California Says Pass on Grass

It has just been brought to my attention that in addition to deciding which rich white males would be serving in Congress, this past midterm election also covered several other issues. Namely, whether or not people in California should be allowed to get stoned out of their minds whenever they want.

Proposition 19 would have allowed adults over 21 to legally smoke marijuana, but the measure lost 56% to 44%. Political experts say that the bill most likely lost because young voters didn’t show up on election day. Well duh. They were in their basements smoking pot watching election coverage. Now, I wouldn’t know this for certain, but I’m pretty sure all those funky graphics CNN uses during their coverage must look awesome high. Now, frankly I think the bill failed because the good, moral people of California did not want pot to be legal. They would prefer to keep getting stoned illegally. "It's cheaper," is probably what they said.

The main reason behind the bill is that the state of California apparently has built up a massive debt paying for Lindsay Lohan’s rehab stints, so they figured that by taxing marijuana, they could make lots of money. They also figured they could make some money off of tourism when the entire state of Colorado visits.

Unfortunately I think that thinking is flawed. Whatever money they would make in taxing marijuana would be lost when the California state legislature decides to order 2,500 Big Macs during a lunch break. Also, pot smokers are not the type of people that are going to spend a whole lot of money shopping on Rodeo Drive. Also, I’m pretty sure the economy would tank as a result of every worker in California quitting their jobs and becoming full time poet-musicians.

Now, I don’t really care about this particular bill. For one thing, I don’t live in California. But as a current resident of Colorado, I am well versed in the argument over marijuana. Now, I'm not a stoner, but in Colorado that puts me in the minority. Smoking pot in Boulder is one of those things that is technically illegal but the cops don’t really enforce, sort of like polygamy in Utah and incest in Alabama. I mean, every year 10,000 people gather on a field to publicly get high and create a smoke cloud so thick Sarah Palin can see it from her house in Alaska (she gets mad because it obscures her view of Russia). Just today, a Colorado woman was caught crossing the border with enough pot to get the entire republic of China high for the next week.

The thing is, Colorado’s medical marijuana laws make legalizing pot here a moot point. All you have to do is get a prescription for it. Okay, actually you just need to know somebody who has a prescription for it. And it’s not like it’s all that hard to get a prescription. It’s not like the old days where you had to get a really bummer disease, like cancer or glaucoma. Now even the most innocent of ailments will get you a prescription, including (but not limited to): joint pain, back aches, migraines, eating disorders, problems focusing, acne, gout, ingrown toe nails and an irrepressible urge to smoke pot.

There are a lot of people who argue that marijuana should be legal because it is less harmful than alcohol, and yet alcohol is legal. Other people say that crime would be reduced if marijuana was taxed and regulated like alcohol and tobacco. Now, I don’t know if marijuana is safer than alcohol. I guess in a way it is, since drunk people tend to get the urge to go out and do very stupid and often dangerous activities, such as lighting things on fire and flirting with women. Whereas people who are high typically don’t want to do anything more rigorous than ordering Chinese food and putting on their Strange Wilderness DVD (don’t tell me that the makers of that movie didn’t have stoners in mind when they put in this scene).

But health wise, I tend to believe marijuana is worse. I drink alcohol and I’m fine, but I’ve been around stoners and there is definitely something wrong with them. For instance, I’m convinced it creates large holes in the section of the brain that would normally be dedicated to speaking in complete sentences. Also, most people have a part of the brain that typically limits the amount of snowboarding and skiing movies a person can stand. Stoners are missing this part of their brain. They will sit there for hours watching clips of more talented and active stoners going down a hill. After about the fifth clip as far as I can tell they are just replaying the same damn thing over and over again.

So actually, I hope that they do pass this bill in California next election. Maybe then all of the stoners here will move there, and I can finally take out this darn skiing DVD.

Midterm Madness

It’s been an exciting week politically with all of these midterm elections finally coming to a close. I’ll be honest, I couldn’t wait for them to be over with. For one thing, all these people kept knocking on my door and trying to get me to vote for their candidate. I am a busy guy; I can’t have my naps constantly being interrupted by some doofus who actually cares about the democratic process. So I started to answer the door in only my underwear, which worked well enough until one of the people at my door turned out to be some guy trying to check my dryer ducts (and no that was not a sexual innuendo you perverts).

Now, one reason I don’t listen to these people at my door is that I am not registered to vote here in Colorado. I am actually still registered in my home state of Hawaii, so I normally could not care less who gets elected in Colorado. The only reason I normally regret this is that a lot of restaurants give out free food to people who have proof they voted here. Whereas I just fill out a ballot and send it off in the mail, where it will inevitably get lost and arrive in some rural town in Indonesia and never in any way affect the election.

But this is the one election that I almost wish I had voted in Colorado for. First, a little background on this midterm. When our forefathers founded our government, in order to keep anybody from gaining too much power, they invented democracy. Democracy ensures that nobody becomes too powerful by making sure that nobody in Washington is ever able to get anything done.

This of course means that elections follow a very predictable pattern. Voters become frustrated with Party A because they have not gotten anything done. Enraged, they then elect a president and legislators from Party B, who campaign on the failures of Party A. But then, Party B of course also fails to get anything done in the first term, because democracy is a very stagnant process. Voters of course become frustrated, and in the next midterm, they elect a whole bunch of legislators from Party A. This means that Party B’s president now has an even harder time getting anything done, so the next election, everybody elects a president and legislators from Party A and we start the vicious cycle all over again.

