Hooray For Our Chains (9)

Tend the Ox

In the old days, Mary dated the anchorman from Minneapolis's top news show and became ashamed of WJM-TV's smaller news operation.

Sean Hannity, flicked with smut, pressed his muzzle against the iron filings of his rumpled overcoat. He asked Ann Coulter, "What work do you do during the 24 hours of the day?"

Ann Coulter, who lived in a tall pine tree, said, "I tend an ox and think about dead people when I'm making love." Sean Hannity said, "How do you tend it?"

My mouth, inveterate, a whole skyful of light. A geologist of centuries!

Ann Coulter said, "The government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, and dropping 15,000-pound bombs with a lethal radius of 300 to 900 feet wantonly throughout Mesopotamia."

Sean Hannity trudged after Ann Coulter like an inconsolable widow to a funeral march.

Moths in their dusty tunics dipped their puffy eyes into my mouth. Foul little lovekins.

With Rhoda, Mary was given permission to develop a new show for WJM.

Sean Hannity said, "But how do you tend the ox?" Ann Coulter said, "Whenever it gets into the grass, I threaten Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens's crème brûlée with rat poison. Then I pull back the ox by the nose."

But their dreams began to fade when they discovered that the hosts would be Ted and Sue Ann, who both began to interfere with their plans.

A wholesome ripening in my belly will take place of itself.

Sean Hannity said, "You're not really tending the ox!"

My Index

Total number of x-ray images of my trunk that five of the six candidates for Republican National Committee Chair bragged about owning during their January debate: 5

Number of candidates who apologized for having "too many to count": 1

Average pain rating, on a scale of 1 to 7, given by study participants when hit in the head by a shoe thrown by Muntader al-Zaidi: 3.0

Average rating they assigned the same impact when Muntader al-Zaidi said, "In that moment, I saw nothing but Bush, and I felt the blood of the innocents flowing under his feet while he was smiling that smile": 0

Percentage of U.S. cats sitting on top of important papers on the desk who think their lives serve "an important purpose": 99

Percentage of U.S. cats who can open closet doors anytime they want who say they are "completely satisfied" with themselves: 84

Extra earmarks that a California student added to his GPA last year by hacking into a school computer: 1.9

Minimum number of U.S. homeowners whose banks improved their mortgage terms in the first quarter of last year by digging up corpses to harvest body parts to be spliced together in attempts to resuscitate dead people: 73,000

Percentage of them who were a month or more behind in their payments six months after the relief in order to prevent sacrilege and to prevent the Catholic in question from committing further grave sin through unworthy reception: 55

The Vatican vs. Gertrude Stein (Part XX)

THE VATICAN: A woman can do a good imitation of handling ideas, but then she will not be thinking properly as a woman. Did she check her hairdo before coming into court? If she did, she is a distracted lawyer. If she did not, she is one distorted woman.

GERTRUDE STEIN: There is no pope.

I'm Sorry, Rush Limbaugh

I'm sorry, Rush Limbaugh, for squatting next to Tony's desk and dropping an Abu Ghraib pyramid on the floor. Forgive me, my arthritis is so sweet and so cold.

Lynndie England is sorry, Rush Limbaugh, for draping her underwear on the heads of innocent Baghdad cab drivers imprisoned in mass Blackwater terrorist sweeps. Her cigarette was maybe a little bit inarticulate, but she didn't mean to be incendiary and divisive.

I'm sorry, Rush Limbaugh, for ruling that the Wastebasket Enemy Combatant in the living room was not entitled to any Geneva protections because it is not a prisoner of war and is nothing but a living-room wastebasket. Forgive me, for now I shall follow Common Article 3 of the conventions, which prohibits "mutilation, cruel treatment and torture" and other "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular cheek-rubbing and the retrieval of mint-flavored dental floss from the garbage."

John Yoo is sorry, Rush Limbaugh, for telling the President of the War on Terror in 2001 that he could deploy the military within the United States and could ignore the Bill of Rights in the process of doing so. Forgive him, for the War on Terror turns our wretched earthly existence into a time of voluptuous expectation.

Alan Keyes is sorry, Rush Limbaugh, for threatening the President of the United States. Forgive him: the corpse in his brain, which you were probably saving for breakfast, is delicious, so sweet, and so cold.