State your name, please.

Mullah Billdoug.

And you're a Muslim mullah?

Well, I'm not a Catholic priest or a Jewish rabbi.

Don't get smart with me.

Sorry.

What kinda Muslim? Sunni, Shi'ite?

Sufi.

Oh yeah? What's that?

A nonsectarian Muslim sect.

A which, now? Cheney, get on that damn computer, check this Sufi story out.

Sure, Karl.

Nonsectarian. We don't have doctrines.

Oh, don't believe anything at all, huh?

We believe lots of things. We believe everything, in fact.

Oh yeah? Everything?

Yep.

You believe I'm going to kick your ass down five flights of stairs?

You've been reading my blog! And here I thought I had no readers.

Answer the question.

Of course I believe you.

How about this: you believe I'm going to kiss you on the lips, slip you the tongue, and slide my pink and puffy left hand down your pants?

You bet I do.

You believe I'm the smartest man in the world?

Yes.

You believe you're smarter than me?

Yes.

Gotcha! That means you believe contradictory things!

I do.

Do you believe it's colder in winter or in the mountains?

I do.

Do you believe Satan can't possibly stop ceasing to become non-Yahweh?

I do.

Do you believe George W. Bush possesses gifts that I never gave him?

I do.

Damn, you do believe everything!

Hey Karl, get this!

What?

I got a website here says that "Sufism has no room for fundamentalism or fanaticism because it has challenged the institution of the mullah."

Oh yeah? What do you say about that, huh, Sufi Mullah?

I agree with it completely.

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He lost it, Cheney says, hanging up the phone.

He what! Rove says.

He lost it. Satan found the shop where they were keeping it, he and Cat Stevens broke in, but the guy got away with the prepuce.

Damn, Rove says.

You know what I think, Cheney starts.

Lemme think, Rove says.

No, listen, Cheney says.

Lemme think, Rove says.

See but the thing is, Cheney says.

The thing is, Rove says, if you don't let me think I'm going to put LSD in your medical astrologer's morning Postum, and your Mars/Vulcanus conjunction will send you to the moon.

Uh, Cheney says, right.

And I ain't talking about no moon shadow, neither, Rove says.

Gotcha, Cheney says.

Rove whips around to Rumsfeld. He moves pretty fast for a big pink squishy boy.

Turn on the computer, he says.

Do what, now? Rumsfeld says.

Turn on the fucking computer, Rove says. I want to check Mullah Billdoug.

That old quack? Cheney says.

I'm warning you, Dick, Rove says.

Right, Cheney says.

Rumsfeld's hands are trembling, but he gets the computer on, the browser open and pointed at mullahbilldoug.blogspot.com.

I don't know what you, Rumfeld starts.

Get out of the way, Cheney says, and sits down to read. Mm-hm, he nods. Mm-hm, right. Just as I suspected.

What, Cheney says.

The good Mullah knows where the prepuce is, he says. It's all right here.

You're shitting me, Cheney says.

"Fifth and Elm, the west wall of the Republican Party Headquarters downtown. Fifth brick up, fifteenth from the street." Get right on it, Rove says.

God damn, Rumsfeld breathes. This guy's good.

I agree, Rove says. Let's pick him up.

Pick him up? Cheney says.

Don't repeat what I say, Rove says. Just do it.

But if we pick him up, Cheney says, how will he find this stuff out, and blog it?

We'll let him go again, Rove says. But we'll turn him first. He'll be working for us. Giving us the straight scoop and feeding disinformation to the enemy.

Brilliant, Rumsfeld says.

Isn't he some kinda towelhead? Cheney says.

Oh, shit, Rove says.

What now? Rumsfeld says.

I just clicked "reload," Rove says, and look what came up!

The boys gather around to look, and gasp. They are reading their own conversation in real time.

Hey, Cheney says, hanging up the phone, they got Cat Stevens on ice in Maine.

No shit, Rumsfeld says. What for?

Apparently he's some kinda towelhead terrorist these days, Cheney says. Tried to fly into New York, they rerouted him to Maine. Now they're gonna send him back to Tehran or wherever.

London, Rove corrects him.

He's got a whole new monicker, too, Cheney says. Joe Islam, or something.

Yusuf Islam, Rove corrects him.

That's what I said, Cheney says. Can you believe this? I used to love his songs. "Bring tea for the Tillerman, grapes for the sun, wine for the woman ..."

Steak for the sun, Rove corrects him.

Oh, come on, Cheney says. Get real. You can't get wine from steak.

Nobody said you were supposed to get wine from it, Rove says. It's just three different foods. Tea, steak, and wine.

That's just crazy, Cheney says. Nobody drinks tea and wine with steak. It's a wine and cheese party out on a pleasure craft somewhere on the Aegean. Bring tea for the tillerman, but the good stuff for the other--

Damn, Rove cuts in. I got it.

You got what, Dick says.

Call them up in Maine, tell them to hold onto the terrorist son of a bitch.

Why?

I'm gonna send him after the Holy Prepuce. I bet the Moon Shadow can find it.

