The road to hell is paved with red herrings

After reading a Facebook posting, from a very wise "FaceFriend", about the news of politicians trying to pass into law a requirement for drug testing if receiving public assistance, my rant urge became too strong to not write. I have viewed some of the crap out there like NotWithMyMoney, blahblah, etc.

How is it even possible for Republicans to be concerned about this? Have they not been informed of the present state of the country right now?

Folks, we are fighting wars on 2 fronts, the economy is in shambles that may take decades to get out of, the general public has just been taken for the biggest heist ever by Wall Street, and our manufacturing base is being exported to whichever country will sacrifice their enviroment and health the most. Did you know that about 25% of the pollution hanging over California right now has been traced to China?

The previous administration allowed the use of the techniques that we EXECUTED the Japanese in WWII for as War Crimes. They basically gutted the Dept of Justice from investigating any social injustice. Not one person has gone to prison for that whole 8 year madness. Remember those Haliburton non-bid contracts for infrastructure that didn't get built? Blackwater mercenaries?

Okay, say that drug testing is an important issue. Skipping the fact that it is applied to only the group that probably doesn't have 10 lobbyist working for them at the Capitol, what are the issues that are raised by this and what is hoped to be gained by this?

 Let us list the possibilities..

    We may be able to save money by not having to give it to people on drugs.

If they were concerned with saving money, they would scream about pork barrel projects like  $1.4 billion welfare for an alternative jet engine for the Joint Strike Fighter that the military has repeatedly officially stated that they don't want. How about $1.9 million for the Pleasure Beach water taxi service project. There is a very long list of items so it can't be about saving money or applying government money fairly.

By not giving them money, it may make them change their life choices and improve their lives.

If they were concerned about that, they would offer rehabilitation and education services so that they would have a chance. Education is the key.

Drugs are bad, okay.

 Just the bad drugs are bad okay. Drugs produced by companies that eliminate shifty eye syndrome are okay. Existing drugs that are acceptable like smoking or drinking that do more damage than all of that "tested for" drugs are fine. But if testing was a concern, they would do it for everyone that gets public money, including teachers, politicians, police, firefighters, even those pricks on Wall Street who got TARP. But that would complicate things, applying testing equally.

What it really is....
This is a Red Herring issue, used as something to divert attention away from the more complicated issues that aren't solved with a 5 second sound bite. This to them is one of those screaming black and white issues that raises emotions from the Rush Limbaugh group and allows easy remembrance for the people that cannot make up their own mind and have to tune into AM talk radio to learn what a opinion is or what opinion they should have. They are too lazy to look up the actual facts or research an issue so they turn to a cigar chomping drug addict for their answers. (Is that irony? I get confused ever since that Alanis Morrisette song).

 For those 5 minute attention span people that gloss over the important stuff, seek easy solutions to complicated issues, and are easily mis-directed by "Red Herring" issues of the day, here is something to read so that you can make up your mind.

 Unemployment went up to 10 percent today as the gradual decay of the manufacturing base...Britneys VahJayJay...drug testing for persons receiving public assistance.

 Crime is on the increase especially in the urban areas due to decreased funding and lack... Saying Happy Holidays not Merry Christmas.... intelligent design taught in schools.

Divorce rates continue to climb as family stress conditions....Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve.....Ban gay marriage to save the sanctity of the marriage.

See how easy that works.....look, a chicken!...send me all your money.

Jamaican Jimjam

"Go fish," I said.

"Damn it!" said The Engineer taking another card off of the floor of our cozy, little jail cell.

Before I could bask in the glory of having beaten The Engineer for the seventh straight time, the deputy warden in charge of our block informed us that our federal public defender had arrived to meet with us.  We were escorted to an interview room where Chuck Pradmore, Esq. was waiting for us.  A manic depressive looking sort, he opened our file for the first time and flipped through its pages as we sat in silence.

Pradmore slowly shut the file, laid his head on it and began to weep.  Beguiled with the distinct impression that we were fucked, I resisted the urge to swat Pradmore across the head beseeching him to get a grip and speak.  "Oh, come on," said The Engineer.  "What is it?"

"Oh, nothing," said Pradmore, wiping tears and snot with the sleeve of his jacket.  "I'm sorry.  It has nothing to do with your case," he said to our great relief.  "It's just--I'm having one of those days I feel like I can't do it anymore.  I have no idea why I went to law school, I'm one-hundred thousand dollars in debt to student loans, and I hate this job with every fiber in my body.  I'm thirty years old going on fifty, on a steady diet of beta-blockers, anti-depressants, and vodka.  Days like today, I just want to disappear."

"Well," I said, "that's some sad shit.  My heart goes out to you, but is there any chance we could get you to opine about our case?"  The case was The United States of America v. The Lawyer and The Engineer, filed by the U.S. Attorney of the District of Columbia at the urging of the Department of Justice, charging us with among other things, treason and terrorism.

"Right," said Pradmore.  "Your case.  I'm sorry.  Ha!  That's why we are here, isn't it?"  The Engineer and I nodded our heads in agreement.  "You guys are screwed."  Pradmore explained that he was going to do everything he could to cut us a deal with the prosecution and that if all went well we would only have to serve twenty years in prison, give or take a couple. 

In the way of mitigation we explained how, with the aid of a couple of nice Russian girls that Tareq and Michaele Salahi had entered the black tie event at The Whitehouse, resulting in the termination of employment of the security guard who had formerly been employed by Satan.  We had, in essence, saved the world!  Our personal defender of The Constitution peered at us through his dark, sagging eyes, one of them twitching, as he closed his file.

"We might have to go the route of proving that the two of you are not competent to stand trial," Pradmore said, leaving us to brood in our misfortune, vanquished of hope.  

The day before our preliminary hearing was scheduled, Pradmore had returned to the jail to meet with us.  As depressed as ever, Pradmore opened our file and held up a letter that he read to himself.  Putting the letter back in the file, he sighed deeply.  "What in the hell is it?  Speak up, damn you," I insisted.

"I just feel rotten today," said Pradmore.

"Sorry about that," I said.  "Does your emotional disposition have anything to do with our case?"

"No.  Not at all," said Pradmore.  Conjuring a smile, Pradmore looked us in the eyes and explained that our case was being dismissed, costs to the government, in exchange that we enter into a gag order, promising never to speak of the matter to anyone.  The Engineer and I jumped to our feet, dancing madly about the interview room, never so thrilled to be alive and free.  Interpretive victory dance complete, we asked why the case was being dismissed.

Pradmore answered, "According to the Justice Department, the whole thing is just too fucking bizarre to persue."

We were ushered to the courthouse and presented to the judge that afternoon.  "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"  We did.  The Engineer and I eagerly agreed to be bound by the gag order, and we were released.  We felt pretty damn happy to see that hell-hole of deceit and idiocy, called Washington D.C., in the rearview mirror of The Engineer's Nissan Cube as we sped twenty miles per hour over the limit out of the nation's capital, free to fight another day.

