The Ratfuck Bastard Conspiracy Part Fourteen

     NASA Director Hud Narbo, rip-roaring pissed, yelling into his phone at General Bomb.

     Narbo: He took my plane, my plane!

     Bomb: Why was the Lear in Scranton?

     Narbo: Wife is visiting her sister.  "Honey, can I borrow the Lear?"  Damn, I should've said no!  Fly Coach, save some money for once, you spend too much!

     Bomb: You're speaking to your wife now in an imaginary way?

     Narbo: What's that, honey?  Oh yes, I'll bring home the milk, and your Beads and Buttons magazine.  Tonight I expect a well made meal and no whining.  Running a space program is hard work!

     Bomb: Have you been insane, and henpecked, for long?

     Narbo: My plane, Bill.  I love that plane.  I became a member of the Mile High Club in that darling Lear 'o mine.  That demented Moe sits his old dirty butt on the seats of my darling Lear.  

     Bomb: Do you want me to shoot down the Lear jet?

     Narbo: Shoot down my darling Princess Di?

     Bomb: It would end the Lieden campaign and possible Lieden resurgence.  My computer nerd forecasters have determined his chances of becoming President again are at fifty-five percent, up from thirty-five a week ago.  President Parris needs a boost.  Give her a new manned, womaned, transed, whatever, space program.  Send people to Saturn!  Put the American banner on Titan!  Do it!

     Narbo: I think a trip to Titan might be in my future.  The money coming in for such a project would help me finish the north wing of my wife's bedroom.

     Bomb: Slush funds can be generated from the project, a trip to Titan will become weapons for the defense of Ukraine.

     Narbo: Yellow and Blue, We Salute You.

     Bomb: Yellow and Blue, We Salute You.

     Narbo: Did you know that when you type in my name, the spell check suggests Narbo is Nairobi, carbo, or Garbo, as in the actress?

     Bomb: That's fascinating.  My name in Google yields pictures of bombs and bombs going off, including King Bomb, the Big H.  That one must not go off, none of the big boy bombs going off on my watch, thank you.  I had to depose President Lieden, not for his hair perversion, but because his talk was veering uncomfortably into World War Three territory, so I struck him to the same deck where Billy Boy Blade filthily ejaculated.  

     Narbo: Arbusto had the Blade carpet changed.  

     Bomb: Naturally.  These sex creeps who run for high office.  I don't understand it. (Shifts, looks at the floor, remembering moments from his dalliance with President Parris the previous day).

     Sam Spade, dapper in a pinstripe suit with pink carnation in his lapel buttonhole; a way with women like something out of 1930, smooth talker, street smart, cynical, fucked his partner's wife then his partner got shot by an English revolver in the hand of a woman Spade fucked and sent to prison, no mercy for the one who slew his partner, Archer.  Maybe a blurred code of conduct, what with his adultery with Mrs. Archer, but Samuel Spade of San Francisco is pure professional with a capital p.

     Today, a Secret Service woman with long Titian hair escorts Spade into Lieden's armored study in the basement of his Wilmington home.  Though separated from and still living with Moe, Dr. Lieden relaxes in her bedroom with a worn paperback of Jackie Collins's Rock Star, bought in Kingston with the first actual cash money she'd been permitted to handle in years.

     Moe stands.  He's wearing white boxer shorts with a repeated cherry pattern all round and a tan shirt and black tie.  His pants are around his ankles.

     Lieden: I was checking to see if it still works.

     

     Spade says nothing, looks with his practiced detective's eye around the room, at the plants, the books, none of them on Alzheimer's.  The Secret Service woman seemed nonplused by Mr. Lieden's appearance.  Spade thinks.  Curious.

     Lieden: The second hand on my watch, it's been erratic.  It's a Bulova, I stole it in 1967.  Might have to get the second hand repaired.  Some gunk in there maybe holding it up while the minute and hour hands work just fine.  You see, I take my pulse through my thigh, I got a reliable vein there, that's why my pants are down, get your mind out of the gutter!  Who are you?

     Spade: The name is Spade, Sam Spade.  You asked me here.

     Lieden: Spade!  That's right!  The detective from Frisco!  How are yuh?  You want the most comfortable chair in the room?  It's the one I'm sitting in, pal, the cushion hugging my buttocks inside my boxers, just delicious, I sit in this chair for hours at a time, you can't sit here, I sit here, is that clear, Spade?

     Spade: Perfectly.  Why do you want my services?

     Lieden: I can't remember the initial reason I had one of my Scranton girls contact you.  It wasn't because she wanted a date with you.  Forget about that.  Those girls work for me.  I get access to their hair, I get to look at them while they work, closed circuit television, ever hear of it?

     Spade: No.

     Lieden: Have you ever wondered why Sherman Helmsley was the perfect George Jefferson?  

     Spade: The names are unfamiliar.  Mind if I smoke?

     Lieden: None of that devil weed in here!

     Spade: I have ones I've rolled (takes out a silver cigarette case with embossed initials, SS, classy as fuck.  Silver lighter with gold highlights gets the tobacco going).  Cut to the quick, Mr. Lieden.  What do you want of me?

     Lieden: Investigate the President, get dirt on her.  Start with her husband's business connections.

     Spade: (taking out a small notebook and pencil stub).  The husband's name is Gard, correct?  The President's name is Parris, like the city but with an extra r?  

     Lieden: Say, you talk like you just arrived in the twenty-second century.

     Spade: You mean the twenty-first.

     Lieden: Twenty-first what?

     Spade: Century.

     Lieden: Uh-huh.  Let's go over this.  I've drawn what I want.  You will do what's on the drawing.  I'll pay you good, Randolph--

     Spade: Spade, Sam Spade.

     Lieden: Okay.  Look at this drawing, Sam.  See the eight tiny reindeer?

     Spade: There are seven.

     Lieden: Aw shucks, can I borrow your pencil? (Spade gives it to him, watches the former President of the United States draw with a two inch number two pencil a stick reindeer to make it eight).  Picasso I ain't but I got the job done, the point across as you see.  These reindeer represent the eighth of the month, that is to say, March 8th, 2024.  I want to by then have command of the Democratic candidate field for President.  

     Spade: What can I possibly do to make that happen?

     Lieden: You misunderstand.  The reindeer do not have a stake in the activities of Mr. Randy Quaid.  

     Spade: Samuel Spade.

     Lieden: Now take a good look at the middle of the picture, the black blot.

     Spade: And?

     Lieden: That's the mystery you need to solve to earn your fee.

     Spade: You pay me a hundred dollars a day plus expenses, and a bonus of twenty-five hundred on top of my fee of 5,000 dollars if I deliver what you're paying for.  Tell me something about this Gard fellow.

     Lieden: A real loser, can't find his asshole with all ten of his fingers.  Probably doesn't even know where his dick is, just thrusts himself against whatever woman comes along, real pervert, likes to sniff hair, too, so I've heard.

     Spade: What about bicycle seats?

     Lieden: What-un-the-who?

     Spade: The perversion some men have of becoming sexually excited from sniffing women's bicycle seats.

     Lieden: Say, that's a great idea!  I'm gonna try that!

     Spade: Sorry I mentioned it.  But about Gard.  What does he do when he's not performing his duties as this...(Spade consults his notebook)...First Gentleman, and I understand he was the Second Gentleman prior to this?

     Lieden: That's right, when his wife was Vice President, the Big Number Two.  Well, she took a dump on me all right.  I'll get her back for that, and Bomb, especially that Bomb!

     Spade: You want to bomb someone?

     Lieden: Bill Bomb!  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff!  

     Spade: Joint Chiefs of Staff.  What's that, and where are they located?

     Lieden: Man, are you behind the times!  Think of Bill Bomb as the chief military officer in America.

     Spade: Okay.

     Lieden: He's got five other honchos around him, they're the Joint Chiefs of their respective branches of the military, got it?  They're located in the Pentagon.

     Spade: Got it.  You'll supply me with directions to this Pentagon?

     Lieden: You bet.  Now there's the Air Force, Army--

     Spade: Huh.

     Lieden: What's huh, sunshine?

     Spade: There's the Army Air Force...

     Lieden: That's old school.  Get with the times, man!  Marine Corps, you've heard of them, and the good old Navy, the Global Force for Good, oh, and the Coast Guard, the Navy's little brother, and let's not forget Space Force! (pumps his fist).

     Spade: Space Force, huh?  Planning on going to the Moon?

     Lieden: We've been there, chum!  We brought back regolith--(low voice) that's lunar soil--and studied it  and by gum, plants can grow out of that shit.

     Spade: Interesting.  Tell me about Gard's wife.

     Lieden: Dinah Parris is the first African-American woman President.

     Spade: Unbelievable.  

     Lieden: 1930 was a great time, like 2022, Sam, but you gotta admit; 1930 had no political correctness or hashtag me too nonsense.

     Spade: Hashtag me too nonsense?  What is political correctness?

     Lieden: You tabula rasa you.  Cute.  I'm not paying you to be ignorant.  Spend a day studying up on this era--sure, I'll pay you the hundred for that study day, but I'm not buying any books for that study session, no sir.  You go to the library, or research it on your phone.

     Spade: By calling the library from my hotel room?

     Lieden: Boy are you a stitch!  Let me recover my breath, (not laughing) this laughter hurts my ribs!  Okay, Sam, you're a duckling in a brand new world, that's fine.  I'm not going to explain Smart Phones to you.  You'll learn about them in your study period.  Tell you what.  I'll get you an iPhone, I'll even pay for it.  I like you, Sam.  You resemble Warren William, who played you in Satan Met a Lady.  

