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.”

Eat Moose!

To paraphrase Brian Wilson in the Vegetables song, I know that you’ll feel better if you send us in your letter and tell us the names of your…most annoying phone calls—and how to fight back.  Mine are:

1. Pension-donation telemarketer.

Ring, ring.

TELEMARKETER: “Good afternoon, sir! My name is Mortimer Gladhand, from the Pension Donation Overzealous Marketing Corporation.  And how are you today?”

ME: “You know, I’m glad you asked me that.  I have a disgusting boil on my butt and my wife never quits with the nagging.  ‘Go to the doctor!  Put some cream on it! Get off your lazy butt!  That’s how you got the boil in the first place!’ Nag, nag, nag. Wives have a nag gene, you know that? Yeah, I first learned that when my mother-in-law came over and stayed for six years. By the second year the romance had died off in my marriage anyway and then I had two old nagging hens in the house. That’s the story of my life—no respect, I don’t get no respect! My kids are no bargain either. I tell ya–”

TELEMARKETER: “You have a good day, sir.”

2. Mothmen.  If you’ve seen Richard Gere in The Mothman Prophesies, you know that a phone call from a mothman is almost as annoying as a telemarketing call.  You get an ear-splitting screeching noise, like something between a fax tone and a screaming banshee. The unspoken message is “I am a seriously creepy entity and I’m going to eat your spaghetti first and then your children.” But do not be creeped out. Instead, have a recording ready of your wife nagging about your butt-boil and play it right back in the mothman’s ear. That will seriously gross it out and you’ll never hear from it again.

3. A call from Sarah Palin telling me she’s a real governor. She wants to get back at comedians (of which I am a type, loosely speaking), for duping her into thinking they were Nicolas Sarkozy. “Hi!  This is the governor of Alaska!” she says. “The largest state in the Union!”

“Oh, sure you are,” I reply. “You couldn’t govern anything larger than your kitchen. Give me a break.”

“Can too.”

“Can’t.”

“Can too.”

“Can’t. A governor wouldn’t go around shooting up the state’s wildlife from a helicopter.”

“Oh yeah? Well at least I don’t bust the federal budget from a $400 million helicopter.”

“Uh-huh…Well, by the way, I can see Canada from Buffalo but that doesn’t make me an international affairs statesman, you know.”

“Hey—eat moose!”

“Chocolate mousse?”

“Damned liberals, you’re all out to get me.”

“Damned right—you’re really hot, did you know that?”

4. Getting put on hold. “Sir, may I put you on hold a minute? Just one moment, sir.”

And here, I have to give due credit to Homer Simpson. “No, you may not put me on hold!” he retorts in one episode, “I’ll put you on hold!” Then he sings Wichita Lineman in a tinny voice. “I am a lineman for the county, and I drive the main road…Searchin’ in the sun for another overload…I hear you singin’ in the wire, I can hear you through the whine…”

5. Obscene calls from a woman with a sexy voice who says she looks like Julia Stiles, only more nubile. Uhm…I’ll get back to you on that one.

4-G iPhone has Bible Thumpers a-Thumpin’!

I just started this Theatre of the Absurd column a few weeks ago, so I hope readers will be patient while I play catch-up on some pet peeves. First, all the lame iPhone jokes on the morning talk shows. Gee, can it shave you? Can it percolate your coffee? Make your waffles for you? Yahdayahdayahda.

In response, Apple has offered a special 4-G bible-thumper edition of the iPhone. Steve Jobs, the company’s founder, speaks about the new application in his keynote address to a Southern Baptist convention at Liberty University in Virginia.

“We’ve designed something wonderful,” he says. “It’s a smart phone without a keyboard, it has a 3.5-inch, HD widescreen, it’s thinner than any other handset, it has a digital cam and it does everything but make Chinese bird’s-nest soup.

“But that’s not the half of it. Point it at your TV, touch the Sopranos icon, and it instantly and automatically sanitizes The Sopranos reruns. It makes A&E’s slashed-up, goody-two-shoes versions look like Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s a revolutionary new function in that it doesn’t censor the raunchy dialogue. No! Instead, it actually rewrites it, making Tony Soprano sound like Ned Flanders.”

“Praise the Lord!” the crowd shouts like a chorus of little angels.

“It even changes the visual background as needed.  No more Bada Bing strip club—that’s definitely out. Instead, for R & R the crew goes to the opera.”

“Ooh! Aahh!”

“Yeah, the fat lady always brings them to tears. Business, meanwhile, is conducted in a back room of the local Sunday school. Take a look.”

The huge HD screen comes to life showing an excerpt from a Sopranos episode. In it, a nasty surprise greets the crew when they discover Christopher in the Sunday school with a stripper on his lap and some white power on his nose.

