Former Vice President, former Secretary of Defense, former Chief of Staff to President Murkin, former one term congressman from Denver, Colorado, lifetime Broncos fan, Charles "Chick" Raney. Irascible, joked about by comedians, a killer. Started a war to make money for the company he used to head, his stock in same company rising in share price. The company did big construction jobs. Wreck a country's infrastructure in a war based on manufactured evidence obtained partly through torture. Some years have passed since that war-booboo. Raney's popularity has "bounced back" from a low of 29 to 35, then a leap to 51 when he condemned Putout's invasion of Ukraine. Now his voice, sought out once again to offer nuggets of foreign policy wisdom from a man who knows his shit about messing with countries, thus, envies Putout--the thrill of sending in troops, tanks, airplanes! To be briefed, to be interrupted, woken up when something big happens. Still, interviewed by Chuck Booger on TYG, the former veep sitting opposite Booger in the newsroom looks like he wants to have a blanket over his lap. A nursing home, or the best home health care, profiting from years of cold-blooded murder of foreigners.
Booger likes Raney because Raney doesn't like Richman. Booger's mind is that simple.
Chuck Booger: Mr. Vice President, you and others in foreign policy circles--
Raney: Circles? Most are squares.
Booger: Touche, I guess. Um, what about Iraq. Why was it necessary to invade Iraq, and do you still believe the WMD story?
Raney: Story? I think you're smoking pot again. We told you to stop. But as to Iraq, that regime was run by an evil dictator--
Booger: Whom we supported throughout the eighties, to just get the whole story.
Raney: For eight years the U.S. tolerated Nazi Germany.
Booger: Your point being?
Raney: We've appreciated your coverage of Ukraine. You made the Nazis sound like they're not a big deal. You downplayed the role of Nazis in Ukraine, that's the way to go, keep using what we tell you (hands over a puffy envelope)--that's for next quarter. We'll continue to artificially inflate your subscription numbers, just keep making denunciatory videos of our enemies.
Booger: Mr. Vice President, this is not an appropriate subject for an interview.
Raney: This will not be seen. I must return to my jet. Lynette and I are going to have filet mignon, neither of us will eat garlic, and what that implies for later in the evening, a bucket list item, to be in the mile high club.
Booger:That's--
Raney: Are you in the club?
Booger: Well--
Raney: Not you, of course. Tiny bathrooms don't accommodate a woman, or man, if that's what you're into, in addition to a man of your girth. Your outthrust chest alone could suffocate a woman. How do you make love?
Booger: With strength and agility.
Raney: Does your belly get in the way? Jackie Gleason always had his lovers giving him a ride.
Booger: Cowgirl, yes.
Raney: You're familiar with the position, from personal experience, or from watching pornography?
Booger: A long time ago, from watching and looking at pornography, or, porn as it's called.
Raney: Mrs. Raney and I watch war movies and then we have sex. I don't use Viagra, or Niagara, or whatever it's called. I'm eighty-one years old. When I get it up, it must be dealt with because I don't know if it's coming back. Will the rocket ship launch? Mrs. Raney and I mostly just leave each other alone. She can't tolerate being around me when I'm full of myself because I'm popular again. 51. That's the majority of the country.
Booger: It's a majority in the sampling of the probably three or four hundred people they polled. People who have nothing better to do than answer a poll aren't movers and shakers in our democracy.
Raney: What are you going to do with that money?
Booger: Donate it to the people of Ukraine.
(They laugh).
On board the Hard Truths, Gil Bates's 500,000,000 dollar yacht. He wears a skipper's hat even though he wouldn't know what to do if he had to captain the vessel. His guests are former President Amare Bongo and Former First Lady and bestselling author--millionaire--Gabrielle Bongo. They retire after a lobster lunch on deck to Bates's study, a unique room paneled on the four walls with the last remaining examples of extinct Indonesian trees.
A stuffed heron stands by his desk. The Bongos politely decline to ask about the bird.
