Robert Mueller hangdogs it to the top of the cave with the last of his remaining finger strength. his callouses are in his thumb prints and in his heart. his face is so exhausted wrecked and wet his wrinkles are rivers of dried sweat flakes.
he plops by a small pebble at the cave entrance and doesn't feel the hot wind on his face. he sticks out his tongue to see if he can still taste existence. he removes his heavy Avenging Angel wings and they plop to the ground in a thud of dust and termites.
Putin: *smiling sneeringly* what's the matter, Bob? you looked like a pussy out there. where's your vim? your vim vim VIM!
Bob: i'm tired. i'm tired of my work. i'm tired of this process. i'm tired of the world. i'm tired of YOUR world! i'm tired of life. but i'm NOT TIRED of the rule of law!
Putin licks Bob's face. Bob speaks slowly and deliberately and measuredly.
Bob: don't get satisfied. what are you gonna do after Bump? sure you got the second election already rigged but you can't predict the future unless you're a witch. and you are most definitely just another man! like they say on ESPN Football: JAG.
Putin: *rubbing his chin* o i'm sure i can think of something.
Bob: why aren't you in Canada now? they're experiencing their Obama Years now. with the Obama ears. i'm your new roommate, think of me as an invisible shackle around your ankle. pants down around your ankles. wherever you go, i go, ho. forever.
Moscow Mitch is huddled like a sack of potatoes by the corner of the cave, sweating and crying.
President Bump sitting Indian-style: what are you doing here?
Moscow Mitch: i hate my name! i'd actually prefer to be called Moscow BITCH rather than Moscow Mitch!
Bump: hey Marianne, i really do like you down-low, i just can't say that in public. i'm terrified of you beating me.
Marianne Williamson: i hate all pricks. o i have the most wonderful news! RUSSELL BRAND AND I ARE DATING!!! now HE is a brand! that's why i did this whole thing! he is gorgeous. but he's not just gorgeous with the long Poldark black hair, he's the greatest spiritual prophet i know! i mean the man is effortless and blasé about his genius, he's the Russ of Reishi!
Bump: i'm the Imam of Impotence. wait, you didn't run for President to sell books?
Marianne: i could ask you the same.
the Linzess babe now works for CNN as a Price Is Right girl. she wears a brown robe. but you can still see her large bulbous ass Felica Combs-style.
Linzess babe: and i have a vulvous vagina.
Wolf: i'm a better gameshow host than Alex Trebek. we went medieval in your ass recently.
Bump: i know.
Wolf: we're the millennial channel, we went old skool, we drew lots to determine who's President.
Alex Trebek: for some reason we end our string of new Jeopardy shows in Midsommar last week of July. we only have Augusts off. where we go on summer vacation and lose all our lifelong friendships and relationships. i mean who watches NEW Jeopardy during summer?
Buttigieg: CHEATING distance, get it?
Laertus: wow! Beto's really letting Bump have it! laying into him like a motherfucking cementlayer.
Eye Luggage: *crying and burbling and gurbling and pointing to Beto on the screen* that's my bitch...that's my bitch…
Beto and Julian Castro hug.
Bump: i don't get it, isn't Beto white, too?
at ESPN First Take, Molly Qerim has just walked off set.
Molly Q: i am so offset right now. i mean i don't give a damn about what's-his-face Black Hulk guy, but what you said, Max Kellerman, well that just now actually hurt my feelings.
Max Kellerman starts to cry.
Max: damn, i didn't even cry when my brother died. i'm sorry, Molly, but you know this has nothing to do with Kobe Bryant.
Molly: *crying* it's just...it's just...
Max: i know. Molly you my Q Boo. but i just can't do that to my boy Jalen Rose.
Jalen: *putting on his eyeglasses* this is all too cultural for me.
Jalen Rose walks off set.
at The Weather Channel, Creek Stewart is helping newbie Felicia Combs tie a knapsack around her butt. Felicia gives him the reacharound to touch the back of his hair.
Felicia: wait...i always thought you wore a ponytail...what the fuck is this?
Creek: i'm half-squirrel. i have half-squirrel DNA, i checked my DNA on match.com. that ponytail is actually a fluffy puffy squirrel tail.
Felicia: shit! i'm calling my cozzin Puffy. now that i look deep gazingly into your eyes, YOU HAVE BUCK TEETH!
Creek: squirrel teeth.
Maria LaRosa arrives on the spot at the spot in a crack of blue lightning which causes the entire forest to catch fire.
Creek: fuck, woman!
