So I am in the kitchen, weeping in frustration, uselessly attempting to get into some American packaging—please, jeebus, I just want a little cheese—when, suddenly, I am seized by a brainshower: the most successful terrorist, in the history of terrorists, that would be, whoever that was, that was that unutterable freak, who put the cyanide, there in the Tylenol. Back there in Chicago. And environs. Back in 1982.

Because, not only did this unutterable freak kill seven people, and never did get caught, but the Americans, in their typical fear-sweating, pants-crapping way, of Total Overreaction, to All and Everything, perceived as a Danger, that might ever Strike, at any time, Again, they then grimly proceeded to make it totally, permanently, impossible, to get into any product, that is intended, to be put, into a person's mouth. It is like, now, today, all these products, they are armored up, in impenetrable chastity belts. And, nobody, provides a key. Today, a hunk of cheese, it is more heavily secured, than is Fort Knox. Random screwlooses, they may occasionally leap the fence, and run right into the White House: but no American, ever, will get into a bottle of aspirin—not without several specialized tools, and at least three handymen. In you want to pry open some vitamins and supplements, you will need to purchase many and manifold complicated devices, that cost more than cocaine, and then you will need to devote at least the entirety of an evening, to the task. So that—at last—you may gobble whole fistfuls, of St. John's Wort, and Valerian Root, and Melatonin, and the like, in hopes you will then remain sufficiently calm, so as not to blow out a valve, or your aorta, the next time you try, to get into some American packaging.

And the American packaging, it has killed far more people, than ever did the original Tylenol poisoner. Tennessee Williams, for instance, he became so enraged, at his inability to open a simple bottle of aspirin, that finally he began wildly gnawing on the lid with his teeth. He then aspirated the cap, and commenced to choke to death. The world, it was deprived of another decade or two of Blanches and Big Daddys. Because the fear-crazed Americans. They insanely shield their aspirin. Better than they do the shit. They shoot up into space.

I remember once I was at my brother's, and he was trying to get into some American packaging. After several minutes of futile effort, he began muttering quietly, but intensely. This was never a good sign, with my brother. And, sure enough, he suddenly went for this huge knife, sheathed at his belt, and with it began savagely stabbing, the American packaging. I don't remember what was actually in the American packaging. But I do remember, that it was totally destroyed. I also remember that, my brother, he said he didn't care. Because, at least, he felt better. A year or so on, he called to tell me he had been wholly unable to extract a leg of lamb, from its American packaging. "So I used the 12 gauge," he told me. "Then I had to pick the beads out. But there were still all these goddam tiny shreds of plastic, embedded in the meat. Finally, I gave up, and threw it over the fence, for the neighbor's dog. All day, the fucker chews wood, and stuffed animals—he always goes first for the eyes—so I figure he can probably digest plastic."

All of the law jockeys, to this day, they claim, that they do not know, who it was—that unutterable freak—who put the cyanide, there in the Tylenol.

But I know.

It was The Hairball.

The Americans, they are suffering, grievously, from these elections. Even more, than from the American packaging. They have been going on, these elections, continuously, for about 600,000 straight days now, and never once, have they been even remotely, Sane. Many of the Americans, they can no longer, at all, cope. And, so, they are completely losing, their shit.

Like this human in Ohio, who suddenly began "acting like a gorilla" and "masturbating on the sidewalk," "growling and punching the cement," "squatting on all fours, punching the blacktop and jumping up and down screaming noncoherently." After this human was taken into custody, it was determined, by the authorities, that he had overdosed, on the elections.

An election-sufferer in Pennsylvania, he attacked a "police officer using a chain, a statue of Pan, and a rotten pizza." This human, he demanded the officer, "make this election stop."

Some of the Americans, the elections, they have so sapped their will to live, that they have sunk deep into ennui. Like this Massachussets human, who felt compelled to take off all his clothes, and then wander around a motel.

Early Wednesday morning, motel employees told police they were in the lobby when a fully naked man walked by carrying an ice bucket. He went to the vending machine area and returned to his room.

