It's been years now -- and I've felt the lack like a hole square through my simple Celtic heart -- but finally last night the ghost of Hunter T returned to my bedchamber.
"Paine, you suckling porker you -- what's up? The Hill ain't your beat no more? The congress beneath your dignity or something?"
He did not wait upon my answer.
"Shit, I gotta rush this. It's unofficial -- my being here -- officially I'm playing stud poker with my buddy Rainer-Marie. He has over some loose-ass motherfuckers -- Luke Apuleius, Joe Addison, Bill Occam. I'm missin' this for you, Paine. And if the Angkor scans me while I'm here -- it's zoop! Back down to the pit, and pronto.
"Maybe you didn't grasp this back there, couple-three years ago, but I can't haunt anyone but Congress watchers. The triad is into pure mission focus -- god bless 'em -- and as a liberator, second rate, I'm assigned to visitatin' with scribes of the north american peoples' representatives only.
"Why, you ask? 'Cause -- err, um -- well that body in its profane wisdom ultimately must be the catalyst of the American people's salvation -- kinda like the Roman senate wasn't, vis-a-vis the imperial system and all. Only this time it's gotta be different -- this time the congress is gonna topple the unitary presidency -- or I'll fuck Ma Cass." I can't really quite capture describe this patter of Hunters -- it all came at me in shape-shifts, likea lunatic sampling of recollected voices. There was a fair measure of Clark Gable, and some offputting Gabby Hayes, and maybe a touch of David Brinkley, and lots, I mean lots, of Bob Reich for some reason.
"And now, you got this het hip Adlai type right up there in the White House ready to play the people's emperor bit. Seeing as the monocrats' monomania is ceaseless aquistion of more elbow room -- pushing the power envelope -- well this guy's gonna try pushin' into new regions.
"So madame speaker, the Nan there, with her hag closeups and lampshade suits and huge chest cones and all, needs to quit this bride of Frankenstein bit -- cut out the Gothic Boulevard, seven-veil act for Barack, and spend her quality time clawing up the GOP leadership like the wild bloody she-cat she is.
"Bypass the prez tango and just gain traction by hacking away at those closet-fruit top-shelfers across the aisle. Run the bastards back and forth through a shambles, put on an S and M show in the House like nothin' since Thaddeus Stevens ran things.
"Call it Congressional Reconstruction II -- the red states' reconstruction, the spiritual Dixie reconstruction. You got me? She needs by congressional action alone to organize all those mongrel sunbelt wage-class helots, the undocs, the brothers, all the busted rednecks and tattoo Annies alike into a national system of freedmens' bureaus -- and -- and -- Fuck! No! I'm getting recalled! Shit!"
And right then, poof! he disappeared.
I have no notion nor even the inkling of a notion where Hunter was going with all that.
I suspect I'd better attend to the house that Madison built once again, like I did through the election of '06, and hope that'll give Hunter permission to return and fill in the rest of the plan.
Comments (1)
"Suckling porker"?!
When I was young, ghosts made an effort to remain civil. They might terrify people, and why not? That's part of the job. But they spared them the gratuitous insults. I'm all in favor of progress and ghastly apparitions exercising their right to free speech, but is it asking too much for them to show some sensitivity?
Posted by Al Schumann | January 28, 2009 10:08 AM
Posted on January 28, 2009 10:08