1/ Not often I like a column from Thomas Friedman, but in this one he argues the obvious solutions to many of our problems are not discussable in this toxic political environment....
Worth reading.....
ONE of my favorite quotes about the state of U.S. politics was offered a couple years ago by Gerald Seib, a Wall Street Journal columnist, when he observed that “America and its political leaders, after two decades of failing to come together to solve big problems, seem to have lost faith in their ability to do so. A political system that expects failure doesn’t try very hard to produce anything else.” That’s us today — our entire political system is guilty of the “soft bigotry of low expectations” for ourselves.
I raise this now because it strikes me as crazy that one of the obvious solutions to our budget, energy and environmental problems — the one that would be the least painful and have the best long-term impact (a carbon tax) — is off the table. Meanwhile, the solution that is as dumb as the day is long — a budget sequester that slashes spending indiscriminately — is on the table.
Shrinking the tax deduction for charity is on the table. Shrinking Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for the poor are on the table. But a carbon tax that could close the deficit and clean the air, weaken petro-dictators, strengthen the dollar, drive clean-tech innovation and still leave some money to lower corporate and income taxes is off the table. So the solutions that are lose-lose and divisive are on the table, while the solution that is win-win-win-win-win — and has both liberal and conservative supporters — is off the table.
2/ An excellent Bill Maher, and his point is so right - the conservative voices we are told are overwhelmingly powerful and represent "millions of real Americans" are often just front groups for a small number of noisy, angry old people.....4 minutes......
ended his show tonight with a New Rule that took on conservative groups for their disproportionate influence on the American political landscape considering just how small they are. Maher deemed this “shitkicker inflation” and called out every group from One Million Moms to the NRA for claiming to speak for the majority but really vocalizing the opinions of a small minority.
Maher opened by mocking conservative outrage over a Geico ad with the little pig mascot and a Skittles ad with a woman and a walrus. In both cases, groups like One Million Moms was outraged over tones of bestiality, to which Maher rebutted, “Aren’t you thinking a little too much about bestiality?”
3/ If you want a textbook example of the way our government has been taken over and corrupted by money and large corporations, read this story from the Times. There is a 2.5% tax in the Obamacare bill that will cut some medical hardware makers profits, so they are furiously lobbying to have this section repealed.....and I bet they'll do it too.
The kicker in this story is that they are buying Democrats as well......
In Shift, Lobbyists Look for Bipartisan Support to Repeal a Tax
By ERIC LIPTON
Published: March 19, 2013
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WASHINGTON — When executives from Cook Medical gathered last month to offer Representative Cheri Bustos a tour of their central Illinois medical equipment plant, they had good reason to expect a frosty reception from Ms. Bustos, a new Democratic congresswoman.
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press
Representative Cheri Bustos of Illinois, a newly elected Democrat, said she would consider joining a tax-repeal effort.
Cook executives had backed Representative Bobby Schilling, her Republican opponent in last year’s election for Illinois’s 17th District seat, after he had joinedwith other House Republicans to push for the repeal of a new medical device tax imposed to pay for President Obama’s health care law. The company said the tax would cut its profits this year by an estimated $15 million, perhaps limiting future expansions. But in a hint of a shift in corporate lobbying strategy now under way in Washington, the industry pitch is now focused on Democrats like Ms. Bustos.
“Republican or Democrat, we need them to understand who we are and what we do,” said Steve Ferguson, the chairman of Cook’s parent company, who was there alongside Ms. Bustos as she toured his company plant. The visit ended with Ms. Bustos telling local reporters she would consider joining the effort to repeal the tax, which is expected to raise $29 billion over 10 years.
“If current laws are holding businesses back from hiring locally, I’m open to looking into ways to improve and fix them,” Ms. Bustos said in a statement.
Just last year, with Republicans still within reach of taking over the Senate and White House, many companies were willing to burn a chunk of their corporate lobbying budget to push House Republicans to pass bills that everyone on Capitol Hill knew had no chance of ever becoming law. The muscle flexing at least made a political point — and potentially set up special-interest groups, like the medical device industry, for a successful push this year, assuming their hoped-for Republican victories had been scored.
4/ A viral French ad "Emma", 40 seconds .......a husband humiliates his wife, laughing at her low-tech ways while brandishing his new IPad.......
The ending is very funny.....
5/ Coming our way soon?
Frankensalmon.......GM salmon that grow twice as fast as normal salmon, and you won't have any way to identify it if the FDA has it's way......
