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After a long summer trip wandering around America, seeing all the great people that actually make up this land, and, if you can believe it, actually meeting actual IRREVERENT readers, it was nice to get back home, take scotch in hand and give some thought to another piece of ageless wisdom to toss down this cybernetic rathole we call the web.

Of course there was the inevitable "catching up" that one has to do after a long trip: reuniting with old editors and making them buy lunch so that I can explain the difference between "shirking" and "slacking", checking out the new and improved layout of the magazine, thinking up the totalitarian rules by which we would allow you, our loving readers to interact with us, your darling writers. Indeed, it was only yesterday that I was able to give any thought at all to the column with which I'd kick off the fall season. I was all set to start with perhaps the most cynical, self-serving, obnoxious bit of government graft and corruption I'd ever seen in my life, but then I discovered that Kevin Trudeau has a best selling book. Government greed and corruption would have to wait, instead I needed to help my ol' buddy Kev make even more money.

Now when I bounced this idea off of my legal samurai, the one, the only, the corpulent Hashimoto Suntori, he quoted from his Book of Zen to remind me that "A felon and your money are soon partnered," referring, of course to Kevin's youthful difficulties depositing $80,000 in bad checks, and the outrageously unfair backlash caused when purchasers of his Mega Memory system discovered a bunch of other charges on their credit card bills. Still I'd be the last person to begrudge a fellow the chance to make a little hard earned at the expense of overly competitive finance companies. I mean what's the real racket here? Some guy dropping a ton of cash in bad checks and using credit card numbers freely given to him? Or a huge corporate bank so much more interested in profits than security? As someone who faced some mighty lean times myself, it was only the fact that I was so broke that I didn't even have checks on which to write bogus amounts that kept me on the straight and narrow. So, wanting to see what Kev was up to these days, I procured myself a copy of his new book Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About. I haven't seen a single greater work of genius, chutzpah, and all round bass balls since Bill Clinton asked for a definition of "is."

If you're a regular (and not in a crappy way) reader of this column you're probably expecting me at this point to talk about double dealing, corruption, and malfeasance that puts Ken Lay to shame. I'm sorry to say that I have to disappoint you. You see, Kevinator is speaking up for you, the little guy against Big Pharma™. You know, Merck, Lilly, Pfizer etc. If there is one thing that guides editorial policy here at this electronic puppy training pad it's sticking up for the little guy. Things have come to a pretty pass when the only things helping out the Average American™ are a credit fraud felon and a cyberrag full of fart jokes, but hey you plebes have to take what you can get. Now the fact that the book is a best seller indicates to me that many of you are already accepting Kev's message that Big Pharma™ is out to kill you. Here's a guy who should know, after all has also done extensive research on the anti-cancer properties of coral.  It seems that cancer -- a large unrestrained growth of cells -- can be halted by consuming coral calicium, created by large unrestraind growth of aquatic calciferous cells.   Were it not for the petty insistence of the incompetent bastards at the FTC, backed by their puppet masters at FDA, who shut that little scheme down, then I and others like me would have mined most of the world's coral reef systems by now. But I ask: is a little beach erosion too high a price to give the big finger to Glaxo Smith-Kline and your oncologist? I don't think so.

I should note, for those of you living under a rock for the last fifteen years that Kevin is the King of the Infomercial. After the Mega Memory scam, he went on to huckster real estates systems, classified advertising schemes, and, at one point, natural sex drugs. Unfortunately for his income, the Fascist Trade Commission, not content with simply shutting down my good buddy's coral cure operation, decided that the only way society, i.e. their Big Pharma™ clients, could be protected from Kevin's allegedly predatory practices was to ban him entirely from promoting any product that was related in any way to health and medicine. For a lesser man this would seriously crimp his style, but not my Kev. He knows it's not cheap to keep a couple of spare cars around. He knows that you have to make money to take on the system that's slowly poisoning us even as our life expectancy is getting longer and longer. He knows that whenever "the Feds™" try to keep you "down," there are usually three or four loopholes one can drive a truck through, particularly with the current bunch of clowns running the circus. So good ol' Kev, in an attempt to pay his employees, feed his kids, and just plain look out for you decided to write a book. And build a website. And charge for the information on it. Wouldn't you?

Trust me I was as surprised as you are. I thought Kevin was just going to hawk his book at 30 beans a copy and be done. Instead the dude demonstrates the spherical volume of his stones by constantly referring people to his website, where the full info is, and charging $9.95 per month for the privilege of viewing it. Now over your immensely increased lifetime that can be a huge money maker for Kevin. "Man of the people" that he is though, he also offers a "True Believer" discount wherein you plump for the 499 smacker lifetime membership and, since you'll live infinitely longer than you would while under the care of Traditional Medicine™, the amortized cost is practically nothing. Compare that to how much it costs Big Pharma™ to enrich children's immunizations with highly beneficial nutritional supplements like mercury and you have to wonder how can Kev do it? How can he cure you for pennies a day? Well low overhead for one. Your highly trained cardiologist has a fortune in education debt, insurance prices up the wazoo, and very expensive golf club dues. Drug companies have all that pesky testing, lawsuit settlements when they fail to do adequate pesky testing, and, since they have to buy their advertising in 30 sec blocks rather than entire half hours like Kevin, extreme advertising costs. It's no surprise They™ don't want you to know about these natural cures, there's too much money on the line.

So I can hear you now. "So what Mercer," you're saying. "Sounds like ol' Kev is taking plenty of green out of this special op." You're right of course, Kevin Trudeau's cash flow is incredible. After skimming a bit for salaries, mansions, and yachts, our little Horatio Alger promises to use the rest of his funds for research. Right now bombed out hippies are busy dictating grant applications to their undergrads trying to get a ticket on the Kevin Trudeau Gravy Train. I was half way to pressing the "send" button myself to get Kevin my resume before I realized what I was doing. I know Kevin needs somebody to shepherd his cause through Capitol Hill, and although primary season is just around the corner, I could use some quick cash.

There was something that stayed my hand as I reached for the mouse. As I thought about it, I began to doubt whether working with Kevin truly is something I'd care to do. I mean OK, taking money for a book that doesn't have any real information in it, charging people to see the information you didn't put into the book, staying just one-step ahead of a major federal bureaucracy, all of that gives me more wood than a healthy dose of Ciallis. There is, however, a slight stink about the whole operation that I don't' think is coming from my pits. I'm sure Kevin is doing lots of good, helping the little guy, fighting the good fight, keeping disease at bay with just a strategically placed leaf of kelp. I can't shake the feeling however, that my wallet would be several dollars lighter at the end of the day, and if I want that nonsense I'll stick to Celebrity Poker. At least there you're gambling with money alone,  not your life.