"Just as no man is an island, no country is an island," the speech began seeking to foster multilateralism. The speaker, long known for his rhetorical style, immediately thought of several notable exceptions to the rule he just announced and so he waited and stared out at the audience wondering if they too had heard of Tonga.

Fact vs. Fancy: Did Ben Franklin Oppose the Elevation of the Bald Eagle to the Level of National Bird?

Ben Franklin did not entirely trust bald eagles even once referring to them in a letter from Paris as "bird[s] of bad moral character" lamenting their inherent laziness and lack of courage. The only reasonable alternative he could offer was the wild turkey for its impetuousness and sense of duty however the turkey did little to impress anyone in the Continental Congress during its hearings on June 22, 1782 and even Franklin conceded the deep vanity of the bird.

Favorite Moments in Judicial Activism: Nix v. Hedden

Nix v. Hedden, 149 U.S. 304 (1893), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court addressed whether a tomato was classified as a fruit or a vegetable under the Tariff Act of March 3, 1883, which required a tax to be paid on imported vegetables, but not fruit. Botanically a tomato is a fruit. The Court, however, unanimously ruled that it was, for these purposes, a vegetable.

Editorial: If the people decide they suddenly want a tomato to be a vegetable, that's an issue best left to the legislature and the electoral processes where the matter can be debated, incorporated into the platforms of competing candidates and, if such a decision be improvidently made, the people could rightly demand the elected official's resignation or outright impeachment (no pun intended). Still some things are too important to be left to the legislature or a century of legal precedent like repealing corporate campaign finance limitations.

The Persistent Problem of Tricky Test Animals: The Clever Hans Effect

"Clever Hans" was a horse that toured Germany around the turn of the 20th Century allegedly capable of doing arithmetic (by tapping a hoof a number of times corresponding to the correct answer to a math problem). Though the spectacle pleased thousands of German onlookers, it was later proven by psychologist Oskar Pfungst that the horse didn't know arithmetic at all but was instead able to read the cues of the onlookers as their excitement appreciably mounted as the horse neared the correct answer. However, after thoroughly studying Hans well enough to direct performances himself, Pfungst discovered something frightful: he himself couldn't contain his excitement enough to keep from tipping off the horse - for what could be more delightful than a counting horse?!?. Thus, the resulting "Clever Hans Effect" has less to do with clever animals than stupid researchers. The effect would go on to manifest itself with studies of the irresistible charms of Washoe the chimp and Rico the Border Collie.

Wind-Powered: Jasmuheen

During the 1990s, Jasmuheen (born Ellen Greve) was probably the most famous advocate of Breatharianism, the belief that food and water are not absolutely necessary for the sustenance of human life where there are sufficient quantities of spirituality and sunlight. She famously claimed that she could go for months without food, however several interviewers found her house stocked full of food. She claimed the food was for her husband.

In 1999, she volunteered to put her beliefs to the test by not eating for one week while being monitored by the Australian version of the television program 60 Minutes. An unequivocal failure, Greve claimed that the test was flawed because on the first day of the test she had been confined in a hotel room near a busy road, saying that the stress and pollution kept her from getting the nutrients she needed from the air. The challenge was moved to a sunlit hill but was quickly stopped as an observing physician saw numerous signs that she was nearing medical danger and was perhaps trying to surreptitiously eat grass.

She challenged the results of the program pointing to the experiences of her no less than 6,000 followers (mostly in Germany). Though she claims these thousands of followers, there is no evidence that any have lived for long periods.

Jasmuheen claims that her beliefs are based on the writings and "more recent channeled material" of the Count of St Germain. She also claims that her DNA has expanded from 2 to 12 strands, to "absorb more hydrogen". When offered $30,000 to prove her claim with a blood test, she said that she didn't understand the question.

This Week in Crazy: Troy Hurtubise

Troy James Hurtubise is a Canadian inventor noted for his often bizarre creations that he tests on himself in spectacular and usually dangerous ways. Though Hurtubise is credited with a wide array of inventions of varying utility the majority of his career has been spent in pursuit of that most elusive of dreams: a bear-proof suit.

Hurtubise's obsession with bears began on August 4, 1984, when he was mauled by a grizzly bear.

The encounter had a profound effect on Hurtubise. Returning to his home province of Ontario, he decided to learn as much about grizzlies as he could. However, how could he learn about these creatures without subjecting himself, once again, to their terrifying wrath? The answer came while he was watching RoboCop in his college dorm in 1987. It was then that he decided to build a research suit that would be strong enough to survive a close encounter without harming the occupant. Such a robo-bear suit would allow him to search for bears, and answer important questions “from the bear's perspective”, he was quoted as saying.

