Ted Stevens revealed

Senator Ted Stevens (R - Alaska) is somewhat of an internet phenomenon. Last year he made these hilariously ridiculous statements regarding net neutrality on the Senate floor:

"Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got... an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.

[...] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material."

Naturally, he was ridiculed relentlessly on the internet and, perhaps more notably, by John Stewart on The Daily Show. I even took a jab at him with a poorly made remix.

His stutter laden tirade is intriguing on several levels. Why was his staff trying to send him an internet? The whole internet? Could there be more than one internet? Perhaps the government has their own secret network of internets. Did Al Gore invent all of them, or just our own personal internets? When President Bush said "I hear there's rumors on the internets." perhaps it was more than just another linguistic error, but a momentary lapse of judgment in which he revealed a classified government secret. No wonder Ted's tubes keep getting clogged up! They're trying to send him enormous amounts of material. Indeed, that is not something that can be simply dumped on a truck.

The most disturbing aspect of it all is that Senator Stevens was arguing in favor of a bill that would rid us of net neutrality. In a nutshell, that would allow for telecom companies to tax webmasters in exchange for faster loading times, while making the websites that chose not to pay load painfully slow, effectively ruining the intertubes.

One might wonder: Why would a man argue so passionately in favor of such a destructive piece of legislation when he doesn't have a fucking clue what he's talking about? (Did I mention that he's chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation? It's his job to know this shit.) The answer is simple. He is being payed off by the telecom companies so he can pass their bill and they can get filthy stinking rich. At least, that was my theory. Just a theory...

...until now.

Agents from the FBI and IRS raided his house today. It had been remodeled in 2000, a project that more than doubled its size. Stevens claims that he paid for the remodeling with his own money, but a contractor has said that they were hired by Veco (an oil company) CEO Bill Allen, who reviewed all the invoices before the Stevens paid them. Allen and a vice president for Veco recently plead guilty to bribery, extortion, and other charges connected with paying off state legislators.

So now we can reasonably confirm that my theory was correct, and that Ted Stevens is in fact accepting bribes from lobbyists. But why does he need all that money? He must be saving up for something big. Something that would require a bigger house for storage. Something that he would need regular access to from the comfort of his own home. Ah yes, its all starting to make sense now...





He's stocking up on TUBES! What a delightfully evil plan! Never again will he wait for days to receive his internets! No, Ted Stevens is a United States Senator. He has big important things to do, and can't be bothered with clogged tubes like the rest of us peons. When it comes down to brass tacks, Ted needs the facts, and he needs an internet on his desk ASAP. The legislative branch is serious business, and Mr. Stevens doesn't fuck around.

If I didn't hate the guy so much, I might feel sorry for him, or at least find him somewhat endearing. He's like a real life Grandpa Simpson. The poor man is obviously senile and has to deal with the pressure of making decisions that affect the lives of 300 million Americans. Is it really very surprising that he became certifiably batshit crazy? In a way, it's kind of cute.

Well, not really. He's just a stupid asshole. I hope he gets what's coming to him.

Asshole of the century nomination

Is anybody reading this? I don't suppose it matters. Somebody recently said to me in passing that "it wouldn't be so bad to be a Borg". I replied, "Sure, and I don't suppose you would mind if you were given a lobotomy. Would you like to volunteer?"

So on a whim I read a little bit about lobotomies. The procedure was invented by a Swiss doctor and was performed by drilling into the patients head and extracting parts of their frontal lobes. 46 years later a Portuguese doctor mixed it up a bit and destroyed the tissue by injecting it with alcohol. He eventually won a Nobel Prize for it. I guess they were having a slow year.

That's when Dr. James W. Watts stepped in. Instead of spending hours drilling into people's heads, he sped up the process by sticking a knife into the patient's eye socket and cutting through brain tissue. This procedure is informally known as an icepick lobotomy and takes just 10 minutes to perform.

When he introduced the new technique to America, it caught on rapidly. Before lobotomies, nobody really knew how to deal with mental patients. They would just throw them in the loony bin, most of which were naturally overcrowded. Watts was convinced that he was going to revolutionize medicine. I suppose he was right. He performed thousands of lobotomies over the next decade. He eventually decided that patients with severe mental illness were not the only ones who could benefit from his magic surgery.

When Lou Dully got tired of her stepson's defiant attitude, she took him to a bunch of doctors who all told her the same thing: There was nothing wrong with him. He was a typical, rebellious 12 year old boy.

Enter Dr. Watts.

"Oh no, Mrs. Dully, Howard isn't your average preteen. He has a personality disorder."

"Oh lord! Is there anything we can do, Doctor?"

"Not to worry, ma'am. I'll just jam an icepick into his eye sockets, wiggle it around a bit, and he'll be good as new."

"Praise the lord! I don't know what I would do without you, Doctor Watts."

"A little parenting, perhaps?"

"Enough chit-chat. Get on with the stabbing."

[The preceding dialogue was a dramatization based on extensive research I made up for this story.]

Howard Dully's case was not an isolated incident. There are hundreds of stories just like it. One of the more infamous cases is that of Rosemary Kennedy, the late President's sister. She had her brains mutilated because of mood swings and promiscuity. Watts asked her to recite songs and count backwards as he cut into her skull, deciding how deep to go based on her responses. He stopped when she became incoherent. She spent the rest of her days staring at walls for hours and babbling gibberish.

Despite his tendency to ruin people's lives, Watts' ego continued to grow. Instead of working one eye at a time, he started performing lobotomies with both hands to show off. He once performed 228 lobotomies in two weeks, including 25 women in a single day. He toured the country performing lobotomies in his van, which he dubbed the lobotomobile.

No, really, the lobotomobile. I wish I was making this up.

Finally, perhaps by divine intervention, antipsychotics such as Thorazine were made available in the mid 1950's, rendering lobotomies obsolete. The medical community suddenly made another remarkable discovery: their conscience. They decided that sticking instruments into people's heads and shredding their brains wasn't a very nice thing to do, and lobotomies were essentially abolished. Dr. Watts, being the arrogant asshole that he was, refused to accept the conventional wisdom. He sold his house and spent the rest of his life traveling the country in his lobotomobile, visiting former patients in a futile attempt to prove that he had changed their lives for the better.

Who was he trying to convince? Perhaps the Nobel Prize committee. Perhaps the hospitals that wouldn't hire him anymore. Perhaps himself. It doesn't really matter. He was an asshole. If there was an asshole of the century award, he probably wouldn't win. Guys like Adolph Hitler, L. Ron Hubbard, Barry Bonds, and Madonna would beat him in a landslide. But he should still be considered. He's certainly on my list.

Hello World!

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Enjoy!