Police knocked on his room door and were greeted by [the human].

"He said, 'You are probably looking for me,'" police wrote in the report.

[The human] admitted to walking around nude. When asked why, he said, "Boredom."

In Washington, an ennuied American "led multiple police agencies in a sometimes dangerous pursuit that spanned two counties and 49 miles on Saturday evening because he was bored, the county sheriff's office said."

[He] had no warrants, no prior convictions and a valid driver's license when he tore off through an intersection at Henderson Boulevard SE and 53rd Avenue SE in Tumwater at 4:38 p.m. Saturday. Burning rubber, he attracted the attention of a sheriff's deputy, who tried to pull him over.

The pursuit went on for more than an hour, crossing into Pierce County and circling back around into Olympia. A handful of patrol agencies were involved.

[He] "was passing cars on the shoulder of the road down near Nisqually," [law jockey Dave] Odegaard said. Sometimes reaching 85 miles per hour, the pursuit "was discontinued three times due to speed and public safety."

[He] didn't appear to be impaired by drugs or alcohol, Odegaard said. So why did he do it?

"He said he was just bored," Odegaard said. "It looks like to us right now he instigated this pursuit because he was bored and just wanted to do it."

Fortunately, there will soon be at least partial relief, for such sufferers. This is because, on Sunday, The Hairball, he will announce that he is pulling out of the race.

"The Hairball had a routine medical exam" [said Hairball public relations vice president John Miller]. "This included a colonoscopy. During that part of the examination, it was discovered that The Hairball has stage one brain cancer. In order to focus on treatment, he has decided to withdraw his bid for the presidency."

"I need," explains The Hairball, "to spend more time with my anus."

Meanwhile, the Democratic version, of the president-tryer—that would be The Mad Bomber—she was recently talking about her Foundation, on some tube or other, and there she said: "I know there's a lot of smoke, and there's no fire."

When I saw that, I had a brain freeze. Because, like, how the fluke, can you have smoke, and not fire? As—yea, verily—it has, so often, so been said: "Where there's smoke, there's fire." Isn't that in the Constitution? And, also, the Bible?

Totally flummoxed, I unscrewed my regular head, and replaced it with my special Science Man head. And then tried to determine, Instances. Where there could be smoke, but no fire.

And then: I had it! Chernobyl Chicken! This is a dish I invented, for when I want to eat fire. It is called Chernobyl Chicken, because, when cooking it, if all the windows are not opened fully, and also the chicken is not removed from the pan, right on time, all the neighborhood, it shall be enveloped, in a toxic plume, like that into which the initially responding firefighters plunged, there when the nuclear reactor, there at Chernobyl, it blew.

This dish, it involves boneless skinless chicken breasts, which are slathered with olive oil, and then pressed firmly into a diabolical mix of the hottest of powders: cayenne, smoked paprika, onion, thyme, cumin, white pepper. You then place a cast-iron pan on a burner, which is turned to high. Then you go off somewhere and read a book. War And Peace, say, or—if you are Hairball-inclined—My New Order. When you are finished with the book, you return to the kitchen. The pan, it is now hotter, than the surface of the sun. You heave the chicken breasts in the pan, searing one minute on each side. The kitchen—and most of the state—fills with incredible amounts of smoke. If you happen to live, you pull the breasts from out of the pan, and stick them in a 350-degree oven, for 10-15 minutes. Then, you eat them.

Is this, what The Mad Bomber, is saying she is? A Chernobyl Chicken? If so, I am not eating her. She can go to the dogs. Like my brother's leg of lamb.

There is, henceforth, a new Rule, in the politics. And that is, if you are a human, in the politics, then, whenever you make a speech, or indeed say anything at all, you have to sing, what you say, and, you have to sing it, falsetto. Like this guy:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06hB4oep4XY]

Also. You have to be naked.

Speaking of Rules, I am going to quote here some from the Rules that Jill Lepore observed, and established, at the Republican version of the convention, in her New Yorker piece on both that convention, and the Democratic version, "A Tale Of Two Conventions."

