Bob Crespo

You’re unlikely to hear anytime soon about aliens abducting a smart guy from a big city, say a scientist or the mayor or somebody like that. These aliens aren’t doing themselves any favors by continually abducting guys with mullet haircuts and supermarket cashiers from trailer parks. Whatever happened to “Take me to your leader?”

Word out of Washington is that it is no longer official policy to consider science to be some sort of voodoo religion. Which means… well, who knows what it means? That depends on the scientists, doesn’t it? It just might be that they have to go through a period of adjustment like the comedy industry is now experiencing after 8 years of growing lazy from government handouts. Our nation’s comics were given a free ride by the Bush The Younger Administration with its socialist policy of providing them with their raw material for nothing. Few comics were prepared to start writing their own jokes again and the new administration won’t play ball and act ridiculous. While the handwriting was on the wall for some time now, many in the comedy industry refused to believe that the government would stop giving them handouts, figuring to be permanently bailed out like they were for 8 glorious years.

All good things must come to an end however, and the comedians’ loss looks to be our scientists’ gain. Will they step up and get productive again? Can they on such short notice? They are in the opposite position of the comedy sector, far out of practice after being banished to society’s wilderness with nary a government bone thrown their way, while the comedians are suffering from too much government largesse. Many of our scientists have spent their years in exile pursuing one frivolous project after another, from shilling for giant pharmaceutical corporations inventing drugs for imaginary mental conditions to debating whether the dinosaurs died out from getting whacked by an asteroid or by early mammal hit squads. None of which has helped mankind deal with some very severe problems that were only made worse by 8 years of comedy-oriented government.

It seems that their scientific skills have been so blunted that these people claim they have invented the wind! Everybody knows the Dutch invented the wind back in the Middle Ages when they started building all those wind mills. And as far as the sun, wasn’t that an Egyptian discovery? How else can one explain all those temples to the sun god Aten and the fact that most of Egypt is one of the most sunburnt wastelands on this planet? Maybe when you spend 8 years debating over whether Pluto is a real planet or just another icy rock that’s what happens, you start grasping at straws. You keep jabbering about how great life would be if only someone would let us do some stem cell research. Okay, you’re allowed to do that now. Please don’t tell us you’ve come up with a revolutionary new stem cell skin moisturizer or we’re going to have to put some better people on the job.

And nobody gives a rat’s ass about Restless Leg Syndrome, that’s just a byproduct of being 9 years old and bored out of your skull by a teacher with a small imagination and smaller talent for teaching. The kid does not need to be drugged into a pint-sized zombie. Don’t tell us about one more insect or anything further about the personal habits of gophers. We’d sort of like our scientists to tell us something we don’t know, like maybe how to propel our vehicles and heat our homes without burning a giant hole in the sky and making tyrants rich. Or maybe curing a disease or two. What are you guys, like 0 for 50 since Polio? Talk about a slump! Those numbers will get you sent back to the minors. You haven’t made much of a dent in cancer, diabetes or the new kid on the block, AIDS. Even malaria and cholera are making comebacks! What’s next, leprosy? The Black Plague?

Just maybe in the near future the Discovery Channel and National Geographic can air some shows about scientists who haven’t been dead for 50 years or more. Those cushy jobs narrating stuff abut Newton, Einstein, Curie and Galileo don’t seem to have inspired similar efforts. Instead of talking about black holes, why don’t we just send some people back into space? And not just in the neighborhood installing cable TV satellites either, deep space where cool and useful stuff can be discovered. The last bunch of scientific advances grew out of the space program, the fiber optics and the computers and whatnot. Let’s see what else we can find. There will be no shortage of volunteers to go where no man has gone before if the scientists can get their act together and decide that the Moon is not the limit of either mankind or our imaginations

Feeding the hungry would be a neat trick, too. On an incredibly bountiful planet, 36,000 people die every single day from starvation. Anybody working on that one besides Sally Struthers? There’s a reason why poor people are chopping down the rain forests (our planet’s lungs) like beavers on steroids and that’s because they have ruined their existing farmland with Bronze Age farming methods. Any research underway to change that reality or do we have to rely on Sting and Bono, they of the single names? The choppers are only going to ruin the new farms in a couple of seasons and keep chopping and people will still be dying in droves. Here’s a clue: the rock & roll stars haven’t come up with any scientific solutions, they are just keeping the seat warm and the issue alive until some of you people decide to make a career change from measuring the wing spans of hummingbirds and creating computer models of dinosaurs fighting each other like a bunch of 7-year olds claiming “My Tyrannosaurus can beat up your Stegosaurus!” Who cares?

