NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE :
Your lies have earned our clients’ gratitude for helping to make so many people afraid of so many things.
Some of our clients are large food producers. They lose billions because a few remaining family farms still produce chicken, pork, and beef at low prices
The only way that our clients can raise prices and increase profits is to put the remaining small food producers out of business. They are counting on you to develop and publicize lies that will make people afraid of the small family farms that have kept them from starving since the beginning of time.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah think these sound like reel profityble opportunities. Kin we get us sum bonuses iffin we come up wiffin sum reelly good lies?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Yes, how about bonuses? Frankly, I am sick and tired of generating massive lies and not getting paid nearly as much as our clients. Why, the big chicken outfits, alone, will make billions if we wipe out small chicken and egg producers. We should get a percentage.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: PRODUCERS OF LIES ARE NOT ELIGIBLE FOR BONUSES OR PERCENTAGE ARRANGEMENTS. IF YOU ARE NOT HAPPY LYING FOR US, WE CAN FIND EXPERIENCED LIARS TEACHING IN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES AROUND THE WORLD. MILLIONS OF THEM ARE DROOLING AT THE CHANCE TO LIE FOR REALLY BIG MONEY. IF YOU DO NOT LIE FOR THE AGREED ON PRICE, YOU WILL BE REPLACED.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I didn’t mean to offend anyone. After all, we are proven prevaricators, and I am sorry for giving the impression that I may have seemed to have harbored thoughts that might appear to be disloyal. I am already working on a lie involving unregulated waste disposal on small poultry producing farms that should add to their costs.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah agree. Ah certainly didn’t mean to offend anyone, either. Ah’m real happy, lyin’ for what Ah’m bein’ paid.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: In my country, we have many small food producers that must be destroyed. Would it be possible to have Peace Corps Volunteers sent overseas to focus agricultural research money on projects that willl delay development of food production? I’d like them to work on mandating small, inefficient irrigation pumps powered by bicycles.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: That’s a great lie and a great project, Ramjet. It will keep people busy, hungry, tired, and poor, all at the same time. It’s a natural for the World Bank!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Thank you, Dr. Dudewell. I am honored to be able to lie, and, unlike some American liars, I do not want any more money. I do, however, have several hundred relatives who would like to attend American medical schools with full scholarships.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Ramjet, all of us have relatives looking for scholarships to medical schools. Let’s think about our clients, instead of ourselves. We have to show a relationship between small food producers and greater likelihood of disease. We can tell the fools that droppings from birds can infect small flocks kept in the open.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Brilliant lying, Mendle! Birds flying over the flocks can infect them with germs from their droppings. It should be illegal for anyone to keep any kind of poultry outside. That’ll fix those small farmers!
Dr. Emil Twist: Microbes from bird droppings might able to get through eggshells. Let’s tell ’em “There may be a “corkscrew virus”. It a chemical in it’s corkscrew-shaped front end that dissolves the eggshell, and allows the deadly virus to get inside. I should get the copyrights to “corkscrew virus”.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE:
Dr. Twist, we have warned you about trying to take advantage of lies told to us for personal gain. You are being paid for your fine lies. Inventing the “Corkscrew Virus” is a very fine lie, but our client actually owns the copyrights.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Emil, you’ve had a wonderful idea. We could say that they crawl into peoples’ brains and eat them away, but how do we convince people that only small farms create this problem?
Dr. Emil Twist: Well, that is why we have a whole committee. Surely, one of us can think of something.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: We must interrupt you. A new client’s cash flows are based on huge, billion dollar fleets of factory ships. Their processing work is done by cheaply purchased North Korean slaves laboring in escape-proof steel hulls. Our new client does not want those cash flows diverted to small, low-cost fish producers in free countries.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I don’t know if I can keep all these lies straight. We’re already talking about birds dropping waste from the air, killing people with “corkscrew viruses”. What about birds that are dropping fecal material in the oceans? Won’t they contaminate fish in the sea?
Dr. Bemis Understod: Slyvia, you can keep the lies straight. Anything that makes money for our client is true. Anything that hurts our client is a lie. Stop worrying about reality. You don’t want THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE thinking you’re gravitating towards the other side.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Bemis! How could you think such a thing? Why, I’ve been lying since Vassar, though that wasn’t that long ago.
Dr. Emil Twist: Good for you, Sylvia. Back to lying in a microsecond. Why, you’ve been gone from Vassar long before the first Clinton administration produced the Appearance is Reality Manifesto, back when all of us on The Lie Committee got our Civil Service retirement benefits approved.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Would you two stop this chit-chat and get back on the subject. Of course the birds spread “corkscrew viruses” in the ocean with their droppings. We simply tell the fools that, since the oceans are deep, and the fish far below the surface, that the infectuous agents in the droppings are killed by salt in the water before they reach the deep-feeding wild fish.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Wow! Good lying, Ramjet! But, what if some of the fools say ‘well, mercury is down deep, because it’s heavy, and fish from the open seas are more likely to ingest it and be killed or disabled.
Dr. Emil Twist: We just say that mercury is so heavy that it plummets straight to the bottom before the fish have time to ingest it.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: It doesn’t matter about mercury. Mercury levels in fish are a completely imaginary problem. But, what if some of the fools understand that the acids in digestive systems kill all microbes known to come from bird droppings? Won’t they say so?
Dr. Mendel Meddle: Of course they will, but no one that smart will ever be allowed on TV, or any other mainstream media. Oh, there’ll be some bloggers from the right side of the bell curve who’ll know, but not enough voters pay attention to them to affect anything.
Dr. Emil Twist: We need to boil down a lot of lies, Sylvia. You’re good at it. As far as mercury is concerned, we’ll just have some of our usual research show that the depths where fish feed are scientifically certified to be mercury free. Who can deny that? I can picture some simple drawings, now, with some newsspewer nodding wisely as one of our TV-certified explainers explains things to her.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah’ve got a great lie! As for digestive juices killing ingested infectuous agents, we simply say “It’s possible that the mutated microbes found in family farms may be invulnerable to destruction by digestive juices. Certain death or paralysis may come from eatin’ meat, fish, ‘n eggs frum family fish farms.” Who kin argue with that?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Magnificent lie, Dick. By the time we’ve finished, the fools’ll think that small fish farms are practically septic tanks. In fact, we could say that some small producers actually raise fish in septic tanks, another reason why our client’s free-swimming, natural, ocean raised fish are so much better!
Dr Bemis Understood: We’ve got a lot of lies. We have to keep them simple. Our copyrighters need super-simple lies for some pseudo-intellectual nincompoop of an “expert” to recite while nodding wisely to some brainless anchorperson.
Dr. Emil Twist: I’ll try to sum up. First, family farms are filthy. Birds are always dropping infectuous agents, so all animals exposed to the sky are are continually infected and re-infected.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Here’s another lie: To stop diseases, family farmers overuse antibiotics. That makes germs resistant to antibiotics, so those who consume such food are nearly certain to suffer agonizing pain and die.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Let’s not just focus on bird droppings. Wind and insects also spread diseases from family farm to family farm. “Corksrew viruses” appear. They are not killed by cooking. They live in human brains, ovaries, and testicles, destroying those living and those to be born.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Bemis, you’ve added a couple of new lies there. Ah like it! Ah think it’s dumbed down enuf for TV news! And, Ah’ve got another lie! You menshuned wind ‘n insects spreadin’ diseases from family farm to family farm. Ah think we should demand legislashun that all farm animals be both covered and screened in. That’ll increase costs so much that thousands, mebbe millions, of small farmers will go broke!
Dr. Emil Twist: Dick, it’s brilliant!
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: DR. DUDEWELL, LEGISLATION TO FORCE FAMILIY FARMS TO KEEP ANIMALS IN AREAS THAT ARE BOTH COVERED AND SCREENED IS ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC! MAKING THE FOOLS KEEP ANIMALS IN COVERED, SCREENED AREAS WILL PUT THEM ALL OUT OF BUSINESS. IT IS SUCH A GREAT LIE THAT WE WILL RESERVE IT FOR A FUTURE CAMPAIGN WITH MORE BILLING TO FOLLOW. CONGRATULATIONS!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: It will translate well into third world media if we blame the Americans for destroying their family farms. That’s always good for riots and headlines.
Dr. Emil Twist: If we do this right, every piece of farm machinery in France will be parked in downtown Paris! Good job, everybody.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: (thinks her microphone is off) Thank goodness that’s over. Bemis, what are you doing for dinner?.”
Dr. Bemis Understood: Uh, Sylvia, I think you’re still on conference.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: click.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE :
These are good lies, nearly ready for a simple, mainstream media script. Please expand your lies to include one or two references to global warming. We’re still on their retainer, and it looks like those clients will be milking GW for years to come. Any lies about how global warming is caused by small farms?
Dr. Bemis Understood: Oh, I love the global warming lies! The fools think the planet’s being par-boiled. Off the top of my head, I can come up with a couple of beauts. We say that “small, family farms don’t control emissions on small tractors and other machinery. They contribute disproportionately to global warming”.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah think we could also say: “Uncovered farm animals release methane, body heat, and waste products that are not controllable. Animals in covered pens and cages can have these dangerous, unregg’llated emissions controlled. Though it is more expensive to raise animals in covered pens, those concerned with the environment will be glad to pay.”
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I’ve got a good one. “Animals that roam loose on small farms and ranches break up sod formations, and cause more rapid erosion. This pollutes vital water sources, blah, blah, blah.”
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE:
Dr. Meddle, your use of ‘blah, blah, blah’ indicates that you may not be taking your lies seriously enough. In the future, please spell out the details of your lies so that we can test their trustworthiness.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I’m very sorry for having given the impression that I don’t care enough about my lies. I just thought everyone was so used to our ordinary, everyday lies that they’d know what I meant. We should, of course, make the fools realize that polluted drinking water is a serious problem made even worse by pastures and fields full of sharp-hoofed animals. Sharp hooves break up vital root structures, thereby causing soil erosion. Polluted water is also darker. It absorbs more heat from the sun, thereby contributing to global warming. Sorry for not having made that clear.
Dr. Emil Twist: Mendle, I appreciate seeing your lies spelled out. You have brought out very good lies, and that makes it easier to tell the newsmorons that we have something ‘new’. That’s always important.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Mendle, Ah wonner iffin we should have the congressoids pass laws makin’ sharp-hooved animals wear shoes?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: How else can we protect vital root structures?
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE:
Small-scale food production can be curtailed by demanding local legislation. Please develop lies to justify more restrictive farming laws.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I love law-making lies! They drive small entities out of business and generate new bureaucracies with ongoing costs at the same time!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: How about this for a starter lie: “There are too many producers of (pork, beef, milk, chickens, eggs, fish, pick as many as you like) in this state. In order to stabilize production and eliminate pollution, there should be no more than two dozen individual production units of this food source in whatever State we’re trying to help.”
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That is a great start. We should go to each State Legislature. If they are too smart to destroy their agricultural base, we should go to states where there are no producers to oppose us. For instance, we will make it illegal to raise catfish in Alaska and salmon in South Florida. There will be no local resistance, because there are no local resistors.
Dr. Emil Twist: Good idea, Ramjet. Then, we gradually move into states where such producers are significant, and we tell the field beasts “We have to keep up with other, progressive areas. They have passed similar laws to protect their people. We cannot fall behind! Public safety is too important! ” We’ll build credibility with momentum.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: If the state legislatures are too smart, we can go to individual counties, cities, and townships. Get a lot of simple-minded twits who hate their neighbors involved. Make it look like a “grass roots” movement.
Dr. Bemis Understood: That’s always a great way to loot the fools. Let’s tie in “animal sensitivity”, too. We’ll tell the fools that “Veal calves are suffering, along with over-crowded chickens, pigs, and cattle on farms that are just too numerous to inspect properly.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: ‘N them stuffed goose livers! We’ll tell ’em how the geese are livin’ in agony while they get their livers stuffed! We can get the bleedin’ hearts gushin’ all over the place. The dummer field beasts are suckers for keepin’ animals happy. ‘Til they get hungry, ‘n eat ’em.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Good lies, good plan. We’ll be able to limit competition, and our clients will make more money than ever!
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE:
Your lies have been tested for the appearance of truthfulness. All have passed.
This time of year, our clients are concerned about people with home gardens. Too many people are raising their own tomatoes and other vegetables. Others plant trees that will produce fruit. Gardening costs our clients a lot of profits.
Your assignment is to produce lies that will minimize the home production of food.