     Spade: Is that a picture?

     Lieden: Oh, it's a Sam Spade drama!  Did you ever think of selling your life experiences to Hollywood?

     Spade: No.

     Lieden: I have a producer friend in Century City, name of Slimeball Doogan.  

     Spade: Slimeball, huh?

     Lieden: He was slimy when he came out of his mother.  Slimeball assured me he'd put up no more than thirty-five million, as in dollars, to make a campaign film.  I could call Slimeball, ask for the resources, the crew, the post-production folks and so on and so forth, and actually make a movie about you.  I got a great idea for a Sam Spade private detective movie.  There's this jewel-covered statuette of a bird of prey, see, an eagle.  It was in the possession of the Knights of Sherman, passed through many hands common and royal, and then ended up on a ship to Frisco, as in San Francisco.  Your partner gets shot to death by someone, that's a mystery right there.  You get involved with a client, a hot number, oh yeah, quite so, a redhead, can you handle a little Mary Astor action, Sam?  

     Spade: Mary Astor, the actress?

     Lieden: Right you are, man.  So everybody wants the Eagle.  It's coated in black wax or maybe it's a lacquer.  I'd pick a lacquer if it were my choice.  They scrape part of the black shit off and what do you know, it's a fake.  The Sherman Eagle, what do you think?  Shall I call Slimeball?  Shall I?  Shall I?

     Spade: I'm not here to make a motion picture, Mr. Lieden.  I'm here to find dirt on Douglas Gard and Dinah Parris.  To benefit your political career, I take it?

     Lieden: Never you mind why I want you to find the dirt!  I'm an ambitious man, it's my choice to explain or not explain.  I was campaigning after you were born.  I never looked back.  I never apologized, I never fessed up to all those claw hammer murders I did when I was full of spit and vinegar as a teen in Wilmington.  He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.  A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.  We'll always have Paris.

     Spade: Right.  Speaking of Parris, can you provide me with a name of someone who knows her well?

     Lieden: Doug Gard.

     Spade: Besides her husband.

     Lieden: Me.

     Spade: Besides you.

     Lieden: You don't know her, so you're out of the realm of possibility.

     Spade: Surely, you can think of a name.

     Lieden: Shirley Brightbutton.

     Spade: Who is she?

     Lieden: President Parris's just recently resigned Chief of Staff.  I have her number in my iPhone.  You're gonna love having an iPhone.  You like looking at women's private parts, Sam?

     Spade: That question isn't something I'm going to answer.

     Lieden: You like men, huh?  Well, you can't have me.  I'm about to be at an event with more beautiful hair than I've been around for a coon's age.  You ever eat coon?  Or do you prefer poon?

     Spade: Raccoon?  No.  Elk, yes.  I've eaten grubs in one particularly desperate situation.

     Lieden: Tell me about it, but not now.  I always want to hear a story about eating something disgusting.  Was it disgusting?

     Spade: The hunger was the worst part.

     Lieden: Hunger.  I've experienced it, but never for more than ten minutes.  Those ten minutes are beastly, I can tell you.

     Spade: I'll contact you after I research this period.  I'll have some ideas.  What's Shirley Brightbutton's phone number?

     Lieden: She might like you, as in might want to sit on your mustache.

     Spade: Her telephone number?

     Shirley Brightbutton's Georgetown condo.  At forty-one, Brightbutton, a Rhodes scholar, has already been Vice President Parris's Chief of Staff, briefly filling that role for President Parris, and the third White House Communications Director in the Bongo administration.  Pundit, single, author of three books on political matters, she's half African-American on her mother's side and half Portuguese on her father's.  Brightbutton was her ex-husband's name, Rex Brightbutton, champion weightlifter and cologne ad man.

     Sam Spade sits in an orange armchair.  An orange cat sits on the windowsill, tail flicking back and forth.  Plants, green leaves, some of them big, drooping, looking as if they need watering.  Shirley herself, a five foot two dynamo in bare feet, white shorts and green shirt tied above her belly button.  Sam finds her a bit of a honey, wouldn't mind taking a chew.  He drinks her bad coffee, smiles at her patter, smokes contemplatively, observes the Bloodhound looking at him from across the room. 

     Shirley: Of course my husband Rex--do you know Rex?  Of course you do, everyone knows Rex, or at least has seen him on TV.  He's a champion.  His trophy from the Berlin stonelifting contest is taller than me.

     Spade: I don't know Rex Brightbutton, I haven't heard of him, either.

     Shirley: Do tell!  Earlier I referenced Britney Spears and you didn't know who she is.

     Spade: I don't watch movies or read entertainment periodicals.

     Shirley: How novel.  What do you do when you're not working?

     Spade: I perfect my whistling ability.

     Shirley: Musical whistling?

     Spade: Applied some place where it feels good.

     Shirley: Good heavens.

     Spade: I'm an experienced gentleman with the ladies.

     Shirley: Are you coming on to me?

     Spade: Madame, no, of course not.  What gave you that idea?

     Shirley: You're a most peculiar man.  I don't know if I want you here.

     Spade: What does your heart tell you?

     Shirley: What do you want to know about Dinah?

     Spade: You're on a first name basis with her?  The President of the United States?

     Shirley: I've known her for a few years.  She calls me Shirley.

     Spade: May I call you Shirley?

     Shirley: Mrs. Brightbutton will do.

     Spade: Is President Parris concealing crimes she's committed?

     Shirley: How would I know?

     Spade: You're close to her work activities, or were.  It's a pity you quit working there.  Why did you quit?

     Shirley: I couldn't stand working for that bitch anymore.

     Spade: Catfight.

     Shirley: Hardly.  More like Dinah raging at people, whining about things not going her way, throwing pens and staplers and papers at people.  She threw her phone at me when I told her there was absolutely no way we could get tickets to see what remains of Styx.  Sold out, I mean sold out, sister.  No forcing the issue.  She had a fit!  Tommy Shaw is her favorite singer and dreamy guitarist.  She saw them when she was young.

     Spade: Styx, like the river?

     Shirley: Yes, same spelling.

     Spade: This is a band?

     Shirley: Yes, they're from Chicago I think.

     Spade: They play swing music?

     Shirley: No, rock.

     Spade: Rock?

     Shirley: Rock and roll.

     Spade: What?

     Shirley: Honey, what else haven't you heard about?  Ever hear of Dr. Seuss?

     Spade: No.

     Shirley: The H Bomb?

     Spade: No.

     Shirley: Have you seen The Sound of Music?

     Spade: No.  It's a motion picture?

     Shirley: Yes, you drip!  Are you conning me?  Have you heard of John Kennedy?

     Spade: Some Irishman?

     Shirley: Just the President of the United States once upon a time.

     Spade: I would like to meet President Parris.  I'll make it worth your while if you arrange that.

     Shirley: How make it worth my while?

     Spade: I'll whistle a tune for you.  (Begins to whistle.  In three minutes his head is between her thighs).

     Artie Sneffen, his Foggy Bottom office.  Outside, fog.  Inside, a polite but tense discussion with Hector Farrbarrhuber.

     Sneffen: You failed to carry out your assignment re Moe Lieden.  I understand why.  Lieden seduced you with future wealth and prosperity, a position in his administration, admit it.

     Hector: You're sniffing happy gas.

     Sneffen: On the other hand, it may be that the worst thing that could happen to the old bum would be for him to win the nomination and then lose to the Republican.

     Hector: Who's that going to be?

     Sneffen: Richman, probably.

     Hector: He's a great man.

     Sneffen: He stinks up the room of etiquette and good manners.

     Hector: You don't like his manners?

     Sneffen: They're atrocious.

     Hector: Most people don't care about that shit.  Maybe that's why Don Richman is popular?

     Sneffen: Are you a Rich Man Man?

     Hector: I never identified with that group, but I understand why Richman appealed to the populace.  They were looking for someone not of Washington.  Get the hint?

     Sneffen: Outsider appeal.  Yet, one knows nothing of the outsider in most cases.  

     Hector: Sneffen, you hooked yourself to the Parris star, are you regretful?

     Sneffen: Hardly.  I abandoned the Lieden ship, yet somehow it remains afloat, attempting to remain relevant.  

     Hector: Last time I saw Lieden he told me he tried to have an orgasm while he had to pee.

     Sneffen: He lost his shit at least five years ago.

     Hector: And no one told him it was time to quit.  You all took advantage of him to crowd out the Progressive, Shronk Blanders.

     Sneffen: Blanders' Socialist message is bad for America.

     Hector: Bringing out the swear words now.

     Sneffen: Damn Shronk Blanders and his grumpy granddad look!  When it was looking like we wouldn't be able to crank up Moe Lieden enough to get him looking at least lifelike during his debate with Blanders, we were frantic.  Shronk Blanders seizes the nomination?  Goes on to beat Don Richman, handles him easily because of Richman's handling of Covid?  Then we're stuck with Socialism?  Health care for all?  Less spending on war, more on domestic projects like infrastructure?  Reel in the CIA, curtail the excesses of the FBI and police departments?  It would've been more than terrible.  Imagine John Kennedy surviving and not getting us into the Vietnam War?  Does your skin crawl at the thought?

     Hector: My brother died in Vietnam.

     Sneffen: You're the wrong person to ask that question, then.  About your failure.  You could and really should return at least some of the money I gave you.

     Hector: That's not going to happen.

