Altered States
Interior – the Oval Office of the White House. POTUS has his feet on desk and is ‘reading’ the latest issue of Playboy. A grinning man enters, wearing jeans, a MAGA t-shirt and baseball cap.
PRESIDENT [looks up]: Hey, Felon. Say, you look different today. No, don’t tell me, I’ll figure it out. How’s it going?
FELON: Five by five, Mr President Dump! Dude, I just saved this once-again great nation a billion bucks!
PRESIDENT: Say, that’s great. How did you do that?
FELON: I made a guy in NASA buy his own coffee.
PRESIDENT: He was spending a billion dollars on coffee?
FELON: Well, it was actually four bucks, but what am I if not a genius? I rounded it up.
PRESIDENT: Wow, that’s great. You saved us a billion dollars! I’ll give you a billion-dollar tax break as a reward.
FELON: I also fired the asshole.
PRESIDENT: He had it coming. Have you seen the Rube today?
FELON: Nein, mein Führer. Sieg h… Whoops. Sorry dude. Don’t know what came over me there. No, I haven’t seen the Rube. But XL was on the lawn licking his lips.
PRESIDENT: Damn. I wanted an update on the Gaza situation.
FELON: I thought that was done and dusted?
PRESIDENT: Yeah, but I wanted to finalise details on the golf course and exclusive Dumpworld resort. And I’ve had some bad news about that statue. They tell me Fort Knox is empty.
FELON: Empty? You mean…?
PRESIDENT: Yeah, all the gold’s gone.
FELON: How the hell did that happen? The new security guys should have had it covered.
PRESIDENT: I thought Fort Knox was guarded by the US Army?
FELON: Dude, they were all autistic quadruple-amputee dykes. Diversity hires. And government employees. I fired them all. Saved thousands of dollars. Rounded up, that’s trillions. TRILLIONS! Because I’m a genius, higher IQ than Einstein. I said that so it must be true, because I’m a genius. Anyway, I replaced those woke crippled dwarf drag queens with Star Wars action figures I got in a yard sale. Ten bucks.
PRESIDENT: That’s great. Give yourself a trillion-dollar tax break.
FELON: I also fired your janitor. I asked what he does round here and he sent me a fifty-page list. Well, if he has time to do that, I guess he’s got way too much time on his hands, and time is money.
PRESIDENT: The asshole had it coming. But where am I gonna get the gold to build my statue?
FELON: No problem, dude. We just round up everyone with gold teeth. That’ll get you enough of the shiny stuff before you can say Arbeit macht frei.
PRESIDENT: Won’t they object?
FELON: I’ll just demand they give me a hundred bullet points of what they’ve achieved in the last week. Failure to respond will be taken as resignation. Permanent resignation. At bullet point. Get it? Bullet point! Shit, I’m just so goddamn smart!
Another man enters the Oval Office. This one is wearing a suit and a tailored beard. He is scowling and tense, as if he’s looking for someone to tear apart with his bare hands, but that’s actually his happy face.
FELON: XL, dude! Great to see you.
XL: Hi, Felon. Love the threads, buddy.
PRESIDENT: Hey, XL. What’s the news?
XL: Master, I regret to inform you that the Sucker is still allowing people to express anti-free speech speech on his social media platform.
PRESIDENT: Shit, that’s bad. Very disrespectful.
FELON: I did warn you, mein – Mr President. Didn’t I say that social media sounds too much like socialist media? Now he’s letting people speak freely about our freedom of speech.
PRESIDENT: Felon, fire the disrespectful, liberal, woke asshole.
FELON: Er – I can’t. He’s not a government employee.
XL: Wrong. He supported the president, right? He gave money to the election campaign, right? He benefits from the new tax breaks, right? Then he’s a government employee.
FELON [brightens]: Yeah, that’s right, XL. He’s either with us or against us. I’ll fire him after my coffee break.
PRESIDENT [slams fist on desk]: The asshole had it coming.