Well, we can’t burn the rotten remains of your computer generated behemoths and your efforts on behalf people with short attention spans have proven pretty fruitless outside of the fun drugs you keep creating. What else have you got beside a long white lab coat and a bunch of letters after your name? If you get busy now, real busy, maybe someday you’ll have a list of accomplishments to go along with that PhD. And if your laboratory happens to be on the waterfront, it’s not like you have a ton of time, either. Once those ice caps start to melt you’ll have to switch to Oceanography or drown with the rest of us who didn’t see fit to move to the new seacoasts of Pennsylvania and Utah. Science people, it’s time to put up or shut up. We’re watching you!

We attend most funerals out of love for the deceased. We pay our respects, express our profound grief, share sweet memories with other mourners and say our final goodbyes. Others we go to just to make certain that this walking, talking nightmare is really dead. When your time comes, which person will you be?

Another American industry, a one-time world leader but now reeling, takes yet another hit in these turbulent economic times. The comedy sector, already hemorrhaging red ink from the loss of The Bush The Younger Administration, now loses another ready-made wellspring of daily comedy as the Illinois Senate has voted to impeach Governor Rod Blagojevich and remove him from office. The vote was an astonishing 59 to zip for impeachment, plus the additional kick in the ass of barring him for life from holding public office in the State of Illinois. What were these State Senators thinking? 

In their provincial zeal to rid themselves of a crooked politician, they forgot about the big picture, that they are but one of fifty United States! And just who do they think is going to replace Blagojevich? The only honest Illinois politician is in White House now! They trash a national comedy treasure and they’ll most likely put some dour, venal old bore in his place who’s just as crooked but a lot more careful. Not many laughs in those secretive creeps. How selfish can these politicians get? Where is their patriotism? Where are their damned funny bones?

This amounts to a callous betrayal of America’s ailing comedy industry and Illinois’ own Second City Comedy Theater operating out of Chicago, once one of the most original and influential comedy troupes anywhere, spawning many of today’s enduring comedy legends, some of them refugees from Canada. What does that say to aspiring comics fleeing to our shores from repressive regimes like Canada and the Taliban? Today the Statue of Liberty sheds a silent tear for the good times. Will the next Sacha Baron Cohen, alias Borat, seek asylum elsewhere, maybe even France, where they’ll turn him into a mime? How did this happen to a world class American industry?

The comedy industry, already paralyzed by the overnight evaporation of comedy-friendly government, loses yet another source of inspiration. Even his name is funny, like a comedic Russian drinking toast. It’s hard to hear Blah-Goy-avitch! without wanting to down a triple shot of vodka and smash your glass in a fireplace. His Moe Howard haircut and Bud Abbot-like straight man abilities will be hard to replace. Who else could keep a straight face on talk show after talk show explaining away his clearly taped conversations revealing an explicit plan to sell the president’s former Senate seat to the highest bidder? He claimed this was his own secret code for achieving world peace and an end to hunger in our lifetimes while preserving Wrigley Field for future generations. Brilliant! This man never left character, never cracked a smile while he spun his tales. That’s talent! Only Bill O’Really approaches his uncanny ability to keep a straight face when delivering hilarious comic spiels.

So now the industry is grasping at the thinnest of straws, hoping that Sarah Palin’s announcement that she is forming her own Political Action Committee will provide the same belly laughs as her performance in the 2008 election campaign. Comedy insiders, however, fear that Ms. Palin doesn’t have a decent second act in her and that she used up all her best material last year. How many times can you claim to be keeping an eye on Russia from your front porch? Anybody heard from the spelling-challenged Dan Quayle lately? Those in the know figure the Republicans will nominate somebody for president in 2012 who can name at least 5 out of the 61 nations and territories in Africa and pick a running mate who has read a newspaper or magazine within the past decade. Comedy pundits figure her to be a minor distraction at best, and all the good jokes about her have already been told. Where’s a nation to turn for laughs?

