Cerise and I romped until dawn, so it wasn’t all that pleasant to be awakened at 8:38 this morning by a telephone call, but Caller ID said it was from my sister Rose, therefore filial duty required that I pick up instead of letting it roll over into voice mail.
Rose: Tom, Hank’s scared to take the family down to the Mall for the fireworks.
Tom: Really? Put him on.
Hank: Uh, hello, Tom.
Tom: What’s the matter, Hank? Osama bin Laden got hold of your cojones?
Hank: I, ah, Jesus, Tom, why take the risk? Look at what happened in England!
Tom: You mean that sleeper cell of doctors who tried to blow stuff up all over the UK?
Hank: They drove a flaming vehicle into an airport in Scotland, Tom! I’m just concerned, you know. Why take the whole family right down there on the Mall? I just said we should consider going to the fireworks somewhere else, like Reston or Fairfax City, that’s all.
Tom: Reston? Fairfax City? That’s not the kind of Independence Day strategy I’d expect from a staunch Republican family living within driving distance of the Washington Monument.
Hank: Being patriotic isn’t as easy as it used to be, Tom.
Tom: Being patriotic isn’t supposed to be easy, Mr. Summer Soldier! And just which patriotic event are we celebrating, anyway?
Hank: Ah, um, our independence, I guess.
Tom: From whom?
Hank: Uh, England.
Tom: Correct! So we are, among other things, celebrating blowing up a bunch of Englishmen at Yorktown, Virginia, are we not?
Hank: I guess so.
Tom: So what the hell do you care if somebody else has a similar idea?
Hank: I… I don’t guess I do, Tom.
Tom: All right then. I thought my sister married a man. What, am I wrong about that?
Hank: No, Tom. But on the other hand, the English did get to be our friends later.
Tom: Yeah, sure, after they burned the White House during the War of 1812 and we blew up some more of them at the Battle of New Orleans. Now show the world we Americans aren’t just proud to have thrown the English off our land – twice, no less – we’re also not the least bit scared of Islamofascists!
Hank: All right, Tom – we’ll go.
Tom: Okay, put Rose back on.
Rose: Thanks.
Tom: Any time.
Rose: Bye.
Then, about half past three in the afternoon, my cell phone rang. This time it was my brother, Rob Roy.
Rob: Tom, Katje doesn’t want to go down to the Mall with me and Jason. She’s all freaked out about the car bombs in England.
Tom: Put her on.
Katje: Hi, Tom.
Tom: Rob says you’re scared of the terrorists and don’t want to go down to the Mall tonight.
Katje: Discretion is the better part of valor, you know.
Tom: Not on a national holiday when we celebrate American valor, it isn’t!
Katje: But we’re only three people. We won’t be missed.
Tom: Did the Minute Men at Lexington and Concord say that? “Oh, let Paul Revere and his crew meet those lobsterbacks at the damn bridge. There’s only three of us, we won’t be missed?”
Katje: Uh, no, I guess they didn’t.
Tom: So what’s your problem? You want to run around in a burkha and be forbidden to work? Banned from driving a car? Locked up in the house all day and forced to starve to death if your husband dies?
Katje: No, of course not, but…
Tom: There ain’t no “buts” about it! I thought you Norwegians were Vikings. I thought you laugh in the face of fear and long to die in battle.
Katje: Norwegians long for hot dish and ludefisk, Tom. That other stuff is what the Swedes brag about to the Danes.
Tom: Oh come on, Nordic Queen – you got some guts in that DNA of yours, I know it. Do you think those scum bags would let you run around covered with tats? They’d stone you to death on general principles for sure – ninety percent probability, anyway. On the other hand, what are the odds that a terrorist bomb on the Mall this Fourth of July will kill you?
Katje: That depends on how big it is.
Tom: All right, that does it. Put Rob back on.
Rob: What can I do?
Tom: Is Jason bringing a date?
Rob: Yeah, sure, that new one, Paisley.
Tom: Paisley got a mom?
Rob: Uh-huh.
Tom: She hot?
Rob: Seriously.
Tom: Single?
