In a surprise leap of logic out of the volcano and onto the asphalt, leading scientists recently discovered the hottest place on earth is not buried deep in some obsure sleeping volcano. Instead, earth’s hottest high temperatures were recently found to exist on seat surfaces inside the average parked family automobile.

“The skin searing temperatures reached on even the lightest-colored car seat far exede what we had first assumed,” announced Winslow P. Star, the heatometrist credited with the discovery.  “I mean, it always felt like a cajillion degrees to me and the kids, but you never know anything until a meter reading tells you what you know.”

Star decided to test the temperature on his car seat one day after a long day of volcano temperature testing.  That’s when he made the discovery that molten lava can’t hold a candle to the heat stored in car seats. 

I hate how the Bad Apple blog has languished on the vine, or the branch, or wherever the hell bad apples grow.  I hate it, yet I know that sometimes life interferes with blogging, dammit.  My priorities are beyond messed up.  I might as well stick my planner in the blender and add a few Blackberries to make things real messy.  That would actually be an improvement over my current “system,” not to mention a fine source of vitamins and minerals.

I wish I could share all the twisty turns, the portentous plot points and the innies and outies of my life of late in Tomatofornia.  It’s not easy working at the world’s central headquarters for all known tomato knowledge, especially what with public institutions finding themselves on the chopping block so we can keep paying to make the world safe for terrorists.

You would find it hard to believe that in this day and age in the first world the kinds of sudsy soap opera bubble plots management has for labor.  It’s not hard for me to imagine a world with no tomatoes left at all.  All the chicken cannibals came and pecked the plants to pieces, and what they didn’t destroy old Terminato the Deadly Tomato is bound to turn Gang Green.

But I’m still here, and I promise more bruised fruit is on its way.  My fingers itch to tell you everything.  I will say more as soon as my tongue unfreezes from that Blackberry smoothie.

In the meantime, I suggest you bone up on my earlier Tomatofornia posts.  This is truly the best preparation for the future that I can offer you.

One day we’re all going to be old, if we aren’t dead already.  And then we are all going to look back at our lives, if we can remember them.  Finally, we’re going to have the time to sort out what we should have done, only it will be way too late.  So the only thing to do is to get in touch with your inner old person, now, while you still have a chance to make a change.

Every person has an old geezer living inside of them, some crotchety old jerk who’s gonna give their opinion whether you ask for it or not. You may have stuffed him, or her, into an interior mental hamper to shut them up.  But if you really want to be happy, you have to let them out so they can freely bitch and complain about the crap you’ve made of your life so far.   

Here’s what you do: Imagine yourself on your death bed for a while, and think about what you would have liked to do with your one sweet life, if you could take it all back now and live it over again.  Remember, you are about to die, which really sucks, so you must be super pissed-off about the things you didn’t get to do — I mean, I for one am probably going to be so mad by that point, I’m going to be ready kill someone, only, I’m going to be too weak to even kill a fly by then. 

Fortunately, I’m still plenty young and strong enough to kill an entire freight-load of flies if I wanted. That’s why this exercise is so amazingly worthwhile to do, if you don’t wait until too late.

Now, come back to the present.  Wow, you are so happy not to be nearly dead!  You are alive and actually years and years away from croaking of old age!  You can do stuff!  You can make changes.  The bed you’ve made of your life so far does not have to be the one you sleep in.   Do you see how that you can turn things around now?  In fact, your inner geezer demands it!!

After your inner geezer has had this chance to share this valuable lesson, it’s probably time to stuff them back down the ol’ hamper again.  You don’t need any more people in your head criticizing you.  There’s enough people outside your head ready to do that.  Remember where you stuff the old person you, though, because you always want to keep in mind where you’re really headed.  How does the saying go, live life like you get to live forever but every day’s your last chance. Something like that.   

And when other people start to mess with you, you can always bring out the old-person-you to give um an earful.  It’s good to have an old person on your side like that, because old people have a lot of experience, and when they’re right they’re so right.

The way I figure, when I’m older I’m either going to be wiser or more bitter — one or the other.  I like the wiser option.  Bitter doesn’t wear well on most people.

Do you suck as a boss?  Inc.com has created a list of signs to help you discover if your employees can’t stand the sight of you and run in the other direction when they see you coming — in case you live in a cloud of blissful, mean ignorance, totally unaware what a giant jerk and bully you are to your workers.  