     Sneffen: I can sic State Department lawyers on your every money-related venture.  They'll find something.  They almost got Gary Condit.  

     Hector: You can do that, but it takes time.  I can very quickly take out my thirty-eight and drill holes in your body, so do you wanna forget about taking money from me?

     Sneffen: (giggles) That threat made me tingle!

     Hector: I dug into your past, Mr. Sneffen.

     Sneffen: Yes?

     Hector: You dated women once upon a time, even married a broad in 1968.  Tina Vicks, a B movie actress, starred in an episode of Hogan's Heroes, the one where Sergeant Schultz sells out the Third Reich for a sandwich.

     Sneffen: Of course I remember Tina.

     Hector: Divorced in 1969, you traveled to Laurel Canyon, participated in CIA experiments there, were seen on three occasions with a scruffy guy named "Charlie," a would-be cult leader.  Two years later you were in Hanoi in disguise as a Vietnamese.  You were keeping an eye on Jane Fonda, oh my Jane Fonda, I love Jane Fonda.  Anyway, you looked enough like a Vietnamese that you got in to take a gander at the Hanoi Hilton's quote unquote guests.  Your career seems to run between the CIA and the State Department, but also Defense, Defense Intelligence, and you have sway over Senate and Congressional committees.  Tell me something.

     Sneffen: I'm all ears.

     Hector: Can Cassandra Blade win the nomination in 2024?

     Sneffen: With manipulation, anything can be made to happen, you know that.

     Hector: Imagine a Cassandra Blade presidency.  What happens to you?

     Sneffen: I become a paid commentator on a network opposed to Cassandra Blade and her policies.  The problem is, though, I agree with most of her policies.  Wrecking third world nations is our mutual hobby.

     Hector: A third world nation's people could pool their money, each putting in the equivalent of a few pennies.  This would amount to my salary, a considerable sum if it represents millions of donations from downtrodden people who want me to take revenge on the faraway imperialists who've destroyed their country.  

     Sneffen: You'd betray your country?

     Hector: Hardly.  Do you think Cassandra Blade or Dinah Parris give a shit about America?  Do you give a shit about it, Mr. Sneffen?

     Sneffen: I am a catalyst for the expansion of my country's influence.  I care deeply about America, God's most perfect thought.

     Hector: Whoah, pass the glue, you are trippin hard, I want some!

     Sneffen: My shield, America, protects me from all jibes.

     Hector: Does it boomerang like Captain America's shield?

     Sneffen: No.  In any case that was done as a visual effect in The Winter Soldier.  That's the one Marvel Comics film I've seen.  I have little time for entertainment periods.

     Hector: Iron Man 3 is good.  The thing is, you haven't dated a woman since you were twenty-eight, in 1973.  No female partner known from then to now.  Are you a homosexual?

     Sneffen: I'm gay for America.

     Hector: I'll take that for yes.

     Moe Lieden's study in his Wilmington home.  He sits in his easy chair, one with a motor that tips him forward to help him stand.  He loves this chair.  He calls it "my little helper."

     He's on the phone with Amare Bongo, just back from a windsurfing laugh-at-the-shitty-condition-of-the-world fuck-off-a-thon with Richard Branson.  Fox made a big deal out of long distance photos of the former President windsurfing, grinning after his country burned to the ground under the leadership of his former henchman, Moe Lieden.

     Time to pretend, Moe thinks.  I like Amare.  He's swell.  He didn't show me up at that function where I stared at the curtains, well they were nice curtains!  Who has gold curtains beside Don Richman?  We do, the White House do!  I gotta get back into that place.  That's where I belong.  I'm gonna get that Bomb, too.  Hoist him on his own petard.  Give him a taste of my medicine.  Medicine Moe.  Heap big medicine man, me Moe, me club with hammer, make people go boom, smoke pipe with Cornpop, Cornpop a General now, good for him!

     Bongo: Say something I want to hear right away and I won't hang up!

     Lieden: Your hair looked nice at the function.

     Bongo: Thanks, Moe.  What can I do yuh for?

     Lieden: I need money.  I mean my campaign needs money.  We're dry, Amare.  Dry as bones.  Bones lying out in the sun for decades, that dry.  I could pawn my watch, my Bulova, but Amare, I've had this watch since sixty-seven!

     Bongo: Is that the one you stole?

     Lieden: I stole all my watches.  I stole cars in the fifties and early sixties.  Man, those were the days, vroom, you get into a car, electrically tickle the vehicle into purr mode, then you enjoy the feel of those contoured seats, and off you go, joy riding or driving it into the river, that was fun, but mainly I brought it to Cornpop's Chop Shop and Freshly Caught Shellfish Stand on Wintergreen and Clark.  Have you ever eaten a freshly killed crab just hours away from walking sideways on the beach?

     Bongo: I only eat veal, oranges, mangoes, cucumbers, Romaine, Ranch, and walnuts.  I drink Old Fashioneds and tune in to basketball games more than Gaby would like.  

     Lieden: My Amanda, well, she's not my Amanda anymore, never wanted to watch MadTV with me.  That Nicole Parker.  I had a thing for her I can tell you.

     Bongo: She has nice hair I take it?

     Lieden: Nice hair, nice everything.  Funny gal.  Charming gal!  Dynamic gal!  Hey gal!  You wanna join our gang and discuss the Kennedy-Nixon debate?  Boy that Ike, what a speech!  Military Industrial complex, what the H is that?  Man, that Elvis is great in Love Me Tender.  I wept, I admit it, boy that I am, I wept.  I concealed my tears behind aggression, beating up my friends when we left the theater.  One of em, Tracy Hunt--Tracy was a guy despite the name--had a lawyer dad and boy, my shit was up for examination.  Luckily, a well-timed bribe to the judge got the case dismissed and I was able to go on with my mayhem.

     Bongo: Have you traveled back in time in your mind?

     Lieden: How did you, a Black man, go so far in life?  Have you been water-cannoned?  

     Bongo: No I haven't, Moe.  I've seen the films.  Terrible stuff.  Folks with water hoses for putting out fires aimin em at folks protestin about their due rights.  It stirred my blood learning about it on television and in that one class in school.  Those TV shows inspired me to overcame obstacles.  I worked twice as hard as my White brethren.  Then I stopped working sometime around the second week of November 2012.

     Lieden: Black man, I hold out this White man's hand, asking for money for my presidential campaign, a new dawn awaits, Lieden Twenty-four, Repeat Performance Best Performance.

     Bongo: You want me to give you money?

     Lieden: I said that, yes.

     Bongo: I gave you money to cover your son's medical expenses.  A lot of money.

     Lieden: I'll forever be grateful.

     Bongo: Not just grateful, you're in my debt.  I made you President, too.

     Lieden: I seek to regain that office through contributions from such fine oligarchs as yourself.  You are the Democratic Party.

     Bongo: I hope not, it's in pisspoor condition.  The mid-terms will be a blowout, probably.  Here's what I'll do.  I'll give you half a million dollars.  That's it.  Expect no more.  There are others you can ask.  Don't ask me again, do you understand?  

     Lieden: You're my President, always.

     Bongo: When Cassie Blade asks me for a donation I'll give her one, just understand that.

     Lieden: As long as it's not five-hundred-thousand or more.

     Bongo: Hey, don't overstep!  How much I give to campaigns is my business.

     Lieden: You went to Harvard?

     Bongo: Yes.

     Lieden: I went to Harvard.

     Bongo: No you didn't.  You went to the University of Delaware, and Syracuse College of Law.  You were in higher education conveniently when the draft was going on.

     Lieden: Harvard, I loved Harvard.  Good old Razorbacks!  Or is it the Huffers?

     Bongo: Harvard Crimson.

     Lieden: Like blood, yeah, hey, King Crimson on the hi-fi!  "The rusted chains of prison moons are shattered by the sun..." yeah, weird writing.  During my psychedelic phase I drove around Syracuse in a Ford van looking for seekers after truth to hang out with, get stoned with, you know, do the Wild Thing with.  We even drank beer sometimes.  Hookers, we picked them up.  We stole a motorboat, joy rode down to Trenton, abandoned the boat, used the money we found on the boat to go crazy in a weekend bash.  Trenton, oh boy, smashing things in Trenton, 1970, King Crimson, grass, man, (low voice) the grass, plentiful and good-smelling, like chestnuts roasting on an open fire, (back to normal voice) Jack Frost melting and dying and losing his mind as you look at him perishing in the sun!

     Bongo: Have you been taking your medication?

     Lieden: Bitch, I'm gonna forget you asked me that!  Did you know I was trapped inside a hologram?

     Bongo: I saw a YouTube video last night that claims we all might be holographic projections deriving from the inner surface of the expanding universe.  Sounds all right by me.  I like the illusion I inhabit.

     Lieden: Thirty-nine years ago, I did the math, I went after Social Security, proposing a fifty percent tax.

     Bongo: Sounds rather steep.

     Lieden: Of course it is.  It's almost too much, but it leaves room for recipients of Social Security to wonder what might be coming.

     Bongo: Keep those hoi polloi shivering in ignorance of what their masters may do.

     Lieden: You got it, chum!  Anyway, there I was, trapped inside a hologram, no joke!  I was in Wilmington in 1959.  I was Moe, but I was seventeen year old Morris Lieden.  

     Bongo: I was briefed on the experiment.

     Lieden: By whom?

     Bongo: By Bill Bomb.

     Lieden: That collapsing off-ramp of destruction?

     Bongo: He has his position.

