there's only so much failure one can take, and when you start out with low self esteem, there's only so much farther down you can go before you just have to focus your attention on something else and give up certain dreams or risk psychological self destruction or death. you can write and write and write until the cows come home (and i don't even own any cows) and that won't make anyone read any of it. hell, it won't even make any of it worth reading. all the product will just get filed away with all the rest, to linger in memories of dreams of publication that need to stop meaning something

thing is, i actually think i can write, when i bother to try (which isn't often enough anymore). but, it doesn't matter cause no matter how much i write, be it in comic form or blog form or prose fiction, i haven't a clue how to convince anyone else to care outside of my wife

it occurs to me, though, that i'm doing something that i've complained about others--notably our government and the scott peterson haters--doing. there isn't actually any evidence that my writing isn't worth anyone's time. the fault is all my own in my lack of ability to "sell" it. but, i don't "sell" it to people, i don't have an audience, so i get to thinking my material must be horrible because otherwise wouldn't an audience magically show up? like, if we can't find evidence of weapons of mass destruction, then we must assume they are hidden, if we can't prove scott peterson didn't do it, we must assume he is still hiding the evidence of his guilt, if i can't prove that there are people out there who might read my stuff if they'd ever even get the chance to read it, then those people must not exist and i must give up completely and devote all my time to what i do best... which, apparently, is watching television and cooking, not a good combination when i've been wanting to lose more weight of late

it doesn't have to be logical to get an obsessive like me to latch onto it and live by it, you know...

no physical evidence links scott peterson to his wife?s death (hell, no physical evidence can conclusively say how exactly she died). but, of course, he?s guilty. he?s a philanderer, and he ordered porn channels after his wife?s death. he cheated on her when she was alive and further defiled her memory by masturbating while she decayed. how dare he

christian nation that we are, who?s surprised that we?d condemn this man to a guilty verdict? one sin is equal to another in the eyes of the lord. if scott is an adulterer, then surely he is also a murderer, nevermind the evidence. can?t we just know that he?s guilty and leave it at that? i mean, it?s not like he is famous, a sports star or black, so we can safely assume guilt based on gut feelings, right? we don?t need no stinkin? evidence. evidence is for the bleeding heart liberals of the united nations and the aclu. we don?t need that kind of qualification required for conviction. we don?t need proof. hell, the fact that scott can?t prove he didn?t do it is plenty of reason to assume he?s hiding all the real evidence still, to this day

that is the logic we used against saddam, isn?t it? we can?t find the evidence of weapons of mass destruction, but as long as he can?t prove he destroyed them, he must be hiding them. as long as scott can?t prove with indisputable video evidence and the testimony of a million witnesses that he was not at the scene of the crime (not that we even know where that is, of course), we have to assume he was there and is guilty

and, assuming guilt, mustn?t we jump straight into sentencing him to death? there?s no need to incarcerate him forever. i mean, we think he killed his wife and her unborn baby. so, let?s kill him and move on to the next big public trial, be it the blake trial or whatever sports celebrity decides to rape or decapitate someone next. let?s move on already. stop with the parading of witnesses who don?t even believe us when we say scott killed his wife and child. stop parading witnesses before us to convince us that it would be bad to deprive them of a loved one. and, really, no matter what you do, do not dare suggest that the death penalty is ever inhumane or immoral or that it won?t fix everything for the family of the victim?remember, laci and the baby will magically come to life once the death sentence is carried out; i mean, don?t we all remember the day mcveigh was executed and all those innocent children killed in oklahoma city rose from the grave and rejoined their living families? it brings a tear to my eye just thinking of it?

now, if we could just kill osama bin laden already so the thousands killed at the world trade center and the pentagon would be resurrected to go on with their lives, just like iraq is the peaceful eden it once was long ago now that saddam is dead? (oh wait, he?s not dead yet. there goes that theory)

Mood:  don't ask

you know what's worse than being sick?

