Saturday, September 13, 2014

Gaslighting with the POTUS (an account of Secret Service agent Dan DeDonde)

El Jefe - the "classy" years


     This really happened, OK?

     So Larry and me were chillin’ outside the President’s office, and El Jefe (that is what President Obama likes to be called by us in private) opens the door, peeks outside and goes “Psst — fellas — come in here for a second.”

     We go in, he looks out the door to his left and right, closes it and locks it. Then he goes and sits behind his desk and motions for Larry and me to sit down in front of his desk.

     We sit.

     He says:  “You folks have been working really hard at protecting me and bringing counterfeiters to justice. I think it’s time you guys loosen your earpieces and tip-up the shades.”

     I thought he was gonna give us some nice presidential pin or pen or some shit like that, because he pulls out this fancy case with shiny felt and gold trim on it, like what they put nice pens or pins in. He opens it and shows me and Larry, my partner, the contents of the fine box and then El Jefe raises and lowers his eyebrows up and down really fast a whole bunch of times, trading looks with Larry and me.
 
     What is inside the box is a giant spliff.
   
     He pulls it out of the box then pulls a zippo from his desk drawer, flips it open, lights the spliff and takes a big ‘ol hit. 

     I look at Larry and Larry looks at me and then El Jefe coughs and laughs as all the smoke is launching out of his mouth at us and he passes the thing over the presidential desk to Larry who looks like a man who has just caught his parents getting it on.

     Larry has no clue what to do with the thing. El Jefe and me can’t believe it: the man actually answered truthfully when he applied for the job about smoking marijuana!  Shit, I just said I experimented with it twice in college to make it seem like I wasn’t lying but Larry really had never seen the stuff up-close!

     El Jefe offers again and Larry takes it.

     “Just baby puffs, Larry. We don’t need you discovering new planets, especially without a space suit.” El Jefe cracks himself up at this.

     Larry lights, inhales and coughs like a dying man with TB and the Jefe busts up laughing again.

     “Pass that shit over to Dan. I’ll bet he’s an old pro,” El Jefe says, raising and lowering his eyebrows again real fast.

     Dan passes the thing to me and I do the double-mini toke followed by the big inhale-and-hold, slowly easing the smoke out of my lungs and mouth for maximal THC absorption.

     El Jefe nods his head in approval and I hand him back his cannabis cigarette and he takes another drag.

     He pulls out a remote-control and presses a button. Over the speakers some shit — I think it was some seventies stuff like “Emerson, Lake and Palmer” — comes on.  El Jefe eases his chair back and puts his feet up on the desk and his arms behind his head.

     I look over at Larry who is looking around the office like a little kid and I try not to bust up laughing.

     El Jefe closes his eyes and says “Fellas — I am going to notify you of something that you will not believe. I am in fact a puppet. The people that are really in charge are inter-dimensional aliens who, when you are ‘tuned in’ to their frequency, have a third-eye right smack-dab in the middle of their forehead.  And they operate among us.”

     As El Jefe is speaking, I catch Larry out of the corner of my eye fidgeting with his ear-piece.

     “Yessir. They could be your neighbor, your mailman, your Senator, your VP.  But you wouldn’t know it, because they are cloaked, and our perception of them is…eclipsed. Unless….” He opens his eyes and offers the spliff to Larry, who declines.

     He passes it to me. I oblige.

     “Why am I telling you this? Because they make me say incredible things that don’t make any sense, like how the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq is not Islamic, or how I will close Guantanamo Bay.  Shit — check out that Nobel Peace Prize on the wall, fellas. How many other mad bombers have won peace prizes, eh?  Folks — they are gaslighting us to see how much of the bull-puckie we as human beings will gobble, and boy oh boy we will gobble quite a bit.”

     What the hell is Jefe talking about? Man, he must be high. But he continues.

     “You know what gaslighting is, Larry?”

     Larry shakes his head.

     Jefe grabs his iphone off the desk and types on the screen.

     “To quote wikipedia: ‘Gaslighting or gas-lighting is a form of mental abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own memory, perception and sanity.’  Yup. The world is being gaslit…gaslighted? Hmmm….” El Jefe ponders for a second.

     He takes another hit off the doobie and snorts some of the smoke from the other end out of the air.  

     “I kid you not. They are hiding in plain sight, and they are here to bring the entire shithouse down. 9-11 was the opening ritual act of the demolition by the ceremonial Archpriest of the Three Eyed Ones, Big Dick “Pull My” Cheney.  Soon you’re gonna check things that’ll make John the Revelator blush.”

