You remember the paralyzing ray, the sound effect, the beam of light flashing across the screen toward its target and -- bingo!  Zapped! All consciousness we had was momentarily checked out, no longer in the building, not on the planet, but caught up in Star Trek, caught and stunned, captured by the light of the ray.

This is how it's been feeling in encounters with media of any kind on this world, and with almost half of its citizens.  First, the flash of light, then, the ticklish electrical sensations begin, like swarming ants on the skin, the intensity gaining strength as the beam -- its first few nanoseconds aboard -- plays havoc with the body's bio-current, then, pulses stronger, threatening to shut down the computing center, up over the eyebrows... Then it does: blackout.

After a long, dusty, dirty spell on Political Row, taking in the various forms of Republican roadkill -- best they can muster in this, the Year of GOP Mass Hysteria & Ignorance, c. 1312 -- it is a soothing relief to bathe a while in modern, scientific waters, sponge off some grime, replenish logic and sanity lost in skirmishes with the heavily duped and dumbed-down.

There is nothing like strolling among some new discoveries and thoughts to help illuminate parts of the path one might be on, to help leave behind the same old, lame, old laments, and be rid of the filth oozed from intractable GOP obsessions with constant obstruction at all levels, at all costs, not matter what price all the People must pay.

Every time I look up from what I'm doing, another Republican is charging off into some self-made fray, seated backwards, on a mechanical pony -- the kind bolted to the floor, requiring a quarter to rock back and forth -- shouting incoherently, trying to make the metal animal charge faster, trying to make it back up, all the way.

The screeching and screeds are usually about mandating religion in the schools and some neo-creationist harangue, or else revising the history books to show how wonderful and not-at-all demented they themselves are, or about GOP men's rights to dictating vaginal probes into women's vaginas and their God-given rights in specifying women's health care, or else it's some frothy meringue regarding how the non-job-creating but-still-so-called "job creators," corporations and the rich, should be spared paying any taxes as their forbears once gladly did.

It is difficult to know where to start, to know where the most appropriate jumping-off place might be.  Instead, we will simply stand up, move to the popped-open door, gauge the height off the ground as being good enough, hook up the static line, check ourselves and the package, and just jump -- parachuting in with some stray facts and thoughts, ammo that will come in handy in the incessant political wars.

The pallets of ammo were too big to send in this trip, but the treasure-map directions to get to these word-artists' palettes are safe, they are right here, good as gold.  Meanwhile, not to worry, the enemy will never find the secret stash -- facts, truth, and logic -- as they've been overlooking them for decades, right under their noses, if they'd cared to look.  All this time, we figured we'd just not yet stumbled on the secret code or right sequence of facts to unlock their arm-linked, lock-stepped, right-wing minds.