Vintage: Landscaping: Fighting for Civilization at a Grassroots Level (Apr 2010)

Self: Ok, James, no Lost until after you've done your taxes.
James: BUT SELF!!! There's only five episodes left!! And Desmond's back and separated from his beloved Penny by his wicked father-in-law!!
Self: Nope, not until you've done your taxes...
James: *Sigh*...ok, what about facebook notes?

On the outer edges of civilization...Weeding is pretty much the futile process of taking the natural prolific, beautiful, and often edible plants out of the flower beds long enough for a picture. "Why bother?" you ask? Well, cuz it pays good, and I'm not about to question the lifestyles of rich people. (Well, besides those King Charles Spaniels...That I will question...they're SO ugly once they grow up...but everybody's got one, so you have to have one too.) Anyway, a dayful of weeding is tough work...it's hard keeping suburbia safe. But luckily for Lands-cape-a-man, you can always munch on some clover, dandelion, or if lucky, some mint...or if you're not so lucky, you can always chew on pine needles (but watch out for hemlock...that would be a mistake, Socrates)

On the outer edges of civilization...is there an Echo in here? Maybe it's in my head (Oh crap, Gollum just ate the mousy one. Gollum: Dids not, precious! Self: Whatever.) Echo has like 50 personalities in her head. Virginia Creeper and eggplant! Talk about creepy.

Speaking of personalities, I want to create a fictional gardener who uses plant names as exclamations and give him a grand adventure.

A public service announcement: So many of you have probably stopped wondering about my future plans because they've changed so many times (Jumping Snapdragons, is that kid ever gonna make up his mind?). My current plan is to deal with those nasty hobbitses...I mean, to volunteer in a homeless youth shelter and then hope I get transferred to a country ending in -éxico, -onduras, -mala, or -Ick! A RAGUA! (Rodents Always Goring Umbrella-carrying Adolescents...I don't think they exist) So if I do that, the next time past July I'll be free is in 2012, about a month before the world ends. I'll be 25.

A public service announcement: On turning 25, my life plan is to get a golden retriever, name her Mandy, and take a binding oath of no kissy-kissy or marriage or dating for the rest of my life. Then I'll write her love songs and become a wealthy crooner. I know it's been done before, but that's exactly why I know it can be done! Then all the single ladies will wish they'd proposed to me sooner, but it will be too late, because I will have eyes only for my beloved Mandy. And because the world will end that month.

The world is changing. People are graduating and moving on. People are getting married. Luckily for me though, all of my friends are avoiding women like the plague that they are.

Although I'm not sure why the world is ending, I think it has something to do with the Mayans and my sister's evil plot at world domination. A word to the wise: don't move your tulips to Nicaragua in the next two years, that's where she's starting her evil empire! (William Walker tried and failed, but Liz will make it work)

Speaking of evil plots of world domination, I've discovered that there is a much worse corporation than Wal-Mart out there. It's called the WTO. Well, that was what I wrote my capstone about, no but seriously, I'm talking about the drug cartels. Iin Mexico college students and buses and random people on the street are getting shot, killed, maimed, etc, around the border and beyond all because Americans really like their cocaine and heroin and marijuana. This has gotten to the point where it has seriously undermined the authority of the Mexican government in some areas, and thousands of innocent people are dying. Frankly, I'm appalled at my country. But I've found the solution! On my flight back on the customs form, I realized that if I just get a government job for another country, I can forfeit my United States citizenship! What do they call the KGB now? Do you know if they're accepting applications?

