picture

picture

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Vatican Digs Up the Pope, Finds Obama's Birth Certificate

When Vatican officials exhumed the body of Pope John Paul II on Friday, ahead of a beatification mass, they made an unusual discovery – U.S. President Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate was clutched in the dead Pope’s hands.

Examination of the birth certificate revealed that Obama was, indeed, born in Hawaii. Officials had no explanation for how the document came to be in the corpse’s possession. Pope John Paul II died in 2005.

When asked to comment on the events, professional foof Donald Trump, who has gained a lot of publicity recently by publicly questioning Obama’s U.S. citizenship, had no comment. "I'm speechless," he said.

The ceremony of beatification - the first step toward canonization, or sainthood, is scheduled for May 1st. Prerequisite for canonization is to commit a miracle. Said one church official, who asked not to be identified, "I think getting Trump to shut up qualifies as his miracle. He's a shoe-in now."

Other Republican leaders expressed surprise at the finding, and confusion over the Catholic ceremony. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said, “I can’t wait ‘til they canonize him. I thought they only did that to circus midgets.”

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Aloha, My Lovely, Part 5: In the Veep of the Night

From the case files of Sam Stain, Private Eye, who's been hired by Donald Trump to go to Honolulu and bring back the President's placenta

Joe Biden stood barefoot in the moonlight in his orange sarong, pointing a .38 Beretta at my belly button. “Okay, Stain,” he said, his lipstick-smeared kisser curled into a sneer. “We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the Scranton way. Which is it gonna be?”

I raised my hands, slowly. “Take it easy, Joe,” I said. “I know when I’m licked.”

He waved the gun at the long, flagstone stairway that led to the entrance of the hotel, flanked on both sides by lush hibiscus. “Walk,” he said. “Slowly.”

I did as he ordered, climbed the steps to the Volcano House with my hands in the air, the Vice President’s pistol prodding my ribs for impetus.
Halfway to the front door I spoke to him over my shoulder. “So you actually pulled it off. Put an alien in the White House. Congratulations, Joe.”

He chuckled. “You don’t know the half of it, Stain.”

“Who would have guessed it,” I said. “I always figured the Birthers’ story had more holes in it than one of Trump’s golf courses.”

“You figured wrong, smart guy,” said Biden.

I kept climbing the stairs to the front entrance of the hotel. Halfway up I missed a step, accidentally on purpose, and stumbled back into him. He should have just plugged me, but his instincts took over and he tried to help, put his arms around me to keep me from falling. Liberals. They can’t help themselves. I grabbed the Beretta and twisted it out of his hands. It was like taking Texas from a Democrat.

Biden’s eyes widened under the long, fake lashes, and his pale, bony arms reached for heaven. He still held the blond wig in one of his brown-spotted hands.

“Okay, talk,” I said. “What did you do with Trump’s investigators? The Jersey boys?”

He smiled, his sapphire-colored orbs twinkling in the moonlight. “They had a little accident over by the volcano. Seems they needed some health care, but the death panel voted ‘em down. Damn shame, really, but the panel decided they just weren’t worthy recipients of health care. I do hope their families understand.”

“Damn big government socialist bureaucrats, rationing health care!” I yelled, driving my fist into his jaw. He fell back onto the flagstones, unconscious before he hit the ground. He looked ridiculous, spread-eagled like that in his sarong and coconut bra, like Rudy Giuliani at the end of a bender. I stood over him, figuring my options. Loud voices coming toward me from the top of the steps helped make up my mind. I dragged the Vice President off into the hibiscus, then crouched down in the bushes, watching.

A large man in shorts and a luau shirt came down the steps, humming “The Girl From Ipanema.” He was heading for a parking lot filled with little electric Smart cars. I recognized him. It was Al Gore. I stuck the Beretta in my pocket and followed him down the flagstone walkway.

The former vice president walked to one of the funny-looking half-cars, which was plugged into some sort of electric charging post. While he fumbled with the cord that ran from the post to his gas cap, I came up behind him and stuck the Beretta in his back.

“Here’s an inconvenient truth,” I said through clenched teeth. “If you make a sound I’ll put a hole in you bigger than the ozone. Now, what do you say we take your little gaymobile for a spin.”

“Okay,” he said calmly in that Grand Ole Opry drawl, his voice thick as a Memphis breakfast. “Now, let’s not do anything rash here.”

“Good idea,” I said, opening the door. I got in first, scooting across to the passenger seat, then motioned for him to follow. “Get in and drive,” I told him.

He did as I said.

The little gizmo started up with a whir. “Sounds like a vacuum cleaner,” I said, as he wheeled us around the driveway.

He glanced at me, cold daggers shooting from his hooded eyes. “Let me tell you something. This little puppy can go from zero to sixty in 3.5 seconds, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and our nation’s dependence on foreign oil, not to mention…”

I aimed the Beretta at the floor, a couple of inches from his right foot, and pulled the trigger. The explosion reverberated like a cannon shot inside the little toy car.

Gore jumped in his seat. “Jumpin’ Jehosephat!” he yelped.

“One more word,” I said, “and I’ll take off a couple of toes. What’ll that do to your carbon footprint?”

For once in his life he clammed up, staring straight ahead as he steered.

“That’s more like it,” I said.