Bates: I've summoned the two of you here to discuss Gabrielle's political future. My forecasters at the Institute of Psychic Research in Allentown, Pennsylvania, have determined you have a sixty percent chance of gaining the nomination in twenty-four.
Gabrielle Bongo: That moves me to my core.
Amare Bongo: Are you saying I might have to live in the White House again?
Gabrielle: On day one, I'll wear a spectacular ball gown. They'll nickname me Cinderella.
Amare Bongo: Except that no one ever told you to clean out a fireplace and wash clothes by hand.
Gabrielle: Madame President Bongo. It sounds good to these sharp ears.
Bates: The forty percent is what I'm concerned about. One of my subsidiaries is working on voter mind control, but may not have the right formula until the 2026 midterms. By then, of course, there may be no life on Earth.
Amare Bongo: We've got our tickets. Mars will hear half a million dollar lectures from Mr. President Bongo.
Bates: Everyone in the circles you will associate with on Mars have already heard your lectures. We know you're Wall Street's bitch. And mine.
Amare Bongo: Your boat, your rules.
Gabrielle: Is there life on other planets, Gil? I mean, alien life? Have we been misinformed about UFOs? When I'm president will I get the Area 51 tour? Will I see alien spacecraft? Will I get to talk with an alien? What are they like?"
Amare: Gabrielle likes to ask questions, Gil.
Gil: Nothing wrong with that. Life on other planets? Definitely, heard of Mars's growing human population?
Amare: Sarcasm isn't necessary, Gil. She meant alien life.
Gil: I don't know of any. When the Defense Department released video footage of alleged UFOs it was for the purposes of distraction and gaining public support for Space Force.
Amare: Space Force!
Gil: I'll join in on the fist pumps. Space Force!
Gabrielle: Space Force! I want to give commands to Space Force! I want to take over China Far Side! Battle For the Moon! My legacy, my military footprint on another world, a great advancement for we women!
Gil: I'm told you're not to get a tour of Area 51. Not even the president is able to see Area 51's labs and craft. You have to have top clearance to even eat in the cafeteria, and for everyone below Level 10, it's forbidden to talk about Room 269.
Amare: What's in Room 269?
Gil: I'm a Level 3, I barely have any pull in Area 51. I'll change that. Give me two years and ten billion dollars distributed to the right people and I'll have full access. I'll get us into Room 269, Gabrielle.
Gabrielle: Now I'm not going to be able to stop thinking about Room 269. Is there an alien in there?
Gil: I won't speculate.
Amare: Let it go, Pandora.
Two generals, Chief of Staff Hard (Marines) and Bomb (Air Force, Chairman of Joint Chiefs), walk down the Pentagon's pentagonal circumnavigating A corridor, a conversation they know won't be recorded. Had they spoken in one of their offices the chances of being overheard by any of twenty-nine intelligence agencies or combinations of them were high enough to make each general tell his secretary, "(Margaret) (Jill), I'm going to (stretch my legs) (get some blood into these shanks!)"
General Hard: The plan goes well.
General Bomb: Maximum commitment to pulling the Russians into Ukraine, Afghanistan Part Two.
General Hard: Their Afghanistan, not ours.
General Bomb: Weapons!
General Hard: Training!
General Bomb: Of Ukrainians, using them cynically to wear down Russia by shedding their blood, no American boots on that ground.
General Hard: News media on board.
General Bomb: Always such pussies for power.
General Hard: Impressed by missile launches, by their maps of Ukraine.
General Bomb: Instructing geography-ignorant Americans about Donetsk and Luhansk.
General Hard: Would you accept an appointment as military governor of Ukraine?
General Bomb: No. I want to run Russia. Once we overthrow Putout, I'll step in and drive that country behind the scenes, install a Neo-liberal neanderthal Russian minor politician with no record of saying or doing anything distinguished.
General Hard: A non-entity.
General Bomb: My arm will be up his ass to the shoulder. I'll impale that fucker.