Loitering about HQ, I searched every online news source I could think of in an attempt to see if there was any mention of The Engineer and me regarding The Whitehouse party crashers.  There was none.  The Engineer paced about, making me nervous, as he was consumed with the thoughts of digging into a styrofoam take-out of spicy beef lo mien, while co-commitently lamenting that Edgar, the "intern" editor, had ditched us.

We were disturbed from our meditations by the sound of a knocking and the front door crashing to the ground off of its hinges.  The Engineer had not yet had time to fix it from when the door had been damaged by The Pentecostals who had busted through it in a spitting rage to kill us before the world came to an end.

At the front door, at the street, the mail man stood wide-eyed at the sight of the door laid out in front of him.  "What did you do?" I asked the mail man with feigned surprise.  "You broke it.  God!"

"But, I-I, just knocked, and--"

"What do you got there?" I asked, and the mail man handed certified mail for me to sign.  Any lawyer who has been around the block knows that good news never comes via certified mail.  My stomach churned and heart sped up as a dose of cortisol was being released in my veins while I signed the green card.

"There," I said handing the green card back to the mail man.  "Well," I said, "you could at least say you are sorry for destroying my door."

The mail man shook his head, regained his bearings, muttered, "Sorry," and shuffled off.

Feeling paranoid, I looked up and down the street, picked the door up and propped it back in the door jam.  Having barely reached the loft upstairs, where The Engineer was still pacing around thinking about crab ragoon, the door came crashing to the ground again, causing me to jump a foot off the ground, and involuntarily blurt out a string of profanities.

I walked back down stairs where standing in the doorway, staring stupidly at the door sprawled out in front of him, was a smug looking bastard, with a buzz cut, in a dark-blue windbreaker.  "What did you do?" I asked buzz cut with feigned surprise.  "You broke it.  God!"

He looked up at me with a scowl on his face, and asked if I was The Lawyer or The Engineer.  I confessed that he stood in the presence of no other than the man the world knew as The Engineer.  Buzz cut whipped out a badge.  "Agent Guy Ballkalsky, Drug Enforcement Agency.  May I come in?"

"What the hell for?" I asked, genuinely confused.  The Engineer and I had done a lot of weird things, some sort of illegal, but drugs?  Searching my mind for the purpose of this unwelcome visit, I could not estimate the reason for a DEA agent wanting to have anything to do with us.

"I just want to ask you a few questions," Ballkalsky said in such a warm, brotherly way that it made my skin crawl.

"Fine," I said.  "Come on up.  Don't worry about the door," I said, lifting it back up into its jam.

Ballkalsky asked us whether we knew anything about a used school bus.  We didn't.  He asked whether we had made any purchases within the last few months amounting to $15,000 on a credit card.  We hadn't.  He wanted to know if either one of us had a green thumb.  I confessed that I had a thing for hostas, Knockout roses, and ornamental grass.

"Grass?" Ballkalsky asked, his eyes wide with suspicion.

"Yeah," I said.  "You can stick it in the ground about anywhere and it grows.  You don't even have to fertilize it."  At this Ballkalsky took a note pad and a pen from the pocket of his windbreaker and started scribbling frantically.  I decided to shut the hell up, and announced that the interview was over.

"You guys don't mind if I have a look around, do you?" asked Ballkalsky.  Before The Engineer could answer I put my hand over his mouth.

"Shove off, and come back with a search warrant," I said.  Agent Ballkalsky gave The Engineer and I a wry smile and snapped his fingers.  The door came crashing to the ground, causing me to clear a foot off the ground and set into another litany of profanity.  Three more agents in blue windbreakers with DEA scrolled on the back in yellow, came clamoring up the stairs.

"Funny you should say that," said Ballkalsky.  "I just happen to have one right here," he said, pulling a warrant out of that damned, government issued windbreaker.  He handed me the warrant, which I read out loud to The Engineer.

It was something about the words, "for suspicion of the cultivation of a controlled dangerous substance, to-wit: marijuana," that put The Engineer and I in a state of panicky confusion.  "Marijuana?" I asked.  "What in the hell is this about?  This can't be right?"

Ballkalsky was unaffected by my pleas of ignorance as his fellow agents and he rifled through HQ, turning over papers, looking through desk drawers, and reading everything.  The bastards even downloaded all of our documents and the blog off of our computers to a thumb drive.  Three hours later, on their way out and over the door, Agent Buzz-cut suggested we stick around for the time being, and not leave town.

Feeling supremely agitated I ripped open the certified mail we received.  It was a dunning letter, threatening suit, if The Engineer and I did not make good on the $15,000 worth of horticultural products purchased on a credit card that we didn't know we had, within thirty days.  I called the company, Amsterdam Express, Inc., from which the purchases had been made.

Somebody, some where, had opened a credit card account under our names and purchased, within the last year, a top-of-the-line drip irrigation system, a hundred twelve inch pots, grow lights with pulley kits, Ph specific soil, and gallons of liquid fertilizer.  I called the toll free number in the letter to speak to someone at the credit card company.  A woman with a rich Indian accent asked, "And when will you be able to pay your account current, sir?"

"Never," I growled.  "We didn't open this account.  It is not ours."

"Very good, sir, but I see nothing to indicate that there is any iota of truth to what you say, sir.  And if I may be so bold as to say, you are a poor liar.  If you do not pay the account, we will have no other option but to turn this matter over for collection and possibly a law suit, sir."

"Damn you," I said.

"Sir, if you continue to use that tone of voice with me, I will hang up and transfer your account to collection immediately, sir."

"Look here.  Tell me where these purchases were delivered," I demanded.

The Indian account representative sighed.  "You should know, sir, since you purchases were made on your account, and delivered to the delivery address that you provided the merchant from which the purchases were made."  I hung up, and called Amsterdam Express, Inc. back.

"Amsterdam Express, duuuude.  How may I help you on this beautiful day?"

"I need to know where my order--" I stopped at that, knowing full well that everything I said on the phone, and in HQ, was being intercepted and taken down by the DEA.  "Er, an order that was made by someone pretending to be me was shipped to."

"You should know, man, since your order was shipped, received and signed for, dude."

"Look, damn you, I need to know where it was shipped," I demanded.

"Hey, whoa.  If you're going to take that tone with me, I'll just hang up.  So chill out, man."  Finally I was able to persuade hacky-sack for brains to fax our--er, somebody's, invoice to us.  The shipping address was a P.O. Box number in a rural township.

With an order of crab ragoon, egg rolls and spicy beef lo mien to go, we rolled out of town in The Cube.  Destination:  the sleepy and impoverished community of Jimjam, USA.  I called ahead to a process server I had used in and near Jimjam to do what is called a "box buster," and was able to learn the the name and physical address under which the box was registered.  Not surprisingly, the box was registered to The Engineer and me.

While in route, I called the county assessor to determine who owned the property with the address we were given.  Not surprisingly, The Engineer and I were the proud fee-simple land owners of the property in question, though neither one of us before that day had ever so much as put our toes in Jimjam.

With the aid of GPS we drove a few miles down a county road and turned onto a dirt road that took us another mile or two deep in the sticks.  With the GPS indicating that we were on top of our destination, The Engineer parked The Cube out of sight, obscured from the road by a thicket of tall shrubs and trees.

