www.(misspelledword).com is totally available

Dear Friends,

  This month's Hard Taco song, "Truer Then a Teardrop," is dedicated to my daughter Scarlett, who spent the last five days in the hospital with a nasty case of bronchiolitis, a word I did not make up. We're home now, and she's feeling much better, but I thought she could use a song.

  I would like to take a moment to introduce you to Steven Giamlalis, a Customer Installation Manager at a company in Albany, NY. I am not fond of Steven Giamalis, even though I have never met him. My antipathy towards this man is rooted purely in jealousy, for Steven Giamalis has something I have wanted for years. He has www.hardtaco.com.  I have written him two very persuasive emails in the last six years, requesting that he give up the domain name, but he has never responded. Meanwhile, I have to go on pretending that what I do is a "project."

  As readers of this digest, and supporters of the Hard Taco mission, I implore you to join me in sending a clear message to Steven Giamalis that his hard taco website is not welcome in our online community. Copy the following letter into your own email program, and feel free to personalize it, using the Mad Libs format I have outlined below.

Send to: Steven Giamalis

Subject: I am not fond of you, Steven

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Dear Steven,

   I am writing to inform you that many ___(PLURAL NOUN)___, including myself, are disappointed in you. Your website, www.hardtaco.com is a ___(NOUN)___ of mediocrity that has been __(VERB ENDING IN -ING)___ for over five years. If you were using the domain name for a viable commercial or personal purpose, I could forgive you, but Steven, your last blog entry was two years ago. It's time to let go. 

   I don't want to be___(ADJECTIVE)___, Steven, but I also take issue with some of your colloquialisms. You use words like "fundage" instead of money. You call your guestbook "Ye Olde Guestbook," and refer to your computer as a "bucket-o-transistors." These perversions of the English language are akin to smearing __(SYNONYM FOR FECES)___ on Noah Webster's grave.

   Steven, there are plenty of good doman names that are still available. Do you have a hobby, such as craftwork or bingo? Why not change your domain name to www.craftworkorbingo.com?  How about www.___(MISSPELLED WORD)___.com?

   Finally, Steven - Can I call you Steven? I do not like your honeymoon photos. They seem very provincial and __(ADJECTIVE)___. Why would you take some many damn pictures of ___(THINGS FOUND IN IRELAND)___?  Of course, if I knew you or your wife personally, I would probably enjoy them more.

   Please understand that I am trying to be constructive. Feel free to write me back and let me know if you agree with my observations. 

(___ADVERB___),

(___(YOUR NAME)___)

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If anyone gets a reply from Mr. Giamalis, forward it to me, and I will send you a free Hard Taco CD or bib.

With Warmest Regards,

Zach

War re-enactments: What are they good for?

Dear Friends,

   The Hard Taco song for the New Year is called, "Egg Came First." I expect that taking a stand on this contentious issue will buy me a lot of hate mail, but I really don't care. To paraphrase Lauryn Hill, I'd RATHER DIE than have one "Chicken came first" person listen to my music.

    You know who else I'm really fed up with right now? Namby-pamby war re-enactors. I call them namby-pamby because they only seem to schedule their war re-enactments when the weather is nice. Where I live, one can go six to eight months without seeing a single war re-enactment! It’s not as if this is historically accurate... some of the world's greatest battles have been fought (or "enacted") in cold weather. Here is a timeline:

December 1777 - February 1778: The Continental Army entrenches itself at Valley Forge. Charles Wilson Peale would later write that it was "cold enough to fee George Washington'f nipplef through his tunick (sic)." 

November - December 1812: Napoleon's campaign in Russia. It was so frigid that the Emperor had to wear a double nine gore shirred overskirt with flounces atop his organdy polonaise and waist-bustle peplums!

September 1864: Sherman's Union army arrives in Atlanta. The weather is mild and refreshing.

November 1864: Sherman sends a dispatch to Washington stating, "I'm freezing my ass off." Two weeks later he sends another one that simply says, "Problem solved."

December 1944 - January 1945: The Battle of the Bulge, otherwise known as the Second Battle of Ardennes, takes place North of Antwerp. This may have been the largest land battle ever fought by the United States Army, and yet NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD OF IT! (The exception being people who learn about history in ways other than watching live war reenactments.)