There are not many writers, currently working in the craft, who are really worth reading (this is nothing new; it has always been so), but Lepore, she is, today, one of them.

Once upon a time, Lepore, she was a historian, burrowed away at Harvard. Her area of expertise, it was that era, in and around the American "Revolution." Then, one day, she noticed, that there had sprouted teabaggers, there in her city. And they were hugging, to their bosoms, their Version, of that "Revolution." Intrigued, Lepore went out and Looked, at the teabaggers. And then, she Looked some more. Ultimately, she wrote a marvelous little book, The Whites Of Their Eyes, that says everything, that can or needs to be said, about the teabaggers.

Then, since, she has wandered all the land, as an anthropologist, chronicling the weirdnesses, of the Americans. And she's, considerably, freed up, her writing style. So that, now, amid the horror:

Americans had been assassinating one another, in schools and in churches, in cars and in garages, in bars, parks, and streets, insane with hate—hate whites, hate blacks, hate Christians, hate Muslims, hate gays, hate police. A certain number of Americans, bearing arms, had lost their minds, their souls, the feel of the earth beneath their feet. Dread fell, and lingered, like mud after rain. At the Republican National Convention, in Cleveland, gas masks were banned, body armor was allowed. "Write any or all emergency phone numbers somewhere on your body using a pen," a security memo urged reporters. "Best to write your name, too," came a whisper over a stall in a women's room, a Sharpie skittering along the tiled floor, as if it had travelled all the way from 1862, when twenty-one-year-old Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wounded at Antietam and afraid he was about to die, scratched a note and pinned it to his uniform, Union blue: "I am Capt. O. W. Holmes," hoping his body would find its way home.

—she is, in her writing, nothing but fun:

The rule inside the Convention was: Incite fear and division in order to call for safety and union. I decided that the rule outside the Convention was: No kidding, it's really awfully nice out here, in a beautiful city park, on a sunny day in July, where a bunch of people are arguing about politics and nothing could possibly be more interesting, and the Elect Jesus people are giving out free water, icy cold, and the police are playing Ping-Pong with the protesters, and you can take a nap in the grass if you want, and you will dream that you are on a farm because the grass smells kind of horsy, and like manure, because of all the mounted police from Texas, wearing those strangely sexy cowboy hats; and, yes, there are police from all over the country here, and if you ask for directions one of them will say to you, "Girl, I'm from Atlanta!" and you have to know that, if they weren't here, who knows what would happen; there are horrible people shouting murderous things and tussling, that's what they came here for, and anything can blow up in an instant; and, yes, there are civilians carrying military-style weapons, but, weirdly, they are less scary here than they are online; they look ridiculous, honestly, and this one lefty guy is a particular creep, don't get cornered; but, also, there's a little black girl in the fountain rolling around, getting soaked, next to some white guy who's sitting there, just sitting there, in the water, his legs kicked out in front of him, holding a cardboard sign that reads "Tired of the Violence."

We have, in this space, occasionally reviewed the Horrors, and the Dangers, of the airplanes. Like, Gerard Depardieu, he could suddenly get up out of his seat, and start urinating on you. Or people might smear fecal matter on the food trays, skulk into the lavatory and then set it on fire, or suddenly explode themselves, and disappear, out a Hole they made, in the airplane. Or, maybe there will be "travelers praying, hugging, throwing their arms in the air and wailing as the plane violently shakes in the air," or throwing off the airplane an Italian mathematician, because a nosy and moronic dingleberry, she believed his notebook scrawlings, to be some sort of terrorist hieroglyphics.

But I don't think we've been, here, to the airplanes. Recently.

So. We will go there. Now.

Video and photos of an Air New Zealand pilot posing with an inflatable doll in the cockpit and an air hostess spitting water with the caption "wish I could spit on passengers like this" have been posted online.

One image shows a pilot kissing a blow up doll in the cockpit.

A video shows an air hostess walking through a cabin spitting water.

