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?

Sophisticated and knowledgeable person that you are, Dear Reader, you are aware that one of the greatest sources of global warming is methane produced by bovine flatulence. Despite the fact that their diet is woefully devoid of beans, our Mooish friends produce vast quantities of cow burps (also farts, but that is not the issue for today. Perhaps later.)  It is surprising that our masters have not yet required our dairypeople (dairymen is, of course, a forbidden term as is, no doubt, milkmaids) to lace the food of their charges with Pepto-Bismol, and required our ranchers to crop dust their pastures and meadows with Gas-X. It probably has something to do with EPA regulations.

But do not despair! Researchers at Argentina’s National Institute of Agricultural Technology have invented a process to transform these effluvia into heating fuel. Yes indeed, these savants have managed to insert plumbing into  the throats of the helpless ruminants which collects the gas bubbling up from the seething mass of masticated grass in their four stomachs and pumps it into a big tank. By strange and wonderful chemical engineering, they then separate the methane from the CO2 in the burps, and Voila! natural gas!!

How much natural gas?  you ask. Guillermo Berra, head of the Institute’s animal physiology group, indicates that, interestingly enough, one lousy cow produces 250 to 300 liters of methane per day, which can generate enough energy to run a refrigerator for 24 hours.

This is great! We now have the simultaneous solution to two of our greatest problems: global warming and energy shortages.

Of course, there is an implementation issue. How do we get the bovo-methane to our homes? That’s easy. Everybody can keep a herd of cows in the backyard.

The methane will heat our homes and run our refrigerators.

Cow poop will fertilize our lawns, and we can  fire the gardener because the cows will eat the grass as fast as it comes up, keeping our lawns a pleasure to behold, if not to smell.

If we add a bull to the herd, we will never run out of milk or meat.

But why stop at burps? By attaching the infernal Argentine machine to the other end of the cow, we can capture whatever gases would otherwise make their way to the cow posterior. Efficiency skyrockets!

And why stop at cows? Considering how bovine the body politic has become (a conclusion reinforced by the laissez faire attitude evidenced by the news media and its sycophants during minor recent problems like a government shutdown, and money printing without end), we can attach the machine to us! That’s right! No more silent but deadly attacks on your co-watchers in the theaters, nor loud resonances which you futilely attempt to blame on the dog. Now all of it will be salvaged productively and used for the greater good.

The only problem is that our masters will require us each to eat two pounds of kidney beans every day.

Bon appetit!