Ze King of Biers

In case no one else noticed, Budweiser started hawking a new brand of their flavored water ironically named “American Ale”. Ironic in that American Ale hits the shelves just weeks after the ink has dried on the contract to sell the Belgians everything from the Bud girls' swimsuits to the Clydesdale's pooper scoopers. This is bigger than the Japs snatching up Rockefeller Center the last time things got rocky here. Who really cares about Rockefeller Center anyhow? Other than Manhattanites, no one sees it more than five minutes each year when the Christmas tree is fired up, and in the 30 Rock intro if they're paying attention. Forget Gatorade, this is the official drink of football we're talking about here.

About the same time the patriotic-sounding brew hit shelves, the King of Biers also found the need to start calling itself the Great American Lager. Still pitching to that nationalistic crowd. Will rednecks still drink it, or will the Great American Lager find itself pigeonholed as a Blue State libation, as fit for ridicule as a carafe of Bordeaux? Keep it cheap and I wager the marketers will slide this one right on by. If GM is ever bought out by Toyota, you can be sure they'll just play Seger's Like a Rock even louder and never let on what happened.

Not long ago we were filling our britches when a bunch of rich guys from Dubai (a redundant way of saying a bunch of guys from Dubai) wanted the contract to guard our ports. Now we'll be lucky if they don't end up owning the ports. Yes, the Great American Fire Sale is here. The banks will just be first to go. The foreign firms will move in to scoop up what bargains remain after the dust settles. I say first to go, but that's just in this wave. This is a trend that's been building a while now.

The House Republicans didn't want to throw the banks a line because in five weeks they're up for reelection and figured they'd better start tightening the purse strings like they used to in the old days. Fair enough, the deal stunk either way. And I'm still not sure which would be worse, swelling the debt another barely fathomable number, or the fire-and-brimstone/cats-and-dogs-sleeping-together mass hysteria scenario painted by its cheerleaders. But our failure to buy up those soured bank notes does reveal one thing- that we were unwilling to invest in ourselves. We didn't trust Americans to pony up on our own debt. And who could blame us?

There's nothing we like more than borderline-xenophobic rhetoric, something that looks good on a bumper between our other angry stickers. Give us someone to blame, and that overtime to pay for what used to not to need overtime to pay for is just a little easier. But now the blame game has gotten confusing. If I buy American does it help if the company is actually a subsidiary of an offshore holdings corporation with majority of shareholders based in... ah hell, blame me I can take it. None of this can fit on a bumper sticker and people are starting to wonder (too late) if maybe they should have been paying closer attention all along.

We are a nation of tough talk. But aside from our apparent willingness to send our boys and girls off to fight in every corner of the globe, our walk is somewhat lacking of late. Amid all the clamor for having to put our collective shoulders to some imaginary grindstone, along with the politically required praise for the American worker, no one will ever have the guts to say what all that really entails. An earthquake could swallow California whole the same week the Russians decided to drill in ANWR themselves and the first thing to be dismissed out of hand would be a tax hike. Such a silly notion, ever raising a tax. Better to live free and just borrow more money. That's the American way.

A wise man once wrote about the Death of the American Dream. I couldn't find the quote I was searching for, so I'll whip up my own about it instead: No one wants to call the time of death because they won't really know it's happened until they smell the rotting corpse and figure out where the flies were coming from. Authors and historians have been predicting the demise for so long now it seems inevitable, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Late night political discussions seldom end without mention of Rome. And you can't help but wonder if (or more likely when) it happens, what it will look like afterwards. No one can say, but that sound you've been hearing all month was another of its coffin's nails. Don't fret that we might lose our empire, of course we will eventually. But it doesn't have to be as bad as you think, England seems happy enough these days. Of course they drink like a nation of walking fish. My advice is to invest heavily in breweries. Though it looks like someone already thought of that.

The piper is calling, can you hear him? Try to ignore him if you can. Try to cling to guns and Bibles or universal healthcare and gay rights. Either way he's going to collect, and he doesn't care who you blame so long as you keep working until the day you die.

Sorry this one took such a hairpin for the dark side, but life can't always be shits and giggles. My deepest apologies to anyone tricked into thinking we'd actually be talking about beer tonight. Also apologies to The Onion for swiping their Capitol image. It was late and I swear it won't happen again.

David Blaine to be Horsewhipped 500 Times

NEW YORK- Legendary illusionist David Blaine announced today that he is training for his most grueling and controversial endurance ordeal yet- to be publicly horsewhipped 500 times while riding a unicycle.

