The Secret Files

This morning, I was attempting to locate our former campaign manager's files and came across McDougal's stash of personal documents. Since we've nothing better to report (bus still broken down in Minnesota and McDougal's gone missing again), I will share some of the contents of the dozens of three-ring binders containing documents scrawled in mixed media, including crayon, blood, and charcoal.

The first binder I opened was an incomplete autobiography on the big man dating back to 1114 B.C.

Excerpted from McDougal's unpublished autobiography and translated from the author's Portuguese:

(Please forgive any erroneous translations, as my Portuguese is not as strong as I had thought coming into this deal.)

The $40 Lay
by McDougal

In the steamy willows outside Baton Rouge, for which my hamburger with fries gets its nickname, I found the best $40 lay of this heretofore confounded millenium.

Let me tell it to her from the beginning.

I was flying a Corsair 2380A mock-up at 10000' with Ashcroft at the rotors when I saw the twinkle of a harlot's attractor in the bayou. "The Pipeline can wait" I told my mike, which just so happened to be wired to Ashcroft's ear. We dropped her down to telephone wire altitude and "to hell with CINCLANT" as we used to say to the bank over Bloody Marys, "let's bed some of Louisiana's finest".

I set her down in a marshy lot meant for local necking and the dropping of tonnage that I would not like to know of what character. The blades sang their quieting song as I donned my black stealth enviroblenz suit, earpiece with extrasensorial sensors, a briefcase full of Red Stripes,
Galaendeaewagean spark plugs, and condoms. I quickly killed Ashcroft as I realized he was a commodity whose options had recently become undesirable.

With a small GPS screen surgically inserted into my left palm (just before Burma, God help me), I tracked my coordinates and had a cheese danish and a Red Stripe mixed with whiskey. I found myself 3 miles from my intended lay, and daylight was rapidly approaching feathers.

"How do I get myself into these infernal situations?" I asked my small stuffed representation of Tubbs (from Miami Vice), which I carry for just such situational quandaries. I pulled his string and a muffled Tubbian Fishmonger voice told me "chase her down, pull her over, and give her the old Mallory Keaton, Ha Ha!"

I knew then that I must tennis match on.

Pulling a few shoots of browning swampgrass aside, I viewed my obective with the naked eye. In a ramshackle delicatessen or theatre with blazing oil lamps was the entire 2-Year-College of Natchitoches Swampers Cheerleader Flag Brigade en flagrante, dancing to the soundtrack of Risky Business.

I winked at an imagined vision of my left, and downed another Red Stripe. It looked to be an all nighter for "The Rouge Baton".

I flew through the door with guns blazing; girls screamed and hid under discarded panties and pom poms.

"McDougal is here!" I yelled,"and I want my Red Baron Pre-Heated!" The screams were replaced by vaguely muffled moans of interest from the four corners of the room, as the young dancers realized what fortune had brought them this hot and humid night.

"Put away your guns, Mr. McDougal," louder a red-haired young baton twirler, "We have some Red Stripes chilling in the icebox, if you'll have us - I mean them!" she reddened and giggled, waddling away as I patted her on the rump.

The rest, shall I say, is water under the moorings. I didn't finish the Pipeline until September aft, and I told the Baronial Ass who monitors flights to boil his head in a pot of cooking sherry and asparagus-tainted urine. As for the girls, well, the most piquish four were brought back to the Compound for a little reunion tour a few weeks ago, the rest have been 'hitting my digits' for phone sex at a silly rate, so much in fact that I gave them Edmonton's number.

Oh, and the $40, you ask? Still in my pocket, ha! I think if you're looking for a lesson in my little tale of indelicacies, it lies somewhere between the legs of a pre-law student in Crystal Springs.

Help Wanted - IN CHILE!

After a falling out* with our former campaign manager, McDougal is searching for a replacement.

Fearful that anyone hired within the borders of the United States of America would likely be a spy tied to the Ashcroft regime (mortal enemies who have hunted McDougal for six centuries) McDougal has taken the job hunt South of the Border.

Craig's List Posting in Santiago

* By falling out, I mean McDougal attacked him with a brick and threw him off the bus because he believed he was using x-ray glasses and laser technology to steal bits of his soul and sell it over time to the government of Guyana.