There’s always O’Really’s tried and true Angry Man routines, and maybe his fat, drug-addled radio counterpart Lush Limburger, who’s trying out a new comic persona as a traitor wishing the president to fail and his nation to collapse. That’s a promising departure from his old schtick of “The Stoned Smirking Glutton.” Then there’s that Sean Sanity guy who just tossed out his liberal comic foil Alan Colmesover, but that’s like watching Abbot without Costello. As funny as some of these comedians are, the comedy industry thrives on new blood and a fresh perspective. Their acts are old and starting to wear thin, even with Limburger’s bold new Benedict Arnold act (It seems he just can’t lose that smirk!). Unlike past aging masters like Henny Youngman and Rodney Dangerfield who embraced their retro images and reveled in being campy relics, these guys are trying to be cutting edge with a plastic spoon. It’s just sad. 

Besides, the sore loser is an old-hat comedy premise. Their great strength and off-the-wall appeal drew on being that most unusual sort of being, the sore winner. Their party was in power, the ideas they spent their lives pushing were a political reality and yet they still hated everybody and whined like outsiders. And in the face of failure after failure of their bonehead ideas and policies, they stayed on message with the same tunnel-visioned zeal as Goebbels in the bunker with the Feuhrer. That was hilarious!  Now it’s not. They just haven’t moved on with the times and the new realities of the nation they are trying to amuse and seem reluctant to drop their genius image and give self-parody a shot. Which is yet another reason to mourn the banishment of Rod Blagojevich, a potential comedy superstar cut down in his prime. This man was a new kind of comic genius, and now we’ll never know how far he could have taken his Brazen Lying Salesman routine. Look for one more industry to line up at Capitol Hill for a Federal bailout any day now. Damn you, Illinois State Senate!

There’s nothing prettier than freshly fallen snow. Except maybe beautiful women, of course. No sense getting all sappy about the weather when there’s fine looking females demanding some attention.

A mother in California gave birth to eight babies the other day. The odds against that happening are greater than those of being struck by lighting. As of this writing, she’s cursing her luck and wishing for the lighting.

Michael Jackson’s best selling album “Thriller” is going to be made into a Broadway Musical. No word yet on who will play Michael, but Jackson himself is hoping to land Angelina Jolie for the role, figuring maybe she’ll be needing an experienced baby sitter while she’s onstage.

Scientists in Great Britain have completed a study that confirms that cows that have names give more milk than cows without names. This study proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that scientists in the UK are just as liable to waste their expensive educations as scientists anywhere. Meanwhile, the ice caps are melting and we’re still burning the greasy remains of rotten plants and lizards. On the plus side, however, we are naming a lot more cows.

Japan is the latest nation to send naval ships to the coast of Somalia to battle the pirates that have been wreaking havoc on international shipping. Several Asia-Pacific countries are busy drafting a joint resolution declaring that any amount of piracy on the high seas is far preferable to Japan becoming a major naval power again.

In Mexico, an 11-year old bullfighter killed 6 bulls in a bullring in an effort to break the world’s record. Unfortunately, the Guinness Book of World Records does not acknowledge records involving the the harming or killing of animals. When questioned about it, the boy was pretty pissed off about the snub. The 6 bulls were unresponsive. 

Speaking of world records, Bernie Madoff is breathing easier as one Ponzi scammer after another is brought to justice across the nation and the world. It seems than not a single one of these guys have come anywhere near approaching his pyramid scheme total of 50 billion dollars stolen. A few hundred million here, a billion or two there, chump change to to the “Wizard of Wall Street.” The New York Times is even calling these wannabes “Mini-Madoffs” and pointing out that none of them merit the diamond-encrusted solid platinum ankle monitor that Mr. Madoff wears while under house arrest in his palatial Manhattan penthouse.

In exciting psychology news, compulsive shopping is getting it’s own disease name! Even though shrinks haven’t come up with a proper scary name for it yet, it is already being welcomed to the Dubious-New-Mental-Condition fraternity by Nervous Leg Syndrome, ADD and Bipolar Disease. The pharmaceutical giants are scrambling to create an expensive placebo to treat this new scourge.

