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!

When the documents purloined by Snowden the Rat surfaced, Dear Reader, you thought that you had seen the worst of spying by our masters. Think again. A whole new level of surveillance is about to commence, managed by the Thought Police.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have just given a grant of YOUR money to the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) to embark on a project to monitor your Twitter account for evidence of depressive mental illness. [Some might say that the very fact that you use Twitter is evidence of mental illness (i.e., hypertrophy of the ego), but I would not be so uncharacteristically uncharitable (heh heh). At worst, The Happy Pessimist might speculate that the use of Twitter indicates that you are a twit (for further analysis of twitdom, see Monty Python). But enough of these ad hominem animadversions. Let us move on to the meat of the matter.]

This is only the camel’s nose under the tent. If experience with gummint programs is any guide, this little study will metastasize into a comprehensive cataloging of all undesirable mental states.

But this is wonderful!

The Feds will undoubtedly marry this data with the Outlook address book they have already stolen from you and maintain in the bowels of the Ministry of Truth in the huge new computer complex in Utah. This will enable them to compile a complete social network connecting each group of mental defectives with similar conditions. Given the governmental penchant for acronyms, these will be denominated NON’s (Networks Of Nuts).

What will our masters do with NON people?

They will retool the superabundance of SWAT teams as Mental Health Squads, each headed by a shrink. They will zip around your town in giant urban assault vehicles which will be repainted white and adorned with a caduceus (you know, that little doctor symbol with snakes curled around a pole), breaking down the door of each and every NON person, and administer the appropriate therapy.

Are you depressed? They will shove Prozac down your throat!

Are you manic? They will shove Thorazine down your throat!

Are you suicidal? They will lace you into a strait jacket and cart you off to the nearest loony bin!

Are you a Republican? They will shoot you!

Within only a few weeks, the country will be cleansed of NON people, leaving a population of the certifiably sane. Of course, this means that we will have eliminated from the body politic all painters, sculptors, musicians, actors, novelists, politicians..

Politicians?

Maybe we are safe after all.

In 1995, a revoltingly PC movie entitled “Dead Man Walking” starring Sean Penn (surprise, surprise) and Susan Sarandon (also surprise, surprise) hit the market. In the film, a sociopathic murderer is practically beatified as the film ends with Mr. Penn strapped on a gurney, arms extended so he appears to be in the process of being crucified.

Why is your interlocutor, The Happy Pessimist, providing free publicity and thus increasing the income from residuals of these unpatriotic thespians? Because of the title of the film. [Unpatriotic? Recall that Mr. Penn is great buddies with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, and lived in France because of its great superiority to the U.S. until he found out that France also imposes taxes on its residents. He is sort of a 90’s version of orange-haired Dennis Rodman, buddy of Kim Jong Un.]

It turns out that “dead man walking” is shouted out by the guards escorting a condemned prisoner. While not strictly true when uttered, it is certainly predictive.

The Happy Pessimist also knows of another instance of walking dead men: ZOMBIES! It turns out that this is not strictly true, either. Zombies actually exist, but they aren’t dead. They have been drugged by a voodoo practitioner to the point that they act like, well, zombies

However, our insane legal system has finally produced an actual walking dead man. This past Monday, October 7, 2013, Hancock County Probate Judge Allan Davis ruled that Donald Eugene Miller Jr., who had arrived in court to petition Judge Davis to reverse his 1994 determination that Miller was legally dead, was still dead. Miller wanted to reactivate his social security number and get a driver’s license. However, the judge ruled that Miller had to stay legally dead because the Ohio Legislature in its infinite wisdom, has established a three-year limit on when a death ruling can be changed.

And you wonder why western civilization is doomed! We have become prisoners of a legal system which no longer makes even a pretense of reflecting reality. We are trapped in a gooey web of legalisms that produce insane results.

But let us ignore the total insanity of the decision for a moment.

This decision is actually great!

Imagine the possibilities:

Dead Mr. Miller can steal whatever he wants to. Why? How can you arrest a dead man?

Dead Mr. Miller doesn’t need to pay his taxes. Dead people can’t own anything! So what can the IRS seize?