General Hard: Anyone in mind?
General Bomb: Code Name Greasy Spoon, that's all I can tell you.
General Hard: He knows of his grooming for high office in a fixed election after Putout retires?
General Bomb: He's heard a little bit. We flatter him, give him booze, women, CDs--he's mad for American music of the 1980s.
General Hard: A Devo man?
General Bomb: REO Speedwagon, Styx, but also Van Halen.
General Hard: I've not heard of those groups.
General Bomb: You don't want to. Unlistenable.
General Hard: Here comes General Beak.
Leader of Space Force strides, leaning forward, nose an inverted bow on a sleek ship. Of all the Joint Chiefs, he most resembles Charlton Heston. He stops to confer with his colleagues, then the three walk abreast down the hall, causing foot traffic coming in the opposite direction to part around them.
General Beak: I just got out of a Zoom meeting with President Lieden. His wife was there interpreting his sometimes bewildering statements.
General Hard: What did he say that was bewildering?
General Beak: He said the ghost of Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, yes, dead since 1945, had visited him in the Oval Office last night and given him a fireside chat.
General Bomb: What did the president say?
General Beak: Lieden or Roosevelt?
General Bomb: Obviously, Roosevelt wasn't there, but President Lieden believes he met the ghost of Roosevelt. What did Roosevelt say?
General Beak: He said to put together an infrastructure package, thirty trillion at least, better yet, fifty trillion.
General Bomb: That would cut into our defense budget.
General Hard: How can we stop Roosevelt from passing on such hideous advice?
General Bomb: Roosevelt isn't alive, Lieden's imagining him.
General Hard: That portrait of Roosevelt in the Oval Office has a strong presence. It speaks of past victory, of achieving unipolar domination of Planet Earth, command of the seas, occupation of Germany and Japan, we were big shit in 1946!
General Bomb: We're big shit today! This is our time. Let our fathers and grandfathers enjoy their memories of Tarawa, Pearl Harbor, Saipan, Normandy's red beaches. We are the generation of Iraq, of Afghanistan, we rearranged Yugoslavia, we fucked Yemen, we scrape Somalia, we bomb Pakistan and they're our ally! We are not bound by ordinary rules!
General Beak: Big shits expanding into space!
General Hard: Dominating this corridor! Stand aside Pentagon workers! Three members of the Joint Chiefs pushing through, make way! We're having a meeting here!
General Beak: Dr. Lieden said the president has been talking in his sleep about Richman, how he wants to tell him to get off the diving board.
General Bomb: What's that?
General Beak: He seems to have confused Don Richman with Cornpop.
General Hard: Cornpop was Moe Lieden's first antagonist.
General Bomb: One never forgets one's first antagonist.
General Hard: A psychoanalytical article produced by the RAND Corporation in 2021 revealed that President Lieden's passive-aggressive resentment of Black people came from his interactions with Cornpop. His Crime Bill of 1994, so punitive against small time druggies, represents, according to this RAND article, a revenge against Cornpop's challenge of his authority at that public swimming pool in the 1950s. Notice the maintenance man in the story cuts for Lieden a length of chain to use against Cornpop and his gang. Chains were used in lynchings.
General Beak: Are you suggesting President Lieden is a racist with murder on his mind?
General Hard: If he is, it's no concern of mine.
General Bomb: My hatred of Black people, I'm pleased to say, is not passive-aggressive.
General Beak: President Lieden, I'm pleased to say, has granted permission to use our new death ray in Ukraine. I have a satellite ready to blast several hundred Russian troops at a time. Zelensky isn't winning this in spite of what news media say.
General Bomb: He pretended he was outside in Kyiv while standing in front of a green screen.
General Hard: Right, he's as phony as I am when I testify before the Armed Services Committee.
General Bomb: You go with the incompetent puppet you have.
General Beak: I'm eager to see the results of the death ray's performance. I predict maximum casualties among Russian troops, with a thirty to fifty percent casualty rate among civilians.
