Bob Crespo

Is it 2010 already? Next stop: personal space ships, robots and vacations on Mars! Happy New Year everybody!

He who lives by the sword is hopelessly out of date. Odds are he will wind up second best when confronting he who lives by the gun.

To my loyal readers: The nitwits here at bobcrespo.com finally let me write my own intros to my advice column. I told the big boss, Bob Crespo himself, it was either that or I get lost and take my shtick to another website. Yes, Mister My-Name-Is-In-The-Title-So-I Can-Do-What-I-Want was writing my intros and doing a lame friggin’ job of it if you ask me. I told him where to stick his smug jokes and to let me handle my own opening before I get to the letters from you emotional cripples and weirdos. I told him it’s not like I plan to use the words “motherfucker” or “shitstain” all the time, so what’s his beef? Believe me, he’s a real piece of work, this one, and could use some of old Dot Kham’s best heart to heart advice, like: “Get over yourself, bozo, you ain’t the only one in Brooklyn knows how to tell it like it is!” So from here on in this page will be all Dot Kham all the time! Now let’s see what whining drones have written to me this week:

Dear Dot: With all this terrorism I am afraid to fly anymore. I think we need harsher laws to stop these people, don’t let them get on airplanes. What should I do? – Frightened in Phiadelphia

Dear Frightened: How about getting a life, you friggin’ moron, and growing a pair of balls? You have a better chance of getting struck by lighting than being a victim of terrorism. You want to surrender your civil rights because a few incompetent camel jockeys don’t like Coney Island, go right ahead and stay in friggin’ Philly with your cheese steaks and second-best baseball team! Just don’t ask the rest of us to stop being Americans because you’re afraid of woman-hating fags who think they can change the way we live with a few bombs. Listen, pal, it was my town that was attacked on 9/11, and we didn’t surrender then and don’t plan to anytime soon. We got plenty of A-rabs in Brooklyn and they’re okay Joes for the most part, even if their food smells like old dogshit. They got as much right to enjoy American civil liberties as shmucks like you who would play right into the terrorists’ hands and live in a Big Brother society. It’s chumps like you who love The Patriot Act and getting spied on and having people locked up without access to a lawyer like the Gestapo came for them! What’s worse than that?

Dear Dot: My pet poodle Fluffy is getting old and the vet says he needs an operation to cure his cancer, but that would cost $8,000. What do you think his chances are? Loving Fluffy in L.A.

Dear Shit For Brains: I look like Marcus Welby, M.D. to you? How the hell would I know what your dog’s chances are? You want to spend 8 grand on a cancer operation? Fine, spend it on somebody’s kid that that some corporate HMO told them it was a pre-existing condition and they won’t pay. While it’s bad news that your poodle is dying, the good news is that Fluffy’s only a damned dog, you idiot! Put him out of his misery, go to the dog pound and adopt another young and healthy pooch that they will only kill if no one adopts them, and donate the $8,000 to a poor family to help their sick child survive. Where are your priorities? Sometimes I can’t believe I have to explain such obvious crap to you people! Have you been paying attention to this thing we have called life? Open your friggin’ eyes, we’re all in this together!

Dear Dot: My boyfriend Jimmy says that men are naturally polygamous and that it’s okay for him to screw around with other women as long as he comes home to me. He’s a great lover and a decent guy and I love him and don’t want to lose him. Should I let him fool around on me? – Penelope in Queens

Dear Penelope: Some people are going to screw around no matter what, men or women. At least Jimmy is upfront about it. Just tell Romeo that if it’s okay for him, then he won’t mind you banging other guys. If he’s okay with that, then you should be okay with his stray dog tendencies. Bottom line is, you can’t help who you fall in love with, and if the guy’s a mutt but he’s good to you, well, you’ve got to ask yourself if you’d be better off with him or without him. The arbitrary sex rules we set up for ourselves too often doom good relationships. As long as your home life isn’t torn apart and you’re getting plenty of Jimmy’s loving, what’s the big whoop?

Dear Ms. Kham: My name is Fred Trilling from Detroit and I have a tough question for you: My 1957 Chevy Bel Air Hardtop is the envy of my antique car club and I’m very proud of it. It’s in perfect condition, but a couple of parts are wearing out, like the struts and the chrome grille, which I think I polished into near-disintegration. Some excellent replica replacement parts are available but I want original ‘57 Chevy parts. Am I being unreasonable? – Fred Trilling from Detroit.

