Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Henry Ford Is Raised From The Dead

The Ford family was against the idea. The medical profession did not think it could be done. But the Governor of Michigan signed into law the exhumation order which had the gravediggers remove Henry Ford’s body from his grave at the Ford Cemetery in Detroit. The casket was shipped to the Chemistry Department of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where something very secret was performed on the body of Henry Ford. The Board of Directors of the Ford Motor Company were in one of the lecture halls in the same building waiting nervously, including Henry Ford’s grandson, who was the current CEO of the Ford Motor Company.

When Henry Ford walked into the lecture hall, he appeared almost green and very frail. His hair was grey and he walked with the help of two assistants. They brought him to the podium which was off to the side. Mr. Ford grabbed the side lips of the podium to steady himself. One of the assistants positioned the microphone near Henry Ford’s mouth. The audience was in shock. How could this be? They were told that Henry Ford could be raised from the dead for only an hour, and that during that time he could probably muster some kind of speech. But the chemists and biologists who had worked on the body were as startled as the audience at how vital the old man was. Afterall, he had died back in 1947 at the age of 83, almost sixty years ago.

Old Henry Ford tapped the mike and it made a loud clack throughout the lecture hall. The Ford family, including all the cousins and great grandchildren, as well as the Board members, were all there. The old man smiled at the thundering clack he made with the tap on the mike. The audience jumped from the noise.

Henry Ford, with his dry cracked lips that had the color of eggplant, leaned into the microphone. His voice was raspy but bellowed with a deep pitch, stronger than one would expect from a man temporarily raised from the dead. “I am told I do not have much time. So let me keep this short and sweet. You people are idiots. Every goddamn one of you. You have no guts. You have no foresight. You have no vision. You have taken this great company that I built with every bead of sweat in my body and turned it into shit. You have let events control the company rather than the company control events. Why the fuck do my cars still run on gasoline? You are still using the internal combustion engine? That piece of shit is a hundred years old. Do you have a research and development department? Or do you assholes have stock in the oil companies? What? Oh, are you scared of the oil companies? Or are you just fucking lazy? And why the fuck did you turdheads bend over every three years and let the UAW ram anything they wanted up your asses? Don’t get me wrong. I don’t blame my workers. But you know what you jerks taught them? You taught them if they asked for it, you would give it to them. So as far as I am concerned, the UAW was smart. The UAW took care of their members. But you half-brains just sat on your fat asses and let the dividend checks come in without thinking of the future. So I am here to tell you to all go to hell. I am ashamed of what you did to this great company. I am ashamed that you people come from the same gene pool as me.”

At that moment Henry Ford started to cough. The assistants came over to help. Henry Ford pushed them away, holding his index finger up with a gesture that he had one more thing to say.
“Maybe you have one last shot at saving this great company. Maybe. But you are going to have to break some balls and piss a lot of people off and spend a lot of money to do it. Good luck. And try to make me smile when I am lying in my casket. Because recently all I’ve been doing is getting pissed off.”

With that, he turned and walked out slowly with the aide of the two assistants. Everyone in the lecture hall was silent. As silent as a Ford assembly line.

George Bush Is Ecstatic

President George W. Bush sat in one of the two three-cushioned couches in the Oval Office on the morning of Wednesday, November 8th. There were several newspapers lying on the plush rug, unopened, unread, but with banner headlines in large black letters. Newspapers were routinely delivered to President Bush, and Bush routinely ignored them. Afterall, why read newspapers. They were written by journalists who went to college and through osmosis became soaked in a liberal view of the world. Bush did not need to read that. And the banner headlines, which Bush saw at the corner of his eye, had exclamation points, or if they didn’t, they sure as hell should have. The editors could not help but have erections at the election last night. The Democrats were back, and the media was peeing on themselves with glee. But you see, this is where they have it all wrong, thought George W. Bush. Because it was George who was happy. If the Democrats think President Bush was going to crawl under a rock and let them control things, they were as thin and liberal as he always suspected. Bush already had a plan. In Bush’s view, he would rather nuke an American city and make it look like an attack by Islamic terrorists than suddenly go soft. Sometimes you had to do crazy things to save the world. More importantly, sometimes you had to do crazy things to save America. Americans can be idiots, thought Bush. Just because a few Americans die in Iraq, a sandy shithole, they all start to get scared or so soft. Soft. That’s what Demorcats are: soft. Nope. Not George. Now was the true test of his character. God was testing him. Now George W. Bush was really going to show them who was boss. Bush smiled. This was a message from God. It was time to get tough. He had just two more years. He was going to make the most of it. George Bush stood and stepped on the newspapers and walked to the Oval Office bathroom to take a dump. He always liked taking a dump when he felt pumped for a fight. Yeah.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Secret Service Buys Sony PS3 For President Bush

