Bonus article! As in a satire piece, not a half-baked prank. I still don’t get doing pranks when they’re expected.
Enjoy it? Lobby your friends. Hate it? Spam your enemies.
New President Orientation
By Dennard Dayle
What a race! I haven’t seen a nail-biter like that since 2000. I thought we might have to pick again. Good thing we let things shake out.
I mean it, you should be proud. When I was a kid, I wanted to be president. Then I learned a bit more about how things work. Decided I wanted to make a difference instead. But it’s nice to see an underdog go the distance.
I know that look. You think we were too hard on the last few guys. Guess what? We agree. We’re going to give you a little rope, as a reward for playing along. Keep it up, and we’ll let you play with the interest rates.
But first, some guidelines. I find starting with business sets the right tone. And this is a business. Never forget that. In fact, let’s call that Rule One. Let that principle guide you, and we’ll get along just fine.
Rule Two? We don’t exist. I mean, you exist. You’ll exist more than anyone alive, save popstars or photogenic cats. But I don’t exist, and my coworkers really don’t exist. The other rules are contextual, aside from Four, but this one keeps you alive. You like being alive, right? Dead people don’t give Inauguration speeches.
Rule Three: no more chatter about aliens. We’re very human, but that’s too close for comfort. If people start talking, let out the MLK tape. The culprits are more basic than you’d expect, but any answer should have people fired up for a bit. Hell, even I thought it was unsporting.
Rule Four—and this one’s big—if you say military, industrial, and complex in the same sentence, your family’s dead. We’ll replace you faster than Ike, with half the mercy. We’ll degrade your legacy to a jingle and undead political party. And it will be slow.
Cool? Cool. Sorry to kill the mood.
There’s this silly rumor that we want an idiot in the big chair. Nonsense. Do you want a dumb babysitter? To find the bushes covered in a mix of Jose Cuervo and lunch? And your kids hungry, rioting, or poking around Area 51? I don’t think so.
We want the best babysitter. You’re an Ivy League SAT tutor, and your pay reflects that. Just spend it slowly. Curing a disease is nice, but then you’re stuck doing speaker tours to make rent.
On that note, let’s talk advancement. We take care of most presidents, as long as they don’t embarrass us by forgetting their lines, or pronouncing them nu-cue-lerr. But our favorite presidents become junior clerks for The Council. Isn’t that exciting? The pilot program’s only a hundred years old. I wish you could see how happy Woodrow was.
From there, who knows? You might go the distance, like Coolidge. A council seat. A corner office. Immortality. He suggests finding a gimmick, by the way. Something quotable. It tends to distract people from the rest.
I forgot: try not to mess with the alliances. We’ve got the World War IV (the cold one counts) teams set, and the bets are locked in. Cleansings come and go, but resetting the board takes weeks. You get it. That’s family time.
Go get ‘em, Tiger! Don’t make us give you a warning shot like Ronald. He took a minute to catch on.
Thanks for reading. I hope you found laughter, or an acceptable substitute. I have more A-grade satire in my book, Everything Abridged.
I agree World War III, A.K.A., The Cold War, is highly underrated. Humanity almost destroyed itself several times, which is a real achievement.
Speaking of which, I'll take the over on 1,000 total nukes deployed during WWIV.
When does the satire start?