My personal favorite from the list: Too many ex-employees:

“If your staff falls away like linty Post-it notes, ask yourself: Is high turnover the problem? Or am I?”

Of course, if you are a crappy boss, this kind of wussy self-questioning probably isn’t your style anyway.  In that case, you might prefer the kind of advice found in the soon-to-be-published best-seller The Seven Habits of Highly-Effective Hitlers. 

Finally, I’d like to present a word of encouragement to crappy bosses and their poor victim-workers everywhere.  It’s a little motto that I live by, even had one of those trendy band bracelots made up special to always remind me of these wise, wise words:

Never Give Up…

Your Liver.

It’s another ho-hum election day in California. I know I’m supposed to be overjoyed by my choices — I’m not.  Can anyone explain, why oh why does such a creative state as California always have to have such a dry, legalistic ballot?

I’m tired of these meaningless measures and the brain-killing language they ride in on.  Who writes this crap, bureaucrats?  No wonder a majority of folks don’t want to vote anymore – It’s soooo BORING!  

It gives democracy a bad name, people.  How is democracy supposed to look youthful and fabulous, anyway, with all these stodgy dudes in beige suits trying to make it look like dull work?  We all know that behind closed doors our elected officials all put on tie-dye togas and dance around like the mortgage-dance cowboy. They don’t really fool anyone.  

Even adding a little more color and gender to the ballot doesn’t stop it from boring me to death over here.  It’s still the same old Coke versus Pepsi debate when I don’t drink either — that worthless sugar-water just rots the teeth, don’t you know?

If I ran the elections, you can bet that Bad Apple would spice things up a bit.  In Bad Apple’s election, we wouldn’t obsess over a little money spent on this or that, bondus boreyondous. Boring ballots are the elitists’ last defense, in case Americans’ ever-shortening attention span isn’t short enough, and if the out and out election fraud doesn’t, for some reason, take.

Bad Apple’s ballot, now there’s something else entirely!  Finally, a ballot worthy of citizen’s time — as inspiring as it is informative.  Critics everywhere would call it “the feel-good election ballot of the year!”

Of course, Bad Apple’s ballot would decide only the big and radically-important stuff.  Here are some possible initiatives that my ballot might put up for future vote:

-Should we continue cooking ourselves and the planet alive, or should we stop cooking ourselves and the planet alive?

-Should we vote fuckheads off the island?

-Should we tear down the City of (fill in the blank), and its incredibly backward traffic patterns, including that horrendous flash bulb camera set to catch red-light runners? 

–Should there be a law against celebrities becoming politicians and politicians becoming actors?

-Should the top two percent of uber-capitalists keep getting more and more loaded, or should we have them walk the plank, mateys?

-Lastly, should we outlaw beige suits and boring language from our politicians?  Isn’t it high time we make it hella sexy and endlessly faboo to protect our democracy from these devils in beige?  

Got something you’d like on the Bad Apple Ballot? Fresh, hot instant democracy available now at the drop of a comment (below).

Love is more-than-normally complicated for the perplexed chicken with a taste for… chicken, and the people who love them.

Cannibal chickens have mixed feelings about their double yearnings — for romantic love with another chicken on the one hand and for the gastronomic satisfaction of a barbecued breast and drumstick on the other. 

What with eating other chickens a real taboo among chickens, cannibal chickens typically must limit their romantic interest to other cannibal chickens.  This concentration of cannibal-chicken clans only serves to further distort their dietary freakishness, leading to a potential powder keg of Kentucky-fried cravings.

(Or at least so at my house.)

Anyway, until recently Valentine’s Day was a fairly lonesome affair for many a cannibal chicken who had no means of meeting other cannibal chickens for conversation, sex, or anything in between.  Until now.  Thanks to the Internet, cannibal chickens are making community like never before, on-line and off. 

Today, cannibal chicken raves and speak-easy-style singles bars (known as cluck-easy’s) are increasingly common in more chicken-dense counties.  Any fowl expert will tell you, these bird-eating birds are hooking up, hitching up, and hatching up more… cannibal chickens.

Coming up on Bad Apple in February, you’ll want to stay tuned for our super-sexy Valentines Day feature all about how some lucky cannibal chickens will be spending their V-Day at the most romantic chicken-roast for chickens you can possible imagine.  (Images of hot crackling chicken over a blazing fire and a room of revelling chicken couples toasting to romance and the growing underground cannibal-chicken-restaurant industry).

Then we’ll follow one couple out to a night of partying and dancing, including the first reports ever from inside San Francisco’s hippest cluck-easy’s.

