You sure got a purdy blog.

I got's me a computer too.

Who are these people?

I don’t mean the gen-u-ine debaters who know how to actually argue a point, and concede their position when they lose. I just got back from a four-hour dinner with an old friend – a purdy lady friend – and for most of the evening we jousted aggressively over a whole range of things. Firm but respectful, lightening quick and both of us able to back off and rethink if it turned out we were full of it.

Add wine and a dessert cart so laden with the Devil’s own private stash of caloric wonderfulness that they needed a full team of Holstein oxen to drag it pornographically back and forth in front of us, and its fun for the whole family.

So not that kind of argument. Hell, I live for that kind of shit, y’know? Someone to push against. And there are several places where I and a Moderate Republican would agree wholeheartedly and were these different times, different standards and manners would be called for. But this is here and now, and I will not have any such conversations by the light of a burning cross.

Period.

Kick the Fundy Ultras to the curb or shut the fuck up, because we have absolutely nothing to discuss until you clean the pirahannas out the kiddie pool. In fact, since you obviously know who and what these monsters and, and you persist in wrapping your lips lovingly around their throbbing hate gristle, that actually make you worse than them. Because you know better, and yet still abet people causes you know damned are evil, with your eyes wide open.

But in principle I love a good argument.

OTOH...who are these other people? The Rove Warriors. The vomiters of undigested rightwing propaganda. The ones who will just scream that 2+2="Houseboat" over and over an over again...until the party line changes, and then pivot 180 degrees and start screaming that Houseboats Hate America an 2+2=”the conspiracy of Terrorist left-wing Judges and various Usual Suspect mountebanks.” Just rabid-otter-crazy shit, boomed out in 120 Decibel San Serif Font.

They persuade no one. Whatever cause they’re dimly trying to champion is only made more ridiculous and mockable by fact that such lunatics embrace it and Jesus, do I really want that as a ideological bunk mate?

So exactly who and what are these critters once you peel back the anonymity the Web affords us ? Husk them out of their safe little sniper’s nests...what do we find? It interests me.

I'll leave it to trained forensic ontological entomologists (shorter: who let the Fundy mealy bugs into the Metaphysics!?) to do the hard science: all's I know is, their psychological ordure is crawling with worms and with bad crazy stink. So an objective profile of these creatures I will leave to professionals. Subjectively, in my head, here's what they look like to me:


Waddling himself across the room is an effort, but plugging the microwave into the overloaded, daisy-chained power strips by his computer would blow the circuit. Besides, heating his pick-me-ups in the tiny, mossy bathroom in the hall is…efficient. He can plump down on his ancient, gray toilet, absently Brailling the waffle pattern the rattan chair leaves on his huge, pale ass, and thinking of cool stuff while his pick-me-ups cook.

The corpulent man loves “efficient”, but hates to be away from the computer. He knows they’re talking about him, the computer people. Talking constantly about him, all over the world. Some are afraid of him, of his powers. Most just wait silently – reverently -- for more of his wisdom to pour out.

But they are all envious. They’re all sick with it. Sick with envy for his powers.

His tiny, hairless dog butt-scoots furiously back and forth between his fat, varicose feet, yipping impatiently for its portion of whatever’s on the menu, when suddenly the phrase “They shall be a portion for foxes” erupts orgasmically through the doughy man’s head.

And, “But those that seek my soul, to destroy it, shall go into the lower parts of the earth.” And, “But the king shall rejoice in God; every one that sweareth by him shall glory: for the mouth of them that speak lies shall be stopped.” He remembers that last part of the 63rd Psalm was Mommy’s favorite when he was little. She would read it over and over to him. About how all the liars would die, and he and Mommy would be exalted.

Digging his pinguid toes into the gritty, green shag carpet, he feels comforted. Memories of “outside”, walking in the grass with Mommy years and years ago, before the liars and the coloreds and the spics and the girls and the jews started ruining everything. Mommy explained to him that they – all of them -- envied him his powers.

But now she’s old and yellow and smelly. She’s one of the liars now, and afraid of his power. She is fearful and envious of his vast powers, so she makes war on him. A weekly war of attrition; of who will run out of supplies first? Will Mommy burn through her Pall Malls and Bristol Cream before the bloated man runs out of his pick-me-ups?

As it happens, one of his many vast powers is strategy, so he usually wins. He visits many websites and subscribes to many magazines, and knows – for example -- the minds of the US soldiers, the average Iraqi, all terrorists, all insurgents and every Muslim in the whole wide world better than any other human being. He has written many letters to many people in Washington offering his services, but they have not replied.

Envy. Envy everywhere.

To be honest, this week the battle had been closely contested. He completely exhausted his cache of Aunt Honeybear’s Xtra-Loaded Tater Skins, the Veri-gud Cheddar and Ham Spirals, the Lil’ Chikun Pies, the Mac & Cheeze & Cheeze & Cheeze, the BeefPacks and even the Choco-Monster Breakfast Dots and SugarMilk.

He was almost through his extra emergency case of Vienna Pork Sausages, when she shrieked down the stairs that she was going out to the store. He shrieked back that he had left a list by the front door.

Victory!

The faded rattan chair groans in misery as the lumpy, naked man sits back down.

The keyboard is crusted with a hoarfrost of sticky, brown smudges and petrified crumbs. The “Ctrl”, the “C” and the “V” keys are a solid, gooey black: one of his many, many vast powers is his gift for copying and pasting things.

The sojourn back from the bathroom leaves him weak and whiffling for breath, but it’s time to get back to work. Time to share his vast powers with the silent millions who he knows wait anxiously for his next pronouncement, no matter what the loud girls and jews and liars say. He pokes another little sausage in his mouth.

His angry, microscopic dog clambers up his tree-trunk leg, along his spongy arm and finds a wattled perch on the shoulder of the huge man. It digs its claws into the man’s flesh. The man likes the pain. It vaguely reminds him of something he can’t quite dredge back up. Something from childhood. Something about Mommy and his vast powers.

The dog whispers to the massive, ruined man, “OK, bitch, start typing.”

The man complies.