     Lieden: And I will have mine.  Thank you, Mr. President, for the money.  I'll make good use of it.  I have a lad in mind to make the first campaign ad.

     Bongo: I don't want to know more, Moe.  I really don't care about anything except gratifying my own pursuits.

     Lieden: May God water your brain with wisdom.

     Bongo: You too, Moe.

To be continued...

Vic Neptune

     

     

       

     

         

     

     

 

     

    

      

Bonkers McLunatic, Bath Salts Experimenter

      Pot of gold at end of rainbow stolen.

     I wonder if I'll have money when I'm eighty.  Memory.  It's 1993, I'm cutting across a public space with paved walks and a hillock with a blanket, someone's rolled up possessions, backpack, other items lying out, but who steals from a bum?  Capitalists?  

     The owner of this home on the faded winter green wasn't around.  I left three one dollar bills under a macramé hat.

     There used to be a poet in my town, self-published two books of verse while homeless, hanging out in the main downtown coffee shop.  I had a copy of one of his books which he handed out to me and several other coffee shop patrons.  I remember he spelled poem as ploem.  

     He stepped in front of a train one night.  Stopped traffic flow on several avenues for quite a while.  Lights from the coppers, the blue and red oscillations, why can't they shut those fucking things off?  One requires black curtains shutting out all inside light and preventing outside light from coming in.  My friend lived near the death of Robert Kachur by locomotive with tons of rolling steel and the mathematics of inertia behind it.  He wore a cloth cap.  I've wondered if his cap was the one I left the three dollars in?

     With Google's handy Inflation Calculator I find that three dollars in 1993 was the equivalent now of six dollars.  Giving a bum a six dollar tip these days would seem extravagant to some.

     Six dollars doesn't buy two gallons of gas in my area or any other part of the United States.  Two avocados for five dollars at my grocery store.  An extra buck added to the cost of peanut butter.  A variety of Jif recalled.  My car had its airbags replaced.  Turns out metal shrapnel can blast a driver and passenger in their faces.  Get those bags out of my car!  Problem fixed, free of charge, they even had an old man drive me home so I could wait out the surgery on my car, my precious Marilyn, in the comfort of my home.  I got a lot done waiting for word of my blue beauty's recovery and readiness to vroom and zoom on pavement wet or dry.

     Flash forward ten months.  The airbags in my car, I'm informed by letter, contain a defect: metal shrapnel may fly at the faces of the passenger and driver when the airbags deploy.  Wow, the manufacturers of that airbag in Japan really didn't figure out how to not explode shrapnel at drivers' and passengers' faces.  

     The country that produces twenty percent of the world's high grade wheat is a war zone.  How will that harvest be affected, resulting in what famines where?

     Joe Biden has invaded another country: Somalia.  Bombing it, sure, lots of bombs.  Trump bombed the shit out of Somalia, but Joe has sent in ground troops to help the Somali military combat al-Shabaab.  I'm sure that after twenty years of fighting them, this time will work and won't turn into a quagmire.  In the Pentagon they want to avenge the 1993 Blackhawk Down scenario, the U.S. troops dragged dead through Mogadishu's streets.  We dismember children with our missile shrapnel but a U.S. soldier dragged dead through a foreign capitol is the worst thing ever.

     The problem with America is one of control.  Look at your own life.  To what extent do you control everything and everyone in your life?  Do the people in your life do what you want them to do?  Do things always go your way with money?  With relationships?  Do your fellow citizens not like it when you steal from them and murder them, while pretending there's nothing to be concerned about?  

     Obvious reasons for why the world is the way it is:  Trade relationships, natural resources competition, competing first world powers, chaos generated for profit's sake, greed, long-time foreign policy goals carried out despite Democratic or Republican Party control.  Hegemony is America's middle name now.  We want to be the Uni-Power, the dominant.  It's funny looking at Antony Blinken, Secretary of State and formerly one of Obama's world-wreckers.  Blinken looks like Dana Carvey, the Saturday Night Live comedian known for his impression of President George Bush, the first one.  Carvey is just a mild-looking slightly built man with a harmless look about him.  Blinken, though harmless-looking, is a mass murderer, coup artist, liar, and fomenter of war in Ukraine.  A wonderful man, in other words, the Nobel Peace Prize must go to him, because nothing means anything.

     And that is the coming legacy, maybe, for Joe Biden's time as President.  The era when nothing means anything.  We've come through a pandemic during which the CDC and World Health Organization lied repeatedly about Covid-19, about its origins in a laboratory.  Fauci, set up as an exemplar by the news media, someone to rely on in a time of uncertainty, the sane voice in the Trump administration, even though no one asked why Fauci didn't have qualms about accepting work from a man like Donald Trump. Nor have they asked why Fauci accepts the same work from Biden.  Fauci has no problem being chief medical advisor to mass murdering racists.  

     The censorship of the Biden era contributes to the nothing means anything scenario.  Hunter Biden's laptop was Hunter Biden's laptop, authenticated and written about in Glenn Greenwald's revelatory October 2020 article about Joe Biden, Hunter, and Joe's brother; shady business dealings in Ukraine and the People's Republic of China, pay for play shit because Joe was Veep at the time.  The article was attacked in the major press, no one else covered Candidate Biden's influence peddling for personal gain in foreign countries.  The New York Times just recently published a story confirming what's been known for a year and a half: the Hunter Biden laptop is Hunter Biden's laptop.  No one in major news media will retract their numerous stories about how the Hunter laptop story is Russian propaganda.  Russiagate, now proven to have been concocted by the Clinton campaign in 2016 before the election, prepared Americans for a new wave of distrusting Russia, which could lead to nuclear war.  In that case, it's not a stretch to say that a major contributor to the end of the world would be Hillary Clinton, "Queen of warmongers," as Tulsi Gabbard dubbed her.   

     Rain all day where I live.  Looking out at it in the place where I work I thought of a moment in a Merchant Ivory film, call it The Waning Moon, strings on the soundtrack, the protagonist looking through the leaded pane, shadows of rainwater traveling across the face.  Suddenly it's an Oliver Stone film, car crash, airbag shrapnel in the face, hell on wheels at ninety miles an hour in a thirty-five zone, it's Bonkers McLunatic, Bath Salts Experimenter, starring Nick Cage.

     

Vic Neptune  

     

         

         

The Ratfuck Bastard Conspiracy Part Thirteen

      Doug Gard, driving his rental, a blue 2020 Volkswagen Aspen, seats six comfortably.  Hands on the steering wheel, ten and two, good for you, boo hoo hoo.  I'm on my way, Dinah.  I'm bringing Beak back.  I expect wifely reward at bedtime tonight.

     General Beak, in full uniform, had simply packed his bag, objected not at all, verbally, and taken his place in the rental's front passenger.  It is, thank God, a comfortable ride, Beak thinks, gloomy for the first time since his mother refused to let him watch Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.  He thought it was a werewolf movie.  He was ten.

     Gard: General?

     Beak: Yes, First Gentleman?

     Gard: Have you considered what it will mean for your career if you defy the will of my wife?

     Beak: I'm a man of principle.  Any oath I take is an oath I won't break, I swear it by Space!

     Gard: Space Force!

     Beak: I have Major Tunage, Space Force Chief Musicologist and Frequency Expert, composing the Space Force theme song.  I've asked for rousing, but eerie, tense, but fluttery.  I want flutes and piccolos, brass, lots of brass in the climax, which will go on for seven minutes.  I've written down for the Major my list of requirements.  If he fails to meet my requirements I shall give him a different job in this man's Space Force.

     Gard: You're supposed to say "this person's Space Force."

     Beak: What are you?  PC?  And look at your face in the rearview, I'll steer.

     Gard: Ah yes, I missed a spot.  I'll kerchief it.  See, I have a kerchief.  My mother said, "Never leave home without a kerchief."

     Beak: I can steer the car but I'd prefer not to.

     Gard: Oh, I see another spot.  Red by the corner of my mouth, it just kind of blended in with the surrounding skin.  I've been called a ruddy guy.

     Beak: First Gentlemen, please don't bother with it now.  I'll remind you when the car is still.  Turn your eyes to the road, drop the handkerchief--

     Gard: The what?

     Beak: Kerchief.  Drop it.  Take the wheel, I don't want to drive anymore.  It's awkward from this position.  

     Gard: Driverless cars (takes the wheel, Beak breathes out loudly and settles in his comfortable seat), I'm not sure I approve.  What if some CIA tool takes over the Transportation Department and then the CIA controls the roads, the cars, the music we play in our cars, total control, is that what they want?  Why?  So they can manipulate us in a Matrix-like computer program, oh yes, we're going to fit snug inside a computer program, General Beak, we'll unite with the Troniverse."

     Beak: The what?

     Gard: Maybe wrong generation I'm talking to.  In my day, Tron showed us the world of computers, meaning, the insides of Computers.

     Beak: Who is Tron?

     Gard: Bruce Boxleitner.  Tron is a movie, Mr. Out of Touch!

     Beak: It deals with computers?

     Gard: Yes!  Are you quick to pick up on things!  You must get voted Smartest Joint Chief of the Month over and over again.

     Beak: It's an informal low stakes affair.  I sometimes win.

     Gard: Good for you.  Must give you major wood to command Space Force.

     Beak: If I take your meaning, you're using slang to describe a man's erection--

     Gard: Or a boy's.

     Beak: True.  In any case, said erection is exciting, like the hard spaceships exploring our galaxy in the near future.

     Gard: Near future?

     Beak: Oh yes, what with developments in space travel, the Triton mission launches from Mars orbit tomorrow, but you already know that, I take it?