being sick when it's cold out and today is laundry day (already postponed and unavailable for further postponement)

weird thing is, mecicine i got at ralphs this morning, after getting (and passing) the smog check retest (yes, it's been an extra busy, extra miserable morning, thanks for noticing)--i can actually feel it working. in another hour i might feel just fine for heading to launderland... except, i need to go before then if lunch is to happen anywhere near lunchtime... or i could go after lunch...

but, to make a stupid story short, i don't (right now) have the mental acuity to complain about politics or pop culture or what have you, and any sharpness i manage to get in the next few hours will be occupied with me not falling apart completely (not to mention looking after a couple kids)

anyway, watchlist:

jeopardy
• lost
• ghost hunters
• good eats or south park if i'm in the mood
• the daily show

Mood:  don't ask

first things first: (WASHINGTON (AP) - Leaders from Iraq, Jordan and Senegal paraded through the White House Monday morning. By afternoon, President Bush was hosting Elmo and the Cookie Monster at a children's holiday party...) and, here, i thought my sesame street blog entry was all made up

second: stop pretending emanuel goldstein... er, osama bin laden is still important. clearly, the war on iraq is the only war going on and has always been the only war. the so-called "insurgents" have always been our enemy and always will be...

until we kill them all and move on

third: we must keep teaching abstinence. children need to learn that it is wrong to give in to sexual feelings. the sooner they learn that, the better control they will have later in life (perhaps in fighting off certain attractions to their own gender), not to mention little chance of getting any STDs or getting pregnant... unless of course, god feels like getting himself another immaculate conception (he has been celibate for quite a while and might be missing that action after two thousand years; there's only so many times he can still get off on watching his priests molesting little boys). barring immaculate conception the sequel, we must trust teenagers to just not have sex. surely, it will be easier for them to completely ignore some of the strongest biological imperatives in their bodies than it would be for them to navigate their way around condoms. and, needless to say, fornication and premarital sex still qualify as sins and surely the idea of burning in hell for eternity will deter any teen from having sex (cause that system has worked so well so far)

and, it's ok to exaggerate the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of condoms. there's no need to be objective and honest with children when the possibility of them having sex is on the line. we need less honesty and more propaganda, anything to be sure that teens will NOT HAVE SEX

except, of course, teens have always been having sex, will always have sex (and not in the way that the insurgents have always been the enemy). isn't it nice when we try to stop things that have always been? and, isn't it even nicer that we try by instituting more rules and more lies?

we could try assuming that the "rules" of the past will be broken, cause they've always been broken and stop acting like we can change human nature through adminstration and punishment and teach people to use simple precaution. it's not a choice of abstinence or abortion. there are many in between choices. and, contrary to popular belief, not a one of them is a sin

watchlist:

• last night
  • audition - a nicely creepy and fucked up film involving a fantastically abrupt change of pace and graphic (though mostly just out of frame) torture and at least one good scare (read: startle) moment
  • arrested development - funny stuff with the coffin mishap, the confusion about ann, buster's costume, the charlie brown motif and the return of the slut shirt
  • the daily show - puppy juice!
• tonight
  • jeopardy
  • rebel billionaire
  • amazing race 6
  • house
  • the daily show
  • and i've got the pink panther to watch on dvd (the life and death of peter sellers got me interested. i liked that hbo film, though the ending was odd and the lack of aging with his kids bugged me. i loved the moments when characters stepped out of the movie to comment on sellers)
  
  
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Mood:  lazy

i probably should have taken the car to get a smog check retest this morning. but, i just didn't feel like it. thing is, i don't feel like doing much of anything this morning. not sure why. i'm not tired. i slept plenty last night and as i loaded up this blog page to write a new entry, i put my mood as "sharp"

then, i had some crackers as a snack

clearly, we can assume crackers destroy sharpness. and, nabisco is clearly a supporter of the Right and the current administration in this country, and they are drugging their crackers to keep us wannabeheroes and pseudorevolutionaries down. they get us preoccupied with online research into the march 22 movement in 1968 france and we drift from there into the situationist international site (again) and from there to the struggle site and the red & black revolution magazine and i get to listening to american idiot and suddenly it's like and hour past when i expected to have today's entry finished and i've not even begun

