The Enemies List...

This past week, the White House has asked that it's supporters report on their friends, neighbors and relatives who disagree with them on anything the Obama administration does. They especially wish to know about people who propagate "fishy" information on healthcare ("fishy" being defined as any fact, opinion, speculation, graph, e-mail, letter to the editor, diary entry and probably private conversation and pillow talk which would tend to cast aspersions upon Barack Obama and his policies). Those whom you might consider to be potential enemies of the State are to be reported to the White House directly at flag@WhiteHouse.gov.

We seem to be importing a lot of Germanic policies these days: Cash for Clunkers was a copy of a German policy, and now creating a network of informants is on the menu. Next week: Mandatory goose-stepping.

Anyways, it seems as if the Community Organizer in Chief doesn't like the democratic process unless he's running and profiting from it. And it also appears as if he has a very, very thin, post-racial skin when it comes to legitimate criticism. The Left in this country is getting a dose of it's own medicine at the Heathcare Town Hall meetings, and not just on that topic either, and finding it a most bitter pill to swallow. So, those who persist in running down The One and His Most Holy Programs will be reported to the Secret Police deep in the bowels of the White House. They must be watched...for our own good.

Paging Mr. Orwell...Paging Mr. George Orwell...

Not only is this an egregious violation of civil liberties -- remember them; George W. Bush and John Ashcroft supposedly destroyed those, creating the need for a The Savior in the first place? It's illegal; whatever happened to the First Amendment? (probably the same thing that's happened to the Second). It's immoral, but then again, spending more money than you can print and lying about it is too, and that doesn't seem to faze this White House, either. The up-side? The 'program' is, after all, entirely voluntary...for the good little Nazi who turns you in. Not for you, if you happen to be the one reported on. The Generation that destroyed a culture with protests (the Nancy Pelosis, Harry Reids John Kerrys, Barbara Boxers et. al.) now objects to protests directed against them.

Not noly do I want to protest openly in the public square, venting my spleen at anyone who will listen, I WANT TO BE ON THAT ENEMIES LIST.

Yes, I WAN'T to be on that list. I want to be attacked by the White House and MSNBC. I want my chance to tell Barack Obama to perform anatomically-impossible reproductive acts, and to tell Keith Olbermann that he should be the poster child for oral sex. I want to, metaphorically, kick Nancy Pelosi in her cast-iron testicles. I want the attention that being an enemy of the State brings, because only then does anyone take you seriously. I want to be the Political Milk-Carton Kid; the victim of the overreaching, overzealous, overbearing Federal Gestapo, especially the one that is as incompetently -run as this one is shaping up to be. So, here's a list of stuff that ought to get me on that list:

* Barack Obama is a big, dumb poopyhead!
* Obama is so lame, he had to get Bill Clinton to rescue American Hostages!
* Healthcare 'reform' is simply is scam to get insurance to people who can't afford it, and people who deserve it, by getting rid of those useless old folks!
* Barack Obama is a racist!
* Barack Obama couldn't find his own ass with both hands and a road map!
* Joe Biden is really the smart one!
* Bet you all wish Hillary won now, huh?

Someone out there, please, please, PLEASE report me! I would report myself, but that would be lame.

Obamacare Explained...

Big Brother is Watching You...

One more for the "What the fuck is happening in the UK?" File.

This, from the Daily Express.

Appropriately, the man who advocates this policy is named Ed Balls. He is also the Minster for Children (why do children need a Government Ministry? Since when did they start paying taxes?). Tell me he doesn't have some deep-seated issues to work out from his childhood. Perhaps it's what's led to this.

Some highlights and commentary:

"Private security guards will also be sent round to carry out home checks, while parents will be given help to combat drug and alcohol addiction. Around 2,000 families have gone through these Family Intervention Projects so far..."

How about taking this approach with 2,000 convicted felons, drug-addicts or pedophiles? By the way, how many of those families have at least one 'honor killing" in their background int he last six months, or are only white, native-born Britons going to be watched?