Rob: Yeah, that, too.
Tom: Say “In that case, Jason, do you think Paisley’s mom would like to go with us?”
Rob: Tom! Doing that’s way more dangerous than messing with terrorists!
Tom: Sure it is, but you got your country to think about in this situation. Be brave.
Rob: Hey Jason! Do you think Paisley’s mom would like to go with us instead?
Tom: What’s happening?
Rob: Katje’s packing our things in the car.
Tom: Great. Have a good time.
Rob: Thanks, Tom.
Not ten minutes later, my cell phone rang again. It was Ibrahim, my gardener.
Ibrahim: Mr. Collins, we are having the cookout you recommended – hot dogs, hamburgers – all halal meats from my cousin, the butcher. The whole family is also wearing the Redskins jerseys and the Nationals baseball caps, and we are drinking nothing but Coca Cola.
Tom: Ibrahim, I’m very proud of you, and I think that every American should be very proud of you.
Ibrahim: Thank you, Mr. Collins. But now the cookout is nearly over…
Tom: Let me guess – you’re wondering whether it would be a good idea for you and your family to go down to the Mall for the Independence Day celebration and fireworks.
Ibrahim: Why, yes, Mr. Collins. I was just about to ask for your advice on that.
Tom: My advice, Ibrahim, is that you should go.
Ibrahim: Are you sure nothing bad will happen?
Tom: No. But I am sure that its very important you go anyway.
Ibrahim: Why?
Tom: Because, of all of the Americans down on the Mall tonight, none will be more essential to the cause of freedom than you and your family.
Ibrahim: I understand. Thank you, Mr. Collins.
Tom: You’re welcome. Have a good time.
Ibrahim: We will!
There’s no way Cerise and I are going to miss that shindig on the Mall tonight. I got us passes to watch the show from the roof of the Humphrey Building, and I’m writing this post on my laptop at a friend’s house on Seventh Street SE, a slow fifteen minute walk from there. It’s just after four o’clock in the afternoon now, and I’ve got about seventy-five minutes before we start strolling over to catch the concert before the fireworks, so let’s see what was in the old Inbox this quarter.
To all those irate folks who wrote in, taking me to task for helping the evil Dr. Kleinenschavantz sell the gullible public on the idea that global warming isn’t real – and if it is, it’s not our doing, especially not from industrial and vehicular carbon dioxide emissions, let me point out that Dr. K’s employer, the National Energy Solutions Alliance, pays me quite well, and that irate writers of emails to my Web log do not. We Washington consultants have to work for evil people sometimes, because the evil people in Washington outnumber the good people by about ten to one. So there just aren’t enough good people here to go around; believe me, I’d work for the World Wildlife Fund if they’d just call and offer me an assignment. If you’re really upset about that situation, then move to Washington DC and try being good. Should you succeed at that, I’ll be glad to work for you at half the rates I charge greedy, unprincipled bastards like NESA.
You pimply teenage jackasses who sent me 1,347 emails with various digital stills of my sister’s hooch taken from that video on YouTube attached can stop sending them now. I have plenty of them, enough to reconstruct all of the hooch footage several times over. It was interesting to note the part of the video that was most popular with you little perverts. All I can say is I feel really sorry for your parents. Even though spanking your monkeys looking at my sister’s private parts isn’t going to make you go blind, I sure as hell hope it gives you all a raging case of NSU.
My cat Twinkle still isn’t anywhere near finishing her vast store of hermetically sealed, untainted cat food, but since I wrote about the melamine thing and her encounter with the pet food lobbyist, the situation has gone from bad to worse with the Chinese. Since that posting back in April, the Chinese have managed to distinguish themselves with widely detected contaminations of US human food and cosmetic supplies, culminating with a ban on Chinese farmed fish. Looks like the US Government finally developed the common sense God gave my house cat. But the Chinese have nothing to worry about – no way it’s going to last. And thanks for all the emails from cat lovers everywhere. I now have about sixteen hundred digital pictures of cats – I’m all set, thanks again – no need to send any more. Also thanks to the thirty five people who also own cats that can talk, especially the twenty eight of you who attached audio and video files of your conversations with your cats. Very entertaining, and the variety of subject matter is remarkable. I had no idea, for example, that cats could be interested in opera. Twinkle’s a real lightweight by those standards – she only appreciates televised nature programs, preferably ones involving birds.