At the moment, the Democrats have lost America’s faith after only two years, which is funny when you consider that America had the patience to stick with Lost for seven years. Republican senators and representatives around the country thus dropped their golf clubs and hunting rifles and began their surge to retake the Hill. Except of course in Hawaii, where a democrat could admit their hobbies included electrocuting cats and cross-dressing and they would still win by a landslide.

In Colorado however, the race was much closer. The race pitted incumbent democrat Sen. Michael Bennett against the republican challenger Ken Buck, who was formerly the District Attorney. Now, I don’t like to flaunt my political opinions on this site, and I have no idea whether or not Michael Bennett is any good as a senator. But oh boy was I sure glad that he pulled out the narrow victory over Buck. Just a bit of a background on this guy. He says the types of things that guys would say if they knew they never had to speak to a woman again for the rest of their lives. He wanted to outlaw abortion and birth control, didn’t charge an admitted rapist because he felt the woman was simply experiencing “buyers remorse,” and basically said that women have no place in politics.

Speaking of women who have no place in politics, Buck wasn’t the only wacka doodle that actually made a run at Congress this midterm. There is Christine O’Donnell, who basically was a witch as a kid, a whore as a college student, and then became a God-fearing, bible-toting, sinner-smiting politician. She was running for senate in Delaware, which is suspcicious in itself. Why would you want to be a senator for Delaware? Is Delaware even part of the U.S? Somebody should check on that.

Anyway, while she lost, the fact she was even in this race showed the power of a new and rising force in politics: the Tea Party. I to this day have no idea what the Tea Party is or does. I have no idea what their views are, nor do I plan on finding out. I looked up their Wikipedia page, but it was really long. I’m just assuming that they like to dress up as Indians and dump stuff into the ocean. Whatever they are, they have replaced the Green party as the new pain-in-the-behind for politicians. Democrats like to have somebody to blame when their womanizing, pot-smoking, radical loony bins don’t get elected; Republicans don’t like people who don’t own their own oil companies.

At the end of the day, Democrats were able to keep the senate but lost the house. This got me to thinking that I really need to stop wasting my immense talents on a readerless blog and start my political career. I will start my own party based on being flexible, not letting anything go to waste, and keeping things fresh. It will be called the Tupperware Party.

Counting in the U.S.A.

In my ongoing efforts to prove I am a model citizen, I followed instructions for once and filled out my Census form yesterday. Of course, the government will probably never get it, because the forms have disappeared in the random pile of junk mail and useless fliers that is our dining table. It’s not like it really matters though, because I have a suspicion that the box that we thought was for outgoing mail is actually a bird feeder.

Regardless of my example, the rest of you should really mail in those forms. The Census takes place only once every ten years, so it is entirely possible that you will be dead before you ever take another one. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you (yes I did), but I think it is really important that you fill out this form. This really is the only way we have of determining how many people we have living in this country. Or if you believe the unstable guy in my journalism class, it’s how the government tracks us so they can send nuclear weapons to kill us. Now, I always figured that if you are using nuclear weapons, you don’t really need to know where exactly a person is. You just sort of need to know which general hemisphere they are in. Anyway, keeping track of the millions of people in the country is a lot harder today than back in the days of cavemen Wog and Oog.

Wog: So with me, let’s see… that’s 40 people.

Oog: Actually, I think you counted illegal immigrants.

Wog: We don’t even have countries; how do we have illegal immigrants?

Oog: I don’t know, but those guys over there sure are good at picking berries.

But why is it so important that we know how many people live here? Mainly so they know what population to put on those stupid signs in little hick towns that say something like "Silver Hills: Home of the First DUI, Population 324." But knowing where people are is also very important for democracy and representation. The U.S government allots a state a certain amount of representatives based on how many people live there, so not filling out your form could cost you on Capitol Hill. For instance, since most of the people living in North Dakota don’t know how to read, a lot of them didn’t fill out their forms. As a result, the U.S government thinks that only seven people live in the entire state, even though everyone knows that number is closer to about 15. This of course means that North Dakota only has one representative in the House, and that representative is actually a moose.

So unless you want your state to miss out on useless million dollar failed projects and National Mothball Museums, you need to fill out those forms. And of course, as with all official forms, I highly encourage you to cheat. For instance, on my form I’ve established that 300,000 people currently live in our two-bedroom apartment. This means that I expect that our apartment will shortly be declared its own Congressional district, and since only my roommate and I actually live here, I’m pretty sure we have a pretty good chance of getting elected.

Of course, we don’t want all of you to do this. Because then we will have some ridiculous population and we’ll have to start drowning baby girls just like the Chinese, and we don’t want that. Besides, being a Congress person is overrated. You have to wear suits all the time and you have to pretend you give a damn about the people who elected you and you have sit through long meetings and everyone keeps track of the hookers you hire. It can be very stressful; do you think all these legislators sex text their aides because they are old perverts? No, they do it because they are so stressed out going about the very democratic process of getting re-elected.

Also, the Census report affects how many electoral votes that a state gets, which is very important if for some reason you care who becomes the president of the United States. I’m especially bitter about this, because I come from Hawaii, a state that doesn’t get many electoral votes. In the 2008 election, CNN declared the election over before the polls in Hawaii even closed. Of course, maybe this is for the better, since a lot of the people I knew back in Hawaii didn’t vote, and in some cases were unaware that an election was going on. For instance, my friend Chris. This is the conversation we had over the phone when CNN called the race.

Me: So did you see the news?

Chris: I’m on the beach right now.

Me: You didn’t vote in the election?

Chris: Was that today?

