Pride Is A Sin… Except in Bangladesh… and Except If You Are the Rat Killing National Champion…. and Except If Your Government Buys You A 14” TV As A Prize.

Bangladesh awards farmer who killed 83,000 rats

By JULHAS ALAM [available ONLINE via Goolge hosted Wire]

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Bangladesh on Wednesday awarded a farmer who killed more than 83,000 rats and launched a month long campaign nationwide to kill millions more, to protect crops and reduce the need for food imports. Mokhairul Islam, 40, won a first prize of a color television for killing some 83,450 rats in the past nine months in Gazipur district near the South Asian country's capital, Dhaka. He collected their tails for proof.

"I am so happy to get this honor," Islam told The Associated Press after receiving a 14-inch television and a certificate amid cheers at an official ceremony packed with 500 farmers and officials. "I had no idea that the government gives prizes for this."

"This is an exciting moment. I will continue to kill them," he vowed.

Officials say the impoverished nation imports some 3 million tons of food annually, while the Ministry of Agriculture estimates that rodents annually destroy 1.5 million to 2 million tons of food.

"We can cut the import of food by at least half if we can succeed in this year's campaign," said Wais Kabir, executive chairman of the Bangladesh Agriculture Research Council.

He asked everyone, especially farmers, to take on the killing mission as a sport. The government has said it will train mainly farmers and students for this year's campaign.

"Killing rats is not that easy, it needs training," Kabir said.

Islam said he mainly used poison to kill the rats at his poultry farm, and that the cull has paid off as the rodents now scavenged less.

"Previously I needed 33 sacks of poultry feed per week, now I need less than 30," he said.

Fakhrul Haque Akanda, a farmer from northern Bangladesh and the second-prize winner, killed some 37,450 rats mostly with traps, some he invented.

"These bloody rats are my enemy, they destroy my gardens," Akanda said.

"Please pray for me so that I can continue my mission, and teach and motivate others to join me," he told the audience before taking his prize, also a television.

Last year, the U.N. World Food Program launched a monthslong food aid project in the country's southeast after a plague of rats devoured rice crops.

 

 

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There is really just so many things wrong with this.  But I can’t resist a hot story like this one, before the rest of the national media gets a hold of it!   First off; how do you store 83,000 rat tails?  Hold a NASCAR event! [rimshot!] Seriously though; if I catch a field mouse in a trap, its outside in about 3 minutes after the snap.  This loon had keep 83,000 rotting tails, cut from poisoned corpses, to prove to his government that he earned a 14” tv.   Which, I think probably wasn’t even 1080p, and are still likely smaller than a Gameboy screen.  I still am waiting for the Obamanation to start pushing stimulus dollars for a similar program.  Probably my favorite part of this whole mess is the quote about how killing rats takes skill and training.  Then he admits, he used poison.  That’s about like Albert Einstein saying it takes skill and training to master physics to create ideas on relativity.  Then walking to Kmart to buy Physics For Dummies to write a paper about it.    Something like that.    That and the “please pray for me,” line.  That shtick has worked for televangelists for years, why not rat killers…. in Bangladesh…. with 14” tv’s. 

I Could Make The Hall of Fame Yet One Day…

Or, as I was told… the Hall of fame of Douche Bags. 

 

 

Is that harsh? 

 

 

I really didn't think so either, after I thought about it.  Of course, that conversation happened before another ill-fated date.  I guess, I really have made a career of it.  People always wonder why they feel like they have the worst love life.   Then some of them meet me.   Others, end up at the other side of a table from me at dinner.   They are the unlucky ones in this.  Tonight, we tried a rather nice, talkative brunette, and a low key place in the early afternoon.  I then spent the early evening trying to get the hell out of Davenport for a few hours.   Eventually I realized, there wasn’t much point in running away from it.  I managed to sit through dinner; what keeps me from just sitting through it in Dport?  For that matter, what keeps me from sitting in the chair, awaiting my induction at the Hall someday?  That’s what keeps me going I guess. 

 

For the longest time, people never believed me when I would tell some stories.   Then, inevitably, then never wanted to stop hearing stories.  Now, they seemed to have stalled or stagnated on the stories.   Some are asking pesky questions.  Or loosing interest.  So.  At dinner, we sat.  I tried to make idle conversation.  It wasn’t working.   There wasn’t really any kind of middle ground.  I also noticed, she wasn’t particularly making any eye contact at me.  Always a great sign.  I hate being so uninteresting that people ignore me.  Especially in one on one settings.  So, sensing it was a lost cause, I shut up for a while.   She was talkative.  But not interesting.  People Magazine would be interested.  I wasn’t.

