Well, Well, Well!

Some picture of some current event in the news. Notice there is no well in the photo. This is not good.

If you're like me, and I know I am, you have undoubtedly noticed a sharp decrease in stories that fall into the "exciting news" category of televised network news shows. In the odd chance that you haven't pawned off your television to help pay for student loans, try turning it on to the local news. What you will find may shock and possibly horrify you, or else it might just cause you to make a sound like "ehhhhhh" and proceed to dismiss the entire television with a quick sweeping gesture of the hand. For you people who lack televisions, do not know how to operate one, or have mistaken a card table for a television, let me take a moment to sum up the daily news items which rotate around every newscast:

Suicide bomber in Middle East blows up Dunkin' Donuts; 15 killed.
President Bush travels to a country that is not currently America. He meets with a person wearing either a robe or a suit and they shake hands.
The stock market has gone down but analysts claim it will rise again, possibly sometime before the sun explodes.
More agencies are using that stupid Segway Scooter so they can look as absolutely goofy as possibly.
A criminal has escaped from a local jail.
A criminal, who had previously escaped from a local jail, has been caught.
Another criminal has escaped from a local jail.
Somebody knew something about 9/11 before the date of 9/11, revealing huge communication failures in the government. This is presented in a shocking and surprising way, as all other governmental services such as the Post Office and IRS work so efficiently and are near flawless.
India and Pakistan hate each other and there could be between nine and 11 million billion zillion deaths if they decide to start throwing missiles at each other. This estimated death toll figure, which was based on a particularly exciting game of Risk, is mentioned at least 50 times so everybody is really aware of how many people could die if a bomb the size of a camper trailer is dropped on some mud huts and crude stone fortresses in the middle of God knows where.

This photo has nothing to do with today's update but man, look at that old guy go! Ahahahahahaa!

These quality reports are classified as "phase 1" of news broadcasts and are immediately followed by the "phase 2" news items. "Phase 2" is like the single-A minor league farm team of any baseball team. They are the boring, pointless, uninteresting gobs of wasted film dedicated to showcasing whatever idiotic local events took place that day. "Phase 2"-type stories include such winners as:

Woman finds snake in toilet. Animal control people are called in and they catch the snake. Interview with woman reveals she was "very frightened" and "did not expect a snake to come out of the toilet." Expect to see this story reported within nanoseconds on Fark.com.
Gas prices are rising because it's either summer or it's not summer.
Voting for a local bill will commence tomorrow. Such bills include rerouting water pipes, using barren land to construct a memorial to barren land which also doubles as a dog park, and various things regarding some mythological group of people dubbed as "the County Board." The County Board is simply a group of all the white people who have memberships in the area's most expensive country club.
Traffic is backed up on every road everywhere. Drivers, for some inexplicable reason, do not seem to be pleased.
The old guy who spent all day feeding the birds and sitting in front of the Arby's recently died. It turns out he had an exciting and colorful past. For example, he once rode in a boat during World War II.
Some large business is moving into town. People interviewed admit they have mixed reactions while in the background some idiot with a scarf jumps up, waving and smiling, at the camera.
A crappy national landmark burned down, like an 183-year old house of some guy who wrote a poem shortly before being stabbed in the face by his crazed wife.

Then it's the weather report, a summary of how low the stock market dropped, an investigative reporting piece about how there are secret things in your home or body that could potentially kill you and your kids while you sleep and a guy who once auditioned for the part of a leading doctor on a soap opera confirmed all this and we should just give up now and kill ourselves right after we purchase whatever goods and / or services are currently being advertised. Then the news is over. That's it, the end, now get ready for reruns of the feelgood, laugh-inducing, child-molesting antics of "Fraiser" reruns.

Now I know what all you people out there are wondering: "But Rich 'Lowtax' Kyanka, something seems to be missing! That summary of my local news report sounds quite accurate but there's just something... something that seems to be missing! What is it?" You're also wondering if you are getting fatter, which you are. However, your weight issues have nothing to do with the fact that each and every news report these days lack an important key story that is necessary to make any television news program complete: kids falling into wells.

You may remember that one kid who fell down the well in the mid 1980's, a time of cold war tension, nuclear weapons, New Coke, and breakdancing. The kid, who wasn't very well off (ha ha, that's a clever little pun! Thanks for playing along!) captured the hearts, minds, and colons of the American public. News crews had cameramen stationed 24-7 outside of the well while Police and FBI agents from across the globe tried to fish the kid from his stony deathtrap. Viewers called in sick to work just so they could sit down and witness the ongoing developments of Operation: Pull Kid Out of Well. Ratings skyrocketed while the entire American population banded together in order to hope and pray that little whatever-his-name-was would somehow get yanked out. I don't really remember what happened after that; I think the kid either died of boredom or the city officials gave up and filled the well with concrete so no more idiot children could fall into it. I suppose it doesn't really matter because even if that kid was hauled out of the well he'd just end up starring in porn or doing meth. That's what falling into a well at an early age will do to you.