We exited the drive and moved out onto the main road. After a moment, he looked at me. “Where are we going?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Just drive. Give me your cell phone.”

Gore pulled a Blackberry out of his pocket and handed it over. I thumbed the keypad, punching in Trump’s number. He picked up on the seventh ring. I’d forgotten about the time difference. It was the middle of the night in New York.

“This better be good,” said The Donald. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Sorry, Mr. Trump. It’s Sam Stain.”

“Where the hell have you been, Stain? You were supposed to have checked in hours ago.”

“The liberals kidnapped me,” I said. “Brought me to Molokai.”

“Did you find Obama’s placenta?”

“Not yet,” I said. “But I found out what happened to your investigators. The boys from Jersey.”

“Tell me,” he said.

“They were death paneled. Liquidated by the big machine.”

“Son of a bitch,” hissed Trump. “Murdered by Obamacare.” The line went silent for a moment, then he said: “I need that placenta, Stain. The liberal press is killing me.”

“I think I might know where it is,” I told him. “I’m going to need another plane ticket.”

“Where to?”

“Africa,” I said. “The Dark Continent, where it all began. Get me a ticket to Kenya, Trump. I’m going to blow this caper sky high, with a cherry on top. But first, I need a way off this island.”

There was silence on the other end. The great mind at work. “Okay,” he said, finally. “I’m going to tell you what to do. Where are you?”

“On the eastern edge of Molokai,” I said. “Near the volcano.”

“All right.” His voice was the sound of authority. “Here’s what you do. There’s an airstrip not far from the volcano. Be there in one hour. I’ll take care of the rest.” He hung up.

I looked at Gore. “Do you know where the airstrip is, the one by the volcano?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I know where it is.”

“Take me there,” I said.

Turning to the window, I looked out at the dark landscape whirring past. A bright light blazed in the side mirror. I turned around and had a look out the back window. A big, black Packard was coming up fast behind us, its headlights eating up the road.

I turned to Gore, who had his eyes fixed on the windshield. “Step on it,” I said. “We’re being followed.”

“All right,” he said, his foot stomping the gas.

The little gizmo puttered ahead, not going any faster. I glanced at the dash. The needle danced at 60. It didn’t feel like 60.

“Is that the best it can do?”

Al Gore looked flustered. “Well, heck, I’m doing 60 kilometers an hour!”

I stared at him. “Kilometers? What’s that in American?”

He squinted, figuring the math. “37.28227153424004 miles per hour.”

“Dammit!” I yelled, pounding the dash.

Behind us, gunshots rang out, bullets pinging off the gizmo’s chassis.
“They’re shooting at us!” Gore yelled. “Why are they shooting at us?”

I rolled the window down, leaned out and fired back at the Packard.
The muzzle of a Tommy Gun appeared out of the passenger window, belching fire. Rat-a-tat-tat. I answered with the Beretta. Bullets ricocheted off the hood of the the Packard, but it kept coming. The big car sped up, ramming us from behind. The little gizmo veered crazily across the road, tires squealing.

“Hang on!” yelled Gore as we flew off the road. We bounced wildly through the thick, tropical brush, and then we were airborne, the little car taking flight. As we soared through the darkness, I heard someone scream, and realized it was me.

Gore's eyes were wide as cueballs, his fingers white on the wheel. He yelled, “I regret nothing!”

“Remember the Stain!” I screamed.

Next time: the thrilling conclusion!

Monday, April 25, 2011

Aloha, My Lovely, Part 4: Lava Means Never Having to Wear Your Sari

From the case files of Sam Stain, Private Eye, who's been hired by Donald Trump to go to Honolulu and bring back the President's placenta

The roar of the surf became the drone of engines as I came to lying face down on a cold metal floor, vibration shaking my bones. Wind whipped my clothes and hair and bit the back of my neck. Groaning, I raised my head. I was in an empty cargo bay, in a propeller plane that seemed to be missing a door. Outside the doorway there was nothing but air, whooshing by. If I craned my neck just a little, I could see the ocean, blue and distant, blurring by a couple of thousand feet below.

Behind me sat the two hula boys who’d conked me with a coconut at the Department of Health. They were sitting in a pair of fold-down seats, watching me quietly through dark, placid eyes. I remembered Lulu’s voice, just before I slipped under. “Take the haole a-hole to the volcano,” she’d said. “Like the others.”

That’s when it hit me. They were going to throw me out of the plane into a volcano. I was about to become Magma, P.I. I’d stuck my nose where no noses should go, asked one too many questions about the President’s birth certificate, and I was going to pay for it, head-first into molten lava, unless I did something, quick.

Moaning, I staggered to my feet, then, steadying myself, I ran for the cockpit door, grabbed the handle, and yanked. Nothing. The door was locked tight as W’s flight suit on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln. I looked over my shoulder. Funny. The hula boys hadn’t moved. They just sat there, watching me and smiling.

“Relax, haole,” said Kong #1, his voice rising above the sound of the propellers. “We’ll be landing soon.”

“Landing? Landing where?”

“Molokai,” he said, his smile growing wider.

I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck. “Molokai? Isn’t that a leper colony?”

Kong #2’s eyes lit up. “Kalaupapa,” he said. “Father Damien.”

