The New Year is Upon Us

I've been holed up at the Salt Lake City compound since some time before Christmas. No one has seen or heard from McDougal since he left Haiti, but I received a fairly complex and detailed set of instructions wrapped around a cinder block and hurled through the window of my 1982 Chevy conversion van on I-40, just west of Little Rock some days ago.

The message was written in blood (ox or maybe chicken) on a 3'x5' cured beaver pelt. It said:

FofM ID: 324A(lpha).611.0.9.4:

Report to Compound 04C(harlie) at 0900 hours on October 12,
2006(1.) wearing Santa suit and knee brace. Come armed. Factions gather against us. Revolution is nigh. Bring fancy French cheeses and best nylons. The cause demands a martyr. We all sacrifice for the betterment of Noopsie(2.). Plumbing is shot(3.). Don't crap in ANY of the third floor facilities. Bring wet suit and boot knife. Also, would like to see The Holiday while you are in town. Gratification is instant and only mildly painful. Thought of you while abroad (only briefly). Your time has come. Hope you know a thing or two about phrenology. If not, brush up.

~~~
1. I received the letter some time in Mid-December, so hope I am not punished for my tardiness.
2. Have no idea who or what Noopsie is. This is the first reference I've heard.
3. "Plumbing is shot" is a bit of an understatement. What it should have said is "raw sewage has seaped through through the thrid floor (and now second floor) ceilings and is dripping on the inhaibitants of the lower floors like rain in hell."

So, here I sit stinking of shit water in a Santa Claus costume that has not been washed since the Carter administration, reading about head shapes.

Also, the thermostat is set on 309 Kelvin degrees and penalty for touching the controls (even in McDougal's absence) is to be drowned in a pool of raw sewage ... which now seems my likely fate whether I adjust the temperature or not.

Yet, I find I am surprisingly optimistic these days.

Things are starting to look up.

See, there's the phone. I bet this is someone with good news right now. Perchance they've found my wife and child~`

Benthamism ad nauseum

*RING*

*RING*

Mmmnnt... Hello?

Hey Jimbo! It's McDougal!

It's three in the morning. And it's Dave, not Jim... bo.

Listen Jimbo, do you have a Roto-Tiller?

A Roto-Tiller?

Yeah, I need to borrow your Roto-Tiller. It's important.

What for?

I just want to borrow it. I'm gonna borrow the crap out of it!

Yeah, see... That's the kind of statement that makes me not want to loan you anything. Ever.

So... You're not gonna let me borrow it?

I don't even know if I have a Roto-Tiller.

You know if you don't let me borrow it I'm just going to come over and steal it anyway.

I know McDougal... I know.

Also, I need your passport, the license plates off your Lexus and your wife's wedding ring. Hey, you're daughter is sixteen now, right Jimbo?

WHAT? What the hell is going on here McDougal?

I'm coming over.

NO! I don't have a Roto-Tiller!

Don't be like that Jimbo. See you in a little bit!

McDougal, I have a gun!

Hey, me too! This is gonna be fun!

*Click*

McDougal! McDougal...? Fuck.

Gameplan 2007

Ok, listen up.

Big things are afoot here at Friends of McDougal, but we need your help. To fully unlock the awesome potential of McDougal we are going to need a little audience participation. A lot of you say you are Friends of McDougal, but do you really mean it? Are you prepared to let McDougal into your home and/or workplace? Are you willing to help McDougal score some meth? Will you let him cook his own meth in your bathtub? Are you going to allow McDougal to fuck your sister? Will you take video so we can post it on YouTube?

If you answered no to any of these questions, well then you are not truly a Friend of McDougal.

For the True Believers, mission one starts now.

