Another election, congratulations, and condolences,

The election is over, Trump is the winner, and I can live with that. Not that there is much choice. I voted, but only because my wife makes me. Years of casting a ballot has never produced even the smallest feeling of accomplishment, or satisfaction. Quite the opposite, it has left a feeling of forced, uncomfortable compromise.

In my earliest years the rancorous sounds of political campaigns left me feeling a little ashamed, and those politicians were mute, and polite by the standards of today. Now we have never ending news coverage, and "journalists" so slanted that they might as well work for one campaign or the other.

I was never able to put much faith in democracy. A disquieting feeling of corruption and vice always seemed to pervade the whole process.  Once I was old enough to figure out what "redistricting" meant the whole facade of fairness fell away. There is election fraud, and it is carried out on a mass scale by the government, the people elected to be impartial, to work for America, and its citizens. Turns out they were working for themselves, or at the very least their political party.

It is possible they have convinced themselves they are doing the right thing, by doing their best to turn the country into a one party system, all while screaming at the top of their voices from the highest mountain tops that they hold the constitution as a sacred text.

It might be time for me to take a stand. I don't normally tell my wife no. "No, I am no longer taking part in this seamy little charade. The country will have to carry on the ridiculous illusion of free will without me, I refuse to suspend my disbelief any longer." It makes me feel better just typing that.

So, for those of you who wanted Hillary to win, suffer miserably, and for those of you who wanted
Trump to win, gloat insufferably. Either way, don't believe too much is going to change, it never does, and don't think for a minute that any of them will really help, they won't, they don't care.

Politics has always, to me, been an ugly business, filled with ugly people doing ugly things, and it only seems to have gotten worse. And it will probably continue down that dark, disturbing path until somehow it melts down completely. And everybody will say "we should have listened to Tim." I really hate being right all of the time.

It looked good on the whiteboard.

Last Thursday, one week and one day ago, Thursday the 21st, Dr. Dawg and I had a very important meeting with a potentially profitable client. We can't mention any names, but he represents an organization that is housed in a huge building that has more than 4 sides, but less than 6 sides, and throws money at anybody who can design and build a guidance system able to deliver a warhead through a basement window.

Anyway, on that morning, we overslept, and then somehow we started watching "2012" with John Cusack, we have a real affinity for doomsday movies where scientists save some small, wretched, undeserving, ungrateful contingent of base humanity. It still brings a tear to our eye.

About the time the aircraft carrier John Kennedy smashes into the White House killing Danny Glover (who, if you remember, kicked hell out of a predator, so he does not go gently into that good night) we remembered our meeting. We rushed out the door, Dr. Dawg in Iron Man pajamas, and me in a coffee stained tshirt and gym shorts. But, traffic was heavy and we were too late, our potential cash cow, client was gone.

Clearly, this was unacceptable. We had to make sure this did not happen again. We decided to install a black hole generator right on the big curved ramp from one freeway to the other.  We reasoned we could use it most days to shave between 9 and 23 minutes off our commute by traveling through quantum space and avoiding the 2nd freeway altogether.

On days like last Thursday we would use the "gravitational redshift effect" to travel through time, and make it to our meeting with minutes to spare, even if we had an extra cup of coffee, another frozen breakfast burrito, and watched the entire movie "Sunshine" where scientists equip a bunch of whiny, do nothing, no good astronauts with all of the tools and skills needed to reignite the sun with an atomic weapon, and save the world.

Today we took it for a spin, it worked great. We got to work at the same time we left the house. Our coffee still hot, and tasty, our donuts as fresh as when they came out of the little glass enclosure, the sprinkles almost jumping off the glazed topping.

Unfortunately for the small midwest city where our secret midwest office and research facility is located, the off switch malfunctioned, and the gravitational governor was sucked into the event horizon and launched into another universe. These troublesome, but completely unforeseeable, and completely "non-litigatable" occurrences have started quite a chain reaction on the east side of town.

So, to the all of the drivers who are now stuck in some alternate universe, or distant galaxy we would like to apologize without accepting any legal responsibility, And to the homes and businesses being swallowed into the inky blackness rest assured we are working toward a reasonable remedy, and it should be finished before it is too late, not that we did anything wrong, of course.