Young Johnny Steele has an Oldsmobile
He loves his dear little girl.
She is the queen of his gas machine
She has his heart in a whirl.
Now when they go for a spin, you know,
She tries to learn the auto, so –
He lets her steer, while he gets her ear
And whispers soft and low:
Come away with me, Lucille,
In my merry Oldsmobile.
Down the road of life we’ll fly
Automobubbling, you and I!
To the church we’ll swiftly steal,
Then our wedding bells will peal.
You can go as far as you like with me
In my merry Oldsmobile.
They love to “spark” in the dark old park
As they go flying along.
She says she knows why the motor goes
The “sparker” is awfully strong.
Each day they “spoon” to the engine’s tune.
Their honeymoon will happen soon.
He’ll win Lucille with his Oldsmobile,
And then he’ll fondly croon:
Come away with me, Lucille,
In my merry Oldsmobile.
Down the road of life we’ll fly
Automobubbling, you and I!
To the church we’ll swiftly steal,
Then our wedding bells will peal.
You can go as far as you like with me
In my merry Oldsmobile.
– Vincent Patrick Bryan, 1905
Ever run into somebody you knew when you were fourteen or so, about twenty years later? This evening, I did. He sat down next to me at the Round Robin Bar in the Willard Hotel, much, it occurred to me, as Edward Calahan might have taken a seat next to Samuel Clemens there, one hundred and forty-two years ago. Unlike Calahan, who became rich and famous for inventing the stock ticker, however, Wilder was pretty bummed out, no doubt about it, and it wasn’t until he’d downed three shots of top shelf, single barrel artisanal bourbon whiskey, all chased down with a large micro-brew draft, that he even recognized me.
I, on the other hand, had been contemplating him for an extended period while he got properly sauced, considering how the young and angelic countenance, which I remembered so vividly from when we attended prep school together, could still be so instantly recognizable in what anyone today could see is the tortured, betrayed and miserable face of an adult who clearly expected life to be less of a cruel farce. Thank God Almighty, I reflected, that my father was a bartender, and, consequently, I was raised to know better than that.
“Holy [expletive],” he slurred, blinking at me with an incredulous mien, “you’re Tom [expletive] Collins!”
“Wilder,” I brayed back heartily, “you [expletive] [expletive] [expletive]” (for that was the way boys of our age greeted one another in New York City back in the 1980’s), “how the [expletive] are you [expletive] doing?”
“Totally [expletive] off,” he declared, motioning for the bartender to pour him another shot of bourbon, while pointing at his empty beer glass and nodding his head so that the bartender would get the idea that another draft was also required. “Barack Obama’s about to whip out that huge [expletive] [expletive] of his and [expletive] me in the [expletive]! That’s why I came to Washington.”
“To do what,” I asked, “request that he use some Vaseline?”
Wilder slapped my back affably. “Nah, I came here to visit my trade association lobbyists. They asked him.”
“Really?” I replied. “Which ones?”
“The National Association of Automobile Dealers,” Wilder confided.
“Automobile dealers?” I volleyed back. “Is that what happened after all these years? You became a car salesman?”
“No, no,” Wilder corrected, “not a [expletive] suck [expletive] salesman, Tom. I own four General Motors dealership franchises! You remember how my family moved to New Jersey and enrolled me in Hun, at Princeton?”
“Yeah,” I recalled, “it seems I remember something like that.”
“Well,” he continued, “after I graduated from Hun, I went to Rutgers and got a degree in automotive engineering. Then I worked for GM for six years, and saved up enough money to buy a Pontiac franchise.”
“A Pontiac franchise?” I could scarcely believe it. “You know, of course, the phrase for which ‘Pontiac’ is an acronym?”