Several supermarket chains have pledged not to sell what could become the first genetically modified animal to reach the nation’s dinner plates — a salmon engineered to grow about twice as fast as normal.
The supermarkets — including Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe’s and Aldi —stated their policies in response to a campaign by consumer and environmental groups opposed to the fish. The groups are expected to announce the chains’ policies on Wednesday. The supermarket chains have 2,000 stores in all, with 1,200 of them belonging to Aldi, which has outlets stretching from Kansas and Texas to the East Coast.
“Our current definition of sustainable seafood specifies the exclusion of genetically modified organisms,” a spokeswoman for Aldi said in a statement that also said the policy might evolve over time. She said the company would not comment further.
The salmon is now awaiting approval from the Food and Drug Administration, which in December concluded that the fish would have “no significant impact” on the environment and would be as safe to eat as conventional salmon. The agency is accepting public comments on its findings until April 26.
Under existing F.D.A. policies, the salmon, if approved, would probably not be labeled as genetically engineered. The agency has said that use of genetic engineering per se does not change a food materially.
The campaign by the environmental and consumer groups suggests that the salmon could have trouble winning acceptance in the market, assuming consumers could actually identify it.
6/ There is a great series called "People Are Awesome", and these videos are like the fails [see #8] but without accidents or mistakes.....four minutes of amazing athletic feats.....
7/ And more on the theme of corporate power.....Monsanto is well on the way to making itself immune from the federal Courts....by a rider in a Senate bill, inserted by it's lobbyists......
This one may or may not pass.......it's just outrageous enough to meet opposition......
We’ve seen similar scenarios in the past, events in which the massive financial power of multi-national corporations is able to buy out legislators who were elected to ‘represent’ voters. But now, Monsanto has set the bar even higher. Instead of just getting a few kickbacks or avoiding USDA regulation, Monsanto lobbyists have gone as far as to generate legislative inclusions into a new bill that puts Monsanto above the federal government.
It’s called the Monsanto Protection Act among activists and concerned citizens who have been following the developments on the issue, and it consists of a legislative ‘rider’ inside (Farmer Assurance Provision, Sec. 735) a majority-wise unrelated Senate Continuing Resolution spending bill. You may already be aware of what this rider consists of, but in case not you will likely be blown away by the tenacity of Monsanto lobbyist goons.
If this rider passes with the bill, which could be as early as this week, Monsanto would have complete immunity from federal courts when it comes to their ability to act against any new Monsanto GMO crops that are suspected to be endangering the public or the environment (or considered to be planted illegally by the USDA). We’re talking about courts that literally can do nothing to Monsanto if it’s found that their newest creation may be promoting cancer, for example. Whether it’s a GMO banana or an apple, Monsanto could continue planting the food abomination all it wants under court review.
8/ Golfers will appreciate this fail compilation.....some of the golf cart accidents are really doable with a ditzy or careless driver.....3 minutes......
9/ This story and #10 are on the lines of "Nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care"....
The migration of Monarch butterflies is one of the phenomena of nature, but their annual visit from the US Midwest to a rainforest in Mexico is at the lowest level in decades......and the root cause is pesticides and chemicals used in farming.....
This is one of these straws in the wind that show how much and how seriously we [humans] have disrupted nature, and although you may say "they're only butterflies, WGAS" all of these things are interconnected.
We are toast folks......
The number of monarch butterflies that completed an annual migration to their winter home in a Mexican forest sank this year to its lowest level in at least two decades, due mostly to extreme weather and changed farming practices in North America, the Mexican government and a conservation alliance reported on Wednesday.
Travis Morisse/ The Hutchinson News via Associated Press
The monarch population has declined with extreme weather and changes in farming that have diminished its source of food.
The area of forest occupied by the butterflies, once as high at 50 acres, dwindled to 2.94 acres in the annual census conducted in December, Mexico’s National Commission of Natural Protected Areas disclosed at a news conference in Zitácuaro, Mexico.
That was a 59 percent decline from the 7.14 acres of butterflies measured in December 2011.
Because the insects cannot be counted, the combined size of the butterfly colonies is used as a proxy in the census, which is conducted by the commission and a partnership between the World Wildlife Fund and the Mexican cellphone company Telcel.
“We are seeing now a trend which more or less started in the last seven to eight years,” Omar Vidal, the head of the wildlife group’s Mexico operations, said in an interview. Although insect populations can fluctuate greatly even in normal conditions, the steady downward drift in the butterfly’s numbers is worrisome, he said.