So that was their game! Ask too many questions about Obama’s birth certificate and you end up a leper. And not just figuratively, like David Frum or Peggy Noonan, but a real, honest-to-goodness skin-falling-off leper, like that Scottish king in Braveheart. Sweet mother of Ben Hur! I sank down onto the cold floor of the plane, my back against the cockpit door. In a few minutes we would land, and I’d be face to face with the noseless ones. Was this the end of Stain?

A few minutes later we touched down. As the plane taxied down the airstrip, the hula boys tromped over and lifted me by the armpits, carrying me to the open doorway. The plane probably wasn’t going much more than 20 miles an hour when they threw me out. I bounced along the runway a few times and came to rest in front of a big black Packard, the kind you’d see in an old Bogart movie. Two pugs got out, picked me up and threw me in the back seat like a sack of pineapples.

The Packard started up with a roar and got rolling as I peeled myself off the old man’s lap. He didn’t look like much, but at least his nose hadn’t fallen off yet.

“Allow me to introduce myself, Mr. Stain,” he said. “I’m Neil Abercrombie, Governor of the great state of Hawaii.”

He didn’t look like a governor, with that scruffy white beard in need of a trim. “Must be tough, for a politician,” I said. “Being a leper and all.”

The governor’s eyes glinted behind wire-framed specs. “You’re a little behind the times. We haven’t had a leper colony on Molokai in decades.”

“Oh? Then why did your hula goons bring me here?”

“Let me be blunt, Mr. Stain. We know you’re working for Donald Trump. You’re the third investigator he’s sent to Hawaii to find President Obama’s birth certificate.”

“It’s worse than that,” I said. “Now he wants the placenta.”

“I see,” said the Governor. He looked out the window, gazing at the lush vegetation whirring past. “Trump’s an idiot, Mr. Stain. But, yeah, he’s right.” He turned back to me, his cheeks dimpling as he smiled. “The President wasn’t really born in Hawaii.”

He was smug about it. Too smug.

“No, really. See, when Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, a poor white girl living in Honolulu and attending the University of Hawaii, married a foreign student from Kenya in February, 1961, on Maui, she was already three months pregnant. Despite the fact that, as Mr. Trump himself puts it, ‘everyone wanted to become a United States citizen,’ she chose to fly all the way to Africa and have the baby there instead. Even though she somehow knew then that 50 years later he would become the first African-American President of the United States, and, in order to do so, would have to be an American citizen. So, with the help of her parents, a scheming World War II vet and his conniving bride, the homemaker who’d worked at Boeing during the war, she developed a cunning plan. First they bribed doctors, nurses and officials at the Kapi'olani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu, convincing the hospital to send a bogus birth announcement to the Hawaii state Department of Health, which, in turn, issued a counterfeit certificate of live birth. Next they bribed the editors of two separate Honolulu newspapers, The Honolulu Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin, to run identical phony birth announcements stating that the future President was, indeed, born in Honolulu. Not content to stop there, they bribed many friends of Ms. Dunham’s in Hawaii, including yours truly, and still more friends in the state of Washington, where she visited with little Barack one month after his birth, convincing us all to attest to their dastardly lie. It all worked beautifully, and would have continued to do so, if it weren’t for that meddling billionaire, Donald Trump. Congratulations, Mr. Stain. You got us. Too bad you won’t live to tell anyone.”

I stared at him, my mouth hanging open in disbelief. “The President’s mother was named Stanley?”

He nodded, smiling, then turned and looked out the window as the big Packard wheeled off the main road and turned down a lazy, palm-lined drive. In the distance, a brightly-lit sign flashed the words, “The Volcano House” in blazing neon.

The Governor turned back to me, patting my knee consolingly. “You do understand why we can’t let you leave the island, Mr. Stain. There’s simply too much at stake.”

We were approaching the front of a sprawling, plantation-style hotel. Leaning over me, the Governor unlatched the door.

“Goodbye, Mr. Stain,” he said. “I hope you enjoy your stay.” The car was still moving when he pushed me out.

I did my impression of a bowling ball again, rolling down the driveway. When I finally came to rest, I was looking up at a pair of long, bony, white gams that rose above me like tall stalks of sugar cane, disappearing into an orange sarong. I got to my feet and took in the rest of her. She looked vaguely familiar, and all wrong somehow, like Michael Dukakis driving a tank. A big yellow sunflower sprouted out of her long, blond hair. Her eyes were laughing sapphires in the leathery, crinkled map of her face. She had the sinewy, hard-scrabble shoulders of a champion bowler, and breasts the size of passion fruits beneath a string coconut bikini. Her turkey wattle neck jiggled when she spoke.

“Hello, Mr. Stain. You’re just in time for the luau. We have fresh Humuhumunukunukuapua'a.”

Her voice was deep. Too deep. It did things to me I’d rather not think about.

She reached up and played with her hair, the way girls do when they’re nervous. She had hairy wrists, for a dame. “Perhaps you’d like to clean up, and then join us for dinner. Would you like me to show you to your room?”

I rolled my tongue back into my mouth and said, “You had me at Humuhumunukunukuapua'a.”

I was still drooling when she took off the wig. I didn’t notice where she got the gun from. Maybe it was in the wig. All I know is that when I looked at her hand, there was a .38 Beretta in it, pointed right at my spleen.

“Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” I said, trying to look more relaxed than I was. “Joe Biden.”

