August 8th, 2004:
In Reality, a Beautiful Country
As I sit at my monitor watching Iron Chef in the reflection of my strategically placed glassed-in poster, I wonder when this "reality programming" will end. It just struck me, after having watched the Iron Chef for years, that there is no way that these chefs actually do everything they need to do in one hour. But for this show, who cares if they are fudging the facts? It's obviously entertainment, nothing more. I know in ten or twenty years all the doofs who are watching these reality shows, begun with Survivor!, are going to be laughing their fannies off seeing re-runs of these same shows that are about as close to reality as the Penthouse Letter's were. Speaking of reality, I recently read in the Wall Street Journal about more middle-aged bankruptcies, the offshoring of jobs and then Friday I recognized that the DeMedia was frothed up about only 32,000 American jobs being created last month, when 215,000 were predicted. It's almost as if, under their breath, they are chanting, "When John Kerry is President . . . " he will cease middleaged bankruptcies, end the exporting of American citizen's jobs ("nod, nod, wink, wink") and somehow produce 215,000 jobs month after month, ad infinitum. And he will do this by snatching back the Bush Tax Cut those evil few who earn more than $200,000 benefited from. Adjusted for inflation, your Mr. Wonderful's income in the 1980s would have easily been in this area. Do you know how I earned that much money? My brother and I owned, and managed, and worked six days a week at a company that also employed fifty-six citizens of the United States. We offered excellent health insurance coverage along with a pension and profit sharing plan. So what do you imagine would happen if President John Kerry, in a supposed effort to create jobs, increases taxes on the everyone who reports more than $200,000 in annual income. A income classification that numbers four out of five of its members as small businessmen. (Know that, small businesses, those with less than 500 employees, create eight out of every ten new American jobs.) Understand that President Kerry is going to charge IRS agents to collect a larger portion of the income from these businessmen and women who earned it. Which will deprive them of either investing these dollars in their own company or in our economy, and instead wheelbarrow these same dollars off to the government coffers from whence they will be distributed which will somehow generate more jobs than if they had remained in their owner's purses. Does that make any sense to anyone? Speaking of government work, here in Arizona, after $60,000,000 tax dollars were spent on rebuilding my alma mater, "The Arizona State Mental Hospital" (aka: 24th Street and Van Buren) the clinic now faces sanctions from Medicare simply because, among other violations, the government employees did not realize it was against the rules to handcuff patients to the chairs. Gosh. Who would've thought? But this is the kind of insanity (pun intended) that has gone on in government work from Biblical times and continued on into the 21st Century. Last month, setting another 'shortest-time-to-drive-record', Northstar-powered, your Mr. Wonderful zoomed from Scottsdale, Arizona to Fort Worth, Texas. Along the way, I was amazed at the beauty of this nation. I cannot understand how the Major Media and many of those in the opposition party can scream such bad things about our citizen dotted countryside. This is a country so beautiful, several times my breath was taken away with what I was seeing. And as the 2000 "Red & Blue" map which showed 99% of Gore Democrat voters were in the asphalted and shrouded skies of the cities dependent on federal largese and welfare, the beauty I saw was on the open roads and the open skies of literally, Bush Country. Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

July 8th, 2004:
Fires Fry Arizona Forests
An A.P.S. power plant burns while the fire departments stand helpless. Why don't they extinguish the blaze? Because the EPA has labeled the mineral oil that cools the industrial dumpster-sized transformers, as a toxic waste. So further attempts at fire abatement would only produce more 'toxic' slurry to be carried off. If the EPA were asked, which they indeed might be, by the Dairy Industry, they would also gleefully declare the Crisco vegetable oil you and I fry with as both a hazardous and toxic waste. Believe it or not they are currently studying whether microwave popcorn fumes, inhaled as we step into our kitchens while our paused DVD waits for us in the other room, will kill us. Understand it is the job of EPA employees not to protect us, but to prove how badly they are needed. To assure us that every adult American would surely perish within one hundred and thirteen days (children would last three and one-half days longer. The aged and infirm would die twenty-one days sooner) if the EPA's budget was cut by as little as .01%. I'd be willing to wager that 5 out of each 100 American millionaires attained that rare seven-digit status by filling the mandates imposed by the EPA. At its core, the EPA is simply another means to covertly remove dollars, by increasing the cost of products, services, licenses and permits that meet EPA criteria, from the moth-eaten wallet of the oblivious taxpayer. These dollars are then used to pay an EPA employee, who does basically nothing, while simultaneously performing at only 30% of the efficiency any employee of a for-profit enterprise must deliver. The billions of tax dollars that are left over, after paying EPA employees, are distributed to the before mentioned millionaire/industrialists, whose lobbyist's most likely helped Congress craft the specific EPA regulations their product or service now fulfills. As the SNL Church Lady used to murmur, "Isn't that nice!" This reminds me how Ross Perot and Donald Trump cashed in on government contacts. The former, was made rich by providing software for Medicare reimbursements and the later by Section 8 housing. (And if you are at all familiar with Section 8 housing, you know that the people who benefit from these horrible, horrible, horrible, housing projects are, in no particular order: the drug dealers, the gang leaders, the contractors, the management companies and the owner's of the real property. Everyone profits, except the sad family-groups who inhabit these warrens of filth and degradation.) Today, with the Texas-county-sized forest fires flaming to the northeast threatening the 320KV utility lines feeding Phoenix, 105F degree plus daytime temperatures, 450,000 invisible illegal aliens sucking up electricity, and the aforementioned Sun City power plant laying, smoldering, like a labia-moistened, Clinton-era Oval Office cigar, the residents of Arizona are likely to get a taste of what life was like in The Valley of the Sun. In the 1950s. Before freon and refrigeration. Yes, we are facing the possibility of rolling black-outs. Rolling black-outs that will silence the hum of both our roof top mounted air conditioning units and the fans cooling the hot guts of our Pentium powered bedroom computers. With your Mr.Wonderful typically departing his tony Town of Paradise Valley apartment at 5AM and returning at 11PM, you needn't worry about my possible discomfort. You were concerned, weren't you? <grin> But why are we in this insane situation? This is the 21st Century and are we still to be subject to the capricious whims of nature? Our current predicament stems from the fact that the (USDA) Forest Service, a continent-crossing branch of our federal government, after, over the decades, harvesting billions of tax dollars and hiring thousands of employees, has basically completed only two tasks. It has watched the forest grow and has battled fires after they broke out. Other than that, USDA Rangers have told any taxpayers, who might have the gall to attempt use their national forest, under what exact and codified limitations they might proceed. But, the Forest Service has done nothing to even begin to narrow the devastation caused by forest fires. Forest fires, like the Willow Fire in northern Arizona, which is now predicted to consume 200,000 acres of sparse Arizona vegetation before it is finally extinguished. It has become clearly visible that the Forest Service has been a federal agency where individuals who enjoy the outdoors, may get paid . . . to simply enjoy the outdoors. What many, many American taxpayer's do not realize, is that certainly one half of our government agencies are less productive  than even the Forest Service. That is why Conservative Republican's, while they may spend billions in a foreign country to stem attacks against any of the fifty United States, territories or possessions, attacks that could consume thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, always want to shrink the largest money pit this planet has ever known, that has dug its way, like a terrestrial landed dark-hole, into the banks of the Potomac in Washington, D.C. And most times we feel like we're trying to shrink the swimming pool sized hemorrhoids of an always constipated Blue Whale, by applying match-head sized squeezes of Preparation-H. Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

June 22nd, 2004:
Bassmasters, Jackson and Marion Jones
I was vacationing and staying at an old friend's house who could only afford the stripped-down version of Dish Network. I haven't seen anything so short on features since I witnessed Roseanne Barr in a micro-skirt. I'm forced to watch ESPN, where I see and hear, " . . . Bassmasters . . ." something, something, "It's the Super Bowl of fishing!" Oh wow. I still don't believe such a massive amount of time and effort and certainly billions and billions of dollars are involved in grown men playing games well. Games. I find that the Fox News Channel is unavailable, so I tuned to, gasp!, The Today Show. That's how uninteresting I find professional sports. Even during the seventeen years I was racing motorcycles pro-am, I'd have a difficult time naming off the top five professional motorcycle racers in the world. Phil Jackson - even in a world where sports celebrities are held in such reverence one would think that they could forever change the sports fan's life for the better with a simple wave of their championship trophy - my gut tells me that Phil Jackson is an immense prick. Later, back again at ESPN, while waiting to learn if one of my client's made the cut for the 2004 U.S. Open at Shinnecock, with an actor's ear I listen as female track mega-star Marion Jones precisely reads a prepared paragraph claiming that she does not and has not ever used " . . . performance enhancing drugs", with the emotion of a corporate Coca Cola® CPA articulating the monthly sales totals for Casa Grande, Arizona. Damn, girl! The USADA is accusing you of the illegal use of steroidal-type drugs.They are accusing your life of being a fraud. They are accusing you of being a cheat. And you cannot summon up some emotion? I assume that you have at least four more years of formal education than Mr.Wonderful (who finds it extremely difficult to obtain an office job without the sheepskin of an accredited institution of higher learning) and that you, Miss Marion, could both compose and memorize a passionate statement of innocence entirely on your own. Because your reading today could be summed up in two words, "I'm guilty."
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

June 2nd, 2004:
When Doctors Attack !
The em-effing American medical establishment just cannot refrain from attacking Dr. Atkins' diet. Your Mr. Wonderful is almost to the point of believing that urban legend about how wealthy American physician's want to keep their patients healthy, but not too healthy so that they might stop seeing their doctor on a regular basis. The latest bullshit that is spewing out is that the Atkins' Diet causes your kidneys to dry up and grow as hard and wrinkled as the useless pair of breasts that our dwarf governor (in the comfortable shoes) carries under her business suits. Dr. Atkins' advised that anyone on his admittedly high protein regime must drink more water than usual to keep things functioning as God intended. (Think about it - especially you numbskulls who actually believe in Darwin's Evolution Theory - can you imagine that ancient man, each one who had more testostorone than Republican's: hunter-Ted Nugent, actor-Charlton Heston and governor-Arnold Schwarzenegger combined, crouched around flashing their butt cracks while scraping around in the dirt, pulling up rutabaga roots, or instead, chasing down, clubbing to death and gnawing on the throbbing and hairy leg of still warm, raw meat?) Attackers of Dr. Atkins' claim extra water intake will make the diet no safer. As my reader's know, by strictly adhering to the Atkins' Diet, coupled with massive and regular exercise, I have shed forty-eight pounds of globby fat. (Currently I'm in a Hank Hill-like funk, drinking alcohol like Homer Simpson and packing back on the pounds like Rosie O'Donnell at an all you can eat lesbian buffet. This is mostly due to, not my own poor choices, but the very addicting Fiery Hot Pringles® which keep flying off the Safeway shelf into my cart and once at my tony Town of Paradise Valley apartment, they again wing their way, unbroken, out of the hermetically sealed cannister to roost inside my mouth only to lay on my tongue and dissolve, not unlike a communion wafer from Satan.) Before I began the Atkins' Diet in February of 2003, both my kidneys ached almost every day. Visiting the toilet, as a CFA (Certified Fat Ass) I could read an entire seven page article in the Harvard Business Review, not while grunting out a bowel movement, but while trying to take a simple piss. Before I went on the so-called 'kidney killer diet' I was as likely to eat vegetables or a salad as I was to vote for Al Gore for President. I often finished a large, steaming Pizza Hut pepperoni pie piled with extra cheese all by myself. In a Jethro-sized bowl, I'd scoop massive amounts of Schwan's ice cream, from their 2 1/2 gallon container, and then bury it under a Fisher-Price toy dump-truck load of red skinned Spanish nuts with Hershey's chocolate syrup covering the mound like black lava. I carried around, twenty-four hours a day, the equivalent poundage of the largest sack of dry dog food found on any Petsmart shelf. Not surprisingly, most of my joints below my hips ached. Every waking moment, I was so tired . . . no, wearied, that I feared melting into a forty-five gallon flesh-colored pool of goo. For godsakes I was wandering the aisles of Ross, wondering what size came after XXXL! I still am a pig, but a pig that enjoys eating salads and barbecued chicken more than Kentucky Fried Chicken and Schwan's ice cream - but not more than Pizza Hut pizza. Our media-savvy flawless physician's would rather see all American's on one of their perfectly balanced diets, that few American's can adhere to without regular, constant and expensive consultation. Don't these doctorate-holding professionals realize that millions of currently obese people (facing strokes, heart attacks and surely adult-onset diabetes) who might have attempted the Atkins' Diet and seen success in the first time in their lives, now, hearing these fanatic physician warnings, have yet another excuse not to even try? Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

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