Dear Readers,

Today, I got another communication from my pen-pal from the planet Laggah. It seems that the poor chap is quite confused about the climate change debate here on our planet:

Dear Mike,

I have noticed from your news transmissions that there have been many stories voicing concern about climate change on your planet. As I write this, many of your diplomats are meeting to determine how to stop your global temperature from increasing. They all express concern over the melting of water ice, I suppose because they require it to chill their bottles of champagne. I don’t know why this necessitates such a large international conclave. Can they not just switch to drinking hot sake?

Much of the terminology that is used in this debate deeply confuses me, and so I was hoping you could straighten this out for me. For one, there is all this talk about “Green House Gas”. I had not heard of a Green House. Is it similar to your “White House”? If I were you, I would be more concerned about the gas that has been emanating from that dwelling.

Then, there is all this discussion about the element carbon. For example, many of you humans seem to be concerned about “carbon footprints”. I do not know why this is, but if it is so controversial, can your people simply discontinue the practice of wearing shoes made of coal? I do not know what kind of feet your species has, but on our world we would find such shoes to be quite uncomfortable.

Truly it seems that discrimination against carbon is deep-seated among many of your people. I know that prejudice is problem among Earthlings, but it must be worse than I thought for Earthlings to extend this to the periodic table. You seem to love gold, hate carbon, and detest uranium, except for the Iranians, who can’t seem to get enough of it.

Take the human Al Gore, for one. He is always bragging about being “carbon neutral”, yet his words reveal his true feelings about the element. And what is this talk about “carbon caps”? That’s a worse idea than the shoes.

The last thing that perplexes me about your climate change discussions is this obsession that your species seems to have over the color green. Everyone seems to be high on the idea of “green energy”. I don’t understand. Doesn’t burning things while they are still green create a lot of smoke? Perhaps combustion works differently on Earth.

By the way, if you Earthlings love green so much, you will really get a kick out of the cheerleaders here on our planet.

Regards,

Wannah Chuggah Brooski

I’m not sure of the best way to answer this. Any ideas?

A little while back we reported on the eight years worth of Mayor Ray Nagin’s missing e-mails. Now, I come across another strory about technical foul-ups in the city (although the e-mail deal may not have actually been a foul-up). It seems that, a few years back, the city spent $6 million to install cameras in some of the more, let’s say, unstable neighborhoods in an effort to crack down on crime.

So, how well has this program been protecting the citizens? About as well as the Saints’ defense did last year protecting the scoreboard. (For the record, they were tied for 5th worst in the NFL. So maybe in fact they did slightly better than the cameras.) Depending on who you believe, these cameras have caught either none or one criminal since they were deployed. The city claims one, but that may have been from a camera owned by a citizen and the city is just taking credit for it.

The problem: it seems that most of the time, these cameras are either not working or producing videos so fuzzy that they can’t even identify the criminals. A teenager can make a better You-Tube video while he’s riding a stunt bike.

Perhaps the city should have hired a technology chief whose skills were at least slightly above a neandrathal’s (with due apologies to the Geico cavemen). Or at least it should have been somebody besides Greg Meffert, whose skills were more in the area of graft than in gadgets.

I’ll tell you how the city could have saved a whole bunch of money and made a serious dent in the crime rate. Instead of cameras, they could have brought in a bunch of retired Catholic school nuns to patrol the streets. If they’re anything like my old 6th grade teacher, Sister Candida, they have more eyes on their heads than a potato that’s been in the pantry for three weeks. They could spot a perpetrator in an instant and quickly demobilize him with a well placed eraser shot to the temple from thirty yards. Then, she’d single-handedly drag him by his earlobe straight to the principal’s office- I mean, police station.

Anyone who’s ever attended a Catholic grade school would agree with me here that such a plan would make New Orleans one of the safest cities in the nation.

I have just tonight received a new e-mail from my other-worldly correspondant, Wanna Chuggah Brooski. I like to share these with my readers as soon as they show up in my inbox. This one comments on the reports of alien abductions that pop up from time to time.

