Interruptions
Television reporter Holly Gonightly looked through the camera to make sure the shot was what she wanted: five nannies seated in a semi-circle on the steps of the Library of Congress [subliminally suggestive of the U.S. Supreme Court], brown paper bags over each head, the sunlight casting shadows behind them. "Please go down the line, and everybody say 'testing, testing, testing'." The nannies dutifully repeated the words down the line. The cameraman then played back the tape so that Gonightly could hear how their voices sounded through the paper bags. (Dramatic!) "OK, I think we're ready to go!"
Nanny number two abruptly sneezed, then removed her bag to blow her nose. Gonightly exchanged worried glances with her cameraman, then positioned herself to begin the expose.
"Holly Gonightly reporting from Capitol Hill." She was wearing new shapewear to avoid looking TFFT (too fat for television), and special makeup to have a thinner-looking face. "Please tell me the name of your organization." She stuck the microphone into the first nanny's face/bag.
"N-U-T-T-Y. That stands for Nannies United To Take Y-chromosomes."
"And what is the purpose of Nutty?" asked Gonightly.
"Not 'nutty'!" said the third nanny. "It's N-U-T-T-Y!" (She rolled her eyes out of habit, forgetting nobody could see them.)
"The purpose," said the first nanny, "is to position ourselves into an economically viable future by replacing the mothers of our charges."
"Stealing their husbands?" asked Gonightly.
"Don't twist our words!" said the third nanny.
"Stop interrupting!" said the fourth nanny.
"I have just as much right to talk as anybody else!" said the third nanny.
"OK, everybody will have a chance to talk, but let's go one-by-one. Nanny number five, you work for a family of five in Eastern Market." (Quick check of cheat sheet.) "The father is Chief of Staff for a U.S. Senator, and the mother is a paid lobbyist for a Fortune 500 corporation. If the father divorces the mother to marry you, and you become a stay-at-home mother with only part-time custody of the three children, won't he expect you to get paid work outside of the home?"
"What?! Of course not!" said the fifth nanny.
"He will be paying child support, and no longer have the income of his wife to make the mortgage payments. How exactly will your situation improve?"
"That is not the point!" interjected the third nanny. "We are the ones that take care of the house and the garden and the meals and all the lovely things that make his home a castle!"
"And take care of the children?" asked Gonightly.
"Of course! The children! It's all about the children," said the third nanny.
"It's not our fault the economy is destroying women's chances!" said the second nanny. "Obama's policies made 92% of women lose their jobs!"
"No," said the first nanny, "92% of the jobs lost were women's jobs. We would have better jobs if it weren't for Obama."
"So you do not like taking care of children?" asked Gonightly.
"Of course we do!" said the third nanny. "And you [looking at the second nanny] became a nanny during the Bush Administration!"
"Our jobs are hard," said the first nanny. "For instance, we were all expected to work yesterday to take the kids downtown for the Cherry Blossom Festival Parade, and Saturday is supposed to be a day off! They gave us extra pay, but that doesn't make up for the extra exposure to pollen--I slept eleven hours last night! And I'm still sneezing."
Gonightly returned to the fourth nanny. "What about love?"
"I love the kids, and I love their father! But their mother is evil."
"Why is she evil?" asked Gonightly.
"Because she works outside the home!" said three nannies in unison.
"So do the fathers," said Gonightly.
"If those women would stay at home with their kids, then single women would be able to get jobs!" said the third nanny.
"It's Obama's fault, just like Romney said," said the fifth nanny.
"Do you feel you speak for all nannies?" asked Gonightly.
"Oh, no," said the first nanny. "Some nannies are too ugly to land a man, so they just take care of the children."
"Reporting from Capitol Hill, this is Holly Gonightly!"
In the midst of the small crowd of onlookers that had formed on the sidewalk to watch this intriguing event stood Congressman Herrmark's Chief of Staff--a woman. She was appalled by the entire interview. She had worked hard to get where she was, and being a woman was not nearly as much of a handicap as being a zombie. I know a Senator's chief of staff with a lobbyist wife and three children, she thought [though this description actually fit quite a large number of people on Capitol Hill]. I should eat her. She was thinking, of course, of eating nanny number five, but, in truth, she really could not stand that lobbyist wife. What if I eat her instead? Will he marry that ninny nanny? It had taken her years to learn how to use her special skill set to advance her own professional objectives, and she shook off these sudden impulses. I need to keep my eye on the prize. (All of her killings had to fulfill at least three out of five potential purposes on her kill-criteria list, and it was also important to prioritize.)
