On Sunday The Mad Bomber gifted Fristian Phrenologists all and everywhere with Christmas in September, when she woozily wobbled at some 9/11 shindig, and then collapsed, bodily, into a van. Like any sick animal, she sought refuge in a place she associates with safety and comfort—in this case, her daughter's apartment. From which she emerged some 90 minutes later, smiling brightly, petting a small child, and pronouncing it "a beautiful day in New York." Then, she went on her way.

But this would not be the end of it. Oh no. Because, in these days, all and everything, and always, it is filmed. My bowel movement, yesterday morning, for instance, it was filmed by two separate cameras: one, fixed to a small drone passing by the bathroom window; two, an in-the-bowl "Colon Cam," apparently now standard equipment with such plumbing fixtures, connected directly to the federal Department of Howdy Doody, so that the health of the colons, of all the people, it may be monitored, and in real time, and for the Good, of All the Nation.

And so, of the Bomber's wamble and fall, there was Footage. And this Footage, it went out unto the tubes. And the tubes, lo, and yea, verily, they, and immediately, became unsane. Great crashing waves of ecstatic orgasms, they pulsated through the Fristians, as they rhythmically ejaculated, great streams of Theories. She'd stroked out, The Mad Bomber. Her battery-pack, it ran down. She'd ODed, and on jimson weed. Anus Jones, he was on the case: Parkinson's. The Express weighed in: advanced vascular dementia, and she will be dead, in six months.

The Bomber people then rolled out, as would-be Moses, to attempt to part this red sea of Fristing, the Bomber's personal sawbones, who said she'd diagnosed the Bomber with pneumonia on Friday—and, it was this pneumonia, that had caused the Bomber, to must needs be wheelbarrowed on out, from the 9/11 bacchanalia.

But the Fristians, they were not buying the pneumonia—they would not buy anything, even if the Bomber were to undergo a complete physical, live and on the television: the Fristians, they would say it was fake, like the moon landing. Meanwhile, the Normal people, in the press and elsewhere, they were wondering why the sam-hey the Bomber, she didn't just announce the pneumonia on Friday, rather than sitting on the news, until after she'd had a bad jimson-weed reaction, in front of all and everybody. "I didn't think it was a big deal," the Bomber said of the pneumonia, while aides mumbled anonymously about "privacy." But the Bomber, of all people, she should know that, for those wanting to be the president, there is no privacy, and everything is always a big deal, about each and every body part, which belong, to all the people, at all times, and not to the presidents, or the president-tryers: her husband, after all, was the man whose penis was intensively dissected by the people, and for eighteen straight months, until utimately it was actually impeached. With the very semen, of the Clenis, entered, as Evidence. On its way. To permanent, stained, display. At the Smithsonian.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0Bx4oY4mt0]

The Hairball, on September 11 itself, he had been prevented, by his oberfuhrers, and by main force (they muzzled him and strapped him to one of those restraining boards, like Hannibal Lecter), from emitting or twitting anything whatsoever.

But on Monday, he flapped out, like some orangey dawn bat, to screech that he has recently endured some sort of medical encounter, and "when the numbers come in"—"and they will be very, very beautiful numbers, the best"—he will publicly reveal them on a previously booked quack-show hosted by something called "Dr. Oz." He also expressed pity for the Bomber, whom he described as the human equivalent of an old worn-out horse; good, now, only for the glue-pot.

The Bomber's running mate, Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, he got too deeply into the whiskey jar, and suddenly bumbled out on stage to babble on like the Bomber had already been taken away on the Final Stretcher, and he, Stay Puft, was now the Democrat's president-tryer: "I'll tell you a little bit about me," he slurred. "In campaigns, I have run eight races, and I have won eight races. I'm undefeated. And can I just tell ya, I'm not gonna lose this one. I am not gonna lose this one."

Stay Puft, he was yanked off, with one of those big stage-hooks—and then the Bomber's people, they rushed out to announce that she, and very soon, will be throwing out way more medical info, than The Hairball's mere "numbers."

By day's end, both candidates had vowed to, commencing immediately, and for the remainder of the campaign, hook themselves up to multiple invasive Machines, that will Measure and Broadcast, in real time, and 24/7, all of their medical vitals, through all of the tubes, and to all of the people.

Then, they topped even that, by agreeing, just around midnight, that the presidency, it will be decided, here in 2016, by a marathon. In which all of the president-tryers, they will run, until all but one of them, drops dead.

They will be like that nitwit Pheidippides. Who ran like twelve bastards from Marathon to Athens, to announce to the people that the Athenian serial killers, they had prevailed over the Persian serial killers, in some numbnuts battle. After running flat-out for 26 miles, Pheidippides, he arrived in Athens, with the news. "Rejoice! We conquer!" he gasped. And then he dropped dead. Some 2506 years ago. Yesterday.

