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From the Desk of the Campaign Manager

4/10/2007

To: All Campaign Staff

Effective immediately, we will be initiating Contingency Plan 19. This is not a drill. It has become apparent that we have no hope of proceeding with a conventional campaign. All Class A employees report to campaign headquarters for further instructions. All Class B employees report to assigned stations in designated "Battleground" states. All Class C employees will sever all ties, and eliminate any evidence of association with the McDougal campaign then infiltrate their assigned rival campaign. If you are not aware of your assigned letter class, that means you were never given one, and are hereby terminated. The internship program is suspended, effective immediately.

Treatise on the Retarded

Treatise on the Retarded
A position paper for the McDougal for President Campaign

By Xavier Alonzo Mercado McDougal IV

I've killed a man.

That is not to say, "In my lifetime, I have killed someone." As a veteran soldier, freedom fighter, and lifelong meth addict, I've killed scores of men.

I mean that as in, there is a bleeding corpse at my feet as I type this treatise.

In my lifetime, there have been men whose deaths I have lamented. I've even wept at the passing of some. I have, however, no second thoughts, remorse, or concern for this headless sack of shit lying crumpled now at my feet.

The Red Robin offers infinite steak fries as an integral part of the Red Robin dining experience. They offer infinite french fries, towers of onion rings, and some of the best Goddamn hamburgers in the business.

Last evening I dined at the Red Robin.

And this until-very-recently-bumbling bag of monkey shit was assigned to service me.

My dining expectations are not extravagant. There are no complex riders or special requests for hand jobs from Peruvian nuns or dodecahedron-shaped mackerel fillets. My requests are simple. Keep the beer and steak fries coming (don't ask, just bring them), deliver the appetizer in under eight minutes, and my meal within six minutes following, don't speak to me unless spoken to, never look me in the eyes, and NEVER touch me.

These are the understood rules of the serving class. They have been passed on from medieval serving winches to Elizabethan footmen to college students and flunkies working in chain restaurants.

This festering sack of horse entrails must have missed that communication.

These corporate deals, they have training programs. Days of training focused on how to roll silverware, pre-bus tables, and refill my Goddamn Dr. Pepper. It's not codebreaking for the NSA for fuck's sake. It's delivering food to tables of diners. If you're too stupid to remember MY FUCKING TOWER OF ONION RINGS, yet you irresponsibly accept the position as foodserver, then you deserve whatever fate I as patron and holder of the American Express Black card deem appropriate.

Should you fail to live up to your end of the deal, you deserve torture, mutilation, and eventual death at the hands of a 450-pound meth addicted gorilla. For fuck's sake, he never even mentioned the infinite steak fries!

The bleeding heart anti-death penalty banana peel humping hymens who would weep for this man's passing would do well to spend a little less time bemoaning the fate of sinners and a little more time lessening the need for future executions.

I do not know from whence came this notion that all human lives are to be valued as equal. Is Tonya Harding to be considered of equal value to John Wesley? Is Albert Brooks of no lesser value than Albert Camus?

We all start valueless ~ creatures of the happenstance of those who made us. We add or subtract value with each passing day. We define ourselves by our actions, thoughts, and deeds. This value is cumulative. Beat a hooker to death with a rubber mallet on Tuesday, and rescue a chimney sweep from a rabid alligator on Wednesday and the impact to your value score is a net zero.

But it is not only in matters of life and death that one gains value. Did you properly wipe your ass? No? You've just lost value. If you chose to live as part of society, brush your fucking teeth and CONTRIBUTE.

I don't care if you're the mayor of Shitville, Indiana, or a fucking bathroom attendant. If you're going to live off the fat of others - that is sell your time and skills as a service to someone (e.g. corporation, private business, pimp), then fucking do your job.

You don't deserve a paycheck and you sure aren't going to get a Goddamn tip from me.

Show up at my table 19 times with the same shit-eating question, "You doin' alright here?"

No I'm not fucking alright.

Where are my Goddamn onion rings?

Oh, you forgot.

Now I have to cancel my plans for the night, wait until you get off work, club you in the head with a bag of oranges, toss you in the trunk of this stolen Buick Electra and spend the rest of the night teaching you the intricacies of foodservice.

