Homo 'Hobbit' Floresiensis and The Space Toad

Let me tell you something: My life is not easy.

I never asked for this PMMF Custodian gig. Yet, as Uncle Ben once said, with great power comes great responsibility. And I've shirked mine going on now for over two months. You know why? Because I had to get a real job Working for The Man again. (This coming after a good stretch of sleeping late most days as a lethargic consultant attacked with sporadic bursts of manic productivity, fizzling out finally to a protracted recessionary depression.)

So I've been busy. I got people to do. Things to be. Places to meet. All the while, trapped in a world I never made.

And the Great Playtpus is not pleased. He bellows at me nightly in nauseating lime-green shades of disapproval, with flash-forward dream glimpses of repulsive reprisals. (I gotta tell ya: I am not gonna do another of those long and winding stuffed-sausage expulsions down the gooey green entrails of The Space Toad. The Great One put me there last summer, and I simply cannot do that again.)

So I need to get this out. Or else.

First off, you may be curious as to why I posted the above artist's rendition of The Hobbit Homo Floresiensis. (And the sculpted face model at left ...)

The answer is that we do not know why. I work on impulse, you see?

But consider the fact that these little chimp hobbits -- maybe human, maybe not -- lived and hunted big chubby field rodents on the Indonesian island of Flores for at least 80,000 years, up to about 13,000 years ago. Standing less than 4 feet tall, these guys actually lived at the same time and on the same island with contemporary homo sapiens.

Isn't that weird?

In other news, I've been enthralled with Lantern Jaws vs. Coco. Haven't you? Probably not a lot of folks are aware that Jay Leno used to be a great stand-up comedian. Before he became oh so very lame, this guy had terrific -- even socially relevant -- material, in addition to impeccable timing and delivery.

Since taking over the Tonight Show in 1994, he's morphed into a lowest-common-denominator joke crapster devoid of substance or cleverness. Hey, if you like Sarah Palin, you probably think he's the best. Sarah Palin's book is still on the top end of the Hardback Nonfiction Best Sellers List (selling for about 2 cents a pop, albeit) and she just got a plumb commentator job on Fox Fallacious News. And Jay Leno will soon be back to re-dumbify the Tonight Show.

That's marketing. That's ratings. And that's what Stoopid America likes to eat.

Conan O' Brien, on the contrary, has a weakness for cerebrally edgy, pushing-the-envelope comedic bits -- with a signature wink to twisted and sarcastically angry liberal spirits everywhere -- and he gets shit-canned before he can even get established. Makes sense. Needless to say, I'm with Coco.

And needless to say, the big winner in all of this is sure to be the only living Grand Master of Late Night TV and our favorite Intern Banger. Long live the King, cuz with all the bad karma and negative press surrounding Jay Leno, NBC's Tonight Show will likely take a long and satisfying seismic drop into the ratings dirt. If NBC brass was smart, they'd have paid Coco more money to stay put while kicking the unfunny Lantern Jaw to the curb. Tuning in to see Coco's fantastically wicked two-week flight of skewering NBC and Leno has catapulted his ratings into the stratosphere and made him and his team many new fans. What do you think is gonna happen when Leno is back tossing his conservative, old-hat cookies? One things for sure -- it'll be the teabaggers' Tonight Show.

By the way, want to know Why Some Comics Aren't Laughing at Jay Leno? Check it out -- an excellent read.

Let's see. What else?

Healthcare reform is set to make a killing for managed care companies. We already knew it was a gift for them. But now the amazing dropped ball of the Democratic Party and Martha Coakley constitutes a fumble recovery that will be run all the way back for a game-winning touchdown.

So here's a phlegmy congratulations to the executives at Aetna, Cigna, Pacificare, et. al. Your bonus checks and tee times will be an even bigger pre-existing condition for the sick and uninsured.

Finally, you shouldn't be surprised to hear there's been another big shooting tonight. Reportedly, eight people in Virginia are left dead at the barrel of another U.S.-patented crazed gunman who, at presstime, is still hiding somewhere in the woods. Some kind of dysfunctional family situation, evidently.

But at this point, what does it matter? This kind of carnage is an almost a weekly phenomenon in America -- even at our largest Army base. It's a national pastime, fer cripesakes.

Why doesn't this happen with near the frequency in other countries? When there was a school shooting in Germany last year, the entire nation erupted in a horrified conniption fit: "Why us? That kind of shit only happens in the United States!"

According to this World Timeline of School Shootings, only 13 of 57 school shootings with multiple fatalities have occurred in countries other than America between February 1996 and March 2009.

OK. That's all for now.

Please pray that my dreams tonight do not present the hoary maw of a celestial amphibian.

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