What killed me was that I was mad at him not because he was taking for granted one of the most basic liberties that our ancestors fought for, but because I wanted to be on the beach too. Instead, I was stuck in the snow where I am now forced to care about things like elections and Census forms because I have nothing better to do. You know what? I’m tired of this. Forget about everything I just said about being patriotic. You should just follow the example set by Boulder and use your Census forms to roll joints. Those stoners probably solve more problems than Congressmen anyway.

Hallelujah Health Care!

As I’m sure you have heard by now, the big news is that yesterday, the new health care bill passed the House and is coming very close to being enacted. I think. The whole process of bills was always very confusing to me, maybe because my only experience with them was that darn School House Rock song that I don’t really remember. I think it went something like “conjunction junction, what’s your function.” For all I know, the only thing they voted on yesterday was what font they wanted the bill printed in. But judging by the way people are reacting, this vote seems to be a big step in finally getting this health care reform. This is a good thing, because frankly we need to get this whole thing over with so the media can move on to covering something important, like Jennifer Love Hewitt’s love life.

Now this whole thing was a big surprise to me since I assumed that, like me, Congress was on spring break and was spending their entire day watching basketball and NCIS reruns. But unlike me, these legislators not only managed to get off of their couches but also worked to pass a bill that appeared to have a blunt’s chance in Boulder of passing. It really was a remarkable display of non-partisan cooperation. Of course, by “non-partisan cooperation,” I mean “Democratic gang-rape.” None of the Republicans in the House voted yes on the bill, but the Democrats had enough numbers to overcome that.

But enough about how the bill was passed, let’s focus on what is truly important: how this reform affects you. By “you” I mean “me.” I don’t really care about you. Anyway, luckily for those of you who don’t understand health care, I happen to be an expert on the subject. My qualifications include knowing the Pepto Bismol song by heart and once diagnosing myself in a doctor’s office (“hey doc, I think the problem is that there is a knife sticking out of my foot”). So I’m going to make health care easy to understand by completely making up facts and using inappropriate metaphors and puns.

Now there was a time was a time when there was no such thing as health care (if you live in Africa, that time was two minutes ago). To demonstrate, we finally bring back our cavemen Wog and Oog.

Wog: So what seems to be the problem?

Oog: I think I have a cold sore.

Wog: I’m sorry to say we don’t yet have a cure and you’re going to die. But we can make your death as quick and painless as possible.

Oog: How?

Wog: We are going to hit you over the head repeatedly with a club until you die.

So things have gotten a little better since those days (doctors these days use axes), but there are still a lot of people in this country who are uninsured. This health care reform will give health insurance to 32 million uninsured Americans and make health insurance mandatory. Of course, all of this money has to come from somewhere and many high income people are complaining that it will end up being them. To them I say, “HAHA nanny-nanny boo-boo.” Because if there is anything that makes me happier than watching rich people suffer, I sure as heck haven’t found it yet.

Another part of the reform is that insurance companies can no longer cancel or deny policies to people with preexisting health conditions. This only makes sense to me. I mean sure, a diabetic person may have a higher risk of health problems than a healthy young man in his twenties. But the odds of that healthy young man getting hit by a bus tomorrow are probably greater since the diabetic had his foot amputated and can no longer walk.

Speaking of healthy young men, I should also benefit from this reform. The new plan would allow unmarried people up to 26 to remain under their parents’ insurance as long if they don’t have a job that offers them insurance. Why unmarried? Probably because the insurance companies know that marrying women is one of the biggest health risks to guys. I’ve seen CSI; if the husbands have any sort of life insurance, the second they piss their wives off BAM they’re dead.

Of course all of these benefits are nothing compared to the person who was truly saved by this vote: Barack Obama. Now as a fellow Hawaiian, I like the guy, even if his bracket sucked (I mean, come on; Kansas?). But even I have to admit that he was taking some heat for failing to really change anything aside from the oval office furniture. At least now he can hang his hat on the first health care reform since the 60’s. Then again, I would avoid doing anything that hasn’t been done since the 60’s. I’m pretty sure there was a good reason for stopping most of the things that went on in the 60’s other than The Who.

Anyway, at least this is a step in the right direction. Or the wrong direction. At least we are walking somewhere as opposed to standing there and looking confused like a Brit in a dentist’s office. Only time will tell whether or not we’ve taken a step towards happiness or Candianness. Speaking of which, I hope this free health care means I can finally get a Canadian doctor to look at this raccoon that has been clamped to my foot for the past three days. It’s starting to look infected.

State of the Union: Hungry

Like all concerned and involved citizens of this great country, I was holding my breath to hear Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. And then I passed out, because that’s what happens when you hold your breath for too long. Okay, so maybe that was an exaggeration. I had no idea Obama was giving his State of the Union address (I was sleeping though, so that part is true). To be completely honest, I’ve watched more Twilight movies (two) than State of the Union addresses (zero)in my lifetime, which I’m pretty sure means I will soon be deported to some desolate foreign country, like North Dakota (in my defense, I didn’t want to see either one).

It’s not that I’m not an informed citizen. Far from it, I consider myself a “connoisseur” (I think that’s French for snob) of information. For instance, I know who is playing in the Super Bowl (not my Jaguars that’s who). I bet I even know more about what is going on in this country than Obama. I mean, how “in-touch” can he be considering he lives in the Vatican City? Wait, sorry that’s the Pope. By the way, why can’t there be a cool presidential hat that all of the presidents have to wear like that thing the pope has to wear? In fact, I think we should make America more like the drinking game Presidents and Asshole, which means we have to give the president a hat and elect the Asshole of the United States of America, who has to do whatever anyone in the country says (I nominate Dane Cook, only because Justin Bieber isn’t old enough).

