Economy Fine, According to Poll

n a recent poll of Enron CEO's, the American economy was said to be doing "just fine right now, just fine."

Enron CEO and acknowledged Ponzi-scheme expert Ken Lay, queried while attending a White House get-together with his butt-buddy George W. Bush, the alleged president of the United States, put to rest rumors that the economy was about to go south, or was, in fact, already in the tank.

"That's a lot of horse shit," Lay said, laughing heartily. "I mean, sure, a few thousand people have been laid off recently, and maybe one or two of 'em are going to have to sell their boats or their vacation houses, but from where I sit... ha ha, excuse me, I just find this very amusing... from where I... ha ha ha!... from where I sit... oh, dear god, this is too much..." Lay chortled convulsively for a few minutes, then paused to wipe tears from his eyes. He took a few deep breaths with the aid of what appeared to be a large canister of nitrous oxide, and shook his head vigorously. Finally somewhat composed, he continued, "From where I sit, the economy is just peachy-fucking-keen! Ha! Ain't that right, Cracky?"

Lay then reached over to smack the alleged president hard on his backside, which caused him to nearly drop the glass pipe and butane lighter he had been holding up to his face, and to cough and choke on the voluminous clouds of acrid smoke that billowed from his mouth and nose.

"Oh, yeah. Whatever you say, Kenny," Bush said, once he had regained his composure. "Kenny's my main man," he went on, "whatever he says, you can trust it to be truthorious."

When asked if he thought most other Americans shared his rosy view of the current economy, Lay said simply, "Ha! Who gives a flying fuck? What color are their parachutes?"

To which Bush chimed in, "Yeah. Joke 'em if they can't take a fucking."

Lay then stared hard at his compatriot for a few long seconds, and finally commented, "You know, you really are a fucking idiot, Cracky, just like everyone says."

"Shut up!" retorted Bush. "Am not!"

The two then engaged in a slap fight that lasted nearly ten minutes, with Lay appearing to get the best of Bush by feinting with his left hand and repeatedly connecting with his right on Bush's cheek.

Asked for further comment on the state of the economy, Lay just waved his hand in dismissal and chuckled some more.

Signaling that the interview was concluded, Bush then turned his attention back to the glass pipe and lighter, ignoring both Lay and this reporter.

The event was a simple Saturday morning gathering that featured Colin Powell doing a sprightly tap dance for the guests, followed by John Ashcroft demonstrating some of the latest torture techniques on a group of unnamed Middle Eastern detainees and a ritual deflowering of all the underage daughters of the White House staff. Brunch was served, and it was a hearty Texas-style repast, composed of hearts of retarded felon salad in a balsamic vinaigrette and baked Mexican baby head with truffles.

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I know officially I'm not entitled to any veteran's pay or anything, but I think I deserve it after last weekend. The post-Thanksgiving Day weekend. The Vietnam of weekends. And where's my parade?

Okay, maybe it's the Korean War of weekends, and the weekend before Christmas is the Vietnam. That call's up in the air. But I do deserve some major pity, and I want it delivered since I'm still too tired to go anywhere else. I haven't been shopping since. I've got post-mallwalking stress disorder.

It started innocently enough. I saw McCattery's Jewelers was having a half-off sale on bling-bling, but it started at 8 a.m. Yeah, "a.m." as in "at morning." I'm completely out of my element when it comes to shopping on a budget, which also explains where all my Who's Your Daddy? money went to, so I didn't know where to go. Then I lucked out, because I found out the lady who keeps calling me trying to get money for my credit cards, Mina, turns out she's a big shopping wizard. Wizardess, whatever you would call it. It took some conniving, but I managed to join her shopping party. I figured she would help me with all the inside secrets.

Big mistake, though I didn't know it at the time. She was leaving the house at 1 a.m. ("almost morning). I've left the house a lot of times at 1 a.m., but it was different this time because my fridge was already full of beer and I didn't have half a buzz. I thought it might be fun, we'd make a night out of it, head for the bars and tie one up. Drop by the stores on the way home and make fun of the shopping morons while we loaded up on ornamentation.

No. Check this shit out—Mina and her shopping galpal Lynette were actually getting in line at Wal-Mart at that time. I thought it was shopping overkill, but there was already a line when we showed up. Mina said Wal-Mart opened at 5 a.m., and we'd have more than enough time to get to McCattery's for the stuff I wanted. She wanted to get a DVD player for the guest bedroom and a guest bedroom mattress, and then would hit Lowe's when they opened for lumber to build a guest bedroom. The deal, as far as she was concerned, was I would help stake out items she wanted and help her carry stuff to the cart, her shopping safety base, and she would keep me from getting screwed at the jeweler's.