And speaking of catty, boy, did a bunch of enraged art lovers threaten to scratch my eyes out over my piece on the Elgin Marbles or what? All right, for the record, everybody, I didn’t really think that just looking at the Elgin Marbles can turn a jack into a queen. That was a joke. At least I thought it was, until about twenty guys wrote in to testify that prolonged viewing of the Elgin Marbles had just such an effect, and did I know how it works or could I tell them how to reverse it? Plus, I got about a hundred sordid missives commenting on the handkerchief combinations I described. Look, people, I just reported what those fellows flashed. To tell the truth, I had no idea what the gay semiotic content was, and if you folks who know about that sort of stuff had to run into your well-decorated bathrooms to hurl into your designer porcelain thrones after reading what those guys were suggesting to each other, I’m sorry. If it’s any consolation, after getting all those emails, I did some research on various gay Web sites and found out for myself what those fellows were about to get up to, after which I had to run into my own marble finished bathroom for a technicolor yawn – what’s more, I was in such a hurry, I stubbed my toe on the bidet.
I expected prodigious reams of angry emails calling me a bigot for not endorsing the Reconquista, but certainly, if I had any idea how many Ricardo Montalbán fans lurk in the blogosphere, I would have likened Señora (or perhaps Señorita) Oveja to somebody else. But what really freaked me out were about a dozen emails ragging on me for insulting Zorro, and one from somebody who is apparently a old lady in Little Havana proclaiming very self righteously that, in no uncertain terms, Desi Arnaz never used methedrine once in his entire life. Sheesh, gimme a break, abuela, that was a metaphor, all right? (Okay, before I get my Inbox clogged by an avalanche of messages from fanatical grammarians – that was actually something called a simile, but the typical reader would have to stop and look up “simile,” while practically everybody knows what a metaphor is, and the concepts are closely related. Strangely enough, there is no grammatical term for the substitution of one grammatical term for another which is closely related in concept. Now, if I’m wrong about that and you’re a fanatical grammarian, go ahead and send me an email.)
Likewise, I anticipated heated epistles from Down Under, threatening to bash my head in with a Fosters can. What surprised me though, was that the vast majority of the angry Aussies who wrote in weren’t mad at me for pointing out their world famous cultural practices and personality traits, but rather, they were totally steamed because I suggested that the average Prince Georges County redneck could easily best them at both. Hardly anybody seems concerned about who will end up owning the Wall Street Journal, however, with the possible exception of that newspaper’s employees, who walked out on management earlier this week to protest the Murdoch bid.
That hugely powerful, awesomely influential, extremely cleared for ultimate confidential information federal visitor who fell down on the floor and had a heart attack in my office back in May recovered nicely after quadruple bypass surgery. Several people wrote to enquire about how I can stand to work with such monsters, how can I cope with the stress of such continual inside-the-Beltway hypocrisy, and aren’t I the least bit worried about the karmic implications of serving the dark minions of the Bush White House? My answer is, it’s easy. I was here for the Clinton Administration, too, you see. So I just keep in mind that these idiots come and go; they are but today’s parade of evil clowns, the latest ship of fools that I pass in the night. Plus, I drink like a fish – top shelf only, of course.
