The Ratfuck Bastard Conspiracy Part Eight

      Chuck Booger, TYG, interviews former First Lady Gabrielle Bongo.  TYG's most popular video ever.

     Booger: Your new book, Swell, documents the last two years of life in the Bongo household.  Your husband's temper tantrums, his pushover personality, his giving in repeatedly to House and Senate Republicans when he should've been telling them what to do, for he could've destroyed them, Chuck.  I mean, Gabrielle.  I was talking to myself earlier.  Do you mind if I call you Gabrielle?

     Bongo: Gaby's fine.

     Booger: Bam!  Gaby Bongo, I like that!  Gaby hanging out on the TYG set with Chuck Booger!  The Young Genocides, (low-voiced) God will sort out his own!  

     Bongo: Amen, brother.  I wrote the book to counter the rising hysteria in this country of 330 million jolly little precious dreams and hopes, insignificant by comparison of the hopes and dreams of those with all the money to accomplish their Big Think goals.

     Booger: You have a mesmerizing way of talking.

     Bongo: Glad you met me when you did?  Otherwise, that wife of yours, Lara Armenian, never would've hitched her star to you?

     Booger: She's not my wife.  Colleague.

     Bongo: She serves the functions of a wife, the business function, as I serve as Amare's business function, also his penetration into enemies' minds function.  

     Booger: Your frankness--

     Bongo: Operation Frank, that's it, you're part of it now.  Seeding the truth into news media.  Picture it!  All of a sudden Jake Tape tells the truth about the war in Ukraine.  Words emit from his mouth, he delivers them eloquently, people notice, someone talks to him.  If he does that again, goes off script from the premise that war is a good idea, Jake Tape will find a job at Fox, willing to restrict his speech.

     Booger: Let's look at this exchange between you and Fuck Todd on Press the Meat, last Sunday on NBC.

     

     Fuck Todd: Your husband speaks regularly with President Lieden.  Have they discussed the President's red line on Ukraine?

     Mrs. Bongo: Well, sugar, if that Putout were to use chemical weapons on the valiant Ukrainian people,

well, shucks, we'd go in guns blazin.  

     Fuck Todd: We'd invade Ukraine?

     Mrs. Bongo: Fattening profits thereby.

     Fuck Todd: Keep Zelensky?

     Mrs. Bongo: Good question, Fuck.  Moving on.

     Fuck Todd: Your husband flat out said we're going to war with Syria if they use chemical weapons.  Did he pace when he was trying to decide the fate of nations?

     Mrs. Bongo: Talks to himself.  Talks in his sleep, watches CSI shows.  The only fun he had was playing basketball with Secret Service.  They have uniforms.  They play the Department of Defense team, the Striker Brigade.  Rumors of a homoerotic nature regarding these clusters of government men enjoying basketball play to boost their day are probably true, but not to the extent published in the grocery aisle literature section.

     Fuck Todd: Your new book, My Uncle Thomas, documents your struggle to reach inside the mind of your deaf Uncle Thomas, as a boy had his ears boxed by a cruel white man, a banker who became impatient with how long the boy was taking to shine his shoes, boxed the boy's ears, he never heard again, didn't get a tip, either.  From the dust jacket.  Mrs. Bongo, your writing style erupts charms all over the page.  Please read the highlighted passage.

     Mrs. Bongo: In twilight ambient heat, red and cooler purples come to mind, day's efflorescence in stalks of trembling golden grass, shoeless dark feet met thirsty earth, no rain spring of 1928, boom town from water accumulation after storm drenches the land.  Wanderers under dripping leaves, a murder of an important man by a roadside, some desperation led to it, here begins the tale... 

     Fuck Todd: Chills, Mrs. Bongo, my hairs in the back of the neck area stand as if static were present.  

     Mrs. Bongo: That purple prose will harden many a nipple, eh, Mr. Todd?  Are you reminded of Faulkner?

     Fuck Todd: I don't know who that is.  Back to the interview.  Your anti-fat speech the day after your husband was inaugurated rubbed some the wrong way.  The press called you Fat Camp Gab!  Tee shirts were sold on President Richman's website.

     Mrs. Bongo: He was just a game show host then.

     Fuck Todd: I'm contractually obligated to call him President Richman.  

     Mrs. Bongo: By all means, follow the rules!  Don't get in trouble on my part, you pussy.  You work for a network that took it upon itself to hack and slash at Don Richman for over four years, you failed, he's still around, he might be President again, you're licking your lips because that means profits, more indignation about how terrible he is!  It works, I know!  I insult that motherfucker every chance I get!  Hey, Don Richman!  I know you'll see this!  When I run for president in twenty-three and twenty-four you better have more than one nickname ready for me because I got a mess of em for you, Mushroom Dick!  Hobbit Hands!

     Fuck Todd: Coming up, Is Putout insane?  Our Press the Meat expert panel will weigh in.

     Mrs. Bongo: Go to commercial.  I've always wanted to say that.  Is Putout insane?

     Fuck Todd: That's what I'll find out on Press the Meat.  If you'll excuse me, Mrs. Bongo, I have to walk over there, sit down, and review my lines.  Thank you for the book.

     Mrs. Bongo: Read what I wrote for you.

     Fuck Todd: Fuck: Keep Stoking the Furnace.  A Job in My Administration Is Not Impossible!

     Mrs. Bongo: Push the name Bongo, Gaby Bongo, whenever you can.  I'll be grateful, Fuck.

     Fuck Todd: In me you have a loyal servant.  Good day, First Lady Bongo.

     Mrs. Bongo: Good day, gracious Fuck!

     Oval Office.  President Lieden drinks his second glass of Strawberry Quik, brought to him by Dr. Grauchi.  Gil Bates also present, wearing a sweater, looking harmless in his black framed nerd glasses and Kermit the Frog voice.

     Lieden: So I tells him, Vlad, I call him Vlad because that's his name, Vlad, you and me go back a long way.  We started raping your country right after the fall of the Soviet Union, guided your election of Yeltsin, we created the oligarchs.

     Bates (laughing): We really fucked them, Mr. President!

     Grauchi: Fucked em good, we'll fuck em again, they are going to dread the Night Sickness, every day, dreading it.

     Lieden: I sometimes think I hang out with extremists in the cruelty department.

     Grauchi: Healthy hatred, Mr. President.  You hate the Russians, do you not?

     Lieden: I don't hate anybody anymore, not since hating Dinah for calling me a racist on national television.  I publicly forgave her and made her my Vice President, the first Black woman Vice President.  

     Bates: Your worst mistake.  

     Lieden: Giving her the Veep job is how I got back at her.  

     Bates: Her growing popularity, though, it's real, just slow, is in direct proportion to your deteriorating popularity.  Forty, Moe.  That's terrible.  I'm ashamed for you.  Don Richman summoned a 55 at one point!  (his phone dings, he takes it out, looks at a text, texts back.  Into the room comes Dracula Deadface and Biff Jeezus.  There's more net worth in this room now than there is in the education departments of all U.S. states.  

     Biff Jeezus: Can someone use a hand in figuring out what's real and what's not?

     Dracula: Let's share a few thoughts, record them, learn from them, release this as a public service announcement, a five minute documentary, YouTube will show it millions of times a day.  President Lieden, are you on for this?

     Lieden: On for what?

     Grauchi: Don't take his absent-mindedness for dementia.  He's sharp as a tack.

     Lieden: Who's attacking who?

     Bates: Russians attacking Ukrainians, innocent Ukrainians, people who found themselves on the crossroads of geography and history.  

     Lieden: The Saudis attack Yememis.

     Dracula: Doesn't matter.

     Biff Jeezus: There are good war crimes and bad war crimes.

     Gil Bates: Good Nazis and Bad Nazis.

     Biff: Good al-Qaeda and Bad al-Qaeda.

     Lieden: Good dog, bad God.  Woof!

     Dracula: We beg your pardon, Mr. President?

     Lieden: Sound a dog makes, maybe you should get a dog Drac, mind if I call you Drac, sounds like Dreck.  Hey Dreck, how's it hangin?  You look like you need to sit under a sunlamp a few hours every day, or do you like to be a flashlight when it's dark inside your house?

     Dracula: Mr. President, we've accelerated the timeline, skipping out of parts two and three.  We're in part four.  When we get to part eleven, your key part, we want you to be prepared, so practice your lines.

     Gil Bates: (hypnotically) three two one...Hello Mr. President.

     Lieden: Moe, call me Moe.

     Bates: Moe.  I'm Gil.  This is Dracula, this is Biff, we are looking after you for a little while.  We have an important question, we need your answer.  Will you come to Triton with us or will you live on Mars?

     Lieden: Triton, see that beautiful blue world of Neptune, oh, the Dark Spot.

     Bates: It's decided then.

     Dracula: The three of us agree, then, that the president comes to Triton with us?

     Biff: Agreed.

     Bates: Agreed.

     Bates: Then take pity on his mind.  He may be resurrected as a whip smart man.

     Biff: Look, he's lost in a fantasy created by his mind.

     Bates: No doubt a primitive fantasy.  This man operates on the level of Homo sapiens 30,000 B.C.

     Dracula: Like Don Richman.

     Bates: Richman is more a Renaissance man.  He has an IMDB page, he hosted a successful game show for a decade, he keeps himself in the limelight, he's a one word name, Richman, which is what he is, even if he exaggerates his net worth, I heard it's just fifteen thousand dollars.  

     Biff: The president smiles, he drools like he's living in a nursing home.  He's becoming disgusting.

     Bates: Think of what Dr. Lieden, the divinely formed Amanda, has to put up with, living with this man. Yes, you, Mr. President.

     Lieden: What are you talking about?  I got the feeling I was being talked about.

     Biff: We were talking about you, Mr. President.

     Bates: Talking much about you.

     Lieden: How talking?

     Dracula: About your potential as an actor.

     Lieden: Really?

     Dracula: You're interested?

     Lieden: You bet I am!

     Dracula: Gentlemen, we have found the star of our first film project for Triton Film Studios, the first movie ever shot in the Outer Solar System!

     Biff: With eight dollars a month you can see at home on your widescreens this movie and a host of other entertainment on Mississippi Tertiary.  Mississippi, we deliver quickly.