Seven years and $150,000 later, Hurtubise had worked his way up to the Mark VI, the suit he believed could protect him from a grizzly. In order to test it, Hurtubise consulted widely asking onlookers to try to simulate a bear attack upon him as he wore the suit.

These tests saw members of a notorious Canadian bike gang paid to maul him, a 300-pound log swung into his abdomen and solar plexus, a BMW driven over him, as well as Hurtubise simply tossing himself down the side of an escarpment.

Though initial testing on a Kodiak bear proved troublesome, as even a smaller bear was able to rip the helmet from the suit quite easily while the overwhelming weight of the suit effectively eliminated the possibility of flight or retreat, Hurtubise is said to be attempting to make the suit explosion-proof as well and hopes to sell the suit soon.

Revolution Today: Thailand

In April 2007, Bhumibol Adulyadej, the King of Thailand, was portrayed with feet superimposed over his head, an act extremely offensive to many Thai people, in a video posted by a YouTube user named "Padidda". The Thai government banned the site for lèse majesté, and a host of other YouTube users responded by posting other clips even more offensive to Bhumibol, leading to tens of thousands of views, including: photos of Bhumibol with a thumb toe for a nose; photos of Bhumibol hoarding shoes; photos of Bhumibol in a Podiatrist's lab coat; and photos of Bhumibol wearing a crown with the Dr. Scholl's logo emblazoned across the front, proving once again that the people united will never be defeated.

Favorite Misdiagnoses Explained: Coprolalia

Coprolalia is involuntary swearing or the involuntary utterance of obscene words or socially inappropriate and derogatory remarks. This was often misdiagnosed as Tourette syndrome. That is, until cases of deaf patients swearing in sign language were seen, showing that coprolalia is not just a consequence of the short and sudden sound pattern of many swear words but is, in fact, just another way to relax.

Favorite Psychological Phenomena Explained: The Dunning-Kruger Effect

The Dunning–Kruger effect is an example of cognitive bias in which "people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it". They therefore suffer an illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average. This leads to the perverse result where less competent people will rate their own ability higher than relatively more competent people. The studies conducted by Justin Kruger and David Dunning and not coincidentally conducted at Cornell University were made famous in their paper entitled "Too Stupid To Know It?".

Norman Mailer Describes Why He Didn’t Join in the Protests Outside of the 1968 Democratic Convention or the Silent Vigil Afterward

Ever modest, Mailer seems to offer that he was too tough to risk a beating by police as well as too tough to risk joining the candlelight vigil afterward protesting the police beatings. The means by which he was able to attain the objectivity necessary to make such statements may have something to do with Mailer referring to himself in the third person as “the reporter”:

The Protests:

“The reporter had an aversion to this. Besides, he was afraid of his own violence. It was not that he was such a good fighter, but he was not altogether courteous either – he had broken a man’s jaw in a fight not so long before, and was not certain the end of that was yet heard…He was not afraid of his own violence because he necessarily thought it would be so heinous to break a policeman’s jaw, good law-abiding citizen that he was! It was more that he was a little concerned with what the policeman’s friends and associates might do to him immediately afterward.”

The Vigil:

“The reporter did not join them…He could see them attacked by gangs, and the thought of taking a terrible beating in this company of non-violent McCarthyites and McGovernites, shoulder to shoulder with Arthur Miller, Jules Fieffer, Theo Bikel and Jeremy Larner, no, if he was going to take a beating, it was best to take it alone or with people he felt close to, people who were not so comparatively innocent of how to fight.”

--Miami and the Siege of Chicago

Actual footage of the reporter's own violence

Favorite Quotes Explained: Part 241

Quote: "I think therefore I am." --Descartes


Explanation: N/A as it's now accepted that Descartes was misquoted and actually said "I think I'd like some ham."

