The midgets made me do it!
May 5, 1999

FWD:  To The Trash : The Third Tirade of a Truly Terrific Trilogy

Boy, has mass e-mail gotten a bad name lately.  I figured I would hide in my cave, wearing only my Tarzan undies and speaking gibberish so that the authorities couldn't track me but --- --- ---as you may have guessed, the angry midgets in my head found my withered brain and kicked it back into the light.  It sq-ooshed.

So, here I am, preparing to go mental once again.  And, to honor the form FWD uses, I'm going to go ahead and make sure that this mass e-mail meets the standards of its predecessors.  A hastily thrown together, un-spell-checked collection of sh*tty grammar and poorly constructed sentences designed to be funny and helpful that will surely offend you all so much that I am hunted down like a scared raisin and eaten.  (Did the punch pay off there?)

So here it is, the last, and late, FWD.  I promise to return to you, my anchovies in the night, like a mother sardine buys canned tuna for her young.  Perhaps I will be back next September, if George Lucas doesn't hype my brain into a sweaty palpitating ooze of Wookie sweat.  ("Raise your hands, if you're SURE!")

The following contains anti-government propaganda.  Reading it means that angry ATF agents will arrive at your house and stick that bug thing from the MATRIX into your ass.  Then they will paint you with SURE (today's episode brought to you by SURE deodorant, are you sure that you're SURE?) and shove your molested body into a brainwashing program for renegade members of the Christian Coalition.  --- --- ---They'll make you sing Hymnals from the 1400s, the ones with lots of grunting, and talk about how the world would be better if everyone had a gun and no one had a trench coat.

Fundamentalists that want to force everyone to think like them. aRGh, they make me ache in the sq-ooshy part.  Brain.  Yeah.

To Whom It May Concern ---

HEY!  The latest commercial that I saw (I live in a cave) was this happy commercial for SNUGGLE laundry detergent.  See, Snuggle (the little white bear that is on the bottle of SNUGGLE.  You heathens don't know who that is, do you?  Dear Un-Cola!*!  What are you doing in college if not collecting symbols of the mass media to use later in life?  Learning?  Are you confused?  The point of college isn't to learn, the point of college is to reinforce the class system in America.  And to collect useless information. Okay?  HEY!  Don't look over there!  OKAY?)

Anyway, Snuggle is walking through the woods.  The voice of a guy like James Earl Jones says, "Snuggle looked everywhere for the perfect scent to put in his new laundry stuff."  Okay, maybe he didn't say that.  But, right now, you're really afraid because Snuggle is in this scary jungle, and you think that James Earl Jones might pop out and eat him.  It's scary.  Scary.  So, yeah, Snuggle is walking around looking for this perfect scent in this scary jungle, and then, he walks into a meadow and says, "Ah, BREATHE DEEP."  (Yes, big letters mean PAY ATTENTION.  Are you really SURE that you're paying attention?)

Wait, wait, wait.  Snuggle, symbol of love and happiness to children and homemakers alike, is advertising a white granular substance with the slogan . . . get this . . . breathe deep.  The only way to be -more- obvious is if Snuggle whipped out a mirror and a rolled up hundred.  Dear me . . .

Actually, I'm happy to see Snuggle, I thought he was eaten by the monster things in the Listerine commercial.  You, know, the stuff that lives in your mouth.  ("Sure," you say, the monster things that live in your mouth. Get it?  SURE?)  Speaking of drug culture, I have always wondered how the good people at Listerine can advertise a product that is 33% alcohol by insinuating you're going to go on a really good ~trip~.  Remember the commercial where Listerine is dressed in suit of armor (well not really, it's just a bottle of Listerine) and fights the dragon of bad breath? Yeah.  I want to know how much Snuggle you need to breathe deep to get that hallucination.

If you think this is overly cynical, hey, I'm in college now.  All I have learned so far is that college is a method of retaining the class system in America while avoiding the subject of ability, and that the mass media is dictated to by the wonderful and practical oh-mighty-dollar.  Yeah, I was a Communications major at a private university.