     Gard: Why would I know about Triton?  I'm an Earther.  I command a minuscule but significant portion of God's Earth, my office in the East Wing of the White House.  I don't need God's Triton.

     Beak: I plan to retire there once Muskrat Corporation terraforms it.  I want to see Neptune first thing each dawn that comes around every five days and twenty-one hours.

     Gard: That makes for a long work day.  That would be like working forty hours a day.

     Beak: I'll be retired.  And in any case, workers will have work shifts, as they do here on Earth.

     Gard: Good old Earth.

     Beak: Earth has nothing on Space.  Space is black, Space is huge, Space surrounds us, Space gives way before us, Space is everywhere, Space is nothing, Space is everything, without Space there is only Time, join Space Force and see Space!

     Gard: An awfully fine improvised poem, General Beak.

     Beak: I can't take credit for it.  My code of honor forbids it.  I recited the Space Force pledge.  Every recruit, every officer candidate says the pledge in a solemn ceremony you wouldn't understand.

     Gard: Why wouldn't I understand it?

     Beak: You're an outsider.  A civilian.

     Gard: I considered joining the Army when I was eighteen. 

     Beak: What changed your mind?

     Gard: The recruiter, a Sergeant Somebody, came on to me.

     Beak: I find that hard to believe.

     Gard: I was aghast, too.  He called me several times.  He offered to pick me up in his car, or maybe it was a company car, like a Jeep.  He wanted to give me the rundown on the benefits of hooking my star to the world's greatest military machine.  It sounded exciting, but I didn't quite feel the major wood, and I was into girls.

     Beak: The Sergeant may have simply wanted to make it easy for you to get to the recruiting station.

     Gard: He wanted to fuck me, Beak, okay?  I'm in no doubt.  I'm taking this exit.  I have pee pain.  

     

     Beak purses his lips, shakes his head.  Silence for a while, then Doug plays Chapter Four of Wells's The Invisible Man.  Beak listens to the story but muses too about the President (the current one, his Commander-in-Chief) and what she may want to tell him.  Had there been a development in Musk's invasion plans, Beak would've received hasty word.  Maybe the President wants Lieden-scuttlebutt, Beak thinks.  Whatever the case, I'm not giving in on anything I want to accomplish before I go to Heaven.

     Mug "Muggles" Porterblix, Jennifer Psyop's new boss at MSNBC Dodo, has an L-shaped office.  Back there she can see the end of a double bed and red wallpaper while the rest of the office has brown and gold wallpaper.  His football-shaped head is indeed wider than it is tall.  He looks like a cartoon, a mob boss in Hollywood in 1954, brown suit, pink carnation in his lapel, thin mustache hugging his upper lip, he's a cliche with a game ball head.  On his desk, a silver-plated skull polished to a mirror.  There are no papers on his desk, no computer in the room, but a naked curved knife hangs on a wall and a suit of armor worn by Charles Laughton stands stoutly in one corner.  

     Psyop: Sir, how do you get by without a computer?

     Mug: My assistant Carol has a laptop, it's not hers, it's the company's.  My business I conduct on that laptop.  

     Psyop: What if Carol loses the laptop?  Or damages it?  What if information is lost, or worse, published eventually, like with Happy Lieden's laptop.

     Mug: That was Russian disinformation.

     Psyop: The New York Times confirms the laptop as authentic Happy Lieden.  

     Mug: Russian disinformation.  I say that because I'm a Democrat.  

     Psyop: But you know the Happy Lieden laptop is authentic?

     Mug: I haven't researched the subject.  You have your opinion, that's fine.  Moving on.  Do you plan on having children?

     Psyop: I haven't thought about it.

     Mug: I've finally met a woman who hasn't thought about having children.  Are you a saint?  Or a liar?

     Psyop: I'm an experienced pundit, I've logged umpteen hours on cable news explaining the President's thinking--

     Mug: He thinks?

     Psyop: Do not bait me into arguing the point I will not make which is that Morris Lieden is senile, I am not an anti-Liedenist.  

     Mug: That's good to know.  We're not behind Lieden anymore.  We're looking at Cassandra Blade for twenty-four.

     Psyop: She's too old.

     Mug: That's ageist.

     Psyop: She's unpopular.

     Mug: So was Yoko Ono, for a time.

     Psyop: Okay then, Blade.  Are we going to promote her on this network?

     Mug: App.

     Psyop: App.

     Mug: We'll give a generous portion of airtime to Blade surrogates, to Blade herself, and I was wondering if you, Jennifer, would like to do the interview?

     Psyop: With Cassandra Hartliss Blade?  You bet I would!

     Mug: I've already assigned it to Morton Grumbles.

     Psyop: Is he still around?  I thought he retired after he flashed that kid.

     Mug: Allegedly flashed, never proven beyond the shadow of a dick.

     Psyop: Very funny, may I call you Boss?

     Mug: Yeah, why not.

     Psyop: About Mort Grumbles.  How old is he now?  Ninety?

     Mug: Ninety-five, but he's sharp.

     Psyop: Can he bend down and pick up something without hurting himself?

     Mug: You're getting old too.

     Psyop: I exercise on a daily basis.

     Mug: You got the kind of skin that goes haywire in the sunlight.  That's too bad.  You're not a bad-looking woman.

     Psyop: (smiles, moves aside her hair, laughs in her nose, then frowns) 

     Mug: All right.  Tomorrow, lunch time, say, twelve?  Or are you a late luncher?  Me, I like twelve.

     Psyop: You want to have lunch with me?

     Mug: Discussion of your role here is essential don't you think?  Eating lunch while having the meeting will kill the two birds idea with one BB.  

     

     Psyop studies the man's glistening face.  He sweats no matter what.  He produces what he calls the "Mug Lubricant," a greasy sweat making a good lube.  Of course he wants to bed Jennifer Psyop.  He knows she's single.  He knows she's a bullshit artist, like he is.  He figures they'll bullshit their way into his or her bed.  She'll land on his football head, recover a fumble.  

     Haven't had a redhead in five years.  That Maureen O'Sullivan chick.  Not Maureen O'Sullivan, but she looked like her, like Jane from Tarzan of the Apes.  Now that was a film.  Weissmuller, champion swimmer, what a body that guy had, but practically no acting ability.  His voice was high too.  Unfortunate.  Back to Jennifer.  Compliment her you dummy.

     Mug: You have great screen presence, Jennifer.  That's largely why I hired you.  The rest, well, I like to have good-looking women working here.  So far, there are thirteen I want to get busy with if you know what I mean.

     Psyop: Is that so?

     Mug: I do not want to get busy with you.

     Psyop: Okay.

     Mug: It's because you're a little too refined.  I suspect you've even read Dostoyevsky?

     Psyop: I've read Dostoyevsky.

     Mug: And Proust?

     Psyop: Yes.

     Mug: Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities?

     Psyop: (embarrassed, head down) Yes.

     Mug: I like the color sea foam on you.  That blouse rocks my world.  Wear it to lunch.  You'll be receiving a folder of information to absorb before you interview Mrs. Blade.  That interview is set for this Saturday at two p.m. to three p.m.  Be prepared.  That's all for now.  And, Jennifer, twelve noon pm sharp, my driver will pick you up, be ready or he'll take off without you and I'll be pissed.

     Psyop: Understood.

     Mug: Go.  Show me the back of you, yes, the back of you as you go...close the door!  (leans back, unzips his pants).

     Oval Office.  President Parris at her desk.  Secretary of State Sneffen, right butt cheek on that side of the desk.  Secretary of Defense Holroyd, without his assistant for once, sits in the big armchair opposite the desk.  On the couch, General Beak seated next to General Bomb.  Across from them, Doug and Cassandra Blade, advisor to the President.

     Parris (standing, walking around the room throughout this scene): General Beak, tell us about the mental condition of Moe Lieden.

     Beak: President Lieden has never been in finer shape!  His mental acuity dwarfs even mine, Madame President!  To know him is to love him.  Just to see him smile, makes my life worthwhile.  

     Bomb: The man's gay for that hair pervert Lieden.

     Beak: I am not, sky jockey!

     Bomb: Cosmos humper!

     Beak: Parachute-needer!

     Bomb: Pressure-suit required!

     Beak: Can't beat the frictionlessness of Space!  Admit it!  Space is better than your Air!

     Bomb: You wouldn't exist without air, General Beak!  Lungs, man, have you forgotten about them?

     Beak: Would that I could transform into a vapor and travel into your lungs, leaving an irritant behind.

     Bomb: We're working on a weapon that can do that.

     Beak: Really?  Can some be given to Space Force?

     Bomb: Yes, but you give me one of your rockets, a good one.

     Beak: For what purpose?

     Bomb: An Air Force Space Program that will eat up what's left of the budget, fuck the poor.

     Beak: Fuck the poor.

     Bomb: Common ground.  It's always good to find it when engaged in a fight.  Let's drop this bickering and cooperate with each other.

     Beak: Agreed.  What next?

     Bomb: I want everyone to realize the seriousness of preventing Moe Lieden from becoming President again.  I'm sorry to say it, but he's crazy.  

     Sneffen: You're not sorry to say it, you head-bludgeoning oaf.  You're a violent man, Bomb.  You have no idea of the extent to which President Parris and I have discussed what to do about you.

     Bomb: Is that so?  Well, I'm accustomed to scrutiny.  I nevertheless maintain a carmatic overdriven pulsating decru.  What does that mean?  I can't tell you.

