Can you believe this? Neither of my senators—or the representative—has written me back! What the hell are they doing in Washington? Certainly not paying attention to their hard-working and attentive constituents who bothered to learn their names! I especially have a problem with the representative. What excuse do you have? You’re not even important! I even closed my letter to Representative Dana Rohrabacher by telling him that the swell has sucked lately, so he’s not even missing anything (He’s a surfer. I’m a surfer. I reached out to him as one surfer to another. He was not feeling it.). Hello! I bothered to look up personal information about you! The least you could do is respond! Oh, by the way, Dana, the swell is totally picking up. You’re about to miss some epic swell.

You better not be vacationing in Hawaii right now.

I’d like to clear up any lingering confusion over my previous post: No, I did not write two senators and a representative about how outrageously snobby that second-hand store Buffalo Exchange is, as some of you (you know who you are and you’ve spent way too much time in Texas) thought. Come on, people. No, I actually wrote them about the Republican takeover of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by extension, my beloved NPR. Can you believe they’re calling it “liberal”? Honestly, I’ve never even heard of such a thing. Unfortunately, I have heard of how Bush’s new budget conveniently increases funding for faith-based programs and abstinence-only education while slashing funding for something you’ve probably never heard of, a little thing called HEALTHCARE.

At least I think that’s what I read or heard somewhere. Unless I totally messed up those facts. Which is possible. Because I did have the following conversation the other day:

ME (in midst of one of those witty and intellectually stimulating political discussions I often have): I can’t believe you used to think George Bush was cute!

FRIEND WHO NEEDS TO GET OUT OF TEXAS: He is cute!

ME: Well, we have the Governator. He’s kind of good-looking.

FWNTGOOFT: That’s nothing! You should see our governor, Rick Perry! He’s really good-looking.

ME: [ogling website] Wow, he really is good-looking.

F-GOOFT: Yeah, he looks like what someone who’s a politician is supposed to look like.

ME: Yeah. I can’t believe you know who your governor is. I don’t even know who our governor is. Who the hell is our governor, anyway?

F-GOOFT ["expressing utter shock at my lack of awareness"]: ...?!

I mean, I suppose you could be forgiven for forgetting who your governor is if it’s someone like this. (No offense, Bob.) But when your governor is a two-hundred-plus-pound former Mr. Universe whose most famous utterance previous to his election was a Spanish phrase in a thick German accent right before he blew people away with his machine gun—there’s really no excuse.

Man.

But now that I’ve figured out who our governor is, don’t you think I’m ready to fulfill my civic duty as a jurist next month? I hope I don’t get knocked out because I’m too smart.