Roscoe in Mexico

The Denver game is worse than I imagined it would be so I decided to pass the time by putting together an album of Roscoe's adventures in Mexico. I sure hope the Carolina-Seattle game is better'n this dog.

I did pick the exact score of the game, though, 34 -17. I should head to Vegas immediately, right?

Unlike in America, Mexican kids aren't afraid of Roscoe.

He is a real water sportsman.

Remote fishing village of Juncalito, where we always stayed.

Beamis likes Mexico.

Typical Bronco fan

Roscoe is quite peeved that I picked the Steelers over his beloved Broncos, prompting him to stage a raucous pep rally for me when I returned to the office after supper this evening. He was proudly displaying his favorite John Elway card and wearing his very vintage 1960's Broncos jacket that Vanessa bought for him when he was living with her in Logan, Utah a few years back.

That devil does get around. Anyway he is Exhibit A of what an obnoxious Bronco fan is really like. Sheesh!

I bought him the Elway card as a reward for not getting too weird when he went with me and my then girlfriend (ya'll remember Brenna?) to Mexico for a month of fishing and drinking tequila. After all was said and done she only ended up having one nightmare about him (an interesting future blog post maybe) and did refuse to let him sleep in the bed of her truck with us.

She did, on the other hand, enjoy breezing through the random check points set up by the Federales and the Mexican army who, like bored soldiers everywhere, delighted in a diversion of any sort and loved asking for Roscoe's papers and posing him and taking turns talking to each other with him. I remember one especially enthusiastic reception, in the middle of nowhere Baja California, where the soldier sat Roscoe on his automatic rifle and started hitting on Brenna using my dummy! He bellowed "Hey Babeee! What's up babeee!". The regiment was having so much fun that they almost didn't give him back. I think Brenna may have been slightly disappointed that they did.

The puppet jerks back on his string

They don't think it's funny no more.

In a follow up to my recent blog posts about the bombing of Pakistan by the U.S. government it appears that their once complicit ally is now about to pay a terrible price for going along with the 'Muricans Warn Terror. Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is about to go the way of every other murderous traitor in the service of America-----oblivion. After his removal radical Islam will become, overnight, a nuclear power, making the current furor over Iran's nuclear ambitions seem like a distant quaint memory. This will happen, mark my words.

The very fact that the U.S. government is so obsessed on Iran and yet would foolishly let a CIA bureaucrat decide to viciously attack Pakistani soil with an un-manned drone tells me that even at the very highest levels of government the same lack of accountability and raw unfocused inept stupidity exists in exactly the same proportions as I experienced as a U.S. Park Ranger. THE SAME IDIOTS ARE AT THE CONTROLS!

We, the not so innocent funders of this immoral activity, will pay the ultimate price for their hubris and lack of informed judgment on matters which are gravely important issues to the actual people living their lives under the bombs being dropped. I wouldn't blame those pissed of millions one damn bit if they decided to fire a few salvos back the Infidels way. After all the 'Muricans set the pattern of nuclear retribution back in 1945 against an already defeated, only needing to be blockaded enemy, we openly despised. Nuke 'em Harry! Cook those gooks!

I believe future historians will view this bloody and violent predator drone attack on Damadola, Pakistan as being the fuse which lit the bomb of total war, similar in scope to the assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 precipitating the First World War, which, by the way, never really ended.

Pakistan Tells U.S. Not to Repeat Attack

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/pakistan_al_qaida_attack

Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues! - Revelation 18:4

Pittsburgh vs. Carolina in the Super Bowl

Former Georgia Bulldog star Hines Ward

I have not heard from the Bagwhan of late so I decided to make my own un-professional prognostications about the outcome of this Sunday's NFL championship games, which determines who will play in the 40th edition of the Super Bowl.

I don't erase any of my old blog posts so I will have to live with these picks in my archive for time immemorial. Anyway here goes:

Pittsburgh will defeat Denver to the tune of 34 - 17.

Carolina will settle Seattle's hash 27 - 13.

Whaddew I know? Not much really. I'm just groping in the handicapper darkness.

Where is the Bagwhan when I really need his holy guidance and spiritual light?

I like Jake Delhomme. My kind of football player.

Cossack weather

Is the recent bitterly cold weather in Russia and Europe yet another indication of global warming? Moscow is supposed to warm up to -4 F by Saturday.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/01/19/D8F7TLHO0.html

Russian Winter by Nikifor Krylov (1827)

Zionist sunset

Today's sunset in Zion Canyon was indeed a beautiful sight to behold.

