On the Side

In the Depression Era 30s, McDougal did a stint as a sideshow performer. He didn't need the money, but as a Communist in those days McDougal felt it would be a great gesture to the Proletariat.

Yes, McDougal is a freak of nature ... but McDougal's freakish elements are not the kind men normally pay to see (can eat metals, can hold his breath for over nine minutes, has been alive for somewhere between 5,500 and 8,000 years, etc.).

When the former proprietor of the freakshow interviewed McDougal, he told him that while his resume was impressive, McDougal wasn't really the right fit for the program. McDougal then beat the man to death with his own shoes, skinned him, roasted him on an open pit, and fed him to the freaks by telling them they were eating rhinoceros, which they found incredibly exciting and exotic.

With the former sideshow CEO permanently dispatched, McDougal promptly shook up the line-up and made himself the main attraction. Crowds would come in and watch bearded women pleasure themselves with sticks and rocks; tattooed midgets wrestle alligators, hyenas, bears, and bearded women; old Vietnamese men contort themselves in impossible positions, and Chinese dogs type French manuscripts (blatant rip-offs of Camus ... but since Camus hadn't yet penned his first novel, the dogs, it turns out, were quite revolutionary), and your typical sideshow fare.

The show was about four hours long, and the crowds were usually pretty racked from second hand opium smoke by the time McDougal's act came on. It's hard to say whether that was a good thing or bad thing leading into McDougal's "performance."

McDougal then walked out on stage (usually jacked up on a mix of opium and oxidated horse dung) in a three-piece purple velour suit and a rhinestone studded tophat and sat down on a three-legged stool and lit a pipe.

When the pipe was lit, an American Indian (usually a Navajo) would walk out on stage completely naked and offer McDougal a plate of pickled herring, which McDougal always refused -- generally to the great delight of the assembled crowd.

When the indian was gone, McDougal would sit and smoke his pipe for anywhere between four and 38 minutes (depending on the crowd).

In McDougal's version, that's all there was to the act. However, according to two verified reports from the only surviving members of the sideshow the "act" was "performed" about 12 or 13 times and inevitably concluded like this:

McDougal sits there smoking his pipe while the audience watches. While the amount of time varies depending on the crowd, the inevitable reaction is boos, hisses and grunts, and finally attempts to depart the tent. It is at this point that McDougal's "act" spins into a horrific and terrifying direction.

The way the story is told, McDougal would let the first person out. No one's sure if this was a gesture of compassion or a ploy to lure the rest of the audience into a false sense of security. He'd let the second person get one foot out of the door before leaping out of his seat and attacking him with the blunt edge of a hatchet that witnesses swear materialized from thin air.

McDougal would then collapse the tent on the remaining crowd and summon a pack of wild half-starved Irish Springer Spaniels, who would viciously attack the crowd. While the crowds were busied defending themselves against the spaniels, McDougal would bellow a deep gutteral "barooooooga," which would call in the nude Navajo and a horde of Belgian mercenaries who'd swoosh in on toboggans and beat the entire crowd to death with their penises.

I asked McDougal the other day if the witnesses accounts were true and the big man smiled, and responded with one simple word.

McDougal Fast Facts

McDougal's favorite day of the week is Wednesday, because on Wednesdays McDougal does not cast a shadow.

McDougal's favorite color is Myopia.

McDougals Chinese zodiac sign is "The Narwhal."

McDougal's New Year's resolution was to not make any New Year's resolutions. The act of making this resolution caused the resolution to instantaneously break itself, creating a small tear in the space-time continuum. This explains the popularity of the song "London Bridge."

McDougal's first word was "squirrel."

McDougal once started a cold fusion reaction in his bathtub, just to prove it could be done. He used it to power the entire Eastern seaboard for two weeks before he shut it down, causing the Great Blackout of 2003. He refuses to explain how he did it because, he says, "you really just had to be there."

Cogs, you know

I've awakened just moments ago. A low rumbling in deep in my abdomen. I've eaten things I shouldn't have. Car parts. Gears and switch plates and the like. I've made poor gastronomical decisions to impress erudite young men and nubile co-eds from these swank Northeast colleges of liberal arts and loose moral fiber.

That's money country up there. It grows, not on trees, but in damp Cape Cod cellars tightly guarded and poorly ventilated. Manned by shapeshifting demons who appear to mortals as visor-clad accountants with claws instead of hands. They compost, seed, and fertilize the filthy lucre with liquid greed and stardust mined in the outer reaches of the known universe.

Stardust is magically teleported by those given the names Poseidon, Aries, and Artemis by the Greeks. Today, some call them the Illuminati.

The magicians.

Eternal alchemists.

Gods, some have said.

I'm out of place here. These people don't shower. They don't have to. They sweat anti-bacterial liquid soap. It oozes from their pores. They smell like pine this time of year. Full, rich hair and sparkling white teeth.

The plumbing here is terrible, as they do not produce waste. These God damned alien half-breeds.