This Day in the History of Crazy: Thomas Eagleton

Thomas Eagleton (September 4, 1929 – March 4, 2007) a United States Senator from Missouri serving from 1968-1987 is perhaps best known for briefly being the Democratic Vice Presidential Nominee, sharing the ticket with George McGovern in 1972. Between 1960 and 1966, Eagleton checked himself into the hospital three times for physical and nervous exhaustion, receiving electroconvulsive therapy twice. The hospitalizations, which were not widely publicized, had little effect on his political aspirations. George McGovern had asked several politicians to join him and run on his ticket including Ted Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey, Edmund Muskie and Birch Bayh, all of whom refused. McGovern sought to ask then-ambassador to France and minor celebrity Sargent Shriver to run with him but Shriver was reportedly unreachable by phone on board a flight for Moscow. McGovern next asked Senator Gaylor Nelson who declined but suggested Eagleton. Perhaps frustrated, McGovern asked Eagleton with only minimal background check. Eagleton accepted with alacrity making a decision in the process not to inform McGovern of his history of serious mental health issues including a powerful course of anti-psychotics which allowed him to serve as Senator though they were issued in his wife’s name. The first whiff of Eagleton’s possible instability may have come when he made anonymous mention of McGovern’s fondness of Acid to journalist Robert Novak. It has since been speculated that Novak may have manipulated the overly-suggestible Eagleton. Eventually Eagleton admitted to McGovern some of his history of hospitalizations but admonished McGovern that if he tried to remove him from the ticket he would fight it with everything he had (left). Eventually Eagleton agreed to withdraw but only after McGovern read a statement that Eagleton had prepared which essentially said that Eagleton was not crazy and that it was those who suggested such that were actually crazy. McGovern went on to lose the 1972 presidential election in what was then the second largest landslide in U.S. history.

ALTERNATIVES TO DEFINING INSANITY AS DOING THE SAME THING BUT EXPECTING A DIFFERENT RESULT:

-doing the same thing but expecting Steve Guttenberg to now be flattered by your rendition of the song that the three men sang to the baby in the movie.

-eating nothing but potatoes but expecting to be something other than coquettish.

-only toweling off your feet and then not expecting the rest of the bananas glacee to drip down from your torso where you spread it in an effort to demonstrate you were the kind of guy who enjoys the finer things in life.

-stealing packets of butter from restaurants without a real plan as to how to transport them without them perishing en route.

-foolishly believing that by eating only sticky foods you’ll be able to reverse the process of your molecules slowly dislocating that the ferret told you in no uncertain terms was too far gone to undo now.

This Day in the History of Crazy: Dr. Franz Lipp

The Bavarian Soviet Republic was part of the German Revolution of 1918, the short-lived attempt to establish a socialist state in the form of a council republic in the Free State of Bavaria. Established on April 6, 1919 by the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (The “USPD”), the USPD would not retain control for long perhaps because of poor personnel decisions including the installation of Dr. Franz Lipp as the Foreign Affairs Minister. During his brief tenure, Lipp, who had been admitted to psychiatric hospitals several times, unilaterally declared war upon Switzerland for their presumptive refusal to lend the Republic 60 locomotives, sent threatening and altogether lude letters to the pope and sought the personal intervention of Vladimir Lenin via cable after claiming that the ousted former Minister-President Johannes Hoffman fled to Bamberg and took the key to the ministry toilet with him. The regime collapsed within 6 days.

Le Pétomane

Le Pétomane was the stage name of the French professional farter and entertainer Joseph Pujol (June 1, 1857 - 1945). His stage name combines the French verb péter, "to fart" with the -mane, "maniac" suffix, found in words like musicomane (music lover). In English, a translation might yield "the fart maniac". His profession can also be referred to as a "Flatulist," "Farteur," or "Fartiste."

Pujol was born in Marseille. He was one of five children of François (a stonemason and sculptor) and Rose Pujol. Although a baker by profession, Pujol would entertain his customers by imitating musical instruments, and claim to be playing them behind the counter. Pujol decided to try his talent on the stage, and debuted in Marseille in 1887. After his act proved successful, he proceeded to Paris, where he took the act to the Moulin Rouge in 1892.

Some of the highlights of his stage act involved sound effects of cannon fire and thunderstorms, as well as playing 'O Sole Mio and La Marseillaise on an ocarina through a rubber tube in his anus. He could also blow out a candle from several yards away. His audience included Edward, Prince of Wales, King Leopold II of the Belgians and Sigmund Freud.

In the following decade Pujol tried to 'refine' and make his acts 'gentler'; one of his favourite numbers became a rhyme about a farm which he himself composed, and which he punctuated with the usual anal renditions of the animals' sounds. The climax of his act however involved him farting his impression of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

With the outbreak of World War I, Pujol, horrified by the inhumanity of the conflict, retired from the stage and returned to his bakery in Marseille. Later he opened a biscuit factory in Toulon. He died in 1945, aged 88, and was buried in the cemetery of La Valette-du-Var, where his grave can still be seen today. The Sorbonne offered his family a large sum of money to study his body after his death, but they refused the offer.