Anyway, for those of you who also missed the speech, I’m pretty sure you didn’t miss anything. All presidential speeches are the same: sweeping statements, lots of assertive pointing, and at least one football analogy. It was probably made up of the same key words you always hear in presidential speeches, like “hope,” “progress,” “Monica Lewinsky’s snatch,” etc. At least George W. Bush tried to make them interesting by mispronouncing words, garbling sentences, and occasionally reverting to a language that he and Jeb made up smoking weed one day in high school. But just in case you do need to know the state of the union, I will give you my own state of the union address, which I did not write in capital letters because I am humble (and I always thought pushing the shift button was a nuisance anyway).

Now I’m sure that one of the big issues that everybody is thinking about and trying to solve is health care reform. Or at least I hope it is, because I’m not and somebody needs to be working on it. “Health care reform” is one of those phrases that become really popular for people to say but people like me don’t quite understand, like “trickle-down effect.” Now I don’t really have a firm grip on the “facts” of this issue, but I do know whose fault it is: old people. If the baby-boomers had just kept using drugs and having unprotected sex like they were supposed to and died already, we wouldn’t be having this problem. I think. Or maybe I’m thinking of social security. Oh well, old people living too long is a problem in any situation.

Now I don’t really have a horse in this race, since in five years I will either be living in Sweden with a supermodel or in jail for attempting to kidnap a supermodel, but either way I won’t have to worry much about health care. What I do know is we shouldn’t go to universal health care. Oh sure, it sounds like a really good idea that would benefit everyone but rich health insurance people (who we hate anyway). But there is one big disadvantage: the Canadians use it. Nothing good ever comes from adopting something the Canadians do (hockey, listening to Celine Dion, having intimate relations with moose) and we shouldn’t start now.

The other big issue is the financial crisis. Again, this is one of those things that I am vaguely aware of, but I don’t know how or why it happened. Sort of like Lady Gaga becoming popular. As far as I can understand, someone did something that resulted in something bad which led to more stuff and POOF! Everybody is broke. Or something like that. The guy who explained it to me used a lot of hand gestures, and at the time it made sense. But regardless of how it happened, I think we can all agree that we are in dire financial trouble. By “all,” I mean “not rich people.” Rich people somehow are always the people that get more money from the government, as if rich people are on some sort of endangered species list that must be protected by the government at all costs. They never give money to the people that need it, like students paying out of state tuition to go to the University of Colorado who are stuck in the snow because they have to drop down one grand every time they want to go back to Hawaii.

So yeah, in other words the state of the union is bleak. All of our celebrities are dying, there are still two Twilight movies left, an earthquake knocked over Haiti’s last two standing huts, and global warming has yet to make it stop snowing in Colorado. But then again, there are some signs of hope. For instance, The Who will be playing at the Super Bowl halftime show and Paula Abdul isn’t on American Idol anymore. Besides, as Barack Obama so eloquently said in his closing statement to make us Americans appreciate what we have: “Hey, you could be Tiger Woods.”

A Truly Nobel Gesture

So I stayed awake long enough in my political science class the other day to find out that apparently Barack Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize. Now at the moment, I didn’t really see what was the big deal, so I went back to sleep. But when I woke up they were still talking about it, so I’m assuming that everybody else thinks this is a huge issue.

Now as always when I am about to examine a huge issue, I decided to do some research and deep soulful thinking. So I took a nap on my couch. Then I went on Wikipedia to find out what the hell a Nobel Prize was. Apparently the Nobel Prize is awarded by some committee of really old people with funny accents who live in one of those European countries that never have wars and just smoke and drink all day and harbor rich people’s money, like Sweden or Delaware or something. Apparently there are several different categories of Nobel Prizes: Peace, Science, Spelling, Best Evening Gown, and Cinematography.

So anyway, every year, this committee locks themselves in a church and they don’t leave until they decide the winner, when they send white smoke up the chimney. Wait… sorry my bad. I’m getting mixed up, that’s how they decide the pope. Anyway, somehow they decide who gets the Nobel Prize, and this year they decided to award it to Barack Obama. Which is completely understandable. I mean, he’s been doing some great in his first few months as the president. What was that? He was nominated in February? But that means he was nominated after being president for like a week?

Never the less, I think it’s a great decision on the part of the committee. I mean, not only did Obama unite the world in a captivating national campaign of hope, change, and inspiration, but he changed the Oval Office drapes on his fourth day in office and they go way better with the carpet now. And trust me; nothing encourages peace more than good feng-shui when you are negotiating treaties. The explanation given by the Nobel Committee was as follows: guggenheimen wienerschnitzel hamburgular hindenburgen doitshce baggattee. As it turns out they don’t speak English, but once everything was translated, their story was that Obama encouraged an atmosphere of peace. They also added that this year’s candidate pool was not exactly deep. The other nominees are not made public, but rumor has it that the runner-up for the award was the Geico gecko.

Besides, Obama is the not the only president to win a Nobel. I mean, Teddy Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize and he was famous for shooting a whole lot of people in the Spanish-American War and saying to “speak softly and carry a big stick.” The Dalai Lama won and to my knowledge he, unlike Obama, never threw out the first pitch at the MLB All-Star Game. I mean for goodness sakes, Al Gore won just because the Nobel committee cried every time they saw all those poor baby polar bears drowning.