Dear Fred Trilling from Detroit: Hell no, Freddie boy! Your car is not only your pride and joy but a national treasure, reminding America that this was a better country when everybody drove giant flashy cars, smoked cigarettes and ate steaks! Replica parts for a ‘57 Chevy? Might as well tell old Dot Kham to get herself a new plastic pussy ’cause I used it so damned much! Some things are classics and thus sacred, and old Chevies and my nether regions qualify. You just get in touch with my pal Vito from Canarsie, who appreciates all things classic, if you get my drift. He’s in the vintage car business and if he can’t get an original part, it can’t be gotten, and believe me, he’s got a full inventory of Classic Chevy original parts. Guess what I drive around Brooklyn every day? A fire engine red ‘57 Chevy Bel Air Convertible with full original chrome detailing, and Vinny is the guy who keeps my car (and me) running smooth with original Chevy parts, including the hard-to-find white-on-white convertible top. Bless you, Fred Trilling from Detroit, and if you’re ever in Brooklyn you can look up Dot Kahm and we’ll compare original parts!

Dear Dot: It’s the New Year and I need to make some resolutions. Any suggestions? – Amenable in Alabama

Dear Amenable: Being that it’s after the New Year, maybe a procrastination-related resolution might be appropriate. Better yet, how about resolving to decide for yourself who the hell you are instead of asking me? Make a mental list of all your other New Year’s resolutions and see if you kept a single one. I know the only one I ever kept is to swear off unrealistic expectations and self-delusion. I renew that one every year just so I can say I made a damned resolution. Meanwhile, the trick is to be who you are all year long, the best friggin’ version of you that you can be. Happy New Year, kids

Being Pope is not nearly as much fun as it was when kings kissed your ass, you could make up all kinds of crazy rules, order the people who question you to be burned at the stake and nobody dared to make fun of your silly clothes.

As a public disservice, bobcrespo.com has been scouring the world for oddball facts. Just in case you don’t have enough useless information stored up between your ears, try these on for size:

A lactating Holstein dairy cow produces about 150 pounds of waste each day, one third urine and two thirds wet feces. Is it any wonder why so few of us want to be dairy farmers?

Bulls are really colorblind and the red cape that bullfighters use to infuriate them appears gray to them. The real reason the bulls are so pissed off is because they have already been stabbed several times by picadors before the matador starts waving his cape around and stabbing him some more. The red cape, however, looks really smokin’ with the matador’s flashy duds.

Enough about bovines. The new thing with turkeys is to deep fry them. Not that the taste of this dry ass bird is any better deep-fried, it’s just than some people want to cut to the chase and swiftly move on to the Thanksgiving Day football games. Only problem is that a great many homes have been burned down by people who figure it’s okay to have a few drinks before tossing a 25 pound frozen bird into 5 gallons of boiling oil. Not exactly the most brilliant idea to come down the pike lately, but often a pretty spectacular sight.

To those who are critical of American industry, there’s hope. Almost 90% of all pornography is produced right here in the good old U.S. of A, with 260 brand new porn websites going online every single day. Fastest growing genre? Hot Asian Babes Doing All Kinds Of Weird Stuff. Take that, China!

The smallest nation on Earth in both area and population is Vatican City, 110 acres and 800 people. It’s also one of the most influential nations on earth, what with the Pope living there and all, and him being the boss of all bosses of more than a billion Roman Catholics. While its power is not quite what it was in the Middle Ages when kings and emperors kissed papal ass, the Vatican still packs an ideological punch.

Good news for the Pope: Christianity is the world’s fastest growing religion.

Speaking of tiny countries, the only nation on earth with more personal computers per capita than The United States is San Marino, properly known as The Most Serene Republic of San Marino, with 738 computers per thousand citizens as opposed to a mere 574 per thousand in America. There are 30,000 Most Serene Marinans in a 23.5 square mile landlocked nation surrounded by Italy. This nation also boast the world’s oldest Constitution, dating from 1600, and has been independent since the year 301, when they split from the remnants of the Roman Empire. That’s about as much information as is needed about San Marino. More, probably.

The top of the food chain is occupied not by humans, but by the smallest of living creatures, bacteria, which eat us when we die. So much for our big brains, appetizers for microbes.

In the World’s Record For Futility Department, the structure that was the biggest failure and took the longest time to build and is the longest wall ever is the Great Wall of China, 800 years in the making and completely useless for keeping out invaders, its only intended purpose. It did however, begin paying dividends in the 20th century as a popular tourist attraction.