General Hard: Not bad, hard to complain about that.
General Bomb: Did the president seem like he was in trance at times?
General Beak: He may have shit his pants. He looked uncomfortable. Dr. Lieden smiled a lot.
General Bomb: A brave woman.
General Hard: Heroic work from her holding her husband together for us.
General Bomb: A handsome woman.
General Beak: She said she's excited to see what the death ray can do.
The Presidential bedroom, deep-cleansed after its use by Don Richman, who slept there alone while his wife slept in a separate bedroom down the hall, originally Louisa Adams' sewing room where she'd get away from her husband John Quincy Adams, sew, hum, look at the grounds outside, 1826 Washington.
Dr. Lieden sleeps with her Moe. They cuddle, make silly sounds, laugh at his farts, she puts up with his nuzzling her hair and moaning while jacking off, sometimes ten minutes at a time, it really is a bore for her. She wants to sleep, she's had a hard day: two interviews, one on The View, the other on CNN, promoting her new children's book she wrote and ghost-illustrated. The real illustrator will become a radical after being ripped off by American royalty, Dr. Lieden, the 5 foot three fifty-nine year old smiling manipulator who steers her husband through the news media landscape with such skill they don't even know he's being held together by sorcery, or some hyper-advanced technology. Did someone bring up aliens?
Lieden: I snuggle in your hair. Is this hair my Shangri-La? Will I find a pleasure palace decreed to be built by Kubla Khan? Coleridge? De Quincey? Peart?
Dr. Lieden: Darling, let's get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.
Lieden: What happens tomorrow?
Dr. Lieden: Take your face out of my hair and look at me.
Lieden: Oh, that's asking a lot.
Dr. Lieden: Okay then. NO VAGINA TONIGHT1
Lieden: I'm here! Eyes to eyes! Tell me what you want to say, my dumpling.
Dr. Lieden: Don't call me that. What happens tomorrow is the death ray gets tried out on Ukraine! You get to make a statement on our YouTube channel. C-Span will open up its five other channels to cover the spectacular use of this most Star Wars of weapons.
Lieden: How much do they cost?
Dr. Lieden. We just have the one, which cost five billion. We can crank them out at two and a half billion, sell them for seven or eight billion per unit. Space weapons, honey, that's the lobby you're joining after you're defeated in twenty-four.
Lieden: Defeated? What do you mean?
Dr. Lieden: You're a necessary part of a plan set in motion by those you work for. Some of these you've met, others not.
Lieden: I'm going to ignore everything you're shoving into my head when I'm not ready for it.
Dr. Lieden: You're the president. You have power. If you were to go onto the YouTube broadcast tomorrow at five, Moe's Perspective, Episode 296, and say, "Intelligence agencies have too much power in this country. I'm ordering a reduction in their numbers by fifty percent. Those fired will be given honest jobs with insurance, even dental. Your days of being taxpayer-paid control freaks are over."
Lieden: Hey, I like how you acted that out!
Dr. Lieden: I spend most of my time thinking.
Lieden: I spend most of my time wondering if my meal will travel through my body without car trouble.
Dr. Lieden: Do you like the Hot Wheel I gave you?
Lieden: Yeah! A shiny red Hot Heap! Imagine driving around in Wilmington in 1958 in this Hot Heap convertible, a revved up twenties automobile customized with plush cream seating, a shifter of ivory. Ivory, man! Steering wheel made of ivory and the rarest wood from an extinct tree in Sumatra. What a great car to fuck in! Vroom vroom!
Dr. Leiden puts her bare legs under the covers, watching her husband jog around the room, past portraits of more sober men (No Nixon portrait hung in that bedroom), holding out the little car, flying in his liver-spotted hand. Hot Heap. By the time he parks the car on the bed, Dr. Lieden is asleep, leaving sad Moe Lieden feeling frustrated. Three hours of masturbation without ejaculatory result cause Lieden to want to approve an arms sale.