It seems there’s been a rash of violence in different parts of the nation stemming from bad karaoke performances. And not a minute too soon.

In real estate news, in an effort to jump-start the stagnating market, brokers are backing off their insistence that every condominium offered for sale must be listed as “luxurious.” New labels being proposed for sales brochures include “Adequate,” “Habitable” and “Has Ceilings.” They’re still not selling a damned thing, but at least it gives them something to do other than leaping in front of speeding dump trucks.

It is official, Spain has now clearly entered a serious recession with production dropping off dramatically. The official announcement was delayed by the daily three hour afternoon siesta. Who saw that one coming?

In Japan, whale meat from Iceland and Norway has gone on sale. Japanese consumers are excited, declaring it tastes just like chicken. Huge, house-sized chickens.

In Africa, it is reported that President Robert Mugabe is only one more cholera epidemic away from realizing his assertion that “Zimbabwe is all mine.”

The Iranian President Mahmoud Imadinnerjacket has demanded an apology from the United States for “crimes against Iran.” Maybe he’s referring to the United States’ stiffing of Iran for the hotel and blindfold bills of 52 American diplomats for 444 days when they were “guests” of the late Ayatolyah Howmany following their revolution in 1979. He has graciously offered to reciprocate by apologizing for his polyester leisure suits.

A New Zealand man has returned an MP3 player he bought for 10 bucks in an Oklahoma thrift shop when he discovered it contained 60 of the United States Army’s sensitive files. Senior U.S. military officials were relieved to have recovered the MP3 player when it was revealed to also contain a recording of James Brown and The Famous Flames’ groundbreaking live concert at Harlem’s Apollo theatre in 1963, complete with several bonus tracks. While military secrets are a dime a dozen, that baby’s hard to get your hands on.

A report from Tampa Florida confirms that many football players have suffered brain damage as a result of participating in their sport. Suspicions were aroused by the performances of many former players on NFL pre-game and half time shows. Once thought to be the result of the mind-numbing minutia arising from trying to fill air time during the 2-week buildup to the Super Bowl, doctors tested the afflicted athletes with picture puzzles and comic book reading comprehension drills since actual brain scans of many former NFL Stars-turned TV commentators revealed very little.

In more science news, the effects of human-generated carbon dioxide production in the atmosphere is being compared to a bathtub with its drain opened, which tells us very little. This from the people who still use the term “horsepower” to describe the strength of our engines. Perhaps a minor in language ought to be included in any science education, and maybe some sensitivity training to let these people know that non-scientists are plenty bright enough to wrap their brains around more precise scientific terms than horse and bathtub. We’re not all addled ex-football players.

Yahoo is reporting hundreds of billions of dollars in losses for the 4th quarter of last year. So much for the idea that giving away your services for free will make you money by sheer volume. We here at bobcrespo.com can assure them it doesn’t work that way. Might we suggest a little larceny? The word is that Bernie Madoff had a lot of time on his hands lately. The “Wizard of Wall Street” can probably come up with a customized pyramid scheme for Yahoo before lunchtime. What have they got to lose? It’s pretty much all gone now.

There’s no business like show business. Which is no big deal, since there’s no business like waste recycling either. To each is own.

You know you’re a real outlaw when Face Book gets on your case. It seems I have been promoting this website to my personal friends and that’s a no-no. Maybe I should have been posting photos of puppies or something. Only trouble is, I don’t have any puppies and the only pictures I do have of puppies are from Korean cookbooks getting themselves wokked. Nobody wants to see that on Face Book, except maybe Korean chefs, and I don’t know any. Besides, a lot of my friends are animal lovers, which is a good thing, except maybe for Sheep Guy. That’s just wrong what he does and I wish he’d stop sharing those disturbing photographs with me. Sometimes you can’t be too quick on the draw with the old Delete button. 

Sheep Guy, do us all a favor and keep that part of your life private. While I have to admit your Little Lamb doesn’t look unattractive in that French maid outfit, the bondage stuff is a little too much. How did you teach her to tie you up like that when all she’s got are hooves? That’s one Little Lamb that knows how to do more than follow Mary to school, eh? Be that as it may, why don’t you go back to letting that be your little secret? Trust me, it’s better that way. Sooner or later the Face Book Police are going to figure out what’s what and you’ll be banished like me. Maybe forever. My exile only lasted half a day, but with dire warnings that I could be terminated. Or at least my Face Book page, anyway. They don’t have Face Book hit men, do they? That would be pretty awkward.