We’re #3! We’re #3! As it turns out, America is not the nation with the highest percentage of fat people. Australia tops us for the #2 slot, but the real connoisseur of corpulence, the champion of chops, the lord of lard, the Supreme Leader of Eaters is Samoa, where an impressive 93.5% of the population is obese. Well done! Or rare, medium, medium well, whatever…  just get it to the table and watch it evaporate!

At least the good old US of A still leads the world in teenage binge drinking, even if we are only a paltry #43 in average alcohol consumption per capita. The number one drinking country is, get this; Uganda! When you consider that the only other thing you’ve ever heard about Uganda is the genocidal misadventures of Idi Amin, that figure becomes understandable.

While we’re doing meaningless records, guess which country has the most bicycles per capita? No, not China, but The Netherlands. When you consider that drugs are practically legal there and driving cars while really stoned is problematic, and sort of dangerous, that brings the bicycle thing into sharper focus, even if that’s about the only thing in sharp focus over there.

The record for the most autobiographies is held by the late Winston Churchill, who apparently never had an unexpressed thought. While the man led a riveting life and was a major player in one of  history’s most fascinating  epochs, you’d think that two or three “The Story of My Life” books would have sufficed, but good old Winnie figured a dozen or more (many with several volumes) would be more like it. No one recognized the man’s indisputable greatness more than himself.

The person holding the record for the most Google searches ever is Michael Jackson. Second and third on the list? Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. You have to go a very long way down the list to find people like Einstein, Lincoln, Gandhi, King, Caesar, Christ, Newton, Voltaire, Jefferson, Washington, Mandela and yes, good old Winston Churchill, who is hundreds of millions of Google hits behind Madonna, who has written about a dozen fewer autobiographies.

The most nutritious food in the world is seaweed, possibly explaining why whales and Japanese senior citizens are in such great shape.

The Million Man March in Washington D.C. on October of 1995 was 600,000 men short of its title, but the “400,000 Man March” is nowhere near as cool a title.

Deserts cover one third of the world’s land masses, while water covers two third of the entire earth. Factor in all the swamps and uninhabitable mountain ranges and that pretty much explains why the subways are so crowded.

The movie phrase that is heard least often in real life is: “The Force is strong in this one!” The most often used movie line? “Feeling lucky, punk?”

The world’s biggest ball of yarn? Who gives a crap where it is and who put it there? Nobody’s making any detours to see that! There’s a limit to skull space for oddball facts and bobcrespo.com draws the line at gigantic balls of yarn.

There’s lots of facts about Canada, none of them remotely interesting. Again, there are limits to our curiosity and Canada is a guaranteed eye-glazer.

Flood plains are called flood plains for a good reason. As beautiful as some of them are, you might want to build your dream house elsewhere. That sweeping river view just might be from the bottom of it one of these days.

Is anybody out there prepared at a moment’s notice to set fire to a bunch of police vehicles? Seems like something you’d have to prepare for pretty carefully, no? It’s probably not all that easy to do, especially since the police who use those vehicles would be handy, and very likely less than enthusiastic about losing their rides. And yet you read in the papers about “spontaneous” riots that occur here and there across this globe, and it appears that random people in the street carry incendiary devices, just in case they happen upon a riot. Can this be the case?

And what about those cities in the Middle East where the rioters throw stones? Where do they get them? Do cities in the Middle East differ from cities everywhere else in the world by having an abundance of tennis ball-sized stones laying around, or are there stone vendors in those cities who spring into action like the umbrella vendors in New York City during a sudden rain storm? By definition, riots are spontaneous flare-ups, so you have to wonder how all this works.

So many things go on in this world that you just sort of take for granted until you think about them a little while. Take all those genocide campaigns in Africa. That sort of thing takes a whole lot of time and energy, especially since the weapons of choice seem to be the machete and the gasoline-soaked burning automobile tire around someone’s neck. Where do all those machetes come from? Does everybody have one? Or the tires? You have to figure that there’s a whole bunch of vehicles up on cinder blocks with the gas siphoned out of them when a good old genocide campaign gets going. Seems like an awful lot of trouble.

Why not just run them over? They obviously have plenty of cars around, and they would be far more efficient when the goal is to kill as many people as possible in a short time before those pesky United Nations troops show up. How much less time-consuming that would be than all that hacking and severing of limbs and jacking up cars to remove the tires and the siphoning of gasoline! Sounds a bit counter-productive, no? And don’t they care about getting their clothes all messed up with grease, gasoline and blood? Sometimes it seems that these genocide slaughterers don’t think these things all the way through.

