Tiger Sets off Balloon Girls and Sarah Palin

Washington—December 10. Tiger Woods broke his extended silence today to deny any romantic involvement with Sarah Palin. “No, Sarah Palin is not one of my mistresses,” he told reporters. “She’s not even one of my pinup girls, although she does have a great body. Wow, have you seen that braless pic where she’s painting her walls?  All right, I did have that one taped in my country club locker, but the dog ate it.”

Asked about alleged text messages to the former Alaska governor, Woods spoke emphatically . “No, no, no.  I didn’t tell her she’s ‘hot.’ I said it’s hot in Florida. I said I could use some of that seaside view of Russia right now. I wasn’t interested in her romantically, and my intentions were purely honorable and political in nature.  Why couldn’t she release a copy of her birth certificate? I said. I figure as long as she’s a birther, let me see hers. How do I know she’s not a Russian?”

In Ohio, meanwhile, eyewitnesses reported seeing 14 to 17 former Woods mistresses spill out of an errant UFO-like helium balloon when it crash-landed and sustained a tear in the fabric. The young women were not immediately available for comment because they were busy scrambling through a nearby cornfield, reading their text messages.

Elsewhere, Libyan president Moammar Gadhafi admitted to reporters that all of his famed female bodyguards were Tiger Woods’ girlfriends. “These brave Libyan women withstood the colonialist-imperialist hegemony of American infiltration, of ruthless penetration into our glorious purity. Death to golf!”

A spokeswoman for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, meanwhile, could not be reached for comment because she was also busy reading text messages. NFL officials say they are still investigating why the Cowboys cheerleaders have “for months been cheerleading golf tournaments instead of football games and disappearing into the club house afterwards.”

“This is highly unusual and most irregular,” said one official who asked not to be identified. “Normally, football cheerleaders cheer-lead football games, not PGA tours. I have to wonder what they’re thinking. Well—to be honest, we don’t get the pick of Rhodes Scholars. Most of our pom-pom girls think ‘foreplay’ is a golf term.”

Friends of Tiger Woods identify Carrie Prejean, the former Miss California and anti-gay marriage activist, as one of the golfer’s minor conquests. Asked for comment, Prejean said opposite sex marriage is a holy sacrament and that she had believed Woods when he’d told her he was single. “Duh, I think music is the universal language,” she said, “and my hope is for world peace. My ambition when I graduate from community college is to help the hungry children of the world.”

Woods refused to comment on the alleged relationship, but did respond to rumors about a liaison with U.S. Secretary to the United Nations Susan Rice. “Hey, Susan is undeniably babe-alicious, and I mean hot,” Woods said in a news conference. “But she’s way out of my league. She’s beautiful but too cerebral for me. Her brain is to the UN what my golf swing is to the PGA tour. Wow, I tried, though. I swung and I missed, if you’ll pardon the baseball metaphor.

“But I categorically deny having anything to do with the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. That was a nasty rumor started by Angelina Jolie. She’s always jealous, that little so-and-so, just because I jilted her. First she tells Brad all about me, hoping the guy would beat me to a pulp, but it didn’t happen. So she makes up this nonsense about me bonging everybody in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Didn’t happen. Except for Amber Tamblyn and America Ferrera. They’re just so hot. Come on, give me a break—what sporting man could resist?”

Secret New Weapon: Serena Sends Taliban Running for Hills

Inserting myself into one of the remotest regions of Afghanistan—and embedding myself with no one in particular except a sheep farmer named Tirkluckless—I interview him. I do this mainly because he can talk, unlike his sheep. The intelligence he provides me, however, is stunning. As a bandit in A Fistful of Dollars once stated, “In these parts, a man’s life can depend upon a mere scrap of information.”

“You seem pretty calm, Tirk,” I say. “The Taliban are howling at the door, and not a NATO soldier within 50 miles, yet you calmly tiptoe around the sheep dip without a care in the world. What’s that all about?”

“Did ye not know, oh infidel? The American drones circle above like eagles—I can certainly hear them, as they interfere with the bah-bah-ing of my sheep and therefore I cannot sleep when I’m trying to count my sheep. Anyway, there are not only drones but the CIA has also secretly inserted Serena Williams into the foothills of the Forbidden Mountains.”

“What? Serena Williams? Come on.”

“Indeed, it is true, oh unbelieving one. She has been sighted on several occasions, cursing the wolves and frightening them to death. She even outruns them and eats them for breakfast.”

“If this is true, Kirk, it’s still incredible. She makes the Special Forces look like girl scouts.”

“It’s Tirk, not Kirk. My full name is Tirkluckless. How many times must I remind you of that, oh clueless Trekkie nerd? Be careful or I shall smite you. I come from a rough neighborhood. Last week, down near the capital, I was watching a full-scale battle between NATO forces and Taliban insurgents, and a ladies’ tennis match broke out.”