Armed with tazers, we hiked around the twenty acres the property encompassed, keeping low and treading cautiously.  After a couple of hours, and very thirsty, we considered giving up for the day, having found nothing of interest, not even so much as a little tar-paper shack, which you would expect to see in those parts.  Resting under a tree we considered our options.

"There's nothing here," said The Engineer as he jumped up and walked around, kicking rocks.  "This is a complete fucking waste of--" said The Engineer before falling through the ground as he was replaced by a plume of dust.

"What the...," I said walking over to the hole in the ground where The Engineer once stood.  I got down on my hands and knees, and no sooner than I had peaked my head over the edge of the hole, a large and hairy arm grabbed me by the face and pulled me down it.

"Drop the water guns," said a burly looking, gapped-tooth, hillbilly.  The Engineer and I dropped our tazers.  "You don't want to excite Cleetus here," he said pointing to another itchy looking hillbilly with a double-barrel, sawed-off shot gun trained on us.  "His finger starts to twitch sometin' fierce when he gets nervous, don't it Cleetus?"

"Sure enough does, Darl," said the bastard, Cleetus.  "And I reckon I'm feeling a bit nervous and twitchy right now, Darl."  The two scumbags started to snort wildly, which I assumed passed as laughing in Jimjam, USA.  After the initial shock of being yanked face first through an obscured hole in the ground and being confronted by the cast of Deliverance had worn off, I focused on the room behind Darl and Cleetus.

It was our credit card, hard at work.  We were standing at the back end of a school bus that had been completely buried and modified with hanging grow lights, over pungent and healthy looking marijuana plants fitted in pots.  Black tubing neatly ran from one pot to the next, methodically dripping water to nourish the roots.  From one end of the bus to the other, marijuana plants thrived and reached upwards towards the grow lights, gently waving in the air moved by oscillating fans.

"Boss?" said Darl into a walkie-talkie.

A scratchy voice came back, "Yes?"

"We's got ourselves a couple trespassers.  Whatchya want us to do with 'em?"

"Kill them," the voice came back in an instant.

"Hey there, Cleetus.  It's your lucky day.  The boss said kill 'em."  The inbreds started into a hardy round of snorting and laughing.  The Engineer and I shuttered.

"Woo-hoo!" yelped Cleetus.  "Whichy oney do I wanty to killy first?" asked Cleetus alternating pointing the gun at me then the Engineer.

"Wait a second," came back the voice on the walkie-talkie.  "Describe what the tresspassers look like."

"Well," said Darl.  "They definitely don't look like they're from around here.  Kinda look like smart-ass city types.  Yip, both look like a couple of smug, know-it-all, punk, sons-of-bitches, boss."

"Ah, I know them.  Take them up to the barn, and let Candy take care of them, over," said the voice.

"Oooo-weee!" exclaimed Darl.  "Candy's gonna be takin' care of you all, you lucky sons-of-bitches."  The Engineer's face twitched and contorted.  I fought back the urge to piss my pants.  Darl and Cleetus burst out snorting and laughing as hard as they had ever in their simple and despicable lives.

With Cleetus and his shotgun at our backs, we marched about half a mile to a wooden barn.  Inside, Cleetus opened a box and pulled some articles of clothing out, threw them at us and commanded us to strip.  The Engineer flat refused.  Cleetus put the barrels of his shotgun right into the nostrils of The Engineer.  "I suggest you do as I say," said Cleetus.

That was all the motivational inspiration The Engineer and I needed.  We stripped and put on black latex shorts that were about two sizes too small for us.  Cleetus pulled a couple of orange gag balls and made us put them in our mouths and fasten them around our heads, and then made us put a pair of hand cuffs on.  We were made to raise our arms as Cleetus fastened the cuffs to a couple of hooks hanging from the rafters.  The hooks were high enough that we could not raise our arms high enough, on our tippy-toes, to release them.  Feeling very vulnerable, we expected to see Dick Cheney walking into the barn at any moment to deliver up a smarting round of torture.

"There we go, sweet hearts.  I'll leave you all to think things over for your selves a little before Candy gets here," he said, snorting and laughing out the barn door closing and locking it from the outside.

An hour later, a stunning blond, attired in close to nothing, appeared in front of us.  She wore emerald thigh-high boots.  Other than that, she wore a pair of green panties. The only thing covering her breasts were marijuana leaf stickers over each nipple.  "You boys ready for the shoot?" she asked winking at us, as she set up a tripod with a camera mounted on top of it.  "Okay," said Candy looking pleased with her seductive self.  "Say, cheese," she said, lighting a joint.

I dare not describe what happened after that.

The photo shoot over, Cleetus returned and released us from the rafters and the cuffs and directed us to put our clothes back on.  "I hope Candy treated you boys real nice.  Now hurry the hell up, and getch your clothes on.  The boss wants to see you all."

In double time, Cleetus marched us to a mobile home close by.  It was clean on the outside--there were no cars on cinder blocks, rusted-out kitchen appliances nor a pack of flee bitten dogs scratching about--a rare sight in a place like rural Jimjam.  From inside, in the main living area, you wouldn't necessarily know that you were in a mobile home, especially in rural Jimjam, USA.  It had an Ikea feng shui that was pleasing to the eye and cozy to the soul.  It was the sort of place you expected to see black turtle necks, leather boots and black dresses, and martinis.  Cleetus pointed to a door with his shot gun.  "Thata way," he grunted.

We walked into what should have been a bedroom, but had been outfitted as an office.  Candy was standing next to an executive seat with its back to us.  We took it that this was 'The Boss' with his back to us.  As we stood on the other side of the desk from them, they were looking at a computer monitor that sat on the credenza behind the desk.

"Wow, how did you learn to do that?" asked The Boss, whose voice sounded awfully familiar.

"I told you, I paid my way through college by being a stripper," said Candy, still in her cannabis costume, and giving us a wink.  Peering over the back of the executive seat The Engineer and I could see that they were inspecting the photos of the recent shoot that Candy directed and produced.  In each photo Candy had assumed a provocative pose, while smoking a joint, nestled up to either one of us as we hung from the rafters with gag balls in our mouths, looking like helpless morons.  The Engineer and I were in a complete state of shock as we contemplated what it would portend for our careers and marriages if those photos ever made there way to the commons of the world wide web.

The executive chair pivoted around to us, and there sat no other, looking at us through squinting eyes as red as the devil's, our "intern" editor.  "Edgar!  You sorry, little prick," I said.

The Engineer followed up with, "You sack of shit," or something equally insulting.  Edgar laughed as Candy rubbed his shoulders.

"Welcome to my farm, guys.  I hope you have been treated well," said the stoned smart ass.  "I take it you have met my business partner, Candy?"  Candy blew us a kiss.

"Hey," said The Engineer in way of salutation back to Candy.  It was hard not to be enamored with her talents, no matter how tawdry.

"Come on, Edgar," I said.  "What's the deal here.  You are going to get us all in a shit-pot full of trouble if you keep this up.  We've already been visited by the DEA back at HQ.  Once the fed's get a whiff of you, there is no shaking them."

