In the Year of Obama, time flies like setting concrete. Warps swirl and crises linger like the sound of that lawn mower yesterday that seemed determined to cut every blade of grass in the neighborhood.

Except yours.

In the Year of Obama, the Gnattering Gnomes chatter on, intoning warnings of the dangers lurking at the edge of Blake holes born in Geneva.

Don’t you mean black holes? you say, but you are drowned out by roaming bands of communist death panels hunting for Sarah Palin’s kid. And by roaming bands of Patriots armed with semiautomatic weapons hunting communist death panels and crying out against Blake holes being born in Geneva.

I’m pretty sure you mean black holes, you say, and who besides Stephen Hawking has ever seen them? Let alone in Geneva.

Stephen Hawking, the Patriots shout, calling off their roam for a moment. The British health system killed Stephen Hawking.

But Stephen Hawking is alive, you say, he’s alive and well in Britain. The sound of yesterday’s lawn mower drowns you out.

In the Year of Obama, the administration is filled with communists. They’re everywhere, a woman in Arkansas, I can see them from my porch in Possum Grape. You can tell; Obama has appointed czars in the government.

But the communists were against the czars, you say. They overthrew one and killed him. And his family.

You are downed out by a roar of the crowd. It’s the roaming bands of Patriots urging people to keep their kids at home from school so they won’t hear Obama’s communist message that kids should stay in school, read books, and get a good education. Most of the U.S. schools are public schools, the Patriots cry, which sounds a whole lot like a “public plan” — proof that the U.S. education system is full of communist death-panelists.

Public schools? you say. But lots of things are “public.” The police department. The fire department. The Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines. The Coast Guard. Universities. And the universities’ hospitals. Not to mention Medicare.

You and your communist government keep your hands off my Medicare, shouts the woman from Possum Grape.

All those things are “public plans,” scream the Patriots, proof in the pudding that the death panels are out there, ruining the American way of life.

Pudding? you say. Who made the pudding?

The death-panelists made the pudding, the Patriots cry. Just like they made the Blake holes in Geneva. Just look what happened in Samoa.

Samoa? you say. Can you find it on a map?

It’s in the Atlantic, Mr. Smarty-Pants, the Patriots sneer. Right at the location where Atlantis disappeared.

Atlantis?

And that’s what will happen to Samoa, the Patriots yell, because on Monday, the Samoans switched from driving on the right, like Patriotic Americans, to driving on the left, like the Brits who killed Stephen Hawking.

That’s why we have to find the death panels before they kill Sarah Palin’s kid and make us all drive on the left. Because then, America will disappear into a Blake hole born in Geneva. Just like Atlantis.

In the Year of Obama, time flies like an ostrich. Crises swirl, warps linger. Bands roam the land, bands of death-panelists, bands of Patriots, and America slides toward a Blake hole born in Geneva by communist Swiss bankers.

In the Year of Obama, here comes the sound of yesterday’s lawn mower, determined to cut every blade of grass in the neighborhood. Except yours.