Mercer '08: Let's Go Crazy!!!

My dad was divorced around eight times. I say "around" because I'm not 100% sure of the actual number. There were three or four stepmoms that I never actually got around to meeting before the marriage inevitably failed. Plus, he married and divorced a woman named Carolyn twice, probably because he'd lost track and didn't realize they'd been married before. So I'm not sure how to count that one.

My mom, God bless her, has been through three divorces. The first was from my dad, so I don't think we can hold that one against her. The second was from J.R., a rugged good ol' boy who made it his personal mission to save me from my own potential gayness. The third was from a guy named Frank, about whom the less said, the better.

So that's 11 divorces between the two of them, give or take. I used to joke that my first marriage was doomed to failure, and I should just marry someone I don't like and get it out of my system. Then I could concentrate on making the second one work.

So what's my point? I'm glad you asked, Charlene. My point is, I have a feeling that's what the Republicans are doing in 2008 by running John McCain. They know they're doomed to lose this election, so they're just running someone they don't like to get him out of the way. Then they'll concentrate on making the 2012 election count. McCain is basically a political palate cleanser.

So is this really the year for the Democrats to be hauling out the big guns? Sure, Obama would be a great president. But it almost seems wasteful to pit him against an also-ran like McCain. Maybe we should save him up for 2012 as well.

So who should the Democrats run instead? I'm glad you asked, Gretchen. I think the Democrats (or "Dems," as they're called by FOX News, because multisyllabic words are problematic for most of their viewers) need to send a message. And that message should be, "Hey! You Republicans aren't the only ones who can elect an insane, illiterate, borderline retard into office!"

In these crazy times, we need a president who is, not to put too fine a point on it, nuttier than a sack of assholes. We need Lee L. Mercer, Jr..

The first thing you may notice is that he bears an eerie resemblance to Michael Clarke Duncan. The next thing you'll probably notice is HOLY SHIT, THIS GUY IS OUT OF HIS GODDAMN MIND!!!!

From the first paragraph illuminating his Campaign Theme to the final clause of his Privacy and Legal Policies, you'll realize that Mr. Mercer composes a lot of sentences by randomly stringing together unrelated terms. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see huge chunks of his manifesto spelled out verbatim on his refrigerator with those little magnetic words. But keep digging down into this morass of haphazard sentences and Wanton Capitalization, and you'll eventually get to the meat of Mr. Mercer's madness.

You see, when Mr. Mercer was in the ROTC, he was tasked with developing the "Eye Spy Community-Military Intelligence (All Three)" network, to which he and all other U.S. citizens were connected by an "intelligence hotwire" that was installed and cannot be removed. Now this sort of thing may sound fantastic and beyond the realm of possibility, but that's only because you're not a "Road Scholar" with "millions of doctor's degrees" like Mr. Mercer. If you had the proper qualifications, you might be able to appreciate the accomplishments of this man who "invented computerized education and the applications to make computerized education learn."

This Eye Spy Community-Military Intelligence (All Three) surveillance network is the true power behind the United States, and actually serves as a secret government (known as the "United States Government's Technocracy"). Since Mr. Mercer is already president of that government, he's ready to go public and assume command of the other U.S. government. You know, the one that everybody knows about.

Once he's in charge, Mr. Mercer intends to use his super powers to fix all of our nation's problems. In addition to vindicating the U.S. in the Iran War (!) and bringing criminal organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and the Communist Party to their knees, he insists that he'll be able to use his amazing computer brain to balance the budget. In fact, he claims that there will be enough money left over to pay each U.S. citizen $350,000 a year for almost 100 years. HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU NOT VOTE FOR THIS GUY???

Here are some other intriguing reasons for Mr. Mercer's candidacy, in the man's own words. Seriously.

• To prove I have developed a crime prevention program and a city warfare program in Business and Commerce Intelligence to solve the Crime War, Drug War, The Fifty Years War, the Iran War and any other war that might come about in the world in the future National and International.


• To prove I have solved every crime in the world as it happens from zero to start to finish for every crime done in Business and Commerce Intelligence National and International.


• To Prove I am a University of Texas at Austin ROTC to West Point Military Academy Road Scholar and Scholar of The World Academic Bid awarded doctor's degrees student graduate keep in student status in the U.S. Army Military Intellgience Academy Camp Bullis San Antonio, Texas, Houston, Texas a Texas Congress, Texas Senate and United States Congress Business and Commerce Intelligence Project/Program took over by the United States Federal Congress which I am the administer National and International.