The latest decline was hastened by drought and record-breaking heat in North America when the monarchs arrived last spring to reproduce. Warmer than usual conditions led the insects to arrive early and to nest farther north than is typical, Chip Taylor, director of the conservation group Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas, said in an interview. The early arrival disrupted the monarchs’ breeding cycle, he said, and the hot weather dried insect eggs and lowered the nectar content of the milkweed on which they feed.
That in turn weakened the butterflies and lowered the number of eggs laid.
But an equally alarming source of the decline, both Mr. Taylor and Mr. Vidal said, is the explosive increase in American farmland planted in soybean and corn genetically modified to tolerate herbicides.
10/ Algae blooms caused by phosphorus runoff from farms are causing massive damage to Lake Erie, sending it on the way to becoming a dead lake with no fish of other life in it. But to fix the problem would mean confronting Big Ag and the fertilizer manufacturers, so the chances of anything happening in this Congress are zero.....
As I said, "Nobody seems........
Spring Rain, Then Foul Algae in Ailing Lake Erie
Brenda Culler/ODNR Coastal Management
Algae blooms, like this one in 2011, are threatening Lake Erie.
By MICHAEL WINES
Published: March 14, 2013 177 Comments
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TOLEDO, Ohio — For those who live and play on the shores of Lake Erie, the spring rains that will begin falling here soon are less a blessing than a portent. They could threaten the very future of the lake itself.
Multimedia
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Lake Erie is sick. A thick and growing coat of toxic algae appears each summer, so vast that in 2011 it covered a sixth of its waters, contributing to an expanding dead zone on its bottom, reducing fish populations, fouling beaches and crippling a tourism industry that generates more than $10 billion in revenue annually.
The spring rains reliably predict how serious the summer algae bloom will be: the more frequent and heavy the downpours, the worse the outbreak. And this year the National Weather Service says there is a higher probability than elsewhere of above-normal spring rains along the lake’s west end, where the algae first appear. The private forecaster Accuweather predicts a wetter than usual March and April throughout the region.
It is perhaps the greatest peril the lake has faced since the 1960s, when relentless and unregulated dumping of sewage and industrial pollutants spawned similar algae blooms and earned it the nickname “North America’s Dead Sea.” Erie recovered then, thanks to a multibillion-dollar cleanup by the United States and Canada that became a legendary environmental success story.
But while the sewage and pollutants are vastly reduced, the blooms have returned, bigger than ever.
Once, fisheries and sports anglers pulled five million walleye from the rejuvenated lake every year. Today the catch is roughly one-fifth that, the Environmental Protection Agency says. Commercial fisheries’ smelt catch is three-fifths of past levels. The number of charter fishing companies has dropped 40 percent. Sport fish like walleye and yellow perch are deserting the lake’s center and moving shoreward in search of oxygen and food.
“We’ve seen this lake go from the poster child for pollution problems to the best example in the world of ecosystem recovery. Now it’s headed back again,” said Jeffrey M. Reutter, who directs the Sea Grant College Program at Ohio State University.
The algae problem is hardly isolated. Similar blooms are strangling other lakes in North America and elsewhere, including Lake Winnipeg, one of Canada’s largest, and some bays in Lake Huron.
The algae are fed by phosphorus, the same chemical that American and Canadian authorities spent billions to reduce — for good, they believed — in the 1970s and ‘80s. This time, new farming techniques, climate change and even a change in Lake Erie’s ecosystem make phosphorus pollution more intractable.
Like plants, algae thrive on a phosphorus diet. Decades ago, some 64 million pounds of phosphorus flowed into Lake Erie each year from industrial and sewer outfalls, leaky septic tanks and runoff from fertilized lawns and farms.
But no one hopes for a drought. To cut phosphorus levels this time, scientists say, the habits — and the expensive equipment — of 70,000 farmers along the Erie shore must change. Most of the phosphorus that feeds algae these days comes from farmland.
Much of the phosphorus originates near Toledo, where the Maumee River completes a 137-mile journey and empties into the lake’s shallow western basin.
If you have forgotten which of the Great Lakes it is, here is a map - Buffalo at one end and Detroit at the other......
11/ Wow - hard to describe this music video of David Guetta's "She Wolf"......part documentary about Viking warriors, part animation, mysticism and all starring a wounded wolf running through the tundra, pursued by hunters and a dogsled.....
Great song too.....