Look, shitmouths. No one is going to fix your shit for you. Figure out what you want to do and do it. Do it to the best of your ability. Don't fuck around. If you can't do the job you've whored yourself out to do, then find another job.

Otherwise, I'm coming for you.

Oh, the Hu-Manatee!

Lakehurst, Florida - An explosion at a political fundraising barbecue has caused the death of seventeen endangered manatees in a Florida wildlife sanctuary. The cause of the blast is still under investigation, but initial reports indicate that strong winds caused a large inflatable gorilla to topple over, striking several grills. Sources close to the campaign indicated that the cash-strapped campaign had filled the decorative pink gorilla with propane gas, rather than rent fuel storage tanks for the grills. Officials from the Lakehurst Manatee Sanctuary reported that seventeen manatees were killed in the blast, and an additional twenty-four were injured. The manatee is listed as an endangered species.

The fundraiser was for the campaign of a mysterious independent candidate know only as "McDougal." The candidate's campaign manager requested that the Lakehurst Manatee Sanctuary serve as the location of their fundraiser because, until this incident, the candidate had been billing himself as strong on environmental issues. However, McDougal provoked a public outcry after the explosion when he quipped that the charred bodies of the deceased manatees were to be ground up and canned under the name "Beef of the Sea." McDougal's campaign manager issued a statement apologizing for these remarks and stating that the meat would be donated to area homeless shelters. The manatee is also known as the sea cow.

Campaign Manager's Journal

My new management philosophy (don't try to direct McDougal's behavior, only try to control the damage) had done wonders for my health, however I'm afraid it has caused the campaign to slow to a crawl. The big man is easily distracted and it his hard to keep his momentum up. I thought the unveiling of our new Iraq strategy would be the shot in the arm that the campaign needed, but the Liberal Media has cast doubt on the abilities of Manuel Noriega to effectively subdue a war torn nation like Iraq, given that he has been out of the military strongman game for so long. Some of them have even had the gall to suggest that the Middle East does not need another despot. I would suggest that dictatorship is the only form of governance that those people understand, but we'll save those talking points for the debate...

But, to my surprise, the issue from McDougal's platform that attracted attention this week was not foreign policy, but the environment. Since the United Nations recently released its report on climate change, reducing emissions has become the hot-button issue of the week. McDougal seems an unlikely candidate to be leading the pack on environmental issues, but the other candidates have only offered vague solutions. McDougal, on the other hand, has been coming up with concrete solutions, like his plan to produce biodiesel using the algae that grows in California's Salton Sea.

This plan recently came to the attention of the good people at the Sierra Club, who invited McDougal to speak at one of their fundraisers. Unfortunately, as our Campaign Convoy was pulling in to the convention center, McDougal chose that moment to open up the emergency escape hatch in the bus's roof and throw out several pounds of assorted fast food cups and wrappers. Several members of the Sierra Club were struck by this errant garbage, walking away splattered with ketchup and chocolate non-dairy milkshake product.

This could have spelled disaster for the campaign. It does not look good for a candidate for President to engage in littering in front of dozens of prominent environmental lobbyists. The old me would have been tearing his hair out. But that would have been a waste of time. Instead, I sent the interns on a trip to the city dump, while the speech writers and I went to work at a furious pace.

Half an hour later, McDougal took the podium in front of a hostile crowd, carrying a large black Hefty bag. They immediately confronted him about the litter. McDougal calmly smiled, reached into the sack and pulled out a bulky white item. While the crowd worked themselves into a frenzy of indignity, McDougal surveyed the room. He picked out a man about halfway back, who seemed to be shouting the loudest and hurled the item at him. If the he had caught the bundle he probably would have been OK, but he just stuck out his arm, like a sissy, to shield his face. The bundle burst open, showering him with its contents.

"You know what that is?" McDougal asked.

The man just stammered and started to retch.

"That's right," McDougal continued, "it's a disposable diaper. A very used disposable diaper. One of the earliest, in fact. As you can see, it is much bulkier than the current version. I doubt I could have gotten one of the new ones much beyond the third row. I got it in your city dump."

A murmur was running through the crowd as they backed away from the retching, shit-covered man.

