Tales From the Third Lobe - Spotted Dick

About the author: Descended from old English money, Vidicon was raised by spiny echidnas in the mountainous rainforests of the North American Southeast. Lured back to society by time-traveling gray/reptiloid alien hybrids posing as renegade Jesuits, he has managed to maintain his outsider's perspective and an appetite for crunchy insects. Today, Vidicon is a world-class synchronicity surfer and an unlicensed quantum mechanic. He has a fourth-degree black belt in weird. About his bi-weekly column: Tales from the Third Lobe are the unfocused meanderings of the World's Smartest Moron. Topics range widely over the sciences, religion, philosophy, technology, modern culture, mysticism, Vidicon's personal history and viewpoints, and whatever pissed him off in the media last week. View all articles by Laszlo Q. V. St-J. "Vidicon" Xalieri, 2HC Columnist...

Learn the word odious. It's a good word. Basically it means you won't want it, and if you get it, you'll be in a hurry to get rid of it. Politely speaking.

This is an easy concept. If things went hideously in the first four years—when GWB had to worry about being reelected—how do you think things will go now? His party's grip is stronger in both houses of the legislature, and he's poised to appoint more justices as they drop dead.

Is he going to bother giving every man, woman, and child $300 again as thanks for allowing his busted ass into office? No. He won't even wipe his dick on the curtains and leave $5 on the dresser.

To paraphrase the words of Einstein, only an insane person expects different results when no changes are made to the controlling conditions.

These are actually linked. And inevitable. And you've already seen the onset.

See, we trust our government to give us information. In fact, it's illegal for the government NOT to supply us with information. It's called the Freedom of Information Act.

But as we've seen when we demand information, we get garbage and lies. We get made-up crap. We get official documents with official stuff blacked out officially by officious bastards and we DON'T get told that the whole document was discredited as worthless by intelligence experts two years ago.

However, we aren't that stupid. We know that we shouldn't trust anything we're told by the Bush Administration. And that leaves us blind, because we have no other sources for most of this information.

We take action anyway, because we have to. But when we take action without a clear picture of reality (or with a deluded picture—because we have no choice sometimes but to believe what we're told) we do crazy things. We defend ourselves from people who aren't attacking. We hide things that no one is looking for. We take things that someone told us were ours, but they aren't...

... and sooner or later we're walking out into traffic with our own shit smeared in our hair, pretty much demanding that the rest of society either take care of us or kill us.

See, what we end up doing depends on what we think is true. But if what we think is true has nothing to do with reality, then we are crazy. Senseless and deranged, even.

If you have syphilis these days, especially to the point where it drives you blind and mad, you have to want to have syphilis.

The course of the most recent election has pretty much proven that to be the case. I mean, how tough can it be to simply check the other box?

So.

You can tell me it's some kind of pudding, but I'm pretty sure it's pus.

Look at the evidence.

If the Bush machine were good stuff, would they have to lie to us to get us to do what they want us to do? Wouldn't they be able to present evidence that something needs doing, provide a good idea or two concerning what to do about it, and then let us get on with it?

If the pigfuckers have to alter reality (which both Karl Rove and GWB both think literally happens when you lie to enough people!) in order to get people to do something that they think needs doing, then what we end up doing is crazy! What we end up doing only makes sense in the parallel universe where Spock has the evil little goatee!

Not that there's anything inherently evil about evil little goatees.

Is it any reason the rest of the planet thinks the United States has snapped? As a nation, we're blind and deluded and dangerously violent. Right up there with the best famous syphilitics of history. Only with nukes.

And we've just turned down the penicillin again.

So thank you, all you Armageddon-loving asshats who, according to CNN's exit polls, still think Iraq had anything to do with the prosecution of some kind of deeply ironic war on terror. Barring impeachment or (God forbid) assassination, it'll be four more years before the needle comes around again. When next we'll have to fight off the candidacy of Jeb Bush, an out-in-the-open signatory of the NeoConservative Manifesto.

Jesus.

Maybe we ought to make the shot a double-dose. When we finally bend over and take it.

[*]

Vidicon has been the buddha, but the pay was lousy