So of course, Barack Obama made a very modest speech before he was interrupted by Kanye West, who attempted to give the award to Lady Gaga. But in the speech he said that the award really belonged to the American people. Which of course means that I can now add Nobel Peace Prize winner to my long list of accomplishments this week (like waking up before dinner every day and not getting hit by a car).

Of course the question now becomes, why didn’t they just give the award to me in the first place instead of doing it through Barack? I mean, I’m not undercutting the accomplishments (?) of Barack Obama, but I’ve done more to encourage peace today than he has in the last week, and I have not even left my couch. Everybody you talk to that knows me will tell you that I am a true champion of peace (if they say differently, than they obviously don’t know me). For instance, I often walk up to pure strangers and give them big hugs. Sure, I’m normally drunk and stumbling down the street at 3 in the morning when I do, but I bet Obama doesn’t go around giving homeless people hugs in the morning. Besides, and I don’t mean to brag here, but I have never watched an episode of “The Hills” or “John and Kate Plus 8”, and if that doesn’t earn me an award then I’m not exactly sure what does.

Of course, unlike me, Obama now has to bear the burden of this award in the public eye while I gracefully carry out my peace-bringing ways in unacknowledged secrecy. Kind of like Bono and Angelina Jolie. And I’m starting to see signs of the award getting to his head. For instance, did you know that we recently bombed the moon? That’s right, just after he gets an award for bringing about peace, he goes and lets NASA bomb the moon, which I’m pretty sure has never made a threatening move in its history. The only country to be less threatening military wise is Canada, and that’s only because the truck carrying the entire Canadian army broke down on a road somewhere in Quebec and all six soldiers got mad cow. And yet here we are, bombing the moon. Yeah sure, NASA is saying we’re “looking for water.” Right, the same way we were “looking for Osama bin Laden.” Anyways, I have to be going. As a Nobel Prize winner, I have to look after the children I adopted from Africa. I sent them to fetch me a pizza and they haven’t come back yet.

Next On the Agenda: Nap Time

So this past Tuesday I attended a City Council meeting as part of an assignment for my reporting class. And by attending I mean I didn’t go. I frankly had more important things to do, like sleep. If you think sleep is not important, you should try getting the swine flu, like I just recently did. I slept for two days straight, and I’m pretty sure the only reason I didn’t die is because I was too sleepy to die. Of course the day I finally get up the energy to go back to class, my reporting teacher decides to make us cover this City Council meeting. Unfortunately, the meeting started at 5 in the evening and is probably still going on. I, like many college students (including most of the others in the reporting class), have way too many things on our plates to be spending six hours sitting in a building that does not involve a bouncy castle.

I was however able to catch some of the meeting on television. Yes, they air these meetings on live television, bumping the Jonas Brothers to third on the list of the stupidest things on television (both are still chasing those TV priests who inspire people to give their money to them… er… God, via yelling and hair gel). Anyway, this is what I could gather from those five minutes: absolutely nothing. These meetings are run by trained politicians, who are well versed in the art of making nothing into something and making that something very boring. These people could sit there and argue about the proper spelling of the word “is.”

Anyway, the main agenda of the evening was a bill on reducing the size of houses in Boulder. As a person who does not currently live in a house and will probably never own a house in Boulder, this issue was about as interesting as a lecture on proper sod removal technique. But apparently to everybody else it was a huge issue. And by everybody else I mean the ten lonely wackos who showed up to the goddam meeting. I mean, these people got up to the podium and referenced emails they sent the council before hand. That’s right, this was my assignment and I still did less research than these people. Most of these people were mad that the character of the city was being compromised by these large buildings. Now, I’m not here to nitpick, but since when did Boulder have character? If by character you mean rich snobby businessmen surrounded by pot smoking vegan hippies, then yes, Boulder has tons of character.

Besides, who are we to tell rich people how big they can build their houses? Frankly, when I get rich, I’m not going to ask my neighbors for permission before I start building my mansion. Do you know why? I won’t have neighbors. I’m going to buy my own damn island. And yet here are these concerned (by concerned I mean filled with jealous hatred) citizens of Boulder who are insisting that large mansions are an eyesore upon their neighborhoods and corrupting the youth of America and solely responsible for decreasing literacy rates and inner city violence in Colorado (even though everyone knows the real culprit is Hannah Montana).

I think by now I’ve properly illustrated how stupid covering this City Council meeting would have been. Now, I’m not saying I haven’t covered stupid things as a reporter before. But do you know what made those meetings way more interesting and captivating? It was the fact that it was in my own community, and I could really connect with the issues at hand and feel like I had something at stake. Haha I’m just joking. It’s because I was getting paid. They should give ADD kids money to pay attention, because I’ve somehow been genuinely interested in things like duck habitats and solar panels where normally I would have fallen asleep so fast I would have fallen face first into the duck pond (by the way, I was at that duck habitat for three hours, and the only thing I never saw were ducks).

In my opinion, to make the reporting class truly representative of today’s journalistic environment, they should pay us very little money and then fire us so they have money to hire fifty new web design nerds who spent their college years creating viruses and spilling hot pocket cheese on their sweatpants. Forgive me if I’m a little mad about this, but it’s very frustrating when your chosen profession, your true passion (or in my case, the only thing I don’t completely suck at), is slowly disappearing in the real world. I swear, every journalism professor I have just sits there and tells me how much it sucks to be a journalism major. So to prepare us, these classes try to teach us diverse journalism skills, like web design, architecture, flipping burgers, pole dancing, prostitution, etc. Because the world will always need doctors and lawyers (to sue the doctors), but sometime in the future (like yesterday), people will no longer need journalists. Instead of paying for poor reporting and plagiarism, they can get it for free on Twitter. While we journalists are stuck with all of our morals and ethics of reporting, Twittering idiots can bypass all of that and just write “Obama calls Kanye West ‘jackass,’” even after Obama requested it be left off the record.

