Originally published by drfaustroll under Invective, Pataphysics, Phlakes, Sedition December 1, 2008

I bought another GPS at a Gray SaturdayXmas Sale to double check the accuracy of my other GPSes that have yet to tell me exactly where I am, where I’ve come from, or where I am heading that contradicts my personal experience, which at this point does not instill in me a sense of optimism. Several acquaintances have called me as their role model over the years, and I’m reluctant to admit that I’ve outlasted most of them, but I’ve always considered a sense of optimism, or even benign contempt, to be evidence that someone is not looking at the entire picture.

When I explained to the clerk where I bought my latest GPS what I considered to be the fundamental flaw with the entire GPS concept, she tried to reset my expectations and repeatedly corrected my imaginary assumption that I could use a GPS to find out where I was going to end up and when.

“Sir,” she smiled brightly, “If you need spiritual guidance, you shouldn’t be shopping.”

Touché, young lady. Touché!

Ah, what a refreshing way to deal with a difficult customer, and believe me, I can be the mother-in-law of all difficult customers. Like the president elect, my middle name is Hussein.

But what this post is about is what you can give imaginary people like me, who don’t need anything, have more than they will possibly ever use, and don’t even want anything. I suspect that contentment is an unnatural act. Granted — you caught me, but you get the gist. It’s just that not everybody in the NOMF™ really deserves or requests gifting & re-gifting.

And suddenly I just remembered the time my German teacher related a story about how German civilians after WWII refused assistance from our heroic liberating forces because the Care™ packages were stamped GIFT, which in German means poison. Ain’t communication grand? But that’s another post for another dollar a day, along with how the same German teacher explained during class that he smoked a single cigarette a day for its laxative effect.

So what can you do to keep people like me from annoying people like you? Well, there’s the obvious, of course. You could stop coming here. You could commit suicide. You could enlist and help in the war on terror to avenge the honor of the lameduck First Idiot’s father. You could go totally blonde and paint your display with Whiteout™.

Yeah. I realize that I am once again being impractical and totally pataphysical. There is probably no way that I can be prevented from thinking and writing things that upset you, so I’m content to accept ephemeral gifts of the kind that kept Mithridates at the top of his game for several hundred years that have nothing to do with you.

I’m talking about things like Goober devoting his final 50 days to touting a legacy that he continually told you he wasn’t interested in for eight years because he really believed he was going to be the next Franklin Delano Roosevelt of this freedomocracy and serve as many terms as he wanted because 9/11 changed everything, and he was The Decider and you gave him his mandrake, by gum.

And then there’s Neocondi Rice and her Republicrat spokesbeaners assuring us that she’s not going to sabotage Hillary Clinton, the far more astute and intelligent incoming Secretary of State, because Neocondi is going to show the former First Lady the ropes and then move on with her meaningless, incompetent, and internationally criminally insane world view by teaching a new crop of idiots at Stanford. Isn’t that special?

And let’s not forget about that cute, cuddly, Sarah Palin, who apparently did not get the memo about her effectiveness on November 4th and is actively campaigning for one-term Georgian Senator Saxby Chambliss, who is apparently too polite to tell Alaska’s governor to go moose hunting or care for one of her name-disabled offspring, or that the Georgia he serves was never part of the former Soviet Union.

With Sarah down there, the Demopublicans have shifted their operatives to Minnesota, where they can focus on absentee ballots that were rejected because they were cast for the wrong candidate, without having to rely on Garrison Keillor to do all the math. Nothing adds up in Lake Woebeggon. Of course, it doesn’t help that the challenger is a known terrorist organization called al Franqen.

What? I just heard that the stock market has crashed again. This is Sarah’s fault. You betcha. She hates Santa and the Demoblicans, and she just wants someone Clintonesque to blame.