FELON: Hey, maybe he’s got some gold teeth! That reminds me, I heard this great non-woke joke. How many Jews does it take to change a lightbulb?
PRESIDENT: That’s a tricky one. Oh, I give up. Go on, tell us.
FELON [adopts bad German accent]: Ah, the Jewish Question. Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you later with a Final Solution.
XL [stares blankly at Felon then shakes his head]: Nope, I don’t get it.
PRESIDENT: Must be an intellectual joke. Let’s face it, this guy is the greatest genius of our time, probably the greatest of all time. He told me that, so it must be true. So that must be the funniest gag I ever heard.
XL: Yeah, but why’s it funny?
FELON: Because it’s about math, XL dude. How many, right? That’s math.
XL: Not Jews?
FELON: No, dude. Jews are just, like, you know, a MacGuffin.
PRESIDENT: Mmmm, I like those. A nourishing breakfast in a sandwich. Even better than a cheeseburger.
XL: So why the Colonel Klink accent, Felon?
FELON [shrugs]: Hey, that was just the way I heard it on some Groyper podcast. Uh, Mr President, are you okay there?
PRESIDENT [squirming in chair]: My butt’s itching like crazy. Hasn’t been the same since that wimpy Brit guy was kissing it. I just hope the asshole hasn’t given me a disease. You know, like the one that escaped from that lab in China that we definitely didn’t fund.
FELON: Dude, it’s probably just hemorrhoids. Without the A, of course. Good old American spelling and grammar, different than the Limeys. Much more efficient.
PRESIDENT [nods sagely]: It’s only common sense.
XL [snarls]: Fucking Limeys. Telling us how to spell. Bad enough them telling us what to do with Ukraine, even though we kicked their faggy redcoat asses back in 1776. We didn’t need no foreign help then, don’t need it now.
PRESIDENT: That’s right, Rochambeau and the other Frenchies were never here. Fake news. Cheese-eating surrender monkeys. What have they ever done for us? A lousy statue? Cheapskates couldn’t even give us a gold one.
XL [foaming at the mouth]: I hate the fucking British even more than I hate the French. After all we’ve done for them, they side with that unelected dictator who attacked our peaceful Russian friends for no good reason. All they ever do is bitch, bitch, bitch and whine, whine, whine. And take, take, take. The ungrateful commie, libtard bastards.
PRESIDENT: Yeah, no free speech there now. Just woke bullshit and shariah law. Get your hands chopped off if you use the wrong pronoun. Not like it was back in the old country. And to think we supported them when they declared war on Hitler for no good reason. Special relationship? They didn’t ask our permission and it put us in an impossible position. I mean, it’s not as if Germany and their allies attacked the US, is it? And obviously we didn’t give supplies to the Brits and the Soviets and the Chinese to protect our national interests against Germany, right? And let’s be honest, we even gave them money to rebuild, lots of money.
FELON: Um… I thought that was, like, a loan? With interest? And special repayment conditions that boosted the dollar by insisting on pre-payment conversion from sterling that we charged extra for?
PRESIDENT [puts fingers in ears]: Fake news, fake news, fake news. We dug their tight asses out of a hole, a very deep hole, and didn’t make so much as a cent on the deal. And this is how they repay us, by turning into woke, commie bastards and siding with fucking disrespectful, rude comedians. Didn’t even support us after 9/11. The assholes don’t even have a written constitution, just some lame, hippie “Human Rights Act”. Human rights? Who needs fucking human rights when you have GOD?
XL: God?
PRESIDENT: That’s right. G-O-D. Good Ol’ Dump.
FELON: Could I get a glass of water? It’s time for my meds.
XL: I didn’t know you were sick.
FELON [rattles a plastic vial]: I’m not. These pills are to keep this mega-genius brain in tip-top, warp-speed condition.
PRESIDENT: What are they? Vitamins?