He’s totally out of it, singing “I’ll be comin’ round the mountain with a bimbo on my knee…”

“Yo, hidilly-ho!” Tony exclaims, “What the dickens is this?  I hate to be Suspicious Aloysius on you, but are you inhaling cocaine through your nostrils again?”

“And biblically getting to know the exotic dancer, too,” Paulie Walnuts says.  “Goodness gracious. This is all too much for me.”

Adriana is beside herself. “Christophah!  Oh my God, Christophah…how could you? And we were supposed to get married!”

“Gee willikers,” says Tony, “we all trusted you.”

“Golly, I’m sorry, Tony.”

“You’re darned tootin’ you’re sorry—a sorry spectacle. You little munchkin, you wascally wabbit, you’re done for!  You’re done-diddly-done for.  You’re done-diddly-doodly-done-diddly-doodly done-diddly-doodly.”

And Larry, Larry, Larry, what’s up with the lame questions? Something the iPhone should do for Larry King the next time he interviews Paris Hilton (or anyone, for that matter): MAKE HIM ASK SOME TOUGH QUESTIONS FOR A CHANGE. Is that asking too much? It’s not exactly a revolutionary task, you know. Doesn’t the iPhone have a teleprompter application? Why couldn’t some savvy producer key in some sensible questions? Remember Paris Hilton on Larry King when she couldn’t think of her favorite biblical quote—after claiming the Bible was her favorite book in jail? No-nonsense, hardboiled, hard news question like:

1.  Paris, do you like older men?

2.  How about older men in suspenders?

3.  I know, I know, it’s really tough to remember Bible stories. All right, you’ve done a little, er, acting, right?  Let’s pretend the Bible is one long porno movie. Say the parting of the Red Sea is like…parting your legs.  Which prophet did Charleton Heston play in this movie?

4.  Are you wearing panties now?

Cheney Considers Preaching Word Of Gawd

In my last column I divulged the kinds of jobs the American people think Alberto Gonzales should hold. Now I know what you’re thinking: What about Dick Cheney? Where’s he going to work? Well, cronies of mine with their ears to the train tracks inform me that our (thankfully) former VP has been offered the top position at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. A source has provided Demockracy with a secret taping of Mr. Cheney’s meeting with the university’s Dean of Academic Affairs in the latter’s office. A transcript follows:

Dean: I’m so delighted you’ve come to share some of your valuable time with us, Mr. Cheney. It’s a great pleasure. Scones? A donut perhaps?

Cheney: Uhm—thank you, no. My heart gets clogged up with anything fattier than celery sticks and a rice cracker.

Dean: Ah, yes, a pity sir, a pity. Well let me get right to the point.With the death of our beloved spiritual leader and founder, Jerry Falwell, we seek inspired leadership to carry on our mission teaching of alleged intolerance and creationism. We feel that you are the right man to take us on the course forward to renewed heights. As you may know, sir, our squeaky-clean campus boasts a pre-eminent natural history museum that is the only one in the world that labels dinosaur fossils as “5,000 years old.”

Cheney: I have heard of that, although it’s a radical-conservative bit of revisionist science even for me. But then again, I am a Christian….

Dean: Exactly, Mr. Vice President. As our dear departed Reverend Falwell said so eloquently, “If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being.”

Cheney: Amen to that.

Dean: And that’s why I’m calling on you today, sir, to help me follow Gawd’s mission to save our country and educate our flock in America’s holier-than-thou and debatably most intolerant institution of higher education, Liberty University. You’re especially a good fit with us since you’ve been awarded an honorary doctorate by Brigham Young University. While we abhor that particular denomination, at least they have the reactionary credentials that make your résumé stand out from the crowd.

Cheney: That’s very flattering, Dean, and I thank you. Nonetheless, even a reactionary such as myself has a hard time reconciling the basic and multiple scientific methods of dating our earth with the notion that dinosaurs lived 5,000 years ago and sailed on Noah’s Ark. Wouldn’t the T-Rex have eaten all the other animals along with Noah himself? Won’t society at large, even conservatives, question all this, not to mention my association with such educational assumptions as you put forth at Liberty?

Dean: Well, sir, praise Gawd, Reverend Falwell had the wisdom to teach us that “Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions.”

Cheney: Now that I can relate to. If we could convert the media to Christianity, we’d have something here.

Dean: Besides, it is a documented fact that you, yourself, Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove were fossils revived from the same excavation.

Cheney: Well, you’ve got me there. I’m not a spring chicken.

Dean: Indeed, sir. Praise Gawd, Reverend Falwell brought you all to life with healing power of prayer!

Cheney: Uhm…Amen. And your curriculum? To what extent would I be able to put forward a—

Dean: [thumps a nearby bible] The Bible, sir, the Bible! Reverend Falwell said, and I quote, ‘Textbooks are Soviet propaganda.”

