Howzits's blog: "Island Humor...it's all about the funnies!!!"

There's a group of folk on this planet who think people should live on wheat grass, pea pods and corn husks instead of eating dead cow meat. Their reasoning goes like this: Killing cows to eat them is immoral and inhumane. It's also not good for the planet. It takes to many of Earth's resources to raise cows for food, as opposed to the amount of time, energy and space it would take to grow edible plants. And it is cruel and unusual punishment to turn a living, breathing animal into teriyaki kabob. Cow meat also is too high in fat, and so is not good for the human body. Oh yeah, cows also burp and pass gas, and these odorous emissions destroy the ozone. I read all this kind of stuff and watch it on television, and it really makes me dig deep into my brain, right down to the medulla oblongata, and consider the philosophical ramifications of the issues. But I resurface from this Zen brain scuba dive like a metaphysical Lloyd Bridges with the same question on my lips: "We're talkin' about cows, right?" The funny thing is, I can almost identify with every single thing the Save The Cows lobby espews. If I had to actually personally kill a cow in order to eat a cheeseburger, lunch most likely would turn into grilled cheese sandwich. Maybe not... If having cheese meant milking a cow, which entails grabbing on to those slimy long, udder thingies, then I'd just be reduced to eating a grilled bread sandwich. Few people actually would eat cow meat if they had to bonk a bovine on the head with a sledge hammer just to whip up a pot of chili. That's why an industry has developed to keep us from thinking about the fact that we are eating large dead farm animals. People in the cow industry know that you aren't going to make much money if you have to convince people to eat cow butts and leg muscles. In stead, they have clevely come up with a variety of names for cow meat like, "steak," "hamburger," "fillet mignon," "prime rib," and regal "Baron of Beef." They package it so it is impossible to imagine that just days ago, a certain rosy-red slab of tenderloin was part of a complete living animal package, munching on grass and staring blankly at passing automobiles. And frankly, I'm glad they do. Because, as much as I identify with the Save the Cow lobby, you just can't escape the fact that cows are pretty tasty. Do I feel quilty? Sure. But I also feel like I'm doing my part to perpetuate a species. It's like this: We have to eat cows to save them. How many cows to would be around if they had no purpose in life other than to decorate the north forty with mush mounds? None. Some people would keep a couple of cows for pets, I suppose, and there might be a few in zoos for vegetarians to throw peanuts at. But there would not be the millions of cows that there are now. There are probably more cows around today than in the history of cowdom. Let's face it, the cow is not a major predator. Left on its own in the wild, the common cow would last about a minute. Wild beasts would hang around the cows and use them as hyena decoys. ("Okay, guys, if you see a hyena gang, start moving very quietly over towards those trees. Oh, yeah, and don't tell the cows.") The truth is: most cows have it pretty good. They spend their time rigorously living life to its fullest, doing all those things that cows like to do: drooling, standing, burping, eyeing strangers suspiciously and thinking deep cow thoughts. What those thoughts are, of course, we don't know. But they are probably something like, "This is really a great clump of grass. I mean it. Mmmmmm. I don't think I've ever has a better clump of grass. Gulp. Chomp. Say, now THIS is really a great clump of grass. Wow! Tjis is the best grass I've ever eaten, ect." It's too bad that cows can't run real fast so they could enter the Kentucky Derby. Or that they don't have big claws and bad attitudes so that nobody will mess with them. And it's really too bad that they go so well with mashed potatoes and gravy. But at least they are here. Go ask a dodo bird sometimes how it feels about being tough, stringy and hard to catch. I doubts you'll get a good answer. It's not that dodos are dumb, mind you...they're just extinct. mooo:)