FELON: My own special blend of neurotherapeutics. Ketamine with LSD, mescaline, cocaine, methamphetamine and a dab of THC.
XL: Say, aren’t those all illegal?
FELON [takes a pill]: Not when you’re as rich as I am, dude.
PRESIDENT: That’s right. The law doesn’t apply to those of us with enough dough and power to buy the best lawyers. And jurors, judges, prosecutors, the Supreme Court… Survival of the richest, as that Darwin guy said.
FELON: And it definitely doesn’t apply to American geniuses. Whoa, that dose hit the spot! Hey XL, did you know you have six arms and a stars and stripes halo? And Mr President, dude, you got horns and a tail! So cool! You look like Hellboy!
PRESIDENT [stares at Felon and snaps his fingers]: Got it. I know what’s different about you. Felon, are you growing a mustache?
FELON: A mustache?
PRESIDENT: Yeah, that little hairy thing under your nose.
FELON: Oh, that. It’s a tribute to one of my heroes. That and the new side parting and forelock. Now there was a guy who knew how to run a democracy. Everybody free to say exactly what he thought.
XL: Just like the Impaler. That man has rejuvenated the soon-to-be-restored Soviet Union. Freedom to listen to his speeches and agree with whatever he says, the right not to protest, high window views and free air travel for dissidents. You got to admire him. I can see why you have his back, Mr President.
PRESIDENT: Yeah. That and the evidence. The alleged evidence, which of course is deepfake news, if it ever gets out. Which it won’t, because me and the Impaler have an understanding. If the alleged evidence existed, that is, which it doesn’t.
The door opens and a panicked aide enters.
AIDE: Your Majesty! I have important news!
PRESIDENT: Hey, weren’t you working here the last time I sat in this exalted chair? Before Sleepy Dodo stole that rigged election?
AIDE: Uh, yessir, Noble Sir. But I’ve got my job back.
FELON [aside]: Not for long. A government employee? Ha!
AIDE: Master, the Director of the FBI has advised me that they have caught a Ruritanian spy!
PRESIDENT [aside to XL]: Who’s the Director now? Remind Me.
XL: Some guy called Couch Potato, I think. Felon?
FELON: No, it’s that Indian guy. Not Injun Indian, but Indian Indian. Cash Orjail, something like that.
AIDE: Sirs, the spy said –
PRESIDENT: Where the hell is Ruritania?
FELON: It’s a Ukrainian enclave near Narnia, where Russia borders Middle Earth.
XL: Narnia?
FELON: Great place. I went there on vacation last year when I was being a little free with my cerebral upgrades. Skiing and snowboarding. It’s ruled by this great woman, real witchy type. I asked her if she’d like to have a couple of my babies but she wouldn’t play ball. Besides, it’s a backward little country and they don’t have IVF facilities. I’d have had to do it the old-fashioned way. You know me. I don’t do icky.
AIDE: Anyway, while he was being waterboarded – er, interrogated enhancedly – this man, who claimed to be a woman, gave details of enemy plans that could jeopardise our once-again great nation!
PRESIDENT: Oh, I love Jeopardy. I get all the answers right. Alternative facts are the way to go. I’m thinking of writing a book on the subject. Dump’s Book of Real, Authentic, Genuine, Incontrovertible and Uncontestable TRUTH.
FELON: Great idea, dude! Have you started writing it yet?
PRESIDENT: No, I can’t figure out how to spell “incontrovertible”.
XL: I take it this spy was picked up during a random gender confirmation sweep?
AIDE: That’s right, sir. Despite a birth certificate and hospital records, intensive medical examination proved that he had undergone reconstructive surgery to make him appear like a woman. Well, it could have been a butt-lift and a Brazilian, but you don’t fool KFC Jr’s new homeophysioholistipathic medical corps. Quartz crystals, runes and chicken bones never lie.