TO BE CONTINUED

Friday, April 22, 2011

Aloha, My Lovely, Part 3: The Coconut Always Rings Twice

From the case files of Sam Stain, Private Eye, who's been hired by Donald Trump to go to Honolulu and bring back the President's placenta

Trump had booked me into the fancy-pants Waikiki wikiup that bore his name, the Trump International. It was where he’d put the two tough guys from Jersey, too, the ones he’d sent out here four weeks ago to dig up the dirt on Obama’s birth certificate. The Jersey boys had strung him along for a month, collecting some of that famous Trump cash, called twice a day to blow smoke up his pants about all the dynamite stuff they were dredging up on Obama and his big secret. Until one day they’d just stopped calling. Dropped off the face of the earth. They were most likely back in Jersey, laying low and bragging about how they put one over on The Donald. But Trump was sure something had happened to them, and that Obama’s socialist minions had something to do with that something. He’d hired me to find out what, and to bring back the President’s placenta. It was the only proof he’d accept that Obama was really born in the U.S.A.

I dropped my bags off at the Trump International and drove my rental heap over to the Department of Health. It was an avocado colored bunker off of Ala Moana Boulevard. It didn’t look like much, but I didn't let that throw me. This was the dump where the biggest long con ever pulled had been put over. We -- the American people -- were the suckers.

My shoes made loud clicks as I crossed the deserted lobby to the only person in the place, a little Hawaiian princess sitting behind a waist-high counter, filing her nails. Her nametag read “Lulu.”

“You know what I’m here for,” I said. “Show me the Obama file.”

Lulu stopped sharpening her claws and looked up at me, her eyes burning like a pair of hot coals in a lava bed. She handed me a laminated sheet with several views of the President’s Certification of Live Birth. They clearly showed the raised seal and document border, and a picture of the signature stamp on the certificate.

I tossed the piece of junk back in her lap. “Pshhh. The COLB. Doesn’t mean diddly squat. Any Barack, Hussein and Harry can get one of these for 10 bucks and a bag of Limbaugh Leapers in Times Square. I’m here for the big enchilada. The placenta.”

Lulu’s lava-hot eyes turned cold. “Placenta? What are you, nuts? There’s no placenta here.”

I scowled. I didn’t like being spoken to that way by someone who wasn’t a real American. Like The Donald, I have a good relationship with the blacks. But the Hawaiians? We weren’t exactly getting off on the right foot. “Okay,” I said, “then show me the Birth Certificate. The long-form.”

Lulu shook her head. “I’m sorry, sir, but the state Department of Health no longer issues copies of paper birth certificates. The department only issues certifications of live births, and that is the official birth certificate issued by the state of Hawaii. Legally and lingually, a COLB is a birth certificate. It’s a copy of an official record of a person’s date and place of birth and parentage. It’s what every American brings to the DMV to get a driver’s license, or to the Justice of the Peace to get married, or any other purpose for which a birth certificate is required.”

She had me there. “Okay, but this is just a copy. I want to see the original.”

Lulu rolled her eyes. “Sorry. Privacy laws bar us from disclosing an individual’s birth documentation without the person’s consent. That’s per the State Attorney General, David Louie.”

“Right,” I said. “So why won’t Barry Hussein Secretmuslim O’Bama give his consent, huh? Answer me that, Lulu. If that is your real name. What’s he hiding?”

“He can’t,” said Lulu. “It’s a Department of Health record and it can’t be released to anybody. Mr. Obama can come here and inspect the document himself, but that’s it.”

I’d had enough of her liberal mumbo jumbo. I leaned over the counter and grabbed her by her Polynesian armpits, hauled her over the counter and shook her like a rag doll.

“I want the truth!” I yelled. “Where’s the signature? And don’t give me that crap about it’s on the back because that’s just a stamp.”

“It’s on the back,” she said.

I slapped her hard across her cheek. “I said I want the truth!”

“It’s a stamp,” she said, not looking away.

This time I gave her the left, whacking her other cheek. “I said I want the truth!” I yelled again.

She was whimpering now, her voice a trilling songbird in distress. “It’s on the back.”

Slap!

“It’s a stamp.”

Slap!

“It’s a stamp on the back,” she blubbered.

I backhanded her and threw her against a glass bookcase. There was a lot of commotion, crashing and breaking of glass. Books and binders filled with documents fell all around her, piling up on the floor. State regulations, no doubt, designed to bar the flow of free enterprise and make life harder for business. Would the liberals never learn? It just hurt the economy -- made it harder for the job creators to hire. In the end they were just hurting themselves. She looked up at me, hot lava eyes filled with molten hate.

“The stamp is a signature. Understand? Or is it too difficult for you? In combination with the raised seal, it carries the weight of an original signature. Surely, as a billionaire businessman, your boss, Mr. Trump, must be aware of this. Or does he sign all your checks by hand, Mr. Stain? Why don’t you go back to the Hotel Trump International and ask them.”

What? I staggered back, my mouth agape. She knew my name. Knew it all, that Trump had sent me, where I was staying, everything. This conspiracy went deep. Deeper than anyone realized. Even The Donald.

Two of the half-naked hula boys came out of the shadows behind me and grabbed my arms. They were big, like sumo wrestlers, grass skirts covering their tropical climes. I struggled, but I was a chihuahua going up against a couple of King Kongs.

