Voter Turnout in Senate Hits All-Time Low

tories of voter apathy in this off-year election have more merit following Monday's vote in the Senate for an $87.5 billion budget for Iraq reconstruction. The spending package passed with a 5-1 ratio, but only received an estimated 6 votes among the Senators in attendance.

Using the cop-out, or "strategy" known as a voice vote, the Senate skipped the usual procedure of recording who votes for what in the record so as not to embarrass apathetic Senators and possibly damage their chances for re-election or campaign contributions.
Using the voice vote, a verbal "yea" or "nay" or "no fuckin' way nay," Senators kept their names off an official record as being for the Iraq war or against it, so in due time when the majority of the populace reaches consensus on the wisdom of the war they can finally tell us how they really felt.

Some theorize the miniscule number of Senators voting had more to due with disillusionment and disappointment in Congressional legislation, rather than a despicable show of cowardice and political tightrope-walking. For the Senators, the "seniors" of the D.C. school, they've been around the block and seen how the game is played, and their cynicism is manifesting itself in voter apathy.

"It doesn't really matter anyway," said 39-year-old Hunter Whepley (D-SC), "no one ever listens to me. It's not like one vote in the Senate ever made a difference anyway."

The words express what many feel is an unwritten truth in the Senate: Voting is for nerds. Actually, it is a written truth, if you check out the men's room in the Capitol building. But instead of being the attitude of underachieving legislators or a handful of stoner congressmen, many point to the voting record as proof the Senate no longer thinks voting is cool.

"I'm not saying anything against voting," said Montana Republican Rooton Hardsandal, "but when was the last time anybody even passed any good laws or anything? You can't change nothing. The president just does what he wants. The states all do what they want, you can't make a difference. And those assholes in the Congress, they'll vote for anything you put in front of them. Gaylords."

Pennsylvania Senator Eli Keith expressed the lack of power many Senators feel.

"Sure, you can 'yea' or 'nay' a bill until the cows come home, but you know it's got to get approval from the House, and then the dorkwad president has to agree to it. And by that time, like, a hundred riders have been attached to it making it so it's illegal to smoke frogs or something, whatever some jerks in the back think is funny. Then, if you actually do show up, and nobody does, all the other Senators hear about it and get on your jock about it. I don't really care what everyone else thinks, but I don't want to be the only guy voting besides Robert Byrd. That old fossil votes for everything. I guess when you actually get Medicare you give a shit whether it passes or not."

Some peppy strategists on other congressional committees have proposed ideas to win bored Senators back to voting, including a Senatorial "Rock the Vote" special on C-Span, with guests like Nelly and Coldplay, or luncheons with motivational speakers like Tony Robbins to espouse the virtues of showing up to vote. The problem, according to Senators who wished to remain anonymous, is all those ideas are super-lame, and organized by king dinks of Dinktopia, doing more against voting than for it.

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The other day I found myself sitting on the roof of my house, throwing outdated eggs at some old women who were taking their daily afternoon walk up the sidewalk across the street. One particularly well-flung egg ricocheted off the oldest woman's temple, striking a nerve cluster and causing her to completely lose bowel control in an extremely messy fashion all over my vegetarian neighbor's lawn. And the thing is, when the detox van showed up to take her to the drunk tank, all I could think was: "You know what? I think Ginger and Mary Ann were lesbians."

Practically all my life I've been nagged by the question of why anybody would want to get off of Gilligan's Island in the first place. They had great weather, a lagoon, plenty of food, and last but not least: two fine pieces of ass in Ginger and Mary Ann. Damn! You can bet your mini-skirted dollar that Omar Bricks would have been starting his own civilization in that sandy paradise. The tiny gene pool would surely have necessitated some serious wife-swapping, and you've always known Omar is down with that. Unless it involved either of the Howells, but my grade-school understanding of biology tells me that contingency wouldn't be very useful for procreation. The Professor on the other hand… well, that would be just for fun.

Now, I'm not saying everybody would like it there at first. I'm sure there were sand crabs and no TV and other hassles, and I'm sure everyone would get tired of the Professor constantly bitching about not having any outlets for his hair drier.

And of course the pickings were pretty slim romance-wise. I'm sure Ginger was saving herself for some high class sugar-daddy to snatch her up before her looks went, and I don't blame her. Once she hit the island, her only prospect in that area was Mr. Howell, and that meant finding some non-suspicious way to bump off Mrs. Howell. But she was a resourceful girl, I imagine with time she would have worked out some kind of coconut car bomb or at least a shiv, or she could have cut a deal with the cosmonauts, or the Russians, or even those apes in that one episode. Hell, with a couple of well-placed innuendos, she probably could have gotten Gilligan to skin Mrs. Howell alive.

Ginger definitely would have out-cat-fought Mary Ann for Thurston's withered affections, so that leaves the Skipper, Gilligan and the Professor for Mary Ann to choose from.