PRESIDENT: The sex of a child at the exact moment of conception is that person’s sex for life. That’s when the little wiggly guy shakes hands with the big round one. A sacred moment, maybe the most sacred of all. GOD said so. Anyway, go on. What did this sneaky pervert have to say?
AIDE: Well, for starters there are going to be uprisings in Ruritania and Narnia, timed to take place at precisely the exact same identical moment of simultaneity. Apparently, there’s a man claiming to be the real prince of Ruritania, looking to overthrow the true ruler, who’s sympathetic to Russia. And Narnia’s rebels are following an insurgent leader known as “the Lion”. Their ultimate goal is to use these nations as a base for an invasion of Russia.
PRESIDENT [slams fist on desk]: The bastards! I bet the Canadians are behind this.
AIDE: That isn’t all, My Lord. The Scandinavians are launching a pre-emptive invasion of Greenland, led by someone called Ragnar. A whole fleet of ships built secretly in the fjords by a naval technician called Floki.
XL: Shit, this is like something out of a Netflix show!
FELON: Luckily for this once-again great nation, the American people can tell alternative facts from fiction.
PRESIDENT: They can? Oh yeah, of course they can.
AIDE: There’s more, Holiness. Saboteurs disguised as clowns are poised to rise against us. There’s one called Pennywise in Maine, another called Twisty in Florida, a whole bunch of others.
PRESIDENT [slams fist on desk]: These red-nosed greasepaint assholes will never inflict their evil clowning on the American people! We will hunt them down and, after a fair trial, execute every last one! Or my name isn’t Ronald McDonald Dump!
XL [foaming at the mouth]: And my name isn’t XL Bully!
FELON [gives a Roman Salute]: And my name isn’t Felon Merkwürdigliebe!
PRESIDENT: I tell you, whoever comes after me is gonna have some big shoes to fill.
AIDE: One or two other items of interest came out of the torture. Er, I mean the polite, gentle questioning. Firstly, the Elvis comeback will definitely be this year, beginning with a residency in Vegas.
PRESIDENT: Great! Book me a table. Front row, Diet Coke for me, Prosecco for Balonia, and a dozen of those tasty MacGuffins.
AIDE: Certainly, Your Grace. The deceased – er, the terrorist pervert spy – also said the planned alien invasion has been called off. Something to do with galactic quarantine regulations.
PRESIDENT: Regulations? The Dumpster doesn’t do fucking regulations. Hit them with 30% tariffs on everything. Extra for anal probes.
AIDE: Consider it done, Dear Leader.
PRESIDENT: The assholes had it coming. Anything else? I wouldn’t mind getting back to that interesting feature I was reading in Playboy.
FELON [to aide]: What’s your name, dude?
AIDE: Er, Jackson, sir.
FELON: Nice to meet you, NPC Jackson. You’re fired.
AIDE [startled]: What?
FELON: AllThe gospel according to Curtis Yarvin. The greatest original thinker since Wernher von Braun. Except for me, of course. And that gospel is RAGE! Retire All Government Employees! Your severance pay and first social security check – no unpatriotic British Q – are in the post.
XL: Um, you fired all the postal workers. Government employees, remember?
PRESIDENT: The assholes had it coming. Leeching off the taxpayer’s dollar. Fuck ’em.
FELON: Then it’s win, win and win again! Save on wages, mail costs, and payouts to NPCs! That’s trillions of dollars!
PRESIDENT: Outstanding, Felon. Give yourself another tax break. Fuck it, consider yourself and all your companies one hundred percent tax exempt, in perpetuity. I’ll write a decree as soon as I’ve finished reading Playboy. Never let it be said that I don’t reward a guy that does a great job.
AIDE: Except me, apparently. Well fuck you, all of you.
FELON: NPC, are you still here? XL – see him off, boy!
XL [drops to all fours, foaming at the mouth]: Grrrr! Grrrr!
The aide departs, angrily slamming the door behind him. XL rises to his feet and wipes lather from his beard. Felon pours two glasses of Jack Daniel’s and a Diet Coke from the President’s personal supply.
