Starting right around eleven this morning, and continuing incessantly off and on all day, poor Gretchen had to contend with a long-distance caller from California trying to get an unscheduled appointment. It was Marilyn Davenport, member of the Orange County Republican Central Committee. Gretchen and I finally managed to squeeze her in between a Nigerian diplomat worried sick about the election fraud charges the loser is making against Goodluck Jonathan and an engineer from the IAEA who’s about to have a nervous breakdown from all the suspense surrounding what he’s calling “Chernobyl in slow motion” at the Fukushima Daiichi power plants in Japan.
Davenport: Hello? Tom Collins?
Tom: At your service, madame.
Davenport: Oh, I’m so sorry; I know I must have been driving that nice young lady who works for you crazy. But you were highly recommended and I’m simply at my wit’s end here.
Tom: Highly recommended by whom, may I ask?
Davenport: Ah… um… Tim Pawlenty?
Tom: Spoken like a true Californian, that’s for sure.
Davenport: Excuse me? I don’t think? There’s really anything like a Californian accent?
Tom: Well, not like people in Boston, Memphis or Fargo have an accent, no. But you must be aware? That you Californians tend to speak? In sentence fragments? And end your statements with a rising inflection? As you just did?
Davenport: Oh, that?
Tom: Yes?
Davenport: I think that must be? Because I’m so tired and worn out? From all this? You know?
Tom: Of course. Now, take a few deep breaths and concentrate on talking like somebody on this side of the Rockies. What can I do for you?
Davenport: Yes… good idea. There, that’s better. Okay, it all started when I heard about Donald Trump running for President…
Tom: He hasn’t actually announced yet, however.
Davenport: That he’s thinking about it, I guess, anyway. So he sent a bunch of private detectives to Hawaii to find out whether Obama was really born there or not, and everybody started talking about Obama’s birth certificate again, and whether he’s legally entitled to be President of the United States under the Article 2, Section 1 of the US Constitution.
Tom: I’m sure that’s just the beginning of all the wonderful things Donald Trump will contribute to our national political process in the coming months.
Davenport: Oh, me, too! So anyway, I saw this cute picture of some chimpanzees on the Internet, all dressed up like people – a daddy chimp, a mommy chimp and a baby chimp. So I thought, what with this talk about Obama and all, wouldn’t it be funny to cut and paste Obama’s face onto the baby chimp’s body and then send it around to my Republican friends and colleagues and say, “Now you know why no birth certificate,” because, if Obama really is a native-born American like the Constitution says he has to be in order to be President, then how come we’ve never seen his birth certificate?
Tom: Yes, I understand the issue.
Davenport: So, as a matter of fact, a lot of my Republican friends and colleagues thought that picture and the caption were extremely funny!
Tom: I certainly have no problem believing that.
Davenport: Great! So you think it’s funny, too?
Tom: That’s not what I said.
Davenport: Oh. Yes, well, so far so good and all – but then, things took a turn for the worse! Some coward – who has yet to come forth and admit what they did, I might add – contacted the media and told them about it! And in no time at all, my husband Dick and I started living in a complete nightmare! We can’t answer the door anymore, because there are hordes of reporters and cameramen outside, just waiting for us! All kinds of perverts and Socialists and liberals and God knows what else started calling us and saying nasty things! We can’t even answer the telephone anymore! We’re trapped inside our own home with all the shades drawn! It’s a living hell! And people are calling me a racist – even other Republicans! Well, not many of them, but more than I would expect, anyway. How can they do that? Some of my best friends are Negroes – my garbage collector; the nice man at the full-service pump down at the filling station; the plumber who comes in the middle of the night and unclogs our bathroom when Dick gets excited and uses too much toilet paper; and that waitress at the coffee shop! Those people are dear to me! They are close to my heart!
Tom: How unfortunate. My sympathies. But you must admit, it would have been very difficult not to have foreseen that your, ah – attempt at humor – had, at the very least, the potential to set off such repercussions.
Davenport: No, no, no! I swear, the idea never occurred to me!
Tom: I certainly have no problem believing that, either.
Davenport: Er… uh… well… yes. I’m sure you can tell I’m totally sincere.
Tom: Yes, indeed I can.
Davenport: And that I consider myself completely blameless.
Tom: Yes, I’m sure you do.
Davenport: So, can you believe that our local Republican chairman, Scott Baugh, demanded I resign my post, and even talked Michael J. Schroeder – who used to be Chairman of the California Republican Party, and is still very influential – into to publicly stating he agrees with that?
