Danocrates discusses international

I’m subscribed to Kayak.com for travel deals. Normally, I get emails that tell me when flights to Orlando dip down below $150 or if there are any spectacular packages to London but today I got this treat: “Night Border Crossing Experience”.

Your ‘coyote’ guide, Pancho, pulls off his black ski mask while actors gather around to scare you senseless along the way…make your way through barbed-wire fences. Survivors are blindfolded…

Wow. What a steal. Only eighteen dollars.

Read more about it here or if you dying to find out what it feels like. Here’s where you can make it happen.

Now I want to go to the ‘Two Nights in Ole Nanking‘, ‘Flight From Mount Vesuvius Adventure‘, or ‘Dachau Day Trip‘.

I probably won’t be able to do the “Dachau Day Trip” since the dollar is so weak to the euro. Hopefully, the $600 rebate in June will fix everything.

The growing population of monkeys in New Delhi, India has been an epidemic for quite some time because many Hindus worship the deity Hanuman, a monkey god who symbolizes strength.

It became international news when a gang of marauding monkeys mauled their deputy mayor to death.

When I read this, my first thought was, “Man, monkeys suck.”

My second thought was, “Man, what the fuck did he do to all those monkeys?”

My third thought was, �Man, that guy probably molested a baby monkey and when the family heard about it they went ballistic and tore that dude to shreds.�

My fourth thought was, “Man, that’s gross. That dude had sex with a baby monkey. Justice served.”

However to my knowledge, he “instigated” the attack by simply walking on his own terrace to get a breath of fresh air and then out of nowhere it started to rain monkeys and he was engulfed in a firestorm of teeth, tails, and hair. His only option to douse the fiery, furry attack was to fling himself off the balcony to the street below taking a few monkey martyrs with him.

You would think that after losing their deputy mayor to a mob of monkeys, that the city would
reconsider their stance on reincarnation and start baiting the city with poisoned bananas. Nope. The city officials decided the best long-term solution to rid their problem would be to import a small elite force of even larger, more aggressive, carnivorous monkeys to eat the smaller, less-aggressive, non-carnivorous monkeys. Perfect! Finally, a government that isn’t shortsighted. What could possibly go wrong? At first, I was a little worried but I was relieved to discover that the Blackwater Corporation is breeding these mercenary monkeys. Everything will be fine.

Hmmm�

If these tactics do work, perhaps we should use it here to deal with New York City’s plague of rats. In fact, they estimate that there are eight rats for every person that lives in Manhattan. By New Delhi-logic, I guess the best solution to get rid of the rats is to import a dozen rat-eating tigers.

With that same logic, the herpes virus is on the rise again, the Department of Health should unleash the anthrax virus to kill the herpes.

Or better yet�you could kill two birds with one stone and infect the tigers with anthrax.

No more rats. No more herpes. No more problems.

Well…sort of…there would be one caveat: We would eventually have to deal with the anthrax-infected tigers roaming the subways.

I just got back from a weekend getaway in Toronto, Ontario. Fantastique! I felt right at home. Basically, Toronto is the NYC of Canada sans the smells and apathy.

Wanting to be productive, I did a guest spot at the Laugh Resort Comedy Club
(Which I’m still trying to decipher. I’m not sure if they are trying to say that this is the last place in the world that will make you laugh or this is the last place in the world where you would think you would laugh).

I was slightly concerned that my American references wouldn’t be understood but Toronto is renowned for being one of the most diverse cities in the world so they were all well informed.

Unsurprisingly, the three other Canadian comics at some point in their act described Americans as slow, dim-witted gun-toting people.

Since I was raised in Texas and served in the USAF, you would think that I would be slightly patriotic but I my lost admiration for Uncle Sam long ago when I read Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Heller’s Catch-22 when I was a teenager.

As much as I agree with Canadians, it gets grating after an hour and a half. Although, it’s hard to defend America while Bush is still in office. So I let them have their fun. Who cares? The only myth that I wanted to dismiss was their continued attempts to paint NYC as a crime-riddled city where you are lucky to get mugged instead of being raped or set on fire (or a combination of all three). This really annoyed me because it simply is not true. I’m not saying there isn’t crime but it is a very safe city. If you’ve ever read Freakonomics, you’d know why. Roe vs Wade, yay! I’ve lived here since 2001 and I have never felt this safe anywhere else in the country. I live in Astoria which was predominantly Greek but now is becoming one of the most diverse areas in Queens. It’s extremely safe and you feel a sense of community.

With that said, I got back to the States and turned on my phone to find six voice mails and six text messages.
Here’s one of the text messages: “Someone got shot and killed at our Broadway stop tonight. Beer kept me safe and off of my normal train.”

Here’s an excerpt of an article written about it:

“The victim lay in a large pool of blood in front of the token booth - his long black hair a bloody mess on the station floor, witnesses said. “The lady inside the [token] booth was almost crying,” said Ricardo Peris, 42, of Astoria. “I was even scared.”