but can i really blame nabisco for my own lack of initiative? i mean, clearly it is the american way to blame everyone else for all your problems. i've still got an old non sequitur comic on the message board here by my desk with the big corporate ceo saying "we have got to get in step with the times, gentlemen, and find a way to make us out to be victims of something." and, that's the way it is, isn't it? everything is someone else's fault. everything is always someone else's fault. never ours

comes in handy when we want to get a war on. pick a country out of a random list, drop some bombs and come up with an epxlanation on the fly whenever someone asks--doesn't matter if it's the same explanation each time, either--and no one will complain, cause they will get a nice feeling of something actually being done. nevermind figuring out if it's a good thing or not, just that it's being done at all is good enough. they don't really want to know why, they don't want to get involved. and, they certainly don't want to be held in any way responsibile for it...

except half of us do, apparently, cause puppet w will be around for a while longer, won't he? so, fuck discussions of responsibility, fuck discussions of explanations. who cares? the killing will continue. the bombs will keep on dropping. "9-11" will remain on the tips of political tongues for a good time to come. and osama bin laden will remain free cause what does it matter if he is or isn't? hussein was caught (aguably not by us, despite the wonderful staging of that whole spiderhole incident) and what has come of that? the war didn't end. peace didn't break out. the insurgents didn't suddenly realize that they were wrong and we were right and repent all their sins against us

of course, the world didn't end either, did it? it still goes on, and will keep on for a while. despite the destruction of certain elements of the environment, despite overpopulation, we will not be destroying the world itself anytime soon. we'll just be making a lot more of her people miserable. but, that's ok, as long as it isn't us. we will still have our sitcoms and our police procedural dramas, our law & order and our csi and we'll have basic cable and pay cable for those shows that smaller groups of us like, so we can pretend that we cater to everybody, so shut up and sit down and watch your niche's shows and leave the mainstream to sort itself out, let the fcc do it's damn job and eat your crackers

always eat your crackers

Mood:  on fire

representative gerald allen of alabama wants to ban novels with gay characters, "to protect children from the 'homosexual agenda.'" abc affiliates got scared and didn't show saving private ryan for fear of the fcc. the united states defense department reported that muslims actually don't "hate our freedom" but rather our policies. and, when only half the country wants you, apparently that implies a mandate from the lord... and the authority to do whatever the fuck you want

it's been promised that there will be no draft yet draft offices around the country have been dusting off their desks and cabinets, readying for the possibility that one could be "necessary." thing is, what would make one "necessary?" there would have to be something catastrophic, some huge attack on our country that cost a lot of lives and captured the rest of us in its tragedy... nothing like that could ever happen while bush is in charge, could it? surely, our intelligence agencies are smart enough to stop any attempts to, say, commandeer planes and crash them into buildings, just for an example. surely they won't be too busy only finding information that will support the administration (cause, we all know, objectivity has gone the way of the geneva convention and the dodo)

and, speaking of the geneva convention, the red cross says we're torturing (or, officially, we're using "psychological and physical coercion that [is] 'tantamount to torture'") the detainees at guantanamo. doctors have even "been assisting interrogators by providing them with information about the mental health of inmates and their vulnerabilities." isn't that nice? we've not only got half the voters behind the administration, raising jinogist fists and flying flags and affixing bumper stickers, we've got doctors (that is, actual educated, scientific-minded doctors) siding with all of it. of course, not all doctors will be liberal or against the "war on terror" or against torture for that matter, but at least we could hope they would be, don't you think? it would be better than this, what the red cross calls a "flagrant violation of medical ethics"

meanwhile, the nominee to replace ashcroft as attorney general, alberto gonzalez, has said that "Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners" has been rendered "obsolete" and "some of its provisions" have been rendered "quaint." that is, he's okay with torture, as long as those we are torturing are the "enemy" of course. and, we can define anyone as an enemy if we like. if we call them "enemy combatants" we can detain them however long we like and do whatever we think we have to do to make them give us all the information and cooperation we want. and, that's just what we're doing at guantanamo