     Bates: We're not going through with Lieden becoming a movie star.  

     Dracula: We're not?

     Bates: We use him for the time being then we make him irrelevant.  Putting this carcass to bed is the best idea for now.  Secret Service bedroom attendants, take away the snoozing president.

     Dracula: I sometimes think he's pretending.

     Bates: No way of knowing.  He's very good in side moments, like stopping to tie his shoes while filing past the Holocaust memorial.  

     Biff: The man who accidentally walked into history.  Unlike us.  Did we not consciously choose our means of ascendance, our forms?  Now, to be immortal.  As for Lieden, give the man hair to smell, he'll be harmless.

     Bates: On Triton I'll build, with donated funds, a dome lined with hair.  One can walk through hair.

     Dracula: I know someone who would like to spend time in that dome!

     Bates: The President.

     Biff: That's who I had in mind.  Lost in Hair on Triton, President Moe Lieden finds nirvana in hair sensations all over his old man's body, he loses weight, he de-ages by ten years, then is put into the stasis pattern rotating his physis to maximum 8 potential on the Yorico Immortality Scale.

      

     If it seems like I'm suggesting rich people are strange, I am.  The details are the ingredients in the general soup.

     Bates: Best to see how Lieden gets through the next day.

     Dracula: And night.

     Biff: I've increased his nightly hypnotic suggestions.  Dr. Lieden has been kind and gracious in helping me manipulate her husband's mind.

     Bates: Amanda is the worst of us.

     Dracula: I call her Mother.

     Biff: She's just another character, like Angie Crook.  I'm going to offer Angie Crook a ride in my cock rocket.

     Dracula: That thing is ridiculous.

     Bates: It looks like a cock.

     Biff: Purely coincidental.  I need to teleport to Tallahassee in one minute.  Figure Lieden is the first of our enticements to his class in joining our journey to the Outer Solar System, a cold journey for brave men and women.  Awaken to the new normal: Jeezus Universe, spread out before us!  Package delivery to the stars!

     

     He vanishes, transported to Tallahassee, a conference on pigs' pituitary glands, how their mashed essence mixed with garlic and olive oil creates a delicious broth, when drunk instantly acts on a man's member.  Biff marks it as a business trip, gets his bald nuts off for seven days while the Ukraine War burns and weightlifters continue work on their bodies as ends in themselves, these beautiful bodies blown up as readily as scrawny starved-from-war bodies. 

     Bates: Would you ride in Biff's cock ship?

     Dracula: I wouldn't be afraid.  In virtual reality I've toured Afghanistan.  I've been shot at in Iraq.  

     Bates: You've experienced the technology your company has developed with government assistance.

     

     Billy Boy Blade in his Harlem office on the phone with Mathilde de Sade, about to go on trial for enticement of a minor.

     Billy Boy: You're going to be fine, Matty.

     Mathilde de Sade: I want my guarantee.

     Billy Boy: You know we all want that.  Have you met any big women there, like someone who's spending a lot of time near you?

     Mathilde de Sade: Several.  I know I could be dead any day, but you know what will happen.  The whole world will see.

     Billy Boy: You used to be fun.  I guess endless days and nights in jail demoralize one.

     Mathilde: Help me, Mr. President.  I'll make it worth your while.

     Billy Boy: You have challenged me in the way I prefer to be challenged, attractive English lady.

     Mathilde: Well, good to know.  

     Billy Boy: Prone bone.

     Mathilde: I beg your pardon?

     Billy Boy Blade: It's where you lie on your front on your elbows, legs together, while I pump you from behind.  Prone bone.  That's what I want the night you get out.

     Mathilde: Sounds easy to achieve.

     Billy Boy Blade: We're going to try for a way to sacrifice the Republicans on the list of those who did the naughty stuff with the underage ones.  

     Mathilde: How about Maf Krabstone, Head of Israeli Counter-Intelligence?

     Billy Boy: Your spy craft boss, don't worry, he's on board with throwing it down on the Republicans.

     A yacht in the Atlantic 150 miles south of Bermuda.  Maf Krabstone, Head of Israeli Counter-Intelligence, sits in the deluxe living room on the upper deck, beautiful late afternoon.  A French-Swiss-English-Dutch actress, Uschi Aspen, is a guest, along with two American Republican politicians and a Czech arms dealer, Mr. Slozschuij Kernovchsi.

     Maf Krabstone: Crap!  Lieden is a non-entity!  He serves at the pleasure of the Knesset!  He serves at the pleasure of the Israel Lobby!  I got off the phone just now with Mathilde de Sade.  She's convinced she'll get off, live a normal life, she's suffering from the delusion engendered by the refusal of the conscious mind to bow to the inevitability of an unsought-for doom.

     Mr. Neek (Senator, ID, Democrat): The gal's an optimist, seeking hope inside of a grim situation.  My Aunt Clara--

     Mr. Unx (Senator, FL, Democrat): Hard to see how Ms. de Sade can be anything but feeling up.  Someone giving the impression of enjoying jail.  She could stay in jail, be a propaganda tool for how jail can be enjoyed.  Remember the movie with Cybill Shepherd as Martha Stewart in prison?  Women in prison movies are a particular favorite genre of mine.

     Maf Krabstone: I didn't ask you two Americans on board to speculate about one of my past agents.

     Mr. Kernovchsi: You asked us here to discuss ammo.

     Maf Krabstone: And rifles.  And grenade launchers.  Assault vehicles.

     Mr. Kernovchsi: The War needs ammo.  Ammo is blood.

     Maf Krabstone: Ammo makes blood flow.  Ike!

     

     A man in a tailored suit appears from around the corner, hands folded before him, bulge in his jacket. 

     

     Krabstone: Bring the condemned.

     Mr. Neek: I don't like that word, condemned.

     Mr. Unx: I own twelve auto dealerships, all of them profitable.  I met Bono in Davos.  

     The man in the suit leads out a scrawny naked man, blinking in sunlight he hasn't seen in three weeks.  Guided to stand on the boat's rim above moving blue waters by the well-dressed gunsel, the man stands on trembling legs, looking back at Krabstone.

     Krabstone: Here we see a man willing to betray my beloved secret service.  Give him the ultimate consequence!

     

     The well-dressed man, Ike, unbuttons his jacket, reaches in and sweeps out a small machine gun, puts five slugs into the weakened man, splash, at least one politician witness wonders if it really happened and decides he'll plead ignorance if ever questioned about it. 

     What to do after that?  

     The steward appears as the killer puts away his gun. 

     

     Steward: Dinner is served, sirs.

     

     Maf Krabstone sits at table's head, red phone by his side connected to the radio room.  At his right sits the Czech arms dealer. Unx sits at Maf's left, Neek sits to Unx's left.  Asleep earlier, rat-tat-tat of an execution become dropped chestnuts on a kitchen floor in her dream, Uschi Aspen, jet setter, actress, winner of a snobby film award, sleeps mostly in the day.  Now, she drinks a screwdriver, cuts her steak vigorously like a man, watched by another guest who was awake when the killing occurred but chose to ignore it, Squeege Richman, Don's bastard son and fix-it man.  Maf Krabstone is a Richman family friend going back to the 1980s. 

     Squeege Richman: What was all the noise up here?

     Maf Krabstone: Jeremy saw a shark, got excited.

     Kernovchsi: A man got murdered on this boat.  

     Maf Krabstone: Drank a lot, did he?

     Kernovchsi: Some brine, I guess, when he went over.  He is food now for shark.  

     Uschi Aspen: You speak as if someone really was killed.

     Kernovchsi: Slozschuij do not lie to pretty lady.

     Uschi: I feel I'm in the middle of a jest!

     Maf Krabstone: Of course you are, Ms. Aspen!  A merry boat of jokes and laughing at things!  To the state of Israel!

     (They drink) Uschi: You gentlemen of America.  Do you see any chance that Reese Witherspoon will win a Golden Globe for her performance in Orange County Hate Crime?

     Unx: You pique my interest.  That film was shot partially in Orlando, near my congressional district.  I'm sympathetic to the film, and Florida, receiving more exposure.  More tourism is good for Florida.  More revenue.  We welcome tourists.

     Neek: The film ignores the equal hatred of the dark-skinned races for cops.

     Maf Krabstone: Who cares about this shit?  Squeege.  You'll let your father know about Billy Boy Blade's plan with Mathilde to go scorched earth on Republicans on the list?  You're on the list, Squeege, you got motivation.

     Squeege: I have plausible deniability.  I was just married at the time I allegedly flew to Terry Stein's island.  I had every reason to stay faithful to my first wife.

     Maf Krabstone: You're on the list, you're on a DVD, I've watched it, your schmeckle isn't as big as you make it out to be in your tweets.

     Squeege: It is so.  Take that back!

     Maf Krabstone: I have a copy in my bag.  I'll go get it, we'll all see your schmeckle.

     Squeege: Wait!  Yes, I'll talk with the Don about Blade's going apeshit on Republicans.  

     Maf Krabstone: I'll call my good friend Hank Hugginger, tell him he needs to get his protege, Mrs. Blade, in line.  Some Democrats will be sacrificed as child rapists, some Republicans will be sacrificed as child rapists.  That's what my boss wants.

     Uschi: Who is your boss, Maf?

     Maf Krabstone (smiles) Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos.

     Oval Office.  Sneffen, seated on one of the couches.  President paces.

     Lieden: Why Artie?  Why?

     Sneffen: It's a question of competence, Mr. President.  Dinah has the edge on you in that department.

     Lieden: You don't believe that!

     Sneffen: She's learning.  She'll be up to passing herself off as president in two years.

     Lieden: An election year!  How will I proceed without a vice presidential candidate?  I assume she's not going to run for President and Vice President?  

     Sneffen: She intends to smear you against the wall like a mosquito.

     Lieden: Ow!

     Sneffen: You're giving Ukraine another shipment?

     Lieden: A freedom shipment!

     Sneffen: Good, sign it into action, go to bed, Dr. Grauchi will visit you, give you Strawberry Quik, you'll sleep without dreams in a room hooked up to hypnotize you with subliminal messages.  You don't know what I'm saying now, a remnant of a post-hypnotic suggestion.  You have become mighty in reason and thought, you will apply it tomorrow in the meeting with the Joint Chiefs, you will declare the Lieden Doctrine.