• To Prove I will be the 2nd Negro President of the United States of America in 2008 in my Business Commerce Intelligence National and International.


• To Prove my Presidential Campaign Committee joined my me in my Presidential Campaign and Eye Spy Community-Military Intelligence Business and Commerce Intelligence, my board and staff and me saved the lives of every person alive at this future time.


• To Prove President George Walker Bush, Jr. and other Public Officials have been Impeached by the United States Congress in 2004 for torture of me and my family, capital murder in my family, Espionage and other crimes against the state and humanity.


• To Prove the government owes me Zillions of Dollars in money and is refraining to pay me and my business Eye Spy Community-Military Intelligence (All Three) Business and Commerce Intelligence National and International.


• To Prove government employees are operating organize crime rape gangs solved by Eye Spy Community-Military Intelligence Business and Commerce Intelligence Electronic Surveillance National and International.


• To Prove the definition Kill in the Random House Dictionary of the English Language College Edition Larence Urdang Editor in Chief Stuart Berg Flexner Managing Editor in All Displines across the board through Military Intelligence.


• To Proved I Lee L. Mercer, Jr. cleaned up the Law Books Of the United States Of America across the Board Notate, Schematic and Tracking National and International.


• To Prove the United States Government killed my sex life, my wife sex life, my daughter-in -laws sex life both may sons and other of my family members sex life with Espionage Experimentation and Espionage Exloitation sex killing.


• To Prove Jeb Bush is all in my house with disease.


• To Prove the Bush Family is a Death Order.


• To Prove My only Guardian Former Governor of Texas Ann Richards has just joined me MERCER FOR PRESIDENT CAMPAIGN and Lt. Col. Charles Wallace of The United States Army Military Intelligence Academy.


• To Prove America is America.


• To Prove these perpetrators are trying to stop me from running for President of The United States. They are Vice-President Dick Chenny, Former Vice-President Al Gore and their Assessors. They keep killing my mother and our family the evidence is on my mother's and our Criminal Intelligence Electronic Surveillance Health Recorder. I do not want these perpetrators to kill my Mother.


• RELIGION PROGRAM TO WORK AMERICA. The program has solved everything in the world such as 1. All the crime 2. The lack of world peace 3. All the poverty 4. All communications 5. All prejudice 6. All phenomenons guaranteed to be true by the United States Army. This is a U.S. Army FBI ROTC religion program. This made all of my Doctor's degrees.

MERCER 2008
Jeb Bush Is All In My House With Disease!

"Grace!"

As children, most of us are taught the following prayer:

God is great, God is good,
Let us thank him for our food.
Amen.

(Some people go on to learn additional stanzas about "being fed" and "daily bread," but frankly, that's just overkill. It's like learning the second verse of the Star Spangled Banner, and who the hell needs that?)

So like most normal kids who are indoctrinated at an early age, I learned to Bless the Food™ by rote. Any time I was called on to say the blessing, I would simply bow my head and recite the prayer I had been taught.

As I got older, the prayer went through several mutations...

Good bread, good meat,
Good God, let's eat.

Or...

Rub-a-dub-dub,
Thanks for the grub.
Yaaaaaaaay, God.
Amen, dig in!

But by the time I became a teenager, praying by rote was no longer acceptable. Or rather, praying a prayer that someone else had written was no longer acceptable. My grandfather had been praying the same prayer for so many years that he had it down to a science, and every time he "asked the blessing," he would speed pray like an auctioneer.

Accept this thanks our Father for this day we ask that you bless this food bless it to the nourishment of our bodies...

About that time, my younger stepbrother J.J. began receiving the prayer duty. I, for one, was happy because it meant I wouldn't have to do it anymore. Also, J.J. hadn't managed to commit the entire prayer to memory, so his blessing would always be along the lines of "God is great. Amen."

One day, after visiting the First Baptist Church in Winnsboro, Texas, we all went back to my grandparents house for lunch. My grandmother had done her traditional pot roast, and we were all pretty hungry. So when the time came to say the blessing, my sister and I both chimed in, "Let J.J. say it!"

Unfortunately, J.J. had apparently received some schooling in proper praying since the last time, and he went to town.