5h0utz 0ut 2 lilgrin, oberon, tellyfromtalin, hazelnutz, dorito, blowpop, H3lli0n, DublinMort, Dreidel_Craze and M0lli3_M1nk5 for their comments on Uncle Sam’s tiff with Michael Moore. No, I don’t think he should run for President – I say let Ralph Nader ruin it for the Democrats like he always does. Yes, I agree that La Cosa Nostra is more moral than the American Medical Association, but I draw the line on comparing medical doctors to leeches, tapeworms, screw flies and vampire bats – to do so would be cruel to those poor animals, who never did anything to deserve being compared to members of the AMA. Likewise, I don’t think that giving health insurance executives the same treatment the Italians gave Mussolini is appropriate – it’s far too dignified for them. Although infecting health insurance and pharmaceutical industry lobbyists with some of the grotesque tropical diseases you folks suggested would, as one of you put it, “make them as ugly on the outside as they are on the inside,” I think that it would also tend to decrease sympathy and concern for the unfortunate people in the tropics who contracted those diseases by accident. But I do agree with the suggestion that everybody in Congress should have the same health care coverage as do minimum-wage workers. And, of course, here’s to the fifty other people who wrote in and ranted at me, basically saying Moore’s a traitor, and a big fat slob like Michael Moore is going to need some health care somewhere pretty soon himself. To them, I say yes, but Moore can get any kind of health care he needs anywhere he wants, because he’s a multi-millionaire now – a Socialist multi-millionaire. That’s the best kind, IMHO.
I most certainly did not expect to get a slew of emails from women arguing that fornicating your way to success is a great idea, but boy howdy, was I wrong about that! Not only did I get denounced for “not fully understanding the situation” of women who have to work with guys like Wolfowitz, I also got extensive commentaries on the contents of that voice mail a certain lady left me. Let me be very clear about this – I had no idea what the stuff she was talking about involves. Well, at least I didn’t until I got those emails. Now that I do, I’d say most of it strikes me as being so arduous, degrading, painful and nauseating that I can’t help but wonder if just doing a competent job in one’s profession might not be an easier alternative for the ambitious career woman. Unless she can’t, of course.
The vegan PETA brigade gave me what-for when I described how my brother’s wife went off the deep end with food contamination phobia, dug up their yard for an organic garden and started feeding the family nothing but brown rice until the crops come in. I got twenty-two emails telling me that Macrobiotic Number Seven cures everything from arthritis to zits. Fourteen people wrote in to say that they, themselves, did the same thing. I even got nine messages rhapsodizing on the virtues of compost heaps, for jumpin’ Jiminy Pete’s sake! Unreal! “How dare you teach your nephew how to cook meat? If meat isn’t murder, why don’t you grill your cat for the first lesson?” one correspondent demanded. Thank God for the Internet so I don’t have to meet these lunatics in the flesh. So to speak.
I received a number of flames about my post relating the details of Jenkins’ visit with me to discuss the Senate Intelligence Committee report. What few supporters Bush has these days remain both verbose and loud, at least. Predictably, I was characterized as “a coward” who would “let the terrorists win,” and “betray the sacrifice of our troops in Iraq.” Although I must admit that one fellow, when he was done vilifying me, did offer a very gentlemanly correction concerning Halliburton’s heroin factories – he said that, while they are indeed close to the Afghan border, the plants are actually located in Pakistan. Well, maybe so. There were also a few emails attacking me from the other side, which makes me feel like I must be MOR, after all. Those folks said things like “having assisted the Bush Administration in fabricating its web of deadly lies leading up to the invasion of Iraq, you are no better than any random collaborator who served Hitler.” BEEP! Godwin’s Law Alert! BTW, Jenkins has yet to apply the strategy I advised for him to get what he imagines is his fair share of the Oil-for-Food kickbacks. I know because he keeps calling me, toying with the idea, but I’m pretty sure that, in the last analysis, he will prove too chicken to try it.
Messages about my brother-in-law Hank’s male problem split more or less fifty-fifty between stern lectures from ardent Republican feminists concerning the real and present dangers of HIV/AIDS and kudos from guys who still have their equipment intact calling shenanigans on Bush. Hank says he has managed to hold on to his cabriolet top successfully so far, but he still lives in dread that the Bush Administration will promulgate yet more helpful advice about what a monogamous married American man should do with his most prized possession. Hank would really hate to register as a Democrat, but he’s told me he’s thought about it, and if that’s what it would take, so be it.
