well dear readers its Friday and that means it’s time for the Aloha Friday Hula and Holla!

as I dance in my little grass skirt, shaking my hips to that hypnotic Island beat, I want to Holla to all the weather forcasters out there with a big old hey ho! you gotsta go!

seems its was supposed to rain big time here, but (surprise!) it didn’t. . .I am beginning to wonder how much I can trust the weather guys around here. I mean, seriously, most times it’s just  partly cloudy and 85 degrees so when any real weather looms everyone just freaks out and starts calling Mayor Nagen to swoop in and save the day. . .

anyway, the clouds are getting fierce, so I best be heading home

have a good weekend folks

Since when did we start living in a third world country?

When did America start sucking this badly?

I think I can attribute our current malaise to three factors:

1. our pandering political class that is more interested in re-election than actually giving a crap about the constituency  2. the blathering idiots in the media who have reduced all serious national discourse into soundbites and 3.  intellectuals who have abdicated harnessing American exceptionalism  for pie-in-the-sky ideology (both left and right)

“Hype” is not action. Inaction is not the “political process”.

****

I know I am living in a third world country when:

1. the value of the dollar has been circling  le grande toilette  for the better part of three years

2. the financial system has crumbled faster than a 4$ meth ho’ after a pimp slap from Andre the Giant

3. work wages remain lower than in Nigeria and have not risen substantially in my lifetime. part-time and flex hours are just another way of saying We cheap. See ya!

4. the cost of living in many cities across our great land is now higher than when I was living in Tokyo in the 90s—-Tokyo!

5. the actual physical infrastructure of our county is about as well maintained as Geraldo Rivera’s mustache . . . just drive down a road, take a trip by train or visit some of our airports and get an investigative reporter’s “sense” of the joyous crapfest that is our great nation

6. NASA—yes, f$#$@! NASA—which just happens to be celebrating its 50th anniversary—has had to purchase seat on the Russian Soyuz craft because the damn space shuttle has less computing power than a Chryslar La Baron and was actually designed during the NIXON administration. . . .let that soak in for a moment. . .the last time anyone seriously looked at manned space flight in this country SCRAPPY DOO had just been thrust on the national scene!

7. people are allowed to home school their kids because our educational system has devolved from creating a civic society to focusing on performance and results

8. nepotism in all walks of life abounds. in spades.

9. entertainers feel free enough to espouse political wisdom ad nauseum.  ever notice how many entertainers in third world countries have an inordinate amount of clout?. . .south america, eastern europe, africa. . .people aren’t so much as following them as wanting to be like them. read that: rich and influential 

10.  our country’s foreign policy based on fear and foreign public opinion. 

11. I hear everyone talk  about the greatness of China. . . Lets take a gander at that wonderful country, shall we?  atrocious human rights abuses, no press or personal freedoms,  hundreds of millions surviving on a few dollars a day, blatant racism, aggressive nationalism,  genocidal policies toward ethnic minorities,  environmental destruction,  technological progress gleamed from other countries, a “vibrant” culture lifted from German political theory and modern Japan and Korea. . .oh, and material progress funded by American and Japanese investment.

12. the meteoric rise of  Tina Fey is not heralded as an imminent sign of the apocalypse

But I think I am most disgusted in this nihilistic wet-dream that many have now that America is somehow past her prime, that America is doomed for eternity unless we do that one important thing!. . .

It’s all of a piece, a symptom of an entire generation that has infected this country with its cultural myopia and love of  self-gratification.

we have become intoxicated with the allure and solace of slow dissipation, a gradual ebbing away of our vibrancy toward a civilized geriatric wonderland.

Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!

When does a habit become a style? When does a fad become the norm?

I was recently confronted by this quasi-philosophical issue after having poured over a number blogs from across the great literary landscape we call the “blogosphere”—a place that magiacally floats justed above the bloated intellectual landscape of the “micheal-moore-o-sphere”.

And how could it not.  From radical diatribes on political shennanagans to the mundane haikus of the spiritual vapid, I soon realized that it is a vast wasteland of quirky insouciance that has somehow become the de facto  jell-o mold of our electronic discourse.  I encountered so much  ’hip’ writing, in fact, that I begin to wonder if I stumbled upon a vast left wing conspiracy hell-bent on bludgeoning us to death with the tripe of the trope.

Everything seemed so excruciatingly bland and pithy and whimsical and poignant and desperately earnest, that the emotional gamut of life has somehow been whitewashed into literary vanilla.

Sure,  I came across some slight personal variations:  novel topics, unique word choice, esoteric vocabulary. But through it all I mostly found people grasping awkwardly in search of a compelling ‘voice’.

Perhaps I am being too harsh—I too have indulged in a glaring lack of style and have fallen back on cliche and the comfort of the first person.  I too have had moments of weakness and tried to exceed my tenuous literary grasp. I paused to wonder: Could this all just be some kind of an allergic reaction to how our stories and our lives are exposed in the media? Could this all boil down to some fundamental boredom in our lives? Is this actually a. . .rebellion?