The other thing I learned is that academia is a mindless construct to weed out the truly smart ones and make them bitter and angry by forcing them to conform to stupid rules.  The elitist in me (he's a small man with a clip board, the midgets sq-oosh him good!  Wheee!) thinks this is a good idea.  Then I see the "club" that is academia, not as an exclusive organization for smart people, but a controlling agent of society.  I realize that academia is a coincidental construct of society to freeze up the brightest that DO follow the rules so that they can't actually change society any.  The summation of all this:

After school, bright English majors spend most of their time teaching English students, and bright writers become winos celebrated after their livers fail.

Hmmm ...

It's really not that bad.  I'm really not going to get a shotgun and blow the mean and stupid people off the face of the planet.  Promise.  And, even if I did, I certainly wouldn't murder any of you, my little children of the dusky afternoon.  But, you would be safer if you all would learn to make your tummies glow when I hug you.

Anyway, it seems to me that this nation-fueled by the media and politicians and celebrities quick to capitalize on the issue-has driven the discussion of the Columbine killings away from the issue and into their own personal politics.  Democrats have driven it to gun control, Republicans to violence in the media.

A million other fractions have interpreted and analyzed and simplified and stripped down to the point where 15 dead students are a platform for national righteousness.

The price of this insanity is that hundreds of children who are outcasts already are being scrutinized and told to conform or "else."  ("Else," in case you're wondering, is that these bright kids are rejected from the system and ostracized even more.)

"Way to make some more killers," say the midgets in my head to the stupid f*cking institutions that run this world.

A wise man once said that this world would be a better place if we all got rid of labels and took the extra time to get to know each other.   (Hint: Most of you know this wise man.  He is the philosopher in our midst.)

That's what the Columbine killings are about: get to know the people you get a chance to meet, and accept them for who they are and who they want to be.   If you can?like them!  If you can't ... put a flaming bag of poop on their ... er ...head.  Yeah, they're head.  (That's not right, but I don't want to be preachy ... I'm already toeing the line.)

I'm certain that I could tie all this back into mass e-mail and all, and bring this little paper back around full circle.  But, I would have to have a moral for this story, and the midgets won't allow it.  Also, I am writing a mass e-mail, not some sort of well thought out essay thing.

Besides, I'm old school.  I want you to think about it.

!aRGh!, dense like a stupid f*cking essay for a final that I wrote while inhaling SURE (yum!) deodorant.  I think that I am going to go ~snuggle~ up with my shotgun, and get intimately acquainted with some Listerine and a Hundred dollar bill.  Then I will consider mass e-mails, and school, and scary government people who construct social institutions to keep us all down.

But, then I will think about how life is actually getting better.

And smile.

Life is actually getting better.  The midgets are doing their best to make it that way.

The midgets are happy with this ending, cause after all, the midgets are really you and me. I love you all, my little children of the dusky afternoon.  See you soon.

Hey, the next person that you see, run up to them, and hug them for me.  Unless, they have BO, in which case, offer them some SURE.  (Today's proud sponsor.)

--- sa

(I am not responsible for any REPLY ALLS that come from this e-mail.  Really.  Please think carefully before you abuse the Internet.)

HEY! READ THIS 
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This strip brought to you buy:

My Kitten Cat, a source of inspiration.
Hobbes, the philosopher who I finally found a good nickname for.
Nacho Man, the force that sent me and most of you the slashdot column about Columbine.  (thanks ROB!)
Jay, as always, was his lovely sexy self.
The Queen Countess Of All The Stuff, cause I thought of her while writing this brain lint.
MK Ultra, for being the babe whose voice reminded me not to be --- too --- intellectual.
The Tomato of Sin for making me write this, and for coming home to me soon!

And all the rest of you, my little midgets of hope with steel toed boots, for being there to read and understand.