    In spite of these pivotal winter campaigns, most namby-pamby war re-enactors prefer to commemorate cushy summer battles like Gettysburg and Bunker Hill.

    Give me a break! By all accounts, Gettysburg was more of a three-day weekend than a battle.  Obviously, there were thousands of casualties, but that's only because the Union General George Meade turned down Robert E. Lee's offer to "Suttle this like gentlemen in the volleyball pitch." (Meade had a nagging stomach wound from the Battle of Glendale that acted up when he tried to serve overhand.)

    Still, there is ample evidence that the "bloodiest battle fought on American soil" was, in fact, a charming and lively affair, owing in large part to the agreeable weather. In the South, it is still referred to it as "Gettysburg Days," because it was really more of a summer festival than a battle. For instance, halfway through the engagement, both sides stopped for twenty minutes while the Union Fife and Drum Corps entertained the crowd with a medley of Stephen Foster songs. They started marching in a group, fanned out to spell U.S.A., and then regrouped in the shape of Abraham Lincoln's face. Then the Confederate Drum Corp (they were too poor to afford fifes) marched around in the shape of Jefferson Davis' face, playing the drum part to "When Johnny Comes Marching Home."

    Meanwhile, George Custer ran a bonnet-making workshop out of his tent and did not participate in the fighting at all! (I learned this on ANTIQUES ROADSHOW, because this lady had one of the bonnets and it was worth over $250 in today's dollars.)

    Anyway (and in conclusion), when war re-enactors start waging some serious arctic warfare, I'll stop categorically calling them namby-pambies.

    Please download my song now.

With Warmest Regards,

Zach

Sci Fiction Con

Dear Friends,

    The Hard Taco song for January is called, "The Only Girl at the Sci Fi Convention," and you have every incentive to download it right now.

    To be frank, I don't much care for science fiction myself. Besides the familiar fact that there are no female science fiction fans, most of us don't know much about this strange genre. When I first started diving into my research for this song, I thought that I would come to respect or at least appreciate the champions of this unusual subculture.

    Surprisingly, I was wrong.

    Science Fiction Conventions, or "cons," are billed as a gathering place for like-minded individuals to discuss common interests. The disturbing truth is that the science fiction world is a tangled web of contentious factions. The conventions are simply the arena for these feuding sociopaths to engage in gang warfare. 

    The Trekkies hate the Warsies (Star Wars fans) who like to beat up on the MSTies (Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans). Everyone wants to kill the Whosies (Dr. Who fans, who are unusually ugly.) The BFF's (Babylon 5 fans) are complete savages who pretty much hate everybody while the Earth F. Conflicties (Earth: Final Conflict Fans) mostly just loathe themselves.

    Within the subset of Trekkies, there is a divisive hierarchy. It would be social suicide for a boy whose family follows "Deep Space Nine" to go out with the daughter of an "Enterprise" fan. The muddy waters run much deeper than that, though. James Doohan, who played Scotty in the original series, was found dead in July. The official coroner's report lists pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease as the causes of death, but the ugly truth is that he was stripped and tortured to death by a gang of "Voyager" zealots. In my opinion, violating a demented 85-year-old in his own home is entirely wrong, especially if he has pneumonia. 

    But these guys don't care. Most of them have the dangerous triad of autism, antisocial personality disorder, and pimples.

     Casual fans who go to these conventions looking to buy Quantum Leap trading cards are completely unprepared for the world of hurt that is in store for them. If your shirt says "Gene Roddenberry is God," someone will kick your ass. If you take a second series Jar-Jar figurine out of its original box, someone will kick your ass. If you conjugate a Klingon verb in the wrong tense, someone will kick your ass. If you try to be non-confrontational and fly under the radar, someone will kick your ass. That just makes you an easier mark for the "He doesn't like you. I don't like you either," line. 

    The trick is to find the one guy in the convention center who is smaller than you and beat him to a bloody pulp in a public place, such as in front of the Peter Mayhew autograph booth. You won't have real street cred until the Battlestar Galactica crowd thinks you're a maniac. Only then can you move among the panel discussions and costume contests with a certain degree of impunity.