It wouldn't be column-worthy if it all worked out as planned, you must have learned that by now. I was jostled, bustled, wrassled, bumped, poked, and prodded just standing in line for the lame-ass DVD player. Then a fight broke out when two monster ladies grabbed for one DVD player at the same time. They got to rolling and stomping around like Godzilla and Rodan and I was knocked off my feet. I lost hold on my DVD player, the one I had stood in line three hours for, and one of the she-beasts grabbed it.

I tried to make it up to Mina by grabbing some fencing, the only thing nobody was trampling over everybody else to get to, but I ended up needing to throw it over the crowd just to get past them. Mina was pissed, you better believe. She would have dumped me completely, but she needed someone to help her carry the lumber since Lynette had never returned from housewares.

It never got any better. All we could get from Lowe's was driftwood, thanks to a crowd that started earlier than we anticipated, and when I got to McCattery's I at last noticed even at half-price all the gaudy jewelry was outrageously priced. I might have bought it, but Mina was heckling me so badly I didn't think it was worth it.

I'm not asking for a parade, or even combat pay, although if the government wants to award it to me, I wouldn't argue. I just want you to take a few minutes this year over the Christmas ham and say a silent prayer out loud for the lost ones, like Lynette. This one's for her, and for Meek Susie, and Big Glasses, and Fatty with the Scarf, and Sweats. All the hard-fighting ladies who didn't make it out, or at least I didn't see again as I was leaving. And for me. Mostly for me.

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Let me be the first to say I have no idea where I met those East Germans. It was one of those things where one minute you're ordering a vodka drink named after a Muppet, the next minute you're one of the founding members of a kraut-rock quartet and then the next thing you know you're smuggling guns into the harbor on an air skiff. Or whatever the hell was going on, I don't even speak East German and those guys sucked at Charades.

Needless to say, it was an interesting weekend. What I can remember of it, which is about an hour total of choppy flashbacks. All I know for sure is that I was blindsided by happy hour Friday night and I woke up this morning in the barrel of a cannon on a Navy ship. In-between it's like cable TV the week after your descrambler crapped out.

There's a slight possibility those guys were just tearing around the harbor on the skiff and trying to run over ducks just for fun, but they were pretty heavily armed for just some general drunken mayhem. Usually a pellet gun or a homemade egg salad cannon is plenty for that kind of action. So that definitely doesn't explain all the assault rifles or typewriter parts or whatever it was strewn all over the hydrofoil. It was dark.

There was definitely a little old guy with wire-rimmed glasses involved, usually a dead give-away as the evil mastermind behind the whole thing. He had some phony cover story about being pissed that I'd honked on his houseboat, but I'm pretty sure it was all a covert passcode, like "the raven barfs at midnight," the kinds of things you hear in the spy movies all the time.

Hands and Balls played along and bare-assed the guy as we were hydrofoiling by, they were definitely hip to what was going on. Come to think of it, I'm starting to doubt those were their real names, they sound kind of fake in retrospect. At the time I was wondering what was up with Fritz and why he didn't get a body part name, like maybe he wasn't really East German. But really, those guys were so hard to understand I might have thought they were saying their names when they were really saying "Pass me the screwdriver" or "I think you peed on the police." German definitely wasn't written to be understandable by English-speakers.

East German or no, these were some clever bastards. I'm pretty sure they were just using yours truly to pin as a scapegoat once everything went down, otherwise I don't know why they would have carried me from the short bus to the hydrofoil. I mentioned the short bus, right? Too late now if I didn't. Yeah, we spent a couple of hours riding around with the Special Olympics hockey team, singing the Chuck Wagon song. I'm not sure how that got started; I think we may have barged onto the wrong bus after the bar ran out of cocktail cherries.

The whole cherry thing happened while Balls was going on about how the Great Wall of China was overrated and how the Berlin Wall could take it any day of the week, and I dumped a whole jar of cherries down his shirt to save his ass since the Chinese guy down at the end of the bar was starting to look like he was going to put his ass-kicking shoes on. We left in a hurry after that since there were at least ten dollars worth of cherries that had gone down Balls' pants, and this burly-looking biker guy at the bar had just ordered a Shirley Temple.

Most everything is a blur after that as the East Germans' plot kicked in and I was along for the ride like a suitcase that barfs and yells out requests for Neil Diamond songs. When the cops finally got wise to the whole scenario the East Germans predictably tried to pin it on yours truly, wheeling out this cock and bull story about how they were tourists who came to see the museums and the next thing they knew they were being dragged around town by the collars by some psychotic drunk who had Fritz's wallet. They had the whole thing sewn up pretty tight until I played the ace up my sleeve and ran like greased hell.

Nice try, East Germans. Next time you'll have to find yourselves a bigger sucker. I'll give you Rok Finger's number, I'm still pissed he gave me that Wild Draw Four for Christmas.

Bricks Out.

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