I met this hot girl the other night who really likes to flaunt her Jolie look, so maybe busting out a Brad Pitt would help me get in the door…

Oh damn…  There’s one problem…  Even if we really clicked, I don’t think we could be highly individual enough to pull off a Brangelena without the hottest accessory in town… 

Of course you know… I mean it’s only hanging from the neck of Sandra Bullock on the cover of People Magazine this week…

Listen Up Everyone: The HOT new accessory for this spring has sprung:

Black Babies are where it’s at.

 
Of course, you MUST have known this product would take off… “Black Baby” just rolls off the tongue…  And the skin tone goes SO well with Louis Vuitton… 

I mean, is it really a surprise that Sandra named her latest little accessory “Louis”? 

Now the hard-core trend setters like Madonna, ex-Brangelina and Tom Cruise were all way ahead of the curve on this.  Truly they SET the curve… and it’s really picking up speed.  Steven Spielberg, Kate Capshaw, Jeoly Fisher, Hugh Jackman, Mary-Louise Parker all jumped on-board…  But People Magazine has splattered their cover with photos of Sandra Bullock and her little Louis accessory, and I for one think it’s great!

You see, I was never one for Chihuahuas, and that whole Paris Hilton puppy in a purse phase is SO 2007.  I mean, pink and fuzzy had a good run…  But we’ve milked it for enough years folks.  It’s time to get back to basics, and NOTHING says “O.G.” more than brown and gold.

And the great thing is, you don’t have to pull a “Bruno” and go all the way to Africa!  Thanks to Hurricaine Katrina, people have woken up to the fact that New Orleans is the Uganda of the United States…  So you can avoid those pricey import fees by buying domestic!

Just think of how hot you’ll look with a cute little Louis, Gucci or Dolce (all highly suggested names) swinging from your shoulder! 

Author’s Note:

You know, if just ONE celebrity did this, I wouldn’t blink.  But celebrity after celebrity is starting to annoy the shit out of me. 

Listen up you idiots:

There are children starving all around the world.  Adopting ONE is a selfish, “look at me” kind of move, and yes we all see through it.    I know that if feels great to pose with your new accessory-child-of-ethnicity in a narcissitic orgie of pseudo “altruism” in front photographers… it just feels so good.  Especially when you’re a 30+ or 40-something celeb who really wants that lime light…    

You want to make a difference? 

You really care about the plight of these people?

How about selling one of your multi-multi-million dollar estates and building several schools, or a couple thousand wells?  I guess helping out tens of thousands of unfortunate people doesn’t feel warm and fuzzy as spending 4 years waiting and working to get your own ‘designer baby’. 

Next Up: Chinese-Baby-Slippers (spoiler: they’re disposable!)

On the ENTIRE PLANET there are only 4 third-world countries that border what are considered first-world countries. Three of those are Iran, Iraq and Syria, which border Turkey. (I would personally contest Turkey being considered first-world…)

The fourth country is Mexico… which in 2004 had the illustrious title of “Kidnapping Capital of the World.”

However, Mexico City didn’t turn out to be the utopic paradise that you might image…

The driving of a culture is, in my opinion, a good reflection of the culture in general.

For example, in germany, the people drive VERY fast, very well, yield to each other, and obey the laws… They are uptight yet very skilled and precise drivers.

My experience of Mexico City was that people drive 5 cars wide in three lane roads, drive over the center median into oncoming traffic to get a few extra car-lengths ahead, and take red lights to be a vague suggestion. (people sit perched at red lights looking for an opening to shoot through…) I saw three brutal t-bone accidents and one pedestrian dead in the road in a whopping 2 days of driving in Mexico City. My cab driver spent 15 minutes trying desparately to enter a traffic circle leaving the airport because no one lets anyone in… you have to jam your way through traffic like a bull. 

