Armouralle gets in his moment of cheer!

Edward Armouralle--Our Happy Intern

I've arrived at that dusty skull-strewn crossroad in my internship where the entire game--from the lowliest ideal to the loftiest crusade--now appears to be wholly fabricated from low-grade baloney, bundled together with steel-like bands of nonsense, and indelicately lubricated with rancid banana oil. Maybe this is how earlier commentators got their starts, waking up to reality and defending the handful of valuables worth defending, while staving off the forces of...what? Darkness? Hardly! Evil?--such Moriarty-like stylishness eludes us. Far more like blandness or lameness--the monstrous, chugging, leveling-engine that's pitilessly churning back and forth across this astroturfed playing field the poet Dante forgot to add to his Hellish blueprints; probably because even that Latin cynic couldn't imagine anything so soul-sappingly awful. As I plot my life's voyage, I don't see laid out before me calm bays, sheltering harbors, sun-dappled seas, or oceans of clear blue rejuvenating water; I spot instead potholes full of junk and drainage, unnavigable sewage, stagnant industrial ponds topped with sickly glistening scum, oozing rivers of dreck washing down the sides of mountains of horses**t. Waiting Out There is an all-encompassing non-kulture where every square millimeter has been gridded and plotted for maximum return on investment; a landscape crushed under dying galaxies of fluorescent-lit cubicle-hives aglow with confused constellations of flickering computer screens and their attendant orbiting litter and paraphernalia--Beanie Babies, office kitsch, cute kitten calendars, aromatherapy icons, and self-lobotomized men and women desperately parroting absurd business jargon or social jargon or scholastic jargon or intellectual jargon or redneck jargon or media jargon or spiritual jargon; all playing at wisdom, worldliness, and professionalism when those concepts have become complete shams in this PR spun, over-marketed, self-aggrandizing, self-promoting, ignorant-as-hell, two-for-one circus freak-show and termite mound. Lording above, and manipulating by threat and diktat the various Rube Goldberg contraptions, are the social, political, religious, or entertainment power elites with their nauseating gold-plated kitsch, pathetic over-inflated lives, and stillborn ethics--barbarian kings and queens, unscrupulous sheiks, sleazy corporate rednecks, slimy politicos; those whose only assets are attitudes, image, and assets. It's a culture of silliness, triviality, dehumanization, and greed and even the traditionally good people have turned into grotesques: eco-ghouls, hateful peaceniks, hyperbolic-Luddites, politically correct spell-checkers, conniving Kristaluthian-politicos, creative nihilists and incompetents, and business/retailing trolls and death-grimacing demonettes and cheerleaders for the new apocalypse. It's where being a bitch or a bastard, a cocky a**hole, or a loud assertive jerk, is considered a praiseworthy thing and the alternative remaining to anyone unwilling to sensibly bolt is the role of professional whiner or toady. Ladies and gentlemen, and certainly freethinkers and humanitarians, need not apply; advocates of selfishness, oppression, and enforced ignorance please line up to the Right... or Left, it doesn't really matter anymore. Intelligent design advocates are forced to question the intelligence of the Creatrix, and evolutionists should be cheered by the more-than-ample evidence that man is not only brother to the howler monkey, but possibly now even mother, father, and midwife to a generation of chattering, easily distracted, sensation-seeking, cell-phone-and-iPod-clutching baboons. Someone once said that the only job left for intelligent people in decadent times is satire. That sounds about right to this reporter.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Intern Armouralle was assigned to "Da Urth" desk for a brief interval after the Professor Pille debacle and exposure to that annoying parallel world seems to have, as they say, "gotten to him" also. To be fair, few of us don't have a protracted look through "Der Peeper" without experiencing headache and nausea. We bought Armouralle a big chocolate chip cookie and a colorful balloon in the shape of BingeBob (the God of Shopping) and he seems fine now. We profusely apologize for the foul language]