Johnny Depp has repeatedly expressed interest in portraying Pujol in a major motion picture.

He'd always thought the phrasal verb "to bargain against ones self" with its negative connotation was sort of silly because who better to bargain against than someone with the same values and with the same longterm commitment to spaniels.

My Desires In The Event That I Should Be Incapacitated

I wish to be resuscitated, intubated, rehabilitated, preserved by artificial means, preserved by natural means, preserved by preservatives, if you need to, you should take me home and feed me something home-cooked, perhaps you ought to give me a bath too and one of those study pillows so you could prop me up and maybe even pretend that it's me who's saying the witty things you say in my voice which are incisive though always discreet and maybe also give me money too.

Get to Know a Historical Figure: Charles Sumner

Charles Sumner (January 6, 1811 – March 11, 1874) was an American politician and statesman. An academic lawyer and a powerful orator, Sumner decried the "crime against Kansas" and was almost immediately severely beaten by Representative Preston Brooks on the floor of the United States Senate.

The top of the world; the highest point within 100 miles of Iowa City, Iowa; where, it's said, the sky is revealed to be but a lens giving out on to other floating worlds. Still Madge couldn't shake the thought that despite not having had cheese in years there was quite clearly a cheese stain on her shirt.

The Principle

There are certain thoughts which one can merely think and they will never be the same. These thoughts are all around us like nourishing banana clusters. There are a finite number of these thoughts. Think them all and you will be as wise as the four winds or the three flavors (sweet, salty, salty-sweet) or those two guys in the back. However, each of us has a unique order – with slight variation permitted – in which we must think these thought or risk schizoid embolism. The stakes are high indeed. But without thinking any of these thoughts you risk collapse into the merest carnality: rampant sex without attachment, lust without devotion, having more pie without thinking about your one fat leg. The process of this principle is additionally complicated by the fact that the mark of many, but not all, of these thoughts is that it will be forgotten almost as soon as it’s thought. This is all made even more complicated by the existence of the “flouters” or “octogenarians” or “malamutes” whose role it is to try to rename the thoughts as hokum base and banal – never you worry about that mallet they’ll implore you. One may ask: if the very thinking of the thought will render me changed-forever how come I’ll forget it once I’ve thought it? But there is no simple answer to that question; no simpler anyway than to a question like how many plums is all of them plums? But the question serves to point up yet another danger: simply thinking one of the thoughts then forgetting it then thinking it again. Subsequent repetitions of the same thought will not have the same effect though there will be a slight yet gratifying tingle which for some is all the vindication they need. Those types find a life spent do-see-do-ing through the same thought rewarding. These people may set up huge temples to coax others to do their little fever dance but in the end they will meet violent ends as the axis on which they spin crumbles under the toiling mass of their bottom-heavy convictions heaving like a bag pipe even just walking down to the corner. One may think this terrain unnavigable, this game intractable, but this should not counsel resignation which would be met with foul language and insinuation about the city of your birth. Indeed, the road is long and not really even a road as much as a parkway or thoroughfare but perhaps I’ve already said too much; though I will conclude by noting that if you should ever have the thought why all these flowing robes? why so much pepper? you’re doing it wrong.

Walthingham

He was not a fat man; nor was he a particularly skinny man. He was likewise neither rich nor poor. And so he bore no mark of, or ready explanation for, the uncommon and unrelenting fervor with which he pursued food of any quality, at any time, and by any means. His methods ranged from simple footraces towards the food source to more cunning ruses - bait-and-switch, rope-a-dope, follow-the-birdy, breathe-very-deeply, lookout-for-that-bear and three-card-monty - usually called for when he’d lost the race or when other factors conspired to see another possessed of the food before him, such as the restaurant industry. Nothing in his past told of any period of deprivation and so theories of compensation were of no greater merit than those which posited some sort of inner emptiness as he was a particularly joyful person. Except, that is, for whenever food was present or presented shades of its own possibility at which times an assiduity overtook him as if the existence of his race depended on his immediate attention and inexorable determination. Yet it was this very singular will which arguably prevented such a peculiar proclivity from ever proceeding to the detriment of his reputation or social station. People were often taken aback by such wanton displays as him hiding with a Christmas ham or pouncing on a pile of pulled pork spotted from afar yet whatever alarm initially dawned in those in witness invariably gave way to a sort of admiration for, and inspiration by, the profound purpose which propelled him from one now-ravaged salad bar to the bus pan scraps just behind those always-swinging doors. And all agreed that he was indeed an estimable sort.

