If You Really Loved Me You'd Let Me Eat Your Brain

You want to know what pisses me off? The fact that USA Today, the nation's coloring book, has some kind of deal with the hospitality industry to foist copies of their publication, with its color-coded sections and bite-sized story-ettes, on unsuspecting travelers and charge them for it!

Whenever I stay at a hotel I make it a point to carefully read whatever paperwork they've given me during check-in. Some hotels give the papers away for free, some charge you and let you decline receipt of the paper, and others give you a paper, charge you for it, and never tell you. When I see the box telling me I can decline to receive Newspapers for Dummies, I check it, and with gusto. If I don't see any wording about newspapers I tell them I don't want any, even if they're free, but if they aren't free, I'm not paying for them, so don't bother giving me any. I think my intentions are crystal clear. No goddamn newspapers.

And yet every morning, like clockwork, I step out of my room for the continental breakfast and risk breaking my neck by stepping onto a slippery copy of the very newspaper I hate with every fiber of my being! Despite my stated preference for no paper I still get one. It lays there outside my door, bark-shouting its monosyllabic headline in the trademark 36 point Moronique font like a lobotomized idiot man-child with a grape juice moustache.

I let them pile up. I never touch them. I ignore them. I'm very good at ignoring. Sometimes when I come back from my work or leisure for the day the paper will be gone; I can only assume someone stole "my" copy that day, though I can't fathom why. Not my problem. I didn't ask for it, and I'm not paying for it so it isn't my property to miss.

Time marches on and eventually my check out date arrives, and with it the bill. I like the trend towards no-human-contact checkout. I love it when it works and there are no discrepancies on my bill. This is usually not the case when I'm dealing with a USA Today-aligned hotelier. No matter how many gallons of pigs blood I use to write "All work and no USA Today makes Tom a happy boy" all over the lobby they just don't seem to get it, the way I'll never get it about feminism because I was born sans Mysterious Cave of Yaga, From Which All Knowledge Flows.

Marching down to the desk for a service industry deathmatch is not my idea of a good start to the day, but principle is principle. As a tautological rapper once observed, "A (person)'s gotta do what a (person)'s gotta do," and I do, so I do.

Sometimes the desk clerk is aware that guests can refuse paying for newspapers they thought were free, and this makes the bill adjustment quick and pleasant. I once had a clerk look up my check-in paperwork and tell me she'd never heard of someone refusing the USA Today. I felt like Kramer trying to opt out of the postal system. Then I get the clerks who haven't had the proper training or experience to know that 75 cents isn't just 75 cents, it's 75 cents and freedom, democracy, the right to own property, and the pursuit of happiness. They're the ones who have to summon a manager for me to have a bossfight with.

In the end they all relent and give me back my 75 cents per day. Well, not my 75 cents, but the 75 cents of whatever client I'm working for.

What I'd really like to see is an admission from the hospitality industry that they've been forcing unsuspecting customers to pay for crappy newspapers for decades. I'd like a thorough accounting of how much money they’ve made off this little racket. If the sums are big enough, maybe I can charter a class action lawsuit! Tens, maybe hundreds, of millions of dollars are at stake here. I'm sure some bottom-feeding class action lawyer could be persuaded to fight the good fight for a few million.

And when the dust settles, we'll all get coupons for $23.72 off our next stay. And a complimentary copy of USA Today.

Would Al Gore like to explain how our recent spate of cold weather fits into The Model?

My copy of Earth in the Balance is still in the hands of our astute Manual Override Lab researchers.  They're working on ways to let people read the book without breaking into gales of derisive laughter.  I mean, c'mon, there isn't any science in the book.  It's a piece of fiction, just like the majority of Gore's claims about his past.

DNC Chair Howard Dean says America can't win the war in Iraq.  Too many parallels to Vietnam, he says.

I don't remember the Vietnamese pulling off two rounds of nationwide democratic elections, establishing a constitution, and gearing up for a third election.

I don't see any important nations supporting the terrorists in Iraq, at least none that we can't bomb the hell out of without starting a nuclear war.  I'm sure China and Russia would complain if Israel or the US destroyed a few Iranian nuclear weapons sites or set the Syrian border with Iraq on fire, but it isn't as though either are giving support to our enemies in Iraq.

I don't remember the Vietnamese capturing or killing the brutal thugs that ran their nation into the ground and putting the survivors on trial for their use of chemical weapons and mass killings of innocents.

And finally, I don't remember tens of thousands of Vietnamese gladly lining up for police or military service while almost daily terrorists were setting off bombs in their midst.  Over 100,000 Iraqi soldiers have been trained and roughly 25% of their fighting units are competent enough that they can operate on their own.

The only thing that can stop Iraqis from reclaiming control of their country is a handful of radicals bent on undermining the will of the American public, wearing us down with constant attacks, releasing outright lies in the media, and using the horrors of war for political gain.  I'm talking about American politicians, mostly liberals and Democrats, not terrorists.  (Notable exception:  Sen. Lieberman.)

...the next time you hear a liberal, anti-war, or doe-eyed flower child complain that the US tortures people and things were better under Saddam...ask them how many meat grinders the US has deployed.

The Hakmiya intelligence headquarters in Baghdad sounds like a real shop of horrors.  One of hundreds if not thousands of torture and murder factories operated during Saddam's benevolent reign.

So some lefties are steaming mad that the US is pumping money into programs designed to spread news in Iraq.  Isn't propaganda part of every war effort?  I have no problem with our government spending money to establish and support a free press in a newly-democratic society, and I don't for a second think that the stories being printed are at all untruthful.  Isn't that the real test one should apply when judging their sources?  (If you've got a few days and you're really interested in what's going right in Iraq, check out this article and work backwards.)

Perhaps it pisses off the NYT scribes that writers in Iraq are being paid for their efforts and that the Iraqi journalists end up writing good news which bolsters the case for the US continuing its work in Iraq.  I think what makes them even angrier is that the NYT writers, the ones who haven't been fired for passing off fiction as fact, are writing pro-terrorist and anti-American tracts day in and day out with no thanks or financial support from the murderous tyrants and terrorists they support.

Perhaps all the liberals reading this would like to set a timetable for the terrorists all around the world to withdraw and stop murdering people.  Until then their calls for a timetable to exit Iraq (or as I call it, surrender) will be ignored by this writer as I think they should be all freedom-loving people everywhere.

I believe my 1993 Saturn SC2 has driven its last miles.  The battery is worn out and I'm too lazy to buy a new one.  Plus the car is in such disrepair (easily 20 linear feet of windshield cracks, bald tires, all out of alignment, and burning oil like a Jewish mountaintop fortress) that my wife is demanding that I buy a new car.

I wonder what kind of subtle genius I must possess that I've been able to, quite unintentionally, maneuver her into a position where she's demanding that I spend lots of money on a new toy.

I think I'm going to go with a Hyundai.  Or a Chrysler.  Or maybe a...I really have no idea.  I'm open to suggestions.