12/ You may have read that the Lieutenant Governor of Florida resigned, but the corporate media probably didn't tell you the full story of why she left our idiot Governor's administration.
Carl Hiaasen with a very good column in the Miami Herald summarising the scandal, and it IS a scandal of the usual corruption, lobbyists and our scummy politicians.....
In Florida, not much is asked of the lieutenant governor.
It's a sham job, devoid of responsibility. Your typical day is spent attending dull functions that the governor chooses to avoid.
Under the best of circumstances you'll serve out your term uneventfully, and unknown to most Floridians. Under the worst of circumstances you'll end up like Jennifer Carroll, a mortifying headline.
She resigned suddenly last week after federal and state agents began rounding up suspects involved with a chain of Internet cafes that allegedly served as a front for illegal gambling, racketeering and money laundering.
The organization had presented itself as a charity called Allied Veterans of the World, and had tax-exempt, nonprofit status. Under a typically porous Florida law, it was allowed to operate Internet "sweepstakes cafes" as long as the earnings were donated to charitable causes.
Over three years, Allied Veterans raked in hundreds of millions of dollars, but only 2 percent found its way to veterans' groups. The rest of the money went to sleazeballs who bought fancy cars, boats and big houses.
13/ Book Review
"The Accursed" by Joyce Carol Oates, and reviewed in the Times by Stephen King [yes, him!].
It sounds most complex and disturbing......
Bride of Hades
‘The Accursed,’ by Joyce Carol Oates
Illustration by Tomer Hanuka
By STEPHEN KING
Published: March 14, 2013
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Some novels are almost impossible to review, either because they’re deeply ambiguous or because they contain big surprises the reviewer doesn’t wish to give away. In the case of “The Accursed,” both strictures apply. What I wish I could say is simply this: “Joyce Carol Oates has written what may be the world’s first postmodern Gothic novel: E. L. Doctorow’s ‘Ragtime’ set in Dracula’s castle. It’s dense, challenging, problematic, horrifying, funny, prolix and full of crazy people. You should read it. I wish I could tell you more.”
THE ACCURSED
By Joyce Carol Oates
669 pp. Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers. $27.99.
Related
Times Topic: Joyce Carol Oates
Yet telling more is the reviewer’s (usually thankless) job. Still, spare a little pity for the critic, if you please; I’m doing delicate surgery here. This is an enormous, craftily sustained work of fiction, and while I consider the Internet-fueled concern with “spoilers” rather infantile, the true secrets of well-made fiction deserve to be kept. Imagine how unfair it would have been if Bosley Crowther’s New York Times review of “Psycho” had led with the information that Norman and Norman’s mother were one and the same! Ick, right? In deference to the ick, I’ll keep most of Oates’s secrets, but she owes me (and anyone else faced with the task of discussing this novel) an apology for making the job so difficult. The reader’s job is also difficult because “The Accursed” asks a lot of him or her. All I can say is, don’t lose your courage, and wait for the sermon at the end. It doesn’t explain everything, but it does explain a lot, and in splendid pseudo-biblical prose.
“The Accursed” purports to be the definitive account, written by one M. W. van Dyck II, of the so-called Crosswicks Curse, which afflicted — or infected — the bucolic college town of Princeton, N.J., in the years 1905 and 1906. The ambiguities start with van Dyck himself, an amateur historian who is racist, prudish and snobbish. He’s also an obsessive-compulsive fussbudget. I learned much more about Princeton University politics, the great houses of Princeton’s lily-white West End and turn-of-the-century ladies’ fashions than I cared to know. At several points I found myself thinking, “O.K., van Dyck, enough about the corsetry, let’s get back to the unhappy Slades of Crosswicks Manse.” For it’s the unhappy Slade family from whom the Curse (always capitalized) spreads outward, and we care about them just enough to make their various fates interesting.
14/ Movie Reviews
Out today is Tina Fey in "Admissions", which according to the Times review is decent but could have been much better [B-].
The heavily advertised "Olympus Has Fallen" is a dud.....action, no plot and [a boring] leading man Gerard Butler [C].
However, still in theaters are......
"Spring Breakers" - more than it appears......yes there's lots of T&A but it actually has a plot, and is quite edgy......
Just before the candy-colored apocalypse comes to Harmony Korine’s “Spring Breakers” you hear the peaceable murmurings of a beach, of lapping water, calling gulls and playing children. They’re nice, these sounds of summer, promises of carefree, youthful pursuits like building sand castles and shrieking at waves. The first image of what looks like a beach party keeps the happy vibe going. Dozens, hundreds of gyrating, dancing young women and men are basking in the honeyed light — as the beat goes on and the smiles sour into sneers — though it becomes evident that they’re also marinating in a tsunami of beer.
