Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2009
The sun comes up on a quiet National Mall. Remains from the previous night are scattered about: a few deflated performance tents, champagne bottles, various couples spooning in sleeping bags. Last night’s inauguration got off to a rocky start. Activists, dressed in rainbow flags, jumped on stage during the invocation and declared Rick Warren a homophobic fraud, before being hauled off by police. Warren defused the situation by ripping off his shirt to reveal a “Power Bottom” tattoo across his chest, and announcing that the U.S. Army marching bands and the comedy stylings of The Capitol Steps had been ditched in favor of an Earth, Wind, and Fire reunion with Bootsy Collins filling in on bass. The inauguration turned into a 24-hour orgiastic funk rave. Mamma Biden was spotted freak-dancing to “Serpentine Fire.” The show was broadcast live around the world, commercial-free, only to be interrupted when President Obama promised into a stray microphone to right everything Bush had done wrong in just one week. It seemed like an improbable promise, but the crowd roared, ready for change. James Brown’s “I Feel Good” blared from the loudspeakers.
Around eight that next morning, a mixed band of Obama supporters, charged from the night before, decides to storm the White House to make sure the Bush family is really gone. They burst through the front door only to find remnants of Jenna Bush’s 80s-themed inauguration party. A “Welcome Obama” banner falls to the floor while Modern English’s “I Melt With You” repeatedly plays in the background. Jenna is passed out in aerobic gear next to a punch bowl filled with Malibu Zima-tinis. George and Laura are nowhere to be seen, having taken a late night flight to Dubai to avoid the possibility of impeachment. The mob quietly begins cleaning up the trash and debris, as Obama’s newly-minted cabinet walks in to begin putting together the first initiatives of the new administration.
After lunch, the cabinet announces their first request: a cutoff of all corporate bailout spending. The request becomes a bill and passes through Congress by cocktail hour. Instead of bailing out banks, personal bailout checks are then sent to every homeowner in need. An additional provision allows for “purchase annulments” or “shotgun divorces,” where homeowners can void the purchase of overpriced, usuried real estate. Donald Trump commits suicide by drinking a bottle of hair tonic.
Talking heads flood the airwaves warning of catastrophic economic policies, but nobody seems to care. More stipulations to the bill are added after dinner. CEOs must forfeit their income from the past three years. Auto industry executives must drive Corvairs to business meetings. Financial institutions must pick up any remaining bailout money from Check Cashing outlets at 50 percent interest. It passes unanimously.
Before midnight, 21 percent of America’s CEOs hurriedly pack their bags and move to the Caribbean.
Thursday, Jan. 22, 2009
All American oil and gas companies are nationalized. Their $400 billion profits are used to install state-of-the-art, Maglev supertrains between every major city, powered by the momentum of trains going in the opposite direction. A national gas tax is levied. Riots break out over increased fuel prices, but emotions are subdued by the release of new Segway customization kits, including flame stenciling and bumper nutz.
Fearing the emergence of a socialist state, Grover Norquist and the Americans for Tax Reform fill every second of advertising on The View with pictures of Stalin-era Ukrainian work camps and a slogan voiced by Kelsey Grammer, “Sound familiar?” Move On counters in the afternoon with the message, “Are you rich or just ghetto rich?” Thousands check their credit card bill just to make sure.
Shocked by what they find, thousands storm the offices of major credit card companies demanding penance for their indentured servitude of debt. The throngs eventually disperse, lulled by the boredom of having to stay in Delaware for an extended period of time.
Late in the day, President Obama institutes universal health care just for the hell of it.
Friday, Jan. 23, 2009
Unemployment threatens to collapse the economy. The president’s stimulus package languishes in Congress, delayed by a protracted debate over how much funding each state should receive for green infrastructure projects. The national mood improves after a new reality show debuts called “Look Who’s Made Off”: Bernard Madoff is chased naked through Detroit by Michael Vick’s dogs after his balls are dipped in gravy.
