New Beginnings
The Heurich Society emergency sub-committee was meeting furtively in a private room at Tony Cheng's in Chinatown to discuss recent disturbing developments.
"Why are we eating Mongolian food?" asked a hedge fund millionaire. "This could be horse and cat meat, for all we know!"
"If you can't taste the difference, why do you care?" asked an FBI agent.
"Look, could we focus on what's important?" asked Dick Cheney, a former member of the Heurich Society trying to get back in. "Angela de la Paz is exhibiting schizophrenic behavior, and Button Samuelson is acting like a lesbian."
"Don't you have a lesbian daughter?" asked an arms dealer.
"She's a Republican lesbian--that's different." (Several heads nodded in agreement.) "You people need stronger leadership--you need to bring me back in." (He also believed that the Heurich Society should never have allowed any women in, but he would save that argument for a later day.)
"She's not schizophrenic," said the investment banker recently exorcised by Angela de la Paz. ("You expect us to believe she pulled a demon out of your body?!") "You all saw it happen!" ("Hypnosis!") "No, something was wrong with me! And I feel different now. I think she's right--there's world damnation out there, and maybe that's more important than--"
"Don't you dare say it!" screamed the arms dealer, who couldn't bear to hear the terms "money" or "power" maligned.
"I'm not a lesbian," said Samuelson, emerging from her hiding place under the table. "And I agree that there's something wrong with Angela. But he's not the one to fix it!" she added, pointing angrily at Cheney, her late father's arch-nemesis. "Go back to the Wyoming rock you crawled out from under, you old dinosaur!" (There were several gasps, because nobody had ever heard Samuelson being so forceful...and because Cheney had pulled out concealed handguns over less.) "And stop calling me 'Button!'" she added, glaring at the men seated around the table.
A mile to the west, Laura Moreno (like Angela de la Paz) needed to find a new job. After years of toiling in obscurity at Prince and Prowling, she had been summarily laid off with all the other contract attorneys on January 2nd. After reading the D.C. Bar magazine's cover story on contract attorneys, she had visited their offices on January 3rd to find out from Daniel M. Mills how to get legal cases under his supervision. She had encountered a line of contract attorneys stretched out the door of the D.C. Bar building and halfway around the block. "Mills is on vacation," a D.C. Bar unpaid intern was shouting through a megaphone. "We cannot hire you to work on cases under our supervision--that was a misquote! If you are interested in doing pro bono work or registering for our next $300 CLE on how to become an ambulance-chaser, please remain in the line. Otherwise, we suggest you move to North Dakota because they'll hire anybody there. By the way, that's my plan, too, so please let me know if I can carpool with you to drive out there!"
"Occupy the D.C. Bar!" shouted the Braggart, with a competing megaphone. "What do we want?" ("Jobs!") "When do we want them?" ("Now!") "Why should we pay dues to a professional organization that lets us be treated like tomato-pickers? Do you really think borrowing another $20,000 to get an LLM from American University Law School is going to get you a job as something more than a temp? Dream on! It's time to Occupy the D.C. Bar! OCCUPY!" ("OCCUPY!") "OCCUPY!" ("OCCUPY!")
With that, the crowd rushed into the lobby of the D.C. Bar, where they were met by Blackwater security contractors and fifty gallons of pepper spray.
A couple of miles to the south, conspiracy theorist Glenn Michael Beckmann was also starting the New Year in need of a job. For years, he had survived on Texas State Lottery payments, but he had received his last check in December. He had then joined the chorus of other social advocacy groups asking for year-end donations from his blog followers, but the translation of that fundraising plea into his byzantine pseudo-lifestyle-blog code had been misinterpreted by his confused followers as "please send money to the president of the Monkey Poop Society". After a cursory perusal of job ads online, he had encountered an intriguing story about fake Navy Seals, which led him to recall he had once worked for Blackwater in Iraq (this was true), which in turn led him to recall that the U.S. Marines had decorated him for "Most Courage Shown by a Temp in a War Zone" (this was not true). And so Beckmann decided to build on his success with the Hunter-Gatherer Society to launch his own security firm, named "Beckmann's Bad Asses". (In his fake lifestyle blog, this translated as "Beckmann's Floral Cushions".) Then he asked his followers for client referrals.
Up at the White House, Luciano Talaverdi was picking up his date, Clio, whom he had found in a LinkedIn discussion group for White House employees. Mistakenly believing her to be a major player in the Obama Administration (who could help the Italian economist advance his career--maybe even getting him out of the Federal Reserve Board and into the World Bank!), he had no idea she was the Butler. For her part, it would be her first date since overcoming the psychological delusion that her children were alive and still living at the White House. (It was a match not made in Heaven, but they can't all be.)
Out in the river, Ardua of the Potomac had finally succeeded in luring her rival, Chessie of the Chesapeake, up into the Tidal Basin--where Chessie was trapped and eaten by a Coalition of the Willing (featuring the Beaver, a hundred infected ducks, and a thousand river rats). As her minions handed Ardua the Chessie heart to eat, the demon screeched in delight, knowing she was one step closer to becoming Ardua of the Atlantic!
****************************
COMING UP:
Hong Kong triple agent Charles Wu scoops up a fired Angela de la Paz.