Tom: The maxim that a good Republican should never speak ill of another Republican has its limits, I’m afraid.
Davenport: Ah… um…. uh… yes, every principle has its theoretical limits, of course…
Tom: Did my secretary, Gretchen, acquaint you with my consultation fee schedule?
Davenport: Oh, oh… that, yes… um… Tim told me that you do… uh… pro bono work…
Tom: So I do.
Davenport: And… I assume that…
Tom: Yeah, sure – but on the other hand, my time is very valuable.
Davenport: Right, that makes sense. So, uh…
Tom: So let’s cut to the chase. Here’s what I think you should do: call a press conference.
Davenport: Oh, okay, let me write this down… call a press conference…
Tom: Hold it on your front lawn.
Davenport: … on front lawn… okay, got it…
Tom: I assume, like most Californians, you have at least one bottle of nice wine in the house?
Davenport: Oh, yes, yes, of course we do! We’re very proud of California’s wines! Better than French, you know!
Tom: I understand – okay, right before the press conference, uncork a bottle of wine.
Davenport:…uncork… bottle of wine… yes? And then?
Tom: Holding the wine cork in a pair of kitchen tongs, char one end of it thoroughly over a the burner of your stove for two minutes.
Davenport: …kitchen tongs… char cork… two minutes. Got it.
Tom: Then, put the cork aside, and while it cools, drink the entire bottle of wine.
Davenport: What?
Tom: Drink the entire bottle of wine. This won’t work unless you do that – in less than five minutes.
Davenport: Oh… okay, if you say so… drink bottle of wine… less than five minutes…
Tom: Then take the cork with you to the nearest mirror and decorate your face with the charred end. Thoroughly and completley cover everything except your lips, your eyelids and the area immediately around your eyes with the soot from the burned cork. Got any white lipstick?
Davenport: Uh, yeah, I think so.
Tom: Put that on your lips, your eyelids and around your eyes. Then you’re ready.
Davenport: Okay, okay, let me get all this… mirror… charred cork… white lipstick… All right, then what?
Tom: March right out there onto your front lawn and tell the world how much Republicans love black people!
Davenport: Oh, my God! That’s brilliant! This will fix everything! I could never have thought of that myself!
Tom: Oh, come on – don’t sell yourself short, now.
Davenport: Oh, shucks, you little devil! Seems you know flattery will get you everywhere! Okay, thanks, and God bless!
Tom: You, too! ‘Bye!
Now let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope Dick doesn’t figure out what Marilyn’s up to and stop her before she manages to do it. And meanwhile, let’s see what’s in that Quarterly Mailbag!
Most of the people who e-mailed me about what happened to Captain Owen P. Honors said they think he got a raw deal. The majority of those folks also believe that although maybe his videos weren’t in the best of taste, they weren’t anything to get upset about, either. The rest of that bunch said they actually found Captain Honors’ videos rather entertaining, and a number of them let me know which clips were their favorites. The shower scenes took top honors, as it were, with that crowd. Then there were the readers who told me that, in no uncertain terms, Captain Honors is a very naughty sailor indeed. Many suggested he shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near our young service men and women, much less be placed in command of them. Several pointed out that they have a son or daughter in the Navy and it’s guys like Owen P. Honors that keep them awake at night, worried that he might, for instance, put them in a barrel one day a week, where they would be forced to perform unnatural nautical acts, such as the ones they have heard or read about which are allegedly popular in the British Navy. Fourteen people also wrote in to ask just what the hell kind of name “Honors” is, anyway. My guess would be that it’s one of those bogus “American” names the immigration officers at Ellis Island used to hand out to Eastern European peasants. And, of course, most of my far-flung correspondents wanted to know what I think, which is this: if you’re going to produce videos that gross, coarse and smutty, and then use your subordinates as a captive audience, your work had better be considerably more entertaining and clever than that tripe Captain Honors served up, or people will never let you get away with it. Which they didn’t – QED. Now, in all fairness, I must apologize to tripe, which, when properly prepared, can be, in fact, pretty darn good, and shouldn’t, therefore, be compared to the motion picture travesties of Captain Owen P. Honors, USN.
