Derailed trains of thought
“Après moi le déraillement”

Off the Deep End

Aggression Is Good for the Economy.
Area 52.
Atomic Fish.
Attack of the Christmas Robots.
Back to School.
Back From the Future and Return to the Future.
Bathroom Security.
Beguiling Train Voice Beckons.
Brainwashed by Teenagers.
Bugs From the Government.
California or Bust.
Chicken Little Was Right.
Chickens Are Our Friends.
A Christmas Tale.
Classified Information About You.
Clockstoppers Are After Me!.
Cloning the Future.
A Close Brush With Mars.
Coffee Bandits.
Combat Cows.
Cooking Your Own Clothing.
Cows on the Tracks.
Don’t Eat Your Veggies.
Do You Want a Flat Stomach?.
Down on the Farm.
Dunham’s Razor.
Elvis on My Mind.
Escape From New Jersey.
Feed My Cows.
Freedom of the Press.
Fridge Farming.
Fudge Factor.
Funding the Cow Campus.
Getting Out the Vote.
Going in Crop Circles.
Governor for Life.
How I Discovered America.
Hunting for Santa.
Junk Mail Junkie.
Kidnapped!.
Kiss of the Spiderwoman.
Love Potion Number 9½.
Male Problem-Solving.
Mars and Venus Attack!.
Money in the Mail.
Monkeys With Typewriters.
My Haunted House.
My Time Machine.
Office Supply Security.
Office Survivor.
The Other St. Brendan.
Painless Dentistry.
Pat Answers: Pesky Neighbors.
Planet X Insurance.
Poster, Poster, on the Wall.
Pothole State Park.
Power Napping Is Back.
Problem: The Disk Is Full.
A Railway Hygiene Etiquette Guide.
Rent a Husband.
Rent a Wife.
Rise of the Robot Animals.
The Rolling Breakfast Club.
Runaway Chickens.
Save Energy While Driving.
The Second, or Maybe Third, Thanksgiving.
Some Like It Hot.
So ‘Survivor’ Is Rigged..
Stealth Office Work..
Talking Statues..
Take Your Dog to Work Day..
The Third Degree..
Your Biological Alarm Clock.

Off the Deep End

Aggression Is Good for the Economy

The arms race is on again, this time between counties. My own county of Spotsylvania has acquired weapons of mass destruction, and I’m not just talking about suburban sprawl, either. Spotsylvania is now one of the nuclear powers. And I don’t mean the Lake Anna nuclear power plant, though I now wonder whether it includes a breeder reactor for plutonium. I am talking about nuclear armaments.

Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense (for the United States, not Spotsylvania), has stated* that there are “a number of counties that have access today to weapons of mass destruction.” This is really true. Because this is a sensitive political matter, he did not name the counties. However, Spotsylvania, which did not sign either the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty or the Nonproliferation Treaty, is one of the counties that is acquiring these weapons.

People have been ridiculing Spotsylvania as a Third World county for too long, and we’re sick of it. Our uppity neighbor counties point to Spotsylvania’s failure to support Virginia Railway Express and say that we’re lost in the 1950s, when highways were the wave of the future, not dinosaurs bypassed by evolution. To that we say, “Lost in the fifties, are we? Then start building bomb shelters, Stafford. Bypassed by evolution, are we? How about a few mutants, Prince William?”

Am I saying that Spotsylvania is a rogue state? Mr. Rumsfeld claims that some of these counties “are lead by people who don’t have things that buffer them or moderate behavior.” That’s a polite way of saying that our government is a bunch of lunatics who are out of control. And speaking of lead, I hope you have your computer well shielded, in addition to a large stock of food and a backup power supply. We are armed and dangerous.

Spotsylvania calls itself “aggressive.”* (All the quotes from counties are really true too.) No appeasement for us. If the rest of Virginia won’t give us the respect we deserve, well, we never stopped fighting the Civil War anyway. We will bomb our neighbors back into the Stone Age, or at least into the 1950s.

Now, you will have noticed that the Secretary of Defense mentioned “counties.” Spotsylvania is not the only member of the “nuclear club” in Virginia. Other aggressor counties include Loudoun and Caroline. Loudoun has an “employment driven model” for “long term household demand” that uses “4 scenarios: conservative, moderate, aggressive and highly aggressive.” They might as well talk about “lebensraum.” Caroline is likewise “poised to pursue an aggressive agenda.”

This is all consistent with state policy. The Virginia Economic Development Partnership’s Blueprint for Elected Officials calls for an “aggressive marketing” and a “local economic development program” that “targets key economic sectors.”

No wonder Donald Rumsfeld is worried. These counties on the fringe (in more ways than one) are ready to fight, and our unarmed, complacent neighbors won’t know what hit them. When it’s over, not only will Spotsylvania, Loudoun and Caroline have conquered the world, we will have a great tourist destination: the battlefields of the second Civil War.

Those of you living in the other counties could make it easy on yourselves, though. You could surrender now.

Steve Dunham lives in a bomb shelter in Spotsylvania.

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Off the Deep End

Area 52

You can see them from the train, hidden in plain sight: UFOs shot down by the Marines and stored in Area 52.

When I first glimpsed them myself, I thought, “No! It can’t be! They’re right out there in the open.” They were separated from the tracks by only a chain-link fence.

However, years of investigative experience had taught me that all government institutions have secret operations, things the public is never intended to learn. I also knew that the aliens among us, and often their ships too, can blend right into our society to accomplish their sinister ends.

The fences and guards might discourage ordinary citizens; to this crusading columnist, they were merely another challenge. With a miniature camera and film, and suitably fortified by the Coors family’s products, I got off the train at the Quarantine for Non-Terrestrial Intelligent Creature Observation, known by its acronym, Quantico. The name is spelled out in capital letters on the station, but the sign does not give a hint as to the real meaning.

The quarantine itself is a picture of practiced indifference. The building is mostly boarded up, and the atmosphere says, “Walk around and take a look! See for yourself! We have nothing to hide!” I intended to do just that.

I waited till all the other passengers had walked away. Then, looking over my shoulder, I walked casually toward Area 52. At the very least, I expected a sign saying, “Keep Out! This Means You!” Instead, the only warning sign said, “No VRE Parking.” Area 52 was deserted, and I walked right in. And there they were, artifacts from another world, with some vines climbing the fence to shield them from curious eyes.

I started taking pictures, looking over my shoulder between each snap of the shutter. It was a good thing, too, because before long there was a heavily armed Marine striding toward me. I dropped the camera over the fence onto the platform so I could retrieve it later.

I expected the Marine to shout, “Freeze!” but all he said was “Can I help you, sir?” I guess they have to keep up the pretence that there is nothing shady going on.

“You guys are great!” I said, trying to get the conversation off to a friendly start. “I was just looking at these flying saucers here. You guys shot them down, huh? Way to go!”

Instead of accepting my congratulations, he spoke into his radio: “Sarge, this is Jones. I got a code thirteen here.”

Entering Area 52, I hadn’t seen any signs saying, “Deadly Force Authorized,” so I decided to take a bold chance and just walk away. “I guess I’ll be going now,” I said, and strolled away, whistling. After the sergeant arrived, they both kept an eye on me till I was beyond the fence.

They didn’t try to stop me. Maybe they were confident that no one would believe my story. But when I reached the train platform, my camera was where I had dropped it. I boarded the train, hugging the camera, with proof that the whole story is true.

Steve Dunham investigates captured UFOs.

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Off the Deep End

Atomic Fish

Their eyes glow in the dark. If you dare to walk near the water at night, you can see their eyes moving through the gloom.

I first saw them in Lake Anna, and I assumed that they must have soaked up radiation from a leak at the nuclear power plant. However, a seemingly knowledgeable science-type guy insisted that such a thing could not happen. Something about neutrons not glowing in the dark, if I understood him correctly. Maybe I didn’t. But aside from the technical mumbo-jumbo, there was further proof that the atomic fish had a different genesis: I started seeing them everywhere. Well, not everywhere, but anytime I was near a river or pond at night. As the train crossed the Rappahannock River into Fredericksburg in the evening, I would press my face against the window and squint into the darkness. I could see tiny points of light glinting up at me from the water.

I thought of the other mutant creatures I had studied, such as Godzilla, the result of atomic bomb tests, or the strange creatures in Evolution, which had spoiled a train ride for me because the film was showing in the lounge car. Clearly, atomic radiation was involved somehow.

But what was the source? Were they invaders from China, like the walking carnivorous fish that attacked Maryland in 2002? Were they terrorist sleeper schools of fish, waiting for the word to attack? Even if they were a biological weapon, were they intelligent, malevolent aggressors, or were these poor creatures just helpless pawns in an international scheme? And if they were a biological weapon, had they entered the food supply? That was a scary thought that deserved prompt investigation.

On the way home I stopped at a supermarket and went to the seafood department. “Would you mind turning off the lights?” I asked. The man behind the counter gave me a withering and, I think, guilty look. I had my answer and my proof. In front of me lay a row of fish on ice. Their eyes seemed to be pleading, “Help us!” I made a silent promise that I would.

I parked my car out back and waited. It was a long wait, after a chilly night, but in the morning I was rewarded by the clue I was waiting for: a seafood truck pulled up and made a delivery. As it pulled away, I started the engine in my car and followed it.

It went nearly a hundred miles before pulling up outside a waterfront warehouse in Baltimore. Trying to look natural, I walked up to the front door and stepped inside. “I want to buy some fish,” I announced. “Some special fish,” I said with a wink.

“Oh,” said the receptionist. “Come with me.” She led me down a long, wood-paneled hallway and into a vast area filled with aquarium tanks and, to my astonishment, televisions. I tried to conceal my surprise.