Speaking of evil plots of world domination, the Rossum corporation...Echo...umm...security guards...man, I never saw that one coming. So I'm going through immigration at DFW and the dude is SO obnoxious. He's like where'd you go? I'm like Mexico. What'd ya do? Volunteer. With a group from the states? No, with locals. Am I gonna find drugs if I look in your bag downstairs? No. And then the worst part is, he lets me go...he doesn't bother to check my story (I had 50 pages of journaling and 600 pictures) or anything, just passive-aggressively decides he's scared me enough. Then they took my ham sandwich away in customs. :( 

Maybe it's all the Clancy novels I read growing up, but I'm always kinda insulted when people consider me a terrorist threat or feel they need to take something for other people's airplane safety. Every time, I'm always thinking, you know, if I was really a terrorist, I would so NOT do things like that, and then I start hatching a plan. But ham sandwiches are a dangerous weapon. In Mexico, though, they're a lot stricter (except they don't make you take off your shoes...shoes are apparently only a major threat to US airports). I definitely got patted down twice...they took my EMPTY water bottles. And they asked to see my rubber ducky. Yup, Squeaky was flirting with the bag check ladies. Talk about a personality.

Speaking of personalities, although I'm not sure why the world is ending, Joss Whedon is really good at creating characters. His latest show Dollhouse, has individual characters take up multiple personalities through this idea of brain-imprinting. (And In the show, the abuse of brain-imprinting and "wiping" is why the world is ending.) Not only is he stretching the limits of what we think of as human...he's also creating the most complex characters known to fiction! However, on the far reaches of civilization, Malcolm Reynolds is drifting because Fox cancelled that show...and now Dollhouse (disclaimer: neither of these shows are kid shows). So why is the world going to end in 2012? Probably because he's going to make an even better show that will then be cancelled, and fans will revolt. Or maybe, after two years of spinning from the climax of Lost, people's brains will explode. Or, turns out my sister is actually Darth Vader and allied with a communist conspiracy.

RED freakout. Story time: So the CIA and the United Fruit Company don't like the nationalizing tendencies of some of Guatemala's leaders in the 1950s...so they try to overthrow the gov't and the CIA makes some very high level hits...after which Guatelmala goes into a 30-year civil war. Frankly, I'm appalled at my country. Luckily, Joshua Huff and Ryan Heerwagen are going to found the American Anarcho-Capitalist Party (Or AACK!, for short), which will hasten the world's end. 

I will fight (for bovine freedom!). At this point I think our only recourse is to go back in time. Now, I know what you're thinking, Marty McFly's disappearing and all that...we don't know what this could do. But I think we need to steal the pen of whatever Mayan dude wrote that crazy stuff down, then the world won't end. Won't that work? I'm very confident about time travel, because even though Desmond is a lackey of his evil father-in-law in the time-travel induced future, he still meets Penny. I have faith in the humans (Affirmative)...well, as long as they're not politicians. Reading Mexico's history has me pretty cynical on politics on both sides of the border. My favorite theory: that the reason that we only took a third of Mexico after the Mexican war was because the North didn't want to give too much political advantage to the South. Yay for pragmatism. Speaking of which, did anyone notice that clause of the healthcare bill that was a nice FAT gov't subsidy specifically for pharmaceuticals? Some lobbyist is getting a killer Redwood-sized raise. 

Speaking of raises, I really wonder how long the US can keep making its debt and trade deficit bigger. Like eventually, our credit card's going to max out, yeah? Unless we just bully people into giving us more loans...which loans are just like giving away power ANYway so what the dandelion is our government thinking? Plus, since we elected a communist sleeper agent to the presidency, the United States will probably join the Russian Federation. At which point, the world will end and it will be revealed that Vladimir Putin is actually my friend Tim Graf, and my Russian will come in handy, but my scheme of joining the KGB will be ruined because for all practical purposes, I'll be a US citizen again. Applesauce! At that point I will probably imprint myself into Mandy's brain. Then we will be together forever, the two will become one brain; I will, as a canine, forfeit all citizenship, and like my great forefather Grommit, take off for the Moon in my beloved spaceship Serenity. "no you can't take the sky from me." (Well, unless it falls...isn't that part of the world ending?)

Lands-cape-a-man/Mandy/Gollum/Squeaky/James/Self and the Pansy Gardener: Out.