A mile to the south, Glenn Michael Beckmann also had a kill-criteria list, but he kept it all in his head. Trapped indoors by season allergies [which he blogged about as germ warfare set loose on the city by the United Nations], he kept himself busy with his home inventor kit. Today's project: create a Taser field that can be added to your automobile so that you can electrocute homeless men that approach with donation cans while you are stopped at an intersection, or those pesky children out in Arlington and Alexandria who start rubbing wet rags on your windshield before you agree to the "wash". Deep in the bowels of Beckmann's apartment building, the Southwest Plaza demon focused most of its energies on Beckmann because so many other people had moved out of their units. (The demon had yet to learn the balancing act of being a leech without destroying the host.) Suddenly the paranoid schizophrenic next door began screaming about aliens invading his bathtub. Beckmann could not and would not tolerate these interruptions. He got up, grabbed the pistol holstered at the side of his Lazy-Boy recliner (the other Lazy-Boy holster held the TV Guide), shot several times through the wall at his neighbor's apartment until the hollering stopped, reloaded his gun, then put the gun back in the holster. He rummaged in his work cabinet for the spackle, filled up the holes in his wall, then went back to his electrocution project.
Several miles to the north, Chloe Cleavage (one of the Southwest Plaza residents that had gotten away) was sitting in her condo Lazy Boy recliner, staring in disbelief at Pierre (a former resident of Occupy DC). Pierre was kneeling before her, a ring in his hand, proposing marriage. Cleavage found the ring (inherited from his grandmother) hideous, but that was not the worst aspect of the proposal. "We could go live in Shenandoah National Forest, off the grid, livin' off the land as Nature intended!" (He really just wanted to marry her to get on her Prince and Prowling health insurance plan, but he thought a more romantic and over-the-top proposal would serve his purposes best.) "I could build a little cabin for us with my own bare hands, and--"
"Stop! Just stop!"
"Of course, my love!" he said, hopeful.
"We have nothing in common!" exclaimed Cleavage.
"Just what the birds and bees have in common, my love, and isn't that all that Nature calls for, ultimately?"
"I'm going to the office," she announced, and stood up without another word.
He watched in silence as she grabbed her bag and headed out the door, then he buckled over in pain from the kidney stones and gallbladder stones that had first started developing when he was abstaining from drinking water to minimize urination while camped at McPherson Square. "Aaaaargh!" Feeling dizzy, he staggered up and out to the balcony to get a fresh breeze. Suddenly overcome with nausea, he leaned over the balcony railing to vomit, then was too dizzy to stand back up. His feet gave way, and he grasped at the railing in vain before plunging to his death several stories below. A flock of nearby sparrows jumped up in alarm, but the nearby starlings just watched in silence.
Nanny number two abruptly sneezed, then removed her bag to blow her nose. Gonightly exchanged worried glances with her cameraman, then positioned herself to begin the expose.
"Holly Gonightly reporting from Capitol Hill." She was wearing new shapewear to avoid looking TFFT (too fat for television), and special makeup to have a thinner-looking face. "Please tell me the name of your organization." She stuck the microphone into the first nanny's face/bag.
"N-U-T-T-Y. That stands for Nannies United To Take Y-chromosomes."
"And what is the purpose of Nutty?" asked Gonightly.
"Not 'nutty'!" said the third nanny. "It's N-U-T-T-Y!" (She rolled her eyes out of habit, forgetting nobody could see them.)
"The purpose," said the first nanny, "is to position ourselves into an economically viable future by replacing the mothers of our charges."
"Stealing their husbands?" asked Gonightly.
"Don't twist our words!" said the third nanny.
"Stop interrupting!" said the fourth nanny.
"I have just as much right to talk as anybody else!" said the third nanny.
"OK, everybody will have a chance to talk, but let's go one-by-one. Nanny number five, you work for a family of five in Eastern Market." (Quick check of cheat sheet.) "The father is Chief of Staff for a U.S. Senator, and the mother is a paid lobbyist for a Fortune 500 corporation. If the father divorces the mother to marry you, and you become a stay-at-home mother with only part-time custody of the three children, won't he expect you to get paid work outside of the home?"
"What?! Of course not!" said the fifth nanny.
"He will be paying child support, and no longer have the income of his wife to make the mortgage payments. How exactly will your situation improve?"
"That is not the point!" interjected the third nanny. "We are the ones that take care of the house and the garden and the meals and all the lovely things that make his home a castle!"
"And take care of the children?" asked Gonightly.
"Of course! The children! It's all about the children," said the third nanny.
"It's not our fault the economy is destroying women's chances!" said the second nanny. "Obama's policies made 92% of women lose their jobs!"
"No," said the first nanny, "92% of the jobs lost were women's jobs. We would have better jobs if it weren't for Obama."
"So you do not like taking care of children?" asked Gonightly.