Lulu stood, wiping blood from her lip, and smiled, but it wasn’t a Kamanawanaleiya smile. It was the kind of smile her people had given Captain Cook, right before they stabbed him in the back about 57 times, dragged his body into the jungle and cooked it, ate his heart, chopped off his hands and filled them with salt, then scattered his bones around the island. The burning magma in Lulu’s eyes danced. “Good bye, Mister Stain,” she said. “I hope you enjoy your … vacation.”

She exploded into high-pitched, tittering laughter, so high it was almost beyond a human’s ability to hear, like the sound dolphins blow out of their nasal airsacs when they’re excited. Then just like that she stopped, and I heard one of the hula boys grunt behind me, just before something hard hit me on the back of the head. I went down like a cliff diver at Kaanapali Beach, but I didn’t stick the landing. I ended up on my back, looking up through a cloud of pain. One of the hula boys was holding a coconut. There was a thin white line running down the middle, where the coconut split when it hit my skull. Cool, white liquid dribbled out of the crack and landed on my forehead, drip, drip, drip. Milk and honey trickling down on me from the upper two percent. It was Reaganomics at work. Soon, like the economy of the 1980s, I would be back on my feet. There was just one problem: like Reagan in “King’s Row,” I couldn’t feel my feet.

“Where’s the rest of me?” I said, doing my best Gipper. “Mommy?”

It was bedtime for Bonzo. One of the Kongs leaned down and conked me again with the coconut, squishing it into my face. The numbness washed over me like high tide rolling over the shore, the roaring surf drowning out all sight and sound, except for Lulu’s voice. It was the last thing I heard before the waves crashed over me.

She said: “Take the haole a-hole to the volcano, like the others.”

And then the swell picked me up and carried me off, washing me out to sea.

TO BE CONTINUED

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Aloha, My Lovely, Part 2: The Big Brainwash

from the case files of Sam Stain, Private Eye, who's been hired by Donald Trump to go to Honolulu to bring back the President's placenta

Two-and-a-half hours after Trump left my office I was sitting in a first-class seat on a Hawaiian Air jet, a portable DVD player in my lap. It was one of those fancy, new, high-tech jobs that weigh about as much as a feather. They were all the rage and would be for about two weeks, until the R&D boys came out with one that was even smaller.

Trump had the dingus sent over before I left, along with a manila envelope full of DVDs. Of Fox News. “Background, Stain,” he’d told me, “on Obama’s birth certificate. I want you to watch these on the plane. All of them, or you’re fired. I want you to hit the ground running when you land. I want to nail this guy.”

Fifteen hours of Fox News? I wanted to tell him to stick the feather up his pink, puckered taint, that way we’d both be tickled to death, but I needed this job. I needed it bad. So I put a disk in the dingus, and I watched. God help me, I watched them all.

Fifteen hours and seven bourbons later we touched down in Honolulu. I staggered off the plane and onto the tarmac with the sun beating down hard, the air as hot and heavy as Limbaugh’s breath. My head felt like the King Kamehamehas – all five of them – had taken turns sitting on it. It was five o’clock in the afternoon and I was drunk, but not on bourbon. I was looped up on Fox.

All the nuttiness, all the lies, fifteen hours worth, had been pounded into my skull. My brain was spinning like Bill O’Reilly on crack. A parade of wingnuts marching to some crazy, mixed-up tune only they could hear. Steve Doocy, Megyn Kelly, Britt Hume, Karl Rove…. After an hour I filled up the airsick bag. But they kept on coming, as relentless as the tides. Ann Coulter. Dick Morris. Bill Kristol. David Brooks. And oh, yes, Glenn Beck with his crazy, teabagger conspiracy theories. Obama’s a muslim. A socialist, a communist, a nazi. He’s the antichrist. He wants to redistribute our wealth. He should have gone into Libya. He needs to get out of Libya. We need to lower taxes on the rich so they can create jobs. Supply-side economics, trickling down to the rest of us. It just kept on coming, like rain in the tropics. It was a typhoon of batshit, an endless downpour of drivel, and it soaked me to the bone. But then somewhere over the great Midwest – Iowa, maybe – a funny thing happened. The batshit turned to guano, and, like any good fertilizer, it fed nutrients into the parched, gray soil of my braincrops. Something was happening to my think tank. It was all starting to make sense. The drivel was seeping in, saturating my mind with a new truth. I could feel it easing into my bloodstream, filling me with warmth. My worries lifted like helium balloons at a little rich girl’s birthday. Bozo the clown was there, with his giant feet, honking his big, red nose. It was all so … easy. For the first time, everything became clear. A dark veil had lifted. All those things I’d spent my life niggling over, global warming, the poor and the downtrodden, world peace, a woman's right to choose, minority rights, worker’s rights, all of it, slipping away, like traitors in the night to join the enemies of America, freedom and the marketplace. For the first time, I had someone to blame. For everything. The illegals and the unions. Old people on medicare and social security. Environmentalists. The Gays. Liberals. Hippies. Planned Parenthood. Acorn! It was like Ayn Rand wrote. They were parasites, sucking the lifeblood out of honest, hard-working Americans like me.

And of course, there was the Big Kahuna, the reason I was here. The birther conspiracy. Orly Taitz, wearing that ridiculous wig, but speaking the truth. Obama was born in Kenya, of that there was no denying. If he wasn’t, where was the birth certificate? What were they hiding with this phony baloney certificate of live birth? It was up to me to find out. The placenta. I had to get the placenta.

