Speak up!
Prince and Prowling junior partner Felix Cigemeier was sitting through the first criminal deposition of his legal career. The government attorney was deposing the Trump International Hotel's head of housekeeping, who had been summoned to clean up the pig shit dropped by the drone illegally operated by Cigemeier's (and the ACLU's) client, defendant Glenn Michael Beckmann, onto the Old Post Office Pavilion Bell Tower as a political protest on 9/11. So far she had testified (with the aid of a Spanish interpreter) that: (1) the drone had frightened a few employees, (2) it had taken seventy-five minutes to clean up the manure, (3) she was expected to keep everything 100% clean all the time under threat of deportation, (4) Donald Trump had never been in the Bell Tower, (5) Ivanka Trump had never been in the Bell Tower, and (6) about three guests visited the Bell Tower each day.
Now it was Cigemeier's turn to question the witness.
Q: "Were there employees who enjoyed seeing that drone dump pig manure there?"
A: "Yes, most of the employees were delighted!"
(The prosecutor objected this was irrelevant to the illegality of the drone operation.)
Q: "Don't you have to clean the Bell Tower every day, anyway?"
A: "Yes, pigeons are always pooping there."
Q: "How many undocumented workers are on the cleaning staff?"
A: "All of us, but that nice man gave me immunity to testify!" (She was pointing to the prosecutor.)
Q: "Are you absolutely certain that Donald Trump has never been in the Bell Tower?"
A: "Oh, yes! Too windy for his hair. But Eric Trump has gone up many times with a silent gun to shoot pigeons."
Q: "And you're absolutely certain that Ivanka Trump has never been in the Bell Tower, either?"
A: "Oh, yes! But the nanny takes Ivanka's baby up frequently for fresh air and to dangle the baby."
Q: "Dangle the baby?!"
A: "Oh, yes! Like Michael Jackson--this is how celebrity baby likes it."
Q: "Are you surprised how few guests enjoy the Bell Tower? It was a very popular attraction for tourists and locals before getting privatized. Only a few a day?"
A: "Guests are angry that tower visit costs extra $500. But I go up for free every day to clean!" (She was smiling.)
Q: "Did Donald Trump ever grope you?"
The prosecutor interjected hotly to put an objection on the record, but the head of housekeeping was then directed to answer the question.
A: "No, I'm too short and ugly. He likes groping Magali, Juanita, Rosa, Carolina, Victoria--"
"Stop!" exclaimed the prosecutor, jumping to his feet.
"You can't stop her!" retorted Cigemeier.
"I can if I'm dropping the charges!"
With that, the prosecutor directed the videographer to close up shop, and they all started filing out of the Prince and Prowling conference room. Cigemeier stopped the head of hotel housekeeping before she left to ask her if she wanted to sue Trump, but she declined after he told her he could not offer her immunity.
Not far away, another Trump-related dispute was underway in the upper floor conference room of the Brewmaster's Castle, where the Heurich Society was in its third session in two weeks.
"You went too far, Condi!" exclaimed Chairman Dick Cheney, glowering at the speaker phone. "Donald Trump is the Republican nominee--"
"Donald Trump is a piece of shit who would probably be poisoned his first day in office by the kitchen staff!" retorted Condoleezza Rice.
"We can control him! If HRC is in there--"
"You CANNOT control him! Your male ego is even more delusional than his is!"
As the argument continued, the ghost of Henry Samuelson would have died of shock if he had not already been dead. He got more pleasure listening to those two screaming at each other than in anything else that had happened since his death!
"He will put fossil fuels back where they belong--as the centerpiece of domestic and foreign policy!" barked Cheney.
"He will make abject disgust the centerpiece of domestic and foreign policy!" snarled Rice.
"Since when do you care about how popular an American President is?"
"Since when did you decide that only people with dicks have balls?"
"What?!"
By now, Ghost Henry was laughing his head off, even as the other members of the Heurich Society were taking a dim view of the proceedings.
"Look," said the investment banker, standing up. "Several of us took an emergency vote and decided it's time for you to step down, Dick." (He had really only discussed this with two other people, but he was gambling that nobody would risk any accountability by speaking up one way or another.)
"How dare you?!" screamed Cheney (who had actually murdered the previous Chair to get this position). "Who do you think you're dealing with?!"
"After your last heart incident," said the member of the CIA, "we had a special modification put into your pacemaker. At this point, you need to do what we are asking, which is go quietly."