Dead Mr. Miller can probably murder his enemies with impunity or any other weapon he chooses.  He can shred his enemies in the public square at high noon with an audience of thousands while shrieking racial pejoratives. [Of course, he can do that even if he is alive in any of our major metropolises, with only slightly higher risk of incurring untoward consequences.] How can you administer capital punishment to  a dead man ?

Dead Mr. Miller is infinitely powerful. He is much better off than if he were legally alive.

Hmmmm……

No, Dear Reader, I am not mimicking the faux enthusiasm of microcephalic sports commentators at basketball or ice hockey games. Oh no. I am introducing you to the new video game (actually, suite of video games) which make “Grand Theft Auto” look like good, clean fun . I am aware that many of you consider “good, clean fun” to be a contradiction in terms, but grant me just a few minutes and I am sure that you will concur.

Sega, the Japanese electronic games giant, has created “ToyLet.” You might think that this is a game about miniature toys, “let” being a common diminutive. Nope. This one is a “what you hear is what you get” game. ToyLet is a urinal game. You read that correctly. ToyLet is played in the urinal. Before you regurgitate, let me assure you that there is no need to swim in the urinal in order to play; you need only use the urinal in its customary fashion. But you must AIM. ToyLet installs a sensing pad in the urinal which is connected to a video display atop the urinal, and you score points by peeing at the appropriate spot.

While the Japanese may be first, they are not alone. A British company called Captive Media has introduced its own game which includes  three games to choose from: a skiing simulation, a trivia quiz with multiple choices, and a knock-down-the-penguins shooting gallery.

In this PC world, the development of this game raises an important issue: that of gender equality. Girls would probably enjoy playing this game too. In the movie “A New Kind of Love,” the hero (Paul Newman) having been disappointed by his light o’ love, is standing around with the boys in a bar, raises his glass, and proclaims “To the bachelors of the world! May their tribe increase!” One of his compatriots wryly responds “How?” The same question is apt here. But fear not! The urinal gamers have developed a cardboard funnel which the distaff side can use to aim.

The obvious question is: what next? After all, the human body produces many effluvia.

I can see it now.

How about PoopLet, in which a photomontage of pre-war Berlin is inserted in the toilet bowl and wired to a video display, with scores being accumulated by “bombing” the more important buildings?

How about BarfLet? PhlegmLet? BloodLet?

Limbo dancers are constantly asked “How low can you go?” This question is equally applicable to popular culture, and this latest development suggests that the answer is “Lower than you can possibly imagine.”

We’re doomed.

And you thought that bureaucrats only covered their own rear ends!

Major trends do not always arise in the United States, Europe, or Japan. As the Southern Hemisphere gains influence, we can anticipate developments in warmer climates propagating northward like, for example, killer bees or the Bossa Nova. (Note to Younger Readers: the Bossa Nova was a Brazilian dance that entered the U.S. during the 1960s. It was executed to the sound of really excellent music, but rapidly lost traction to the elegant Mashed Potato.) Now, Dear Reader, we can look to Venezuela, the socialist paradise, for a truly remarkable precedent.

The government of Venezuela has announced that it is seizing control of a factory that produces toilet paper. The purported reason for this action is a profound shortage of rear-end-oriented products, including toilet paper, sanitary napkins, and disposable diapers. Further, the Venezuelans do not mess around – they have announced that they will execute the takeover not with legal orders, but with the army.

In our view, taking the position that the government will shoot people if they attempt to hijack bum products (note the bad pun) is a little much. On the other hand, it may be necessary in a country that does not generate all that many corn cobs.

But let us imagine that this approach is adopted by the gummint here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. The American Red Cross reports that blood supplies are dangerously low. Not to worry! Our masters can save us. Following the Venezuelan approach, they will deploy battle hardened troops to round up a likely group of donors (the current Administration probably prefers Republicans, although there is a school of thought on the left that maintains that Republicans have no hearts and accordingly have no blood), stick needles into them, and drain them dry.

And there are other shortages!

Physician deficit? Draft promising students and force them to go to medical school!

Ammunition shortage? Seize all plows and beat them into swords!

The possibilities are endless.