Mystery Deepens - Blat's Evil Twin??

It was a situation that the Ralph/Blat 2008 campaign staff never expected to have to address - Blat himself scrambling through the Hollywood Hills in the dead of night, replacing the renowned "HOLLYWOOD" sign with a slogan more in keeping with the themes he introduced recently in Coralville, Iowa...themes since repudiated by Ralph himself at the Knoxville Raceway, where he famously declared "I DON'T DO LOVE!" Yet, a plethora of local SoCal witnesses, apparently already bored by the summer spectacle of Paris Hilton's arrest and jail time, came forward to positively identify Blat as the mysterious individual responsible for the dramatic overnight change to the iconic marquee.

"I know Ralph is conflicted on this issue," Blat explained to an unnamed reporter from the Alhambra Daily Dime, "but this campaign really is all about the love! OBFUSCATION-LOVE, WIRETAPPING-LOVE, MILITARISM-LOVE, BYPASS-FISA-LOVE, GONZALES-LOVE, POLITICIZE-DOJ-LOVE! ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE!!! LOVE!!! LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED!!!"

But the plot thickened even further when, at the very moment Blat was giving his exclusive interview to the Daily Dime, he was also spotted in Harlan, Iowa, desperately pleading with residents who had turned out to a Tancredo campaign "town meeting" at the local Pizza Ranch to give him just a few moments to hand out religious tracts and vitamin samples while addressing important issues like flag-burning, the Rapture and Hillary Clinton's villainous cleavage and its effect on young people's morals. "Please!" urged this mirror-image of Blat. "Just a sip of Vibe and a few words of this campaign literature will make it all crystal-clear for you, what devastating plans PIAPS has in store for you unless you make the right choice in this...er...before-the-election year!"

Kate Stone of the syndicated No Stone Unturned column managed to catch up with this Iowan version of Blat to ask him how he explained the existence of this apparent doppelganger.

"Well, the last thing I remember, after boarding the Underground Bail-Road, was being at a campaign stop in Smallville, Kansas. I was speaking at this industrial facility where I understand experiments are carried out on what the locals there call 'meteor rocks' - luminescent green, really strange - and there was an explosion - and in the confusion I could for a moment have sworn that I saw a carbon copy of myself, fleeing the scene in horror and looking, if I may say so, downright liberal!"

Attempts to reach candidate Ralph were rebuffed by Ralph's new valet and floor-licker Konservo, whose statement both to Blat and to reporters investigating the apparent identity theft case consisted of: "Death to all Muslims! You should all be investigated for treason and impaled on the border as a warning! I bet you're not even 2/3 American! I bet you watch TVs that get stations outside the U.S.!! You are all merely pawns in a game of Islamic Chess, and you know that in Islamic Chess the black pieces suicide-bomb the white pieces! ROTFLMFAO! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!" Konservo then performed an abbreviated Macarena, yodeled for five minutes, and then called for a "moment of silence" into which he recited the lyrics to the opening theme of Gilligan's Island, with accompanying shadow-puppet gestures.

The assembled press figured there was no point in further questions, and made their thankful exit.

At this writing, the exact whereabouts of neither Blat is known, but many questions remain. Are these manifestations, indeed, of two separate and diametrically opposed aspects of a single personality? Has Blat been the secret object of a highly illegal cloning operation undertaken by Eniva Corporation? Is Luthorcorp complicit in either scenario? And exactly how much further is citizen journalist Kate Stone willing to probe - perhaps at great personal risk - in order to uncover the potential corruption and turmoil that clearly underscores this underdog campaign?

Answers will have to await further investigation.