Last week someone caught me on the way out the office door and said "Hey, are you free next weekend? Can you go to California and interview some people?" I nodded my noodle enthusiastically and said "Sure. Absolutely". The next day I walked in to work and somebody said "No, we're not going to California after all". An hour later someone else tapped me on the shoulder and said: "Hey, did you hear that you're probably going to Los Angeles to do some interviews?" An hour after that I passed yet another person in the hallway, who said: "No, someone wants you to keep researching disasters in the Maritimes, so you're not going". Since August, this is the second time I've had a Stateside trip dangled in front of my nose. Bitterly I reeled through old microfilms of Newfoundland newspapers, searching for snippets of tragedy and tear-stained widows' faces.

As of this evening, though, I'm kind of glad I didn't get to go to California this weekend, because I now have genuine proof that the state of California contains at least 2 million idiots, 2 million slack-jawed droolers who can't distinguish between decent politicians who won't let Enron swindle away every last cent of their money and the pig-dog joint-smoking Hitler-loving lady-groping Enron-buttkissing saggyman Arnold Schwarzenegger. For the real dirt on Enron's Teutonic trashman, read Greg Palast's expose here (As some bloggers like to parenthesise, it's a must-read). I figure that if I visit California I'll have to breathe the same air as some celebrity-dazed dingdong who cast a ballot for Schwarzenegger. Apparently that's an illegal act in over twenty States.

So what am I ranting about? Arnold Schwarzeneger? Enron? The Fox-dazzled freaks who like to croak out the deceptive rhetoric of criminal politics? Citizens who excercise their right to vote for people that will actually take away their power? The inability of my bosses to send me to California for a long weekend? Damn, I wish they were sending me to California. I bet I could get Arnold's autograph.

parode - exode