“Good heavens, that is a rough neighborhood. I take it Serena was there?”

“Yes, she was. She is a one-woman Special Forces, to be sure. Already she has crushed many a Taliban with her powerful thighs and decapitated others by hurling tennis rackets with superhuman agility and accuracy. Still others she curses to death with unimaginable slurs calculated to defeat their manhood. Yes, oh beardless one, the mountain villagers sing folk songs about her. They call her the Wild Woman With Huge Haunches and Thighs That May Crush a Man into Ragged Pieces. Oh—I’m getting excited; I had better to stop now.”

“Uhm—no, please, go on. I’m sure you can control yourself.”

“She is also veddy beautiful, you know, and she’s having breasts like mangos!”

“I seem to recall that line from A Passage to India.”

“What, those Shiva-worshipping heathen?”

“Now, now, I think the Serena-lust is getting the better of you.”

“Well, there are always my sheep with which to—“

“Ahem. You were saying?”

“You must understand this is a lonely place, sahib. Indeed, before you there was ne’er a white man to be seen in these hills since the days of W.C. Fields in the 1930s. He had lost his corkscrew, you may recall, and was forced to survive on food and water.”

“Such a contingency would be unfortunate, yes.”

“The word in the hills is that Osama bin Laden watches ladies’ tennis on satellite TV and he shivers with fright as we speak. I have seen a sneak preview of a new video he will release, denouncing women in sport—and women in general, of course. He promises to hack off the arms of any female who dares to bare her arms, let alone use them to hurl tennis rackets at him.”

“How do you feel about this?”

“Well, he’s not all hell and brimstone, actually. He has a heart. He says the point is negotiable and that if the USA will call off Serena, he will settle for a ladies’ tennis referee position at the US Open.”

“He really is scared.”

“He said the officiating call was in error; there was no foot fault and therefore as punishment the referee’s tongue must be removed and Serena’s fine must be canceled.”

“A man of mercy, I see.”

“Praised be to the heavens, Serena shall return home and I shall return to my sheep in peace. If we run out of wolves and Taliban, she might develop a taste for lamb.”

From Bangkok to Bangalore, What Isn’t Outsourced?

In an age of shrinking economies and a time when it seems nothing is made in the USA anymore except financial scandals, many pundits say the question is not what is outsourced but simply what is not. In California, a state with governance marred by bankruptcy and disputes between Governor Schwarzenegger and the legislature, discussion of outsourcing has morphed into radical action: the governor decided last week to outsource the California legislature to China.

“Yah, I’ve had enough already with the little girlie-men in de California legislature, you know?” the governor said on Meet the Press last Sunday. “Dis is it. I’m gonna CRUSH deir little GIRLIE-MUSCLES and send dem all to China to squabble over dere! If dey don’t like it, dey can lump it. A few sessions with a bunch of tight-wadded Chinese bean counters is just what dey need. Let dem shut up and enjoy some dim sum for a change while I balance da budget.”

In Beijing, however, the Chinese government was less than receptive to the idea. “We already have provincial legislatures,” trade minister Shi Guangsheng said yesterday. “First of all, this is not a trade issue. If the Americans wish to outsource all their private-sector employment, we are more than happy to assume ownership of the American middle class. But the California Congress would most likely find little to occupy them in China. We already have provincial legislatures, and besides, we don’t have any girlie-men in China and frankly we don’t want any.”

California lawmakers aside, it is well known that just about everything else American has already been outsourced. Americans no longer even lick their own stamps, that function having been exported to dingy streets from Bangkok to Bangalore. In Bangkok, Thailand, the stamp-licking company sign, tucked away between the fishmongers and laundries, says ME LICKEE, YOU LIKEY? Inside, what looks like a sweatshop is actually a stamp-licking room with part-time workers assiduously licking American stamps and sticking them on envelopes that will be shipped back to the United States, thus explaining why U.S. First Class letters are so often delayed.

In Bangalore, India, the stamp-licking concession belongs to the Sir Leaks a Lot Corporation. Asked about the misnomer, Operations Manager Varnish Singhalong told a Demockracy.com reporter, “Ah, yes, that was an English error. Because we can’t spell very well in this organization. But it doesn’t matter anyway. We are stamp lickers, not a call center. Besides, ‘Sir Licks A Lot” doesn’t sound very dignified. “Sir Leaks a Lot” might at least suggest we are plumbers.”

New outsourcing initiatives in the U.S. include the exporting of obesity. US customers call up the International Lardbutt Company in Cambodia and buy them a gallon-sized Slurpee for five cents, which the foreign surrogate proceeds to slurp down by proxy and get fat.

