"Silence, foul fiend!" The former Senator/Secretary springs to her feet, knocking over two overeager camera operators and spilling the Younger Senator's water. "You and your loathsome kind have silenced me long enough with your threats. "I WILL say it! I hate the TPP and everything it stands for! Now do your worst! Foul fiend! --As I noted previously."
The moderator's icy pterodactyl mask slips for just a second, exposing the soulless multinational corporation below. "So. You have made your choice. You knew the consequences. Now America's icons will pay the price."
THUMP.
"That was a literary mortar round eliminating Donald Duck, Senator/Secretary. Will you retract your rash statement, or will Mickey Mouse be next? ....Your silence speaks for you. Paradoxically."
THUMP.
That must've been Mickey Mouse! Gosh, will they stop with Disney? What if they go after...Scooby Doo??? Is stopping the TPP worth the loss of Peabody and Sherman?
THUMP. THUMP. THUMPATHUMPATHUMPATHUMP. THUMPATHUMPATHUMPATHUMPA.
Wait a minute. That isn't the sound of transnational evil's literary mortar fire destroying American cultural icons. That's the dog. Waking me up with his scratching. Even though he doesn't have fleas.
Dammit, you dumb dog, stop scratching. You had a bath with organic nondetergent oatmeal infused shampoo a week ago AND a flea treatment. You're doing this on purpose to annoy me.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMPATHUMPATHUMPATHUMP. THUMPATHUMPATHUMPATHUMPA.
Ignore it. Go back to sleep. Maybe I can get back into the debate dream. I want to hear what the Older Senator says. Breathe in, two, three, four; hold, two, three, four; breathe out, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Breathe in, two... Maybe I should put on some whale music, or old blues...
Lefty he can't sing the blues,
All night long like he used to;
The dust poor Pancho bit down south
Ended up in Lefty's mouth..."
What a line! Who wrote that? Somebody Van Zandt. Wonder what else he wrote. No. Stop. Sleep. Relax hands. Relax toes. Breathe in, two, three, four; Hold, two...
Click click click clickety clickety click click clickety clickety clickclickclickclick click click click.
STOP WALKING AROUND, you dumb dog. You had two walks today and everybody told you you were the best dog in the world and played with you and gave you hors d'eouvres. You're 13 years old and you're supposed to sleeping all the time. Especially at night. Or do dogs get sundown syndrome too?
Insomnia Helper #1
THUMP thumple thumple thumple.
Ah, he's scuttled to his office -- under the bed. Quiet at last.
The Older Senator and the Younger Senator and the former Senator/Governor and the former Senator/Secretary are adrift in a lifeboat. Reporters paddle after them on air mattresses, shouting questions. "How hungry are you? Who are you going to kill and eat first? How will you decide?" The candidates ignore them in favor of the epic poems each is writing on yellow legal pads. Baffled, the reporters begin zinging their queries in the form of slow moving drones launched toward the lifeboat. Daenerys Targaryen's dragons flap by on their way to a script conference and flambee the reporters, but the drones continue, each with an eerie warning whine.
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Aaah! That's no drone, that's a mosquito! Aaaaaagh! Hit it! Kill it!
No good. It's retreated. Unless I got it.
Back to sleep. Sleep. Dorothy Parker wrote about trying to sleep. "What fresh hell is this?" is in that story. She knew her way around a line just as well as that Van Zandt guy. "Robert Benchley and I had an office so tiny that an inch smaller and it would have been adultery." I wonder if Van Zandt would've liked the Round Table at the Algonquin. Not much of a guy for martinis, but he was depressed, and that seems to have been a qualification.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Aieee! It's the mosquito again! Swollen with my blood, no doubt; he's way louder this time. Whack him!
Funny how much Daenerys's dragons remind you of mosquitos, when you think about it. When they appear they're unignorable, and then they just disappear. Ideal dei ex machina.
The candidates' lifeboat drifts athwart a massive floating collection of Waterworldian junks and yachts and rafts and TV studios. Peering from its portholes are another Older Senator and two Younger Senators and a Reptile Senator and a Former Governor -- no, two Former Governors -- and a Former CEO and two Current Governors and a Retired Neurosurgeon and two Evangelical Explainers and a Guy with Hair...
That's it. Knitting needles, raveled sleeve of care, here I come.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz