Fresh Air; Pulling Our Heads Out Of Our Asses

In the long road to pulling our collective heads out of our collective asses we, as a country, need to modify a few of our behaviors, curtail some bad habits and adopt a more positive and forward thinking philosophy if we don’t want to end up like Albania, a country of poor villagers pushing wooden carts filled with bales of straw around all day while their donkeys stand emaciated on the side of the road waiting for the sweet release of death.

We need to breathe fresh air again and we can’t do it when our heads are lodged in the constricted confines of our rectums. We have somehow become a nation of sound bites and thirty second video clips. We’re all attitude and no bite. A large portion of our population still believes that Velveeta cheese is food. We’re mixed up and confused and it is directly related, I believe, to having had our heads up our asses for generations.

It’s obviously very difficult to move or even see where one is going when one’s head is up one’s own ass. Think about the physics of having your head up your own ass. Some serious yoga moves must be employed plus some joints simply need to free themselves from their sockets in order to achieve such a seemingly impossibility. In order to begin, however, we need to understand a little history on how we got here in the first place.

Well, we began sticking our heads up our asses sometime after World War II. The nation had come out of a very difficult time and was tired of having their heads all out in the open and using rational thought and critical thinking to solve everyday problems. Using their critical thinking skills had become very taxing on Americans. So, in 1952 in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois a man named Herb Smith proceeded to be the first person to successfully insert his own head up his own ass.  He had tried it unsuccessfully twice before in 1951. Both attempts got him sent to the hospital where doctors were unable to detect the cause of his injuries. Herb explained that they were simply ‘gardening’ accidents and everyone left it at that.

In his garage Herb successfully overcame the ‘rigid-spine’ conundrum that had plagued white people for centuries and was able to lodge his head three quarters of the way up his ass. Excited about breaking the halfway barrier Herb continued for the next two weeks until had achieved full head/ass insertion.

Herb became overjoyed at the feeling of having his head up his ass. No more thinking, no more deciding on stuff. There was no responsibility for anything. Herb could walk around and say anything he wanted and it didn’t even have to be true. Herbs friends noticed that he was more relaxed, more confident than he was before. When asked about it, Herb brought them to his garage where he showed his astonished friends how to stick their own heads up their own asses.

It wasn’t long before suburban communities all across the country were enjoying the freedom of having their heads up their asses. The trend quickly spread to the cities and ports and forests of America. At the same time this was taking place, however, a slow disintegration of core values began to take place. Hard work was being replaced by unrealistic pursuits for fame and fortune.  The Rat Pack and John Wayne was replaced by the Real Housewives of Who-Gives-A-Shit and the Kardashians. America was crumbling before our eyes. It wouldn’t be long before we would become fixated with Justin Beiber and what kind of car he was driving.

Not everyone, however, was enamored with the idea of having their head firmly wedged in their ass. Some people thought it was reckless and even dangerous, especially when driving a car. Others thought that it was unnatural and not very flattering. But, by this time it was too late. It was the 1980s and more than half the country had their heads securely lodged in their own asses. This was reflected in the nation’s acceptance of big hair, shoulder pads and parachute pants. It is now 2011 and we are still dealing with the traumatic effects that parachute pants has caused this nation.

America, we need to pull our heads out of our asses, and fast. We’re falling behind in rubber dog poop production, hair loss technology and hot dog eating contests. We cannot move forward unless we dislodge our heads from our rectums and take a look around at the big picture. Only then will we be able confidently say that America has the largest ball of twine, we have constructed the longest Hoagie sandwich ever and that The United States of America, hands down, is home to the greatest foosball playing, beer-chuggers the world has ever known.

Changing Lanes On The Road To Nowhere

The freeway, as most people in modern cities agree, is a wonderful place to merge with other cars and pretend like you’re in the parking lot of the grocery store and you’re waiting for your wife who just ran in to get some tampons but got distracted by a Twinkie display and is now filling a grocery cart with frozen burritos, Gummy Bears and beer. The traffic jam is a classic here in Southern California and is beloved by all who participate. To be involved in a Los Angeles traffic jam is a special, special experience that, I’m pretty sure, shortens your life by about ten years.