"Why are we eating Mongolian food?" asked a hedge fund millionaire. "This could be horse and cat meat, for all we know!"
"If you can't taste the difference, why do you care?" asked an FBI agent.
"Look, could we focus on what's important?" asked Dick Cheney, a former member of the Heurich Society trying to get back in. "Angela de la Paz is exhibiting schizophrenic behavior, and Button Samuelson is acting like a lesbian."
"Don't you have a lesbian daughter?" asked an arms dealer.
"She's a Republican lesbian--that's different." (Several heads nodded in agreement.) "You people need stronger leadership--you need to bring me back in." (He also believed that the Heurich Society should never have allowed any women in, but he would save that argument for a later day.)
"She's not schizophrenic," said the investment banker recently exorcised by Angela de la Paz. ("You expect us to believe she pulled a demon out of your body?!") "You all saw it happen!" ("Hypnosis!") "No, something was wrong with me! And I feel different now. I think she's right--there's world damnation out there, and maybe that's more important than--"
"Don't you dare say it!" screamed the arms dealer, who couldn't bear to hear the terms "money" or "power" maligned.
"I'm not a lesbian," said Samuelson, emerging from her hiding place under the table. "And I agree that there's something wrong with Angela. But he's not the one to fix it!" she added, pointing angrily at Cheney, her late father's arch-nemesis. "Go back to the Wyoming rock you crawled out from under, you old dinosaur!" (There were several gasps, because nobody had ever heard Samuelson being so forceful...and because Cheney had pulled out concealed handguns over less.) "And stop calling me 'Button!'" she added, glaring at the men seated around the table.
A mile to the west, Laura Moreno (like Angela de la Paz) needed to find a new job. After years of toiling in obscurity at Prince and Prowling, she had been summarily laid off with all the other contract attorneys on January 2nd. After reading the D.C. Bar magazine's cover story on contract attorneys, she had visited their offices on January 3rd to find out from Daniel M. Mills how to get legal cases under his supervision. She had encountered a line of contract attorneys stretched out the door of the D.C. Bar building and halfway around the block. "Mills is on vacation," a D.C. Bar unpaid intern was shouting through a megaphone. "We cannot hire you to work on cases under our supervision--that was a misquote! If you are interested in doing pro bono work or registering for our next $300 CLE on how to become an ambulance-chaser, please remain in the line. Otherwise, we suggest you move to North Dakota because they'll hire anybody there. By the way, that's my plan, too, so please let me know if I can carpool with you to drive out there!"
"Occupy the D.C. Bar!" shouted the Braggart, with a competing megaphone. "What do we want?" ("Jobs!") "When do we want them?" ("Now!") "Why should we pay dues to a professional organization that lets us be treated like tomato-pickers? Do you really think borrowing another $20,000 to get an LLM from American University Law School is going to get you a job as something more than a temp? Dream on! It's time to Occupy the D.C. Bar! OCCUPY!" ("OCCUPY!") "OCCUPY!" ("OCCUPY!")
With that, the crowd rushed into the lobby of the D.C. Bar, where they were met by Blackwater security contractors and fifty gallons of pepper spray.
A couple of miles to the south, conspiracy theorist Glenn Michael Beckmann was also starting the New Year in need of a job. For years, he had survived on Texas State Lottery payments, but he had received his last check in December. He had then joined the chorus of other social advocacy groups asking for year-end donations from his blog followers, but the translation of that fundraising plea into his byzantine pseudo-lifestyle-blog code had been misinterpreted by his confused followers as "please send money to the president of the Monkey Poop Society". After a cursory perusal of job ads online, he had encountered an intriguing story about fake Navy Seals, which led him to recall he had once worked for Blackwater in Iraq (this was true), which in turn led him to recall that the U.S. Marines had decorated him for "Most Courage Shown by a Temp in a War Zone" (this was not true). And so Beckmann decided to build on his success with the Hunter-Gatherer Society to launch his own security firm, named "Beckmann's Bad Asses". (In his fake lifestyle blog, this translated as "Beckmann's Floral Cushions".) Then he asked his followers for client referrals.
Up at the White House, Luciano Talaverdi was picking up his date, Clio, whom he had found in a LinkedIn discussion group for White House employees. Mistakenly believing her to be a major player in the Obama Administration (who could help the Italian economist advance his career--maybe even getting him out of the Federal Reserve Board and into the World Bank!), he had no idea she was the Butler. For her part, it would be her first date since overcoming the psychological delusion that her children were alive and still living at the White House. (It was a match not made in Heaven, but they can't all be.)
Out in the river, Ardua of the Potomac had finally succeeded in luring her rival, Chessie of the Chesapeake, up into the Tidal Basin--where Chessie was trapped and eaten by a Coalition of the Willing (featuring the Beaver, a hundred infected ducks, and a thousand river rats). As her minions handed Ardua the Chessie heart to eat, the demon screeched in delight, knowing she was one step closer to becoming Ardua of the Atlantic!
****************************
COMING UP:
Hong Kong triple agent Charles Wu scoops up a fired Angela de la Paz.
posted by washingtonwaterwoman | 2:03 PM
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