"Don't worry, I've thought the whole thing through.  I suppose, in part, you guys are a little concerned about this property being titled in you names."  The Engineer and I shook our heads in agreement.  We were mortified.  "I have already deeded the property to Rush Limbaugh by way of forging your names to a quit claim deed.  Anyone investigating will see that it is an obvious forgery and that your pens never came close to a piece of paper that has anything to do with this enterprise."  Edgar started laughing again, though we didn't share his enthusiastic humor.

"Okay," said The Engineer.  "But that doesn't mean we won't be investigated.  Being investigated kind of sucks, you know.  And besides, what is going to keep us from telling all, and pointing the finger right at you?"

"I'm glad you brought that up, bitch," said Edgar pointing at the monitor behind him.  "All I have to do is click 'send'," he said, his index finger hovering precariously over the right button of the mouse, "and you will have a whole lot of explaining to do to the press, and your wives and families.  All the photos will be up on the blog and emailed to your families and all of the local media."  He widened his blazing red eyes and looked at us with a crazed, opened mouth smile, taunting us to dare him.

"Say, Edgar," I put forth, "there's no need to do that.  Let's consider our options.  You wouldn't have $15,000 lying around, handy?"  He nodded in the affirmative that he did.  "Wow," I said.

"Good job," said The Engineer, impressed with Edgar's and Candy's entrepreneurial spirit.

"If you will pay us what we owe on your credit card," I continued, "we can close that account and protest it with the credit bureaus as having never been ours to begin with."

"This is pretty damn good hydroponic stuff," said Edgar as he took a long drag off of a joint, kicked his legs up on the desk and blew a few smoke rings.  "I call it Jamaican Jimjam--good name, huh?"  Edgar fell into a deep contemplative silence.  After a minute, and still no word back from Edgar with regard to our proposal that we get everything set straight and be allowed to get the hell out of there, The Engineer stamped his foot.  "Hey!  Edgar, come back."

Edgar bolted straight in his chair.  "Do what?"

"What we were talking about, with the credit card and all," said The Engineer.

"Credit card?" asked Edgar.

"Goddamn it!"  I explained the whole thing to him again.

"Sure," said Edgar.  "No problem."  Edgar opened a drawer of the desk and threw a wad of cash across it to us.  "That should be a little more than fifteen g's there for you."

"Sixteen exactly," said The Engineer having counted the sum in a flash.

"Well, it's getting dark out," I observed.  "Just give us the keys to The Cube, and we will let Candy and you get on with your lives."

"Wait," said Edgar with a look of alarm on his face.  "Did you hear that?"

"You're just paranoid," said The Engineer.

"Eat some chocolate chip cookies, and drink a gallon of milk, and you'll feel better," I added.

"No!  Shit!" Edgar said, panicking.  Picking up a walkie talkie he yelled, "Cleetus!  Darl!  Get out of the bus.  Repeat, abandon the bus.  Code Green!"  Darl's and Cleetus's voices came back in a sonic collage of redneck angst, driven mostly by drawling explicatives that only a fellow redneck-hillbilly, bastard could decipher.

"What the fuck is it?" I shouted.

"Listen," said Edgar.  For the love of all the holy saints, it was the sound of the air being repeatedly dissected by the blades of a helicopter.  I didn't know whether to run or jump in place.  The Engineer was stricken frozen in a state of utter fear.

Candy danced around, her c-cups bouncing up and down, repeating, "Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

"Come on," said Edgar with a large duffle bag slung over his shoulder.  "Down the hole," he commanded, dropping down a hatch in the floor of the mobile home, and into a tunnel.  We popped out of the ground fifty yards from the home.  Edgar took what looked like a control for a remote control toy car out of the duffel bag.  No sooner had he hit a button on it than a ball of fire lit the night sky with a considerable concussion that came from over the hill where the buried bus was.

"That should take care of the evidence," said Edgar.  We could see the helicopter, and dangling beneath it the silhouettes of men sliding down ropes to the ground.  Edgar ran to a pick up truck parked in the dirt drive way.  He started it up, turned on its lights, and put it into drive.  We watched as the pick up idled off, driverless, down the dirt road and out of sight as the helicopter above followed it.  "Let's go, this way.  Stay low," said Edgar, the perfect homosexual version of Rambo.

We lit out into the surrounding woods.  After there was about two-hundred yards between us and the home, Edgar took out the remote control, hit a button and blew the home to smithereens as agents ducked and ran for cover all around it.  All that was left were the axles, ablaze.

"This way, keep up," Edgar implored The Engineer, Candy and me.  After what seemed a half mile of trudging through shrubs and woods we came to a happy sight, indeed.  It was The Cube.  Edgar through the duffle bag in back, as we all climbed in.  Darl and Cleetus popped out of the ditch and came running to us, but not before we were all inside The Cube and The Engineer had locked the car.

"They aren't coming with us, no fucking way," said The Engineer.  "Where in the hell are the keys, Edgar?"

"Oh, shit, the keys.  I left them in my desk."  The Engineer and I turned, looking at Edgar in the back seat with a lust for murder in our eyes.  "Hahaha! Just kidding.  Here they are," he said handing them to The Engineer, while Cleetus and Darl banged on either side of the car demanding to be let in, like their lives depended on it.  "Hit it," yelled Edgar, "but keep your lights off for at least a mile."

"What about the hillbillies?"  I asked.  "They are going to get caught and will tell the fed's everything to get out of this.  They'll sing like song birds," I said as I watched Darl lose his footing and crash to the ground in a cloud of dust as Cleetus continued running after us, his arms flailing about wildly.

"Don't worry," said Edgar.  "They have been greatly misinformed about who Candy and I are.  Tell them your real name, Candy."

"Sissy," she said.  The Engineer and I were not predisposed to believe that was her name either.

Edgar swept HQ for bugs and ran a few programs on our computers to prevent any further hacking by the DEA.

"So, what's in the duffle bag?" The Engineer asked Edgar.

"Oh," said Edgar, unzipping it, "after Sissy's cut, just a hundred thousand dollars more or less."  Sissy took her share, loaded it into another bag, and said something about putting her business administration degree to good use and opening up a strip club, and sauntered off.  It was for the best.  Only a homosexual male, like Edgar, could be in business with trouble like that.

"Holy smoley," said The Engineer.  "That's a lot of money.  Say, Edgar, you wouldn't want to pop around the corner and pick us up a pizza, extra garlic?"

"Go fuck your self," said Edgar.  Our working relationship with Edgar would have to be renegotiated on more favorable terms to our "intern" editor.

The next morning reading the paper, I blurted out, "Hey," getting The Engineer's and Edgar's attention, "check this out."  I read them the AP report.

AP--Jimjam.  DEA agents raided a rural estate located outside the small town of Jimjam last evening at dusk.  The property was suspected as being the site of a marijuana growing operation inside a buried school bus.  DEA agents confessed that there was little in the way of prosecutable evidence left on the property.