     Cabinet meeting room, the James K. Polk Room, a painting of the man himself above the president's head.  Lieden and the six Chiefs, Holroyd from Defense, Holroyd's aide de camp Space Force Captain Lodger, a thirty-nine year old strawberry blonde woman in the handsome dark blue uniform of the Defense Department's sixth, and newest, branch.

     Angie Crook sits at the end of the table, resembling a trembling chicken eyeing cleavers on a table.  The blades are these men, these lovers of war. 

     Lieden: Fifty-thousand mega-ton ordinance, piffled all over the landscape.  Carpet bomb Ukraine, no, Russia, take the thing out, beat the carpet, flood the basement, wreck the infrastructure, I owe Chick Raney a good war contract.  Death from above.  No more love pats from America.  Time to face punishment, like my good old dad did me.  Naked butt in the air in front of the neighborhood, Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1949, no joke.  Snap!  Little Morris's buttocks reddened by dad's leather.  I liked the smell of that belt.

     Angie Crook: I think what the president is saying is we need to give more military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

     Lieden: Give them bullets!  Give them guns!  Let the war continue forever!  I hate cynicism.  I'm no cynic.  I don't feel cynicism when I say it's imperative we make the people of Ukraine suffer so that we may force Russia to heel before its master.  Maybe I feel contempt?  For Russia?  For stealing our election in 2016?  Wait, I never believed that, just played coy in the background, never offering my real opinion, Amare Bongo did the same thing.  I may be going far off field from the subject of this meeting, but I do that because I don't remember the subject of this meeting.

     General Bomb: The subject is strategy on Ukraine's War for Freedom and Democracy against Most Base Russia.

     Lieden: And we're on who's side?

     Bomb: Ukraine's.

     Lieden: The Nazis.

     General Best: Well--

     General Beak: Nazis discovered space travel, made it to the Moon in 1942.

     Lieden: Tell me more about that.

     General Bomb: Mr. President, that's off the subject matter.  Time is ticking.

     Lieden: It always ticks.  1942, huh?

     General Beak: The Sea of Tranquility, coincidentally.  The Nazi landing site is five hundred yards from Apollo 11.  Big difference, the Nazi landing craft wasn't able to take off.  The three men died there, one of them out on the regolith.  All of them were blonde, all died saluting.

     Lieden: Why am I just learning about this?

     General Bomb: Ukraine, sir.  We're looking at a 32 percent increase in profits in the second quarter.  The War goes well.

      All (chanting) The War goes well.

     General Beak: As we expand into space, we'll bring the Ukraine-Russia War with us, factions out there fighting each other, Ukrainian militias on assault ships in the Uranus District.  Yes, I said Your Anus, I pronounced it the way I was taught!  Urine-uss sounds like urine!  I'm taking a trip to Your Anus!  I'm in orbit around Your Anus!

     Holroyd: I theorize that President Lieden's mind affects others.  General Beak, do you feel unnaturally heated in your rhetoric today, not your usual calm stable self?

     General Beak: You're right.  I had an unusual morning.  I didn't even watch Fox News.  

     Holroyd: I'm going to Kyiv tomorrow.

     General Bomb: You will reassure Zelenky of America's commitment to filling his country with weapons to continue the war to his country's future complete destruction and make that sound like a good thing?

     Holroyd: Exactly.  We are the chess players.  The pieces have no say in how we move them.

     All, (except for non-members Captain Lodger and President Lieden) Ratfuck Bastards!

     General Hard: Mr. President, when shall I tell my lads they can drink Russian blood?

     Lieden: Get em started ASAP, get em down with the taste of it!  Cold Russian blood.  Icy red!  Honey, I'll have another cup of icy red!  Let's drink blood!

     General Bomb, (ignoring him): There's a reason I water down my drinks.  Mr. President, may I say something to the assembled company?

     Lieden: By all means, my good Bomb.

     General Bomb: Thirty-seven years ago, this Lieutenant Bomb flew a mission over the Gulf of Sidra, shot down a Mig-17, some old crate flown by a brainwashed Libyan pilot, never had a chance in life to taste the American promise, for I'd shot him down, removed his piece from the board.  I received a medal. I bought booze and drank through the rest of the "emergency" with Libya, complaining of headache and vision problems.  That's my combat experience except for Iraq and that was worse, but...

     General Beak: I too had a moment of conscience.  It was 1974.  A woman in the car I was driving drowned after we flew off a bridge and landed upside down in a creek during a rainstorm.  I saved myself and didn't save her.  I felt bad.  I finally got it out of my system by working with Nazis on getting America to the Moon.  

     General Hard: I had a crush on my mama.  Dirty thoughts.  That's it, nothing more, don't feel good about it.

     Admiral Palindrome: I knew your mother, she was very beautiful.  I visited her every Saturday night for three years.

     General Hard: The Moon Pie man.

     Admiral Palindrome: Yes, a Moon Pie or Ho Ho, always some packaged treat for my little Hardtack.

     General Hard: Yes, my mama liked you.

     Admiral Palindrome: She was one of the best.

     Lieden: When we enter Ukraine, it must be done soberly.  None of our troops can appear to be stoned, drunk, or looking as if they didn't get a good night's sleep.  Plenty of rest is mandated, word of the Commander-in-Chief, and by the way, that's a bulky title, how about just call me the Commander, or Commander.  I like the sound of that.

     General Best: Commander.  When will we initiate Red Button Plan C-One, the Michael Bay Cut?

     Lieden: Tomorrow at noon.  I'll make following its progress into a working lunch.  A ham on rye sounds like a good choice.  I like being able to eat whenever and whatever I want.  The kitchen is staffed by a good bunch of men and women.  Only one of them is an ex-convict.  Three of them speak Spanish as a first language, one of them is Pakistani and rumored to be an ISI agent, don't know it for sure, give him the benefit of the doubt.  He's under surveillance by the assistant dishwasher, my own dirty tricks man, Chet Calhoun.  I'm a lot more on top of things than people give me credit for.

     Captain Lodger (every man gives her total attention): Gentlemen, Secretary Holroyd has a meeting with the Foreign Minister of Burkina Faso coming up in twenty minutes.

     Lieden: Look at you, Holroyd, setting up a meeting inside a meeting again.  You and your tricks.  Can't keep your butt still for just one meeting.

     Holroyd: I'm seeking to secure the interests of DOD concerns: Well-Carbo, Bont Electric, GreenGas Summers Project, Miracles From Coal, Rohan Grasslands Oil Development, Encirclement Securities, Richman Fertilizer.

     General Best: I want you to know, Commander, I've never doubted your ability to maintain a good grasp on any situation.  Let me be the elbow for you to take if you find yourself stumbling.  I stumble, we all stumble.  I once stepped on a land mine, blew off half my right leg, most of my left leg, preserved my junk, thank god, but then I had lined my underwear with a bag of ball bearings.  Getting my junk blown off was something on my mind before it ever really happened, you see.  Yes, I'm half man, half machine.  I'm not much to look at, no Tom Cruise will ever play me in a movie, but I've survived this long!  I'm in on meetings deciding the fates of countries.  Tom Cruise doesn't participate in such meetings!  

     Admiral Palindrome: Is the meeting concluded?

     Lieden: If anybody has anything?

     Angie Crook: I would like to know which stocks my husband should buy prior to our invasion of Ukraine.

     Lieden: You want it to be easy?  Why didn't you take notes?

     Angie Crook: I'm losing my marbles, Moe, something we have in common.  I need help doing things.  Like sharpening a pencil, I wouldn't be able to figure that out.  

     Lieden: And you're running for another term?

     Angie Crook: Never give up!

     The Oval Office, cameras and lights, reporters, Sneffen and Parris, their people, Holroyd with his tall beautiful assistant Captain Lodger (Space Force).  It's the interval during each Saturday at 11 am Eastern time that the president "Talks to a random constituent."  This time it's Wally Eachdaysame of Indianapolis, Indiana.

     Lieden: Motor City.  The brickyard.  Zoom!  Cars fast and low to the ground, predators of the land, overtaking each other until one comes out ahead of all the others and that's you, Wally!

     Eachdaysame: Actually, not me.  I have nothing to do with Indy 500 matters.  Don't care, Mr. President.

     Lieden: Oh.  I care about Indy and its legendary race a lot.  Maybe I'm talking to the wrong Wally Eachdaysame?

     Eachdaysame: I want to ask about UBI.

     Lieden: You buy what?

     Eachdaysame: Universal basic income.  Each citizen of the United States receives, let's say, twelve-hundred a month.

     Lieden: For free?

     Eachdaysame: From the government.  Billionaires and millionaires pay their fair share of taxes.  Currently they do not.  Mr. President, make them pay their fair share.

     Lieden: I'll assemble a meeting of the American billionaires though not of the millionaires for there are too many of those to fit in one auditorium.  I'll have the CIA send me some funds from their smack profits to build a deluxe auditorium in a pleasant locale like the Cayman Islands for the billionaire meeting to encourage them to pay more taxes.  They'll be resistant, I'm not gonna lie, Wally.  

     Eachdaysame: Cancel student debt.

     Lieden: I get pestered about this a lot by people under forty-five, it's like the marijuana question, won't go away, these druggies want their pot, okay, smoke it as much as you want, move to Colorado, breathe the high altitude air, pass out.  I don't care to fix the problems of those students who couldn't imagine they'd some day have to pay off their loans for college.  I mean, come on, man, how dense can you get?  Wally, do you have student debt?

     Eachdaysame: Eleven-thousand dollars.

     Lieden, Well, that's not bad!  Get an extra job for a summer, pay it off, move on with your life!  Vote Democrat in November, House and Senate Ds need your help!  Got any other questions for your leader, Wally?

     Eachdaysame: I pray you do nothing to escalate the war in Ukraine.  Peace to you and your family.

     Lieden: And to yours, Wally.  (Hangs up phone) What a nice man.  I can say with no B.S. spin applied, this is my favorite activity of this job.  Connecting with a fellow American.  Kayla?

