MERRY MAYAN CHRISTMAS!!!

Here's a little story that will either warm the cockles of your heart, or make you laugh, or both. It involves approximately 20 bored archaeologists and historians (but mostly the archaeologists are to blame on this one), a gingerbread structure, and some mayhem. Really, it's best told in photo-essay form, so a tip of the Santa Hat goes to Troy for inspiring me and my cohorts to document these inspiring events in this way.

It all started a few weeks before Christmas, with the miraculous appearance of a beautiful Mayan Pyramid, made of gingerbread and candy, on our front office tables....

Here's an aerial-view to give you the full awe-inspiring effect, obviously taken by a brave Peeps in his Peeps-o-Copter....


We admired the structure with all the hushed reverence of 2nd-grade children, for a full 2 days. Besides, there were Gummi Bear guards clearly posted at the main entrance, and we seriously didn't want to mess with them.


Alas, after 2 days of hushed reverence, the gawking public and voracious looters could be held back no more, and some of the inner chambers were cracked open... to reveal... treasure!

Here you can see what must have been a Sacred chamber of Peanut M&Ms, and chocolate kisses... Not surprising, considering the Mayans worshiped the cacao bean as a god, and practically invented chocolate as we know it.

Above is the Chamber of Skittles, "mistakenly" opened by one amateur archaeologist when he fell into a trap door. Fortunately, his body was impaled on 1,000 spikes and then consumed by albino alligators that have been living in the underground river for the past 1200 years. Thus taking his greedy insolence out of the gene pool forever. Yaay!
Unfortunately, his comrades managed to destroy (probably by eating) the top of the pyramid, exposing the greatest treasure inside- a mural of The Sacred Mayan Hippo God! Named um, uh... Hippocatepetl. Yeah.


This apparently loosed the spirit of the great Hippo God(dess) and not in a good way. Protector spirits soon showed up, chased away the looters and gawkers, re-set the ancient curses protecting the pyramid so that anyone who touched it would find their flesh falling off of them in a matter of minutes, and erected licorice barriers to protect the site.

This is the main guy. Pretty fierce, que no?
He stayed on top of the pyramid to guard the Hippocatepetl mural, and deployed his troops all around as needed.

Nevertheless, looters snuck back in and viciously cut out the heart of the Hippo mural. And probably ate it, because it wasn't made of solid gold or anything, it was just sugar candy.

Emboldened by their victory, the looters and the looting continued.

And continued....

Reinforcements were brought in, including Santa the Roaring Hippo, but to no avail.


Things were rapidly getting out of hand. In the interest of science, we had to participate, and by doing so revealed another mysterious symbol on one of the inner walls. What is that thing? Could it be... Peace?

The looters were getting cheeky, even venturing to replace the hippo's heart with a red M&M...

And then, even cheekier, putting one in Santa Hippo's mouth.


At some point in here, I tried to appease the Gods by sacrificing some marshmallow Santa's on the pyramid and rolling them down the steps, as is customary, but some people in the office got offended. Go figure. I mean, what's Christmas without a little Mayan sacrifice? Complete with Cherry Cordials for blood? So there are no pictures of that. Sorry. Try and have a good Christmas without it.

Some of the hippo guards starting arming themselves with toothpicks.


One rather large fellow decided to block the entrance.


While still others doggedly kept up the licorice rope-barriers.




And of course, a few of them started getting punchy after awhile...


And then, the unthinkable happened. Worse than looters, or gawkers, or amateur archaeologists, or meth-head "arrowhead hunters"- yes, that's right. Developers.
The next day we arrived to find this sign erected in front of the pyramid. We rubbed our eyes like the little Whos in Whoville, not believing what we saw. Also, it was very difficult to read the fine print.


But it was true. Our beautiful sacred Mayan Pyramid site had been re-zoned, right out from under us. Something called "The Pyramid Lofts" starting at $700,000! were "Coming Soon!" We were sore' amazed and confused.

The hippos put up a valiant last stand.

But in the end, greed won out, and historic preservation was annihilated by something the developers like to call "Progress."


I won't show you pictures of the destroyed pyramid. It's just too sad.
So boys and girls, brothers and sisters of all stripes, everywhere, please remember this Christmas to treasure and protect your cultural resources, whatever they may be. That's the only point of this blog, other than to show what a serious bunch of dorks we are. And also, if you live in a capital city, go to your local SHPO office and take those hardworking guys and gals some cookies or something, because clearly we're all losing our minds.

As Hippocatepetl would say, "Oooga Booga Wooga Chooga, Happy Freakin' Christmas to Ya!"

