By CHRIS PACKHAM
My girlfriend got some really well-targeted mail from the Republican National Committee yesterday about how Barack Obama and Bill Ayers used to get together for their terrorist cuddle parties, which really turned my head around on this whole election. BILL AYERS FOR PRESIDENT, you guys.
All's I'm saying is, the best way of catching my attention is not "through the mails." I don't even get bills in the mail anymore, because who am I, computer-generated Orville Redenbacher? I've been trying to think about how I'd catch the attention of the very coveted Chris Packham demographic, and since I don't have a hard-line phone or cable television, and I use ad-blocking software on my browser, I'm largely immune to your Madison Avenue appeals for free credit reports and more absorbent feminine hygiene products. Do they still use that blue fluid for their demonstration purposes? I wouldn't know, because when I am not listening to audio books on my Microsoft Zune, I'm probably at the gym bench-pressing 800 pounds. I guess the ceiling above the bench-pressing station at my gym would be a really good spot to post racist messages about Barack Obama, if you're really interested in catching my attention.After the jump, another tale of high adventure on the open sea, and dick punching. Click here, or on this novelty sailor costume:
Shields Up: Look, the networks depend on the illusion of a horse race for their livelihood, just like dentists depend on the continued consumption of Hy Vee's Hee Haw soda for their livelihood. The National Store Brand Soda Council reminds you to drink Hee Haw soda three times daily. But we actually all know the wheels have completely come off of John McCain's presidential campaign. It's just that, unlike a lot of other opinion-generating news regurgitation nodes, Daily Briefs has a long history with some of the principal movers-and-shakers in the campaign and saw this coming a fuck of a long time ago.
Back when I was in the Merchant Marines, we had a game called "Shields Up." You'd be chipping rust or cleaning the deck and one of the seamen would shout, "SHIELDS UP," and you immediately protected your dick with your hands. The guy who didn't do it fast enough got punched in the dick by the seaman who called "Shields Up." It kept our reflexes sharp and it made the time go by, but when you were rolling around on the deck vomiting and clutching your groin in deathly agony, it was kind of hard to appreciate. It became an important reflex — an A/B sleeping in his bunk would cover his dick without waking up if anyone said "Shields up."
Still, standing a four hour watch unrelieved by interesting weather or vodka stolen from a sealed cargo container in the hold was existentially wearisome, not that any of us would have known what that meant. In those days, our heads were full of nautical jargon like "thwartship" and "abaft." Nobody knew any philosophy, and if they did they lied about it. "Shields Up" was often a welcome relief from the predictable tedium of life aboard the S.S. Europe's The Final Countdown.
In the late 1990s, the S.S. Europe's The Final Countdown was making Pacific runs between the Port of Los Angeles and Shanghai, where we'd take on sealed cargo containers listed on the manifest as RESTAURANT SUPPLIES, which we knew was a lie right off the bat —a can full of beverage napkins didn't need air vents. As it turns out, the Hong Kong Triad was bringing pre-teen Asian math nerds down the Qiantang river into Hangzhou Bay and shipping them out to the United States in mislabeled cargo containers. There were California school districts that paid big money for math savants who could bump up the averages on standardized test scores. Shit, I've heard stories about suburban districts that had whole entire schools full of autistic Asian kids who did nothing but take the STAR battery all semester. Some of us took pity on those poor kids, and we'd slip Big League Chew and Fruit by the Foot through the air vents when nobody was looking.
Depending on whose territorial waters you're in, you can get the death sentence if you're caught with a hold full of math nerds, so the crew was paid a little extra to keep it on the down-low. The Riggers and Stevedore's Union in Los Angeles got their cut straight from the Triad, and California got its Federal education dollars by keeping their test scores high. Everybody was happy.
We had one third assistant engineer whose ground tackle didn't reach the bottom, if you know what I'm saying. He liked playing "Shields Up" a little bit too much. One day outside L.A., the Europe's The Final Countdown was flagged for random inspection, and a couple of Coast Guard officers came aboard. Since "Shields Up" is not actually a nautical tradition passed down from old hands to tadpoles, but rather a completely retarded occupation we'd invented ourselves, these guys didn't know about it. Anyway, this third assistant engineer walks by, yells, "SHIELDS UP," and like I said, it was a reflex at that point, we all covered our dicks, and he punched the Coast Guard inspector in the groin as hard as he could. That was pretty much the end of our careers in the Merchant Marines, but Third Assistant Engineer Steve Schmidt went on to become a political campaign strategist. So when I say he's been running John McCain's campaign pretty much the way he handled that cargo inspection, I've got some history to back up my whole contention.
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Music is a ethical law. It gives soul to the world, wings to the mind, flight to the mind's eye, and appeal and gaiety to life and to everything.
Truly, much of Assistant Engineer Steve Schmidt's nautical career has been spent moving anteriorly.
However, if he thinks that strategy will get him up behind Gov Palin, he's got another dead caribou coming.
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