“Oh, yeah,” he snickered, “I heard that in the men’s room my first week at General Motors: ‘Poor Old Nitwit Thinks It’s A Cadillac.’ But I got a great deal, Tom, let me tell you! GM was practically giving Pontiac franchises away, and besides, I worked for GM designing Pontiacs, so I knew they were good cars, and, what’s more, doing that gave me the inside track on a franchise deal for what I had managed to save, see? I mean, really, there’s no way I could have afforded to start a Chevrolet dealership with what I had. Then I built it out from there, so in a couple of years I was selling Hummers, then GMC trucks, then when GM bought Saab, I started selling those, too, and… and then,” he stopped, quickly knocking back his latest bourbon shot and chasing it with about a third of his new glass of draft beer. “Then, Tom, GM came to Washington, begging for a bailout, which they got. And after which, GM became Obama’s [expletive]. And when GM proposed cutting forty-seven thousand jobs and slashing corporate debt by half, what do you know – that wasn’t good enough for him, was it, oh, no, GM wasn’t taking Obama’s [expletive] [expletive] far enough down the throat! No, he wants to feel some gagging, he wants to see the eyes water! No, he says, GM has to get its bond holders to agree to swap $28 billion in debt for GM stock! Do you know what GM stock closed at today? [Expletive] one [expletive] dollar and [expletive] seventy-one [expletive] cents, [expletive] that’s [expletive] what! So what are they, [expletive] nuts? Totally [expletive] stupid, maybe? Whacked out on that Mexican heroin they’ve got these days that’s cheaper than [expletive] Budweiser, for Christ’s sake? Of course the bond holders won’t go for it! And then, on top of that, Obama says the United Auto Workers and General Motors have to come to an accommodation that’s acceptable to Washington, too! Great! Bond holders screaming bloody [expletive] murder while the [expletive] UAW tries to see how far they can stretch GM over a [expletive] barrel! And if GM can’t break up the [expletive] log jam by June 1, then…”
“Oh, I get it,” I surmised. “You’re here because the Administration is demanding that GM file for bankruptcy in exchange for further bailout funding, and you want the National Association of Automobile Dealers to do something about it.”
“Right,” Wilder affirmed. “Obama’s people say they want to split GM in two, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. They want to cut the company up into a ‘good’ General Motors and a ‘bad’ General Motors, Tom; and Pontiac, Hummer, GMC and Saab are gonna be in the bad one! And if GM goes bankrupt, the bad GM that’s left over afterwards isn’t going to have any money to buy out its dealers.”
“Buy them out?” I asked, a bit puzzled.
“Sure, Tom,” he slowly nodded, “you remember Oldsmobiles don’t you?”
“Of course,” I assured him. “They were one of the very first automobiles manufactured in the United States. When GM finally stopped making them, Oldsmobile was the third oldest surviving car brand in history. GM bought it in, what, 1910 or something?”
“Make that 1908,” Wilder corrected. “And in 2003 and 2004, when GM stopped making Oldsmobiles, the company bought out all the dealers. But if GM declares bankruptcy…”
“But why,” I interrupted, ”do you even need to worry about whether GM can afford to buy you out? The Administration claims that the bankruptcy will only last a couple of weeks.”
“For the ‘good’ GM, maybe,” he grumbled, “the GM with Chevrolet and Cadillac, that might turn out to be true. Not that any bankruptcy for a company the size of GM, or even half that size, has ever taken only two measly [expletive] weeks! But what do I care if it’s as ‘surgical’ as the Treasury Department says it will be, when I’m going to be left owning franchises to sell four of the major products the ‘bad’ GM will be stuck with, along with all of GM’s bad debts, all its most inefficient factories and all of its health care obligations! The bankruptcy of my GM,” he sobbed, “the ‘bad’ GM; Tom, it’s going to be a [expletive] nightmare, and it’s going to take [expletive] years…”
“It could be worse,” I offered. “You could be owner of a Saturn franchise, too.”
“Yeah,” he spat, downing another bourbon shot, “and I could have been born with one great big eye, right in the middle of my [expletive] head, too.”
“So,” I inquired, “did you get to meet with your trade association lobbyists?”
“Yes, I did,” Wilder flatly stated. “Yesterday. Today they met with Congress and Obama’s car industry people at the White House.”
“And what did all that accomplish?” I pressed.
Now quite woozy, Wilder upended yet another bourbon shot, then regarded me intently with a pair of eyes fighting to stay uncrossed. “You speak Spanish?”
“Some.”
“Well, amigo,” he sighed, “let’s just say, now I know why they the call the [expletive] thing ‘NADA.’”
By this time, however, Wilder was feeling (and behaving) pretty numb. So when I changed the subject to old times, he was more than willing to go along with it, and I dare say we had a grand time remembering what asinine, foolhardy and totally juvenile jerks we were. Hey, you’re only middle-school age once, why not do it right? Now, let’s see what’s in the Quarterly Mailbag.
First of all, 5h0ut50ut to 514rtyb4rdf45t for e-mailing me to say that he and his friends prefer reading Tom Collins’ World Wide Web Log to watching videos on YouTube “because the pictures are better.” I sincerely appreciated that.