Dr. Bemis Understood: It’s about time! I have neighbors with gardens, and they grow a lot of food. Some of them freeze it and can it so they can eat it for a whole year. If millions of cheapskate field beasts produce their own food, it has to have a bad effect on our clients. I can’t believe it’s legal.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: The fools can produce their own food? How, exactly, do they do that?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: The field beasts buy seeds. Then, they stick the seeds in the dirt. The seeds turn into plants that produce vegetables.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Seeds?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: They’re things that grow on plants. When you put them in dirt, they grow and make another plant.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I never heart of such a thing. Is this another one of your lies? There’s no way a stupid plant could produce something that complicated. They must be made in laboratories. Or, factories. I’m not a simple field beast, you know.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: ‘Course y’all aren’t a simple field beast. Seeds do grow on plants, and when they’re planted, they make more plants. Why, Ah’ve done it myself. The vegetables are a lot better than what you can buy. Cheaper, too. We’all are gonna have to really lie.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Dick, why haven’t I heard about this?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Sylvia, you’re a perfessional environmentalist. Y’all are workin’ at the very highest levels there are. Y’all aren’t ‘sposed to know about grubbin’ ’round in dirt. Take my word for it. People are stickin’ seeds in the ground, and gettin’ free vegeetables. They call it “gardenin’”. Our clients want it stopped, so we got to stop ’em.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: This will need good lying because the fresh vegetables have more vitamins. I’m ashamed, deeply ashamed, that I have a garden. I grow vegetables. When I go home, I will uproot everything. Kill every plant in my garden. Then, I will work on lies. Good lies.
Dr. Emil Twist: We can focus on how bad it is for people to get their hands dirty. Say that germs and microbes living in the filthy dirt are absorbed directly through the skin, and that all soil contact must be avoided. That’s not much of a lie, but it is a start.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: It’s not that bad a lie. Dirt is full of germs and, well, dirt. We’ll have to focus on that.
Dr. Emil Twist: We can always say that “Home gardeners are historically careless with dangerous chemicals. Chemicals that kill weeds or insects will kill people. We need legislation that will force those home gardeners to take classes in the proper use of dangerous chemicals.”
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s brilliant! The Executive Committee may be able to generate fees from state colleges and uiniversities to sponsor mandatory gardening classes. We’ll force the filthy field beasts to pay through the nose to learn what they already know, and get money for our friends.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Don’t forget The Children! The Children may be hurt by these deadly chemicals. They could go blind! Deaf! Become obese! The Children are suffering in endless ways. We cannot have The Children suffering as long as there’s money in it for us! Why, what would happen if one of The Children ate one of those “seeds”?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: A lot of what we’all eat is made outen seeds, Sylvia.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I can’t believe that. First you plant the seeds, then you eat the seeds? That makes no sense at all. Are you sure you aren’t making this up?
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE:
We feel that Dr. Sweem’s grasp of things should be maintained as it is. She will be a more valued contributor if her remarkable standard of knowledge is maintained. Please change the subject.
Dr. Bemis Understood: There’s a great danger of allowing people to own sharp instruments. You know, a maniac running amok with a rake or a hoe could kill a lot of people. Have there been any cases of that?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: It happens every day. Remember our friend, the heroic Pol Pot? He killed millions of people with rakes and hoes. Think of the money he saved! The Chinese have to spend a lot of money on bullets to execute prisoners. Not Pol Pot. Why, the threat of deadly, unlicensed garden implements is a very real threat to every one.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: That’s the truth. Why, a spadin’ fork in the wrong hands is as deadly as a bayonet.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Rake? Hoe? Spading fork? Is that what field beasts eat with?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Nah. They dig in the ground wiffin ’em.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Digging destroys the natural habitats of valuable earthworms. We can’t allow the fools to just “dig in the ground.” Who knows what manner of irreplacable animal life they’re destroying?
Dr. Emil Twist: Sylvia, they do worse than dig. Some of them actually grind up the ground with roto-tillers. They shred every worm they run over.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Roto-tillers?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Sylvia, a roto-tiller is a lot like a giant Cuisinart, except it grinds up the ground.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: That has to be illegal! People can’t be allowed to go around grinding up the very earth we walk on. That would cause increased water run-off! Or, in some cases, it might stop water run-off. In any case, water run-off will always be changed. Surely, that’s illegal?
Dr. Emil Twist: Absolutely. It’s in the fine print of any number of EPA regs. We just can’t get lazy EPA regulators to enforce it. Once they start working at the EPA, they work from home and never do anything! That’s why this project is so vitally important. Once we can fine them heavily for any unlicensed food production, we’ll be able to shut down this filthy “gardening”.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Those ‘roto-tillers’ bother me. Won’t ‘roto-tillers’ hurt The Children? Why, if the field beasts ran over little childrens’ feet, wouldn’t they be crippled? Are ‘roto-tiller’ operators licensed? Can anyone just go to a store and buy a ‘roto-tiller’? This seems like a wonderful opportunity for licenses, fees, programs, regulators, and inspectors! No matter how much it costs, we must Protect The Children.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: But, not from abortionists!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Now, Ramjet, you know that unborn babies are not human beings until they’re in high school.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I just wanted to be clear, in case one of the fools brought it up.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE:
Clients point out a problem. It seems that many “gardeners” actually believe press releases that tell them environmental “problems” are real. The dumber ones make generous donations to our clients. Naturally, our clients do not want to offend the more gullible “gardeners” and reduce the huge stream of cash that flows from them into environmental organizations. We need finely polished lies to discourage individual food production and still have gardeners think our imaginary enviro-problems are real.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: That’s gonna take some mighty fine lyin’! Mebbe what we do is tell the fools that minimal diggin’, spadin’, n’ roto-tillin’ are all right, if they’re “done responsibly”. At the same time, we let ’em know that “responsible gardeners never use chemicals”.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That’s a good lie that will certainly reduce their output of food! Why, their gardens will be eaten alive by bugs and choked with weeds! Collectively, the fools will spend billions to make thousands. Wonderful!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: So, it sounds like one of the lies will be “Responsible gardeners never use chemicals.” Dick, I like it. It’s short and simple enough that even the dumbest newsspewer can look sincerely into the camera while reciting it.
Dr. Emil Twist: Not so fast! Before you guys break your arms patting yourselves on the back, we’ve got our clients to consider. They buy herbicides and pesticides by the train-load and spray them with giant tractors and airplanes. They spread huge clouds of chemical dust. How do we avoid having people say “Responsible commercial food growers should never use chemicals, either.”
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Good catch, Emil! You’re absolutely right! We need to refine that lie. We need to custom-tailor it so that it only affects gardeners and family farms, but our clients have to be safe from it. They need powerful chemicals to make enough profit to pay our fees.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Emil and Jacob, thank you. Why, our lie could have been used against our own clients! We could have lost our jobs. We need better lies!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: One would be: “Only large food producers can afford the ‘good chemicals’ that break down into healthy nutrients less than an hour after they’re applied.”
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Sylvia, “good chemicals!” That’s brilliant. Is it true?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: How would I know? It sounds true, and the field beasts will believe it.
Dr. Emil Twist: They sure will! Let’s make up a name for “good chemicals”. Then, we can invent a logo for it, and stamp it on the containers of “good chemicals”. Our clients can sell the copyrights and make money without having to grub around actually making anything.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Why not just call them “natural chemicals”. Or, “purely natural chemicals”.
Dr. Bemis Understood: That may confuse the fools. We’ve spent a lot of time convincing them that “chemical” is bad, and “natural” is good. We might negate all the fine work we’ve done if they realize that everything in their bodies is made out of chemicals. We need something better.
Dr. Emil Twist: How about “Purely processed chemicals”?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah lak it! Ah really do! “Purely processed chemicals” just rolls off’n the tongue with such positive believability the fools will love it.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: We need just one more positive adjective. “Purely” is counteracted by the negativity in “processed” and “chemicals”. Can we get “love” or “trust” or “health” or “safe” stuck in there?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: How about showing some thin, sensitive-looking woman interrupting her Yoga lesson. She turns, and stares into a camera while saying “I trust purely processed chemicals. For the people I love, they’re more than healthy, they’re perfectly safe.” Then, she goes back to saying “ommmm”, or whatever the hell they do.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Mendle, you must have been the brightest boy in Brooklyn! Ah lak it!
Dr. Emil Twist. Let’s get some alliteration in there for the additional copy. “Purely processed chemicals are perfectly safe.”
Dr. Dick Dudewell: We can finish off with: “Food from large, caring corporations is better for you. They care enough to use perfectly safe, purely processed chemicals.”
Dr. Mendle Meddle: And one attack-lie will be, “Food from small producers and home gardens is produced with impure chemicals applied by untrained operators. It is almost certain to be medically dangerous to unknowing consumers.”
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: GOVERNMENT CLIENTS WOULD PREFER THAT ‘GARDENING’ BE STOPPED. ‘GARDENING’ IS FELT TO ENCOURAGE INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, SELFISH PROFITEERING FROM NATURAL PROCESSES, SELF-RELIANCE, AND DEVELOPMENT OF SURVIVAL SKILLS.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah sure agree with that, but it’s even worse. Gardenin’ gets people outside, ‘n away from their teevees. We cain’t hardly keep the fools thinkin’ right iffin they’re workin’ in their gardens.
Dr. Emil Twist: This whole concept of individual or family food production and storage focuses people on themselves and their families. The idea that they should grow food without being forced to give it to those who need it is repugnant.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: A great problem with gardening is the arrogance it causes. Gardeners think they have the right to decide what kind of plants will live and what will die. The very process of deciding which plant is an undesirable weed is human arrogance. Pulling up any weed is a crime against nature.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: It’s worse when they kill insects. Who are they to decide that Japanese beetles should be killed while a ladybug is spared? Doesn’t every beetle have the same right to survive? Gardening is speciesism of the worst kind. No species should decide that another will be destroyed.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Of course you are right. A person working in a garden might swat a mosquito or horse fly. Spray a caterpillar. Shoot a lettuce-eating rabbit. Frighten deer away from food they have just as much right to as the arrogant gardener.
Dr. Emil Twist: One dangerous thinking pattern they have leads to what they call ‘weeding’. They think they have the right and ability to identify undesirable plants, and destroy them!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: No!
Dr. Emil Twist: They do! They go into their gardens, and pull up what they call ‘weeds’.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: They’re like Nazis! Trying to ‘purify’ their surroundings. We need to develop a few pro-‘weed’ associations. Weeds have rights, too. They must be protected from the primitive thinking that destroys all that isn’t useful.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Syl, Ah hates to tell y’all, but weeds acshually are useless. They take up nutrients and sunlight ‘n that reeduces food production.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Who’s to say people are better than ‘weeds’? Who gives them the right to rip up and destroy precious plants for their selfish, short-term gain? We need a ‘Bill of Rights’ for plants! All plants are worthy of protection. Even the worst ‘weed’ may have some use, someday. Even if only to itself!
Dr. Bemis Understood: But, to make money, our clients have to get rid of weeds. How are we going to let them decide what plants to brutally destroy while denying the same right to the ‘gardeners’?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Oh, I’m sure I don’t know. Tell them that “Large, caring organizations grow weeds on acerage set-asides to maintain vital plant diversity.”
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah think that’s purty good, Syl.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I do, too. Tell them “Each precious ‘bio-diversity plot’ must be a hundred acres”. No home gardener can hope to do that. We’ll fix the selfish, Nazi bastards so that they’ll never be able to kill another helpless weed.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: And, what about fences? It is repugnant to think that one species can keep another species away from food grown on our living mother, earth. And, fences encourage people to think that they can “own” property. It’s awful!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Attacks on gardening and gardeners help us undermine whole concepts of customary values. Asking young children basic questions about “What makes you better than a rabbit or potato beetle?” can confuse them for decades. We need the Education Sub-Com to join with us in this vital endeavor.
Dr. Bemis Understood: We can ask adults the same kind of mind-deadening questions. Those who live in cities and strive to define themselves by living up to media descriptions of “caring, vital persons” can be easily turned against gardening. “Dangerous, old-fashioned ideas of independence.” should be a part of every Sunday supplement.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Gardening is worse than mere “independence”. It is an attack on the basic inter-connectedness of life. Setting the individual above the all-important collective is moving backwards into greed.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Tha’s right, Sylvia. Attackin’ gardenin’ gives us an oppurtunity to replace the idea that nachure is here to benefit mankind with makin’ ’em think that mankind is here to benefit nachure.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Very good, Dick. But, that really should be “humankind”. You’re right that we want people sacrificing themselves for the benefit of bugs and weeds. Once we get those notions in their minds, they just can’t fight against us.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Attacking gardening is a way to attack every incorrect thinking process.
Dr. Emil Twist: Again, we see the importance of Education. Schools should be teaching the value of canned, frozen, and otherwise processed food from large, “caring producers”. We want children to think it’s mean and selfish to be self-supporting.
Dr. Bemis Understood: One of the worst thing gardening does is teach them skills. They learn how to do actual things. We can’t have that.
Dr. Emil Twist: You know, I just realized that gardening also gives children a sense of cause and effect. Why, they might realize that bread comes from wheat, or that milk comes from cows. They should be taught that food comes from our clients, who, alone, are entrusted with mysterious food-producing processes far beyond the fools’ ability to understand.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Y’all are sure right. That’s why Ah’ll bet our clients would pay to help us get rid of farmer’s markets. That’s where a lot of gardeners turn their produce into cash.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I never put that together! They can turn sunshine, water, and earth into money! That must be made illegal! What right does one person have to make a profit from our common earth? Sunshine? Water? What every happened to the idea of community-owned rain and sunshine? This is awful!
