All indicators point downward, I tell you. On the lobotomy box the other night I stumbled on what seemed to be sock puppets standing behind rostrums and hypnotically intoning “The American People, the American People, the American People.”

Puzzled, I speculated that it might be a convention of performing autistics, but soon understood that it it was a debate among Republican candidates for the presidency. Why use people, I wondered? We could do it as well in software. Computer graphics, small recorded vocabulary, narcotic rhythm. Easy.

Someone named Romney was speaking. I checked the Wicked Pedia to see what manner of creature he might be. No surprises. Pampered rich kid, apparently not too bright, mediocre student in fancy private schools. A Mormon. Only one wife, though. A former missionary in France. It might have been worse. We could have bombed St. Denis.

I thought of all the Mormon missionaries I had seen in various countries, black-suited in Taiwan in August, peddling around like bicycle-borne undertakers, earnest, solemn, living in some eerie head-bubble inaccessible to outsiders. Oh help.

I'm going to become an ant, I decided. It would be less embarrassing. I don't know how to go about it, but there must be a way. I'll live in one of those high-rise mud nests in the Australian desert, except I think those are termites. How can they be termites with no wood to eat? Maybe they have it shipped in.

Among the American-Peoplers was Rick Perry, a Son of Texas in the mold of Bush II, dumb as turnips, inarticulate, a wing-nut Christian. I guess he's waitin' for the ol' Rapture-suction to whoosh him up to drink Lone Star with Chay-suss. Poor Chaysuss. Rick wants to invade Mexico militarily, but only with the permission of the Mexican government. Thoughtful of him to ask.

Does he speak Spanish? No. English? Almost. Any experience outside the US? No. Doesn't need it. He has a direct line to God, who presumably speaks to him slowly, in words without too many syllables.