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The Hillbilly Saves the Economy

18 Aug

August 18, 2011

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, The Hillbilly.


With all the talk about the economy and all the trouble on Wall Street I thought I’d give you some advice on how to increase your personal wealth. If everybody would follow some simple rules then we’d have this economy running like a tractor in no time.

1- No need to buy that expensive store-bought pig slop. Good hearty pig slop can be made out of left over parts, gullets, necks, feet, and gizzards and can go straight from your dinner plate to the trough.

2- Why buy a new set of clothes when you start a new job or third grade? A good pair of overalls can last you for years with a little patching in the seat, and it is easy to “accessorize,” like they say in the movie magazines. Change your rope belt for a length of wire and you’ve got a new wardrobe.

3- Who needs high-priced fur coats? Musk rat makes a fine weather keeper-outer, and if you shoot it yourself you can get a meal out of it too. Don’t forget to keep the scent glands, that’s good musk.

4- Making your own mattress isn’t just easy, it can be fun too. Get Granny to form a sewing circle, and the young ones can stuff it with hay from the barn. Just make sure you make it big enough to sleep all your cousins.

5- Schooling? Anyone still in school over age 12 is just putting on airs, I say. The sooner they get to working the sooner the children can pitch in and buy barbed wire.

6- I don’t know what the debt ceiling is or why it so long to raise it, but you and your friends can raise a barn or patch your own ceiling in a day and you only need a couple of jugs of moonshine and some hog ears for lunch.

7- Taxes only get paid if they can find you to pay them.

8- Old cans and jugs never get thrown away. Cans are good for target practice and shooting at them instead of your neighbors keeps you out of trouble. Jugs are good to keep homemade molasses in. And moonshine. A good can should last forever, and who buys canned goods anyway? Waste of money. Like some big green ogre can grow better peas than I have growing behind the outhouse.

9- Never pay a repair man to fix your radio. If you can’t get Ozark Pete on it that set isn’t worth fixing anyway.

10- Going in to town is always a waste of money, especially on a Saturday night. Town-girls are nothing but trouble and always looking for money. If you have to get a woman, look no further than your cousins. You know who they’ve been with and the money you spend on them stays in the family.

You all come back now!

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In Search of… Atlantis

17 Aug

August 17, 2011

Atlantis is the fabled sunken city. First described by Plato in 360 BC, it has fascinated scholars and adventurers alike. To this day, its very existence is debated.

Is Atlantis real?

How should I know?

Where was Atlantis?

It all depends on who you ask. Theories abound that place Atlantis anywhere from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic to just off the Florida Coast. However, the theories all agree on one important point. Atlantis is underwater. 

Atlantis has historically been hard to find. Before the age of underwater breathing apparatus, most of the explorers searching for Atlantis got to a depth of about twenty feet before they could hold their breath no longer and had to come up for air. The ancient philosopher Crantor wrote in his texts that “be it in humble surf or raging torrent, Atlantis is farther than I can throw a rock at a seagull. Oh brave seeker, row out a little farther than the end of the jetty.” One thing is for sure- Atlantis is farther out than you could comfortably wade, and most pleasant beaches have long been thoroughly explored, though that fact does nothing to discourage the may Atlantis seekers who get large grants and then spend the summer in the islands “searching for Atlantis” in the sun.

What was Atlantis?

Again, it depends on who you ask. Classical mythology holds that Atlantis was a major naval power that conquered many cities. Other accounts hold that it was a center of arts and philosophy. Still other accounts claim that it was an inter-dimensional alien city. Trust me, what ever it was, it was not that.

Why did it sink?

Theories abound, most of them a little kooky. They range from earthquakes and natural disasters to wrath of god or evil aliens, or, according to Nancy Pelosi, the Tea Party. (In her speech of July 2011, Ms. Pelosi said that “voting for the Republican debt plan is what sunk Atlantis.” New York Times) Most classical accounts claim that it took only a day to sink, which seems a little hasty. On the other hand, look at Pompei.

Who were the people of Atlantis? 

Is there any proof of Atlantis?

Yes.

Are there other sunken cities?

There are legends of many other sunken cities across the globe. Other than Atlantis, the most famous sunken city is R’lyeh. Noted explorer Howard Phillip Lovecraft and famed cartographer August Derleth have different opinions of R’lyeh’s location.

Lovecraft said that R’lyeh is located at 47°9′S 126°43′W in the southern Pacific Ocean. August Derleth later placed R’lyeh at 49°51′S 128°34′W in his own writings. Both locations are close to the Pacific pole of inaccessibility (48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W), the point in the ocean farthest from any land. Derleth’s coordinates place the city approximately 5,100 nautical miles (9,400 km), or about ten days journey for a fast ship, from the real island of Pohnpei (Ponape). Pohnpei also plays a part in the Cthulhu Mythos as the place where the “Ponape Scripture”, a text describing Cthulhu, was found.

It is recommended that sailors avoid R’lyeh as it is the home of the evil god Cthulhu.

The city is a panorama of “vast angles and stone surfaces … too great to belong to anything right and proper for this earth, and impious with horrible images and disturbing hieroglyphs.” The geometry of R’lyeh is “abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours.”

R’lyeh is sometimes referred to in the ritualistic phrase “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn”, which roughly translates to “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming”.

Do you have any final words about Atlantis?

Yes. Thank you for asking.

You’re welcome.

Either Atlantis is a sunken city rich in gold and ancient artifacts or Plato was full of it. The truth is probably somewhere in between. Assuming Atlantis was real, it was most likely a slum. Leave it alone.

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