Bumpkin's Plan

A young Bumpkin grazing with her mommy: Sheila

It's a devious plan indeed.  It's diabolical.  The casualties will be enormous; many people will die when Bumpkin finally makes her move to wrest control of the world from the humans.
"I'll attack Canada first," declared Bumpkin.  "That place is so freaking cold that I'll be doing them a favor by putting them out of their misery.  That place is fit for neither groundhog nor beastie.  Who says I don't have a heart?"
"That's nice of you, Bumpkin.  It is a God-forsaken land during winter.  You might want to toast Minnesota and Maine with your fireballs for the same reasons; it can get really cold in those states."
"Don't try to tell me what to do!  I know all about that anyway, buster!  I watch the weather channel."
"I'm sorry, Bumpkin.  You're right.  It's your war: not mine."
"Darn right, mister!  It's my war!  And I suggest you try to remain on the right side of it."
"Yes, ma'am.  I know you will kill as many humans as you need to in order to win.  And killing people is as easy as pie for you."
"Easy as pie?  How does that make sense?"
"Well, it's just an expression that people say.  It's means it's easy."
"What's so easy about pie?  That's what I'm asking."
"I don't know."
"Then stop saying that, dummy."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Where was I?  Oh yeah.  After I attack Canada, I'll launch many super-sized fireballs that will kill humans anywhere and everywhere, but harm no animals.  I want to let the humans know that the whole world is under attack, and there is no safe harbor."
"Good idea, mistress Bumpkin."
"You're darn tootin' mister."
"Then what?"
"Then I'll get on TV, and tell the humans how they can avoid further bloodshed."
"How can they do that/"
"By surrendering, butthead."
"Of course.  What if they don't surrender?"
"I'll kill as many people in Switzerland as possible while not harming animals."
"They're neutral."
"I know."
"Good idea, Bumpkin.  Annihilate a neutral country; that will have them thinking."
"Of course.  Believe me, I know what I'm freaking doing." 

TV Is a Drug

Don't watch TV; watch this young groundhog!

It really is, and I am a recovering addict.  As a kid, I watched tons of it.  As an adult, I've watched tons of it. When you add cable, it becomes a hard drug.  A TV with digital cable is cocaine.  A TV with digital cable plus a movie channel is crack.  A TV with digital cable plus two movie channels is meth, and so on.  You get the point.  TV, the way I have it now, is like alcohol or marijuana.  I have no cable, so I get only three channels, and one of them is a 24-hour-a-day weather channel.  However, I have a DVD player.  I watch very little television programming, but I might watch anywhere from part of a movie to two movies in any given day.  I certainly don't miss having to pay the monthly charge for cable, which went up every single year. 
TV, like drugs, can be a real time-waster.  I'm pretty sure that Time Warner Cable isn't planning to offer free cable to me, but even if they did, I think I would decline it.  The older I get, the faster time seems to move.  I feel like watching TV is like watching your life pass by.  I want to do more with my life than watch TV.  And it really does get me high.  I turn it on, watch it, and get high on it.  It brings on a certain feeling of relaxation. 
Someone recently said to me that TV gets a bad rap.  I think that's true to a degree.  I think most of the programming is crap, but I have seen some interesting and informative stuff.  Probably the most informative show I ever saw was about the Three Gorges Dam in China.  I learned that many people were displaced by it.  A city was shown, from above, that was eventually going to be entirely underwater because of the dam.  It blew my mind, because it was a real-sized city with tall buildings and everything.  It was hard to imagine.  Of course the buildings would have to be demolished.  You can't have a ship, traveling down the river, crashing into an underwater building.  In fact, some people were paid to demolish buildings in their own town that they were being forced to evacuate: adding insult to injury.  So, as you can see, that was a very informative program.  On the other end is a show like Celebrity Apprentice.  What a piece of crap.  I have to admit, the commercials drew me in.  I gave it a try.  It didn't take long to realize that Trump's main objective was to create drama by getting the participants to criticize each other: garbage.
You're free to watch as much TV as you want to.  Just remember, ultimately, what you're doing is watching a box.