The Permanent Committee to Recall the Governor has fallen on hard times over the past few months, as interest rates in their cause have declined. Many members abandoned the group after the last election for chairman, which was won in an upset by the new delegate from Brisbane, Irving Rascible.
Under Mr. Rascible’s chairmanship, the Committee has abandoned its previous advertising campaigns, such as the well-known efforts to link Governor Schwarzenegger with violently pro-metric sentiments. During the height of the flu season, agents of the Committee distributed cases of pocket tissues imprinted with a number of anti-Schwartzenegger slogans, such as
- Give Arnie an inch, and he’ll take a meter!
- When you ride with Arnold, your kilometerage suffers!
- Get fit with Arnie: count your kilojoules!
This whispering campaign was crushed by the governor’s recent remarks on Space Ghost: Coast to Coast about “those cranks who want me to open a can of vupp-ass on them, and that’s a gallon can, not a liter!”
In response, Mr. Rascible has devoted the Committee’s dwindling resources to compiling evidence linking the governor’s behavior with the dire weather in California. At the last full meeting of the Committee, he elevated Jodie Geld, a self-described math puzzler and delegate from Volcano, to the position of Chief Researcher to the Committee. The position carries a generous stipend in free hours on AOL, which are ostensibly to be used for research on the Committee’s behalf.
Today, Ms. Geld issued the first press release from her office, which claims the discovery of a chaos-theoretic model that explains California’s recent weather patterns. In the six-page release, mailed to news organizations as a holograph manuscript on college-ruled notebook paper, Ms. Geld attempts to show how the governor’s consumption of a cigar in Van Nuys can result in tornadoes in the Bay Area. A single political speech by the governor can cause up to two inches of rainfall in the greater Los Angeles area, with the devastating mudslides that follow.
Ms. Geld repeatedly invokes pretty butterflies as the crucial link between the governor’s actions and natural disasters affecting the state. In Ms. Geld’s analysis, every action taken by the governor in public or private life results in the derangement and death of innocent butterflies, which are particularly sensitive to smoke, noise pollution, and unregulated dietary supplements. The suffering of the butterflies then leads to environmental chaos, in accordance with well-known principles of chaos theory.
The Geek Chorus: Dood, you’re at it again!
Myself: I beg your pardon?
The Geek Chorus: Your science writing is sick. Do you have a grudge against empiricism or what?
Myself: Nonsense. My parents were datapoints, in actuarity.
The Geek Chorus: X! You’re Ebola with the language, man.
Myself: Bloody right I am.
The Geek Chorus: Basta! I’m outta here.
Myself: Goodbye.