Smoothing out things: AN ALIEN CONSPIRACY.

Some efforts to smooth out things have been around for a while, like filling in POT HOLES, which is a spring rite, and filling in facial WRINKLES, which has become a rite of passage. There’s also AUTO-TUNE to smooth out the voices of pop singers, manipulating their pitch and nudging them toward the desired note.  Yeah, yeah, you say, we know all that. But do you know the larger context? These smoothing efforts are part of an ALIEN CONSPIRACY! Some outer space nation wants to norm us so that we will no longer be able to tell the difference between humans and robot body snatchers when the invasion starts!

Cher looks invaded already, as does Liza Minelli. Mick Jagger’s cratered face, on the other hand, has so far defied alien efforts to smooth out his wrinkles and make him look normal.  Ditto with Clint Eastwood of empty chair fame. He is past norming. His telomeres are way too short. Telomeres, in case you haven’t heard, are the shields that keep your cells from aging.

You see this is the latest trend (or the latest tool of ALIEN CONSPIRATORS): equal telomeres for everyone! Check out the NY Times of 21 April. They’ve started measuring them, and pretty soon your local hair salon will peddle telomere extensions. It could be the end of dying, meaning you’ll never inherit your parents’ nest egg.

On the positive side, you’ll never have to suffer through another election campaign, because what’s the use of voting after all politicians have been normed. The ALIEN CONSPIRATORS will standardize them to telegenic men and women spouting platitudes in the language of your choice. They’ve got Justin Trudeau in the bag already: dazzling white teeth, pablum in French and English. Harper is still struggling with the alien forces, withholding smiles except of the most tight-lipped kind. The aliens almost got him last Christmas (remember when he sat at the piano and sang nicey-nicey Beatle songs?), but he escaped in the nick of time and reverted to his old dour accountant self.

Speaking of Justin Trudeau and nice. Looking for the root causes of the Boston bombing, he came up with a cogent reason. It happened because SOMEONE FELT EXCLUDED (Globe & Mail, 18 April).  The ALIEN CONSPIRATORS will take care of that. They’ll make everyone feel included and connected at all times. Why do you think they created Facebook? The aliens will have you surrounded with FRIENDS. You’ll be horribly stuck in the sink hole of on-line friendship. You won’t be able to go on with your life.  You’ll be mired in a mass of cute cat and dog pics and smothered by the sweetness of babies. You won’t see the ALIENS for all your FRIENDS.

Another human quality the ALIEN CONSPIRATORS want to eliminate is the joy of bullying, although it will only work if bullies start reading books. Apparently the CONSPIRATORS have swamped the publishing world with anti-bully books. They’ve even persuaded publishers to start their own anti-bullying campaigns and gotten their full cooperation. After all, it gives the publishers a chance to look good AND promote their products. I guess the quality of hucksterism will stay put. The aliens will have to deal with that.

Another way of taking the snark out of bullies and norming us all into bland and benevolent beings are CHIPLETS, now developed in Xerox’ Palo Alto Research Center (NY Times, 21 April). They’ll provide supple, sensitive skin for our hands and make us sensitive all over.

Once the CHIPLET programme has kicked in, we’re done. We’ll all be indistinguishable nicey-nice.  And the ALIEN CONSPIRATORS will take over for good.

TRAVEL DESTINATIONS. Rummel’s Trip Hazard Advisory.

 

Acapulco: Do not venture more than two blocks from the beach. That’s the advice of travel.state.gov, but to get the real dirt on travel hazards, read on:

West Coast: FLYING BULLET HAZARD. LAPD hunting a murderer -- Christopher Dorner, black male, driving a gray Nissan Titan -- shot two women in a blue Toyota Tacoma by mistake. After that the murderer abandoned his vehicle. I guess he didn’t feel safe. So take a hint. When in LA, don’t drive a van/pickup of any color. And duck when you see an LAPD car.

East coast: WEATHER HAZARD. Don’t drive a van on the East Coast either. I suggest renting a snow plough sleeping four.

Teheran: UNPREDICTABLE, but watch ARGO for survival tips.

