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26 April 2010

mine furor

Mine furor has gripped America.
It is the topic of conversation from the Shenandoah to the Rocky Mountains. Buried in years past under a mountain of disinterest, mine furor surfaces when we least suspect, spreading heartbreak and woe throughout our collective consciousness.
There is only one sure way to combat mine furor's iron grip - total war on the forces of greed and indifference. We cannot afford to ignore our coal-black brothers any longer, toiling as they do in places unknown, in conditions unimaginable.
Join today - your country needs you.

Ultima Ratio Regum.
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16 April 2010

Reline your stomach today with Relinerize!

ARE you tired of relying on your body to renew your stomach lining every week?

Bioregenetics International announced last week from its headquarters in Bangor, Maine, a revolutionary new way to ensure that the human stomach remains properly lined.

"People are fed up with the inconvenience of natural stomach lining regeneration," Dr. Thornton Churlish, director of product development at Bioregenetics, said. "Our product provides them with a feasible alternative to the weekly hassle of standard regeneration."

The new product, named Relinerize (TM), is a half pound of stomach lining starter cells that, once swallowed whole, lines your stomach with a more robust covering than usual, saving your body effort and reducing wasteful energy consumption. Clinical trials on Rhesus primates have shown a remarkable reduction in energy usage due to constant regeneration and a reduced dependency on shellfish as a major dietary supplement. Relinerize, which must only be taken once every three months, completely eliminates the natural process of stomach lining rejuvenation, a process that occurs regularly in most healthy people.

Studies have shown that the body often takes too long to reline the stomach, which, due to the constant presence of acidic digestive fluids crucial to the digestive process, is in a perpetual death spiral of destruction and rejuvenation. Relinerize adheres to the stomach wall and expands quickly to cover the entire organ with a thick coat of cells ten times the width of the average stomach wall.

"The thickness of a Relinerized (TM) stomach wall is the key to the product's success," Mary Yardmoth, lead researcher on the Relinerize developmental team, said. "With our new product, the speed of degradation to the stomach wall is slowed dramatically. An additional benefit of the Relinerized stomach's reduced capacity is marked but healthy weight loss similar but far superior to the invasive practice of stomach stapling."   

While Bioregenetics says that the ingestible version of Relinerize is easy to swallow, they have hinted at the development of a new, implantable, capsulized miniature biofactory that functions much like implantable birth control devices. "We understand that most consumers are willing and able to dry-swallow a half pound of gelatinous membrane," Churlish noted, "but there is a small segment of the population that would rather have a miniature cellular production factory sewn onto the outside of their stomach pouch."

Relinerize is shipped via special overnight delivery in a sleek foam container marked BIO-HAZARD in bold red lettering, making it easy to spot. The product must be ingested immediately to guarantee the highest rate of success. "We want to stress the importance of immediate consumption," Yardmoth said; "you can't just leave your shipment of Relinerize to bake in the hot sun out in your mailbox."

For further information, and to order your free sample of Relinerize, e-mail relinerizeinfo@bioregenetics.net

14 April 2010

a profundity of beasts

My late father had a vision for the six and a half acres of land here in south-central Pennsylvania - to make it a safe haven for all sorts of flying and crawling and bounding beasts. While the township will not allow the front of the property to become wild, the rear of the property, which receives but minimal mowing, is slowly fulfilling his dream.

Over the past months, I have been witness to a wide variety of beasts moving through or living on our land. The most recent and exciting addition is a Barred Owl, or hoot owl, who has made her nest somewhere on the northern slope of this small valley. She is a fine bird, wide in wing and broad in head, who, I suspect, due to the fact that she is hunting during the day, is raising a brood of chicks in one of the many rotting trees. Hopefully the large, snow-white feral cat that lives in the barn does not try to raid her nest or otherwise scare her off.
I found the owl just yesterday fishing in the stream in broad daylight. Startled by my appearance, she flew silently to an adjacent sapling, where she eyed me with bland curiosity as I attempted to pole-vault over the stream and proceeded to fall ten feet into the gravel stream bed. Aside from a few cuts on my right elbow, I am unharmed.

