URGENT MESSAGE TO NOSTRAPATSPUBUS

Okay, most important matters first: If I use this Courier font too much, please understand. This is the font of many very old, now extinct manual typewriters, like the one I first used when I wrote my first unpublished brilliant novel at age 13, a memoir of sorts, le roman a clef, entitled "When the Fuck Can I Get Out of This One-Horse Boondock Already?" (Publishers pls address queries to: Bob / Room 1-900 / Akira Kurosawa Zeta Beam Drome Tri-Spires / Ciudad Vleeptron / Vleeptron / Dwingeloo-2).

And then just a few years later, when I was kicked out of my freshman year at (set browser on FULL SCREEN) Expensive Greek Revival University, I needed a job until they would let me back in, and accidentally wandered into the Editorial Department of The Washington (DC) Daily News (now also extinct). When I showed them that I knew all 26 letters of the alphabet, and a few punctuaton marks, the Managing Editor told me to get down on my knees (no no, we didn't have any of that stuph back then), he touched my shoulders with a pica rule, and said: "Rise, New Copy Boy." And that was how I got into the Journalism Racket, and from there just a short meteoric rise to becoming Vleeptron's European Affairs Correspondent. (These PHONE BILLS are killing me!)

I got real good using these ancient mechanical Courier font typewriters (also the choice at the time for kidnap ransom and bank teller stickup notes) for phone messages and then obituaries. I got so good at writing obits that I knew who would die tomorrow, and would write the obits in advance.

(You're all safe as far as I can tell through the Fourth of July, known in Canada as "The Rebel Picnic.")

I also got real fast on these ancient clunkers. By the time I was Universally Conscripted into the United States Army, a couple of WACs gave me the Army Typing Test, and actually got scared when they computed the results: 73 wpm. (They'd offered me my choice of Manual or IBM Electromechanical, I chose Manual.) The two women soldiers were very frightened, and shook in a corner, they had never seen a man type that fast before, and on a manual to boot.

As a result, I was immediately assigned to The 53rd Remington Raiders type type type typey type typey typey typitty typey type and spent the Vietnam War typing and napping and reading the classics of World Literature in paperback form in offices, sometimes air-conditioned. It was heck, heck I tell you. Once, completely surrounded by 4500 short Southeast Asian Communist typists, my ribbon ran out, and I had no replacement ribbon in my desk. Only another Remington Raider can understand.

I survived the horrible Vietnam War, and then came IBM Selectrics, and I got faster, and then came computers, and I got faster still. But learn a lesson from my horrifying war experiences: If you have a masculine child, and I hope your first child is a masculine child, teach the little yard ape to type fast. It will save his ass.

For ye who typeth fast, ye shall never hear ye clamor of terrifying loud weapons, ye shall be kept far from ye nasty dangerous field of battle always. For ye Company and Battalion Commander, and His/Her 1st Sergeant (hereafter addressed as "Top"), desperately needeth ye very fast typist with ye great spelling, punctuation and grammar. For ye War, it generateth much fucking paperwork.

-- Beowulf, Chapter 9,
"Grendel needs DOD Form 90210A-67 filled out ASAP"

And Nostrabobus gazeth into ye Crystal, and holy shit, ye Universal Conscription is comin' back soon and bigtime. It will be called "Supervolunteering." You heard it first on Vleeptron.

Okay, speaking of guys in countries which have or used to have Very Famous Systems of Universal Conscription, and have an old Heathkit Model CB-44 (vacuum tube/valve) or CB-99 (solid state) Crystal Ball ...

PAT'S PUB! PAT'S PUB!

You said:

Switzerland is not an official EU member, but we are monitoring the situation very closely. Some people, as you have clearly pointed out, are scared of the future and in the case of CH that would have an enormous effect on societyand economy. We would have to give up our system of direct democracy and neutrality and that's too scary for some people (including myself, to be hones)

but we have realized that we cannot live without the EU and so this coming weekend we have to go to the polls and decide wether we want to join the Schengen/Dublin Treaty or not.

More News as they unfold.

Well, This Coming Weekend is Now (World Time Zone dependent). Last week's Future is right now's Now. And on Monday it will be Yesterday's News (suitable for the floors of parakeet cages, please do not use the Funny Pages, please save Astirix for me).

Have the Swiss, and their recently (7 February 1971, congratulations Helvetia!) enfranchised Swiss Women, voted on the Schengen/Dublin Treaty, which I still have No Clue what it is?

What do the billboards say?

PLEASE take a photograph of any two billboards next to each other which say: OUI JA in that order.

But like ... does the whole goddam place look like

OUI! JA GEA! NON NON OUI!
NEIN SI NA SI NO! NO NON
NEIN!!! OUI OUI! NEIN GEA!!!!!

Take a LOT of pictures. Please. Vleeptron's European Affairs Correspondent is also responsible for some pictures of Euro-stuff. If you have to, travel to other Cantons. Or call up your buddies in the other Cantons and tell them to take the digital photos. Make sure you get the GEA and NA billboards. I want to send them photos to my e-pal who cranks out the UNESCO ENDANGERED EUROPEAN LANGUAGES website.

And now, O Nostrapatspubus, I cross your palm with Pizza. Remove the attractive Naugahide™ hood from your Zauberwhatchamacallit, gaze into the mists which shroud the Future from those of us who never built Heathkits or bought old ones for $5 at a tag sale, and tell us:

Will it be GEA?

Or will it be NA?

If you tell us, O Nostrapatspubus, and if you do not violate the Sacred Vleeptron Honor System because the vote results were already announced four hours ago (in horse-race betting, these magical astonishing accurate predictions of which horse will come in first in today's 3rd race at the Jockey Club, Macau, are called Past Posting, and you can get 5 years in one of PRC's many Political Re-Education Facilities for Seeing The Future this way), and most of all ... if your Prophesy is Korrekt (and half the time it's bound to be, how hard can this be?) ...

Well, that's worth a WHOLE PIZZA! I hope you like pizza.

Don't forget the GEA!!!!! and the NA!! photos. Also please don't forget the OUI and JA billboards, but they must be in exactly that order. (But a JA OUI photo would be outstanding and more fun than die Barrel von Affen too. When you are a single mom and broke and can only afford Generic ©™® Brand stuff for your kids, and you want a Ouija ©™® Board, over here you can buy Wal-Mart's Jaoui ©™® Board, manufactured under license by prisoners in the Peoples Republic of China. After much kvetching by Aministia International, much human rights progress has been made in these Chinese Free Trade Zone Long March ©™® factories. Now when a prisoner does not make the Jaoui ©™® Boards fast enough, his Supervisor no longer beats him with a stick. He just gets Less Food ©™® until he picks up the pace.)

We say Grazcha to you, O Nostrapatsbubus, in advance for assisting the Vleeptron Intergalactic News (VIN) now. In a few days, we shall already have thanked you for having assisted the Vleeptron Intergalactic News (VIN) a few days ago. That is the English future perfect or the future pluperfect tense or something. What do we know, we stopped being Inflected in 603 A.D., we got tired of all the verkakte inflections, it was interfering with the Viking-Saxon Pferd-trading and the pitching woo between teenage Vikings named Lars and teenage Saxons named Ethel.

And where the hell is Schengen? What kind of Wurst do they sell there? Is it any good? Is there anything to see around there? I know where Dublin is. Go to Hollyhead, take the ferry. The Chieftains are playing Saperstein's Authentic Irish Pup tonight!