Greetings, programs! It has been NaN years since I last wrote anything on this website, which is probably a good thing for all concerned. Yet, here I am again, and you might be wondering why the long interlude. Was it the soul-crushing ennui and loss of sense of self and direction that accompanies a global pandemic, the fear and uncertainty surrounding a potential collapse of the global economy, and the sinking feeling that the ghost of Edwin Meese could pop up at any time, rattling the chains of the Wedtech Scandal?

Ha! That’s pretty funny. No, None of the above. I have been far too busy trying out the recipes on this website, and developing my own synthetic ham bandolier, which I compulsively brandish in an open-carry-cockstrong manner, to the chagrin of all the other peaceable denizens of the Trader Joe’s. But I really need them to see how powerful I am. You never know when some salad-bowl-wielding communist hippy is going to sidle up next to the alfalfa sprouts and puff up his neck pouch. But I digress.

What do you think of “META”, the new name for Facebook? Well, I for one, have completely forgotten all of the completely awful psychological manipulation and warfare they have engendered and the debilitating effect they have had on global democracy. With that new name, it’s like, “PHYTOOMPSH!” and all the bad stuff is gone.

Amidst the modern burgeoning waves of advertisements, jingles, phone numbers, web site URLs, email addresses, movies, online videos, social networking websites and applications, mobile phone conversations (of our own, and of others), radio programs, text messages, junk mail, magazines, billboards, digital signage, e-readers, and so much information flotsam and jetsam, it can be hard for the modern human to grasp that there was once a world with no written – or even spoken – information. The primal Earth was a blank slate, one on which Mankind had not yet scrawled a single mark, carved symbols depicting good fortune in the hunt, or written an advertisement for toothpaste with Whitening Power.

We’re drowning it it now, though, hoo-boy. You can’t rip a toot without five different companies peddling anti-flatulence medication to you (and two peddling pro-flatulence medication). You can’t event THINK about remote controlled candy bars without That Huge Online Retailer sending you a MindAd about HoverChoc. And if you even LOOK at that new model hovercraft (the one swimming in eels) – you’ll be getting a ton of spam, landing in your inbox, message over message, building up like neural plaque, until eventually your own personal cyberspace looks like an Etch-a-Sketch collaboration between Stephen Hawking and Salvador Dali.

So, what can you, an average 7’11” tall tax attorney for marsupials, do in the face of such electronic adversity? The long answer is – understand that online connections are not the same as real world connections; tune out of so-called “news” whose only objective is to get you angry amped up, scared to death, and tuned in more frequently to their advertisement stream; go have coffee in an actual coffee shop with an actual friend; buy a new album and listen to it in your underwear, with headphones, while you Swedish Death Cleanse your apartment; and read a book from your library.

Or, you can just wait for the sweet release of death promised you by Gorlox, the Hyperspace Lord of Reconciliation. After all, Earth will soon be the galaxy’s first planetary Starbucks, and we need you to be gone to make that happen. KTHXBYE