Napalm in the Morning
Ex-Senator Evermore Breadman knocked on the suite door of Prince and Prowling, and Laura Moreno interrupted her work for the 100th time to get up and let him in. He smiled warmly at her, told her she should start charging him, then inhaled deeply as he walked by her workroom. "I love the smell of dead rat in the morning!" he bellowed down the hallway, as he passed the wall display photograph of himself and Mother Teresa on his way to his 300-square-foot office-- where he would later be hosting his new lobbying client, the Plawsubble de Niabillitee Pharmaceutical Company, Inc.
A loud crash woke Laura Moreno up. It was only a dream! Actually, most of that was true. Only part of that was a dream. Darn. She rolled out of bed to face another day of sharecrop lawyering at Prince and Prowling.
Across the river, ex-Senator Evermore Breadman was also rolling out of bed. He was in an excellent mood: his shares in Chevron would probably quadruple in value today after that successful drilling test in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday! He was glad he had voted to ease restrictions on offshore oil drilling in his last year in the Senate. He forgot that a year ago he was sitting in a Senate Energy Committee hearing on Gulf oil spills during Hurricane Katrina. His future was bright!
Dizzy scowled at the strung-out punk urinating in the bushes at 7:43 a.m. Everybody knows you gotta take care of your business before 7:30 a.m.! He looked around to see if a cop would arrest the punk, but the nearest cop was a block away, parked at 17th and Pennsylvania, staring vacantly in the general vicinity of the White House--which he would be doing until his relief came at 10 a.m. Dizzy finished eating his breakfast, rinsed out his mouth, picked up his bowl and trumpet, and walked over to the northeast corner of Urine Park. It was a little early to start playing, but the weather was fine, and he was in a good mood. Yesterday was the most money he had collected since a year ago, the first time he had started playing New Orleans style jazz. It was funny how many people had walked by him without paying much attention for three years, then suddenly decided he must be a refugee from Hurricane Katrina. Now everybody was in Katrina anniversary mode, beating their breasts in public mourning again, and his collection was up. Behind him, a half a dozen ducks flew in for a landing, their feet still wet from the Potomac. The ducks waddled awkwardly among the pigeon doves, feeding on the morning's first bread crumbs. Dizzy launched into his first performance of "When the Saints Come Marching In," hoping this would be the day one of the fancy motorcade limousines would finally stop and notice him. He wanted to talk to Those People about the ducks. Those ducks weren't right.
At the World Bank security center, a young woman was staring at the camera feed monitoring Urine Park. She thought ducks were just the cutest thing ever! She zoomed in for a closer look. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a frenetic flurry of feathers and switched her gaze to a different camera feed. A catbird was chasing a pigeon dove away from his family's nest in a light fixture. The catbird repeatedly dive-bombed the much larger bird, which--the woman saw by switching her gaze to yet another camera feed--had to retreat all the way to the World Bank roof garden before the catbird turned and flew back to its nest.
The woman did not see the parking garage camera feed showing the junior economist from Wurpuristan finalizing a kickback deal to get the senior loan officer to authorize the new dam which would bring hydroelectric power to 300,000 people while only displacing 60,000 residents and an old growth forest in Mitebeetailabanstan. The senior loan officer was happy to take the kickback, and did not tell the junior economist that he had already decided in favor of the dam because of Musharraf's live-and-let-live agreement with the Taliban. If you can't beat 'em, drown 'em! He needed to remember that line. He wanted to tell Wolfowitz his plan for damming away the Taliban country-by-country. He wasn't actually sure what Wurpuristan would do with the electric power, but at least they would not be growing poppies or fanatics with it! He needed to remember that line, too.
Condoleezza Rice stared out of her Watergate penthouse window at the Potomac River while she brushed her teeth and drafted sound bites in her head. She really liked some of the report ideas delivered to her desk earlier this week by her Anti-Fecklessness team. She still believed that eventually everybody would agree she was the smartest person in the room and do what she told them to do. America did not appreciate what a diplomat she was! America did not know that she was the one who had buried the top secret plan to set off a chain reaction of "diplomatic" incidents that would lead to Iran's setting off a neutron bomb, thereby clearing away all those troublesome Middle Easterners and leaving their oil reserves unscathed. Sure, the plan made sense in many ways, but it would be far too difficult to conceal in the long run. There were some real idiots in this Administration. She was the only one practicing soundbites every day to make sure the media had at least one intelligible quote to print. She stared at the ducks circling the Potomac in an odd way. Something about "duck and run", the "tide of history", "the unstoppable current of democracy"...she would find the words.