And the American’s hunger pangs? “Hey, I suck it up,” said one happy male customer in Houston. “A little rumbling in the tummy is worth it. I slim down and I feel like I’m a patriot, exporting death by obesity to the heathen abroad. The time difference of 12 or 13 hours means the poor devil has to get up at three in the morning to suck one down, but hey, nobody put a gun to their heads forcing them to get paid slurping Slurpees in the middle of the night. I’d call that a pretty good job.”

As for Hollywood, it was only a matter of time. “Hollywood has essentially been outsourced to Bollywood, no doubt about it,” a studio executive who wished to remain anonymous said. “Bollywood makes more movies in a year than McDonald’s flips burgers, and for one-tenth the cost. By the way, are burgers still made here? Anyway, why should we pay Brad Pitt millions for his pretty face when we can give some crooner in India a couple of bucks and a pack of Marlboros to sing and dance around the script? We’ll save hundreds of millions a year that we can pay ourselves in bonuses.”

Are there any projects in the works? “Our first Indian film will be a Mumbai remake of Michael Clayton with Arjun Rampai in the Clooney role and Preity Zinta as the Tilda Swinton character,” the executive said. (The Swinton role of “Karen” has been changed to “Kali.” Kali is the name of the wife of Shiva the God of Death referred to in the original version.) A journalist who was shown pre-release clips from the famous Clayton ending reports a song-and-dance fest featuring a love triangle, angry parents and a hero who fights and defeats a plethora of gangsters, none of which has anything to do with the original plot, although some modified dialogue remains. “See, now, that’s just not the way to go here, Kali,” Rampai croons in sync with his dance steps. “You know, for someone as smart as you, you really are lost, aren’t you? I’m the easiest part of the equation, and you want to kill me? Don’t you know who I am? I’m a fixer. I’m a bagman. I fix anything from illegitimate caste-climbers to bent Maharajas, and you want to kill me? Five million rupees—that’s to forget about your lower-caste origins.” Kali tiptoes across the set, arms flailing, singing “This discussion will have to take place in another setting, oh yes, oh yes, take place in another setting!” Rampai swirls to her side and belts, “DO I LOOK LIKE I’M NEGOTIATING?”

All Play and Carrie Bradshaw Makes Scott an Unholy Boy

One of Bill Maher’s funniest antireligious moments on TV was the time he put up a photo of three asinine-looking clerics at some interfaith dialogue. You had the Greek Orthodox guy in his stupid hat; next to him was a Muslim mullah with the big turban, and then there was this bishop with his big stupid hat. So here are these three old men in Halloween costumes talking about their gods and moralities and the only thing they could agree on was that sex is bad.

“Why is sex bad, anyway?” Sarah Jessica Parker said to me plaintively, in a dream I had from Sex and the City. Actually she didn’t say that; I just wrote it for effect. But I did dream about her. She’s not even my type, physically speaking (I like Asians), but I dreamed of her overnight hugs, kisses, and highly charged intimate passion because her personality in the TV show was so appealing. Well, OK—so was her body, not to mention the gorgeous hair. Obviously the Lord abandoned me that night to my evil thoughts. Within the space of three weeks I dreamed not only of Carrie Bradshaw but also my beautiful Vietnamese physician and my Chinese ex-wife’s sister. At least I got my Asians in there, but the consensus among the religious is that I will burn in hell for all eternity. Repent! I must repent my sinful subconscious!

One thing the religions all agree on is that they each have exclusive rights to the correct answers. Others may be partially correct, but only my religion has all the correct answers. You ask me if my religion offers the correct answers? What a dumb question. Of course it does, otherwise I wouldn’t belong to it, now, would I? I know it’s the correct one because my parents and my clerics and people like me have been telling me so all my life.

It’s so comfortable not to have to think, to have clerics and parents and the lowest common denominator of sheep do the thinking for me.

It is said by some that Mormons believe they will become gods in the afterlife and get their own planet if they’ve been good during their mortal lives. Others deny it, but frankly I am not interested in doing enough research to determine definitively whether Mormon families inherit their own planets. I give it as much credence as Catholics thinking, to paraphrase Bill Maher, they’re actually eating the flesh of a 2,000-year-old dead god when they suck on the wafer. It’s not even worth my time contemplating other than to make it grist for my anti-religion mill. Come on, life is short; use your brain cells for something reasonable. Joseph Smith believed in moon men, for Christ’s sake, who looked like us and lived for a thousand years.

Decades ago, when I was a child in the Netherlands, young Mormon missionaries on bicycles wearing short-sleeved white shirts and skinny ties visited us on a weekly basis to impart priceless truths. My parents were religious nuts too, so we had a weekly Battle of the Religions. I liked the final logic of the Mormons, though: “The thing is,” they said, “all the religions tell you they’re right. The difference is, we know we’re right.”

Right.

By the age of 16, I knew I was done with religion.