FELON: Let’s drink to success!
PRESIDENT [downs his Diet Coke, smacks his lips]: Ah, things go better with Coke.
FELON: Allegedly. But you can’t beat JD.
XL: That’s what I always say. Mmm, that’s mellow.
PRESIDENT: Anyhow, what are we gonna do about this Ruritanian situation? Nuke ’em?
XL: We can’t do that. It’s too close to the Impaler’s territory.
FELON: And it would ruin the skiing in Narnia. I’d need a new winter sports wardrobe.
PRESIDENT: I told you never to mention water sports!
FELON: Winter sports, dude.
PRESIDENT: Hmm, I’m getting a little hard of hearing lately. Maybe I need one of those cholera implants. Not that I believe in vaxxes. KFC Jr put me right on that. He says licking your fingers after eating prevents all known diseases.
XL: Yeah, vaccines suck. I didn’t even have a rabies shot when that crazy guy in the wolf costume bit me back when I was a kid. It was always the same in backwoods Kentucky when there was a full moon. Nut jobs in wolf outfits everywhere you looked, pissing on lamp posts and shitting in back yards, chasing cars and howling all fucking night.
PRESIDENT: We didn’t have that sort of crap in Queens. Democrats, now you’re talking, infest the place like roaches. Needs an exterminator. Maybe a little job for you in your spare time, XL. Say, that’s a really nice light coming through the window.
XL: Yeah, it is kinda pretty… Like shiny daffodils, or star-spangled creamed corn.
FELON: I know just what to do about Ruritania and Narnia. And Greenland. A meme campaign on Z. We’ll out that Lion guy as a trans paedophile, spread the word that the fake Ruritanian prince is a defective queer liberal clone cooked up in that Chinese lab we don’t really fund, and say that Ragnar and Floki are woke cannibal communists. Extraterrestrial woke cannibal communists who hatch their plots in a paedophile pizza parlor, without the unAmerican U.
XL: Hey, Felon. Not to worry you, but you’re looking kinda ET yourself. Must be the light in here.
PRESIDENT: You mean those pretty rainbows?
XL: No, I’m talking about that eerie yellow glow and the creeping shadows. Makes you look kinda Satanic, Mr President.
PRESIDENT: Bullshit. I look nothing like Satan. I should know. Say, what did happen to all that gold in Fort Knox?
FELON [shrugs]: It was all there when my boys went in. I can assure you that its disappearance has nothing whatsoever to do with the solid gold SpaceZ starship under construction at my secret base in Antarctica.
XL: You have a secret base in Antarctica?
FELON: Doesn’t everyone? Anyhow, it’s where my starship is being built. I’m planning on a trip to Proxima Centauri, and it’s only fitting that their new emperor has a vessel to match his towering intellect. I call it Venus, because it’s so beautiful. Though I might change my mind and just name it after myself. Make a statement.
PRESIDENT: What a brain! Newton, Einstein and Hawking, all rolled into one. And not a Limey! Have you invented anything really cool lately?
FELON: Well, I don’t do any actual inventing. I leave that to the serfs. I’m more of an ideas man. I say, the minions do. Most of my titanic efforts go into separating fools from their money. Investors whose financial input inflates stock prices and makes me megabucks.
PRESIDENT: I hear what you say. Never give a sucker an even break. When are you setting out for wherever it is?
FELON: Proxima Centauri, dude. Blast-off is later this year, as soon as the ice melts.
XL: Are you going alone?
FELON: What, and have nobody to tell me how brilliant I am until we get there? For seventy-two years at light-speed? No way, dude. I have some of my best boys lined up to do the doing when I have an idea. Some security guys. An AI to run the ship. Oh, and some NPC entertainment modules, not that I’ll get involved in that icky stuff. They can double as incubators for the Meta-Race I intend to sire among the stars.
PRESIDENT: Good planning, Felon. Speaking of which, I guess we’d better get on with the invasion plan.