Now THIS is news! Note that I, for some inexplicable reason, made a yellow X through the picture. I'm still not sure exactly why I did that.

So where is our decade's Well-Child? I can't even really remember anybody falling into a well in the 1990's, which leads me to believe that perhaps some renegade cop made it his life's mission to hunt down and eliminate all wells in revenge for killing his idiot son. Or maybe industrial-strength fans were installed near the bottom of each well so when some single-braincelled moron kid falls into one, the fan will blow him back up and into the waiting arms of his homeless drifter parents who wear four pairs of pants at once even though it's summer and they'd be much more comfortable wearing just two pairs of pants and keeping the others in that sack-tied-to-a-stick thing they always carry around. Regardless, the number of children falling into wells has decreased dramatically, as illustrated here in this timeline I thought of while taking a shower this morning:

1,000,000,000 BC - 1500 AD: Wells hadn't been invented yet, so children could not fall into them. They tried falling into ditches and holes and the ocean but none of these really caught the news media's attention, mainly because the news media didn't exist back then.
1501 AD: Samuel H. Well, an English poet, patented the first well which he had previously named "Ye Olde Hole In Thy Grounde" but had to change the name because that phrase had already been copyrighted by a local cemetery. During its inauguration, 19 children immediately plummeted into it and tainted the water for days to come.
1502 AD - 1700 AD: Lots of kids and stupid people continued to fall into wells but nobody really cared because the well victims would be bitten by at least a million deadly plague rats during their decent, and by the time they reached the bottom they would have died of at least 10 different diseases.
1701 AD - 1900 AD: The Boston Tea Party.
1901 AD - 1950 AD: Poverty struck throughout the world and major corporations were forced to shut down all wells. The new trend moved from well-falling to the more economically viable "standing around primitive industrial plants and getting covered with soot while looking miserable." Sometimes kids would climb the gigantic coal-burning chimneys of electrical plants and then fall in, but that required a lot of effort and was hindered by the fact that those dorky little old person caps that all the kids wore back then would usually fall off during their ascent.
1951 AD - 1980 AD: Wells were once again reopened and children found themselves attracted to them like flies to a fly whorehouse. Luckily for the nation, Lassie was always around to grab the little morons before they could plummet to their boring deaths. I think the Lone Ranger helped too, he could've used that lasso rope of his to catch the kids or something.
1981 AD - 1990 AD: I guess Lassie died because a lot of kids fell into wells and suddenly the government and news media began taking intense interest in them. Also I think Fidel Castro was involved in some way.
1991 AD - ???: Who knows!

As you can plainly see, the timeline above shows a disturbing trend which I can't quite figure out yet because I'm not paying attention to the timeline above. It doesn't really matter though because the central point I'm trying to establish here is that we need more kids to fall down more wells. Sure this whole 9/11 thing did a great job in bringing Americans together and creating a more patriotic nation which now buys more patriotic bumper stickers to put on their Toyota pickup trucks, but I think it's way past time that we return to our roots and band together to applaud the efforts of a good televised well rescue.

Let's join hands, America, and make sure the youth of today find the wells of tomorrow! Do your part to make this exciting event happen! Place signs that read "FREE GOLD AND MAYBE ALSO TOYS!" with an arrow pointing to a well and then kidnap a grade school and force them to look at the sign (some of them might "fall" for it, literally, ha ha!). Travel across the country spreading the message that only the "cool kids" jump into wells. Start a public access television show which revolves around giggling puppets who have magical adventures in the Kingdom of Joy and Wonder, which is coincidentally at the bottom of a well. Construct an entire skate park centered around a well placed exactly in the middle. Trick your pregnant wife into bending over a well and aiming her baby-hole down so when she's about to give birth so the kid shoots out directly into the well. It doesn't matter how you do it, let's just get more kids to where they belong; in the bottom of a well.

You're Big in Japan!

Zack "Goose Emulator" Parsons has put his brain through the wringer once again and reviewed another perverse Hentai game for you ungrateful louts. This time it's a delightful little gender-bending romp entitled "X-Change", so head on over and give it a look.

Immediately after getting a lesbian sex exam from the nurse that started with me being forced to strip naked I went to talk to my chemistry lab partner. She told me she needed to examine me and that I had to strip naked. Much to my complete lack of anything resembling surprise I was presented with the option (which I chose) to engage in lesbian sex with her. Seriously, how hard is it to come up with a different scenario for lesbian sex? I know these guys are probably spitting one of these games out every half-hour or so, but for the love of Christ I've seen better plot concepts randomly float together in a bowl of Alphabits.

Sounds like another winner from our friends to the East!

– Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka (@TwitterHasBannedAllMyAccountsEver)