Cheney's eyes bulged out of his sockets. "You wouldn't dare!" He looked around the table, but was met with only icy stares.
"You'll all regret this!" Cheney said, overturning his coffee cup and grabbing his satchel to leave.
That's what he said the first time we kicked him out! thought Ghost Henry. (But would Ghost Henry think it enough vengeance for Cheney's assassination of his daughter?)
Further north, triple agent Charles Wu was generously tipping his (highly informative) Nigerian taxi driver before returning home for an early family dinner. He frowned at the giant, somewhat dilapidated octopus stuck to the front of his roof. "What the--?"
"Daddy!" squealed his daughter, Buffy Cordelia, racing out the front door to greet him. "We made it into a spider for Halloween!"
Little Delia was clearly still high from yesterday's spectacular fifth birthday party. "Did you?" He looked into the doorway to glare at his English nanny, but she was wisely staying out of view. "When I agreed to bring it home, I didn't agree to displaying it on the roof!"
She gave him her best little-girl-sad face and started cooing at him in Chinese, which she knew made him melt.
"Alright, alright!" he said, afraid of what he might find indoors. It was the first--and last--time he would ever agree to a joint kiddie party for his little girl. When little Delia had first made friends with a young Chinese girl, Charles had thought it fantastic for her! Then when he discovered they shared an October birthday, he had agreed to a joint party. That's when he discovered that the Chinese-Brazilian-now-American mother was a psycho who would take his $300 party supply contribution and use it to make the most garish, over the top, hideous display of handmade "ocean dream" paraphernalia ever taped, stapled, and glue-gunned to a Rock Creek Park pavilion in the history of the National Park Service.
("Not Momzilla!" neighbor Liv Cigemeier had cried in dismay yesterday, upon arriving at the party site to find her loathed coworker was the one who had actually put together the party. "Oh, Charles! I would have warned you if I had known!")
"We're changing my mermaid costume to a death-ray worm costume!" Delia suddenly said, pulling her father forward by the hand.
"That sounds disgusting!" He looked at Mrs. Prudence Higgety-Cheshire to see if some type of early senility was setting in, but she was serenely sitting on the family room sofa sewing.
"It was my idea," said Angela de la Paz, sitting on the other side of the room with a paintbrush in her hand. "Delia had a d-r-o-w-n-i-n-g d-r-e-a-m at nap time."
"What did I have?" asked Delia.
"And how is this an improvement?" asked Charles.
"It will scare monsters away on Halloween!" said Angela. "I would have thought that obvious!"
"No, not obvious! What souvenir did you take home?" asked Charles to Angela, who had turned 22 this month and always joined in for the October birthday party.
"I would like to say that I took home the d-e-m-o-n that I extracted from that crazy woman, but, unfortunately, it's all her." She smiled and looked at Delia, who was now sitting on the sofa inspecting her nanny's costume stitches. "If you want, I can make an act of persuasion for Momzilla to avoid socializing with your--"
"Yes, do it! smiled Charles. "I'll give you another birthday bonus! Still, I'd rather have you dealing with Trump," he added, hopefully, but she shook her head. He still did not understand exactly how and when his prized agent chose to use her supernatural gift. If Donald Trump were not pure evil, who was?
"I think democracy will work out just fine," smiled Angela.
Back at Prince and Prowling, Felix Cigemeier was being chewed out by client Glenn Michael Beckmann, who was devastated he would not be able to testify at trial about all his reasons for using a drone to dump pig shit on Trump's local tower. "It was my free speech!" wailed Beckmann, who was almost in tears.
"Mr. Beckmann, this is a good result! You could have gone to prison!"
"It's a terrible result!" exclaimed the ACLU lawyer who had hired Prince and Prowling's drone expert to take Beckmann's case. "Donald Trump said today he would curtail the First amendment--that there's already too much free speech!"
"Well, there's certainly an excess coming from his mouth," replied Cigemeier.
"This is not funny!" she cried, patting Beckmann on the hand. "The First Amendment is under assault! We wanted to make a stand!"
"First of all, he's not going to win the election. Secondly, the President of the United States is not the President of Russia."
"Russia probably killed my Darja!" wailed Beckmann.
"What?" asked Cigemeier.
"Never mind!" huffed the ACLU attorney, who would have been thrilled out of her mind to get the publicity a Beckmann trial would have received. "We will pursue other options!"