XL: Invasion?
PRESIDENT: Yeah. Canada, maybe Greenland, who knows, get in before that Ragnar guy makes his move. But Canada first. They could use a make-over. I mean, what the fuck has Canada ever given this once-again great nation?
XL: Uh, well… Troops in Afghanistan, though the cowardly schmucks wouldn’t commit to Iraq… Peanut butter, the telephone, insulin, snowmobiles, hockey, basketball… William Shatner, Joni Mitchell, Mike Myers, Neil Young, Jim Carrey, Leonard Cohen, Mack Sennett, Bryan Adams, Celine Dion, Avril Lavigne, John Candy, Alanis Morissette, Keanu Reeves, Oscar Petersen, Shania Twain, Fay Wray, Robbie Robertson, Lorne Greene…
PRESIDENT [shocked]: Hold on there. Lorne Greene? Lorne Greene? Are you telling me Ben fucking Cartwright was a Canuck?
XL: Yessir. Sad but true, though I guess we could retcon the birth records. And of course there’s him.
PRESIDENT [looks wildly around]: Him? Who him?
FELON: I think he means me, dude. But only through my mom, and she was merely a vessel for my glorious creation.
PRESIDENT: I thought you were a US citizen!
FELON: Yes, I am. And South Afrikan by accident of birth. That’s with a sensible Germanic K, by the way.
PRESIDENT: Let me get this straight. Just how many fucking countries are you a citizen of, exactly?
FELON: The US, South Afrika and, sadly, Canada. Mars, of course. Oh, and now Proxima Centauri.
PRESIDENT: That’s an awful lot of places to pledge your loyalty to.
FELON: Dude, there are no conflicts of interest. My only loyalty is to myself.
PRESIDENT: Hey, I can live with that. How about you, XL?
XL: He who does American is American.
PRESIDENT: And the American way is to take what we want or force others to give it. Pussy, dough, power, just grab it. It’s the natural order. This world is ours by right. Our manifest destiny. But mine, mostly.
FELON: One nation, one people, one leader!
PRESIDENT: That’s me, a unifier. I just want to be everybody’s big brother. Right, that’s settled. Hey, you guys wanna see my new john? Solid gold, a gift from that British guy who’s always hanging around hoping for an endorsement or a hand-out. You know, the one with a face like a toad and those fucking god-awful suits that make him look like a comedy country squire from a 1950s British B-movie. He was a bit cagey about where he got the golden john, but who gives a fuck. A bit chilly on the butt, but it’s a throne fit for a Dump. Hey! That fucking ex-aide walked off with my Playboy! Now I’ll never know what the April centrefold likes to do in her spare time.
Felon and XL follow the President to the Oval Office’s private bathroom, where they admire the solid gold lavatory and lavish décor.
PRESIDENT: The bathroom looks prettier than usual. Those weird patterns definitely weren’t there this morning. Felon, did you spike my drink?
FELON: Mr President, like your vastly over-rated predecessor, I cannot tell a lie. I have indeed slipped you and XL a dose of my special brain-booster. Do you like it?
PRESIDENT: Hard to say. The world always looks a little off to me.
XL: Is that the Constitution hanging on the wall there?
PRESIDENT: Hey, I have to wipe my butt like anybody else.
FELON: Very patriotic choice of toilet paper, Mr President. Actually, that reminds me. Isn’t the presidency a salaried position?
PRESIDENT: Yep. Four hundred grand a year. Plus a non-taxable fifty grand for expenses, a hundred grand for travel, and ten grand for entertainment. And free use of the White House, Air Force One, Marine One, and Camp David. Yeah, I know it’s a pitiful reward for my dynamic greatness, probably the most dynamic and greatest dynamic greatness ever, but you can rest assured that I’ll be awarding myself a backdated raise commensurate with my magnificent achievements.
FELON [looks thoughtful]: So that means you’re a government employee…