Next, I’d like to address an e-mail I got from another fellow named Tom, way back in January. His Dad is from DC, and he’s heard the old man use the phrase “GZPZ” and has also seen it here. So he wrote in to ask if I could enlighten him on the etymology of GZPZ. Well, here’s what I know. I first heard GZPZ in Prince George’s County, Maryland. It’s one of those terms, called alteration euphemisms, that are substituted for other, stronger words and phrases, such as “gosh” for “God,” or “darn” for “damn,” when a young and callow speaker wishes to obtain the emphasis of swearing an oath but either doesn’t want to offend potentially sensitive listeners or, more commonly, is afraid the nun or similar adult authority figure hovering in close proximity will punish them severely for saying anything more accurately reflecting what they hear their parents yelling at each other when they’re drunk. Astute readers of this Web log may have noticed that I avoid certain words, placing the phrase “[expletive]” in my posts instead. I do that so as to maintain greater accessibility and avoid needless sanctions by various mindless and badly designed censorbots, not to mention various mindless and unsophisticated humans.
Of course, all of this delicate discussion begs a crucial question – for exactly which obscenely ripe and disgustingly raw imprecatory oath is “GZPZ” the substitute euphemism? The answer is, that the “G” is for “Jesus;” the first “Z” indicates the possessive case; and, the “P” together with the second “Z,” stand for “pizzle,” an Old English word, from the Saxon Low German pezel, the term for that part of Osiris which Isis never found after Set dismembered him. (Egyptian mythology, by the way, holds it was eaten by a fish. “Anybody like fish sticks? You do? What are you, a gay fish?” Well, that fish was obviously pretty gay, unless it was a female fish, of course, in which case, I guess it was the kind of girl fish that guy fish like to date.) The fact that the second component harkens back centuries before even the time of Chaucer (who, after all, spoke and wrote in Middle English), leads me to believe that the parent phrase probably came over to Maryland on the Ark and the Dove (which is the Chesapeake region’s version of coming over on the Mayflower). And no doubt kids in what today is Prince George’s County were getting soundly whipped for saying it many years before Oliver Cromwell beheaded Charles I. In those days, believe it or not, the English called the last letter of the alphabet “zee,” not “zed,” the latter having been introduced into British English after the American Revolution. So it’s perfectly conceivable that ”Jee-zee Pea-zee,” was substituted for the offending phrase at least that long ago, if not even earlier, perhaps in merry old England itself. Later, probably in the nineteenth century, the sequence of letters “GZPZ” was most likely substituted, the literal pronunciation of the letter names offering, as it does, such an attractive, compact and clever representation of the euphemism. So there we have it – anybody who thinks they know better is invited to send me an e-mail concerning their version of history.
Thirdly, I would like to respond to my latest Inbox phenomenon, namely fundamentalist Christians sending me urgent pleas intended to save my soul. I swear, these are just as, if not more annoying than all those threatening e-mails I used to get from people named “Tom Collins” who wanted me to either pay them money to use, or cease and desist from using “their” name. Look, you Bible-pounding peckerwoods, if you actually read my blog, instead of relying on somebody else’s description of it, you’ll see that my full name is Tom Collins Martini, and you’ll know exactly why, too. Furthermore, you’ll also see that I was raised a Catholic and that I actually attend Mass occassionally. GZPZ, what pain in the posterior you guys are!
So, with those three general items taken care of, let’s move on to last quarter’s blog posts:
Most of the folks who wrote in to comment about my conversation with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid concerning Roland Burris sympathized with Senator Reid’s predicament. Not very many of them sympathized with Roland Burris, however. It looks like those who don’t know Burris concluded, on the basis of the media coverage, that he’s some kind of mental case. On the other hand, those respondents hailing from Illinois, who, in fact, do know Burris all too well, are absolutely convinced, on the basis of their personal experience, that he’s some kind of mental case. Unfortunately, right now he’s also the only African American in the United States Senate. So, speaking of sympathy, my many correspondents on this issue have plenty of mine, and I’m sure if Governor Blagojevich had appointed a white man that crazy to the Senate, he’d be out of there by now, regardless of whether or not he bribed Blagojevich to get into the Senate in the first place.
