Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Posted By on Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 4:05 PM

Admittedly, you have to grok Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller, the AZ Daily Independent (and in particular, what they call cartoons) and the recent Arizona Daily Herald dustup to appreciate the brilliance, but if you do ... well, Gerald gets all the wrong stuff exactly right in this pitch to Arizona Daily Independent loon-in-chief Loretta Hunnicutt:

Dear Miss Loraina Hunnicutt,

I am a big fan of your cartoons, and I would like to submit 1 here. I look at all your cartoons and my dad got me photo shop and I learn it at school. I am getting an B in my computer drawing class.

I did it in the style of your cartoons and it is about a funny story you have been reporting and so have the news other people.


If you need me to explain it here goes - in Star Wars Episode IV (a New Hope), Obi-Wan Kanobe says to the stormtroopers "These are not the droids you are looking for".

Everyone loves Star Wars jokes, so this one is funny.

But in my joke, it's about how Ali Miller and Tim Deloris are pretending not be Jim Falcon, even though everyone knows that the Arizona Daily Herald was really Gerald Falcon. John Hucelbarry and Chuck Winchester are in the back ground. Andf I put in a saguaro and deathstar.

If you don't want to buy it, even though it fits your style, I am offering it to the Tucson Weekly, or Tucson Sentimental or Northeast Explorer, which I have cced to show that I'm serious.

You can use it for only $74.99, which I think is cheap. I will take $49.99 if I retain synication rights.

Gerald

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Posted By on Thu, May 26, 2016 at 2:30 PM


Historians, skeptics and believers in the paranormal can all find something to love about the downtown Tucson ghost tours put on by Specter Tours.

The small Tucson-based tour company leads walking tours around downtown Tucson. 

Tour guide and business owner Robert Owens is a dedicated historian and entertainer. Tour goers are taken around many Tucson landmarks such as the Rialto Theater, the Fox Theater and the Pioneer Hotel.

The Pioneer Hotel, the site of Arizona’s most deadly fire, has a rich history and spooky ghost stories to compliment it.

The tour also stops by 101 E. Pennington Street, an old mortuary that is now the home of Reilly Craft Pizza & Drink and Tough Luck Club. Owens recommends it as a place to relax with a drink while looking for apparitions after the tour.

Specter Tours is in the process of adding a new route, which is expected to open in early July. The new route will take tour guests around Fort Lowell Park with ghost hunting equipment similar to what you might see on television, like thermal imaging scanners.

Tickets can be purchased through Groupon for the Friday and Saturday tours. Tours start in front of the Rialto, loop around downtown, and end at Hotel Congress. 


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Friday, May 20, 2016

Posted By on Fri, May 20, 2016 at 1:47 PM



The bizarre story about Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller’s staffer, Timothy DesJarlais, has taken some new twists today.

As the Weekly reported yesterday, DesJarlais has an alter ego, Jim Falken, and recently someone had used the Falken name to create an online news site and to query members of the Board of Supervisors as well as candidates for office.

Big kudos to Tucson Sentinel’s Dylan Smith, who has a comprehensive report on DesJarlais’ strange cyber trail and the only interview with DesJarlais about this peculiar episode. It was after Smith reached DesJarlais via phone on Tuesday night that traces of “Jim Falken” began vanishing almost immediately from the web.

DesJarlais, who is also seeking a seat on the Marana School Board, has not returned multiple phone calls from the Weekly to confirm or deny that he set up an online news source—the Arizona Daily Herald—under the name of “Jim Falken.” But he did release a statement to the online propaganda blog Arizona Daily Independent.

DesJarlais acknowledged creating the “Jim Falken” identity “as part of a high school project” but said that he did not have anything to do with Jim Falken’s effort to create the Arizona Daily Herald:

“Regarding the current Arizona Daily Herald site and email address, those accounts are bogus accounts created by someone trying to impersonate me,” DesJarlais said in his statement. “As I work for Supervisor Miller and know both Kim and Marla well, I would have no reasons or time to pull any stunts like this. Nevertheless, I do apologize to anyone for the inconveniences caused to them and charge whoever did this to come forward and confess the truth.”

Perhaps DesJarlais will join O.J. on the hunt for the “real killers” next.