The presidents, they have never really been well. Two-thirds of them have died before reaching life expectancy. Half of them, or more, suffered from some mental disorder serious enough that they should have been taking Medicine, if not been placed in a Home.

And all of the people, who have tried to become the president, and then actually did become the president, they have regretted it.

They never tell you. About that one.

For instance: in June of 1923, President Warren G. Harding, he was in a ship off the coast of Alaska, when it, lightly, collided with another ship. All persons aboard the president's vessel, they were ordered to go up on deck, in case the thing started to sink. And everybody did so. Except Harding.

One of Harding's aides, he went down to fetch him.

Harding was lying on his bed, his face hidden in his hands. Without uncovering his face, the president asked what had happened, and the aide told him there had been a slight collision. Even though everyone had been ordered on deck, it was not serious. Harding lay there, motionless. "I hope the boat sinks," he said softly, his face still hidden.

Two months later, Harding was dead. In a hotel room in San Francisco. He had pneumonia. His gastrointestinal system was fucked up; so was his heart. Then, his brain blew out. He was 57.

Harding was succeeded by his vice president, Calvin Coolidge, who, at first, very much liked, being the president.

Previously in the politics, Coolidge had been an active, energetic fellow. And so he was now, when he took over for Harding, a-moldering there in the grave. An associate recalled that, there in the White House, Coolidge "would almost tiptoe around, touching things, and half-smiling to himself. As if he were a small boy whose daydreams of being a king had suddenly been made real by the stroke of a magic wand."

So, with Harding's term expiring, Coolidge, he decided, to run, for another. He was pretty full of himself, Coolidge. The chief White House usher at the time, he said that Coolidge displayed more "egotism, self-consciousness or whatever you call it" than any of the nine presidents the man had previously served.

Then, early in the campaign of 1924, Coolidge's son, and namesake, Calvin Jr., sixteen years old, was playing tennis, on the south grounds of the White House. Calvin Jr., he was wearing sneakers, but no socks. After, he developed a blister, on a toe. And the toe, it became infected. He contracted blood poisoning. The doctors pronounced the boy's condition serious.

For Coolidge, it was now no longer fun, being the president. He was thoroughly distracted, "going about as if in a dream." Journalist William Allen White recalled that Coolidge "moved a dozen times a day back and forth from his desk to the boy's sickbed. One day, remembering little Calvin's love of animals, he coaxed and caught a small brown rabbit among the plants in the White House garden, picked it up gently and came trotting through the White House to the sick room. In return, across the pained young face, came a smile." The rabbit went back to the garden when the boy was moved to Walter Reed Hospital. Where, shortly thereafter, he died.

That was in July. In November, Coolidge was elected to be the president, for another four years. But Coolidge never really served the term. Instead, he slept. Twelve hours each night. With a nap or two during the day. It might be said he delegated his responsibilities, but he didn't really do even that. He mostly told his cabinet people to do what they thought best, and he had the same message for Congress. He was haunted by his boy's death. "When I look out that window," he said to an aide, "I always see my boy playing tennis on that court out there." Being what these days is frequently referenced as "the most powerful man in the world," that meant nothing to Coolidge, because, even in it, he had not been able to save his son. "In his suffering," Coolidge wrote in his autobiography, "he was asking me to make him well. I could not." He said the same to White: "When he was suffering, he begged me to help him. I could not."

"I do not know why such a price was enacted for occupying the White House," Coolidge reflected. He would rather have not been the president. With his son, alive.

Coolidge, he was in grief. And he received no Medicine. For grief relief. So, for four years, the Americans, they, basically, had, no president.

These are among the grim tales that are related in The Mortal Presidency: Illness and Anguish In The White House, one of the books that keeps leaping off the Interstellar bookshelf.

When the Bomber was Sunday undergoing her jimson-weed crisis, I picked this book up off the floor, and leafed through it. And there was reminded of such unsettling factoids as Ronald "Where's The Brain Of Me?" Reagan evincing as much lululand denial about his own health, as about everything else in the whole friggin' universe: though they drug big lumps of cancer from out his colon, Reagan insisted that "I didn't have cancer. I had something inside of me that had cancer in it, and it was removed."

And that George I, when he launched the famous heave-ho into the Japanese Prime Minister's lap, he had already been hurling all over Japan, but felt he needed to stagger into that dinner to "prove himself strong," or some such would-be he-man balderdash.

And that this televised barf-in-the-lap incident, combined with this 66-year-old old-man's heart going totally wild while he was out jogging one day, helped to elect The Clenis . . . as people became concerned that "Poppy," he might suddenly drop dead, and Poppy's running mate, Dan Quayle, was then considered, by only 19% of the electorate, to be even a minimally, sentient, human, sorta, creature.

The core of Gilbert's book consists of detailed examinations of the health histories of Coolidge, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and Reagan. You come out of the thing in awe that any human being, can long live, much less a human being, who is also the president.