To add to the glee of driving in Mexico, the government and people take such pride in their capital city that the roads are pitted with potholes the size of open graves… I drove the length and width of Belize without a hitch, but blew out both tires and bent a rim hitting a 4 foot pothole on a freeway overpass between the two largest freeways in the capital city. Hecho en Mexico.

Much like the drivers, the shop owners and police officers seemed to view us as obstacles to be navigated, pushed around and taken advantage of.  People were continually trying to screw the stupid tourist out of money, send you in the wrong direction, and generally make life miserable.  (And in the police’s case, they were successful).

A mere three days into our Mexico Shitty vacation, we decided to rent a car and get the hell out of dodge. We were pulled over by police before we could leave the city, who wanted to give us the ‘going away present’ of claiming I ran a red light (note: I was quite possibly the only person in mexico city who wasn’t running red lights), and literally had us empty our wallets into his sweaty hands, rather than take us to jail.

Ah, the memories.

On our drive to the coastal jungles to the East, we started to think perhaps we made a mistake… Maybe Mexico wasn’t all that bad. Maybe we weren’t thinking clearly becasue of the horribly polluted Mexico City air, which you can TASTE as much as smell…

But then we passed Pueblo… Pueblo is a sweeping city that looks like it was constructed with the exclusive use of cinder blocks… However, prior to the completion of a single building in Pueblo, there was apparently a mass exodus of all the adults, leaving only children to live in the post-apocalyptic garbage heap that remained.

In this lord-of-the-flies hell, the inhabitants have apparently created a currency using garbage. It’s literally a city of 3 walled, half-roofless cinder block houses, with glassless open windows and ladders instead of stairs to the mounds of garbage piled on the rooftops…. The most prestigious members of this society have the most garbage on their rooves. Or so it seems… We didn’t stay to find out.

Ah, Mexico.

Never again.

We headed south to the jungles of chiapas and the Zapotista rebels who are sticking it to mexico’s version of “the man” (who in this case wears cammo, and carries a big machine gun which he points at you while searching your rental car’s trunk because it’s more fun to screw with obviously harmless tourists than keep sticking it to the rebelling peasants who have guns and communist flags…)

The jungles of southern mexico are dense and amazing. It’s an incredible country, which has only one problem… It’s filled with Mexicans… Mexicans who view the countryside as a large garbage bin.

As a matter of fact, if there’s a theme to Mexico that I’ve detected outside of the most touristy of the tourist spots, that theme would be garbage.

Exhausted yet relieved, we rolled across the border of mexico into Belize.

Amazingly, Mexico’s very poor neighbor to the south, Belize was spotless, and the people were honest and incredibly friendly… Something we hadn’t encountered once in the entirety of mexico.

When I was there we stayed near Belize City… We stayed at the Best Western Biltmore (which was more of a motel, although a reasonable pool). It shows quite expensive online when I look now, but I don’t remember it being expensive at all.

The airport is in the north (we drove in from the mexican border to the north… not much to the north so you’re not missing much if you don’t go up there… just a lot of flat land…).

Belize City isn’t all that great… I was there more for jungle/nature, and we drove all the way down to Punta Gorda in the south (the southernmost point). Make sure you have plenty of gas, because we were almost out when we got down there, and the ONLY gas station in all of southern belize closed early that day (like 3 pm!) so we were stuck going door to door in the middle of the night looking for gas from total strangers, and hoping we didn’t get shot. That’s the good news… people are exceptionally friendly in Belize. (we did get gas and get back to our hotel eventually!)

The further south you go, the more rural and less populated it gets. There was pretty nice, burly jungle down there.

But as we discovered a little too late, the treasure of belize is not on the mainland, but the islands or Cayes (pronounced Keys). Cay Corker is to the NW of Belize City… you can take a ferry out there for pretty cheap, and it’s loaded with young people who are diving and generally partying and enjoying the beach lifestyle. It’s nice, and very touristy. There’s amazing diving/snorkeling once you get out to the Cayes, and I definitely recommend you hop on a boat and at least snorkel out by the reef (to the east of the island). We only were there for the day, so I don’t know where to stay there… but if I went back, I’d wager most of my time would be spent diving from that island, not on the mainland (but I’ve taken up scuba diving since that trip).

