-wearing cigar-smoking rich guys by letting people actually take money out of their bank, so it almost makes sense that they charge you to make a withdrawal.

However, most of the commercial banks in Mesquite charge businesses to put money INTO their banks!

That’s right, if you want to give money to a bank, you have to PAY them for the privilege!

Again, the fees range from 15 cents to 40 cents per check that you want to deposit.

Of course, if you’re willing to keep a minimum balance of up to $20,000, they’ll gladly waive that fee, which leads me to another gripe about these unmasked, unarmed highwaymen (and highwaywomen, which is different from a street walker, but we’ll talk about that at another time).

One of my biggest complaints about banks is that they practice discrimination and bigotry.

No, it has nothing to do with the color of your skin.

They only care about the color of your money.

They discriminate against the non-rich.

For example, and everyone knows this, the only way you can get the bank to give you money, called a loan, is if you already have money.

If you don’t have money, they won’t lend you money.

It gets worse.

If you deposit lots of money, they’ll give you more money, called “interest.”

If you only deposit little bits of money, you don’t get any interest.

Even worse, some of the banks will CHARGE you if you don’t have thousands of dollars in your savings account.

This is so different from the “good old days,” when poor folks could furnish half their houses with appliances such as free toasters, blenders, and calendars the bank would give you just for opening an account.

People would furnish the other half of their houses by making frequent trips to the gas station, where a full tank (which by the way cost less than $10 back then) would earn you a set of glasses or a transistor radio.

Now, you have to hock all those things just to pay the monthly bank fees, which can range from $10 to $20 a month for businesses.

So maybe Jesse James and his boys had the right idea.
It was probably the last time in the history of banking that someone could actually make a withdrawal without two forms of ID, a thumbprint, and a first-born child as collateral.

Slinkies And Other Alternative Fuels

The following column was originally published in May of 2006.

With gasoline approaching $3.50 a gallon, America has suddenly discovered the idea of “alternative fuels.”

News reports abound regarding the use of ethanol, hydrogen, and even used french fry grease as potential fuels for our vehicles.

However, I think the scientists charged with finding new go-juice have overlooked some important alternatives, and I’m not just talking about the same old joke sources like bean flatulence and the hot air from politicians.

For example, I believe the government needs to commission a study of “Slinky Locomotion.”

Have you ever watched a Slinky “Walk down stairs, alone or in pairs, and make a slinkity sound?”

Ever since I was about three, I’ve marveled at the perpetual motion possibilities of a Slinky and an “up” escalator.

Another idea would be to research the use of Sugar Frosted Flakes as an alternative fuel.

I’m not sure what they put in that stuff, but I’ve seen four-year-olds bounce off walls for extended periods fueled only by Tony the Tiger’s secret recipe.

As a kid, I also witnessed a form of propulsion every Saturday morning that warrants additional investigation.

For years, it was an impractical resource, but with the price of gas reaching the stratosphere, I think it’s time for us to consider “Y-shaped cactus with the large Acme rubber band” technology.

There might be some legal entanglements due to patents currently held by one Wile E. Coyote, but I’m confident something could be worked out.

You might laugh, but I consider the rubber band to be the most under-used energy resource in the country.

I’ve seen rubber bands provide the necessary propulsion to make a propeller-driven balsa-wood airplane fly.

I’m not admitting to anything, but I’ve personally witnessed rubber bands generating enough rock speed to break a decent sized picture window.

And when placed against the tip of your index finger, extended, aimed, and released, rubber bands have been known to exceed the speed of sound.

(I learned this in a Middle School science class, where a girl became the unfortunate victim of a drive-by rubber band incident.  They said you could hear her scream four classrooms away.  I base my “speed of sound” theory on the fact that it only took a split second for the rubber band to reach its target, but it took five minutes for the hollering to stop.)

Also, a member of my family once owned an old Fiat, and I recall that the piece of equipment under the hood wasn’t much more advanced than a rubber band stretched between two sticks, so someone is already looking at this idea.

