In 1983, Monty Python, the British comedy group made up of English Literature Ph.D.’s who decided they wanted to do something meaningful with their lives rather than rot in Academia, did a famous sketch on organ transplantation. A fellow answers a knock at his door by two white-coated minions of the National Health Service (Britain’s version of Obamacare) who inform him that “we’re here for your liver.” When he protests that “I’m still using it” they respond “Is that an organ donor card in your pocket?” Somewhat mystified, he answers “Well, yes” at which point one of the health care providers says “I rest my case” and proceeds to extract the liver accompanied by the agonized shrieks of the victim.

In 1983, it was a joke. Today…

Britain’s newspaper (loosely speaking) The Telegraph (also renowned recently for publishing the secret  documents purloined by Snowden the Rat) has reported that the social services department in the English city of Essex forcibly sedated an Italian woman visiting England on a business trip, performed a C-section on her unconscious person, and then proceeded to take the baby into custody for over a year. They had a court order permitting the C-section, based on the woman’s having had some mental episode.

And you thought Death Panels were bad!

Britain is prologue. Now that the Feds have seized the medical system, we can expect this foreign occurrence to be the harbinger of new improvements over here. If you  have no rights to your unborn child, what parts of your body do you have rights to?

None.

So we can anticipate the promulgation  in the near future of regulations establishing rights to your organs, internal and external, by whoever is designated by the Department of Health and Human Services, for whatever purposes they see fit. We will be pursued down the street by chainsaw-wielding, white coated representatives of DHS screaming “we’re here for your [FILL IN THE BLANK]!”

Times are getting harder, fifty million people are on food stamps, and humans are made of meat.

Yum!

I am sure, Dear Reader, that, cultured person that you are, you have seen the film “Jaws.” You have probably also seen “Jaws 2”, “Jaws 3,” and the other sequels up to and including “Jaws 947.” You also probably cut your teeth watching “Rocky and Bullwinkle,” an actually clever children’s cartoon featuring Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle the Moose, who were constantly evading the evil plans of Boris Badanoff and his girlfriend Natasha (“must get moose and sqvirrel.”)

Based on that deep background, I am sure that you would agree with me that the good guy here is the moose, not the anthropophagous piscine denizen of the deep. Not a day goes by without a bloodcurdling account in the popular press of a swimmer or surfboarder consumed by a large shark. In contrast,  your interlocutor is unaware of any instance in which a human has been eaten by a moose, meese being herbivorous. [N.B. Yeah, I know that the plural of moose is moose, but I claim poetic license.] Meese are only dangerous to us anthropoids when we are in a jeep during rutting season.

Given these well known facts, your Interlocutor was appalled by the following headline from myfoxdc.com:

“Two Men Save Shark from Choking on Moose”

The article goes on to quote one of the rescuers as saying “”It was a good feeling to see that shark swim out, knowing that you saved his life.” Tell that to the next armless, legless surfer you meet.

This bizarre episode epitomizes how far we have fallen. We have interchanged the good guys and the bad guys everywhere. Predators have been transmuted into victims. No sympathy here for the innocent bovine moose being dragged to a watery grave. He is cast in the role of enemy of Nature. The news writer probably thought he was a Republican.

So where do we go next as Apocalypse roars toward us, drooling and snarling? I can see the headlines now:

“Tiny bacteria slaughtered by antibiotics”

“Wicked philanthropist degrades virtuous poor by providing Christmas dinners to homeless”

“Heartless judge sentences weeping axe murderer to community service”

I wonder what happened to the moose?

There is no clearer evidence of the collapse of Western Civilization than the return of piracy as an accepted occupation. Of course, we no longer have Blackbeard and Long John Silver, and Bloody Captain Morgan survives now only as the fierce label on a second-rate rum swilled only by the uncouth. But the Barbary Pirates are enjoying a renaissance, sallying forth from their new haven in beautiful Somalia to plunder European merchantmen laden  with the treasures of the East. No walking the plank with these guys; they just separate your head from the rest of you unless you are ransomed.

When we had this problem in the 18th Century, President Jefferson proclaimed “millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!” and sent the Marines to the shores of Tripoli. (Of course, that didn’t work very well and he ended up paying the tribute anyway. Sort of like our current approach to the Mad Mullahs of Iran.)

But we now have a new and apparently more effective strategy against the Islamopirates. We do not arm our merchantmen; we do not pound their pitiful seaport villages into toothpicks. No, No, No!

We all sang a song at camp about “Abu Ben Bulbul Emir,” the first and most memorable line of which was “The sons of the Prophet are mighty and bold, and quite unaccustomed to fear.” This is no longer true. The sons of the prophet have one overwhelming fear:

Britney Spears.

