I should note, by the way, that 2004 was a lousy year for campaigning. But January always brings with it the seeds of hope, and I expect to make big strides, militia-wise, in the coming months.
You all may remember that November saw my advancing hordes held in check west of Tibet by the fleet-footed legions of the Crunch 'n' Munch Kid. I know, I know — he prefers to be called General Doom. And really, after the way his infantry routed my swordsmen along the walls of Katmandu, he probably gets to have me call him whatever he wants. But even twenty years after those commercials, it's hard to picture this bitter enemy of mine as anything other than a surly kindergartner grousing about the substandard snack food his mother chose for him. It's my belief that if General Doom's childhood had not been so fraught with disappointment, he would not have overstretched himself in the Mongolian steppes over Christmas and opened his supply lines to my raids.
And thank God for that: as beaten down as my Third Battalion was at that point in time, they were not fit to survive the winter on foraging alone. As it turns out, the plundered caramel corn and peanuts — I'm no psychoanalyst, "Crunch 'n' Munch," but I find your choice of rations to be
intriguing, to say the least — kept my scattered soldiers alive long enough for me to airlift them out.
Live to fight another day, I told myself, as I orchestrated a wholesale retreat that surrendered Yakutsk, Irkutsk, and Kamchatka to General Doom. It's always hard to hand over the land of your childhood, where you gamboled and played in those halcyon days of youth, before all of us got involved in the world domination business. But it's not like I haven't bugged out of Asia before: I've been beating my head against this wall three years running. As I boarded that helicopter and gave the go-sign, I said to myself over and over again,
Live to fight another day. These days that has become, regrettably, my mantra.
That other day is now, people — and I have my designs now on South America. Once you establish a position there, it's easy to defend, and you have naval access to the West Coast of Africa and North America. What's that, you say? Lead an advance through Panama? The first thing you learn in this business is that you
never lead more than a single battalion out onto an isthmus — unless it's part of a larger sneak attack, with a fleet of destroyers poised on either flank.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. We all know well that Bea Arthur's minions claim to have the entire continent in lockdown, but they're a fractious bunch — not terribly well-disciplined, and my agents have already infiltrated a number of their operational centers in Uruguay and Peru. The whisper campaign is in full force, and I predict a full-fledged mutiny against Brigadier Beatrice by the end of February. It will still be warm enough, at that time, for me to land paratroopers into Bolivia and move more substantial ground forces in from Patagonia in the south. We'll take Ms. Arthur by surprise, all right. She was always out of her league. Should have taken up macrame — or some other hobby where she couldn't hurt herself — after they canceled
Golden Girls. Joining the multilateral battle for world sovereignty is a big step. Anyone can get in the game, but you have to have the organizational skills, the resources and — dare I say it? — a certain amount of
cajones to
stay in the game.
As for you, General Crunch 'n' Munch, you'll be lucky to be holding the Ukraine come April. They say Gavin McCleod is cloning American Gladiators in his laboratory by the Black Sea. With these new battalions of genetically-proven warrior-primates at his beck and call, Captain Steubing finally has the land army to complement his considerable naval resources in the Mediterranean. I'll be content to hunker down in the Amazon Basin while you two bang your heads together in Central Asia.
The coming months will be interesting, indeed . . .
Today the Wife and I embark for Florida for the long weekend. We've arranged a non-stop flight to Tampa on Song, or Delta/Song, or Song/Delta (the two airlines —
or is it one? — seem to have some kind of identity relationship, a precise understanding of which eludes me, due to a treasured lack of knowledge about corporate matters), which can mean
ONLY
ONE
THING . . .
The Big Horse is back in the saddle, baby (or something like that). It's Song Music Trivia time, and I am
geared up. Last year I walked in cold and
knocked some heads (TSA officials, I meant that metaphorically). This will be something different. This will be a day that the passengers on Song flight 3510 will be telling their grandchildren about:
Come sit down on my lap, Little Susie, and let me tell you about the time I was on a plane with The Legendary Phutatorius.
Did he do Music Trivia, Grampa?
Susie, he did Music Trivia that day like nobody ever did Music Trivia before or after. I wish you could have seen it.
Well, I'm to the point now where I'm considering plastic surgery. That's where I am right now — because I've spent the last ten days trying to get these miserable earbuds — which Apple actually has the gall to
sell separately — to stay in my ears, and I'm coming round to the view that it simply is not possible. I am making strides with the right ear. I really have that 'bud lodged in there but good, crammed halfway into the cochlea on that right side, and barring some extreme intervention involving a tractor, rope, and a pair or needlenosed pliers, I'm convinced that Earbud R is in there to stay.
The problem is the left side. I just can't get that L to stick. Oh, I've tried everything — peanut butter, epoxy — but no dice. And as someone who likes to listen to music in stereo, I have to say it sucks to play my iPod's 25GB of loaded music into one measly ear.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong here. Maybe all the people I see in the street, strolling along, with earbuds securely placed, are privy to some secret tip I don't know about. Maybe I'm a horrible, horrible freak with a gaping maw of a left ear parked so far beyond the normal limits for
Homo Sapiens sapiens that even Apple Corp., with its significant design resources, could not account for me when they developed these earbuds.
A co-worker of mine described the same problem to me: the right earbud holds its ground just fine, but the left can't stay in place. I observed at a meeting later in the day that she was writing — like I was — with her left hand. I'm wondering now whether southpaws naturally have a larger external ear cavity than their right-handed counterparts. Apple's engineers may or may not have observed this phenomenon in the course of their R&D. At best, there is a market out there for a Left-Handed Earbud Set. At worst, Steve Jobs is a
sinistrophobe.
In any event, I don't see any nonsurgical alternatives right now, and yesterday I consulted with a physician who proposes to take cartilage out of my knee —
who needs it, right? — and graft it into a ridge along the bottom of my left auricle, just above the lobe. The Good Doctor promises that the new "seawall," as he calls it, will hold that left earbud in place through any physical jostling short of a grand mal seizure. "The iPod itself will skip," he declares, "before that baby jumps your left-side ridge."
Now if only the Health Plan would approve the surgery. They're calling it an "elective" procedure, and it could be another six weeks before I get through their appeal process. Jerks.