I know that scientists have been working with ethanol and methanol, but they need to do more studies on alcohol.

I can envision Bourbon-fueled automobiles in the not so distant future.

I base this on my observations of usually-quiet men and women who suddenly become non-stop oratory machines after three shots of Jim Beam. 

I don’t think the Beam-powered cars would be very fast, but the miles-per-gallon possibilities are staggering.

And finally, the “domino” theory of propulsion has always fascinated me.

If we could figure a way to harness the energy of 20,000 dominoes knocking each other down using only the power of the initial falling domino (or an accidentally-bumped table), I believe we could put the Middle East out of business in about a week.

There are other technologies out there that need to be looked at, such as the energy generated by a screaming baby.

(The energy produced by the scream is exciting enough, but the ability of a shrill scream to bring three or four adults immediately to their feet is phenomenal).

We as a nation need to expand our research in order to find the energy source that will carry us through the next century.

The answer is out there.

And I suspect it will be found in a Warner Brothers cartoon.

Eunuch Union

The following column was originally published in May of 2006. 

It seems that everyone wants to be a eunuch in India these days.

I know, it sounds a little far fetched, but according to a story from the AFP news service, legitimate eunuchs in India are being forced to issue their own photo ID cards as proof of their, um, legitimacy.

I can’t imagine that anyone would want to pretend that they have had their, er, “dangling participles” removed as a social statement.

Heck, for that matter, I can’t imagine that anyone would want to ACTUALLY have these parts removed.

However, according to the story, nearly one million men in India have opted for this procedure.

The story doesn’t say why.

And my imagination isn’t good enough to come up with a convincing reason.

I can certainly understand eunuchs who were forced into the club by someone else.

I’m married to a woman who believes Lorena Bobbitt has done more for marital fidelity than Dr. Phil and Dr. Ruth combined, so I recognize how a transgression could lead to gender neutrality.

But to choose such a lifestyle is beyond my powers of comprehension.

When the article started talking about how they achieve that particular state in a ritual that begins with tying off the testicles using a strand of horse hair, I had to change the cerebral channel.

The funny thing is that the idea of removing your own private parts wasn’t really the thrust of the story.

The real issue was a group of posers which have been horning in on the eunuchs’ territory.

Apparently, eunuchs are often the target of scorn, ridicule and embarrassment by those with their parts intact.

(Not a surprising fact.  I wouldn’t want to be around someone crazy enough to choose neutering as a fashion statement myself.)

Since they have trouble finding a job (insert vulgar doughtnut factory remarks here), eunuchs often pick up pocket change by crashing weddings and birthday parties.

In India, it is traditional for the party hosts to pay the unwelcome unencumbered guests to leave in order to avoid embarrassment.

Now, a small band of faux-eunuchs have taken to crashing parties and demanding outrageous sums to leave, creating even more headaches for the legitimate geldings.

So they have begun issuing ID cards as proof of their legitimacy.

The article didn’t indicate which government organization is responsible for confirming the lack of male equipment.

(In the United States, I suspect that duty would fall to the IRS, an agency which has perfected the art of emasculation).

While I still don’t understand why any man would choose this procedure, it at least answers some other questions I’ve had about the country but was too afraid to ask for fear of being labeled racist or politically insensitive.

For example, it explains why some men in India wear nightgowns as part of their everyday attire.  (Can you imagine the pain involved in wearing a tight pair of jeans for a newly-minted eunuch?)

And it certainly explains that eardrum-bursting practice of ululating which is deeply entrenched in the culture.

(I can imagine the scream “Ay-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi” coming from my own lips at just the thought of having those particular jewels heisted.)

In any event, the eunuchs in India have chosen to issue photo ID cards to those who truly qualify as members of that union.

While the story doesn’t say what the photo is of, we can be pretty sure of what is NOT in the picture.

And just imagining what is NOT in the picture is enough to make me ululate all over again.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to call the fabricator about my new stainless steel truss.