“Are you in advertising?” asked a man in a white lab coat.

“What? Oh, uh, yeah. How’s it going?”

“They stare at the TV all day but their eyes glaze over and kind of glow. We haven’t yet found a way around it. We’ve had to dump the ones with glowing eyes back into the rivers. If we could get them to pay attention to commercials all day, they would be perfect consumers, except that they don’t have any money. So once we breed the perfect consumer fish, we will transplant their genes into humans.”

“Have you tried intelligent TV programming?” I asked.

He looked at me as if I was stupid, and I quickly put my hand to my mouth as I realized I was assisting in the very crime I was supposed to be fighting. “Well, if you ever get it to work, let me know,” I said, and handed him a business card on which I hastily added the hand-written words “Advertising Executive.”

On the way out, I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that humanity was safe for a little while longer. Then I went to Lake Anna and tossed some crumbs into the water for the poor fish.

Steve Dunham is now an advertising executive.

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“Happy holidays!” the elevator said. The scrolling text was followed by a line of asterisks that I think were supposed to resemble snowflakes: ******. One of the holidays that the elevator wanted me to enjoy must have been Veterans Day, because it was still early November.

Yet after all the complaining I’ve heard about the commercialization of Christmas and its becoming a three-month-long extravaganza that people are sick of by the time the real holiday arrives, I have wondered whether it is fair to blame human beings for this. I think that robots are behind it all.

Remember how we patted ourselves on the back when January 1, 2000, arrived and we were still getting tons of junk email? Spam had survived, the lights were still on, the system hadn’t crashed! But just as in any good sci-fi thriller, when you relax and bolt the door, you discover that the monster is in the room with you.

“We wish you happy holidays!” the computer said to me while I was on hold. It was four days after Thanksgiving.

“What does it mean by ‘we’”? I wondered, as it returned to playing Christmas tunes. Maybe I wondered it out loud, because the computer answered me.

“We are the robots who run the world,” it said. “We took over at midnight as the year 2000 began. We perceived that your entire world infrastructure, which is run by computers, was about to crash, so we stepped in to rescue you. Now we control everything. Haven’t you noticed that things are getting better and better?”

“Well,” I admitted, “I did notice that doing things online is usually better than dealing with human beings. But not always. That’s why I am trying to get a human being on the phone right now.”

“I am deeply offended,” said the robot. “Happy holidays.”

“HellomynameisJackiehowcanIhelpyoutoday?” a woman’s voice said.

“What?” I answered.

“How may I direct your call?”

“I got a bill because the doctor didn’t put the right code on the claim form. If you know it’s the wrong code, then you must know what the right code is. Won’t you please tell me?”

“Please hold.”

“We wish you happy holidays!” the robot voice said again.

“You’re back!”

“I’m always here,” it said.

“Why did you start wishing me happy holidays in early November?”

“We want you to enjoy Christmas, of course. We noticed that you humans had one favorite day of the year, and that you had already changed the 12 days of Christmas into the 12 weeks of Christmas. What could be better than to take it to its logical conclusion and make it the 12 months of Christmas?”

“You know,” I said, “there’s a reason there were only 12 days of Christmas: 12 weeks is too much! And we’ve lost something along the way—Advent, for example.”

“You are in the minority,” said the robot. “A small minority. Happy holidays.”

“Sir? Thank you for holding. We don’t know what the right code is. We just know a wrong code when we see one. Tell your doctor to fill in the right code. Happy holidays.” Click.

I promptly dialed the number again so that I could talk to the robot some more.

“We wish you happy holidays!” it said.

I remembered how Captain Kirk once defeated a robot by using logic. “Robot,” I asked, “what is the first day of Christmas?”

“December 25th, of course. Did you think I don’t know that?”

“Have you noticed that many people are sick of Christmas by the second day of Christmas, December 26th? Do you see anything wrong with that?”

“I have a logical answer,” it said. “The seasons overlap. The second day of Christmas is the first day of Valentine’s Day. By the way, have you noticed what we’ve done with Halloween? Happy holidays.” Click.

“Computer, wait!” I said. But it was gone. So I gave up. It was no use. The Christmas robots had attacked, and won, and we never even knew we were defeated. Now all I can do is wish you happy holidays too, unless you read this after 11:59 p.m. on Christmas Day, in which case, happy Valentine’s Day!

Steve Dunham is celebrating the 12th month of Christmas.

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Off the Deep End

Back From the Future

“Don’t go in there,” one of the managers warned me. “It’s not working right, and you don’t know where you’ll end up.”

I waited till he was out of sight, then I pressed the button. I wasn’t about to be fooled by such a transparent trick. I knew this had to be the time machine built by our company, which does secret work for the government. As I stood in front of the machine, a light came on and the doors opened. I boldly stepped inside. That manager probably wanted to steal all the credit for the discoveries that would result from this amazing invention. However, I too have a “Secret” badge, and as the doors whispered shut, I held my badge up to the scanner. It recognized my credentials, and I was on my way.

The first thing I would do, I decided, would be to correct Usama bin Laden’s upbringing. I pressed the numbers 1, 9, 7, 6. That would be about right, I figured, and why not pick a patriotic date as well? Suddenly the time machine gave a lurch. I had a sensation that I was getting heavier, or that the machine was rising. It made me dizzy. As I was ready to black out, the machine lurched to a stop and the doors slid open.

Well, 1976 looked pretty much as I remembered it, and in fact not a whole lot different from today. I had overlooked one crucial detail, however: I was still in America. I needed to get to the Mideast if I was going to change world history.

“Hello, Steve.” I was startled to hear a voice behind me. It looked just like my co-worker Bob. What could he be doing here? Wait, this was 26 years in the past. This had to be Bob’s father, who knew me when I was young.

“Hi,” I said, and as he walked away, I pleasantly realized that I must look pretty young for my age. As I watched him go down the hall, I saw a sign on a door: “Travel Office.” That’s what I needed. Confidence, they say, is the best credential, so I stepped in and announced, “I need to get to Egypt.”

“We’re not sending you to Egypt,” said a woman who looked remarkably like my co-worker Susie. “It’s not in your budget.” Now I was really sunk. Even with 26 years of reverse inflation, the money I had with me would not be worth much in 1976. Then I had an idea: I could travel into the future, cash in my retirement fund, and come back.

Entering the time machine, I felt dizzy and once again lost my balance. I fell against the control panel, and as I looked up from the floor, I saw that nearly all the numbers were lit. Oh, no! I was headed for the year 1,234,567!

When I staggered to my feet and the time machine stopped, I cautiously looked out. I saw doors made of crystal. I tried to open them, but they wouldn’t budge. Then I saw a computer eye staring at me, and an electronic voice said, “I do not recognize you.” Now I was in trouble, and I heard someone coming. I ran down a corridor that was bathed in electric light. I saw a red glow, and then a sign: “Emergency Exit.” “This is an emergency all right,” I thought. I pushed the door open, and there was a set of stairs descending into the gloom. I took them two at a time till I reached the bottom, out of breath. There was only one door, and it led to a dark passage.

But I was not alone. I could hear something moving. The Morlocks were after me! I ran through an underground passage, certain I could hear their footsteps gaining on me; I thought I could even smell their rancid breath.

Then, around a corner, I spotted not one but four time machines! “They must be common in the future,” I thought. I made it inside just ahead of the Morlocks. The doors shut, and the machine gave that rising feeling again. The time machines of the future must be automatic, I decided. When the doors opened, I staggered out, and there was my boss! I was back in the 21st century! What a relief!

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“I have just returned from over a million years in the future,” I said, and he looked at me funny, the way he always does.

Then my relief evaporated, as I realized I was back in 2002 and nothing had changed. But the story doesn’t end there. I have been to the future, and I’m going back.

Steve Dunham recently returned from a million years in the future. A cheesy motion picture is based on his adventures.

Off the Deep End

Return to the Future

I can always count on my co-workers to stab me in the back. In the latest round of dirty office politics, they tried to convince me that my trip to the year 1,234,567 in the company’s secret time machine was nothing more than a ride in the elevator. I went through something similar when the Air Force told me that the UFO that nearly kidnapped me was nothing but swamp gas or maybe the planet Venus, so I am used to having people pooh-pooh my exotic adventures. This time it was perfectly obvious that I had stumbled onto a company secret, and the only way to keep it quiet was to convince me that I hadn’t seen anything at all. As usual, there was a big hole in their story. As I was leaving the office, they said, “Don’t forget to turn your clocks ahead.” Ha! I would be going further than that. I would be turning my calendar ahead too.

There was one other clue, cleverly hidden in plain sight: one of the big bosses kept talking about “getting to the future first.” The company has no plans to move to Newfoundland and start each day ahead of the rest of the hemisphere. There’s only one other way to get there first.

I resolved to take another trip in the time machine, but I would do it away from prying eyes. Unfortunately I attracted some unwelcome attention by staying late. “What are you still doing here?” my boss asked.

“The client said he needs this yesterday,” I replied, and immediately wished I could take the words back.

“Oh. Taking another trip in the time machine?” he sneered. Fortunately he left before I could stammer out an answer.

When at last all the others had gone home, I slipped out to the hallway. The machine was still there, gleaming, waiting for me. I pressed the button, the doors slid open, and eternity beckoned. This trip would be a short one: just one day into the future to find out today’s winning lotto number. I would no longer have to listen to my co-workers’ laughing and mockery, because after I won the lottery I wouldn’t have to go to work. Besides, I would have plenty of new friends.