     Reporter: How are those called selected?

     Lieden: Randomly.  Master computer in Denver.  Your golden locks glow with the photographic lights.

     Reporter: So, you Mr. President, randomly might get selected for a call.

     Lieden: If that happens, I'll talk to myself, nothing new, I talk to myself often, I'm doing it right now, not sure any of this real.  K.P.?

     Reporter: K.P. Spread of American Blood Eagle Magazine.  What's our strategy on Russia?  Have we found Putout's weak spot?  Any compromat?

     Lieden: In America we call that compromising material.  Are you Russian, K.P.?

     Spread: Albanian by way of New Jersey.

     Lieden: We've tried everything.  Infiltrating a diplomat into their diplomatic corps.  Introducing a military spy into their embassy in Washington, we even sent in a boxer to fight one of theirs.  Our guy in Moscow did a little spy work for us.  He's in a Gulag.  Kage?

     Reporter: Kage Iddybop, Daily Worker, LA Edition, Mr. President, thank you for answering our questions.  You're a gracious and kind man.

     Lieden: Thank you, Kage.  Dark red hair, that's unusual and nice.

     Reporter: Thank you.  When end the war in Ukraine?  You can declare your wish for Ukraine's neutrality, in full agreement with Moscow, Putout will order withdrawal, bloody gun battles will rule every day and night, law and order will be established by a coalition of Nazi fighters, Belgian, Dutch, WWF, NFL, Russians, Virginians, David Boreanaz, CIA men, FSB men, Boris Johnson, you, Mr. President, you want to fight in Ukraine?

     Lieden: I love Ukraine.  The wheat, the yellow bottom of the flag.  I have one in my office.  I caress that flag when I feel down.  The sky blue lifts my spirits high.  "Ukraine," I sigh, she's a long lost love.  When I ruled Ukraine after the coup I always knew the job would end with the Bongo administration, so I left the seeds in place to rebuild after I became president.  Fortunately, presidents have been so shitty it was a choice between a game show host freakazoid, and me.  I may be freakazoid, but I'm freakazoid plus.

Doesn't answer your question but I'll tell you this, Kage of the red hair and the gold bow pulling it back from your nicely constructed face, are those freckles? oh Kage, you become more and more interesting, see me after the press conference, which will end soon, I think, where was I, yes, the war will end in six months.  Can't explain further.

     Jennifer Psyop (hurries to the podium, Lieden grabs her arm, pulls her close, face in her hair as she tells him something then backs away with a lurch.  He pivots awkwardly, almost falling down, bracing himself violently against the podium, which rocks on its base.

  

     Lieden: Earthquake! (laughing, he gets to laughing uncontrollably) Earthquake.

     Jennifer Psyop: Yes, Kadji?

     Reporter: Six months and the war ends?

     Jennifer: That's not set in stone.  Krumples the Clown?

     Reporter: Krumples the Clown, Founder and Editor of Surfing Reviews and Clown Makeup Tips Magazine.  My source in the CIA says Morocco is ready for a little tickling from the IMF.

     Lieden: There are topics not discussed in this setting.  You have to have a clearance.  Those high clearance meetings are fun.  You want to hear what's really going on when a roomful of narcissists debate a top secret issue.  Why is it top secret?  Because it would be embarrassing or difficult to explain away if made known because maybe it's wrong, or criminal, you know, things of that type.  One more.  Konrad?

     Reporter: Konrad von Oelinbeck, Third Margrave of Sunderhoffen.  My personal servant is a reporter in his spare time, I merely wait for him to finish his side job so I can resume my vacation to Belize.

     Lieden: I'd like to get the perspective of European aristocracy.  Old money.  Old traditions.

     Reporter: Old People.  I mean, my third cousin is eighty-nine years old and is still called Princess Katarina.  When her 109 year old mother dies she'll be a stiff old queen.

    Lieden: What do European aristos think of the war in Ukraine.

    Reporter: We're hardly aware of it.  Does it affect my castles?  Does it affect my income stream?

    Lieden: What is your income stream from?

    Reporter: Profits from heroin purchased from the Taliban and before them, the CIA.  War always elevates illegal drug profits.  Basic fact of the world, Mr. President.

     Lieden: Come with me to my office.  I have a proposal.

     Reporter: I guess my servant will ask his question to your press spokeswoman.

     Lieden: An attractive lady.

     Reporter: A bit hard in the face.  Needs to smile more.  Nice digs.

     Lieden: It's oval shape.

     Reporter: So easy to get in here.

     Lieden: I like its accessibility.

     Reporter: I could be dangerous for all you know, like that scene in X-Men 2, the blue guy, Alan Cumming, sneaks into here through the ceiling vent.  Do your people check the vents?

     

     Door opens, Bill Steiner enters with gun drawn.

  

     Steiner: Mr. President, who is this?

     Lieden: Put the gun away, Bill.  This is Konrad, Third Margrave of Sunderhoffen.

     Steiner: You give off the look of an arrogant aristocratic prick but let me see your identification.

     Reporter: (Whips out a passport.  Steiner passes it back after a glance) I was invited in here by the president.  How could I refuse?

     Steiner: Not everything the president says can be relied on as something sensible to do.

     Reporter: Give him more credit.  Morris, you're with it in the head department are you not?

     Lieden: Oh yeah, crazy man!

     Reporter: Consider me a Rasputin.  I don't seek to harm anyone.  I'm a wanderer, I was planning on staying in Belize for the summer but now I'll settle for an ambassadorship to Belize after my time here is ended.

     Lieden: You're hired.  Smooth-voiced, even gaze, you like that gaze, Bill, huh?  Look at his wise hands, they're wise, don't ask me how I know.  I love this man, this Konrad von Oilendorfer.

     Konrad: von Oelinbeck.

     Steiner: How old are you?

     Konrad: Forty.  At thirty-three I transformed from a greedy selfish aristo into a compassionate, awake, fish out of water learning to breathe air for this is an alien world to me, full of fright and woe, pain and trembling even after the danger passes.  I'm here to heal.  I'm here to provide aid to those who don't know what to do or where to go to save themselves.  I am a manager of the chaotic mass.

     Lieden: Pretending to be a reporter.  You know Ryan Stelrelia?  CNN man, looks boiling vegetable oil poured into a thick rubber man suit.  

     Konrad: I know his work.

     Lieden: This Ryan hosts an entertaining show.  Dr. Lieden and I watch it often, we put it on DVR.  Do they have DVR in Sundenhoffen?

     Konrad: All things of vanity, yes.

     Lieden: You'll have to set me up with a tour of your fine country, are they in the UN?

     Konrad: No, Sunderhoffen is a tiny slice of an archaic principality that existed as part of a confederation in western Bavaria in the thirteenth century.

     Lieden: Kind of where Hitler lived?

     Konrad: Well, not really, there are several valleys and mountain ridges between Sunderhoffen and Berchtesgaden.

     Lieden: Mountain air doth breathe back and forth, rushing through vale, hissing past jagged rock, chilling one spot to another, icing them together, a bridge of ideas.  Tell me about your family's past in the 1930s and 1940s.

     Konrad: My father was an ardent anti-Nazi.  He was shot in 1944 after spending two years in prison for having written in 1933 an article critical of the SA.  My mother had eight children, I was the fourth.  She was quiet and patient but she never got over what happened to my father.

     Lieden: You hate Nazis?

     Konrad: I love mankind.

     Lieden: You hate em.

     Konrad: I hate what drives men to cause destruction.

     Lieden: It's fun!  Give in to it!  I can make a phone call and ten minutes later, in Yemen, some village gets obliterated, now it's fun to just know I can do that!  The power of a god!  I'll demonstrate!

     Konrad: No, Mr. President!  You mustn't, on my part.  I believe what you say, except that having the power of a god, as you put it, gives you extra responsibility to not misuse it.  Just because you can step on an ant doesn't mean you should do it.

     Lieden: I disagree.  (to Steiner) What do you think of this guy?

     Steiner: I don't think he's Rasputin, but that doesn't answer a lot.  I'll do a check on him.  You don't mind that do you, Margrave?

     Konrad: I expect it.  SOP.

     Jennifer Psyop, lunch in the White House Commissary, where one might see the Secretary of Defense rubbing elbows with a Marine guard taking a break from opening and closing the building's front doors.  She sits this time opposite Susan Ermrich, World Bank Honcho, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.

     Ermrich: Will Somers, he's the new Ambassador candidate, wants to meet with President Lieden, can you squeeze him in?

     Psyop: I'll check.  Yes, Tuesday morning, 8:40 to 8:50, Oval Office, be prepared but don't expect the president to understand what you're talking about.  It's early for him, the coffee doesn't kick in until ten.  Then he's a wild man.

     Ermrich: He's changed since we were in the Bongo administration.  He used to care more for the plight of Africa's refugees.

     Psyop: Is Sudan your new project?

     Ermrich: Ethiopia.

     Psyop: Mussolini invaded it, now we will (they laugh).  I'm preparing talks for the press on how to react to Ethiopian hostilities, set to begin once interest in Ukraine winds down.  

     Ermrich: How will they react?

     Psyop: Accepting, eager for news of destruction and fleeing peoples.  Human stories.  Cruelty and chaos, but hope too.  Go to commercial, Rolaids or Pam.

     Ermrich: Cynicism it is I detect.  Remember when we were doing Libya?  For a while we had doubts about pulling that off as something the American people shouldn't be concerned about because it involved killing.  Killing bad guys, Jennifer.  Gaddafi was bad.

     Psyop: No argument.  I have a presser to get to in ten minutes.

     Ermrich: Let me walk you there.  I'll watch from the wings, though may I ask a question at the presser?

     Psyop: No, I'm afraid not.  You don't have proper credentials.  

     Ermrich: May I, A V.I.P.!!! speak?

     Psyop: You may speak.

     Ermrich: At your presser?

     Psyop: At my presser.  Shall we?

     Press Room.

     Psyop: Unless we begin to admit to ourselves that defeat is not inevitable but is probable, we will inhabit a fantasy realm, able to be manipulated by the likes of Dracula Deadface, watch out for that man.  Simon?