My post on the [expletive] industry bailout request drew only a few comments about its content, and most of those were attempts at risque humor (”How do you make a hormone? Don’t pay her!” “What’s with the ‘French post card’ reference, Tom? Why don’t you put your home address on your Web site, then I can send you one and you can write a blog entry explaining what’s so [expletive] funny about it.” “… to hell with that, buddy! Help me find my car keys and we can drive out of here!” “… Quick! Shoot the dog!” “… because Thursday is your night in the barrel, that’s why!”). But I also received a big pile of requests concerning the contact information for Phil McCrakin, who, as the post says, is the principal lobbyist for the Association of American [Expletive]. I guess it must be the economy, because nearly forty-three percent of the inquiries were from women. I forwarded all of those to Phil. Sorry guys, but as you might well imagine, there are no openings for males in the [expletive] industry at the moment, no, not even for the young, handsome and gay with hearts light as a feather. And I’d advise that the gals who wrote in not get their hopes up too high, either. Remember, that post was about the industry going broke and begging the federal government for a bailout, after all.
My post on George W. Bush’s final news conference drew the expected barrage of angry epistiles from his loyal and avid supporters. “Your a idiot” was a commonly expressed sentiment. Some of my other favorite comments were: “Dam you too hell, you will burn their for all eternetitty [sic].” “All I can say is, God bless George W. Bush! Just you wait and see, Obama will leave America prostate with debt.” “Your a Socialist coward… and President Bush is half the man Tom Collins is – at twice the price!” “How dare you back a Muslin in the White House?” And the grand prize goes to: “After that black-[expletive] [expletive] won, I went and drank myself into bolivia, and now you maid me feel like doing it again. If I was a man, I would beet you up.”
The post where I celebrated President Obama’s inauguration by reiterating my advice to the last incoming Congress drew even more incredulous responses than the first time. It seems that a lot of folks thought I was being facetious. Alas, if only that were, in fact, true. Yes, Virginia, there is a Congress, and it’s everything Mark Twain said it was a hundred years ago, only more so, and with Blackberries and Web sites to boot.
I got a slew of responses to my account of Timothy Geithner’s consultation. It seems that he proved instantly unlikable to the vast majority of Americans, and none of the ones who wrote me were shy about what they had to say. “A repulsive, sniveling, lickspittle lackey of the criminal class on Wall Street” and “an unqualified, Machiavellian, egomaniac toady for the latter-day robber barons, whose very presence should raise the gorge of any decent person” are the only comments I can reproduce without extensively redacting the content.
By now, I suppose, everyone who is interested has seen the Internet video of the PETA half time commercial that NBC refused to run during Super Bowl XLIII. Certainly, most of the mail I got reflected a widespread sentiment that NBC must be run by a bunch of blue-haired seventy-year-old virgin spinsters. Actually though, that’s not really true. NBC is run by a bunch of moronic, hinder-smooching corporate suits whose family jewels are currently on deposit with the Federal Communications Commission. I did, however, receive a few very enthusiastic messages from guys and gals who get off on vegetables, some of which provided me with, shall we say, a few more details than necessary. After the elapse of a decent interval, though, I’m pleased to report that I’m now fully capable of eating zucchini, parsnip, cucumber, carrot and fingerling purple eggplant again.
The account of my meeting with Nathaniel Gordon of the National H1B Visa Coalition drew a tidal wave of responses from native-born American citizens with advanced scientific, engineering, technical and business degrees, all singing the blues in the key of H1B. I also received a nearly equal amount of e-mails from irate foreigners with advanced scientific, engineering, technical and business degrees, the general sentiment of which was captured nicely by a fellow who goes by the handle KumarTheCool978. “You suck-[expletive] fat, lazy Americans all eat [expletive]. Your kids sit around all day listening to [expletive] cretinish rap music and playing [expletive] idiotic video games instead of studying. Then you all sit around scratching your [expletive] with your thumbs up your [expletive] wondering why companies like Microsoft pay the airfare to bring us Desis here. You mindless Americans can’t even do algebra anymore, much less multivariate analysis and differential equations. Instead, your children have to take remedial reading when they go to college, can’t even recite the first row of the Periodic Table and couldn’t calculate a radio wave’s length from its frequency if their worthless lives depended on it! You want to see your bloated, greedy, wasteful and decadent society fall apart at the seams? Just watch, when the H1B Indians, Asians, Pakistanis, Egyptians, Turks and Iranians say ‘[Expletive] you, stupid, ignorant, apathetic, slothful, ugly, despicable, stinking Americans, we’re all going back where we came from – every single one of us! And we’re never, ever coming to America again – no matter what!’” Promises, promises, promises. And if that’s Kumar the Cool, I’d sure hate to see what Kumar the Irascible is like; or meet the other 977 KumarTheCools with accounts at Godforsaken Microsoft hotmail, for that matter.
