Paradox Point

         Just By Being Cats   Before my wife and I got cats, mouse droppings kept appearing in the basement. Then we got cats, the cats lounged around and rubbed their scent everywhere, and the mouse droppings stopped appearing. The mice would crawl in, sniff the air, smell cat, and crawl out. The cats did their job just by being cats!

             From the annals of the National Liar           V2#2 October 31, 1995           Black Hole! Earth Absorbed   On September 23, 7:23 GMT, a black hole collided with planet Earth. The collapsed star quickly absorbed the planet; a cosmic catastrophe that spelled the end of all life on Earth, including the human race.           “It’s a dangerous universe,” commented Carl Sagan, noted media astronomer. “The dinosaurs, too, dominated Earth’s ecology, and they too were destroyed by an asteroid impact. How are the mighty fallen!”           “Dammit, I had just made the down payment on my new car, when all of a sudden this happens,” said Joseph Six-pack, of Oshkosh, Idaho.   “If I had known this was coming I’d have kept the old four-door.”  ...

From the annals of the National Liar Volume 0, #0, April 1, 1993 Big Bang Theory Explodes   The “Big Bang” is dead. Astronomers from around the world convened to announce that the “Big Bang” theory of the origin of the universe is “absurd, incorrect, impotent and obsolete”. Stephen Hawking said, “Basically, we were barking up the wrong tree. We thought the Big Bang explained everything, but now it has outlived its usefulness.” The “Big Bang” theory claimed that the entire universe was originally concentrated in a single point, which exploded. This, according to the theory, explains the expansion of the universe; which explains the Hubble redshift; which in turn explains the darkness of the night sky. The Big Bang has also been made to answer for the abundance of deuterium; the flatness of space; the absence of anti-matter; and the 2.7 degree Kelvin background radiation. However, difficulties plagued the theory from its inception. It was not clear how galaxies could fo...

                 From the annals of the National Liar Volume 3, #1, April 1, 1996        “Beige People” Issue Protest             “We’re not white; we’re beige!” declared Elmo Earl of the Beige People’s Liberation Front. The infamous racial demagogue proclaimed to thousands of cheering followers, “Snow is white. Paper is white. Milk and soap suds are white. Clouds are white. Bones are white. But we aren’t. We’re another color. We’re beige! ”           Mr. Earl pointed out that the color of paper and the color of Caucasian skin are clearly distinguishable to the eye. He argued, “Suppose you went down to the grocer and got a carton of milk. If it turned out to be full of a liquid exactly the same color I am, would you drink it? No you wouldn’t! You’d bring it back for a refund! And why? Because milk is wh...

On Cootie-Powered Idea Theft Written during the Obama administration   Normally, when you steal an idea from someone, then that person gets to keep the idea. In fact that person gets to take credit, and boast ‘at last you have caught up to me’.   But what if you could steal someone’s ideas in a way that they can’t take credit, and must even repudiate? What if you could steal an idea out of someone’s head, so they don’t have it any more? Impossible, you say? But we have witnessed just this happening with Barack Obama versus the Republican Party. Over and over he has taken their ideas, which they have repudiated! He has stolen so many of their own ideas out of their heads that they must now run on bad ideas, or no ideas at all! Why is this so? How is it even possible? I blame Cooties. Cooties are a children’s schoolyard fiction. They are a kind of invisible magical lice, undetectable to the bearer, but intolerable to everyone else. They contaminate individuals, and a...

            The Situation Room Photo                   Written during the Obama administration                     On the off chance that you haven't seen the Situation Room photo, here's a link:                        http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/5680724572/in/set-72157626507626189/                   I write to comment. First of all, whoever took this photo deserves a Pulitzer. It is a revelation. Here I discuss six of its subjects, whom I nickname the General, the Spook in the Suit, the Jester, the Angel, the Seasick Secretary, and President Thundercloud.                   Starting with the General: he's the center of the photo, and he's the only calm person in the room. Everyone around him is wracked ...