List XXIV: John McCain is Much More Rich and Beautiful than the Pictures Depict

If you're
raped
in Wasilla,
you pay
the city
to collect
the evidence

What if
Obama
is elected
President
and moves
to Guyana?

If any
man shall
add unto
these things,
I shall add
unto him
the plagues
that are written
in my Tora
Bora Box

Attenshun,
plz?

"I won't
be doing
any more
campaigning
because
one side
at the damn
drawbridge
of I-95 traffic
is stopped
for 15 minutes
yet traffic's coming
the other way"

I opened
all the closet
doors while
you slept
last night

Tree foliage
shunned
Rush Limbaugh's
glockenspiel

And I moved
the water
across
the kitchen floor

I can see
Joe McCarthy
with lipstick

"He was
handcuffed
to a gurney,
given Motrin
and a prescription
for antibiotics,
and sent
to jail"

And you
can't stop me
from dropping
an Abu Ghraib
pyramid
next to
your desk

The Vatican vs. Gertrude Stein (Part XVI)

THE VATICAN: The close connection which exists, in mentality, between the practice of contraception and that of abortion is becoming increasingly obvious. The pro-abortion culture is especially strong precisely where the Church's teaching on contraception is rejected. Despite their differences of nature and moral gravity, contraception and abortion are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree.

GERTRUDE STEIN: There is no pope.

My Hardcore Dusky Audit, Layered with 36 Real Band-Aids

The Chariot is driving you full-speed into a crazy and passionate love affair with the cat in the window of the building across the street, dear Shimmy. However, with the Hanged Man interfering, you need to watch out.

You might receive a registered letter from Diane Fedele, President of Chaffey Community Republican Women, saying that if Barack Obama is elected, his image will appear (on a donkey's body) on food stamps -- instead of on dollar bills, like other presidents!

Or Diane Fedele might send you a fax that says:

Dear Shimmy,

I'm not a racist. I once supported Alan Keyes. I didn't see the image of Obama (on a donkey's body) on food stamps the way everyone else is taking it. I never connected. It was just food to me. It didn't mean anything else.

Love,
Diane Fedele

Or your vehicle might hit a big rock on the road and overturn, like when the furiously flesh-elemental Laura Bush murdered that guy who was her ex-boyfriend, running over his chest with her car on a clear night on dry pavement at a crossroads described as "the middle of nowhere" (where the view was unobstructed and the stop sign that faced Laura Bush was clearly visible).

All along the way today traps and potholes might be lurking, Shimmy.

You are advised, therefore, to travel at a slower speed and to study the red laser-pointer as it flies up the wall then back down again.

In your professional environment, you are going through a phase of discouragement. Hard as you try to get the Wastebasket Enemy Combatant to reveal which bathtub Bill Ayers is sleeping in, you can’t help but feel that your efforts go to waste. You feel that nobody gives you recognition for your labors -- even when you strap the Wastebasket Enemy Combatant to an inclined board, with his feet raised and head lowered, and you wrap cellophane around his head and pour water over him to simulate drowning.

You won't see mice under the stove until it gets colder, and you might not get a smile from the Wastebasket Enemy Combatant when you rub your face against him. He is tightly bound and cannot move. Try not to see things from the Wastebasket Enemy Combatant's perspective. You’ve also got the Sun smiling on you!

Animated Public Telephone Ratio

Sarah Palin called Joe Wurzelbacher to ask if they'd caught the mugger. She apologized for losing his money, and he told her not to worry about it and gave her the rest of the day off. Sarah Palin was insulted by Joe Wurzelbacher's accusation and asked him to leave.

When Joe Wurzelbacher stopped by the diner, G. Gordon Liddy told him what really happened to Sarah Palin, and Joe Wurzelbacher realized he'd really put his foot in his mouth.

Joe left the diner and went to the hotel to find the guy who mugged the Constitution. He caught him, but got in trouble for owing back taxes to the state of Ohio, not having a plumber's license, not having firm plans to buy his business, and for qualifying for a tax cut under Barack Obama's tax proposal.

At the hospital, John McCain confronted Barack Obama about Congressman John Lewis, an American hero, and the stress that the campaign was causing (which was no good for the baby).

"Congressman Lewis made allegations that Sarah Palin and I were somehow associated with the worst chapter in American history -- segregation, deaths of children in church bombings, George Wallace," John McCain said. "That, to me, was so hurtful."

After apprehending the mugger, Joe Wurzelbacher went to the diner and apologized to Sarah Palin. He asked her to go down to the police station with him and fill out a report so they could make a case.