A rock in the forehead

Downed American helicopter in Iraq

The, so called, enemies of American military occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan are a pretty crafty resourceful bunch when it comes to creating and using homemade devices to destroy the high-tech multi-million dollar "Arsenal of Democracy". Come to think of it so were the Vietcong, Khmer Rouge and assorted Somalian warlords, among many others who have successfully thwarted the imperialist ambitions of American power over the years.

I'm pretty certain that over-stuffed Goliaths always fall in much the same way. Good thing too.

http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=10428

Quiet village in January

Kirby

Austin's pasture

Osama

Wood piles

Are we even surprised?

They aren't happy about the U.S. killing their brethren.

US: No Apology for Pakistan Bombing

Washington, Jan 17: The Government of President George W. Bush refused Tuesday to show regret in view of the consequences of the bombing of a Pakistani village by a US plane Friday that killed 18 innocent people.

"You know our previous comments on issues of this nature," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said evasively, as he replied to a question from a journalist on Washington's stand on the bombing.

The attack was allegedly aimed at Al Qaida's number two leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

However, the operation left 18 innocent civilians killed and Pakistan authorities say al-Zawahiri was not there.

According to reports, a CIA Predator plane entered Pakistani air space without permission Friday, shattering the village of Damadola with rockets.

Islamabad officials said the CIA mistakenly bombed the area, as Al Qaida's second-in-command was not in the village.

The action triggered a protest by thousands of marching Pakistanis, who burned US flags and demanded a US pullout from Afghanistan.

In the port city of Karachi, about 10,000 people took part in the protest which spread to other cities including Islamabad, Lahore, Multan and Peshawar.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry summoned US Ambassador Ryan Crocker to formally report on the incident.

Nature Nazis?

After two years of dealing with the absurd and comical attempts by the National Park Service to regulate my business, it gladdened my heart to read this diatribe against them by the head of the Alaskan Alpine Club. I could not have said it better:

National Parks remain as Police-States ruled by malicious, armed, mental midget thugs who could not understand these words even if you handed them a dictionary. They write and impose laws to criminalize all human actions, so the thugs can arrest people at whim, to feed the childish ego of Park Police bullies, and to create enforcement budget excuses. Rights have been turned into privileges, grantable and deniable at the whim of petty police thugs. They are still writing more laws. They cannot stop writing laws, and will continue to more extensively criminalize what they have already criminalized, and arrest more people, until they eat their own, on schedule. Inherently self-defeating power cannot recognize the process of human reasoning which can demarcate between harmful and harmless actions. Power demands to be worshiped because of raw power alone, void of a human thinking process. Pity them. Give them the hollow flattery and worship they crave, and dance to the tune of their paperwork idiot-drills, if you wish, to avoid arrest, if you do not learn the other processes, while laughing yourself to tears at petty power-damaged minds.

Amen brutha!

Amen brother Mencken

The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.
----H.L. Mencken

The United States attacks Pakistan

Damadola, Pakistan was savagely bombed by the U.S., killing innocent civilians.

The following report about Friday's bombing of Pakistan by the United States comes from an independent Australian news service:

The US air strike carried out on January 13 on the isolated village of Damadola, near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, was as reckless as it was criminal. At least 18 civilians were killed, including five women and five children, further inflaming already high political and social tensions inside Pakistan.

Under international law, the strike was an act of war. The Pakistani government of President Pervez Musharraf has collaborated with the US takeover of Afghanistan and its broader international aggression, but it has never formally granted the US military the right to cross the border and carry out operations on Pakistani soil or airspace. It is unclear whether the Pakistani government and military had pre-knowledge of the attack. But in the face of public outrage it has been compelled to issue a protest to the US ambassador and deplore the bombing of Damadola as “highly condemnable”.

Not only was the attack a violation of Pakistani national sovereignty, the intended target—the senior Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri—was not even in the village. Haroon Rashid, the local member of the Pakistani National Assembly, told Afghan Islamic Press: “I know all the 18 people who were killed. There was neither al-Zawahiri nor any other Arab among them. Rather they were all poor people of the area.” A Pakistani military intelligence officer told Al Jazeerah: “Their [the US military] information was wrong, and our investigations conclude that they acted on false information.”

This is a very serious turn for the worst children, and from the BBC:

In response to this latest bloody attack U.S. Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice said tough tactics are necessary in the fight against al-Qaeda.