Now, there are probably some of you who are thinking to yourselves, “Mitchell, if you would just buckle down and do the stupid reporting assignment instead of writing stupid notes about it you would be done already and you would stop complaining and I could go back to mindlessly Twittering.” Well, unfortunately I have writers block, and when I have writers block I find that the best cure is to write about something else. So really, by reading this, you are all helping me to write my article for reporting class. As such, I feel I have the right to blame all of you when I get an F on this paper.

Playing Korean Chicken

So I was surfing the internet yesterday when I read on CNN that North Korea is going to shoot a nuclear missile at Hawaii in early July. Obviously, as a person who is currently in Hawaii, this story concerns me. A lot. On my list of things that concern me at the moment, it is currently third behind what I’m going to eat next and whether or not I should take a nap and just ahead of cockroaches flying into my ear (trust me, if this ever happened to you it would be this high on your list too). But it’s not just me; the entire state of Hawaii is paying close attention to this story. The last time a story concerned everyone in the state this much was when they did a story on how the recession would cause the price of spam to go up. You can tell the seriousness of the issue when the West Hawaii Today’s headline reads “Lakers Continue to Hold Referee’s Wife Hostage.” Oh wait… sorry, that was the sports section. Anyway, trust me, it was the lead story.

Apparently Kim Jong-il finished the “Friends Season Five” DVD his mother got him, because he got bored again and decided to say he was going to blow up America. This is nothing new obviously; Kim Jong-il threatens America so often that his threats are behind “John and Kate Plus Eight” updates on the news (somebody needs to deport that woman to Iceland before her husband and her eight children throw holy water on her and she dissolves). The last time he tried to launch a missile it went about eight feet before the rubber band powering it snapped and it just kind of fell over (further proof Asians should not be allowed to drive anything).

This time North Korea is using a Taepodong-2 missile with a range of 4,000 miles, which is funny since Hawaii is more than 4,500 miles away. My guess is that, like me, Kim Jong-il was not paying attention in that part of class where they teach you how to convert from metric units. But of course it sounds a lot scarier when they say “North Korea threatens to bomb Hawaii” instead of “North Koreans aimlessly send missile into the middle of the ocean somewhere.” And remember, this is all according to Japanese Intelligence. Now, the Japanese are smart and all, but I don’t fully trust intelligence from a country that tells me to set up a VCR by “plug socket wall for best electricity and taste.” Besides, how do I know that Japan isn’t just publishing this story so the Koreans will read it and forget they were actually planning to bomb Japan? My geography is a little rusty, but I’m pretty sure that Japan is a lot closer.

Regardless, the United States has said they have set up a missile defense system. Now, I’m sure this is true, but I’m still nervous because I still don’t really understand how these things work. When I hear “aerial missile defense system” I picture some guy named Earl sitting on his porch with a shotgun looking at the sky with binoculars. I would much rather have something I can see, like a big concrete dome or a giant butterfly net. This whole missile intercept thing sounds like it involves a lot of complex math, which I don’t trust.

All I do know is how everybody in Hawaii will react: they will buy toilet paper. No really, whenever there is some kind of impending natural disaster or emergency situation, people in Hawaii head to Costco to buy toilet paper, rice, and gasoline. Even when it makes no sense. For instance, a couple of years ago there was a big earthquake off the coast of Kona. I’m watching the news and I see reporters in Honolulu standing outside a Costco and there are tons of cars trying to get gas and people walking out of the store with enough toilet paper to TP the entire city. And for those of you geography challenged people, Honolulu is on a completely different island from where the earthquake was. They only felt a few tremors and lost power for a little while. Yet the first thing they think when they lose power is “oh my god I need toilet paper and gas,” even though since toilets and streetlights don’t work during power outages, making both of those items relatively useless. If the city of Honolulu were hit by Hurricane Katrina, all you would see are people floating on rafts of toilet paper holding bags of rice. But then again, I’ve heard stories of people in early Hawaii wiping their asses with Sears magazines (which were shipped to your mailbox for free whether or not you wanted them), so I can see how these people have come to hold toilet paper very near and dear to their hearts.

So anyway, I hope that North Korea won’t act on this threat, because as I’ve just told you, we are definitely not ready for it. If we suddenly heard that the missile was incoming, we would all rush to hide in our basements before we realize that nobody in Hawaii has basements. At least on the mainland people have those storm shelters installed. In Hawaii, people just go the Ace Hardware and nail plywood to their windows and duck tape their doors. Odds are that when the bomb went off, half the population would be on the road trying to fill in gas. I personally will probably just stay at home. Of course, with the speed that news reaches Kona, I’ll have to read the paper on July 5^th to find out Kona’s been wiped out by a nuke. Speaking of wiped out, I’ll probably have to save the newspaper, because they were sold out of toilet paper.

Breaking News: You Are An Idiot

This past Friday I was sitting in the San Francisco Airport eating a clam chowder sourdough bread bowl and watching CNN. Seeing as I was eating, not studying, and home was a few hours away, I was pretty happy. Then this evil sound reached my brain and my ears started to gush blood, and sure enough I looked up at the airport TV and saw: Nancy Grace.

