Blighted

Former Senator Evermore Breadman hurried into his office at Prince and Prowling, two current Senators trailing close behind him.  He closed the door behind them and motioned for them to sit on the leather couch.  "I tell you, I don't know where Snowden is going!"

"Come on!" exclaimed the senior Senator from the state of ________.  "How many times have you told us Charles Wu is the golden link between Washington, Beijing, and Hong Kong!"

"And now he's out of town?!" exclaimed the junior Senator from the state of ________.  "Right when Snowden flies out of Hong Kong?!"

"Charles is in England, visiting his father," said Breadman.

"How do you know that?" asked the senior Senator.

"He sent me a postcard!" said Breadman.

"Come on!" exclaimed the junior Senator.

"Look," said Breadman, who was more nervous about Charles Wu than anybody, "Charles is a businessman!  What he cares about is finding mutually beneficial ways for people on both sides of the Pacific to make money.  He's not going to jeopardize that for the sake of this silly boy and his inane ideals about liberty!"

Several miles to the north, Calico Johnson was hosting another meeting of Sense of Entitlement Anonymous (D.C. Chapter).

"That silly boy and his inane ideals about liberty have ruined my life!" exclaimed a new member of S.E.A., a former judge on the FISA court.

"Tell me about it!" exclaimed another.  "My wife said my daughter-in-law won't allow me to see my grandchildren anymore!"

"They published all our photos!" another one whined, referring to Sunday's Washington Post.  "The man at the doughnut shop refused to serve me this morning!"

Mega Moo let out a thunderous call from the east pasture, momentarily stunning the FISA people.  "Have a mint julep!" said Johnson, bored with them.  "The mint came from my garden!"  He was desperate to show off his new Potomac Manors property, which was only ten miles away from his previous one and indistinguishable in features to most of the guests who had previously seen the other one.  (But there was a huge difference!  Mega Moo was happy here!)

"Thank you, Calico!" beamed Bridezilla, daintily taking a chilled glass.  "And may I say, it was good to see Mega Moo outside grazing on that lush, green pasture when I arrived!"  (Johnson grinned broadly.)

"The way I see it," said Judge Sowell Ame (jerk of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia), turning to the new members from FISA, "a judge who acts with dignity and justice has nothing to fear from public scrutiny."  (He was referring to gavel-thumping pronouncements in a public courtroom--not, of course, certain activities that might or might not be happening in private chambers before said rulings.)

"We're not afraid of public scrutiny!" hissed one of the FISA folks.  "But our hands are tied behind our backs!  It's not fair!  We can't talk about what we did!"

"Oh, stop your belly-aching!" exclaimed Dick Cheney.  "I've already told the American people everything they need to know about counter-terrorism activities in this country!  Anybody that questions what I've said is a traitor to our country!  Hold your heads high, and tell them that to their face!"

"My Indian guru tells me that water flows to the sea whether there is a fish in it or not," said Bridezilla.

"What?!" asked Mayor Vince Gray.

"Is your guru from northern India or southern India?" asked Luciano Talaverdi.  "That makes a difference because--"

"He's not from India, silly!" said Bridezilla.  "I think he's from North Dakota or Wyoming."

"What's his name?" asked Cheney, suspiciously.  "I know everybody from Wyoming."

"You mean he's a Native American?" asked John Boehner.  "That's what you have to say, or you'll get in trouble."

"He never calls himself anything like that," said Bridezilla.  "The point is, you have to think about the water flowing."

"What kind of point is that?" asked another of the FISA folks.  "What are you implying?"

"She's not implying anything!" protested Talaverdi.  "And you people are lucky!  If your photos had been published in Italy after what you did, the Mafia would have wiped you all out!"

"Is that a threat, you damned Wop?!" cried Cheney, rising to his feet and reaching for his handgun.

"Now, Dick, we don't have any quarrels with legal immigrants--remember?" said Boehner, yanking the old man back down to his seat.

"I can't take this anymore!" cried Johnson's girlfriend, a member of N.U.T.T.Y. (Nannies United to Take Y-Chromosomes).  "You're worse than the 'Ship of Fools'--I need to leave!"  (Johnson smiled indulgently at her hapless reference to their book club selection, but didn't try to stop her--he was growing tired of her hissy fits, which were obviously based in her ridiculous jealousy over Mega Moo.)

A few miles to the south, Liv Cigemeier pulled out some more blighted mint from her new backyard garden.  "I don't understand it," she said, turning to her husband, who was trimming bushes.  "The old stuff is fine, but everything I've planted since we moved here is dying.  I never had a black thumb before!"

"You don't have a black thumb!" he replied.  "It's just bad luck."

"That's what you said about the Oprah television specials, and the--"

"Honey!" he exclaimed, putting down the clippers.  "You're taking all this too hard!"

"Well, how am I supposed to take it when people tell me--"

"Forget them!  You're the most beautiful woman in the world!"  He knelt down and put his arms around her again, but he feared he was losing the battle to comfort her after Oprah's production company canceled the "Girl Hurl" (International Development Nerds) television specials because his wife was not sufficiently photogenic.

"'You can't fix a crooked face with makeup, and we don't have the special effects budget to make your face presentable!'" she repeated again, unable to shake it off.

"Those producers are full of shit!  That woman gets three hours in a makeup chair every time somebody takes a photo of her!  They canceled it for some other reason, which is undoubtedly a lack of commercial sponsors, and that's not your fault!"

"We're not getting any profit-sharing from it!  We don't have money to furnish the house, and my black thumb just wasted hundreds of dollars in the garden!"

"You're spiraling!" he said to his wife.  "Everything's gonna be fine!"

But it's not going to be fine, she thought.  I can't grow a baby, I can't grow plants, I can't do anything right anymore.  (Cigemeier continued holding his wife--who still didn't know that his law firm had lost $20,000 on the International Development Nerds art fundraiser they had held at Prince and Prowling.)

Over in their backyard shed, the real estate demon grinned in delight as he peered through the keyhole at the miserable couple--so weak and vulnerable and easily afflicted!  A catbird in the tree began imitating the sound of a riding lawnmower, and a family of millipedes crept closer to the basement, ready to launch their home invasion.