Maria: you wish, kid. ah yes, Creek Stewart. and his "nature walks". don't fall for it, honey. i mean he was doing the same knapsack routine thing using only twig and berries with Stephanie Abrams just last week.
Creek: what can i say. i'm good. at my job.
Maria: i mean your name really is CREEK? come on. for an outdoorsman? that's a bit convenient.
Creek: given name. my father was the love child of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett and the Country Jamboree Bear who has that jug of plum-tomato rum in a mini-barrel around his neck which doubles as his washboard instrument.
Felicia: *rubbing her chin then her ass* that explains the squirrel DNA, it's unnatural. having a threesome is unnatural. what are you doing here?
Maria: i'm here to replace you. you're fired.
Dirg: you bisschen!
Llywarch: nice, Dirg, real nice.
Dirg: relax. it means little. as in kawaii, you and Laertus are bishonen, right? just con talk, that's all.
at the Treehouse, things are coming to a head:
Doryce: well, it looks like you're stuck with me.
Gladyce: i love it, dear.
Doryce: no, that was for Dirg. doesn't look like i'll be going out much in the near future. that's a practice familiar to you, right Dirgsy!? i'll just be dreaming of destinations from now on.
Gladyce: don't lose hope, lover, bans are just that. eventually bans get banned.
Doryce: Toloache? Letang for some Tang? Faulhaber? i need my rudis, Bama hasn't called in a week.
Gladyce: you are just the rude girl to desire such a thing. rude gal? rude babe? i'll give Eye Luggage a ring and see if Harley Hammer's home.
Doryce: once the leash is loosed, let's go to Powell's Books in Oregon.
Gladyce: enough with the whiteness.
Doryce: no i want dusty first-editions of some Ursula K Le Guin dime pulp and Atwood dustcovers to soothe my salve vav. i need some Sister Love, that's the warmest and krinkliest of the loves.
Doryce: i dunno. maybe i've lost my edge. i mean just the other night as i was tinkling i see as predicted two shellless slugs squirming their way onto the bathroom tile. i was able to insta-react, instinct-issue, strike my hand, raise a fist, but then i thought to myself, "you know, i admire these little worms! i got love for the little fuckers! despite all the odds against them---from Nature and the Cruelty of Man---they survive. and lemme tell ya, Nature is a mean ol' mother, she's Joan-Crawford-level, but she's a good witch. the worms keep sliding back into airconditioned back walls and serrated holes and they survive! they keep living! and then i saw it. there weren't two, there were THREE, it was a FAMILY! i couldn't after that, you know, i had grown the balls of admiration for them, i counted them as equals in this dark game called life. they keep coming, they just keep coming no matter what. no matter how many stomp- or flush-deaths proceed them. if they're so willing to live i'm willing to live and let live. i'll never bother those worms again.
Dirg at the fridge shaking the microwaveable box: hey granny, we're running out of snacks, out of cardboards, i don't hear the frozen rocks inside.
Doryce: watch it, sonny boy. read the label on that box.
Dirg: Jose Ole.
Doryce: exactly. now go away i'm talking with my beloved. look, how many taquitos are there in the box, beloved?
Gladyce: 15.
Doryce: exactly. but the instructions tell you how to cook 6 taquitos. doesn't make any sense. shouldn't there be 18 taquitos then?
Gladyce: this is why i love you, babe, you are a glutton. see they were thinking of the chiquitas who are always on Montezuma diets to fit into their laredo dresses at the bullring. watching a bullfight is enough to make any nina a vegan.
Madame Pons: THE IMPOSSIBLE WHOPPER!!! it's finally here! i've been waiting my entire adult life to step foot in a Burger King again!
Gladyce: see, you missed the fine print: there are instructions on how to cook 3 taquitos as well...
Doryce: o NOW i see, thanks for explaining it to me, babe, you keep me healthy wise and sane.
Doryce: hey numbnuts, over here!
Dirg responds without saying a word, hangdogging his head low.
Doryce: take this yellow box of Jose Ole taquitos and when the gardeners arrive you tell them you want to eat these with them.
Dirg: NO! HELL NO! anything but that! i'll never survive!
Doryce: refuse and get this star-topped wand shoved up your small asshole. i was gonna use the silver star shape to make cookies. not bake them. we gotta force multicultural diversity into you before your soul becomes all stained white and is lost. it's a way to break the ice with folk you despise, believe me. and we must break ICE.
Melbourne scarily knocks on the door which gives Dirg quite the fright.