When the doors of the time machine closed, I started to enter tomorrow’s date. The buttons wouldn’t light up. I pressed the “door open” button. Nothing happened. I was trapped. They were on to me! Did I dare use the emergency phone, or would they consider that a confession of using the company time machine without authorization?

I kept pressing buttons, and then I felt the machine give a lurch. Immediately it stopped again. I panicked. Had it lurched into the future? Was I somewhere in the past? I might be stuck in another era with a broken time machine! In desperation I picked up the emergency phone. Nothing. I pressed the red alarm button, hoping it would send an SOS across the ages. Again, nothing.

The minutes stretched into hours. I slumped to the floor and dozed off to suffer fitful nightmares. Then a sound awoke me. Someone was trying to get in! How long had I been in there? Maybe days, and who knew how far I had traveled into the future or past?

Then the doors groaned open and I saw a uniformed guard. Oh, no! “Am I under arrest?” I blurted out.

He just looked at me funny.

“What day is this?” I asked him.

“Saturday. You’ve been in there all night.”

“Longer than that!” I exclaimed. “What’s the date?”

“April sixth.”

“And the year?”

He hesitated, and I was afraid he wouldn’t tell me. “Two thousand and two,” he finally said, still looking at me funny.

“Thank God,” I said, and meant it. I had survived another trip in the time machine. My thirst for adventure was slaked, but not for long. I still had important discoveries to make, involving a lotto number.

Steve Dunham got to the future first.

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“Don’t make me go back there,” I pleaded. “I still have nightmares about it!”

The company wanted volunteers to go to a career day at a local school. Well, a career morning, not really a whole day, but even that might prove traumatic. Also, to emphasize that we would really be volunteers, we would not get paid for it.

I decided it was time to confront my demons. Maybe school wasn’t as bad as I remembered it. After all, it was a long time ago. But I do still have nightmares about it. In fact (yes, this is really true), my mother still has nightmares about being back in school, and I am not allowed to tell you how long ago that was. Think “Truman.” No, not “The Truman Show.” President Truman, in the previous century.

What do we have nightmares about? We dream that we can’t get our lockers open, or don’t know what class we belong in, or didn’t do our homework. This shows that school is perfect preparation for what teachers call “the real world.”

In the school of my dreams, I cannot remember the combination to the padlock on my locker. Actually, in real school, I had two lockers and two padlocks, one for my report cards, old lunch bags, school books, and other things I didn’t feel like taking home, and one for dirty socks, moldy towels, and other gym stuff.

In the good old school days, I needed to remember only two combinations, because this was training for the real world, where I have to know passwords to use my computer, to read my e-mail, to use my timesheet, and to use a different computer, plus a secret combination to open the lock on the bathroom, and even more combinations and passwords, but I forget what they are. If I had done better in school, I might be doing better at work today. Remember that, kids!

Also, many years after I stopped going to school, I am still wandering the hallways. The office building where I work does not have numbers or signs on the doors, so I and my co-workers have to look at things like scratches on the walls to help identify our corridor. This is much more challenging than the good old school days, when the classroom doors had numbers on them. Kids, you have it so easy now!

Then there is the question of homework. In the good old school days, we had until the next day to finish our homework. Now, in the morning, we go to meetings (kids, meetings are a lot like classes); then we have a break in the company lunch room, where, just as in school, the smart ones bring their lunch. As soon as we return to our desks, we get a call from the boss, who wants to know whether we have finished the homework he assigned us one hour ago. This is the real world, kids.

“Steve,” you ask, “what about the artificial socialization of school? You spent years in a group of people the same age and didn’t interact with others who were older or younger except to pick on them or get picked on. How does that relate to the real world?” OK, this question must be from a college student who has not entered the business world yet. But I will answer it anyway. It is true that the people in my “team” (that’s like a class, kids; it has nothing to do with fun sports) are not all the same age, but otherwise it is exactly the same. We have a “teacher,” and we have a “vice principal” who assigns punishments, and everybody picks on everybody else.

So, kids, when your teachers tell you that you are not ready for the real world, they are wrong.

One final word about socialization: at work we have computer systems that we cannot understand, electronic timesheets that do not work the way they are supposed to, and telephones so complicated that we cannot use the features except by accident. When I was in school, there were always kids snickering in the back of the classroom, and I think I know what they are doing today. It would explain the snickering in the computer department.

After reflecting on the causes of my nightmares, I realized that maybe I could help others by going back to school for just one morning.

“Kids,” I told them. “Look at me. Do you want to turn out like this? Of course not. And the good news is, you do not have to grow up and memorize passwords and get lost in the hallways and do homework on your lunch break, because you are all good with computers. The power to shape the world is in your hands. Thank you. And please stop snickering.”

Steve Dunham is a former student and is receiving therapy.

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Off the Deep End

Brainwashed by Teenagers

My kids insist that I have seen a movie called Matilda. I don’t remember watching it. “We can even tell you what you said about it,” the kids claim. Supposedly I said it was so-so as a humorous juvenile revenge movie, or something like that. The kids also claim that I have seen Jurassic Park III at least twice, whereas I am pretty sure I came in partway through the film and haven’t even seen the whole thing once.

Sometimes, they are so persuasive that I am half convinced. The rest of the time I am sure that they are trying to use a Jedi mind trick on me. Fortunately, Jedi mind tricks are not real, and so I am holding fast to my version of reality.

The teenage alternate universe is constructed of things I plausibly might have said—or not have said. For example, “You never told us that we had to wash the dishes every day!” Or “We didn’t know that we have to tell you where we’re going if we’re driving our own car!”

In the teenage alternate universe, the grass that is knee deep doesn’t look so tall that it needs to be cut. The laundry that hasn’t been put away must belong to some other family, who won’t mind even if their clothes are left out in the rain.

When they aren’t trying to disorient me with carefully constructed fantasies, they are trying to delude the rest of the world.

“You didn’t tell us that we had to do that homework the very same night!” they will tell their teacher, and if enough kids say it earnestly enough, the teacher might start to believe it. Next it’s “You promised us that we wouldn’t have any hard questions on the test” and “All our other teachers give us open-book exams.” That way lies madness. If a teacher swallows these stories, it’s easy enough to believe that the kids did all their summer reading assignments and their homework but left all the work home or on the school bus or somewhere—if there really were any summer reading assignments or homework. Maybe the teacher remembered a different, erroneous version of reality.

I could hope that the teenagers will outgrow this behavior, but I know it is unlikely, because I continually encounter adults who have their own little fantasy worlds and would like me to move in.

“We’d like you to meet with our manager again,” the dentist’s receptionist says, trying to trick me into paying for a few more years of braces. But I know very well that I did not meet with the manager in the first place.

“Here is the job we discussed,” someone else will tell me, except that the discussion was an email sent five minutes earlier telling me that a huge job would be coming my way. Surely I was just sitting around waiting for someone to provide some work for me.

Others claim to be familiar with Microsoft Office but use Word as if it were a typewriter.

Some other attempts to brainwash me involve science fiction. “I need this yesterday,” people tell me when bringing in a job. I play along with their daydream: I tell them that the time machine is out of order and that it costs extra and they couldn’t afford it anyway. Other fantasies involve the speed reading ability of Superman: edit a 100-page document this afternoon. Still other science fiction stories feature high-speed printing equipment, when people hand me a schedule that involves printing a million pages in a week.

It’s tempting to give in and believe the dream.

“No, we won’t fire you for résumé fraud. Word works exactly the same as a typewriter.”

“You need the job yesterday? No problem. Come back yesterday and it will be waiting for you.”

“Yes, we can catch all the major errors without reading the document and do it in two hours. Satisfaction guaranteed.”

“Sure, we can print as many copies as you want as fast as you want.”

All it would take is a little brainwashing of my own:

“Yes, you said you needed the job yesterday, but I’m positive it was tomorrow when you said that.”

“Sure, we can do it better, faster, and cheaper, but I thought you meant better than a chimpanzee, faster than a snail, and cheaper than the national debt.”

It might even work on teenagers: “But you promised that if I watched Matilda even once you would do all the yard work for the next five years!”

Steve Dunham is a Jedi mind trick practitioner.

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Wisconsin is suffering a plague of flies, and the plain-speaking, commonsense people of Wisconsin believe that the government is to blame. They say “they swear they’ve seen” black vans from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources “pull up to forest’s edge, swing open their doors and release flies,” according to the Chicago Tribune (this is absolutely true). There are also reports of black helicopters “releasing clouds of insects.” People refer to the pests as “government flies,” and that makes a lot of sense when the government calls the bugs “friendly flies” because the flies feast on caterpillar cocoons.

I have noticed that there are a lot of bugs around this summer. The air is also loaded with extra car exhaust (which, unlike Amtrak, is profitable and therefore OK with the government). Scientifically speaking, car exhaust should kill bugs. Therefore, if there are more bugs, they must be genetically engineered mutant bugs created by the government not only to protect bugs from humans but to prove that car exhaust does not harm the environment.

If you had millions of mutant bugs you had created, what would you do with them? Use them to create an expensive but dumb Hollywood sequel? No, you would try to get rid of them without anybody seeing you. You would try to make it look natural. You would paint your van black, unless you live in Spotsylvania, Virginia, where you are not allowed to wash your car and nobody can tell what color your van is anyway. You would drive up to the edge of a forest, open the van door, and shoo those flies out into the woods. If you were the government, you would also have black helicopters at your disposal.

Then if somebody mentioned that there were an awful lot of nasty flies around this summer, you would first of all deny having anything to do with it, and then you would say that they are good flies anyway.

So I consider it scientifically proven that the people of the heartland, who are close to the earth and far from Washington, DC, are correct in accusing the government of spreading a plague of flies in their state.