Now, everybody knew the Professor was gay, so he's out of the running straight away. No pun intended there. He was also sweet on the Skipper, and it probably would have been in Mary Ann's best interests to avoid going toe-to-toe with the one mug on the island who knew how to make plastic explosives out of coconut mash. And it's not like the Skipper was anywhere near worth it either, he's so goddamned fat the last Willie he saw was Gilligan. And with a name like his, she probably wasn't exactly chomping at the metaphorical bit to become Mary Ann Grumby, or even Mary Ann Skipper, depending on whether or not it was a formal occasion. That leaves Gilligan, who's a total nimrod but at least she could crush his spirit and mold him into a decent lapdog-style husband who would kiss her ass for thirty years and take her to the opera.

So that leaves us with everyone paired off pretty nicely: Gilligan and Mary Ann, the Professor and the Skipper, Mr. Howell and Ginger, and Mrs. Howell face-down in the lagoon. Who wants to go back to city living when they're living the sweet life island-style? Not this cast-away. So the only thing that makes sense in the context of the show, with everyone wanting to leave so badly and all, is that Ginger and Mary Ann must have been big-time fuzzbumpers. I'm talking about skinny-dipping in the lagoon, secret rendezvous by the cave, and lots and lots of coconut milk being poured over naked bodies. I can just picture it now…

Nope, still picturing it. Come back in five minutes.


Now I'm sure some sensitive types will take offense at my theory, calling it all sorts of bad voodoo. But I'm just telling it like it is, or rather like it must have been. I challenge any of those politically-correct drones out there to present a competing theory that makes as much sense. I mean, what the hell do I know about how a woman's mind works? Maybe they were waiting for the Harlem Globetrotters. Bricks out.

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Over the course of my life, any time I've had a gripe about the way things were going or if I had things that I thought were unfair, my mom was always there to remind me that there are people out there who have it worse off than me. No matter what your problem is, there's always some poor S.O.B. out there whose wretched existence made yours look like a complimentary trip to a Bangkok whorehouse.

My mom's the undisputed master of this line of reasoning. No matter what happened when I was growing up, she always had some reason why I should be happy about it. Any time I took the guys to meet Mr. Bike Frame after riding my Huffy into a gopher hole or a curb or something, while I was on the ground in the fetal position, writhing in pain, she always reminded me that at least I didn't have spinal meningitis. I'm not kidding! Needless to say, that's not the kind of thing a guy wants to hear when he's just had his family jewels knocked back into his earlobes, so I spent a large portion of my childhood years sucking on a bar of Ivory soap.

But she never faltered. Your dog got hit by a car? That's a piece of cake compared to having cystic fibrosis. Pulled a 300 on the SATs? That'd make your day if you had hooks for hands. I don't know where she got half that shit. Every once in a while I'd catch her blatantly making something up, like the time in Jr. High when I got kicked in the nuts by a mule and she told me it was better than having Herkemer's Syndrome. I asked her what the hell that was and she just muttered something vague about having your bones itch and said I didn't want to know the details.

To be perfectly honest, I never really appreciated my mother's philosophy when I was growing up; actually I thought she was sick in the head. But now that I'm older I'm really starting to understand where she was coming from. It's taken me a long time to find my purpose in life, but now I think I've really found it. I'm here to remind people that no matter what kind of foul shit is going down in their own lives, hey, at least their last name isn't Fagerbakke.

You don't even have to know a thing about be, beyond my name, to know that I didn't have an easy time of it growing up. All my life, I've been like some kind of nickname magnet. You can try to surprise me with something new, but I'd advise you to save your breath, I promise I've heard them all: Froggerhockey, Fan-of-Balki, Faggotbacon, Fag-bot, Fuckerbacker, Fingerbecky, Shag-her-buddy, Fizzledick, Dr. Lousy Lay, Sir Fucksafreshman, Tommy Hatesajew, Dildo on Wheels, The Cunnilinguist, Tom the Racist Wonder, Tommy Comesponge, Mr. Nazi-cock, Tommy Two-Minutes, Tommy Knockmeup, The Back-door Bandit, Tom Thumbs-a-stranger, Tommy Inchworm… the list goes on and on. I'm sure I'm forgetting some good ones, too, you can email my mom if you want the complete list.

The point is, I got stuck with the Spruce Goose of bad last names. And for a long time I thought that was a curse, you know? But now I realize it's a blessing. Just like how Superman got super-powers and used them to help out humanity when it got in a pinch, Tom Fagerbakke got a super-shitty last name and he's going to use it to raise humanity's spirits. No matter who's pissing on your parade or what kind of crap life is trying to pull, all you have to do is stop and reflect on the fact that your last name isn't Fagerbakke, and that kind of puts it all in perspective. Sure, maybe your wife left you for your boss and your mom joined a cult and your son just got into Weird Al Yankovic, but you know, at least you're still doing pretty good in the last name department. So maybe everything isn't as bad as it seems, right? Feel better?

No need to thank me, it's the work I was born to do.

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