     Reporter: Simon Griff, Roving Reporter, Pensacola Tulip.  Is Mr. Deadface still linked as an ideas man to the Lieden administration, working for one dollar per year?

     Psyop: He is.

     Reporter: Is Mr. Deadface proposing to the President ideas about manipulating reality?

     Psyop: Surely, I don't know.

     Reporter: If you don't know, Jennifer, it's top secret information?

     Psyop: How would I know?  Sludge?

     Reporter: Sludge Ennerson, Winnebago County Practitioner, Mayor of Borth, on a mission to the capital, to see the president, to tell him the key to winning in 24, does everyone want to hear it?

     Psyop: Relax, Sludge.  Smoteman?

     Reporter: Smoteman Burdoon, Chief Editor of The World Times, Bangkok HQ, on the job since 1938, yes, I'm very old, but flexible.

     Psyop: What is your question?

     Reporter: Why do we keep pretending Moe Lieden is with it in the sense of having his marbles all together in one bag?  He doesn't have his marbles all together in one bag, he's a dimwit, he's dangerous, no amount of security is too great to keep him clear of the nuclear football.  His mind should be erased.  Gil Bates has a Mind Destroyer/Replacer.  It replaces the previous mind's memories with new images from others.  False background. A very popular solution sought by more criminals as they find out about it.

     Psyop: All I heard was false, and football.  I like football, too bad about the Bengals, my hubby's a lifelong Bengals fan, he was maximum excited Super Bowl Sunday.  We cuddled on the couch and watched the commercials, ate popcorn, shish kabobs by my maid, what a time!  Soren.

     Reporter: Soren Donnelly, Aberdeen Times, UK.  We've all noted I'm sure the presence of former Ambassador Ermrich.

     Psyop: She's here to say something.

     Ermrich: Thank you, Jennifer.  Thank you, all.  We're in a very dangerous time.  People we have armed cause chaos after we arm them.  They're useful.  Seventeen armed groups, each named for a letter of my name, for instance, the Snake Brigade, S for Susan, and then the Utility Brigade, and the Stitches Brigade, and so on.  It's flattery of a kind I've never experienced.  You.

     Reporter: Vernal Lickurd, Weekly Dash and Scan, arts page.  Best film for the Oscars?

     Ermrich: The Long Trek Into Demon Valley, the first State Department funded film to be made in Eritrea.

     Reporter: That's in Best Documentary category.  I mean Best Picture category.

     Ermrich: You're asking me about movies?  I'm here to discuss Ethiopia.  Swift and bold action is required.  I did like Big Tummy and Nothing Tummy.

     Reporter: That's Best Short category.

     Ermrich: Gaslight Two?

     Reporter: Interesting!  Did you like Spielberg's remake of Citizen Kane?

     Ermrich: I've heard it's terrible.  Next question.  Let's separate the glamour from Ethiopia, that's the subject.  You, yellow hair, pretty complexion, better than mine.

     Reporter: Jinx Van Lustig, The Former Omicron Literary Journal, now titled Cron.  Our psychology contributor, Dr. Edward Bon, theorizes in this month's issue that society is becoming more loopy, television hosts misbehave, a CNN host masturbating in a Zoom conference, a Vice President incapable of taking seriously the most serious matter, can't even respond to a question like a normal human being, I'm talking about Dinah Be Damned Parris.  How many of you think she should resign?  None of you?  Come on!  Cowards!  Reveal how you feel about her horrible job performance!  I've heard you talk when we're not in here!  Latest poll shows 67 percent of Americans wish they'd never heard of Dinah Parris.  I know, I just made that poll up but it sounds plausible!

     Ermrich: Please, you will speak respectfully of Vice President Parris.  She's in a different chunk of the govermental squash from where I'm active.  

     Reporter: Steezer McLeod, Dublin Times.  In which chunk are you most active these days, Ambassador Ermrich?

     Ermreich: The chunk with its chunks in other chunks.

     Psyop: That's enough for today.

     Doug Gard, Second Gentleman (the dumb title someone came up with to apply to Dinah Parris's husband) lies, hands bound at his sides, naked in a coffin, mouth taped shut, eyes goggled.  Thirteen rats crawl on him and around him.  Ratfuck Bastard Initiation Ceremony for Accepted Candidates, attended by thirty Ratfuck Bastards, including a former Secretary of State, two CIA directors, a former Head Coach of the Los Angeles Rams, two Mossad agents, a DIA man, and two FBI top tier folks.

     After an hour he's clearly uncomfortable but only his grunting signals any problems.  Two more hours and he's finished, trembling, grateful for a shower and a warm soft robe.

     Doug Gard: I pictured my wife's face to get through that last part.  Ornery little buggers once you throw in the rotten steak. 

     Ratfuck Bastard #1: I'll bet that gave you some adrenalin, focusing on the hated image of your bitch wife?

     Gard: I love my wife!

     Ratfuck Bastard #2: He loves his wife!  Hilarious!

     Gard: I certainly do!  How dare you infer--

     Ratfuck Bastard #3: Infer, the Candidate has a clever tongue!  Let's burn his clever tongue with matches!  

     Ratfuck Bastard #2: Let's make him suck our suckers!

     Gard: Please go away!

     Ratfuck Bastard 4: Hey, we're all friends.  They're playing with you, play right back, or just ignore them.  You have the power now.  Wield it.  Take control of your wife for us.  Let her be the vessel by which the Blade faction, Ratfuck Bastard representation of 75 percent, takes back full power with Dinah, Cassie, and Billy Boy the next three presidents.  

     Gard: I'm game for that!  Dinah needs a win!

     Ratfuck Bastard #4: Come join us in the pool.  We're selecting teams for polo.

     Gard: I'm glad the rats have been put away for the next Candidate!

     Ratfuck Bastard #2: Water sports for the newbie!  Surviving a drowning is your next test!

     Gard: I'm not a Ratfuck Bastard yet?

     Ratfuck Bastard #1: Nah.  Get through this, water in your lungs, you'll be welcomed into the fold.  

     Gard: Very well.

     Ratfuck Bastard #2: Newbie in the room!

     

     Two dozen naked Ratfuck Bastards await him, taking turns holding his head underwater, hitting him, tripping him, making him tread water in the deep end for two hours, real Ratfuck Bastard stuff carried out by many recognizable people.  

     A day later, Vice President Parris finds her husband in their bed at two p.m.  

     Parris: Doug?  Where have you been?  You said something about Arby's?

     Doug: Ratfuck Bastards, RB.

     Parris: What do you mean?

     Doug: I'm a Ratfuck Bastard.  They skinned me alive, or that's what it felt like when they put the acid slanket on my skin.  That was the third test.  I'll be tender for a while, no strenuous lovemaking.  My lungs still burn from the waterboarding segment of the Initiation.  The rats weren't as bad as that.

     Parris: Rats?  Oh my god!  Baby, you got little scratch marks all over your body!  Ahhhh!  Rats?

     Doug: Night rangers questing with their noses and fangs over fresh prey.

     Parris: Do you remember our honeymoon?

     Doug: Why?

     Parris: I pledged my heart to you, my body, too, which you took with your Harlequin Romance Paperback model he-man strength.  You fought off rats for me.  You endured an acid attack for me.  My hero!  Doug the hero!  

     Doug: I'm going to retire.  I'm in no shape to be around people.  People are terrible.  Look what those Ratfuck Bastards did to me!  They traumatized me!  I need therapy.  I want to cuddle with you, Dinah.  Can we cuddle?  Pleeeeeeeeeze?

     Parris: Keep your hands off of me!  Get some rest.  I'll send a healer to salve your rat scratches.  Get you tested for rabies.

     Doug: I don't hate the rats.

     Sneffen and a bored Lieden, Oval Office.

     Sneffen: Weapons sales are up!

      Lieden: Yeah?

     Sneffen: If Ukraine falls to the Russians, you'll not be reelected.

     Lieden: Not be reelected.

     Sneffen: Arm more conflicts!  Increase pressure!

     Lieden: Get all stoked up!

     Sneffen: Chew, swallow, digest, shit out the enemy!

     Lieden: Enemy is who?

     Sneffen: The Army, The Navy, Space Force will make your enemies into dust!

     Lieden: Space Force!

     Sneffen: General Beak of Space Force comes here now.  General Beak!  I leave him to you.  His brain may be fogged, but you may startle him into consciousness using whatever means necessary short of killing him.

     Beak: Understood.

     Lieden: Bye Artie!

     Beak: Look at me.  Look into these eagle eyes, the vision of Beak is upon you!  You are under my control!  I'm speaking to the chip!  A-one-three-back-slash-T-S-one-nine-zero-three.  

     Lieden: What is it that you want?

     Beak: Focus this man Lieden on two important things: conduct of the overall war, and competence shown in meetings.  He must be seen to be doing his job.  

     Lieden: It will be done.

     Beak: I'll say the code.  Two-one-seven Heavy Night three-fourteen G seven-one-two.

     Lieden: I feel like my head was split open on an aluminum hinge, some work with fine steel tools was being done on the inside of my head.  

     Beak: Fantasies of the mind, trifles to ruminate upon when on train rides.

     Lieden: Trains.  I took the train every day for thirty-nine years.  The Head Lobbyist for Amtrak stood at my second wedding.

     Beak: Sir, the Ukraine War.  We, the Chiefs, and your cabinet, your people, need you to be in full command of your senses during this time.  This is why you were elected president, to handle desperate crises.  Spider-Man, a helpless lady is being mugged on U Street!  What are you going to do about it?

     Lieden: I'm going to give my Aunt a hug, oh Marisa Tomei, she looks great whatever the decade, love the hair.  I'll hide Peter inside Spider-Man's suit.  Let's go and find out what's going on!  That's it!  We'll enter the war once we know what's going on!

    Beak: We are in the war.  We supply it with weaponry and training.  

    Lieden: My Spidey-sense picks out the faint odor of Pantene shampoo.  My secretary Grace uses Prell, nothing wrong with that, just not my favorite.  Oh, here comes Pantene.  Dinah!

     Dinah Parris enters: Rope enough to hang me, you mean?

     

     She's talking to Roy Holroyd.  

     Parris: (laughs) Are we interrupting?

