Joshuah Bearman

Here's Chertoff Patting Himself on the Back

Because our allies are terrorist targets. Salut -- to friendship!

And then the janitor went back to cleaning up

Having spent a lot of time at the Baldwin Hills mall, I can tell you that the scene down there would certainly be livened up by more spontenous musical numbers. This is the best Improv Everywhere mission I've seen in a while, if only for the fundamental insight into universal mall culture that lays the point of departure from sanity on the Hot Dog on a Stick girl:

"It was a big black thing about nine inches long..."

And it was in the toilet. And alive.   

Bearm-o-tronic

A bold proclamation for a bold writer! Believe it or not, this fan club was not started by me. Even under a pseudonym. Kyle Minor is a real person, in Ohio, and a very fine writer himself. Now that he has thrown my hat in the literary ring, I can finally cash in on the promise of all this social internetsworking hoo-hah. Next stop: best-seller/world dominationa/IPO! For those interested in joining, I am not an administrator, but I have noted that officer positions are apparently open to all. Yeti Wrangler is taken, but I think we could arrange Co-Yeti Wrangler for those interested. (Sorry Krafft!)

Those Krofft Brothers Might Have Been On To Something

As the Homo Floresiensis debate rages (summary: hobbits versus tiny "cretins"?) new evidence emerges in the form of more little people! This time the bones were discovered in greater numbers, and in diving paradise Palau. This is where I spent a month in 2004, communing with a baby monkey and pretending that Bush didn't win. Who knew I was so close to such important paleoanthropological/cryptozoological find? Turns out the researcher who discovered the bones was also in Palau on vacation, specifically because his wife wanted to go to a place where it would be unlikely to find any bones. (Palau is solid limestone, with limited opportunity for burial and therefore also burial sites.) But on the last day he talked to a local who said he knew of a cave full of bones. There they found 1,200 specimens of humanoid skeletons: three feet tall, orbital ridges, and teeth "at odd angles." Hmm. Small, dentally challenged, and big brows. Could it be that our new contemporary cousins are neither hobbits nor cretins but rather the extended family of our old friend Chaka?

Pass the Bitter Bitter Herb Y'all

With passover approaching, everyone's searching for strategies as to how to endure yet another interminable trip down the memory lane of old mitzraim. Surprisingly, painting eyeballs on your lids and napping doesn't fool anyone! PSPs, iPhones, and other electronic devices are banned. Clandestine messages in morse are too time consuming to decode. What's left? A magical inner voyage? Counting to ten thousand? Drugs? Well, that's how Moses apparently started Passover:

According to Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, psychedelic drugs formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times.

Writing in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy, he says concoctions based on the bark of the acacia tree, frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, contain the same molecules as those found in plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared.

Burning Bush explained! Not only was Moses passing the bitter herb back in the day, but so were the rest of the gang. (Wouldn't you if you were stuck in the desert all that time?) In fact, it sounds like the whole Sinai scene might have been a proto-rave:

"The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a people in an altered state of awareness," writes Shanon. "In advanced forms of ayahuasca inebriation, the seeing of light is accompanied by profound religious and spiritual feelings."

My guess is that Moses broke those tablets because he was pissed that no one gave him a flyer for Golden Calf 1280 BC, Mark II. 

Lock Your Doors People

Otherwise this could be you: