Well, I suppose I better quit puttin’ it off and get into my yearly blab about one of the great ongoing mysteries on this planet. Regular readers might already be saying, “Oh sweet Lord in Heaven, he’s gonna start gurgling about crop circles again!”
Good call! Yes, I must journey once again into the wheat and barley fields of Britain to present a brief briefing on this fascinating phenomenon known as Crop Circles. There’s something irresistible and compelling about these creations. (To call these amazingly complex and sharply executed agri-glyphs “circles” is so lame and condescending; it’s like calling Beethoven’s Ninth “a nice tune.”)
The collected batch of crop circles (at last count, 67) that have shown up this summer in the fields of England has been, as they have been for the last decade, impressive, outrageous and, at times, fantastic. As usual, no humans have been seen or caught creating these works; no UFOs have been reported in the skies at night. The answers as to how and who remain tucked inside the cracks that exist between the words of the questions. I guess. As usual, I encourage you to see for yourself at www.cropcircleconnector.com.
And please, don’t even think that Mel flick, Signs, has any connection to this story. It doesn’t. The crop circles seen in that movie were primitive pieces of work, the kind that immediately get busted as man-made hoaxes by experienced circlists.
Lately, health professionals have stiffened their recommendations for human fitness, saying that where they used to think a half hour of aerobic activity three times a week was sufficient for general health, they now want to nudge it up to six days a week. That’s bad news for those dedicated to the slothful life, but then again, sloths have a tendency to not let this kind of news bug them anyway. But there’s a key question here: Does a half hour of doing the “wild thing” qualify as a bona fide aerobic activity? Because if it does, a lot of Americans are better off on the daily workout scoreboard than they might think.
Scrappy jungle love fiends should note that the key words here are “half hour.” Erotic bursts of glandular gladness lasting for three minutes aren’t conducive to cardio health, no matter how much you sweat.
As you read this, some poor bastard is being choppered into Washoe Med from the Black Rock Desert, completely out of his mind after drinking a Harvey Wallbanger at a funky juke joint called The Sandpounder Saloon. That cocktail was dosed with a very stiff jolt of ketamine, known as “vitamin K,” an animal tranquilizer that is capable of sending humans into psychological realms familiar only to Tibetan monks and surviving members of Jefferson Airplane. I can only hope that poor bastard isn’t me. Have a great, juicy and completely memorable Labor Day!