When angered they can breathe fire and launch rockets from their genitalia. But they don't anger easily. They needn't show emotion. They're sleep in fluffy beds, stuffed with goose down and well worn $20 bills.

They roll hemp cigarettes with crisp new hundreds.

Ball them up and throw them at each other in ritualistic money fights before the snow comes.

And the snow, like all weather, comes when they command it to do so.

Mortal feats do not impress this crowd. Hell, they shrug their shoulders at inbreeding. How do you impress such a lot?

One way, I learned, is by disassembling and eating aging European luxury sedans and their more aged and less luxurious owners.

He was to have been killed anyway. Teetering on dottering, his time had come. And I here to make a show of it.

Haughty rich believed his side curtain airbags would protect him. Old fool. Time and persistence were on my side.

The car was wheeled into a massive dining hall and driven onto a 20-foot solid oak table.

And I at the head sat down with a hunting knife, serving tongs and a ratchet set.

Over the course of the evening, I ate the entire machine and its then sleeping occupant.

I ache today and my stool bleeds.

This will be important come caucus time.

John McCain, it's your turn.

True Story (4)

So one night, about twelve years ago, this was, I'm out cruising on my motorcycle ('65 Harley Panhead. The guy who sold it to me said it used to belong to Sonny Barger, but I kind of doubt it)... I had just left the bar and was enjoying the cool night air, when I start to get the craving for a taco. Everybody knows tacos are the perfect late night snack. Don't trust anyone who says otherwise. They're probably Al Qaeda.

Anyway, I pull into one of those late night fast food taco places. I'm waiting my place in line, mentally playing out that classic debate: Hard Shell vs. Soft. The car ahead of me finishes his order and pulls through. But before I can pull up to that beautiful glowing menu with the speaker set into the middle, this white Cadillac whips around me. I'm dumbfounded. I like to imagine we live in a civilized society, the kind of place where a nice orderly line is respected, maybe even embraced. Line cutting is bullshit. So I hop off my bike and walk up to the window of the Cadillac to tell the driver so. But instead of entering into a discussion of patience as a virtue, I find myself looking down the barrel of a 9mm handgun.

"Great," I think to myself, "I'm about to die over a taco."

Suddenly there is the roar of an engine and terrible crunch. Now, instead of looking into the window of a Cadillac, I am looking into the window of a pickup truck. The Cadillac skids across the parking lot, up over the curb and into a clump of trees. The two gang bangers climb out of the Cadillac and take a few steps toward the pickup truck, but stop dead in their tracks. The man inside the truck is gigantic, and he is holding the two biggest chrome revolvers I have ever seen. This guy is so big that he has one gun out the driver's side window and the other out the passenger's side window, and he never even had to shift in his seat. The gang-bangers, wisely, decided to get back into their damaged Caddy and took off.

I asked the big man his name, and he told me it was McDougal. I shook his hand and offered to pay for his meal.

It cost me three hundred seventy-two dollars and sixty seven cents.

Miss Virginia and the Thought Brigade

"Hey, I wonder if that's a vagina~`" McDougal says.

I follow his gaze and look out the window as we approach LAX. "I think that's the Pacific Ocean."

"No. Before that," McDougal says.

"The wing?"

"On my seatback."

McDougal's messing with the airsick bag.

"In your hands?" I ask him.

"No. No. Of course not. Hymen?"

"Are you asking or telling?"

"I'm hardly sure anymore," McDougal says.

I agree.

"We've left Virginia?"

"Some hours ago."

"And she's OK?"

"Who?"

"Virginia. How did she take it?"

"The state?" I wonder.

"Yes, what state was she in?"

"Confusion would be my guess."

McDougal wanted me to be certain. "I thought it was Virginia~`"

"We all did," I admit.

"And she's fine?"

"Who?"

"Virginia," of course.

"Dulles?"

"Absolutely."

"Then I agree."

You have to be careful with McDougal on an airplane. You have to be careful with McDougal most of the time.

"Then we should call her."

"Virginia?"

"The state?"

I don't know what to say.

"Will there be money involved?"

"I would imagine. Yes."

"Then we'll call her when the business is done."

"Who?"

"Virginia," of course.

We called the state Virginia.

And she answered.

CAMPAIGN MANAGER'S JOURNAL 11/07/2006

I spent the evening with McDougal at Diebold Master Control, making subtle changes to the election results. This midterm elections is critical to our plan to make McDougal the next President of the United States. We wanted to make sure that Democrats took control of the House at the very least, and the Senate too if possible. Not that McDougal is a big fan of the Democrats. Far from it, in fact, but with an unpopular lame duck Republican in the White House, a closely divided Congress with a slight Democratic majority should guarantee legislative gridlock up until the 2008 Presidential race. If all goes according to plan, by that time the American people will be just as sick of the Democrats as they are of the Republicans now. This will make a third-party candidate like McDougal look far more appealing.