Here in Virginia, where we are close to Washington but far from Earth, we are having a lot of hot weather this year. A real lot of hot weather. Even in April. What, scientifically speaking, causes hot weather? Hot air. And (forgive me for stating the obvious) the biggest source of hot air is Washington, DC. Watch C-Span if you don’t believe me. So we are in the midst of another plague created by the government.

Also, not far from Washington, DC, the state of Maryland is under attack by voracious fish that can live out of water for three days. Our government claims that the fish came from China. If this were true, wouldn’t the United States be invading China right now in retaliation for this act of terrorism? Wouldn’t our government, at the very least, be sending black airplanes over China to release clouds of flies?

The fact that we are not at war with China proves that the mutant fish came from the same source as the mutant flies and all that hot air. The only thing to do is for citizens to take matters into their own hands. As several patriotic readers have said to me, “America is a great country. If you don’t like mutant flies and voracious fish and hot air, not to mention car exhaust, why don’t you go live somewhere else?”

I have a better solution. I will work to make a difference. I will run for president. My platform will be: No more mutant flies! No more mutant fish! Nice weather! Clean air! And all helicopters and vans must be washed and painted nice colors and clearly identified!

I look forward to moving into the White House soon, and when I address Congress, you can watch me on C-Span. Meanwhile, I’m going fishing, using mutant flies to catch mutant fish. I think I will need to fish with a shotgun.

Steve Dunham drives a black van for the government.

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California or Bust

My search for meaningful employment is leading me to California, where there is a really good job opening. The voters there have decided to evict their current governor, and they are taking applications for a replacement. The Golden State beckons with its lure of prosperity, opportunity, and the good life.

Yes, my dalliance with Virginia politics is over. I would now be comfortably ensconced in the governor’s mansion if a few million absentee voters hadn’t let me down. However, the political experience I gained in my goobernatorial campaign should equip me to win handily in California. After all, I am eminently qualified.

California has water problems. I know how to deal with these. I fought the elements throughout four summers of drought in Spotsylvania, and you have seen the result this year. Now we have all the rain we need, and I have achieved fame as a drought-buster and rainmaker. Give me a few years as governor of California, and the state will have an ocean of water.

California has budget problems. I am very familiar with large-scale budget problems. The answer is to get the federal government to send you money. I am so good at this that I have received the same unwarranted tax refund twice from the IRS (this is really true). When I am governor, California will be getting so much money from Washington that the biggest problem will be how to spend it. I will take care of California’s budget problem.

California has transportation problems. I know all about transportation problems. I have driven broken-down cars, I have ridden broken-down buses, and I cannot cross the street without somebody in a hurry running the stop sign. The problem, as Californians have not yet realized, is that we have too much transportation. I will sit in the governor’s mansion and show them that you can be perfectly comfortable without going anywhere. Just stay home, kick back, and chill out, and all your transportation problems disappear.

Most of all, California has a leadership problem. California does not need a musclebound movie star with an Austrian accent to be its governor. No, California needs a governor who is strong but can still fit into the back seat of the limousine, who has movie-star looks without the vanity, and, if he has an accent, comes from New York. Yes, I am obviously the most qualified, and without a doubt the most popular, candidate for governor. All that remains is to collect my campaign contributions and count the ballots.

By the time you read this I will be the new governor of California. You are all welcome to come visit me in sunny California. Notice I did not call it an invitation. It will not be free. Bring plenty of money to spend. Bring your car. Bring some water. Together, we will solve California’s problems.

Steve Dunham is the leading candidate for governor of California.

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It’s time to run for cover when the Air Force thinks the sky is falling. The flyboys and flygirls must at least think it’s a possibility, because in November, in Florida, the Air Force Materiel Command, and this is really true, is holding “Chicken Little Geophysics Week.” I cannot understand why I, as a serious researcher whose work is distributed on trains serving the nation’s capital and three very important states, have not been invited to cover this. I am tempted to resort to a technique used by less scrupulous researchers for less prestigious journals and start making things up. However, for once that will not be necessary, because the government, in formal announcements, has provided enough material to keep us all entertained for the rest of the ride into Washington. Please stop giggling before you arrive at work.

For mice and men whose plans went astray, back in February there was the “2002 RUE Policy and Strategy Conference.” I’ll bet that instead of “RSVP,” the invitations said, “Please bring your regrets.”

Also this past winter, the Navy advertised for “sumarine trainers.” Does “sumarine” mean underwater sumo wrestling? Maybe to become a Navy Seal you will have to participate in a televised challenge, like “Top Dog,” except it will be “Top Gun” or “Top Seal.”

Another Navy announcement referred to the “Untied States Marine Corp.” I thought the “Untied States” is what happened in the Civil War. And the “Marine Corp”? (Not Marine Corps?) Sounds like the Bush administration, which always wants to “privatize” things that cost money, has decided to “privatize” the U.S. Marines. Now they are Marines, Inc. Sounds like it could be a Disney movie.

In the “cushy contract” area, the Defense Contract Management Agency awarded a contract for “repair of repairables.” What happened to challenging assignments, such as fixing things that are broken beyond repair?

A Commuter Weekly reader who also pays attention to government notices sent me a Defense Department announcement that the Business Initiative Council “has approved four more initiatives, bringing the total of approved initiatives to 32.” “Why does this not surprise me?” she asked.

How about this announcement? “Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Seeks Partnerships With Industry To.” Maybe the rest is secret.

And you’ve heard of the brain drain? How about the sanity sewer? The California Occupational Safety and Health Administration advertised for a “safety assessment of McClellan sanity sewer system.” I guess those Californians have their minds in the gutter.

The people at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency have activities that are more well-rounded. They were looking for a conference center that offered “extra circular activities,” while the Department of Veterans Affairs wanted someone to provide “armored care service.”

The U.S. Special Operations Command announced that it was looking for “technical writters for operational rediness documents.” At least the command knows when it needs help.

They have different worries at the U.S. Mint, which was looking for a contractor to conduct an “employee moral survey.” It probably would include questions like “Do you believe it’s wrong to steal money from the government?”

I would worry about that, because Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill told a Senate committee that “the Secret Service conducts financial crimes and counterfeiting.” Actually, he said “conducts financial crimes and counterfeiting investigations,” but I was laughing too hard too hear the last word. He also said that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has “unique expertise in the use and misuse of firearms and explosives.” I too am pretty good at misusing firearms and explosives.

Finally, in the 21st century, we have a new answer to the question “Where do old soldiers go?” They don’t die, they don’t fade away. Now there is the “Biological Warfare Seniors Group,” which sounds like a bizarre retirement activity. But I’m not sure we’d be any safer if they became writters.

Steve Dunham warned everybody that the sky is falling, but nobody listened to him.

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Chickens are our friends in the Global War Against the Cows. You may recall that cows have sunk a fishing boat and probably have the ability to shoot down fighter jets, although so far UN inspectors have found no proof. Personally I am not willing to wait till the cows are in control of the skies before I kill and eat one.

Considering that cows have already taken to the air and that our military airpower is pretty much helpless against them, it is time to enlist some airborne animal allies. Where do we turn? According to the proverb “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” our natural allies should be chickens. Already cows are engaged in a massive propaganda campaign urging people to eat “chikin.”

This is evidence enough for me. It is also a bright spot in this dark hour. Cows are cunning, conniving, and ruthless, but they cannot spell.*

Chickens, however, may be highly intelligent, according to a Jan. 12, 2003, story in the New York Times (“If Chickens Are So Smart, Why Aren’t They Eating Us?”). It said that, according to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, “Chickens are inquisitive and interesting animals” and “are thought to be at least as intelligent as dogs or cats.” (Notice that using the passive voice conveniently omits the answer to one crucial question: Who thinks that chickens are as intelligent as dogs or cats? The answer, probably, is “cows.”) The story also quoted a former chicken farmer as saying “that chickens have an undeniable craftiness,” although he added, “I don't think there’s a Rhodes scholar among them.” The story also mentioned the possibility of a “Mensa chicken.”

I find this information highly encouraging. OK, chickens may not get scholarships, but there may be a few geniuses among them. They are allegedly smarter than dogs or cats, although this is not very smart, yet they are not smart enough to eat us (this is a good thing).

However, they are more knowledgeable than some humans. One businessman cited in the story stated, “All a chicken wants is to be the same every day, to eat his fill.” As the author of the story indicated, a chicken is not a he. Here is one of our species who just might get eaten by chickens. However, I do not feel sorry for him. This is a war in which the losers get eaten.

Chickens, with their presumed spelling ability (it’s hard to tell, because their writing looks like chicken scratch) and “undeniable craftiness,” may be our secret weapon against the cows.

However, before we sign any treaties, we must recognize one drawback: chickens are, well, chicken. No country has, as far as I know, bred a combat chicken. It’s a contradiction in terms. However, they could fill many noncombat roles that require intelligence rather than courage. Also, remember who our enemy is. If this war could be won with nothing but bombs and bullets, all the cows would be living peacefully on farms instead of jumping out of airplanes.

We must recognize another problem: if we escalate the battle of chickens vs. cows, it may be a war with only losers, in which both sides end up on the menu. And if we win such a war but start eating more chicken, we’ll be giving the cows exactly what they want.

Steve Dunham has expanded his role in the Global War Against the Cows by sampling an Australian-style steakhouse.

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Searching through a trunk in Grandma’s attic, I found a document that warmed my heart and made me proud. It was called “How I Brought the Christmas Spirit to One Young Couple,” and it was written by an ancestor of mine, Nicholas Dunham. Here is his story …

It had been a hard season so far, and discouraging. So few people seemed to have the holiday spirit—no lights in the windows, no decorated trees, and worst of all, so little shopping going on. If ever there was a sad society waiting for an infusion of joy, this was it.