Dr. Emil Twist: What about gravity? Gravity is what makes the rain fall and brings apples down from trees. Using communal gravity to so that an individual or small group can make money should be as illegal as using rain or sunshine. We need more laws!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: This battle is more than legal. We need to stop individual gardeners by every possible means. First, let’s stop calling them “gardeners”. Let’s call what they do “Profiteering From Nature” Once we label something, we can make it illegal.
Dr. Bemis Understood: All progressive people have a clear duty to stop selfish “earth profiteers” from benefitting personally from sunshine, water, gravity, and earth.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah hate to interrup’ such a wonnerful thought, but what are we gonna do iffin pipple grow mushrooms in caves?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: What!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: They kin take any kind of waste, even old logs, ‘n grow mushrooms to eat or sell. Ah know not many of ’em do, but we gotta go beyond saying that sunshine is a common property whose results must be freely given to those who ask fer it.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I see where you’re going with that, Dick. We want to make it unfashionable, then, illegal, for any person to personally profit from any natural process.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Tha’s it. Gardenin’ is only the tip of the iceberg. Let us expand our thinkin’. Sorry Ah interrupted you, Mendle.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Glad you did, Dick. What I started to say was that home gardens are just a step away from farmer’s market stalls. They are just a step away from truck farms. They can turn into agri-businesses that can hurt our clients.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Let’s weed them all out!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Sylvia, you’re a beautiful woman, a great liar, and a punster, too! What a woman!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: You two are flirting again! I am duty-bound to report this if it continues.
Dr. Mendle Meddlea: Relax, Ramjet. If you make an issue of this, and the many Mrs. Singhs find out, they may think you’re jealous! If just one Mrs. Singh finds out that you don’t want Sylvia flirting with someone, the rest of them will make your life miserable.
Dr. Emil Twist: Now, now, we mustn’t get personal. We have a beginning. We will continue working.
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE:
CLIENTS REPORT THAT THE FOOLS ARE SPENDING TIME AND MONEY ON TWO TYPES OF GARDENS. YOUR LIES ONLY COVER FOOD-PRODUCING GARDENS. MANY OF THE FIELD BEASTS RAISE ORNAMENTAL FLOWERS AND SHRUBS. THIS DIVERTS THEM AWAY FROM TAXABLE ACTIVITIES.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Good point. We don’t want women, particularly, wasting time growing gardenias and roses when they could have jobs that earn taxable income.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Women can grow their own flowers? It’s terrible that any woman would spend time on unnecessary activity.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah thank a lot of wimmen like purty thangs. We gotta git in their minds ‘n make ’em unnerstan’ that the only purty thang is a job ‘n the bes’ thang about that job is that it lets ’em “contribute”.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: What about the ones who have jobs and take care of flower gardens when they get home? We must do more. The very process of thinking that they can make the world a more beautiful place has to be undermined and destroyed.
Dr. Bemis Understood: So true. The most beautiful dwellings are the most efficient. Remember the concrete glory of the East German high-rises? The endless grey was truly inspiring.
Dr. Emil Twist: No time to waste on flowers! People should be as busy as bees. Work, work, work. That’s the real joy of life.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: You got that right, Emil. Any field beast who doesn’t put in twelve or fourteen hours a day to make life fairer jes’ doesn’t know what life’s all about.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Let’s get some lies out about “The Joys of Monochrome”. Have Oprah, and the rest of our spewers, start to focus on that. Grey is good.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Sylvia, that’s good! Show before and after pictures of huge buildings with flower boxes, then without. Praise the uniformity. Criticize by saying “Women who try to make things better think they’re better.”
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s a great lie! Undermine ’em right in their sense of self-worth. Say that “Elitist thoughts of improving anything are a mean-spirited attack on everyone who has gone before.” It’s kind of sexist, though. Let’s have it read “People who try to make things better think they’re better.”
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Tha’s jes’ what they do think. Uppity basta’ds.
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: CLIENTS ARE PLEASED WITH YOUR LIES. ONE IMPORTANT CLIENT SUPPORT GROUP HAS A DISPROPORTIONATE NUMBER OF MEMBERS WHO SELL FLOWERS AT RETAIL. BE SURE THAT YOUR LIES DO NOT THREATEN THEIR LIVELIHOODS.
Dr. Bemis Understood: One refinement is to say that “The only safe flowers to buy come from established stores with truly sensitive employees.”
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Let’s add: “They work hard to be sure that only organic flowers of the proper color and aroma are available.”
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah like that! Stick that organic crapola in there, again. Dum’-ass’ field beasts’ll eat it right up.
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WELL DONE. OUR CLIENTS ARE PLEASED WITH YOUR PROGRESS.
OUR NEW ASSIGNMENT: TWO CLIENTS BELIEVE THEY HAVE A SUBSTITUTE FOR FAT. IT IS MADE FROM SEWAGE PLANT SLUDGE. CLIENT A IS PAID TO HAUL IT AWAY, GIVING IT A NEGATIVE COST ON RAW MATERIALS.
CLIENT A PROCESSES IT INTO A COMPOUND THAT LOOKS LIKE BLACK LARD, SMELLS AWFUL, AND TASTES LIKE, WELL, IT DOESN’T TASTE GOOD. CHECK YOUR SAMPLES. CLIENT B SEES AN INCOME OPPORTUNITY.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah love a challenge. But this? We’re supposed to take somethin’ made outten of raw sewage sludge, ‘n tell the fools it’s good for ’em to eat it?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: No field beast could be that dumb!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I’ve lied about everything under the sun, but I don’t see how we can come up with something that will make people eat this! It’s awful. It’s sickening. Why, when I opened my sample, I gagged!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Foolish Western thinking. You need to look far afield for your lies. In my religious tradition, such a food would be thought to be good for you precisely because it is so awful.
Dr. Emil Twist: I’m with Syl. I tried to give some to my dog and little Bismark threw up. I don’t think anyone will buy this, no matter how much we lie
Dr. Bemis Understood: When the going get’s tough, the tough get going. You’re forgetting key advantages. First, it’s recycled. Stop gagging, Sylvia. Second, it has absolutely no fat in it. We’ve been lying about fat for fifty years. Nearly all the fools are cconvinced there’s something wrong with fat, even though their own brains are mostly made of it.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Bemis, y’all may have som’thin’ there. Iffin we kin get ’em to eat this unspeakably vile crap, well, we either do it at gunpoint, or we make ’em think it’s good for ’em.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Now, now! These are still early samples. My wife mixed in a lot of curry powder to kill much of the foul taste and smell. I added some pepper to that, along with a lot of licorice flavoring. Now, it’s quite tasty.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Ramjet, are you out of your mind?
Dr. Bemis Understood: Sylvia, one of the Mrs. Singhs gave me some. I was actually able to swallow it without retching. It’s not good, but it’s better than our early samples.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Sylvia, we could sell this in many countries! They would love it because there are no animal deaths involved in its production.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ramjet, they might eat it in y’alls’ country, but not here. This vile crap has no food value, smells lak a cess pool in August, and makes a dog throw up. Ah haven’t tasted your version of it, Ramjet, and Ah’m not goin’ to.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Actually, you already have. We took Ramjet’s concoction, baked it, heavily salted it, and made it into the frito-like chips you’ve been eating since the meeting started.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Arrrgggghhhhhh!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I can’t believe it! We’ve been snacking on it all this time? Ramjet, you are a genius! You have turned processed sludge into fat-free junk food! Why, you ought to get a Nobel Prize!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Truly, Ramjet, this is going to be big! Big, I tell you! Big! We just need a few lies to help our client.
Dr. Emil Twist: Just who is our client?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We have two. Client A is the company that invented this process. Client B is the International School Cafeteria Association. They are sick and tired of wasting money on food for school children that would be better used to increase their own salaries.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Why, that’s purty daggone smart. Most schools already keep the kids locked in all day. There’s no way the little bastards could get away from eatin’ this vile crap. Both client’ll be makin’ billions!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Dick, you really should stop referring to this as “vile crap”. This job requires some of the biggest lies we’ve ever told, and your negative attitude makes it harder.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: A’hm sorry. I shor’ am. It was unperfessional of me to complain. Iffin a client want’s a lie, a perfessional liar’s got to lie, without complainin’ ’bout it. Iffin it’ll help, Ah do have the beginnin’s of a lie. What about callin’ this stuff “Cycleround”?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I like that! How about “Fat-free Cycleround”?
Dr. Emil Twist: That sounds good. “Fat-free Cycleround”. Has a nice sound. Healthy, environmentally sound, modern, why, I think it’s a great name.
Dr. Bemis Understood: We have to have a great name. We’re selling the fools processed sewage! And, a nice logo would be a cyclist, going down some country road.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Mebbe headin’ towards an outhouse?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Now, Dick, that’s not necessary. But, how do we get away from telling the fools what it’s made of?
Dr. Emil Twist: We don’t. We just analyze it and list the chemical names. We’ll make the print so small that the fools can’t even read the content part of the labels.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Wal, I guess you could put “Made in USA” on it. Be nice for ’em to know they ain’t eatin’ no imported food. Put in the ads “Fat-free Cycleround helps keep America strong.”
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Dick, I get the idea that your heart isn’t in this.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah got children from my fourth n’ fifth wife, and grandchildren from wives one, two, and three in the public schools. Ah must admit, Ah ain’t crazy ’bout havin’ ’em eat processed sewage while they ain’t learnin’ how to read ‘n write.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: In my country, we realize that everything is one. There is an interconnectedness that unifies all. Making the fools think about that keeps them quiet.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah’ll try to think of it that way. At any rate, we got a coupla good lies out of this meeting. Ah’d like to sugges’ one addition: “Fat-free Cycleround, our connection to the cycle of life”.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Ohh, Dick. That’s wonderful!
Interoffice memo to
Director,
Executive Committee: Dr. Dick Dudewell has been our most creative liar. He serves on nearly all the Lie Committees. For the first time, he has been reluctant to enthusiastically support lies, in this case for Fat-Free Cycleround, though he did, to be fair, invent the brilliant name “Cycleround”. Please put a note in his personnel file to watch him closely and monitor his communications. We do not want such an important person in our organization to move towards truth.
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: BOTH CLIENTS ARE ABSOLUTELY ECSTATIC ABOUT YOUR LIES! THEY LOVE THE NAME “FAT FREE CYCLEROUND” TO DESCRIBE THE NEW, BALANCED SCHOOL CAFETERIA FOOD MADE FROM PROCESSED SEWAGE SLUDGE. LIES ARE BEING PREPARED FOR NETWORK NEWSSPEWERS TELLING THE FOOLS HOW GOOD IT IS FOR THEM AND THEIR CHILDREN.
YOU HAVE A NEW ASSIGNMENT. THE WORD “ORGANIC” IS GROWING STALE. THE WORD IS ONLY BELIEVED TO BE MEANINGFUL BY A SMALL SUBSECTION OF FIELD BEASTS WHOSE INTELLECTS CAN BEST BE DESCRIBED AS “MODERATE”. WE NEED LIES TO BOOST THE OVERALL CREDIBILITY OF “ORGANIC”.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Wal, Ah’m amazed than any fool in his right mind gave it any credibility a’tall. “Organic” food, Ah mean, how can anybody in their raht mind take that seriously?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We did do a wonderful job making them think that “organic” meant something! It’s really one of our best efforts.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: When I worked on Public Television, all the people talked about “organic” this and “organic” that. I couldn’t keep a straight face. They’d actually go on and on about what kind of dirt their carrots were grown in. “Pure loam allows proper root formation.” was an important part of every food conversation.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Sylvia, how could you stand being around those low-level liars on Public Television?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I couldn’t. I’d already been part-timing for one of the Lie Committees, and I knew that everything they talked about was just too obvious. After a while, I started despising them so much I couldn’t stand to look at them.
Dr. Emil Twist: I know it. Having to think of Public Television personalities as intelligent, well, I’ve been lying professionally for thirty years, and I still can’t do it.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Listen, they sell a lot of Volvos, and they keep the more pretentious field beasts in a state of permanent confusion, so they aren’t totally worthless.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Bes’ thing about Public TeeVee is we get to test our lies, see iffin the morons’ll beeleeve ’em. Wors’ thing is, they believe ever’thin’ we tell ’em, so’s we can’t get ’em refined enough to fool the smarter feeld beests.
Dr. Emil Twist: Who actually watches Public Television? Does anyone know?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Mostly, mid-level workers and academics in the most useless agencies and departments. Self-important wackos and neurotics like it because it helps them think they’re a lot smarter than they actually are. They’re desperate to find the latest lies so they can appear to be intelligent, loyal, and promotable.
