A few months ago, when it was bad, I would maybe get one trip to O’Hare every week.  Before the recession, you’d get one per day.  Yesterday, my friend, he drove out to the airport three times.  Three!  You are my second fare to the airport this week.  I had one Monday and now you today.  Look at this traffic!  A few weeks ago you could get to O’Hare in 20, 25 minutes.  Today it may take 45.  Business is happening again.

And he’s right.  I’m flying to California on a business trip.  Business is happening again.

photo credit: Matt Werner Photography

His basic premise is that the activity of traffic, of cab rides, of construction is a gauge he can measure daily.  What was weeks-ago a rare and quiet 7AM morning trip to the airport is now a traffic slog that’s happening daily.  His income is likely up.  He’s busy again.  He mentioned that the going price for a city taxi badge was hundreds of thousands of dollars now – a year ago the price was a tenth that.  He could see the economy recovering.  People were spending money.

Economic recovery is still a pivotal part of this year’s elections.  The Beige-Book report only hints at it, but my cab driver and I know it’s here.  The rest of America has three weeks to realize it’s happening too, and when they do, the Tea Party doesn’t stand a chance.

We didn’t see a single Mexican place in Paris.  Ethnic food, as a whole, seemed to be in short supply.  We had Thai once.  It was good, but France’s inferno spicy level is America’s medium.  It’s just different here.  My first hypothesis was that it was the lack of a colonist culture.  England has great Indian food, which supported my theory.  But France was big into Vietnam, but they seem to have influenced Vietnamese food more than they let Vietnamese food influence French cuisine.  We did see American food — McDonalds and KFC and a terrifying, Texas-themed place called Texas Pete’s or something.  We tracked down pizza a couple nights.  There seems to be more ingredient-related risk at the pricier places, but I craved cheap tacos.

photo credit: lucianvenutian

Now I think it’s an immigration thing.  France isn’t terribly open about things.  They just expelled a few thousand Roma.  They convene yearly to purge foreign influence from the language.  They’re … insulated.  Intentionally.  There are rules on how to make each region’s wine.  There’s a fixed price for the basic baguette.  Each cheese type has a mandated shape.  It’s both amazingly complex and amazingly simple — you never have to worry if you’ll be able to have quiche Lorraine for dinner.  There’s comfort in that.

The US has its issues with immigration, but we need to look to our guts to settle these issues.  It’s not about job-stealing or welfare-scamming — it’s about flavor.  It’s about the tortilla chip.  What would America be without Mexican food?  We’d all eat burgers and fried chicken and iceberg lettuce salads everyday.  Goodbye, tacos — we’d turn into France.

In Chicago, I’m surrounded by ethnic food, but no country is better represented than Mexico.  I can leave my apartment and walk across the street and go to the corner burrito place.  From there, I can go directly across the street to the other corner for more elaborate Mexican food, or go two-doors-down to the other burrito take-out place (which is across the street and around the corner from two other burrito joints), or spin around and head perpendicular two blocks to my wife’s favorite spot, or head a block north to my favorite.  It’s everywhere and I love it.  Give me tacos or give me death, I say.  Viva tortilla chips!

I’m having Mexican food tonight and I can’t wait.  I can’t wait for the spice to make my nose run.  There’s comfort in that.  And if you try to take that away from me, I will jump in the picket-line so fast it’ll brûlée your cheeseburger.

Maybe I’m idealizing the past I wasn’t part of, but I believe people used to go to museums to look at art.  They looked at the Mona Lisa … LOOKED at it … and took it in … experienced it (Dean Moriarty would have dug the Mona Lisa).  But that was the point — look at the thing and take it in … maybe talk to those experiencing it with you (… Dude, why doesn’t she have eyebrows?).  That’s not the case anymore.  Our cameras now hinder our ability to experience the beauty of our art.  Now, instead of LOOKING at the thing, we want to get a picture of it.  We whip out our iPhones and our CoolPix and our Rebels and we click-click-click our way through museums.  Click-click-click … pictures that have already been taken.  Click-click-click … pictures for Facebook we’ll never look at.  Click-click-click and bump-bump-bump those around us … the others getting in the way of our perfect picture … click-click-click … I don’t want to talk to anybody about this art, I just want to … click-click-click!  Are my eyes open in that one?  Take another … click-click-click!  Hey, we’re trying to take a picture here, buddy … click-click-CLICK!  Enough.

Here’s what we should do: ban cameras.  Ban cell phones too.  No electronics allowed in museums.  Instead, the museum takes your picture when you enter, and if you want a picture of your body in front of Winged Victory, they Photoshop you together.  You get three free prints with your admission and unlimited downloads for the next two months from the museum website.  You can have your shit pictures, but you don’t get to ruin your experience trying to take them.  This can work.  We don’t have to take this.

photo credit: i_yudai

photo credit: bonus1up

Hard on Terrorists

photo credit: dan paluska

It had been two weeks since the Prosthetic Penis Bomber had struck, and the United States was again winning the War on Terror.  All males were now padded down at airport security and those with a hard, potential stick of dynamite in their pants had some explaining to do.  The soft, good Americans were allowed right through.

Of course the Defeaticrats said this was un-American and grotesque.  They didn’t understand that “we have to fight them down here (the President said pointing to his crotch with both arms), so we don’t have to fight them here (now pointing at his head and heart).”  It was very simple, the President explained after raising the threat level to orange in front of what could have been the flaming wreckage of flight 333, Southwest’s flight servicing Chicago Midway and Oakland, California.  “We cannot afford to be soft on terrorists.  We have to be hard on terrorists.  Good Americans with soft penises will not have any trouble at airport security.  You are all good Americans, aren’t you?”  The Press Secretary would have more explaining to do later.