My post about Joe Biden’s trip to Pakistan drew plenty of fire from apologists for the current Pakistani government, as well as Islamic sympathizers in general. I got over eleven hundred responses, and about one tenth of them insisted that the real problem is obvious – Americans in general, and Joe Biden in particular, simply don’t understand the Pakistani sense of humor. The remaining ninety percent suggested, in various ways, and with varying degrees of complexity, complication and graphic detail, that I and everybody else in the United States who isn’t a fundamentalist Sunni Moslem should die. My fellow Americans, let’s face the facts – with friends like Pakistan, who needs enemies? And oh, yeah, there were three people who wrote in to scold me about making fun of Joe Biden. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns.
Note to my fellow bloggers – if you want to get thousands of comments from pathetically clueless ignoramuses, write something about astrology. The only item I have ever composed concerning it, posted on January 19, drew more e-mails than when I dissed Tiger woods and called golf a weekend refuge for henpecked wussies. That’s why I have the comments on this particular Web log disabled, BTW. Can you imagine moderating that many incoherent, obscenity-laced rants? Not to mention the totally surreal forks that would develop in a thread like that. Okay, here’s my rejoinder to the points I gleaned from a statistically significant random sample of three hundred such e-mails. 1.) Yes, Ronald and Nancy Reagan did, in fact, actually believe in astrology. What’s more – and this is the scary part – while President of the United States, Ronald Reagan based various national decisions on astrological advice. Godwin’s Law forbids me from mentioning who else did that, of course. 2.) No, the year did not always begin in January. If it had, then “October” would be the eighth month, not the tenth, November would be the ninth month, not the eleventh, and “December” would be the tenth month, not the twelfth. On the other hand, if you start counting from March, when the vernal equinox occurs, September, October, November and December are the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth months of the year, just as their Roman names indicate. So March was the first month of the year in ancient times, and you can look it up if you don’t believe me. 3.) Yes, the sun signs are based on which constellation the sun appears to rise under, and no, they haven’t always been the same, and yes, they have changed and keep on changing due to that thing called “the precession of the equinoxes” I mentioned in the post, and no, I am not the spawn of Satan for saying that. 4.) The days get longer in the summer because the Earth’s axis of rotation is tilted, not because we have Daylight Savings Time. 5.) I don’t care if you found your soul mate by following astrology, all that means is, you are an idiot and, most likely, so is your soul mate. It most emphatically does not prove that astrology is real, okay? 6.) I don’t care if you think you won the lottery, got a great job, avoided getting run over by a bus or whatever else because you believe in astrology, either. That just proves you’re an idiot, who, unlike the ones in Number Five, above, can’t get a date, and therefore can’t use your soul mate as an example. 7.) Aether is so a genuine Aristotelian element, and the rules for assignation of elements to astrological signs stipulate that the primary assignment be Cardinal. Therefore, as it says in the post, since Ophiuchus is the first, and only, sign ruled by Aether, then Aether is Cardinal for the sign of Ophiuchus. Case closed. Another example of the fact that you can consistently apply ironclad logic to complete nonsense. That’s no big surprise, either. Aristotle did it all the time. 8.) No, it doesn’t say anywhere in the Bible that there are twelve signs in the zodiac, and no, neither Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Ezekiel, First Kings, Judges, the Gospel of Mark or the Book of Revelation name them. Even if any of them did, that wouldn’t make it true; and, come to think of it, if more than one of them did, they’d probably contradict each other. 9.) Where did I say that astrology isn’t “just harmless fun?” I didn’t – that statement is nowhere in the post. But since you insist, very well: astrology isn’t just harmless fun, it’s an insidious racket by which unscrupulous charlatans bilk gullible suckers out of billions of dollars every cycle of the zodiac. Sheesh!
