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Endeavour College of Natural Healthendeavourcollege |
Give Your Healthiest Heart this Valentines Day |
It's Valentine’s Day, and while most people are thinking about who they want to give their hearts to (figuratively, of course), perhaps we should also be thinking of whose hands to put our hearts in. Our hearts work every second of every day, so it’s imperative that we take excellent care of it. |
Amy Taylorwildlikethesea |
Mindfulness For The Full Mind |
Mindfulness is becoming popular. It’s something we think we’d like to do, if only we had time. We’re busy. Rush seems to govern many aspects of our lives these days. |
Ms. Munch |
To: Cynthia Munch, Comptroller, Grants Division From: Mitch Kakuski |
Ronald McDonald Foundation Helmsley/AMC Gitford Hotel |
22278 Ronald Reagan Pacific Coast Highway 737 Seventh Avenue |
Newport Beach, California 92663 New York, New York 10019 |
Dear Ms. Munch, |
This is in reply to your response to my EMERGENCY request for more money. Let me remind you, in case you missed the messages I left on your machine over the weekend, that I am down to my last few thousand dollars, which won’t even cover the bill for last week here at the hotel. I know that by Third World (or even terro... |
The Postal Service Delivers Hope |
I received my Ronald McDonald Genius Grant by certified mail. Though I’d never applied for one, I wasn’t too surprised when it came. I’d seen an infomercial on TV about thousands of grants, worth billions of dollars, that foundations are desperate to give away. |
I did think it was strange my name was misspelled on the envelope, and that the grant was for "Distinguished Work in the Flavor Dynamics of Recycled Fast Food Grease," but people make mistakes, even when large sums of money are involved. And sure, someone could question my credentials as a genius and say I should’ve kn... |
It’s true my mind can get lazy; I can’t count the number of times it’s spit out the command to "just do something!" when it got tired of thinking. And yes, I could barely put two words together on a page for the first few decades of my life. It took years of honing my craft, sending letters to the editors of local free... |
I really was surprised when I saw the amount on the check. You people are very generous. Of course I guess you can afford to be, with all the billions of hamburgers you’ve sold, even after all those cows went crazy from that "mad cow" brain disease a few years ago. |
Moving On Up |
After getting the cash (minus the 8% fee) at one of those bulletproof check cashing places and putting it in an old backpack, I found a "suite" at a nice hotel near Times Square (almost $300 a night). Spending money like that made me nervous at first, but it was just a drop in the bucket now that I was rich. I needed a... |
My new suite was sunny and spacious, with big TVs in both rooms. I ordered meals from room service (about $120 a day including tips), and sent one of the bellhops out to The GAP for three of everything in my size when I ran out of clean clothes (another $120 a day). |
I spent a few days watching really interesting stuff on satellite TV and realized I was a sucker for living without it all those years. There’s a world full of knowledge out there, with channels dedicated to every subject you can think of, from debutantes to dictators, being broadcast on invisible waves right through o... |
To top off the luxury, I didn’t have to lift a finger to keep the place spotless. The maid would come through every day at 11:00 AM, when I was watching "History’s Greatest Bloops and Blunders" on the What Happened Channel. I tipped her $20 a day, spreading the wealth. |
After a week at the hotel, it occurred to me that I could afford a nice apartment. But I found it didn’t bother me at all to live in a place where I was always treated as a guest, and didn’t have to fill rooms with possessions like a pharaoh getting ready for the afterlife (thanks, Mysteries of History Channel). Instea... |
The idea of becoming more evolved really appealed to me— I could almost feel the new "lobes" growing on my brain as I soaked up the satellite TV— so I decided to stay at the hotel. |
Now That You Can Have Anything, What Do You Want? |
Of course my first thought when I got the grant was to hire a beautiful young "escort" for a night out. We’d start in Chinatown, dining on the exotic deep-sea creatures I’d only dreamed about. I’d learned from the Green Channel that sadly, a lot of these species are nearly extinct because of demand from a wealthier Chi... |
The last escort service I called gave me the number of an "adult entertainment" line. But I was so disgusted after talking to three of the girls there that I gave up. They each had low, husky voices and said the most perverted things I’ve ever heard. I was pretty turned off by the phone bill, too, when I found out the ... |
Peacock Feathers Are an Evolutionary Necessity (Thanks, Natural Broadcasting Corporation) |
After that experience I realized there was a hole in my new life— I was kind of lonely. I was pretty sure I’d have a better shot at getting a girlfriend now that I could afford to maintain a decent appearance. I even considered getting plastic surgery to make myself look really good, but then thought about the burdens ... |
