Noooooooooooooo!

Seems like we won't have Google Ron Paul to kick around any more.

The erstwhile limited government Republican/Internet geeks' 2008 answer to Howard Dean wiped the drive of his presidential campaign today, saying instead he will form an organization bent on finding and electing "limited government" politicians to public office. His new website is here: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/

True, he had no chance of winning the Republican nomination, once the John McCain Geriatric Juggernaut woke up and angrily asked who had snatched its newspaper. But now who am I going to vote for in November? I'll have to shoulder more of the blame for whoever gets in (or loses). I kinda know, now, how Hillary Clinton's supporters felt when she bailed on them a week ago.

This announcement, I'm sure, is causing much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth on the Intertubes. Paul's supporters, who pop up in the oddest of places, including in You Tube reviews of old Carol Burnett show skits, debates on the best brand of pantyhose and certainly anywhere the wearers of tinfoil hats gather, have got to be disillusioned. Well, probably not, considering who they were bucking for in the primaries, but still.

I suppose I could take the same approach I took at the primary election when confronted the the one (and only) candidate running for our local county prosecutor. I wrote in "Anyone else but him."

His departure also doesn't mean his supporters will take his campaign signs down. No chance. It's always fascinated me, the treatment campaign signs receive after the election is over. The winners almost invariably collect their signs, eager to preserve them for the general election, and perhaps elections to come if the weather wasn't too harsh on them. The losers, however, somehow always manage to leave their signs up forever, weathering in the sun, collecting trash at their stakes, flapping forlornly in the breeze, as forgotten as corn husks after the barbecue is over.

I think they're shaming us. Hoping, in some way, that the signs will be passed over at roadside trash collections, survive past the general election, perhaps a year or so into the winner's time in office. Then, as things turn sour and we, the voter, become embittered with those elected to public office. When we see their opponents' signs, standing defiantly among the waist-high weeds on the roadside, they hope we remember our vote and choke -- and then consider, maybe, voting for them at a future date. When they'll be victorious. And change everything. While their opponents leave their signs up, hoping they'll survive a year or two . . .

Bigfoot Lives! With Marvin the Martian!

So, Bigfoot has been sighted again. This time on Mars:



True. If you tilt your head and squint just right, you can see the figure of a striding -- that's the word all these Sasquatch people use: striding -- briskly across the Martian landscape. To prove they're politically sensitive, most of those babbling about this image on the Intertubes believe the figure to be female. That makes me feel warm all over: Female Sasquatch Spotted Striding Briskly on Mars! Probably going to stride briskly right over to the Mars rover that took her picture and re-wire the dang thing so it works better, reconfigure the solar panels so it absorbs more light and THEN demand that it be painted pink or fuschia. I'm sure if she were striding in a way that would allow us to see her left hand, she'd be carrying a purse.

NASA, on the other hand, insists this briskly striding figure is, in fact, a two-inch-tall hunk of Martian rock, carved by the wind. So consider: One one hand, we have an element of the (roll ominous music) FEDERAL GOVERNMENT once again engaging in a cover up, because all of their other cover-ups (Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Guantanamo, secret Bette Midler breeding program) were so successful. And we have a pure group of Internet-based truth seekers who have been so successful in selling their truth (Ron Paul) to everyone. Guess who comes up as more believable? (Believe it or not, searching for Ron Paul and Sasquatch pulls up more than 70,000 hits on the Internet, including a site that also offers itself as a web portal for the band "Testicle Bomb." There's your plug, boys.)

Eric Hartwell, a poster at the site linked here: http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=4927&st=30&p=108306, pokes fun at the Intertube dwellers, claiming to have spotted in the same NASA photograph other figures, some striding and some not, including: Jabba the Hutt, a poloar bear, a duck, a hand pointing to the striding Sasquatch and a Tiki head which, judging by the look on its face, is getting a good glance up the Sasquatch's skirt. (He posts pictures at the site as well. Please take a look. Then take the Jabba the Hutt picture out of scale and context and show it to your Star Wars fans just to watch them gibber.)

I'm fairly certain the first people to notice this striding figure thought, "Ha ha! Let's post ths somewhere so some idiots will believe it's a Sasquatch!" But believe me: I've been to Idaho State University's Sasquatch display. (ISU is an epicenter of Bigfoot research, God only knows why.) These people NEED NO ENCOURAGEMENT to be absolutely nuts. Because as Nose Hair Man (our site mascot) will attest, it's EASY to find familiar shapes in nature, because our eyes and brains want to make sense out of nonsense. This explains why I have identified three geese, a dragon and a coyote in the plaster swirls on my bedroom ceiling, and why I have a collection of rocks that resemble pigs' noses (which evidently prove that ancient pigs had easily-detachable and quickly-fossilizing snouts in order to make it easy for modern man to find and classify their remains). I love how much Mother Nature cooperates with mankind's whacked-out fantasies. . .