Dirg: AHHHH! scared the fuck out of me. the sheer unknowing terror of it all.
Melbourne: ready? yeah hey you know the entire lifespan of those huge wheeled recycling bins you have out front there they've never been washed ONCE. yeah, people forget to actually wash the BINS themselves, they're so busy being green and responsible and recycling all their shit. so...
Dirg: OH HELL NO.
Dirg spends the rest of the afternoon into evening and the rest of his summer vacation in the completion of scrubbing down the bins to their core, removing all the decades cobwebs and permanent gunk and shell formations. he is offered no washcloth so he uses his face. the towel is not for his neck but for the after-clean. his arms are long but still not long enough to reach the very bottom of the bins. he needs to use a casing---a sausage casing---to get out some of the grime. a jackhammer is needed for the caked-on gum. and he uses his teeth to remove the stuck crystals.
Dirg: shit. i thought the crystals would taste like pussy. or at least that strangely odorous mellifluent brew of the desperation of women trying to find love, that's my favorite musk. it doesn't even taste like Pop Rocks.
Dirg's arms are now brown, so much so he doesn't need tattoo sleeves to try to look manly anymore. they look like he spread poo on them with a butter knife.
the Mexicans---happy as ever---go about their day and lives and pay him no mind.
Dirg: OKAY I'M ANGRY.
Eye Luggage: what has changed? oh you mean just now? ready to discuss the Otezla commercial?
Dirg: *plumfaced* this isn't about what i've just been through but i thoroughly hate this commercial!
Laertus: come on.
Dirg: no, really. how much biracialness can we take? it's so damn forced and cynical. we get it, the small white girl wants to rebel on her parents so she dates the black guy.
Laertus: yeah but it's not just any black guy, it's a devilishly handsome black guy with BULGING muscles. this guy is the REAL Black Hulk! that's why you have a problem, you're jealous. as i smell your smelly pipecleaner arms.
Dirg: i used these skinny pipecleaner arms as real pipecleaners today! besides, who goes to coastal-town seaside carnivals anymore anyways? with Bop The Clown and lanes and ONLY waterguns on the washed-out wooden planks of the gin-stained boardwalk. those don't exist. except on Steven Universe.
Eye: are they really calling the continuation The New Adventures of Steven Universe? that is so '90s...…...i kinda love it...
...joining us on the podcast is none other than TYZIK!
Tyzik has two earrings in one ear and none in the other. he sits down slowly, as if he's been standing for a very long time.
Laertus: hi Tyzik!
Dirg: hey Tyzik.
Tyzik: hi fellas. and you.
Eye: *blushing* an honor. thank you Ty. so you know what you're doing. thanks for coming.
Tyzik: not like that. i'm a reddit superstar. and youtube Top Fan. but i'm a nobody, too. with all the answers and insights about life.
Eye: you do the anime roundup for us this week, my online god.
Tyzik: Stain…
Dirg: ...very funny...
Tyzik: ...from My Hero Academia. Mineta, god damn Mineta, YOU are the reason Stain exists! YOU justify Stain's ethos! YOU create all of Stain's misbegotten and misguided and misjustified young fans who think their deaths will cause a riot which they view as a revolution.
the sealed room laughs. then cries. amongst themselves, the outside world can't hear them.
Eye: The Breakfast Club, go.
Charlamagne Tha God: me?...oh, not me. not any of us this week. *hangdog*
Laertus: you mean the conservatives' wet dream? their favorite movie ever? i mean Pat the Conservative---that columnist---got more ink from this than any other article he ever wrote about policy or carrying a piece. amazing how times have changed. the newspaper biz, amiright?
Eye: not right enough. okay so as with everything else we do, we watched this for the first time last week to prepare for this week's discussion, and the trip of it is that the trio of us are of course, like, 40 years behind the times. we're the only people on Planet Earth who have never seen this film and are experiencing it for the first time in 2019! as a brand-new film! i can't begin to explain to people the sensation of that experience. all the jokes everyone knows are brand new to us!
Tyzik: Planet Earth won't be around for much longer...
Dirg: i mean take the purloined case of Molly Ringwald. change-ringer. what a conundrum! what a position! she's the Mall Queen of the '80s, it's just her! her and Tiffany, whom i'm convinced Tiffany was Molly Ringwald's mother, she's a ringer for her, a young mother who had a baby too early. didn't eat enough toffee instead. so Molly goes around all the malls of America---the ultimate supremium mall tour---as the gabs of screaming-girl fans and some thirsty older boys are yelling at her to sign their posters and baseball cards with her frog-topped pencil, and Molly has to spread the message of ABSTINENCE the world over to these kids. cos the Catholic Church don't want your dirty unwed-mother babies. unplanned pregnancies are the result of bad planning. kids having kids.