I love that he said “was almost crying” implying that she’s seen worse and could hold it in. An my absolutely favorite part “I was even scared” kills me. I’m assuming Ricardo lives in a haunted house on Riker’s Island filled with bees.

Since I was raised in San Antonio (three hours from Mexico), I tend to pronounce things differently. You see Emilio Estévez and say “Ah-Me-lee-oh Est-ah-vez” I say “Eh-meel-ee-oh Es-teh-vez”.

A very subtle difference but I still sound like a pretentious asshole.

My worst offense would have to be the night my buddies were driving me home to Queens from Manhattan and they asked me which bridge would be quicker.

I casually responded, “Probably the Triborough Bridge.” (Note: I pronounced it tri-burro with a Spanish accent)

My friend driving the car nearly slammed on his brakes and said, “What the fuck did you just call it?”

I said it again without thinking, ” The Triborough Bridge.” (This time making sure to correctly roll my “R’s”)

Everyone stopped talking for a moment and just stared at me in mixture of disgust and amusement as if I were a giant talking penis.

Someone else said, “Say it again just so it’s clear which bridge you want us to take you on.”

I was starting to get annoyed, “Jesus Christ, are you all deaf? The Triborough! ¡Hay Dios mio!”

They all started to laugh and the driver the said, “Got it. Señor Allen wants to use the Three Donkey Bridge.”

We have all done something in our lifetime that we are ashamed of and would be mortified if our actions came to light. Be it a night in jail, a transaction with a prostitute or the thousand hours you spent playing Dungeon and Dragons as a teenager. Of course I’m speaking about other people. I’m one of the few people with no skeletons. My closet door is wide open. Please do not to be confused with the closet door of homosexuals. That door is still closed but not closed because I’m a closeted homosexual. It’s just a different door often confused with the closet containing people’s skeletons. In fact, I don’t even know where my sexual closet is located. I live in NYC and I can’t afford a closet. So I guess I’m a eunuch. I can’t wait to be wealthy enough to afford a closet.

But I digress…

The skeleton that I’m speaking about is the closet of the company Degussa that is jammed with the amount of bones it would take to construct a Tyrannosaurus Rex. They were contracted out by the German government to coat the concrete slabs constructed for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe with an anti-graffiti substance called Protectosil. One small caveat: Degussa is a subsidiary of Degesch, the infamous manufacturer of Zyklon B, the gas used in gas chambers during the Holocaust. Now I have to come clean and say that I’ve fucked up at various jobs throughout my life: As a waiter I dropped a bowl of potato soup into a dude’s dreadlocks and another time I forgot to chain the door of an arcade which was burglarized that evening. But to be “The Guy” who authorized the payment of million dollars to a company that helped kill a million Jews has to be the winner of the “Most Douchiest Douche Award”.

You know that, I know that, people of China know that and the citizens of Korea know that but for some reason Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe doesn’t think it’s that bad. Perhaps he’s a distant relative of Clayton Williams the ex-gubernatorial candidate for Texas who made a “joke” to a reporter, likening bad weather to rape, “as long as it’s inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.” Let’s also not forget one of his infamous responses to his defeat by Ann Richards, a recovering alcoholic, “Well, I hope she doesn’t go back to drinkin’!”.

In 1937, Japan was one of the worst offenders. The Chinese refer to this as the Rape of Nanking. Tens of thousands of women were brutally raped over a period of six weeks.

I never understood the term, “brutally raped”. It seems redundant.

bru‧tal‧ly, adverb
1. savage; cruel;

Rape is brutal.

Rape is the one word in the English language that does not need an adverb to modify it. Its like describing an orange as an orange orange.

Unless there are different methods of rape I’m not aware of:

A flower deliveryman delicately raped a young woman this evening in her apartment today.

or

Father Aguilar was arrested today because of allegations that stated he had passive–aggressively raped an altar boy.

or

Israeli president Moshe Katsav secretly raped his secretary.

or

Since Mark Foley was molested my a priest and brainwashed by his alcoholism, he reluctantly raped a 16-year-old page.

Rapist beware someone just invented an anit-rape condom called Rapex

(I’m not lying. Click on the link).

Click here

Obviously, they never attended Kent Powers Academy:

More and more Iraqi insurgents are becoming violin makers. Flooding the market with millions of mass-produced yet exquisite instruments. The Iraqi “Stradivarius” has become the “Model-T” of Baghdad.

The world observes helplessly as these finely-crafted, musical masterpieces are being forced upon the unsuspecting cilvilians.

When will the violins stop!

I’m not sure.

My internal clock is messed up.

I remember seeing a Cinco de Mayo parade in Union Square Monday.

Silly me, that was the immigrants striking.

I’m slow.