And they watched and wondered if it was right to prefer the night to the day; if it was wrong to see themselves as little more than the nameless black that the nightlit sky dressed them in; if the fireworks would possibly speed the drying of their pants.

Alfred J. Glouchester couldn't say how he had come to this particularly privileged place. He lived his life according to a few separate principles which collectively led him to think the merest impulses were imbued with the meaning and majesty of the divine that lies within us all. To the outside world it seemed he merely favored large women with large breasts.

Like most things of the sort, some immediately turned away from it; others inclined to stare it down often approached it but in so doing they almost invariably became either disenchanted or desensitized and rejoined the throng of the former. And it was this thought which led Gary to first consider that his commitment to eradicating homelessness among sheep might be nothing more than a novelty.

For a time he’d thought of himself as a tough not in the sense that he’d lift wallets or ruin topiary but that he knew what he knew and stared out as if on a world already traced with the hairless, fingerless hand of close-cropped chance. He could tell when someone was about to flee and he could tell when someone was about to eat. He sensed beginnings in the slightest of snack samplers and endings just after. He knew the form of wild winds and the content of nameless sauces. But this was not the first time he’d begun to feel self-consumed like a fat man, as wretched as wide, cursed to be covered in candy shell. And there’s no word for feeling like you know what you know whilst knowing that you’d previously known knowing only to once again be surprised at new sounds and meal deals. There’s not even a shorter way of saying it besides maybe at once sure and unsure; joint and several like the father and the son or the steps to clutterers’ anonymous. And so it was that his sudden fall was quite unexpected. When the world, one day, formed itself anew the terror which he felt was just too much and so he screamed and when he heard the sound of his own voice set against the world he now saw he screamed some more and when he felt that he could no longer scream this prospect too terrified him for its only by calling its name that terror relents and so he thought to write down his thought but no combination of vowels and consonants could capture the rough edge of it so he screamed himself silent and then resolved to hurl the pencils which had failed in the face of their greatest calling and the colored pencils too, though they had given slightly more effort, and when there was no more to throw or voice in his lungs he flung out his arms at intervals while extending his digits at alternating intervals and when he could barely lift his arms anymore he sprinted and sprinted away from the falling night and when his feet could move no longer he at last sensed that resignation was the only path left to what paltry righteousness there could be in such a feckless world and at last he sat down to the very lunch in which his doom seemed but a side. And it was only after he had nothing left to lash that he accommodated himself to the hot dogs hastily thrown into his macaroni and cheese.

The Last Day of Langley Collyer - Chapter 1

The cure had begun to take effect: Homer's blindness was no match for the daily regiment of 100 oranges and black bread. Small wonder. His affliction was no more mysterious than the machinations of the outside world bent on infiltration of our perimeters and, once inside, forced adherence to various principles of determinism and weight loss which I've only been too proud to eschew these past years even if the efforts required for our continued security have surpassed even previous estimations but are quite commensurate with the persistence of their provocations as laid bare more by the silences between than the shouts that come ringing through our halls admonishing us to "smell the topiary" or "flush the grundles" or "sniff the dandies" or any number of countless exhortations designed for no purpose but to make me question my convictions; but I will not; I must not for were we to surrender at this point the bureaus and legions would have little choice but to try us for the highest brand of treason and treachery - they'd probably force us into educational programs designed to make us forget the powers of the life force just within once it's awoken with fragrance. Which brings me back to where I started: Homer. A fool would treat his affliction as if it were merely one sensory faculty affected. Such a simplistic view of the world belongs in the schoolyards or the docks. No, just as it takes two eyes to perceive depth, it takes all the senses together to behold the manifold mystery of our day. Things are only rightly understood when taste and smell are in concert, when touch and smell waltz, and when hearing and smell twirl. It was this folly that engendered Homer's compromised state. Homer had been relying too heavily on his eyes, had thought the world can simply be seen. Well it can't and if it could be known through a single sense it would surely be smell. That's where the oranges come in; there is no object in this world that is such a delight to each of the senses jointly and severally and there is nothing so uniformly disappointing to each of the sense as black bread. Why is it black any way? The point is this: through the systematic derangement and rearrangement of the all-sense scheme as executed through this repeated excitement and disappointment of the senses, Homer's senses could begin to work as a team again with the captain taking his post at the olfactory watchtower. It's already begun to work. I just need a few more weeks to allow its proper course but they advance daily. Will Homer's cure first afford me the reinforcement I so desperately need in our defense? Or will they overtake us and pound us into the submission of scolded children through campaigns to compromise heightened senses of smell or at least heightened awareness thereof? Or will these booby traps I've rigged throughout the newspaper piles spell victory for us once and for all? The answer is out there curling through the air like the aroma of ham or broccoli.

