So, stop me if you've heard this one before: I have a friend who calls me crazy. 

For the past three years I've left Washington around the end of spring for the cooler confines of Western Alaska.  In June and July, the Sockeye Salmon run wild and run big, and on their shiny backs ride a billion dollar industry, which directly supports many of my friends in the Great Northwest, from Ilwaco to Missoula.

My friend says I'm crazy because I leave Washington during the one hospitable time of the year, when the dreary grey cloud cover that has so many Californian transplants running up energy bills with diffused light boxes peels off into the jet stream, and our skies shine the radiant blue of the ethereal Dr. Manhattan from the Watchmen movie. 

Upon my return from the Great White North, I usually jet straight to Phoenix to see my folks and old friends, and bask in the searing 110 degree heat, attempting to thaw out from two-and-a-half months straight of 18-hour shifts, which my friend points out is the crux of his reasoning for deeming me insane. No one in their right mind goes to Phoenix in August. That's monsoon season.

I like to think of it more along the lines of catering to my desires for extremes, of which I've never needed a Mountain Dew to express my proclivity for.

It's also a nice way to snap back into the brutal reality of this ever-maddening life in America after nearly three months of mind-numbing repetitive isolation.

I miss a lot of news while I'm gone up there. I missed almost all of the BP oil-spill disaster in the Gulf, which most of America is now conveniently forgetting, save for the constant barrage of BP public relation ads assuring us that everything is under control.

I missed the capture of Colton Harris-Moore, which is probably a good thing, because I was really rooting for that kid to get away. It's my personal belief that we need more bandit heroes, more outlaws. We need more Frank & Jesse James. We need more John Dilingers. We need more inspiration to come from our passionate disapproval of societal failure to remind us anything is still possible, and that with some balls and a little luck you just might make it through any situation and ride that sweet chariot into the fading sun at dusk

Thankfully, I've also missed most of the primary season here in Washington, as well as nationally.  Everyone's now in place for the big October push, all without much fanfare locally. The primaries, on occasion, offer a little surprise in the rare upset, as in the case of Delaware's Christine O'Donnell, the Tea Party yahoo whose political career up until this point, and for the last ten years, was pinned on her innate ability to spout bat-shit crazy pseudo-progressive Christian propaganda (and somehow get it all on tape).

This is why I don't run for political office. Out there, somewhere, is the evidence of a man too far gone. As long as I just stick to schlepping for this rag, they'll let me be. Live and let live, no?

And when we sit back and really soak in this sham of a political electoral process, isn't that really all it is? Somebody trying to get elected to a good paying government job with bomb-ass healthcare, and zero to little responsibility (unless they want to get re-elected)? Someone looking for a gig where their only real job is keeping the political base happy with earmarks and subsidies, and fired up with vitriolic, divisive slander of the other guy, all while keeping as many skeletons in the closet, gay or otherwise?

Obama's not even halfway through his first term, and they're already talking Obama/Clinton. They're already talking Palin/O'Donnell. According to almost every news source the Dems lost the elections in February. They've already lost control of a majority congress due to an inter-party collective spineless anxiety, focused on not losing the elections and not on the suffering American people. Meanwhile, Republicans have stood united in a grand "Fuck You!" to everybody who doesn't believe in their greedy, evil platform of shadowy bigotry and the economic divine right of kings.

Everyday when you turn on the tube or the radio, or are checking your sites on the "interwebbe", you are bombarded with children pledging allegiance to Chinese overlords, self-righteous assholes who haven't had anyone but a Mexican mow their lawn in 15 years wanting to get tough on immigration, and plenty of "let's fix this broken government" talk WITHOUT ANYONE PRESENTING ACTUAL SOLUTIONS.

It's sickening; it's disheartening; and so omnipresent that it's no wonder Xanax prescriptions are going through the roof.

Peter Callaghan of The News Tribune hilariously hit it on the head a few weeks back in his list of 20 questions with no answers. You can peep it here.

We here at the El Vacio Moral world headquarters have been forced back into Mom's basement out near Buckley to struggle through this "economic downturn." We realize that in this absurdist reality, the agro-apathy of the "Tea Ninnies" shouting bullet points off of pamphlets distributed by the Falwell-ian youth of the ‘50s now presented as the only viable alternative option will not suffice. A man much greater than I once said, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

Well, somebody get the IOC on the phone and tell ‘em I won't be in London for 2012.

El Vacio Moral rides again.

Coming up: A date with Slade Gordon & Bill Gates, Sr., Tax the Rich, Free the Booze, Dino Rossi, Patty Murray's running shoes and much, much more. Stay tuned, kiddies...

Owen Taylor is tired. Very tired. He's also the only hack Volcano editor Matt Driscoll knows crazy enough to take the job as political correspondent. Thankfully, he's got enough underworld connections to make it interesting. El Vacio Moral is Taylor's weekly court-ordered therapy session where he rants about his dwindling faith in the government to get anything right. You can find it here at weeklyvolcano.com on Fridays, definitely after noon.