And so you wonder. You look at pictures of Buddhist monks, and it dawns on you that half of them are young boys, like 11 or 12 and even younger. You’re thinking, that’s an awful young age to commit yourself to celibacy, poverty and everlasting prayer. You wonder maybe if for a lot of them it wasn’t their idea to walk around barefoot with shaved heads wearing orange robes and chanting all day long, the monotony broken up only by receiving severe beatings with rubber truncheons from Chinese soldiers. Then you figure out why there’s so few really old Buddhist monks, that plenty of these kids quit the monk business once they realize there’s no money in it and there are other options in life, like getting some pussy, or a pair of pants and a shirt, maybe some shoes too.

Then you check out reports from Europe and notice that a lot of places over there are getting back into anti-Semitism and xenophobia in a big way. On the one hand they’re going all Kumbaya on each other with this European Union and their standardized Euro currency and fair trade agreements, and on the other hand bitching and moaning about immigrants diluting their “cultural purity.” Haven’t we heard that term somewhere before? Rings a bell. Oh, yeah, the Nazis, that’s right! The Japanese Empire too! Hitler, Hirohito, genocide, World War, that sort of thing. What, are Europeans getting nostalgic for that shit? How does that work, exactly? Is there a memory lapse virus going around on the Continent? Do they want things both ways, having peace and prosperity and their cherished nationalistic hatreds?

Not exactly compatible goals. Maybe they should read the science journals and catch up on the DNA news; there are no “pure” races, and we’re all pretty much a bunch of mutts who have been humping one another and mixing our DNA since before we left our caves. And once we began sailing the 7 seas, all bets were off. How do people think Tiger Woods exists? He’s a mix of the DNA of just about every continent and major island chain, and is obviously a guy just as driven as his far-flung ancestors to spread his seed. And wasn’t that whole “Master Race” theory exposed as a fraud in 1945 when both claimants to that throne were soundly defeated by the “Mongrel Races” they sought to enslave? So you wonder what’s on people’s minds lately, and how things work.

God wants you to speak for Him about as much as you would want to sit in the passenger seat while a mouse drives your car. Probably less.

How little we have learned. It seems that every revolution is inspired by noble thoughts but winds up leaving one huge ingredient out that sort of festers until it explodes. With the American Revolution we forgot to abolish slavery right off the bat, and our shining democracy was tainted by nightmarish race relations for almost 200 years, even 100 years after a bloody civil war nearly split the nation apart over this issue. The French Revolution was doomed when the revolutionaries became even more murderous than their former oppressors. The Mexican Revolution merely replaced Spain with home grown tyrants who still grabbed all the wealth and left most of the nation in dire poverty.

Now Iran is poised for a do-over of their revolution of 30 years ago that left them with a tyrannical theocracy that makes the Shah look benevolent by comparison. But here they are following Dueling Ayatollahs, one freshly dead and one probably on this way there. The one crucial thing they are forgetting over there is to put a separation of church and state in place before they allow any new government to form. For decades they have seen first hand that there is no tyrant more cruel and bloodthirsty than one who is cruel and bloodthirsty in the name of God.

Geez, imagine having some of these born-again preachers we have around here anywhere near the reins of power and being in charge of guys with guns? Main Street, USA would be running with rivers of blood. Bad enough we have to listen to their hate-filled and warlike screeds in the name of The Prince of Peace. Imagine if they mattered? Imagine if they had their hands on America’s nuclear arsenal? They’d be tripping over one another ushering the world into Armageddon, going all Rapture on our hapless asses.

Now there’s anti-government riots in the streets of Iran and you hope that they’ve thought things through this time and have reconsidered that whole Islamic Republic deal. On the face of it, they don’t seem to have done much reflection on the error of their ways of 30 years ago, when the Iranian Revolution introduced the world to one Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, as evil and murderous a prick as ever breathed. The first big parade held in Tehran to celebrate their revolution told the world what Iran would be like under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini.

Most prominent among the tortured “criminals” being paraded through the streets while people spat upon and stoned them was a little girl no more than 9 or 10. She was stripped completely naked, crying and blind with pain. She held up poorly bandaged bleeding stumps where her wrists ended and her hands used to be. Both her hands were tied together with a string and draped around her neck like a macabre necklace as she stumbled along, prodded by soldiers’ rifles. Not even the most psychotic and cold serial killer could ever do this, or allow this to be done to a little girl. There is no possible or humanly imaginable offense a child could commit to merit this treatment.

No human being who witnessed this televised spectacle will ever forget the sight, or the sickening realization that this unspeakable act was being done in the name of God and religion. Or the equally sickening realization that those responsible for this little girl’s grisly and perverted public torment were now in charge of a nation of 70 million souls. It was a hollow, revolting feeling and one can only imagine how Iranians felt at this moment of realization of what they had wrought. Their horror and despair had to be bottomless.