"Ministers hope the move will reduce the number of youngsters who get drawn into crime because of their chaotic family lives, as portrayed in Channel 4 comedy drama Shameless. "

By this logic, George Bush wouldn't have gotten the Patriot Act if Jack Bauer hadn't had it first. Sure, all the really first-class countries dictate public policy based upon what they see on television...

"But Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: "This is all much too little, much too late."

I'll assume that "Shadow Minister" means "Conservative", and that somehow this poor person believes that putting people under active surveillance and sending goons 'round to check on them is "too little"? I think he/she has missed the point entirely. No wonder the Tories can't win elections.

"This Government has been in power for more than a decade during which time anti-social behaviour, family breakdown and problems like alcohol abuse and truancy have just got worse and worse."

And we're too stupid to notice the obvious correlation, being politicians, and all. That is the best advertisement for a Conservative government I've ever heard right there. Delivered from a Labourite's mouth, no less. If this does not become a standard article of Conservative party propaganda until the next election, someone should be fired...and then executed. I'll even help you: it's called YouTube.

"Mr Balls also said responsible parents who make sure their children behave in school will get new rights to complain about those who allow their children to disrupt lessons."

Excuse me while I pick my jaw up from the desk. Apparently, you haven't got the right to complain in England, especially on principle, when it concerns your children? But you may earn the right if you do what the government tells you to do? Is this guy for fuckin' real?

Don't be surprised if one of the nitwits on this side of the Atlantic recommends something similar, soon.

Conspiracy Theory is Simply History for Stupid People...

Re: All the recent hub-bub about Barack Obama's birth certificate: Stop already. You're giving some of us (republicans) headaches, and making the rest of us (republicans) look dumb, playing right into the hands of a certain section of the political left which actually believes we (republicans) are a bunch of Bible-thumping yahoos incapable of rational thought -- talk about pots calling kettles black? These are the people (leftists) who demand lock-step group-think, not us. We're better than that.

All conspiracy theories eventually bump up against the brick wall of reality. The more persistent manage to soldier on, and those who have an interest in advancing them will continue to smash their craniums against this metaphorical wall until they emerge battered and bloody and looking foolish, but they will remain unencumbered by shame. They will continue with their stupidity in the same way that an alcoholic will continue to drink long after he's destroyed his life; they simply can't help themselves. The smart people stop, step back, evaluate the situation, and then make rational decisions to stop drinking, or in this case, to stop espousing nonsense in place of valid argument.

Those who don't, or won't, stop such self-destructive behavior usually wind up killing themselves, literally in the sense of an alcoholic, or, in this case, figuratively, as a political movement. In both cases, the ones who get hurt the most are usually those who happen to simply be in the splash zone of the stupidity.

The simple fact is that conspiracy theories are usually provably false. Provided one can be objective, this premise doesn't even need a defense or demonstration.

The fact we're dealing with here, is that if Barack Obama is indeed some form of Manchurian Candidate, created so as to bring Socialism to American shores, it's a pretty incredible conspiracy; whoever set it in motion would have to a) select someone who hadn't even been born yet to be the point man (straw man) for the plot, b) purposely and secretly direct the man's life in such a way so as to put him in a position to see the plan through, c) be so incredibly prescient so as to correctly divine the political and social currents of American life, and then be able to use his selected tool at precisely the proper moment in history to have seen the plan to it's fruition.

So far as I know, the only being capable of doing that, even by the admission of most of the Birthers, is God. Therefor, one could make an argument that if there was a conspiracy, then the Almighty is the one who executed The Plan; otherwise, control of all the circumstances which brought President Hopenchanger to power are beyond the control of mere mortals, no matter how smart or insidious.

