Hello once again, Dear Reader!  I apologize for my long absence, but I was drawn again into the ignoble pursuit of coin, viz., I had to make a living. But a recent event has drawn me back to the more valuable work of chronicling our civilization’s (sic) demise.

I am sure that you recall from your distant youth the famous novel by Anthony Burgess entitled “The Wanting Seed,” one of whose premises was that the governments of the planet continually engaged in warfare in order to generate bodies that could be chopped up, packaged, and sold to the masses as canned meat. (Appropriately enough, the canning was performed in China, and the cans were labeled with the ideograph for “man.” Sort of like today.) Similarly, you also recall the film “Soylent Green,” starring Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson, in which the eponymous substance, supposedly a soy product, was actually composed of the remains of the dear departed, since the planet had become polluted and was now incapable of producing any other crop than us.

Well, that was bad enough. But now life is imitating art in an even more revolting fashion. New Scientist, a respectable rag, has informed me (23 May 2014 edition) that an edible insect farm has opened for business in the well-known third world country of Youngstown, Ohio. The operating entity, Big Cricket Farms, has filled a warehouse with what the publication describes as “a twitching mass of European house crickets.” I love that “twitching mass.” It conjures up fond memories of low budget horror flicks in which teenagers are devoured. Unfortunately, in this instance, the teenagers will be the ones doing the devouring. The firm plans to execute the crickets, grind them up into “flour,” and use the cricket stuff to bake cookies and dipping chips (called “chirps.”)

This insidious plot is being carried out jointly with a firm called Six Foods which is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts (where else?). The Six Foods folks believe that they can use their overwhelming intellectual powers (no doubt honed to a heretofore unheard of degree of sharpness by Harvard, MIT, and other hotbeds of learned insanity) to overcome what they describe as the “yuck” factor, by using green marketing. Cricket farming uses very little water; emits a very small amount of greenhouse gases when compared to those belching, farting ruminants that produce porterhouse steaks and lamb chops; and crickets are fantastically efficient in converting fodder into protein: 1.7 kilograms of feed per kilogram of cricket protein, compared to 10 kg of fodder per kg of steak or its gustatory equivalent.

And this unholy cabal is not alone. Tiny Farms in Austin, Texas is producing “gut loaded” crickets which taste like apples or honey. Tony chefs from expensive eateries are adding insects to their concoctions (like the prices alone weren’t enough to make you throw up!)

The end is near. If they can con us into eating bugs, what’s next? I think that the next step is selling us bacterial sludge. We can  pump out the septic tank, mix the contents with sugar, and sell it as a dessert topping or frosting mix. In the alternative, we can mix it with spices and sell it as a chopped meat extender. Sort of like Hamburger Helper.

Uh oh.

Unfortunately, Dear Reader, we have sunk to an unrecoverable low. Doom is not awaiting us- it has already arrived.  The barbarians are not at the gates – they are within the gates, ushered in by Dear Leader. We are being flushed down the toilet.

Who are our most ferocious and successful enemies? The Russkies and the Islamis (rhymes with salamis).

Let us first address the boys from Moscow. I have been saying for some years that we should not go to war until our enemies are marching down Main Street. Guess what – they are about to. Our idiot leaders have negotiated an agreement with loveable old Vladimir Putin to have Russian troops assist us in protecting events that are subject to terrorist threats, such as the Superbowl. It’s not even legal for U.S. troops to police civilian events here, let alone invaders from the steppes of Mother Russia. I can see them now, AK-47’s at the ready, a steely glint in their eyes, as they mow us down. But Obamababy is perfectly willing to have Russian troops strutting down our streets, though, though, because they will protect us from — the Muslims!

But it’s to late! The Muslims are already here, and recruiting the fairest flowers of our literary monde to serve their evil ends.  Soledad O’Brien has just joined Al Jazeera America. She will be batting her big eyelashes at us as she encourages our kids to become suicide bombers “I look forward to beginning a relationship with Al Jazeera America, which has  made a commitment to producing quality programming and pursuing underreported  stories,” O’Brien said. What stories would those be, I wonder? The ones explaining why all us infidels should be rent in small pieces?

We have been forced to the edge of the abyss, i.e., the toilet. There is nothing for it but to flush ourselves down.

Ah, the halcyon days of youth, when we pledged eternal loyalty to our current best friend, frequently sealing the bargain with the exchange of tokens or blood! But, fortunately, we grew up, and learned the folly of making long-term contracts without an escape clause.