Eisenhower, for instance, was a fucked-out old wreck, with one foot deep in the boneyard, before he ever declared for the presidency.

Which is basically the problem facing the Americans today: both The Hairball, and The Mad Bomber, they are so old, that they are supposed to be dead. They are both past 65, that age designated by the federal government as retirement age. No government is ever about freely giving money to people—unless they are serial killers—and so it is actuarially presumed that, by 65, at least half of the Americans, they shall be dead.

These people—The Hairball, The Mad Bomber, among the lucky ones, the Survivors—they are supposed to be counting their blessings, if they are still mentally and physically competent enough to actually count, contenting themselves with shuffling around playing horseshoes, or bocce ball, while gumming lines from TS Eliot:

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

But no. Instead, they are out there. All day. Every day. Melting our minds. Trying to be the president. And, both of them, sick as itchy skinny rickets-ridden old heartwormed coon-dogs. They have to be. They're old.

The Hairball, without a doubt, he is one KFC bucket away, from a mammoth aorta blow, right there on live television. The Bomber, jeebus knows, what's wrong with her: according to the Fristian Phrenologists of the National Enquirer, true pioneers, in the Fristian arts, she is "suffering from strokes, brain cancer, depression, alcoholism, multiple sclerosis, endometriosis, and paranoia, among other dire conditions." Not to mention that she chows down, like some fuckin' animal, on jimson weed, and then goes, barking, into some 9/11 hullabaloo.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNl7VrYoygo]

If the Americans are going to insist on considering for the presidency people so old they should be dead, the Americans, they are going to have, to learn, to accept, some fraility.

I mean: look at The Kenyan. He was elevated to the presidency while still in his 40s; and, today, at 55, he is the freaking living picture, of Dorian Gray. He is, like, in his presidency, what happens in the true-life documentary film The Omega Man, where, when the virus strikes, your hair, almost overnight, goes all totally white, and shit.

We know, from an earlier Sesame, why people age so, when once in the White House.

Because, as revealed by Robert Coover, in his true-life non-fiction tome The Public Burning, Uncle Sam, long believed to be but a mere symbol of the United States, is, in truth, a real, super-corporeal, semi-divine being. Who dashes to and fro, at home and abroad, getting about the country's business. And who, meanwhile, from time to time, "incarnates" in the body and mind, of whomsoever happens to be the president. And this "incarnation," it is accomplished, always, through anal rape. An act which does not occur, but, once, to each president. But which must be repeated, over and over again, whenever an important decision is to be made, or speech given, or the like. And so long as that particular "vessel," of the incarnated Uncle Sam, occupies the office, of the presidency.

And. Such a thing. It can wear. On a person.

I had intended, in this piece, to review, in some detail, the blood-curdling medical history of Dwight Eisenhower, while in the Oval Office—he stroked out, had a heart attack, and also had a gastrointestinal operation to remove a huge impacted celery chunk from his gut: apparently there did not occur a lot of chewing, in the Eisenhower mouth—but that is not going to happen, because I am running up against the JtC deadline for timely filing these OTs, and the cat, he will just not, get off, the book.

This animal, he has declared dedicated cat-war, against all printed material: the magazines, these he now simply shreds; and, if I am lying there, reading any book, for any extended period of time, he begins scraping at it with his claws. And, if I lay a book down, here, to reference it, as I am typing into these tubes, he simply lays on it, and gazes at me, with The Eyes, which let me know, that it is Against All Laws, to attempt to move him.

Which. Of course. It is.

He is, clearly, trying to reduce—or elevate—me, to pre-literate man. Which is, maybe, probably, not a bad idea. But it is certainly, not consistent. With the Mission Statement. Of these Tummlers.

So, I'll sneak in here, an ending, brought in from a tube, rather than a book; a tube, upon which, this animal, is not, at least currently, lying.

And that is. The Science Men. They think. Now. That all the humans. They are speaking. The same. Language.

Humans across the globe may be actually speaking the same language after scientists found that the sounds used to make the words of common objects and ideas are strikingly similar.

Research which looked into several thousand languages showed that for basic concepts, such as body parts, family relationships or aspects of the natural world, there are common sounds—as if concepts that are important to the human experience somehow trigger universal verbalisations.

"These sound symbolic patterns show up again and again across the world, independent of the geographical dispersal of humans and independent of language lineage," said Dr Morten Christiansen.

"There does seem to be something about the human condition that leads to these patterns. We don't know what it is. But we know it's there."

This. Makes. Me. So. Happy.

Because. We really are. All. One.

Meanwhile. Back. On the lowest. Of all the low. Levels.

The politics.

The Hairball. I think. He should eat some purple berries. The Mad Bomber. Too.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QySJPJ8Igmc]

/

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3XWd0IDVBw]