I told McDougal that after tonight he should take a break from the campaign. He's been stumping hard for months and what he really needs is to unwind. Go down to Mexico, or where ever the big man goes this time of year. I'll need the time to retool the campaign. The staff needs to be retrained so that they will fall in line with my new style of management. My biggest mistake in the past few weeks was attempting to manage McDougal's campaign in the conventional sense. McDougal is the one who manages the campaign. My number one duty should be to manage the damage he leaves in his wake. Smoothing ruffled feathers. Sweeping debris under the rug. Running dead hookers through the wood chipper. Whatever it takes.

I'm Back You Assholes

CAMPAIGN MANAGER'S JOURNAL

I'm back, and better than ever, I might add. Before I was fired from McDougal's campaign I worried constantly. The stress nearly destroyed me. My health suffered. My mind suffered. My soul suffered.

No need to worry about that anymore though.

Let me tell you a story.

The night McDougal finally found me hiding in the overhead luggage bin and kicked me off the bus, the campaign convoy was cruising through the hill country of Mississippi. As I sat on the roadside, clutching my laptop, listening to the crickets chirping and praying for a cold rain under which I could curl up and die of exposure. The rain never came though. It was dry, dusty and warm that night. I wandered aimlessly along the side of the road for a while, hoping to hitch a ride somewhere. Anywhere. Preferably someplace with a hotly contested race for mayor, or maybe school board, where I could ply my trade. But there was not a car in sight.

At midnight I found myself at a crossroads, unsure which direction to take. I decided to sit down and wait, figuring that, with another road in the picture, my chances of hitching a ride would double. Suddenly a stranger appeared out of the darkness. The night was very still and quiet, yet I never heard him approach. He greeted me by name. He identified himself as The Devil. I laughed and asked his forgiveness for my disbelief, explaining that I was not a particularly religious man. "All the better for me," he replied, adding "but as for forgiveness, that is the realm of... that other guy." The devil explained that he could help me with my dilemma, that it was still possible for me to continue on in National politics, free from pesky moral qualms, able to act with unyielding certainty. He whispered that I could be the influence behind great power, be, in his words, "smoother than silk and slicker than grease."

All he wanted in return was just one little thing...

"So..." I asked, "in exchange for my soul, I become a brilliant and fearless political advisor?"

"Why not?" The Devil replied, "it worked for Karl Rove."

So here I find myself... Back on the bus. I don't remember how I got here. I'm holding in my hands a small box. It contains several critical replacement parts for the bus, a patch kit for the inflatable gorilla and tranquilizer darts and radio collars for the feral interns.

I feel great, really I do. Better than I've ever felt in my life.

I feel confident.

I feel flexible, like an eel.

Tomorrow is an election day.

I feel ready to work.

McDougal Fast Blast

McDougal has 372 college degrees, including 35 Doctorates and 59 Honorary Degrees. But the degree that he is most proud of, the one that hangs above McDougal's mantle, is his Associates Degree in Slot Machine repair from Route Six Community College.

This I Know is True:

Actually it's not one Shit-zu but a Team of Shit-zu's that pull him around on a sled even when there's no snow.

I've seen him careening into the Young Ave. St. Deli on his Shit-sled swinging swords and maces and murdering maniacally but righteously like the guy in "Gladiator". Then when the room is moaning and soaking in broken Bud bottles and sluggish pieces of bodies he releases the reins on the little vicious Shit-zu's and they eat all the still-living people. Fucking Sick. Some of them run around humping the bodies when they are full and can't eat any more.

McDougal in the Twenty-Third Century (excerpt)

Copyright 1983, Starbox Press

McDougal angled the starship down toward the surface of the alien planet, firing off several bursts from the laser cannons. His newly formed army sat quietly below him, in the ship's cargo hold. McDougal chuckled to himself, thinking about how surprised the Alien Overlords would be when they encountered these tiny humans they had so carefully bred to be docile and obedient. The lobotomies had fixed all of that. Certain traits of mankind can be suppressed, but they can never truly be eliminated. Certain circumstances, such as a strategically placed ice pick, can unleash the basest instincts of even the most civilized human. No one knew the awesome potential of viciousness, gluttony, lust and altered brain chemistry like McDougal. Certainly not the Alien Overlords. The surgery had succeeded beyond McDougal's wildest hopes. The future humans were now so aggressive and prone to violence that even McDougal himself sometimes had trouble controlling them, and in minutes they would be unleashed on their unsuspecting oppressors.

McDougal felt a slight twinge of guilt about lobotomizing Xerxes. After all, he had taught McDougal so much in the preceding months. Like how the tools and equipment the Alien Overlords issued to all human workers could be extremely dangerous if mishandled. And the exact locations of the safety devices installed in all of those pieces of equipment which kept them from being even more dangerous. Xerxes even taught him how to operate the starship which was now diving directly toward one of the alien planet's major cities. One thing McDougal did not feel a bit guilty about was wiping out the entire population of that miserable planet on which he had been imprisoned. They were nothing but surly and rude toward McDougal from the day he arrived, but they made excellent live targets when it came time to train his army.

McDougal pressed the button to activate the ship's primary weapon and fired off a single shot. As he watched the entire city below him dissolve into white-hot liquid, his chuckling grew into great peals of laughter.