Just when you think you've learned all there is to know about government, you find out something new. For instance, I never knew there was such a thing as the Bento and Musubi Enforcement Branch in the state Health Department, but apparently there is. They are the guys who go around town checking the temperature of Spam musubis and bento lunches. And they've made a shocking discovery: Bentos sits out on counters unrefrigerated for hours at a stretch. Well! As far as they're concerned, this disgusting practice has just got to stop. The public health is in grave danger! I don't know. People have been eating room-temperature bentos for what, 100 years? I don't think they've ever documented a bento-related death. And I've never heard of one person getting sick from eating a musubi. On the other hand. I've heard of a lot of people getting sick from eating poorly cooked hamburgers at well-known fast food places. So, the bento police decided to crack down on box lunches and musubis, and they weren't too thrilled with those dead ducks that hang upside down in Chinese delis either. Their edict was that all bentos and musubis had to be refrigerated. Of course, this met with a predictable result: people ignored it. Apparently, unwilling to form bento SWAT teams to swarm into mom-and-pop stores and wrestle helpless bento criminals to the floor, the Health Department has agreed to form a task force to come up with other solutions. In other words, it gave up. And it's good thing, because trying to change a cultural tide the size of room-temperature bento and musubi consumption in Hawaii is impossible. It's like what happened in New Jersey when they passed the "runny egg" law. Fearful of salmonella from undercooked eggs, the new Jersey legislature made it illegal to cook eggs over-easy or sunny side up. The people told the legislature then repealed the law and probably formed a task force to study other solutions. In other words, it gave up. In short, trying to force stores to refrigerate bentos was a dumb idea. For starters, most people would rather lick cold Crisco off a car bumper than eat a refrigerated bento. More importantly, the bento police ignored two of the great scientific principals of food management: The Spam Preservation Postulate and The Theory of Spam Relativity. According to the Preservation Postulate, Spam sitting at room temperature not only does not spoil, it actually inhibits the growth of bacteria, thereby becoming more edible the longer it is left out. The Theory of Spam Relativity states that any food relatively close to a piece of Spam falls within a BPZ, or bacterial protective zone. While the exact size of the zone is unknown, it is a fact that a single slice of Spam placed in the average bento container protects not only the entire bento from contamination but, possibly, everything on the countertop or storeshelf. Sort of a preservation by proximity theory. So, these health guys need to find something else to worry about. First, they try to crack down on bentos, musubis and dead upside-down-hanging ducks carcasses. Next, who know? They'll probably be trying to figure out what's actually inside a manapua. And, in this case, I think I can safely say no one really wants to know. Aloha buddies, if you're not familiar with these local terms...I like to introduce you to them :) bento: Japanese box lunch. musubi: cold steamed rice, sliced Spam rolled in black seaweed wrappers. manapua: steamed or baked bun filled with meat. plate lunch: an island favorite as an inexpensive, filling lunch. Consists of "two-scoop rice," a scoop of macaroni salad and some type of meat, either beef, chicken or fish. Sometimes called box lunch.