I am not making this up. It turns out that the Islamists’ horror of all things Western is particularly focused on Western culture, whose archetypical representative is Britney Spears,  a drug-addled perpetual teenager who vomits forth sex and whoopee for her pre-pubescent fans. When confronted with Britney’s musica, Islamists flee in dread.

So instead of adorning their decks with 50 caliber machine guns, the merchant fleet now equips its vessels with loudspeaker systems worthy of an Aerosmith tour, which blast forth an unending stream of Britney’s hits. Breitbart reports that “Hit Me Baby One More Time” and “Oops I Did it Again” are particularly effective.

The only problem I foresee is the development of resistance to Britney’s charms. But there are undoubtedly other mechanisms for exploiting the conditioned reflexes of the Pirates of the Porte. When Britney stops working, we can substitute “Onward Christian Soldiers” and “Hava Negila.”

Salaam.

Anyone who has ever lived in Chicago (such as The Happy Pessimist) is well aware of the fact that just because you’re dead, that doen’t mean that you have to be politically inactive. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of dead people vote in Cook County in every election.

The fraudsters of Cook County are pikers compared to the inhabitants of the smoke-filled rooms of Washington State.

These latter politicos have managed to arrange for the election of two dead men by substantial majorities. In the Seattle suburb of Des Moines, John Rosentangle won 71 percent of the vote over write-in candidates in the King County Water District 54. Rosentangle died last August of an illness. In a city council race on the Washington coast in Aberdeen, John Erak, also dead, beat Alan Richrod, very much alive, with 53 percent of the vote.

This situation has actually occurred before elsewhere in the USA. In 2012 in Florida, the late Earl K. Wood was elected Orange County Tax Collector. In Alabama, the late Charles Beasley was elected to the Bibb County Commission. In 2000, the late Mel Carnahan was elected to the U.S. Senate. In 2002,the late Patsy Mink was reelected to the U.S. House of Representatives. And the list goes on. And on. And on.

Now, the guardians of the polls claim that all these worthies died too close to the election date to have their names removed from the ballot. Hah!  A likely story! Your humble guide to the collapse of Western Civilization (me) believes that these elections are part of a brilliant scheme concocted by our finest minds to populate our various representative assemblies and administrative bureaucracies with members who are even more brain-dead than their current occupants, no mean feat.

To what end? you ask. To improve the quality of government, that’s what!

Think about it. Dead legislators cannot concoct laws! Dead bureaucrats cannot enforce regulations!

The next time your local city committee complains that it’s getting very hard to dig up people willing to run for office, show them they’re wrong! Take them to the local cemetery, hand them shovels, and let them have at it! It will give the popular phrase “the dead hand of government” a whole new meaning.

The voters will never notice.

And you thought you had trouble with the NSA! Ah, Dear Reader, you are living in a fool’s paradise! It turns out that you and your significant other are now being ratted out by your undies.

The comfortable seclusion afforded by a cheap motel room or the backseat of your Prius has now been breached by a perfidious brassiere.

Greek marketing group OgilvyOne Athens has developed the ‘Tweeting Bra’ as part of a campaign from Nestle Fitness for October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month in Greece. The idea is that every time a female unclasps her stopsemfromfloppin, a transmitter hidden in the clasp will send out a tweet announcing that she is about to perform a breast self-examination, thus encouraging others of her gender to do the same. Admittedly, a laudable purpose.

Sadly, all technology has its dark side. Little do the promoters of this latest gift of modern technology realize that the device has an additional application as a digital chastity belt. Your paramour’s parents will surreptitiously substitute a tweeting bra, cleverly camouflaged with black net and red frills, for her normal undergarment. Off the two of you go, waving farewell and exuding innocence. Then, there the two of you are, in the initial stages of an act of amorous dalliance, when the tweeter sends a message to the parents. In mere seconds, an SUV parks next to your love nest, a battering ram breaks down the motel room or car door, and your and your inamorata’s irate parents drag both of you out into the open and beat you with bamboo canes.

Shit.

It gets worse. Mayor Bloomberg will get wind of this device. I’m sure, Dear Reader, that you recall Hizzoner’s campaign to encourage breast feeding by hiding all the baby formula in the maternity wards of city hospitals. Mr. Bloomberg will commission a modification of the clasp-rat to be installed in all nursing bras sold in The Big Apple, which will tweet whenever one of the nursing panels is opened and the little bundle of joy starts slurping up sustenance. I can see it now (no, not her knockers, you pervert!). If tweets are not received at the appropriate intervals, a white van will pull up next to you (even if you are not in your home, since your cell phone will provide the City fathers with your location), you will be restrained, and your mammary gland will be shoved into the little monster’s maw.

I wonder when the tweeting machine will be incorporated into an athletic supporter?