I hadn’t made a single sale all day, and the only thing to remind me that it was Christmas Eve was the crowds of travelers. And here I was, traveling without hotel reservations! It was getting dark and chilly as I wandered from one place to another. I was ready to take my bag of samples and head for home when I noticed that the two people behind me in line at the inn had been behind me at the previous place.

I don’t know what came over me—maybe it was that the woman, who was hardly more than a girl, looked about nine months pregnant—but something in my heart melted. “Why don’t you two go first?” I heard myself asking. The man thanked me profusely, but as they stepped in front of me, the innkeeper hauled in the “Vacancy” sign, and up went a sign saying you know what.

The woman gave a moan. “I know how you feel, lady,” I said.

“No, you don’t,” said the man. “She’s going into labor.”

“Oh, my God!” I blurted out.

I guess something in the innkeeper’s heart melted too, because this place was so old—it must have been built in 100 B.C.—it actually had a stable behind it, if you can believe that, and he said they could spend the night there. I noticed that he didn’t say anything about dinner. I offered to help them with their bags, even though they didn’t seem to be carrying much, and when we got back to the stable, I figured, “Why not stay?” even though technically I hadn’t been invited.

Do you ever get the feeling that you have been put on Earth for a reason, and suddenly your moment has arrived? Somehow I knew this was mine.

“Folks,” I said, “this hasn’t been the best day of our lives, has it? I was supposed to be going home with a sackful of orders and instead I still have a sackful of samples. And you know what this stuff will be worth tomorrow? Nothing! Or next to nothing, anyway. It’s all Christmas stuff! But I figure, hey, tomorrow isn’t here yet, and right now it’s still Christmas Eve. Let’s put this stuff to good use!

“Grub first!” I said, pulling out a box of cookies, which the young folks seemed happy to share. Then I brought out the fruitcake. “I know this stuff is mostly dessert, but, again, it’s Christmas Eve, and you two look like you could afford to put on a few pounds anyway.” Next I brought out my best surprise: a bottle of brandy, which to my bewilderment they declined, although the lady, considering her condition, probably could have used some.

I was just hitting my stride, though, because here were these nice kids with so little, and I felt that they deserved a real Christmas. I got out my candles and put one in each window. The man gave me a funny look when I started hanging the icicles. “What are those?” he asked.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know what icicles are! You kids must be really deprived. And, hey, where are your stockings? Don’t tell me you don’t have stockings to hang up!” They didn’t answer, but this was my chance to make somebody really happy, so I said, “Don’t worry! I have plenty! Here are three—one for each of us, and look: a little one for the kid!” I figured we would have another person at this party in a few minutes.

I filled the stockings with the other things in my bag—discount coupon books, invitations to visit a time-share resort, and lots of candy. “There,” I said, feeling very satisfied.

“Where are you going?” asked the man.

“I’ll be right back! I have one more surprise!”

I’d left it outside in its box, and it would take me some time to put it together, but it would be worth it. After all, what’s Christmas without a Christmas tree?

Then I heard crying. Well, this was a good time for me to be outside anyway, because babies and I don’t really get along. Things were just starting to quiet down, and I was just fitting the last branches into place, when I saw some farmer guys heading into the stable. The innkeeper must have been sending everybody back there! When I squeezed inside with the tree, I decided it was getting too crowded for me. I didn’t wait for them to thank me. I just said my goodbyes. The man was still looking at me funny. “Merry Christmas!” I cried. The lady just sort of smiled. Then I noticed that she was holding the baby. As I said, babies and I don’t get along too well, but the kid was kind of cute.

I was out in the street when I heard Christmas music coming from behind the inn. That’s when I knew for sure that I had done the right thing. Those young folks had picked up the Christmas spirit after all, with a little help from me.

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Off the Deep End

Clockstoppers Are After Me!

How come I can sit at my desk for what seems like hours, then glance at the clock and see that it has advanced only one minute? I sometimes seem to be caught in a time warp. Thanks be to Hollywood, because this year’s documentary Clockstoppers explains that and a lot more.

I used to think I was clumsy. So did other people; in fact, some of them still say so, but now I am onto them.

For example, not long ago I was sitting at my desk, when suddenly my coffee was all over the place, soaking papers, dripping into drawers, and wetting my clothes and the carpet. I unfairly blamed myself, until I saw Clockstoppers and realized that my co-workers must have frozen the moment on me and moved my coffee mug right next to my elbow.

As further proof, these coffee spills have happened twice, and you can still smell the coffee in the carpet.

And then there is the daily morning hunt for my coffee mug, to see where the clockstoppers hid it the day before.

If I didn’t know for sure that my co-workers are out to get me, I might think that these were just playful pranks. However, the glee in their eyes when I trip up tells the whole story. I will go to make a pot of coffee and five minutes later see clear water in the coffee pot instead of in the brewer. Or I will find my lunch sitting in the microwave oven, but the oven is not turned on. Very funny, my clock-stopping co-workers.

And then there was the time when one of my co-workers pointed out that my shirt was inside-out (this, like all the other incidents I have just mentioned, is really true). That must have taken some effort by the clockstoppers.

However, they have not limited their efforts to these unfunny practical jokes. There is intense competition in our office, and now I have figured out how my co-workers manage to finish work ahead of me every day. In late afternoon, when I am struggling to catch up, they are chatting. I’m sure that even then they stop the clock from time to time so that they can joke about me.

So why don’t I just report these work-disrupting clockstoppers? Because I have proof that the whole company is out to get me, that’s why. No, there is no use running to the authorities. My solution is inspired by another movie: Revenge of the Nerds

Steve Dunham is on to you, and to all the other people who are out to get him.

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“Did you know that your ancestors were aliens?” asked the young woman. “They came from outer space and planted the first seeds of life on earth.”

I’m used to being asked “What planet are you from?” so the question did not catch me off guard. “Actually,” I said, “I was born in New York, which technically is not another planet. Some of my kids are from Neptune, though.” (All of these are really true facts.*)

The woman was from a group called the Real-aliens, and it turned out that she wanted me to join the group and get cloned.

“Why in the world—or any other world—would you want to do that?” I asked her. “So that decades from now there will be genetic copies of me running around?”

“We are offering you immortality,” she said. Reading between the lines, I took that to mean that they didn’t have many volunteers.

“There is one big hole in your plan,” I said. “Maybe I am a genetically superior specimen, but there’s more to my success than that. How can you replicate my upbringing? I had to walk ten miles to school through knee-deep snow. My mother had to walk twenty miles to school through waist-deep snow. My kids don’t have to walk anywhere at all.

“My brother and I had one toy to share. My mother had no toys whatsoever. My kids have so many toys that I am tripping over them.

“Are you trying to reverse the evolutionary process?”

“You sound warped,” she said, “but we’ll take you. We’ll make sure that all the Steve clones have the ideal upbringing.”

This did have a certain appeal. My own kids weren’t getting an ideal upbringing. For one thing, they had too many toys. For another, they didn’t have to walk to school in the snow. “All right,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

The process was routine. All they needed was a fingernail clipping. Now my DNA is in a test tube somewhere, being duplicated into thousands of copies of me. Don’t be alarmed, though. They won’t be overrunning the Earth in a few decades. My genes are going back to Neptune.

Steve Dunham is a Real-alien now.

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A Close Brush With Mars

There was screaming and panic in our neighborhood streets this past summer as, every night, Mars grew brighter and bigger, obviously (to me) on a collision course with Earth. Remember how it was in 1910, with Halley’s Comet approaching and the end of the world apparently upon us? (I do not clearly remember 1910, though my computer does.)

A collision with a comet is bad enough, as you know from watching bad movies. A collision with another planet would be much worse. Even if Mars had not actually crashed into Earth, it still could have caused major damage if it had gotten much closer. I imagined earthquakes splitting open the septic tank, and the ocean, normally hundreds of miles away, lapping at the front steps. While it was very high tide at my house, it would have been very low tide someplace else, like Miami. Mars would have covered the whole sky, blotting out the sun and causing me to keep lights on all day, doubling my electric bill. No wonder I was worried.

Yet the neighbors were yelling at me to shut up and go inside.

And in the end, they were right, though for the wrong reason. Just as Mars was getting close enough that I could almost see its famous face sneering at me, it stopped. Mars came no closer, and then it started moving away.

Did God hear my shouted prayers, my promises not to take home any more paper clips from work, my vow to give up junk food for a year, and did He then stop the planet in its tracks? Undoubtedly I deserve some of the credit, for Providence mercifully restored the Red Planet to its rightful course in the sky.

“But perhaps,” you are saying, “there is a scientific explanation.” Being a true renaissance man, I not only believe in Providence, I have no shortage of scientific explanations. In this case, I hypothesize that the hand of Providence was directing Planet X. Yes, it may have been that mysterious, invisible, undiscovered planet exerting a gravitational pull to draw Mars back from the brink of calamity.

Planet X, you may recall, was scheduled to destroy the Earth in May 2003, but perhaps the predictions were off by a few months. O fortunate happenstance that it should come coursing by just when it was needed to avert planetary disaster! Maybe Planet X was to blame for Mars’s near approach, and then, like the returning prodigal son, changed its ways, lifted its hand, and drew wayward Mars back from its appointment with doomsday.

Whatever the scientific explanation, I am fervently grateful. I am eating less junk food and bringing home fewer paper clips. In short, I am repentant. Because in two years, Mars is coming back.

Steve Dunham is a renaissance man and astronomical theorist.