    Just make sure you have an emergency escape plan for every situation. For instance, if an overweight teenager in a Stargate Atlantis shirt starts bludgeoning your face with the butt of a plastic light saber, you will want to distract him by throwing a pile of Enterprise blueprints into the air as you head for the nearest exit sign. (See Exhibit A)

    If the exit is blocked, you will need a backup plan. Carefully follow the specifications in the blueprints (see Exhibit A again) and build a functioning life-sized replica of the Enterprise. Then, go to the transporter room and beam yourself to a safe distance.   

    Don't forget to download the song, because it may start a dialogue about a lot of these issues.

With warmest regards,

HT

Please Forward to Everyone You Know or We All Suffer

Dear Friends,

    The Hard Taco song this month, "The Only Serious Thing," is now available for download. This is the low-hanging fruit of the musical world, so take it now while it's ripe.

    Meanwhile, please forward this email to twelve (12) other people, and your wildest dreams will be CAREFULLY CONSIDERED. This is not a hoax! I already sent it to twelve people and the next day when I got home my towel rack was fixed and also my wildest dreams had come true. Here are third person testimonials about people who thought this was a hoax and ended up regretting everything:

1. A homeless guy thought things couldn't get any worse for him, so he deleted the email without forwarding it to anyone.  The next day he was falsely convicted of first degree high treason and had to travel over several time zones just to be executed. 

2. This one girl didn't believe in jinxes or computer curses, even though everybody told her how wrong she was, including the president of her company. She turned off her computer without forwarding the email to anyone, left her house and immediately got lost at the first intersection she came to.

3. Do you know those factories filled with rotating robot arms that bolt big pieces of metal together all day? Well, this guy who declined to forward this email got his foot caught in the conveyer belt at one such factory, and got sheet metal bolted to his upper and lower body over and over again. Finally, at the end of the assembly line, the robots (which were well-built) sensed that something was wrong, and flicked his metal-encased body into a reject bin rather than sending him to market.

4. An old man forwarded the email to everyone he knew, but it was only eight people. The next day, all eight of his friends were swallowed whole by a number of different animals. When word got around that the man had no living friends, no one would hire him for a real job and he had to live out the rest of his days ringing a bell in front of the grocery store like an idiot.

5. This other lady fell into a bottomless pit for unrelated reasons. After falling straight down for nearly fifteen minutes, she forwarded the email to the right number of people, and pretty soon her wildest dreams came true.

With warmest regards,

HT

Surf Rock USA

Dear Friends,

Do you have a crush on a cognitively-impaired girl, just because she's good at surfing? In other words, is the girl you long for a truly gifted surfer but basically retarded?

If so, the new Hard Taco song, "Surfin' Savant" is going to help you sort out your issues/feelings. It took a lot of unpleasant surgery for me to be able to sing four parts at once, so I hope you enjoy it.

Did you know that before hormones drove me into rock music (and herbal supplements drove me back into new age music), I had a brief career on the semi-pro surfing circuit? This picture of me is HUGELY EMBARASSING, but you have to take it in context... I was ten years old and the style in those days was for surfers to wear 4/5 length pants and flesh-colored knee pads.  I'm the second one from the bottom in the left column...

Nowadays, I only take my board out a few times a year, when I really need to unwind and completely CLEAR MY MIND. Paddling out to sea, the burdens of the daily grind evaporate, and troubles seem to vanish magically from my mind. I can't recall the boring details of my workday, or what I had for breakfast, or whether I took my pills that morning. I lose the ability to remember my address and who the president is. I forget what my sister looks like, and how to make Legos fit together. I have word-finding difficulties; I can't do dot-to-dots or figure out which side of the comb to push against my head.

Anyway, you may wish to brush up on surfer jargon before you download "Surfin' Savant." Let me get you started. Surfin' California surfer jargon for Surfing (the apostrophe replaces the G).  However, to Mexican surfers, SUR FIN means "South End," a popular surfing destination in South Carolina near Georgetown (which is called 'eorgetown in California, and Pueblo de Jorge in Mexico.) Keep practicing.

With warmest regards,

HT

Keep Smokey Out of your Britches

Dear Friends,

Break 27, put her up to 27, John. Cotton mouth Hand here, looking for a pit park with the motion lotion between Watermelon 500 and Dome Town. Taking my freight shaker here on the backslide at double nickel in the granny lane. Just pulled a dragonfly past the chicken coop when I got my doors blown off by a beaver bobtail taking the hammer lane at triple digits. She's out dropping alligators when I see her get shot in the back by a County Mounty at a bear trap two yardsticks South of Derby City. That's the Four-Roger. Keep your nose between the ditches and the Smokey out of your britches. All the good numbers, over.

