Today’s post comes from Bart, the bear that found a smart phone in the woods. His offering has been translated from its original language – Ursus Textish.

Yo, Bart here.

Looks like that Mitt Romney’s handlers and hangers-on have all dropped off, leaving him pretty much alone – as alone as a bear in the December woods! So I kinda feel close to him in a way that makes it OK for me to offer some advice.

Mitt, I’ve seen the stories about you going to movies and filling your own car with gas and riding amusement park rides by yourself and scribbling long notes to old friends and staring out the window. The writers of these articles are amazed that you are doing ordinary things. And they can’t help comparing all these dumb time-wasters to what you would be doing if you’d won the election – planning your inauguration and solving the problems of the world.

Yes, you were almost president, but now it’s your picture that comes up when someone googles “pathetic”. Time to get over it.

In my opinion, you need to hibernate.

It’s great therapy and totally natural. We all go through it – some more than others. When the food dries up and the weather turns cold, you get this feeling there’s really nothing to enjoy about being alive.

That’s when a good long sleep can help a guy adjust.

Anyway, “sleep” isn’t really the right word for it – you just become half awake, grumpy and non-responsive, sort of like President Obama in that first debate.

You can afford the time off, Mitt. Just dig a shallow depression in some overlooked corner of one of your estates, and curl up under a bed of leaves and branches. Let the country fly off a fiscal cliff while you drift into a state of torpor.

Nothing you can do or say at this point will make any difference anyway.

And when you do wake up, we’ll still be here. Things will either be worse or not. But in either case, you’ll be OK and you’ll feel a whole lot better – in fact you’ll feel like ripping open a rotting log to see if there are some grubs inside! It’s an entitlement – forest style!

That’s where you want to be! So stop appearing in public. Give them a chance to forget about you.

I predict in three years you’ll be able to re-surface with a fresh haircut and a nice suit and people will think you’re brand new. So why not give it a try? After all, what (else) have you got to lose?

Your Pal,
Bart

Bart makes some good points, but it’s hard to know the mind of a politician. But it does make one think – you’ve just run for president and lost – how do you put that on your resume?

At ease, civilians!

But watch your language when it comes to casual talk about “going over the fiscal cliff”. We Public Safety Enthusiasts are alarmed at the decision by those who frame our discussions this way. To call the upcoming budget deadline a “Fiscal Cliff” does not give enough credit to cliffs!

A real cliff is a very serious thing indeed. Real cliffs don’t discriminate between the rich and the poor. They are not indexed and there are no exemptions. Think of a cliff as the sudden withdrawal of terrestrial support while gravity remain in place and is as vigorous as ever.

Can we survive without earth under our feet? I say no! This is undeniable. Instead, pundits gab with mock seriousness about “going over”.

This kind of talk creates what is widely known as a reverse visioning hazard. We already understand that visioning is a key principle in leading an organization – helping people “see” their future in order to make it happen. The more we envision a thing, like going over a cliff together, the closer it comes to reality.

And what if we DO go over the “cliff”, and it turns out to be Not That Bad? Suddenly, cliffs become part of the everyday lexicon, and “going over” is just something you do every now and then. No big deal? Wrong! Let’s make sure cliffs remain dreadful. We should speak of them in hushed tones, and stay away from every kind – figurative, fiscal, and physical. That’s my advice!

Yours in groundedness,
B.S.O. Rafferty

Have you ever gotten over a useful, protective fear?

Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden.

Hey, Mr. C.!

I was thinking of you today in homeroom because Mr. Boozenporn forces us to talk about The News of the Day. Once each week every student in the room is supposed to get up and talk for five minutes about something they heard or read or saw in the media, so just like real journalists (you?), we have to put on our Serious Faces and Pretend We’re Interested.

Anyway, there’s this one kid, Ahmad, who always talks about stuff going on in other countries, and today he started going on about what’s happening in Egypt with the president there. I guess the country’s new leader, Mr. Morsi, just got up one day last week and announced that he’d decided something important about his decisions – that from now until sometime in the future nobody can un-decide him, not even the courts. Ahmad called it a power grab, and believe it or not, something about that just kind of clicked with me and I didn’t have to pretend to be interested anymore.

Because I didn’t know you could do that! That’s awesome!

I’ve been kind of pushing back against authority my whole life, but always in subtle, smart-alecky ways. And I think in a bid to turn me around, Ms. Flippen got me appointed a bus cop, so I have some responsibility now on the bus to enforce the rules and watch over the younger kids. And it is kind of cool to have some power and some status, but it bugs me that I’m still not the biggest boss on the bus. I have to obey Mr. Ralphs, the driver, and he’s a control freak. He’s always looking in the mirror! Isn’t he supposed to look forward sometimes?

What I’d really like to do is what Morsi did – just tell everybody how it’s going to be. Mr. Ralphs just drives the bus – I’m the only law that matters from the yellow “Don’t Cross This Line While the Bus Is Moving” line all the way back to the emergency exit. I’ll make all the calls, and I dare them to try to tell me otherwise.

Of course, Morsi’s got thousands of people marching around in the streets of Cairo, doing just that. But I figure if I’m sly about it and don’t come out with it as an announcement but just think the new rules and keep it inside my head, I’ll be able to get away with a total one-man revolution!

What do you think? Should I try it?

Your pal,
Bubby

I told Bubby the more power one grabs, the less easy one rests. Shakespeare wrote about that pretty much nonstop. But if he can keep the political insurrection inside his brain and not go blabbing to everybody about his superior powers, Bubby will probably just come off as smug and self-important, which doesn’t make a guy stand out in a crowd these days. Par for the course, as they say.

Thousands of people are in the streets, chanting that you’re a tyrant. What do you say (or do) to change their minds?