     Cassandra Blade: What about Elon Musk?  He's set to launch his battle fleet according to the latest intelligence.  Are we prepared to repel 2,000 warships and a reported 900 troop ships filled with genetically engineered slave soldiers bred to fight in Earth's gravity?  

     Parris: Get a grip, Cassie.  I talked with Elon Musk just two hours ago.  He's doing fine.  I asked him about the supposed battle fleet.  He said the ships are supply vessels for the long trip to Triton.  Once they're out there they're gonna be out there (laughs).

     Doug: Beak works with that traitor Lieden on his Lieden '24 campaign.  Serving the opponent of my wife, you scoundrel, you heel, you snake in the grass, you butthole.

     Parris: General Beak, I want an answer to this question, or sugar, I'm gonna have you demoted.  Yup, no more Joint Chiefs for you.  I'll put you in command of some sighting station in southern Nebraska.

     Beak: What's the question.

     Parris: How well-organized is Moe Lieden's campaign, and who, if anyone, is the weakest link?

     Beak: It's an efficiently run enterprise.  Too many attractive young women for my liking.  Very distracting, and they all have the Lieden-preferred long hair.  The weakest link?  That would be President Lieden himself.

     

     Doug erupts in laughter.

     Parris: Doug?  Care to share the joke? (laughs).

     Doug: That show, The Weakest Link!  Remember the stern butchy English broad hosting that show?

     Parris: Doug, watch your language.

     Doug: I'm not knocking the English broad.  She was good at her job.  Would've made a fine President.

     Sneffen: Another Douglas Gard moment of perfection.

     Doug: Why do you hang around like a bad smell, Sniffen?

     Sneffen: I have every right to be here.

     Parris: I invited him, Doug, settle down.  Moe Lieden, the weakest link in the Lieden campaign, hmm, let this first African-American woman President of the United States cogitate on that. (paces, swinging her arms--this is how she knocked down the Churchill bust).  I'm just gonna brainstorm out loud.  Feel free to join in, anybody.  Lieden.  Schmieden.  Grieden.  Smieden.  Smeyes.  Pterodactyl.  Rastafarian.  Good weed.  Where can I get me some? (laughs).

     Doug (joining in): Fire General Beak.

     Cassandra Blade: No fire General Beak!

     Beak: Thank you, Madame Secretary.

     Cassandra Blade: Essential you are to the control of Space.

     Parris: Space cowboy!  Yippee-yay-koh-tie!

     Bomb: Madwomen of Chaillot.

     Parris: Space monkey!

     Bomb: Government functions best when in the hands of the military.

     Parris: (stopping short of Generals Beak and Bomb.  They look down at her) You are a couple of tall fucks!  No short beds for you boys! (ambles on).  Lieden, the hair angle!  Lieden loves girls' hair.  Well, we'll invite him to a White House function, lots of invites to women and girls with long beautiful hair.

     Bomb: You intend to bait President Lieden with underage girls and women?

     Parris: Oh, they'll just put up with him like everyone else has.

     Bomb: This is not a good idea, Madame President.

     Cassandra Blade: Oh why not, Bill?  Bill Bomb, afraid to use a few girls to show Moe Lieden up for the hair pervert he really is!  I'll make sure my Saudi Arabian assistant has gourmet microwave popcorn and Margaritas on hand when I watch Moe Lieden lose his shit around the most hair he's been near for quite some time.

     Parris: It'll be fine, General Bomb.  Doug, as my special advisor, what do you think?

     Gard: I think Secretary Blade's offer of Margaritas and popcorn sounds terrific.  When shall I arrive for the fun?

     Blade: I didn't mean with you, dumbass!  I'm going to enjoy the time with my daughter and my assistant, is that all right with you, Douglas?

     Gard: Naturally, I understood you to mean you wanted me to join you.  I'm hard to resist as a fun guest.  I know a card game or two.  I was Trivial Pursuit champion two years in a row on my dorm floor.  I lost my virginity when I was thirteen, and didn't have sex again until I was twenty-two.  

     Blade: Long wait.  

     Gard: I handled it pretty well.  Sure, masturbation, but mainly, I learned the discipline of waiting.  Like now.  I wait for my wife to be done with this meeting.  We plan to fuck as soon as we're done here.  Nobody seems in a hurry to end this.

     Blade: Drop trou and start masturbating.  Everyone but your wife will leave.

     Gard: She'd be mad at me, though.  I'd spend five minutes trying to calm her down, and then she wouldn't be in the mood to fuck, even though she promised it once the meeting would end.  

     Blade: Do whatever you're gonna do, Doug.  I know my destiny.

     Gard: Everyone, may I have your attention?!

     Parris: Doug?

     Gard: I want everyone here to know that...I love my wife.  I love her so much.  We don't often get time together, to, you know, press our bodies together and get all warm and stuff comes from our bodies.  We need time together.  Each man, each woman, requires alone time with each other.  They need to snuggle.  They need to fuck.  They need to fall asleep together, passions quenched.  Dinah, end this meeting soon!  Your plan to show Moe Lieden to be a hair sniffer won't do anything because people already know about it and he still became President.  

     Parris: Make a good suggestion to replace it, then, Doug.

     Sneffen: Yes Doug.  What's your suggestion?

     Gard: Same as yours, Mr. Sneffen.  Tell the assembled group of VIPs what our suggestion is.

     Parris: Arthur?  I'm glad to hear you and Doug have made up enough to collaborate on ideas for my administration.  

     Sneffen: Yes, our collaborations, in spite of our mutual disdain, we are able to look past such petty grudges worthy of a fishwife.  The idea, Madame President, is to invite Moe Lieden to a White House gathering where other invitees are women and girls with lovely hair, all of it clean for they are guests at the White House and one must wash one's hair the morning of.

     Parris: It's the same idea!

     Sneffen: It's the best idea!  Fuck all other ideas!  No more ideas accepted!  It's the best!  It's our means of destroying Moe Lieden's campaign!  He will misbehave, oh he will misbehave around all that hair!  

     Parris: General Bomb?  Do you still tediously object?

     Bomb: I stand back, neutral.  Do what you will.

     Parris: Thank you.  General Beak?  What will you do?  Go to Lieden, tell him his invite to the White House is a trap?

     Beak: With straight beautiful shiny hair the cheese?  Yes, I'll tell him, but he'll go anyway.  I agree, too, with your husband.  The public will see images of President Lieden smelling hair and nothing will happen except chatter.

     Parris: I happen to believe otherwise.  Thank you Generals, thank you Arthur, thank you Ray--

     Holroyd: We never got to my report.

     Parris: Oh dear.  Can you make it in less than a minute?

     Holroyd: I'll shrink it. (Opens a binder, flips forward several plastic covered pages) We tried two Madness Inducers, both handheld, on the city of Mecalia in Bunzunuto.  Left wing gangs doing vandalism, beating up cops and citizens, terrible stuff.  Three days of the madness inducer turned up to three and then four on the last day led to mass violence, 427 people killed, 990 businesses looted, spray-paint on the capitol building steps, over a thousand homes vandalized, ninety-seven reported rapes, weapons depot broken into and emptied by rebels, cars stolen or burned, a limo carrying the Foreign Minister overturned, Foreign Minister kidnapped, awaiting demands.  Tight beams will focus from the inducers on the Parliament building day after tomorrow, should be wild.  Expect politicians to kill one another with their bare hands, with pens, with rolled up papers shoved down throats.

     Parris: All right, thank you, Ray--

     Holroyd: I have more--

     Doug: Hey, Ray!  You're cockblocking the First Gentleman!  

     Holroyd: Oh.  Madame President, may I schedule a private meeting with you?  I can speak with your secretary as I go out.

     Doug: It's fine with me.  I don't have to attend every one of my wife's meetings.  

     Parris: Yes, Ray, that's fine.  Schedule a meeting with Leonie.

     Sneffen: Leonie's new?

     Parris: Yes.  Brand spanking! (laughs).

     Sneffen: Did you know there's a West Wing betting pool on how long your employees last with you?

     Parris: No there isn't.

     Sneffen: Oh yes there is!  

     Blade: It's true, Dinah.  I put in twenty bucks myself that this Leonie won't last more than two weeks.

     Parris: Cassie!  Am I that bad of a boss?

     

     (Everybody laughs, except Dinah and Doug).

     Blade: (laughing loudest): Oh Dinah!  Just read a few articles about your former employees and how they feel about you!  You're the Boss from Hell.  

     Parris: I will kindly ask you to leave my office, Cassandra, and my employ.

     Blade: You can't be serious?

     Parris: Go.  

     Blade: Rather unexpected, but okay.  We'll see who comes out on top in twenty-four.

     Parris: You're still here?

     Blade: I'm going.  Good day, gentlemen.  Good luck serving this louse.  After all I've done for you, Dinah, what a shame.

     Parris: Artie, close the door.  Don't want to have to look at that pitiful loser looking back at me like she expects me to change my mind.

     Bomb: I must say, Madame President, I'm impressed with your decision-making and your carrying it out with admirable force suitable in a Commander-in-Chief.

     Parris: Thank you...may I call you Bill? (smiles sweetly and sexily).

     Bomb: (suddenly aware he's getting a hard-on.  The President's forceful firing of Madame Secretary Blade reveals a layer of Dinah Parris the General didn't know about.  At this moment he determines he will have her as his mistress).  Bill will be fine with me coming from your mouth, Madame President.

