There’ve been some really weird stories in the news this week.  Bizarre stuff.

In England, the owner of Segway, the company that makes those nifty two-wheeled gyro-stabilized scooters, died when he accidentally drove his Segway off a cliff into the River Wharfe.

I wonder what his last thoughts were.  I’m guessing something along the lines of “Lean left to go left my ass!”

Here in the U.S. executions are grinding to a stop because there’s a shortage of sodium thiopental, the drug used to put the condemned to sleep before killing them.  I’m not sure why they need to be asleep when they die or why we can’t just sneak up on them in the middle of the night with a big hammer but I’m pretty sure there’s celebrating going on in death rows around the country.

Meanwhile, the United Nations is about to appoint an ambassador to aliens from outer space.  Seriously, they are.  Reno is just three hours down I-80 from San Francisco so I know about guys who think they can talk to Uranus but who knew a hobby like that could be parlayed into an ambassadorship?

It’s the perfect no-pressure job.  Who would know if you were late in the morning, Chewbacca?  Heck, who would know if you took a three-month vacation?  And think how easy the progress reports would be!  “Report for September: war with aliens from outer space averted.  Report for October: war with aliens from outer space averted.  Report for November…”

Maybe I’ll send my resume to the U.N.—let them know I’ve seen every single Star Trek episode and I’m good at wasting time.

Here’s the weirdest story of all this week: I attended a Democrat Party fundraiser Friday evening, something called the “2010 Virginia Demmler Honor Roll Dinner.”  Can you imagine?  Me at a Democrat fundraiser!  Talk about a fish out of water.  Talk about an Arab out of the desert.  Talk about Obama without a teleprompter.

Hopefully it’s a sign of overall lack of enthusiasm for the Democrat message that a staunch conservative was filling a seat at one of the tables.  I was a little surprised when the UAW invited me but apparently they didn’t want an empty chair after paying $1,600 for twenty plates.  Since I knew one of the honorees, I said yes.

I generally enjoy listening to an opposing viewpoint, no matter how shallow, inane, illogical, dishonest, and stupid it might be.  Good thing.

This being Nevada I had to listen to speaker after speaker wax rapturous about Harry Reid, which reminded me of something my Psychology 101 teacher talked about when I was a freshman at the University of Michigan.  She said one way to achieve alternate states of mind was to immerse the mind in surrealism until it grew fatigued, lost it’s grip on reality, and accepted a new paradigm… a fancy-pantsy intellectual way of describing brainwashing.

You can accomplish this by taking LSD, or by staring at Salvador Dali paintings, or by listening to speakers repeat falsehoods over and over again at a political fundraiser.

(Here’s another way: my psychology teacher was a beautiful 22-year-old blonde-haired blue-eyed graduate teaching assistant with perfect, unconfined, barely-covered breasts which mesmerized me so thoroughly that every single class was a demonstration of altered states.  At least for me.  She seemed pretty steady.)

Where was I?  Oh yeah, the Democrat speechifiers at Friday’s dinner.

The food was good enough to make me glad I attended but the unrelenting verbal spooning of Harry Reid almost made my meal reappear.  Harry Reid is slimy, dishonest, incompetent, bad for the nation as a whole, and even worse for Nevada in particular.  As Senate Majority Leader for almost four years now, he’s presided over a legislative agenda that’s driven Nevada to the highest unemployment rate in the nation, the highest foreclosure rate in the nation, and the highest bankruptcy rate in the nation.

Can you imagine a worse resume than that?

After four years under the Harry Reid agenda, Nevada is the only place in the world where even casinos can’t make money.  You’ve heard that we have ghost towns out here in the west, right?  Well, we’re about to have a ghost state.  Neighborhoods are full of empty houses, strip malls and office buildings are only half rented, casinos are boarded up and out of business all over town, and this morning the radio warned me that Reno is expected to have the most precipitous decline in home values in the nation over the next year, with Vegas coming in a close second.

Nifty.

Yet Democrats are so happy with Harry they’ve catapulted his idiot son, Rory Reid, into the political limelight as their candidate for governor.  They’re grooming him to succeed Harry, that’s my guess.  See what I mean about surreal?

This is why these brainwashing sessions are so important to the Democrats.  They don’t want the Kool-Aid drinkers entertaining awkward thoughts like, “Hey, maybe things aren’t going so great,” or, “Gee, maybe somebody else could at least scrape Nevada off the bottom of his or her shoe and help us move up to second-to-worst.”

The keynote speaker for Friday’s dinner was a man named Mitch Stewart, who is renowned for winning the 2008 Iowa Democratic Presidential Caucus for Obama.  He did this by busing thousands of mostly-black Illinois caucus participants into mostly-white Iowa where they confused, intimidated, and overwhelmed the Iowa residents.  In other words, he cheated.

Because it’s the first official balloting of the presidential election season, the Iowa caucus vaulted Obama from the middle of the Democrat pack over Hillary Clinton into the front runner position… which he never relinquished.

Hillary supporters are still bitter about the way Obama cheated in the 2008 caucuses, which set up an interesting scenario at Friday’s dinner.  Next door to my table, directly between me and the dais, was a table with what appeared to be a strong lesbian contingent.  (I’m not saying everybody at the table was a lesbian.  I’m fairly certainly the two men weren’t.)

For mysterious reasons better left uncontemplated, lesbians seem to support Hillary Clinton enthusiastically.  Knowing who Mitch Stewart is and how he shafted Hillary, I watched closely as he was introduced.  Energetic and generous with their applause all evening, the lesbian table’s welcome was suddenly more muted.  Still polite, but barely.  Later, when he mentioned the Iowa caucus, the table was absolutely silent.  I swear I heard teeth grinding.  And at the end, when many people were giving Mitch a standing ovation, the lesbian table barely mustered a few tepid claps.

My advice to Mitch: keep a low profile around certain kinds of women.  For the rest of your life.  And stop bragging about Iowa.  It doesn’t look as good on your resume as you think.


From Reno, Nevada, USA

October 3, 2010 - "Guys who think they can talk to Uranus?" I wasn't expecting that. Thanks to you I spit Sugar Frosted Flakes all over my keyboard. - John D., California

October 2, 2010 - "Lean left to go left my ass!" Hey! Did you steal that thought from obama? Just asking..... - LiAnne, Connecticut

October 2, 2010 - You know something dire is afoot when casinos can't make money... especially after ALL the moula I've handed over to them. And Nevada casinos are especially notorious for not paying out. This is one of your most hilarious posts to date. Did you bring back a souvenir from the Dem. dinner? - Boomer Pie, Michigan

J.P. replies: Yes, I brought back some kind of souvenir.  I was depositing that souvenir in the toilet most of the weekend.  I manfully left that tidbit out of my column, but now you've lured me into spilling the beans... so to speak.

October 2, 2010 - I have a visual of you at that dinner and hardly being able to contain yourself to get home and stir the pot. I probably missed it but what about Michigan?! I have lost my daughters to Texas and Massachusetts... - Penny, Michigan

J.P. replies: I'm trying to get back to Michigan, but here's the ironic thing: Michigan is probably Nevada's biggest rival when it comes to worst economy in the nation.

September 30, 2010 - lol.....great stuff Jim!! - Todd, Michigan

September 30, 2010 - That was a fun article to read, and that's a pretty good picture of you dad! - Samantha, Michigan