Buttocracy

Couple weeks ago (before our Northern excursion), the campaign caravan was rollin' through Minnesota. We'd just missed a campaign stop in Duluth due to a combination of factors involving McDougal eating our GPS receiver, John Ashcroft, and a surprising lack of cartographic and geography skills among McDougal's top advisors.

McDougal was stoned to the bejesus on a solution of mescaline, robitussin and whale butter. He dropped trow sometime around Noon and at the time I first considered dispatching this report, it was well after 7 p.m.

McDougal had spent the better part of seven hours "accidentally" shoving small household items up his ass. No one knows exactly what all the big man had put up there, but we had confirmed reports of the following items missing from the bus:

• three Star Wars figures
• a roll of toilet paper
• two Gameboys
• One of those cool Razor phones
• One 16-oz plastic tumbler of Fresca
• Four lavalier microphones
• Mic stand
• boom
• our sound guy

By about 9 o'clock, McDougal was visibly uncomfortable. Sweating and coughing, occasionally breaking into tears. It was then that he made his confession. Tearfully and with some measure of shame, he admitted to "accidentally" maybe "getting some stuff in my butt."

Since then, McDougal has banned pantlessness on the bus and with the exception of a few paid positions has actually outlawed pantslessness for all staffers and interns at all times. He's even considering adding a pantless ban to his campaign platform, citing the great success his nemesis John Ashcroft had covering the nasty teets of Lady Liberty.

"America wants this," McDougal decreed. "And if I can spare one man, woman, or child the pain I experienced in this dreadful buttific catastrophe, then it will all be worth it."

What the hell just happened there?

Loni Andersen was the best since I
have you RIGged this infernal machine to automatically trunkate my posts? Like you have me Then he shouldn't have said "bacon on the side"
That's not a BLTon some kind of pay no mind list? I've seen this shit before, dPerry White or Perry Mason?ung, it's calleSeems like you might have let the air out first.d a mutiny. And I'll not stand for it.
Now I know which one you are though. You're the red haired firecracker with tits Lou Diamond Phillips has my back on thisto the moon. I

1. 
   Still can't believe she wouldn't take the goat in exchange for THAT MUCH LETTUCE.

know you, woman. I was married to you for 11 years. You may or may not remember me, but I'm the one who got you the new teeth. You were a funny vixIf I could have done six times the load, you know I would haveen when I found you, lying severely beaten and nearly dead off the 126. Said you were on your way back from TJ, where you were working some dog and pony show for the tourists for something like $44/hour. Lived like royalty down there for that wage. But your heart was black as coal, and you know it. I saved your life woman.
But you know all this. And that's not what You're going to have to spend the night with Reba. I don't know how many nights. She's not back from Yuma yet.I want to talk about anyway. Couple of things while I'm sober. This presidential business. Sure, I'll run. But I want to make a few things clear:

• Walken's out. I want nothing to do with him. That is to say, he's out of the campaign bus. Of course, he's my guy for Veep. He was in that movie with Chris Rock right? Wait, is Chris Rock the wrestler, or is I mean, come on, it's 2071. Things have changed since then.that Charlie Murphy. The one with the funny facial tick. That's the one I want. If he's not at my side, call the whole thing off. And by my side, I mean nowhere near me or my handlers. I don't want to see him, talk to him, or hear what he says in support of our campaign. We're in this together ... but apart. I still don't have an N key. Now, every time I want to type an N, I have to turn the computer sideways and type a Z.

I don't know what a M.E.A.T. party is. But I believe in their principles. So they can count me in Let's just borrow the money, then call Peter Ustinov when it's time to collect.as their leader. I'll do this for free, but I want an honorarium. I want a lump sum payment of I don't think it's a barracudanearly $8,000,000. The exact amount doesn't concern me, but it better not exceed the agreed upon fNo, you're going to have to -- hold on, I have another call. It's the Chancellor. He's come for the goiter, and I can't cover for you anymore.igure by one penny. I also want Tom Delay and John Ashcroft involved. And I want a pint of mescaline and a tanker truck full of those tiny little M&M's. I'm going to throw those to supporters at campaign rallies. I'm going to start training now so that by the time the campaign kicks off, I'll be able to launch them with such accuracy that I'll be able to take out a robin's eye at a quarter mile, if needed. And, trust me, it will be needed.
It took me six days to type all that shit up there. My anger has subsided some, and I can't remember who I'm writing this to. Patrick Swayze once said thatDid I tell you that I fixed the N problem? You have to be smarter than the machine, that's what I always say.