Somebody must be punished for my inability to shoot semen like a man!
Ah, yes, he goes through In Box papers. This one. Albania wants ten B-2 bombers, 6 Apache helicopters, 10 F-16s. Sold! I don't care how you use these weapons platforms! We gotta move the merchandise.
Another sheet in his In Box was a Letter marked From 1129-A, Top Secret, President's Eyes Only, Use Your Own Discretion Regarding Enclosed Information.
1129-A: Killings of journalists increase in frequency. The government made clear its opinion of journalists when ISIS and al-Qaeda-affiliated groups funded by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and the United States, set about making snuff videos showing masked executioners slicing off captured western journalists' heads. President Bongo critiqued these videos, offered suggestions to the director, Sammy Skeledon, generator of a great amount of official propaganda.
President Lieden reads, rereads, goes back to reading it again, reads it during lunch, drops a baloney circle on it, wipes it off, reads it and reads it again.
1129-A: The Bleeding Land, a documentary and book about Belarus and Ukraine in World War Two will be adapted into a film, available to stream September 2023. Actual Nazis will be used to play World War Two Nazis. The Russians and Nazis can take a break from the war, make a film, become stars, go back to killing each other.
Note, these are opinions of 1129-A, a representative of a government agency, most likely.
Lieden (Soliloquy): I can never find a napkin when I need one. This thing from 1129-A is already soiled. There. Clean as a whistle. I never got to be a train engineer. Or a gay porn fluffer. I never got to smell Princess Diana's hair. I've smelled Queen Elizabeth's. Too powdery-smelling. Like smelling your grandma and expecting a thrill in the pants from it! No sir! Not this weirdo! Telephone!
Oh hi, Arthur! How's tricks? You're having second thoughts about the death ray demonstration? General Beak assured me just this morning, I remember this, he said the death ray is safe to use. No joke. I'm sorry you feel that way but this country needs some excitement. Give the world a death ray demonstration and see if any nation wants to mess with Delaware.
Yes, I mean Delaware, I mean the United States. Delaware is in the United States. Arthur, General Beak is going to be disappointed. You're going to be the one who tells him the demonstration is what? Postponed? Okay, we agree on postponed, then? Good. You know, I think the Strawberry Quik is working. I remember I had Hardee's food for dinner. I'm still burping it up. Okay Arthur, I understand. Go relax. The death ray is good. We won't be disappointed.
Hangs up, thinks, Taking on the intelligence community, huh! Richman did that, they messed with him for four years. I'm pliable to them. Yes sir, Mr. CIA Director, I'll authorize the overthrow of the government of Portugal, I'll infiltrate spies into Switzerland, don't mess with Delaware. Am I losing my marbles? Is the laundry bag just half full? Is the cliff eroding? I can't ejaculate, a sign of a pleasurable activity dropping away as if the body says I don't need this anymore, focusing remaining energy on thought, ability to move, and coordination. Say, I'm feeling smart! Have I taken a spelled brew in Wonderland? Is the big rabbit nearby? Cock of iron, that's what I want. The hardest iron cock in Western Civilization. Morris Ironcock, King of Earth, and Queen Doctor Lieden. After we take away all the guns we'll let citizens hunt with spears, but only spears. We'll hunt them, "Most Dangerous Game" style. Package deal, five thousand dollars gets you a twenty-four-seven hunting experience with the prey an ordinary American armed with a spear, given a day to survive, made into an actor or actress if they succeed, which rarely happens.
Lieden: I so want to climb into my Hot Heap, I'll be cool and not use the door, but I'll propel myself into it with the abandon of eighteen. Cornpop's crappy De Soto was no match for my Hot Heap. Half of Cornpop's dudes were ready to join my team, not that I had one. Cornpop ordered them back to his side.
Then Cornpop did something I'd almost call gracious. He gave a casual salute and drove on into the mist of a March 1958 early spring, when shame still existed.
To Be Continued...
Vic Neptune
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