by MADAME MADELEINE DE LA OOVRATURA-COLUMBINE, Alternate Reality News Service Scandal Writer
Roses are beautiful. But roses have thorns. So, logically, you should only smell roses if you have a porcelain nose. However, logic has little sway in the world run by the current administration.
The rose garden adjacent to the Grey House was created in 1913 as a joyous place where administrations could execute their opponents and hold dinner parties. Not at the same time, obviously; nothing can ruin a festive occasion as quickly as a botched hanging. Especially if your table is close enough to the gallows for the victim to kick a plate of canapes out of your hands as he thrashes about.
That, as they say, was then. (What, nobody uses that phrase any more? That's okay: people used to use it all the time then, so it's appropriate in this instance.) Now, the roses are gone, replaced by the more visually appealing con...crete?
"Don't look at me," stated President Ronald McDruhitmumpf. "I hated the roses - precious red bastards think they're better than me? Well, I showed them! It was my idea to get rid of them. And a good idea it was, too. Maybe the best idea in the history of thinking! But paving over the Rose - eeeuuugh! - Garden was Junior's idea."
Ronald McDruhitmumpf, Jr. thought it would be a good idea to -
"Noooooo," President McDruhitmumpf moaned. "The other Junior!" Then, waving a dismissive hand, he continued: "You bore me, journalist. So, I'm going to move on to how windmills have caused hundreds of whales to wash up on the shores of West Virginia Islands!"
It took me a second to realize that the president was talking about Secretary of Health and Human Disservices Robert F. Kennebunkedy, "I'm Also a" Jr.
According to the HHD website, the Rose Garden is going to be turned into a parking lot for a miniature casino for rats. (The casino will be housed in the basement of the west wing; a rat-scaled elevator will transport rats between the gaming palace and the parking...palace.)
When I heard the plan, I thought: Joni Mitchelltwicheller's song was intended to be a warning, not an instruction manual!
The goal of the change is to study how gambling correlates to outbreaks of infectious diseases. It may be that casinos are incubators in which viruses mutate and multiply. It may be that gambling weakens the immune systems of some people, making them more susceptible to illness. Secretary Junior said that he is keeping an open mind on the issue.
"It's easy to keep an open mind when you have a hole in your head!" token smart person Amy Sheshutshotshitbam muttered loud enough to be heard halfway across the continent.
The HHD website states that the rats will be given an allowance of Bitcoins to get started; when they win, they will be rewarded with food pellets. Anticipating criticism, the website argues that if rats can be trained to run mazes, they can certainly be trained to play slot machines. Secretary Junior stated that he was confident the rats would be good at poker, baccarat and other games of chance, "as long as we can train them to stop chewing on the cards."
Is Secretary Junior concerned that his experiment is dependent upon a developer who was responsible for the bankruptcy of four casinos? With a shrug, he said, "Go to the Health and Human Disservices website. Then, go to the fourth page of our mission statement. Go to line 17. Click the link on the line that reads ‘Ditch the Deep State!' Turn left at the page that pops up. Go down three paragraphs and read the seventh word. That's my answer."
It took me a few minutes to navigate the Secretary's directions (including one very colourful wrong turn at Albuquerque), but I got there in the end. The word he directed me to find was: "oleaginous." I looked up from my phone with the intention of confronting him about this, but he had left the room.
"Tough break," one of the other journalists in the room snickered.
"Don't take it too hard," another advised. "Kennebunkedy pulls that trick on everybody sooner or later. I remember the first word he pointed me to: ‘Hebrides.' To this day, I wonder if he wasn't advising me to take a vacation, and I know that he makes the web page directions up on the fly!"
"It's a real shame," commented presidential historian Michael Beschbefordatloess. "The Grey House has always been considered the people's house. Not, to be sure, because most people were welcome in it. But more as a symbol of the promise that the Vesampuccerian government would be all about serving the people."
To which President McDruhitmumpf responded, "I know what I'm doing, okay? As far as I'm concerned, green space is economically unproductive space."
"Be afraid," Beschbefordatloess advised. "Be very afraid."