Laertus: better than cages. or kids killing kids. i wonder while they were making this in that school room the kids thought this would be a legend they were making.
Dirg: nah, too claustrophic. did you see that room? it's too open-air. that had to have been John Hughes's old high school they were filming in, right? i mean the script is his EXACT experience in high school, HAS to be.
Laertus: but was he Bender or the geek?
Dirg: wanted to be Bender, was the geek. Anthony Michael Hall---kid in the hall locker---weird mood-whiplash. going from the creepy geek who is obsessed with getting laid to the ACTUAL virgin geek here. i hate creepy nerds, they don't deserve to get laid.
Laertus: this was the first bottle episode. tv episodes soon followed with their bottle episodes. all nice and intimate and all done in one room, coulda been a Broadway play...but DON'T turn it into a Broadway play! Matt Groening was OBSESSED with this film.
Dirg: people don't know who the first Bender is. Bender Prime. not the clones. EAT MY SHORTS is NOT a Bart Simpson original!
Laertus: i mean Judd Nelson. right? not Judd Hirsch. this guy Judd Nelson comes all the way from Maine out of nowhere and chews the scenery like he's Sean Connery. Judd Nelson is an acting ingenue savant boy genius. every emotion expressed is pitch-perfect and never overplayed, he is so believable in this role, his anger is so real and justified, unlike yours.
Dirg: Nelson. Muntz. oooohhh, now i get it. hey! i got notes of anger to my personality...that i achieved by reading notes on how to portray anger.
Eye: what were we talking about again?
Tyzik: oh, how Ferris Bueller is really the non-animated Heavy Metal, one last dose, the last gasp of summer before adulting has to commence and you have to find a job next semester. Fooly Cooly for Americans. how Siskel + Ebert should have recused themselves from the Ferris review cos they were too close to the Chicago scene. how Mia Sara is the daughter of some Greek shipping magnate, i'm a huge fan of your podcast.
Dirg: that junior principal was a real asshole. it'd be justified to do to him...well i'm not gonna say, politically-incorrect and all.
Laertus: there was a real anxiety among '80s adults back then, like they felt this new young wave generation would be running the world soon and that terrified the crap out of them, basically everyone thought back then the world would end in nuclear fire.
Dirg: why does the janitor always hold the soft wisdom?
Laertus: cos the janitor's had a REAL job, he's actually lived life live. not held a cold management position. hardscrabble. he knows where the bodies are buried cos he's dug the holes and watered the lawns over them. the sprinklers are not just for the football players you know, they're for the cheerleaders. what happened to Judd Nelson? why didn't his career take off? Brooke Shields did better, and she did too much too young and Mr. Pickles! remember like the first MTV Movie Awards? they honored the cast and Judd Nelson boy you could tell he was uncomfortable and NOT a fan of this cast! not friends! did not get along.
Dirg: like the movie. life imitates art. they shunned him. cos he was the best actor. he could run circles around them despite being the biggest one.
Eye: you know i get it now, with all the cosplays. yeah, now i would TOTALLY do a Breakfast Club theme party where you have to go as your personality. and wear the anarchy pins or Omni shirt or pixy stix or sushi or many sandwiches.
Tyzik: and yours?
Eye: well of course i'm the goth girl, she gave me a Club chub. but secretly all goth girls are goth girls cos they CAN'T be the Molly Ringwalds.
Dirg: Emilio Estevez ate a lot of chub clubs. sandwiches, furries were still in their infancy. the goth girl had the best smile. oh, and she didn't go to detention cos she got bored, she just got lost going to the mall to play LazerTag for the practice.
Eye: hey, the goth girl is the only one who actually eats breakfast at the Breakfast Club! that Cap'n Crunch sandwich is actually healthier than if she ate rotten romaine lettuce or mad-cow-disease mccheese or a meat-is-murder cow for meat.
Dirg: getting into Morrissey finally? Bender. is that where an alcohol bender comes from? or is it bender over to fuck the young lady's ass. legally. what was Bender's blonde joke in the air ducts supposed to mean? what's the punchline?
Tyzik: the blonde tells the barkeep that yes she is feeling frazzled. her man just told her he was gonna pound his favorite bitch with this sausage, so the blonde picked both of them up---the poodle and the 6-foot salami---and got the hell outta there!
the roundtable claps.