Maybe I’ll move over to My Space and see if I can alienate them too. Wonder what rules they have? Does anybody ever read the Terms and Conditions to anything you sign up for on the internet? I sure don’t. Hope I didn’t promise anybody my first born or anything like that. He’d be pretty pissed off, no doubt. So would his lovely wife. No sense alienating the family, so maybe I’ll start reading some of these Terms and Conditions. One of these days… Well, at least I don’t have to deal with Microsoft anymore. That’s one hard-ass company, let me tell you.

Got me a Mac now, and just in time, too. I was trying to get back to the Windows ‘98 operating system for my old computer and you’d think I asked them for Bill Gates’ personal bank account numbers the way they reacted. Tried to shove that lame Vista system down my throat, they did, and I was forced to tell them where to go, and it wasn’t Seattle. Who knew they tape all their calls? I never meant to actually carry out all those threats! I was just a little worked up is all! They sort of didn’t see it that way. Now, those people have hit men, and even worse; attorneys. If you hear from Microsoft, you don’t know me. Or my eldest son. Never heard of those guys.

So far so good with the iMac. If I have any trouble I get to speak with a nice Chinese lady in Shanghai named Veronica. Unless it’s a music question, then she transfers me to some slacker in California named Chip or Slick or Skip or something and his accent is harder to understand than Veronica’s. “Duuu-de, that’s a narlee friggin’ praah-blum!” What? Get me back to the nice Chinese lady! Luckily, I got the hang of the thing and stopped calling them. Every other week they send me updates and I agree to Terms and Conditions and upload whatever it is they’re offering, I have no idea since it makes zero difference in the computer’s performance. If they want to charge me, then no thanks, I’ll muddle along with the free stuff. I’m not NASA over here, and odds are I’ll never use half the crap inside this machine.

Which gets me thinking… I have a subscription list to this website! There must be rules, or Terms and Conditions. I don’t even know, I leave that to my son the web guy, the one I promised to Microsoft. Maybe I can put something in the small print, oh, I don’t know, nothing too greedy, maybe making me one of the beneficiaries of my subscribers’ wills and life insurance policies, for maybe just a percentage point or two. Junior won’t even miss it, especially if I stipulate I get paid off the top. That’s more of a long-term strategy, though, and for all I know I’ll drop dead before they do. 

Then again, if I do live a long time I’m pretty much screwed since I never thought I’d live even this long and I’ll be one broke-ass old codger. You think I’m grumpy now? Wait until it’s cat food time! The win-the-lottery strategy hasn’t panned out, so maybe the way to go is a combination long and short-term scheme, since I’m kind of broke now, too. I’ll have to look into my options here, see how touchy banks are about sending me a tiny portion of my subscribers’ bank accounts on the strength of their agreeing to my Mickey Mouse Terms and Conditions. Of course I won’t implement these rules for my current subscribers, mind you, only new meat, er…readers!

So, here’s what I’m offering my current subscribers: For every new subscriber you recommend and who actually signs up, bobcrespo.com will give you a piece of the action, say…10%. No, wait! Let’s provide a real incentive here. How about 25%? We can make a discreet PayPal arrangement, maybe set up something offshore. Hold on, don’t touch that mouse, that’s not all! I can also offer you a preferred price for stock in bobcrespo.com. This one’s totally legit, an IPO being handled by one of the top guns on Wall Street. Bernie Madoff himself is handling the whole deal for me, and he assures me it’s a real steal! Now if you’ll just click the YES box on the Terms and Conditions…

The only difference between Americans and Canadians is the pronunciation of the word “about.” Americans pronounce it: “Ah-bowt,” while Canadians pronounce it: “approximately.” Okay, there’s those funny hats and bulky mackinaws they wear too, but hey, it’s real cold up there! And that’s approximately it.