     Lieden: Your hide on your backside little lady, get to loving it because I'm gonna take it off with my belt!

     Beak: Mr. President, that's uncalled for.

     Lieden: She betrayed me!  A cabal of conspirators, including Sneffen, including the Blades, and from what I understand, a large cadre of Meh supporters, go along to get along types, nothing wrong with that, sticking your neck out gets a rope put around it.  What is this about rope, Dinah, and sit down, I'm not mad at you anymore.

     Dinah: The rope referred to putting me out as the Democratic nominee in twenty-four but not giving me enough backing to the election, losing on purpose to a resurrected Richman.

     Lieden: The Grover Cleveland of the twenty-first century.

     Dinah: Did anyone here see the Oscars?

     Holroyd: I saw a clip.

     Dinah: Mr. President?

     Lieden: Will Smith, does he work for us?

     Holroyd: In a way, yes.  Independence Day was made with DOD help.

     Lieden: Smith makes it popular to assault comedians.  This is a favorable development.  Just have a popular actor do the violence, one punch, one statement, bang!

     Holroyd: Slap and awe.  Funny how the news media refers to it as a slap, but that was a hit, even if it were a slap.

     Dinah: I liked the slap.  He was defending his lady.

     Lieden: A lady with no hair.  Astonishing.  I wouldn't know what to do with her.

     Dinah: I love his films.  Concussion.  Ali.  Men in Black.  I never missed Fresh Prince of Bel Air.  

     Lieden: That's a stupid TV show!  Shows an unrealistic depiction of Black American lives.  But those Men in Black movies, I'd watch one right now!  

     General Beak: Mr. President, I will see you at the Joint Chiefs' Presidential Summit at Annapolis tomorrow at ten a.m.  Madame Vice President.  Secretary Holroyd.  

     Dinah: That man's uniform is the crispest I've ever seen.  The gold stripes down the legs, the dark deep blue of the fabric, the shiny ribbons, little splashes of color on his broad chest, I even saw a hot pink ribbon.  Purple, the General's been wounded, must ask him about that, really, my dream job was to be an interviewer on a weekend afternoon one hour show, not too much work, big staff, plenty of people to berate and throw shit at, weed out the baddies from the goodies, that's how I run my office, Roy, Mr. President!  I know what I'm doing, I'm good at my job.  I have to be twice the asshole of a man in this job. I'm twice the asshole Dan Quayle was.  

     

     In walks Dan Quayle, in private business now, still in Indianapolis, still a once a week churchgoer, still married to a woman with a Mary Tyler Moore hairdo, still a cross between Robert Redford and Jerry Mathers.  The Secretary announces his presence, tells Lieden he's on the schedule for a meeting.

     

     Lieden: Join the fun, Dan!  This is Vice President Parris, Secretary of Defense Holroyd.  We're all friends here.  We can talk about the motives of Allen Dulles in killing JFK, we can do that freely here.  Anybody want to suggest a topic, it doesn't have to be that.

     Dinah: Like Area 51? (laughs)

     Holroyd: Area 51 is a cover for something else.  The real activity happens elsewhere.  Area 51 is a set of laboratories these days, and a military base plus a currently deactivated underground city capable of housing 50,000 working men and women.

     Dinah: Moe, are you just learning this?

     Lieden: Learning what?

     Dinah: About Area 51.

     Lieden: Haven't had a ride on a saucer yet.  Dan, did you get to ride on a saucer?

     Dan Quayle: Yes.  I was taken halfway to the Moon and back to Earth, to my front lawn in Indianapolis, two nights before taking the train to Washington and the start of our new lives.

     Lieden: Beautiful.

     Holroyd: Who piloted the saucer craft?

     Dan Quayle: Charles Napier in a dark blue airline captain's outfit, cap with scrambled eggs.

     Holroyd: The actor Charles Napier?  From that goofy Star Trek episode?

     Lieden: Which one?  (Parris giggles)

     Dan Quayle: The futuristic guitar player, Adam, big jaw, he flew the ship, Space Hippy.  I saw no aliens.

     Lieden: They're crafty little buggers.  I haven't seen one yet, either, and I'm the president.  Maybe they're gremlins.  They're in the corners of your eyes.  Soon as you look at em, they vanish!  Could that be, Dan?  Could it?

     Dan Quayle: Well, if I say yes, that will placate you?

     Lieden: For now.

     Dan Quayle: Yes, they live in a peripheral universe, set at right angles to this one.

     Lieden: I get it!

     Dan Quayle: (sotto voce to Holroyd and Parris) How long has he been like this?

     Holroyd: Two years.

     Parris: Just slowly getting worse, though lately he seems to be tumbling into more and more embarrassing situations.

     Dan Quayle: Mr. President.  Moe!  What year is it?

     Lieden: 2022.

     Dan Quayle: Who's the President of Russia?

     Lieden: That scalawag Putout.

     Dan Quayle: Ratfuck Bastards ask that you initiate Operation Arcade.  Tell your State Department agent in Moscow to spread the rumor.  I was never here.

     Lieden: Bye Dan!

     No one seems to be aware of Quayle's exit, though he's gone nonetheless.

     Parris: Strange how he showed up just as I mentioned his name.

     Holroyd: Vice President Quayle doesn't come to Washington except to deliver messages.  His bland farm boy looks make him the perfect vessel of information bringing about evil acts.

     Lieden: I'm bound for a nap.  I want to have a sweet non-political dream, is that so much to ask?  I don't want to hold anyone's head underwater in my dream, either.  Hey, how about cockroaches for my dream?  No thanks.  Had enough of those the last dream.  How about those rap artists singing their rap and you couldn't understand them, no thank you, had that dream don't want it again.  How about I sniff hair in my dream?  Wake up with a boner?  That's the dream this president deserves!  Dinah, will you escort me to bed?  Holroyd, find out what Operation Arcade is, Artie probably knows.

 

     Presidential bedroom.  Dinah Parris bends over, tucking in the president.

 

     Lieden: Come here, baby, give me a big kiss!

     Parris: No, Mr. President.  I'm married.  You're married.

     Lieden: Marriage is a legal thing, who cares?  I want some loving, dammit!

     Parris: I'll speak with your wife.

     Lieden: Not with her!  I want strange!  There's got to be someone like Terry Stein operating in D.C. now.  Find him, hook me up with a girl with long straight hair, Pantene!

     Parris: I'll get right on it.

     Lieden: Dinah.  While I still know your name, just realize I always did like you, but for political reasons I had to pretend to hold you in disdain.  

     Parris: Thank you, Mr. President.  I always suspected that to be the case.

     Lieden: I doubt that.  You don't have to pretend with me.  I know you're uninterested in your job, you just want mine.  You can have it, or that's what I would say if I meant it now--I saw your body twitch when I said it, interesting.  1936 Olympics, Hitler's supermen bested by American Black athletes.  Our scions of the peculiar institution, slavery, defeated Nazi athletes, the Fuhrer was not pleased.  Someone said he trashed his Berlin apartment, broke his right hand on Frederick the Great' saber hilt.  Flailing his arms around, that was Hitler, should've been tased.  

     Parris: Mr. President, I'm going to my office, worky-work to do!  Tutu-loo!  (giggles). backs out of the office laughing at nothing.

     Lieden, closed door partial cabinet meeting, 10 a.m. in his pajamas, cup of coffee, papers everywhere, dust on his computer keyboard.  Lieden is listening to General Bomb make his military report to a room with these people: Holroyd and his assistant,Space Force Captain Lodger, Artie Sneffen, Parris, Grauchi, and White House Historian Gavriel Polytrireme, author of twenty-six books on American history, a narrow focus but the best subject for books nobody reads anymore.  Lieden's favorite historian, Polytrireme dedicated his latest book, Oklahoma Soonest, to "President Moe Lieden, a long time fan of mine.  Do a good job in that new office.  Gav. Polytrireme."

     General Beak perches on a small corner of the president's desk, eyes on his Man.  CIA Director Tina Bledsoe, the "Fingernail Ripper," called thus due to her recommendation at Bagram Air Force Base that prisoners' fingernails be ripped off with a new high tech torture device from IBM.

     

     Lieden: Holroyd.  Tell me what's going on with our land force.

     Holroyd: The land force opposite western Ukraine, ready to enter?

     Lieden: Like a ripe young thing.

     Holroyd: The force is prepared.  We've got this thing under control.  Nothing could go wrong.  One-hundred percent guarantee.  If I'm lying I'm dying.  

     Lieden: That's good enough for me.  It feels good to be in command of a military machine about to enter a foreign land, rescuing it from its tormentor, Empire of the Bear of the Red Star.  

     General Bomb: Gracious, Mr. President, you're putting this all into melodramatic framing.  Back to a perpendicular solid off the drawing board reality wherein our third, ninth, and fifteenth divisions prepare to push into the tenderest portion of Western Ukraine, a needle pushed through skin, a groom's prong finding the cherry, invaders distributing medical aid, acting also as avengers, and propagandists.

     Lieden: So we're going to war with Ukraine?

     General Bomb: We're rescuing the people of Ukraine.  We'll join with the Nazis and expunge the Russians from Ukraine.

     Holroyd: We decided we're not seizing Crimea from Russia, though.

     General Bomb: The war has a rationale for being up to a point, but then it's a matter of lying correctly about it.

     Grauchi: I'd like to announce that Covid is over!  We defeated the little thing!  No more Covid!  Whatever comes later that's called Covid-19 is not going to be counted.  You'll get sick, it's not a big deal.  Go fuck yourselves.  Now what do you all think of that for a public services announcement?

     Lieden: Grauchi, you failed America.  You're going in the stocks.  Three days in the stocks!

     Grauchi: I have a thermos of Strawberry Quik for you, extra strength.

     Lieden: Gimme!

     

     While the President guzzles and groans his pleasure at the sweet strawberry-like flavoring of the soothing drink moistening his statesman's throat, Sneffen takes a stand in the middle of the room, turning about as he talks.

     

     Sneffen: Who's in charge here?  Who's the manager?  Why is Vice President Parris laughing?  Gav, are you going to write an article about this grotesque though typical Lieden administration meeting?

     Polytrireme: I get most of my material on your types from yacht trips.  I'm here because the president invited me.  