In January we are going to be having a Friends of McDougal "Behind the Scenes Week." Friends of McDougal is a large, complicated, cumbersome operation. We want to introduce you to all the little cogs in our corporate machine. We want to show you the assembly line where these very words were bolted together. We want you to meet the white laboratory rabbits on which we test our jokes. But we do not want to bore you. So in the interest of entertainment, we will only be revealing the segments of our operation that you shiny-eyed readers are interested in hearing about. All you have to do is email your questions to friendsofmcdougal@gmail.com

This is easy. You can do this.

Your second mission will be more difficult. The mechanics of this will be revealed soon, but I will tell you this much: It will be in the form of a contest, and the victor will be rewarded.

VooDougal 2006 (Part V)

McDougal is gone.

He left us here.

In Haiti.

Still, I can't really fault him for it. He saw a business opportunity and he took it. He found a buyer for the rum in Guatemala, so he loaded up the plane and left. When the money-lust hits him, everything else (like personal hygiene or his Presidential campaign) just becomes insignificant details.

I found this out from the customs officials at the airport. McDougal didn't want to be bothered with taxes and paperwork (insignificant details) so apparently he was paying out very hefty bribes to everything in a uniform that was standing still. They hadn't ever seen anything like it, which is saying a lot in a third world country. Apparently he actually threw a handful of fifty dollar bills at a cardboard cutout of an American Airlines pilot.

They Haitian Customs and Immigration officials when so far as to load his cargo plane for him, while McDougal sat up in the airport bar, downing bottles of Prestige. They said they'd never seen a pilot drink so much before a flight. Again, this is saying a lot in the third world. Maybe it's good that we weren't on that plane with him, not that he would have had room with all the rum. If I were putting money on it, I would bet that the plane was a few cases lighter by the time it got to Mazatenango.

Of course, we are still stuck with the problem of transportation. There is not enough money left in the campaign fund to fly the whole staff back. Hell, there isn't enough left for me to fly back and leave the rest of the staff down here. Believe me, if there were, I would have flown out yesterday... We wanted to have the zombies build us a boat, but after yesterday's massacre they are in no condition for manual labor. Instead, we have enlisted the children from the neighboring villages. This has actually worked out better, I think. They are really quite skilled, and their small hands make for excellent craftsmanship. You ought to see the tiny stitching on the sails. It's really quite breathtaking.

Anyway, it will be a few more days until the boat is ready, and I don't know how long the voyage will take after that... So until we make landfall the McDougal Presidential Campaign Tour is back on hold. Hopefully it will resume again sometime after the new year.

VooDougal 2006 (Part IV)

In retrospect, attempting to overthrow the Haitian government was a bad idea. Those UN peacekeepers are surprisingly good shots. I take back all those bad things I said about the Sri Lankan military.

I spent all day stitching zombies back together.

On the plus side, the campaign staff beat a very organized and tactically sound retreat when things started to head south. I like their instincts.

Still no sign of McDougal. I stopped by his distillery and all of the rum was gone. I imagine if I find the rum, there I will find McDougal.

VooDougal 2006 (Part III)

We haven't seen McDougal in several days. I have completed the retraining of the campaign staff. I can't think of anything else we need to accomplish here in Haiti, but we are unable to leave without McDougal. In the meantime, I've been trying to find busy work for the staff. Helping the zombies cut sugarcane and such. I've been telling them it helps them learn humility, but I'm pretty sure they know I'm bullshitting them.

I took a team into Port au Prince today. We took a quick drive by the airport. McDougal's plane was nowhere to be seen. Damn. Where the fuck is he?

I decided to take the staff over to the Presidential Palace and have them do a security survey. You know, for training purposes. Sort of a "if you were going to stage a coup, right here, right now, what would you do?" kind of a thing. Their ideas and tactics seem sound. I particularly liked their suggestion that the machete-wielding zombies could be sent in first, as a distraction.

The plan is so good, maybe we will try it out for real. After all, people are always complaining that McDougal's lack of political experience is a liability. President of Haiti might be a good entry level position. Plus it will build some serious foreign policy cred.