Back on the mainland, as I said, there’s very little to Punta Gorda… It’s a one gas station, couple of resteraunts kinda place (population 6,000). We went there basically to get as far from civilization as possible, and to see where the road ends… we drove to the south west corner of belize off-road in our rental car (rally style… it was pretty fun), and did day and night hiking out in the middle of nowhere with a ‘native’ guide.

There are, however, quite lovely Mayan ruins throughout the land, and the further south and west you go, the more there seem to be. The ‘night hike’ we took was actually in an area where there were supposed to be zip lines and bridges through the trees… we drove all the way out there only to find that the last hurricaine took them all out, and now there were just remnants… But the river that ran under ex-zip-lines pours out of a huge cave near the top of a hill… it’s quite spectacular… and our ‘native’ guide took us to the cave system’s ‘back entrance’ waaay up in the hills, where there was a tiny hole in a cave that I birthed myself through to emerge into an underground cave rivaling anything you saw in Lord Of The Rings (no shit). It was apparently an archealogical site that had just been mapped but not really explored, so I saw a couple of very rough and fairly uninterestingancient artifacts in the cave (again, no shit). I’m proud to say I didn’t take the broken clay bowl piece that I found, which anyone visiting my house would look at and go “eh”, and instead left it for science. But the underground caves were very cool. Belize is cool for caves…

Another great thing as you certainly know is that ENGLISH is the official language of Belize (unlike the U.S.) so everyone speaks it… even the ‘natives’ who are literally living in cinder block houses and sometimes HUTS. Yes. Huts. (the further from the city you get the more you see this).

We drove to the Guatemalan border (not so interesting), of which there is only one road because the Guatemalans are bastards and no one likes them (there are also only two roads from mexico into Guatemala. No body likes them… they should sulk). Near the border there are towns called Santa Elena/San Ignacio… all quite uninteresting, but there are hanging suspension bridges that you can walk through the ‘jungle’ and see some lovely waterfalls from. Not worth driving there for that, but if you’re going to the border anyway, it’s worth a stop.

About half way to the Guatemalan border, there there’s an area called Caves Branch River and a ‘resort’ called Jaguar Paw. There are fabled to be Jaguar out in this area, although we never saw any. but what we did find we loved… That was CAVE TUBING.

Ah cave tubing.

You see, there are all these underground aquifers pulsing with tons of water because this is, after all, the tropics. But belize is quite jagged, with small, sharp peaks and underground caves, and what happens is the ground collapses all over the place, and the aquifer is exposed… So what is a tourist such as yourself to do?

Grab an innertube, hike about a mile and a half/two miles through a lovely jungle, and toss your tube into the crystal clear water… drift down stream INTO UNDERGROUND CAVES. Yes… it’s really as cool as it sounds. These caves are HUGE. Bring a head-lamp that is water proof (good thing to have in the tropics anyway), and you can see underground caves, formaitons, and waterfalls.. then erupt back into the tropical sunlight that feels like the Jungle Book… and then float back underground itno another huge cave.

There are generally guided tours of these things, although once you do it once, you can do it again on your own. We hired a guy at the parking area for the one we did, and he ended up being our guide for the rest of the trip.

That’s the other thing… the people are very friendly… and very poor. Food and services like guides are pretty cheap if you go native. The cave tubeing was magical, and still one of my favorite experiences ANYWHERE so you have to do it. I demand it.