Blaine says he has been training himself for months, working on his balance as well as developing a resistance to the excruciating pain sure to come from having one's back flayed open like a gutted trout.

“It's been a dream of mine since I was a boy,” Blaine said in a press statement. “To see if I could do it. It is proving to be my most ambitious challenge yet.”

The magician says he has so far been unable to get accustomed to the swift blows of the birch switch used to whip his back raw. He seldom makes it more than fifty blows before weeping for his trainer to stop. “It takes some getting used to, hopefully I can scar up in time. My physicians tell me the nerve endings may just die before then so that would be helpful.”

Besides toughening up his skin, Mr. Blaine must also master the art of unicycling which he admitted as being “just a gimmick, really”.

Always pushing the envelope, the magician says he may be ready for an even more daring stunt soon after. “It's still in the planning stages, but I'm seriously considering being shot through the heart and undergoing an emergency transplant." All televised live of course. "I have faith in my team of surgeons, and we are basically waiting for the right donor to become available. There's a waiting list for viable hearts, and I wouldn't want to jump the line.”

Mr. Blaine hopes to bring attention to the need for more organ donors, particularly those being blood type A-negative.

Peter Robbed

GALILEE- Local fisherman and known Christ associate Peter was shocked to find his apartment had been burglarized over the weekend.

“I’d just returned from a weekend trip down the River Jordan with some pals. Some fishing, some wine, you know, good times” said Peter. “Anyway I get back and see my door off its hinges. And I’m like, ‘Jesus, what's this?!’”

“Jesus was with me when I found the place and he really tried to calm me down” Peter admits. “But it’s easy for him to say ‘turn the other cheek’. Things just seem to always go right for that guy, and some of us have to work for a living.”

Reported losses included a jar of figs, robes, assorted fishing nets and tackle, and a several pieces of silver that had been hidden in a hollowed-out piece of fake bread on a shelf. The thieves also carved crude remarks about Peter's mother into the walls with a hammer and chisel.

“Those villains will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven if I have anything to say about it” lamented the anguished Peter.

In a bid of sympathy for his longtime friend, fellow disciple Paul has offered to help Peter get back on his feet, having reportedly come into some money recently.

A Bigger Bang

Today marks the day when some marvelously expensive underground experiment beneath the French/Swiss border first fires up. The switch on the fabled and costly Large Hadron Collider was finally flipped. I’m hoping it’s one of those big red buttons with the plastic safety cover over it, like in the movies. One that requires two keys and lots of “Preparing to initiate beam, sir.” “Initiate!”

What’s strange is that no one really knows what is going to happen when it does whatever it is supposed to do. Surely lots of tiny stuff will collide with lots of other tiny stuff at fantastic speeds. After that it’s difficult to explain without lots of charts and chalkboards and a healthy helping of layman-izing to get the paying taxpayers onboard. I had some strange dreams about rocket-powered turtles last night and woke with an unexplained headache and a leg that was asleep, maybe these can be blamed on the LHC’s side effects from halfway around the world.

Will this thing find a way to run all of Europe for a week off a teaspoon of dark matter? Will a snapshot of skidding protons eerily resemble the face of Jesus? The more likely outcome will be a few years from now when the physics community has wrung out as many dollars as it could from the holders of the purse strings, and after whatever newly discovered weird subatomic thingies have been cleverly named after their discoverers, an alternative use will be clamored for.

So what do you do with a 17 mile underground tube? The most obvious answer is some sort of futuristic racetrack. One problem with this is where do you put the spectators. A more interesting idea is to put them in the tube themselves, make them part of the action. You thought watching ultimate fighting got your adrenaline pumping? Try dodging superbikes doing two hundred past you inside a deafening 12 foot concrete tunnel. Just stick to the inside and don’t move too suddenly and you should be OK.

Some worrywarts have said that when the thing spins up to a full head of steam and hosts its first subatomic fender bender, there is a slight chance a black hole will be generated, swallowing the Earth, her moon and any itinerant comets unlucky enough to be passing by into oblivion. Though the scale of this event may have grown in the retelling, like the massive catfish General Sherman that Homer nearly landed, it’s at least a possibility. Once again the chance is slight, there’s no need to strip nude and don a placard announcing the proximity of the end just yet. Plus Hawking is rumored to have a cash bet against it, so I’m not sweating. Talk about a win-win for the Doctor, his bookie will be interstellar ashes if the time ever comes to collect. But if you think that this is indeed the end, cash out now and have a good time with my blessing. I hear old man Potter is paying fifty cents on the dollar across town.