"We'll continue to work with the Pakistanis and we'll try to address their concerns," she said on Monday.

Describing the country as an ally in the "war on terror", she said al-Qaeda and its supporters "are not people who can be dealt with lightly".

She said she could not comment on any specific circumstances.

Stay tuned for further imperial deterioration.

Iranian defiance----I think it's great

Persian soccer fans

From The Guardian of London:

Iran stepped up its defiance of international pressure over its nuclear programme yesterday by warning of soaring oil prices if it is subjected to economic sanctions. As diplomats from the US, Europe, Russia, and China prepared to meet today in London to discuss referring Tehran to the UN security council, Iran's economy minister, Davoud Danesh-Jafari, said the country's position as the world's fourth-largest oil producer meant such action would have grave consequences.

"Any possible sanctions from the west could possibly, by disturbing Iran's political and economic situation, raise oil prices beyond levels the west expects," he told Iranian state radio.

I love this stance by an ancient and populous civilization that can respond to the U.S. federal government's bullying tactics with real power. What does the U.S. gummit propose to attack them with, a Chinese credit card? The American Imperium is crumbling fast and it will fall all that much faster with a real live Iranian oil embargo, with maybe Hugo Chavez and Venezuela joining in for the extra special pleasure of watching the strangling economic torment brought on by the rash and reckless gangsters in DC. I say bring it on.

Why should I feel less safe because Iran has nukes? Should I feel any measure of comfort in knowing that Israel and the U.S. do? What about India and Russia? North Korea? France? It ain't none o' my business.

Has anyone noticed that the United States never attacks countries with nuclear weapons? After witnessing firsthand the death and destruction which it has rained down upon its neighbors, Iraq and Afghanistan, I am not surprised that the Persian Empire wants a nuclear bomb of their own, with which to protect its citizens from the willful spite of the Infidel. I hope they get their bombs and soon. The sooner the better! Nuclear weapons in Persian hands are a definite plus for world peace. Take it to the bank dudes.

I say Mexico could use one or two ICBMs as well. Maybe from a French flea market.

The judge, he holds a grudge,
He's gonna call on you.
But he's badly built
And he walks on stilts,
Watch out he don't fall on you.

Maryland vs. Wal-Mart

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/incredible-stuff.html

Purely moral reason

To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason. ----H.L. Mencken

Tolerance

We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart. ----H.L. Mencken

Democracy perfected

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. ----H.L. Mencken

Don't follow leaders, watch your parking meters

The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.----H.L. Mencken

It hit me hard today when I saw an ad on the internet for a show about Abraham Lincoln which had the tag line: The Real Lincoln. Honest Abe. I was again reminded about how well the state run education system and lap dog media have propagandized and glorified some of the vilest human trash to ever grace the world stage.

Most Russians have come to terms with the fact that Stalin was a blood thirsty monster and so was Lenin, and boy no one can let the poor Germans ever forget the sordid truth about Adolf Hitler, lest they repeat his evil mistakes again!

Meanwhile here in the U.S. morally corrupt killers and a long string of lawless gangsters in national leadership have had their names enshrined in the collective memory as heroes and victors in the cause of truth, justice and the American way. We don't seem to go in much for moral introspection or digging for the historical truth concerning this nation's tarnished legacy of deceit, death and the physical devastation of vast tracts of productive land worldwide, which, by the way, is going on at this very moment.

Ours is easily the most ignorant and propaganda ridden country under centralized federal control in the entire world. China is virtually libertarian by comparison.

I'm pretty sure that Jefferson wouldn't recognize the place any more.

Murderous dictator and usurper of the Constitution.

Immoral warlord, the killer of millions of innocent foreign civilians through indiscriminate aerial bombings of large urban centers in Europe and Asia and the illegal incarceration and theft of property from Japanese Americans, who were shipped to concentration camps.

A self-serving liar and pompous moralist who brought untold death and misery to the 20th century through his interventionist meddling, the effects of which we still reel from almost a century hence from his tainted reign.

First to aggressively invade and wantonly plunder a sovereign nation, setting the stage for the dictatorship of Lincoln and the current border problems of today resulting from the un-natural frontier that was created when the U.S. federal government stole one-third of Mexico at the point of swords, bayonets and cannon.

A backwoods pug ugly responsible for unleashing horrific violence and poison on innocent civilians and starting a war that needlessly took 57,000 American lives for absolutely nothing.

