Cowboy Picayune-Sunny Times Reader's Quiz

Compiled by TRIPP FANTASTIC

Salaam! Salaam! O'Grand Ayatollah a la Curious Reader!

Below is a sample current events litmus test from The Church of the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Back 9, designed to weed out all undesirable interlocutors and undeserved devotees of the most holy & righteous Golf Bum Obb Putnam of Providence, RI!

Channel Tom Tomorrow and take with spiked tea:

1. Former Clinton White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry was a master?

a) Of disguise
b) Lover & International Man of Intrique
c) Of Zen Buddhism
d) Electrician
e) Classical Xylophonist
f) All of the above

2. The Sunday New York Times is must read piffle among Ivy League Yuppies because?

a) Its real estate section contains the most absurdly comprehensive and ridiculously exclusive listings in the tri-state area. (Can you say: "Your own private island dacha & vineyard awaits, anyone?")

b) Its metro section/diary provides tragically hip dilettantes and pseudo-intellectual poseurs with enough probing human-interest sob stories and glibly secular anecdotal insights to impress fellow, eternally preening cocktail habitues that they are in touch with the oppressively gritty urban reality surrounding them, which consigns less fortunate New Yorkers to make do without pipe-organ espresso makers, jolly and obsequious doormen, and tax-shelter & hedge-fund advice from graduates of The Wharton School of Corruption.

c) Its weekly chronicling of the ruthless breeding contest--(a.k.a The Weddings & Engagements Page)--is must read INTEL among the over-weaned and commingling DNAs of hyper-competitive Kleptocrats, Resume Gods, and Trust Fund Scions clawing their way past, around, and over the graying wits of their Ruling Elite paymasters, back-stabbing colleagues, & rival sycophants in their crazy-making climb to the soulless pinnacle of Mt. Cutthroat.

d) The snarky crypto-Catholic shibboleths of Maureen Dowd provide rich zingers for the cool kids to test out on each other in their daily water cooler bull sessions--to ease the cognitive-dissonance of the unceasing barrage of fascist-wannabe shouting heads on cable TV & talk radio--before weaving the cattiest of them into their mutual appreciation society Listserv e-mailers, desperately convincing themselves that, somehow, with petty cut-and-paste thinking, and the magical press of a button, they are contributing to a counter-Dark Age zeitgeist that will save the world by enlightening the dimly awakening converted to the wound-licking horror of facing another 8 years of W.'s, and every other right-wing nut job's, inexplicable ascendancy, brilliant Machiavellian high-handedness, unbearably unworthy longevity, and mind-fuckingly pious domination.

e) None of the above

3. We are most likely slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocents & wasting hundreds of billions in Iraq because?

a) W. was one letter off when Karl Rove was giving him a lap dance and he overheard Uncle Dick tell Iran to go: "Saddam itself."

b) United Defense, makers of the Bradley fighting tank and other fast-track weapons systems, stood to win a nice slice of the unprecedented defense spending pie, which had the coincidental benefit of enriching Klan Bush's stake in The Carlyle Group, United Defense's majority share holder, vis-a-vis former President George H. Bush's classified role as "Adviser to Carlyle's Asian investment funds" before leaving in 2003.

c) W.'s undiagnosed A.D.D caused him to grow bored with ho-hum pressing issues like Homeland/Border Security, Illegal Immigration, Health Care Reform, and Balanced Budget Amendments when Uncle Dick shouted "Hey, Iran! Go, Saddam yourself!"

d) Ussama bin Laden is such an unprofitable mouthful for a National Guard ducking, Vietnam War avoiding, Skull & Bones skulking, Ivy League cowboy when the smart money is telling to find out what is buried under the sands of the Tigris & Euphrates.

e) Jenna wanted to make a Daddy's Girl Gone Wild video in one of Saddam's palaces over Spring Break.

f) Psychotic Christian Evangelicals, egged on by obsessive Neo-Con crypto-Zionists, have conned the impetuous W. into latching onto the messianic delusion of grandeur that a former obnoxious drunk and lifetime C-student has been ordained by God to bring about The Second Coming of Christ by instigating a Final Conflict between Jews, Christians, & Muslims in The Cradle of Civilization. Tangential events such as: 1) the recent launching of a Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish-legal tribunal in the land of Israel (the first time in 1,600 years) of 71 rabbis who have received special rabbinic ordination, as specified by Maimonides, to "authenticate a Messiah when he comes;" 2) the escalating worldwide hostilities between radical Jewish settlers & Hamas militants; 3) the intifada and the growing worldwide jihadi insurgency, as well as the rebirth of the Jewish state, somehow presages the recapture of Jerusalem. These geopolitical crisises are often cited by religious agitators, Christian extremists, and Rolex-wearing demagogues, on all sides, as proof of their encapsulated, self-aggrandizing prophecies. The creative minutiae and welter of meaningless details that apologists for these madcap doctrines successfully propagate, regardless of empirical facts to the contrary, tragically affirms that their followers & minions have swallowed--hook, line, and sinker--an irrational smorgasboard of idees fixes calculated to induce in the most impressionable of them a rabid, uncritical mind-set vulnerable to exploitative suggestions to carry-out the biddings of these modern day Tartuffees and inflame the already panendemic phenomena of mass genocidal hysteria. All this negative energy has been harnessed by all these materialistic men of rhetorical giftedness and wordly ambitions, so that a handful of their power hungry benefactors, blue-blooded Capitalists and Ruling Class henchmen can realize the bellicose money-making agenda of the G-8 (Ed-thanks anonymous reader!) Trilateralists.

g) All of the above.

4. A Neo-Con is?

a) Just like a regular con, only with bigger hair.

b) A foreign policy wet dream, hijacked from the Neo-Classical socio-political writings of University of Chicago professor Leo Strauss (circa 1930), championed by a zealous cabal of hawkish post-Reaganite crypto-Zionist wonks, justifying the parlaying of ancient Greek ideals (like the 'Noble Lie' from Plato's The Republic) on an amnesiatic, ahistoric, and inattentive public to sell them on the nakedly aggressive and hegemonic idea of projecting unprovoked US power to advance the patently imperialistic cause of resource exploitation and economic domination under the populist cloak of promoting preemptive global democratic reform as an unquestionable moral imperative (commonly referred to as the widely held & unexamined belief in American exceptionalism).

c) Something your mommy told you a girl could fall in love with too.

d) A hybrid car from Saturn that runs on corn oil, nail polish remover, oil, beer nuts, and lots and lots of oil.

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