A Pleasant Evening Down South

A couple of hours ago, I remembered that I owe McDougal about $1,600 (US) for several assorted expenses and debts that have added up over the past six nights.

I also remembered that McDougal had my family tied up in gunny sacks in the crawl space beneath his trailer.

I also remembered that he had poked three holes in my liver with an ivory handled letter opener he'd received as a gift from Margaret Thatcher in 1981 ... and that he'd bound my hands and feet with leather straps and had secured a long piece of nylon (maybe about 30 feet long or so) to my ankles and was dragging me behind his Cutlass at that very moment.

I wondered why I hadn't thought of all that before.

I wondered if surgeons would be able to reattach my right thumb or to cosmetically repair the words McDougal had etched into my back with an ice scraper: cogito ergo vagina.

I wondered if McDougal was going to stop the Cutlass and come back and talk to me again.

I wondered if he was going to tell me another joke like the last time we stopped, when he said:

“A rabi, a nun, and a prizefighter walk into a bar. The nun and the prizefighter sit in a booth, and send the rabi to the bar to place their drink orders. The rabi says to the bartender, 'I'll have an imported beer, two bottles of Listerine, and a dozen egg whites.' The bartender says, 'Your honor, I can understand about the beer, and even the Listerine, but what the hell are you going to do with a dozen egg whites?' The rabi didn't say, a word. He shot the bartender eight times in the mouth, then went and sat down with the prizefighter and the nun. The nun was shocked. She says to the rabi, 'Mr. Ashcroft, why on earth did you just shoot that man?'”

I'm not really sure how the joke ended, or for that matter, if it was even a joke at all. I think McDougal might have actually been recounting some experience from earlier in the evening. Either way, I passed out before McDougal got to the punchline because the plastic bag he'd placed over my head restricted the amount of oxygen that was available to me at the time.

He didn't stop though until we got back across the border, when he said he forgot why he had cut off my thumb and tied me to his bumper.

“That's funny,” I said. “Over the course of this evening, I've forgotten most things I knew in my life, too.”

McDougal said that in my case, that actually made sense because he'd removed the left side of my brain and sold it to some Mexican scientists for beer and gas money in Matamoros.

It had been a long night, and McDougal and I were both pretty hungry, so we stopped at a Denny's in Brownsville. McDougal ordered the Texas Scrambler and I just had some toast.

Blue Rondo a la Turk

Earlier this summer, I was on McDougal's cheap ass Glastron cabin cruiser with McDougal, his mistress, the Dutch ambassador, and the Turks.

McDougal's blitzed out of his mind on flapjacks, creatine, and some cocktail he prepared from Redbull, motor oil, and liquid nitrogen. Also, he's completely nude.

The Dutch ambassador is obviously uncomfortable, but we're 40 miles offshore, and there's really nowhere for him to go. He's stopped talking to McDougal or really anyone since earlier in the morning when McDougal bit off the man's right ear. At the time, he acted like it was no big deal, but as the hours passed and the bleeding continued, I could tell he was at least a little angry.

The Turks are somewhere below deck with a porpoise and a bunch of halibut they brought with them from the old country. Common decency prohibits me from elaborating further on their activities down there. Let's just say the Turks have a different and unique culture that should be glorified and honored.

No one's seen McDougal's mistress since the night before, which is slightly distressing, as she was the only member of the crew with any knowledge as to how to pilot the vessel, or even which way the shore was.

I have to admit that though I'd known McDougal my entire life, I was likewise uncomfortable -- filled with a deep sense of dread and hopelessness, the likes of which I'd never known.

I sat down next to the Dutch Ambassador and offered him a shot of railroad gin and a Band-Aid. He graciously accepted both.

"You're gonna need to get that looked at," I said.