Corrupt and out of control grafter who presided over the deliberate genocide of the remaining native tribes of the American West and the first large scale relocation and concentration of said natives on government run "reservations". Hitler and Stalin took much inspiration from this efficient method of dealing with "undesirables".

Semi-illiterate born again dry alcoholic ex-cokehead warlord who is presiding over the demise and collapse of the American Imperium from within and without. He is directly responsible for the deaths of many thousands of innocent people and has devastated two sovereign countries with aggressive warfare and occupation. During his two terms of office alone, the feds have borrowed more money from foreign governments and banks than was borrowed by all other American administrations put together, from 1776 to 2000. More debt added to the national burden in his eight years than in the previous 224. That's some legacy.

Let's hope he is the last of a line but I really sort of doubt it, unless of course he ends up bleeding the Beast to death, which is a distinct possibilty. One can always have hope.

Democracy, too, is a religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses. ----H.L. Mencken

Secessionism lives on in Vermont

Secession is still alive and well in the Green Mountain State!
http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_12_19/article.html

Long live the Disunited States of America!

A funny smell is emanating from Washington

Canadian newspaper editor, Eric Margolis, wrote today about witnessing the disintegration of the current political order in DC. Let's hope it's true!

A smell of "fin du régime" hangs over Washington, just as it did over the last days of a decaying Soviet empire when an out of touch leader presided over a lost foreign war, and a swamp of influence peddling and bribery, as the secret police struggled to keep a lid on growing dissent.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis11.htmlml

His book is upside down.

Who is the Bagwhan?

There has been some recent confusion about the identity of the Bagwhan. Some apparently think it is me, or a character I have made up like Johnny Carson's Amazing Karnak. I thought it might be time to re-introduce the Bagwhan to those who were not following this blog when I started posting his predictions last fall. Like any good comic book super hero you have to re-tell the origin story every once in a while for the benefit of newer readers.

I've known the Bagwhan since 1969, and remember noticing then that he held special talents when he made a sculpture of Artis Gilmore using empty paper towel tubes for legs attached to a Kleenex box body. He lives with his two closest spiritual advisors Bosco & Zoran, a mere 50 yards from the Parkway Deli. What's left to say?

We await further predictions from his holiness. Right or wrong his heartfelt pronouncements add color to our day and have increased traffic on this blogsite.

That, my friends, is the Bagwhan.

Just hangin' after work

The Rubicon has been crossed

Defending freedom

The time has come again for this amateur historian to draw a parallel from the last century concerning the actions of the current warlords in DC. As I've mentioned in recent blogs, the passage of the "Law for Terminating the Suffering of the German Nation" in 1933 was the end of German politics and the beginning of totalitarian rule, which ultimately led to the smoking ruins of WW2.

The current regime in charge here has said that it will not be deterred by that quaint old Constitution in its prosecution of the War on Terror, especially when it comes to illegally wiretapping, incarcerating or torturing innocent American civilians. That they're doing it "to protect American lives" should give none of us any comfort.

So this is it folks. It is exactly the same moment in history that Germany experienced in 1933, when it accepted Hitler's word that he was seizing extraordinary powers only in the interests of the safety and security of the German people.

Protecting us against dangers by revolutionarily changing the constitutional system to one based on executive supremacy precisely the supremacy which the framers whom Bush and his henchmen love to cite waged a revolution to throw off the President says that if it is necessary to secretly kidnap people in Europe and ship them to Uzbekistan, where prisoners are boiled, or to Egypt or Syria or other places where they are tortured in other ways, he can order this even though there is a decade-old federal law under which it is criminal. He says that, if it is desirable for Americans themselves to torture real or supposed enemies to obtain information, he can order it though this too is a federal crime when done abroad, as has regularly occurred. When signing the recent bill containing the McCain prohibition against torture, he says that this is subject to his power as Commander-in-Chief. Translation: he can order torture, despite the McCain law, if he wants to. He attempts, when signing the law that contains the McCain bill, and when signing other laws too, to vastly alter 200 and more years of law and practice by seeking to have laws interpreted not in accordance with the intent of the Congress which enacted them, but in accordance with the often very different intent of the President who signed them. He says that, if it is desirable to run secret prisons in unidentified foreign locations, he can order it. He says that, if it is necessary to engage in electronic surveillance of American citizens within the United States (which, we now know, was begun by the NSA even without his order), he can order it although there is a statute that was enacted to prevent this because of horror at its prior occurrences.