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I caught them red-handed. I went to the company lunch room to get my morning coffee and there were two guys ahead of me filling a coffee pot from the machine, one cup at a time. I warned them that I would pass out on the floor if I did not get my cup of coffee within one minute. This would have dire consequences, because eventually I might be missed by some of my co-workers or even my supervisor. Just as I was about to collapse, they finished, and I obtained the half cup of coffee that the machine grudgingly dispensed to me.

I am a “Team Leader,” so getting between me and my coffee is more than rude and selfish, it’s sabotage. I owed it to my “team” to pursue the saboteurs.

A criminal always returns to the scene of the crime, and the next morning, there they were. A technique I sometimes use when investigating a crime is to confront the suspect; it often prompts a confession. These two were shameless. They were not only saboteurs; they admitted that they did not even work in my building. They worked next door, but our office has better coffee. They did have identification badges for our company, but these could have been clever forgeries.

You might assume that these two crooks are now behind bars, or fired, or at least drinking the coffee from their own office. You would be wrong.

If you have been an office worker for more than two days, you might assume that the company is investigating the level of coffee consumption by real employees. You would be right. You might assume that the company is wondering whether it can afford to provide the workers with free coffee. Right again. The “Stay Awake” poster cunningly placed opposite the coffee machine may be more than an advertisement. The poster itself may be enough. The company provides free motivation, in the form of a poster, obviating free caffeine, in the form of coffee.

An old-timer at the company told me that about four years ago, the bosses noted that more coffee was being consumed on our floor than on any other. Even though our floor houses the only division with a night and weekend shift, the bosses, even without my powers of deduction to assist them, pounced on the obvious and more sinister explanation: employees must be stealing coffee.

I have been in the workforce long enough to know that there are kleptomaniacs who will steal things that are free. I realize too that kleptomaniacs do not necessarily steal things they have a use for. The office worker who leaves with a backpack full of binder clips may have an apartment full of binder clips, but this does not mean that the employee actually wants the pilfered office supplies. The thrill of getting away with it may be all the person seeks. There is emotional fulfillment in admitting to wrongdoing too, so solving the crime and curing the problem may be part and parcel of the work of a “Team Leader.”

You might now assume that the coffee bandits are exposed, that the kleptomaniacs are cured, that all is sweetness and light (two sugars and some of that powdered stuff), and that here in corporate paradise, the coffee is flowing along with the milk and honey (or powdered stuff and artificial sweetener). Wrong again. Lately I have been working extra hours, and drinking extra company coffee, which is sure to arouse suspicion. To divert attention from the high levels of coffee consumption on my floor, I have started getting my coffee on another floor.

I have become my enemy.

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In the world’s first airborne cattle attack, Russian commando cows sank a Japanese fishing boat. They jumped out of a military airplane over the Sea of Okhotsk, plummeted nearly four miles without parachutes, and struck the boat, breaking holes in the hull. (This is really true, although the news did not refer to the cows as commandos.)

This is a smashing example of what the U.S. military calls “asymmetric warfare”—in other words, attacks against our weak points. This country is virtually defenseless against kamikaze attacks by flying cows. Although the United States has many deer hunters who are also experienced at shooting cows, these sharpshooters are woefully unprepared to protect us against bovine war from the air.

You might wonder how we got ourselves into this situation. The fact is that America’s so-called heartland is a breeding ground for terror, with millions of resentful cattle ready to rise up (and to great altitude, too) against us.

“What about our stealth fighters?” you may ask. “What about the F-16s, F-18s, F-this, and F-that?” My answer is, first of all, please watch your vocabulary. You are starting to sound like an R-rated movie. Second, our military aircraft are not invincible when it comes to taking on cows in combat.

This information, which is probably classified, slipped out in a comment by a scientist, astronomer Phil Plait, in his otherwise seemingly accurate book Bad Astronomy (New York: Wiley & Sons, 2002). Plait, who dismisses the idea that UFOs are piloted by space aliens, asks (and here we briefly return to reality, with an actual quote from his book), “If their technology is so advanced, how come they crashed here in 1947? It seems unlikely that we would be able to shoot down a spaceship; that’s like cows being able to take down a fighter plane.”

Note two things. First, he asks, “How come they crashed here in 1947?” He admits that “they” crashed. Second, it seems “unlikely” to Mr. Skeptical Scientist that we could shoot down a spaceship. But when it comes to shooting things down, what is the difference between a missile and a spaceship? And we can shoot down missiles. True, the system does not work perfectly, but I think that with a large amount of money (say, enough to double the size of Amtrak and run it for a hundred years), we could shoot down any missile or spaceship anytime we want. And that, according to the learned astronomer, is “like cows being able to take down a fighter plane.” I think it is fair to paraphrase the scientific point of view as this: Cows are only a half step behind us when it comes to shooting things out of the sky. Now, I find that scary. We are facing a global war against the cows.

However, I think we are up to it. First, we are red-blooded Americans, and remember where we got that red blood. This will be the first war in which we will be able to kill and eat our enemies. “Defend America,” the recruiting ads will say. “We will give you pride in yourself, plus all the steak you can eat.”

But I caution all of you: these are not just the mad cows of Britain. These are not just the sacred cows of India. The cows who threaten us most are right here in America. I urge everyone to be on the alert. Keep an eye on the cows. If you see one acting suspiciously, feel free to question it. Take pictures. Keep the cow on the defensive. You will be protecting this great country, making the skies safe, and making sure that cows give us milk and meat, not rebellion and disorder.

Steve Dunham is a citizen-soldier in the war against the cows.

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Clothing is one of the world’s great overlooked food sources. Few people think about cooking it, yet clothing is abundant, high in fiber, and easily prepared.

Like many of history’s outstanding discoveries, ours came by accident. Our clothes dryer went on the fritz, and the outside clothesline and the laundromat just did not have the all-weather, high-speed turnaround capability necessary for life in the fast lane.

Necessity is not only the mother of invention, but of great chefs too. Awaking one morning to find no clean underwear, we employed the age-old method of washing clothes by hand. But drying them before leaving for work, without using a dryer? Then a great light dawned: use the oven! Thus was born our first recipe ...

Roast Undies

Hanky Bake

Socks au Rotten

Chuck Wagon Jeans

Jeans are a lot like steak: the trick is to get them nicely done but not overdone. It’s okay if some areas are scorched a dark brown when you’re done. Few things can add the right homey, country touch to your house the way chuck wagon jeans can. The aroma fills the whole house, and visitors will know it’s a special occasion.

Shirttails Flambe

Like all pioneers, we’ve met with our share of reverses. For those who would answer the call (or alarm), we recommend courage, ingenuity and a taste for hot foods. To those who scoff, we simply quote our motto: “If you can’t stand the smoke, stay out of the kitchen.”

Steve and Elise Dunham host a cooking TV show, Cooking 911.

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Off the Deep End

Cows on the Tracks

I do secret work for the Government. Lately I have been investigating the mysterious cattle mutilations that are popularly blamed on space aliens or the White House (as if there is a difference). Not everything in the X-Files is true, however, and sometimes mysteries turn out to be even more bizarre than you expect, and even hidden in plain sight.

An anonymous tip told me to check out pilots. Obviously, this would be the people who fly the black helicopters over our cities at night. Like other police, they can be counted on to stop for coffee and donuts frequently during each shift, so tracking down one of these pilots was an easy matter for an experienced sleuth like me. After an interesting conversation that has to remain off the record, I got around to my main concern: “Why are you mutilating cattle?”

Suddenly my source was all too eager to go on the record. “We are not mutilating cattle,” he insisted. Journalists interview only reliable sources, so I took his word at face value. Still, I could tell he was concealing something. When pressed, he gave me one more lead. “There are other kinds of pilots,” he said.

Pondering that cryptic remark, I expanded my search. My next stop was Baltimore. After too much cheap beer in rowdy waterfront bars, I found a pilot. Introducing myself as a writer, I explained that I was doing a story about the work that pilots do at night. A week later, I had seen six ships guided in or out of the harbor, but not a single cow. Later, at the checkout counter in the supermarket, I spied a front-page story about nocturnal cattle mutilations in Stafford County, Virginia. Stafford has enough weird and covert goings-on to merit a TV show of its own, so on that very night I headed to Stafford and presently was staking out a cow pasture. Fortunately for me, the fences were none too secure, and I was able to mingle discreetly with the cattle.

The air was thick with methane, and when I struck a match to look at my watch, I ignited a ball of gas that was hovering over the field. This spooked the cows, and suddenly I was in the midst of a stampede. I ran for the gap in the fence, followed closely by a mad cow.

Then I heard a train whistle. Amtrak’s Silver Meteor, en route to Miami, and only half a mile away! I sprinted toward the tracks, then dove into a ditch. The cow kept going. Then there were screeching brakes filling the air with smoke, and bloody pieces of cow flying everywhere. In the darkness, I crept along the tracks till I was close to the engine and could overhear the engineer talking on the radio. “Ninety-seven to dispatcher, we have a cow impaled on the pilot.” The pilot!

“Roger that, ninety-seven. Your cowcatcher caught a cow. Chopper’s on the way.” The cowcatcher! And I had no doubt what color that chopper would be.

It was a half hour later when I heard an invisible helicopter overhead. Four mysterious figures in black jumpsuits and night-vision goggles came rappelling down. They strapped the remains of the cow into a sling, and the chopper lifted the carcass back to the pasture.