Our wisdom was even continued into the realm of technology. As you know (or should know) entities with whom you communicate on Facebook are called “friends.” (Personally, your interlocutor, The Happy Pessimist, considers this term inapt. There are many people with whom I communicate whom I do NOT consider friends, e.g., the traffic cop handing me a citation, the TSA agent who is attempting to goose me, and the NSA spook who is currently reading this post.) But the vast cyborg that is Facebook permits me to unfriend somebody or something (you never know what is hidden behind that screen: Alan Turing’s ghost, Arnold Schwarzenegger in a Terminator suit, the Blob, me.)

But there is a new threat on the horizon.

Israeli entrepreneur Shelly Furman Asa has now developed a website which is a particularly potent competitor to Facebook – you have to be dead to join the site. Mr. Asa’s site, neshama.org, is populated by pictures of headstones. Putatively, the purpose of this site is to allow folks to memorialize the deceased and spread their memories far and wide.

I predict major problems. Suppose, exempli gratia, that your ex-girlfriend dies in a horrible car accident and is electronically linked to your most recent wife, whom you bumped off. Do you think they will be happy? Do you think that they will haunt you? More to the point, how can they unlink? Failing a Ouija board, how can the connection be modified?

I do not believe that this concept is ready for prime time.

You recall, no doubt, Dear Reader, from your misspent youth of watching cowboy movies, that ranchers in the Wild West allowed their herds to forage on the open range. Because more than one herd might be munching in the same area, and these herds might be under different ownership, it was the practice to mark the cows with a brand unique to the owner – for example the Bar T, the Circle M, and so forth – by searing their hides with a red hot branding iron, leaving a unique scar. Then if, heaven forfend, the herds became mixed, it was child’s play to identify which cows belonged to whom and thus be able to separate the herds and drive them to market separately.

But cows are not the only objects that can be branded. We now learn that this technology has been adopted by Britain’s National Health Service (or at least by one of its surgeons), no doubt blazing the trail for Obamacare.  Dr. Simon Bramhall of Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital in Birmingham, England, has been suspended for branding his initials (“SB”) on the liver of one of his patients. Technology having advanced substantially since the 19th century, SB did not perform this action using a red hot iron, but rather using an innocuous stream of nitrogen gas, thus avoiding the untoward effect of penetrating the anesthesia and causing the patient to leap screaming from the operating table.

There has been much speculation as to the reason for SB’s action. My initial thought was that SB was in dire need of electroconvulsive therapy, Thorazine, a strait jacket, and many hours of “Vy you don’t like your mommy?”

I have, however, rethought my position. I now believe that SB is an undercover operative for the involuntary transplant industry. You know, the guys who entice you to a tryst with a femme fatale, after which you awaken in a bathtub full of ice with a bandage on your rear and one less vital organ.

The involuntary organ transfer people are CRIMINALS! You can’t trust them! What better way, then, to prevent the hijacking by rivals of the fruits of your labor than by branding your product? By offering substantial snitch fees on an anonymous website, a consortium of surgical practitioners can insure that the proceeds from the sale of the fruits of their harvests will be directed to the proper individual.

Congratulations SB! You have struck a mighty blow in the interest of honest commerce.

We are all well aware, Dear Reader, that the purpose of a Government advertisement or slogan is not to inform, but to deceive. How else may we explain that the motto of the Strategic Air Command, the now disbanded organization that flew big, ugly B-52 bombers loaded with thermonuclear death over our heads twenty-four hours a day, was “Peace is Our Profession?” How else explain that the gates of Auschwitz had a sign reading “Work makes you free.”  Lies and distortions are the currency of government-speak.

We like it that way.

After all, how effective would military recruiting posters be if they presented a picture of a mutilated corpse with the caption “Join the Army and Get Your Ass Shot Off.” How effective would a Peace Corps recruiting posters be if it presented a picture of a young woman with disheveled clothing and a bloody face with the caption “Join the Peace Corps and Get Raped.” [This is not speculation, by the way. I knew a young woman to whom it happened, twice. Fortunately, the Peace Corps maintains special hospitals to treat the victims of these attacks. And that is not a joke.]

However, this policy of dissimulation appears to be coming to an end. Our friends at the National Reconnaissance Office, the guys who build the satellites that allow the NSA to perform your colonoscopy without requiring you to get off your own toilet, have a new motto and logo which are emblazoned on their launch vehicle for their latest foray into space. The motto is borderline acceptable: “Nothing is beyond our reach.” OK. However, the logo is something else. It shows a yellow and orange octopus, slightly larger than the earth, beak rasping at the arctic tundra, with tentacles wrapped completely around the planet.

Are you kidding me?

I can only conclude that this logo was designed by the same guys who created the Obamacare website.