Responses to my post relating Veronica’s attempt at getting Gretchen to outdo Nadya Suleman fell into six categories. First, there were the people who said that Suleman is obviously a profoundly disturbed, mentally incompetent person who is in no condition to have responsibility for the care of a single child, much less fourteen of them (16%). Then there were those who proclaimed Suleman a brave and saintly lover of children, who is being cruelly persecuted simply because she isn’t married (22%); those who proclaimed Suleman a brave and saintly lover of children, who is being cruelly persecuted simply because she doesn’t work, hasn’t worked in years and probably never will work again, isn’t independently wealthy and thus can’t afford to support fourteen children, and therefore absolutely must have her own reality show on cable television, just like “Jon & Kate Plus 8” and all those other pathetically insane, litter-dropping obsessive compulsive breeders do (19%); and, those who vociferously proclaimed both points of view (11%). Another 23%, almost exclusively male, requested contact information for Veronica, and the remaining 9%, about three quarters male, said they want to meet Gretchen. I forwarded the requests to Veronica, as usual, and, also as usual, don’t hold your breath waiting for a reply. Since I posted that story, Gretchen has read quite a bit about Nadya Suleman and she was completely freaked out when I told her people were sending me e-mails, hoping to get a date with her because they read about her in a post concerning Octomom. She asked me not to forward any of them. Instead, she requested I delete them, which I did. So, my apologies to those earnest guys – and gals – who wrote in trying to contact Gretchen. She thinks you’re all, well, kind of weird is what she told me, anyway.
The transcript of my consultation with Mr. Hieronymus Hogg, who represents the American Goober Council, prompted a large number of peanut fanciers to write in. They alternately extolled their beloved legume while just as enthusiastically excoriating its growers for their perfidy and betrayal of the Lord’s most favored ground nut. Indeed, in order to properly substantiate their ire, about six out of ten included genuinely horrifying tales of recent peanut-induced Salmonella poisoning, replete with gory details of huge, splattering, uncontrollable defecations, projectile vomiting across distances that can only be described as truly Olympian, and astounding body counts of how many people their virulent flatulence incapacitated in the elevator, car pool, assembly line, classroom or cube farm. If there remains any doubt at the responsible federal agencies that contaminated peanuts constitute a serious national emergency, I beg that the contractors who read those agencies’ e-mails to the members of the Civil Service who work there send me the appropriate e-mail addresses, so I can forward those stories for the edification of federal regulatory and enforcement staff.
I really had no idea how many Scandinavians of, shall we say, a certain age read this Web log until I told everyone about my encounter with Arne Arneson at the Round Robin Bar. It seems that Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland, not to mention the United States and Canada, are filled with disconsolate old Nordic people whose children and/or grandchildren constantly insist they take sides in family arguments, the issues of which, they neither know anything or care anything about. And if what my correspondents in this matter say has any accuracy at all, the upshot of such incidents is, almost universally, exactly as poor Arne described. Furthermore, a surprising number of those e-mails mentioned Pirate Bay as the very disagreement making these folks’ lives miserable, and of those, every single one of them complained that, after all the arguments, bickering and interminable talk about the subject on both sides, they still don’t have any idea what peer-to-peer technology is, much less why anyone would want to pick a fight about it.
The post concerning my dinner with Urquhart sparked a flurry of e-mails, mostly from other wannabes who brazenly assured me that they can write rings around no-talent hacks like him, and, to prove it, attached excerpts from their own novels, or, occassionally, the entire novels themselves. I suppose the Fair Use Doctrine allows me to quote them briefly, so here goes: “You won’t believe it, but guess who I met down at the country club this afternoon – the principal of Harvard University, no less!” “’There’s nothing like this,’ the doctor said, ‘in all the anals of medicine.’” “And why shouldn’t she know what men liked? She’d been one for twenty-eight years, hadn’t she?” “’You’re too clever by half,’ he chuckled. ‘But you overlooked the crucial question: which half?’” “He chased his pants half on and half off as she ran as fast as she could to get away from him.” “There, at his hometown bus stop, no sooner had Adam stepped off the Greyhound than he came across a stray dog on his way home from spending three tours of duty in Iraq.” “They floated around the dance floor exactly the way a couple of paraplegics couldn’t.” “He was as puzzled as an Active Server Pages developer who has just accessed a corrupted dynamic link library object.” “’There,’ Jordan said, pointing at the fireball, ‘but for the grace of God, go you and I, even if you are an atheist.” “She felt that if life was a movie, she’d be the assistant script supervisor.” “His thoughts tumbled around in his brain like fabric softener sheets in an empty runaway clothes dryer set on Heavy, Permanent Press.”