Reeling, I made my way up the tarmac. A hula girl in a grass skirt came wiggling towards me, hips shaking. She was holding a flowery wreath in her hands. She came at me, lifting the noose. She was trying to strangle me with it. I grabbed her arm, twisting it behind her back. “Hold it right there, Tokyo Rose. What are you, an illegal? You don’t look American to me. What are you trying to do to me with that thing?”

She cried out in pain, her double mocha brown eyes suddenly big with fear. “Ow!” she screamed. “You’re hurting me! It’s just a lei. A traditional Hawaiian greeting…”

I sneered, hissed in her ear. “Nice try, senorita. A lei. Ha! Buncha fruity colored flowers. It looks gay to me. Are you trying to make me gay?” I pushed her away. “Take a hike, kewpie doll. Save it for the NAMBLA parade! Go peddle your commie filth somewhere else.”

A couple of half-naked hula boys came at me, brown, SPAM-fed muscles rippling in the sun. They were nothing to me. The dark-skinned minions of the gay, liberal nanny state. I laid them out on the tarmac. They could sleep it off. Maybe I’d knocked some sense into them. Then again, maybe not. They were wearing skirts, after all. They’d probably wake up, head down to the courthouse and get married. Hawaii was one of those states. Like Vermont. I shuddered, heading for the rental car lot. I would have to watch my back here in the Aloha state. It was clear these tax-and-spend, bleeding-heart liberal gay bastards would stop at nothing to keep me from finding the President's placenta.

TO BE CONTINUED

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

From the Case Files of Trump's Hawaii Investigator: Aloha, My Lovely, A Sam Stain Caper

Part One: Dial "B" for Birther

He said his name was The Donald. I should have known the foof spelled trouble when he walked into my office and started blathering about the President’s birth certificate.

I stubbed out my Lucky Strike and glanced up at him, taking in the $12,000 Armani suit, the perfectly bronzed-yet-bloated face, lapis lazuli eyes as blue-as-the-Blue Lagoon. I half expected Brooke Shields to go swimming across them, one to the other, with Christopher Atkins in hot pursuit. And of course that brass-blond thing on top of his skull he called his hair, all combed forward in a crazy swoop, held in place with enough hairspray to blow a hole in ten ozones. It reminded me of cotton candy. Or maybe a dead marmot.

“That thing on your head,” I said, splashing a shot of bourbon into a Styrofoam cup. “Has it had its shots?”

He didn’t like that. The half-crazed, half-stupid look in his eye caught fire and he leaned back in his chair. “You’re fired,” he said, lifting his chin defiantly.

I raised the Styrofoam cup to my lips. “You can’t fire me. You haven’t hired me yet.”

He pursed his lips, eyeing me across the desk like a proctologist studying a polyp. “That’s true,” he said. “You’re a smart guy. I need a smart guy like you, Stain. That is your name, isn’t it? Samuel Stain, Private Eye?”

“That’s what it says on the door,” I said, nodding at the flaking sign on the frosted glass window, right above the bullet hole. Souvenir from an old client. I really should have got that fixed.

He pulled an airline ticket out of his pocket and dropped it on my desk. “How’d you like to spend a week in Hawaii, all expenses paid? Plus your fee, of course.”

The bourbon came shooting out of my mouth like Old Faithful and splashed down on his expensive silk shirt. It had been yellow when he sat down. Now there was a dark brown stain spreading across the front, with little flecks of green. That would be the relish from the hot dog I’d had for lunch. Oops.

“The dry cleaning comes out of your bill,” he said.

“Tell me what I need to know, Mr. Trump.” I refilled the Styrofoam cup, lit another Lucky Strike, put my feet on my desk and listened.

Turned out he’d been peddling his story for the past few weeks on every talk show in the country. The one about the President not being born in this country. Nobody believed it, except for the wing-nuts. I shouldn’t have either. But when someone waves an all-expenses paid trip to paradise in your face, you don’t say no. Not to The Donald, anyway. Maybe that’s why I didn’t throw the foof out of my office. Or maybe it was the picture I had in my head. The one of a pale, tired sap, broke and going nowhere, lying on a sun-splashed Waikiki beach next to a gorgeous bottle blonde. She was wearing a little green bikini with pink polka dots on it, like in the song, only hers held a pair of gun turrets the size of the ones on those sunken battleships at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. I kept listening.

He was after the President’s birth certificate. The original. He’d sent two tough guys from Jersey out to the islands to get it. That was a month ago. At first they’d reported back regular by phone. Twice a day, like clockwork. We’re making progress, they’d said. You won’t believe the stuff we’re finding out here, they’d said. It’ll blow the doors off this whole story. They said. Then suddenly, three days ago, the phone calls stopped. He tried calling them. No luck. So he called the hotel where he’d put them up. The Trump International, of course.

“It’s a beautiful 38-story property, located just steps away from Waikiki’s famous white sand beaches.” He sounded like a bad infomercial. “With gorgeous views of the Pacific, Diamond Head, the Honolulu skyline, and the magnificent Ko’olau Mountains. It’s opulent. You can’t beat it, Stain.”

