NPR Goes on Strike, Dave Runs from Muppets

by Dave Maez

I don't watch the news; it's boring and takes up too much of my precious time. I don't read the paper; it takes way too much time and has too much useless crap in it. So how do I stay in touch with the world? I listen to Morning Edition and All Things Considered on NPR. It's always top-notch reporting and relevant news. Every morning on my way to work, and every afternoon on my way home (to the bar) ... I listen to my NPR.

I used to, anyway ... before they went on strike. Except they have a special name for their strike: It's called a "Spring Fund Raiser."

Whatever.

When you refuse to work until you get more money, that's a strike, baby.

It takes me on average 45 minutes to get to work in the morning. I turned on the radio this morning, and was greeted by the lovely sounds of Bob Edwards' voice reading some headlines. Yeah, for about a minute! After that I spent 44 minutes listening to him and others beg me for money.

Now, I'm no business major, and those guys on NPR always seem a whole lot smarter than I, but this just can't be a good source of income. Last time I checked I was broke. I hear them all the time, at the end of the show, where Bob will announce, "Morning Edition was brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and General Electric." I'm pretty sure Mr. Edwards is never going to say, "Morning Edition was brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Dave." Maybe they should stick with GE; they seem to have a whole lot more money than I do.

So what is a morning commuter to do? I think about it, then it hits me. I'll listen to that new 80's station that Atlanta just got, WMAX. I've listened to it before and it was awesome. They play music just like in the 80's -- the good, the bad, and the ugly (e.g., Depeche Mode, Tiffany, and Steve Perry). I start to get really excited as I tune into it, and....

Oh sweet Lord, no. It can't be. It is! The only thing worse than morning shock jock talk radio: syndicated morning shock jock talk radio!

It's always the same, too. One raging moron who happens to be louder than anyone else, surrounded by 12 guffawing yes-men. Constantly making inane jokes about Robert Blake and whatever reality-based TV show came on the night before. There's got to be some kind of FCC regulation against morasses of asininity such as this.

It's bad enough that I'm going to start my day completely uninformed of the world's events, now I have to start my day missing a few more IQ points. To give an example of their gross lack of intelligent and relevant discussions, they brought up an intern who, as is any reasoning member of society, is afraid of clowns. These bozos (no pun intended) couldn't even comprehend why people are afraid of clowns!

Clowns are scary because they're freaking clowns, man, CLOWNS. Any man who wears makeup and tries to get close to children is a freaking monster. He should be locked up in a padded room only to have company with the phallic balloon animals he creates.

I absolutely love zombie films. They're great. Movies about undead corpses that eat living human flesh. Oddly, that's not scary. Why? Because I can walk. Oh no, a zombie that wants my brains is coming, what do I do? I walk away, that's what. A zombie can only crawl at a pace of a half mile an hour. Therefore, a zombie is only a threat when I'm sleeping and I'm too busy trying not to think about clowns and Muppets to sleep anyway.

Yeah, I said it, Muppets. They're the most horrible things to ever walk the earth, ever. And they're REAL. People always tell me, "But Dave, how can you be scared of Elmo? He's so cute." First off, because I don't trust anything or anyone with a lisp that bad, and secondly, because he's friends with the cookie monster. Good Lord, what happens when the cookie monster gets burnt out on cookies and decides to become the flesh monster?

And how in the world do you stop a Muppet? At least with zombies you can split their heads open (Dum-dum bullets and shovels both work nicely, too.) and they're dead. A Muppet?!?! Shoot, man, a Muppet is made of plush! Shoot it all you want, it loses a squiggly eye and some stuffing and it's still coming to eat you.

There should be a federal mandate that requires all Muppets to be made out of the most flammable material possible, so when they turn on you, you can kill them with a cigarette butt. Yeah, non-smokers are screwed, but that's none of my concern. However, I bet Jim Henson made them out of asbestos, not only to resist fire, but also to give children cancer.

The scariest thing is that somebody in charge of creating educational kids' television programming decided instead to create unstoppable killing machines. You know why Jim Henson's dead? Because the Count sucked the blood out of his veins and then ate him! On a side note, the Count enjoys counting the number of victims he's consumed.

Holy crap! I just came up with a solution! Bury all the Muppets in a cave in Afghanistan, cancel Sesame Street, and use the proceeds to put NPR back on the air. The only thing scary about Morning Edition is host Bob Edwards' face.

Damnit, now I'm gonna be scared of NPR.

Author bio:
Dave Maez is a freelance hacker, aspiring social commentator, and self-denying imbecile. His weekly column, Idiocy, appears in more than 4 email inboxes nationwide. You can reach the author by email.

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