Conspiracy at My Doorstep
Every single morning when I wake up, my Toronto Star arrives at my doorstep.
But sometimes, it's SOGGY.
I thought at first maybe this was just my delivery guy's way of expressing his frustrations but I was to discover the forces behind my soggy, slimy, ink-smeared friggin' papers were FAR more sinister than a mere paperboy. He's just a pawn in all this, a tool in the Great Paper-Soiling Machine.
What? You mean you can't even GUESS who's behind this yet? "Hah!" I say to you. Give that melon of yours a wet slap. Hard. Still no? It's Mike Harris for the love of God, people! Sure, yeah, he's a PREMIER you say. He doesn't have time for yahoos like me, you say. I hope each one of you who thought that chokes on a mustard-covered sardine!
Let's begin with the word "premier". What IS a premier really? The head of the province eh? Fools! The word is an acronym for Primarily Responsible for Eliminating Morning Informational Readings (the second "E" in "premier" is there to throw you -- it's only in there because "premir" sounds too French).
Oh, but those who seek to destroy me would not stop at merely tampering with my paper. Get THIS: almost every time I run to get on a TTC bus, I arrive at the stop just as the driver is leaving. Oh sure, you say, I ought to just leave for the stop a few minutes early. If only it were so simple. When I show up EARLY, the driver shows up even EARLIER.
This is not a bunch of unrelated accidents -- this is too repetitive. These bus drivers are communists with a carefully orchestrated plan to keep me from making it to where I'm going on time. Yes, I know, that fare box on the buses may reek of capitalism but that's just a front. Every wonder why the TTC symbol is RED and the drivers' uniforms are sort of RED? Flaming pinkos they are! First fluoridation and now my bus comes early. Will their wackiness never end?
And when I go to play BINGO, I never win. Never EVER. By the undeniable law of averages, I ought to win at least once every few dozen times. Why do I fail to win again and again? Only Stalin could be behind this treachery. I don't care if he's dead! That doesn't mean his reign of terror has ceased.
See, in his will, Stalin outlined his final infliction of pain upon the world -- he saw to it that ANYONE with the name "Lincoln" would never win BINGO. I have proof! Notice how the words BINGO and Stalin's first name, Joseph, have NO letters in common? Oh sure, there's the "O" but what is an "O" really, except some zany alphabetical form of the number ZERO! See? It's him, man!
Some nights when I'm up late, I turn on the television. And there's channels with test patterns on them. Sounds normal, right? Except some of these test patterns have MUSIC. Piano music. How low must society plunge into the murky abyss of corruption before we try to come clean?
The coupling of test patterns and piano music is disarming really. I mean who would suspect such bright colours and such soft music could be capable of such evil? What evil, you ask? First, this is a cheap ploy to boost the ratings of test patterns, which are apparently in danger of being cancelled. Oh, BIG mystery why. No action, no suspense, no guest stars, no credits -- c'mon now. I'd rather have breadknives jammed in my eyes while watching Full House (though if I WAS watching Full House, I would welcome the knives).
Secondly, a viewer who gazes at the seductive colours of the test pattern while hearing piano music will come to associate bright colours with the PIANO. See what I'm getting at? The next time you see a rainbow in the sky, you'll suddenly have an irrepressible urge to buy a piano. Looks like a classic case of corporate sponsors monopolizing television.
Oh, looks like I'll have to stop writing this for a minute while I fetch a Tylenol from the cupboard. Seems my neighbour has fired up the lawnmower early this year. And it's loud. And it gives me a headache. There's a reason why lawnmowers do not come with volume control dials. It's because the lawnmower companies made a deal with the headache medicine suckers.
Said Mr. Lawnmower Bigshot to Dr. Headache Quack: "You guys make those machines really loud with NO way to make them quieter, and we'll pay you some good coin. Meanwhile, we'll make more off our pills because so many people will get headaches from your machines. Hahaha! We're just TOO sneaky!" They'll pay for this.
And one thing that REALLY dampens my mood is all these people who keep asking to borrow a pen. And most of the time, once a person has borrowed a pen from me, I NEVER see the pen again. I'll not hear any of you nay-sayers trying to convince me this is some simple misunderstanding.
See, while I sit around grinning like an idiot in anticipation of my pens being returned, these cunning pen-borrowers have joined forces and accumulated a warehouse's supply worth of pens. Even as I speak, the vile lot of them are at work, building the largest structure in the world made entirely of pens. MY pens.
It just makes me feel like a baby deprived of a pacifier when I think of the glee these ruffians will feel when they go in the Guiness Book of World Records with their big pen-monument while I'm shut out and not given an ounce of credit. Well I'll have it known RIGHT now that half those pens were already out of ink. So there.No, I'm not saying the whole world's out to get me. That's silly. The dead people haven't borrowed my pens or given me soggy papers. Everyone else is a suspect. Some would say I'm paranoid.
Oh really? Am I really a paranoid person or merely the product of a paranoid society?
Now that's a question that just BEGS to be answered. And I would answer it too, except Margaret Atwood or John Grisham would just take credit for my answer and make themselves look all fancy-smarty and make more damn money while I again get ignored and marginalized. Time to read my soggy paper and miss the bus again. But I'll be damned if anyone's borrowing my pens.