     Sneffen: Do you keep a diary?

     Polytrireme: Diaries are personal.  I will not reveal if I have one, or if I don't.  I've been keeping a journal for eventual publication for the past twenty-one years.

     Sneffen: We will be in your public journal? 

     Polytrireme: Show me something interesting, so maybe so.

     Lieden: Gavriel, your mellifluous voice makes me gay.  Don't talk when I'm trying to get ahead with the ladies.

     General Bomb: I don't like gays, but I must tolerate them in my Air Force.  

     General Beak: I've purged them from Space Force.

     Lieden: Space Force!

     General Bomb: That's illegal, General Beak.

     General Beak: I've been given by the Commander full responsibility for Death Ray operations.

     General Bomb: You imply you can blast me from above anytime?  Touche.  I can take out my sidearm and shoot you in the liver, anytime.  Think about it, small time player.

     Sneffen: Do I need to separate you two?  Vice President Parris!  Why are you laughing?  Share the joke!

     Parris: It's this rubbing thing you do, on the coffin thing, oh, the sarcophagus, the body container, and you get the rubbing good and rubbed and all that rubbing makes an image, you look at the image and see what's on the stone, which you rub.

     Sneffen: This caused laughter?

     Parris: No, the word rubbing caused laughter.  Rubbing something hard, the stone.  But it's hard! 

     Grauchi: And the hardness is getting rubbed! (busts a gut laughing, doubles up on the couch, Parris crying and hardly able to breathe)

     

     Gavriel Polytrireme takes out the Luger his father took off of Eli Roth, considers firing it into everyone but Lieden, puts it away.  No one noticed there was a gun visible in the room.  

     

     Holroyd (pointing at Polytrireme): I'd like to propose not including outsiders in our secret meetings.

     Lieden: Gav?  He's trustworthy!  He wrote a massive biography of Martin Van Buren.  Anybody with that patience must be harmless.

     Holroyd: I tried to read your Fillmore bio.

     Polytrireme: Why thank you!  Mr. President, pull back your divisions, bring the temperature down in Ukraine.  Simply my advice.  

     

     Konrad enters, wearing a black robe, hair parted in the middle, food particles in his beard.

 

     Konrad: Blessings to all!  Secretary Sneffen, your date can't make it, she sends her regrets, she was looking forward to demonstrating her deep throat technique on you.

     Sneffen: I'll throw my frustration into my job, work all night.

     Lieden: Konrad, you look fine.  The humble look.  You'd fit in with St. Francis.  Boy, I need some hair in my nostrils.

     Sneffen: Did Grauchi give you your Strawberry Quik?

     Lieden: A dose, yes.

     Sneffen: Did you get enough?

     Lieden: My taste buds don't work!

     Sneffen (speaks into his wrist): We have possible Covid, Subject is President Lieden, prepare Dinah Parris for her role of a lifetime, over, grant her temporary presidential powers even if she laughs through the ceremony, a brief one, fortunately.

     

     Grauchi's office.  Gil Bates and Billy Boy Blade gather to discuss recent events.  President Lieden out with Covid.  Grumpy, he's recovering, but he wanders nude sometimes, such as into a cabinet meeting led by acting President Dinah Parris, who's assumed command, making sensible decisions, her speech coach, Billy Boy Blade, proud of her progress, but is Cassie Blade doing the job through Parris?  Whatever the case, she has learned to project compassion, acting feelings rather than feeling them.  She's not even chipped, but she behaves like an android hobgoblin with a narrow mind and a purely functional heart.

     Billy Boy Blade: Half of Greenland's exposed.  They found an eleventh century village.

     Grauchi: I'm betting they'll find some long concealed entrance to Thule.  Nazi Germany did a lot of research in Greenland, Newfoundland even, U-Boats dropping off spies late at night, Krauts walking around St. John in 1943, pretending to be Canadians from Ottawa, Ottawa accents even.  I was part of that program.  I helped the Nazi spies gather information from Canadian military personnel.  I had drugs, plenty of drugs, I had experience in Manchuria getting men to talk about things they didn't want to reveal.  Side effects of these drugs include itching, twitching, a feeling of a continual bowel movement, desire to strip off clothing, picking at people's personal boundaries, peculiar psychological tendencies such as addiction to milk, need to kiss crosses, the desire to snuggle up in a coffin and wait for a hoped-for inversion of this reality.

     Gil Bates: I detect weariness, Doctor.  Your Covid-19 Pandemic was a success.  I thank you for the money.  Doctor Death, whither lead us?

     Grauchi: You flatter me and flattery'll get you anywhere.  Let's just say I'll be ready to burn up the human race when I'm called to do so, no problem.  

     Billy Boy: Tony, did you see Nicolle Wallace say she's your champion?  How does that feel?  Top Republican who turned to the Democrats, followed the line of power from White House Communications Director under Arbusto, pushing the Iraq War, now a major broadcaster.  

     Grauchi: Nicolle hitched her horse to evil years ago.  These connections, some go back to the 1980s or earlier, but even those dating from fifteen or twenty years ago, connections between post-9/11 politicians and the punditry class.  That generation became the War on Terror journalists, thus malleable.  Prone to fear.  Why did Daniel Pearl, a journalist, get beheaded by the man who started al-Qaeda in Iraq, which morphed into ISIS?

     Billy Boy: Governments kill journalists to prove a point.  

     Gil Bates: Back off, scoop-seekers!

     Grauchi: I'm confident the Night Sickness will kill at least thirty percent of the U.S. population.

     Bates: We're committed to the summer of 2025 for first transmission?

     Grauchi: I see no reason to alter that.

     Billy Boy: I'll be on the Moon by then.  My mansion will be finished in August 2024.  

     Grauchi: Is Mrs. Blade living with you under your dome?

     Billy Boy: She's planning on living in Washington indefinitely.  I"ll have girls shipped to me by the dozen each week, so no Cassandra, no disgusted look, the curl of the mouth, the hard eyes, the head shake.

     Grauchi: You can't get turned on by an old broad staring at you with disdain, is that what you're saying?

     Billy Boy: Exactly Doctor.  I understand why you get paid so much.

     Grauchi: My Strawberry Quik IV was discontinued by the president's head doctor.  He's on a new regimen of regular aging drugs, with memory aid drugs permitted, but a different and better diet, a request to an already overburdened Dr. Lieden to keep him on the straight path.  Impose discipline on him, never have your own life, dear Dr. Lieden, merely dream of your own freedom, fantasize about killing your husband with a garden trowel and flying away in a helicopter to her own island in the Caribbean.  Guests flown in, supplies, masseurs, regular sex with young men who work there, no visits from Moe Lieden's family allowed, hostess to Ratfuck Bastard meetings.  Oh, she can party when she wants to, our Amanda.

     Gil Bates: You're a mine of information.  The further we go with this, the more removed from ordinary humanity we become.  Put a child in front of me, I'll make it go poof with a motion of my fingertips, I'll walk on and think nothing of it.  While I still have the capacity to feel, give me a chance to come out in front, revealing myself at the crucial moment, to be the Christ, Cosmically Coming Back To Rule Earth After Wiping Out the Impure.  

     Grauchi: You want the big spotlight like your old friend Steve.  He outshone you as a thinker.  Your imagination is stunted compared to Steve's.  He was a showman.  When he'd bring out a new product, a focus of Steve's wizardry, he'd come out on stage in the white turtleneck, do his thing.  Those were fun events!  I met my third wife Shirley at one of them.  Steve was best man at our wedding in Tahoe.

     Gil Bates: You're right, I have an inferiority complex.  I'm not afraid to admit I'm a ninety-eight pound weakling type.  I cringe when I'm threatened, that's why I like to run things behind the scenes, controlling others' realities.  I may not be Steve, but I'm Gilbert.  I'm GOOD!  I'm INTELLIGENT!  I'm LUSTY!  I'm BEAUTIFUL!  I'm EVIL!  I'm RICH!  I'll be TRIUMPHANT!  

     Billy Boy Blade: You'll be triumphant in your sphere of interest, Gil.

     Gil Bates: As God, my sphere of interest is everywhere.

     Grauchi: You're not God.  You were in the right place at the right time.  You didn't invent anything, you're not a Tesla or an Edison, you're not a clever man, even, but you have an instinct for infiltration, making it not seem like it's a bad thing.  Your popularity rating is 55, well above Dracula Deadface's 31 or Biff Jeezus's 36.  Can you believe thirty-six out of a hundred Americans think that ugly little twerp is a great guy?

     Gil Bates: Don't get me started on popularity ratings.  They're more about influencing people in how they think about politicians.  Say Vice President Parris has a twenty-eight approval rating and we think we know what that means.  What is twenty-eight?  Two, and eight, but really, twenty, and eight.  Is that not great?  Two times four is eight.  I own 28 percent of Sesame Street.  

     Billy Boy Blade: Hookers, beers, pool, line dancing, and you.  I gotter get truckin.  My ride is taking me to that deluxe brothel on P Street, anyone want to come?  Pun intended.

     Gil Bates: I'm going to ruminate.

     Grauchi: The noodle needs stretching.  Mr. President, I shall be your companion in Eros!

     

     Five hours later, an exhausted Grauchi, naked and scrawny on a king size bed in Hookertown, Virginia, where the pols let off their steam, reclines on silk pillows with a tubby naked Billy Boy Blade, picture a naked Laurel and a naked Hardy after giving the home run treatment to Thelma Todd and Anita Garvin, pre-code the way it could've been.  Billy Boy Blade's famous penis can't be seen under what resembles rolls of uncooked bread below his breastbone.  Pink-skinned in spots, he breathes slowly, eyes half-lidded.

 

     Blade: Feel better, Tony?

     Grauchi: Like a spring chicken.

     Blade: I'll order some.  Worked up an appetite on Angela!  How was your Blair?

     Grauchi: Blair has tiny feet, I like what she does with those feet.

     Blade: Her dad owes me a hundred thousand.  I said, Take your time raising it.

     Grauchi: Billy Boy, tell me, is Cassandra really going for it?  Snatching the presidency from Dinah once President Lieden goes haywire in full view of many cameras?