Belize also has a “babboon” sanctuary. There are, of course, no babboons outside of Africa or zoos, but the babboons in Belize think the Howler Monkeys they have are babboons… Anyway, they make an impressive roar and although we came too late in the evening to see them, they ARE there and they give guided tours if you get there earlier than we did (after sundown). We still got the guided tour (bribes work) but only got to talk with the angry male monkey who sounded like a lion… never saw him just the tree he was shaking to intimidate us. That was OK, but I’d recommend you learn from us and NOT spend your days hunting for monkeys (we called our trip the quest for monkeys because we went to all these jungles in southern mexico and Belize, hoping to see our first wild monkeys, and not a single damn monkey was to be found… Of course every person we talked to had just ridden a jaguar through crowds of monkeys and aligators…

Fortunately, I later went to Costa Rica and Thailand… Two countries where they give out free monkeys when you step off the plane, so not only did I get my fix, I was completely monkey-jaded by the end of those trips, slipping monkeys a few bucks to steal chips from (and fling poo at) other eco-tourists).

But for all it’s wilderness, the most exciting wildlife we saw in Belize were Jesus Christ lizards, so named because they stand up on their hind legs and run across the water, making you shout “Jesus CHRIST!” as you fumble for your camera trying to get a photo.

There was also a place we visited called “blue hole” which was essentially a natural spring that emerges with amazing blue water in the middle of a cave/hole in the ground in the middle of jungle. It was lovely, but not worth the drive, or the amazing mass of mosquitos that were there.

OHHHH… The mosquitos! Especially on the mainland, you need to get used to this sound: “Whack. Whack. Whack whack. WHACK!” That’s not the neighboring hotel room’s over eager teenage son. That’s you smacking the mosquitos which have also figured out that Belize is a much lovelier place than Mexico… when you cross the border from Mexico to Belize, you suddenly exchange people who don’t speak English and are constantly trying to screw you out of money while creating huge piles of garbage everywhere, for friendly and helpful people who speak english and keep their very poor country quite clean, but whose national bird is the Mosquito. They’re everywhere in Belize and good repellant will be your friend.

If I were to do Belize again, I’d probably spend two days on the mainland… one for cave tubing and the attractions along the road to Guatemala, and one day to head south and see the jagged mountains and mayan ruins of the Southern region. Then I’d hop on the ferry out to the Cayes and spend my time diving and relaxing in the truly caribbean splendor of Belize’s island life.

By the way, Belize has a FASCINATING history of british pirates who were continually screwing with the spanish fleets that were busy pillaging the rest of the Americas.

Yes, that’s right… She’s pointing to Howie Long’s pee-pee…  And shouting “I want THAT car!  That’s a BIG girl car!”  To which Howie smiles and says “She’s a SMART little girl.” 

No.

No, Howie, she’s not. 

She’s calling your Oscar-Meyer-Of-Love a big car.

And while EVERY guy likes to think of his ‘manhood’ as rivaling that of a blue whale’s, the shape alone, no matter how many STDs, could never look like an SUV… making them hard to confuse.

(Now if they were selling a penis-shaped-car like the Jaguar XK-E, perhaps this confusion would be understandable)

Whoever directed this commercial is either a COMPLETE idiot… or a total GENIUS (after all, it got my attention, right?  who can forget the ad with the girl going for Howie long’s crotchal-region?)

I know I can’t wait to drive MY new Howie Long’s Schlong down the road! 

Please don’t ask the miles per gallon.

Nice work guys. 

What I’ve come to realize is that the MOST intelligent, MOST talented, MOST (insert adjective) people focus their incredible mental ability on IDEAS. They slave. They hone. They hide their little special nuggets away from everyone else, shaping them into the perfect concept…
And it never sees the light of day.
Ever.
Ugh.
Then you have bazillions of people who aren’t all that incredibly bright, aren’t all that amazingly talented, and DON’T have the best ideas…
But they have great EXECUTION.
In other words, they get shit done.
They move.
Now.
And those people make a hell of a lot of money.
Their ideas aren’t the best. They are often quite flawed. But somehow, these ideas see the light of day. (Consider, for example, the DigiScent “iSmell”, a product designed to help you ‘smell the web’… not only a frightening concept, but the worst name ever… “Hey Bob, what’s that stink?” “Oh, Jenny, it’s that I smell!”)
So, to land the plane:
Terrible ideas with good execution do quite well (we’re surrounded with them every day)…
But the best idea in the world, with terrible execution will never see the light of day.