The beer doesn’t flow, it floods: over heads, writhing torsos and the bared breasts that wiggle like puppies and wag at the camera like the middle fingers that more and more revelers raise. Welcome to the party, dude, Mr. Korine seems to be saying (or is he snickering?), now sit back, relax and enjoy the show. He proves an excellent ringmaster and a crafty one too. In “Spring Breakers” he bores into a contested, deeply American topic — the pursuit of happiness taken to nihilistic extremes — but turns his exploration into such a gonzo, outrageously funny party that it takes a while to appreciate that this is more of a horror film than a comedy.
If the laughter at times catches in your throat, well, that’s part of the queasy, transfixing experience that is “Spring Breakers,” which plays with some of the same ideas in Mr. Korine’s last feature, “Trash Humpers.” In that movie, shot on VHS tape, four characters in rubber masks run amok, getting down and dirty as they compulsively, even ritualistically grind their pelvises against anything — garbage, of course, included — in a creepy, joyless yet also amusing burlesque. In “Spring Breakers” Mr. Korine has traded in his plug-uglies for a far more seductive and commercially viable female quartet that includes two former Disney teen queens, Selena Gomez (as Faith) and Vanessa Hudgens (Candy), along with Ashley Benson (Brit) and his wife, Rachel Korine (Cotty).
Interesting trailer.....James Franco looks pretty dangerous!
15/ "The Call" is a low budget but effective little horror movie....with Halle Berry.....
An effectively creepy thriller about a 911 operator and a young miss in peril, “The Call” is a model of low-budget filmmaking. Well, as low as anything starring Halle Berrygoes. It’s probable that Ms. Berry was the priciest item in the budget, followed by the movie’s one other conspicuous expenditure, a sprawling 911 dispatch center called the hive. Buzzing with the trills of incoming calls and the hum of reassuring voices, the hive is where every rote greeting — “911, what is your emergency?” — becomes the opening line in a never-ending procession of melodramas, comedies, dramas, tragedies and horror stories like the one that puts the chill in this no-frills diversion.
Put another way “911, what is your emergency?” is “once upon a time” with higher or at least more shudderingly plausible stakes. That’s the clean, clever premise of “The Call,” which, along with being a movie about a woman in trouble helping other women (and a few men) in trouble, is something of a salute to your tax dollars at work. Like Steven Soderbergh’s epidemiological nightmare, “Contagion,” in which a miscellany of federal agencies saves humanity, the heroes in “The Call,” including Jordan (a fine Ms. Berry), are largely Los Angeles government workers — beat cops, fingerprint technicians and call-center operators of all races and ethnicities — who are presumably collecting a livable wage and benefits. Given how many extra miles Jordan runs, crawls and scrambles, she earns her overtime.
“The Call” is also a recovery story because, soon after the movie opens, Jordan calamitously fumbles a phone plea for help. Years later in movie time, she remains haunted by that bad call and now trains new dispatchers and pops prescription pills. But, as John Wayne says in “Rio Bravo, “sorry don’t get it done” — nor does it win the audience’s sympathy and hold its attention. Which is why, after an inexperienced operator starts bungling a distress call from a kidnapped teenager, Casey (Abigail Breslin, at once grown up and believablyadolescent), Jordan climbs back in the saddle. Jaw and shoulders squared, she puts on her headset, stares purposely ahead and, as rescue plans go into overdrive, starts smooth-talking Casey down from convulsive hysteria to panic.
The kicker is that Casey has been kidnapped from a parking garage by a stranger (Michael Eklund), and is calling from inside the trunk of a moving car. It’s a harrowing situation for her and a potentially tricky one for filmmakers, as is apparent from how dissimilar directors handle characters trapped in rooms,coffins, airplanes
Holy moley....this is a scary trailer!
Todays video - a great magician and some incredible golf shots from the European Tour pros......
Magic and Golf, what's not to like!
Todays old guy joke
Bill and Bob, two friends, met in the park every day to feed the pigeons, watch the squirrels and discuss world problems.
One day Bill didn't show up. Bob didn't think much about it and figured maybe he had a cold or something.. But after Bill hadn't shown up for a week or so, Bob really got worried. However, since the only time they ever got together was at the park, Bob didn't know where Bill lived, so he was unable to find out what had happened to him.