Dr. Bemis Understood: They should thank Baal for Public Television! If it weren’t for that, what would they do?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah reely don’ know. They’re too lazy for fast food work, ‘n too dum’ ter be doin’ much else. They kin barely think. Iffin it warn’t for Public Television, they’d prob’ly jus’ stare at a blank screen all day. Might smarten’ ’em up.
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WE ALREADY KNOW HOW DUMB SOME OF THE PUBLIC TELEVISION FOOLS ARE. WOULD YOU PLEASE GET TO WORK ON MAKING ‘ORGANIC’ SEEM TO BE WORTHWHILE.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Enough about Public Television’s IQ levels. Let’s roll up our sleeves and come up with some good, solid, “organic” lies.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem. This is harder than it sounds. The big companies trying to appear to be “organic” all use chemicals. They’ve defined it so they can use every chemical they want to reduce growing and preserving costs.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I still do not understand the American fascination with calling things “organic”. If we had purely “organic” food, people would pay twice as much for it. Maybe three times.
Dr. Emil Twist: That’s exactly the point, Ramjet. We got to keep them thinking that “organic” is good, and then our clients raise prices, and profit margins, like crazy.
Dr. Bemis Understood: I’ve got a beginning lie. “Organic food, just the beginning.”
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Wal, what the hell does that mean?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: That’s the beauty of it. It means nothing at all, but it gets them ready for the rest of it. I’d add on “now, and forever.”
Dr. Mendle Meddle. It does flow. “Organic food, just the beginning. Now, and forever.” It means absolutely nothing, but it does flow, it sounds positive, and, well, I like it.
Dr. Dick Dudewell. Ah get it. We aren’t after a lie so much as we are a feeling about a lie we alreddy got established. Ah kind of lak that. Let’s see. Let’s add on, “Organic food, just the beginning. Now and forever, a better life for all.”
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Dick, you’ve done it, again!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: OK, we’ve got two sentences beginning with subordinate clauses. Now, we need a solid, positive sentence that demands commitment. Let’s make it read: “Organic food, just the beginning. Now and forever, a better life for all. That’s why we’re making a serious commitment.”
Dr. Sylvia Sweem. Mendle, that’s beautiful! Of course, anyone who says that sentence and thinks it’s meaningful is too dumb to be allowed to drive.
Dr. Emil Twist: Now, Sylvia. Of course it’s puff, but it’s magnificent puff. Look at the positive words they’ve associated with this “Organic” crapola. “beginning”, “forever”, “better life for all”, “serious commitment”. I don’t think “magnificent” describes it adequately.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: ‘N we show some of the usual wheatfields in Kansas, you know, the “amber waves of grain” stuff, with stirrin’ music in the background. Ah think the National Anthem’d fit right in.
Dr. Emil Twist: Let’s be sure there are no diesel combines belching black smoke!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Maybe we could work in a picture of a scythe hanging on an old barn? Give the fools the impression that millions of square miles of grain are harvested by hand.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Put some Amish in the picture. Find some healthy-looking ones. Just as long as no one can smell them.
FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: OUR CLIENTS HAVE AGREED TO TAKE YOUR CONCEPT, FLESH IT OUT, AND USE IT FOR ADVERTISEMENTS. WE MAY, BY REWORDING, HAVE ENOUGH SOLID COPY TO STRETCH IT OUT INTO A PBS SPECIAL.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: It might overwhelm them. “Organic food, just the beginning. Now and forever, a better life for all. That’s why we’re making a serious commitment.” is just too much at one time. I’d give two weeks to each phrase. “Organic food”, by the time you dress it up with the usual rice paddies in, well, wherever they are, and the happy pigs eating, I don’t know, acorns, maybe, and fish swimming in the oceans while whales jump out of the water, why, you’ve got two or three two hour specials, right there.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Sylvia, y’all have actually worked, iffin that’s the word, at Public Television. How DO they make those whales jump out of the water all the time?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Electro-shock harpoons. We put a bunch of dead animals in the water. When the whales come to scarf them up, we hit ’em with a high-voltage harpoon, and I’ll tell you, when that jolt hits, they just fly out of the water.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Then, what happens?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: We film it from every possible angle. Then, KERPLOW!, the bomb in the harpoon goes off! One of the accompanying cannery ships from the Cleanfleece Fleet picks up the body, and they make it into, oh, I don’t know, dog food or burgers for McNippon’s, or whatever they call the chain over there.
Dr. Emil Twist: I didn’t know Cleanfleece had their own cannery ships!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: There’s a half-dozen in the Cleanfleece Fleet. Each has three crews. Part of one crew photographs the whales while the others stand around and look sensitive to show the field beasts the reverent awe with which animals should be observed. The second crew runs the ship and handles harpooning. The third crew, mostly slaves from North Korea and the Sudan, does the processing work. Cleanfleece sells the whale meat and the film. They’re rolling in money! What an operation!
Dr. Bemis Understood: I had no idea.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: On top of that, they take the whales’ teeth and make fake scrimshaw in their secret Balinese factories. They took over all the STASI facilities once the East German secret police were turned into envirnmentalists.
Dr. Bemis Understood: I never knew!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Did you think it was a coincidence that Cleanfleece protesters were at so many harpoonings?
Dr. Bemis Understood: Sylvia, those Cleanfleece lies are so good that I believed them, myself. I must be slipping.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I believed them, too. I only found out when my uncle, a Cleanfleece founder, was killed with his own bomb destroying an animal testing laboratory.
Dr. Emil Twist: What!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: He was in charge of a Cleanfleece guerilla fire team launched from the Cleanfleece Fleet. He was sent in to destroy a lab on the brink of actually curing cancer. They were only two chimpanzee tests away from validation.
Dr. Bemis Understood: I hope they destroyed the lab! The last thing our clients want is a cancer cure! It would destroy their cash flows!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Y’all know that Ah’m on the Medical Lies SubCom. Ah cain’t wait to tell ’em ’bout this! All the SubComs Ah’m on are bothered by pesky smart people destroyin’ client cash flows iffin sum smart person acshally cures a disease . Do these Cleanfleece guerillas hire out?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Oh, sure. They smuggle narcotics, nuclear devices, gold, weapons, blow up things, you name it. Their media control keeps anyone from finding out about it.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Mostly, they blame any violence on Neo-Nazi extremists. All six of them!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Wal, Ah’ve got to say, Ah’m flabbergasted. Are y’all sayin’ that most bombings and sabotage are actually done by environmental instead of religious or Neo-Nazi extremists?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Yes, Dick. The newsspewers add or change a couple of words, and whole countries are blamed for the actions of a few Cleanfleece specialists. What else could they do, once the Soviet Union collapsed? They had to make a living, and none of them knew how to do anything but lie and steal.
Dr. Bemis Understood: And I thought that the only organized crime was us and the Mafia!
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WE ARE NOT FINISHED WORKING ON REVITALIZING THE CONCEPT OF “ORGANIC”. SOME OF THE FOOLS HAVE FIGURED OUT THAT MAKING FOOD “TOO CLEAN” KEEPS THEIR IMMUNE SYSTEM FROM WORKING PROPERLY. DIRTY FOOD IS CHEAPER FOR OUR CLIENTS TO PRODUCE. THEY REQUEST LIES TO CONVINCE THE FOOLS THAT THEY SHOULD EAT ORGANIC FOOD WITH LOTS OF IMPURITIES. IT IS CHEAPER TO PRODUCE AND HAS HIGHER PROFIT MARGINS.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Wal, now, that’s a switch! Usually, the fools want their food to be real clean. Should we tell ’em “Don’ bother washin’ your veggies, we’ve made ’em dirty jus’ for you!”
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Let’s come up with a new kind of dirt to spray on food that’s guaranteed to build up “natural immunities”.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I love that “natural immunities”. In my country, of course, all food is unwashed to keep precious microbes from being killed. Our life expectancy is less than half of America’s. How do we convince the fools that they should eat pay more for dirty food and live half as long?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Good point, Ramjet. Maybe, we need what Sylvia suggested, a new kind of dirt that’s not so, well, “dirty”.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah love it! Sell “clean dirt” to the fools. Will our clients have to do anything?
Dr. Emil Twist: Nah. We’ll fix it so they harvest their veggies as usual, pretend to have some “thoroughly analyzed”, and call whatevere they find “Immunity enhancers”.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Emil, that’s the best lie I ever heard! “Immunity enhancers”! The field beasts’ll eat it up.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Emil, I wish I’d thought of that. Let’s add “natural” and say, “Food sold by Completely Food, (or wherever the fools buy this stuff) is carefully provided with ‘Natural Immunity Enhancers’.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Hellsfire, we could get the fools to pay more iffen we guaranteed that ever’ potato they bought was pissed on by a Honduran.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: You know Dick, that gives me an idea. Our clients have to pay millions to put Porta-Potties in the field. Getting rid of them allows “natural immunity enhancers” to be available right on the spot. Saves our client money and stops the pickers from wasting time trekking back and forth to the Porta Potties.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah think this is one of our best day’s work! Emil, you and Sylvia sure did us proud. Ah cain’t think of a single improvement!
Dr. Emil Twist: The fools are going to end up with dysentery! Dengue fever! Cholera! Hepatitis A, B, and C! We’ll get increased billings from our medical clients. Hordes of field beasts will be soilin’ themselves! Making office visits! Buying more medicine than ever!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Emil, what a great discovery! They’ll need more clothes, soap, air fresheners, medicines, and they’ll have to cook everything until it tastes like paste. We’ll cost ’em big money, good health, and take more joy out of their lives! What a triumph!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Truly, it is an honor to be around you! I never dreamed that such feats were possible. Oh, the lies you tell! And so quickly, so naturally.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah thank there’s even more we could do. Take medicine, fer instance. What iffin there were “natchural immunity enhancers” in it? It would negate its curative effects! They’d all be sick ‘n takin’ medicine lots longer!
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: OUR CLIENT IS PLEASED WITH ‘NATURAL IMMUNITY ENHANCER’ AND FEELS THIS CONCEPT WILL GENERATE INCREASED PROFITS. HOWEVER, IF THE FIELD BEASTS GET TOO SICK TO WORK, CLIENTS MAY LOSE MONEY.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s right! Let’s focus our marketing of death and destruction on non-productive segments of the economy. Take old people. Who cares how sick they get? They don’t have anything better to do than hang around their doctors’ offices, anyway.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Good point, Mendle. Young people don’t have jobs, either. Let’s try this: “You may feel older than you are. You may not be making the money you deserve or have the energy you want. It’s not because your body has betrayed you. Uncaring food producers cause this damage by over-processing the very food you eat.”
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Sylvia, I think I see where you’re going with this. People who already think they’re too sick to work will make themselves the targets of a campaign to make them even sicker.
Dr. Emil Twist: Sure. Old people. The unemployed. People with jobs that give them hours to think about stuff like this. We’ll go after them.
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITEE: MANY OF OUR CLIENTS’ CASH FLOWS DEPEND ON KEEPING OLD PEOPLE ALIVE TO PAY FOR USELESS MEDICINE. PLEASE REFINE.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Dang! We shoulda thought of that! Mebbe we should get ’em to jus’ try “food fortified with natchural immunity enhancers” once or twice to see iffin it helps ’em.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Good point. And, I simply love “fortified” to describe food that has been peed on! It doesn’t matter what the results are. All our clients want to do is churn merchandise through the retailers. When this campaign runs out, we’ll come up with another one.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: So, we’ll say “Try, for a few weeks, to revitalize your life with food that has been ‘enriched’ with Natural Immunity Enhancers. Natural Immunity Enhancers aren’t for everyone, but you may be one of the many, many people they will help.”
Dr. Emil Twist: Ramjet, that’s brilliant! “Enriched!” Get ’em sick for awhile, but don’t kill ’em. More money for everyone! For more billings, let’s add “Ask your doctor about natural immunity enhancers.” at the end. Any fool who’ll prescribe or take statin drugs’ll believe it’s smart to eat food sprayed with some farm workers taking a. . . , oh, my, what if we resurrect Juan Valdez?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Well done, Emil! Our clients already have artwork. Ever’body can picture him in their minds. “Juan Valdez, workin’ to provide you with ‘natural immunity enhancers.’”
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Surely, we don’t want to show pictures of him actually applying the natural immunity enhancers.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Only in my country, where such practices are commonplace.
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: A CLIENT HAS HAD AN INTERESTING IDEA ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SUBJECT. “WE SHOULD KNOW WHERE EVERY FARM ANIMAL IN THE WORLD IS AT ANY TIME.”
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Why?
Dr. Bemis Understood: Sylvia, think about it. There must be thirty or forty billion farm animals. To know where each one is, each one would have to have an RFID chip in it.
Dr. Emil Twist: Oh, glorious day! Think of the tracking mechanisms. Cell towers on every farm! Automatic transmission of data to central locations! Downloading and tabulating! These are jobs that governments love.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: They’re the kind of jobs that go on forever, and no one has to do anything. No one knows if any of the data is correct. No one cares. No one judges. This is a miraculous idea!