It is a widely known fact that the current location of the 405 freeway here in Los Angeles is the site of a famous covered wagon traffic jam that occurred on a June morning in 1874 and lasted for seventeen days and four minutes. This was where a convoy of Mormon settlers was headed south towards Mexico in search of a great beanstalk that was rumored to grow so tall that it reached a Giant’s castle up in the sky. Along the way a cattle rancher who didn’t see the oncoming settlers sideswiped the wagon train with a herd of emus, causing the very first Sig Alert in Los Angeles. And, because a group of rubber tree farmers stopped on the other side to see what was going on, but never offered to help, it also gave birth to the term ‘assface who watches but does not help in any way and also impedes progress by blocking all traffic with their stupefying curiosity’. The term was later shortened to simply ‘rubbernecker’.

Ever since then Angelenos pay tribute to that blessed event by holding a commemorative traffic jam every day Monday through Friday at around 7 am and another one around 5 pm. However, because of the growing popularity of ‘The Great Western Pile-Up Of 1874’, as it is now affectionately called, the commemorative traffic jam is currently held seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day.

It is in these awesome traffic jams that you might have the unique experience of observing one of nature’s most elusive and annoying creatures, The Constantly Running Late Lane Changer. Imagine yourself at a complete and utter standstill in your car along with six hundred and fifty thousand other cars. Now imagine another car desperately needing to get in front of you. You can tell because their turn signal is on and the nose of their car is slowly inching towards the nose of your car. This is the point where all of that high school algebra comes in handy and makes you realize that the physics of what they are trying to do isn’t going to work out. The math simply doesn’t add up. There is already a car in front of you and several thousand cars in front of that one that one and the probability of the Lane Changer occupying that particular space in front of you is very close to zero point zero zero. But don’t tell them that. Our forefathers didn’t sacrifice their lives so that we can be told that two objects can’t be in the same place at once. This situation is on the verge of becoming a freedom issue and cooler heads must prevail.

Somehow though, the Lane Changer, who is never cool in stressful situations, is running late as they do every day of their lives and therefore, in more of a hurry than the other four million people who are headed in the same direction. And don’t get me wrong, everyone wants to let them in, it’s just that we can’t. It’s physically impossible. Even when they roll down their window trying to get your attention with that desperate wave and the pleading look on their face. You feel helpless. It’s like watching a basket full of puppies being adopted by a family of hyperactive kids. You know those dogs are in for a lifetime of stress and panic, but what can you do about it? Hyperactive kids need pets too. For a moment you have a thought of putting your car in reverse and ramming the car behind you creating enough space for the Lane Changer to squeeze in, thus shortening their commute to work. But alas, because of the millions of cars behind you, this too seems improbable.

The Lane Changer believes that moving laterally, no matter how minute, gets you to your destination quicker. This may be true in their mind, but to the rest of the universe it doesn’t make any sense. Perhaps they are ahead of their time and that one day the cars of the future will have the ability to swiftly merge into each other without colliding, but at this moment during the commemorative morning traffic jam it seems like an idea that is light years away.

Upon further research I’ve discovered that the Lane Changing species goes back several thousand years, all the way back to the Buffalo Wing Dynasty in Upstate New York. It was here amongst crowds of people in wooden carts where they discovered that the way to get somewhere faster than anyone else was to be as obnoxious and irritating as you can with your cart. Constantly changing lanes creates the illusion of forward progress. In the end though, we all arrive at the same destination at the same time to a job that we all hate, wishing it was Friday so we could begin drinking our lives away. If you happen to know a Constantly Running Late Lane Changer perhaps you can recommend to them a book that I have written called ‘Always Running Late? Try Getting Up Earlier!!!’ It gives people tips on how to avoid staying up late on a work week and also includes a link to a PDF file that has the operating manual of every type of alarm clock made in the USA since 1967.

If you come across a Lane Changer, though, please don’t touch them, don’t look them in the eyes and absolutely do not feed them. We need to keep them in their natural state of being lost, confused and desperate and certainly would not want them to begin depending on us for survival at this point in the game. See you all on the freeway.