Seven Habits of Highly-Effective Hitlers

Not every Hitler gets to take-over his own country.  Most have to be satisfied with dominating only the people they know and come into contact with everyday.  But that doesn’t stop you from becoming the most-effective Hitler you can be , if you just believe in yourself to the exclusion of all others! 

Here’s a plan to keep even the most-self-conscious facist on track:

Habit One: Maintain Your Power:  You have to keep power to get power, if you know what I mean.  You must never doubt yourself.  Critics aren’t just wrong, they’re Satan!  Never waiver on your path to total domination.  If you hear a little voice in your head questioning Habit One, clobber it.

Habit Two: Find Your Subjects:  Whether you plan to take-over your native country and spread your evil genicidal rot from there, or if you just want to rule your own little nuclear family with an iron fist, forming your children into messed-up and highly-ineffective adults — or something in between –  whatever your plan is, you need someone to dominate right now.  If a coup is out of the question, consider starting a family, or even getting a job in management.

Habit Three: Stay in Your Insanity Zone: We all know, a little crazy goes a long way.   A little crazy is charismatic, a bit more is convenient as well, at times when your subjects attempt to use reason on you.  But when you go too far into crazy, we’ve all seen what happens.  You lose it, and become a Highly-Ineffective Hitler.   This is a big no-no.  You must find the proper level of insanity and stick with it!

Habit Four: Locate Your Leni Riefenstahl:  A great Hitler needs to pair up with someone who can make him feel and look like a god.  Whether this be your presidential spokesperson or your tan-salon specialist, I cannot stress how important it is to locate top talent to keep your legend lookin’ good. 

Well, that’s enough for today.  Perhaps you have a Habit to share that you have gleaned from the most-effective Hitlers in your midst.  You might be surprised how much you know and are willing to share about how to be an effective Hitler.

We Secretly Replaced the World’s Democracies with Folger’s Crystal Coffee

And no one noticed the difference!

Citizens the world round are delighted by Folgers Crystals instant coffee in place of the usual, slow-brewed democracy. In polls people prefer it 20 to one.

Here’s a few responses from customers who were pleasantly surprised:

“I can’t believe this is instant coffee!  I would have sweared this was the usual constitutional three-branch representative democracy that I always enjoy after a big meal.”

“This is Folger’s Crystals?  I’m switching right away.  I can’t believe I’ve been making messy, time-consuming government by and for the people all this time!  I could have just added hot water!”

“Did you say this was Folgers? Amazing.  Before tonight, I wouldn’t have touched instant coffee, but now that you’ve tricked me into it, well. I can say, only a fool would brew whole-bean representation when they could save themselves all that effort with instant.”

“Delicious.  I know a few non-democracies that would be interested in this stuff – it’s that good!”

Warning: Annual Retrospective Season Looms

It’s that time of year when everyone (in the media) takes a quick glimpse back at the last 12 months before jumping blind into the next 12 months.  Time to revive for one last moment all the folks who croaked, the famous ones I mean, and all the big disasters (especially the ones they have pictures for). They always include a few of the good things that folks might have done, crazy heroic acts and heartfelt philanthropy for some total heartbreak case, not to mention all the year’s developments in the big news stories and in the latest teen idol’s complete disintegration.  

Hard to give a crap about the geopolitical quagmire, but damn I need my latest teen-idol disintegration news just to get me out of bed in the morning, how about you?

Bad Apple also feels a certain retrospective impulse coming on, because I’m celebrating the one year birthday of the Bad Apple Blog on December 6.  It’s been a year of discovery, invention, and strangeness at Bad Apple, and I’m going try to ruminate on the high points, exorcise the garbage, and generally get a handle on where all this rot is headed heading into the great 20 ot eight.

For example, I’m going to take a hard look at potatoes vs. tomatoes.  In 2008, I predict all-out war between the potato and the tomato stories here at Bad Apple. Such vegetable rivalries never end up pretty.

Also, what about the cannibal chickens?  Will they remain misunderstood freaks or will they become the new It-chickens of tomorrow?  Stranger things have happened, folks, so don’t be laughing at my predictions’ predictor, now. 