“You don’t understand,” he told a reporter.  “The new rule is exactly like the rule requiring all laptop computers to be turned on before passing through airport security.  It’s just the opposite.  We can’t treat this like the shoe-bomb situation of a few years ago.  Not only can we not send a male’s member through the scanner, but the explosive potential of a prosthetic of this nature is significantly greater than that of a Dr. Scholl’s gel shoe insert, and we haven’t even allowed those on planes in over a year.  We can’t just ban men from flying, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” he said with a laugh.   It was the reporter now that looked ridiculous.  How could she even suggest banning all men from flying?  That would be ridiculous!  The president’s solution was the same type of knee jerk protection that didn’t do anything but needed to be done so that it looked like he was doing something so it had to be done.  And something had to be done; the threat level had already been raised to orange.

No, men could not be banned from flying like dangerous Dr. Scholl’s gel shoe inserts and Revlon Extreme Hold hair styling gel.  And men couldn’t be scanned with the airport scanner like a dangerous pair of Allen Edmonds, and they wouldn’t fit into a bomb-proof, pint-sized zip-top bag like a deadly tube of Colgate Total Whitening either.  America had no choice but to pat down each male as he passed through airport security and to single out those potential offenders and make them turn their penises off.  It was just like the laptop computer rule that stated all computers had to be turned on.

“The computer rule states that all laptop computers need to be turned on,” the airport guard told a person that can only be described as a white potential terrorist.

“I’ve told you already, this isn’t a laptop computer,” the white potential terrorist said.

“Then where is its screen?” the guard asked.

“It doesn’t have a screen.  It’s a server.  I’ve already told you that.”

“Well, we can’t let it on the plane unless your laptop turns on.  I’m sorry, but you’ll have to board without it.”

“I can’t board without it.  My only reason for flying is to take this server from Chicago to LA.”  The white potential terrorist was supposedly an IT Administrator from the law firm Womanizer, Idiot and Jackass LLP, or something.  He showed his business card to the airport security guard, but the guard’s job was to follow the rules, not to read.

“Well, you have to turn all laptops on at airport security.”

“I can turn it on, but I don’t have a screen, so you won’t be able to see anything.”

“Then turn it on.”  The guard crossed his arms.  He was hard on terrorists.

“I need to plug it in,” the white potential terrorist IT Administrator from Womanizer, Idiot and Jackass LLP, or something pulled a cord from his carry-on bag and carried what was either a bomb or a server over to the wall outlet.

“See, it’s on.”

“What’s it do when it’s on?” the airport security guard asked.

“This green light blinks.”  The white potential terrorist IT Administrator pointed at the green blinking LED on the server.

“What about those red ones?”

“They only blink if there are problems.”

“Well, it is on.  I guess you can fly with it,” the guard said because nobody had ever been able to build a bomb that you could plug into a wall with a blinking green light not to mention a bogus bare-bones computer that could boot, but was really a bomb.  And this guy was white and a nerd and had a business card and his penis hadn’t been hard when the airport security guard had checked.

“I feel some hardness here,” the security guard said to an elderly gentleman that had just walked through the scanner.  The guard working the scanner heard his cue and scanned the elderly gentleman’s carry-on bag and walker twice to make sure he caught everything.  He saw what looked like Dr. Scholl’s gel shoe inserts in the man’s Velcro shoes and what looked like Colgate Total Whitening toothpaste and Burt’s Bees Lifeguard’s Friend lip balm in what had better be a zip-top bag.  He called over another guard to investigate.

“You’ll have to turn that off,” the guard said pointing to the elderly gentleman’s groin.  You can do so in cubicle six.

“It’s the Viagra,” the man explained.  “I’ve been hard since last night.”

“Well, cubicle six is all ready for you.”  The guard felt sorry for the man even though he could easily be a terrorist, so he pulled the man’s walker from the scanner and let the man use it to get to cubicle six.

“Do you have any lotion?” the elderly gentleman asked.

“If you needed lotion, you should have brought it in your zip-top bag.”

The elderly man rose to find cubicle six.  Four other men were utilizing cubicles one through four and an airport guard was cleaning number five.

“When will it end?” he asked, to nobody in particular, though nobody was listening because all the guards were busy terrorizing the passengers by being hard on terrorists and nobody had any time for logic and reason because the threat level was orange and something had to be done.

The man in cubicle two smiled while those in the others gritted their teeth.  “Inspection!” the cubicle monitor guard yelled to the guard cleaning cubicle five.  The man in cubicle two had ejaculated and had cleared his name.  He could now fly.

America was now filled with men that had to fuck themselves to fly.  And when you’re fucked, the only solution is to stay the course and win by adapting.  Men adapted by wearing frozen pouch boxers that were frozen the night before in their freezers until the FAA found out that the frozen insert was a gel and had to be banned from flight.  Men stayed the course by continuing to fly and by not causing a scene when they needed to jack off to do so.  And everybody ignored the Muslim world, which was outraged in their hearts and minds at the hedonistic lack of morals the United States showed by making their citizens masturbate in their airports.  But it had been two weeks since the Prosthetic Penis Bomber had struck, over two years since the Shoe Bomber had struck, and almost a year since the Gel Bombers had almost struck and the United States was again winning the War on Terror and that was all that mattered.