*Brief pause as shivers of joy course through the author's poor corpus collosum*

    Mondays are especially delirious here because Slate includes a section called "Pundit Central" - which is nothing less than the sort of wrap-up and analysis of the weekend's news talk shows we were warned against repeatedly in junior high by our friends.  Well, everything they tried to tell us back then is true: If you want to have a meaningful life, stay the hell away from "Face The Nation", "Meet The Press", and anything else which might contain words like "President Gore" that have been dangerously thrown together by poor, cynical peasants in the high Andes and slipped into this country when the entire Coast Guard was too busy watching "Baywatch" to care.

    I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking, "Well, at least you must be well-informed.  That's admittedly not much, but - "
    Let me stop you right there.  I am not well-informed.  Instead, I am reminded of an old saying, that's what I am.  "If you want to know the time, buy a watch.  If you never want to know the time, buy two."  So long as I limited myself to one source of information, I felt very well-informed indeed.  Now I toss restlessly in bed every night, hoping against hope that today will be the day that ABC and NBC agree that rain is wet.
    Oh, sure, there are certain compensations.  Addictions always throw us a few tasty morsels to keep us hooked.  But is the occasional chance to see CBS's delicious Rita Braver's quivering lower lip as she reports on the latest plane crash worth all the pain and wasted time?
    Not unless she does something new with her hair.

    Well, I'm tired of waiting for a new hairdo.  And I'm tired of clogging the only brain I have with "black tar", "mind rot", "animal tranquilizer", and all the other teen slang terms and polite euphemisms for what is nothing but fact and information, plain and simple.
    Enough!
    Today I declare myself a free man.  Today I take my first steps towards becoming a normal human being with a normal life by joining my friends and relatives in the bright, joyful world of ignorance.
    Thanks for waiting so long.

    Now the question becomes: What do I do with my hands?
    The answer is obvious: Start working to better the world instead of merely observing it.
    How?  Fortunately, Slate's "Pundit Central" has just given me some inspiration.
    Here's the scoop: It seems that CBS's Bob Schieffer complained on "Face The Nation" yesterday about how tired he is of presidential candidates who follow the polls instead of their guts.  Now this happens to be an old complaint of many people - a complaint that I've actually heard even more often than that other tedious one that goes "Get your damn feet out of the dishwater!"  In other words, it's the perfect place to start in my new determination quest to better the world (especially since the dishwater is just about the right temperature today).
    Consider: If a politician follows the polls and tailors his or her beliefs to fit them, we call him or her "gutless."
    Consider: If a politician utterly rejects the polls and tries to impose his or her views on the rest of us, we call him or her a "tyrant."
    Consider: If a politician tries to sail a course midway between these two extremes and tailors his or her views to those of just a few people, we say that he or she is "in the pocket of special interests groups."
    What's a politician to do?
    Why, that's easy!  They all ought to buy
 

    Are you a politician who doesn't know what to believe anymore?
    Are you a politician who is tired of taking it in the neck from constituents and commentators who suspect there's a dirty little ulterior motive behind each and every one of your policies and positions?
    Well, today is your lucky day!
    Just let Dan's Amazing PP Randomizer select your policies and positions for you!  Just name the issue and let the patented internal randomizing gizmo choose a set of coherent but entirely arbitrary answers!
    No longer can anyone charge you with selling out!
    No longer can anyone yell "Conflict of Interest!" with a straight face!
    And best of all, those arbitrary answers are every bit as likely to be the right ones as those arrived at after oodles of thought!
    So, come on - the people who voted you into office never expected you to stick with those silly, old-fashioned views you spouted before the last election, anyway!  Why not finally wise up and take the plunge into a new and better random world TODAY!

    Ok, Ok - needs a bit of work.  I'll see what I can do.  Maybe tomorrow.  Right now it's time for "My Local Forecast" on The Weather Channel.
    Ohhhh, man - where do they find those intoxicating sun icons and that kickass Day-Glo music???

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(All Material Not An Obvious Rip-Off Of Some Other Aspect Of Western Civilization © 1999 by Dan Birtcher)