A loud crash woke Laura Moreno up. It was only a dream! Actually, most of that was true. Only part of that was a dream. Darn. She rolled out of bed to face another day of sharecrop lawyering at Prince and Prowling.
Across the river, ex-Senator Evermore Breadman was also rolling out of bed. He was in an excellent mood: his shares in Chevron would probably quadruple in value today after that successful drilling test in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday! He was glad he had voted to ease restrictions on offshore oil drilling in his last year in the Senate. He forgot that a year ago he was sitting in a Senate Energy Committee hearing on Gulf oil spills during Hurricane Katrina. His future was bright!
Dizzy scowled at the strung-out punk urinating in the bushes at 7:43 a.m. Everybody knows you gotta take care of your business before 7:30 a.m.! He looked around to see if a cop would arrest the punk, but the nearest cop was a block away, parked at 17th and Pennsylvania, staring vacantly in the general vicinity of the White House--which he would be doing until his relief came at 10 a.m. Dizzy finished eating his breakfast, rinsed out his mouth, picked up his bowl and trumpet, and walked over to the northeast corner of Urine Park. It was a little early to start playing, but the weather was fine, and he was in a good mood. Yesterday was the most money he had collected since a year ago, the first time he had started playing New Orleans style jazz. It was funny how many people had walked by him without paying much attention for three years, then suddenly decided he must be a refugee from Hurricane Katrina. Now everybody was in Katrina anniversary mode, beating their breasts in public mourning again, and his collection was up. Behind him, a half a dozen ducks flew in for a landing, their feet still wet from the Potomac. The ducks waddled awkwardly among the pigeon doves, feeding on the morning's first bread crumbs. Dizzy launched into his first performance of "When the Saints Come Marching In," hoping this would be the day one of the fancy motorcade limousines would finally stop and notice him. He wanted to talk to Those People about the ducks. Those ducks weren't right.
At the World Bank security center, a young woman was staring at the camera feed monitoring Urine Park. She thought ducks were just the cutest thing ever! She zoomed in for a closer look. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a frenetic flurry of feathers and switched her gaze to a different camera feed. A catbird was chasing a pigeon dove away from his family's nest in a light fixture. The catbird repeatedly dive-bombed the much larger bird, which--the woman saw by switching her gaze to yet another camera feed--had to retreat all the way to the World Bank roof garden before the catbird turned and flew back to its nest.
The woman did not see the parking garage camera feed showing the junior economist from Wurpuristan finalizing a kickback deal to get the senior loan officer to authorize the new dam which would bring hydroelectric power to 300,000 people while only displacing 60,000 residents and an old growth forest in Mitebeetailabanstan. The senior loan officer was happy to take the kickback, and did not tell the junior economist that he had already decided in favor of the dam because of Musharraf's live-and-let-live agreement with the Taliban. If you can't beat 'em, drown 'em! He needed to remember that line. He wanted to tell Wolfowitz his plan for damming away the Taliban country-by-country. He wasn't actually sure what Wurpuristan would do with the electric power, but at least they would not be growing poppies or fanatics with it! He needed to remember that line, too.
Condoleezza Rice stared out of her Watergate penthouse window at the Potomac River while she brushed her teeth and drafted sound bites in her head. She really liked some of the report ideas delivered to her desk earlier this week by her Anti-Fecklessness team. She still believed that eventually everybody would agree she was the smartest person in the room and do what she told them to do. America did not appreciate what a diplomat she was! America did not know that she was the one who had buried the top secret plan to set off a chain reaction of "diplomatic" incidents that would lead to Iran's setting off a neutron bomb, thereby clearing away all those troublesome Middle Easterners and leaving their oil reserves unscathed. Sure, the plan made sense in many ways, but it would be far too difficult to conceal in the long run. There were some real idiots in this Administration. She was the only one practicing soundbites every day to make sure the media had at least one intelligible quote to print. She stared at the ducks circling the Potomac in an odd way. Something about "duck and run", the "tide of history", "the unstoppable current of democracy"...she would find the words.
posted by washingtonwaterwoman | 11:27 AM
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