Good Times

Jim Henley stands accused of failing to understand that we are now ruled not by militaries, governments, police, corporations, etc., but by the "journalism-education-diplomatic-transnationalist complex." It puts me in mind of a story.

It was perhaps midnight. We sat in the Professor's (for he had no other name to us) tall, dusty office, lit dimly with gas lamps and bearing through its creaking shelves and piles of books an edge of slow decay, moral decadence, and internationalist sympathies. A record player spun Shostakovich backwards and out crooned a slim female voice singing the Internationale. A man in a felt fedora cried "Scoop, scoop!" into the corner phone booth. And I drank from a demitasse, for I always drink from a demitasse.

"What shall we do," I asked the Professor, "about the War on Terror?"

"Why, lose it of course," the great man replied in his familiar basso profundo, the voice of the very Devil himself I would say were I not personally familiar with the Devil's peroxide whine.

"Yes, yes," said Joe Wilson, also present, spinning a globe slowly and smoking a Cuban cigar laced with fragrant yellowcake. "But first, how are we going to kill the President? The President, man! The President!"

"With books," said the Professor. "With books and a system of academic tenure that is biasied in favor of liberal candidates."

"Will that work?" asked I, masturbating wildly to homosexual pornography while defecating on the chair that I had recently reupholstered with an American flag.

"If we involve the diplomats, it will," the Professor stated firmly.

"The diplomats!" The Reporter nearly fell from his perch by the phone. "Egad, man! You're playing with fire!"

"I can control them," said Wilson.

"But for the grace of Kofi Annan go we," said the Professor.

"Down with God," I said.

"Uh, Death to America?" offered a tentative Osama.

"Osama, you're out of your element," the Professor told him. "The world does not stop and start at your convenience, you miserable . . ."