Theatre of the Absurd is a regular satirical column at Demockracy

Cheney Seeks True Love Online

Where has tricky Dick been lately? I know, I know, Nixon done died. I mean Dick Cheney. Where is that bigmouth. Where are the pearls of wisdom reminding us he was always right and Obama is wrong about everything? Can anybody help me find him? Like Dave Letterman, I want to know who the hell I’m supposed to make fun of after this old trooper fades away. Certainly not Michael Jackson; forget about that.

Oh—just got a news flash.

Houston—

From: admin @ missmatch.com

Sent: Friday, June 23, 2009

To: Dick Cheney (dickhead @ hottiemail.com)

Dear Dick:

Your photos and profile for Missmatch.com have been approved! You now have your NEW PASSPORT to a new love, a new life, a new adventure! Given your record as former Vice President, however, we would like to emphasize that “a new adventure” at Missmatch.com refers to new adventures in love and life, not invading countries all over the Middle East. Now it’s up to you to find Miss Right Wing!

But here at Missmatch.com we don’t just take a shotgun approach. We genuinely want to help you find the right-wing girl. Our state-of-the-art, highly personalized database has already prepared a starter kit of sexy female neocons to write to. Click on the following profiles, submitted for your approval:

1. Ann Coulter (Look for her profile name DCDOMME!)—describes herself as tall, blonde, lanky as Twiggy, with a caustic wit that can drive you to distraction. She enjoys a good argument, long walks on your chest, crushing hands, and romantic candlelit dinners that involve dripping the hot melting wax on your nipples.
2. Harriet Miers (Look for her profile name MATUREBABE!)—says she’s a “mature babe.” We know you’ll overlook the wrinkles on this hottie because you’ll love her for her mind. And for an evangelical Christian whom George Dubya nominated for the Supreme Court, she’s pretty darned nonjudgmental. She’s described Dubya as the most brilliant man she’s ever met, so she’s right (no pun intended) up your alley!
3. Condi Rice (Look for her profile nickname, NICERICE!)—your compatibility score with this sexy Ph.D. goes right through the roof when you consider she talks just like you! For example, she once said, “This is the democratic process at work….what you’re seeing with this process is the Iraqi people embracing American-style democracy.”  What a dreamer! Just like you, Dick—and she plays piano, too. A true Renaissance babe, brown sugar for your coffee.

The rest is up to you, Dick. Go get ‘em! Shoot ‘em if you have to.

Sincerely,

Missmatch.com Management

P.S. We are sorry but not surprised you were rejected by eHarmony.com. Our competitors at eHarmony accept only beaming goody-two-shoes types, which you clearly are not.

From: texasfewextrapoundschick  @ match.com

Sent: January 31, 2009

To: dickhead @ hottiemail.com

Dear Dick:

You do have a way with words that make me hot. I love the decisive way you keep repeating “in fact,” tempered occasionally by “if you will.” You said you are “in fact in the final throes, if you will,” of any attachments to your former wife. But since everybody knows you are divorced from all reality in the first place, how the hell do I know you’re really divorced from your wife? And why am I having trouble believing you after you posted pics of Brad Pitt to represent you in your profile? I was mesmerized at first, but really you’re an old fat guy with a pacemaker. And by the way, who hacked my computer and deleted all your emails to me?! What other lies are you telling me…and living with?

Yours,

Disappointed texasfewextrapoundschick

From:dickhead@ hottiemail.com

Sent: January 31, 2009

To: texasfewextrapoundschick @match.com

Dear Fewextrapounds:

I think you are on the last throes, if you will, of your sanity. Those photos are in fact ME, and they are RECENT. Less important than physical accuracy in imagery, I think, is that the American people want me to look like Brad Pitt. As for my health, except for the occasional heart attack, I’ve never felt better. OK, as I admitted before, I am mentally not quite as sharp as I was when I was Vice President. Tell you the truth, hon, I had a bad day yesterday when I mixed up my Viagra pills with my Valium. I had a stressful job interview with Halliburton so I had intended to take a Valium, only I took a Viagra by mistake and when the woman HR officer shook my hand I had an orgasm. This was most unfortunate, and I in fact did not get the job, and furthermore it made my pacemaker run amok. Later, that night, I had a date with Condi Rice. (She had me at “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” you know.) Well my pills were still mixed up and I took the Valium that night instead of the Viagra and fell asleep just as I started to kiss her. She’d put me to sleep before, playing Mozart on the damned piano, but this was ridiculous.

Let’s face it, girl, you and I need each other. Just because I peppered your husband’s face with birdshot and I mix up my Valium with my Viagra doesn’t mean you should shut me out. I believe in fact you will greet me at your door as your liberator. I am prepared to face my responsibilities and am willing to use force if necessary.

