I know it’s risky to go out on a limb at this late date, but I want to throw my hat into the presidential prediction ring. Note that it’s a very big ring, and I have a very small hat.
I won’t be cheeky and pick someone like Sarah Palin or Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate.
My prediction for the winner of the 2008 election: the American people.
Feburary 29, 2012 — LJUBJIANA
BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH - 16!!
Bwwwwhaaaaahhahahahah!
It is I, Gosar, the evil vampire overlord of Slovenia with an important announcement.
Every four years, the calendar-makers insert that greatest of holiday, LEAP DAY, into the calendar to confuse and bewilder you. But you have probably asked, as we all have, where have all the other February 29ths gone? THREE-FOURTHS of the February 29ths in the timeline are missing.
Does that mean that the earth rotates 1/366th faster around the sun-sphere three years out of four? Or are the February 29ths there, only we miss them because of the MASS SLEEPING DREAM that encumbers us? Or have the LEAP DAYS been saved in a mountain lair 27 miles east of Trieste, Italy?
The answer will surprise you! Unless, of course, you already know that, I, GOSAR, EVIL OVERLORD OF ALL SLOVENIA, have been hoarding February 29ths since 46 BC!
Now, for the truly evil part of my plan! I will unleash the February 29ths back into the calendar in 2013 unless I am paid a mighty ransom of 1,000,000,000 Slovenian Tovars in exactly one fortnight.
Otherwise, puny earthlings, I will reduce your calendar to look like this:
October 2013
November 22, 2008 — DALLAS.
JFK in Dallas
It has long been accepted that Lee Harvey Oswald, a man so hideous that he had three first names, was the sole assassin of JFK. This is not the truth.
History and mystery are taught in the same classrooms at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where I attended college. In the early 1990s, when I was getting my undergraduate degree in Historical Mysteries, I took a class from professor Dr. O. L. Harvey, an expert on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States of America.
In the class, which was about solving the mystery of where the great, lost city of Atlanta had disappeared to, he mentioned in an offhand remark about JFK’s assassination, “Yes, Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. It’s the accepted fact. They acted alone.”
I bolted up in my seat. What had he just said?? They? They acted alone? What did he mean by that? I waited until after class and walked with him back to his office in the secret, underground academic control center of SMU.
“Dr. Harvey, did you mean to say ‘They acted alone?’ Shouldn’t you mean, ‘He acted alone’?”
And then Dr. Harvey told me the hideous, horrible truth* of November 22, 1963 and the events that happened 45 years ago today:
Lee Harvey Oswald acted with a team of three.
Lee Harvey Oswald was cloned.
A group of four Lee Harvey Oswalds killed JFK.
Many people know that Lee Harvey Oswald was a great Cuban and friend of Fidel Castro. What they don’t know is that during his time spent in Cuba, he was the test subject of Soviet cloning experiments. For the Soviets, Oswald was the perfect candidate for speed cloning, a radical method of cloning and growing a new human individual to an exact match of the original test subject.
Oswald agreed. He knew that four or five (the exact number is still unknown) clones would be the perfect accessories to commit murder, changing the course of history forever. The quick cloning process grew four known new Oswalds in record time, subjecting the clones to human growth hormones that brings them to the real Lee Harvey Oswald’s age in six years.
Mentally, the Oswald clones were less than 10 years old. But physically, they would match Oswald’s appearance and age in 1963… after 1963, they would age too quickly. Oswald had to act before 1963 was done.
So that fateful day in Dallas, four of Oswald’s clones sat in the Texas Book Depository and fatally wounded John F. Kennedy and shot John Connolly, governor of Texas at the time. After the trauma, one of the Oswald’s was captured, and later killed by another Oswald in a Jack Ruby costume (he had aged fitfully in those few days), who later died in prison by a third Oswald who became a prison guard. The fourth Oswald’s fate is unknown. He may have returned to Cuba.
All of these facts were given to me by Dr. Harvey, who passed away three years ago, on that fateful autumn afternoon in the secret underground academic stronghold at SMU. How did he know so much, I asked?
The original Lee Harvey Oswald changed his name, he said. He went back to school, specializing in historical mysteries, and now teaches at SMU. That’s right, Dr. Harvey was Oswald Harvey aka Lee Harvey Oswald, the man whose clones killed JFK.
*by which I mean “questionable but interesting lie.”
Brian wrote me earlier today to suggest that we go see Synecdoche, New York at the Paramount Theater in downtown Austin. It’s showing as part of the Austin Film Festival, and Charlie Kaufman would be there for a brief Q&A after the movie.
We got there early enough to get in and have a nice front seat in the balcony. Lots of leg room! The theater is beautiful inside. It’s a turn-of-the-other century theater. Chandeliers and art deco decorations everywhere. The lights got dark, and then the movie started!
At the end of the movie, a crew hand brought out three chairs. Then, he came back out and removed one of the chairs! Charlie Kaufman: The Man and then Charlie Kaufman: The Interviewer came out and answered questions.
Then Brian and I left. I was hungry, so I went home and made a baked potato with salsa and a little not-butter. Then I wrote this movie review while watching the Daily Show. The review was well received, with a little chuckle from a friend and many, many confused remarks on the comments section. I was a little dismayed by the nature of the comments which questioned whether I really saw the movie I thought I saw and whether I really saw the theater I thought I theatered.
The next day, I woke up to exercise. Three months later, I went to Nicaragua. I got a minor cold at one point, and I stubbed my toe.
In April of 2009 I went to Guatemala to learn Spanish. I met a beautiful girl, Esmeralda, and we had a baby named Avacado. She wasn’t able to get a green card, and I didn’t want to commit to marriage. She died in a plane crash in 2043. Avacado became a fishmonger in Veracruz.
I lost a bit of weight and considered getting surgery before I started my PhD in Geography at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. I met a beautiful Canadian woman, Amy, and we dated for four years before she left with my advisor, Gregor Ripvein.
Thinking about space and time, I started writing a review about this review. In it, I changed the names of the writer and the friend I went to see the movie with. My friend then decided to write a review of the review I was writing, and I switched places (and gender) with the person who was imitating my character in the review that my friend wrote about this review.
Scene.
We here at Davebrand Industries take our civic responsibilities seriously. We encourage all of our employee* to pay taxes, serve jury duty, and vote.
*Yes, employee. There’s only one.