In any case, Barack Obama will be gone in a little over three years, barring some tremendous and as yet unseen events (which the Birthers will conveniently bundle into their Conspiracy Theory) and so it would seem to me that the best course of action is simply this:

Expend your energies into ensuring that something remains of American culture, and that freedoms survive the Obama Experiment after he's gone, Why waste your time and effort trying to prove something true that is so obviously false? If your excuse is that the very fact that there is some question (there really isn't) as to his citizenship in and of itself constitutes an Obama 'weakness', and that it should be pursued for it's own sake, then your own thought processes and motives are called into question. Particularly when you treat the people on your own side who disagree with you as if they were the enemy, too.

Update: Andrew McCarthy at National Review makes a compelling (and reasonable) case as to why this matters. Note, however, that it was already known that Obama was a liar to anyone capable of breathing without mechanical assistance, and we didn't need Andrew McCarthy to delve as deeply into the bullshit as he did to confirm it. Still, it's a fairly decent read.

Chris Dodd has Prostate Cancer...Conveniently.

First, let me begin by saying I'm not pleased by Senator Dodd's announcement of cancer. I'm not completely heartless, and I wouldn't wish cancer on anyone. Even an alleged crook. I will say this: it's highly inappropriate that Farrah Fawcett is taken from us by incurable cancer of the ass, while a man for whom such a fate would be entirely appropriate, is instead afflicted in way which -- thanks to modern medical technology that will disappear under Obamacare -- is little more than a nuisance.

Senator Dodd's announcement was rather convenient. He's about to be nailed to the wall over allegations of accepting sweetheart mortgage deals from the biggest loser in the mortgage crisis, and running Senatorial interference to help protect both his benefactor, and the the industry as a whole. The records released (thus far), the Senator's own behavior in trying to defend himself from the allegations, and the testimony of a witness, all would seem to indicate that the Senator is guilty as charged. That democrats on the Senate Ethics Committee have been dragging their feet on the investigation into Dodd's activities, speaks even louder of complicity in something possibly illegal. The attempt to garner some sympathy, in the hopes of mercy when the guillotine is hanging by a thread, Senator, is an obvious tactic.

I hope the Senator recovers from his cancer. But I also hope that no one believes that Dodd's illness is a fair excuse to drop the investigation into his potential crimes. I then hope he spends some time in jail, if required.

By the way; we're still waiting to see the documents, Senator.

Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing...

Here's one more thing for Henry Louis Gates to be shot for...errr...consider. Via HotAir.

Guess that staged kegger in the Rose Garden was supposed to fix everything, huh? These are the jackasses who now run this country; they believe that human nature can be overcome by silly symbolism, and they obviously believe that only white men are racists.

Toasting Someone Who Will Soon Be Toast...

Re: This whole Keg Party at the White House thingy. I'd like to make the following statements:

1. This Professor Gates guy is an asshole. He's made a living selling his own hatreds and whining brand of self-pity as 'serious' scholarship. He's almost like the English stage actors who 'make their name' playing Lear or Hamlet at the Old Vic, and then continuously live in that motif, unaware of where the part ends and the individual begins. Henry Louis Gates is a product of his industry; like any good salesman, he's always working the angles.

Which is why I believe (but can't prove, natch) that when the police arrived at his door, he couldn't do the right thing and co-operate with them. No, no, no. He instead fell into character as the aggrieved black man, and when the defecation hit the ventilation, decided it was too good an opportunity to continue to peddle his brand of venomous stupidity. He's unaware that his is living in the past, while still having the wherewithal to remember how his present depends on his trotting out his tired act yet one more time. It's what his public wants.

2. This Sergeant Crowley fella has missed an opportunity. Sure, it's really nice to invite yourself to the White House for beer and an audience, but you could have made it so much more with a little imagination. This will not be, as the President hopes, a teachable moment or experience or whatever buzz-phrase he's trotted out for it, it will be a First-Class Dog-and-Pony-Show, complete with Potemkin-like expressions of solidarity and contrition, all contrived.