"Now, in the open air, that shit would have dried to a crust and flaked off decades ago. But there's a funny thing about garbage dumps... Here, take a look at this..."

McDougal reached into the sack again. The crowd cringed. But McDougal only pulled out a newspaper. It was somewhat yellowed, but otherwise intact. He glanced at the date.

"1952."

McDougal paused for affect.

"See, organic matter really needs two things to break down. Oxygen and water. But what happens at a landfill is, all this garbage is packed into a plastic-lined hole in the ground, then sealed with a clay cap. So the trash just sits and builds up, higher and higher, year after year, and even the most fragile material never gets a chance to biodegrade. Don't take my word for it though, take a look for yourself!"

McDougal began tossing items from the sack. The members of the Sierra Club jumped up from their seats and made a mad dash for the doors, which, of course, we had locked ahead of time. We wouldn't want anyone escaping before McDougal got his message across. Meanwhile, the campaign staff remained seated in the front rows, clutching plastic sheeting like the crowd at a Gallagher show, and cheering wildly. I was too busy ducking under this plastic to avoid the occasional stray maggot or drip of putrefaction to see all of the items McDougal threw out, but I do remember seeing an open jar of spoiled mayonnaise, a dead skunk and a sickly gray-green T-bone steak. It was like Mardi Gras in hell, and the Sierra Club, still crowded around the locked door, made an easy target.

"Nasty, isn't it? And the hell of it is, in the open air... say in a parking lot, for example... most of this stuff would have been completely gone in a month. What really chaps my ass is, we're paying for all this! Waste disposal is a multi-billion dollar industry, and most of it is just smoke and mirrors. We're lining their pockets so they can hide stuff that would otherwise rot for free. Out of sight out of mind, right? Well, that's just the way they want it. The less time you spend thinking about where your trash goes, the better for them. Of course, we can't just throw our trash in the ditch... Because littering is ILLEGAL. And in most cities you can't even burn your trash. You know who is behind all these laws? THE GARBAGE LOBBY! They've been paying off the politicians left and right so that they will legislate away every option other than sending your garbage through them. For a price. Hey, Gretta Granola, better watch out, they'll be coming for your compost heap next! That's why, if elected President, my first priority will be repealing all litter laws! I don't want my trash hidden away by backroom deals, I want it out where I can see it! I demand accountability!"

McDougal marched, triumphantly off stage. We, the campaign staff, filed quickly out after him before the shell-shocked members of the Sierra Club had a chance to think about what had really just happened in there. I heard that they were stuck with a pretty hefty clean up bill from the convention center. I also heard that, after seeing the bill, a few of them were grumbling about "the garbage lobby." That's just what I heard though...

Campaign Manager's Journal

It has been a rough couple of weeks in the McDougal campaign, but things are finally starting to look a bit better. I think this month we have finally disproved the old adage that all press is good press. I don't think any Presidential candidate has ever gone from completely ignored to universally reviled as quickly as McDougal did with his Elvis's birthday speech. I find it more than a bit unfair that people have reacted so negatively to McDougal's Iraq exit strategy of reinstating Saddam Hussein as dictator, when it is a plan that is inherently unworkable. Dead men do not make effective dictators. With the possible exception of Fidel Castro. I have some doubts about the current situation in Cuba...

Anyway, the war in Iraq is such a hot button campaign issue, it would be political suicide to go back out on the campaign trail without an Iraq exit strategy. The major parties have already taken their sides, with the Republicans digging in for the Long War and the Democrats standing by for the chance to Cut and Run. This leaves precious little middle ground for third parties such as ourselves.

McDougal spent so much time carefully crafting his Iraq policy, it would be a shame to throw it away outright. After many late night, cocaine and whiskey-fueled discussions on the bus, his plan started to make more and more sense to me. After all, propping up friendly dictatorships is the strategy that won us the Cold War. Somewhere along the line we lost direction and started pursuing this misguided "spreading the seeds of democracy" policy that has caused us nothing but misery. It's time for a return to the good old days.

Of course, there's still the problem of finding a suitable dictator...