     Blade: Plan Theta.  That's an iffy way to do it.  Sneffen thought that one up.

     Grauchi: What does it involve, I've always been curious but I'm not in the know, purposely or not.

     Blade: Plan Theta starts with President Lieden waking up on a designated morning, like on a day he's doing a photo op with the Chinese Ambassador to the U.S.  Lieden feels better than he has in years, his mind is sharp, he remembers where his razor is, he takes cares of his needs without assistance from his wife or Secret Service boudoir men.  

     Grauchi: I'm listening.

     Blade: Whistling, he stops by his wife's bathroom, gives her a kiss, she's in the shower.  He goes to the Oval Office, gets work done for two hours while he eats a working breakfast, drinks a moderate amount of coffee, pees three times, gets a lot of thinking done, makes recordings on his phone of ideas for how to run America, remembers where he stored his grass, lights up, looks outside at a rabbit or a squirrel, chuckles, gets back to work, time for the presser and the ambassador.  The Chinese man looks nervous but is lightened up by his jolly mood.  The cameramen and women, the reporters are laughing with him not at him, a first since he became president.  Their contempt for him has dropped away for a moment.  It's fun to work in the White House!  Then--

     Grauchi: What happens next?

     Blade: The chip in his neck sends a command to the cables in his brain: Two-one-seven no go, execute X-one-two.  C-three.  The President starts fiddling with his tie, then he takes it off, tosses it away.  A photographer picks it up, holds it, then puts it on the desk.  The president takes off his shoes and socks.  He rubs his damp toes.  Soggy lint bunching between his toes gets captured in some of the photographs.  He stands up, unbuckles his pants, goes to his black jockeys stitched with a silver 46, the forty-sixth president, the one we'll wipe from history.  Off comes the shirt.  He puts his cufflinks on the head of the Churchill bust.  He gets out a fruit-flavored yogurt and sits back down.  After a few spoonfuls he barfs on the Chinese Ambassador.  A big tortured barf.  A smell reminiscent of undercooked red meat rotting inside his stomach for days fills the room.  

     Grauchi: How do you know all this is going to happen just this way?

     Blade: It's my fantasy of how it's going to happen.  It'll happen some way, anyway.  Dinah will be sworn in, no choice.  In twenty-four, Cassie will betray Dinah and challenge her for the nomination.  Cat fight, great ratings.

     Grauchi: Former friends, a deliciously entertaining story I will enjoy watching.

     Blade: Via the Oval Office's recording system, this bodily breakdown of the president's will go out live. YouTubers, tweeters, Metazoids, TV watchers, all will see Moe Lieden barfing, disrobing inappropriately, and soiling the nice suit of an Asian dignitary.  If he stays on as president after that, the people will have no respect for us.

     Grauchi: Seeking respect from those we don't respect is foolish, Billy Boy.  Take it from an old hand at I Don't Care What Others Think, me, Tony Grauchi, dog torturer, oh, do Beagle lovers hate me.  Funding experiments with flies feeding off of the faces of Beagles seems to have been swallowed awkwardly by dog-loving Americans, but I ride the storm.  Public opinion has no real power when compared with the power to unleash biological weapons on the public without their knowing it.

     Blade: He'll be gone soon.  Lieden served his purpose; our chaos-maker.

     Grauchi: Purposeful Chaos Through Incompetence.  PCTI.  We have a page on that subject in the CDC Website.

     Cassandra Hartliss Blade's office in her condominium on the fortieth floor of a building overlooking Central Park.  The office, an exact replica of the Oval Office, features portraits of Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, John Kennedy, U.S. Grant, and John D. Rockefeller.  A bust of Margaret Thatcher made from steel from the WTC collapse of 9/11 sits on her desk.  Cassandra writes imaginary letters to "Maggie" Thatcher, letting her know about her political thoughts, about UK-US relations, about Meryl Streep's performance as Thatcher.  The book she hopes to publish in January 2025 as Dear Maggie...

     Her one o'clock arrives five minutes early.  Dinah Parris enters wearing a long coat, a dark veil and a slouch hat.

     

     Cassandra: Woman of intrigue!  1945 movie, film noir!  Come in and make yourself comfortable, I'm afraid I have no ashtray if you're thinking of smoking.

     

     Parris sits on end of a very attractive 1970s blue couch.  Cassandra takes the opposite end.

     Cassandra: Tea?  There's half of a Snickers bar on my desk.

     Parris: No thanks.  I'm scared about what's going to happen to Moe.

     Cassandra: Nothing's going to happen to him.  He's going to a better place, he's getting into a better situation I mean.

     Parris: The pressures of the job won't be on him anymore.

     Cassandra: They'll be on you.

     Parris: I know, that's my real problem.  Moe, he's old, it happens.  He'll be fine.  He's got Dr. Lieden.

     Cassandra: Amanda's fed up.  She wants to party and I don't blame her.  She's put up with this guy's hair-sniffing for thirty years.  The guy practically cums in his pants when his nose gets close to freshly washed hair on a--let's face it--young woman or girl, usually girl.  We all know Moe Lieden's a pervert!

     Parris: I want to confess something wrong I did.

     Cassandra: I'm not done ranting about the president!

     Parris: I had relations with your husband.

     Cassandra: What kind of relations?

     Parris: Sexual relations.

     Cassandra: Are you into anal?

     Parris: No!

     Cassandra: I heard he's been looking for someone into that.  Dinah, you're the eighteen thousand and three-hundred and fortieth woman my husband has pushed over a table, or shoved to the floor to blow him.  He's a hog, he's charming, I understand, the motherfucker did my protege, huh?  I should do his protege!  Who is his protege?  No, he doesn't have one, but the next protege of his I'm doing.

     Parris: I want to assure you, Cassie, the relation between the former President and myself is all over with.

     Cassandra: That's what you think!  You're at a party, a fundraiser, a victory party in November, let's think big.  Billy Boy swaggers up to you, five drinks in him, relaxed as a fiber-filled turd sliding out of a bull's rectum.  After a few minutes you're in a closet blowing him.  He doesn't pleasure you, notice.  He complains about his aversion to performing cunnilingus, how he was traumatized as a teen by an older girl who forced that act upon him.  Bullshit!  He's only interested in his pleasure, so he doesn't return the favor.  Sex with Billy Boy Blade is like one part of a restaurant meal coming across as great, and the rest forgettable, you're even embarrassed you went to that restaurant.  Believe me, Dinah, I know this man better than anyone.  I am him.  He's a sweaty blob of selfishness covered with thumbtacks, dirt, iron filings, dead beetles, and smelly liquids.

     Parris: Oh my!

    Cassandra: Forget Billy Boy.  I'm your ride.

     Parris: You mean in the sense of a vehicle to achieving power with appointment to high office?

     Cassandra: You see, you just talk like a lawyer and people will think you're intelligent.

     Parris: I am a lawyer.

     Cassandra: So am I!  So is the Senate and Congress, the whole government is polluted with lawyers, legalists, people with no imagination.  I'm breaking free.  Through you, once you're president.  I will be your chief advisor, I'll accept a salary of 250,000 dollars.  You need me to get you elected in twenty-four.

     Parris: I know that and I'm grateful.

     Cassandra: You're going to show your gratitude.  You're going to mention me often, give me praise, make the people realize I'm indispensable.  2024 will be the year a woman gets elected president of the United States.

     Parris: It has a good sound in my ears, like Tupac!

     Cassandra: Honey, no one ever believed you listened to Tupac in college.  He wasn't doing music when you were in college, when you were also supposedly smoking marijuana.

     Parris: I was smoking marijuana.  I was high all through school!  They called me High-na Dinah.

     Cassandra: You need to lie more convincingly!

     Parris: I swear to God I am not lying about High-na Dinah!

     Cassandra: That's a believable lie.  Okay.  Get a tattoo of 2024, somewhere tasteful so it can be shown, upper arm maybe, wear something that shows it off during interviews and debates. 

     Parris: A conversation piece.

     Cassandra: More than that!  A campaign slogan on your arm, Dinah!  Jeesh!  Are you always slow to pick up on the obvious?

     Oval Office.

     Lieden: (Head on desk) Woe is me.

     General Best: The war goes well.

     Lieden: What war?

     General Best: The Russia-Ukraine War

     Lieden: Freedom!

     General Best: Robust weapons sales help us maintain a sturdy sales quarter, foundational non-critical infrastructure bested in nineteen cases descending like falling steel to bloody ground, the AMS Division reports no casualties and a ninety-three percent creep.

     Lieden: What?

     General Best: Rising oil prices are a small price to pay.

     Lieden: 4.98 a gallon even in a small town, you think that's a small price, does that make you cum, General Best?

     General Best: I apologized for that uncontrollable bodily discharge.  

     Lieden: I reach into my pockets (reaches into pockets) and take out fifteen cents, three shiny pictures of Tom Jefferson, these three Toms'll make you cum, won't they, General?  Won't they?  Look at em!  Fifteen cents, I'll give you those coins if you cum while looking at em!

     General Best: Mr. President, I'll leave you to your madness.  I warn you, forces are at work seeking to unseat you.  You have my loyalty, even though you seek to embarrass me.  I'm beyond embarrassment.  I dropped trou in front of two-thousand horny G.I.s in Kuwait.  I've sunbathed nude in Ibiza.

     Lieden: Good, General.  I know about the plot to replace me.  Dinah is so dumb she thinks she's not being manipulated by the master manipulators, the Blades.  Cassandra will control Dinah if we get a President Parris.  Over your dead body, right General?

     General Best: Oh?  I, um...

     Lieden: You and every woman and man on my side are my shield.  Shield Lieden.  I offer you command of Shield Lieden.  I'll double your salary, secretly.  I'll provide you with a two-thousand dollar gift certificate to Hookertown.  Have you been?

     General: Not since the Gulf War.

     Lieden: I'm going to do an end run around the Blades.  As for the war in Ukraine, pull the troops back from the Ukrainian border, deescalate for the time being, let's cool off a bit so I can concentrate on petty local political conditions, starting with thwarting the motherfucks who want to take me down and prop up that dipshit from San Francisco I had the poor judgment to select as my running mate.

To be continued...

Vic Neptune