[Texgreen] Cheney Sickens Planet/Earth recoils as VP assumes role

[Roger Baker]

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notes072707.DTL
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Friday, July 27, 2007 (SF Gate)
President Cheney Sickens Planet/Earth recoils as VP assumes role for  
two "unholy" hours. Also: no WMD in Bush's colon
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist



Beginning at 7:16 a.m. last Saturday, and continuing for exactly two  
hours
and five minutes, Vice President Dick Cheney assumed the role of  
President
of the United States, while George W. Bush underwent a routine
colonoscopy, a safe but risky-enough procedure that obliged the
administration to invoke the rarely used 25th Amendment, which transfers
all executive powers to the vice president when a sitting president is
unable to perform the duties of his office.

    While most Americans were completely unaware that the temporary  
transfer
had taken place, the response from the collective body was nevertheless
nearly instantaneous, as millions across the nation reported feeling  
some
sort of unnerving wave of dread, something dark and ominous and  
stifling,
like a collective shudder, a giant musty pillow jammed over the mouth of
life itself, a great, low moan of deep, chthonic pain.

    "What the hell is going on?" cried Jane Klowster of Oklahoma  
City, echoing
the sentiments of millions as she called in to a local talk-radio  
program
early Saturday morning, just after making a pot of coffee so bitter  
as to
be undrinkable and noticing the flowers on her patio had suddenly wilted
for no apparent reason, and also that her parakeet was dead.

    "Did someone snuff out the sun or something? Why does the world  
feel so
pale and deathly right now? I feel like my heart is being molested by a
drunken hockey team made up of poisonous sea slugs and angry  
pinecones in
the bowel of a rock. Wait, does that even make sense? I don't care.  
That's
the feeling."

    Klowster was, apparently, far from alone.

    "I can't go to the bathroom. Everything's stopped up, like  
someone poured
rancid concrete into my intestines and stirred with Satan's own swizzle
stick while laying on a bed of nails made of spider legs, in the sun,"
reported Tom Deavers to his baffled family doctor. "I also feel like
punching a wall. And also crying."

    The stories were as shocking as they were, you know, titillating.  
"We were
totally having wicked sex in the tailgate of my Subie," said Brandon  
"Bran
Flakes" Zander, 22, a surfer from Redondo Beach, sitting next to his
"smokin' hot" girlfriend, Amber, 19. "When all of a sudden, right in the
middle of the good s--, boom, everything sorta went limp, you know? Like
some dude yanked the plug from the love toaster, right? We just sorta  
look
at each other like, WTF? We decided to fire up a spliff and wait it  
out."

    Doctors, scientists, healers, middle managers, astrologists and  
even auto
mechanics nationwide were, at least initially, equally confounded by the
bizarre outbreak of widespread malaise, which seemed to impact nearly
every aspect of the animate and inanimate world, and even caused
automobile clutches to suddenly seize, light bulbs to dim, shiny  
things to
tarnish and electric components to flicker and spark and, often,
spontaneously combust.

    Finally, one scientist actually read a newspaper, and it all came  
clear in
an instant.

    "Two little words," said Dr. Alan Lenner of the Phenomenology  
Research
Institute in Bethesda, MD, glancing around nervously as if his next
utterance would cause lightning to strike him dead. 'President Cheney,'"
he whispered. At that exact moment, a woman's terrible scream could be
heard in the distance, a pack of wolves howled, and once again that  
long,
low moan reverberated throughout the land. No, seriously, it totally  
did.

    What's more, the virulent reaction to the temporary Cheney  
presidency --
now referred to as "Dick Doom" by phenomenologists -- wasn't  
restricted to
humans. Pet store owners reported a sudden, deafening outbreak of  
yelping,
squealing, barking, hissing and so on.

    "It was total cacophony," exclaimed Becca DeWalt, assistant  
manager of
Petapalooza in the Northtown Mall in Boulder, Colo. "Every creature that
could make a noise or that could show some sort of reaction suddenly let
loose and acted as though it had just caught on fire. Heck, I was  
standing
right over there when, at exactly 7:16 a.m., at least 50 goldfish  
actually
leapt out of the main tank to their deaths, like some sort of mass
suicide. It was totally crazy.

    "But then I heard about -- should I really say this out loud? --  
President
Cheney, and it all made sense."

    (Editor's note: At the mention of the words "President Cheney,"  
that poor
woman's terrible scream could be heard again. Apparently, even  
writing the
words in this very paragraph provokes this unholy sound. "President
Cheney." See? It's uncanny).

    Like a virus, like a bad rumor, like nuclear mushroom cloud  
spreading in
all directions, feelings of Dick Doom quickly reached the rest of the
planet. Reports flooded in from as far away as Singapore, Turkey, Latvia
and Nanjing of strange animal mutations, mass faintings, violent fights
breaking out in churches and small woodland creatures intentionally
leaping into electrical fences, as a wave of dark energy swept over the
land.

    Nuclear warheads spontaneously armed. Guns spontaneously cocked.  
Every
active soldier on the planet felt his mouth go dry in dread. Herds of
gazelles and addaxes and even prides of lions across the African veldt
paused in their activities, looked up and cocked their heads in nervous
awareness, as if sensing the presence of a very large, reeking predator.

    Shoes came untied. Cheese sweated. Clouds scowled. Scissors nicked.
Children on playgrounds worldwide instantly halted all play and fell to
the dirt and began to wail. Eager fetuses just entering the birth canal
sensed something ominous and quickly retreated, apparently deciding to
wait just one more day.

    "I never ever in a million years thought I'd say this, but oh my  
God am I
grateful that Bush got back into the president's seat almost  
immediately,"
sighed much of the nation, collectively, as it slammed another triple
vodka and waited for the residual nausea to pass. "I mean, he's by  
far the
worst president the United States has ever known and he's done more  
to set
this nation back and embarrass us and create more terrorism and repress
science and women and love and hope for all mankind everywhere. But  
oh my
God, he's still no Dick Cheney. That guy makes baby unicorns bleed."

    On a related note, after Camp David doctors successfully removed  
five
apparently benign polyps from Bush's colon, they were allegedly  
instructed
by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to see if they could, at long last,  
find
at least a trace of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction "up in
there" to help justify the Iraq conflict, a lost war that even the
smallest human child now understands was one of the most malevolent and
destructive political decisions in American history.

    "We looked and looked. No WMD. No secret storage bunkers. Not  
even a vial
of Nigerian plutonium," sighed the doctors, who all seemed pretty much
through with this terminally long joke. "And just in case you were
wondering, no sign of Osama up there, either. We did find one of Jerry
Falwell's big gold rings. But that doesn't really count. Wait, does it?"

    Dick Cheney, busy cackling ominously deep in his bunker, was  
unavailable
for comment.



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