He’d learned what lessons he could and his success was manifest as the zombies he was trying to organize spent most of their time vomiting in their seats in the auditorium. You’re dreaming again she heard him say, I didn’t actually just do that it was just a dream. But he’d known better. And he wasted no time by first testing his reality with candy corn and plums. Day after day and night after night he’d felt that his days were coming two at a time and his nights in threes. We’ve been promised new knobs and I want to know when we’re getting them an angry older tenant inquired from the back as loud as she could but only half loud enough to rise above the din of zombie ministrations. A portly fellow cum zombie turned as she spoke and ran for her with an alacrity he likely never knew in his alive life but was quickly turned away by auxiliary police who’d been contracted for just such services and who by all available criteria had performed it well even as some of the tenants had suggested that they were in league with the zombies. The local magistrate continued his speech by noting that he had been in touch with the very highest echelons of some local agencies and he could assure them that progress was a-coming. With patience, he admonished us, mountains can crumble and the towering incompetency and cronyism that had run the city long enough would be on its way out with just such inaction on the part of those in attendance. His thoughts drifted back to the race he watched earlier in the day. As the fleet-footed participants passed it was strange custom to offer the athletes presents. Almost invariably the runners would refuse prompting the offeror of the gift to keep it. Thus the gifts had become more wrapped items sought by the would-be benefactor for their own sake. And so it was that when an athlete did accept the gift it would often times be kitchen implements or brassieres. And before long the custom had become to hurl undergarments and rolling pins at the passing crowd because it is often those traditions for which there can simply be no explanation that stand the rigors of time while those which seem to be informed by principles of middling measure fall off. Such were his thoughts anyway when the zombie running for him was felled after being pelted with a frying pan by a tenant whose plea for functional salad crisper drawers for all refrigerators had hardly skipped a beat.

It wasn't that he didn't think things through. It was just that the deliberative process never seemed to yield the answers which informed his actions - most times it just wasn't done yet by the time he began whatever undertaking he was considering. And it was this fact that made him think that perhaps he was doing someone else's bidding, that perhaps all this thoughtful consideration was really just a charade, like a sweater put on a hog. But if that was true then who was it pulling the strings? Who was the Svengali? Who was the puppet master? He went down the list of people he knew that perhaps had benefited from some of his hastily conceived acts. Aunt Una certainly seemed pleased when he broke down and bought one of her pamphlets on safety with power tools; His friend Madge was only too happy to learn that he and his long time swimming buddy had decided that they just swam irreconcilable strokes. His brother Murtha certainly benefited from his decision to start wearing vertical stripes as he was gifted all the horizontally striped leftovers. And still he felt that behind it all there was someone or something pushing the buttons to make him do his trademark twirls. But all this was palatable, he reasoned, but what if whomever it was making his decisions showed a comparable disregard for reasoned acts - what if whoever was behind him was just as willy-nilly? How could he go on? How could he think of himself as anything but a pawn's pawn? And what is there for a pawn's pawn to do but...but wait, maybe he could take some comfort in the invisible intrinsic coherence of others' acts: maybe Lutz had a reason for practicing his jump kicks; maybe those geese had a reason for just staring at him like he was a piece of bread; maybe it all made a sense that wasn't his to understand. And he felt a peace that he'd not felt since he inexplicably began hording root beers.

True to his campaign promises, his first official act was to try to eliminate any laws of evidence and his purposes were elucidated and enumerated in his now-famous Fort Ticonderoga speech: trust: it is the cornerstone of every healthy relationship and what was an electorate if not a series of relationships - and what were the rules of evidence if not a formal cataloging of man's distrust for his fellow man, a veritable latticework of misanthropy, a codification of all that keeps us apart? So, he reasoned - and his reasoning is now thought to have catapulted him into office along with some vagaries about whether toddlers are allowed to vote - whatever one says in open court shall be taken at its word. If I say I couldn't have stolen those garden hoses because I was busy myself investigating the alleged victim of suspected cronyism then the scrutiny is rightly placed on them instead. If I say that I didn't throw plums at them at all but they threw them at me then my history of similar incidents leading to similar counter accusations is really not all that relevant. And if I say that I have never even heard of the term 'stewing chickens' then I surely couldn't have been able to fence them. For without trust, he admonished us, all is lost.