LOOKOUT BROW BEATING

Surveying the WWWWW (the Wonderfully Weird World Wide Web) So You Don’t Have To

Compiled from press reports and thin air by

CLIFF D. WELLER, SAP (SENIOR ANIMAL PUNDIT) AND OHNA RIDGE, DUD (DIABOLICALLY UNDERPRIVILEGED DAME)

Welcome back, gentle readers to the Cliff D. Weller one-man band show. As astute regulars will recall, my partner in writing these highly informative columns, Ms. Ohna Ridge, has flown the coop. She says she is disgusted with the bickering between the governors of Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee over the issue of who gets water and who doesn’t. She’s sick of worrying every time she turns on the tap that the wet stuff won’t be there because it is watering some lawn in Buckhead. So she took off last month and went to Iowa- Iowa City, to be exact- in order to enroll in the University of Iowa’s nearly famous Donald Trump School of Accounting. This was an ill considered move, considering that it rained for something very near 40 days and 40 nights when she got out there. Highly ironic, no?

Anyway, she has written a little note to me, and I know you concerned readers will want to know how she’s doing. You unconcerned readers can just go get another double-double latte with cherries and try to decipher the newest translation of the Bhagavad Gita, or whatever it is you people read in your little coffee houses. Here it is:

June 23, 2008 Iowa City, Iowa

On an Island that wasn’t here two weeks ago

My dear friend Cliff:

Well I made it to Iowa. It’s a lovely state if you are totally into seeing nothing but endless rows of corn stretching to more endless rows of corn. Reminds me of Sand Mountain, only farther away and with an accent. They talk real funny out here. And also lots of crows, of which I never did like them because they are real spooky. Although I hear that crows are very social creatures, and if one of their flock dies the others mourn. I know people who don’t do that!

Anyway, it has been raining since the dawn of time out here. The University of Iowa is located on a lovely island near the Iowa River. But I hear that is a recent development. All the new islands look lovely through the many rainbows we have been experiencing when it is not actually raining like the Biblical flood of old Noah. The locals do not share this view, however. Many of them would like to begin living in their homes again, or at least as soon as the turtles, snakes, manatees, bass, eels, and egrets can be removed. I haven’t heard this much whining since you cut off your big toe last summer weed eating around your tomatoes.

The big news here (and I assume you have heard it down yonder) is that  Bushnell, a binocular manufacturer, and Field and Stream magazine have combined to offer a cool $1 million to anybody who can “provide an  unaltered photograph/video, verified and substantiated by a panel of scientific experts, the evidence required to prove a Sasquatch/Bigfoot/ Yeti exists.” I presume that a dead body would also be ok too as well. Suddenly you can’t go to the Mall without pushing past mobs (armed mobs) of gun toting yahoos streaming in to Guns Are Us to stock up on ammo for the Big Hunt. If there is a Bigfoot out there who is reading this, your days are numbered big guy. I remember once seeing that grainy 8mm film showing a blurry image of a man in a rug walking through brush that supposedly was BF himself. Terrible quality, but not so terrible that you couldn’t tell it was a guy in a rug. Photo experts call the creature in that piece of film “blobsquatch.” Ha, ha. Those pro photogs are a zany bunch!

I have been considering whether or not to follow through on this accounting degree thing. Maybe it’s just a phase. And everybody out here is just as bad about complaining about too much water as the folks are back  home who complain there isn’t enough. Is the whole world agua ga ga?

The Donald Trump School of Accounting is housed in an incredible complex that was donated by The Donald himself. There is the Ivana Dining Hall, the Wretched Excess Library, the Boom or Bust dormitory, and the Britney Spears Memorial Weight Reduction Clinic. First class stuff. I am really learning a lot about money and people.

Anyway, stay in touch. I have to run to class now. This morning we have a guest speaker coming to lecture us on how to help clients avoid paying their taxes, and get away with it. I love this stuff, but miss home and hearth, and even the governors, very much. If I come back can I still write for Mr. Midgley’s rag? Is he still mad? Not “crazy” mad but angry? Please advise.

Your friend, Ohna