Two explosions rocked the area atomizing a mobile home on the property and what was believed to be an old school bus buried beneath the ground in which marijuana was being cultivated, according to DEA Agent Guy Ballkalsky.  No agents were injured in the raid, he said.

Two local men have been taken into custody.  According to agents, the two men were wondering about the property, bewildered and under the influence of marijuana.  "They have been interrogated," said one anonymous source with the DEA.  "We believe the two hillbilly, redneck scumbags were running the illegal operation, but we are still not sure.  They don't seem smart enough to pull something like this off."  

According to another anonymous source, the two men, while being interrogated, insisted that they were working for a man they only new as 'The Boss,' who they believe to be a wealthy son of a Polish oil man, and his assistant, Candy who 'The Boss' had met in New Zealand and brought to the U.S. with him.

Agent Ballkalsky indicated that the investigation will be dropped.  The reason cited for closing the case is, "the whole thing is just too damn bizarre," according to Agent Ballkalsky.  

Atomic Dinette???

 Heard on the radio the other day that "The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists" has dropped back the Doomsday clock by one minute. This is sort of a coincidence as I am trying to write a blog entry about certain events that occurred not too long ago that most people didn't even realize had occurred. This particular series of events, by the opinion of some historians, actually brought us closer to doomsday than even the Cuban Missile Crisis! But until that blog, as I am somewhat of a Cold War history buff myself, here is some trivia facts for the interested....

1) Klaus Fuchs was a famous spy during the Manhattan Project. There was another spy, just as important, codename Perseus whose identity was never found out.

2) In the middle of Hollywood, there was a secret film studio called Lookout Mountain that filmed all of the atomic tests and had 250 employees. At one time they were producing more film footage than any of the major studios.

3) Several sites were set up so that a plan called COG or Continuity of Government could be implemented. Congress was supposed to go (but not their wives and children), when warned, to a designated place called GreenBriar which was a secret complex built underneath a luxury hotel. All of the luxury hotel employees were told that the secret complex employees for the underground site were "TV Repairmen". It was undiscovered for 30 years until a reporter disclosed its existence.

4) During the peak of the US Bomb making in the 50's, 50 percent of all the stainless steel produced in the country went to the process of making bomb. 30 percent of all the electricity produced in the country went to the same purpose.

5) During the fallout shelter debates of the 60's, a congressman who was a major proponent of cheap shelters that could be made by anyone for 40 dollars and would survive a attack, proved so by making one in his backyard for that amount. When he had a fire on his property caused by burning trash, the shelter was completely burned and destroyed. This prompted physicist, Enrico Fermi, to state "There is a God and he has a sense of humor"

6) Right before the first test during the Manhattan project, there was a science fiction writer that wrote a short story about such things. It was specific enough in detail that he was arrested and interrogated by the FBI before they were finally convinced that it was a coincidence.

7) During testing for pilots in the air that may observe accidentally a megaton burst, a mileage number was needed so that the pilots could be assured that they would not experience eye flash blindness that may hinder their ability to fly. The testing was abruptly stopped and the report was classified when it was discovered to be more than 750 miles.

8) During a SAC flight a bomber carrying a 1.2 megaton H-bomb collided midair with a jet fighter. They had to eject the bomb out of the plane into the waters because they thought they were going to crash.
The bomb was never found after 6 weeks of intensive searching by the military. It still sits in the water somewhere off the coast of Savannah, Georgia in the good ole USA.

9) Before the first test at Alamogordo , there was concern that it would be a fizzle and the only sizable quantity of plutonium on the face off the planet would be scattered to the winds. So they came up with a design called JUMBO, a metal tank that was 25 feet long and weighing 214 tons that would contain the fizzle. They found the one foundry in the country that could make something of this size and had one produced. Then a special railroad car had to be designed to ship it to New Mexico. Special routes had to be then constructed to get from the rail lines to the site because normal roads would collapse with the weight. When it was brought to the site, the scientists decided it wasn't needed and left it in the desert where is still sits today.

 10) No, Indiana Jones would not have survived in a lead lined refrigerator as shown in the movie "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull". So impossible was that scene that it gave rise to the saying "Nuke the frig" meaning a scene in a movie that is so implausable as to destroy any credibility of plot for the whole movie.

There WAS such a thing as the Doom-Town test in which the Atomic Energy Commission built a whole town complete with all the infrastructure and placed mannequins throughout the town and then blew it up with a A-Bomb. 

11) There was sort of an "atomic energy is our friend" crazy pr campaign going on although by this time it was well known the dangers of radiation by government departments (AEC, etc). One of the things that I would have sold my soul to the devil for was this toy. It was the equivalent of the erector set and easy bake oven rolled into one! Behold the Atomic Testing Lab for kids!! And you thought that toys weren't educational. My 6 year old vision, a perverse sort of Christmas story, was me in a white lab coat saying
"and with this last step, I shall rule the world!! Bwaahaahaa!"

As the literature for the toy by the company stated.....

comes with four types of uranium ore, a beta-alpha source (Pb-210), a pure beta source (Ru-106), a gamma source (Zn-65?), a spinthariscope, a cloud chamber with its own short-lived alpha source (Po-210), an electroscope, a geiger counter, a manual, a comic book (Dagwood Splits the Atom) and a government manual "Prospecting for Uranium."

For some reason my mom refused to let me have it. I eventually came around to understanding the wisdom of that.

12) The picture is of Miss Atomic Bomb 1957. The title of this blog is a cheap take of a profound piece of media called "Atomic Cafe" by Jayne Loader. The Atomic Testing for Kids toy was produced for 1 year I think around 1951 by the Gilbert Company. The kit was expensive at the time but a neighborhood friend had that toy, used,  that he was willing to part with for 10 dollars. He also had the largest box of M80's and Cherry Bombs that I had ever seen in one spot. And a Playboy magazine hidden for his paying customers to view. I think he later spent time in prison for some reason or other. Something about this kid just made bells go off in your head without the need any spoken words. Natures defense mechanism at work I suppose.

Pivotal moments in US history changed by the courageous actions of 1.

It was something that was going to change the world! The internal combustion engine was not only going to allow everyday citizens to have personal transportation, but also was going to replace the more hazardous steam power. The only problem was the fuel. When the engines were made more efficient and more powerful with higher compression, this horrible problem kept revealing its ugly side. A ominous sound would start up from the very bowels of the engine cylinders when put under stress.

This sound was discovered to be "Pinging" or sometimes called engine knocking. The sound was like somebody had put gravel rocks in the cylinders! Besides the very undesirable sounds that were produced from the relatively new technology it was discovered that pinging caused damage to the internal workings of the engine itself. Some solution had to be found or this technology would never be accepted!

So in 1916 a chemist, named Thomas Midgley,  was given the job of finding a solution to this particular problem. He was told that not only was it bad for the automobiles being produced but the newfangled flying machines and the associated aviation engine development was being hampered. So working for General Motors Research, he tried several schemes to prevent this engine knock.

Since Thomas thought that too much heat might be the problem, he tried different dyes in the gas. Perhaps different colors would absorb less heat. This didn't work out so well. They then accumulated almost every element they could think of based on the Periodic Chart of the elements and started going down the list.