Henry Waxman admits that he had never known the limits of the human soul before. Barney Frank reads a quote from Derrida on the permanence of metaphysical anguish.Realizing the situation’s gravity, President Obama quintuples the size of his reform package so every state can replace its strip malls with high-density glass arcological hyperstructures. Funding this shift bankrupts the federal government, and Obama is forced to defund the Department of Defense. All military units disband and return home to work as organic farmers in the hyperstructures.
That evening, any tax haven-bound CEOs are rounded up at various golf courses, devested of their top hats, and corralled onto a small prison island off of the Dominican Republic. Here they’re allowed to create a free market economy based around the only food available on the island: the fibrous, but barely edible, bark of the Calabash tree.
Saturday & Sunday, Jan. 24-25, 2009
Over the weekend, a story reveals that all recently produced military weaponry, which the U.S. and Russia had been secretly off-shoring to China for the past 10 years, has been found to be defective. The low-grade steel used in mortar shells, having been mixed with baby laxatives and cornstarch, tends to crumble on impact rather than tear apart human organs. This leads to a number of awkward, yet passive, international conflicts, mostly resolved by Sunday, at dusk.
Monday, Jan. 26, 2009
An anti-bureaucracy measure, that would allow government employees to be fired, is heatedly argued on the floor of the Senate. Democrats argue against it, claiming that government employees need whistleblower protection, but after being given a tour of the offices of long-term government apparatchiks—some living in a squalor of paperclips and Zen rock gardens, isolated from the world, only able to speak in a pidgin-English of matrix management terminology, and dependent on a maddening ritual of pseudo-work to maintain their pensions—the Senators return to the floor with blank stares and quickly reverse their opinion. Henry Waxman admits that he had never known the limits of the human soul before. Barney Frank reads a quote from Derrida on the permanence of metaphysical anguish.
After lunch, the Bureau of Justice releases a study showing crime drastically plummeting in most cities after a Ron Paul-sponsored bill to legalize drugs takes effect. Gang members line up to apply for Whole Foods cashier positions, and the economy gets a small bump from increased tax revenue. By mid-afternoon, anti-depressant sales have crashed. Drug manufacturer employees are discovered hocking illegal, high-dosage versions of Paxil and Xanax in the streets. Sales are dismal. Reports break of Pfizer employees defending their sales “turf” in promotional ballpoint-pen battles.
Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2009
President Obama calls a press conference with Secretary of State Clinton to announce the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, the Law of the Sea, international bans on cluster bombs and land mines, the International War Crimes Tribunal Treaty, and a newly created Ultra-Supranationalist Human Rights Treaty overriding all previous free trade statutes. Trade sanctions are replaced with a human rights/ecology tariff. Cuban sugar floods the U.S. market, and the price of corn drops drastically. Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack demands an increase on corn subsidies as compensation, but his requests are cut short when he’s found to have Type 5 Diabetes, having gained 300 pounds overnight.
Vilsack is quickly replaced by Michael Pollan since he can no longer fit through the doors of the Oval Office and has a stroke every 10 minutes.
Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2009
Most of the White House’s morning is spent overturning a myriad of laws and signing statements enacted during Bush’s term, from education, environmental regulations, Habeus Corpus, criminal justice reform, NSA spying, legalizing gay marriage, and energy on down to torture. President Obama suffers Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and is forced to wear a cast for his final signing of the week: an overarching extension of the Freedom of Information Act to release documents only weeks after they’re produced. Thousands of documents are finally made public, fully illuminating the Bush term. Now that most of the population has broadband access—thanks to an infrastructure project that was completed earlier in the week—everybody can read all of the gory details online. Shock and dismay rule the land. Most Republicans, from small-town mayors to state legislators, resign their positions out of shame. Others try a last-ditch attempt to reenact the Bull-Moose party, but most just walk away from it all to play golf, yet they’re unable to even double-bogey the front nine at Poplar Creek.