I speak four languages, which makes me slightly below average compared to the average non-retarded European. I believe the average European speaks 127 languages now. Two of these languages I learned after the age of 27, and both I learned without spending any real time in the country of their origin. I speak both very well, and can function just fine in both of those countries.
It’s a matter of pride that when I am in Germany, I only want to speak German. Now contrast that with people who come to the United States and live here for 10, 20, even 30 years, and can barely say ‘toilet’.
There’s something wrong here, and I think it’s because of our attitude of babying people by giving them just enough in their own language. This allows them to ‘get by’ and thus keeps them from ever being forced to learn the damn language of the country and start functioning like someone who lives here.
And that brings me to my next question…
Since when is it our government’s job to express itself internally in foreign languages? Why do I have to look at driver’s license applications in Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese, Farsi, and soon Swahili and Belgian? Why is it anyone’s ‘right’ to have a government sponsored translator at the hospital in the language of your choice? Am I losing my mind here?
If I go to Germany, Finland, or any of the ‘socialist’ countries in the world, I don’t have this ‘right’. So at what point did we decide that it’s an obligation to spend countless funds translating regulations, applications, and other government generated gobbledygook that are hardly comprehensible in English? Is it really necessary that these people be able to read things that WE ALL KNOW no one reads anyway in their ‘native’ tongue?
Here’s a novel idea… how about learning the language spoken by the preponderance of the country? Naah…
Maybe you’re offended by what I’m saying. If so, cool. Keep reading, and getting offended please. At least you’re doing it in ENGLISH. Kudos to you. But I find our country’s attitude toward selectively coddling popular minorities at my (the tax payer’s) expense offensive.
I take offense to this in two ways.
First, it is not a policy which is applied consistently. I can’t get a driver’s license application in Gaelic or Swahili, so why in Cantonese and Spanish?
Second, it is not, as many would submit, a policy which is based on need. I propose that a Gaelic speaker who can’t speak English has just as much need of a driver’s license as does a Spanish speaker.
If it is a matter of aggregate need, then I propose that the aggregate need of Spanish speakers to comfortably take the driver’s license test in Spanish is not nearly as strong as their aggregate need to learn English and function at a higher level in our society. Perhaps the added impetus provided by not having these resources in their native language would provide much needed incentive…
I found it highly ironic that, on my trip to Mexico City, I discovered that there is virtually NOTHING written in English. Huh?
Yes. That’s right. Not only is English the ‘world language’ du jour, but we are Mexico’s closest neighbor, their largest financial and economic contributor, their strongest political ally, and roughly 87% of Mexico currently resides in a 2 bedroom apartment in Reseda right now…
So tell me this: Why is it that there is NO english ‘translation’ of anything in Mexico city (much less any other city in Mexico)… Not in the subways, airports, or anywhere else? But I have to listen to the seating instructions at Disney’s Haunted Mansion in spooky-spanish?
I totally support what Mexico is doing here, by the way… Stick it to the bastards to the North, for sure. But please don’t expect us to hand you a drivers’ test in Spanish…
Finally, I’d like to say WHAT the HELL? Why are we giving out voter pamphlets in anything other than English? It is a requirement to become an American citizen that one must speak and write English.
If this is a requirement, then all citizens should be fluent in English. Somewhere along the line, something is going horribly wrong. Either citizens are raising their children to NOT speak the languge that they in fact speak, or (more likely), people are becoming citizens without meeting the requirements for becoming a citizen.
What country in the world can you move to and demand education, voting rights, government forms, etc. in a DIFFERENT language? Only here. We’re the morons.
If you move to France, you learn French. If you move to China, learn Chinese. If you move to Germany, hide all emotions. And if you move to the United States, learn ENGLISH. It will help you more than it helps anyone else.