Laertus: Bender predicted grunge, he wore the plaid first. honestly it's all a fog to me, the only thing i remember is the Walk Like An Egyptian dance. that really did happen in detention somehow, right?
Dirg: the nerd is the one threatening suicide, not any other of the stereotypes. it would have been better if the nerd starts peeing his pants, but it turns out the water is from a water gun...
Eye: Molly's tears when she realizes cliques are stronger than character are real and heartfelt. so is the jock who realizes bullying is wrong but his dad is just too damn cool.
Dirg: Molly's detention-reason is lame. cos she went to the mall? it should have been that trick she did with her tits, she did THAT in class that got her detention. all girls are teases tho, right? that's been established.
Laertus: send me cruisin' on that same cruise Molly went to! boy scouts, right? all boys have imaginary girlfriends who live in neighboring cities.
Dirg: why did she give Bender her earring? he'd think that was faggoty.
Tyzik: i mean...
Eye: what was on the brain's OMNI shirt? what did it say!!? can someone slow the tape!?
Dirg: can you blame him? the geek is the only one who doesn't get the girl! he needs that Omni magazine to jack off to. and Bender's iconic raised-arm on the football field...
Laertus: don't say white power.
Dirg: ...i was just gonna say that became the logo for American Idol. i'm hurt.
Eye: a fine American show. i LOVE the soundtrack! despite the bad reviews. actually "Don't You Forget About Me" is the least interesting, the rest of the album is a cool indie goth dark-beat low-undertone album. never has there been a song so connected to a film, EVER. when you hear the song, you think of the movie. inescapable.
Laertus: that one bad review said that band had killed their career attaching themselves to this film. now i get that Regular Show, that Progressive commercial, that episode of Dawson's Creek that all had Breakfast themes. the rumor about that fresh new exciting Dawson episode was that it was just about truth-or-dare in the school library. i got the sequel all mapped out in my head. called The Breakfast Club: The Monday After of course. haven't oiled out all the details save for one recurring scene which keeps popping in my head: it's the jock and the bully, they've formed an uneasy alliance and i see them working at the jock's dad's garage together getting oil all over their shirtless bodies, sliding on that iron garage sled like it's winter. does the group still get along? why of course! the goth girl doesn't have to go to school---she's already graduated with a college degree in sex studies---so she becomes the queen bee cheerleader in her spare time. she marries the jock who becomes a tape-dispenser salesman. Bender becomes President, obviously, we've seen that in real life. the brain drops out of school.
Dirg: i won't say the popular princess becomes the school shooter.
Fuerza: i'm proud of you girls. you're much further along than i was at your age.
Sinphony: who are you? why are you here? what are you doing here?
Fuerza: men have been trying to define me for forever. since before i tried to define myself. you idiot!
Fuerza slaps Codrus in the ear in the air.
Fuerza: pinche! want me to pinch your ear!? i set this up so you and your brother could work together to make the first pretzel! but of course you had to screw it up with your need to screw things up. you are a stooge.
Codrus: i can't help it, ma, you made me love chaos.
Fuerza: stop treating your brother like a punching bag! for your penance, i'm gonna have you get up at the crack early every morning at 5AM so you can take me to my dancing classes! you don't know what goes on at my dancing lessons, do you? you just see me gone for a long time and stop thinking about me. ready to be bored out of your mind!? ready to hang out with a lot of old wise folk? you need to hang out with REAL women, son!
they poof away in a crack of clear lightning.
the girls find Cotard sleeping on a dirt road. maybe sleeping.
Sinphony: Cotard, i saved 5 villagers.
Cotard: ow my head. oh good, i did NOT want to do the repopulation thing, i am NOT my brother. girls, get into management while you still can, YOU two become the leaders of the new village, we need to change the world incrementally in a grand-gesture big way, it all starts at home.
he shakes their hands.
Cotard: i have supremium confidence in you, you are two of the finest people i know.
the trio hug.
Velvetta: thanks for everything.
Cotard: remember, don't fall for the stellar acting of Dawn French, DON'T wear the cloth! i know i know, she's tempting, she enjoys her job so much it's tempting and infectious and contagious. female priests and all. power, not priestesses. her smile is a magnet. but resist!!! be Princess Leia.
Sinphony: *haughty* Princess Leia should have been the one flying the X-Wing destroying the Death Star.
Cotard: remember those precious words, they will help you all your life.
Velvetta: use the force?
Cotard: no, the ones from Gundam:
for there's no life, if you live alone
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