Cheney: Well, Dean, this has been most illuminating, and it has given me food for thought. Let me mull this over at least for a day or two or until the new Ice Age, whichever comes first.

Gonzales Alive and Well, But Needs a Nose Job

Scott South is a satirical writer who will be contributing regular works to Demockracy’s commentary section.

As I explored my first piece for Demockracy, many thoughts occurred to me. First, I thought that Dubya is too much of an abomination for me to even think of writing about him any more. I’ve had a bellyful of him, and good riddance. Cheney—maybe later. But who can I laugh at right now?

As I gaze wistfully into my recollections of the Bush era, the eight years of Letterman’s Great Moments in Presidential Speeches, a tear stings my left eye and a sob escapes my lips as I rue the passing of the good old days. Never again will there be so many unscrupulous people who are so stupid and so satisfying to make fun of in print. So who—I thought today while rolling my blank sheet into the clackety old Remington (yeah, right)—is left to excoriate? The horror…the horror.

But wait. Not so fast. Whatever happened to Gonzales? Just when he had become the finest court fool since Spiro Agnew—good for at least a half-dozen scathing columns—he disappeared into oblivion. Fortunately, the other day I discovered some surveys in a mayonnaise jar on Funk & Wagnalls’ porch that reveal a new craze seizing the nation: imagining Alberto Gonzales in all kinds of unlikely scenarios, all of them outside the government.

“And the more bizarre the job, the better,” one respondent said. “He belongs anywhere except the damned government.”

Here are the top five jobs or scenarios the American people find most suitable for Gonzales:

1. New host of The Apprentice

A half-dozen apprentices sit at a conference table with Gonzales at the head.

“You’re fired!” he shouts, tossing his hair.

“Sir,” says a dorky-looking 23-year-old man, “you said I’m superlative in every dimension of business performance. I—I just don’t understand how you can do this to me. It’s not fair. These other people here are all losers. I’m the only one who can generate three spreadsheets on two printers in under a minute and work 120 hours a week.”

“You also believe in counterproductive things like fairness, merit and justice.” Gonzales chops his arm down to the table like a guillotine blade. “You’re fired!”

“What about me?” says a bimbo.

“You’re fired! And you, you’re fired too.”

“Wha–?”

“You’re fired!”

2. Unemployed Pinocchio

Gonzales wanders about Capitol Hill unemployed, sporting a nose two feet long and growing, due to extensive alleged lying to Congress. Senator Ted Kennedy happens by.

“Hey bread-stick face,” he shouts, “what happened, forgot where you live? Or just following your nose to the nearest liars’ convention?”

“Senator, I don’t recall.”

“Yeah? You’d better start recalling, you homeless a**wipe, or you’ll be sucking up storm-drain water through that schnozzola like an elephant, just to survive.”

“Oh yeah? That’s what you think! En garde!” Gonzales lunges and pokes the Senator in the eye with his nose. “Take that!”

“OW! You disingenuous sack of ****!”

Gonzales, enraged by the impudence, sticks the Senator in both eyes repeatedly like a woodpecker. “Take that, Camelot man! And that!”

“Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Oh yeah? Why, you…”

3. Senior partner in a law firm

“Counselor,” an associate says to Gonzales, “You took this case two months ago and you haven’t read the briefs, and you haven’t even spoken to our client? That’s preposterous! Do you realize the constitutional ramifications if we lose this trial?”

“Denny Crane.”

“Huh?”

“Denny Crane, from Boston Legal. That’s me. Who cares about the facts of this stupid case? All I have to do is show up and the prosecution will be so intimidated they’ll wither in their seats. And, might I add, you’ve got great boobs for a midget.”

“Why, you filthy old man, if you weren’t such a pathetic airhead with Alzheimer’s I’d bring you up on charges of sexual harassment, you perv.”

“Denny Crane.”

4. Captain of the Star Ship Enterprise

“Spock—what are all those Federation Star Ships doing out there? I…want…answers…Mr. Spock.”

“It appears, from recent communications, that they are here to assist us in our mission to penetrate Romulan coordinates in order to locate the missing Star Ship Constitution, Captain.”

“Ohuru, please instruct the other Star Ships to leave. This is my turf, damn it.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

“Al, have you gone mad?” the doctor says.

“I have a mission and I don’t want a lot of bleeding-heart Star Ship captains cluttering it up. Ohuru, tell them I’ll fire all fazers on them if they don’t go away. Bones, I see you glaring at me. Tell me I’m not right, Bones.”

“Dammit, Al, I’m a doctor, not a corrupt bureaucrat!”

“All right, the Federation Star Ships are gone. Scotty, increase warp speed and divert auxiliary power to the main shields. We’re going in.”

“She can’t take much more of this, Captain! We’re doing warrup eight as it is!”

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