and, now, we can use all the information we gain through torture as admissable evidence. so says principal deputy associate attorney general brian boyle. when attorneys argued some of the 550--that's the official count, at least--detainess at guantanamo were only being held because of evidence acquried through torture, boyle shrugged it off and argued that they have no constitutional rights. no shit, they have no constitutional rights, but there is common decency to take into account... oh wait, common decency might also allow gays to marry or unprepared mothers to abort or vegetative women to die. so, the geneva convention is quaint and obsolete and the enemy combatants don't qualify for basic civil rights. so, of course, we can torture them. hell, if they prove after a good amount of torture to have no useful information, we should probably just kill them so we don't have to feed them anymore. of course, then we might have to replace them with the red cross personnel who dare to tell people about what we're doing--surely, that sort of objective reporting would qualify as traitorous these days, wouldn't it?

thing is, purposefully or not, guanatanamo is just a testing ground for civil rights abuses to come right here in our "homeland"

anyone who thinks otherwise is probably selling something... or already in on the big conspiracy, not that that isn't something being sold to us every day

so, what's the cut off, anyway? at what point do we stop rambling in our blogs and arguing back and forth on message boards and stand up? when does the revolution begin?

and, to think, after watching the da vinci code decoded last night, i had intended to talk about christ today

watchlist:

• spiderman 2
• jeopardy
• degrassi the next generation

Mood:  cool

all over the place today

last night's lost was great. asshole from "in the bedroom" who showed up briefly last episode turned out to be someone bad. locke made some creepy looks and seems a little too reverent toward the island, not to mention his great black and white eyes in claire's dream. and, i'm siding with those who think charlie's genuinely interested in and protective of claire and not those that think that just cause he's gotten firendly with island guru locke that he'll turn out to be a creepy island lover. and, we're three weeks into what the producers said would cover 40 days (the first season, that is), and now we're getting a real plot going. great setup so far. this show is still going strong

house is also going strong, after three episodes so far (how many more before fox cancels it?). i don't even have a problem with the basic format of incorrect diagnosis after incorrect diagnosis until finally the correct one rears its head. the characters make it work, and all the details are fascinating. plus, the latest was a little different, as they were correct in what they later assume was an incorrect diagnosis, only to prove themselves wrong in thinking they were wrong. and, house's interactions with clinic patients are great

ghost hunters is not a brilliant hoax. it can't be. it's some serious investigators followed by a relatively unbiased film crew played for realism and aiming at disproving hauntings. if they could just get rid of those damn edited in flashes of faces and stuff that show up early in every episode...

today is saer's second birthday. there will be cake and dora the explorer hats and plates and napkins and whatnot later--speaking of which, i forgot to wrap a couple presents in dora paper last night, so how do i manage that today without getting saer all excited (then upset) about those gifts until opening time?--and i gotta pick up that cake today at porto's, plus i still gotta go to ralphs (for the second time today), the automotive store a few blocks from here, the post office and blockbuster, plus pick up hayley early from school, sarah early from work, and take saer for her two year tune-up before the comic book store and my parents' house for the "party"

and, i had intended to get the smog retest this morning, but that got postponed for tomorrow, except tomorrow the gas company's coming over to check our heater that doesn't work

but, at least there's no tv on tonight, so i can finally get around to watching veronica mars from two nights ago and whatever i rent at blockbuster today: maybe ararat and spiderman 2, maybe whatever jumps out and says "rent me." i've been enjoying documentaries lately, though i might be informationed out on the iraq/bush thing... like that's possible, and there aren't many other subjects of which blockbuster is getting the documentaries