Nah. Most people just suck at writing.

There is a reason why not all writers are remembered, nor all diarists lauded.  Who wants to read the pulp drivel of a  hundred years ago? I sure don’t, and I am less inclined to read the crap being produced today.

Well, I can’t change the “blobo-sphere”, such as it is, but I can demand one thing for all of us poor bastards forced to read your blogs: Be interesting!

Thank you and good night.

Note: The best thing I read on a blog?  B.J.Penn wannabee’s liquored up on weekends looking for trouble amidst the Tita action hoochimama’s.

Your old Kona is wondering if a sea change is in the air. . .or if that smell just isn’t some fad drifting by on the breeze.

I bring this up after hoofing to it to work the other day and nearly getting run over by some overweight slob struggling to keep his large girth wedged into tiny biking shorts whilst navigating a mountain bike around pedestrians.

What am I talking about, you ask? Cheapskates trying to save a buck on gas money.

Just how long is this going to last? How much longer am I going to have to get run over on the sidewalk by weekday warriors huffing and puffing their way to physical fitness and fiscal responsibility?

Sure, it looks good to don casual clothes, trick out a retail bike with a new light and knobby tire and start complaining about lack of bicycle parking at work, but I eagerly await the day when everyone just says “Screw it” and sucks up the higher gas prices—’cause you know that’s what’s going to happen.  This whole fitness-through-saving-some-dough phase ain’t going to last long with us couch potato Americans. Eventually everyone will realize that driving to the local McGreasy is a lot easier than balancing a super-sized value meal and 92oz drink with your breaking hand.

And until that day, to all you chunky cheapskates out there trying to kill two birds with one stone I say:  Kona tu-wooska mucho crank-o. oh neeeeeey!

That’s right. You heard me. Not on my watch!

What am I talking about? oil, man! OIL!

I realized yesterday that I am getting just a little bit tired of all of those nattering-nabobs of negativism in the media (I’m talkin’ about you Friedman!) chattering on and on about America’s oil dependency.  Everyone nowadays seems to think that it would be better for oil prices to keep skyrocketing so that Americans can finally ween themselves off of that addictive “malignant molasses,” sweet crude.

Why is it that MY generation must be the one to sacrifice financial well-being for the environmental future?

Why must I be the one to pay $137.82 for a Sonic Cherry Limeade just because I don’t want to turn my air conditioning off while waiting for Jesse, the part-time Community College Student and full time waitress, to hand me the a Vanilla Limeade which just happens to be the drink ordered by the Mr. T-looking dude in the black van  across the parking lot who just happens to be glaring at me  ’cause I am yelling at Jesse through the closed window of my air-conditioned car  trying to explain that the drink tastes an awful lot like vanilla—all the while keeping an eye on  Colonel  Decker as he screams down the street in his antiquated Army jeep hell bent on capturing  the man accused of a crime he didn’t commit?

I get the sense, sipping my cool beverage while watching Face-man peel out in a cloud of smoke, that something distinctly un-American is going on here.

First, Mr T. didn’t get his Vanilla Limeade.

Second,  gas costs way too much these days.

As I look out on the street, I notice Baby Boomer after Baby Boomer drive by in their gas-guzzling Cadillac Behemoths—just like the ones they have driven throughout their entire adult lives.   I turn to ask Jesse as she skates gracefully by and ask, “Isn’t there something wrong with this picture?”   Indeed there is.  Suddenly, in the prime of my money-making life, I am asked to suck down a precipitous increase gas prices along with a commensurate drop in discretionary income in order to make America, quote “a better place”.   How, you ask?  By giving the government more of my tax money so it can piss it away by building  Public Transportation Infrastructure.

Well, my friends, I have seen the public transportation future and it sucks. . . .Even countries that does it well can’t get past the rising ticket prices, public drunkenness, annoying crowds, hectic scheduling and the occasional suicide delay.  The way I see it, rising gas prices aren’t a problem of not enough oil, but of too much consumption.  There are simply too many people driving cars in China and India.  The solution?—Irish Children.

Barring that, however, the only other solution I can see are age restrictions on older drivers. Baby Boomers are wedded to their precious gas-guzzlers, ergo, make all of THEM start using public transportation.  Let’s see how long all of this oil-intervention-tax-hoopla lasts when aging hipsters have to stand in the roasting sun for a bus that may never come right next a  guy who hasn’t bathed since the Carter administration!

I pity the fool!

As I took keyboard in hand and dipped my brain into the black inkwell that is my soul, I was suddenly struck by the dearth of “nard” related humor on this blog.

What happened to me? When did puerile humor suddenly slip by the wayside? Had I, Kona, the most profound thinker ever to listen to Jack Johnson whilst sniffing vanilla scented candles, lost my comedo-philosphic way? Perhaps.