"What?" he replied.

"Your ear," I said.

"What?" he said.

"Oh. Sorry. Nevermind."

The ambassador gestured toward McDougal. "The man's a lunatic."

"Indeed," I agreed.

"I think he might have eaten her."

The ambassador was likely right, but I didn't want to give him anymore cause for concern or alarm.

"Nah," I said. "He probably just threw her overboard in a drunken rage."

"Can you drive this thing?" he wanted to know.

I just laughed and laughed and laughed. I wasn't touching McDougal's boat. I've got a family, after all.

There were a few moments of awkward silence as the ambassador and I stared off at the rolling sea. I kept my head at a 30 degree angle so McDougal wouldn't realize I was looking at him, but beneath my Blue Blocker shades, I studied the giant man.

He was holding a three-inch rose quartz elephant the Turks had given him and chewing on what appeared to be a meat-covered human femur.

"It's the elephant," I whispered to the Dutchman.

"What?" he said.

"The elephant," I said.

"What?" he repeated.

"Nevermind, Dutchman."

Of course it made perfect sense, but I couldn't explain it to him. The manganese in the quartz had somehow entered the big man's blood stream and driven him insane.

We had to get that elephant away from him, and find a way to neutralize the manganese that had already entered his bloodstream. He was likely already suffering from diphtheria, dangerously low blood pressure, and hallucinations, which would explain the uncharacteristic behaviors (i.e. inviting the Dutch Ambassador on one of these fishing trips with the Turks).

I was going to need the assistance of the Turks.

I did some quick chemical calculations: Manganese (atomic number - 25) is a brittle element, prone to oxidation. The most common oxidation states of manganese are +2, +3, +4, +6 and +7, though oxidation states from +1 to +7 are observed. Mn2+ often competes with Mg2+ in biological systems, and manganese compounds where manganese is in oxidation state +7 are powerful oxidizing agents.

I was going to need six pounds of Erythromycin, which I'm sure the Turks had to treat their raging chlamydia.

Ignoring great risk to my personal health and welfare, I went belowdeck to solicit aid from the Turks, who had fortunately already finished their breakfast when I arrived.

I explained the situation in a mix of broken Turkish and Pig Latin, and the then-satiated Turks were actually amenable to my plan.

Moments later we were on deck with several syringes full of Erythromycin loaded onto blowguns used for spear fishing.

"Wij moeten hem in de maag ontspruiten," I told the ambassador. "The fastest reaction will come from interaction with his gastric acids."

McDougal, realizing we were up to something, then stood and threatened us with the femur.

His threats, however, were in vain. At that moment, each of us fired our weapons. I struck him square in the gullet, as did the Turks. The ambassador's shot went wide left, circled back and ended up taking out his own eye.

McDougal went down, fell overboard and sank to the bottom of the sea.

For a moment, we pondered leaving him out there. He'd eventually turn into a natural reef, providing habitat for thousands of fish and other sea life. But this was, after all, the great McDougal. And the world would be worse without him.

So we sent the Dutch ambassador down in the submersible to fetch the big man.

Two hours later, the ambassador returned with McDougal and his mistress, who had apparently spent the night at a topless manta ray bar with Evil Knievel and Joe Theisman.

McDougal was laughing when we brought him on board -- seemingly completely healed, save for a spot of mild diarrhea brought on by the Erythromycin.

We spent the rest of the day fishing, and did pretty well. McDougal caught a bunch of flapjacks and a pot bellied pig. I caught John Ashcroft.

Before we got back to shore, McDougal replaced the ambassador's ear with a 30-pound drum, and seems like that was going to work out pretty good.

In the end, we all agreed: no harm, no foul.

Dick Cheney

One thing about McDougal, he's always going to obey Maritime Law.

The man was in the Merchant Marines for 14 years -- made the rank of Senior Chief Petty Officer. You don't move up like that in the Goddamn Merchant Marines without 1) respecting the hell out of some Maritime Law, and 2) Blowin' the ass end out of your sales quota month after month after month.

Because one thing about the Merchant Marines that you can't forget -- sure, they're marines ... but they're also merchants.

And you motherfuckers know McDougal's a goddamn flat out sales dynamo. That old bastard could sell rhino urine to the Choctaws!