The usual horde of Microsoft zombies wrote in to protest my post about the wiseacre who was selling administrator rights to various US government Web sites. The post states quite explicitly that the miscreant used an SQL injection exploit and I readily acknowledge that Microsoft is hardly the only vendor of products that use SQL. But none of that is going to change history, folks, and Microsoft made history again recently, setting a new record, distributing 64 security patches, fifteen of which are designed to plug remote execution vulnerabilities. That’s right – Microsoft is doing everything it can to make sure nobody else can break into your PC and do stuff – except them, of course. Several people also wrote in to comment on my remark that “some crazy hacker is offering to sell system administrator access to US government Web sites for what amounts to the price of a decent dinner in downtown Washington” and call me names because, in making that statement, I implied that, at least sometimes, I might pay $499 for dinner. How can I do such a thing, they demanded to know, when there are children starving in, well, whatever impoverished hell hole they cared to name? The answer is – because I have $499 and it’s dinner time, that’s how. Should the chef, the waiter, the sommelier and the maître d’ – not to mention the sous-chef, the salad chef, the dessert chef, the pastry cook, the baker, the busboy, the sturgeon fisherman who supplies the caviar, the artisans who prepare the cheeses, the farmer who raises the venison and the hunter who shoots the antelope all starve instead? What, in heaven’s name, would that accomplish? I suggest those self-righteous folks who get indignant at the thought of me enjoying a gourmet meal might better spend their time e-mailing Bill Gates, demanding he disgorge something better than the piddling chump change from his back pocket and, rather, spend half of his vast horde of ill-gotten billions to feed the world’s starving masses. Great philanthropist, my foot – people who admire him might as well admire Al Capone – or John D. Rockefeller, for that matter.
My post about the Internet running out of IP addresses proved that there’s certainly no shortage of nerds, wonks and geeks who read this Web log. The most heated subject turned out to be the accuracy of my value for the number of IPv6 addresses. I’d say that a lot of the controversy stems from the fact that I used the American nomenclature for extremely large numbers – most of the arguments I got saying I was wrong came from British and other European sources. So look up the American system on the Internet, okay? Our “billion” is ten to the ninth power; our “trillion” is ten to the twelfth power; our “quadrillion” is ten to the fifteenth power, and so forth. Right – so, as I said, the total number of possible IPv6 addresses, obtained by raising sixty-five thousand five hundred and thirty six to the eighth power, is three hundred and forty undecillion, two-hundred and eighty two decillion, three hundred and sixty-six nonillion, nine hundred and twenty octillion, nine hundred and thirty eight septillion, four hundred and sixty-three sextillion, four hundred and sixty-three quintillion, three hundred and seventy-four quadrillion, six hundred and seven trillion, four hundred and thirty-one billion, seven hundred and seventy-three million, six hundred and thirty-eight thousand, nine hundred and twenty two. In addition, I got scads of e-mails from throngs of avid entrepreneurs, all of whom wrote in to ask how they can get in on my brother-in-law’s scheme to make big money off cornering the market on IP addresses. Obviously, my readership is nothing if not diverse. I forwarded every single one of those inquiries to Hank, of course – making my dear sister Rose completely furious in the process.
My post about Rick Santorum and his plans to run for President drew stern and irate responses from his staunch supporters – all eleven of them. I got more than forty times that many concerning the origin of the term “santorum,” the subject of both widespread legend and extensive mirth. No less than eight different people were credited with inventing that amusing and completely appropriate neologism, with the most votes going to Dan Savage, the gay advice columnist. Personally, I don’t think he really did coin the term, but I recognize his extensive efforts in promoting its use and for that, I believe, he deserves sincere kudos from the entire santorum-producing community. To what I presume will be the dismay of Santorum boosters, considerably more folks wrote in support of Sarah Palin, whom, as the post mentioned, Rick more or less gratuitously insulted for failing to attend the latest CPAC conference. They universally rejected my suggestion that Sarah’s histrionic display of raging anger at Rick indicates that she secretly likes him and wants him to run as her vice presidential mate in 2012. All of her supporters had their own way of putting it, of course, but I think the best one, that truly blistering broadside which shivers the mainmast and downs the ensign, came from a fellow Alaskan, who told me, “Sarah Palin is TWICE the man Rick Santorum will EVER be!” Agreed.
As the fighting in Libya drags on, word has arrived that, after having only recently assumed responsibility for the No Fly Zone from the US, NATO is running out of bombs. Meanwhile, the flood of e-mails concerning my February 19 post about the Libya’s Arab Spring continues unstanched. Some favor Gaddafi, some the rebels, but without exception, all of them are hopping mad at me. Each assumes (or concludes?) from reading the post, that I must be in favor of the other side. So, for the record, let me state unequivocally that I don’t contribute an aerial fornication about Libya one way or the other. So stop clogging up my Inbox with your inane opinions of my ancestry, anatomy, sexual orientation, dietary preferences and eventual fate at the hands of the Deity, please.
