Today’s post comes from Congressman Loomis Beechly, representing Minnesota’s 9th district – all the water surface area in the state.
Greetings, Constituents,
With the midterm election now less than two weeks away, I just made the startling discovery that I don’t actually have an opponent this time. The adversary I thought I was facing is a guy who left me a terse note at a bait shop in Leech Lake three months ago saying he was going to make me wriggle like a nightcrawler on the Hook of Truth.
When you hold public office, people say stuff like that to you all the time, so I wasn’t too troubled about being pierced but I took it as a signal to get busy with fundraising.
I have a talent for sizing people up, even over the phone! Within a few words’ worth of conversation I can accurately name a person’s political persuasion and at lest two hot button issues. It turns out there are a whole lot of rich people in America who are looking to reward any high official who happens to vote exactly the way they feel at the moment!
And they all live on lakes!
So I managed to collect a decent pile of money and then I realized there was no viable opposition because the Hook of Truth guy was only good at turning phrases and could not come up with the filing fee. He isn’t on the ballot after all.
But I know my funders gave me that money so I could mock and disparage someone, and I’m determined not to let them down! All I had to do was find a person or entity who I could say was unequivocally in the wrong.
That’s when Lockheed stepped forward with a declaration that they have solved the elusive problem of creating massive amounts of energy with a compact device using cold fusion!
And then some other smarties stepped forward to say there’s no way they could have done that!
I don’t understand what any of them are talking about, but it’s not a difficult choice for me – I’m going with the skeptics.
Here’s the script for my first ad:
Music:
A heartbreakingly sad violin plays something classical and brainy.
Image:
A small boy rubs his sleeve on a frosted window to make a peephole, then looks out at the night sky.
Narrator:
Jimmy has dreams about tomorrow.
Image:
We see the boy from outside, his small face pressed against the glass. Camera pans up to see starts twinkling overhead.
Narrator:
He sees spaceships flying to Mars just like airplanes fly coast to coast today.
Image:
Flickering 50’s movies style aliens and spacecraft fill the screen.
Narrator:
Jimmy’s dreams are a harmless fantasy. But Lockheed Martin says his wish is coming true. They claim to have made an advance in cold fusion – something that could, if true, provide power for deep space exploration.
Image:
A woman puts her hand on Jimmy’s shoulder – It’s his mother. She lovingly invites him to go to the piano where we can see sheet music haphazardly stuffed into a little carrying case by the bench.
Narrator:
And for this, Jimmy is neglecting his piano studies. For this, he won’t be in his school orchestra. And for this, he won’t play in a terrible rock band when he hits his ’20’s – a rite of passage, bypassed.
Image:
Jimmy’s face re-appears in the frosted window, except this time it’s a sad, old Jimmy face. His life has been wasted.
Narrator:
Because Lockheed Martin got his hopes up, Jimmy wasted a promising life waiting for compact cold fusion to become a reality. That’s not his fault. It was always just about to happen.
Image:
Jimmy’s tombstone, with engravings that indicate he lived a long, unproductive life, and with a tiny zooming spaceship carved into the granite over his name.
Narrator:
Lockheed Martin’s Cold Fusion Dream: Wrong for Jimmy. Wrong for America.
Beechly:
I’m Congressman Loomis Beechly and I approve this message because I had to use the money against SOMETHING most people don’t understand.
I think that’s a great ad, and I’m only a little bit sorry I had to use it against a fine, rich company like Lockheed Martin. I would have much rather used it to attack some other, smaller, less-well-off person, but I just don’t have any opposition this year!
Maybe next year, somebody with deep pockets will fund an opponent for me, so I can really have a good time!
Politically Yours,
Congressman Loomis Beechly
What makes you Go Negative?
An unbalanced flow of ions to my flux capacitor
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Rise and Whine Baboons!
Comcast/Xfinity.
Uffda; Ishta; Yuck
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Don’t get me started on that topic! Uffda, shitda, pissda. That company perfectly embodies everything that is wrong (that is evil, actually) with modern American business.
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We switched to CenturyLink, and they are even worse.
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They are both the worst
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Same here, Happy Valley Steve. Don’t get me started. There are so many negative things going on these days that could cause me to rant and rave. I would rather not do that. I will mention that I wish some of our so called great leaders, who some people still seem to admire, would stop letting bad elements of big business influence them to keep moving our county in a bad direction.
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Licensure reviews at my agency in which the adequacy of our service is judged by irrelevant numbers instead of positive change in clients’ lives.
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Hee Hee. Kind of like being a teacher these days.
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Exactly what I was thinking.
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I do not like them, Sam I Am.
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Well done, Holly. 🙂
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Morning all. I go negative when overwhelmed by bureaucracy. At work they want to move everyone to laptops, which have to be unplugged every night, locked up (unless you want to drag it home which is what most folks end up doing) and then in the morning re-plugged and re-started. What a waste of time and energy. I requested a dispensation to keep my desktop. I have a laptop at home and don’t want the hassle. Initially I was granted a reprieve, along w/ several other folks in the company but yesterday the head of my division told my boss that it “just didn’t look right” for someone in my position to not have a laptop. To whom? I think I’ve had one client walk by my desk in the last 12 years. I take my own laptop when I travel. I’m the software guru in my division, so everyone who knows me knows I’m not “afraid of technology”. Even if I have a laptop, I certainly won’t be unplugging it to take to meetings. I know how to use paper and pen (athough most meetings don’t even need that). But bureaucracy dictates that I get the laptop anyway. Aaarrgggghhhhh!