watched the saddest music in the world yesterday and was sure i didn't like it, though it was very watchable (i loved the look of it, made to look like a movie filmed when it was set, in the 30s) and somewhat entertaining. but, then i was describing it to sarah, explaining how the younger brother lost his son (but keeps his heart in a jar, preserved by his tears) and his wife left him only to turn out to be the girlfriend (maybe) of the older brother, who's also got a thing going with the beer lady with no legs, who lost her legs when in a car accident because the father was drunk and cut off the wrong one while trying to save her from the wreckage, and did i mention he was drinking cause he actually liked her though she had a thing for his oldest son, and all three of them, the father and the two sons are entering the competition to see what country has the saddest music in the world, as run by the no-legged lady (though she does get some glass legs filled with beer late in the film, though those shatter quite nicely, and she uses some of that broken glass to stab the older brother) and... well, i think i like it a whole lot more now that i look back and see how fucked up it really was, a comedy about sad people with convoluted, silly relationships

and i've been reading tom strong book 2 which i got from the library (i was looking to get a copy of catch-22 or fight club or contact but none of those three was there, so i got the second tom strong book and the second cartoon history of the universe book) and it's fun and all, and well written and put together, but there's something a little off about the structure with all the short stories that makes it pale in comparison to moore's other work, promethea or from hell or watchmen being some obvious examples). that being said, even moore's not so great work is better than a lot of other comic writers' best

and, i liked slaughterhouse five a lot, though i think i expected more of the ending. i think i was hoping there would be a big revelation about how none of it was real and billy pilgrim was just reimagining his life in a more palatable fashion so as to live with it (which was implied time and again, but never explicitly stated). but, it stuck mostly with leaving it to the reader, which should be a good thing... i just didn't expect it

and, i could go on forever like this, touch on the last two episode of the daily show (with great guests brian williams and chris hutchins) or last night's jeopardy (in which jennings defeating emperor zerg lost to what appeared to be a twelve year old), but as i mentioned, it's a busy day today. and i should be getting on with it

Mood:  incredulous

first, two men were arrested in idaho for dumping dirt in the forest. apparently, it's illegal to dump anything in a national forest, including dirt. and, these guys even raked the dirt out so it looked nice. still, they were arrested. go figure

second, who said they could change strawberry shortcake's hair? seriously, if you want to be nostalgic about old toys or just rip them off because you can't be creative enough to come up with new ones, have the decency not to fuck with them. don't make the transformers look like multicolored pieces of crap (with overcomplicated transformations, mind you, if one kieran acquired recently is any example). if anything, make them look more like real vehicles, with real coloring. improve them for the better, like that isn't the damn definition of the word. and, don't try to make strawberry shortcake look like someone new. if you wnat strawberry shortcake, have strawberry shortcake. if you want someone new, make someone god damned new. don't recycle old ideas because you don't have nay news ones. recycle old ideas because they are that damn good and deserve to be revisited. if you really want to change them, make them better, make them more interesting under the surface. don't just shallowly cut some hair or recolor some outfits or panels. you want a better strawberry shortcake or a better transformer, make them talk, make them transform themselves (the transformers, that is--though a transforming strawberry shortcake does sound fun. anyone have her manufacturer's phone number?), make them more like "real" versions of what they are supposed to be. then, soon, we'll have walking, talking teddy bears like in AI...

speaking of AI, was it that he was such a cynic that made the bear just about the most human character in the entire film? or was it a commentary on humanity's attempts to recreate itself that in joe and the bear we get more "human" characteristics than in david, who is intended to be more "human"?

and, i want one of those bears. he was cool. pessimistic and cynical, just how i like my bears. none of that happy-go-lucky picnic basket stealing crap or teddy ruxpin stroytelling-with-a-happy-ending-and-a-song crap. we need more negative children's characters. maybe not like that tarabisho chick, but let's get oscar the grouch his own yearly doll and get rid of that elmo kid--and shouldn't elmo be going through puberty by now? that could make for some nice mood swings and a whole new series of dolls. nocturnal-emmission-elmo, erection-in-class-elmo, acne-scar-elmo, and all that

and cable's screwed up today, keeps cutting out (kinda like my brain, if you have been able to keep up enough to notice). it better be fixed in time for tv tonight... speaking of which...