Okay, so maybe you live a blessed existence and have no idea who Nancy Grace is. Nancy Grace is a TV personality on the days that she isn’t ruling over the depths of hell. She has a show on CNN which pretty much just consists of her yelling and mocking her guests, callers, and most of the human population in general. Do you remember hearing about those experiments where they would raise children in cages and just feed them and not give them any love or human contact and they would die? Well, it turns out they didn’t actually die; they grow up into people like Nancy Grace. Now, she says that she empathizes with victims, but I have a hard time believing that this creature is even capable of feeling empathy. I wouldn’t ever be that angry even with a live badger clamped onto my nose. It’s like her menstrual cycle got caught in PMS mode. I’m pretty sure that her pre-show ritual is biting off the head of a baby bunny rabbit. She used to be a prosecuting attorney, and if I were on a jury I would put in a guilty verdict simply out of fear that she would track me down and kick down my door holding a shotgun and a crowbar.

But Nancy Grace is not the only one out there. For whatever reason (as with everything else, I’m blaming it on American Idol and Simon Cowell), TV producers think we love getting advice from angry people. It’s like getting your news at your anger management meetings. Have you ever watched that show “Mad Money” on CNBC with that guy Jim Cramer? The show is just this guy yelling out financial advice and berating his callers with the same tone you might use to yell at your dog if it ate your newborn child. I’m sure he gives very sound advice; I just never hear it because whenever I watch his show I end up cowering in the nearest corner and trying to apologize for my investment portfolio to whoever will listen. And I don’t even know what an investment portfolio is. I would much rather get my financial advice from the E*Trade babies (not only are they calmer, they sing “Broken Wings” by Mr. Mister, one of my favorite groups).

But CNN is still the place to go if you want to listen to people who think that the rest of the population wakes up in the morning and eats lead paint chips for breakfast. Apparently, they think that people don’t watch TV shows if all they do is report the news. Although to be honest, I know I don’t. I mean, all the news reports are that society basically sucks right now, and I don’t need that from my news channel. If I want to get depressed about the state of humanity I can just change the channel to MTV. The thing about news channels is that there is only so much news to report. After awhile, you realize you are just watching the same 15-minute sequence over and over again. You know you’re running out of news when you bring in three analysts to dissect President Obama’s stand-up routine at the White House Correspondents dinner. (I would give him a B; at one point he made a joke about Dick Cheney’s memoirs being titled “How to Shoot People in the Face and Torture.” Maybe it’s just me, but the fact that Dick Cheney has done these things could be one reason you might not want to make fun of the man.)

So in their attempt to make the news interesting, news networks have hired outsized personalities to make you feel like an uneducated idiot (then again, watching almost anything on TV gives me that feeling). You could ask these people a question about the U.S’s relationship with the sovereign nation of Durkastanislav and they would rant for ten minutes about how the government is mishandling the situation and what their plan is even though 1.they know nothing about Durkastanislav because 2. I just made up that country. But still, you better agree with what they say, or else Nancy Grace will show up at your door with a shotgun. And unlike Dick Cheney, she always finishes the job.

Pro-Life or Pro-Coat Hangers

As most of you who know me are aware, I like sleeping and hate walking. So as you could probably guess, the thirty-minute walk I have to take in the morning to get to my first class is my least favorite part of the day. It’s also when I’m the least coherent; you could walk right up to me and steal the glasses of my face and I would not notice you. So you can imagine the shock my mind went through when I rounded the corner yesterday morning and saw: a 30-foot-tall dead baby.

After I stopped freaking out, I calmed down enough to realize that it was actually a large sign against aborting babies. Remember those really graphic brochures they used to give you in high school sex ed? Imagine taking one of those brochures and make it as tall as a building and this is what this thing looked like. I have to admit, I don’t remember much else about it because I ran away from that thing so fast you would never have guessed I only learned to walk two weeks ago. You see, I do not particularly like blood and pain and all that other stuff. I hate TV shows that have fake blood, and I think the Saw movie series is the worst thing ever created by man (unless you count the country of France as man-made), so all these pictures of bloody babies didn’t really sit well with me. I am paying a lot of money so I can walk around on a scenic campus, not the trash can of a back-alley abortion center. Then again, it is my fault. I mean, they did have a “Warning: Graphic Images Ahead” sign (no, I’m not kidding), so in theory I could have taken an alternative path to my class that would have taken me ten more minutes to get to a class I was already late for (thanks to an army of old guys pelting me with free mini-bibles the entire way to my class).

If I sound bitter, I apologize. It’s not that I have a strong view either way; I after all, will most likely never get pregnant in my lifetime (and I thank fate every day I don’t have a uterus). I love babies; they are my favorite of the STDs, mainly because I can’t get them. (Hey, speaking of abortions, I found this article on toilets around the world. This is my favorite one.)

What I don’t like are the people who feel like they can take their views and put them on giant billboards in the middle of campus and throw bibles and clipboards at people. Unfortunately, you end up dealing with this a lot when you live on a college campus, mainly because college students are viewed as “open-minded” (read “empty-minded”) thanks to the perfect storm of new-found independence, intellectualism, and maturity (and new drugs and a lot of free time). Thus people see college as the perfect place to instill us with various “causes” before we grow up and get jobs and things to do. Every day, there are people standing in strategic locations with clipboards trying to get us to sign up to help (fill in the blank) Darfur, African-children, the environment, God, the Denver Broncos, the Girl Scouts Troop 546.

