'Bred Crumbs

The Phlegmatic 3000™

The prospect probably unnerves many, but, as I've hinted before, I can't wait to be a cyborg. For example, wouldn't it much better if, at the end of a cold, the icky drainage part, you could just unlatch your nose occasionally, pull out the collection unit, and dump your mucus like used coffee grounds?

You decide: all that thick, perfectly natural running and wheezing, or reaping the mighty harvest of technology in a glorious cornucopia of nasal tidiness.

Then again, maybe Cyborg You would never get a cold, thanks to the sensor-driven automatic time-release zinc distributor hooked into your bloodstream. But I hear that can cause sexual side effects. Not to mention tremor. I'd think twice. I mean, my robot brain would.

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Oasis

So I won't be calling myself a Californian anytime soon after yesterday's debacle, but San Francisco has made me proud all over again.

Around this time last year, there was a lot of pie-in-the-sky and tongue-in-the-cheek talk about California's seceding from the union. Well, screw California. Maybe the secession should be much more localized that that.

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Snuffed

Options:

• Mope, cry, scream, dwell on whether that microscopically faint flicker of hope that was just extinguished by another act of mass American idiocy was the last.
• Express said extinguishment with a hastily taken photo of a suffocated candle.
• Post a self-written fake Onionesque news story, "Democracy Declared Brain-Dead," despite the fact that the piece is riddled with mixed metaphors and degenerates into an anti-Republican broadside – not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's clear now that the slick underhandedness of the Republican Party is not the only problem here.
• Move, in spite of the northern winters.
• Increasingly ignore the frelling news, take heart in friends, blessings, comforts, and diversions, and continue to retreat from a society that's lost its goddamn mind and there's nothing you can do about it anymore.
• Get ready to immediately sign the next recall petition.

Right now, I'm at E and F. They're the only ones that really keep A from consuming me.

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Gubernatorama, Day -1: A Rational Voice – and I Bet He Works Out

[Our continuing look at actual statements by candidates for governor of California]

Trek Thunder Kelly, Independent:

Dear Voters, Please vote for me, thus breaking the Seventh Seal and incurring Armageddon. I will legalize drugs, gambling, and prostitution so they may be taxed and regulated, the funds derived would subsidize the deficit, education, and the environment. I believe in peaceful resolutions backed by a strong military; I don't care who you marry or have sex with.

In the end, someone named "Trek Thunder" from Venice comes off as the candidate that makes the most sense and shows the best sense of humor. That's our election, folks. So get out there tomorrow and vote! And if the winner doesn't cut it, don't worry, we can always replace him/her/it in a few months. Order's for chumps.

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Gubernatorama, Day -2: California Out of Vietnam!

[Our continuing look at actual statements by candidates for governor of California]

Joel Britton, Independent:

I have actively opposed U.S. military interventions against the peoples of Vietnam, Cuba, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, joining millions around the world demanding "U.S. Hands Off! Bring the GIs home now!" I have backed efforts to unite working people to fight for "Jobs for all! Cut the workweek with no cut in pay! Raise the minimum wage!"; "Stop INS raids and deportations—end 'no match' firings!"; "Fight police brutality–Abolish the death penalty!"; "Defend women's access to abortion!"; "Debt relief for working farmers! Stop foreclosures!"; "Defend affirmative action!"; "Stop Washington's economic war against Cuba! Normalize relations now!"

Unbelievable – a candidate even more catchphrase-dependent than Schwarzenegger.

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