Dr. Bemis Understood: This could be the bureaucracy we’ve been praying for. Finally, jobs for all our relatives.
Dr. Emil Twist: And, inspector jobs! They’ll be able to make surprise inspections. If there’s any animal without a transmitter, they can be fined. Inspector jobs provide endless bribes.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Better yet, if they ignore the law, we can confiscate their farms, and turn them into parks.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Make them places where The Children can learn more about the environment.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah thank that’s marv’lous! Every chicken should have a chip. So should every egg. The second that an egg is laid, it should have a chip attached.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Two chips! One chip if it’s going to lay eggs. Another chip in case it’s grown for meat.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Oh, that’s wonderful! We’ll make it impossible for any but the largest producers to keep track of all this. Small food producers’ll drop like flies!
Dr. Emil Twist: Can we get chips on flies?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Emil, I can’t tell if you’re joking, or not.
Dr. Emil Twist: You know what Ramjet? Neither can I.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Who will put the chips onto the eggs and animals?
Dr. Emil Twist: The most expensive and inefficient method would be to use government employees in the new Department of Animal Identification.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Way to go! They’ll get sick ‘n tired of doin’ actual work in a week or so, and’ll end up contractin’ it out to a couple hunnerd t’ousan’ flunkies. DAI employees’ll jus’ sit ’round ‘n “analyze”. There’ll be drones layered on top of drones. Half-dozen field beasts, outen of two er three hunnerd thousand employees, will be doin’ all the actual work that gets done.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Then, that’s the way to go! Who will get to be the head of the new department?
Dr. Emil Twist: Well, I was the one who thought of it.
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: DR. TWIST, YOU KNOW THAT MEMBERS OF A SUB-COMMITTEE ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO MAKE THAT DECISION. ONLY THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE CAN CREATE NEW DEPARTMENTS AND ASSIGN NEW DEPARTMENT HEADS. WE CAN TELL YOU, OF COURSE, THAT YOU WILL BE CONSIDERED FOR THE ASSIGNMENT.
Dr. Emil Twist: When will you decide?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Emil, those questions have to go through me. Members are not authorized to communicate directly with the Executive Committee. When I hear anything, I’ll let you know.
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: OUR CLIENT HAS REQUESTED ACTUAL LIES TO HELP CONVINCE THE FOOLS THAT EVERY FARM ANIMAL IN THE WORLD SHOULD BE IDENTIFIED AND TRACKED THROUGHOUT ITS LIFE.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: “Fore we get started, Ah have to admit, Ah’m a little jealous that Ah didn’t think of the new department. That was a great invention, Emil. Regardin’ makin’ up some lies fer sellin’ the fools on how important it is to ‘dentify ever’ farm animal, we kin use “Bird Flu”. We been workin’ on it long enough.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: That’s right. How about this: “Just one infected chicken could wipe out the world’s population. Those concerned about public health know that every, single chicken must be inspected when hatched and tracked throughout its life so that any infected chicken may be identified, isolated, and safely removed at any time.”
Dr. Emil Twist: Not bad, Sylvia. We can use variations of that for all the other animals. “It may only take one pig to infect the world with . . . oh, my, I’ve got an idea . .
‘Super Trichinosis’”. And, “It may only take one cow to begin a worldwide epidemic of, oh I don’t know, hoof-in-milk disease.”
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Emil, that disease is actually ‘hoof-in-mouth’ disease. But, Ah thank that ‘hoof-in-milk’ may be better. It sounds vaguely familiar, but it’s actually bran’ new ‘n completely untrue.
“Bran’ new, cumpletely untrue,
Ah thank tha’s why Ah lak it!”
Repeat that two er three times ‘n make a little song outen of it!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Dick, control yourself. The best thing is, of course, is that it doesn’t actually exist. It’s impossible for anyone to deny funding for a disease can’t be proven not to exist, but sounds dangerous. “Hoof-in-milk” is the perfect imaginary disease.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: And, it does sound dangerous! Who would want to drink milk after a cow had put his unwashed hoof in it?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: That should be “Her unwashed hoof.” Sylvia, Ah hate to tell you, but cows are ‘hers’. Bulls are males.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: His, hers, what difference does it make? We just want to get across the idea that a hoof that’s been out in a dirty field is getting into milk that The Children may drink. We can tax and spend like crazy, once we get Help The Children tied in!
Dr. Emil Twist: Let’s get the Public Tubers to run a series. “It takes one leak to sink a ship. It takes one sick chicken to wipe out the whole world.” We show footage of a ship sinking from a single leak. Then, a bunch of graves holding chicken, oops, bird flue victims, then giant bulldozers shoving computer generated bodies into mass graves bigger than the Panama Canal.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Maybe we actually could use the Panama Canal for that. Fill it up with inflated mannikins. Surely, we’ve got some global freezing or warming or nuclear winter footage that shows the burned-out remains of ruined cities?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That footage never goes out of style. The field beasts can’t tell if they’re looking at Berlin after the last war or Milwaukee after global whatever happens. Al Gore could read the script!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah like Al, too. Ah reeely do. Prollum us, only the dumbest, angriest field beasts b’lieve ‘im. The res’ of ’em all think he’s a ragin’ idjit. ‘N Kerry, they know what a lyin’ weasel he is. Nope. We need somebody else, much as we all like Al.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I do not understand. In my country, when a politician loses, he is killed, or disappears on his own. Works in a curry factory or braids rope in a long, tin quonset hut. Your defeated politicians just go on and on, complaining and whining forever.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah know jus’ whatcha mean. Actually, it’s only the old Democrats who go on whinin’ and complainin’. L’il Jimmy Carter even makes me sick. Nothin’ else they know how to do. Thank Ba’al the old Republicans jus’ play golf. Keeps ’em offin the street.
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: PLEASE STOP WASTING TIME ON POLITICAL COMMENTARY AND PRODUCE BETTER LIES TO JUSTIFY LABELLING EVERY FARM ANIMAL WITH A LOCATING CHIP. THANK YOU.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: All right, group, let’s get focused. I think one lie we can tell is: “In the event a sick animal is found, the “Quarantine Chip”, if we decide to call it that, allows us to trace the animal’s life back to the beginning.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Love that name, “Quarantine Chip”. Once we trace the animal back to its beginning, we can quarantine every single farm, warehouse, processing plant, freight car, restaurant, grocery store, and every other location near that animal.
Dr. Emil Twist: That gives us endless opportunities for confiscation!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Y’all are missin’ an important point. We can say that an infected animal was anywhere we want. Y’know. Iffin there was an unprogressive farmer, we could say the animal came from, or was driven by, his farm, which has to be turned into a “Conservation Area” so that it can be made “Quarantine clean”. These Quarantine Chips’ll give us the “evidence” we need to take property from anyone.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Dick, your phrase “quarantine clean” is brilliant! Certainly, we can show that global disease must be controlled with Quarantine Chips. But, we still haven’t proven that this imaginary “Bird Flu” is real. We still don’t have lies to make it believable. I hate to be reminding you of this all the time, but it’s important. We need a disease! An actual disease!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah know it, Bemis. No gummit’ll authorize money without better lies than we have, now. We got medical experts crawlin’ from Mongolia to Madagascar, tryin’ to find a chicken sick enough to infect some people. We gotta get a coupla cities wiped out. Iffin we don’t do that, our lies don’t have a base, and without believability, there’s no long-term profit.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We can’t build huge lies without a grain of truth. Does anyone know anybody at Cleanfleece?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Mendle, I’m speechless. Not to the point that I can’t talk, of course, but, really, do you think we need to go that far? What would they do?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah think Ah know where Mendle’s headin’ with this. Mendle, you want some city’s water supply infected with som’thin’ that we can call Bird Flu? Wipe out enough of the fools so that the rest of ’em’ll give our clients some cash?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Does anyone have any better ideas?
Dr. Bemis Understood: I have been racking my brain. There just aren’t enough sick and dying people. We’re going to have to wipe out a city, somewhere. Gas ’em, maybe.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: What city, Bemis?
Dr. Bemis Understood: Someplace where they eat a lot of chicken.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: They eat chicken ever’where. Question is, should it be in America, or somewhere else?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We can’t kill Americans. Americans pay taxes. We can’t kill Mexicans, ’cause they’re cheap labor.
Dr. Bemis Understood: We can do it in Africa. Someplace that’s just starting to do well. Everybody’s used to us killing Africans with malaria. No one’ll care about a few more dying from bird flu. Ever since Rhodesia turned into whatever they call it now, it’s been going downhill. We could wipe out a few there. We might as well. Mugabe’s going to kill them if we don’t.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Don’t do it in a Marxist country. People will blame Marx. It has to be in a growing, rich country. How about Nigeria or Uganda? They’re both doing well.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah never did lak Uganda much. Never been there. Jus’ don’t like the sound of the name. “Ah seen u ganda. Whachu ganda at?”
Dr. Bemis Understood: Dick, let’s try to keep on line. Maybe we should get Cleanfleece on it. Sylvia, we’ll have to find out how much they charge, and turn ’em loose.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: How about Canada? It seems to be shaking off the shakles of fifty years of solidly socialist goverments. Good time to take out Toronto. A plague of bird flu’ll teach ’em to vote conservative!
Dr. Bemis Understood: Well, there’s always England. But, they’re sinking so fast that it would be a waste of poison gas. I think Toronto is the place to eliminte.
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WE ARE DISAPPOINTED IN YOU. THERE IS VASTLY MORE MONEY IN LIES THAN MASS MURDER. PLEASE COME UP WITH BETTER JUSTIFICATIONS FOR TRACKING FARM ANIMALS?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Mebbe, we been goin’ at this wrong. What iffin we said that we needed to track the animals for breedin’ purposes? We could say that improper breedin’ weakened the animals and made it easier for them to catch dangerous diseases they’d pass on to pipple.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s an interesting approach. And, if we didn’t like someone, or if some company complained, we could “discover” that their flock, or herd, or whatever was “weak breeding stock” and that “it was too dangerous to let them multiply”
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: And, it might hurt The Children!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah got an even bigger whopper! What we do is tell ’em that “It is the consumer’s responsibility to be sure that genetically impure meat is not purchased. Just check the rfid chip with your own pocket-scanner to be sure you’re getting good meat.”
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That’s incredible! Dick, you’ve figured out a way to sell an RFID chip for every single pork chop! Every rump roast! Trillions of RFID chips! You, sir, are a genius!
Dr. Emil Twist: It’s even better! The scanners are a brilliant part of the lie! Every meat eater should be required to have a scanner. Our clients will sell hundreds of millions of them! We’ll make welfare departments buy them for welfare and food stamp people. Why should the poor be put at risk? Dr. Dudewell, you make Isaac Newton look like a retard!
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: VERY WELL DONE. NOW, ISN’T THAT A LOT BETTER THAN HIRING A GANG OF ENVIRO-GOONS TO WIPE OUT HALF THE POPULATION OF TORONTO? INSTEAD OF BEING DEAD, MILLIONS OF CANADIANS WILL BE FORCED TO BUY OUR POCKET SCANNERS AND JOIN IN THE IMPORTANT WORK OF AUTHENTICATING EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF MEAT THEY EAT. GOOD LYING!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah don’ mean to be suckin’ up, but iffin it warn’t for THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, we’da done gone and wiped out half of Canada’s bigges’ city. Lose all those customers. We kin feel good. We’ve done a good job!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: This committee can be very proud of the work we’ve done, and we can be proud of our superiors for not letting us rest, and take the easy way out by killing half the people in Toronto.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah’m glad y’all are happy wiffin what we’ve done, but Ah have a question. Ah can’t figger out how we gonna handle weenies.
Dr. Bemis Understood: I see what you mean. Each piece of meat, at least I hope it was meat, that was put into a hot dog should have had an RFID chip. Combining pieces of meat from the thousands of animals that could go into a package of hot dogs would be an RFID nightmare.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Y’all unnerstan’ we got the very same pro’lem wiffin hamburger?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Let’s just do nothing. Say that “Ground meat is, by virtue of its basic characteristics, comparitively safe to eat, as long as it’s cooked thoroughly. By thoroughly, of course, I mean that it should be reduced to a thick, tasteless, gummy paste.”
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Then, we tell the fools that “Taking into account the inherent safety in cooking ground meat, we didn’t want to unnecessarily burden you with needless costs.”
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Oh, Sylvia, that’s your best lie, yet. Telling the fools, “We didn’t want to burden you with needless costs.” is the biggest lie any of us ever told!
