VY Panel Gets Shut Out and So Can You

Dear God,

You know, when I ask, "Are You There, God? It's me, Fake-Rob Williams," I'm not asking rhetorically. I actually don't know whether you're listening, Lord. Maybe you're there, maybe you're not there.

But looking at the traffic logs, the information that tells me who reads my prayers and when, I can see that my employers certainly are "there." They're all over my prayers.

To be honest, the traffic logs don't give me names, or even specific locations, of the people who read my prayers. But they do tell me the name of the visitor's internet provider and they also tell me the city of the provider hosting the connection.

For example, I get lots of visits from people using an internet connection provided by Burlington Telecom of Burlington, Vermont. That's all that I know about those particular visitors. Actually, sometimes I do know a little more about a visitor because my traffic logs also tell me what search terms a given person used on Google before ending up reading my prayers. An awful lot of the people who read my prayers use servers owned by Entergy New Orleans. The search term used—nearly obsessively—by one of those users is J. Wayne Leonard, J. Wayne Leonard, J. Wayne Leonard.

In your all-knowingness, Lord, surely you know that J. Wayne Leonard is the CEO of Entergy New Orleans, which owns Entergy Nuclear, which owns Vermont Yankee.

Is it J. Wayne Leonard himself typing his name frantically into Google search fields and regularly discovering that I've prayed about him? I don't know. If it is him, how does he feel about what I've prayed?

Thinking about that—about the fact that he may not be thrilled to find himself in my prayers – I've thought of assigning him a literary pseudonym. What if, in my prayers, I were to refer to him not as J. Wayne Leonard but as, for example, "He Who Must Not Be Named?" On the plus side, that sort of thing worked well for Lord Voldermort. On the minus side, J. K. Rowlings might sue.

So I've been thinking – and now I'm praying, Lord – to find a better pseudonym than "He Who Must Not Be Named." How about "He Who Must Not Be Flamed?" Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Nah. I haven't been saying mean things about J. Wayne Leonard at all. Mostly I've just speculated about why he makes so much money, and I've also assured you that he had nothing to do with the death of Karen Carpenter. So forget that idea.

Oooh! Here's a name that might work: Like "J. Wayne Leonard" it's a three-name name, and, like "J. Wayne Leonard" it has worked long and well for a powerful man whose tinkering with nuclear power many fear.

You guessed it, Lord! Omniscience really works for you! The name I'm thinking of is "Kim Jong-Il" -- the Dear Leader of North Korea.

The more I think about this, the more I like it. Just think about the many similarities between J. Wayne Leonard and Kim Jong-Il! For example:
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Kim Jong-Il is said to be a fan of luxury cars and to have spent $20,000,000 importing 200 Mercedes Benz S500s for his use. He has more residences than John McCain -- 17 different palaces and houses, according to some defectors.

No real information about J. Wayne Leonard's assets and houses are available, but SEC filings do show that he could probably afford a lot of them, what with the huge bonus he personally received after negotiating the $200 million Federal bailout of Entergy New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Kim Jong-Il is famous for his pithy aphorisms. J. Wayne Leonard is known for his Power Point presentations. Kind of similar, when you think about it long enough.

Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that Kim Jong-Il is "not delusional." Ditto, I'm hoping, for J. Wayne Leonard.

Kim Jong-Il is so reclusive that there are rumors that he's been dead since 2003. J. Wayne Leonard may be a man about town in New Orleans. I don't get down there much, so I don't know. But he sure is one hard guy to Google.

Both men have exotic biographies. Kim Jong-Il 's birth was foretold by a swallow and heralded by lightning, thunder, a glorious double rainbow that emerged from an iceberg, and the appearance of a new star. J. Wayne Leonard went to business school and attends fashionable charity functions.

The most significant similarity, I suppose, is that neither man wants inspectors anywhere near his power plants.

Same? Different? Maybe none of this is important. But as Jon Stewart aptly said just a few weeks ago, "Those who do not study the past get an exciting opportunity to repeat it."

Amen,

Fake-Rob