"Other options for getting Mr. Beckmann arrested?" Cigemeier asked incredulously, as the two sailed out of his office.
Across the street, Ghost Dennis was whispering Lame Duck ideas into the ear of President Obama, who was humming loudly to try not to hear that creepy voice.
****************************************************
COMING UP:
Contingency plans for civil war!
Now it was Cigemeier's turn to question the witness.
Q: "Were there employees who enjoyed seeing that drone dump pig manure there?"
A: "Yes, most of the employees were delighted!"
(The prosecutor objected this was irrelevant to the illegality of the drone operation.)
Q: "Don't you have to clean the Bell Tower every day, anyway?"
A: "Yes, pigeons are always pooping there."
Q: "How many undocumented workers are on the cleaning staff?"
A: "All of us, but that nice man gave me immunity to testify!" (She was pointing to the prosecutor.)
Q: "Are you absolutely certain that Donald Trump has never been in the Bell Tower?"
A: "Oh, yes! Too windy for his hair. But Eric Trump has gone up many times with a silent gun to shoot pigeons."
Q: "And you're absolutely certain that Ivanka Trump has never been in the Bell Tower, either?"
A: "Oh, yes! But the nanny takes Ivanka's baby up frequently for fresh air and to dangle the baby."
Q: "Dangle the baby?!"
A: "Oh, yes! Like Michael Jackson--this is how celebrity baby likes it."
Q: "Are you surprised how few guests enjoy the Bell Tower? It was a very popular attraction for tourists and locals before getting privatized. Only a few a day?"
A: "Guests are angry that tower visit costs extra $500. But I go up for free every day to clean!" (She was smiling.)
Q: "Did Donald Trump ever grope you?"
The prosecutor interjected hotly to put an objection on the record, but the head of housekeeping was then directed to answer the question.
A: "No, I'm too short and ugly. He likes groping Magali, Juanita, Rosa, Carolina, Victoria--"
"Stop!" exclaimed the prosecutor, jumping to his feet.
"You can't stop her!" retorted Cigemeier.
"I can if I'm dropping the charges!"
With that, the prosecutor directed the videographer to close up shop, and they all started filing out of the Prince and Prowling conference room. Cigemeier stopped the head of hotel housekeeping before she left to ask her if she wanted to sue Trump, but she declined after he told her he could not offer her immunity.
Not far away, another Trump-related dispute was underway in the upper floor conference room of the Brewmaster's Castle, where the Heurich Society was in its third session in two weeks.
"You went too far, Condi!" exclaimed Chairman Dick Cheney, glowering at the speaker phone. "Donald Trump is the Republican nominee--"
"Donald Trump is a piece of shit who would probably be poisoned his first day in office by the kitchen staff!" retorted Condoleezza Rice.
"We can control him! If HRC is in there--"
"You CANNOT control him! Your male ego is even more delusional than his is!"
As the argument continued, the ghost of Henry Samuelson would have died of shock if he had not already been dead. He got more pleasure listening to those two screaming at each other than in anything else that had happened since his death!
"He will put fossil fuels back where they belong--as the centerpiece of domestic and foreign policy!" barked Cheney.
"He will make abject disgust the centerpiece of domestic and foreign policy!" snarled Rice.
"Since when do you care about how popular an American President is?"
"Since when did you decide that only people with dicks have balls?"
"What?!"
By now, Ghost Henry was laughing his head off, even as the other members of the Heurich Society were taking a dim view of the proceedings.
"Look," said the investment banker, standing up. "Several of us took an emergency vote and decided it's time for you to step down, Dick." (He had really only discussed this with two other people, but he was gambling that nobody would risk any accountability by speaking up one way or another.)
"How dare you?!" screamed Cheney (who had actually murdered the previous Chair to get this position). "Who do you think you're dealing with?!"
"After your last heart incident," said the member of the CIA, "we had a special modification put into your pacemaker. At this point, you need to do what we are asking, which is go quietly."
Cheney's eyes bulged out of his sockets. "You wouldn't dare!" He looked around the table, but was met with only icy stares.
"You'll all regret this!" Cheney said, overturning his coffee cup and grabbing his satchel to leave.
That's what he said the first time we kicked him out! thought Ghost Henry. (But would Ghost Henry think it enough vengeance for Cheney's assassination of his daughter?)