You read the news and find out some odd things. In Pakistan the Swat Valley has been in the news a lot lately with reports of the Taliban blowing up girls’ schools and trying to run people’s lives, banning music, dancing, movies and anything else that makes life joyful in this one-time tourist resort area. Who knew Pakistan even had a tourist resort area? That’s the news, not the Taliban Inquisition. Who used to go there for a carefree holiday? What were the attractions? Did the Taliban arrive there for a vacation from killing people and  blowing up stuff in Afghanistan and decide to make it busman’s holiday? Maybe they figured what the hell, we’ve got the guns and explosives with us, why not? The news reports don’t address any of these questions.

You can look up Swat on the internet and see it described as Paradise on Earth, complete with some breathtakingly beautiful scenery that looks like the set of the movie “Heidi,” all forests and glens and crystal clear rivers and snowy mountain peaks. Even some of the buildings have that Bavarian chalet look to them. There’s pictures of people hang gliding, skiing, hiking in flower-covered meadows and sipping cocktails in luxury hotels with magnificent 360 degree views. There are winding roads, horse trails, trout streams, wooden bridges suspended high above raging rapids and so many waterfalls that only the most beautiful catch your eye. The perfect place for a weary jihadist to kick back and forget about destroying the Great Satan for a week or two. Swat may have been the inspiration for James Hilton’s Shangri-La in his novel “Lost Horizon,” about a peaceful Utopia where men get along.

But you know those whacky Taliban, they just can’t sit still. After a few days of skiing, fishing and knocking back shots of Jaegermeister at the ski lodge, they probably noticed that everyone around them seemed pretty happy. A little too happy for their liking. And over what? It’s not like the people of Swat had just killed anybody or blew anything up, so what was with all that joy and laughter? So, in a tradition that started with Alexander The Great 2,336 years ago, they decided to conquer the place. Maybe wipe those smiles off their faces, and so far, so good. They’ve got the whole valley living in fear and their bread and butter, the tourist trade, is gone completely. Which sort of makes them the infidels, because an outfit like the Taliban is nothing without an enemy to hate and a helpless population to terrorize.

It’s a good deal for the Taliban, outside of the occasional Predator Drone that drops a rocket on a few of them. Pakistan sent some army units to fight them, the few that they can spare from their eternal border clashes with India, and they haven’t exactly distinguished themselves in routing these foreign interlopers. Maybe Pakistan figures this Delaware-sized chunk of their real estate is not worth saving. Hard to say with that nation, a puzzling mix of a modern, educated and nuclear-armed nation and a poor, backward and almost primitive country dominated by ancient tribal loyalties. Will the real Pakistan please stand up? Even their government doesn’t seem to be sure what sort of nation they are running.

All of which would be a remote curiosity to most Americans were it not for the fact that we have a war going on in Afghanistan for like 6 years now, what started out as a simple manhunt for Osama bin Laden but has now, like most wars, turned into something else entirely. Instead of just going in, grabbing bin Laden and killing anyone who prevented that and then leaving immediately, what we seem to have done is to try our hand at nation-building once again, even though the only nation America was ever successful at building was our own. (There’s a lesson there somewhere, no?) Now we’re sort of stuck there re-defeating the Taliban we overthrew when we got there and bin Laden is enjoying an exciting new career in video and the rest of the Taliban simply crossed the border into Pakistan, which is our ally, at least on paper, so we can’t pursue them there. 

Of course, none of this makes any more sense than doing calculus with Roman Numerals, either the Taliban with their banning of shaving, singing, dancing and education or America getting stuck in yet another incomprehensible mess with no possible good outcome. Unless maybe we can kill or capture bin Laden, at which point we should bid the whole region a so-long, it’s been weird to know you. Hand them a few billion for their trouble and tell them to get back to us when they have something other than tribal warlords, jihadist fanatics and imprisoned illiterate women to offer the world. 

Right now there’s about as much chance of Afghanistan or Pakistan or any of the surrounding ikstans turning into peaceful democracies as there is of another Bush getting elected President of America anytime soon. Let’s bring our troops home from places like these and wish their people the best of luck. As much as we’d like to, we can’t fix the world, and the army isn’t exactly the people you send in to win hearts and minds. They have another function entirely and they’re very good at it. Let’s fix America first before this sort of crap becomes a way of life and then we become Pakistan, a house divided and not really certain what sort of nation we want to be. Enough. The repairing of our own nation has barely begun. Let the real America stand up by having our armies stand down.