Sorry to rant, but today’s question segued right into my righteous anger this morning!!
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You have every right to be irritated. The person it doesn’t look right to is your boss, and he (she?) seems to be a shallow twit.
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Tell em you want to do it an iPhone 6
Get the big one!
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Pettiness and mingyness.
You all know I am as frugal as the day is long, but if I’m putting on a spread, I want to make darn sure there is plenty and a bit to spare.
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mingyness?
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Being skimpy, paring everything just inside of “enough”.
Rhymes with stingy and means about the same but not quite as there is also an implication of deception-pretended generosity.
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Another one for the glossary!
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I looked and it is of British origin as I thought. Dates form 130 years ago or so. A portmanteau word–combination of mean and stingy. My British used the word.
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It takes a lot to make me angry. When I was dating I was persuaded to go to a meeting that was important to the woman I was getting to know. Priscilla told me that we’d stop by this meeting for a few minutes, then do something more interesting. She lied. She was setting me up to be the target of a high pressure sales pitch designed to get me to sign up for a set of classes being offered (at a high price) by a cult-like group. When I discovered I’d been conned, I was furious. I left the meeting early and never saw her again.
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The family dentist my parents and l used for decades did the same thing to me many years ago. He learned that l was jobless and all the while he was working on my teeth, he went on and on about a wonderful opportunity to earn lots of money. l was thrilled when he invited me to his own home! As soon as l sat down, he began to show slides of cabin cruisers, mansions, tropical islands, etc. lt may have been Amway.
Between this trickery and alcohol on his breath during dental appointments, l found another dentist.
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Other people. Well, and me. Maybe really me. And the two old crotchety felines with whom I am sharing a house this week.The flies, all those flies who get in this house. That it’s beautiful and sunny out when I wan to be negative and miserable. That I have had to replace my bank card three times and six months and now all my automatic payments are emailing me and I have to change all those. Oh, and the baggage retrieval system they have at Heathrow. Not that said Heathrow baggage retrieval system has caused me any problems. It is that I haven’t seen it. That my Mr. Coffee carafe drips when you use it. That stupid name, Mr. Coffee. Shouldn’t it be Ms Legal Stimulant Maker or Master Drip. That I am wasting my time doing this when I should be carving on Mr. Tuxedo’s wizard staff but my arms hurt too much to do it right now. And apostrophes–we dont even need them.
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It’s so nice to have you back
The apostrophes are spell checker on ipad
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When I donate to something, and then get monthly requests for more $.
When I click, in curiosity, on something and then get weekly emails without requesting them.
When I whiff of what Rush L. is ranting about this week.
When I see Obama bashing stuff on FB.
When I see Obama mess up again.
When I am misunderstood by family members.
When I anticipate having to get on an airplane.
…
As someone above said, don’t get me started.
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Monthly? l get 20 pleas for political campaigns every day!
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That should be “when I get a whiff…” and “Obama-bashing”,,.
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l’m becoming rather negative about having to go to my little virtual keyboard to insert every “i” needed in every text. The main reason that l don’t just break down and replace this 8-year-old Mac is that Apple says it’ll take two days to transfer all the data from this one to a new computer and l can’t live without Mac that long! l’m also afraid of anything new.
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Oh, Dale, you have led the Baboons down the path toward irritation, gnashing of teeth, and churlishness.
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Let us all irritate, gnash and churl away
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Ok, everyone. Start up the chainsaws and buzz all day.
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Better yet, start those annoying leaf blowers. If you want to feel useful while doing it, I can offer a yard with plenty of leaves.
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Don’t get me started on blankety blank leaf blowers!
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For years, l’d spend well over a week daily blowing leaves toward the back of my property. The piles would repeatedly get so high that l’d have to skim the top, the middle, then the bottom just to move the piles a few feet. Then came the landscape beds, the roof, and the gutters. When the huge piles were finally condensed, a vacuum truck would come and suck them up.
Now, l just rent my dock to a guy who takes care of everything.
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That sounds like a positive development!
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ln my divorce settlement, he got the boat with no dock and l got the dock with no boat. Sounds like War of the Roses, doesn’t it?
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This does not make me angry, but the shooting in Ottawa has me concerned and grieved.
oh Canada
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Well, I am ending the day with positive energy, as I am having a house guest named Hans who happens to be the spouse of a certain PJ Baboon. I hope he didn’t bring a leaf blower.
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Thanks for your hospitality, Renee. It means a lot to me. Hope you have an enjoyable evening together.
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My blood type is B positive. Therefore I cannot B negative. Sorry.
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Snort – most emphatically – snort!
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Or maybe, now that I think about it, it was the reason for my divorce. Wasband was O negative – how the heck do you survive that?
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At least you apologized.
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OT: I’d just like to inform you all that today’s photo on bing is of the North Fork of the Virgin River in Zion Canyon, Utah, where I visited lo these few weeks ago.
http://www.bing.com/?pc=U162I
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Very lovely indeed.
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Nice
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Makes me go negative?
Meanness
Half empty folk
Exhausting ongoing never ending drudgery
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