Do you doubt for one moment that, should he think it necessary to secretly pick up you or me or any one else, and to beat the crap out of us in jail to try to get information to protect our fellow subjects, he will order it? Do you doubt this for a moment in light of the already existing record, not to mention what we may not yet know about?

There is no going back if we all sit here and let this happen. This is the most obvious road to oblivion that I've ever seen in my lifetime. The weakened and corrupt legislative and judicary branches offer very little hope of resistance. We are seeing the last remnants of the old republic crumbling in decay, morphing into a wobbly statist dictatorship of militarist warlords.

Read your history kids, this is always the final stage of empires before they fall and crash to the ground with a resounding thud. We may yet witness the biggest thud in world history.

I might add that our own Axis of Evil (the U.S., Israel & U.K.) are still quite hell bent on starting a war with Iran before Bush leaves office. The main reason for the current offensive warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan could well turn out to be that this Axis is merely setting up forwarding bases for the bigger invasions to come. Thankfully I think our military is about to mutiny, which, sad to say, could be one of our only real hopes left.

Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues! - Revelation 18:4

The Bagwhan's Wild Card Picks

have any of you been to LAS VEGAS lately?
does it look like a motel 6?
no?
duh! when everyone is "on" to something, run, really fast, the other way.

all bets based on number of shots of SMIRNOFF it will take THE BAGWHAN to
feel normal

1. i hope i'm wrong! NO TEAM has ever won their final road game and then won on the road in the wildcard round. EVER.
TAMPA BAY (3 SHOTS OF SMIRNOFF)

2. if you bet against NEW ENGLAND you're a certfied schmuck, schmendrik,
putz etc.
NEW ENGLAND (2 shots of smirnoff)

3. SEE ABOVE! NO ONE is picking cincinnati!
CINCINNNATI in a blowout! (3 shots of smirnoff)

4. GAME OF THE YEAR $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
i'm putting my ass on the line here.
THE NEW YORK FOOTBALL GIANTS IN A ROMP, STOMP, CHOMP
(10 TEN shots of smirnoff)

The outcomes lie behind Billy's door.

Trilobite hunting

Nevada afternoon

The weather in the Southwest has been unusually warm and sunny for weeks on end, so today Bill & Jill and I went to soak up some sun and search, yet again, for the elusive trilobite Ollenelus, a denizen of the shallow Cambrian seas that were here 550 million years ago. They are the oldest complete fossil specimens in the entire world. No lie kids.

We set off for a rocky peak south of Caliente, Nevada, that had already been scouted on a prior trip, that proved to be very fruitful. Instead of Ollenelus, we found the less well known and more poorly preserved Bathyuriscus productus. I collected a really large tail (1.5 inches) which is pictured below. Nerdvana! The bug that it belonged to would be well nigh over 4 inches long!

The sun felt warm on our winter faces as we ate lunch beneath Joshua trees, while above two fighter jets carried out a mock dog fight, shooting off chaff flares that burned brightly in the clear deep blue of the endless Mojave sky.

A whopper of a tail

Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia)

Back home in Utah

Bagwhan's believers

THE BAGWHAN ends the college bowl season on a high note!
28 bowls of baksheesh up
24 bowls down
+$40 for the BELIEVERS that are $25 bettors.
NFL PLAYOFF bets upcoming!
TB

Bowled over by the Bagwhan

THE BAGWHAN shakes in his booties
a celestial/planet alignment/volcanic/tsunami/meteoric bet is about to
happen this weekend in the NFL; stay tuned.
2 nite: we are now 27-24 + $15
lay back and bet the OVER 70 (1 bowl of baksheesh)
the shit comes down this weekend
the air is cold
the mind is clean
the bet of the BRIGHT SHINING MOON is on!

Bagwhan gets over

THE BAGWHAN sits at a pitiful 24-24
-$60.00
2 to go
1st, let's play jeopardy:
the answer is:
it's WAY worse than THE BAGWHANS bowl record.
what is: the georgia bulldogs rush defense
OUCH!
2 nite
sit back and watch 2 of the greatest college football coaches in our
lifetimes
OVER 47 points (3 bowls of baksheesh)

Germain - Robin is the best

As I grow older I enjoy drinking alcohol less and less. In fact since I left the National Park Service the desire to drink has lessened considerably over the years. That agency is famous for its lonely drunks.

