TV News LIES

Welcome to the weekend, fellow shell-shock victims:

Thank you for choosing Doctor Dogooder's Philanthropic Trauma Hospital and No-Host, Hospitality Fern Bar.

We'll be triaging everyone according to depth of political dismay and by visible, physical symptoms -- such as foaming at the mouth, inability to control reflexes, sudden bursts of cursing, throbbing temple veins, fur-coated tongue, repeated yelling-while-pointing, and so on.

We're not even into the tail-end, dog days of August and most of the country is already howling at the moon, scratching like mad at imaginary fleas, twitching and itchy all over, bothered and bewitched.

Oh, and, since exporting Industrial-Strength Gonzo-Crazy seems to be our new role in the global economy, let's add the rest of the world to the ranks of the queasy and squeamish.

I'm looking at some bookmarks and clippings heaped here and there, trying very hard to divine any signs of sanity.  Perhaps sanity no longer makes news, which is why it is not being reported.

It's another day on the road with the Totally Amazing -- I Mean, Like Wow! -- Candidate with the Snap-On Head... and the Drop-Down Pants.

But then, it's been a Totally Amazing -- I Mean, Like Wow! -- season for the Grandiose Orange People party, for the Genetically-modified Orangutans Party, for the GOP.

Having had a hearty breakfast of Lucky Charms, His Daily Bread ala Tempest-in-a-Teapot Toast, Juice of Personally-Crushed Oranges, and Oval-Office-tine, The Candidate's head was taken from its storage perch, wiped down, and fully reattached to Body #29.

Relief comes in many forms.  In one song, it was splish-splash, and taking a bath.  In one heartburn-aid classic commercial, the relief came right after the plop-plop, fizz-fizz.

When it comes to mosquitoes, we mostly still rely on swatting ourselves silly, and then checking around for any lucky-hit carcasses.  Those middle-of-the night, self-pummeling, slap-and-swat fests may be drawing to a merciful close.

Stop me if you've heard this one before:  Bigwigs pull some strings, and the rest of us hardly ever know what the heck is really going on.  This is how real life works.  It's like looking at a 419-car pileup on the freeway, most days:  Lots of wreckage, and no way to know what really happened, or how to easily untangle the mess.

However, this everyday, hamstrung-pulled reality also contains trainloads of Red Herring Brand fish meal scattered all over the road, for miles around, just in case it might help cover up some of the more telling skid marks, and to help keep anyone from tracing any awkward facts back to any embarrassing sources.

I'm not big on predeterminism and Fate, but even less so for parlor tricks of Faith. Coincidences may not be coincidences -- it's tempting to think along these lines at times, sure.  Movies and so on.  I should have been born in Missouri, probably, a stubborn but accessible skeptic, happy to learn... a curmudgeonly agnostic with curiosity to burn.

So, it is with a sense of skewed (if not skewered) aplomb, that I had a run-in with a berserk ATM, then managed to also have an allied discussion run equally amok. Here's what happened...