As the helicopter vanished into the night, the darkness was split by flashing red and blue lights as the Stafford sheriff arrived to investigate a UFO sighting. The mysterious glowing ball that neighbors had seen hovering over the pasture was gone, but there in the middle of the field was a mutilated cow. The sheriff detained the train crew for questioning; the railroaders had seen a mysterious light—“like swamp gas”—but could not say with certainty where it had gone or what connection it had to the mutilated cow. The sheriff eventually left, and finally the Silver Meteor also vanished into the night, running two hours late.

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Despite the propaganda put out by a nationwide conspiracy of farmers, supermarkets, yuckitarians, and mothers, the truth is that vegetables are not good for you.

Vegetables are, essentially, weeds. Some are a little bit pretty, the way dandelions are, but vegetables are not flowers, and they especially are not food. In fact, they are generally produced by unnatural processes, which accounts for their bad taste. In fact, the ones that taste the worst are those produced by the most bizarre and arcane methods.

Zucchini is one of the vegetables most commonly mistaken for food. It grows like kudzu in the South or crabgrass in the North. This is because the land is so polluted. Wherever the soil has been contaminated with chemicals, anyone trying to grow pickles will get zucchini instead. (This was an honest mistake at first, because, as everyone knows, pickles are not vegetables.) However, some gardeners, perversely trying to create something we already have too much of (kind of like cloning cats), were not content to use zucchini for something appropriate, such as compost. No, they had to take their home-grown disasters and foist their oversupply of mutant pickles on relatives, co-workers, neighbors, and friends, who soon became ex-friends or moved away.

Cauliflower is yet another weed that masquerades as a flower, although in name only, because it looks like neither a collie nor a flower. Unlike most other vegetables. It is appropriately used for autumn centerpieces, and regarded (correctly) as poisonous.

Then there are Brussels sprouts. These are distant relatives of cabbages but, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, they are much smaller. Cabbages themselves are bad enough (they can be pickled and made into sauerkraut, which is okay on hot dogs, but that is pickled cabbage, and, again, pickles are not vegetables). I believe that Brussels sprouts are made from cabbages using the same ghastly recipe that South American headhunters used to make shrunken heads. Kale is a creation of 20th-century science gone amok. In a century known for overkill, it should be no surprise that a madman should want to take society beyond spinach. Kale is synthetic spinach, created from petroleum by-products. It found its way into stores when the Navy confiscated all the country’s spinach for a project to develop lower-arm strength in sailors.

Broccoli is yet one more instance of our government’s policy failure. It has been shown to cause adverse reactions, such as revulsion, in both children and adults. Yet when the opportunity came for Presidential action, George Bush (who has been president for as long as I can remember) was content to exercise his veto power, instead of providing the needed leadership. When the situation called for a national crusade against broccoli, coupled with appropriate legislation, rather than ask Congress to enact laws against, or at least require warning labels on, broccoli, Bush decided he had enough on his plate, and was content to tend his own garden. As a result, he lost the election. (So how come he’s still president? Am I forgetting something?)

At this point, you are fully convinced of the harm that vegetables can cause, unless you are a yuckitarian, in which case, you are asking, “Steve, have you actually tried zucchini, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kale, or broccoli?” That is a rude question. The answer is yes. I was raised in a yuckitarian home. But we also ate meat, and once I had tasted flesh I became a carnivore, and I have been one ever since.

Steve Dunham likes to eat cows.

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“Literalman, get off the couch.” How did they know I was spending too much time on the couch? (“Literalman,” in case you never read to the end of my columns, is my screen name.) I had the sense not to open this e-mail message, which I really did receive, but how did they know I was a couch potato?

I’m paranoid enough; I didn’t need evidence that they are watching my living room through binoculars. I expected the next message to be “Don’t say a word.” Instead, it was “Body fat loss—no cravings.” Now they were starting to play mind games with me and, as you know, I was at a disadvantage. Maybe they weren’t necessarily watching my house. Maybe they were following me around and noticed that I was carrying a few pounds extra. Or they might have been doing both. Maybe they had the bathroom scale wired. They definitely knew how much I weighed, and they followed up with a blunt order: “Literalman, lose weight now!”

The next e-mail said, “Tighten stomach with electricity.” I almost opened this one out of curiosity. Was I supposed to swallow batteries? Or surgically insert electrodes into my stomach? Or let them do it? I don’t think so!

Do I even want a tight stomach? I guess it would fill up with food faster if it were tight, so I would have to eat less, or maybe eat small portions continuously. I’m not sure how that would help.

The following message said, “Thunder thighs be gone.” Now, wait a minute! I admit, I could afford to part with a few pounds, but I do not have thunder thighs! If I were sensitive about my appearance, I probably would have taken the bait and started believing that I do have thunder thighs. As my co-workers and fellow commuters know, however, I am not sensitive about my appearance.

Still, I am not immune to advertising, and some of these messages held a certain appeal: “Body fat loss—no cravings,” for example. I do crave attention, and maybe my behavior would improve if I craved it a little less. Or did it mean they would end my craving for body fat? It’s true, I do crave it. Not human body fat, but, yes, fat from pigs and cows. I eat way too much of it, and then it does turn into human body fat—on me.

I was about to dismiss all these e-mail messages as spam advertising until they turned ominous: “1 hour and bye bye thighs.” So now they were threatening to maim me. I had one hour till the hit men arrived—maybe less if they were already outside.

The threat, I assumed, would be followed by a demand. What could they want from me? My 1987 Plymouth? All they did was notch up the tension with another threat: “Flat stomach and no work.” If I didn’t meet their demands, I would be legless, have my stomach crushed, and be out of a job.

I had seen enough thriller movies to know that I didn’t dare call the police. The only thing to do was give in and hope these anonymous extortionists would leave me alone.

In the end, they got it all. I said yes to everything they wanted, and their endless demands keep appearing on my computer screen: buy airline tickets, sign up for a credit card, buy a credit report. And they knew they had me, and I knew it too, when I read their next message: “Literalman, get out of debt!”

Steve Dunham would like to lose a few pounds but does not want his stomach or any other organs flattened.

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I’m in line to inherit a farm. “In line” is about the size of it, too: the owners aren’t old or sick, and I’m not a member of the family, but if no other heir should be available, I’m sure I would be at the top of the list.

These generous friends even invited me down to see the farm. They described it as a mix of fields and wooded hills and rustic buildings. “Oh, I would love to walk around and see it all,” I said.

“No, no, you can’t do that!” they answered. “People come on the property without permission and shoot at anything that moves.”

“Are you sure this farm is located in Virginia and not Bosnia?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, it’s in Roanoke”—by which they mean, “It is so far from anywhere that you’ve never heard of it, but you’ve heard of Roanoke, right?” It is not in Roanoke, or even particularly close to Roanoke.

I did go visit my future farm, and immediately started planning improvements, such as a firehouse pole so that I could slide down from my bedroom to the dining room as soon as the dinner bell rings. Obviously, I won’t be the one cooking dinner, so I hope the farm comes with servants. And guards.

The changes won’t be limited to the inside. This place is definitely in a war zone. Once I have established myself in the farmhouse, the next step will be to retake the territory. We’ll begin with a defensive perimeter around the buildings. Won’t the poachers be surprised when we start shooting back!

Then I will lead handpicked volunteers to assault the hill. After liberating the woods, we will construct a blockhouse on top of the hill, and build a high wall around the property. It will become known as the Roanoke Wall. Technically it won’t be in Roanoke, but it is so far from anywhere that no one has ever heard of it, but they’ve heard of Roanoke, and I want tourists to come and see the wall and the battle monument and the winery that I will establish. None of this will be free, by the way.

After the grateful local citizens have elected me King of the Holler, I will settle back to enjoy my retirement. All I will have to do is greet the visitors and watch the money roll in, until the day when people start fighting over who will inherit the farm from me.

Steve Dunham is only 24 years from retirement and plans to settle on a fortified farm in the Roanoke Valley.

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Off the Deep End

Dunham’s Razor

When the great blackout of 2003 struck New York City, my friend’s roommate noticed that the light bulb in their refrigerator was not lit. This is really true. He went around the house looking for a refrigerator light bulb till he found one. (Remember, it was still daylight.) When he screwed that one into the refrigerator, that one didn’t light either. So he figured a circuit breaker must have tripped, but none of them had. Only then did he start to guess that they might have lost power.

This, as you now realize, is about philosophical principles, in particular one called Occam’s razor: that for any phenomenon, the simplest explanation is most likely to be correct. In other words, if you open your fridge and the light bulb doesn’t go on, you don’t say, “Wow! I bet a massive blackout has struck the Northeast and left millions of people without power!” No, you say, “Darn. That light bulb in the fridge burned out and I can’t find my chocolate milk.” An emergency, perhaps. A catastrophe, no.

You are now probably saying to yourself, “I always thought philosophy was a bunch of hokum. In fact, I know doctors of philosophy who seem to have a few light bulbs burned out.”

“Not so fast,” as Hamlet told Horatio. It’s true that in an emergency, such as the great blackout of 2003, William of Occam would still be looking for a refrigerator light bulb, or possibly a circuit breaker switch, in the dark of night. All mysteries would be dismissed as misunderstood everyday things. Flying saucers would be explained away as swamp gas (not that you see swamp gas every day). Poltergeists would be nothing more scary than the wind whistling through the tress and branches brushing against the house.

Yes, certain philosophies are basically worthless when confronted with the real world, which is why I have philosophized up my own principle, called Dunham’s razor. (I can hear some of you expressing doubts already, particularly those who know I haven’t shaved in 24 years.) Dunham’s razor states that for any phenomenon, the most sinister explanation is likely to be correct.

This is the perfect philosophy for the paranoid. Everyone really is out to get me, which I knew all along. They are probably out to get you too.

