Part of What Makes me so Attractive

Okay, I'm very upset. I struggled and slaved to learn how to use video editing software well enough to put subtitles on a .5HNH clip, as well as cutting in vastly better material from Comedy Central and a Youtube ass-rocket video, and now people are emailing me, claiming I lied. They claim the ass in the rocket video is NOT Alan Colmes.

Look, I'd upload the whole video so you could see his face, but I can't do that to him. He has a wife and kids. Probably. Maybe. I don't really know. Anyway, it hurts to be called a liar.

Just for this, I'm withholding another butt-rocket video I have, which features former PBS personality John McLaughlin. That's a shame, because as the rocket goes off, he aims it at Eleanor Clift and shouts "WRONG!"

It's very frustrating, fooling with video. Ideally, you would spend two hours writing and ten minutes editing, but in my case, it's pretty much the other way around. You find yourself sitting at the PC at 12:30 at night, thinking, "Gee, I can either rewrite this or go to bed before 5 a.m." So you click the "upload" button and go with what is essentially a rough draft and call it a night. But eventually I'll get better at it. I had a lot more time to screw with the Larry Craig video, and the rave reviews I got from gays suggest it paid off.

It's a real problem figuring out how long to leave subtitles up. I read much faster than an average person, so to me, it seems like they're just hanging there forever.

I've had a tough time getting anything at all done this week. A big home repair project is going on, so life is disrupted. I tried to devote August to crap like that and get it over with during a month when no one gets anything done anyway. But it is bleeding over into what is supposed to be productive time.

I'm highly annoyed at my tomatoes and peppers, which took an hour or two of my precious time yesterday. So far I have had early blight, bean rust, thrips, mealybugs, aphids, snails, damping off, leaf-curling virus, and possible spotted wilt. Every week I have to look up and buy a new chemical to fix things. By the time I have produce, it will be radioactive.

Seriously, though, I don't think anyone should be afraid of pesticides. Because bugs clearly are not. I started with Sevin, and I thought I had done my job. But no, mealybugs huff Sevin at parties for kicks. So I used bifenthrin. Which thrips think of as a mild spring tonic. Then I used malathion, and the thrips liked it so much they stood in formation and spelled out, "More, please."

Yesterday I used something called esfenvalerate. I couldn't tell whether the thrips were enjoying it, so I followed it up with diatomaceous earth and a generous hosing with a soapy capsaicin mixture I made in the miniature Cuisinart. And it was a windy day, so in essence, I maced myself.

I have something like ten really nice, healthy tomato plants. But if what I have read is correct, they may all have a bug-transmitted virus which will assure that I get no tomatoes. If that's true, I have to wonder how anyone anywhere in this county ever grew a tomato. I realize I brought the blight on myself by planting out of season, but the bugs...you can't hang them on me. They're here all year.

For people who don't know, diatomaceous earth is a bizarre miracle product, sort of like boric acid. Harmless to people, but supposedly deadly to bugs. It's just trillions of tiny dead diatom skeletons made of calcium. Sort of like talc, only on a microscopic level, it's very sharp. And it supposedly carves bugs up and lets the water out of them. I have no idea whether it works, but today all my plants look like Frosted Mini-Wheats. Finally a product with no poison in it. You can actually kill bugs in your food by adding 2% diatomaceous earth. And then you eat it.

As for the capsaicin, I don't care if it works as long as it causes the bugs excruciating agony.

I have to say, I think everyone who claims to grow vegetables organically around here is a goddamn liar. I think they're like the "kosher" catering services that actually slip supervising rabbis a hundred bucks to go home. We have a billion kinds of bugs here, they breed right through the winter, and each bug responds to its own unique insecticide, so you have to put an endless variety of poisons on your crops just to get them to fruit. Anyone who says he or she did it by releasing a few ladybugs is talking out of their ass. I'm pretty sure our county malathion trucks would take care of the ladybugs in one night.

I'm really not afraid of the poisons. I was thinking about it yesterday, and I couldn't think of a single example of a bug poison harming a human being who used it correctly. People are now saying that even bad old DDT is safe. Not even bad for bird eggs. I keep reading the safety literature on these chemicals, and the toxicity warnings are almost laughable. "At high doses, may cause brief sneezing." Is there a case I don't know about, where a bunch of people sprayed their lettuce and then had their genitals fall off or something? If so, it's news to me.

In some cases, even the packaging--which was created by neurotic lawyers trying to prevent bogus lawsuits--says things like, "Protective clothing is not necessary."

Speaking of neurotic, I had another problem which distracted me over the last three weeks or so. I thought I was dying of melanoma. I hadn't talked to a doctor about skin cancer in about seven years, and within the last month, two very dark spots popped up on my back. Just "POW," there they were. So I figured it was time to give away those green bananas. I made an appointment with a dermatologist, and it took two weeks to get in, and during that time, a third dark spot popped up on my hand. Which later turned out to be a scab from one of Maynard's helpful grooming bites. I was pretty nervous. When I was a kid, the guy next door to me got a spot on his back, and they carved a thing resembling Bryce Canyon in him, and then he died anyway. I'm not actually sure if the melanoma got him, or whether it was the five packs of cigarettes he smoked every day for like forty years. But still.

So I was freaking out for two weeks, and I was also having pains in my ribcage which I figured had to be metastases. And I went in on Wednesday, and the doctor looked at me for like fifteen seconds, and in a polite way, he told me to get my hypochondriac ass out of his office. I had absolutely nothing on me that interested him in the slightest. He said the things on my back were freckles.

As for the pain, I am pretty sure my diet has irritated my gallbladder, even though I'm getting a fairly generous 1500 calories a day and losing weight very slowly. Guess I'll have to see another doctor. Maybe I'll have my gallbladder yanked and turned into a change purse. They used to saw you in half to get it out, but these days, they stick a tube in you, jerk it out, seal the hole with joint compound, and send you on your way.

I now find myself in the perverse position of having to make sure I don't eat too LITTLE.

Reluctantly, I am giving up my four daily eggs. I have a feeling they were the main problem. Gallstones are full of cholesterol. Now where am I going to get protein? I wonder if thrips are edible.

Coffee is good for your gallbladder. So now I get up in the morning and drink it because I have to, not just because I'm a bug-eyed, trembling addict.

Unbelievably, I went to the hippie grocery and waded through the B.O. to buy kefir yesterday. I may conceivably have to eat something healthy once in a while. Disgusting. You know my slogan. "Lips that touch soy will never touch mine." Actually that applies to virtually all lips. But it illustrates a principle.

I guess I'll go outside now and see if any of my plants are still alive.