Remember, Bad Apple is the only media outlet that provides any coverage of cannibal chickens, or that even admits they exist.

***

More future stories in the works:

What it Means to Love a Cannibal Chicken.

Cannibal Chicken Graft Gangs: Community Success Strategies.

To Dress or Not to Dress Your Cannibal Chicken, 5 FAQs

***

     Want more now?

Visit the original Chicken Soup for the Cannibal Chicken’s Soul book announcement that started it all. 

Visit all Bad Apple stories that mention the Cannibal Chickens.

 ***

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.

Not to get too philosophical on you, but sometimes we all need a proverbial shot in the ass, don’t you think?  A curative prick of vitamin real, anything to remind us that in the great opera of life everyone gets only one chance to sing their swan song and get it right.

It’s like life is a mini-series and you are the co-writer, star and costume design.  You get absolutely no rehearsal; There will be no editing.  It’s all up to you whether you create a captivating tale, performed to perfection, or a dull reel, destined for the dust bin of eternity.  No pressures, mate — we all know that paralytic fear is anathema to a good life well-lived.

To complicate matters, you also must constantly play an extra in everyone else’s life-mini-series, plural.  You have a few larger roles, as well, sometimes playing the spouse, the friend, the co-worker, the boss, the employee, the customer, etc.  Look at all the parts you have to play!  You never are given any lines.  You must completely improvise based on this character you have been assigned and co-created with the universe, a character I will simply call ”You.”

And who is this You?  Well, sometimes it seems You could be anybody.  Other times, this You character appears overly determined by the situation You was handed, i.e. the script.  In reality, You is fluid and contradictory.  You are always finding out who You is, all the time.  Mostly it’s a hit or miss thing.  You try something, something changes, and you see if You is happy or not.  Often, You’s most unhappiest moments are the clearest indication to you of what this You person really wants.  (This is where that proverbial shot in the ass comes in handy, as well.)

My relationship to my own You character, which I will call “Me,” can be closely compared to a computer game I used to have where you get to plan your own Roman empire from scratch.  You start by creating a city, and you have to decide how many temples versus how many city walls to build.  Because if you don’t manage to keep your people happy with temples and stuff they riot and tear everything up, and if you don’t build enough walls the invaders come and tear everything up anyway. 

That’s Me, all over.  I keep putting up temples and walls, trying to make this insatiable Me person happy, secure, and not tearing shit up, figuratively speaking.  I haven’t managed to get past the city level, in the game or life, in part because I can never figure out how to collect enough taxes to satisfy and/or fend off the various external and internal angry mobs/Me’s.  If only I thought I could buy Me off as easily as my virtual Roman citizens, I would know what to devote myself to — more money for more temples and walls, of course. 

But alas, in the game of life, money buys nearly everything else, but we all know there’s no shopping for lasting happiness.  That you have to work for, and it doesn’t really come very easily much of time.  It’s a moving target. 

So in the end, I suppose what I’m finally saying here is that life is a great kill-less hunt for happiness and self-discovery.  And I for one am stringing my bow and otherwise preparing for the next season in the great happiness hunt slash mini-series episode starring Me.  Only, I hope I don’t accidentally hit anybody with this thing, there are an awful lot of extras hanging about on my happiness hunting grounds. 

We live in an anxious age, in case you haven’t already been freaking out about it yourself.  Why, if someone gives me one more thing to torment myself about, I think I will have located my sanity’s 100th monkey, the one who’s going to pound out Macbeth on a funky old type-writer of my last nerve.

I used to be able to drink coffee with impunity, but today it’s like fingernails on my deepest darkest innermost chalk board.  My mouth, formerly a semi-useful body part, now seems to run around and get me in all kind of trouble.  Can’t I just shut up?

Times like this, I see how they can sell a lobotomy. Come on, Doc, just turn this creep in my brain off, please!

What I need is an eye lid to shut over my own rancid thoughts.  What I get is a creative impulse to share all with you, my readers.  Something tells me you’ll understand.   

“Submission Accomplished”
-homemade bumpersticker #1.

“Proud parent of a turn indicator user”
-homemade bumpersticker #2.

Loud religious debate overheard on the street at lunch today:
“That would be in the Bible: Have you read the motherfucker?”

Finally, overheard in the office moments ago:
“The human body is like 110 percent water.”

 Got any similarly-wonderful signs-of-our-time to share?  
Oh come on, I know you do, so give um up!