The Iowa Spawning Ground

I’ve spent the last 2 years chronicling the slow descent into madness of Michelle Bachmann. From her proclamation that congress was filled with Commies that needed to be weeded out by the ghost of Joe McCarthy to her fear that President Obama’s call for volunteerism among the nation’s youth was a thinly veiled program to get them into internment camps where they would be brain washed to become tie-dye wearing vegans living off of government assistance and growing pot out of empty buckets of spackling compound, I’ve mined Michelle’s pixilation for laughs all the while wondering how the voters of Minnesota couldn’t notice the twinkle of insanity in her eyes.

Recently Michelle has been threatening to run for president. Of course, as someone who uses her batshit crazy behavior for his benefit I was thrilled. Two years of debates, interviews, speeches and appearances: Michelle will be in the public eye constantly. There’s no telling when her mind will go off the rails and where that train of lunacy will end up. But today, I have to admit, Michelle surprised even me. She didn’t wait for an interview with Chris Matthews or a campaign stump speech. She hit the ground running and made her first gaffe on THE DAY SHE ANNOUNCED HER CANDIDACY. Yes! Michelle Bachmann ladies and gentlemen . . .

Today Michelle made the announcement that she was officially running for president in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa (insert your own Napoleonic reference here). Michelle said:

"Well, what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That's the kind of spirit that I have, too."

Who doesn’t admire The Duke? A man who made movies that stood up for traditional American values, a man who beat cancer twice, a man who wasn’t born in Waterloo, Iowa. Yes, Michelle got her facts wrong once again. John Wayne the movie star was born in Winterset, Iowa. John Wayne Gacy was born in Waterloo. John Wayne Gacy, who went on to murder 33 people, hide the bodies under the floorboards of his home and eventually is executed by lethal injection.

So if Michelle has the spirit of John Wayne Gacy behind her campaign I have to assume that she will be murdering the other Republican candidates one by one and stashing the bodies under the rug of her congressional office. I can’t wait until she puts on the clown makeup and twists Mitt Romney’s intestines into the shape of a poodle.

Be proud Iowa. You’ve spawned a serial killer and the craziest woman in congress. I’m not sure which one you should be smacked for more.

I’m hoping in the next few days the other republican candidates take on the anima of their favorite killer. I think it would really enliven a dull process. Tim Pawlenty could become Ted Bundy, Newt Gingrich takes on the persona of Ed Gein while Ron Paul channels Charles Manson. Just think of the debates. While Newt is covering his podium with the skin of Fred Karger, Ron Paul will be carving swastikas into his own cheeks as Tim Pawlenty strangles Herman Cain.

Michelle has struck at the heart of American politics: every man/woman for themselves, hiding the bodies until the authorities catch up to them.

Heal Thyself

I have a paper route. Boy it sounds stupid when I write it out, like I’m 12 again delivering the daily to get enough money to order some sea monkeys and x-ray specs from the back of the Daffy Duck comic book. Alas, I am not 12, I’m 46 and need the money so I deliver papers in the morning as a second job and the repetitive motion of wrapping the rubber bands around the papers is wearing the skin away from several of my fingers. They hurt enough I wrap them in first aid tape. I’ve grown really tired of having my fingers taped up so I went to my medicine cabinet and got out the Neosporin to hopefully heal things up.

After a few applications I inspected my dried out skin for progress and . . . nothing. They looked and felt the same. But then I noticed other changes. When I swore under my breath it was in Norwegian. I spoke louder, doing the soliloquy from Macbeth in a Scandinavian dialect and a voice deeper than Barry White. My brain was swirling with strange images I couldn’t explain nor deny. Picking up a sharpie I inexplicably began covering my walls with the multiplication tables and recipes for potato pancakes. I knew I was in serious trouble when I started not singing the songs of Tom Jones, but mooing them like a cow. Then in the middle of the bridge for “She’s a Lady” I called a friend and told them “I have superseded ultra-consciousness and passed on to the realm of the blue ocean sting ray dream.”

I must have passed out at some point because the next thing I remember is waking up on the floor under the end table having a conversation with a lamp cord that graduated from Dartmouth with a 3.5 GPA. The last sane thing I could recall was using the Neosporin so I looked at the tube to discover that it had expired in 2008. Note to self, clean out medicine cabinet once in a while.

I found another half-full tube of Neosporin and you would think that after my experience I would check the expiration date, but I didn’t. I lathered it onto my hurting fingers as though it were Lorenzo’s oil then sat back and waited for the healing to begin.

Now, I don’t know where the marching band came from, but I do know if they had played the Broadway medley one more time I was going to let the beavers out of the cage. There’s only so much “Pirates of Penzance” I can take. Also, the state of Kansas, get off my lawn, you’re tramping down my azaleas.

After applying the Neosporin, things got . . . hazy. Colors called out my name and asked me to dance. There was an antelope in my living room doing stand-up and I’ll be damned if he wasn’t a funny son-of-a-bitch. I found the end of the rainbow but instead of a leprechaun and a pot of gold it was Danny Devito and a cardboard box of tangelos. I’m not sure how or why but my living room was filled with water and I was playing Marco Polo with a basking shark. I called that same friend again to let them know that “the seventh dimension of free-falling dementia is a pale rider for the blowing breeze of Pluto’s ascendancy.”

Here’s the thing about waking up in a kimono with baling wire wrapped around your feet and wearing a necklace of Ritz crackers: You don’t want to remember how you got that way but man does the silk feel good against your skin. When I was fully sane again I checked that tube of Neosporin and it had expired in 2004. Yeah, that’s right. I had a tube of antiseptic cream lying in my medicine cabinet for over 7 years. Go ahead, top that. I dare you.