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I got an email just now from my buddy Lotus. I read it and then replied back to all the recipients with my two cents, but good golly, I didn’t realize that I was going to get all worked up and shit. Here we go…

From: Lotus
Subject: The Doom Bunker
Date: Friday, March 6, 2009, 4:21 PM

Okay, on our recent trip my wife and I ended up in a PizzaHut, yes a PizzaHut, for dinner in Crescent City CA. Despite the rest of the beautiful northern Cali coast, Crescent City leaves much to be desired and hence, PizzaHut. Well, I sat across the table from the ol’ ball and chain with my eyes transfixed on the TeeVee above her. I was stuck, like watching baboons screw, reading the close captioning and watching what must have been the worst thing I’ve ever seen on that damn box. They had on Faux News. There was a show on called “The War Room” with this goofball named Glenn Beck. I was mezmerized by the stupidity of this show and couldn’t believe it was even on the air. But if anyone would give this show the time of day it would be Fixed News. I was speechless the entire time and I think I still haven’t told the Wombat why. I think at one point she looked at me with this concerned look, like I was vacant, and the thought crossed my mind of explaining what was going on on the boobtube above her. Then I realized there was no way I could convey what was on that piece of shit network just then.

Well thank you Steven Colbert for succinctly mocking what must be the most laughable god-awful pile of horsepiss to have ever run on tv. And that’s saying something. SO my dear sweet battleaxe, here’s why I was not quite “with you” that evening on our romantic PizzaHut dinner stop. It was Fox News hun. Like watching baboons screw.

Click here to see what Lotus was talking about

Well, after reading that, I thought I’d respond. So I did.

I saw the Colbert thing, and just about pissed my pants laughing.

Some thoughts that have popped into my head over the last year or so because of stuff just like that:

1) Colbert does a hilarious job acting like a right-wing megalomaniac that I didn’t get it at first, and didn’t like the show until that one day when I finally did get it. The actual right-wingers are trying to copy him or Jon Stewart’s Daily Show with their own show called Red Eye or something like that? This show isn’t funny at all. I mean, I can’t even view it and think, “Man, this would be funny if I were on their team.” So I see their show and I wonder if I’ve somehow lost part of my grip on reality? Did I ever have one? Hmmm… Seems like Sense Of Humor isn’t a Republican trait.

2) Faux News. Are you people for real? From the not-even-thinly-veiled hatred that spews forth from this channel to the cast of characters that are on it… AREYOUFUCKINGPEOPLEFORREAL!?!? For example:

3) Ann Coulter. Insanely out of touch, or marketing genius? I honestly wonder if she actually believes and means the shit that comes out of her horrible mouth, or if she concocts it strictly for headlines, or if she somehow thinks that “Teehee, it’s just television, how can people actually think I’m being serious?” Whatever the truth…she dies in my fantasy.

4) Our two-party system sucks. All it does is breed distrust and an Us VS Them mentality, so much so that legislation is often based on a strategy of “they want this so we are going to fight it, regardless of whether it makes sense or is better than our own plan”.

5) TV sucks. All it does is breed an atmosphere of envy. Envy that the rich and famous people on TV have all these wonderful things in their wonderful lives that we are missing in our pathetic “normal” lives. The Dalai Lama said in a book that in our culture of excess, he sees more unhappy people than in 3rd world cultures. And one time I was in a bar and I was shooting pool with a stranger from Africa. He told me that Americans are crazy because we work too much. He’s right. And, of course, we work too much because we are a nation of Joneses, always wanting what we think that the other person has: happiness because of all the material things they possess.

Wow, I didn’t think I’d get that worked up, but Western Civilazition is doomed. The only thing keeping the machine going at this point is sheer inertia and with the stock market doing what it’s doing, it’ll be interesting to see what’s up in a year or 3.