After they left the station, Joe Wurzelbacher took Sarah Palin home, and John McCain said, "It's been a very tough campaign. And I know from my experience in many campaigns that, if Senator Obama had asked -- had responded to my urgent request to sit down, and do town hall meetings, and come before the American people, we could have done at least 10 of them by now."

John McCain thanked Joe Wurzelbacher. He asked Joe Wurzelbacher why he didn't call when the Constitution was attacked. Joe Wurzelbacher said he had a long night and was flying to New York that evening for a sit-down interview with Mike Huckabee on Pravda. They then began kissing.

When Joe Wurzelbacher returned to Sarah Palin, she asked him what his emergency meeting was about, and Joe Wurzelbacher told her that John McCain had a proposition for him. "I think you'd better start calling me boss," Joe Wurzlebacher said.

Sarah Palin asked if John McCain had given him a job at Newell Plumbing & Heating. "I'm going to buy it," Joe Wurzelbacher said.

Sarah Palin asked how he planned to pull it off, and Joe Wurzelbacher explained that John McCain didn't want to run the company, so Joe would take control through an off-shore transaction. Sarah Palin warned that John McCain was smart and would figure it out.

Joe Wurzelbacher told Sarah Palin to keep silent about his plans until the deal went through. But as soon as Joe stepped out of the room, Sarah Palin called Sean Hannity and said, "I asked the question but I still got a tap dance . . . almost as good as Sammy Davis, Jr."

Episode Twenty-Seven: "Arnold Conrad's Hands Move No Faster than Race Horses Filmed in Slow Motion"

RHODA: I challenge any one of you to tell me a story about being sung to by an immigration officer.

MURRAY SLAUGHTER: There’s nothing worth knowing or exploring.

MARY: History should be understood and practiced as toys.

RHODA: John McCain's single moment of relative prominence happened a long time ago, and is widely believed to have been dumb luck anyway.

TED BAXTER: Perhaps you can imagine yourself as if you were outdoors on a warm and pleasant day. Do not touch yourself.

RHODA: Mary, I almost want to take a survey, stop each person and ask, "Excuse me, could you tell me the top three reasons you're staring at me?"

MARY: Arnold Conrad, former pastor of Grace Evangelical Free Church in Davenport, Iowa, will appear whenever he has a message for us, and he will come in the form of dreams.

RHODA: Dear Lord, millions of people around this world are praying to their god -- whether it’s Vishnu, Allah, Avalokiteshvara, Horus, Marduk, Loki, Shakyamuni Buddha, Green Tara -- that John McCain's opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their God is bigger than you, if that happens.

Hooray For Our Chains (2)

Hooray For Our Chains (1)

Episode Twenty-Six: "You've Been Hanging 'Round with an Enemy of the State"

MARY: What happens to the soul when we die, Rhoda?

RHODA: The exception to this, always, is the bodhisattva.

MARY: Nature is wondrous, but it has never fashioned an immortal body.

RHODA: Both are extremely dangerous, of course.

MARY: And as for who coined that central war on terror being in Iraq, it was the General Petraeus and al Qaeda, both leaders there.

TED BAXTER: And it's probably the only thing that they're ever going to agree on -- but that it was a central war on terror. A central war on terror is in Iraq. You don't have to believe Sarah Palin or John McCain on that. I would believe Petraeus and the leader of al Qaeda.

RHODA: We have to assume two things, Mary: nature wishes the phenomenon of Sarah Palin to occur; and nature has not provided us with any means of determining the exact state of ourselves during or after Sarah Palin.

MARY: There 's just too much finger-pointing backwards to ever make us believe that's where you hate going.

RHODA: Maybe the afterlife is a reservoir of de-Baathified souls.

MARY: Yesterday we were losing in Iraq. Today we are winning. The exception to this, always, is the bodhisattva.

"I do take issue with some of the principle there with that redistribution of wealth principle that seems to be espoused by you."

The consumption of cyclical time in ancient societies was consistent with the real labor of those societies.

But the pseudo-cyclical consumption of Sarah Palin contradicts the abstract irreversible time of her production.

I rubbed my cheek against the bathtub spigot to visualize minute patterns on the surface of relics mounted on a fabric backing and varnished with acrylic paint resin. My cousin, Winter, mailed me a copy of the Constitution packed in a gold-colored presentation tube.

I rubbed my cheek against the bathtub spigot like a novice magician.

Sarah Palin is thankful that the Constitution is a history leaflet that would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president, if that vice president so chose to exert it, in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of every throb of the spectacular machinery, of the president's policies, and of making sure, too, that our president understands what our strengths are.

Sarah Palin is grateful that this individual experience of daily life remains without language, without concept, without critical access to its own past. She can't wait to get out there and go to work with you.