If you're thinking, "What the #@&*!?" you're probably not a teamster. If you're thinking, "What the "@!&*#?" you're probably dyslexic and not a teamster. Either way, I sprayed you with a light volley of trucker jargon in order to get you keyed up for this month's experimental Hard Taco song, "King Trucker."

 

Who is the King Trucker?

The King Trucker is the guy that drives the truck that hauls other trucks. Usually there will be two or three tractor cabs stacked at an angle behind the front one. This truck is the undisputed paramount sovereign of the interstates. We may find the trucker caste system to be barbaric and misogynistic, but let's face it... it works. Here is the chain of command in common CB slang.

1. KING TRUCKER - supreme oligarch dictator-in-charge of truck power

2. Thermos - A gas or oil tanker

3. Double Quad - A truck that has 44 wheels instead of 18

4. Rolling Ranch – A cattle truck

5. Parking Lot – A car carrier

6. Ice Box – A refrigerated truck

7. Skateboard – A flatbed truck

8. Dry Box – A plain 18-wheeler with a boxy white trailer

9. Bobtail – A tractor with no trailer

10. Tard Box - A Short Truck. (According to trucker code, the driver is customarily retarded, and it is rude to make eye contact with him.)

You might not have a lot of respect for The Hand (as we truckers call each other), but trucks are an important part of our economy. The reason there is always highway construction is that trucks are much heavier than cars and cause the asphalt to crack. Someone has to put tar in those cracks, and that person often uses the money they earn to buy toy trucks, completing the cycle and keeping the market "bull-ish."

With Warmest Regards,

Zach

You Have Pet a Chicken 1 Times

Dear Friends,

This month's Hard Taco song, "Give Up the Kibble," is now available for download! Put 500 copies of it in your iPod shuffle and go for a nice long jog!

INVESTORS WANTED

Have you ever wanted to start a charitable foundation, but couldn't find a worthy cause? Would you like to see your name on a wall somewhere under categories like "Sponsor," "Patron," "Benefactor," or, "Supreme Beneficent Godfather of Philanthropy?" Well, you're in luck. As soon as I find someone to front the money (roughly $300) I am going to build the world's first and largest...

ONLINE PETTING ZOO!

The concept is so simple, it's amazing nobody has done it before. A webcam will be installed in a real petting zoo, allowing around-the-clock visuals of docile barnyard animals. The arrow icon will be replaced with an open hand, and when the mouse button is clicked, the hand will close its fingers in a gentle scritching motion. Much like animals at a real petting zoo, the online animals will not react to the contact in any way.



"Traditional" Petting Zoo

Contemporary Petting Zoo



THE BACK STORY

When I was six years old, I broke out in hives after my first (and last!) visit to a petting zoo. I'll never forget the day the doctors told my parents that I am allergic to sheep dander, and that I would never be able to go to another petting zoo again. 

As the years went by I became a troubled teenager, spiraling into a cycle of self-destructive behavior. I came this close to losing everything. Finally, when a court-appointed social worker badgered me into joining a support group, I learned that I am not alone. A lot of kids with farm-related allergies hurt themselves and the people they love as a way to fill the void left by the absence of petting zoos.

It has been a long and difficult journey back from the edge, but my burden is lightened by the knowledge that by building an online petting zoo, I have the ability to help others like me. I look forward to a day when everyone can enjoy the satisfaction of rubbing a goat behind the ears without getting watery eyes or itchy throat.

Plus, it's not just for asthmatics! Here are some other people who could benefit from an online petting zoo:

- Urban children and/or prisoners who do not have access to a traditional Bricks-and-Mortar Petting Zoo

- Farmhands who want to "practice their chops" after hours when they are back at the farmhouse.

- Children with no hands, who would otherwise not know how real livestock respond to human touch. (Note: The answer is that they don't respond, as mentioned above.)

- Australians. They don't have mammals in Australia, so most of their petting zoos are stocked with marsupials and kiwi birds.

- Shift-workers who only have the time to pet animals between the hours of 2am and 7am.

Sincerely,

HT