“So what kind of porn are you in to?”    The question just sat there on the table for a few minutes.   There was the awkward time where neither of us really wanted to touch it again.   But.   She finally answered.  I win again.

 

Eventually I got my 10 minutes of fun out of her discomfort in approaching the answer.  Squirming.  Making funny faces, forcing the outward look of appall.  But I forced the issue as best I know how.  So, I think it couldn't have gone any worse than it did.   Would it really go much better than that?

 

Here and now, I guess I laugh about things like this.  Its pathetic.  I understand that.  I also understand, I put myself through great and unnecessary duress, to not end up in the Hall.  I don’t want to end up in the Hall of Fame.  When has anyone ever said that?  When has anyone, with numbers like mine; with stories of the chase like mine; that has just gone through the grind every day, to play the game; when has anyone ever said that?  That I don’t want to be in the Hall of Fame.  But, I’m on my way. 

As a career, it really isn’t about what I’ve played for that is going to get me in; it’s how I played.  Take for exampled my most recent dinner date fiasco.  I pulled that can of gas out, and doused everything in sight.  I didn’t need to do that.  I didn’t wasn’t to do that… not initially.   But I did it.  Like the one winter night, where I sat and just screamed obscenities at someone, to make her cry, and to watch her cry.  It didn’t matter what she had done to me, most people might say.  It didn’t matter what I was playing for.  It only mattered what happened when I went to bat.  And, I keep going to bat.  I never miss my turn.  I bat third.  Because for every shit situation I keep getting into, I always have to make the last out.  Make the last out, or make it count.  That is what defines a Hall of Famer.  That is a career guy.  

I always sit up, those moments before I get out of bed, but after the alarm goes off, and ask myself; What kind of day am I going to have?  I ask myself, if today is the day I can make it happen.  So I go out there and get ripped every time.  I go out there, when I know that I had an awful game the day before.  I know I have to swing again when I hear the cat-calls, and the jeers.  I know too, that I have to hit again in 3 innings or less.  Like it, or not.  Like it or not; I’ve gone back to girls I shouldn’t have.  I’ve faced them again and again.  I’ve seen people I’ll never see again.  I’ve seen people that wouldn’t ever want to see me again, every day.  But I go back out there. 

 

Like it or not, 3 innings is coming up fast on me again.  Maybe it means, this is my last few at bats before I have to call it off.  I’m pressing, but I need a hit.  I can do it in my last AB.  Ted Williams hit a homer and walked off on his final shot, and look where he is…  Cooperstown.   Teddy Ballgame.  Ted Williams was a ball player.  The best I’ve ever known.  Ted Williams, made the Hall of Fame.  I’m on the path to the Embarrassment-town.  I’m probably going to make the Douche Bag Hall of Fame.  Because I don’t want to end up that single guy, over 30.  I don’t want to be the one, everyone laughs at.  The guy that doesn’t have a family.  That doesn’t have a real job, or real money.  The guy that doesn’t really have the respect of anyone that knows him.  The guy, everyone looks at, and treats differently.  So I play.  I play the game.   I keep playing because I want it.  I want it to work out for me….  or maybe just for someone like me.  Maybe that doesn’t matter now.  What matters is, I’m getting older.  I’m getting fat.  I’m getting so opinionated, I’m divisive and called a separatist.  I’m so dedicated to my interests, people abandon me.  But I’d like to think I’m not a bad guy.  I’d like to think, it isn’t entirely over yet.  My name might be on a ballet some day though. 

Its Been 10 Years

Since I graduated high school. that really does seem like an eternity.  i was trying to think what all was going on ten years ago; and i came of the opinion the more that i thought about it… that the world changed.  9/11 didnt happen.  no wars in afghanistan or iraq.  bill clinton was president.  the internet was still largely accessed by the hordes of AOL users. iphone? ipod? there wasnt even the imac yet.   there was no windows vista, no xp, no NT5 or 2000.  we had windows 98, pre SE!  no firefox.   linux existed, barely, in Mandrake and mostly in Red Hat.  apache was a buzz word when it came to computers.  multi cores didnt exist, multi threading couldnt even work in the current OS’s.  the red sox largely sucked.  the yankees were a good team.  there was no bartman for the cubs fans.  nascar still had dale earnhardt.  hell richard petty had hardly hung it up.  limp bizkit was already out of favor once, we had heard all we wanted of the boy bands, and the new crop of girl [without]bands was propping up.  britney spears seemed like a porno character, hardly the household name.  and michael jackson was still boning 8 year olds.  the world was different.  that was the world i lived in, until so many things changed.

 

but that was when i graduated high school.