VooDougal 2006 (Part II)

The campaign staff is making so much progress here in Haiti! I'm very proud of them. They are mastering election rigging and their marksmanship has improved greatly. Yesterday we went down into one of the slums in Port au Prince and practiced the fine art of starting a riot. Some of the interns have even taken up voodoo. Right now they are working on a curse that will kill the political careers of McDougal's competitors. I'm thinking of letting them test it out on Barack Obama.

We haven't seen much of McDougal since we've been down here. Turns out he owns a large sugar plantation here. He had completely forgotten about it until I mentioned Haiti last week, so he was eager to get down here and have a look. Since the campaign is low on funds right now, McDougal generously offered to let us stay in the workers quarters at his plantation. These are concrete block shacks (see photo) without electricity or running water. Each shack ordinarily houses fifteen workers, so with the campaign staff added to the mix, space is a little tight.

After observing production at the plantation for a few hours, I complimented McDougal on how hardworking, obedient and silent his workforce is. Most of Haiti is a noisy, chaotic place, but McDougal's plantation is silent as a tomb. There is no complaining or backtalk. McDougal told me that is because all of his employees are zombies. I was certain he was joking, but the big man just fixed on me with a steely gaze and my laughter quickly faded. Later, when McDougal was gone, I went to talk with the foreman. For the first time, I noticed that he seemed terrified of the workers he was supposed to be in charge of. He told me that when McDougal first started the plantation, he spent several years scouring the backwaters of Haiti for the zombies that would become his workforce. Mindless and soulless, they would do whatever they were told. At the end of the day, if the foreman didn't tell them to stop working, they would hack with their machetes until every plant and tree on McDougal's property was gone. Then they would turn on each other.

Once harvested, McDougal's sugar cane is loaded onto ox carts. It is then taken to a distillery in town, which McDougal also owns, where it is brewed into a particularly potent variety of rum. Before the rum is sealed in oak casks to age, a hougan (voodoo priest) adds a secret ingredient to each batch. He says that this will give anyone who drinks the rum the power to communicate with the spirits. Or something like that. My Creole isn't that great.

VooDougal 2006

I told McDougal to take it easy, kick back, enjoy his annual Thanksgiving trip to Tijuana, get lost in a haze of underage hookers, tequila and mescaline... Not to worry about the new direction the campaign would be taking. I told him I have it all under control. But when he heard what I had planned for the week, well he just had to get involved.

It's election time in Haiti.

Anyone who wants to win an election, any election, anywhere, would do well to look at Haiti. A person can learn everything he ever wanted to know about corruption, graft, election rigging and the fine are of the violent coup by studying Haitian politics. I feel this is the kind of knowledge that our campaign staff is severely lacking. Sure, we know the high tech end of things. That modern stuff. Diebold voting machines and the like. Attack ads. Hanging chad. But what of the classic stuff? The real grass-roots of election fraud. Kids today don't know how to stuff a ballot box. They don't know how to rig an election so bad that a legion of United Nations Inspectors canvassing the country in white helicopters still can't figure out what the hell you did. They don't know how to crush a determined, and heavily armed, resistance who knows the election was crooked.

I fully expect all of these to be required skills in 2008.

So we spent the past few weeks packing up the whole operation into McDougal's C-130 transport plane and just today we arrived in country. I'm glad McDougal decided to make the trip, even though our arrival in Haiti was delayed by several days as a result. An hour out of Miami he decided that, even though he missed Thanksgiving, he really did want to get some of that mescaline. He ended up going on a three day bender. Actually, in the interest of full disclosure, WE ended up going on a three day bender. I remember nothing, the work of the tequila more than the mescaline, I'm sure... But according to the pictures on my digital camera (I deleted all of them this morning for legal reasons, so don't even ask) McDougal managed to convince several of the interns to take second billing in the donkey show. Each of them made about four hundred pesos each in tips, which they seemed very proud of. When they sobered up enough to understand the exchange rate they were understandably upset.