My post concerning the FBI following my gardener around prompted lots of nice gentlemen from faraway places (and a few nearby) to write in, describing what they think the Holy Quran and Sharia Law say should happen to me. Oddly enough, by some coincidence of the psychotic mind, several of them suggested the same thing that two of my correspondents from the vegan-PETA lunatic sector did – namely, roasting me alive on a spit over a slow fire. My theory on that is that insane zealots get so worked up they throw their hormones and blood sugar out of whack. A plate of some nice North Carolina barbecue with fatback baked beans and bacon potato salad would no doubt work wonders for raging vegan nutcase and rabid fulminating jihadi alike.
But the most email I got this quarter concerned my efforts to help the Federal and State Justice Project refine their recommendations for sentencing criminals. As with most of my posts, there were two schools of thought. The first one was that I am some kind of absolute fiend to suggest that Paris Hilton should serve (or, as of today, have served) one single second in jail for what she did. These folks tended to maintain that people like Paris are so rich, so beautiful, so marvelous, so chic and so wonderful that they should be allowed to slit open orphan’s bellies in order to warm their feet therein on cold days. None of them wanted to roast me alive on a spit over a slow fire, though – they’re way too anorexic to even imagine that. One of them did suggest that I be tied down in the street so Paris could run over me while chugging cosmopolitans from a beer pitcher, though. Others imagined gross stuff from tacky reality shows and declared those things should happen to me until I expire. The second school of thought was that I should be roasted alive on a spit over a slow fire for helping the FSJP keep feckless, idle rich people from receiving the nasty, unforgiving, scarring, stigmatizing, unbearable and wrathful justice everybody else gets for breaking the law in the United States.
Sopranos fans were a close second in their response to my post on the untoward effects of that series’ last episode. No mention of roasting me on a spit came from the distaff side, however – those guys just wanted to shoot me in the head, wrap me in a rug and dump me in the Jersey pine barrens. The guys (and by the way, not one woman, as far as I could tell, wrote in about this post) who sent emails with favorable comments thanked me for explaining what was wrong with them and providing them with an effective remedy. The works of Quentin Tarantino as an antidote to Soprano’s Limp Willy Syndrome. Who’da thunk it?
Approximately eighty percent of those who responded to my post about the suitcase nuke at the White House said they weren’t surprised to learn that the truth about these things is being suppressed by the Bush Administration. Of those, about half went on to tell me some place where, they were sure – absolutely sure, mind you – some relative, co-worker, local authority figure or strange new family in the neighborhood has stashed another one. Several sent attachments with plans and schematics for devices to spot and contact UFOs, avoid mind control, or perform astral projection. One fellow also advised me “do NOT attempt to construct these hats from ALUMINUM foil. Use ONLY GENUINE TIN FOIL.” It helps to know these things, I guess. The remaining epistles concerning the post more or less assumed that I am already wearing appropriate attire and described how this or that medication had changed their lives.
My post on the Vice Presidency brought a chilly response from someone whom I can only assume is a Grande Dame of American Politics, upbraiding me severely for the opening quote attributed to Nance “Cactus Jake” Garner – “Young man,” she wrote, “I was there, and that’s not what Nance Garner said. Moreover, what he really said to Lyndon Johnson on that occasion is not suitable to print, even given today’s lax and vulgar idiom.” Okay, I confess. I cleaned it up considerably. But I think it still gets the general idea across pretty well. For the first few days, the rest of the mail on that post was pretty much along the lines of “Oh come on now, if that’s true, Cheney’s lost his mind.” But as the news story finally reached the general public, the tenor changed to “Oh Jesus Christ! Cheney’s lost his mind! You! You’re there, in Washington! Do something for God’s sake!” Sorry, folks, but nobody has retained me to address that particular problem. Yet.
Lastly, several people have already written in to complain about me shattering that poor young journalism student’s illusions when she stopped by my office to get some mentoring for her summer project on the CIA ‘family jewels’ documents. All I can say is, get real, okay? When you’re out hiking on Kodiak Island with a kid and they spot a baby bear, are you going to shatter their illusions about bears or let momma bear show up twenty seconds later and kill them? And as anybody who’s hiked on Kodiak Island and worked inside the Beltway will attest, you are most definitely one hell of a lot safer out in the woods with a bunch of goddamn bears.