http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehObqTGXpL4

As I stopped by the local national-chain sandwich shop this evening to get a fast dinner (don’t laugh too hard if you’ve been to Subway before), I decided that the remaining raspberry cheesecake cookies on the counter rack looked relatively appetizing. I asked for three, and the young lady proceeded to get tongs and remove them.

“That’s fine,” I replied.

“They’re very crumbly,” she said.

Decision time. Should I follow the trail blazed by Mr. Cleese four decades earlier and just blurt out, “I don’t care how ****ing crumbly they are! Bring  on the raspberry cheesecake cookies with all due haste and speed!”?

Answer: “That’s fine.”

I’m sure she either didn’t comprehend the ironic smile on my face, or else she called the police and I’m being surveilled for sexual harassment.

As expected, I saw no mass flashes and ascending human forms at 6 p.m. eastern U.S. time. But being the rationalist that I am (hold the snickers), I still tested the delusional claims of Harold Camper and found something sinister and well cloaked.

Clothing racks were well stocked – far more stocked than on any other day I’ve been in a Wal-Mart. I began covertly photographing  the scene:

Well stocked shelves at racks in Wal-Mart? Verrry suspicious ...

As I tried to remain unobtrusive (yeah, keep on laughing …), I saw other hints that, in fact, people had mysteriously disappeared in recent moments.

Two belts just lying in the floor? Hmmmmmm ...

My word! Could have an entire family just tossed their clothes in the basket and gone to meet their maker?

And then I saw the dressing rooms. I stood back, pretending to compare bargains on tube socks while noticing the parade of shoppers entering the dressing stalls. As each shopper entered, they never exited. Yet more people filed into the rooms as the attendant smiled. Finally, I was able to get the photograph I feared . . .

I saw the light, and I am afraid ...

Note the vertical shafts on light from the stalls.  I’m sure I’ve found the secret to Wal-Mart’s ‘everyday low prices.’

Be afraid. Very afraid.

On Thursday, I think I might have made two significant cultural discoveries in a CD bin – possible the two shortest, commercially released music CD’s in U.S. history: Kenny G Super Hits and Vanilla Ice Greatest Hits.

Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars . . . .

Carlos Lam, plotter not-so-extraordinaire

  Mr Lam – until Friday, a deputy prosecutor for Johnson County, Indiana but still presumably an admirer of whiteshirt Republican Governor Scott Walker of  Wisconsin – apparently thought that Nazi Germany came up with a few good ideas in the late summer of 1939. Like using deception and staged violence to defame enemies domestic and foreign. Maybe Lam was surfing the web and found something really obscene, like the Gleiwitz incident.

Not-much-better plotter Alfred Naujocks

Lam, in what he probably thought was a fit of brilliance, committed his thoughts to email. An email with his username and part of the official email system of the Johnson County, Indiana prosecutor’s office.

And, thus, the official records of that system begat this:

“If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions’ cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the unions,” the email said.

“Currently, the media is painting the union protest as a democratic uprising and failing to mention the role of the DNC and umbrella union organizations in the protest. Employing a false flag operation would assist in undercutting any support that the media may be creating in favor of the unions. God bless, Carlos F. Lam.”

Let’s see . . . in 1939, SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich, Gestapo chief Heinrich Mueller and SS Major Alfred Naujocks cooked up a similar plot in which concentration camp prisoners would be dressed in Polish uniforms and killed at the site of a German radio station to prove that the Poles were aggressors against the peace-loving German state.

I wonder if Lam deleted something from his email. Say, something like . . . . “Walker, mein leader, perhaps you could get some cheap clothing and weapons, requisition a few Wisconsin Department of Corrections inmates, make them change their clothes and let them ‘loose’ on the grounds of the governor’s chancellery . . . . your stadtpolizei would become heroes and collective bargaining for public employees could be reined in by a final resolution . . . .”

And for added interest, Mr. Lam seems to envision himself a prophet of race relations in the United States (here).

“This book is an excellent prediction of what is to come in the next century. Not only are black and hispanic militancy on the rise, but White movements are gaining adherents daily, probably in response to the crimes perpetrated against Whites by these other races. Mr. Chittum’s predictions are also backed up with statistics, and he also shows that past multiethnic empires have broken up. Read it and prepare.”

I feel so inadequate. My best effort on Amazon’s book reviews was only this.

I suppose it could have been worse. Lam could have gotten a copy of ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.’

But all of this still leaves a question unanswered. What passes for brains among some segments of the GOP in the north central U.S.? I have one theory . . . .

The synapses are probably more active in this too . . .

and the Chicago Transit Authority?

It’s obvious. More cowbell.

Me to Walmart employee: “Do you have any snow shovels?”

Walmart employee: “We’re out.”

Me: “Are you geting any more in?”

Walmart employee: “No. They’re a seasonal item.”

Me: “But it’s still winter for a month and a half.”

Walmart employee: “There’s no demand for them after winter.”

At this point, there are two responses roiling in my mind . . .

Me, talking in my mind: “You f***ing moron, it’s still winter!”

Me, opening my mouth: “Never mind.”