WHERE ARE ALL OUR MAD SCIENTISTS?

There's problems in this world, folks. In case you haven't noticed, there's world food shortages, astronomic oil prices and imminent global warming where the new beach resorts will be in Pennsylvania and the old ones will be a deep sea divers' paradise. And all our scientists don't seem to be doing a damned thing about it besides appearing on CNN with graphs and charts and dire warnings. And they all seem so damned normal! They can't be real scientists! Real scientists are demented looking and ill at ease in public. I've got three words for these button-down regular guys with the charts and the patient bedside manners: Albert Friggin' Einstein!

Now there was a scientist, all freaky hair and distracted expression, a guy who could lose himself in abstract mathematics and solve some cosmic puzzle while his wife prattled on about the pain in the ass neighbor's kids trampling on their lawn and how her hairdresser's friend's cousin lived next door to a guy who knew Frank Sinatra's milkman, all the while never skipping a beat, pretending to pay attention to Mrs. Einstein, knowing instinctively where to throw in the "um-hums" the "really's?" and the "yes dears." He was like the Rain Man of Science, scribbling something illegible with a dull pencil on a paper napkin that would revolutionize an industry later that week.

What are our guys doing these days except predicting disaster, inventing tiny electronic gadgets to go along with the bazillion other tiny electronic gadgets we already have and making the world safe for sufferers of acid reflux? And even acid reflex is a new name they just made up for heartburn to make you think they've been up to something dramatic. They haven't cured a damned disease since polio or put a guy on Mars forty whole years after we landed on the Moon. There's not a bona-fide mad scientist out there! Was Boris Karloff's life's work all in vain?

Where are the laboratories in dank castles on mountaintops where lightning striking the tower is an integral part of the experiment while his hunchback assistant secretly pines for the love of the mad scientist's ward, the beautiful young blonde niece who secretly loves the duke in the castle next door even though he's opposed to her uncle's evil experiments? Boris showed them the way. Where are these guys when the planet needs them? Seems like they're all working for corporations now, perfecting the annoying little cutesy noises our computers make, inventing even more absorbent paper towels and dreaming up phony diseases and the pills that cure them. The same corporate goons intent on wringing every penny out of this planet no matter how many people they kill and poison. It's like the roles are reversed nowadays and the scientists are the bland button downs and the corporate people are the evil mad ones. That's backwards!

There's not a decent death-ray guy among them! Not a one of them is working on sucking all the water out of one of the Great Lakes and irrigating their own personal desert in order to make a vast fortune. There are no secret projects involving gigantic magnets aimed at jet planes and foreign armies, pulling all their tanks and guns right out of their hands onto that big-ass magnet. Didn't these guys watch "Million Dollar Movie" after school? Every other day there was another primer on how to be a mad genius working on outlandish projects. Did they forget all the James Bond flicks too? The scientists on both side were demented! None of these guys reported to anybody in a suit! They had big plans!

They didn't give a rat's ass about putting four blades on a disposable razor. They were lucky they remembered to shave their own faces every few days, so distracted and consumed were they with their mad scientist work. And have you heard our modern so-called scientists laugh? Please! They laugh just like any other person, not a decent sinister "Bwoo-Ha-Ha-Ha" to be found in a convention full of these drab losers. Without that laugh it's almost a guarantee that their work involves nothing more earth-shattering than improving micro-wave popcorn bags or making all-day lip gloss.

And for that last one we men hate them. There's few things sexier for a man to observe than a woman applying her lipstick and now these killjoys who don't even realize that are taking that away from us. Thanks, nerds. What's next, a pill that takes away the effects of the five drinks we just bought that beautiful lady with the ruby-red lipstick? Try that one and we march on your corporate offices at midnight with torches, pitchforks and dogs and force you to work on global warming and alternate energy sources. And teach you all the proper mad scientist laugh. Bwoo-hah-hah-hah, bwoo-hah-hah-hah...