Yours,

Dick, sad, confused but decisive

Top Three Reasons I Think I Can Write Top Ten Lists

Dear Dave:

So—you’ve seen fit not to hire me, huh? Reject all my submissions, will you? Well so be it. I have a few TOP TEN LISTS OF MY OWN, YOU KNOW!

Sincerely,

Scott

Top Ten Reasons Justice Souter is Leaving the Supreme Court:

10. He’s been offered a stand-up comic gig in the Poconos.

9. Doesn’t really like climbing New Hampshire mountains—it’s just that he got fresh with Justice Ruth Ginsberg and she told him to take a hike.

8. You can’t get a decent maple snow cone in Washington.

7. Needs to bone up on constitutional law by watching “Matlock” reruns.

6. “I want to spend more time with my groupies,” he said.

5. Missed 19 seasons of “Guiding Light.” Must fill the hole in his life.

4. In DC he keeps getting mistaken for General Petraeus and ordered back to Iraq.

3. Embarking upon an epic search to find a footnote he lost during his “intellectual lobotomy.”

2. Feels strange attraction to “The Mummies” rock formation in North Woodstock, NH.

…and the number one reason Justice Souter is leaving the Supreme Court:

1. Prefers to judge wet t-shirt contests.

Top Ten Reasons Hot Married Moms Should Have an Extramarital Fling With Me:

10. I can spell a-f-f-a-i-r.

9. I fell off the turnip truck in a classy neighborhood.

8. Learned recently that “foreplay” is not a golf term.

7. I speaka de English

6. Wondering if I’ll find money under the mattress when I flip it.

5. Dave Letterman might hire me after reading this.

4. My bra size is also—oops. Never mind.

3. Need another reason to commute 43 miles on Houston highways.

2. I’m the Avis of playboys but I try harder—get it?

…and the number one reason to have an extramarital fling with me is:

1. Anticipation? Anticipate THIS.

Speaking of marital and extramarital affairs, I now have the

Top Ten Reasons Miss California Campaigns Against Gay Marriage

10. Born too late to campaign against interracial marriage.

9. Thinks male gay sex results in babies with two penises and four testicles.

8. Even Rock Hudson was married to Doris Day…wasn’t he?

7. Duh…

6. While performing breast implants, surgeons accidentally transplanted her jellied brain to her breasts and inserted a cadaver’s brain in her head.

5. What’ll people want next—to marry their dogs?

4. “I’m married to Jesus, and Jesus wasn’t gay. Jesus was married to God,” she said. “Oh, wait a minute. It’s only Catholic nuns that are married to Jesus, right? Never mind.”

3. Duh…

2. She got confused and made a mistake. When she was 11, her mom told her no more PLAY marriage (with the creepy boy next door).

…and the number one reason Miss California campaigns against gay marriage is:

1. Wants to marry Elton John.

Teaching College in Dubai: Osama on the Screensaver

After 13 years in the desert Middle East, I carry certain sentimental longings of home: Green leaves, black clouds, hard silver rain (or soft rain of any color, for that matter), and the change of seasons.

Still, “The UAE is like a resort compared to Saudi Arabia,” say the weekend visitors who come to escape Saudi, a nation run like a vast, gender-segregated prison. They are amazed that dating is allowed, abayas (those tent-like black burkas) are not required, and you can have a real drink. Their jaws drop (the better to imbibe mass quantities of beer) and exclaim “Boy, you guys have got it made!”

Imploding economy aside, Dubai is still the place to go in the Middle East. It’s a modern-day Casablanca on steroids, a soon-to-be over-the-top, oversized, outlandish version of Las Vegas that even without the casinos will make Vegas look like a quiet hamlet in Vermont where the biggest excitement came in 1952 when Mad Dog Madden chopped down Mortimer Pumblechook’s maple tree in a fit of syrup-producer envy. Dubai Developments on hold are supposed to include replicas of the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, giant ships in the middle of the desert and, according to one account, “a huge snow dome that looks like Superman’s home planet.” Until then, Dubai’s got pubs, nightclubs (yes, alcohol flows freely), really big malls (Emirates Mall has an indoor ski slope), tropically landscaped beaches and the world’s highest concentration of hotels.

“Ah,” says my mythical cigarette-smoking fat man in the hotel café, “And how long do you staaayyy in Casablanca?–I mean, Dubai?”
“Who can tell, sir–who can tell?” I reply, patting my inside pocket to feel the letters of transit that are signed by General De Gaulle and cannot be rescinded or even questioned. “I live in Dubai. Perhaps I will die in Dubai.”

This smog-encrusted jewel by the sea supposedly sports about 100,000 British residents installed in their newly owned condos (built by Pakistani laborers laboring under slave-like conditions and wages). The Brits have apparently eschewed the old Spanish Costas for the more cosmopolitan trappings of Dubai. But do they know the summer temperature in Dubai soars to 120 degrees F. with 90% humidity? Thank goodness for air-conditioned malls with indoor ski slopes. Who knows–fake London-style drizzles and fog may be just around the corner from that Burberry shop.