Appendage to the Greatest Heist in History

I should have been more clear with my original post, titled The Greatest Heist in History, until Now, and I apologize. Mostly the 3 Trillion dollar question for these past 8 years, for me, at least, has been- are they merely thieves, like the Territorial governors of New Mexico, or are they fixin' to build on this heap of destruction, a good ol' fashioned dictatorship? So I've come to the conclusion, after much nail-biting, fear, disorientation, calamity, and hives, that they are indeed the former rather than the latter.
They know as well as we do that not only would the American people not put up with such crap, even if there is an "R" after some elected official's name, and 2) this country is too damn big for one person to take over. Hell, it's too big NOW for one elected president to preside over. We just baaaarrrrrrely got control of this uh, United States of 'merka, as it is.
They also know that trying to bomb us into submission will only call them out and mark them as the bandits and scum-sucking sheep ticks they are for life. As it stands now, they've manipulated the media and public opinion to the point where the average citizen now feels justified in making up their own facts to support their own extremist, hateful, flimsy opinions, which are probably just extrapolations and regurgitations from the Republican Talking Points, aka Sean Hannity. (so that's a double regurgitation...eeeewwww, sorry for that).
You know that old saying, the first casualty of war is always the Truth? Well, I think we can go ahead and say that first, middle and last casualty of any Republican administration is the truth. Seriously. Go test this out on your neighbors or co-workers or friends. After 22 years of no Fairness Doctrine, and now 12 years of a completely de-regulated media, people now take Entertainment Tonight more seriously than the nightly news. That to me is the most damaging thing that's happened to this country, especially in the last 8 years. That people actually believed the shit those assclowns were throwin' up on the TV, just because they were saying it, loudly, and it was on- did I mention?- the TeeVee, it was taken as the God's Truth- that's what broke my heart and turned my stomach.
Those babies that were killed during the first bombings of Baghdad- well uh, they deserved to die, right? Because their parents were evil Iraqis or insurgents or something. I mean, how dare they stand up to the United States Military? If they had just fled like they were supposed to, or surrendered before the troops even showed up, they wouldn't have died! so it's THEIR fault! Stupid brown people. AND- how freaking irresponsible are those parents, living in a potential war zone??? I mean COME ON- they knew the United States Army was on it's way!
puh.
Yeah, with serious shit like this going on, no wonder we thought they had plans for totalitarianism. That's what a lot of their propaganda was designed for, to keep us afraid, to silence us. So we'd keep our own necks and heads inside our little turtle shells until the danger passed. But what if it didn't pass? We asked ourselves, repeatedly, and with good cause.
I started this blog a month ago, and now even more shit is hitting the fan. But it makes me even more certain that the plan all along was not to impose absolute power absolutely, if even for only a few years, but it was to break this country financially and leave it in such a huge fucking mess otherwise that we'd be too busy dodging chunks of falling sky to notice them sneaking off to their Leer jets bound for Dubai, holding big sacks of cash.
Where did that 9 billion dollars go, Paul Bremer?
But no, they're just a bunch of fucking thieves. And murderers. Who will high-tail it to the nearest, friendliest, extradition-free country (Dubai, Dubai, and Dubai) next week on January 20th at approximately 12:35 pm EST. They're not competent or smart enough to "build" on any of this catastrophe, anyway. Which is reason #3 that we don't have to worry about that.
They were smart enough to look at history, and know that greedy, murdering dictators who try to grab ALL the power and control ALL the people never survive long enough to enjoy their booty. So it was always this delicate tightrope dance, balancing just enough fear with just the right amount of media manipulation and corruption (wherefore art thou, Justice Department?) so that people wouldn't scream too loud about all the money they were stealing and the people they were killing.
As one of my hero/heart-throbs, John Cusack, said in his blog, "You gotta hand it to 'em, their gall is gorgeous."
But I still hold out hope that whether it's by special prosecutor, or Grand Jury investigation, or international tribunal, they will be held accountable for their war crimes, and the trashing of the Constitution, and for the stealing.
I still hold onto that image of Jenna Bush in a brown polyester waitress uniform, groveling for 35 cent tips so she can slowly, day by day, pay off her daddy's sins. One way or another, they will be held accountable. If not by the Congress, then by Grand Jury. If not by class action lawsuit ("The People of the United States vs. former President George W.Bush and Richard D. Cheney" has a nice ring to it) then by the Hague. If not by international special-forces peacekeeping units then... well, ya know. We'll figure something out. The important thing is that justice is restored to this country. We can't just turn the page and pretend this never happened. And remember, much of the country still doesn't know what really happened to it/them, and they may well be in post-traumatic denial for quite some time. Yes I'll say it, we need to give them a helping hand out of the swirling shame spiral.

See? it's possible for people to see the light.

Dick Cheney says he's going back to Casper, Wyoming. (yeah, right.) I think what he meant was, "I'm going to the island off of Dubai that I had created to look exactly like Casper, Wyoming. Oil rigs and all."
I'll leave it at for now- FBI agents are probably monitoring this.