Or maybe this has happened before. Maybe the last Big Bang was the result of a previous collider experiment gone slightly wrong. Or quite successfully depending on your viewpoint. Somewhere along the line a designer forgets to carry the one, or a couple fairly important wires get crossed. Before you know it God is looking down from his watch shop, shaking his head as the whole show starts up again. Who does he swear to I wonder?

It was revealed someone stashed a couple of beer bottles inside the guts of the great thing, perhaps in a futile effort to ward off planetary disaster. The brand’s motto claims it will "refresh the parts other beers cannot reach". I swear it’s true. Ironically there is an actual phenomenon in physics known as Beer’s Law which describes the absorption of light in a given medium. For example shining your maglight into a fishtank will have a measurably different effect than doing so into a fishtank full of raspberry Jello. There will be a measurably different effect on the efficiency of your guppies’ gills as well, but that lies in an entirely different field of science to be discussed another day.

Let's raise a glass to science and hope she's kind to us this time.

A Costume that Really Tied the Room Together

We at the Bunker wish to apologize for having succumb to the lure of politically motivated posts these past days, a genre we swore at our founding we would not slip into. But tis the season, and I venture even Old Saint Nick might face a roasting in his high season. Our aim here is not a standard, sober analysis of the news, we've heard there are a few places already offering this. This publication is more aimed for the audience looking to creatively kill a few minutes with their laptop on the crapper. That would naturally be the reader on the crapper, not the laptop. The concept would be simpler to convey with the aid of a graphic, alas our meager budget still prohibits a full-time illustrator. We also regret that the Bunker is not available in print form, to serve the role of surrogate in the event your bathroom roll runs out. If you're in such a position right now, we can only assume you are now considering an awkward duck-walk to the kitchen, sans pants, in search of some napkins. We'll wait.

Anyway, to make it up to our more conservative-minded readers or those weary of the past two weeks of national over-seriousness, here is an adventure. A tale, taller than most in these parts. It is a tale of clandestine construction, of drinking, of bowling, of mischief. In any event I hope you enjoy it.

I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the LebowskiFest phenomenon. That celebration of all that is Jeffrey Lebowski, better known to Achievers the world over as The Dude. If you're not so versed no fear, it is my job to kick you up to speed. It is, in a breath, a bunch of free-wheeling folks getting together to dress in costume, furiously quaff White Russians, bowl poorly, and watch the Greatest Movie Ever. My breaths are long. As each year's gathering grows in size and manic devotion, the costumes mimic the progression, with attendees struggling valiantly to don not just the most artfully done garb, but the most impressively obscure.

At first such obscurity came easily, to be bestowed on the first person with the wherewithal to dress as a red spandex-wrapped nihilist wielding a giant pair of scissors (from the 10-second nightmare montage of the Dude's). Now you can probably find such ilk on a string of Christmas lights at Spenser's novelties. After a few seasons kudos might have been granted to a Liam-clad guest (Jesus' bowling partner). But as the cruel whims of ironic fashion dictate, the landscape was soon to be littered with discarded Liam bowling shirts, with the extra-extra-extra-larges turning up at the garage sales of hipsters from Knoxville to Albuquerque. As with other avenues of irony, the path to obscure (and thus cool) supremacy demands navigating an ever-narrowing array of fashion choices. Fortunately this is a film with oodles of supporting and minor (let me stress that word) characters.

After a night of soul-searching and head-slapping I arrived at the ultimate costume idea. One that had probably* never been done before, the Holy Grail of Dudeian cosplay. The hedge of probably was required, there being no known officiating organization to be in a position to confirm or, uh, disconfirm my suspicion. The fact that there were obvious logistical reasons it had probably never been done before was one I tossed aside, kicked at, and spat upon. I would present myself as one Arthur Digby Sellers, retired writer of 156 episodes of Branded (the bulk of the series). As fans will recall, Mr. Sellers had no lines in the film, he didn't even move. These are common side-effects of being in an iron lung.

Construction of the lung began in earnest. As the thing would need to be mobile, iron was soon ruled out as the primary building material. Cardboard painted silver might do, but it would have looked a bit too junior-high science project for my liking. After some searching I found a stack of 50 gallon plastic drums behind a food packaging warehouse out by the railroad. They still smelled strongly of their previous contents. I would have spent some time looking for ones that had shipped something like honey or licorice, but as I was poking through them, an angry bald man started shouting from a loading dock. There was a clear impression my presence was not welcome. Ten seconds later, my pickup, two white barrels, and yours truly were bouncing over the tracks bound for the workshop. I ended up with one still smeared with vegetable oil and another crusted in something resembling cream of mushroom soup. A hot afternoon of scrubbing with Mr Clean rid them of the visual remains, but the smell of each never really faded.