Well, this is just a preview of the kind of deep bad apple pie-style thinking I’ll be serving up in December.  As a friend, I strongly discourage you from facing the annual retrospective season without regular, inoculating visits to this site.

Have We Done Enough Nothing Yet?

Officially, it is unsafe to help the birds and clean up the oil on the crude-besotted coast of San Francisco Bay.  Officially, you should leave your hillside home to burn and let the experts take care of it.  And if there are no experts in sight and your house is burning and your shores are coated with black death and a wild bird is struggling to stay above the surf, well, remember to stick to safer activities like driving at 80 mph in the carbon car and shopping in the city where homicides are only at X many this year compared to last. 

Yes, and we all know what good hands our national security is in, and how safe the geoglobal political politics are making us everyday in every way.  Not to mention what’s going to happen around here when The Levy breaks, The Big One hits, and millions of people go crazy on each other for things like food and water.  I’m so freaken safe-feeling right now, I could swallow a sword. 

Why is it in a so-called participatory democracy that the official line is “do nothing?”  Haven’t we done enough nothing yet??  Haven’t we let them rip up the trolley lines and turn our cities around, to be built for cars instead of people?  Haven’t we let them string us along on this toxic death road long enough? 

We who live in our dream houses have let the fire’s fuel build up too much.  This land wants to burn.  The chaparral needsto burn to complete its cycle.  We told it, don’t burn:  It’s much safer to do nothing.  But oh, you cannot tell the chaparral that.  It may listen for a while, but we all know that when it does finally, inevitably go up, it’s much worse.  Even the chaparral won’t survive that inferno. 

So goes democracy’s story.  The powerful say “be still,” but enough fuel builds in the frustrated human heart to blow us all away in a beat. Justice and greater equality aren’t nice ideas to be set up in gilded frame in the back of some museum.  The human race can’t build a future on corrupt privilege for the few and massive injustice for the rest – we have to keep those relics in the rear view mirror if we plan to survive any significant length of time.

Today, deadly oil mars San Francisco waters, a bay of such peculiar natural security that the sea’s storms can’t penetrate.  All the unseen animals seeking refuge beneath its surface, a wilderness that humanity spoils everyday, in little ways and now in a big one.  It is too ugly to face, and yet I must see my own complicity in this pure evil unleashed on the voiceless innocent.  I too haven’t done nearly enough, have left too much to the experts.  Swept up in short-sighted survival agendas, living in not exactly a dream house but certainly not a reality house, either.

But fortunately (and unlike official spokespeople), fire doesn’t mince words.  So sometimes it becomes blessedly obvious that the only right course of action is to turn on the hose and stop your house from burning down.  Of course, in matters like fire and oil and democracy, time is of the essence.  Wait long enough, and the inferno isn’t safe for any living thing.  

What democracy and life require now is a low, hot fire burning under the proverbial asses of our politicians, figuratively speaking, so let’s all use a little bit of the overabundant fuel in our hearts to call and call and call, and vote, and talk to others voters, and get involved and get engaged, and do something! 

Don’t leave self-government to the experts, because that has proven the least safe course of them all.

When Branding Burns

When oh when did the language shift, people? When did “selling out” change to “buying in”???  When did people start to sit still for getting branded?  I for one am outta here at the first whiff of burning flesh wafting down the hall, folks.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for turning the Golden Gate Bridge into a giant underground shopping mall. Hell, paint it yellow and turn it into the Golden Arches McDonaldland Play Emporium Bridge if it means we can keep our local Bohemian Club open for the poor ultra rich to send their ruined psyches to summer-camp.  Hey, I’m not a heartless anarchist here.  I believe the children of the ultra privileged deserve just as many Taco Shack tattoos as anyone.

Actually, the problem with corporations is that they haven’t completely taken over yet, so naturally we are all suffering in a state of pre-corperatization.  No wonder no one knows who the hell they are – we have yet to fully embrace our soul brands and  place them at the center of our existence.  Right now, we remain confused as a species about things like God and democracy, but one day soon all that confusion will be cleared away.