In the summer of 1997, after a year of underemployment in Houston (where at least I had bought a house with my Saudi earnings) I accepted a job at a government women’s college in Dubai. Government colleges in the UAE don’t take any guff from teacher-drones. The job was well-paid, to be sure, with the usual package of tax-free salary, free housing, and annual ticket money to your home of record, but if you stick up for yourself, you’re out the door. It’s the first college I’ve seen where a teacher was fired within 10 days of his arrival (during orientation and before classes even started). This was disturbing, I thought, given that the usual procedure is to wait until instructors have actually entered a classroom and taught a few incompetent lessons before booting them out the door. The college president has to answer to the education minister–a Royal Family Sheikh. One time His Excellency saw a class picture with a male instructor and noticed one of the women students had her hand on his shoulder. Swhoosh! That was the sound of the teacher flying out the front door and onto the next plane out of here. Kissing the Sheikh’s ass doesn’t help either: the computer hardware lecturer who sat near me should have kept his mouth shut when His Perfumed Magnificence stopped by our workstations. “Would you like some tea, sir?” he offered.

The Sheikh glared at him. “WHAT ARE YOU, A LECTURER OR A TEABOY?” he thundered back.

Our abaya-clad students added to the underlying sense of anxiety, considering, for example, their reaction to the latest Palestinian intifada during which they screamed insults at the college president, who was American, and sent emails to some American teachers accusing them of being Jews. The local Arabic-language press also ranted about our college being riddled with Jews, an accusation that was both false and, of course, racist. I remember what I was doing in the Middle East on September 11, 2001, four years after I joined the college, although it’s not very dramatic. I certainly wasn’t George Clooney racing across sand dunes in an SUV, trying to save the Emir. I was in a classroom with a lot of other teachers receiving instructions on operating our new laptops.

“Have you heard about this plane crash in New York?” somebody said nonchalantly. “Something about a jetliner crashing into the World Trade Center. It’s bizarre.”

I screwed my face up. “Sounds unlikely to me,” I said. Later, as the facts filtered in, an Arab faculty member scooted past me, stopping just long enough to blurt, “I tell you something–it’s only the Israelis who stand to gain something from this!” Another was overheard saying it was about time the Americans got what’s coming to them.

Some students had Osama bin Laden screensavers on their laptops. Others came to my cubicle to dispute my intelligence and teaching methods with insulting remarks. My classes became a nightmare. Finally, the next July, I resigned from the college and took a position in Abu Dhabi at the Petroleum Institute, a men’s university where the students were surprisingly affable. It is reassuring to note that the UAE is, with a few exceptions like that silly women’s college, and compared to Saudi Arabia, actually a fairly gracious and friendly country. At least I didn’t have to listen to Rush Limbaugh.

Teaching English Overseas With Cool Hand Luke and Dirty Harry

This is a true story. My day job is teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) at universities and corporations overseas, on a worldwide basis. I’ve been doing it since 1986, living in 10 countries from West Africa to Japan. It’s a tough job but somebody’s got to do it, and other assorted clichés. But it really is a tough job.

Although we teach mainly at universities, we’re not professors; neither are we certified school teachers. We belong to some purgatory of nonentities where we can be exploited, dumped on and then spat out at will. (Overseas, we can be fired peremptorily at any time with no recourse.) Our managers are EFL people who wouldn’t know how to manage their luggage, let alone a group of professional people.

Both the ranks and the managerial levels area are dominated by petty-minded schoolmarms who own exclusive rights to the Correct Way to Teach and who are curriculum-obsessed. That is, we peons must create lesson plans for their own sake and they must fit the Master Plan of Schoolmarms.

In Equatorial Guinea, where I worked for a US oil company, teaching English to locals in the oil and gas industry, the supervisor of my rotation shift stepped off the airport shuttle bus and the first thing out of her mouth in that grating, gravelly voice was “Okay—WHERE’S THE CURRICULUM?”

I said, “Curriculum? We don’t need no stinking curriculum.”

“What?” she said.

“I teach via the Movie Lines Method. I believe every lesson and every word from my enlightened yap can come from famous movie lines to the exclusion of everything else.”

The Curriculum Queen looked like she’d been hit by one of those battered Land Rovers that chase rhinos in the bush, which is apropos considering she damn well looked like a rhinoceros. She went red and sputtered a bit and huffed and puffed and finally collected herself enough to say something. Then she snorted and I thought she was going to charge me and I jumped back an inch or two before collecting my wits.

