When the phone rang at 2 o'clock this morning, I naturally panicked. What now? Was the building on fire? Was Dad in the drunk tank again? Had Borders put more copies of Swift Boat Liars for Bush on the shelves?
Unfortunately, it was far, far worse. When I answered the phone, I was horrified to learn that my mother had been rushed to the emergency room with a severe case of the Flesh-Eating Virus.
I threw on some clothes and ran out to my car, then remembered it's "Don't Drive If You Hate Bush Week" and hurried down to the bus stop instead. Four hours and sixteen transfers later, I walked into the lobby of Our Lady of the Pinched Nerve and demanded to see my dying mother.
As my readers know, Mother's last fours years have been a tapestry woven with sadness. First, her boyfriend Raoul dumped her for a younger man. Then Boeing laid her off just a few weeks short of retirement. After 20 years of wildcat strikes and organized work slow-downs, the Airplane Restroom Toilet Paper Dispenser Union had finally won its members a 4 hour work-week at $500 an hour - only to see the whole division outsourced to Pakistan, thanks to the Shrub. Then to add insult to injury, Bush sliced the fan belt on Mom's '95 Jeep Cherokee. Now, she's wasting away in some hospital bed with a horribly painful disease.
At least that's what I thought. Imagine my surprise when I dashed into Mom's hospital room only to see her sitting up in her bed, thumbing through a copy of Mother Jones.
She smiled and waved at me.
"Mom!" I growled. "What the hell happened?"
She put her magazine down and gave a long, totally unconvincing death rattle.
"I was at the Deep Purple show last weekend, dancing in the main aisle like I usually do," she explained, "when suddenly rainbows started shooting out of my ears and the ground melted into goo right under my feet. DAMN THAT BUSH!"
"Holy crap, Ma," I said. "You didn't leave your drink sitting around unattended, did you?"
She looked at me like I was nuts. "What do you think I am? A lightweight?" she asked with disgust. "I was going to rock concerts back when you were still waiting for me to come home and change your diapers. I would never leave a drink sitting around with all that acid in it. Stuff ain't cheap you know!"
"Sorry," I apologized. "Please go on."
"Anyhoo," she continued, "after I fell down between the seats, the technicolor squirrels came. One of them looked exactly like George Bush. I told that little pecker to go right back to Crawford, but he just laughed that horrible Bushie laugh and sank his teeth into my leg!"
"That BASTARD!" I shouted, kicking an empty bedpan across the room.
"Well, it's happened before," Mother said, "so I didn't think much of it until the next day, when my leg started to tingle. I looked down and saw THIS."
She pulled up her hospital gown to reveal a small, one-inch abrasion just below her left knee.
"Looks like a harmless scrape to me," I said, breathing a sigh of relief. I had half-expected to see a shiny femur sticking out of a rotting stump where her leg had once been.
"That's what the doctor said," she told me. "He said it was a 'harmless scratch', slapped a band-aid on it, and told me to go home. But my lawyer - Leo Abromowitz, of Abromowitz, Abromowitz, Abromowitz, Schaffer & Abromowitz - thinks different. He says it's the Flesh-Eating Virus, and we're going to sue that doctor for 170 million dollars!"
"WHOA NELLIE!" I said. "170 MILLION DOLLARS?"
Don't get me wrong - I despise the medical industry just as much as the next guy. If they aren't gouging their patients with obscenely high medical prices, they're fighting tooth and nail against the Democrat party's righteous crusade to provide free health care for everyone. I could understand sticking it to George Bush and Deep Purple, but it seemed a little cruel to ruin a good doctor who was only trying to help her - and I told mother so.
"Oh I wouldn't worry about it," she assured me. "That's what malpractice insurance is for!"
"KA-CHING!" I shouted, pumping my fist.
At this, a short, oily man who could only be Mr. Leo Abromowitz oozed into the room. He looked me up and down, then pointed at Mother's ruined knee.
"Where's your band-aid?" he wheezed, eyes opened in horror.
"I tore it off and threw it away," Mother replied. "It sure won't do a helluva lotta good against the Flesh-Eating Virus!"
Abromowitz let out a primal shriek, causing Mother and I to jump with a start.
"Don't you understand, woman?" he hissed. "Since you refused treatment, we have no grounds to sue the doctor for malpractice!"
"DAMN THAT BUSH!" we all shouted in unison.
As I read your blog, I thought to myself "wow, the only thing seperating this from the comments at Democratic Underground is that this guy actually writes complete sentences."
Posted by: Ken McCracken | September 24, 2004 at 12:39 AM
You know, I've been feeling a little sick myself lately, ever since Bill Burkett admitted that Joe Lockhart tried to get those "fake but authentic" memos from him. I bet Bush is sending out a virus over the TV airwaves, using his control over the FCC.
Posted by: CavalierX | September 24, 2004 at 04:55 AM
No technicolor squirrels were injured in the making of this post.
Posted by: spd rdr | September 24, 2004 at 10:41 AM
"I was going to rock concerts back when you were still waiting for me to come home and change your diapers"
Now that's a great visual! Looks like mama raised you right, Larry!
Posted by: d00d | September 24, 2004 at 11:57 AM
Your Momma's so fat that she was diagnosed with the flesh-eating virus and the doctor gave her 30 years to live...
Posted by: Supernatural Rabbit Scribe | September 24, 2004 at 12:51 PM
That's it. I've suspected that Larry and Ranbutan were actually one and the same person for quite some time, but now I have conclusive proof.
This is how Ran predicted my life would end...in a lonely hospital bed, dumped by my husband for a younger woman with huge mammary glands and a trust fund, riffed by my company and without medical insurance, just another poor deluded pawn of the richest 1%.
Posted by: Cassandra | September 24, 2004 at 01:25 PM
I don't know Cass... Larry is funny.
Posted by: bahabuddha™ | September 24, 2004 at 02:54 PM
Good point baha. Although Ran can be pretty funny too. But not side-splittingly funny. And unlike Larry, I don't think Ran is intentionally amusing.
Posted by: Cassandra | September 24, 2004 at 06:54 PM
When do we get a book from good'ol Larry and what would the title be?
Posted by: Lune | September 25, 2004 at 07:26 AM
My mom reads Mother Jones too, just bought her a subscription for her birthday...
Posted by: MAnn Coulter | September 27, 2004 at 03:12 AM
What is going unsaid is that all of this is clearly affected by the presence of fluoride in the water supply. We all know that fluoridation is just one more instance of the military-industrial complex taking over every aspect of our lives and eliminating our right to choose. What is fluoride? I took chemistry at Berkeley. Twice. And I can tell you with one look at the periodic table that fluorine is one of the worst, most reactive and dangerous substances there is. The sodium fluoride in our water is only one step down the table from hydrogen fluoride, aka hydrofluoric acid. That's right. ACID. So what happens when the contaminated water gets into the blood stream? That's right. Technicolor squirrels. Chemicals. And guess who supplies the chemicals? It all loops back to Halliburton.
Posted by: Vishnu Troll Daddy Earth Goddess | September 27, 2004 at 10:16 AM
this is a very strange story and how can you possibly blame Bush for a mostrosity like this
Posted by: Annanomysos | February 07, 2005 at 01:43 PM
"When do we get a book from good'ol Larry and what would the title be?"
1. I don't have time to write a book.
2. Liberals in the Mist.
Posted by: Liberal Larry | May 05, 2005 at 10:40 AM
You are the most ignorant idiot I have ever heard...
Posted by: james | August 19, 2007 at 08:19 PM
Jeez you all are idiots!
Posted by: Buffy | August 22, 2007 at 11:25 AM