Beauty is like fruit— the moment it reaches its peak is the moment it starts to rot. |
Plus I wasn’t sure what I wanted to look like. Studies show that women prefer "pretty" men like Brad, but then so do men, and I wouldn’t be comfortable with a bunch of men’s eyes crawling all over me — I don’t know how you women stand it. Then I thought about going for a more "thuggish" look, but could guess the outcom... |
There’s no way this scene can have a happy ending. Looking like a thug just attracts trouble, and doesn’t scare off a real one, who can smell the killer inside like a shark smells blood (yes, sharks do smell underwater somehow (thanks, Cousteau Channel), while we humans get underwater in the bathtub so we do not smell)... |
Prisoner of Love |
No matter what you look like, it seems like most relationships either go bad, with a nasty divorce and decades of child support, or the marriage works out and the rest of your life is cast in stone, so there’s hardly any point in waiting around to see what happens. Either way, the husband will to have to spend his enti... |
1) working indoors, stuck in a dead end job at an airless office surrounded by incompetent bureaucrats, working for a petty fascist whose only enjoyment in life is spreading misery, until the poor guy has stewed in the pressure cooker for so long that one day he "goes off" and "takes out" everyone around him with an as... |
2) working outdoors, where the monotony, scorching sun and freezing rain break him down day by day, like erosion eating away at a mountain, until his face is shriveled up like a walnut, his fingers and toes are all crooked, and it hurts every time he moves, so he winds up drinking and taking pills all day to numb the p... |
(Venus Trap) |
(Yes, as I’m pretty sure you’re thinking, I shouldn’t look so far ahead and snuff out the embers of romance before they even catch fire. It’s not that I don’t feel the longing and desire that makes you want to drop everything and follow a beautiful stranger into the unknown. I get that feeling all the time here in New ... |
You’re right, I need to stop thinking so much, it gets in the way of my happiness. But without funds, you can bet I won’t have much else to do.) |
So, after all that, I bought one of the Japanese key-chain pets ($29) I saw on the Spend ‘n Save Channel. It’s a digital leech named Froyd, and I have to push a button to feed him blood a few times a day or he starts saying "Froyd vants blood— a virgin vould be good" like a vampire, louder and louder until you feed him... |
The World Turns Out to Be a Super Titanic |
Death Match |
NOTE: I have to warn you that things take off from here. Current events suddenly hijacked my new life and turned me away from luxuries like love and happiness, back to the irritated frame of mind I had when I wrote letters to the weeklies. Or even more irritated, because the topic in the weeklies was usually just an ex... |
After the terrorists murdered thousands of people for the greater glory of Allah and dimmed every beautiful day (like 9/11 was here) with a lurking sense of dread, I started wondering if my happiness was the only thing that mattered. I tried to think of what I could do to improve the world. |
Of course my first thought was to go on a personal "jihad." I’d buy a plane ticket to Pakistan, grow a beard, and infiltrate the local scene. I’d act deaf and dumb, and carry a Koran with a picture of Osama bin Laden, then point to the picture and hold up a piece of paper that said "Please help me find my daddy!" I kne... |
And when I found him and his bloodthirsty crew I’d martyrize them on the spot: I got a bomb recipe from the Militia Channel (fertilizer, sugar and Diet Coke), and some tips on how to be a suicide bomber from the Al Jazeera Network (remind yourself that your victims are ants; eat garlic to cover the smell of the bomb; c... |
The only thing I wasn’t clear on was what I’d say just before I set off the bomb. People would want to understand my motivation— was I doing it for God, for my People, for spite, or just to get on TV? I needed something clever, something an action hero like Bruce Willis would say, but he had millions of dollars worth o... |
Is the World Such a Wreck That It Deserves to Be Blown Up, Along with All Us Inhabitants? |
Meanwhile I’d continue to think about what was wrong with the world. Some people said the terrorists had the right to kill as many random strangers as possible because their People were being disrespected and the world is not fair. These people are idiots, but it’s true the world’s not fair. It never has been and proba... |
After the terror attack, you could feel the hole blown in the side of reality, like America just found out it was mortal. All of a sudden nothing mattered but survival, and all the stuff we normally argue about was submerged under a river of grief and anxiety. But it wouldn’t take long for the thieves to learn to breat... |
Thank You Ronald |