I'm not about to tell Sgt. Crowley his business, but if it were me, I would have asked for the following;

a) A public apology from both President Obama (for sticking his nose in where it didn't belong, and for the insult to police officers everywhere) and Professor Gates (for being an uncooperative, unappreciative dipshit) before I set foot in Washington, D.C., and an assurance that the First Harridan...errr...First Lady, will have been safely airdropped anyplace three-days walk from Washington. Make certain that formerly-private citizen Lucia Whalen (the woman who made the original 911 call, and who is now being pilloried by your allies and fellow race-baiters for it), gets her own apologies, as well.

b) If you want your photo op, Mr. president, then I get to choose which media will be allowed inside to record the event, and then I choose the outlets I find the most trustworthy. I then get to approve whatever dispatch the White House Press Office decides to send out --before it sends it out. I also get to choose who is in the picture, excepting yourself, and Professor Gates.

c) I reserve the right to have my own cameraman record the event, so that I can call a press conference the day after to counter whatever administration-approved lies the Mainstream Media is ordered to tell afterwards.

Then I would happily toast every one's health, gladly.

Now, as to who will be 'toast' after this event.

Unfortunately, Henry Louis Gates will probably still be employed after this fiasco reaches it's crescendo. Parasites like this almost always survive even the worst results of their self-inflicted wounds. Just think about how many drunk drivers walk away from the SUV-wrapped-around-a-tree while all the passengers died or ended up cripples. This is, in a way, almost like a drunk-driving accident; Professor Gates acted irrationally, and put others at risk because he was selfish, arrogant and stupid. You don't agitate men who have guns and often-stressful jobs; that's often a recipe for disaster. The Professor is a very lucky man. He's lucky that the police officers that responded exercised restraint and acted professionally and responsibly. Otherwise, he might be laying on a slab in the morgue. He's been dinged, but the public will forget his name in very short order, and he will return to being Harvard's Number One Tenured Race Baiter.

Barack Obama will not be so fortunate.

I've told you before that the election of Barack Obama would lead to a certain phenomenon, where blacks would now assume that with one of their own at the top (and I wonder, how many of them would have ridiculed Obama as not being 'authentically black', or called him 'Oreo' for having a white mother -- before it seemed possible that he might actually win the election?), this gives them a license to do whatever the hell they please. I generalize; I don't expect all black folks to act with that lack of restraint, or leap to the illogical conclusion that they could, over would. There is, however, a certain subset of the black community that feels that not only is their right to act like retards, but that no one should call them on it. If you do, you get called 'racist'.

But I've come to the conclusion that Barack Obama has shot himself in the foot on this one. The man who advertised himself as someone capable of spanning the racial divide instead dove headlong into the chasm. He did something which resonates with certain blacks --back the Brother against The Man -- but that occurred simultaneously with something which resonates with far more people -- he acted, spoke,and passed judgement without having, by his own admission, the facts. The people who see that Barack Obama, the quick to judge, the uninformed, the one willing (some might say eager) to inject race into something he was ignorant of, speaks far louder about him to people with the same sense God gave to a guinea pig.

That's what's so troubling -- the willingness to make assumptions that can't be backed up by facts. It's already bit Obama on his posterior with regards to Unemployment, the so-called Stimulus, and now this 'Healthcare' monstrosity. It's almost as if he believes that whatever set of facts, or even whatever flight of imagination, he cooks up, makes it so. Professor Gates wasn't arrested because the police responded to a legitimate situation, and refused to co-operate, he must have been arrested because he was 'Racially Profiled'. The facts say otherwise, but in Obama's world, they don't matter. The only thing that matters is perception. That's what he's been selling the American Public his entire life, after all. I guess there's a little way-past-his-encore English stage actor in Obama, too.

The facade around Obama cracks daily, mostly because he's unable to communicate either the purposes or effects of his policies, but this incident took one of those cracks and widened and made it the Grand Canyon. Now we're talking about Reverend Wright again. And Michelle's "for the first time I'm proud of my country..." speech. And we're wondering if all that "Post-racial" nonsense was just that.