Actually, we secretly replaced the world’s democracies with Folder Crystals coffee a few months back, and no one noticed the difference!  Citizens the world round are delighted by Folders Crystals instant coffee in place of the usual, slow-brewed democracy, and in polls people prefer it 20 to one.

Celebrity Mayor Meets With Crack-Head Wood Elves

Just to prove even Bad Apples can be burdened with a conscience, I admit that I do, I feel a tiny twinge of something approaching guilt over having put Mayor Sellums in the Celebrity Mayor category in yesterday’s post.  I agree, it’s still early in the game.  It’s only been a year.  Give him a chance, the little twinge tells me.  Things look bad, yes, but he still has a couple more years to really blow it.

After all, at least Outland’s latest Celebrity Mayor is famous for being a politician, but then again, so was the last one and he was the worst of all, even worse than Mayor Willy, another celebrity politician Celebrity Mayor I suffered under, back when I resided over the bay waters in San Franabismal. In fact, now that I think about it, celebrity politicians may prove to be the worst Celebrity Mayors of them all, if you can imagine that’s even possible! 

So naturally it’s so hard to keep an open mind about Mayor Sellums, even though, yes, he had a great run over there in Congress, and even if he practically had to teach them old boys social justice at the ABC level, even if he pretty much shook down South African apartheid with his little finger — let’s remember, this here is the City of Outland we’re talking about now.  This place eats Celebrity Mayors for a midnight toothpick.

The problem is, it’s one thing to take on the seat of national and international power, the good old boys, the White House, etc.  It’s quite another to take on the local gangs, the good old city bureaucrats, the Crack Houses, etc.  

Probably anyone would choose being stroked and seduced by a harem of Satan’s lobbyists over a forced listening-to of local activists trying to save the last transvestite albino Redwood tree and its population of homeless wood elves addicted to hookers and crack.  I mean, who wouldn’t?? 

The fact is, there’s very little in life that a fat check from a cute lobbyist can’t solve or at least make feel a little better.  But almost nothing in life can be done about those crack-addicted wood elves.  Those things be hella nasty!

Well, Mayor Sellums, may the Force be with you as you take on the armies of gnome, leprechauns, pink lawn flamingos, iron maidens, ugly Betty’s, and every other kind of citizen here in the great cheesefood-melt of Outland, California.  Remember, we only expect you to fix everything, and chopping Bad Apple’s job in your first budget really is not something we here call an “auspicious start.”

Like a City of Trash on a Hill of Trash

Did you know there’s a floating island of trash north of Hawaii that’s larger than Texas?  That’s right, and somewhere on it, there’s a village missing its idiot, George Bush.

In fact, there’s so much trash congregating in the Pacific that experts predict underwater trash mountains will soon lead to new trash islands, and not just the floating kind.  In related news, Disneyland is considering adding a Trash Mountain ride to their California Adventure Park. (Imagine the thrill of coming within centimeters of being pricked with a used hypodermic needle!)

In even more other news, the scientists have discovered all sorts of species are catching a ride on the ocean trash train and setting out for new shores.  I’m sure this is a real piss off for those immigration reformers who feel everyone should just stay put wherever they happen to be born.

Yes, we don’t get enough trash news in the West, only celebrity trash news.  We have to look to Pravda to find out about our great freaking island of trash!  I mean if that isn’t one of the major manmade wonders of the world, my middle name isn’t Censorship Sal.

Actually, unlike Greenpeace, I think the island of trash is humanity’s best hope.  We simply wait until it becomes a continent of trash, and then we form a new nation on top of the tampon applicators and easy-pic toothpicks of yesterday. It will be like a city of trash on a hill of trash, but we won’t let any new trash in — and only the best trash will be allowed to stay.  Sorry, George.