An acquaintance with a better understanding of ranching than I once gave me this bit of advice: never raise anything that eats a lot and is hard to catch. I thought that was good advice, even though I never actually planned to go into ranching. It also explained why cows are so popular among farmers. You never see a farmer in a footrace with Herefords these days. The spunkiness has been bred out of most cows. Now, they just sort of stand around and look disinterested in life. Which is not a bad attitude for a future hamburger steak to adopt. The reason I bring this up is that there apparently is a new trend popping up across the country: ostrich farming. Proponents of ostrich farming points out that ostrich meat is low-calorie and low-fat, which is a big deal these days. It's considered "red meat," which a few marketers think is another selling point. (Ostrich... the OTHER red meat!) In addition, ostrich leather is so touch it can stop a bullet. While some investors are flocking to the ostrich industry, others are leery. Investors in one partnership paid $500,000 for 11 pairs of breeding ostriches. That's not chicken feed. There are some 4,000 ranches raising some 75,000 ostriches in the U.S. right now, many more. Yet, last year, Americans ate only 6,000 pounds of ostrich. That's only about 75 birds. That is chicken feed. Especially when you consider that even the crummiest McDonald's around, located in a bad part of town where one out of ten customers is wounded in drive-by shootings, moves about 4,000 pounds of hamburger a day. More importantly, I think ostrich breeding probably isn't a great idea because it clearly violates both of the basic principles of animal farming that my ranching friend warned me about. To wit: ostriches eat a great deal and they are hard to catch. It takes a hell of a lot of feed to keep a bird the size of a refrigerator happy. And on those 2,000 horsepower drumsticks, ostriches can run like the dickens. (Not to mention ostriches are just plain mean. They consider spitting an acceptable form of greeting, and their favorite pasttime is pecking out eyeballs.) But, all is not lost. With a few changes, ostriches may yet become a mainstream comestible, and a good investment to boot. First, they have to give up trying to sell ostrich as red meat. People don't like to think of birds that big as having red meat. We're a whitemeat society. Even beef producers have started calling T-bone steaks, "the other sort of white meat. Kind of." They also have to come up with a better term for ostrich meat that "ostrich meat." We don't eat "cow meat." We eat beef, steaks, sirlion and hamburger. No one wants to think they are eating dead ostrich. (And you are never going to see an entire roasted ostrich sitting on a Thanksgiving dinner table. For one thing, you'd need a chain saw to carve it.) They need to come up with acceptable edible terms like fleetmeat, quickchick, turbo-chops, swiftlets, speed-chunks, skedaddle-dumplings and mega-neck-nuggets. Finally, they have to solve this ostrich mobility problem. They've got to slow those buggers down. I suggest cross breeding them with slower animals, such as pigs. Now, there would be a delicacy! Imagine enjoying a bacon strips the size of a surfboard that actually is good for you! If they could do all that, I'll call Charles Schwab tomorrow. And on that note, have a pleasant day and enjoyable evening my friends...hugs Howzits :) {credit C.Memminger}

Once police get this DUI- driving under the influence- problem licked, they ought to go after even bigger problem: DWS. That stands for Driving While Stupid, and all indications are that more and more drivers suffer from this affliction. I mean, how many times have you tried to get on the freeway but someone suffering from DWS has stopped right at the end of the on-ramp? You think, man, that guy is really stupid. Doesn't he know that the purpose of an on-ramp is for you to build up speed so you can blend into traffic? You aren't supposed to stop at the end and enter 55-miles-an-hour traffic going 10 miles an hour! Or, how many times does someone suffering from the stupidity syndrome tailgate you even though the traffic is so bad you can't possibly speed up or change lanes? Or, my favorite, how many times have you seen extremely stupid drivers in the left lane of the highways going the slowest speed possible, matching the exact speed as the guy on his right, causing a massive backlog? What the police have to do is pull these clowns over and give them a Field Stupidity Test. These are kind of like sobriety tests, where you touch your nose and things like that. But FSTs determine if you are too stupid to be allowed to keep driving. For instance, the cop could say, "Uh, okay, Mr. Jones. You see that white lane over there? I want you to try to walk on it." Then, when the guy walks out into the middle of traffic to walk on the lane marker, the cop will say, "Hey, brah, whassa matter? You stupid, or what? Get outta the roadway. Ho, brah, you way too stupid to drive. Gimme your keys. You gotta go to stupid traffic School." Other possible Field Stupidity Tests are: 1) Try touching my gun, brah. 2) Lift your car and move it over there, brah. 3) Touch your nose with your thumb and then wiggle your fingers in the air while saying "I think all cops are punks." 