Last week, while walking to the barn to fire up the Kubota tractor for a bit of mowing, I discovered a large snapping turtle sunning in the grass near the culvert. Wholly indifferent to my presence, the turtle, a fine specimen with a foot-long shell wainscoted by dried algae, moved not an inch when the tractor lumbered past five feet from its head. I was shocked to hear of the annual local tradition of making turtle soup out of these splendid creatures, and will be vigilant for anyone attempting to capture this snapper on our land.

Last year, I startled a large whooping crane fishing in the culvert's spill area, a pool not five feet wide and two deep. the bird rose on its grey and white wings, flying east toward Codorus Park, her long spindly legs tucked deep into her belly. In the same spot, the rushing current escaping the culvert, I found last week a pair of mating Mallard ducks who flew a dozen yards downstream, their wings clipping the overhanging bushes as they planed in for a landing in the shallow stream.

A woodpecker has been dismantling the rotting maple near the lane, eying me suspiciously when I walk out onto the front porch to see what all the knocking was about. Since her departure for trees unknown, finches have taken over the nesting hole she bored into the soft wood. Robins hop across the broad front lawn, pecking at the soil and throwing down the bugs and worms they find there. Brilliant cardinals flash bright red in the trees. A murder of crows, perhaps ten in number, harass the striped-tailed hawks and other birds of prey that circle the valley in search of food, pecking in flight at their feet.
Either the crows have moved on, or they do not mind the presence of the massive buzzard that wheels in the valley's updrafts, so large that when it passes overhead I mistake its shadow for a passing airplane.

These and many other, smaller, but no less worthy beasts live or eat in this valley. As I discover them, I will here mark their passage.

Ultima Ratio Regum. JP

09 April 2010

easter airport cluster-fuck

It is the Thursday evening before Easter, two thousand and ten, and terminal one at San Diego airport is in chaos.
Three lanes lead past the terminal, bisected by a pedestrian crosswalk. As soon as this light turns red, arriving travelers bolt from the curb into the arms of their friends, where they hug, kiss, and eventually start loading their bags into too small trunks. Invariably, the light turns green again before the greeting and loading rituals are completed, and traffic remains halted rather than flowing.
In the waning light, passengers throng to the edge of the sidewalk, craning their necks to try and see over others craning their necks for a glimpse of the person coming to pick them up. Once positive contact is made, the motorized loved-one parks her car any way possible, in any proximity to the curb, shifts into park, and exits her vehicle for the welcoming ceremony.
There are only three security officers on duty. They patrol the hundreds of feet of curb as best they can, flashing their flashlights at drivers who have waited too long and hurrying along those inept at loading luggage. The officers might as well be herding cats. Cars stop in any and every lane to load passengers, blocking traffic behind them for minutes at a time. Vehicles cut sharply toward the curb, forcing those kind enough to let them into one lane to wait until someone in the next lane is kind enough to let them into that one, too. Unlike other, larger airports, the arriving and departing passengers share the same curb at Lindbergh Field; those travelers with little time to spare tussle with those recently freed from their cramped seats who are enjoying a leisurely, leg-stretching stroll.
I hate driving into airports to pick up arriving friends; there are few things I loathe more than entering a confined airport loop closely monitored by a cash-strapped police force. A close second in my pantheon of loathing, however, is people who turn into self-centered assholes the moment they see a loved one. You can almost see their vision tunneling, their hearing blocking out any frustrated honking, their skin flushing and their hearts fluttering. Without a moment's hesitation or the slightest concern for the needs of the vehicles behind them, they stop their car in the middle of traffic to hug, kiss, and chat with whomever they are collecting. Doing your hugging and kissing and chatting in the comfort of your own home, or at the next gas station, is not nearly as romantic or special as doing it in front of a packed airport, but it is far easier on the people who are sitting in traffic for the sole reason of physically picking up their peeps.
So, next time, consider leaving your ride in short term parking - you will have all the time in the world to say your hellos without fear of someone getting run over. You will not stoke the wrath of everyone around you with your obliviousness to how much of everyone's time you are wasting. And you won't have someone shining a flashlight in your eyes and yelling at you to move along.
In short, never abandon common courtesy, even if you haven't seen Granny in months.

Ultima Ratio Regum.
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