Tales from the Cryptic:

A Missing Essay

[Zeppnote, 3/29/02] Believe it or not, I once had an essay go missing. In fact, it went missing about two years ago, and I just happened to come across it today.

I’m in the process of going over my website and doing a bit of revamping and housecleaning. Use CSS, clean up a bunch of links that have gone flaky over time, that kind of thing. Background stuff.

But the site is some 1,200 pages and over 9,000 links, so even a relatively minor spruce-up requires some thought and planning, so I don’t end up putting several months in on a job I hope to finish in my spare time in a week.

First thing would be to get rid of all the superfluous files. This would be redundant gifs, stuff I d/led for inclusion in essays that I didn’t end up using, and of course, the slush pile. The slush pile is where I put essays where I get 300 or 500 or 1000 words in and realize it’s a complete hopeless dog, or it gets superceded by events, and the essay is rendered moot, or ridiculously wrong. I was looking through the pile, looking to see if any of those efforts could be resurrected (not even on Easter weekend, it seems!) or if any were so ridiculous that I could work them into a humor piece or something.

I had noticed the file called "Weyrich.wpd" before, but just assumed it was the Word Perfect format for a bunch of Paul Weyrich quotes that I had in "Other Voices." I gave it a glance, and stopped dead. Weyrich was in the story, which explains why I called the file that, but his role was parenthetical. What it was was a complete essay I wrote about the GOP primary in February of 2000, once which explored the vicious and goofy nature of the now-famous South Carolina campaign.

It was still early enough on that I felt that none of the pieces would be of interest to anyone two days after they were written – indeed, coming at a time when my website was averaging 6 hits a day, there wasn’t much interest in them they day they were written. I’ve since gained popularity, and realized that the old stuff usually makes for interesting reminders of current events past, and provides good ammo for liberals to use against the ever-forgetful.

I was still finding my Voice, so this one looks a little strange to me. But it was falling-down funny (to me, at least) when I wrote it, and I think it holds up very well.

The McCainian Candidate:

Must be the Season of the Weyrich

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

2/17/00

http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Humor/McCain.htm

OK. It's a cheap "fill" story. We could fill my harddrive just talking about the Bush campaign, which is proving that money can't buy you love. Nor does rich = smart, judging from Rub_a_Dub Shrub.

But with the primaries just starting, it's already been an incredible year. There are already pranks and pitfalls that would make the legendary Dick Tuck groan with envy.

This particular story I call, "The Macainian Candidate: Must Be the Season of the Weyrich"

Paul Weyrich, foaming nutcase who runs the ultra right_wing "Free Congress" outfit on the net, started a story in his syndicated email claiming that Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain, who spent six years as a POW in the "Hanoi Hilton", was a "Manchurian Candidate": i.e., a POW brainwashed by evil Asiatic overlords, who comes back to America after the war, seemingly normal, gets involved in politics, runs for President, gets elected, and, once in office, would have a keyword whispered in his ear which would lead him to go mad and destroy America. [Deep breath]. Right. Just like the movie.

But Weyrich didn't use just a Hollywood movie for his source. Oh, no. He used a source of impeccable morality and probity, one which could only have the best interests of America at heart.

His source was the Khmer Rouge.

Yes, that Khmer Rouge. Those fun_loving cut_ups who killed a third of the population of Cambodia and threatened to engulf all of Southeast Asia in a genocide worse than any seen to date.

I mean, if you wanted to warn American about bad guys, the Khmer Rouge is the first folks you would talk to, right?

On that note, we'll leave Weyrich to spin madly and hiss at blank walls, and mosey over to the McCain camp.

Naturally, they've gotten wind of this story.

Now, for a brainwashed zombie who is on an unwitting mission to destroy his country, McCain has a pretty good sense of humor. Of course, when you have to deal with alleged fellow conservatives who are out to destroy you because you don't think candidates should be empty pawns of big business and big religion, a sense of humor comes in handy.

So, it is reported, he got together with several of his consultants, and devised a fiendish plan. Since he is, after all, a brainwashed dupe of Hanoi, fiendish is the best you're going to get out of this guy.

In the movie, Frank Sinatra is to be triggered by a code word, which sets off a post_hypnotic suggestion. It was decided that McCain should have such a trigger word, and the existence of this word should be leaked to the Bush camp. Weyrich is an irritating and repetitive noise, and somehow, the word "banjo" just suggested itself.

What the McCain people hoped to do was leak it out to the Bush people that Weyrich's paranoid rants were, in fact, true, and the trigger word that would cause McCain to go spectacularly nuts in front of millions of Americans and 220 countries was "banjo".

In theory, Bush would just happen to use the word in the candidates' debate held a couple of days before the South Carolina primary. He would be assured that if he used the word, McCain would leap up, sending the table flying, utter a mighty scream of rage, kick Alan Keyes in the 'nads, bite Larry King's head off, and go lurching out the door in search of nuclear codes.

It seemed the type of debate scenario that even George W. Bush could win.

Of course, when the word was said, McCain would just sit there, calm and collected, because of course, he wouldn't tell the Bush camp the real trigger word, and eventually, he ask Bush why he was rabbitting on about banjoes. Then he could just grin while G_Dub turned bright pink.

`But Bush has a bad habit of talking over his advisors, to their enormous frustration. They kept trying to tell him the word, and he kept interrupting them, and eventually things got a little bit mixed up.

`So if you watch the debate, and something about Bush seems a bit odd, and there's a phrase he keeps using over and over, it's because his exasperated aides, trying to tell him the secret word and being forestalled by G_Dub's voluability, kept saying, "If you would please let me finish..."

And if McCain looks ever so slightly perplexed, it's because "Please Let Me Finish" was NOT the keyword they leaked to the Bush camp.