Here, I’ll take a moment to describe CQ’s character. She was one of those eminent personages who steal your work and take credit for it, along with everything else that is positive that has ever contributed to the program. If something useful had been done, she did it. No matter who did it. She was an ogre who scolded you if you taught a lesson that wasn’t in the CURRICULUM that she had ordained (without authorization, I might add). CQ basically invented everything. When she took valuable time to be away from her critical and internationally recognized duties of creating the NEW CURRICULUM, it was only because she was busy attending the United Nations Conference on Cold Fusion in Geneva. She invented cold fusion.

Back to huffing and puffing and gravelly, grating voice, she said, “Movie lines? Oh, brother. All right, then, let me see your LESSON PLANS on my desk tomorrow!”

Revolutionary though I am, I actually like to pick up a paycheck now and then, so I submitted my LESSON PLANS. They went something like this:

Lesson One:

“Now ah can be a nice guy, and ah can be one reeeaal meeeaan sumbitch.”

Lesson Two:

“What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

Lesson Three:

“Ya got ta git yer MIND right!”

Lesson Four:

“I know what you’re thinking, punk–did I teach six classes, or was it only five? Well in the excitement and all, I sorta lost track myself. But seeing as how the Schoolmarm Curriculum is the most powerful curriculum in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you have to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?”

You get the drift.

Very rarely, justice prevails. The Curriculum Queen eventually got herself fired due to sheer arrogance and wound up teaching in Afghanistan. Let that be a lesson to you. If you teach for a living, don’t be arrogant, and don’t moan and cry about being transferred to Dearborn, Michigan. How’d you like to find yourself in a classroom in Taliban land?

“God is great!” Mullah Omar remarked when learning of this development, “for Queen of Curriculum will scare away the infidel American dogs in uniform! Praised be to Allah, for she shall bring peace to our lands because no girls will want to educate themselves when they know she has invented the Afghan National Curriculum!”

Cheney Turned Down for Radio Offer

Recently I wrote here at Demockracy.com that former Vice President Dick Cheney was interviewed for the deanship of Liberty University but that that institution was arguably too backward even for him.

I have “reported” elsewhere that Cheney screwed up a Halliburton job-interview debacle because he took a Viagra by mistake instead of a Valium and had an orgasm when the woman HR officer shook his hand.

“This was most unfortunate,” the former Vice President told me in an exclusive interview on Funk & Wagnell’s porch, “and I in fact did not get the job, and furthermore it made my pacemaker run amok.”

Later, Cheney attempted to job network with Condi Rice in what essentially turned into a sizzling date. (“You had me at ‘Good evening ladies and gentlemen,’” he told  her.) His pills were still mixed up, however, causing him to take Valium that night instead of the Viagra and fall asleep just as he attempted to kiss her.

“She’d put me to sleep before, playing Mozart on the damned piano, but this was ridiculous,” Cheney said.

It is not well known, but he was next turned down by the KAWG radio station (AWM stands for Angry White Guy) because he never shuts up even for the commercials and besides, the airwaves already have a big fat jerk who wants our President to fail.

In the latest turn of events, he appears to favor Monster.com as both rich in listings and apropos in name. Friends of Cheney, who spoke on condition of anonymity, identified a shortlist of job openings on the web site for which he expects to apply:

• FINANCIAL EXPEDITOR. U.S. arms manufacturer operating in Burma, the Congo, Zimbabwe, the Middle East, and East Los Angeles seeks disreputable mediator and agent provocateur with extensive expertise in how to lie, cheat, grease palms, blackmail, waterboard, terminate with extreme prejudice, and otherwise coerce friendly despots into lucrative weapons and construction contracts. Ideal position for cons, ex-cons, neocons, Def-Con 3 personalities, action-hero icons, and Connie Francis. Drop résumé behind loose brick at Soldier of Fortune office building and chalk-mark with an X.

• FOREST FIRE LOOKOUT. Private security company seeks Senior Forest Ranger with the kind of high-level clout that can marshal the massive resources required to divert forest fires and wildfires from expensive homes to middle and lower-income neighborhoods. Minimal weapons skills required include the ability to shoot trespassers in the face with a shotgun. Experience in culling wildlife a definite plus. Shoot your CV to our Monster.com inbox.

• FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY FOR EX-VEEPS! What kind of watch did Mickey Mouse wear? A Spiro Agnew watch!  Are you a self-starter and a sleazy, lying former Number Two? Do you hate nattering nabobs of negativism as much as we do? Despise pusillanimous pussyfoots? If so, you’ve got what it takes! The sky’s the limit in this North American sales management position in charge of revitalizing the Dirty Time Company, former manufacturer of Spiro Agnew watches. We have now reinvented ourselves, and it goes without saying that we have outsourced our wristwatch factory to China—where virtual slave labor combined with cheap lead-based coating guarantee LIMITLESS $$$$ COMMISSIONS for our chief sales executive. If you are executive sales material, soon even Batman will be wearing a Spiro Agnew watch. Next…all of America…then France…who knows? IT’S UP TO YOU!! If you’ve got the time, we’ve got the watch.