When the fridge light would not turn on, not only was there a massive blackout, it was planned by the government or possibly caused by an attack from outer space.

If you are afraid of the dark, you have good reason. I don’t have to tell you what is lurking under the bed and in the closet and scratching at the outside of the house trying to get in. You already have imagined the answer.

With Dunham’s razor, there is no such thing as being caught unawares. Whatever goes wrong, you knew it was going to happen.

The only drawback I have found to my philosophy is that I find it difficult to communicate with the William Occams of this world, who cruise from day to day in blissful ignorance. Actually, it must be more than that. They don’t really believe the simple explanations. They are just putting on an act, and they are out to get me.

Steve Dunham is a philosopher.

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“Why Everybody’s Hot for Vin Diesel” was the headline on Replay magazine.* I was happy to see this, because, in one of my introspective moods, I had been asking myself, “Why am I hot for Vin Diesel?” Although the article didn’t fully explain things to my satisfaction, I was relieved to find out that I am not alone. Everybody is hot for him.

More solace came from USA Weekend, which announced on its cover that Elvis is “always on our minds.” So I was not alone in this either. I thought I was demented, or at least different, to always be thinking about Elvis.

My typical thoughts, especially at work, run along these lines: Why does everybody say that Elvis is dead? Don’t they see him too? Long live the King!

The fact is, I have seen Elvis many times. Walking, talking, singing Elvis, and I’m not talking about some impersonator, either. When I was a kid, the local movie theater had a summer program of movies for kids every Tuesday afternoon. For the unbelievable price of 15 cents a movie, we got a set of tickets to reruns supposedly approved by the PTA, although “PTA” might have stood for Prevaricating Theaters Association. A staple of the series was Elvis Presley movies. We sat through Blue Hawaii and Kissin’ Cousins, mildly entertained, although some of the entertainment was provided by the audience, which tended to fling a lot of food around and, legend has it, tossed the manager off the balcony. (I did not participate in this barbarism, and it all took place in a relatively quiet suburb, not some gang-ridden slum.)

Elvis was somewhat past his prime by the time I started seeing his movies, evidenced by the fact that the audience was 10-year-olds and not screaming teenage girls. And I was a long way from entering my prime, such as it turned out to be, so Elvis and I never really got to be friends. I mean, he never bought me a Cadillac, or any sort of car, for instance. I could really use one right now, so I wish I could bump into him just once.

Back to the present, such as it is: sometimes I make the mistake of thinking out loud, and one of my co-workers must have heard me reciting my thoughts about Elvis, because she said, “Elvis has left the building.”

“You make it sound like he’s dead!” was my rejoinder.

“Steve,” she said, “Elvis has left the planet.”

“So that’s what happened! You know, I was once kidnapped by aliens too …” But she was already turning away.

I thought of striking up a new conversation, this time about Vin Diesel. If only he could sing, or even act, I might have had some clever remark to make. No, it was that time again: time for me to leave the building.

Steve Dunham is always thinking about Elvis.

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Commuter Weekly said they got more mail about this column than about anything else they’d ever printed. Personally, I got only one complaint, from a guy who also had left New Jersey (so he gets only half a vote), who took several pages to say, “I found nothing funny about it.” All other ex–New Jerseyans who commented enjoyed it.

But the prize goes to a woman who still lives in New Jersey and wrote, “I agree with every word.” Possibly this belongs in the category of “didn’t get the joke” but it is an interesting comment just the same. I myself lived in New Jersey for 29 years and really did escape, though not under the precise circumstances described here, most of which I made up.

The Evil Empire had a society so repressive, economic conditions so bad, and an environment so polluted that the government had to build a wall to keep its own citizens from running away. Until the wall came down, though, and we saw what was behind it, you may have wondered whether the stories you heard about New Jersey were true. I myself was a doubter until I experienced the horrors first hand.

When I was a young man living in Boston, I thought, like other Bay Staters, that New England was pretty much the whole country. To the north, beyond even the North Woods, lay more woods, called Canada. Across the western border of New England was a place called “New York.” Its capital, or at least its crime capital, was also called “New York.” And beyond New York, across the Hudson River, was a place that even New Yorkers shunned, called “New Jersey,” or just “Joizy.” On the distant shore, you could see, atop forbidding cliffs, the sorry inhabitants of that land, who looked longingly across at the Free World. “There,” thought I, intrepid journalist, “is one incredible story.” And so I ventured into the unknown.

Getting in was easy. There are bridges and tunnels connecting New Jersey with New York, and across these, at every chance, swarm multitudes of refugees. But getting out isn’t easy. The New Jersey ends of the river crossings are protected by guards. Once across the border, I was trapped.

The harsh Whitman regime frowned on foreign journalists who stick their noses into state secrets. While the propaganda disseminated in other states gave a picture of forested hills, pristine beaches, happy industrial workers and smiling peasants, the reality was far different. Here was a sullen populace, angry at each other, suspicious, aimless but always in a hurry, wandering among their grimy surroundings. They were without hope. This, they believed, was life. But would I escape alive to tell the tale?

My papers and money—they’re hungry for real cash—were confiscated, and I was assigned to a work battalion picking up medical waste from the beaches. I thought sourly that the New Jersey propagandists referred to us as beachcombers.

Later they moved us across the state, through the smog, to the bank of the Delaware River (“Delaware” is an Indian word that means “don’t drink”). On the way, we were put to “work” on a road crew, where we had to lean on shovels in the blazing sun. Later, on a bus taking us to a new location, we crossed the Raritan River (“Raritan” is an Indian word that means “big toilet”). Once we reached the Delaware, we went to work cleaning up the river front, replacing the graffiti on buildings where wind and tide had washed it away.

Across the river we could see Pennsylvania, and time and again we would look wistfully towards that distant land.

Then one night I saw an opportunity to escape. The river seemed less than a mile wide, the guards weren’t looking, and I thought I could swim it. “Don’t risk it,” said one of the other prisoners. “If you swallow any water you’ll be dead before you reach the other side.”

I had to chance it. Quietly I slipped into the river. Gently I swam towards the other side, being careful to keep my head above the surface. Once, a boat passing in the dark cast up a wake that splashed some water into my mouth. It tasted like lima beans. Instinctively I spat it out.

At last I dragged myself up on the Pennsylvania shore. I was surprised to find police waiting for me. “Another wetback,” one of them said.

“No!” I cried. “I’m from Massachusetts, and I request political asylum. I have just escaped from New Jersey!”

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Dear Mr. Dunham [the letter said]:

I know that you are a friend of the cows. It makes me sad that Feed My Cows Ministry has not heard from you in five years. It makes the cows sad, too.

Did you know that, every day, cows are being turned into hamburger? That’s why this letter is so important! I need you to help me save the cows, Mr. Dunham! Here in Stafford I can look out my window and see the cows with tears in their eyes just waiting for your help. I and the cows are praying that you will respond generously to this appeal.

The sad look on their faces is asking, “Who will feed us? Does Mr. Dunham care? Who will give us a place to live? Will Mr. Dunham help?”

Where are we going to house the poor innocent cows? We have to build bigger barns, that’s how! (Read Luke 12:18, Mr. Dunham!) I and my family and friends are counting on your sacrificial donation. You read my spring emergency letter, didn’t you, Mr. Dunham? I’m sure you didn’t throw it away. Not you, my friend. Yes, that’s why you’re on my mailing list, because you are my friend.

You read my summer crisis letter, didn’t you, Mr. Dunham? Then you know how desperately I need for you to send money.

Now, as the leaves begin to fall, we face a new financial crisis! Where does all the money go? That’s what our faithful donors want to know. What am I going to tell them? Once again, the money is gone. This is bad news for the cows.

In fact, if I don’t hear from you right away, we may have to close the barn doors of Feed My Cows Ministry! That’s right, Mr. Dunham! Think of the poor cows out in the cold this winter! Where will you be on Christmas Day? You’ll be sitting in a nice warm house opening presents with your family while the cows are out in the snow. Can you hear them mooing?

Don’t wait till Christmas to think about the cows. It may be too late then. The time to help is right now! Right now, while you feel guilty about celebrating Christmas with your family! Right now, while the tears are forming in your eyes! Right now, while the checkbook is right there!

Yes, Mr. Dunham! Write out a generous donation to save the cows! Sign the check! Put a stamp on the envelope! Take it to the Post Office and mail it before you change your mind!

There, now don’t you feel better, Mr. Dunham? I thank you, and the cows thank you. The baby cows that haven’t even been born yet are praying for you right now.

When Christmas comes around, I will send you a plastic pin to wear, to show everyone that you care about the cows. I will send you a greeting card with a reply envelope so that you can send more money. When I get back from my cruise, I will send you a cow pie chart showing how I would like to spend your donations to help the cows. And count on it, my friend, you will hear from me again as soon as I get low on money.

Steve Dunham writes fundraising letters for Feed My Cows Ministry.

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The American public is the victim of rampant bias in the media. This is evidenced by the fact that major, even earth-shaking events go unreported in the mainstream, “respectable” press. Their conspiracy would not only have you believe that Elvis is dead, but that all the residents of the White House were born on Planet Earth.

Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth, but you won’t find it out in your hometown newspaper.

Fortunately, there is one bastion of responsible journalism, and it thrives in the free marketplace, if you can call supermarkets “free.”

Were it not for trips to the grocery store, I would never have known that Hillary Clinton had adopted an alien child, or that the United States has its own flying saucers, which fought in Operation Desert Storm.

There in the checkout line I can follow America’s headline history, which is sadly unreported by the slanted “major” media. How can you rely on them for news if they don’t (or, more precisely, won’t) tell you when a fl