Of course, I didn't know McDougal when he did his time in the service. That was, I guess, between his prison stints in Upstate New York and that stretch in federal. But I've heard tales you wouldn't believe.

But I'll leave those tales for another man. A man who could tell them with the honesty, vim, and vigor they deserve. Someone who was there with him through the hurricanes, the monsoons, the typhoons, and the ports of call ... oh the ports of call.

But I have had the great honor and privelege of sailing with McDougal on his private frigate. And, my friends, the frigate is a mighty vessel, and McDougal an able captain.

In the late 19th century, I had the honor of sailing with McDougal on a whaling expedition in the great Indian Ocean.

Those were good times. They were honest times. And McDougal was an honest captain.

Our bounty in those days was sperm whales.

McDougal and I set sail on a cold Christmas morn' in Nantucket in the year 1877. Soon after we departed, McDougal nailed me to the mast and announced to the rest of the crew that he was in search of a six-legged whale by the name of John Ashcroft. He promised a bounty of fresh thigh meat from my left leg to the first man to spot Ashcroft.

We sailed for seven months with no word of this mighty Ashcroft beast. And I nailed to the mast the entire time.

Then on our 214th day at sea, it happened.

The mighty Ashcroft was spotted just astern of midship.

McDougal unleashed a fiery attack on the not-yet-Attorney General.

He hit the man just below his blowhole with a flaming Oldsmobile. Ashcroft was, however, unmoved. Then he had Mr. Hooper fire six barrels into his belly. Six barrels!

But not even those barrels were enough to keep him afloat.

"You've got city hands, Mr. Hooper," McDougal announced.

"He can't go under. Not with six barrels, he can't."

But he did.

And we never saw him again.

That is, until he was elected Senator from Missouri by beating some dead guy. Well, that really set McDougal off, and before I know what's happened, the old crew's loaded up the frigate and going after him again.

I resumed my honored position nailed to the mast, and we pursued the mighty Ashcroft for eight and a half years. Then, one day, without warning I was thrown overboard for insubordination, and left for dead in the middle of the North Atlantic.

Fortunately, I was rescued by a Russian troller, and transported to Topeka, where I spent 11 months in a half-way house, before being released to continue my search.

But by then, the trail had grown cold.

Ashcroft, who'd once been spotted singing patriotic hymns on the Senate floor, had achieve supreme rank in the Federal government, but had by then retired to pursue fascism full-time.

But I kept at it. Day and night, doggedly pursuing the mighty Ashcroft.

I finally caught up with him two weeks ago at a Day's Inn in Rochester, and we stayed up half the night, just talking, and laughing, and holding each other in our underwear.

McDougal's New Pants

You ever been pants shopping with McDougal?

The man has impeccable taste, and a wonderful sense of the keen juxtaposition of curves and lines.

He's always worn very tight pants. He has to have them specially made to contour to his gargantuan body.

Of course, McDougal doesn't pant shop at department stores. He gets all his pants from a tarp and awning manufacturer up in Toledo. They've been custom tailoring his pants since 1974, and they do a bang-up job.

I've been with him eight or ten times -- generally to provide moral and emotional support. Also, I help spot him on some of the heavier projects.

We were up there last May, and the man designed a pair of phenomenal banana yellow vinyl trousers that were so hot, they'd give the Pope a boner.

McDougal was so fired up about them that he refused to wait the mandatory six weeks for government approval. He paid the tailor an extra $4,300 to put an express order and complete the pants in 8 minutes.

The tailor was nervous when we left. He'd never prepared pants that tight and with that much fabric in so little time.

When we got on the plain back to Scranton, something happened at altitude, and the pants exploded.

The poor lady in seat 46AA (aisle seat) lost a foot and was permanently blinded in the accident.

The plain had to make an emergency landing in Detroit, and McDougal was escorted off the plane by Homeland Security officials.

He ended up meeting with John Ashcroft completely nude from the waist down.

Ashcroft made him a federal agent and gave him a medal.

Six weeks later, the awning company sent him a proper pair of pants. They even crafted a matching pair for me.

Now McDougal makes me wear 'em every time we go out.