I’m thinking of putting myself out there again. There’s still plenty to be rave and rage about, so I hope my slumber hasn’t lulled anyone into a false sense of thinking that all is well in the world.

I’m not sure yet, so don’t get your hopes up, all of you readers who have been so patient. I can tell by the complete lack of any email that you’ve been patient. But I know you’re out there. I know you wake up every morning wondering if the madmen had been raving.

Maybe. Someday.

Dear world,
On behalf of Dudley and myself, I would like to apologize for our silence. There is certainly plenty in this world to rave and be mad about, and we have dropped the ball. Especially Dudley. Actually, this whole thing is his fault, I’m pretty sure.

It seems that there is a grand experiment going on where bloggers are including the meaningless term Brrreeeport on their blogs in an attempt to make it the most popular term on Technorati and other search tools. It has worked, because brrreeeport is right now the third hottest tag, and the most popular search on Technorati.

Now, there are all sorts of people talking about it on their blog just to draw traffic. What a cheap trick. This is exactly what I described people might do with Jack Bauer a few weeks ago. How could anyone stoop to such a level?

I know this sounds absolutely crazy, but it seems to me after reading a couple articles that the Bush administration is contradicting itself on oil. I know, I know, now I’ll be lumped in with those crazies who think our phones are being tapped, but things aren’t adding up for me.

I just read an article today that talked about the fact that the government may wave $7billion in oil royalties as incentive for oil and gas companies to continue to drill more and drill deeper. One of the quotes from the article says,

“We need to remember the primary reason that incentives are given,” said Johnnie M. Burton, director of the federal Minerals Management Service, according to the report. “It’s not to make more money, necessarily. It’s to make more oil, more gas, because production of fuel for our nation is essential to our economy and essential to our people.”

This seems to be a government driven incentives program that encourages the production of more oil. Am I wrong or confused? This seems to be in stark contrast to Bush’s words, less than a month ago during the State of the Union address, where he said,

“By applying the talent and technology of America, this country can dramatically improve our environment, move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.”

I know Bush wants America to apply talent and technology to finding an answer, but what if he applied the money from gas incentives to alternative fuel research. I think $7billion could go a long way. But then again, I still think that Brad and Jen have a chance.

Dick Cheney actually shot the last remaining person who likes him while hunting this past weekend. Here is my favorite quote from the article.

“The vice president didn’t see him,” she said. “The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good.”

Well by god, we put this man within reach of our warheads. The man can’t handle a shot gun and we’re supposed to trust him with our national defences? Look out Iran, you may just be in the line of fire and get peppered pretty good.

A few Raves after watching the 2nd episode of Survivor tonight.

• This madman is pulling for Shane Powers to go far. Sure, I don’t really want him, or anyone besides me, to win $1 million, but at least he’ll keep it interesting.
• Shane’s entire tribe, Casaya, is a trainwreck waiting to happen. Mr. Miyagi, er Bruce Kanegal, is probably the most stable person on there, and it’s only a matter of time before he starts doing some Samarai chops on his tribe.
• I’m not much for saying thanks in raves, but I want to thank the show producers for convincing Dan Barry to keep his shirt on. I had my radiation suit handy just in case. Last week, he kind of reminded me of what it might look like if somebody put Dudley on what of those stretch rack torture devices.

Now bug off…

Dear Starbucks,
Thank you for your prompt attention to the pneumatic door closing thingee issue which I presented yesterday. I’m sure you have gotten right on it and, even as I type, you are likely laying out a plan to adjust the pneumatic thingees in the 23,751,203,891,345,091,872 stores you have across North America.

I hope I’m not catching you too late, but could you take care of something else in the bathrooms while you are at it? I’m glad you want to conserve energy, but could you adjust your motion sensor light switch thingees to not turn off the lights so quickly? When I’m deep in excretory concetration, I don’t want to keep having to wave my arms around to keep the lights on.

Thank you, again, for your prompt attention to this matter.
Ulysses

Dear Starbucks,
Please uninstall the pneumatic automatic door closing thingees from all of your bathroom doors. They just take too long to close. When have I four shots trying to surge out of my bladder, the last thing I need to do is wait 30-45 seconds for the doggone door to gently close.

And don’t think I can just give the door a good shove either. It pushes back! Battling with a door can cause one to lose concentration, and therefore continence.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Ulysses

With the return of 24, it seems like all anyone wants to do in the blogosphere is talk about Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland. “Jack Bauer” has been the most popular search term on Technorati the past few days since the four hour premiere on Fox.

Pretty soon, there will be people writing entries about Jack Bauer just to see how many people come visit their blog to read about Jack Bauer. And then, those people might look and see that Drew Barrymore is the second on the list behind Jack Bauer, so they will start writing blog entries about how Drew Barrymore is going to marry Jack Bauer. That would be really confusing, of course, because Drew Barrymore is real (at least we think she is) and Jack Bauer is fictional…OR IS HE? Maybe all those searches for Jack Bauer are people who are trying to find a real person named Jack Bauer who they thought was killed 18 months ago, and now they are wondering if instead he is holed up somewhere with Drew Barrymore.

Back to the point…somebody somewhere is probably writing a blog entry right now that mentions Jack Bauer and Drew Barrymore just to draw some traffic to their blog. That would be despicable.

I don’t know, I might hold off on that headline for a bit.