By trial and error, they stumbled upon a substance called Tetra-Ethyl-Tin that showed some promise. Further investigation showed that it was the lead in the Tetra-Ethyl-Tin that stopped the knock completely. Lead was extremely cheap so if this substance worked out, a lot of money could be made. The chemist cooked up a batch of Tetra-Ethyl-Lead and tried it out. The knock went away completely like magic!

But by this time, other researchers had discovered that lead had some very bad properties like brain damage, strange skin reactions, difficulties in walking, etc. The League of Nations recommended to ban all lead in paint to which Europe complied.The United States, for whatever reason, did not regulate lead in paint until a much later date. Thomas Midgley was by then receiving all sorts of reports and letters telling about the hazards of lead but by this time too much had been invested in this magical liquid solution.

In 1922, the surgeon general wrote a letter to the president of General Motors with concerns that lead would become a serious health issue to the public. In spite of these warnings, the president of General Motors, Pierre DuPont partnered with Standard Oil to form Ethyl Gasoline Company with Mr. Charles Kettering as President and Thomas Midgley, the chemist, as Vice-President. The product was put on sale in 1923. Additional public advertising was helped by the fact that Ethyl fueled cars won 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place at the Indianapolis Raceway in 1923.



But problems started to show up. At the Ethyl production facility in Deepwater, the workers became disoriented, had a strange gait, and couldn't seem to think clearly. The Deepwater Ethyl plant started to be called the "House of Butterflies" for the strange effects to the workers. The companies leaders excused the effects as the workers are "working too hard" and that was causing the slow insanity. "We are going to have to protect the workers against themselves" stated Mr Kettering. The public took these statements as a clean bill of health and soon the Ethyl lead additive started taking over the market.

By 1963, over 98 percent of all gasoline contained the additive. But all this lead was also coming out of the exhausts of all those cars across the country. Thousands of tons of lead per year at its peak. But because of political muscle, Ethyl lead gasoline enjoyed the protection of the government. One instance, when a competitor came up with a nonlead additive, the US government actually sued them into bankruptcy. The US Federal Trade Commission came out with a report that stated that leaded gas was not a narcotic, poisonous dope, or dangerous to human health in any way. Ethyl Gasoline was here to stay........except for one person who just wouldn't go along.

This one geochemist graduate student, Clair Patterson, was trying some new ways of measuring how old rocks were with the goal of finding out how old the earth was. His new method was by measuring the isotopes of uranium and lead naturally found in rocks samples. But something was wrong! All of the rock samples he tested contained about 200 times the amount of lead they should have naturally. He just couldn't figure out where the contamination was coming from! He set up a strict contamination procedure in his lab. Still he was coming up with the same results. Where was all the lead coming from?

He found out that the lead contamination was from the atmosphere and spoiling the samples. He then discovered that it was from the gasoline additive, Tetra-Ethyl-Lead, and started publishing his findings.

Dr Patterson came up with an experiment in which he would take core samples from pack ice in Greenland and from the different layers, be able to determine lead contamination throughout past years. The experiment worked and it show that lead levels started increasing in 1923 and that the last tested year of 1965, the lead levels were 1000 times what they had been before 1923.

He also started testing human bones and found that modern human bone lead level were many times greater than pre-1923 bone lead tests. When these results were published, the proverbial "crap hit the fan".

First the Ethyl corporation offered him lucrative contracts for more favorable results. He refused. They then started a public smear campaign designed to destroy his credibility. Even the US government got into the campaign with the National Research Council disputing the findings. The Ethyl Corporation had many friends on their side including a Supreme Court Justice, members of the US Public Health Service, and the American Petroleum Institute.

But Dr. Patterson would not relent on his campaign to inform the general public. Eventually Congress passed the Clean Air act of 1970 which demanded that leaded gasoline was to be phased out because of research that Dr Patterson published. DuPont and the Ethyl Corporation were able to delay the death of Ethyl based additives for 10 more years in court, but eventually all gasoline became lead free in 1986. In the 63 years of Ethyl additives existence, 6 million tons of lead was released in the atmosphere.

What happened to the chemist, Thomas Midgley, who ignored all the warnings about lead and came up with Ethyl additives? Well, he was not totally out of the creative process when Tetra-Ethyl-Lead ceased to exist. He later went on to invent ChloroFluroCarbons, otherwise known as CFC'S. What a guy!!

 
Resources:
 The Nation: The Secret History of Lead by Jamie Kitman
 Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetra-ethyl_lead
 Damn Interesting: The Ethyl Poison Earth by Alan Bellows
 http://www.chemcases.com/tel/tel-13.htm
Kenneshaw University "How the best known Poison on Earth remained in the Gasoline Supply for 60 Years"

Lawyer Claus

It's definitely that time of year again.  You can tell that the holidays are upon us by the way hard working Americans cram a month's worth of work into two weeks, stretching the limits of sanity to the brink of snapping.  Of course, some do snap.  But the purpose of this entry is not to probe the what-for of our collective insanity induced by trying to do too much in too short amount of time, but rather to dish out a few justly deserved presents.

First, for the teabaggers and their de facto leaders at Fox News.  Man, these people really hate government, or at least a government under the executive control of a black Democrat.  My mind still boggles at some of the rich signs these folks were holding up at rallies over the last year.  My favorite was, "Keep Government out of my Social Security."  If you do not instantly recognize the irony of that statement, you might consider using drugs--it couldn't impair your cognitive abilities worse than they are already.

One woman being interviewed by author Max Blumenthal at a spirited teabagging stated the purpose of her participation was because she wanted government out of her life, period.  When pressed to expound, she repeated the injunction over and over.  If no government is what you want, then I give you its alternative:  anarchy for the U.S.A.  Irrespective of naughtiness, my gift to the folks at Fox balls and their teabagging devotees is a pair of Doc Martens and hair clippers so that they can all give each other mohawks.  Rock on!

The religious right's faith in the singularly literal interpretation of an ancient text written by men who thought the world was flat is unwavering.  I admire people that can stick to a certain perspective despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  Most astonishing though, I am chilled to the bone that the one thing the religious right wants more than anything in the world is the total destruction of planet Earth.  So, my gift to them is Armageddon and the rapture.  Go out to a hill somewhere in God's country, and wait, while modernity chugs along without you.  However, this is a bit of a gag gift.  It's not the people who subscribe to the idea that the world is 14 billion years old that are going to get left behind.

As a subset of the same category as the religious right, I have a very special gift for advocates of abstinence only sex education:  STD's and more kids than you can reasonably afford.

Oh, and look here what we have in the bag.  I have a gift for those mad geniuses on Wall Street for whom too much wealth, at any cost, is never enough.  They are the only beneficiaries of anything that approaches socialism in the United States.  Our taxes insure that they continue to make outlandish bonuses as they devise ever more complex schemes to screw us in return.  Wall Street executives get locked in a room for twenty-four hours with a gaggle of stinky World Trade Organization protesters, armed with tazers--no cameras, or other recording devices, allowed.

Let's see.  Reaching into the bag, rummaging around...I know it's here somewhere.  Yes, there it is.  For the health insurance industry, you get the bird.

