Thursday, February 17, 2005
Cough It Up
Sanctiblogger stops his hand mid-toss, tries not to chew. But Chertoff is all over him. This guy is good.
"What've you got there, Doctor?" he asks, hopping off Gonzales and walking purposefully across the room, spurs jangling. "What're you eating?"
"Nothing," Sanctiblogger manages to say around the three or four unchewed chunks that he's pushed over to the sides of his mouth.
"Open up," Chertoff commands, and sticks three tobacco-stained fingers into Sanctiblogger's mouth. As Sanctiblogger gags, Chertoff strips the remaining chunks from his free hand with his free hand, picks Sanctiblogger's pocket with his free hand, and smacks Sanctiblogger across the face, hard, back, forth, back, forth, with his free hand.
How many free hands is that? Don't try to count them, gentle reader: Michael Chertoff has a lot of free hands. Because--and here is today's civics lesson for you good patriotic Americans out there--he has a lot of freedom. That's what being director of Homeland Security is all about: freedom. The freedom to protect freedom as freely as circumstances require. Freeing up all hands to seize, search, and smite the haters and despoilers of freedom.
Over in one corner, Sanctiblogger sees over the thick black hairs of Chertoff's right forearm, plunged now halfway down his gullet, Gonzales has his head in the feed trough, and is gobbling up the old grisly remains of shredded liberal bloggers. As Chertoff finds the last undigested chunk deep in Sanctiblogger's esophagus, he lobs the whole sticky pile of Bill-n-Doug over to the feed trough too, where Gonzales wolfs it down with gusto.
"Look, Sanctiblogger," Chertoff says, slapping a pair of ontological cuffs on Sanctiblogger's in-der-Welt-sein, "we sucked out your mortal spirit once. What'd you do, buy a new one on the gray market?"
With the cuffs on, Sanctiblogger finds himself powerless to dissemble. "Found one on eBay," he mumbles. "Still in the box."
"Shrink-wrapped?" Chertoff says.
Sanctiblogger nods glumly.
"Easy enough to take care of that," Chertoff says, and pulls a hose out of his back pocket. Rubber nozzle in Sanctiblogger's mouth, thloop, and the new mortal spirit is in the bag. Good thing he doesn't know about the monadic insurance. "And now," Chertoff adds, "about that monadic insurance policy you bought at Gitmo ..."