Friday, April 8, 2016

Posted By on Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 1:36 PM



I was enjoying a quiet moment sitting in the shade of my favorite old tree at Catalina Park earlier this week, blissfully unaware of my surroundings until I felt a small impact ripple across the ground. Mystified, I looked behind me and a young male had appeared seemingly out of nowhere. I stared at him for a second, trying to process where in the world this person could have come from. He told me that he’d been up in the tree, enjoying the beautiful day and if I was “feeling adventurous” I should try it out myself. He caught me on a laundry day in a pair of pants that have gotten a little bit tighter over the years, but I promised him I’d come see what the tree is all about when I’m wearing something stretchier. With a warm smile, he told me to have a good rest of my day in that very genuine Tucson-way that reminds me of why I love living here, and off he went.


Today, I came back to that towering (for the desert) tree. Using the gnarly old lumps dotting the trunk as footholds, I hauled myself up into the canopy and appreciated the view from 20 feet up, letting go of the stresses of four classes, two jobs and an internship for a few minutes and watching the storm clouds roll by through the tree branches. Sometimes strangers have good advice.  


If you want to climb the tree too, look for the tallest tree in the southwest corner of Catalina Park at 900 N 4th Ave.

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Monday, March 21, 2016

Posted By on Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 10:30 AM

Houston, Texas – December 2015

Could first impressions be worse?

There they were, the four of them talking so loudly to each other that they were almost yelling. Their Cajun accents were so strong that they would have better fit in a cartoon. Their voices drowned out the conversations in the seats next to them. Two of them had the lower lip and gum decay that only a lifetime of chewing tobacco can inflict on someone, and they all wore amazingly greasy hair. Despite the frigid December weather, they boarded the plane in sleeveless shirts and ripped jeans. Did I mention that they were loud?

My mind was set.

I fortunately sat far enough away that their voices faded out after 30 minutes and I slept deeply. I was awakened to an intercom announcement: “We are now making our final descent into Istanbul, please turn off all electronics and return your seat to the upright position.”

“Idunmind if they speak Turkush here, suhlonguz everone understanz English too!” cackled my Cajun friend. It had to have been a joke. Nobody who willingly leaves their own country really thinks like that. But nobody else was laughing. Not even the others in his group.

Monday, March 14, 2016

Posted By on Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 12:00 PM

Mozambique and I got off to a bad start.

After less than 24 hours at my new job in coastal Mozambique, I decided it was time to leave. My new boss had changed his mind or been misleading about a couple of key things, then wouldn’t be available for several days to answer questions. I had a bad feeling. So I left.

First I wandered onto an island nearby and asked a hostel if they needed help. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t. I went to a hotel, asked the same question, and got the same answer. I decided to look for work at a hostel in a nearby city where I had grown impatient previously because there was nobody working in the morning. I grabbed my backpack and flagged down a van, stuffed to the gills with 25 people people and their bags. It broke down 30 miles into the 120-mile trip. The driver of course didn’t offer a refund.

I flagged down a Toyota Tacoma and rode in the bed for the next 30 minutes, then was left at a fork in the road. A passenger from the first minibus helped me find another ride and jumped into the bed of a farm truck with me.

We spent the next hour driving down a small highway, constantly surrounded by green plants, palm trees, and small hills. It was perfect. But the approaching grey clouds made us nervous.

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Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Posted By on Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 1:15 PM


Just when you think things couldn't get any weirder with extremist Republican wannabe public officials, you come across a post by Slate that reads somewhere along the lines of, "A retired teacher who thinks Obama was a prostitute won big on Super Tuesday."

Her ever-so predictable anti-Muslim, climate-change-is-a-Marxist-hoax, and Obama-was-a-prostitute-when-he-was-in-his-20s rhetoric got Mary Lou Bruner, a candidate for the Texas State Board of Education, roughly 48 percent of votes in a three-way Republican race for the board's 15 seats, though. Something is working. The same thing that's pulling strings for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Texas has long been ground zero for wackazoid right-wing politicians, who seem to get more entrenched every year: The current agriculture commissioner, Sid Miller, is on a heaven-sent mission to put deep fryers and vending machines back into schools after a 10-year ban, and the attorney general, Ken Paxton, is obsessed with invalidating same-sex marriages, even on death certificates. (Paxton could be disbarred for encouraging clerks to ignore the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision, among numerous other ethically questionable acts.)