A month had passed, and Bob figured he had seen the last of Bill, but one day, Bob approached the park and -- lo and behold -- there sat Bill!Bob was very excited and happy to see him and told him so. Then he said, ‘For crying out loud Bill, what in the world happened to you?'
Bill replied, 'I have been in jail.'
'Jail!' cried Bob. What in the world for?'
'Well,' Bill said, 'you know Sue, that cute little blonde waitress at the coffee shop where I sometimes go?'
'Yeah,' said Bob, 'I remember her. What about her?
'Well, one day she filed rape charges against me; and, at 89 years old, I was so proud that when I got into court, I pleaded 'guilty'.
'The damn judge gave me 30 days for perjury’.
Todays Irish joke
Mickey O'Flynn worked in an Irish pickle factory. For many years he had a
powerful desire to put his penis in the pickle slicer.
Unable to stand it any longer, he sought professional help from the factory
psychologist. After six months, the therapist gave up.
He advised Mickey to go ahead and do it or he would probably never have any
peace of mind.
The next day he came home from work very early. His wife, Mary, became alarmed
and wanted to know what had happened.
Mickey tearfully confessed his tormenting desire to put his penis in the pickle
slicer.
He went on to explain that today he finally went ahead and did it, and he was
immediately fired.
Mary gasped and ran over to her husband. She quickly yanked down his pants and
shorts only to find a normal, completely intact penis.
She looked up and said, "I don't understand. What about the pickle slicer?"
Mickey replied, "I think she got fired, too."
Todays rich person joke
..."Hello, Señor Bob? This is Ernesto, the caretaker at your country house."
"Ah yes, Ernesto. What can I do for you? Is there a problem?"
"Um, I am just calling to advise you, Señor Bob, that your parrot, he is dead".
"My parrot? Dead? The one that won the International competition?"
"Si, Señor, that's the one."
"Damn! That's a pity! I spent a small fortune on that bird. What did he die from?"
"From eating the rotten meat, Señor Bob."
"Rotten meat? Who the hell fed him rotten meat?"
"Nobody, Señor. He ate the meat of the dead horse."
"Dead horse? What dead horse?"
"The thoroughbred, Señor Bob .."
"My prize thoroughbred is dead?"
"Yes, Señor Bob, he died from all that work pulling the water cart."
"Are you insane? What water cart?"
"The one we used to put out the fire, Señor."
"Good Lord! What fire are you talking about, man?"
"The one at your house, Señor! A candle fell and the curtains caught on fire."
"What the hell? Are you saying that my mansion is destroyed because of a candle?!"
"Yes, Señor Bob."
"But there's electricity at the house! What was the candle for?"
"For the funeral, Señor Bob .."
"WHAT BLOODY FUNERAL??!!"
"Your wife's, Señor Bob.
"Ah yes, Ernesto. What can I do for you? Is there a problem?"
"Um, I am just calling to advise you, Señor Bob, that your parrot, he is dead".
"My parrot? Dead? The one that won the International competition?"
"Si, Señor, that's the one."
"Damn! That's a pity! I spent a small fortune on that bird. What did he die from?"
"From eating the rotten meat, Señor Bob."
"Rotten meat? Who the hell fed him rotten meat?"
"Nobody, Señor. He ate the meat of the dead horse."
"Dead horse? What dead horse?"
"The thoroughbred, Señor Bob .."
"My prize thoroughbred is dead?"
"Yes, Señor Bob, he died from all that work pulling the water cart."
"Are you insane? What water cart?"
"The one we used to put out the fire, Señor."
"Good Lord! What fire are you talking about, man?"
"The one at your house, Señor! A candle fell and the curtains caught on fire."
"What the hell? Are you saying that my mansion is destroyed because of a candle?!"
"Yes, Señor Bob."
"But there's electricity at the house! What was the candle for?"
"For the funeral, Señor Bob .."
"WHAT BLOODY FUNERAL??!!"
"Your wife's, Señor Bob.
She showed up very late one night and I thought she was a thief, so I hit her with your new Ping G15 204g titanium head golf club with the TFC 149D graphite shaft."
SILENCE...........
LONG SILENCE.........
VERY LONG SILENCE............
"Ernesto, if you broke that driver, you're in deep shit."
SILENCE...........
LONG SILENCE.........
VERY LONG SILENCE............
"Ernesto, if you broke that driver, you're in deep shit."
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