Before gluing the barrels together I fired up the Skil saw and whacked the ends off, creating something resembling the world's biggest Pringles tube. I cut a hole on the right side for my bowling arm, though I wasn't certain how that bit of acrobatics would play out. The base of the creation came from an old Piggly Wiggly shopping cart I had tired of seeing in a shallow canal near my house each day. On a Saturday I managed, with a few strategic swings of a homemade grappling hook, to raise it from its watery grave. Afterward it was awkwardly ridden home. The belly of my shirt was stained beyond use from the sludge on the handle. Fortunately the thing had landed upside down when the kids abandoned it, sparing the wheels the full brunt of rust they would have endured after years spent fossilizing in the muck. A few blasts of WD40 brought them back to life. The cart was removed from the frame and wheels with the aid of a sawzall, then I bolted the barrel fuselage to the wheeled base. As my head would need to stick out, I added a small platform of plywood, which I covered with an inch of foam rubber. The inside of the barrels was also given a generous helping of cushion. I then coated the whole shebang in spray primer, followed by a lustrous silver. It looked like the tin man's tomb. Then I glued on some various tubes, buttons and medically necessary looking stuff.

To complete the project, the ends were fitted with removable rubber diaphragms, the bottom one with two holes (for the feet) and the top with one (head). It would be impossible to get into on my own, a second pair of hands would be needed to encase me in my tomb.
When the day of the festival rolled around, I tied the beautiful contraption down in the bed of the pickup and picked up my friend, bound for the lanes and history. We secretly unloaded in the back of the parking lot for maximum effect. In a few minutes I was strapped in. More cushioning would have been worth the effort. When I was wheeled into the festivities, you'd think MacArthur had just returned.

The hearty applause, marriage proposals and general wave of approval that followed made the late nights of drunken effort more than worth it. Half the attendants ended up using my lung as a coaster. More than one cigarette was absentmindedly left to burn on the control panel-turned-ashtray, scarring and pitting the silvered plastic shell. This I didn't mind, as I had to rely on my fellow revelers for movement, bar purchases, and ball retrieval. A one gallon Stadium-pal strapped to my nether regions (Google if necessary) provided ample capacity for a full night's merrymaking. Enough wiggle room was engineered in so I would be able to turn my head to sip Caucasians from a twisty straw, as well as hold a bowling ball in my palm. As a full-fledged swing of said ball would have been impossible from within the constraints, the roller assembly used for young children and the hideously disabled was wheeled out. Basically my frames consisted of nudging the assembly imperceptibly to the left or right before rolling the 8 pounder down the tracks to the patiently waiting pins. It was a spectacle that drew roars of approving laughter from the crowd. And a fair score on my part- 158, a personal feat not bested since bowling at a kid's birthday party with the rails up.

Somewhere along the line, the wise idea that I should be a mode of transport was floated. This soon led to my being used to ferry girls around, like a parade float. This I did not mind one tiny bit. I wasn't crazy about the races out in the parking lot soon to follow, but as the whole thing had been my idea I can hardly complain. After a few laps around the light poles, one of the participants slipped and hurled me headlong into a parked Miata, tearing off a mirror. The sight of the dangling wires and busted glass caused the cheering crowd to disappear like a street ball team after a window had been shattered, leaving me to drunkenly plea to the heavens to “get me outta this thing!”. After a few minutes passed and no Miata owner came forward to air a grievance, some participants trickled out to help me back inside. They were all apologetic for so cowardly hanging me out to dry, and needless to say my money was no good the rest of the evening.

By then I was done with the contraption, as an inexplicable claustrophobia was beginning to set in. Plus I think the Stadium-pal may have gotten torn in the antics outside and things were threatening to get messy soon. I was helped out by more hands than were probably necessary, with everyone as eager to participate in my photographed extraction as the Marines raising the flag over Suribachi. More than once I was asked why I smelled like soup.

The prize for best costume was a plaque, along with a bowling ball with the face of the Dude beaming. The plaque hangs proudly in the den, where it generates more pride than any diploma ever could. The ball is packed away somewhere, I use it once in a while when I really want to impress the natives.