Have you ever noticed how something that seems really stupid to you, like big baggy bell-bottoms or a bizarre hair-style, maybe seemed odd when you think back to the first time you saw it? But over time, and after enough exposure to the idea, or maybe exposure from someone you liked, respected or even idolized, the idea became not only ok… it became very desirable? You’ve got a mind virus…
In fact, you have millions of them.
This is a fascinating concept that manifests everywhere… it’s totally ubiquitous. And it’s fascinating to think about the repercussions. When you become aware of Mind Viruses, you start to see them everywhere… But what are they, and how do they control our lives?
The idea of a mind virus is truly exactly what it sounds… it is the realization that thoughts are CONTAGIOUS. Richard Dawkins is the first I can find who spoke of this and the idea of Memes (for another discussion). But the basic idea is that thoughts are contagious. For better… or worse.
Napoleon Hill was hired by Andrew Carnegie, during a time when Carnegie was literally at the top of the world power pyramid, to write a book that he would later call “Think and Grow Rich”. If you haven’t read it, get it… it will change your life.
After 10 years of researching, interviewing and studying all of Carnegie’s amazingly successful contacts, Hill came to a few conclusions that were universally true. The first is that all truly successful, self-made people are optimists. The second is expressed in this quote: “Show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future.” All successful people learned to surround themselves with other, like-minded motivated and optimistic people.
By being around success, they caught the ‘virus’ of thinking patterns and behaviors that lead to success…
It’s a fascinating concept… and should wake you up to the fact that this can be used for both good and bad. Ever find yourself humming an advertising jingle that you loathe? Getting into relationships like your parents had that you swore you’d never have in your life?
Become aware of Mind Viruses… use them to your benefit. Program yourself with good viruses that you get from surrounding yourself with excellent people… Books are an incredible opportunity to ‘catch’ incredibly powerful viruses from the greatest thinkers in history.
This affects every aspect of your life… from the clothes you wear, the food you eat, the relationships you have to the THOUGHTS which govern your life and health.
“Stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously.” (Eddy, 1906)
If you’re going to catch a virus, make it a good one, one that infects you in a positive way, and then spread it to all your friends. This is my virus to you.

I’m not like anyone you’ve ever met before. Unless you’ve already met me… stalker. I am extremely driven and motivated… i surround myself with optimistic people who are going somewhere in life, and I don’t mean the golden arches. Imagine a giant rocket shooting for the stars… that’s me behind the controls… And a little monkey in a space suit pulling my hair. I keep very busy and love my life.
for fun:
Watching movies curled up in bed… mainly your friends’ videos of you saying stupid things while drunk in Cabo. I administer spankings as part of a public service program… I poke badgers with a spoon… ask for a free demonstration.
my job:
OK, I train wild ferrets at children’s birthday parties.
my education
My little golden book collection rivals yours. Most everything I know I picked up from reading the ingredients of things at the grocery store. I have an IQ of 178, 961, and I’ve focused it all on creating new words like banalogy and libidon’t.
favorite hot spots:
I like small and cozy bars, and wild and crazy coffee shops. If the word ‘sushi’ is involved, i’ll roll over like a yellow lab. My favorite travel destination is definitely Earth… i just can’t get enough of it.
favorite things:
My favorite thing is when we watch puppies and kittens eating ice cream while walking on the beach at sunset under a rainbow and shooting stars with a full moon and lollie pops falling from the sky.
last read:
There was this little white trailer the police put by the side of the road, and it read: “Speed Limit: 35 MPH Your Speed: 117 MPH” They’re SO considerate helping me calibrate my speedometer! I didn’t think my bike could go that fast!

Nice Guy + Attractive Woman = Lonely Horney Loser. It’s “The Math of Attraction” Are you a ‘nice guy’ who continually finds himself in Friendville? What, do I have to beat you with a rubber hose? Read this, and consider yourself beaten…