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: CLIENTS HAVE DISCOVERED THAT ELIMINATING FAT FROM CHILDRENS’ DIETS IMPEDES BRAIN DEVELOPMENT, INCREASES CHANCES OF EPILEPSY, AUTISM, REDUCES RESISTANCE TO DISEASE, AND CAUSES LONG-TERM HEALTH PROBLEMS. LIES ARE NEEDED TO CONVINCE THE FOOLS TO REDUCE FAT INTAKE BY USING SKIMMED MILK. OUR CLIENTS CAN CHARGE MORE FOR IT. EVEN BETTER, THEY CAN SELL THE FAT FOR ICE CREAM, BUTTER, AND OTHER HIGH-PROFIT ITEMS.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah guess that’s purty good thinkin’. They’ll make lots more, and so will our medical clients.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: It’s a win-win. Why not have several grades of skimmed milk? We could have 2%, 1%, and Super-Skim No Fat.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Why do we even need milk? Why not just mix gypsum and water to get the right color and consistency?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I am offended by real milk. The process of being milked is very demeaning, and the cows hate it. I can feel their shame and embarrassment.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Water/gypsum milk with some soybean additives would let our clients sell their cows. Keep a couple for photographs and TV shots, but with make up and repainting, only six or eight cows in the whole country would be necessary.
Dr. Emil Twist: If they dump their herds, won’t the price of beef be depressed?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Fer awhile. But, our clients will make billions by butcherin’ their herds.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Should we be concerned that the fools might miss the taste of real milk?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Most of them have never tasted real milk. With hyper-pastuerization, the taste has been pretty much eliminated, anyway. To forestall any objections, we’ll make up some lies about “flavor enhancers” that “accentuate the taste of today’s milk.”
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: “Today’s milk”. Brilliant, Mendle. That’s a campaign, right there. “Tomorrow’s milk” won’t even have gypsum mixed in. We’ll just sell ’em water in white containers.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: How about just selling them water with little packets of gypsum they can mix in. You know, “For one percent milk, mix in half a packet, etc.” We’ll call it “custom milk for today’s educated consumers.”
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah lak that! The fools can barely read and write when they get out of high school. They love it when we call ’em “educated consumers”. They’ll think them l’il packets of powdered chalk are jes’ what they need!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: The fools like to be told that they’re “demanding”, too. That way, they’ll think they’ve specifically demanded that we provide the slop we’ll sell them.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Is there anything that we could put in “today’s milk” that would be anti-fat? You know, actually dissolve fat in the peoples’ body? Maybe, recycle it? Some of those half-ton, piano-crate people are sooo fat that they could recycle the fat they’ve already got for decades.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: You know, maybe our customers could set up fat farms, where they could harvest that fat and recycle it. They have lots of uses for fat. Must be worth several dollars a pound. Or, it would be if they turned it into butter. Or, additives for “today’s milk”.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: This is sickening. Sometimes, I wish we could just let the fools alone, instead of always getting at them. Mendle, what you’re suggesting is practically cannibalism.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Well, I can see how you could think that way. Because, of course, that’s what it is. But, honestly, Sylvia, we’ve already taken most of their money. What else do some of them have left to take?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah kin appreciate where y’all are comin’ from. But, the time isn’t right. We need a few more horror and science fiction movies ’bout alternative food supplies to get ’em used to the idea. Make ’em think it’s their “duty” to give, and losin’ a few extry pounds is good for ’em.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I’ve got an idea! Let’s make it so food stamps only work for 0% skim milk. That way, the welfare kids will have slower brain development, and will be utterly dependent!
Dr. Bemis Understood: Mendle, that’s wonderful! We could turn them all into morons. You know, sometimes, those welfare kids grow up to be decent citizens. We could put a quick stop to that!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: And, they’d think it was for their own good! Mendle, you’ve hit a home run!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah can see it now! All kinds of congressoids tellin’ people how much they were “helping with the epidemic of childhood obesity.”
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: And, we’ve caused the obesity with food stamps! They’re so dumb they deserve whatever we do to them.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Sylvia, you’ve given me an idea. Let’s invent the Poverty/Obesity Syndrome. We won’t blame it on food stamps, but on the “insatiable eating caused by, oh, I don’t know, global warming.”
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah know that the perfessers at Sludgewater State Multiversity are lookin’ for som’thin’ to justify more grants. The Poverty/Obesity Syndrome would be just the ticket!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Let’s call it POS. The fools think that learning what mindless governmental acronyms stand for is a sign of intelligence. They’re so happy with their mindless accomplishment it never occurs to them to wonder if it’s worthwhile. POS is so simple that even the dumbest newsspewers can get it right.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I can picture them, now. Sincere, perfectly groomed newsspewers nodding solemnly while reciting statistics about “The Poverty/Obesity Syndrome, known as POS, is of increasing concern to dedicated public health professionals. . .”
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Fer the life of me, Ah cain’t figger out how them newsspewers can keep a straight face. “Dedicated health perfessionals!”, why they’d sell their own mommas iffin they thought they could head up a new health problem task force!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I think each newsspewer uses a pound of botox. Their facial muscles must be nearly dead, after a few years of spewing such mindless drive.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: The money it will make! Bribes for managerial and administrative jobs! Kickbacks from suppliers! Whoever runs the POS Program will make two, three hundred million a year.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Now, Sylvia, we all know that’s more than we make, but they do take risks.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Risks, mah ass! The only risk they got is gettin’ hauled in front of some congressoidal committee where there’s some congressoid who’s mad caus’ he din’t git one of his relatives hared as the dee-rector.
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: OVER THE PAST TWENTY OR THIRTY YEARS, WE HAVE HAD ONE IMAGINARY ALARM AFTER ANOTHER. SOME OF THE FIELD BEASTS THINK THAT EVERY PROBLEM THAT THAT WE HAVE BROADCAST IS A MINDLESS LIE.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Those kind of people should be eliminated. They are disruptive to a smooth, ongoing process of redistribution.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Mendle, Ah thank that the EX’UTIVE C’MITTEE is suggestin’ that mebbe we be needin’ some better lies.
Dr. Bemis Understood: That’s exactly right. We need some better lies.
Dr. Emil Twist: It’s easy to say “we need better lies, we need better lies”, but we need to put some truth in the lies to make them believable. Truth makes lies better.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: We know from years of high-level lying that isolating those little germs of truth and keeping them from destroying the whole lie is very, very hard to do.
Dr. Bemis Understood: We’ve already told most of the believable lies. We’ve criminalized cholesterol, flogged fat, and monsterfied mercury.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Oh, stop with the alliteration, already.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I was sort of enjoying it. But, I see your point, Bemis. Good lies are hard to come by.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Y’all know what? Ah thank we should go back, ‘n see iffin there’s somethin’ we missed.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Dick, I think we’ve lied about everything there is.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah knows that. Ah jus’ think that we’ve missed some stuff. We kin jus’ reverse all the ol’ lies. Fer instance, all the time we’ve been demonizin’ fat, ‘n never one word critical of protein.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Dick, that’s so true! We’ve never said anything bad about protein.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Or, Vitamin C. We only lie about how good Vitamin C is. Never about how bad.
Dr. Emil Twist: All we have to do is take our old lies, change the old imaginary problem with the opposite imaginary problem, and preface the whole thing with “New medical research indicates that . . . ”
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I get it! “New medical research indicates that protein build-up on the walls of veins and arteries may cause blockages, reduce lifespans, and cause dangerous weight gain. A diet with any protein in it may destroy human life as we know it.”
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Cholesterol is actually good, because it stops protein build-up.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: And, in a couple of years, we replace “protein” with “white blood cells” or “fatty acid”.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah thank we could autymate the whole thang. Let’s hire some low-level flunkies ‘n nits to do research to find out how long a fad will effectively cause desired cash flows. Then, we have a program that tells the newsspewers to switch over to the new lie.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That’s a wonderful idea! We could automate the newsspewers, too.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: In some cases, we already have. At least three of the networks have been using robotized automatons. As long as they twitch, smile knowingly, and nod wisely, the fools can’t tell the difference. With Dick’s idea, we could go farther and automate the entire process. We don’t even need people.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Let’s look at replacing “problem” cholesterol with “problem” protein. If we do that, we have to replace statin drugs with something else. What can make as much money for our clients as Lipitor?
Transcriber notes: A very long pause, lasting three and a half minutes, followed Dr. Sweem’s question.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ain’t nothin’ that kin make as much cash as any of the statin drugs. But, iffin we don’ try, we cain’t do better.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: My personal belief is that we can make protein reduction as important as lowering cholesterol levels.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: The best thing is that all the field beasts have heard the word ‘protein’. It’s not like we have to start from scratch.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I believe that we should identify ‘protein’ with undesirable people. Tell the fools that “Protein causes anti-social behavior.”
Dr. Emil Twist: It actually does, with dogs. Why, just the other day, I gave my little Bismark a pound of ground round, and he actually got snooty with me. Snarled, if you can believe it. From now on, he gets nothing but tofu treats. I make them myself, and . .
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Emil, we don’t care about tofu treats for Little Bismark. We’ve got bigger fish to fry. We need lies to get people to ingest protein-destroying chemicals.
Dr. Emil Twist: Mendle, you should let me finish. If little Bismark gets angry and excited, his blood pressure must be up. We can tell the fools that it happens with them, too. And, they’ve all heard a million times that high blood pressure is bad.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Thank goodness for little Bismark! We can have a line of “Protein Destroyers” for pets.
Dr. Emil Twist: I think so, too. Not just dogs, but cats, fish, birds, rodents, reptiles, fish, amphibians. “Help your pet be/protein free.”
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Let’s start with animals, then move on to making people protein free. “Protein seems like it’s natural for pets, but scientists have discovered that nature may be wrong.”
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Ohh, I like that! “Nature may be wrong!” If we can get the fools to believe that, we will have acheived a real triumph.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: ‘N we’ve gotten ’em to purty much quit believin’ in God. Now, we be takin’ nachure away frum ’em, too. They won’ have nuttin’ lef’ ‘ceptin’ the gummint.
Dr. Bemis Understood: It’s so blatant. With cholesterol, we got the fools to think that when their brain told their liver to make cholesterol that it was wrong. Now, we’re telling them that the very process of life, itself, is wrong.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: What would we do without television?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah know we shore couln’ get lies this big across to ’em.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: We’re on the trail of something bigger, here. What we can do is say that the very truths upon which all life is based are lies. Big, blatant lies. We can undermine their very reason for living. “It’s our duty.”, we will tell them. Over and over again.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Iffin we kin make ’em think that protein, the very stuff they’re made of, is bad, we kin get ’em to run off’n cliffs lak lemmin’s. Iffin they get so depressed and confused they cain’t work, who will do what we need to have done?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Good point. If our lies are too big, they might get depressed, and just lie around the house all day. I’ve got lawns to be mowed. Windows to be washed. Children to be taken care of. Shirts to be ironed. I need field beasts working, and it’s so much cheaper, and safer, to bring them in from poor neighborhoods than to keep them under armed guards in shacks around the house.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WE SHARE YOUR CONCERN THAT TOO GREAT AN ASSAULT ON TRUTH MAY ENNERVATE THE FIELD BEASTS, MAKING THEM TOO USELESS TO DO WHAT THEY CAN FOR US. STILL, ELIMINATING FOOD PROTEIN COULD BE REMARKABLY PROFITABLE.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Mebbe we’ve gone too fer. Instead of protein elimination, let’s have “Protein Regulators”.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: That’s a marvelous name! “Protein Regulators” sounds a little like “beta blockers”, and they eat them right up.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: “Beta-blockers”? What are they?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Oh, Ramjet, how should any of us know? It is a wonderfully catchy phrase that describes some pill or magic capsule they’re convinced they should take.
Dr. Emil Twist: Rather than medicine, what about a “protein regulating wave generator”. They plug it in and point it at whatever point of their body needs to have its protein regulated?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah’d like to see ’em come in a lotta sizes. We’d need great, big Protein Regulatin’ Wave Gen’rators fer reelly fat pipple. Mebbe 440 volts. L’il ones fer li’l kids that’d be power’d by flashlight batteries. Bigger ones that plug into wall outlets fer teens. Got to Pertec’ The Childr’n.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: PLUG-IN DEVICES DO NOT GENERATE LONG TERM INCOME. PRESCRIPTIONS, ON THE OTHER HAND, CAN BE MADE TO LAST AS LONG AS THE FIELD BEAST LIVES.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Let’s do both! Sell ’em one or two expensive electronic devices to start out. They’re necessary to “soften up the tough, artery clogging protein deposits” and then, “lifetime prescriptions to keep us truly safe from deadly protein build-up”.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Great lying, Mendle! Big, up-front cash flows followed by an ongoing, steady income stream. You’ve hit a grand slam!
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: DR. MEDDLE, YOUR ‘ONE-TWO PROTEIN PUNCH’ IS ONE OF THE MOST OUTSTANDING LIES THIS COMMITTEE HAS EVER GENERATED. CONGRATULATIONS! IT APPEARS THAT WE MUST GET THE MEDICAL LIES COMMITTEE INVOLVED IN THIS. WE’VE GONE BEYOND MERE FOOD AND FOOD ADDITIVES.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: On behalf of the Food Committee, I must protest! First of all, we are not developing lies about “mere food and drug additives “. We are an important confusion generator, a crucial lie originator, and we are developing outstanding cash flows for customers.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: It doesn’t seem right! We were the team that developed the “One-Two Protein Punch”. We can make a protein scam that’s every bit as profitable as the cholesterol myths. It would be wrong not to give us proper credit.