That's brilliant, Rumsfeld breathes. Moon Shadow, Moon Shadow!

I don't know, Cheney says.

There's a lot you don't know, Rove says.

I don't trust those towelheads as far as I can torture em, Cheney says. I mean, look what they did to us on the 9/11 thing.

Let's not get into that again, Rove says.

They changed the fucking plans, Cheney says.

We've been over this, Rove says.

We tell them the Statue of Liberty. Destroy a fucking symbol. They change course at the last minute, take out the Twin Towers. Do you know how much money I lost when those towers came down?

You've told us 10,478,013 times, Rove says.

Yeah! That's how much I lost! All because of those fucking towelheaded towelheads!

Enough, Dick, Rove says. Get on the phone to Maine. Then get the president's helicopter prepped. I'm taking a little trip.

Camp David? Rumsfeld says eagerly.

Rove rolls his eyes, stares past Rumsfeld pointedly.

Don't you have some, I don't know, filing to do? Rove says.

Oh, uh, sure, Rumsfeld says, and scurries out of the room.

What do you mean, Dad, Karl's saying, the suit won't work?

I always mean what I say, son, Satan says evenly, unlike that lying bastard whose fucking suit doesn't even work.

But come on, Rove insists, it's a fucking suit, a fucking costume for Сhrist's sakes. How can it not work?

It doesn't work, Karl, Satan says. Pure and simple. End of story. It doesn't work. It doesn't fucking work.

What do you mean, "end of story." That's it? No theocracy? No New World Order? End of that story?

That's exactly what it means, Karl, Satan says. Unless we can find the key.

The key? There's a key? What, like a wind-up kind of key? How come this is the first I'm hearing of this? I can't work like this, Dad. I need better intelligence than this.

It's not a wind-up suit, son, Satan explains patiently. It's a mystical suit. It is a suit of great power. The power won't work without the mystical key.

Mystical key, mystical key, Rove scoffs. Maybe we should look for it in a box of the Chimp's CoCo Puffs?

As far as I've been able to figure out, Satan says, the key is a prepuce.

A which?

A prepuce. A foreskin.

Oh, cute.

I'm serious, Karl.

Well, then--I don't know, get one of the guards at Abu Graibh to cut one off a prisoner. Or down at Gitmo. Those guys all have foreskins, I betcha.

Not just any foreskin, Karl, Satan says. The foreskin of the Christ.

The what, now?

The Holy Prepuce. That tiny flap of skin cut off the infant Yehoshua by the moyl eight days into the first Year Zero.

Oh, so we need a 2000-year-old foreskin. Sure. That shouldn't be too hard to find.

Don't give up so easily, son. Were you forgetting that our successful completion of the forbidden experiment inaugurated a new Year Zero?

Oh. Oh yeah. Damn, you're right. Oh, man. Thanks, Dad. I'll get right on that!

I know you will, son.

Dear Mullah Billdoug,

I spent three hours reading your Web Site last night, and I have to say, in all Honesty but also Brotherly Love, that I don't find it very Christian. What you wrote over the weekend about our great President, George Walker Bush, was way off base. He is not a Chimp Clone! And I've never heard about him having the kind of Sexual Dysfunction that you write of. If he doesn't have Marital Relations with his sweet wife Laura, that's because they've already had their children and such Animalistical Behavior is no longer an important part of their Marriage. That's all. You don't have to make it into some kind of sneering thing. Sometimes, Mullah Billdoug, with all the sneering you do, I start to think you must be some kind of Liberal. But then I think, no, Harold, that's not a Christian thought. And so I don't think it.

As for President Bush calling Satan "ma man," well--I'm sure you know as well as I do that our President is a Born-Again Christian who would never, never in a Million Years, not even in a Zero Year, talk to the Devil in that tone. He would boldly hold up a Cross and say "Begone, thou Foul Slinking Wretch!" Or some such. That's how you talk to Foul Slinking Wretches, especially Satanic Ones, when you're a Born-Again Christian and a Strong Leader.

And why do you say Satan comes to the White House every day anyway? Why do you say Satan loves Republicans? Why do you say Karl Rove performs unnatural homosexual acts on Satan in the Oval Office while George Walker Bush "chats up the secretaries" in the Outer Office? Why do you say Satan plays poker every Friday night with Strom Thurmond, Trent Lott, and Zell Miller, and then they all go down to the Strip Club and get Lap Dances from Naked Black Women whom they look upon with fascinated disgust and don't touch anywhere on their Shiny Black Bodies?

And why did you stop writing about Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? It seemed to me for a while you were setting aside your Heathen Pagan Muslim ways and coming into the Arms of the Lord--especially when you were quoting letters from some of the most internationally renowned Creationist Scientists in the country--but then you seemed to Backslide into Cynical Liberal Muslimism again. What happened?

Maybe you could talk about Jesus some more? Have you read about the discovery of His Holy Prepuce? That would make for some interesting Web Pages, I bet. And wouldn't get you into Hot Water with You Know Whom.

Yours in Christ,
Harold P. Fingernecker (retd.)
Dayton, Ohio