The caption on the video says: "Wish I could spit on passengers like this".

Now, apparently, these people, they are in Trouble.

An Air New Zealand spokeswoman said the company was "shocked and appalled" by the images.

"We expect the highest standards of behaviour and respect from all our staff.

"These images were brought to our attention in the past 48 hours and an investigation commenced immediately. We believe the video was produced about four years ago and the photos were taken more than a year ago.

"One of the staff members concerned no longer works for Air New Zealand and the other two have been removed from duties pending the outcome of our investigation.

"It goes without saying that this is a situation we are treating with extreme seriousness, and our obvious concern is that the behaviour displayed is a clear breach of not just our code of conduct but basic decency."

I am confused. Because I don't understand what is the big deal. For the job of the pilot, as I see it, is to not crash the airplane. If kissing a sex-doll, this helps the pilot not crash the airplane, then I am for the pilot kissing the sex-doll—even at any and all times. Also, I believe that in the true-life documentary film Airplane!, a sex doll actually assists in flying the airplane, when otherwise it might have crashed. So: don't fuck with the sex dolls. My advice. Too, I want the flight attendant, to spit the water in the cockpit. Rather than on me. Like Gerard Depardieu. With his urine disability.

The major lesson of this thing, to me, is: people, not everything needs to be photographed, and/or filmed. And, even if it is, that certainly doesn't mean it needs to go out on some tube. I mean: jeebus.

The Science Men, and the Book Men, they are all having a major organism, because the Voynich Manuscript, it is being "cloned." So it can further go out into the world. There to further Confuse and Confound. The humans.

Theories abound about who wrote it and what it means.

For a long time, it was believed to be the work of 13th century English Franciscan friar Roger Bacon whose interest in alchemy and magic landed him in jail.

But that theory was discarded when the manuscript was carbon dated and found to have originated between 1404 and 1438.

Others point to a young Leonardo da Vinci, someone who wrote in code to escape the Inquisition, an elaborate joke or even an alien who left the book behind when leaving Earth.

Its content is even more mysterious.

The plants drawn have never been identified, the astronomical charts don't reveal much and neither do the women.

Does the book hold the key to eternal youth? Or is it a mere collection of herbal medicine and recipes?

Scores have tried to decode the Voynich, including top cryptologists such as William Friedman who helped break Japan's "Purple" cipher during World War II.

I remember when I wrote that book. Let's face it: I was bored. So, I would load up on belladonna, wormwood, some ergot of rye, and then I would happily scribble, color, away. It passed the time. And, I figured it more socially responsible. And safer. For me. Than wandering through the motel, naked, with the ice bucket. Or leading the authorities, on a high-speed chase. Just because. I was bored.

As for what is its "code," what does it "mean"? Nothing. It doesn't mean anything. There is, no "code." It was just a lark. I mean: not everything, needs to mean, something. I mean: jeebus.

One of the very worst, most unutterable Crimes, of the Science Men, is how, for centuries, they insisted, that all the living things, that are not humans, are but just robots. Not of sentience. Feeling no Pain. Not knowing Time. Incapable of love, affection, sadness, longing. Not able to Think. To know Death. Much less Life.

Wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong. Monstrously. Wrong.

Here is a story, about a dog, George, whose dog companero of 12 years, Blackie, went into Death. George, he was, then, inconsolable. Like the humans, driven Mad, or into Ennui, by the elections—George, he had no will, to go on.

Then, a duck, showed up. Just waddled on in. From, the ineffable, Nowhere. And became, of George, his new, best friend.

"We have no idea where this duck came from. But he sure does love George. And, since the duck has arrived, George has not cried one time. It is strange for a duck to just appear at our house, and be attached to our dog, and, even more strangely, on the anniversary week of Blackie's passing.

"Since the duck has showed up. George. He's been fine."

So far as I know, no duck, has ever wrapped up a Hairball, or a Mad Bomber, in American packaging, and then said: eat it.

So. I think I will be voting. For a duck. To be the president.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr0GD5M50dI]