Barack Obama, if he hadn't already done so with his policies, has, with this action, ensured that he will be a one-term President. He could pass "Free Easter Eggs for Everyone" and "A Pot of Gold at the End of Every Rainbow" legislation, and none of it will matter now. President Obama has just ensured that the racial scabs which cover this country's wounds, will be continually picked at and torn off for the next three years. It's a process that might never end, even though part of his appeal was the hope (more false perception) that with his elevation to the White House, it might have.

I hope the President seriously considers that while he enjoys his Bud Light and generated-for-the-cameras-regular-guy-bonhomie.

Why Bureaucrats Should be Sterilized...

The day after tomorrow, I am to report to a government office for the purposes of re-establishing my identity so that I may be selected for a government job. Let me repeat that: re-establishing my identity.

You see, the government wants to make certain that I am who I claim to be. This despite the fact that when I took the test for this particular job, I was required to bring several pieces of identification (official documents), most of which the administrator on the scene at the time said wasn't necessary at the time. I was allowed to take the test (which was a total joke), and waited four months for the bureaucracy in question to contact me with the results of that test.

I passed. They wouldn't tell me my grade (they're 'not allowed' to give you the results of an exam that you took - I smell Affirmative Action), just that I had passed, and that someone would get back to me with additional details at some unspecified date.

Three months later, I'm contacted and told to report to a certain office for the purposes of re-establishing my identity. Not "come in, we have a job for you, and we'd like to discuss a few things". Not "congratulations, you're a member of the team". Not "we have an assignment for you". Just "bring all the stuff you brought before, which we told you we didn't care about."

Which leaves me with a bit of a problem.

Because some of the documents I brought with me that day had expiration dates (most official documents do). And they have passed. Now, that's my fault: I should have kept them up to date, granted. But now, I have to rush to re-establish or renew them, and alas, they are required now, as opposed to seven months ago when the agency in question said they were required, and which the admin then pooh-poohed.

This is where it really starts to get weird.

One of the documents I will need can only be obtained by presenting a valid (i.e. non-expired) piece of official identification. Which I no longer have. Another can only be replaced if I give the Federal Government two to four weeks to replace, and that's if I can prove who I am with a valid identification.

I am now in the unenviable position of having to obtain two pieces of legitimate documentation which require other legitimate (non-expired) documentation to even request. In other words, I have to depend upon the government to provide me with documents in order to get copies of the same documents (only valid copies), only the government says that the older-but-expired versions of those documents cannot be used for the purposes of obtaining new ones! And one of them might not even arrive for a month.

And this is for a government job.

Had someone done their job seven months ago, this would not have happened, notwithstanding my own oversight and stupidity.

Your government at work, not working, and creating more work for someone else.

And these people own GM, half the banks and want to run the health care system?

I'll let you know how this goes.

The Religion of Peace chimes in Again...

This via SmallDeadAnimals.com.

This excuse, that Arabs are not responsible for their personal failings, has been used before, and often, by others. It's been used to explain away political chaos and genocide in Africa and Asia. It has been used to brush off the frightening lack of responsibility in many minority communities here in the United States.

People are not responsible for living in terrible squalor, poverty, crime, fear and insecurity because of the racism/colonialism/prejudice/intolerance/neglect/exploitation/mis-understanding (take your pick) of OTHER PEOPLE who are not a part of the 'rightfully-aggrieved' suicide-Jihadi cult. The Islamic world is fucked up because the West made it so, they say. It's dangerously volatile because, despite enormous economic resources, people are poor, uneducated and deprived, they say. I read the above,and thought of something I had written in what now seems another life (bolded text inserted to make my points relevant to the present issue) :

"Many Hindus are poor, deprived, illiterate, and their culture suffered under colonialism, yet they do not go on killing sprees.

Many Buddhists the world over are poor, deprived, illiterate, and their cultures suffered under colonialism, yet they do not go on killing sprees.

Many Christians the world over are poor, deprived, illiterate, and their cultures suffered under colonialism, yet they do not go on killing sprees.