I stared at him, at the soft, almost imperceptible tan-lines around his eyes, those lapis lazuli eyes that pulled me in, like the sparkling cerulean waters of the Pacific.

I took a long drag off the Lucky Strike and blew smoke rings at him across the desk. “Opulent,” I said. “Huh. So did you find out what happened to the Jersey boys or what?”

He shook his head, but his hair didn’t move. “No, Stain. I didn’t. The girl I spoke with at the hotel, delightful girl, Phyllis, I think her name was, said they’d checked out. No idea where they went. I’ve checked up with their associates in Jersey. Nobody’s heard a thing from them. They've disappeared, Stain.”

“And you want me to go find them,” I said.

“That’s right,” said The Donald. “Find out what happened. What they found out about Obama. I want to know it all, Stain. Everything. And if you do find them, tell them, for me, they’re fired.”

I looked down at the airline ticket on my desk. I hadn’t had a vacation since I was ten. My old man took me to Coney Island for the afternoon. I ate three elephant’s ears and threw up on the Tilt o’ Whirl. Some vacation. I grabbed the ticket.

On his way out, Trump stopped at the door and spoke at me over his shoulder. “One more thing, Stain. I don’t just want the birth certificate now. I need more proof.”

My eyes widened. “More proof than a birth certificate? Like what?”

He turned toward me, the blue-as-the-Blue Lagoon eyes gazing down from his oh-so perfectly tanned face. “I want the placenta,” he said. Then he went out, closing the door behind him. His shadow paused on the other side as he turned toward the frosted glass. I saw his lips move through the bullet hole in the window. They said, “Get me the President’s placenta, Stain, or you’re fired.”


TO BE CONTINUED

Saturday, April 16, 2011

The Legend of Ryan Hood

It being the week we celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday -- Happy 447th, Bill! -- we thought it would be a good time to present the bard's most obscure play, regarded as the least of all his writings, possibly written in a state of pixillation, the forgotten disaster:

The Legend of Ryan Hood
He stole from the poor and gave to the rich!

A tragecomedie in one act

Cast of characters:
Ryan Hood
Little John Boehner
Friar Tucker Carlson
Maid Palin
Trump – A foole
The Sheriff of Newtingham
Lord Kyl of Arizonae
King George the Lyin-Heart
Sir Eric of Kantor
Sir Guy of Gingrich
Sir Mitt of Romney
A peasant
and introducing The Merry Mainstream Media Men:
David of Gregory…. a dancing fool
David Brooks….. a dunce
Dana Milbank …. a knave
Wolf Blitzer …….a buffoon
Dick Morris ……. a preening dolte
Joseph of Scarborough….. a nincompoop

ACT 1, SCENE 1
Sherwood Forest. Ryan Hood, Little John Boehner, and the Merry Mainstream Media Men lie in ambush. As a peasant approaches on foot, Ryan Hood leaps out from his hiding spot, brandishing his pie chart.

RYAN HOOD: Halt, measly peon, and deliver your coin,
or my boot I’ll deliver into your loin.
For we are in the midst of a budget deficit,
so I need all of your money, hand it over, you twit.

PEASANT: Faith, good sir. I am but a poor farmer of dirt,
and have no coin to deliver, the bankers of Wall Street took all but my shirt. Pray tell, if I may be so bold to inquire,
who are you, and why make this debt sound so dire?

RYAN HOOD: I am Paul Ryan of the forest of Sherwood,
commonly known as Ryan the Hood.
You know Robin Hood, that socialist?
I’m the opposite of him, if that gives you the gist.
I rob from the poor to give to the rich,
so that it can then trickle down to you in the ditch.
I represent King George the Lyin-Heart, who in Persia, wages war,
on crusade, against the moor.

MERRY MAINSTREAM MEDIA MEN: (singing)
He’s so serious and courageous,
It really is contagious,
With his flow charts and his pie charts
Oh, Ryan we give you our hearts
There’s no need to check the numbers
He really is a wonder!
His fair form so fab, so devoid of flab
I’d give everything I have for one glimpse of his abs…

DAVID BROOKS: He says we spend too much, it must be true!

DAVID OF GREGORY: (dancing) His hair’s so black it’s almost blue!

WOLF BLITZER: He says we must lower taxes on the rich 30% more.

DANA MILBANK: I wonder how he works his core?

DICK MORRIS: He rises early to the gym – no sloucher.

JOSEPH OF SCARBOROUGH: ‘sted of medicare he’ll give us vouchers!

DAVID of GREGORY (dancing):
See how his six-pack abs do ripple?
At the castle gym, perhaps I’ll see his nipple!

DAVID BROOKS:
Yes, ‘tis true. He is most boyish and quite handsome.
And his ideas, though discredited and old, put a puptent in my pantsome!

DANA MILBANK:
See how his pie chart gleams, as he brandishes his powerpoint pen?
‘Tis is a good thing I have money from the Orient, because for Ryan I have a mighty yen… (swoons)

LITTLE JOHN BOEHNER: Come join our tea party and listen to Maid Palin’s ravings, where we shall relieve you of your life sav… I mean, we shall toast to freedom and the troops!

PEASANT: Fie! I have already told you, o orange oaf, I have no coin,
for by the Wall Street knaves, it was purloyned.