I walked by a group of half a dozen street people every day near 51st and Broadway, up the street from Times Square. A few of them looked like pirates, with shifty eyes and missing teeth, trolling for spare change in the stream of potential suckers that flows by every day. It was pretty obvious they ran the lives of th... |
Once in a while I stopped to talk to the ringleader, a loud woman who went by the name "Squirrel Girl." In between her twitching and profanity, and while I tried not to stare at what looked like algae growing on her teeth, she told me her story. She said she and her friends used to live in the crevices around the World... |
"I can’t believe they think they’re killin’ everybody for God! God don’t give a damn what people do, or He’d take care ‘a these morons," she said, pointing a thumb at her friends. These lost souls passed their days buzzing around garbage cans and muttering complaints at passing shadows, living in private worlds that ba... |
God Helps Those Who Help Themselves, |
Thank God! |
Reagan’s followers, including the current president, Bush Jr., claim that personal responsibility is the cornerstone of a healthy society, and that’s one of the world’s greatest ideas. But then these ungrateful parasites don’t want to pay taxes to support the system that helped them get rich, so the rest of us suckers ... |
1) it will cost them less to put up electric fences and hire a private police force than to help support a healthy society (this is known as the "Republican Model," according to the Popular Front Channel), or |
2) the meek shall inherit the earth, but only after assertive people have chewed it up and spit it out, and are relaxing in cryogenic tubes on luxury space ships speeding toward a fresh planet (thank you, Popular Mechanics Channel), or |
3) they are geniuses who could have made it anytime, anywhere— selling heaters in Hell— and are upset they haven’t received recognition from a genius grant foundation like I have, or most likely, |
4) they are blessed, and God has given them the moral right to live better than everyone else. |
The Promised Land |
Just before Bush and his "religious right" attorney general, John Ashcroft, began advertising their White House prayer meetings, the president said we are blessed, and it’s our natural right as Americans, practically our duty, to burn energy like there’s no tomorrow. Meanwhile the "religious right" Reverend Pat Roberts... |
Then Osama bin Laden, a product of the Saudi royal family’s oil wealth and official fundamentalism, came along and made self-serving righteousness look bad— and momentarily distracted the Republicans from their endless attempts to move the U.S. closer to the Saudi "religious right" model. |
What’s this relationship between God and oil, anyway? Is His spirit locked inside the stuff, and we have to burn it to spread the spirit? To the lungs, which are next to the heart? Or have these people been tipped off that there is no tomorrow, and there’s no point in conserving anything or worrying about the mile-high... |
(Or maybe something even more sinister is going on. I watched a show on the Ripley’s Science Channel about how oil comes from dead dinosaurs. After some animations showing gigantic brontosaurus graveyards turning to liquid under the hot sands of Arabia, the show went on to hypothesize that we’ve inhaled so much dinosau... |
The news always shows pictures of politicians going to church, but it’s considered too personal to ask exactly what kind of weird religious beliefs they have. Maybe this is because half of Hollywood belongs to the Church of Scientology and the media doesn’t want to advertise the fact? I won’t even go into the contorted... |
The Moral Quandary of Being Protected by Republicans |
The ruthless, gun loving Republicans are naturals to defend us from the terrorists. But just like the fresh new kid in a maximum-security prison full of perverts, we’re going to have to pay for the protection (thanks for the nightmares, "Scared Straight— After School Special," AOL Time Warner SuperStation). It makes me... |
1) someone has to stop the fundamentalist mass murderers, because they see everyone as slaves to the next life, |
2) the Republicans have their own fundamentalists, and have always been comfortable with the rest of us being slaves in this life |
(and like the fundamentalists, their success depends on keeping a large percentage of the smelly, sweltering "masses" desperate and ignorant enough to thank them for table scraps (thanks, Comrade Central)), |
3) no one’s going to save you from the Republicans, now that the Democrats are deflated from: (a) finally figuring out that the world will never be fair, (b) losing faith in their plans to make the world as safe and caring as a daycare center |
(run by robots, where everyone is so pampered that they turn into bloated parasites, fed liquefied Happy Meals by intravenous tube as they lay in their hammocks watching the Wrestling Channel all day, until no one has enough muscle left to dust off the robots, so they all break down and everyone starves to death (thank... |
and © getting slapped like sissies by the Republicans for so long. Now they just sit and watch, and let the money and corruption creep over them like clouds over the sun. Why should the Republicans be the only ones getting fat? |