Dear Mike:

While monitoring your planet’s video transmissions, I occasionally come across interviews with some humans who tell stories about having been abducted by extraterrestrials. I say that they are humans, but I am not actually certain of this, because these specimens generally have much fewer teeth than the rest of your species. I have postulated that it is because these individuals are herbivores. I was hoping you could clear this up.

I bring up this topic because I wish to assure you that our planet is by no means responsible for these abductions. Why would we waste precious fuel to come all the way to your planet to abduct such specimens as these? We have absolutely nothing to learn from them. We know all that there is to be known about these herbivorous members of your species by monitoring transmissions of the human named Jerry Springer.

If we were to abduct a human, we would select a specimen who is interesting, entertaining, or at least has some good whiskey to share. If Willie Nelson ever turns up missing from your planet, then you might well suspect us. He meets all of these criteria.

My apologies for making this a short note. I am very busy at this particular time conducting an extensive study at the request of our top scientitsts. They wish to understand what has happened to families of your planet from the time of Ozzie and Harriet to The Osbournes.

Regards,

Wanna Chuggah Brooski

Check out previous e-mails from my alien pen pal.

With data collected in-part from a facility in Livingston, Louisiana, scientists are close to proving that the universe is actually a giant pot of chicken-and-sausage gumbo. The facility is one of a handful around the world that is designed to detect ripples in space very similar to those observed when you stir flour into a pot of boiling water. The network, which goes by the acronym LIGO (Ladle Induced Gravy-wave Observatory), has been seeking evidence to prove this theory since 2005.

The “gumbo postualte” is not new, having first been mentioned by Einstein in his theory of relativity. In this theory he discusses his ideas on origin of the universe by saying, “First you make a roux.”

This has indeed been proven true, as the LIGO detectors have been able to look back to the first minutes of the universe’s existence, well before onions were added to the primordial soup. The instruments are able to detect the remnants of waves that occurred from stirring the roux into the boiling mass of cosmic matter that was ignited by the big bang. The big bang is now known to be the largest ever ignition of a propane burner.

The scientists at the Livingston facility, Drs. Boudreaux and Thibodeaux, are very excited about the discovery. They claim to have proven that what were once thought to be giant dust clouds in the space between galaxies are actually big lumps of flour. They further claim to have spectral analysis of the Orion Nebula proving it to have the same composition as Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning.

“Dis proves ‘dat we are but mere pieces of chicken meat in a big universe dat is mainly made up ‘o flour, water, and veg’table oil, no?” says Dr. Boudreaux.

Dr. Thibodeaux added, “An ‘dis proves what we in de bayous been sayin’ all along, dat de’ holy trinity really is onions, bell peppers, and celery.”

C’est bon!

Here’s a great example of our tax dollars at work.

I came across a story about a researcher in New Orleans who was awarded $1.4 million by the federal government to study what happens when you dose fruit flies with LSD.

In preliminary studies, the researcher observed very interesting behaviour among the flies, as they dressed in tie-dyed clothing and formed a drum circle. The studies further indicated these tripping flies exhibited a strong preference for sixties music, particularly the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The researcher’s original intent in the study was to determine if the LSD induced the flies to show symptoms of psychosis or schizophrenia. My question is- how do you psychoanalyze a fruit fly for schizophrenia? Do you lay him down on an itty bitty sofa and make him look at ink blots? What would a fruit fly that is high on LSD picture when looking at an ink blot? Do fruit flies have bad trips, imagining giant fly swatters coming down on them? Do they experience flashbacks? There are so many questions- I suppose that’s why the study costs so much money.

In the end, perhaps we may discover something of value from this- like, a new exterminating agent. Got an infestation of fruit flies in your kitchen? Just give them some LSD and they’ll all hitch a ride on a micro-bus bound for San Francisco.

I recently read where a team of scientists from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium forecasted that the “dead zone” that forms every summer in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Texas and Louisiana would be the largest ever. This “dead zone” is an area where oxygen levels drop to the point where it cannot support any life that is more advanced than decomposed algae. The scientists said that this year, it could grow as large as 8,436 square miles, which is exactly the same area as the state of New Jersey. That would tie it with New Jersey as the largest such zone in the Western Hemisphere.