Just the other day, we spent the first five minutes of our class listening to “Kristen” talk in a overly cheery voice to our geology class about how easy it is to save on energy just as she does by turning off the lights, recycling, avoiding showers, taking shits in the woods and other easy steps that you can take to save energy today! Then she marched back to her tree house to go have intimate relations with a squirrel or an artichoke or whatever. What’s ironic is that to get us to help save the environment she passed out a clipboard with tons of pieces of paper to write down our email addresses on them. Which is also stupid since apparently the school gives them our e-mails anyway. How else can you explain why I have to sort through 14 messages from random student groups before I can find the email from my professor telling me I failed? (He saves paper by electronically informing me that I am a retard.)

Now I know all of you are saying to yourselves, “Mitchell, as a solutions-oriented person, what do you suggest we do about this problem? And for once does not have anything to do with biting people and defecating?” Well, I personally like to vary my strategy depending on who is holding the clipboard. With the smaller and older ones, I just try to act like a fat psycho by making grumpy faces and talking animatedly with my imaginary friend Humphrey (who is actually a four-foot-tall walking pancake), and that generally deters them. When it comes to the young guys, I just have to not be the hot chicks that they are pretending to be cared about the environment for. The hardest are the middle aged ones, and I still have not come up with a reliable method for avoiding them without a cattle prod. I’m thinking of getting a petition to get them off our campus; do you have a minute of your time to sign it?

Survivor: Washington D.C.

In my continuing effort to do nothing with my life, I was watching Sports Center this past week when a breaking update came on. Apparently, ex-NFL lineman Warren Sapp had just finished second on Dancing with the Stars. For those of you who may be unaware of what Dancing With the Stars is (don’t ask me who isn’t; maybe Amish people, but they shouldn’t be reading this anyway), Dancing With the Stars is a reality show in which celebrities compete in a dancing competition with trained professional dancers. Now when I say celebrities, what I actually mean are wash-ups (Lance Bass), sports stars (the aforementioned Sapp), people you have never heard of (who the hell is Cody Linley?), and dead people (Cloris Leachman). These people are on this show only because Hollywood Squares is no longer on the air and because a reality show in which washed-up celebs are fed to sharks and lions doesn’t exist yet (don’t worry, Fox is working on it and Gilbert Gottfried has already been scheduled to be eaten alive by rabid beavers).

Apparently Sapp finished second to ex-famous hot person Brooke Burke, famous for … er… wait, was she in… no… Okay so I don’t know why she is famous. But the results were not a big surprise to me. For one thing, even though past sports figures have had success on the show, have you seen Warren Sapp? I love the guy, but he is a big fat dude. Then there is Brooke Burke, and I may not know why she is famous, but she is hot. Every week Sapp comes out in a suit with enough fabric in it to house the entire country of Ghana in canvas tents while Burke’s outfit never seems to be finished, in the sense that it is missing many key parts (maybe they don’t have time to sew her outfit cause it takes too long to make Sapp’s).

Anyways, after hearing about how many people voted for the winner, and seeing as the winner was clearly the right choice, I had a thought: We should select our President in a reality show! I mean, how much more ridiculous can it be than the Electoral College? Every year it seems as if the state of Ohio single-handedly decides the president. In this past election, Obama was declared the winner before the polls in Hawaii were even closed! So we are going to decide the next President through a reality show.

And on top of deciding the President, it would be entertaining! Wouldn’t it be awesome to watch the Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney arguing and bickering their way around the world in The Amazing Race? Or to watch John McCain revert to his days in Vietnam POW camps by eating rats on Survivor? We could watch Hillary Clinton try and seduce Joe the Plumber in The Bachelorette; Bill Clinton and John Edwards fool around in Wife Swap; Barack Obama overcome his past drug habits in Celebrity Rehab; Dennis Kucinich hunt down aliens in UFO Hunters; Sarah Palin give parenting tips on Super Nanny (after all, she does have a pregnant child, a retarded child, a military child, a gay child, adopted child, a blind child, a deaf child, and a dog, so what hasn’t she seen?).

But I think that the ultimate reality show to determine our new president is none other than American Idol. Imagine the possibilities…

Ryan Seacrest: Welcome everybody to American Idol. Last night our contestants gave their final performance and tonight, we will decide your American President. It’ll be a close race, and we had some amazing performances last night. Barack Obama started off the night with a stirring rendition of David Bowie’s “Changes.” Next up were John McCain singing “War” by Edwin Starr and Hillary Clinton singing Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”

Simon: I felt that all three were solid, but Obama did the best job of connecting with the crowd. He had the “it” factor. I felt McCain wasn’t able to identify with his audience, and I think Hillary was appealing to too small a crowd.

Seacrest: Not all of our contestants were able to swoon the judges. Ralph Nader’s version of Paramore’s “Here We Go Again” was uninspiring and Rudy Giuliani made Frank Sinatra turn in his grave with a horrible version of “New York, New York.” Ron Paul butchered Stevie Ray Vaughn’s “Texas Flood” and John Edwards drew boos from the crowd while singing Hank Williams’ “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”

Randy: Yo dogs, was a little pitchy for me. Definitely not your best performances. That ain’t getting into my dawg pound.

Paula: You know what? You’re all winners. You all make me happy. You all will be presidents of some country some day. I love you all.

Simon: Stupid bimbo. I have heard better singing from the choir at a school for the deaf. It sounded like singing on a bus. A short yellow bus. None of you will ever be president.

Seacrest: Well, after 50 million votes and 10 million commercial breaks, we have the results. The 44^th President of the United States is… oh god.

Sanjaya: Hey everybody!