Sure, there are a lot of vicious bastards out there, but the best ones are already running their own countries. Picking one of them is out of the question. You can't solve a crisis in an unstable shithole by creating a power vacuum in another unstable shithole. In that direction lies never ending chaos. And the past five years have been rough on out of work dictators. Milosevic, Pinochet, Amin... All dead. I was beginning to fear that we would have to craft another Iraq strategy, but just when I was on the verge of giving up, I saw this news item in USA Today:

Manuel Noriega scheduled for September release

Campaign Manager's Journal

After 16 days at sea we finally washed ashore in Florida. The Coast Guard was extremely confused to encounter a rickety boat filled with white people, American citizens no less, so they detained us for a week before deciding that there was nothing they could charge us with. When I got back home, all I wanted was a long shower, a shave and several days sleep in my nice comfortable bed. Instead, I was met with an answering machine full of messages from McDougal, asking me what the hell was taking me so long to get to Memphis. The last few messages, before the tape ran out, contained many threats of violence if I did not arrive in Memphis in time for Elvis's birthday celebration. I took a quick shower, shaved and began packing my bags. I could sleep in the plane.

Given their similar taste in every possible excess, it should be no surprise to the readers of this weblog that McDougal and The King were great friends back in the '70s. But even I was surprised to learn that McDougal had been invited to be a keynote speaker at the Elvis's birthday celebration taking place at Graceland. I hurriedly arranged for banners and campaign literature to be sent by express courier. This would be our greatest opportunity yet to reach the masses with a McDougal campaign appearance. The inflatable gorilla would have been a great attention-getter for the NASCAR set, but getting it to Memphis in time would have been a logistical impossibility. And besides, I doubt the management of Graceland would have allowed it anywhere near the grounds.

Imagine my surprise and dismay when, finally getting his turn at the lectern, McDougal launched into a eulogy for Saddam Hussein. He did not mention Elvis once in his speech.

McDougal went on to explain that the Bush administration forced Saddam's execution as a way to undermine the Iraq exit strategy that he had been working on in secret and was waiting for the optimum moment to unveil on the campaign trail. This was news to me. McDougal never gave me any indication that he had spent even a nanosecond thinking about how he would handle the Iraq situation if elected. The following is an excerpt from his hour-long speech.

"Saddam was the only person who ever demonstrated the slightest ability to control the various factions in Iraq. Sure, his methods were inhumane... But opinion polls now show that the American people don't care what happens in Iraq. They just want our troops out. But leaving Iraq in chaos is no kind of solution.

I was prepared to offer America a real solution.

By restoring Saddam Hussein to power, I would have guaranteed the return of a crushed and defeated Iraq. The Iraq we knew and loved.

We had Saddam right where we wanted him. He was contained. Embargoed. And he scared the hell out of the Iranians, I'll tell you that much.

I miss Saddam dearly. He was everything you could want in an enemy. He was undeniably evil. But he was also comically inept. He was like a James Bond villain. Although he was constantly grasping for a weapon of world domination, you knew deep in your heart that he didn't have a snowball's chance of success.

Who among you, and be honest now, who among you was actually afraid of Saddam Hussein attacking the United States?

Having Saddam Hussein as a nemesis was like matching wits with a cartoon coyote."

At this point McDougal raised his right hand from behind the lectern to reveal a Saddam Hussein hand puppet.

"I know! I'll use my ACME SuperCannon to fire nuclear warheads at that infidel roadrunner!"

The speech continued on for another twenty minutes as a ventriloquist act, with the Saddam puppet quizzing McDougal on Mid-East politics.

The conclusion of McDougal's speech was greeted with stunned silence by the legions of Elvis fanatics. McDougal pumped both hands into the air, fingers in triumphant V's, in a Richard Nixon salute and marched off stage, grinning from ear to ear.

I don't think this will play well in the heartland.

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.

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.

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.

All is lost.

The campaign is in complete disorder. Now lacking in any management whatsoever, we continue to sit on the broken down bus at this rest stop in Minnesota. There must be money to fix the bus in the campaign fund, but no one outside of McDougal himself and his former campaign manager know how to access those funds. At this point, the staff just wanders around aimlessly, trying to occupy the time. Some have fashioned the inflatable gorilla into a crude tent, where they are holding nightly religious revivals. Others have taken to turning tricks for passing truck drivers. Two of the interns went feral and disappeared off into the woods. Sometimes at night I can hear them howling at the moon.