No secular tyrant could ever match the savagery of religious rulers, whether during the Spanish Inquisition of the 1500s or the Iranian Inquisition of 1979. And now the opposition to this government has been inspired by another Ayatollah, the late Hussein-Ali Montazeri, who was said to be a “Moderate.” What the Iranians seem to forget is that this was the guy who was once the heir-apparent to Khomeini back in the day, a man who broke from the ruling council of Ayatollahs over the direction Khomeini’s government was taking.

If there was something worse than what was done to that little girl, Ayatollah Montazeri took that secret to his grave. Presumably there must have been, since he seemed okay with the Khomeini regime for years, making him hardly the guy to rally around when forming a new government. What would a “Moderate Ayatollah” have done to that little girl, chop only one hand off, let her bleed only half to death? Will the new Iranian revolutionaries find another Ayatollah to lead them or will they show some brains and put an end to the murderous religious tyrants.

Persia has always been an educated and sophisticated nation, and Iran is Persia, and how they wound up with the horrible Jew-expelling, little girl-torturing government they have is a mystery. A civilization as old as any on the planet, Iran had been the most progressive and highly educated nation in the Middle East before Khomeini, and its citizens are nothing like the way they are being portrayed in reactionary Western news media outlets. Once they broke the chains of monarchy by ousting the Shah, they had a chance to become a major positive influence among Islamic nations.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, they merely fitted themselves for new chains. Khomeini’s first major policy decision was to take American Embassy personnel hostage for a year. While Iran had many legitimate gripes with the United States and the CIA, taking hostages, calling America The Great Satan, denouncing Western nations in general at every opportunity and openly funding terrorist groups didn’t exactly sit too well with the rest of the word. Then Khomeini got Iran involved in a 10 year war with their neighbor Iraq that ended in a stalemate and all hopes of being once again the jewel of the Middle East were erased.

The gripe with Iraq was that the dictator there was the regular kind of tyrant as opposed to being a religious tyrant. Which shouldn’t have bothered Khomeini since Saddam Hussein was every bit as horrible as he was, just not God horrible. Religious tyrants like their hypocrisy to be unanimous. Well, old Khomeini finally dropped dead and was replaced by the like-minded and similarly named Ayatollah Khamenei as Supreme Leader, and he proved to live up (or down?) to Khomeini’s standards. That is, trying to turn a modern, sophisticated nation into a Medieval theocracy gripped with fear and hatred.

Only thing is, it’s not working and the Iranian people want an end to this bloodthirsty, world-provoking regime. Unfortunately for this troubled nation, the new would-be revolutionaries have hitched their wagon to the late Ayatollah Montazeri, and thus have the makings of another religious dictatorship if they are successful in overthrowing the Islamic Republic. The better bet would be to install the plain old Iranian Republic, with no mention of Islam. It goes without saying that 98% of Iranians are and will remain Muslim, and that’s fine and nobody else’s business, especially not the government’s. Few things matter less when it comes to the morality and worth of a people than what particular brand of religion they choose.

Once a government and a religion are joined, you have neither a government nor a religion. Governments are supposed to pave the streets, collect the garbage, establish courts of law and protect their citizens. Religions are supposed to be religions, and their importance varies from individual to individual, from being the most important thing in their life to being irrelevant, and no government can make a saint out of someone who doesn’t believe. They can sure make them pretend to, of course, since people are nothing if not practical when it comes to keeping their heads attached to their shoulders.

When government and religion are one, who’s paving the damned streets? When a religion is deciding what are your civil rights, watch out! The Iranian people need to ask themselves where they are going before they put this car in gear. They have the opportunity to show themselves and the world that they are reasonable people by forming a reasonable government. For 30 years they have tasted religious tyranny, and if it was working out for them there would be no riots in the streets of Tehran. The God Squad simply did not work out so well for them. Never did, never will.

Ask the millions of tortured and burned alive victims of the Inquisition how that worked out for them. Ask the citizens of Northern Ireland if “The Troubles” were worth it, when bombs and bullets flew in churches and schoolyards. Ask the Huguenots of France or the early Christians in Rome how the marriage of State and Religion worked out for them. Ask that little girl with the bloody stumps where her hands used to be. Oh, but we can’t ask any of these people anything, can we? They are dead, killed by “God.”

Life is full of surprises, some of them decidedly unpleasant. Beware of out-of-control dump trucks, contaminated medical waste and veggie burgers.