      He looks around, then leans closer to us. 

     “But I digress. I can’t talk like this to anyone because their plan is so brilliant that if I spoke out against it I would be considered a lunatic. Anyone would.  So you can’t fight inter-dimensional beings with third-eyes on their foreheads, because they got all the bases covered. Got it?  I just play the rube prez.  What the hell, eh Larry?”

     By this point Larry is sweating profusely and visibly nervous. Damn, that weed was powerful.

     “Why are they doing this?” Jefe leans forward so he’s pretty much on his own desk and face-to-face with Larry, scrutinizing him.  “Eh, Larry?”

     Larry: “Um — er — what?”
 
     “I said ‘why are they doing this?’ and I think you know, Larry.” Jefe slinks back into his chair.

     At this point I start to get worried about Larry. He seems like he’s on the verge of a full-bore freak-out. He’s sweating, fidgiting, messing with his tie, adjusting his holster, and El Jefe just sits and stares at him.

     And then the weed, the music and my mind all converge on some tripped-out wavelength of reality and there it is: above El Jefe’s two regular eyes I see a third eye, right there on his forehead boring into Larry’s mind!

     Holy shit!

     I get up and check the mirror on the wall next to a picture of George Bush Sr., and I got the eye on the forehead too!

     What the shit?! I am one of them also and I didn’t even know it!

     Larry is about to shit his pants when El Jefe says, “Don’t worry, Larry. We’re just gaslighting you. Go and tell everyone about this. See what happens, hehehehe.”

     Jefe takes another pull on the spliff and turns the music up.

     Yes, it is Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and the track now playing is called “C’est La Vie”

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Secretary of State John Kerry: “Burning Man Has Not Jumped the Shark”

Mary Harf - always a hit at the Burning Man

John Kerry looks forward to Burning Man 2015



     “I’m so fancy…you already know…I am in the fast lane….from L.A. to Tokyo…” Secretary of State John Kerry sings along to the lyrics of the hit tune by Iggy Azalea and Charli XCX, shaking his hips and spilling some of his scotch.

     At this point in the story, he is already full-tilt into the fifth day of the Burning Man festival in the high desert of Nevada.

     Yes indeed — he and his entourage, including his mistress of propaganda, Mary Harf, have had quite a jolt in the “Kerry Prankster” camp —  a fortified compound of 5 Starline trailers encircled to create an impregnable fortress.

     VIP only.

     The rest of you rabble need not enter. Don’t even think about it.

     Anyway, the good Secretary of State has opted for some Pharma-grade Israeli ecstasy, and everything has become quite acceptable to the former riverboat sailor.
   
     “This is what it’s all about. Booze, women, and a vision….  I like being hiiiiiiip!  You think I should tweet a photo of me getting my groove on with this day-glo thing?”

     “I don’t think you should fall for that Russian propaganda.” Mrs. Harf blurts out.

     “Good god, woman — you’ve had a kernal panic! You haven’t said anything but those words the entire time you’ve been here! Must’ve been the psylocibin/GHB combo. It shorted out your wetware.  Here — have a sip.”  He takes her gently by the head and spills some of his booze down her throat.

      She chokes and coughs and mumbles “Bergdahl’s platoon-mates are big-fat liars…Putin personally shot down that airliner — I saw a facebook post with a picture of him with the bazooka…  ISIS es muy peligroso…freedom-fighters, er terrorsists…my propaganda is better than the Russian propaganda…ERROR INVALID DATA 13 OxD…Beezlebub twirk twirk who dat I thought you knew dat knew dat knew dat lions and tigers and bears oh my….”

     Secretary of State Kerry tosses his now twitching and incoherent deputy State Department spokesman onto the 1756 silk settee couch he had imported from Toulouse, France just for this occasion.

     Kerry summons his personal assistant, “Get me that bozo Bill on the horn!”  He takes another sip of scotch and checks his twitter feed, snaps a selfie, then checks the pic. “Hmm, I do share a semblance to Lurch. I will consider that a compliment. Yes indeed. Keep it together, John. You are a survivor and a thriver. You are a champion!”

     He snaps off another selfie: he toasting himself.

     “Silly Valley camp. What’s your query?” the geeky male voice (or is it female? John Kerry cannot tell) over the speaker-phone says.

     “This is the Kerry Prankster.  Get your sonofabitch honcho Bill on the line, stat!”