Further north, triple agent Charles Wu was generously tipping his (highly informative) Nigerian taxi driver before returning home for an early family dinner. He frowned at the giant, somewhat dilapidated octopus stuck to the front of his roof. "What the--?"
"Daddy!" squealed his daughter, Buffy Cordelia, racing out the front door to greet him. "We made it into a spider for Halloween!"
Little Delia was clearly still high from yesterday's spectacular fifth birthday party. "Did you?" He looked into the doorway to glare at his English nanny, but she was wisely staying out of view. "When I agreed to bring it home, I didn't agree to displaying it on the roof!"
She gave him her best little-girl-sad face and started cooing at him in Chinese, which she knew made him melt.
"Alright, alright!" he said, afraid of what he might find indoors. It was the first--and last--time he would ever agree to a joint kiddie party for his little girl. When little Delia had first made friends with a young Chinese girl, Charles had thought it fantastic for her! Then when he discovered they shared an October birthday, he had agreed to a joint party. That's when he discovered that the Chinese-Brazilian-now-American mother was a psycho who would take his $300 party supply contribution and use it to make the most garish, over the top, hideous display of handmade "ocean dream" paraphernalia ever taped, stapled, and glue-gunned to a Rock Creek Park pavilion in the history of the National Park Service.
("Not Momzilla!" neighbor Liv Cigemeier had cried in dismay yesterday, upon arriving at the party site to find her loathed coworker was the one who had actually put together the party. "Oh, Charles! I would have warned you if I had known!")
"We're changing my mermaid costume to a death-ray worm costume!" Delia suddenly said, pulling her father forward by the hand.
"That sounds disgusting!" He looked at Mrs. Prudence Higgety-Cheshire to see if some type of early senility was setting in, but she was serenely sitting on the family room sofa sewing.
"It was my idea," said Angela de la Paz, sitting on the other side of the room with a paintbrush in her hand. "Delia had a d-r-o-w-n-i-n-g d-r-e-a-m at nap time."
"What did I have?" asked Delia.
"And how is this an improvement?" asked Charles.
"It will scare monsters away on Halloween!" said Angela. "I would have thought that obvious!"
"No, not obvious! What souvenir did you take home?" asked Charles to Angela, who had turned 22 this month and always joined in for the October birthday party.
"I would like to say that I took home the d-e-m-o-n that I extracted from that crazy woman, but, unfortunately, it's all her." She smiled and looked at Delia, who was now sitting on the sofa inspecting her nanny's costume stitches. "If you want, I can make an act of persuasion for Momzilla to avoid socializing with your--"
"Yes, do it! smiled Charles. "I'll give you another birthday bonus! Still, I'd rather have you dealing with Trump," he added, hopefully, but she shook her head. He still did not understand exactly how and when his prized agent chose to use her supernatural gift. If Donald Trump were not pure evil, who was?
"I think democracy will work out just fine," smiled Angela.
Back at Prince and Prowling, Felix Cigemeier was being chewed out by client Glenn Michael Beckmann, who was devastated he would not be able to testify at trial about all his reasons for using a drone to dump pig shit on Trump's local tower. "It was my free speech!" wailed Beckmann, who was almost in tears.
"Mr. Beckmann, this is a good result! You could have gone to prison!"
"It's a terrible result!" exclaimed the ACLU lawyer who had hired Prince and Prowling's drone expert to take Beckmann's case. "Donald Trump said today he would curtail the First amendment--that there's already too much free speech!"
"Well, there's certainly an excess coming from his mouth," replied Cigemeier.
"This is not funny!" she cried, patting Beckmann on the hand. "The First Amendment is under assault! We wanted to make a stand!"
"First of all, he's not going to win the election. Secondly, the President of the United States is not the President of Russia."
"Russia probably killed my Darja!" wailed Beckmann.
"What?" asked Cigemeier.
"Never mind!" huffed the ACLU attorney, who would have been thrilled out of her mind to get the publicity a Beckmann trial would have received. "We will pursue other options!"
"Other options for getting Mr. Beckmann arrested?" Cigemeier asked incredulously, as the two sailed out of his office.
Across the street, Ghost Dennis was whispering Lame Duck ideas into the ear of President Obama, who was humming loudly to try not to hear that creepy voice.
****************************************************
COMING UP:
Contingency plans for civil war!
posted by washingtonwaterwoman | 6:05 PM
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