Surprisingly, it turned out that the item of most intense interest in my February 24 post was not Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, the teacher’s union, or even who is to blame for the current ubiquitous government budget deficits. No, the subject upon which the greatest number of e-mails dwelled was the macaroni-and-cheese pizza. Folks from Wisconsin primarily, but nearly everywhere if you count them all, wrote in to say that, yeah, Ian’s Pizza in Madison makes a pretty good mac-and-cheese pie, but if you want the best, then you have to try the M&C pizza at this or that restaurant or pizza joint in this or that city or town, usually in Wisconsin, but possibly in Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Ontario, Manitoba or Saskatchewan. The secrets leading to the best pie were variously reported as genuine aged white cheddar, raw milk Parmesan, pecorino Romano, ricotta, cottage cheese, yellow gouda, smoked gouda, Swiss, lace Emmentaler, Gruyère, chèvre, blue, Roquefort, Gorgonzola, Stilton and yes, Velveeta, as the primary or adjunct ingredient in the cheese sauce; sliced medallions of buffalo mozzarella melted on top; and/or use of a type of macaroni other than the traditional elbow variety, including gomito, orzo, penne, lumache, bucatini, anelli, farfelle and orecchiette. There was also one guy who insisted that mixing boiled scalloped Yukon gold potato slices, (“like you make in potatoes au gratin,” he explained) with the macaroni was, as he put it, “the bomb;” and another who insisted that steaming frozen shredded potatoes (”commonly used for breakfast hash browns”) and adding them to the cooked macaroni is “the greatest thing to ever happen in the entire history of melted cheese.” Then, on the distaff side of the question, I received a large number of e-mails from people who vehemently insisted that macaroni-and-cheese pizza is just about the most revolting dish they can possibly imagine. Quite a few of them also pointed out what they, at least, perceive to be its obvious health hazards, including massive fat and cholesterol content, as well as an astronomical calorie count and a glycemic index that should require each slice to be served with a side order of insulin. Yeah, but if you’re freezing your buns off jumping up and down, chanting and beating on drums outside the Wisconsin state capitol building in February for days on end protesting Scot Walker’s idea of a balanced budget, those issues are probably the last thing on your mind.
While braced for a virtual Noah’s flood of incensed epistles from Newt Gingrich’s faithful apostles in response to the March 6 post about him, I was somewhat taken aback by the puny results I actually experienced. It seems that Newt is right up there with Braveheart, the Backstreet Boys, Friends, the Sony Playstation and Laura Croft as an article of genuine 1990’s nostalgia. Speaking of which, more people wrote in to remark on my mention of Bill Clinton in that post than sent e-mails about Gingrich. They almost all mentioned Newt, however – to call him, in various ways, the biggest liar since Baron von Munchhausen for suggesting that Slick Willy was responsible for the 1995 and 1996 federal government shutdowns. My theory is, the Newt Gingrich we see today – the one making the rounds of the usual presidential campaign venues while being as coy as possible about actually running; the one who explains that excessive patriotism drove him to adultery; the one who insists that his vendetta to impeach Clinton was motivated solely by an ardent desire to preserve the integrity of deposition within the American legal process – is, in fact, from a parallel universe where all of those seemingly preposterous things are actually true. And in that universe, Clinton is responsible for the 1995 and 1996 federal government shutdowns, too. How did Parallel Universe Newt get here? That’s like asking what caused the Big Bang. Therefore, perhaps we should just accept it. But for those who require a mechanism in order to sleep at night, I hypothesize that the operative mechanism was probably a chronosynclastic infundibulum which was subjected to intense quantum perturbation, brought on by chromodynamic instabilities arising from the aberrant electromagnetic fields generated by brains soaked for decades in massive hypocrisy. So then where is the Newt we know from the 1990’s? Most likely, he’s in that other universe, where all the strange things this other Newt asserts in this one are actually true. But he’s not running for President there because Glenn Beck is, and Beck is considered an unbeatable contestant for the Republican nomination to run in 2012 against the incumbent Democrat in the White House – who is, of course, Al Franken. Being able to figure out that sort of thing is what makes studying quantum mechanics and general relativity worthwhile.