As for the rest of you, all I have to give is infinite patience and an excuse to laugh at anything that might be spun as remotely humorous.

Ho, ho, ho!  Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.    

Pivotal moments in US history changed by the courageous actions of 1.

The citizens of the country were in turmoil. "The President is a socialist" they cried. A large group of protesters formed to demonstrate around the county. "We need to take back the country and follow the Constitution" were the slogans used by some of the most affluent New York investors. They had lost a fortune in investments and were convinced that the country was headed in a hopeless direction of Socialism. They saw the rapid demise of all they had built up. Something must be done......

You may think that this was a description of the "Tea Baggers" and the harsh words were for President Obama. Well, think again. The President is Franklin Roosevelt and the time is during the Great Depression. Roosevelt had just begun execution of a program called the "New Deal".

The "Tea Baggers" of that time were called the American Liberty League and they had actually more in mind than just protesting. What they had in mind was a coup d'etat, a forceful overthrow of the US Government. So some of the wealthiest men in the country along with the help of a large group of investment bankers held a secret meeting in New York to organize and bankroll this devious plan. They then appointed a go-between messenger, Gerald McGuire, of the American Liberty League, to enlist the help of a U.S. Marine Major General by the name of Smedley Butler to gain control and lead the military.

They claimed that they already had control of the newspaper publications and also had immediate access to 3 million dollars to start the coup and up to 300 million if it was needed. That was a huge amount of money in the 1930's!

Smedley Butler wasn't just any sort of General. He had been awarded the Distinguished Service Medal from both the Army and the Navy. He was also one of only 20 people to receive the Marines Brevet Medal and one of only a handful to twice, let me repeat that, twice receive the Medal of Honor. A national hero if there ever was one.

Initially Gerald McGuire approached the General saying he was from the Committee for a Sound US Dollar, a organization determined to force Roosevelt back to the Gold Standard. He implied that the organization had the support of several political leaders and was bankrolled by the country's most affluent individuals and corporate leaders.

After several meeting with Smedley not showing any interest whatsoever, McGuire dropped all pretenses and at a restaurant meeting laid it all on the line. McGuire indicated that he had the support of key industrial figures and had 3 million in cash to bankroll the cause. He stated that he would like General Butler to lead a force of 500,000 disgruntled Veterans and they were to overthrow the US government. The president and other existing US leadership would keep their positions but the General was to become the secretary of the Office for General Affairs and decisions were to be given to him as to the new formed government.

General Butler expressed interest in this so he joined with the group. After some months of planning, the time for action was now. In the autumn of 1934, General Butler called a press meeting to discuss matters of grave importance. But when the press meeting occurred, he didn't demand the surrender of the US Government. Instead he related to the reporters the details of the plot, complete with names and dates. He had been just playing along with the conspirators all this time. General Butler had also enlisted the help of a undercover reporter by the name of Paul French who was keeping a detailed record of the plot.

After the startling press meeting, Paul French and the General were called before the House Un-American Activities Committee for a full accounting. After their testimony and also testimony from James Zandt, National Commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, who also had been approached to lead 500,000 veterans on a march on Washington, the HUAC concluded that there was compelling evidence of a coup plot. They stated that there was no doubt that certain persons had made an attempt to establish new governmental control in this country.

Suddenly all the newspapers ran stories as to a "plot without plotters" and ridiculed that US corporate leaders could participate in such "Rabble Rousing" behavior. The governments action was of complete inaction. Criminal charges were brought against no one and the collection of listed people in the report were immediately excused from ever testifying. In addition, the go-between, Gerald Mcguire died suddenly 1 month after the report was made public. But the plan had been stopped abruptly even before a shot was fired.

Who knows what might have happened if it wasn't for the actions of one man, General Smedley Butler, who by the way was also known as the "Fighting Quaker".

Party Crashing

Three hours had passed without the smell of pepper beef and chicken lo mien wafting through The Lawyer and The Engineer HQ.  The Engineer and I assumed the worse.  We had been abandoned by Edgar, our "intern" editor, the last of our restless team of editors to quit us.

Rudderless, The Engineer and I sat around for a few days, not discussing or doing much.  Eventually I wanted coffee, so I stood up and walked to the coffee maker and set to figuring out how to make the thing work, but we were out of coffee.  "Edgar," I shouted.  "Pop down to the grocery store and get us some Costa Rican, ground..."  The Engineer shook his head at me.  I slapped my forehead.  We missed Edgar.

The monotony was broken as we were jarred by a sudden calling while The Engineer and I watched the President give a speech on one of the cable "news" networks.  We had cable, with a used DVR box, all courtesy of The Engineer who had hijacked cable from a nearby utility pole.

It was a town hall style meeting about health care, joblessness, the economy, Afghanistan, North Korea, swine flu, and global warming, which pretty much ran the gauntlet of all that is wrong in the world.  Listening to him I felt more helpless and alone at the state of things in general than I did by being left to fend for my own basic luxuries by Edgar's resignation.

"Whoa, look there," said The Engineer, pausing the program.  "Right there," he said pointing to a man in a dark suit, sunglasses, a white coil-y thing stuck in one ear, with arms like tree trunks.  "Who does that look like?"

"I don't know?  A secret service guy?"

"Yeah, he's a secret service officer, but have you ever seen him before?" asked The Engineer.  I moved closer to the television and squinted.  I did recognize the bastard.

I stood and backed away from the set pointing at it.  "That's the guy," I said, my heart racing as only it does at the sight of someone by whom you have been tazered and generally roughed up.  "The security guard at Fox News."

"Who had been employed to guard that psychotic, fart-face, dry-drunk Mormon, Glenn Beck," said The Engineer.

"And protect the dread pirate, Rupert Murdoch," I added.

"And," The Engineer said, "charged to keep secret Dick Cheney's undisclosed location in his makeshift vice-presidential office."

The Engineer and I looked at each other, the blood having drained from our already pasty faces as we entertained the same thought.  My voice cracking, I said, "And to watch over the empire of--"

"The Prince of Darkness," said The Engineer as we slumped back into our respective, pre-owned, Lazyboy recliners.

Before you could say "conspiracy theory" we were in The Cube speeding out of town; destination:  The Whitehouse.

Outside the beltway, we booked ourselves into a discount hotel that offered rooms, for a darn reasonable price, by the week or the hour.  There, amidst the exotic smells of illegal substances being inhaled and the sound of primal grunts and groans and head boards thudding against the walls on either side of our room, we formulated our plan to have an audience with someone--anyone--of importance at The Whitehouse.

A black tie event was scheduled for that evening at The Whitehouse in honor of an international dignitary.  Between the two of us, we had just enough money to rent tuxedos and a limousine.  The Engineer explained that under the guise of being diplomatic assistants from the Luxembourg embassy we could gain entrance to the event and provide a written synoptic memorandum to either the President, Joe Biden or Rahm "The Asshole" Emanuel, whoever we could get closest to the fastest, and then we would have completed our mission.  Thereafter, if we were lucky, we could hang out for a while, have a square meal, get drunk, have our photos taken with Hillary Clinton and Katherine Sebelius, and maybe show what we are made of on the dance floor with the First Lady.