But then the ship of fate set me aright with the alarming news that Voodoo men right here in the Congo (my work location) are prancing about and robbing men of their. . .ahem virility. That’s right.  Billywitchdoctor.com and his cohorts are single handedly shrinking nards and generally making life difficult for the ”average” man. 

This is real. I swear.  Jack Johnson will attest to the fact.

So if you see this man stading next to you on the street corner. Don’t move.

And if he asks you to, never, I repeat, never say these words:

I Am Sofa King We Todd Ed.

The nards you save could be your own.

As most of you know, I am not one of the those “country-is-going-to-hell-in-a-hand-basket” kind of guys.  I’m not one for imminent doom and gloom of the Republic.  In fact, I think we were pretty much as screwed  then as we are now. . .which somehow brings me to my point:

What is it with “comedians” going into politics?

Has anyone else noticed the annoying rash of self-styled “funnymen” getting “serious” about “politics” lately? It seems that suddenly everyone who has sweated it out on stage at The Laugh Factory has suddenly gotten all intense about how I should live my life.

Now, I don’t mind listening to some of our comedians espousing their little nuggets of social wisdom. George Carlin, for instance—one could always sense that no matter what he said he knew when he was full of shit—What scares me are that these other purveyors of ironic truth are earnestly serious and sincerely believe what they say. It’s like a bad Palmolive commercial:

Pretension? Your soaking in it!

And as it turns out these “comedians” aren’t that funny at all. Remember when Bill Mahr was cutting his chops on those crappy HBO specials years ago? He has always found his jokes funnier than his audience—and still can’t deliver a joke with a straight face.  What about some of the others in the comedic millieu? John Stewart? Hamming it high on the schmuck factor.  Al Franken? Please.

But funny of funnies! There is news that Mr. Franken is now on the political march, railroading voters in a cold Polish-rich environment in order to expand his pseudo-intellectual zeitgeist.

Which brings me to my second point: Is there not something inherently arrogant about people who make fun of others trying to tell us what to do? Half of the fun of comedy is being “in” on the joke, that thrilling tingle of superiority one gets when dissin’ the stupidity others.  But does the same logic hold true for political discourse? Who thought that smug irony in the public arena was a good idea for the country?

This man?

Well, my friends, it has been a while since I a have jumped on the ‘internets’ and I do so now with the sole intention of stating that “I am addicted to doughnuts.”   I know. . .I know. . .it is rather shameful to admit it, but I was sent to treatment program after an incident at a local 7- Eleven involving a cinammon twist and a case of Colt-45.  

I was told by my mentor that the first step in overcoming a donut problem is admitting that there is a problem.  In a public place. With people.  Preferably with your pants up.

That being said, in order to assist in my recovery I would like all of you to head out to a local Dunkin’ Donuts  chow down on some jelly-filled goodness for me.  Live the life that I now cannot lead. Do it for me. Do it for your country.

 (And while your at it, pick me up one of those chocolate topped doo-dads with the sprinkles. But keep it on the down low, my mentor is Castro and he’s got plenty of time on his hands now.)

Peace!—and remember Let Go and Let Glazed.

that’s right ladies and gents, due to factors completely under my control I will cease doing this blog on a daily basis. . . .however, there may be periodic updates, errata and/or et cetera. . .

Well, it had to happen.  Someone got busted for Snackin’ on Snoopy.

 That’s right. Here. In Hawaii.

I personally was not involved, but I heard it went down something like this: guy wanted to play a little round of golf with his beloved dog, staff tells hims “no doggie-nuggets on the green,” man is forced to leave pooch near clubhouse, workers wander by and eye fine piece of puppy chow,  dog agrees to go with,  workers make puppy páte.  

A simple tragedy and one that could have been diverted if the owner had just told the workers to “Sit! Stay!”  

The sad story reminded me of  the time I went to Chinaman’s Hat with my brother.  It was a beautiful day, the clouds were no where to be seen, the water was serene and clear, the delicious smell of BBQ wafted over the beach. . . .we made our way to the shore, nodding with a knowing smile at two men  slow roasting a fat, succulent pig on a spit. . .which just happened to have a nice set of paws and A JUICY DEWCLAW!   Ppbbbt! Ppbbt! Ahhhhh! Man?! A dog?!?

Yes. I dog. My brother confirmed it.  How?  I never asked.

Now, far be it from me to not to comment on the cherished traditions of another culture. . . I have to say that I fail to see how this can become accepted culinary practice.  We all know what questionable hygiene practices dogs have,  and I have often found them licking various regional areas and digging up things they shouldn’t (cat box anyone?).  I just can’t imagine that such  culinary carousing makes for a tasty meat. . . .and yet I wonder. What does Fido taste like? It is better fried or BBQ’d ? And more importantly, can I fit my neighbors annoying lap dog into this traditional smoker?  

(It’s portable—a fine feature when running from the ASPCA.)