God is great, God is good,
Let us thank him for our food.
By his hand, we are fed.
Thanks for this, our daily bread.
God bless Daddy and Momma and Meme and Daddy Pops and Mamaw and Papaw and Gran and Chris and Sunny and Uncle Mark and Aunt Pam and Rob and Amber and Zane and Heather and Teresa and Jan and Bubba and Lee Wayne and Leroy...

...and so on, for about five minutes. My mom finally interrupted his heartfelt prayer by saying, "Hey! God knows who's in your family, okay? Just say Amen."

Anyway, once non-recited prayers became the norm, I became very uncomfortable and self-conscious any time I was asked to pray in front of people. I'd stumble through something about "thank you for the food and the weather and, you know, all that." I made a couple of ill-fated attempts to emulate my grandfather, but I lacked his mastery and got my tongue all tangled up over "AcceptthisthanksourFather..."

So imagine my joy some years later, when I was in college, and my mom married a Catholic guy. Suddenly, recited prayers were back in vogue! Any time I joined them for dinner, we would recite:

Bless us, oh Lord, for these gifts we're about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Simple. Elegant. To the point. I wasn't a Catholic. Hell, I wasn't even a Christian by that point. But to me, it was an out. It was a handy, socially-acceptable prayer that I could whip out any time someone put me on the spot. Even after mom divorced the guy, I kept the prayer.

So fast forward a few years later. It was Thanksgiving, and my sister and I were having dinner with my dad and grandmother. (This was before they died, otherwise this would be a truly creepy story.) We'd all just sat down, and Dad said, "Hey, Chrisco. Why don't you bless it?"

So we bowed our heads, and I said, "Bless us, oh Lord, for these gifts we're about to receive..."

When I was done, I looked up, and everyone was looking at me strangely. My grandmother asked, "Where did you hear that prayer?"

My sister said, "I think it's a Catholic prayer," in the same tone of voice that someone might say, "I think that's a turd in your coffee."

I shrugged. "It's the only prayer I know all the words to."

My sister was simply outraged. "You're not supposed to just recite something. You're supposed to pray what's in your heart."

"Whatever. Can we eat now?"

"We need to bless the food for real," my sister insisted.

"Fine," I sighed. I bowed my head again and this time prayed, "Dear Lord, we ask that you smite us not, miserable wretches that we are, but rather you spare us for another day in your service..."

That's as far as I got before I started laughing. Dad laughed, too. My grandmother and my sister, not so much. In fact, it was over an hour before my sister would even speak to me again.

But nobody's asked me to bless the food since then.

Amen.

The Little Red Hen

A few weeks ago, I received this in an email:
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Once upon a time, on a farm in Virginia , there was a little red hen who scratched about the barnyard until she uncovered quite a few grains of wheat.

She called all of her neighbors together and said, 'If we plant this wheat, we shall have bread to eat. Who will help me plant it?'

'Not I,' said the cow.
'Not I,' said the duck.
'Not I,' said the pig.
'Not I,' said the goose.

'Then I will do it by myself,' said the little red hen, and so she did. The wheat grew very tall and ripened into golden grain.

'Who will help me reap my wheat?' asked the little red hen.

'Not I,' said the duck.
'Out of my classification,' said the pig.
'I 'd lose my seniority,' said the cow.
'I'd lose my unemployment compensation,' said the goose.

'Then I will do it by myself,' said the little red hen, and so she did.

At last it came time to bake the bread.

'Who will help me bake the bread?' asked the little red hen.

'That would be overtime for me,' said the cow.
'I'd lose my welfare benefits,' said the duck.
'I'm a dropout and never learned how,' said the pig.
'If I'm to be the only helper, that's discrimination,' said the goose.

'Then I will do it by myself,' said the little red hen.

She baked five loaves and held them up for all of her neighbors to see. They wanted some and, in fact, demanded a share. But the little red hen said, 'No, I shall eat all five loaves.'

'Excess profits!' cried the cow.
'Capitalist leech!' screamed the duck.
'I demand equal rights!' yelled the goose.
The pig just grunted in disdain.

And they all painted 'Unfair!' picket signs and marched around and around the little red hen, shouting obscenities.

Then the Farmer came. He said to the little red hen, 'You must not be so greedy.'

'But I earned the bread,' said the little red hen.

'Exactly,' said the farmer. 'That is what makes our free enterprise system so wonderful. Anyone in the barnyard can earn as much as he wants. But under our modern government regulations, the productive workers must divide the fruits of their labor with those who are lazy and idle.'

