'It's a wonderful knife'

That's right, it's yet another holiday blog. I know Chris and Erin already beat me to it, but let's not forget the real reason for the season: blogging.

I wanted to talk about THE saddest position there is at this time of the year. No, it's not the gin-fueled mall Santas who are probably reduced to wearing rubber leggings to keep out bladder expulsions. It's not even the minimum-wage assistant-to-the-shit-faced-santa elves, who don't have to put up with as much urine, but get so much less glory. No no, the saddest and most horrible yuletide job is that of the salvation army bell ringer. Have you EVER seen one smile?? No you have not, and there's a reason for it. Try doing anything that takes only a second (such as ringing a bell one time) and do it for hours and hours. Unless you're a stoner bouncing a hackie sack off your birkenstocks, it's agonizing. Then on top of that, have that thing make noise. It's no wonder that even when you drop change in the bucket, all you get is a dry "merry christmas." Which is code for "please kill me."

And there's something so pavlovian about the whole thing. Has it reached a point to us now where we hear a bell and instantly go for our coins without thinking? I think my response when I hear a bell ringing on the holidays is that of sadness. For, somewhere nearby is someone very miserable. Even the homeless guy doesn't have to ring a bell when he asks for change. And during the holidays, even he has an extra lil' pep in his step as he mumbles "Shah sha shee sha sha sha flossmy teeth witha dragonstaaail."

So the next time you see a bell ringer, remember: a shit-load of angels may be getting their wings, but someone on earth is in hell for it.

We'll be rewarded in the end.

I take a drag off my Marlboro red and pull the smoke deep into my lungs. It burns more than normal, maybe because of the helicopter blades thrusting cold air down into my face, maybe the carton-a-week diet I’ve been on is catching up to me. But it becomes more and more apparent that it’s the anticipation of this misson.

I shouldn’t have anything to worry about. My team has been deployed time after time without even a casualty, and it’s four against one. But something about this target makes my skin crawl. He’s quite fat from a life-long streak of gluttony, yet he moves as fast as we can. I can’t seem to etch-a-sketch away the thought of his cold dead stare no matter how hard I shake my head. His yellowy, wax-like skin was a cruel gift mother nature gave him at birth. It could go to explain his angry-at-the-world demeanor and perhaps his condition has slowly morphed into dementia.

As the chopper hovers over the perfectly square compound, I find myself wishing I had more time to steady my thought, to steady my nerves. Just one more smoke. Just ONE MORE SMOKE. I brush it off, knowing that if I’m not ready now, I’ll never be.

We touch down. My adrenaline kicks in just like they taught us to control in training. The four of us storm into the complex with careful, controlled meticulousness. Everything is calculated, perfect little steps. But this time, my gut tells me it just won’t be enough.

I signal to Blinks that I’m moving forward. He stays behind as I follow a sparse trail of food wrappers that will hopefully lead me to the conclusion of this awful chapter in my career. Always eating. He’s always eating. What leads someone to do this to themselves . . . my thoughts are cut short when I hear movement around the corner. I almost start attacking right away as I turn the corner out of sheer shot nerves. I’m glad I don’t because it’s the captain who’s also followed a wrapper trail. Was his plan to make us fire on each other?? Sick fuck.

A shrill scream comes from behind me. I was just there with Blinks. I hope to whatever god put us here that it’s not him. He’s an even better agent than I. As I get to his last position, I don’t find a body at all. Or at least, I don’t find MOST of his body. He’s dead all right. And all the psychotic bastard has left are his eyes. No time for mourning or I’m next.

The captain and I hear a dry cackle in the next hallway. Captain goes right, I go left. He sees me first and turns to run, only to see the captain behind him. He’s caught like a runner between second and third in the ninth inning. We ease closer and closer. Slowly and gracefully. “You can do this. Just don’t look the devil in the eye”, I assure myself. Closer and closer. No room for mistakes now. He panics and charges me in a desperate attempt for survival, only to feel the sting of my bayonette just an inch below his ribcage. I pull up sharply on the blade to hit all the vital organs to make sure he’s out for good.

He collapses to the floor writing in pain for a second before he freezes, then sort of colapses in on himself. It’s finally over. We’ve finally done it: Pacman is dead.

Game over.


*I know, I know, this is in serious need of chopping down.

Juu talkin' to me, mang??

So last week, John Kang did his headlines on the beautiful country of Columbia. And while it's actually a really pretty place, and the lines were persuasive, the country is still in such disrepair.

I know this because I was watching the history channel a few weeks ago (surprise surprise) and they were replaying a special they did on narcotics. Of course, I'd already seen this special about three times, so when they got to cocaine, I knew they'd be discussing it's major exporter (jorrs truly, mang) and how it was an impossible problem to control. It's mainly so prolific and effiecient because of how cheap it is to produce . . . so effiecient, in fact, that the drug cartel's income (from the high markup) was in the billions. That's enough to rival the very government trying to stop it.

So I had an idea of my own on how to stop the problem. You might think this is a joke, and I can understand that, since that's what I do most of the time. But this could actually work: Instead of the government taking the offensive approach by storming drug houses, tightening security around borders, and gathering intellegence, they could take a more economical approach. They could simply redirect all funding to harvesting their own cocaine crops and production (in secret of course). Sounds crazy right? Well, if everyone's going to be doing the drug in the first place, then those people will have no problem breaking laws to do so.

So the US could sell their drug for 25% of the regular price. They'd still make a LOT of profit, since there's no transport overhead or anything of the sort. In essence, the anti-drug program funds itself. And the best and key part of the plan: they hit the cartels in the wallet; we start up a bidding war rather than a physical war. In essence, we drive them straight out of business until there's nothing left of them. Then, with the cartels out of the way, the government runs the monopoly on drug use. So then all we have to do to stop the drug problem is decrease the supply little by little each year, until they cut it off completely.

Then: no more coke in America.