The story of that telephone call conference I had with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal drew an unexpectedly low number of responses from loyal Republicans, and most of the ones I received indicated that he got off pretty easy, considering how badly he messed up his party’s response to that crackerjack address President Obama delivered to a joint session of Congress back in February. Democrats, of course, wrote in to gloat about what a lame imitation Jindal turned out to be, and I can’t say I disagree. But even though Jindal never paid his bill, he did get the RNC to contact me with an RFP to develop that new lexicon of meaningless platitudes with which to hypnotize and stupefy the public that I recommended. So listen for new, exciting and much improved meaningless platitudes in upcoming GOP speeches – that’s me, Tom Collins, earning his pay. What’s more, I hear that at last, Jindal’s getting help for this delusion that he’s Bobby Brady. Finally, special thanks to Cici, who e-mailed me to identify a crucial error in the original post. For the record, William Proxmire was a United States Senator from the state of Wisconsin, not Minnesota. The post went up on February 27, and, thanks to her, I was able to make the correction the very next day. Quite a few other people caught that mistake during the 36-hour period it was there, but Cici was the first by a wide margin.
A remarkable number of readers wrote in to describe symptoms similar to those displayed by my brother-in-law Hank after viewing and hearing creepy, squeaky little Jonathan Krohn’s address to the faithful at CPAC. Why the kid has a deranging effect on disillusioned post-Obama conservatives, I can only speculate, but it proved very comforting for my dear sister Rose to learn that her husband was not alone in his episode of embarrassing psychological dysfunction. It’s hardly surprising, then, to have also received a torrent of irate e-mails defending that sorry little twit. Unlike the angry messages I got from offended supporters of George W. Bush, however, these came from what passes for the intellectual wing of the Republican Party. Therefore, I was subjected to a great deal of studied abuse in the form of quotations from people like Adam Smith, Russell Kirk, George F. Will, Edmund Burke, Joseph-Marie de Maistre, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Paul, and, of course, William Bennett, whose blather that obnoxious tyke seems to have memorized for quick regurgitation in order to impress the more gullible adults in his vicinity. Which gives me an idea – why don’t those geniuses at CPAC teach that nauseating trained monkey of theirs to memorize a bunch of pithy quotes by all those other guys I got quoted in those angry e-mails, and then trot him out to spit them up for appropriate photo opportunities? Oh, yeah, that’s right – there aren’t any appropriate photo opportunities for Republicans anymore – everybody’s taking pictures of Barack Obama and his family. Rest assured, Republican conservatives, my heart bleeds iced, purple Perrier for you.
I suppose that a Niagara of e-mails from people telling me their own, personal favorite earmarks in the federal continuing funding bill was inevitable, and I must admit, most of them were just as absurd as the ones mentioned in my March 9th post. A few were even more ridiculous. But reading them, I couldn’t escape the feeling that if they didn’t have Congressional earmarks, a lot of my correspondents just wouldn’t know what to complain about.
My description of treating Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele for foot-in-mouth disease didn’t go over well with his fan base, which consists, apparently, of a limited number of people in Maryland and an even more limited number scattered around the United States. In fact, I received a considerably greater number of e-mails asking who this guy is, and/or is he really the Chairman of the RNC and/or did I just invent him in order to make black people look bad? To the latter group, let me reply by assuring you that Michael Steele is indeed the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, he did indeed make those public pronouncements which I discuss with him in the transcript of our conversation, and no, he is most certainly not some goofball character I invented in order to make black people look bad. Mr. Steele does a truly impressive job of that entirely on his own and requires no help from me or anyone else. And if you think Michael Steele is out there where the buses don’t run, then you have a thing or two to learn about conservative black Maryland politicians – ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce Mr. Alan Keyes? Take my word for it, if there’s anybody who can make Mr. Steele look halfway normal, it’s him. And to Mr. Steele’s supporters, and Mr. Keyes’ for that matter, all I can say is – what, are you people bleeping crazy or something?