And what of the iron lung? We all agreed it was a shame, but no one had the room or desire to actually keep the thing. It was about to be abandoned behind the bowling alley dumpster when some genius had the idea of giving it an explosive funeral. Sometime before dawn it was taken down to the tracks by myself and a hardened core of soused pranksters. After the coast was checked, it was pushed, pulled and finagled onto the tracks just as the whistle of a northbound freight could be heard far off in the pre-dawn stillness. As we waited at the tree line trying not to piss ourselves with laughter, a cruiser was spotted coming toward us from the other side of the tracks. But the officer had other business that night and pulling a huey, leaving us to watch the fireworks. Mischievous overlarge children drooling with excitement, we watched in awe as the twin engine Conrail slammed into the lung at more than fifty, kicking it skyward into the woods like a steel toed boot on a can of Campbell's.

As far as I know, it's still there. Reeking of soup and spilled High Life. A large part of me hopes that it might be right now, providing basic shelter for an underachiever. The bums of the world may have lost, but damned if they don't know how to have a good time.

At least that's what I seem to recall. Though now that I think about it, the whole damned story might well have been nothing but a dream.

*Later investigation would prove this theory wrong

Harper Valley USA!

NEWSFLASH! For those of you who might have felt uncomfortable with Sarah Palin's utter lack of experience in being a half term governor of the third least populous state and the martinet mayor of a town the size of a pair of high schools, take heart. It's been recently revealed by Cindy McCain that Mrs. Palin also possesses skills at basketball, fishing, hockey mom-ery, pistol-packing, and moose hunting. These vital skills are certain to aid her in dealing with just about any future Presidential crisis my mind can conceive of. If you've ever stared down a moose from the relative danger of a mere two hundred yards through a twenty power scope, or cheered your son as he makes that winning goal, you're more than ready to handle a Fed bailout, border incursion in the Caucuses, or terrorist attack. Doubters may now breathe easy.

Devil Reportedly Satisfied with McCain Deal

ST PAUL- A beaming Satan told reporters over the weekend how happy he was with his recent deal with Arizona Senator and presumptive Republican Presidential nominee John McCain.

On Friday, the world learned of Senator McCain's pick for running mate, conservative Alaska governor Sarah Palin. The Prince of Darkness concedes he not only knew of the deal weeks earlier, but that he himself had a hand in its forging.

“I met John outside a cocktail party in Savanna, Georgia one evening” told the evil one. “I recall he was restless and anxious, but it was more than just the weight of the nomination. I've seen that look before. I asked him what was wrong and he lamented about his choice.”

For weeks speculation over McCain's choice in running mate had been the subject of intensifying public and private debate, with the Senator coming under pressure from a range of special interest groups as well as his own advisers.

Over the course of a few drinks overlooking the resplendent garden of an RNC supporter, the Devil knew he had not only captured John's rapt attention, but that his soul was not far behind.

“'My friend,' Johnnie asked me 'where can I go to find someone my base will approve of, someone with strong pro-life credibility, an undying love of guns?'”

“'Maybe even someone die-hard Hillary supporters can use as an excuse?' I added to his delighted agreement.” He told me he had searched 'the very wilds of this land' from each of her great coasts, and was prepared to do just about anything to find him.”

“'Or her' I teased, removing my favorite black pen from its black case in my black jacket pocket” he went on. “It's the same one I acquired Michael Phelps with.”

At first McCain balked at the offer, said Old Scratch. But few in the Senator's unenviable position could withstand the honey-dipped tongue of Mephistopheles in full blossom, while enjoying Johnny Walker Blue from a beautiful veranda pungent with the fragrances of orange, jasmine and just the slightest hint of sulfur. "The setting was perfect for the seduction of a soul", likely not an accident given the Dark One's penchant for details. Noting the weakness in McCain's eyes, the Great Tempter went in for the kill, hinting that Obama's first act would be to lower the national speed limit. Then he dug out the keys to his Corvette and pretended to walk away, leaving John to “mull things over”.

With a twinkle in his eyes, Lucifer told how John stopped him, then bravely puffed up his chest, closed his watering eyes and said to himself “For my country”, before taking the doomed pen in hand and inscribing his name in gold upon the lambskin scroll. John bravely didn't flinch as his finger was pricked to seal the deal in his own blood.

Beelzebub then took his new servant's hand in his and the two flew off into the night, heading northwest through the mist toward the great Klondike and beyond.

“And the real beauty of the whole thing?” the dark one laughed, “I'll only need to wait another year to collect.” Quickly realizing his faux pas, the Devil soberly apologized for the revelation and asked those in attendance to “please not tell John.”

So satisfied was the fallen angel with the transaction, he threw in the guitar lessons for free.