LORD KYL: Come now, bumpkin. Fork it over, without abatement.
We know you have 9 gold pieces. That was not intended to be a factual statement.

RYAN HOOD: Good serf, I beg of thee. Look o’erhead.
The cloud of deficit should fill thee with dread.
It looms like a drunken giant whose full bladder poses threat
We must increase your burden, lest he wet us with debt.

PEASANT: (Reaching into his pocket) All I have is this old ha-penny,
which I have saved for years long and many
toward purchase of a mouldy crouton,
which I hoped my grandchild, one day, could gnaw on.

RYAN HOOD takes the ha-penny and flips it to the Sheriff of Newtingham.

RYAN HOOD: Sheriff, give this to the Earl of Koch, as a taxing,
For I hear his golden shoehorn has needs of a-waxing.

SHERIFF OF NEWTINGHAM: (Whips the peasant)
And wax is not cheap, you slag from the heap!

TRUMP: Pray, good Ryan, stem this talk of horn-waxin’,
For I’ve heard rumor that the socialist Obama is neither Anglo nor Saxon.
I have been commissioned by the crazed Birther Lord,
To inspect his placenta, or at least his umbilical cord.

RYAN HOOD: Faith, yes, but take heed, foole, before blood is shed,
For thou seem’st to have a hedgehog crouch'd upon thy very head.

(They away)

... To be continued. Or perhaps not...

Monday, April 11, 2011

Trump produces certificate of live birth for his hair

Challenged to prove that his hair is, in fact, American, Donald Trump today provided a certificate of live birth, proving once and for all that his hair was born in this country.

Trump made the announcement Monday morning at a news conference in the lobby of Trump International Hotel in New York City.

“I have here a certificate of live birth from Dr. Alfred J. Flintlock, D.V.M., proving once and for all that my hair was born on November 17th, 1979, on a weasel farm in Booger Hollow, Kentucky. It says here that it was named Sparky, classified as being of the species Mustela Frenata, order Carnivora, family Mustelidae, genus Mustela, commonly known as the North American long-tailed weasel, sometimes referred to regionally as the yellow-bellied polecat.”

Trump went even further, handing out his hair’s death certificate and certificate of authenticity to reporters.

“This document of Sparky’s death proves that my hair lived its entire life in the United States of America," Trump proclaimed proudly, waving the document in the air. "Until it was run over by an ATV on July 6th, 1982, on State Road 27, just outside Pigslide, Kentucky. I also have a sales receipt and this Certificate of Authenticity from Ned’s Taxidermy Shop in Lexington, Ky., certifying that my hair came from Sparky, proving beyond any doubt that my hair is completely and 100 percent American.”

A crowd of about two dozen Trump supporters gathered outside the hotel seemed jubilant at the news, firing pistols into the air and whooping. Lyle Little, 61, of Turpentine, Ala., was arrested for discharging a firearm within the city limits. “I don’t care,” said Little as he was led off in handcuffs. “I’m happy. I won the pool. My cousin Cooter over yonder said it was a ‘possum, but I know’d it were a polecat all along.”

“We’re celebratin’,” said teabagger Boone Arliss, 58, of Wingnut, Ga. “Trump’s our man. It’d be nice if he let us in the hotel, though. We tried to go in, but the doorman said we were too scrungy-lookin’. If I’d a knew it was gonna be so fancy, I’d a worn my good tooth.”

Trump’s popularity with the Teabaggers has surged since he began questioning whether President Barack Obama is an American. A recent poll found that 51% of likely 2012 Republican voters believe the President was not born in the U.S., to just 28% who firmly believe that he was, and 21% who are unsure.

Said Verlene Huskins, 43, of Raccoon’s Tail, W. Va., “I can’t wait till Trump walks into the White House and tells black Spock, ‘You’re fired.’”

Friday, April 1, 2011

Maine's Governor Goes Into Labor

Last week the Republican governor of Maine, portly teabagger Paul LePage, removed a labor-themed mural from the state’s Labor Department headquarters and hid it in an “undisclosed location” because he said the mural -- which depicts mill workers, labor strikes and child laborers among its scenes -- is biased in favor of organized labor.

LePage, currently vacationing in Florida, refuses to tell anyone where he’s hidden the mural. But here at the Daily Wedgie, we’ve learned that the removal of the labor mural is just the first change that LePage and his anti-union wingnuts are planning to make. Here’s a few of the other changes on their list:

* Change the title of the federal holiday that falls on the first Monday in September from Labor Day to CEO’s Day

* Change the title of composer Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” to “Fanfare for the Billionaire”

* Change the folk labor song, “John Henry” to “David Koch” (lyrics changed from “John Henry was a steel-drivin’ man” to “Dave Koch was a wealth-inheritin’ man”)

* Change the title of John Steinbeck’s novel from “The Grapes of Wrath” to “The Teabags of Wrath”

* Remove the story in the Bible that depicts Jesus feeding bread and fish to the multitudes and replace it with the story of Jesus serving champagne and caviar to the country club members

* Have the child’s toy GI Joe removed from all stores and replaced with an action figure named Heroic Haliburton War Profiteer Dick

* Change the official soft drink of Maine from Moxie to Koch

* Change the Arthur Miller play from “A Streetcar Named Desire” to “A Private Jet Named Desire,” and the hero from Stanley Kowalski to Donald Trump (“Ivankaaaaa!”)