And speaking of people who are bleeping crazy, the bleeping roof caved in on me about my post concerning “Mr. X,” the federal government bozo at the Treasury Department who made sure the clause enabling the now thoroughly infamous AIG bonuses wheedled its way into the now totally notorious American Recovery and Reinvestment Act via the now completely reviled Joint Conference Committee, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Appropriations Chairman Representative David R. Obey presiding. Many of the e-mails advised me find out Mr. X’s name and address and post them on the Internet so that justice can be done. Not wishing to be arrested for violating a laundry list of federal laws, and likewise being pretty sure that “justice” in this case would probably involve doing cruel, unusual and decidedly unconstitutional things to Mr. X, I categorically refuse. Others asked how I can sleep at night, when I knowingly advise and abet people like Mr. X. The answer is, I sleep quite well, although my girlfriend Cerise says that I occasionally snore. Aside from that, though, I sleep just fine. Still others dared me to meet them in various parking lots, alleys and similar public areas around the greater DC metropolitan area, in order that they could demonstrate their appreciation for me and my work in an appropriate manner. To them, I say: stugotts, paisans, I got nothing to prove. And besides, if anyone thinks I’m some kind of apologist for the United States Civil Service, they obviously don’t read my Web log enough to be taken seriously.
And it was a regular avalanche of e-mails from China that I got concerning my post about my brother Rob Roy’s unhinged survivalist shopping spree, sparked, as that post explained, by Beijing’s proposal to scrap the Dollar as the world reserve currency. It’s good to know that people in China are allowed to read my Web log, and I have received occasional e-mails hailing from the China domain almost since the beginning. But the Chinese response to this particular post was so large and extraordinary that I feel I should mention it. About a two thirds of the e-mails were along the lines of “Mr. Collins, so sorry. I not to blame for American economy mess, work hard seventeen hours six days in week {on computer/in office/on shop floor/driving forklift/truck/tractor/pulling hand cart} at {[insert American or international brand name] athletic shoe company/[insert American brand name] consumer electronics factory/[insert multinational corporation brand name] agricultural processing depot/[insert American brand name] toy factory/[insert designer brand name] sewing shop/[insert American or multinational corporate name] textile mill/metal foundry/ceramics kiln/lumber and drywall yard}. Make good product for you American buy. Please no tell America not buy Chinese product. Must make Chinese product to get Yuan to live in small apartment in big city. Not grow own food, must buy with Yuan. Must earn Yuan to buy clothes, pay rent. Like America, want go someday, want America like me. Please be nice China. PS. Tibet not my fault, too.” The other third were like “Tom Collins running dog American imperialist, tell lies about China, must die!” In other words, the e-mail from China turned out to be pretty much like what I get from everywhere else, except for the way Chinese write things in “Engrish.” But who am I to cast aspersion on that? After all, my Chinese totally sucks.
In stark contrast, I got not one single, solitary e-mail from North Korea, or even from a North Korean outside North Korea, in response to my post about meeting an anonymous third-world diplomat for an ad hoc consultation regarding the US, North Korea and North Korea’s Taepodong 2 rocket launch. Not that I have ever received an e-mail from North Korea or even one from a North Korean somewhere else, or ever expect to. I don’t think they’re very big on the Internet in North Korea. But then, how could they be? An American, Al Gore, invented it, and the North Koreans make sure the whole world knows they hate America, despise everything it does and revile everything it stands for – sort of like the French, but with no Internet, no Disney and no McDonald’s. I did, however get plenty of messages from red-blooded, patriotic Americans suggesting that, as one of my typical correspondents on this issue put it, “We should shoot that damn North Korean rocket down just to show those Commie slope bastard dinks we can do it.” But now, as we all know, that was hardly necessary, since the North Korean rocket fell apart and plunked into the Pacific ocean, proving to the whole world that America might very well triumph in an exchange of intercontinental ballistic missiles with North Korea without having to actually fire any of its own weapons. And for the record, unlike that particular correspondent, I, myself, most assuredly do not think that the North Koreans are a bunch of Commie slope bastard dinks – just Kim Jong-il. And I’m pretty sure I know what Taepodong Kim Jong-il has – tiny; very, very tiny. I bet it’s even smaller than Jonathan Krohn’s.