"Of course we do!" said the third nanny. "And you [looking at the second nanny] became a nanny during the Bush Administration!"
"Our jobs are hard," said the first nanny. "For instance, we were all expected to work yesterday to take the kids downtown for the Cherry Blossom Festival Parade, and Saturday is supposed to be a day off! They gave us extra pay, but that doesn't make up for the extra exposure to pollen--I slept eleven hours last night! And I'm still sneezing."
Gonightly returned to the fourth nanny. "What about love?"
"I love the kids, and I love their father! But their mother is evil."
"Why is she evil?" asked Gonightly.
"Because she works outside the home!" said three nannies in unison.
"So do the fathers," said Gonightly.
"If those women would stay at home with their kids, then single women would be able to get jobs!" said the third nanny.
"It's Obama's fault, just like Romney said," said the fifth nanny.
"Do you feel you speak for all nannies?" asked Gonightly.
"Oh, no," said the first nanny. "Some nannies are too ugly to land a man, so they just take care of the children."
"Reporting from Capitol Hill, this is Holly Gonightly!"
In the midst of the small crowd of onlookers that had formed on the sidewalk to watch this intriguing event stood Congressman Herrmark's Chief of Staff--a woman. She was appalled by the entire interview. She had worked hard to get where she was, and being a woman was not nearly as much of a handicap as being a zombie. I know a Senator's chief of staff with a lobbyist wife and three children, she thought [though this description actually fit quite a large number of people on Capitol Hill]. I should eat her. She was thinking, of course, of eating nanny number five, but, in truth, she really could not stand that lobbyist wife. What if I eat her instead? Will he marry that ninny nanny? It had taken her years to learn how to use her special skill set to advance her own professional objectives, and she shook off these sudden impulses. I need to keep my eye on the prize. (All of her killings had to fulfill at least three out of five potential purposes on her kill-criteria list, and it was also important to prioritize.)
A mile to the south, Glenn Michael Beckmann also had a kill-criteria list, but he kept it all in his head. Trapped indoors by season allergies [which he blogged about as germ warfare set loose on the city by the United Nations], he kept himself busy with his home inventor kit. Today's project: create a Taser field that can be added to your automobile so that you can electrocute homeless men that approach with donation cans while you are stopped at an intersection, or those pesky children out in Arlington and Alexandria who start rubbing wet rags on your windshield before you agree to the "wash". Deep in the bowels of Beckmann's apartment building, the Southwest Plaza demon focused most of its energies on Beckmann because so many other people had moved out of their units. (The demon had yet to learn the balancing act of being a leech without destroying the host.) Suddenly the paranoid schizophrenic next door began screaming about aliens invading his bathtub. Beckmann could not and would not tolerate these interruptions. He got up, grabbed the pistol holstered at the side of his Lazy-Boy recliner (the other Lazy-Boy holster held the TV Guide), shot several times through the wall at his neighbor's apartment until the hollering stopped, reloaded his gun, then put the gun back in the holster. He rummaged in his work cabinet for the spackle, filled up the holes in his wall, then went back to his electrocution project.
Several miles to the north, Chloe Cleavage (one of the Southwest Plaza residents that had gotten away) was sitting in her condo Lazy Boy recliner, staring in disbelief at Pierre (a former resident of Occupy DC). Pierre was kneeling before her, a ring in his hand, proposing marriage. Cleavage found the ring (inherited from his grandmother) hideous, but that was not the worst aspect of the proposal. "We could go live in Shenandoah National Forest, off the grid, livin' off the land as Nature intended!" (He really just wanted to marry her to get on her Prince and Prowling health insurance plan, but he thought a more romantic and over-the-top proposal would serve his purposes best.) "I could build a little cabin for us with my own bare hands, and--"
"Stop! Just stop!"
"Of course, my love!" he said, hopeful.
"We have nothing in common!" exclaimed Cleavage.
"Just what the birds and bees have in common, my love, and isn't that all that Nature calls for, ultimately?"
"I'm going to the office," she announced, and stood up without another word.
He watched in silence as she grabbed her bag and headed out the door, then he buckled over in pain from the kidney stones and gallbladder stones that had first started developing when he was abstaining from drinking water to minimize urination while camped at McPherson Square. "Aaaaargh!" Feeling dizzy, he staggered up and out to the balcony to get a fresh breeze. Suddenly overcome with nausea, he leaned over the balcony railing to vomit, then was too dizzy to stand back up. His feet gave way, and he grasped at the railing in vain before plunging to his death several stories below. A flock of nearby sparrows jumped up in alarm, but the nearby starlings just watched in silence.
posted by washingtonwaterwoman | 1:15 PM
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