You know he’s NOT INSANE!

Yes, fervent patriots, it’s that time of the quadrennium when our beloved Land of the Freak and Home of the Depraved goes from being almost universally despised to being more nearly universally ridiculed, when every deluded moron, every scumbag egomaniac, every pompous twit, every cretinous sociopath, every incompetent, lying, contemptible scoundrel who can still manage to crawl out from under his rock or wade out of his swamp, “throws his hat in the ring” and declares himself (or herself or itself) a candidate for the coveted and deeply respected office of President of the United States. Let us bow our heads in shame.

Those of you who are old enough may remember the title above as the campaign slogan of George Papoon, the invention of Firesign Theatre who, with his running mate George Tirebiter, ran for President on the Natural Surrealist ticket against Richard Nixon in 1972. Now, even more than then, this country needs a president who is NOT INSANE! So it is encouraging to find that Papoon still has an active web page (on which he shows the Florida ballot on which he appeared in 2000), and is evidently still trying to save our beloved country from those who are insane. How many humanoid organisms can you name who have that kind of tenacity? Who will not give up in spite of years of mounting evidence that they’re insane. Okay, unfortunately we do know of one notorious example of that, so forget I asked.

A recent post from my guru concerns a recent column in the Denver Post by Dave Barry in which, in the course of a discussion of the unique charms of Miami as a host for the then upcoming Super Bowl, he skewers Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who had previously and very stupidly insulted Miami by calling it a third-world country. In a Denver Post article about Barry’s column, passing reference is made to Tancredo “recently open[ing] a presidential exploratory committee,” and Barry is quoted as saying that “thanks to Rep. Tancredo, my candidacy looks less like a joke than it used to.” In my fair and balanced opinion, the idea of anyone running for President is a joke, and the only question is one of relative ridiculousness. I suspect I’m not the only person who would far rather have Barry as president than Tancredo, and I’ve always taken Barry’s candidacy far more seriously than those of most of the lame-brained fuck-tards who think they should be taken seriously. Over the years, I have fantasized all sorts of presidential tickets I’d like to see, like Dave Barry and Garrison Keillor, or Molly Ivins and Whoopi Goldberg (tragically mooted by Molly’s recent untimely death). I’ve even thought of running for president myself. I have my own party: the American Nihilist Absurdist Loafers Party. Slogan: Better ANAL than Banal. Very simple platform: kill everybody who isn’t nice. It’d solve a lot of problems: it would get rid of almost all crime (there are, however, many alleged criminals who are actually nice people but are guilty of violating stupid laws), and would considerably alleviate most of the problems associated with overpopulation, like pollution, by eliminating about 40% of the people. Naturally it would be up to me to decide who is or is not nice, although I’d rather not be the one who has to kill them; I detest bloodshed. The idea of getting rid of all stupid people, although appealing, is, of course, out of the question, as that would eliminate about 80% of the population. One has to be reasonable.

Well, my hat is in the ring—and if you’ve ever seen my hat, you’ll want to stay far away from the ring. I think I can fairly claim that I’m not insane, although there may be some disagreement about that in some circles, ellipses, oblate spheroids, or truncated polyhedrons. Please leave campaign contributions in a brown paper bag inside my screen door. And disregard the sign in the window that says “FORGET THE DOG — BEWARE OF THE HUMAN.”