The only staff member who has remained stoic in the face of this soul-crushing boredom is Fiberglass Caveman, McDougal's press secretary. This morning I found a typed press release on his desk, declaring that McDougal is making the elimination of Daylight Savings Time one of the cornerstones of his platform. I sent the statement out, expecting it to be ignored as usual. To my surprise, a reporter from the Duluth Sunshine Telegraph Register Tribune showed up to inquire about an interview with McDougal. The big man gave his consent, so the interview was arranged underneath the Gorilla Bigtop. I think if the interview had stayed on topic, it would have gone well. The elimination of Daylight Savings Time is actually something I agree with, as, I imagine, many of you do. Unfortunately, the interview strayed off topic very quickly. Here's a transcript:

DSTRT: So, I understand you want to make Daylight Savings Time a campaign issue?

McD: Absolutely. Those fat cats in Washington have misled the American people for too long. Daylight savings... Ha! While John Q. Public is sleeping in, the politicians are off lining their pockets with our precious daylight.

DSTRT: Um...

McD: Open your eyes, sir! It's a scam! There is no reason to save daylight in a modern society with the technology we have... sunlamps and such...

DSTRT: I don't think... uh...

The reporter is starting to look nervous and is beginning to sweat. As McDougal talks he gets more and more animated, first standing up, then waving his arms around ever more frantically.

McD: And think of all the benefits! Do you realize that if we don't set our clocks back in the Spring, by the summer the drive-in movie theaters will be able to open a whole hour earlier. And the Fourth of July fireworks! We've been stealing time from the birthday of our country! Why, as a red-blooded American, the very thought of it makes my blood... my red blood... boil. Boiling hot. Red hot. Blood... Say, would you like something to drink?

DSTRT: Yes! I'm... er... Wait.

McDougal hands him a glass. The reporter looks at it, relieved.

DSTRT: You know, for a second there... I thought you were going to give me blood.

Both laugh and McDougal sits back down. The reporter takes a sip of his drink, then immediately spits it out.

DSTRT: Ghaaa! What the hell is this?!

McD: That? Oh, that's poison. It's bad, huh?

DSTRT: What?! Why the hell would you give me poison?

McD: (chuckles) To kill you, of course. Why else would I give you poison?

DSTRT: (beginning to panic) Oh my God!

McD: Relax. You would have to drink the whole thing for it to kill you. It's kind of a weak poison really. As little as you drank, you probably won't even get sick.

DSTRT: So... So I'm OK?

McD: Well, you may notice a tiny bit of blood in your stool, but basically... yeah.

DSTRT: Jesus...

McD: So, what did it taste like?

DSTRT: What?

McD: The poison.

DSTRT: Wait a minute... If you wanted me dead, why didn't you just shoot me or something? I've seen quite a few guns laying around here. Other weapons too.

McD: (getting impatient) Well I didn't want you to die here! Then I would be stuck disposing of the body. The plan was that you would die on the drive home. The freeway really would have been perfect. Especially a nice fiery accident.

DSTRT: Um...

McD: Like I said, weak poison... slow acting... So, you said the poison tasted terrible?

DSTRT: Uh... Yeah?

McD: Terrible how? Like, what specifically made it bad?

DSTRT: I... I don't know... What?

McD: Well, do you have any recommendations on how I could make it taste better? Like, is there something I could add? I'd really rather not have a repeat of this situation.

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.

China Rhymes with Vagina

My campaign manager has asked me to write a position paper on our China policy.

I mean, my former campaign manager. The McDougal Administration believes in accountability. And accountability means not wasting money on idle policy wonks who can't be trusted to write position papers on their own without punching themselves in the face repeatedly with a brick and falling asleep on a platter of General Tso's Chicken.