The time was 11:45pm. A line of people stretched around the corner from the suburban Best Buy in Fairfax, Virginia. Max Fine was number two on the line. Max Fine wore a fleece jacket covered by a beige raincoat. His jeans were new with an iron crease down the front. His Nike running shoes were uncomfortable because they had yet to be broken in. Max Fine was a career Secret Service agent, one of the best, and in the inner circle of agents that protected President George W. Bush. He was 43 years old, his 44th birthday just a few weeks away. Max was not married, never had been, no children, and was thankful for the lack of headaches family seems to bring others. But today, tonight that is, he felt like part of a big family, like one of the kids told to go out and run an errand. Afterall, that is exactly what he was doing.
The number one guy on the line outside of Best Buy looked like he was a college kid, long hair, face stubble, frayed baggy jeans, and Asian. The number three guy on the line also looked like a college kid, long hair, face stubble, frayed baggy jeans, and African American. Number four was a girl. Number five was an older woman, maybe 35, overweight with a crew cut, covered in a fuzzy pink coat with round pink buttons the size of silver dollars. Her skinny bare legs were a mismatch for her rotund upper body. There were of course numbers six, seven, eight…by number fifteen or so, the line turned the corner down the long stretch of the side of the large store that sat in the parking lot separate from the Fairfax Shopping Mall.
Max Fine had gotten to the Best Buy to get online at 6:00pm, as instructed by the President. President Bush said “Max, I want you to be the first in there to get me that thing.” Well, Max would not be the first. Max was number two. The Asian college kid was number one. Max would flash his credentials, but the President also said “Don’t let anyone know you’re buying this for me.” Max had no idea there would be a line. Max also was surprised to learn that Best Buy was to stay open until 1:00 AM just so it could be the first to sell Sony’s Playstation 3 at midnight when it legally was to go on sale. The President said “Dick doesn’t know about these things. There is lots of stuff to learn on Playstation. But Dick doesn’t understand that.” Max Fine was not certain why the President launched into a rant about Vice President Dick Cheney, but he suspected that the President had altered his view of “Dickie Bear,” as he was known in the Secret Service. The resignation of Rumsfeld seemed to change everything. The President chatted more with non-essential personnel now, such as Max was referred to though his job was to protect the life of the President, a task that any thinking person would deem essential. But today, or tonight that is, Max was doing what the Service used to call a “coffee run,” but was now called “doing a Starbucks.” Max was doing a Starbucks at Best Buy to get the new Playstation 3 plus a game. The President whispered it: “Resistance - Fall of Man.” Bush said it was supposed to have the best graphics and blow away anything on the Xbox. “Cheney and Rummie wouldn’t understand the usefulness of Resistance - Fall of Man, but the play action and the 3D graphics would give my administration the confidence to do the right thing in Iraq,” said Bush to Max Fine in the same whisper Bush had uttered the name of the game.
Max looked over at the Asian kid. “You ever hear of Resistance - Fall of Man?” asked Max.
“Yeah,” said the Asian kid.
“You buying it?” asked Max.
“Nope. Can’t afford it. Barely enough for the PS3,” said the Asian kid.
“Don’t buy it,” said the African-American kid to Max’s right.
“Oh, yeah. I heard it was good,” said Max.
“You heard wrong. All the idiots think it’s good. The game has no style, no grace. There’s no room for nuance,” said the African-American kid.
“I see,” said Max.
Everyone on the line started to come to attention. It was almost midnight. The end of one day, the beginning of another, the two days separated by a consumer marketing moment. Max thought of his job description. The last sentence of the description says “And anything else the President requests.”