Beijing: INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION HAZARD. Stock up on Chen Guangbiao’s canned air from the pristine regions of north-west China.

Rome: UNDETERMINED POLLUTION HAZARD. Something in the air makes old men give up. Don’t suffer the fate of Pope Benedict. Take along Cheng’s canned air. No, make that Damascus air -- Assad isn’t giving up, right?

Note to GOP: Send Clint Eastwood to Rome ASAP.

GETTING TO YOUR DESTINATION:.

By air. If travelling on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, remember: Working BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED.

By car. Watch for VERTIGO introduced by gas prices, as you enter California. They’ve shot up from 3.69 to 4.19 in one month.

By rocket. Check out spaceadventures.com. It’s not happening yet, the cost is stiff, and coming back is dicey, but take my advice:

Start your funding campaign now and send your favourite politician/cardinal/relative on a long trip.

 

From Justin Trudeau to the Presidential Campaign:  A Recipe For Political Success

What’s the most important asset for a politician? Integrity, vision, experience? PUH-LEEZ. Under what stone have you been hiding the last twenty years? The most important asset are pearly white teeth and an ability to stretch your lips sufficiently to show them off without giving the impression that your jaws are coming unhinged. That’s an art, people, and Trudeau Junior has it, along with  Silvio Berlusconi, Nicolas Sarkozy, Mitt Romney, and Barak Obama (well, I won’t give him perfect marks, he doesn’t smile hard enough).  Trudeau Senior’s fuddle-duddle smile or Diefenbaker’s buckteeth wouldn’t stand a chance in today’s dentally perfect world.  And I’m just stunned -- gobsmacked stunned --that Harper’s schoolmistress smirk made it past the polls.

What else does a politician need? Policies? A platform? Naw. Never mind boring facts, as long as you have a good story, preferably about your hard scrabble life -- eating off an ironing board, making a desk out of an old door, that sort of thing. Romney and the Democrats got that right. And having Clint Eastwood talk to an empty chair at their convention – that was genius! The message: See that chair, folks? It’s as empty as Romney’s pockets.

Yup, Romney is poor. Or looks poor. Or is trying to. But otherwise, what politicians need first and foremost is money. That’s why those limits on campaign spending are just plain silly, and Super Pacs are a good thing. Let’s face it, a politician can’t win relying on the 47% who live on handouts from the government and have no idea how politics work. It’s the other way round, you sad yokels. You pay, and politicians pocket your money.  What do they need it for? To buy publicity of course. Do you know what TV ads cost nowadays? If you ask me, that’s why Romney is slipping in the polls: his ads aren’t up to scratch, or maybe they don’t speak the language of the average viewer, the guy watching the sports channel. You want to reach him, you need to stick to sports metaphors: knock-out punch, front-runner, game over – you get the drift. If you can’t cram a minimum of six sports metaphors into your ad, forget it. You might as well talk Russian or Chinese.

Which brings me to that other all-important requirement: a good campaign manager.  Barackbackers.com is critical of Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades. They accuse him of skulduggery, mischief, and dirty tricks. Don’t they understand? That’s what you want to see on a manager’s resume. I mean, Mattie Boy has what it takes. He doesn’t care about politics, online.wsj.com tells us with endearing frankness. “He isn’t inspired by ideology.” He just likes a good fight. And he is “a man of few words, plenty of them profane.” If you ask me, that man Rhoades is tops. Now if he could just make those campaign ads funnier or nastier or more like a football game.

 What else do you need as a politician? A wife and children who are willing to sacrifice for a noble cause, who will stand by their man and make him look human. Their message: You see? He’s no robot guided by aides working a central control panel. He has a wife and children. There is real blood flowing in his veins. Maybe Reagan went too far when he got involved in an actual assassination attempt, but the general idea was good: show the voter that you are flesh and blood. Just don’t be too human, like Clinton with Monica Lewinski. Blood is good, semen stains are too much of a good thing. But the all time worst mistake was made by Jimmy Carter, who admitted to dirty fantasies when looking at Playboy.  No wonder he remained a one-term president. Would you trust a politician who has ideas in his head?