Dr. Emil Twist: I just don’t know what I’d tell my little Bismark. Why, if it hadn’t been for my little Bismark, we wouldn’t have thought of any of this. I’m very depressed, and little Bismark is so sensitive he’s sure to be depressed, too, when he finds out that the Medical Lies Sub-Committee gets credit for what he, really, is responsible for. . . Oh, this is going to be the worst weekend of my life!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: We made this lie! We embellished it! We should be able to refine it and help our customers! There will be vast cash flows. We should participate!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah’m shore Ah don’ know jes what to do.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: It doesn’t matter to you! You’re on both committees! You’re on all the committees! You make money no matter whose lies are selected!
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: DR. MEDDLE, YOUR TEAM IS OUT OF CONTROL. THEY ALL SIGNED THE SAME AGREEMENT. WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO TRANSFER LIES TO THE TEAM THAT CAN DO THE MOST WITH THEM. WHILE WE FEEL THAT YOUR PROTEIN LIES ARE ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL, WE HAVE DECIDED THAT EXPERT MEDICAL LIARS MAY BE ABLE TO DO MORE WITH THEM.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Iffin Ah may resp’tf’ly interrupt the Honorable Executive Committee, Ah’d like to sugges’ that the Food Lies AND the Medical Lies be combined into one group.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s not a bad idea. We are understaffed on our committee, and food and medicine are both made out of chemicals. Dick, I think that’s a great idea!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I know very well Dr. Frances Foopahstan. She comes from a country near my country.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: She’s not one of your wives, is she, Ramjet?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: No, no. My wives do not leave the compound.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah’d guess y’all’d hit it off real good wiffin the Medical Committee.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WE WILL TAKE YOUR REORGANIZATIONAL SUGGESTION UNDER ADVISEMENT.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Mendle, do you think they’ll combine the committees? I kind of like being our own committee.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: You know, the more I think about it, I like it, too. Why, we’ve come up with some of the best lies that have ever been told. I mean, EVER.
Dr. Emil Twist: I don’t ever want to leave this committee. I think it’s the best of all committees. We are, after all, specialists.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Mebbe y’all are raht. Ah gots to say, ahr lies are great lies! Ah thank that they’ll let this committee alone.
Dr. Bemis Understood: I should think so! After all, we are the only committee that’s connected with an activity that each of the fools HAS to do! They can live without medicine, education, energy, and politics. But, they can’t live without food!
Dr. Emil Twist: Neither can my little Bismark! We not only keep the field beasts alive, but their pets, too!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Well, while we’re waiting for THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE to decide, lets see if we can come up with some new lies.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah’ve been thankin’ ’bout that. Ah thank we shuld cum up wiffin some lies ’bout whole grains.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Whole grains?
Dr. Bemis Understood: You mean like wheat and oats?
Dr. Emil Twist: Barley and rice?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Yup. All them, ‘n more. Ah thank that the pipple be too innerested in havin’ them grains ground up.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Ground up? They grind up grain?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: They grind up grain to make flour.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Flower? Flowers are make out of grain?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: F-L-O-U-R. Flour. It’s ground up grain. The field beasts make bread out of ground grain.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: You’re kidding! They grind up ground to make “grain” to make “flour”. Then, they make it into bread? How does that work? Do they de-grind it?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Sylvia, I think we went through this a long time ago. Grain is what the field beasts call “seeds”.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Sylvia, Ah got a pichur here. See this heer wheat field? “Amber waves of grain”, they calls it. These big machines, called “combines” go through the field ‘n pick off the grains of wheat.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: First, “grain”? Now, “grains”? “Grain” is made out of “grains”? Next thing, you’ll be telling me that “dirt” is made out of “dirts”. Why don’t you admit you’re just making all this up? You know just as well as I do that grain comes from wood. Martha Stewart is always talking about “woodgrain”.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: AFTER LISTENING TO DR. SWEEM’S REMARKABLE GRASP OF THINGS, WE FEEL THAT THE FOOD COMMITTEE SHOULD MAINTAIN ITS UNIQUE IDENTITY. HER INTELLECTUAL AND LINGUISTIC ABILITIES MAKE HER A GREAT ASSET TO THIS COMMITTEE.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: See! You can’t fool me. All this talk about “grain”, “grains”, and “flower”. Hah!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: (shaking his head as if to clear it) Dick, did I hear you say that you thought you might have a useful lie?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah shore did. Ah plum’ fergot. What Ah figger is that we should be tellin’ the fools that “Whole grain should be eaten whole.” Mebbe a chant, “Whole grain, Whole. Whole grain, whole!” Repeat it over ‘n over.
Dr. Emil Twist: What does that mean?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Yes, I am having trouble understanding that.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Now, Sylvia, Ah don’ wantchu interruptin’. This hare’s mah lie, that we ought’n be tellin’ the fools, “It’s unnatchural to be eatin’ grain that’s been ground up. We evolved wiffin teef that was meant to do grindin’, ‘n iffin we don’ use them teef fer grindin’, we hain’t bein’ faith’ul to ahr true natchurs.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Dick, that’s brilliant! We’ll have the field beast trying to chew up wheat, oats, barley! It’ll take ’em hours to have lunch!
Dr. Emil Twist: What a lie! Make them eat whole grain whole! But, what if they cook it to soften it? Surely, we can’t allow that?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah shuld say not! We wants ’em eatin’ the grain jes’ the way their ancesters did, bak when they was cows ‘n goats ‘n sheep.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I thought the field beasts’ ancestors were monkeys?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: ‘Fore that, Sylvia. Way ‘fore that. See, the monkeys, they came frum squirrels, or sumthin’; n’ the squirrels come frum groundhogs which come from pigs; ‘n the pigs, they cum frum cows, or mebbe camels.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s close enough. It’s hard to keep straight, what happened two or three trillion years ago.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: It is not hard at all to say what happened. I have returned to this life after having spent nine hundred and fifty two years in the mind of a Galapagos tortoise. They understand perfectly.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Why, Ramjet, that’s sooo romantic! Almost a thousand years in the mind of a tortoise.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That is nothing. Wife number 11 spent five thousand years in the living sapwood of a bristlecone pine. Or, was it six?
Dr. Mendle Mendle: Wife or thousands of years?
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: DENTAL CLIENTS BELIEVE THAT FORCING THE FIELD BEASTS TO EAT UNCOOKED GRAIN WILL GENERATE AMAZINGLY HIGH FEES. PLEASE CONTINUE.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah guess it’ll gen’rate some purty high fees! Why, the fools’ll be grindin’ their molars raht down to nubs.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: They will! I can’t imagine how much the dentists will make from our whole grain lies! My brother’s a dentist. They’ll be cappin’ teeth forever! We should get kickbacks from all of them.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: One of my ex-husbands was a dentist. I hated that man. He charged me to put braces on my own teeth. Needed to have them straightened for my first Public TV job. “We don’t care if you’re smart, but you do need straight teeth.” He charged me almost ten thousand dollars.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Your own husband?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Well, I had divorced him, by then. Still, you’d think he’d have been glad to help me out. We had been married nearly a year.
Dr. Emil Twist: How long have you been divorced?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: From him? Or from my last husband?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I think we ought to get the meeting back on track. We do have some lies we need to tell.
Dr. Bemis Understood: We need to get more money for clients. We can’t have people just buy a bushel of wheat for five dollars and eat it. Why, their food costs would drop to a quarter a day. Our clients would lose money!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: A quarter a day! We oughten ter be gettin’ skool caf’teri’s ter be dishin’ out handfuls of raw wheat. Save us a lot!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Roman soldiers used to march all day on a handful of wheat.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Din’ they wear shoes?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Not funny, Dick. What I’m saying is that there is a historical precedence for eating raw grain. I can picture the ads, now. Roman infantrymen carrying their muzzle-loaders into battle with Germans firing rockets at them and . .
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah hates ter interrup’ y’all, Mendle, but Ah thank you’ve got close ter two thousand yars o’ hist’ry all mixed up.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I do not believe any of this! I am not even from Europe, and I know that Romans did not have muzzle-loaders and the Germans they fought did not have rockets.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah knows that! Ah’m tryin’ ter tell ‘im that.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Historical accuracy means nothing. The only important thing, whether it’s true or not, is that Roman soldiers used to eat handfuls of wheat. That’s the kind of factual statement we need to get a good lie established. Does anyone else have any information of whole, uncooked grain being eaten by anyone?
Dr. Dick Dudwell: Mebbe some Navaho squaws what couldn’t find enuf buffalo chips fer a fire.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Dick, that’s sexist! I don’t care if is true that female Indians were called “squaws” and that they did the cooking, no one can be allowed to say so. As Mendle says, historical accuracy means nothing.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: You mean that nothing that we know matters? None of our factual knowledge is meaningful?
Dr. Emil Twist: That’s right, Ramjet. We live in a new age, now. We have to get with the program.
Dr. Bemis Understood: We have to get beyond the imparting of any facts. We have to begin to understand that whatever word comes out of a huper mouth has a degree of validity since it is a free expression.
Dr. Emil Twist: And, as members of the Food Sub, we think that anything going into a huper mouth must be tightly regulated.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: “Huper”? What is a “huper”? Am I missing something?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Sylvia, the Bates Foundation gives a grant any time anyone invents a non-sexist word to replace a sexist word. “Huper” may get a dubble award, since it got rid of the maleness of “man” in Hu”man” ‘n the maleness of “son” in Per”son”. Frum now on, pipple is “hupers”.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: What a breakthrough!
Dr. Emil Twist: It’s real progress!
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: THERE HAVE BEEN MANY RECENT OUTBREAKS OF FOOD POISONING. ALL THE CASES HAVE COME FROM ORGANIC FOOD. OUR CLIENTS NEED LIES, AND THEY NEED THEM NOW!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Didn’t I say this would happen? That organic food is full of germs, microbes, bacteria, spores, not to mention pure, unadulterated crap.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Yes, Mendle. I remember. You did mention it, maybe six or seven hundred times.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Well, I was right, wasn’t I? Organic food kills hundreds of times more people than firearms accidents. Hope the fools don’t notice.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: What if they do? We tell them it’s good for them to be sick. They are building up resistance. They are becoming stronger!
Dr. Emil Twist: Little Bismark threw up on my sofa. Made a terrible mess. I’d been giving him organic dog food.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Organic dog food?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: It cum frum one of mah companees. Ah got a coupla hunnert road squads drivin’ ‘roun’ in ol’ pick-up trucks. Iffin they runs across, or over, an anymul, they throws it in the back. When the truck’s full, they drives ’em back to the plant. We freeze ’em, grind ’em up, ‘n make doggie treets. Organic. Shaped lak popsikkles. Emil’s been givin’ ’em to L’il Bismark fer years.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Does it make him stronger?
Dr. Emil Twist: Oh, yes. Sometimes. Little Bismark is very strong. It’s just that the organic dog food made him so sick he can’t walk, hear, or see. It’s so very sad. I, well I just hate to go home and see him like this, that, well, I just don’t go home. Little Bismark’s getting worse.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Is he still alive?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Emil, I sent a flunkie to your house. He picked up Little Bismark, and took him to the vet. He’s recovering quite nicely, now that he’s not eating Dick’s Organic Pick-me-ups”.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: What a clever name. Well, if that’s settled, we can get back to work. What are we going to tell all these sick and dying people?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: We will tell them that they are not sick and that they’re getting better. We will have some flunkies come up with figures proving it. Then, if our clients are sued, we will have something for their attorneys to say.
Dr. Emil Twist: Did the regular food make people sick, or only the organic food?
Dr. Bemis Understood: Regular food didn’t bother anybody. The organic food’s killing thousands of people a year, just in this country. A lot of the deaths were blamed on vaccinations and mercury in fish. Thank Baal for mercury.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah thank we ought’n ter come up wiffin a little sick-makin’ pill ter give the fools. We wan’ em ter “build up resistance”. We could sell it to ’em.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Dick, as usual, you’ve had a brilliant idea! We should have laws passed, to make them take the pills so that they’ll get sicker and be better “In the long run.”
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: In the long run, we’re all dead.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Not necessarily. I may go back to living in the mind of the giant tortoise. Really, these pills are a wonderful idea. In my country, we believe that sickness makes you holy.
Dr. Emil Twist: I’ve been in your country, Ramjet. It is a very holy place.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WE ARE PLEASED WITH YOUR PROGRESS. OUR MED-FLUNKIES WILL BEGIN PRODUCING “MEDICINES” THAT WILL CAUSE SOME DEGREES OF DESIRED ILLNESSES.