If poverty, deprivation, illiteracy, and the legacy of colonialism were the main causes of terrorism, then we'd see more terrorists from Bombay, Burma, and Budapest instead of Riyadh, Lahore and Aden.

The poverty/deprivation/illiteracy/colonialism connection does not wash since there are people in non-Muslim lands who suffer under the same (or even greater) deprivation who do not vent their frustrations by hijacking airliners and slamming them into office buildings.

Speaking of the 9/11 attack, the majority of the attackers in that plot were of distinctly middle-class backgrounds, many college-educated. Those 19 men were certainly not "poor, deprived and illiterate". More like "perverse, depraved and indecent".

What DOES cause Islamic terrorism is a culture in which every aspect of human activity, from which hand one wipes one's bottom with, to whom and how many wives one should marry, in which economic, social and political activity are strictly defined and proscribed, is dictated by the words of dead lunatic who created a guide for the world as he would like to have had it, and somehow managed to convince enough people that God told him that THIS is the way life is to be lived.

The lunatic was Mohammed, and the guide is the Koran. He is, in a metaphor most westerners would understand, that guy sitting at the corner stool in the local bar who muses "Wouldn't it be great, if...?", but who then managed to actually work up the ambition to make it so. Mohammed was like Norm from "Cheers"... only with a work ethic.

The first mistake Muslims make is to believe that Islam is a religion. It is not. It is a system by which every aspect of life is systematically controlled, and given a religious patina. It is a system that totalitarian systems of the West would have recognized easily, and which the worst of them (The Nazis and the USSR) certainly wished they could emulate. It was created by a very small, and otherwise-powerless man bent on revenge for slights both real and imagined, and used to enlist people to his cause of visiting revenge upon the people who had deprived, ridiculed and insulted him.

Much like Nazism and Soviet Communism, Islam cannot abide a rival system of belief or a foreign concept of personal freedoms divorced from it's own orthodoxy. No rival to Islam can be allowed to survive. It ruthlessly seeks out and destroys any rival system that poses a threat to it. Like Nazism and Communism, it denies the existence of human nature and believes that all human activity (and it's own eventual victory) is pre-ordained. It believes that human nature, when it does rear it's ugly head, can be controlled with violence or the threat of violence. It smothers the individual on behalf of the collective, which then serves and props the system up.

It violently rejects the idea that authority can and should be challenged if the human race is to advance in any meaningful way. As a result, the Islamic world, from all intellectual, artistic, economic, political, historical, scientific and cultural standpoints, is stunted. Nothing happens in the Islamic world that is not subject to the relentless scrutiny of religious orthodoxy. No potential threat to the status quo ante (the rule of the Imam, or the select elite backed by or in league with the Imams) is allowed to survive; the full force of religion (and often religion backed by the police or military power of the state) typically being brought to bear upon it, whether it is the concept of interest-bearing loans, women's rights (or even a woman's basic humanity) , the power of the press, or Brittney Spears' belly-button on the television screen. If you doubt this, just recall that music (which leads to dancing!), television (which might actually inform the people or show them images that will lead them astray) and a free press (which might actually incite the people against the Imams) were all banned in Afghanistan. Note that most Islamic equivalents of said media in most other Arab/Islamic countries are strictly controlled and censored by religious bodies operating under government auspices. Just recall that the first printing press in the Islamic world was not sanctioned by the Ottoman Empire until 1825, and even then it was only allowed to print the Koran.

Why? Because Islam is allergic to ideas. It is especially allergic to any idea which the Koran does not specifically address. The reaction, when this eventuality occurs, is not to revise or reconcile the dogma (which is the standard Judeo-Christian practice regarding conflicts between doctrine and progress)to new circumstances, but to destroy the offending concept and make it outlaw.