     Parris: Consequences? (She looks at everyone, including a lingering look at Bomb's hungry gray-blue eyes).  Of dismissing Cassie Blade?  Am I going to be the target of the Blade machine?

     Bomb: I forbid that!  The Blades, parents and daughter, are now enemies of the Parris administration!  You have the full backing of the Joint Chiefs, right, General Beak?

     Beak: I remain loyal to President Lieden.

     Parris: Go to him, then!  We don't need you to conquer space, right, Bill?

     Bomb: Oh god you've got the right idea, Madame President!

     Beak: A civil war between Space Force and Air Force would be fun to war game, but best if fought in reality, IN SPACE!!!

     Bomb: We shall prevail.  Our ingenuity, our talent, our endless supply of money from taxpayers.  Madame President, may I have a private conference with you.  It's of the utmost importance.

     Parris: Very well.  You heard the man, everyone out.  You too, Doug.

     Doug: First Ray, now you, General Cockblock?

     Bomb: Forgive me, First Gentleman.  It won't take long.

     Doug: It better not, and you better keep your dick in your pants.

     Bomb: Why do you say that?

     Doug: (murmuring) I'm your brother, man, I saw it, it's cool.  

     Bomb: What?

     Doug: Your rod, man.  Impressive rod, maybe bigger than mine.  What?  Seven inch?  Eight?

     Bomb: Go away from me.

     Doug: I'll say seven.  Little Bobby Heinlein is six and a half.

     Bomb: Little Bobby who?

     Doug: That's my dick.  You have a name for yours?

     Bomb: I do not.

     Doug: I'll name it, then.  Easy Does It

     Bomb: Easy Does It is--

     Doug: The name of your dick.

     Bomb: An absurd name.

     Doug: The only name, pal--

     Parris: Doug!  Get out of here!  I have an important meeting with Bill.

     

     Doug leaves.  Bomb takes the seat before Parris.

     Bomb (smiles): Yes, I'm just an old airman.  I started out loading bombs onto F-105s in South Vietnam.  Got into flight school and officer candidate school in the seventies, when nothing was happening war-wise.  My wife is unfaithful to me with another general.

     Parris: I'm sorry to hear that about that shift in topic.

     Bomb: Before today I never saw you as a woman.  If that sounds strange, forgive me.  I'm what's called smitten, President Parris.  With you.  Forgive me for being so straightforward, but I need to get it out.  I hope you say yes to a tumble.  It would be good for both of us to let off some good old steam.

     Parris: You want to bang me?

     Bomb: Yes.

     Parris: All right, take everything off and meet me on the couch.

     Beak, standing outside the front doors of the White House, on the phone with Hector Farrbarrhuber.

     Hector: Don't ask me where Moe Lieden is.  He wandered off out of the Scranton office.  No one's seen him since Tuesday.  

     Beak: Two days.  Hector, find him.  Deploy your network.  You'll all be well-compensated.  Whoever finds him will get a bonus and a date with Susannah Rothschild.

     Hector: Star of the hit show, He Rationalizes, She Intuits.

     Beak: In its third season.  

     Hector: Your incentives make me want to find this man.  I will find him and win the prizes.  I will bang the shit out of your Susannah Rothschild.

     Beak: She's not my Susannah Rothschild.

     Hector: A way of speaking I have.  Any other shit work you got for me?

     Beak: Yes.  Get the dirt on General William Bomb.  He's up to some naughty business, even now, I believe, if that boner of his during the meeting tells me anything.

     Hector: Boner?

     Beak: Bomb's boner, Hector.  Having seen it in the shower I can attest to its impressive girth and length.  

     Hector: You all a bunch of gay boys, huh?

     Beak: Do you understand me, go after Bill Bomb!  Find out the skinny on that snake!  Reach into his guts and pull out the truth!  

     Hector: For that you pay extra.

     Beak: Do a good job, Hector, there's a future for you in Space Force.

     Faint voice in background on Hector's line: Space Force!

     Beak: Who was that?

     Hector: Moe Lieden, he just walked in.

     Beak: Where are you?  

     Hector: At the Scranton office.  The help is all here, too.  Lieden's in his office.  Now, about paying me.          

     Beak: For what?

     Hector: For finding Lieden.  You said a bonus comes to the finder of Lieden, that's me.  I get the date with Susannah Rothschild, too.

     Beak: You're not her type.

     Hector: I fed a guy to a starving alligator once.  That's the kind of crazy that might get all over you, General, if you don't follow through with that date.  I'll be clean.  I'll have good breath, I'll get a haircut.  

     Beak: Very well.  I appreciate your sincerity.

     Hector: No problem.  What do you want me to do about Lieden?  You got a message for him?

     Beak: Tell him to stay put.  I'm coming to get him.

     Hector: He wants to know, in a plane?

     Beak: In a plane, yes, a government passenger plane.

     Hector: He wants a Lear.

     Beak: This will be a small passenger plane.  It's a short trip in any case.

     Hector: He says he wants the comfort of a Lear.  With a stewardess.

     Beak: I will arrange for a Lear jet to take us back to Washington.  He's been invited to a function.  There will be many people there, including many women with lovely hair, and many underage girls with lovely hair.

     Hector: I had him at "Lear jet."

     Beak: I'll let you know when you can date Susannah Rothschild.

     Hector: Make sure it's not when she's having her period.

     Beak: Your crassness is unmatched in my experience.

     Billy Boy Blade's office in Harlem.  Feet on his desk, he's waiting for his noon blowjob and listening to his wife's account of her final meeting as Advisor to the President, salary, 9,000 dollars per week.  

     Cassandra: I'll miss that salary.  I put most of it into my assassination fund.  

     Billy Boy: I would've liked to have seen Dinah Parris's face when she fired you.

     Cassandra: I suppose you would've gotten off on that scene?

     Billy Boy: Most definitely.

     Cassandra: I will destroy Dinah Parris.  I'll team with Moe Lieden.  We'll take her out of consideration. We know how to bait her into saying inappropriate things.

     Billy Boy: She does that on her own.

     Cassandra: I'll show her.  She'll regret the day she shit-canned Cassandra Hartliss Blade!

     Billy Boy: I'll call her, see if I can't sweet talk her into hiring you back.

     Cassandra: You will not!

     Billy Boy: Now that you're her enemy how will you deal with her allies, like Bill Bomb?  My Pentagon Fink called and said the military is on Parris's side for the time being.  Even Artie Sneffen seems like he's a Parassite.  

     Cassandra: Political opportunist that one!  When I'm President I'm going to dangle a choice position before Arthur, maybe Vice President, or better yet, CIA Director, he'd love that.  

     Billy Boy: Then yank it away from him after the pundits have chattered about it for a week.

     Cassandra: Exactly.  Act nice towards Arthur Sneffen, statesman of statesmen, our own Thomas Jefferson.

     Billy Boy: You expend more thought thinking of revenge against Sneffen than you do thinking how you're going to get elected in two years.  A lot can happen in two years.

     Cassandra: Yeah, in two years you went from getting blowjobs from that woman to denying on TV that it happened.

     Billy Boy: I denied having sexual relations with that woman who I won't name because you get upset when you hear her name.  Sexual relations is penetration of the penis into the vagina.

     Cassandra: Don't make it sound so romantic!

     Billy Boy: Women!  All so irrational!  Get the f-bomb outta my office, bee-yotch!

     Cassandra: Billy Boy!

     Billy Boy: Yeah, you're bringing me down.  I don't want to feel down before my lunchtime comfort session.

     Cassandra: Lunchtime is three hours away!

     Billy Boy: You're still here?  Why won't you go away, Cassie?  Take a long vacation.  Contemplate how you'll lose in twenty-four but go full steam ahead anyway.

     Cassandra: Jealous?  That it's me again and not you?  Going for the big chair, Air Force One, meetings, wars, airstrikes, saying one thing to the public and something else to Wall Street types, the power, that's the thing I want, power!  The power to destroy a nation.  The power to rebuild it after destroying it.  The power to command propaganda, the power to crush the will of a people.  Do you remember the episode of Star Trek where Kirk and the others encounter beings from Andromeda Galaxy?  They take over the Enterprise with these transformation belts, converting Kirk's crew into dodecahedrons.  I know, sounds crazy.  The Andromedan leader, a pasty-faced fellow, crushes one of Kirk's red-shirts, kills the young woman.  The way he crushes the poor crew person, I want to crush others like that!  The power to crush!

     Billy Boy: Get a hold of yourself.

     Cassandra: Do you fear my crushing fist?

     Billy Boy: I need to cleanse my palette with some different company.  Get out, Cassie. (buzzes secretary) Yvonne, send someone from the office assistants pool.  Cassie.  I have a meeting in a few minutes.

     Cassandra: A meeting, he says.  Poof!  I'll go.  You'll regret your lack of support.  Oh I know, you support me, but you were snide with me today.  Not acceptable.  No, Billy Boy.  You can't speak to me like that and expect me to not remember.  My crushing ability will only improve with time.  Remember that while you're getting your willy sucked by some high school kid.

     Billy Boy: College age at least.

     Cassie: You're gross and out of shape, why don't you give these girls a break and work out?  If you were thinner and more buff you'd be all right to look at, except for the blotches.  You'd be a blotched buff.  

     Billy Boy: I'm doing fine as I am.  Get out before you cross paths with a much better-looking woman than yourself.

     Cassie: Sleazebag. (she exits). 

     On board a Lear jet commandeered from the NASA Director, the flight back to Washington from Scranton.  General Beak and Moe Lieden, Citizen Lieden, the Regular Guy.  