And they all lived happily ever after, including the little red hen, who smiled and clucked, 'I am grateful, for now I truly understand.'

But her neighbors became quite disappointed in her. She never again baked bread because she joined the 'party' and got her bread free. And all the politicians smiled. 'Fairness' had been established.

Individual initiative had died, but nobody noticed; perhaps no one cared...so long as there was free bread that 'the rich' were paying for.

EPILOGUE

Bill Clinton is getting $12 million for his memoirs.

Hillary got $8 million for hers.

That's $20 million for the memories from two people, who for eight years, repeatedly testified, under oath, that they couldn't remember anything.

IS THIS A GREAT BARNYARD OR WHAT?

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The person who sent it to me did it just to wind me up (she later admitted as much). And the fact is, it worked. I sat down to write a self-righteous, angry rebuttal about so-called Christian conservatives who excuse their lack of compassion and charity by telling themselves that all poor people are "lazy and idle." But about three paragraphs in, I realized I was accomplishing nothing. She'd probably read the opening sentence, hit delete, and then chide me for taking her joke too seriously.

So I abandoned my original rant and wrote this response instead:
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Once upon a time, on a farm in Virginia, there was a little red hen who scratched about the barnyard until she uncovered quite a few grains of wheat.

She called all of her neighbors together and said, "If we plant this wheat, I'll have far more bread than I'll ever need in my life. Who will help me plant it?"

"Will you give us any bread if we help?" asked the cow.

"I'll give you the absolute bare minimum required by law," said the hen. "And you're lucky to get that, with this job market!"

So the cow, duck, pig, and goose labored for eight hours a day and received barely enough bread to keep them alive. Meanwhile, the hen had so much that she couldn't possibly eat it all.

Eventually, the other animals went to the farmer and asked, "Can you give us some bread? We're starving."

"Sorry, I don't have any bread left," said the farmer. "I spent it all on liberating Iraq and tax cuts for the wealthy."

"That's right," said the hen gleefully. "I made out like a bandit!"

"But we're starving," the animals cried. "And we don't have enough bread to feed our families."

"It's your own fault for being so lazy and idle," said the hen.

"Sorry," said the farmer. "I have to do what the hen tells me."

So the hen fired all the other animals and outsourced the breadmaking jobs to a contracting firm overseas. And as the farmer's popularity declined, he desperately tried to distract the angry animals by blaming all of the barnyard's problems on same-sex marriage and foreigners.

The poor, starving animals eventually died, but nobody noticed; perhaps nobody cared...so long as "the rich" still had their bread.

EPILOGUE

Ronald Reagan was paid $6 million for his memoirs, which is kind of remarkable since he repeatedly testified, under oath, that he couldn't remember whether or not he had illegally traded arms to Iran.

ISN'T IT FUNNY HOW SELECTIVE MEMORY CAN BE?

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What can I say? Sometimes it's just better to fight passive-aggression with passive-aggression.

Anyone Still Out There?

Hey there. I'm back. Usually, when I return after a lengthy hiatus, I put up a hilarious cartoon of Morbidly Obese Jesus, and I go into exquisite detail about what I've been up to over the ensuing months. But seriously, who has the time?

So, for any inquiring minds out there, I'll tell you the following:

1. Stephanie and I are still together and it's going great. We're in love, and nerd love is the purest and most wholesome kind of love there is.

2. The play that Sean and I wrote last year, Captain Phantasm vs. the Nefarious Dr. Noir: A Melodramatic Serial in Three Parts, will probably be in Pocket Sandwich Theatre's 2009 lineup. Wooohoooo!

3. I'm still contracting for an online directory service whose name I can't mention for fear that their corporate image would be irreparable damaged if they were affiliated with a blog of such low moral character. They recently laid off a buttload of people, but somehow I dodged that bullet. My contract runs until the end of September, and my boss is hoping to get it extended.

4. Speaking of blogs of low moral character, I just started a new site that focuses on Jack Chick and his hilarious fundamentalist Chick tracts. Check out Jack Chick's Funnybook Gospel (or How I Learned To Stop Thinking and Love the Lord).

And that's it! I missed you guys! And if you're reading this right now, then I missed *you* most of all. Just don't tell the others. They'll get jealous.

Aw, hell. Why not?