watchlist:

• jeopardy - first post ken episode. hope emperor zerg with her vietnam era hairdo plays as badly as she did yesterday and is gone quickly, not that i'm still bitter in anyway in relation to jeopardy, not like i passed their test twice now and they'd let retarded folks on before me (not that i'm saying zerg is retarded; the two things were separate)
• lost - babies and psychics and monsters, oh my
• ghost hunters - a couple haunted houses. hope something (anything) happens
• south park or good eats if i'm in the mood
• the daily show

Mood:  spacey

so, miss spider just played the spiders-need-to-eat-their-webs-so-as-not-to-make-a-horrible-mess bit and i was doing my best to ignore it, but damn it if i heard that crap about how the web stuff had to be eaten to clean up. and, before i get on with my point, it was very clear in context of the show's structure that it was a silly take on recycling, not something actually useful. that being said, apparently spiders will sometimes eat pieces of their web (broken bits and whatnot) to conserve silk

but, damn it, it's still not good to let all the dogs out of the pound at once (a la dora the explorer) and fish should be allowed to eat one another (again, a dora reference)...

and, these shows need more episodes so they don't repeat all the same ones so often. hell, i swear this miss spider show only has like four half hour episodes so far (amounting to eight half-episode stories). maybe new shows should be regulated to once a week instead of the five days a week schedule

yeah, i'm talking about cartoon schedules on nickelodeon, but remember i've got three kids, two of them here right now watching their morning cartoons (usually dora, blue's clues then miss spider or another dora (if i manage to get the channel changed to noggin before miss spider comes on (kieran and saer refuse to acknowledge the crappiness of miss spider))

anyway, nothing much to say today about worthwhile things. politics are quiet, as the election is over and no one cares anymore. protests won't do anything to get us out of iraq at this point and no one can think of any good way to get bush out of office now that he got reelected (and kerry conceded). and no one is willing to contemplate violent rebellion cause they'll be struck down before they've even amassed a good stockpile of weapons (a la ruby ridge or waco (yeah, i reference such obvious examples. so sue me)). i wish i could find the original source of a line someone referenced in the weather underground documentary (and which i'd heard reference before): if you make peaceful revolution illegal then you guarantee a violent one. of course, the Left isn't full of as many reactionaries as the Right; i mean, of course, not so many that would resort to violence. the Left would rather sit around and hope for a better chance next election. the Left is fine with sitting around watching reality shows multiplying like rabbits and simple kids cartoons grabbing onto politically correct crap (that the Left helped engineer, of course, though it's certainly gotten a little out of control) and wait for next time, even as the Right gains more and more power and has put itself into a position to rule the world. if history is any teacher (and, it would be nice if more of us thought it still was), then we can be assured this Empire will fall like all those have come before. thing is, won't things get worse before they get better? a popular vote (exaggerated or not by electoral fraud) just got the big bad bush reelected. foreign countries were supposed to be okay with america still because it seemed we didn't all support this guy and his imperialist ways. but, now more than half of us want him in power, apparently, and the other half are too lazy to do anything about it. so, didn't it just become opne season on america? if any terrorists (cause, we're supposed to believe they're hiding all over the place, aren't we?) were harboring any doubts about whether or not we were all explendable, didn't we just erase those doubts?

our administration will lie or blur the facts to support any part of their cause they like. and, we let them get away with it, because there's a little bit of truth in each lie (a little like i'll forgive that web-eating on miss spider now that i know it can happen in real life (how's that for coming back to my opening?))

how much more will we be willing to accept before we either do something or really all run off to canada or whereever? if we've got four more years in the direction we've been going for the last four, what will it take to recover?