     “Bill Gates of Hell? Okie-doke. Un moment, por favor.” In the background is heard robotic trance music, glasses clinking, laughter, a sheep baa-ing, and a firearm discharging and what Sec. of State Kerry imagines to be a Tesla coil arc emitting electricity in multiple directions, followed by the nasally sound of a voice: “Who?! That slime-bag?  What’s he want — he’s interrupting…screw it.  Pause it! I’ll be right back…(the fumbling of the phone is heard)…  Yes, what is it John? You are aware you are interrupting the Ritual of Appeasement of the Deity Baba-Yaga?”

     “Terribly sorry to bother your ceremony, Bill. But that goddamned system you pawned off to the state department is a giant pile of shit. What are you installing Windows ’98 operating systems into refurnished units and offloading ‘em to Uncle Sam?  Get your pasty ass over here and fix my deputy spokesman or I’ve got two words for you: ‘predator drone’!!!”

     “Are you threatening me, John?”

     "G-D’d right I am! I was in ‘nam you two-bit pirate and I do not take shit from dorks like you — not now, not ever.”

     “Easy, Johnny, easy. We’re pals. You sound like you’re on the verge of a drug and booze induced psychosis. I got a shot I can give you for that — loaded it into mosquitoes to help with overpopulation in Africa - er, I mean diseases and stuff, heeheehee…”

     “Just get over here and fix my problem!”



     Precisely 12 minutes and 45 seconds later a helicopter comes hovering over the “Kerry Prankster” camp, causing quite a bit of dust to kick up into the lavish Alain Ducasse $10,000 party spread.

     “There’s a waste of perfectly good caviar,” says Sec. of State John Kerry as he watches three figures repel down. Well — two repel down and one is lowered down because he is clad in an 1800’s diving bell.

     The chopper leaves and the three approach Mr. Kerry, who lays upside-down on an inversion table smoking a cigar.
   
     The one wearing the diving-bell motions to his crony on the left — an unkempt sort whose belly hangs forth from the T-shirt with the words “MAY THE MASS TIMES ACCELERATION BE WITH YOU” (in Star Wars font) on it and over his skinny jeans — who opens the visor of the helmet of the diving bell.

     “Bill Gates you money-shot maestro, what is that unholy get-up you are sporting?!”

     Bill Gates clears his throat. “I am currently under the influence of an experimental nanobot nootropic that is rewiring my brain and putting forth the sensation that I am deep underwater. If not for this suit, my ear-drums would rupture and my noggin would explode. Now, to the unit.”

      John Kerry flips right-side up, unbuckles from the inversion table, and motions for them to follow him to one of the Starline trailers — the one painted with a bedazzling array of colors in the spirit of a cheesy airbrushed version of a Jackson Pollack.

      They enter the trailer and Kerry points to his deputy spokesman Mary Harf, who now sporadically yells “turned down for what?!” and dry-humps miscellaneous items and furniture and the air about the trailer.

     “What have you fed this one?” a concerned Bill Gates says.

     “What haven’t I fed this one. Booze, G, X, Yage, Shrooms, Xanex, Colorado Cannabis, with a bit of speed to keep her honest.”

     “You fool! You didn’t read the manual — this model is only designed to be loaded with boxed Chablis and Prozac… Ritalin with an upgrade.”

     “Spare me your techy mumbo-jumbo and fix it or give me a new system!”

     Mr. Gates turns to his other assistant — a clone of the other guy except his t-shirt says “BACK IN MY DAY WE HAD NINE PLANETS” on it — and snaps his fingers.

     The clone unzips his backpack and brandishes a syringe and plunges it into the neck of Mary Harf while the other one opens up a laptop and begins typing.

     “Welcome!” says Mary Harf. She smiles. Her eyes are vacant but spinning hour-glasses could be seen in her pupils if one were to look closely. “Well, I certainly hope everybody is having a swell time. Is it time for the press briefing yet?”

     John Kerry nods his head, satisfied. He turns to Bill Gates. “If this ever happens again, you twerp….”
(while John Kerry was saying this, Bill Gates had snapped his fingers over to his assistant on the laptop, who had typed in some code and rendered Secretary of State John Kerry inert, mid-speech.)

     “Thank you, Lazslo. Wipe last hour’s memory and fill it with something nice, like him receiving a blow-job or something.”

     These political models need to be junked, thinks Bill Gates.  Perhaps a mosquito with a vaccine that inflicts these shabby political units with syphilis.  I’ll have to think about that one. Ahh — Burning Man….where visions are designed and universes co-opted.

He closes the latch to his helmet.