My post on the elimination of federal funding for NPR clearly demonstrated that quite a few of its supporters read this Web log. They were about evenly split on Ron Schiller, a slight majority believing that James O’Keefe violated Schiller’s constitutional right to privacy. To those folks, I would point out that there is no right to privacy in the Constitution, and if you don’t believe me, just ask Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He’ll tell you – there’s simply no such thing, unless some liberal muckraker publishes a list of some Supreme Court nominee’s spicy-hot adult video rentals. That’s different, and the reason it’s different is because the Constitution means exactly what the Supreme Court says it does. And if you don’t believe that, just ask Chief Justice John Roberts. Frankly, I don’t know why so many people continue to complain about privacy violations, anyway. In an age of ubiquitous computer technology, massive databases, instant global network access and extremely tiny video cameras, practically speaking, there’s no such thing as privacy anymore. Metaphorically speaking, we all copulate in department store display windows these days (not that many department stores still have display windows, but you know what I mean). The remainder of the NPR supporters, about forty-eight percent, declared that they had been shocked – simply shocked – to learn that NPR raises money by having shameless, flattering, toffee-nosed twits like Ron Schiller take amoral, evil, disgustingly wealthy monsters to expensive restaurants and tell them whatever they want to hear just to get multi-million dollar contributions. Sweet Jesus Christ, they wailed, what the hell does NPR think it is – the Harvard Endowment? Most of the rest of the e-mail came from O’Keefe fans, who, predictably, excoriated me for portraying their crusading hero in a negative light. I contest that assertion, however, and respectfully request that they read the post over again, because that simply isn’t true – it was the executive from NPR to whom I was speaking that called O’Keefe a “sneaky, unprincipled, reprehensible little bastard.” But, now that we’re on the subject, I’d say if the shoe fits, Mr. O’Keefe should wear it. Lastly, four score and eleven readers, presumably from the right-hand end of the philosophical spectrum, wrote me demanding an explanation of why, in this post, as in all my others, I use “TEA Party” instead of “Tea Party” when referring to that loose and ill-defined, yet remarkably well armed political confederation of yahoos, whackos, xenophobes, hicks, rednecks, troglodytes, screwballs and potentially dangerous lunatics that has recently provided the media with so many amusing photo opportunities, hilarious interviews and exciting impromptu incidents of street theater? Because “TEA,” as explained by one of the movement’s own adherents, is an acronym. The person who asserted this claims it stands for “Taxed Enough Already.” I, however, happen to think it stands for something else, which good taste (and a legion of censorious Web crawlers and spider-bots) prevents me from revealing. And while we’re on the subject of acronyms, please note that, thanks to that other Schiller, “NPR” no longer stands for “National Public Radio.” Having come to the realization that radio is “old media,” the organization has moved past that concept entirely. Today, thanks to its recent re-branding and subsequent assumption of a new media market position, NPR doesn’t stand for anything at all.
And speaking of yahoos, whackos, xenophobes, hicks, rednecks, troglodytes, screwballs and potentially dangerous lunatics, a lot of them are apparently unapologetic racists, too, and sent me loads of angry e-mails about the March 19 post on Haley Barbour. Seriously, I was sure I had heard all of the epithets and slurs people like that use in reference to African Americans, but Governor Barbour’s supporters proved me wrong – I added sixteen new terms to the list thanks to them. His followers are totally convinced that, given the terrible economic shape this country is in, the continued, unchecked spread of moral decay, and the trying times lying ahead before our nation, Haley Barbour is the obvious choice to be Führer, er, President. But I wonder, have those folks heard of Haley Barbour’s trip to Israel? Well, in all fairness, that was just this February. No doubt news travels rather more slowly out in the boondocks where most of them, apparently, live. Yes, there Barbour was, spouting a huge list of clichés apparently copied at random from AIPAC press releases, his Southern drawl so thick the Israelis could barely understand him. Oh – what’s that noise? The sound of a million ignorant crackers’ heads exploding across the great state of Mississippi, perhaps?
Tree-hugging environmentalists, Bible-thumping Christians and energy-independence fanatics from the right and left alike hit the ceiling over my March 26 post about a fellow named Lipsky from Texas who happens to have had a problem with flammable well water. The environmentalists excoriated me for aiding my client, Austin Houston Crockett Bowie Bonham III, in the development of strategies to outwit Mr. Lipsky and the EPA. The tent-revival crowd went after me for believing the Earth is more than six thousand years old. The right-wing energy independence crowd accused me of caring less about four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline than whether some crackpot like Lipsky thinks shale fracking is the reason he can’t live in his house anymore. The left-wing energy independence crowd accused me of bias against things like windmills, solar panels, geothermal steam and Jane Fonda on a stationary bicycle hooked up to an electric generator. So it looks like I ended this quarter with a post that ticked off everybody, which, I think, indicates that I’m doing a reasonably unbiased job.