• THE SULTAN OF BRUNEI requires a Court Buffoon for His amusement. White House experience preferred. Free housing and harem of abducted Caucasian women provided. Two-month probation period to demonstrate you can make His Highness laugh—or else. Apply to His Fragrant Worshipfulness, P.O. Box 1, Brunei Darussalam.

Trust No Republican, Agent Mulder

Knock, knock. “Mulder, you there?”

“No one here but the FBI’s most unwanted.”

“OK, I see you hunkering down there. What is it this time? Flying nuns? Extraterrestrial recipes for luscious layer cakes?”

“Stop. You’re making me horny and hungry. But is it an X File, you’re wondering. I’ll let you judge for yourself, Scully. The truth is out there. Take a peek through those unbelieving glasses of yours.”

“Hmm. OK. So you’re investigating Rush Limbaugh. For what—babbling acrimoniously without a license?”

“He may be speaking in tongues, Scully. No, laugh if you will, but I did some cross-checking with an old X File. See? One of the great Unsolved Histories is the story of the ancient Mayans and why they essentially disappeared around 900 AD. In Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto the collapse of the ancient Mayan world is a metaphor for the chaos of the present day, our world of impending ecological and moral disaster.”

“So? What’s that got to do with Skinner’s shiny scalp? Mulder, your unending search for the truth has become a dangerous obsession that has hurled you into a dark occult world of your own making, alienated you from the Bureau, and forced me to constantly sound like the ‘No’ queen of the GOP. I see the parallel, but, yes, why is it an X File?”

“I guess I would say ‘why are you the nattering nabob of negativism?’ My point is, the Death figure to the Mayans has returned to visit us in the here and now, Scully. It’s right here in the file, and we never saw the connection. The ancient Mayans were thought to have slowly gone deaf and unable to function when for some unknown reason the surrounding jungles became infested with howler monkeys. But it wasn’t howler monkeys, and they didn’t go deaf—not exactly, anyway. It was what the Mayans called Ouagadahagghh Limbagghhh which, loosely translated, means ‘big fat jerk.’ The legendary jungle monster, Scully, the boogieman of the Guatemalan rain forest. According to legend, the creature frightened many to death with its loathsome appearance. The rest it assaulted with relentless, deranged hate speech until the victims committed suicide. Here. Look at this drawing of the thing.”

“Oh, my God!”

“See the family resemblance?”

“Mulder, it looks exactly like Rush Limbaugh. It can’t be.”

“It’s him, Scully. The monster is back. The evil is returned.”

“I can’t accept that, Mulder. It flies in the face of all my—oh, my God!”

“What is it you see?”

“The page of his quotes. He is evil incarnate. Listen to this: ‘Feminism was established to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream.’”

“There’s more, Scully—a lot more. ‘You commit a crime, you’re guilty.’”

“I’m not sure whether that one is evil or just criminally stupid. Let’s see what else. ‘Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the twentieth century.’”

“Ugh.”

“And this one: ‘He is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He’s moving all around and shaking and it’s purely an act…this is really shameless of Michael J. Fox.’”

“God, I feel sick. Here’s what he said about Abu Ghraib, Scully. It’s my personal favorite. ‘I’m talking about people having a good time, these people—have you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of the need to blow some steam off?’”

“Mulder, we have to stop this entity before it destroys us all. [Sniff] Do you smell smoke?… Cigarette-smoking man! Where did you come from? What are you doing here?”

[puff-puff] “Now, now, is that any way to greet your savior? Come now, Agent Mulder, [puff] don’t look so disgusted. I didn’t come here to spoil your little party. I came here to warn you.”

“Get on with it before we all choke, you lizard-skinned chimney.”

[Pause] “Very well. [puff]. For many years now the members of our secret group have attempted in coordination with the aliens to produce a viable human-alien hybrid [puff puff]. As you know, we failed with you, Agent Mulder. Nevertheless, we need to keep you around. Enough distractions have hindered our efforts to the extent that making a martyr out of you could potentially become disastrous. [puff] Anyway…we recently discovered that a renegade and highly dangerous alien hybrid was produced many centuries ago, unbeknownst to us. I am instructed to inform you that the renegade hybrid is Rush Limbaugh. You must let us deal with him in due course. Please do not approach this entity.”

“Why not?”

“It knows who you are, Agent Mulder, and it wants you to fail. [puff puff] It wants you to fail, it wants the truth to fail, and it has many sinister friends. Friends in the GOP [puff] who make my associates and me look like boy scouts.”

“That I find hard to believe.”

“Trust me this one time. Stay clear for the time being. And trust no Republican, Agent Mulder.”

Next Page »