Sometimes we're just our own worst enemies, aren't we?
A-Huntin' we will go, A-Huntin' we will go...

In a way, you've gotta feel sorry for Dick Cheney. Our Vice President isn't a criminal (well, he ISN'T, is he?)...he's been made fun of because his heart can basically explode at any moment, and although he's probably nice enough and cordial enough, he doesn't appear to have a whole lot of admirers. Don Imus ("Imus in the morning") calls Cheney a "fat crook". (Of course, he also calls Prezzident Bushed "B-B Brain"...) And now the Veep could conceivably be in some hot water. The guy he (accidentally) shot during last weekend's "quail expedition" has had a piece of Cheney's buckshot lodge in his heart, (slightly) worsening his condition. Gosh...that's pretty close to manslaughter...Ack! Can't you just hear the Cheney jokes now? "Why did Cheney blast his hunting buddy? Because he wanted to prove that he is a big shot!" " How is a Cheney hunting expedition similar to the War in Iraq? Well, we didn't go after Bin Laden for 9-11; we chose Saddam Hussein and Iran, a more visible target. Conversely, on a hunting trip, if Cheney can't shoot something, he'll shoot something ELSE!" (okay, that's a long punch line, but you get the idea)

Can't you just see the satirical bumper stickers everywhere: "9 out of 10 outdoor sportsmen agree that hunting with the Vice President is a real BLAST!" "Dick Cheney's political skills will absolutely BLOW YOU AWAY!" "Dick Cheney...the DECISIVE Vice President...unafraid to set his sights and pull the trigger!" All I know is, if I ever encountered the Vice President in a hallway somewhere and he yelled at me, "GIT OUTTA MY WAY", you bet I would! And, for certain, everyone is gonna have fun with this Cheney Shooting Incident on the internet. Posting all kinds of silly pictures; sinking to new lows of cyber-debauchery. To wit...

My guitar-playing buddy, who puts up with all of the bad notes I am constantly hitting at out-of-control jam sessions where all kinds of individuals with no sense of rhythm or melody try to play in vain, sent me this picture, and this is typical of the stuff we're gonna be seeing here on the internet. I suppose, the subtext of this photo can be translated as, "if you are Dan QUAYLE and you have coffee with Vice President Cheney, you're in no danger of being shot should you make him mad at you!" Mr. Cheney, look at the bright side! At least your heart didn't rupture when you realized that you'd actually shot your hunting buddy!

So anyway, my friend threw down the gauntlet. By sending me that doctored "quail photo", he in effect challenged me to retaliate with something halfway intelligent. But actually, HE is to blame for all of this, because he's the one who showed me how to subvert photos, thus providing me with yet another way to mock everything around me. I put this photo together, and it combines my ever-present paranoia with a satirical depiction of people who are so gun-happy they can't wait to blow the smithereens outta anything that's moving (or not).

And, to show you how relentlessly obtuse I am, I took an innocent photo of two sweet little girls upside down, swinging from a playground bar, and flipped it over, using it for my own subversive purposes. And, there's a little bit of paranoia tossed in for good measure. I suppose one could venture that, here we are, in this technocratic age, blessed with the intricacies of computer transmission, and what do we do with all of that? Stuff like you've seen on this post.

When you think that I probably have 30 times the technical features inside my little desktop computer than NASA had during the Apollo 11 mission, well, we've come a long way, baby! Or have we? And yet I look back 10 or 15 years ago, and I wonder, how did I ever get along without a computer? I mean, I must have done "something"! I know what my Dad would say about all of this: "Pure foolishness! A total waste of time!"
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I'm always searching for new ways to blog. Now, I've got picture-defacing capabilities! Pictures are worth a thousand words? Well, I'll just go ahead and put words on em! That smacks of cyber-overkill! Yep...I resemble that...