Accountability means a lot more than just holding your neighbors responsible for things like invading some God-damned pacifists like Tibet, monkeying with exchange rates and selling millions of tons of cheap plastic trinkets made by prisoners. There's a lot of money in cheap plastic trinkets and prisoners are bored half the time anyway, so why not put the two together and make something of it? Also, those Chinese bastards have a ton of cash sitting around that I'd like to tap, so I'm not going to go off on them and risk not having a crack at that loot. The McDougal administration believes in doing what's best for the American people - and as the chief representative of the American people, It's my job to look out for what's good for the chief. Which is me. Look what sucking up to the Chinese bastards did for Wal*Mart. They sell plastic American flags, made in China, for $1.89. Cost, including ocean freight? About twenty-seven cents. Anybody else would have ordered flags from Chillicothe, Ohio at eighty-seven cents each. Business geniuses! I love 'em.*

But back to my original point - the McDougal administration believes in accountability, which means the Commander-in-Chief shouldn't have to waste his time writing some long, boring policy statement that no one's going to read anyway. As President, I will not be distracted by "policy." As President, it will be my job to make decisions. As President, I will be the chief decisioner in the government. It will be my job to make the decisions and the faceless policy wonks can then redefine the terms and facts to support those decisions.

The McDougal administration also believes in looking at the big picture and the importance of expertise. We will seek out the experts in whatever area we're concerned about and delegate the problems to those experts. In the case of China, everyone's all upset because the Chinese invaded Tibet and have been menacing Taiwan. That's too much information. If we let ourselves get sucked into too many problems, we'll never get out. Thus... and here's an executive decision... we will combine the Tibet issue and the Taiwan issue into one - I'm going to call it "Tai-Bet" and then bring in the best experts to deal with that. In the case of Tai-Bet, there's clearly one man who is the greatest living authority. Of course, I'm talking about Billy Blanks. Billy Blanks invented Tai-Bet and has studied it extensively. I'm going to make Billy Blanks the McDougal administration's ambassador to China; please consult with him if you have any further questions about the McDougal administration's China policy.


Thank you for your support.


MCDOUGAL

*Wal*Mart people: I'm going to be in a position to do a lot for you guys, if you catch my drift... Confucius say "Hand which scratch my back have other hand in pocket..." Capiche? Give me a call.

The McDougal Campaign Tour - Day 62

I feel like the campaign in slowly losing what little momentum we have gained since this thing began. Shit... It has been over two months now, and not a peep about the campaign in any publication, no matter how minor. Even after many costly re-shoots, no TV networks will air our campaign ads. They say they are "offensive" and "slanderous." Fuck those guys. The closest thing to media coverage we have gotten is, we have been the subject of inter-company memos in every major hotel chain, warning their employees not to book rooms for us under any circumstances. At least there are still plenty of independent, mom and pop hotels around. Although, it may not be long until word gets around to them too. The overnight lodging industry is a surprisingly tightly-knit community. Who knew? You would think they would want McDougal running roughshod over the competition, but when he got so drunk that he raped the Pepsi machine at the Holiday Inn in Spokane they knew the whole story at the Motel 6 in Poughkeepsie just a few days later. To make matters worse, we are burning through our campaign fund at an alarming rate. I'm trying desperately to schedule some fundraising dinners in a few major cities, but since I don't know where we will be on any given day, this is next to impossible.

McDougal's MP3 playlist:

White Lines - Grandmaster Flash
Fortunate Son - Creedence Clearwater Revival
Ride of the Valkyries - Wagner
Free Ride - Edgar Winter
Bombs Over Baghdad - Outkast
Highway to Hell - AC/DC
Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
Tiny Bubbles - Don Ho
Running With the Devil - Van Halen
City Hall - Tenacious D

Campaign Announcement

McDougal has been sober since some time Sunday afternoon. He's also not slept since. He's been in round the clock meetings with policy advisers, scholars, and strippers.

He's also issued his first actual platform statement to a conservative group in California (a state McDougal claims may or may not even be a part of the United States of America).

He wrote the following in crayon on the back of a Burger King bag and faxed it out this morning:

The Salton Sea is a 380 square miles lake/inland sea in southern
California. It is full of algae; sometimes it gets so bad that the
neighbors complain.
One of the first acts of my administration will be to
establish algae collection stations around the perimeter of the Salton Sea, both
to make it a more pleasant amenity and to produce biodiesel, the sales of which
will go to support my friends in the military-industrial complex.
Thank you
for your support.