Anyway a good friend of mine in St. George, a man of exquisite taste and distinction, used to give me, for Christmas, a bottle of Germain - Robin; a fine hand crafted alamic brandy distilled in Mendocino County, CA. Why he stopped giving it to me as a holiday gift he's never stated, but it is now what I routinely ask for whenever I house-sit for anyone. When they blithely ask me "is there anything I can get for you in the big city?" my reply is: "Why YES!" Invariably folks can't easily find it, so I average about every third house-sitting job with a bottle of this magic elixir of the Gods. A good thing too I guess, by savoring it that much more.

This Christmas past, Michelle & Joe Hovorka procured me a bottle in Boulder, CO and I'm ever so grateful and slightly drunk from their kind gesture. Hic it's really great struff, hic. You should try some when you can.

Brandy is great in winter.

A New Year homily from Mexico

My favorite living writer, Fred Reed, has done it again! The following piece hit all the heads on all the nails of daily existence in the emerging police state we inhabit north of the Rio Grande. That it is also full of humor and hope ranks his work right up there with Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken in the pantheon of American writers who actually get it.

Storm Troopers on Every Corner

Things are grim hereabouts. We are now deep in the Mexican winter. It is hellishly cold. You almost need a long-sleeved shirt. Instead I wore my thick tee that said Soy Un Autentico Hijo de la Chingada, this constituting my formal wear. It’s like truth in packaging.

Bodacious tropical flowers swarmed over Stu’s balcony, all purple and orange like complex bruises and flaming lipstick red. They glow as if they had batteries. (I was visiting Stu on Lake Chapala, a nasty traffic-ridden gringo enclave near Guad.) The flowers had a nervous look, as if realizing that a drop of a mere forty degrees Fahrenheit would cause them to freeze. It was a near thing.

In the background some damned fool was water-skiing on Lake Chapala. If he fell in that sump of concentrated chemical offal he would mutate into something with tentacles and climb up trellises to eat children. Probably a good idea. I mean, things with tentacles have to eat too.

It being New Year’s, I doubtless ought to say something profound about the passage of time, or the meaning of life, or What is Art? Or the significance if any of the last year. It’s what columnists do, although we don’t know any more about it than anyone else. (You didn’t know that time was passing, right? You need me to tell you? OK. It is. Send money.)

All right, then. Here is Cosmic Truth: Each year is more comedic than last. We’re all idiots. Life’s a sitcom. There is no hope. Now you know.

Being in Mexico adds perspective, at least if you watch the great booby hatch to the north. I especially like the Warn Terr, the preferred toy of the latest Bush. Down here we read all about how the feddle gummint is keeping terrace out of the US so everyone will be safer than probably lots of them want to be. (I’d rather be in danger. Just leave me alone.)

Anyway, it’s all PR. A couple of weeks back a friend drove a Mexican woman and her two kids to the airport in Guad to fly to a border town where a coyote was going to smuggle them across the border. And did. Nobody thought much about it. Coyotes are regarded hereabouts as a form of public transportation, like light rail. Only the gringos are clueless. But that’s a given.

The immigration hooha (somehow I don’t think this column is going to be too coherent) in the States is diverting. When the Mexicans have fiestas in Jocotopec, and high-explosive bottle-rockets swooshboom through the night and garish fireworks turn the milling crowds into a sort of leprous green-and-red cadaverish mob from some Dantean underbasement, you see floats that say, “Nuestros Hijos Ausentes.” It means “Our Absent Sons.” These are the large number of young men who illegally cross the border to work, come back for the fiestas, and then go back across. Crossing the border illegally is as illegal as downloading illegal music.

How, I asked a Mexicana whose brother frequently crosses, do they do it? “Oh, tunnels, coyotes, people mail passports back. There are lots of ways.”

Oh.

Not just wetbacks get their backs wet. When you consider the ease with which drugs go into the US, and get delivered to every small town, at prices you can’t refuse, you realize that the Warn Terr couldn’t keep the Queen Elizabeth II from coming across the border on wheels. With a marching band in front. Criminal enterprise is far more efficient than government. Though probably less criminal.

Think about it. The drug trade, heavily mediated through Messico, is a service industry, like delivering pizzas. After all, people want drugs—only the gummint doesn’t want people to have them—and the narcos don’t make anybody buy them, even fidgety little school boys mad with boredom. (The government forces these to take otherwise-illegal amphetamines. Pablo Escobar never did that.)