But Bruner, a retired teacher with 36 years of experience in Texas schools, is exceptional even by Lone Star standards. Earlier this year, she made headlines for claiming that President Barack Obama bankrolled his drug habit by plying his wares on the street, as first reported by Texas Freedom Network. She posted on Facebook:

Obama has a soft spot for homosexuals because of the years he spent as a male prostitute in his twenties. That is how he paid for his drugs. He has admitted he was addicted to drugs when he was young, and he is sympathetic with homosexuals; but he hasn’t come out of the closet about his own homosexual/bisexual background.

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Monday, February 22, 2016

Posted By on Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 3:30 PM

Mathare Slum, Nairobi, Kenya – January 2016

Summer.

Finally.

I grew up in Death Valley and don’t do well with cold. Seeing 2016 on my calendar means that I’d been on the road for 18 months now, shifting between hemispheres every six months and staying in perpetual winter. 18 months of cold nights and stuffy clothes. But not now. The warm and humid air that stuck to me after I exited the airplane in Kenya was a long awaited hug.

After a quick wait in the immigration line, I made my way out of the airport and was quickly met by Eric and Vivian. Eric is the founder and leader of Mathare Foundation, the organization where I would be working for the next month. Vivian was an assistant who coaches the soccer team and counsels children in writing. We grabbed a cab that was too small for the three of us plus my backpack, so I went with my bag on my lap and Vivian offered to take Hobbes on hers. These were good people.

We were headed to Mathare Slum, a slum of 500,000 people with a 30 percent HIV infection rate and no free education past 8th grade. I would work at Mathare Foundation, a non-profit that offered children free classes in soccer, performing arts, and photography. The pragmatic hopes are that the photography program can be self sustaining and offer the children real work, while the soccer and performing arts programs were meant to assist children in getting scholarships to continue their studies. The immediate results are that the kids can display and take pride in their accomplishments, have positive role models outside of the home, and have productive work to do in the time when they are most vulnerable to drugs and crime.

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Monday, February 15, 2016

Posted By on Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 9:00 AM

Salvador, Brasil


I’ve never touched a drug in my life. The only possible exception would be when we tried to make a delayed-fuse piccolo pete bomb by poking a hole in a cigarette, putting the fuse of the piccolo pete through the whole, then inhaling to try to light the cigarette. It didn’t work. Instead I just coughed a lot and learned to hate the smell of tobacco. I don't drink alcohol. I even avoid caffeine when I can. Despite this, I ended up overdosing on legally purchased sleeping pills while using them for their stated purpose. Life’s a bitch, eh?

My first job in Brasil was at a holistic retreat in Arambepe. I worked daily from 7 a.m. to noon, handling anything from construction to helping at ayahuasca ceremonies. A month later, I went to coastal Salvador to work at a hostel. Overnight, I went from starting work at 7 a.m. in Arambepe to working nights and ending at 7 a.m. in Salvador. I enjoyed the night shift quite a bit. I only worked thrice a week and spent the first three hours of my shift hanging out with amazing people that I would be hanging out with at night anyways, then spent the rest of the night ironing sheets and watching Breaking Bad.  

In addition to working when I usually slept, I also started sleeping in a very active dormitory. These changes in my sleeping pattern completely threw off my internal clock. I was lucky to get four hours of sleep in a day. It started to catch up to me quickly so I went to a pharmacy and asked if they had anything light that could help. I declined the first thing offered and took the cheaper of the two medications. The recommended dosage was one pill, so I took them for a couple mornings. I looked up the pill online to see why it wasn’t working better and found out that it was generic brand valium. Normally I would worry about that but I still struggled to get more than four hours of sleep and I was exhausted all the time. I figured that valium or not, if I wasn’t getting more than four hours of sleep a night with it, it couldn’t be too dangerous to up the dosage. I finally felt horrible one night and took two.

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Friday, February 12, 2016

Posted By on Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 9:00 AM

Deep house yoga isn't a term you hear every day. Actually, you've probably never heard that term. But if you really love chillwave and stretching, every Wednesday night at Movement Culture Spiritual Gangster Yoga hosts a "Deep House" class.

The hour-long, high energy class mixes asana flows and the beats of DJ Elektra Tek to reduce stress and enhance one-ness between your mind, body and soul. The class' Facebook page encourages everyone to show up if they want to move and feel great. Oh, and it's free. Class starts at 8:45 p.m. at Movement Culture. Namaste. 

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