August Bonus Column

(Why yes, this was inspired by a facebook status update. What do you want me from me, I'm freelance now!)

I'm back! Well, for a week at least. Of course, some say I never truly left, and, indeed, stories of my haunting of UT's campus are as rampant and lascivious as they are all completely, verifiably true. Indeed, in your dormant, idle moments, you just might hear my wavering voice, as if from beyond the grave, softly reminiscent of failed first dates or the comeback you only devised in the early hours of a sleepless night. Is it a supernatural event, an astral projection gone dangerously awry? Or could it be the rumblings of a collective campus subconscious, ill at ease and rife with psychological phenomena as likely to paralyze with trepidation as it is to evoke some long forgotten trauma of semesters past?

Maybe. Maybe. Or it could actually be the Real Deal-an, since I haven't, like, actually left or anything. No, I decided to leave behind the vacant expressions and worldweary cynicism, the taciturn apathy of today's contemporary college student and trade up. I'm teaching high school! Sunshine and unicorns all around, my friends. Every single gosh darn day. Nothing says “I'm a happy and adjusted member of society, eager to be productive and forward-thinking” like living with your parents but not being old enough to retain at least some dignity by drowning your sorrows in alcohol and X-Box Live.

You know, like the Nazis used to do. “But Mr. Meggs!” you cry, having easily adjusted to my new state-enforced moniker with nary a twitch. “The Nazis didn't have X-Boxes!” Color me unconvinced. I have many a speciously dubbed youtube meme that proves otherwise.

Even if your wildly fallacious objection had the faintest hint of veracity, don't you think that if Hitler COULD have had an X-Box, he would have? I do. And that's as good as fact, as far as I'm concerned. That's why I only play PC games: because I, in a bold and unprecendented stance that few would dare emulate in our politically correct, everybody-love-everybody culture, hate Nazis.

I hate Nazis for sssooooo many reasons. For instance: remember when Hitler claimed that Poland had weapons of mass destruction and pre-emptively invaded them back in 1939? Probably not. BUT IT HAPPENED AND IT SUCKED. And then he listened to the phone conversations of people with funny names without, like, asking first or something. He was all up in the frehrs' and the frous' business, yo. It was not cool.

Another example: Remember when Hitler implemented socialized medicine and everybody could afford healthcare? Probably not. BUT IT HAPPENED AND WAS EVEN WORSE. You couldn't choose your own doctor, you couldn't choose your own medicine. You couldn't even choose your own state-mandated execution! And the lines. Oh, lord the lines. If you think Canada is bad today, just imagine what the lines must have been like at Auschwitz. To see the doctor, I mean. The lines for the executions were actually quite brisk. That execution department really had its act together! Somebody should have promoted the guy in charge of that. You know, reward efficiency and hard work. But nooo, that would have been too much like the free market for these socialist jerkfaces.

And, finally, they were responsible for the mass murder of millions of individuals merely because they were easily scapegoated minorities, victims of a genocide done not in the frenzy of battle by undulating barbarians but by a cold and calculating bureaucracy run by average, patriotic, “salt-of-the-earth” citizens resulting in a brutally destructive war and unfathomable horrors that left generations after it scarred and fundamentally cynical.

But, man, those lines were wicked! We sure learned a lesson from that kerfuffle, amiright?