Hot and Spicky

One glance at the Fuckedupometer and you can see that Al Gore might have a point.

Gotta make with the funny fast today, getting ready to leave home yet again – this time for a yearly family reunion (Lady Bone's father's people). Plenty of funny stuff on this front, but today I need to discuss more topical matters. You know how most people watch the news from the comfort of their cozy living rooms, shaking their heads at the lousy state of affairs that oozes from the television at ten o clock. "Goodness," they think, "my oh my, isn't it just a shame how those poor folks are getting fucked over." Still it's comforting to watch the news, because no matter how grave and horrific the news of the day, just about everybody watching can thank their lucky stars that it's happening to someone else, and they're sitting in the comfort of their peaceful home half a planet away from the trouble and suffering. Not me.

Let me just throw a couple of hot topics out for discussion, big issues that are the focus of heated controversy on damn near every broadcast. Let me just start off with Global warming. As a matter of fact, Adam, Tyler and myself went to see "An Inconvenient Truth just two days ago, so I'm as up on the facts as you could possibly be. The causes, the sobering realities along with the terrifying consequences to come in our lifetimes if we remain complacent. The film uses plenty of scare tactics to illustrate just exactly how fucked things are going to be, in fact at one point the camera fades in on some African village, native folks standing around suffering. Then slowly up comes some numbers. Three numbers designed to send the audience into breathless, trembling fright – 122. (They also had one of those little circles that designates the number as a temperature – I knew how to do it on my Mac, but am lost on my new PC. It sucks to be the fat guy with glasses, who thinks pie charts are cool – I used to be the young, kinda cute, funny guy, downloading music into his ipod and making fun of the fat guy with glasses. But not any more, now I'm the fat, boring stupid guy. I don't get why PC's can't catch up – they have all the money?) Anyway there it was, superimposed upon the baking African squalor 122, how could anyone deal with that many degrees? I'll tell you how – you stay inside where it's cool and think up funny shit. Last night as I was taking a look at my local weather forecast, and the projected highs for the next three days in my home town were 116.

I've mentioned before that I live in a town where we just get too damn many degrees during the summer, so it was no big jaw-dropper, until I started thinking about the global warming documentary I'd just been scared to death by, and it occurs to me that I'm a trifling 6 measly degrees away from the "holy shit" temperature used in a documentary that's sole purpose is to scare enough shit out of people to wake them up. Talk about being on the frontlines of the war. I'm in a fucking foxhole here. "Praise the Lord and pass the air-condition." Six degrees of separation from documentary shock stats. I'm not exaggerating any of this by a single degree, which may cause you to ask yourself "why the fuck don't the damn fool move? It's simple really. Because while you're shoveling snow off your driveway, and using a CD case to scrape the ice off your window so you can see well enough to freeze your ass off – I'll be wearing a tee shirt and shorts. Hoping it clouds up a bit so it won't be too hot to golf the day after Christmas. Oh by the way, if you live in New York or San Francisco, or Miami any place by the ocean at sea level, you might want to think about putting your home up for sale. According to President-elect Gore, in about 10 years it won't be sea level, it'll be sea-ya-later level.

On to issue number two. Scarcely a day goes by when the controversy of illegal Mexican immigration isn't all over the news. Again this is one of those things that cause most people to shake their head in consternation and maybe grumble something like, "those damn wetbacks are taking jobs from Americans." (As you know on the bone blog I'm in the habit of calling a spade a small gardening shovel – so don't be shocked – I'm an equal opportunity offender. Sometimes you can use a spade to scoop up some white trash – keeps the place spick and span). The point being is that if you don't live in Southern California of Texas, you might not think that you're going to be affected by the illegal immigration problem, that's what I thought too. I was fucking wrong.

I live in a nice part of my town, right across the street from the main city park, which is kept clean and well patrolled. The place where I live has an association, (which means I pay a hundred bucks for cable and a guy with a leaf blower.) When I first moved in, this place was so up tight that they didn't even allow children. The president of the association knocked on my door with an inch thick document wherein the rules of the association were enumerated in detail. I thanked him and when he left I gave the signal to my wife who was, at the time, hiding upstairs, with her hand over my baby's mouth.

We only had one daughter when we moved here and we thought that she was the only child in the whole place. It turned out there was another family with children, but I didn't find that out until a few years after I moved in, that's what kind of fascist regime was running the association. The guy who gave me the association manifesto ran the place like he was Patton and he took a dim view of the Boneman right off the bat. Aside from the other family with the hidelings, we were the only residents who weren't retirees, living out their golden years in this concentration camp. Colonel Bob, as he was called, watched me like a hawk, painted on a nasty scowl any time I drove by with my long hair, and looked for any excuse to make living in this place as unpleasant as he could. Long story short I shot him in cold blood. Actually he died, and the leadership was passed on to a woman whom we very much loved and life became bearable again. Things loosened up.

Then along about a year and a half ago, a Mexican family moved in – a nice respectable quiet familia, they didn't hablo the Englese and they pretty much kept to themselves. I swear to God though, you'd have thought they had Anthrax. Within 6 months every last blue-hair put their home up for sale and moved on to places where the associations didn't let this sort of outrage take place. I'm gonna cut to the chase here, because I'm boring myself, with the exception of one other family, the Boneman clan are the only Caucs left in the whole joint. The place filled up with Mexicans like it was a free laundramat. Before you draw any wrong-headed notions, I like Mexican people just fine. I lived in California for a dozen years, and on a couple of occasions in areas where I was a minority. Mexican people, I've always found, are mostly good-natured and friendly. Around my place the language barrier keeps things to the occasional Ola and Como Esta and that's what I want in a neighbor. My time is precious (at least to me) and I despise neighbors who expect you to stand out on the porch and listen to their asinine opinions. I'm more a wave and a friendly smile kinda neighbor. Respect each others rights and just live and let live.

Anyway this part of the story isn't as earth shattering as the melting of the Polar ice caps and the loss of New York, I'm just illustrating the fact that news isn't always just the shit that happens to somebody else – except of course in the case of cancer and murder and tornadoes and so forth, that kinda shit happens to other people thank God, but watch out for a few of those headlines, they might just be heading your way, Amigo.
God Bless.

PS. As I'm again embarking on another trip, keep an eye on the place for me will ya? I don't trust these damn Mexicans.