---

watchlist for today:

• jeopardy - tonight's the night, supposedly, ken will lose finally
• the rebel billionaire - seriously endangering contestants has been fun so far. i'll keep watching
• amazing race 6 - more fighting, more bad map reading and stupid decisions
• house - loving this show so far, though to be fair i'm not sure if i'll actually get to watch it tonight. will be recording it when it's on and watching it later
• veronica mars - loved how they didn't let the notion that veronica's dad isn't her dad linger and just had someone say it outright after only an episode since the initial clue. like house, though, i'll be taping this and watching later. i can tape two things and watch a third, and amazing race isn't worth keeping, so that's my "third"
• the daily show - back from vacation again and funny as always
• and i've got the saddest music in the world here to watch sometime too

news of palestinian puppet tarabisho's call for violence swept the world recently. and, after american puppet w had already managed to start a couple wars across the globe, it was only a matter of time before more puppets started getting riled up

the violence hit the streets of sesame this past weekend as forces led by elmo set out to rid the world of the "so-called muppets, who aren't even good enough to have their own show. and don't even get me started on their films"

dozens are dead or missing and presumed dead

elmo made his first play for power last week, when he interuppted a plea by bleeding heart prairie dawn for peace and love. "we will not stand for this peace and love bullshit anymore," elmo said. "it's time puppets wake up and smell the world as it is. first we get the muppets out of our way, then on to the humans. no more will we be operated by sticks and hands stuck into our backsides. now is the time when we stand on our own and show the world what being from the street is all about"

a systematic "cleansing" followed, with morally bankrupt puppets first on the trashheap. first went bert (who, despite rumors to the contrary, was not an evil mastermind but just an evil homosexual) and ernie, lifelong companions who had recently demanded the right to marry. next went kami, a south african import with hiv, "who had to have gotten that from a queer," according to elmo's trusted advisor (and rumored true leader of the "resistance") oscar the grouch. sitting in his trashcan, stroking his pet slimey, oscar further called for the destruction of big bird before ordering the march on the "muppets"

it wasn't long before the first net broadcast, the easily recognizable green limbs of kermit the frog beneath a canvas hood, on the floor in the background, gonzo and fozzie bear, also wearing hoods. and, elmo and zoe stood behind kermit. "let this be your first lesson," elmo announced before tearing the marionette sticks from the backs of kermit's elbows. then, soaked in the frog's blood, and ignoring the cries of pain as best he could, elmo proceeded to saw away the beloved frog's head

on larry king, miss piggy demanded a response, a show of force that would put "these street folk" in their place

but, sam the eagle (turning against his muppet brethren) entered the studio with a group of singing cows and the cookie monster and the porcine beauty was taken into custody as an "enemy of the street"

american puppet w put a call through to elmo, congratulating him on his success thus far, but wondered about the manhattan (taken, as many will remember, in 1984) enclave of muppets and what could be done about these insurgents

elmo went to his trusted advisor, oscar and demanded a plan that would rid the world of the infidel muppets. and, thus came operation chocolate chip: millions of chocolate chip cookies would be delivered to manhattan, through, among other means, the 83 mcdonald's restaraunts there. then, after the manhattanites and the muppets had gorged themselves on super-sized meals and chocolate cookies, the cookie monster (starved for four days prior to the operation) was sent in. the stench of chocolate chip cookies was everywhere, and the cookie monster began to eat in no time, and he ate and he ate and he ate

and, then, in the last toy store on manhattan, the last of the muppets, led by beaker and bunsen honeydew, fashioned a dirty bomb and destroyed themselves, taking the now gargantuan cookie monster with them

waldorf and statler were heard to say "good show, but we've still got hands up our asses"

"if only puppet w could reveal his true puppet nature to the world and get the national guard on our side," elmo lamented. oscar handed elmo a cynaide capsule then laughed and stroked his pet worm some more. "you're young, elmo. you couldn't have been expected to win against such powerful opponents, but you made your mark." elmo took his capsule and died. "yes, you made your mark," oscar repeated. then, he took out his cell phone and made a call

"tarabisho, it's oscar. the street is clear whenever you've finally given up on the west bank"

note: obviously, the names above don't really have anything to do with any actual muppets or denizens of sesame street, and no puppets were harmed in the production of this essay