Meanwhile Bush, like Reagan, thinks reading the teleprompter with some TV emotion makes him a real leader, when it just makes him the "front man" selling the facade to the suckers. And instead of growing into greatness with his new popularity, he still spends most of his time selling the same old "pump gas, print money... |
I Had a Dream |
By the way, if hearing the stuff above would upset all those rabid right wing Republicans out there in California, and cause them to vote at their next convention to let the Bush clan, Nancy Reagan and the Christian Coalition stand me up against the wall of an abortion clinic and execute me without a last meal, fine. I... |
You aren’t one of those rabid right wing California Republicans are you? |
Go Forth and Multiply the Right |
to Bear Arms? |
The humiliation of being protected by Republicans has given me a feel for the NRA, militia nuts, and people in Utah, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc., who feel everyone needs their own assault weapons to protect themselves from everybody else threatening their paranoid way of life. Like those weasels at the U.N., who are al... |
(When everyone knows the U.S. was built on gas-guzzling cars, that they are its blood and the freeways its veins. If that fact chains us to humiliated, corrupt oil countries whose proudly ignorant and spiteful citizens want to blow us up just because Britney Spears won’t answer their creepy love letters (People Magazin... |
And after taking our cars and forcing us onto slow, crappy solar-powered buses, they’d raise our taxes to pay for (1) condoms in poor countries, so they can all go buck wild and have safe sex all day for free, and (2) abortions in poor countries, where all the peasants want boys who can pull a plow and inherit 1/50th o... |
So the pro-gun, anti-sex nuts do have a point. But how will assault weapons protect you from a jet plane without a tail? It’s almost like defending against an asteroid from outer space, and for that everyone would need their own assault spaceship with a nuclear device. Maybe that’s what this Star Wars program they’ve b... |
At first glance this might seem like a reasonable approach to security. But with six billion people on earth, there’s bound to be a few kids, religious nuts or drunks who go ahead and push the button, causing a chain reaction of 5,999,999,999 more nuclear explosions, and burn us all off the face of the earth (no TV nec... |
You aren’t one of those religious nuts, are you? |
Back to Reality and Squirrel Girl |
Anyway, in spite of all my bellyaching about Republicans, I definitely do not agree with people who say "nobody deserves to go hungry or homeless," when everyone knows some people don’t deserve to breathe. But I do believe everyone deserves a few chances, and it struck me that Squirrel Girl and her friends— who were wo... |
So I bought them all plane tickets to L.A. ($3800 one-way), gave them $600 cash for drinks before, during and after the flight— they were worried about security— and enough for some new clothes, two weeks at a motel near the beach, three nutritious meals a day, and a chauffeured limo to take them to job interviews ($88... |
I have to admit I thought about escaping to L.A., too— there’s no center to it, so the terrorists would have a harder time figuring out what to blow up. But I’ve decided to stay put, because New York needs all the help it can get. Which means I need you— to send more money. |
So Thanks for Everything, But Please Send More |
The grant transformed me, like an ugly "larva" turns into a majestic Monarch butterfly (Wings Channel), and I owe it all to you, Ms. Munch. But there is a problem. After all the accounting above, I guess it’s obvious I need a higher level of income to maintain my lifestyle than I used to. Without being accusatory, I’d ... |
From what I’ve seen on TV, he wasn’t right about much of anything, but he sure was right that welfare is poison, and that you shouldn’t just send people a check in the mail. The grant freed me from worries about basic survival, but then I started worrying about all these other problems. And how can I solve them if I ca... |
When you sent the grant, you saved my life. And it’s a well known fact that you’re responsible for someone after you save their life. It’s just like saving a dog from the gas chamber at the pound— you can’t decide a week later you don’t like the slobbering Rottweiler after all, and ditch him in the suburbs with a bagfu... |
You bet on my future, too, financing my genius in the hope it would improve the world. If you invested in a company, would you turn your back the first time it hit a bump in the road? If everyone did that, pretty soon the whole economy would collapse and we’d all be sitting in mud drinking rubbing alcohol and trading a... |
It All Depends on the Future of |
the World |
And speaking of Russia, the only way out of this mess is to put more money on the table and spend our way out— the same strategy Reagan used to beat the commies. I just need time to regain my footing and learn how to "fish," maybe with some foreign language classes at a small, elite college, so I’m ready when the futur... |
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