By contrast, people don’t want fifth-rate schools and unpleasantly wholesome FBI heavies who look like armed accountants snooping through their library records, but government does force them to buy these unwanted services. It does force your boy children to take drugs that would land them in jail if they bought them from free enterprise, such as Colombian drug lords.

Organized crime is a better deal. I much prefer the friendly neighborhood dope dealer to any federal official. I can tell the former “no.”

I’m babbling. I hope so. This has not been the classic new year, when you wake up with a hangover that feels like Godzilla trying to gnaw his way out of your skull and your eyes look like eggs fried in blood and your mouth tastes like the inside of a truck driver’s glove.

No. Moderation is done struck. Last night Stu and I sat under arched brick vaulting in his living room and communed with a certain amount of tequila, yes. Actually in hindsight the amount seems rather less certain. I’ll swear to nothing. Of course at five in the morning Stu did start bouncing up and down on his bed and playing the air guitar to Pink Floyd.

You have to understand. Stu and I are in a Twelve-Step Program. It is because we are Recovering Washingtonians. The first step is to get on an airplane to Guadalajara. The second step is to find the right relationship with your Higher Power, which I think means a really big amplifier. The third step is to find a Mexicana who does not have Ideologically Significant hairy armpits or a stupid-looking little blue blazer and a snotty attitude.

Things look strange to the North, very strange. That curious little man in the White House persists in his hobby of blowing up High Rackies, a sport which he seems to regard as a sort of video game. We should have bought him a codpiece instead. He probably couldn’t have figured out the straps.

We need to think about this president thing. Teddy Roosevelt said we ought to speak softly and carry a big stick. He probably didn’t have in mind speaking in tongues, or a swizzle stick. The best you can do is run. What Stu and I wondered was where to put such money as we have before the inflation hits.

After profound analysis and some air guitar, we decided that the gringos actually want a police state. (Remember, it was late at night. But I think the same thing in the morning.) Why wouldn’t they? The folk who yowl about civil liberties like alley cats undergoing a hard birth are mostly writers and artists and others of the professionally disagreeable, who are always yelling, “Yo momma” at politicians. They amount to…what? Two percent of the population?

The rest want five hundred channels on the cable, beer, porn, easy sex and two weeks a year at Disney World. They don’t read much, largely because of honest inability, and count on their fingers, up to maybe six. They’d be perfectly happy to have storm troopers on every corner. Uzis and flack jackets lend drama to lives that don’t have any. Hitler was a consumer product.

Stu took a break to siphon the python and I ran up to the mirador to watch the rockets but we’re running out of column and I can’t tell you about, well, some really critical stuff. Later.

Lago Chapala, Mexico

Bagwhan's Monday Bowl Picks

THE BAGWHAN has just returned from a trip of serious personal introspection along the shores of beautiful st. georges creek in st. marys county, md. no time for verbiage; time to kick ass.

we stand 16 bowls up and 17 bowls down for a total of -$95.00 on $25 bets.

here we go: (all games monday 1/2/06: all times eastern standard)

11:00 texas tech vs alabama ROLL TIDE! i love 'em but take tech -2.5 (1 bowl of bak.)

11:00 iowa vs florida time for the big 10 er 11 to show up iowa pick 'em (2 b of b)

12:30 va tech vs louisville -it's time for a big fav to blow someone away va tech -10 (3 bowls of bak.)

1:00 auburn vs wisconsin prove you don't totally suck and cover a double digit spread badgers wisky +10.5 (3 b of b)

4:30 ohio st vs notre dame i'm on a big 11 er 10 roll ohio st -4 (2 b of b)

8:30 georgia vs west va duh! georgia -6.5 (4 bowls of baksheesh)

ROLL TIDE

Yo Skeeter, yeah you Mr. Big Ten!

The mighty Big Ten (er...11) is a scintillating 0 - 3, so far, in holiday bowl games. With four matches remaining that involve Big Ten (er...11) teams I predict that this pitiful conference will go 1 - 6 overall . (I'm picking Penn State over Fla. State. Not exactly rocket science.)

Let's hear it for the eleventh team to join the Big Ten! Is Pennsylvania in the Midwest?

Go Joe Pa!

Washington squeaks one out

Mark Brunell gets it done, barely

Congratulations to the Redskins who will face the Buccaneers next week in the Wild Card game in Tampa. In the very weak NFC anything might happen. We'll stay tuned and see.

Weep not for Dallas.