Eight Feet Deep

President Bush continued Friday to accept responsibility for government missteps in what some see as a “flood of culpability.” After two days of shouldering the responsibility for the federal government’s subpar response to Hurricane Katrina, Bush also said he was taking the rap for Sherman’s March to the Sea, the Great Chicago Fire and the Hindenburg Disaster.

“He’s never admitted blame nor taken responsibility for anything in his life. It’s like New Orleans, once the flood gates are open there’s no stopping him,” a top White House official said on the condition of anonymity. “I think he’s bound and determined to take responsibility for all the ills of this country.”

White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters at their daily briefing that the president was considering other government failures for which he could hold himself accountable. However, McClellan said the president stopped short of claiming responsibility for Gen. Sherman’s “bed hair” in the above photograph.

Not to be outdone, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, D-La., announced she accepts responsibility for the great 1927 Louisiana flood, the assassination of politician Huey P. Long, a poor crawfish market in 1956 and the potholes on Hwy. 190 outside of Ville Platte.

What an upbeat speech by GW full of yeah, yeah, yeah, for our country and the people hard hit by the storm on the Gulf Coast.

Here are the highlights:

“Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

And finally, who can forget these inspiring thoughts about recovery from Hurricane Katrina:

“Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

It inspires me to hear this. I know as a nation my neighbors in Lousiana will blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah ….

No it just means I occasionally am a careless person. But what is positive about blogs as opposed to newspapers, is you can correct your error as if it never happened.

“Say what?”

“Nope. I didn’t say that.”

“But it’s on the Internet.”

“Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.”

I refer to my little joke about the fortune cookie. It works now. It probably didn’t work so well because I originally omitted a space between the “ok” and “e.” It just made for an awkward read. Sorry. What are you going to do, fire me? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Eeeeh. Sorry, inside joke.

Okay, it’s now as it should be. That doesn’t particularly mean that it is funny. But, well, I stumble, you decide!

Av. Julius
Nyerere
Maputo
3236
Mzbqe.
My good sir: Perhaps I shall introduce myself for I am John Doe, one of 16 sons of former Liberia President Samuel K. Doe. In the photograph that accompanies this message, one may view me as third from the left rear. I fled with brothers when trouble came down and we eventually gathered in Tunisa. Later I most regrettably robbed the national treasury of Tunisia and had to run first to Rwanda and later to Mozambique, where I stay in this hotel in Maputo. My days of running are over as the police have placed me under house arrest. I truly wish I could see my brother Ernie K. Doe, now a upstanding resident of Botswana. For I fear I shall never see the light of freedom again and Ernie K. Doe has not long to live. I feel I must explain why.

Ernie K. Doe settled in Botswana with his wife, Tiffany and her mother. Ernie K. Doe had problems almost from the beginning with his mother-in-law. Sin should be her name. He even made a record about it, or so I have heard. Tiffany and her mother stole all the household items from my brother, Ernie’s home, then left for South Africa. Tiffany’s mother came back however and set my brother’s home on fire, with my brother Ernie K. Doe escaping within three inches of his life.

Years later, Ernie K. Doe contracted a terminal disease which was made worse by the heartbreak caused from the death of his favorite donkey, Jean Claude. Ernie K. Doe is now shunned by his community. I failed to mention he is also confined to a wheelchair and as well is blind.

I managed to smuggle some $4.5 million in US dollars out of Monrovia when we fled. I was the trusted keeper of this fortune for my family. However, I have been cursed with an unfortunate disease of which I bet my money on practically anything. I lost my final $1 million, betting that I could drive my Range Rover over a wide river in eastern Africa. I am unhappy to report that the Range Rover sank like a rock and I was very wet. I was also very broke. That led my my robbing the Tunisian treasury and my current unfortunate circumstance. But I do have $3.8 million in US currency hidden away in an account named to D.H. Lawrence in the Traveler’s Bank of Barbados.

I will never see the money and neither will my favorite brother Ernie K. Doe and his dead donkey. But I wish for my remaining 14 brothers to divide the handsome sum of $1 million and for your assistance in ensuring my brothers receive the money will award you the remaining $2.8 million in US currency. To do this you must receive the documents that list the particulars of my bank account along with the addresses of the remaining Doe brothers.

Should you elect to kindly help this poor and humble prisoner, you would require a meeting with a man named “Abraham” who dresses like a tribal princess. Abraham will then take you to see “Farouk,” who lives behind a Wal-Mart in Kearney, Nebraska, in the USA. From there you will drive in six automobiles to a cabin in Long Island, also in the USA, where you will receive the particulars of my account.

The hopes of the Doe legacy and family are riding on your valiant efforts. Please take my money for your troubles and return my message as soon as it is possible for you to do so.

Courage,
John Doe

Taking objects out of my pockets has always been sort of an obsession with me. I guess that happens when you are also obsessed with pockets. I love cargo pants, shorts, anything with pockets — hot pockets, corner pockets, pockets of resistance. Oh my.

But sometimes I forget and something I left in my pocket will go through the laundry and will become mostly useless from the tides of Cheer. I found — almost a week after doing my laundry — that one of my cargo shorts pockets contained a fortune. That is fortune as in fortune cookie, not a fortune as in Donald Trump. I pocketed that fortune after cracking a fortune cookie open a week or so ago at my local Vietnamese restaurant. Well, I guess technically it is Vietnamese-Chinese restaurant. The point is I kept that fortune for some reason or other. After my shorts went through the laundry, however, I was left with a very strange and cryptic message on the small piece of paper:

“o ne ok e y as”

I thought, hmm, that’s weird. O ne ok e y as. It sounds like maybe it’s a Spanish or American Indian phrase. What could that mean? You will meet a tall, dark stranger? Or maybe you will meet a tall, dark stranger with a bottle of gin? Perhaps it means you will meet a tall, dark stranger with the rest of the letters you are missing because washing your shorts obviously washed away the other letters.

So bothered did I become over what the cookie forturne meant that I actually called the restaurant to see if they had any idea what it said. I talked to someone named Duck at the eatery. I’m not sure how you spell his name. I’m not sure he could spell his name, at least in English. That line of inquiry did not go well.

Finally I sat down with a pen and paper and tried various word combinations. I was never really good at doing Jumble or other word puzzles but I nonetheless put my nose to the grindstone (Which is why my nose hurts. Don’t ever put a stone on your nose, much less a grindstone). Maybe I’m wrong, but I think I finally figured it out. It is the only phrase that makes sense out of why I would still have this fortune on me. This is what I determined as the cryptic message from that Vietnamese dinner more than a week ago:

“Fortune cookie my ass!”