"There's one missing ingredient," I said to The Engineer.  "We have to have dates.  You can't go to a black tie event without a top-shelf, classy woman hanging on your arm."

"Damn,  You're right," conceded The Engineer.  "How do we get two dates on short notice?"

The hotel manager, behind the bullet proof glass window in the lobby, looked like just the man that could help us with our dilemma.  Our good host, Abd Al-Ala, who gave the impression he had not cracked a smile in well over a decade, nor appeared in the habit of shaving on a regular basis, impatiently put down the fried chicken leg he had been gnawing on.  "What do you want?  You only get one towel per week."

"No, we don't need a towel," I said.  "We need your advise."

"How does this work for you, my friend?  Go fuck you self,"  Abd Al-Ala counseled.  

"Look, prick," I said, "we need to hire a couple of real classy women to accompany us to a very exclusive party.  I just thought you might be able to point us in the right direction."

"Ha!" he guffawed.  "I know just the women for you.  How classy are we talking here?"

"Um, well, very, very classy," said The Engineer.

"What the fuck are you two?" asked Abd Al-Ala.  "A couple of fucking Canadians?"

"Yes, that's it.  We are a couple of fucking Canadians," I said.  "Now help us out here, you greasy dick wad."

"Very well," said Abd Al-Ala.  "If you want very, very classy piece of ass, as you say, that will cost you one-thousand per evening."

"Ouch," said The Engineer.

"Per woman," added Abd Al-Ala.

"Whoa," I cringed.

"Ha, ha, ha, ha," laughed the sadistic douche bag.  "You a couple of broke ass punks from Canada, huh?"

"Look," I said.  "We don't have much money, but this is what we have to offer."  I was thinking by the seat of my pants.  "We, uh, my colleague and I, are invited to a very exclusive event, and there will be a lot of extremely important and powerful people there.  It could be a great networking opportunity for the right girls, and offer a boost up in their clientele.  This is the perfect chance for the right, entrepreneurial type go-getters."

Abd Al-Ala chewed on another piece of chicken, put it down and wiped his face and hands with a dirty napkin while eying us like we were a couple of shit heads.  A chilling smile broke across his sinister face.  "I've got just the women for you then," he said.  "I know a couple of good Russian girls.  You will have to negotiate your terms yourself with them.  I make no warranties, my friends."  Though their accents were as thick as a Tolstoy novel, we were able to negotiate that in addition to being provided the networking opportunity of a life time, we would pay Inga and Olya one-hundred dollars each.  

That evening we anxiously stepped out of the lobby of the reasonably priced hotel, appareled in discount tuxedos from a haberdashery called Proms-R-Us, with Inga and Olya who each had breasts as downy-white and expansive as Siberia.  We stepped into the white stretch, Hummer limousine with ground effects, rented at a distressed rate.  Inside the limo, rolling for The Whitehouse, we explained to Inga and Olya that all they needed to do was smile, not say a word, and to hang on our every adoring word.  I'm not sure they understood half of what we instructed, as Inga twizzled my hair with her long fingers.

Immediately we garnered unwanted attention as we exited our gaudy limousine, but were able to put ourselves in line with the other guests quickly enough that most there were unaware of who arrived in the monstrous thing.  The line was long and moving slowly as the secret service agents at the door thoroughly checked the contents of everyone's pockets, swept them over with a hand-held metal detector, and another checked off a list as the guests passed through another metal detector.

Succumbing to that familiar queasy feeling I always got before the day would end by being tazered, I lent over to The Engineer and angrily whispered, "There is a guest list.  There's a fucking guest list.  We're fucked."  The man in front of us--who looked like a Mediterranean pervert I represented once--with a blond waif on his arm, had overheard me and caught my eye with a nervous smile on his face.  I darted a cold look into his twitching eyes.  Though he never quit smiling, bigger than life, he was shaking with nerves.  I sensed there was nothing but trouble ahead.

"Change of plan then," whispered the Engineer.  "We are not lower level assistants to Ambassadors from Luxembourg.  We are lower level assistants to Ambassadors from Russia.  We have to be able to see the list, while acting like we don't speak English, and point to the first Russian looking name we see." 

Inga stared at the back of the head of the waif-ish woman in the red, silken, exotic dress, while talking what sounded like a barrel of smack in Russian.  I shushed her, but not before the blond waif turned and smiled stupidly at Inga.  Inga whispered in my ear.  "I do not like the coot of her jib," she said.  "There is something nawt correct about that American beetch."  Hushing her again, Inga shot me a proud and fierce look.

With only the waif and the jittery looking Mediterranean guy with the idiotic smile left to go through the metal detectors, what I saw caused all the hope I had left of gaining entrance to drop out my pant legs.  The secret service agent that had formerly been employed by those ingrates at Fox News was standing there with the clip board with the list of guests on it.  As soon as I had recognized him, as if sensing that I was looking right at him, his eyes went straight from the buffoon with the waif and landed square upon my countenance.

"You!" he shouted.  I looked behind me as if the person being addressed was not me.  He dropped the clip board and lunged at The Engineer and me.  The other agents joined in the fray, reaching and tugging at us as Inga and Olya beat them over the head with their purses and cursed them relentlessly in Russian.

The Engineer and I were able to pull apart from the grasping hands of the agents and make just enough space between us to make ourselves easy targets from the tazers that had been drawn and triggered.  The Engineer and I were shot in the chest, and we went down hard, our teeth chattering madly, as we sputtered out something that sounded like, "Gi-di-di-di-di-di-di." 

In all the excitement the agents lost track of the waif and her man as they slipped through the metal detector and into the event, the press's cameras blasting them in a strobe of flashes as they entered, smiling and waiving.  The Engineer and I were picked off the ground, our limbs still twittering with electricity as we were hauled off into custody of The United States of America.

It was bad enough that we spent the next week detained in close proximity of cartel mules, inner-city gangsters, meth-heads in withdrawal and an assortment of other violent offenders.  The only matter being covered in the news was the incident of The Whitehouse party crashers, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, the mad man and his waif wife in the red, silk dress.  It served as a constant reminder of our folly and failed mission.  There was no mention of The Engineer and I since our arrest was a matter of national security and therefore secret.

Otherwise the coverage of the matter was predictably dull.  Who are the Salahi's?  What where they doing there?  How did they get in?  What does their house look like?  What brand of car do they drive?  Whose fault was it that they were able to shake hands with the president and Mrs. Salahi was able to get a photo with the Vice President while fondling his chest?  It went on and on, in a monotonous dribble worse than Chinese water torture, until the announcement came one afternoon.

"This breaking news, just in," announced the perky anchor woman.  "The secret service agent that was in charge of overseeing the guest list at last weeks black tie event at the Whitehouse has been terminated from his duties as an agent for purportedly being derelict in his duties in allowing the now infamous Salahi's to enter the exclusive event, though they were not on the list."  The Engineer and I gave each other a high five and celebrated with an intense game of fish in our homey little cell.