If you need a graphic example of just how stunted and culturally-retarded Islamic society is, we need only look at the toolbox of the modern, Islamic terrorist; intercontinental airliners, flight schools, cell phones, the Internet, chemical explosives, international funds transfer, credit cards, the AK-47, the battlefield artillery rocket, the short-range ballistic missile, videotape, broadcast television (Al' Jazeera) and mass media, and last, but not least, the boxcutters used by the 9/11 hijackers -- are all Western inventions. These are all the result of a robust scientific, economic and cultural experimentation which was created under a system of secular rationalism.

What did the Islamic world provide? Nineteen lunatics willing to die.

So, in the end, the poverty the Islamic world struggles under is not one of financial resources; it is a poverty of the mind. The deprivation is suffers is not one of material goods and comfort; but a spiritual one. The illiteracy it contends with is not caused by a lack of books and people educated to read them; the stratification of it's political and social forms is not a legacy of colonialism; it is an inability to reconcile modernity with an outdated orthodoxy with which the underlying desert nomad culture is too frightened to deviate from.

The first step in the liberation of the Islamic world is not to tear down the West, but to break free of it's own, self-imposed, mental chains."

Perhaps if these "100 Arab Scholars" (I'll bet majority of them were educated in Europe and the United States, by the way) could convince their people to look inwards instead of searching for scapegoats, there would be no more poor, deprived, illiterate suicide bombers at all. But there I go, applying logic again.

I should know better by now...

Of Roommates and Rectal Thermometers...

For some reason this analogy just happened to enter my mind, Lord knows from where, but it sorta-kinda makes a weird sense, if you think about it. I probably should have thought it out a bit more before committing it to the blog, but sometimes the Cesspool of Consciousness demands that something be written before it haunts the inside of your skull forever.

The American Republic is like a house in which four people live. They're complete strangers to one another, but they have this arrangement between them to live together as best they can, and so long as the rent is payed, and they equitably split the chores around the house, they will try to leave each other alone. The point here is that living together is a matter of convenience.

In the medicine cabinet of this house shared by four friendly strangers is a rectal thermometer. Most homes, I assume, have one. They're rather handy, sometimes.

The first Roommate is content to leave the thermometer alone, unless he or one of his roommates is obviously ill, at which point, he'll use it if he has to. The act of using a rectal thermometer upon another is slightly gross, embarrassing, and can be construed as being an imposition without sufficient cause. He is content to leave the rectal thermometer in the medicine cabinet, unused, except in direst emergency, an emergency which he fervently prays never arrives. He'll do his part in that emergency, but he'd rather hang around his own room, doing his own thing, and have as little contact with the other Roommates as possible. Especially if it means staying away from their asses.

The second Roommate is absolutely enthralled by the rectal thermometer. She loves it because it represents something, surety, accuracy, a sense of security that if someone in the house has a fever, she will be able to use it to divine that someone does indeed have a higher-than-normal temperature, and then take all sorts of actions. She likes to take actions. All the time. She's the sort of Roommate that leaves little notes on people's pillows to remind them to pick up their socks, and draws little smiley-faces on the note. She knows that if, indeed, one of her Roommates look sick, she'll be the first to get to that rectal thermometer and use it, and prove herself to be a really useful and valuable housemate.

The third Roommate is unaware there is a rectal thermometer in the house. In fact, he doesn't even know what a rectal thermometer is, or even what it's used for. He's managed to scrape by in life without ever having to use a rectal thermometer or have one used upon him. In fact, he probably doesn't even know what a fever is, and how someone obtains one. If it were left up to him, and one of his Roommates was sick, he might watch someone else use that rectal thermometer, but only because once the concept was explained to him it sounded pretty neat. But he'd otherwise be as useful as teats on a bull during the entire process, except maybe to giggle and snigger and offer play-by-play analysis in single-syllable words. And then he'd go back to wonering about who is leaving notes with smiley faces upon his pillow.

The fourth Roommate is the one who one days asks "Excuse me; does anyone know why this thermometer tastes so funny?"

Anyways, that's the beginning of the idea. I'll elaborate on it more as I think about it. I'm sure there's some nugget of universal truth in it. Somewhere.