     Beak: You must accept the invitation, Mr. President.

     Lieden: Of course I'm accepting!  Acres of hair, Beak!  I'm gonna turn down that?

     Beak: That's the problem, sir.  It's a set-up.

     Lieden: A how-budduh-who?

     Beak: The President, the other President, plans to put you in a compromising position, given your fondness for female human hair.

     Lieden: I'll say.  Two bucks on which of us gets the first boner.

     Beak: Mr. President.  You will go to the reception and you will not sniff hair.  You will not--

     Lieden: Not sniff hair!?  How do that?  How do I prevent my nasal cavity from vacuuming up the delicious mingled scents of woman hair, girl hair, brown hair, black hair, afro frizzy, redhead, blonde, even green hair on St. Patrick's day is all right.

     Beak: You must prevent your nose from engaging in hair invasions.

     Lieden: Loving tributes, not invasions, war man!  You think the news media will focus on my smelling hair, the jungle of hair, and that will wreck my campaign.  

     Beak: Yes.

     Lieden: I like you, Beak.  Always looking at the angles, the right angles, the slants.  The straight cascades of soft hair.  Beak, I know you're looking out for my best interests.  So am I, though.  I want the hair boner that's coming to me.  I deserve it!  I got usurped out of my own job by a dimwit, albeit the first African-American female President, a remarkable achievement.

     Beak: You're assuming the press will forget about no doubt hundreds of photos and videos of you sniffing girls' hair?

     Lieden: The press has a collective memory of five seconds.

     Beak: Longer than that.

     Lieden: Five seconds!  I could've gotten away with murder if 9/11 had happened right after.  

     Beak: Don't say things like that.

     Lieden: I have to not be afraid to talk like Don Richman.  Full on honesty.  Can you handle it, motherfucker?

     Beak: I can, but can America?

     Lieden: America's a strong nation.  We've been through challenges, sometimes the outcomes haven't been good.  Sometimes, they've been worse.  But we prevail.  New opportunities arise from chaos.  We build together.  We strive together.  One nation, under God, in-, in-, you know the rest.  We're a GOOD nation!  Our porn industry is second to none!

     Beak: Are you practicing a speech?

     Lieden: To the heartland of America, where the corn comes from, where the cornfed lasses with their long golden locks harden the resolve of America's youth ready to sacrifice and die for their country in far off places nobody ever heard of, where the hell is Ukraine?  I've been there and I don't know where it is!

     Beak: Mr. President, I can tell you where Ukraine is, show you on a map even, but you'll forget and ask again, so I'm reserving my right to disobey any insane order coming from you.

     Lieden: Don't get so serious, Beak.  Gotta have fun on a political campaign.  Gotta generate an artificial reality of excitement, of phones ringing, of campaign workers knocking on doors, interrupting people's days, go away, campaign worker, shoo!  We don't want your kind, and anyway I voted Richman in twenty, regret voting Blade in sixteen.  You think those poor campaign workers, those lovelies with their long smooth to the stroke hair, won't hear such chatter from voters?

     Beak: Who cares what the voters say?

     Lieden: You're right, Beak.  What was I thinking?  I ought to have my head examined.

     Beak: I can arrange that.  Doctor Head, Chief Brain Specialist and Psychiatric Genius Level Visiting Scholar and Teacher at Yale University.

     Lieden: Give him a call.  Is he telepathic?

     Beak: No, I assume not.

     Lieden: You assume because you don't know for sure.  There may be telepaths in your own Space Force.  (Fist pumps) Space Force!

     Beak: (Fist Pumps) Ruler of the Galaxy!

     Lieden: When do I get my own space doughnut to run like a Roman Emperor?  

     Beak: Oh, not for several years.  And they're called Circular Habitation Ecologies With Self-Sustaining Environments, or CHEWSE, pronounced Choo-zee, accent on Choo.  

     Lieden: I can turn mine into a decadent empire with slaves, gladiatorial contests, armies fighting each other?  Sieges?

     Beak: Whatever you want.  Me, I'm for the stars.  Glory be to the galaxy, this galaxy of ours, Milky Way so true, so lighting the path above, milk of Hera's breasts, Juno to the Romans, to Juno shall I go, asteroid hopping to Jupiter, thence to Triton, strap on whatever super-engine Musk Labs have developed and blast off for Proxima Centauri B.  I'll have a crew of hand-picked Valedictorians-only Space Explorers.  They'll get a bellyful of adventure.  Aye, a bellyful.

     Lieden: Can I come?  And why not?

     Beak: You're needed here, Leader.  Only you can overcome the malign forces of Parris and those supporting her.  Bomb is on her side.  Sir, Bomb had an erection in her presence.  We all saw it.

     Lieden: She is an attractive first female African-American President.

     Beak: If you say so--

     Lieden: Oh that's right.  You only see beauty in your ugly wife.

     Beak: Mr. President, under normal circumstances I would throttle you for saying that, but I'm a professional, and I hope you can also be professional when it counts.

     Lieden: Beak!  You know I'm a kidder.  Have you ever kidded me?  You can't kid a kidder.  Margot Kidder, she was something.  I saw Superman five times, ate five tubs of popcorn and drank five big sodas, Doctor Pepper I was into in those days.  Margot Kidder, Doctor Pepper, squash with Bob Kasten, my hammer-throwing practice sessions with projectile-hurling champion Thor Butler, what a kook he was, killed himself with his own hammer.  Swung it around too close, lost his grip and slam, put him on the floor, dead like an impala shot by a hunter with a gun that time in Uganda, I must've accidentally shot two hunters on that trip, when was that?  1980s, or was that the time I rode on a rollercoaster with Idi Amin Dada?  I get these strongmen mixed up.

     Beak: In Space, no such creatures as Idi Amin Dada exist.  If I find such, my ship's cannon will obliterate that Space Scum.  

     Lieden: You better not start a war with an alien race that has better tech than we do.

     Beak: If I see fit to start a war, I will do so by Space!

     Lieden: Can you swear by Space?

     Beak: I have sworn by Space, no oath more holy is.  

     Lieden: (Chuckles).  Backwards talk!  Okay, here goes.  A nice day such it is, agree would you not?

     Beak: Yes.

     Lieden: Cut loose, Beak!  You must have Douglas MacArthur's cock stuck up your rectum.  Nothing wrong with that.  I once had a hairbrush handle in my ass, fit snug as a bug in a rug, with lube, the best lube money can buy, comes in a cardboard box with no indication of what it might be, (low voice) very discreet.

     Beak: Mr. President, are you going to restrain yourself when you're at the function?

     Lieden: No, but good try, Beak.  I understand your concern, but you gotta give this old gentleman a break.  He deserves his hair boner.  Are you really gonna deny him that?

     Beak: I have no control over you, unless you do something violent, or...well, annoying to others.

     Lieden: I know what you're thinking.  Beak.  Don't go to the function, that's an order from your Commander.  I know that technically Dinah Parris is your Commander but she's not here, so it's me, right?

     Beak: Right.

     Lieden: Good impala.  Take the bullet.

     Oval Office.  President Parris meets with Defense Secretary Holroyd, no assistant with him this time.

     Parris: I'm getting the hang of making war (laughs).  I bombed Somalia again yesterday.  I drank a cup of coffee, ate a croissant with olive oil butter and blueberry jam, and unleashed tonnage on poor Somalia.  Nice breakfast rush.

     Holroyd: Killing adrenalizes the bloodthirsty.

     Parris: I've discovered I like it.  I thought I wouldn't, but after my first presidential kill, that labor leader in Gobusluvia, I found homicide on my fellow humanity to be a comfortable fit in my character makeup.

     Holroyd: All Presidents must learn to at least accept murder as a necessity, I'm glad you know the truth, Madame President.

     Parris: Thank you for your politeness.  Tell me, how fares our weapons transfers for Ukraine?

     Holroyd: A well-exercised machine.  The Nazis love our weapons.  

     Parris: I'd be offended if they didn't (laughs).

     Holroyd: I'm here mainly to warn you about Mr. Sneffen.

     Parris: What about Artie?

     Holroyd: His plan is to get Gabrielle Bongo in that big chair come January of twenty-five.  

     Parris: That duplicitous worm!  Do you have evidence?

     Holroyd: He told me so.  You should hear the things he says about you.

     Parris: What does he say?

     Holroyd: You can't resist gossip.

     Parris: Not true!  What else?

     Holroyd: You're stupid.

     Parris: I am not so stupid!  I got an A in Trigonometry!

     Holroyd: Good for you.  High school's over, Madame President.  You're not a cheerleader, you're not a Homecoming Queen, or a Class President.  You're in charge of the world's biggest military machine.  How will you use it?  Unleash it, please!  Put our boots into some country, I don't care which!  

     Parris: Why?

     Holroyd: We need to show the Russians we can invade a sovereign nation.

     Parris: The world knows we've done that.

     Holroyd: Let's invade Belarus.

     Parris: Let's not.

     Holroyd: Okay, how about start something in the Aleutians, fake a Russian invasion there.

     Parris: To what end?  War with Russia?  All out war?

     Holroyd: Don't you just want to kill the Russians?

     Parris: No.

     Holroyd: Our meeting is ended.  I must confer with my group.

     Parris: What?

     Holroyd: You are under scrutiny, Dinah.  Watch out.  I give you this warning not because I'm a Dinah Parris fan, I'm not, but I want you to have a chance to succeed at your job.

     Parris: The knives are out, huh?

To be continued...

Vic Neptune