And, of course, I forgot a couple of things to say in the email. One thing is that it is amazing what some people are saying about the Obama presidency already. Some Republicans are talking about Obama as if he had been in office for 8 years already and royally screwed up everything from our relationships with almost EVERY other country on Earth to our budget deficit. Uhhhh folks, Obama has been in the White House for all of two months. Give him some time. He’s a human, he will make mistakes, but NOBODY could make any more or worse mistakes than the guy who just moved out. zeemzane?

The other thing I forgot to mention to Lotus is that he (Lotus) needs to watch more TV. I never thought I’d say that to anybody, but I think that it’s true in this case. Here’s why: In order to combat whatever it is…be it the enemy or stupidity or what have you, you must know what it is that you’re up against. I told my father on the phone today, “How dumb is the average person? Remember that that is the average and that half the people are even dumber.” How painful is that? But all you have to do is watch most of what they put on TV to see that most of us blindly accept most of what’s put in front of us without thinking or questioning what the hell it is.

So from time to time I hear Lotus tell a tale of how he saw something in mainstream society which flabbergasted him because of its banality. Yeah…well, you watch more TV and see how fine folks like Paris Hilton and Bill O’Reilly are getting on and I guarantee that you will be less surprised in the future.

It’s all a bunch of bullshit. That’s what I gotta say about that!

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Folks, if you ever look at the links page at this site, you’ll notice a link to Engrish.com.  This is a hilarious site where you’ll find hundreds of photos of signs where the English phrases have been butchered to the point of gut-busting hilarity.

Well, I saw one of my own this morning and I thought it good enough to send to the fine folks at Engrish.com.

Please to enjoy…

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Today Dave and I went to a federal building where we had a meeting with somebody in the IT Dept of this federal agency.  The meeting concerned some kiosks that Dave had previously written programs for and we were stopping by to do some follow-up maintenance/upgrading of software for them.

Dave and I showed up at the building and, of course, we had to go through a metal detector and all that, just like at the airport.  The only difference was that the old guy who we were talking to was much more talkative and friendly, especially when telling us he didn’t want to have to shoot us like they did the guy with the hand grenade a few years ago.  All this he said with a smile, like he was offering us a plate of cookies.  ????WTF!  Uh, thanks dude…I think.

Dave and I headed upstairs and we had the meeting, where we were told that there were some concerns with this and that in the software and some of the kiosks had just shut down completely, so we’d need to take a couple of the computer boxes with us and troubleshoot them.  Oh yeah, we can do that…  Dave, you go get your car and take it to the loading dock and I’ll go with the lady here and get the towers and meet you down there.

Down in the loading dock, Dave called me to say that he was ready to come in, so the lady we had the meeting with told the security guys to open the door and let him in.  In addition to having the door closed, they also had those metal poles that were about waist height that would lower down into the concrete hydraulically in order to let a car in, or keep a car out, as the case may be.  It was a bit daunting, but it was kinda cool being behind the scenes in the loading dock of a federal building where they take security VERY SERIOUSLY, ya know?

As Dave was pulling in (after they’d conducted a search of his car), the lady who we had met with turned to me, “Oh yeah, we’ll email you the forms for the background check next week.  But you can take the hardware today.”  She said it with a wink, as though to say that she trusted us, but she had to go through the formality for the sake of protocol.

Hmmmm, that made me feel funny.  Partly because of my knee-jerk reaction to Federal Background Check, but also because they actually might find something.  For those of you not familiar with my Alaskan upbringing, there was an incident in highschool involving 8 of us and a bunch of beer and an FAA building.  In Round One, the building lost.  However, in Round Two: The Legal Round, me and a couple of the others lost.

After talling Dave about that, he said, “Don’t worry, it wasn’t a felony, so it’s probably no big deal.”  And slightly afterward, he added, “Way to go losing the contract for us, dingdong!  You’re fired!”

Well….we’ll see.  Now it seems there are TWO legal entities interested in me for various reasons.  What do you do?

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