PARTICULAR GIRL stop having your hand on your extreme lower back when you walk by my cubicle (six times a day you make it momentarily hard for me to concentrate), and stop always running into me and walking into the break room or the hall or the lobby when i was clearly there first, and stop doing that thing that turns my mouth all gluey. you make my working conditions intolerable.
first, start with the government structure we (in the united states) have. it has its kinks and inefficiencies, but it basically works. then fill it with the following:
in the house of representatives, centrists. communists and fascists strictly verboten.
in the senate, leftists. i'll stop short of saying downright baby-eating marxists but part of me wants to.
in the courts (especially the supreme court), conservatives all the way. i hate the phrase 'strict constructionist' but the shoe fits.
for president, someone who is simultaneously 1. not affiliated with either party of the current two-party system, 2. ideologically libertarian, 3. economically paleoconservative, 4. socially progressive, 5. an actual scientist, and 6. neutral good in the i-roll-twenties etymology (which naturally eliminates any sith lords—huzzah!).
an independent and unmolested media armed with the much-hyped shield law.
and finally, for every single state and local office in the entire nation, from governor to county comptroller, this guy. (though as a condition of his holding office, he must uphold his election-season promise to frickin' blog more, yo.)
elections are instant runoff and are fewer and farther between, with single-term limits at every level.
there is, of course, always more, but this is the gist. in my head this guarantees that the government itself finds the balance between current and stable. pipe dream? oh yes, but a healthy one.
r.i.p. habeus corpus, 1305-2006
but don't cry, because you didn't really need it. it was only a goddamned piece of paper! that ridiculous bit of nonsense was just tying the hands of the judicial process and playing into the hands of the terrorists, the only ones it was protecting. endangering you, protecting them, don't you see?
…normally it's all fun and games until someone yells 'gestapo', but ask yourself: what happens when you become the next "them"?
is a highly refined process, one to be marveled at. marvel with me, if you will.
first, you will unwrap your product. you will take everything out of the packaging, place vital components in their long-determined places, drool over them. it shall be christmas-esque.
but wait! where are your speaker cord connectors? here are your speaker cords … here is the spot on the receiver for your speaker cord connectors, into which your speaker cords will inevitably plug …
you will diligently search the original packaging, the trash, under your couch, under your wife, in your hair, in your cat, and in your mailbox. you will not find them. resignedly, you will sit at your desk and type an email to the vendor who sent did not send your four speaker cord connectors.
patiently, and with hands tied, you will wait. for three days you will wait for the following response from the aforementioned vendor:
all missing part inquiries should be sent directly to kenwood at the following email address (…)
resignedly, you will sit at your desk and type an email to the company who sent did not send your four speaker cord connectors in the box they sent to the aforementioned vendor.
patiently, and with hands tied, you will wait. for three days you will wait for the following response from the aforementioned company:
replacement parts may be ordered through the kenwood authorized parts distributors (…)
you will browse through the multitude of options they will provide you. you will be overjoyed to learn that you have the opportunity to pay US$20 plus shipping and handling (no extra charge for dropping and being left in the sun) for four little nubbins of plastic and copper that should have been included with your original shipment. you will be so overjoyed that you will once again sit down at your desk and share your overjoyment with the people of kenwood themselves. you will most profusely thank them for the opportunity.
as you will now be a repeat contact, your message will be placed in a priority queue and beamed to the rings of neptune. there, the text of your message will be compressed and stored as crystals of methane and photographed by amateur astronomer philip drake of new guinea. phil will not at first understand what he sees, but after some analysis will decrypt the message and pass it along to kenwood support. here, it will be accidentally deleted, then accidentally recovered, then ignored, then finally misunderstood. by the fifth day you can expect the following response:
please reply with your mailing address and we will send you the speaker cords at no charge.
you will again sit down at your desk and very precisely explain the difference between the cords themselves and the speaker cord connectors, and clarify that it is not the cords you are missing, but the cord connectors.
as a third-time contact, this message will be printed out and fed to a bear in the san diego zoo while japanese tourists snap photos; the digital copy will then be deleted from the server (and the server itself burned). since no humans actually involved will actually read your most recent email describing the desired change, five days later you will receive two surround sound speaker cables.
you will curse.
now thoroughly miffed, you will call the number on the packing slip. this number, by design, will connect you to a latex factory in south wales. a bully chap whose welsh-accented name you absolutely will not be able to understand will answer, shout gibberish at you, and hang up. you will look up kenwood's number on the internet; you will completely fail to find it.
you will pay a shady figure a large sum of money to hack into the nsa's server farm and locate kenwood's true number, which you will call during their regular business hours of 0517 and 0518. the call will be answered by a finite number of monkeys who will attempt to connect you to the support department (the digits of whose extension map exactly to the letters of shakespeare's hamlet) by pressing number sequences at random. this will take several minutes. at the end you will be in touch with the gentleman who sent you the original emails. you will again explain to him the difference between speaker cords and speaker cord connectors until you are satisfied he sufficiently understands the distinction. you will then kindly ask him to send you four speaker cord connectors. he will concur and say you will have your speaker cord connectors before the week is out.
ten days later you will receive four surround sound speaker cables.
you will blog.
when i was young and stupid and an undergraduate, i had nothing of importance to say and all the time in the world to say it.
now i have words of substance because i'm busy and therefore have no time to say them. i might have to do something soon: reprioritize. find out what it means to me.
i'll close with that. barbecue at 1300 saturday at the new place; if you're reading this, you're invited.
the wife finally consented to buying a surround sound receiver, on the condition that she could get something she wanted.