Jesus: “I’m Coming Back as the iPhone”

iHave a confession to make. iCould care less about the iPhone.  Actually, caring any less about the iPhone would require me to care about not caring, so actually, as it turns out I couldn’t care less after all.

iKnow I’m a loser for it because iKnow the iPhone is really great. iKnow it’s going to bring about world peace and nirvana for the masses and a round of top-shelf screaming orgasms for all, but iStill can’t bring myself to care about the iPhone.  I’m just a selfish ass trying to pay my rent. If iReally cared, I’d pay twice the asking price for my iPhone and if it didn’t work, I’d get on my knees and thank God and King Jobs for my broken iPhone, which is so many worlds better than no iPhone at all.

Then I’d go back to scavenging the toxic waste dump for dinner.  Life is good, business is freaking fantastic, and iPhones are really the second coming of Christ. 

What, you didn’t know about the missing page in The Bible where Jesus says: “I’m coming back as the iPhone”?  What backward Luddite version of The Bible you been reading, sister?

Happy Get Your Ass to Work Day

It’s Monday, and people everywhere celebrated Get Your Ass to Work Day by getting up and getting their asses to work. Unlike Bike to Work Day which only occurs once annually, Get Your Ass to Work Day is celebrated nearly every day the world over. That’s how much we like it, even though, yes, a holiday that goes for five days out of seven all year long is bound to have a few drawbacks.

One problem is “reentry burn,” an issue I had this morning. You see, I woke up in a haze after two whole days of not celebrating Get Your Ass to Work Day. The truth is, I almost completely forgot it was Get Your Ass to Work Day! By the time I realized what day it was, I had to race to pull my costume together and gather all my Get Your Ass to Work Day traditional items (lunch, make-up, voodoo doll of boss). As you can imagine, I almost nearly didn’t get my ass to work!

Not that I think every day should be Get Your Ass to Work Day. Oh no, that is not what I’m suggesting, oh, Powers That Be, that determine our holidays and when and how they will be celebrated. Far be it from me to suggest anything to the folks that bring us bomb shows on the fourth, turkey genocide in the fall, Hallmark schlock-idays at sickening intervals, and that crowning atrocity of festering expectation known now as “the Winter Holidays.” Burrr. Compared to these annual soul-drains, even Get Your Ass to Work Day seems fun, which I suppose is the whole point.

So have a happy Get Your Ass to Work Day! I hope you managed to Get Your Ass to Work in a timely and stylish fashion. Do you like your costume today? Will you join the sidewalk parade, then? Did you bring your lunch or are you going out? Try to have a happy holiday now! Don’t forget to visit with your friends and drop a comment at your favorite blogs, you big social butterfly, you.

Putrid Foulness: Our Best Hope for Humanity?

Ever noticed how nothing on Earth gets people politically activated faster than a really foul stink? Democracy may have eroded away beyond recognition in the breast of most of us overly-entertained and utterly-distracted citizens of the first world, and we may allow the powers that want-to-be to really screw things up for everyone, just as long as things don’t begin to actually reek.

But watch out world, because once offense occurs on an olfactory level, there’s nothing that can put our Yankee Doodle dandy back in the box, at least not until things return to smell-o-librium.

Now usually, all of the worst smelling things in life are dead, and normally they get well buried away to keep everything running smoothly up here on surface Earth. But ever so often, something goes haywire and a whale washes up on some beach to stink for weeks while the bureaucrats shrug. Or that really smelly rendering plant gets a little too close to the encroaching neighborhoods, and suddenly you have a mini-American revolution all over again – citizens finding their voices on behalf of their noses. It’s enough to bring a tear to this freedom daughter’s eye.

Remember, a foul-scented inspiration is an inspiration nonetheless, and we spoiled modern humans need to find something that will inspire us to progress. After all, there are a lot of terrible things that come in through the eyes and ears that one can ignore, justify, and shirk-off, but a rancid smell of death and decay is not the kind of everyday atrocity that is so effortlessly filtered.

The human race cannot afford to look down our noses at this promising link between popular power and the schnaz – let us instead use our noses to direct the leaders who would lead us by our noses. Adding an olfactory component to politics could only effect growth and change for the better, and to that end, I say bring on the Smell-O-Vision - if only for the sake of the news. If Americans could just smell our foreign policy for once, I know we wouldn’t stand for it one more stinking repulsive minute!