4) Pull down your pants and moon the next Mazda that drives by. If the driver attempts any or all of these, he's obviously too stupid to operate a vehicle and should be put in shackles immediately. I would expect the public to get behide the Driving While Stupid campaign and form organizations like MASD (Mothers Against Stupid Drivers). I want to see bumper stickers that say, "Hey, Are You Stupid? Than Park That Thing." Okay, it's a little to long for a bumper sticker, but it might get their attention. Or you simply have a bumper sticker that says, "Don't Drive Stupid." And if a bunch of really stupid people are hanging out together, they have to find someone fairly smart to drive them around. He or she will be the Designated Non-Stupid Driver and will have to vow not to get stupid the entire night. DWS roadblocks probably would be a pretty good idea, too. The cops would just have a few questions ready to pop to the driver, like: "Who would make a better president? Dan Quayle or Pee-Wee Herman?" And if the guy gives a stupid answer, like saying Dan Quayle, you whip him out of the car and make him take the Field Stupidity Test. The great thing about this kind of a law is that it wouldn't clog up the courtrooms. You'd get a stupid driver in court and when the judge asks him how he wants to plead - stupid or not stupid - he'd be totally stumped, and the judge would send him to jail just for the hell of it. **LMAO, all for fun and remember my Cherry Buddies...Share The Road, Drive Safe and Don't Get Caught DWS :)*

I'm sitting here in the left lane traffic stuck behide a car silly enough to be going below the speed limit during this holiday frickin' season. The car has a bumper sticker that says "Live Aloha," and right now, I hate that phrase. I hate it mainly because I hate the guy driving that car it's stuck on. He refuses to yield to the growing line of cars behide him. It just goes to show you how hollow bumper sticker philosophy is. I think if you insist on putting a bumper sticker on your car, you are honor-bound to live by whatever slogan is on it. And right now, old "Live Aloha" here is not showing any aloha to anyone, like getting his butt out of our way. So, with nothing better to do but study this car's bumper for the rest of the trip into town, it occurs to me that whoever thought up "Live Aloha" for a bumper sticker sure didn't put much thought into it. It's too vague, to begin with. And it sounds like a command. My first reaction when I see an order like "Like Aloha" is "Make Me." I think if you are going to have a bumper sticker that says something like that, you ought to punch it up, like "Live Aloha, Or Die Trying." See, now that grabs you. If you want something a little more hopeful and less hostile, you could say "Live Aloha, Die Rich." This makes you think that, if there must be "Aloha" bumper stickers of some sort, there are many other ideas that would have more impact. Think of some of those great rallying cries our country is so famous for. You didn't get the Revolutionary War Minute Men hot for battle by slapping a bumper sticker on the back of their horses that said, "Live Independence." Instead, they had a dramatic flag decorated with a snake representing the colonies with dire warning: "Don't Tread on Me!" That kind of a bumper sticker might work here: "Don't Tread on Aloha!" Or, you could move to another point in history where people needed a snappy slogan to live by, like "Aloha Right or Wrong." That's nonconfrontational. It's basically asking for complete dedication to the ideal of "aloha." Something with a little more teeth would be "Aloha: Live It or Lose It." Ooooh. That's got a nice ominous ring to it. Then again, maybe I'm reading the bumper sticker the wrong way. Maybe it doesn't say "live" with a soft "i," as in "live and let live" - maybe it says "live," like in "Larry King: Live." If that's the case, other possibilities for improvement exist. We could use the movie genre, like when Frankenstein's monster sits up for the first time. We could make a bumper sticker that says "Aloha. It's a-live!" Or you could have a bumper sticker with a rock 'n' roll type of feel, like an emcee introducing a band: "Ladies and Gentlemen. Live and In Concert: Aloha!" Or something Patrick Herny-ish: "I Regret That I Have Only One Aloha to Live For My Country." Oh, man, this opens up a whole bunch of possibilities! How about "Aloha: It just keeps Going And Going!" Or "Aloha: Never Leave Home Without It!" Finally, the "Live Aloha" car has gotten the messages and changed lanes. The way is clear and suddenly cars are flying past both him and me at a frightening pace. Obviously, they would favor a bumper sticker from the World ar II era: "Damn The Aloha. Full Speed Ahead." Happy Holidays Cherry Buddies Love Howzits in Hawaii :))