IN THE MEANTIME, WE HAVE DECIDED TO EXPAND YOUR COMMITTEE. IN THE FUTURE, YOU WILL NOT ONLY BE RESPONSIBLE FOR FOOD LIES, BUT ALSO, YOU WILL BE EXPECTED TO TELL LIES FOR WATER.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Thank you! We appreciate your vote of confidence in our ability.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah’d lak ter clear sum’thin’ up. Ah’d rather tell lies fer money ‘n fer water.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Dick, I think we’ll all be getting money for water lies.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah know. Ah know. Ah’s jes’ makin’ a joke.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We need a lot of lies about water. First, about how water is dirty. And about different ways to clean it. Then, how to distribute it. Moving water around makes it dirty. So, we have to clean it, again. Our job is to make plain, ordinary water into something expensive, and complicated.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah lak that!
Dr. Bemis Understood: I do, too! Let’s start with the water, itself. Where does it come from? What is it?
(Transcribers note: Silence of two minutes)
Dr. Emil Twist: Bemis, those are hard questions. I don’t know what it is, but I do know where it comes from. Those big, plastic upside-down bottles.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I did not know that, Emil. Who dumps the bottles into the rivers? Do they fill them again at the end of the river?
Dr. Bemis Understood: I thought water came from the sky. Isn’t rain made out of water?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I don’t know. I saw it raining once. It was outside.
Dr. Emil Twist: It comes out of pipes. That’s how it gets into the plastic bottles.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: But, where does it really come from? Has it always been? Will it always be? Does it move around or come and go?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Mendle, Ah’ve fished ‘n boated ‘n sailed. Water comes frum oceans, ‘n rivers, n’ lakes. ‘N unnergroun’.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: That’s ridicuous! How could water get under the ground? If it did, how could it get out, again?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Those are good questions! Dick, are you pulling our legs?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: We got whatcha call “wells”, in Texas. We drills a hole in der groun’, ‘n iffin we drill it deep enuf, water runs inter it. Then, we pumps it up.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I cannot believe that you are allowed to drill holes into the ground. In my country, the ground is holy. We are not allowed to drill into it.
Dr. Emil Twist: If you did, would there be water?
(Transcriber’s note: A silence of one and a half minutes followed Dr. Twist’s question)
Dr. Bemis Understood: No one knows things like that. No one cares, either. Maybe some Smart-flunkie with too much time on his hands would know. I’m sure that the conditions in Texas cannot be the same as they are in Ramjet’s native land.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s right. And, I don’t think we need to know anything about the ‘nature’ of water. We just need ways to make it expensive, hard to get, and taxable.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I just turn the handle, and water comes out. I think we should put some sort of meter on the faucet, and charge the field beasts for every drop of water they use.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Sylvia, we’re already doing that. They put things called “water meters” on every pipe coming into a house. It measures how much water people use, and they get a bill in the mail. They have to pay.
Dr. Emil Twist: Don’t you have a water meter, Sylvia?
Dr. Bemis Understood: She’s been on the Committee for a long time. She’s built up so much seniority she’s meter free. Free phone, electricity, gas, and garbage pick-up, right Syl?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I don’t get bills for anything, really. Only poor people get bills.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah’ve got a qweschun. What iffin some smart field beast collec’ed rain water. Y’all know, lak in a cistern, er sum’thin’. He uses the water, ‘n then he purifies it as he uses it, and puts in back inter the cistern. He’d be “off-meter”. Culdn’t tax ‘im ‘ardly a’tall.
Dr. Bemis Understood: How can you purify water? Once it’s used, it’s filthy, and has to be thrown away.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Where, exactly, do they throw it, Bemis?
Dr. Bemis Understood: How would I know? Flush it down a toilet?
Dr. Emil Twist: If everyone throws their water away, more must be being made, somewhere. If we found out where that was, we could send in troops and take it over. Then, we’d have a monopoly on all the new, clean water. There’s billions to be made, I tell you! Billions!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Emil, you may be on to something. Anyone have any idea where this “water factory” is?
Dr. Emil Twist: No, but we should get some flunkies on it, right away. Real smart ones.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Emil is right. If we can find out where water comes from, whatever it is, we can get a monopoly on the source. Run our water inside our pipes to every field beast in the world.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah’m tellin’ y’all, Ah know that it falls out of the sky. Sounds ridiculous, but tha’s a fack. How we gonna get a ‘nopoly on that?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: It it’s true, we simply tell the fools that such water has unknown pollutants in it. It can’t be used in any way until it’s been purified by certified technicians. All water must be completely purified by our processes in our central purifying plants.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Then, we pump our water, and only our water, to central locations.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah know Ah’ve heerd that phrase before. “Central Locations” is a reel big thang on the Political Lies Sub-comm’ttee. They want to be gettin’ all the field beasts to move all their activities to Central Locations.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: In my country, we teach that the water falling from the sky has been purified by the Atmospheric Gods. When it falls, it is clean. Is that not true?
Dr. Emil Twist: Oh, who would know something like that? None of this matters. We need to do what Sylvia and Dick said. Make ’em use our water, and only our water, and pump it to Central Locations.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Now, Emil, don’t be in such a hurry. I know you want to get
back and see how Little Bismark is doing, but he’s in good hands.
Dr. Emil Twist: Bemis, you’ve read my mind. I’m so worried about Little Bismark that, well, I just can’t think about anything else.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Emil, I think we can excuse you from the rest of the meeting. Go see how Little Bismark is doing and come back as soon as you can.
(transcriber’s note: Dr. Emil Twist signs out of meeting.)
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: The other day one of my flunkies was golf-carting me through the store where they buy food.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: A grocery store?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: That’s it!. Well, I saw some ‘powdered milk’. If you add water, it
turns into milk.
Dr. Bemis Understood: I’ve heard of that.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Well, that gave me an idea! Why can’t we sell the fools ‘powdered water’? They just add water, and they’d have water!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Sylvia, that sounds like an incredible new product! I wonder if we should run it by THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: In my country, we do not have such a thing. We have water, but no powdered water.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: That’s cause you’ve been livin’ in a mitey primitive country, Ramjet.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I do not understand how you would powder the water, Sylvia?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: We’d have to hire Smart-flunkies to do the actual thinking to figure it all out. Surely, there are flunkies for projects like that?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: If we couldn’t ‘powder’ the water, we could freeze it. I have heard that many do that in this country. My wives all want giant boxes that freeze water.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: That may work. We could smash the ‘ice cubes’, that’s what we call frozen water, Ramjet, into tiny particles. Call it ‘powdered water’.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah thank we’s gettin’ in over ahr heads. Ah thank we oughten ter be tryin’ ter jus’ contrul the water. Not lettin’ the fools git a drop, less’n they pay fer a license er a permit.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: You may be right. Thinking that the fools could deal with a concept as brilliant as ‘powdered water’ may be giving them too much credit.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: But, it was a brilliant idea, Sylvia. Truly brilliant.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Thank you, Meddle. It’s too bad that we’re just too far ahead of the field beasts to help them the way we’d like.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Wal, we all agree. They’s lots of ways we kin help ’em that they won’t stan’ fer. But,what we gonna do ’bout Central Locashuns? We gonna need to figger out how fur apart each Central Locashun shuld be. ‘N how many Central Locashuns we need. Ah knows we needs Central Locashuns fer drinkin’.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: And, a Central Location for pick-up. We shouldn’t let them drink at the pick-up Location. Too convenient.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I should say so. Make ’em pick up the water in as small a container as possible, and move as far away as possible before they can drink it.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: What about pouring? They have a Central Location for Pick-up. They are authorized a cup of water. Then, a Central Location for Pouring. Then, another for Drinking.
Dr. Bemis Understood: What about washing? They’ll each have their own, personal cup that has to be cleaned out. We can’t have them washing just anywhere. We need to think about cup inspections, permits, soap dispensing, there are a lot of important considerations that require a Central Location.
(transcriber’s note: Dr. Emil Twist returns. Accompanied by pet)
Dr. Bemis Understood: Emil, how is Little Bismark?
Dr. Emil Twist: He’s just fine. No thanks to those awful Organic Pick-me-ups that your gang of derelicts makes, Dr. Dudewell. They almost killed him.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah’m shore sorry t’ heer ’bout that, Emil. Organic food is full of germs, microbes, wurms, why it’s got ‘mos’ ever’thin’ you don’ want in it.
Dr. Emil Twist: Then, why do you sell it?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah jus’ do what the market tells me. Ah tell ya, organic is big! ‘Viromeddlists, they started tellin’ pipple organic food was good fer ’em. The fools air eatin’ it up. Wurms ‘n all! No matter how bad it is fer ‘um, ah cain’t keep it in stock.
Dr. Emil Twist: Dick, I think it’s perfectly all right to sell this awful garbage to the fools. They deserve it. But, to give it to a helpless pet like my Little Bismark! Why, it’s a terrible, terrible thing to do!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Emil, Ah’m reel sorry that it made yer Little Bismark sick, but Ah’ll bet he’s a lot stronger fer it.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Emil, he may be right. Little Bismark may be stronger.
Dr. Emil Twist: None of you understand! None of you care! Little Bismark is nearly dead! His nose is hot! He is vomiting! His hair has fallen out! Organic food has nearly killed him!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Maybe we should just make people eat organic food. Let the precious animals have all the safe, healthy, processed food. Make organic food illegal for animals.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: How would wild animals eat? Don’t they eat things they find?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah, who cares ’bout wil’ animals. No money in them. Ah’m gonna hafta relabel all my existin’ inventory. Maht be the bes’ thang ter do.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I have a good idea! Let’s make the fools have filters installed in
their throats so that any impurities in the water can be filtered out.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I like that! Mendle, it’s brilliant. They’d have to pay to have them installed. And, we could make them pay to have them changed or replaced every few weeks.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: How would they eat if they had filters in their throats?
Dr. Emil Twist: I hadn’t thought of that, Ramjet. Maybe they could pull the filter out?
Dr. Bemis Understood: Why should the fools be allowed to eat? All they do is stuff themselves with candy and pop and fat. They’ll sit around eating fat all day long. They even eat chicken that’s fried in lard, just to mock us.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Bemis, they’s got human brains that are made out of fat. The smarter wons know they gots to eat fat. It’s good fer ’em.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s why we should take all fats away from them. Make up names for imaginary kinds of fat and tell them they’re bad. Except for some high-profit fat that some client or another makes.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: No! They shouldn’t be allowed to eat any solid food. Some of them don’t chew properly, and we know how important that is! Let’s pre-grind all their food! Then, dissolve it! Then, they can eat and drink at the same time, and we can filter everything for them.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: You mean, we give them only juice to eat?
Dr. Emil Twist: Oh, they’ll hate it! What a wonderful idea!
Dr. Bemis Understood: Not juice, exactly. Something like pea soup.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We could freeze it into lollipops! That’s all the food any of them should ever need. We’ll get rid of all other food. Simplify their lives.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WE HAVE CLIENTS WHO DEPEND ON ALLOWING THE FOOLS TO EAT SOME OF WHAT THEY WANT. YOUR IDEA OF FORCING EVERYONE TO EAT ONLY FROZEN POPSICLES MADE OF FOOD THAT IS TRULY GOOD FOR THEM IS BRILLIANT. BUT, FOR TODAY, WE PREFER TO FOCUS ON THE CONCEPT OF INTERNAL FILTRATION.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: What a downer! Just when we were making real progress. Just when we were going to be able to help everyone with a better diet.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: It would have been wonderful in my country. All my wives would have loved to only worry about one food. One, perfect food.
Dr. Emil Twist: You know, we could still do it, make one perfect food, but for dogs. My little Bismark just adores meat and meat products. If we made “Meatsicles” for dogs, then every dog could have a perfect diet, and it might make for more openness to our idea for “Universal Foodsicles”.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: “Universal Foodsicles”! Ah luv it! Ah reelly do! “Universal Foodsicles”, why, itu’d be bigger’n chuwn gum!
Dr. Bemis Understood: They could be flavored. Inexpensive flavoring additives could be added.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: And, we could specialize the flavors. But, THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE has told us to focus on internal filtration.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: CONTINUE TO EXPLORE “UNIVERSAL FOODSICLES”. SPECIAL FLAVORS MAY PROVIDE UNANTICIPATED PROFIT MARGINS.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I’ve got it! Let’s pack Universal Foodsicles INSIDE filter packs. Then, the fools put the whole thing in their mouths, and it filters both food AND water!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Sylvia, that is the most brilliant thing I ever heard! We will only provide the fools with one ingestable and . . .
Dr. Dick Dudewell: “One Ingestible”! That’s marvelous. We’ll have the newspewers tell the fools “A huper only needs One Ingestible, and that breakthrough in food technology takes the modern, up-ter-date form of a “Universal Foodsicle”. What more could a field beas’ want?
Dr. Bemis Understood: But, some of them like to eat. They like to cook. They. . .
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Bemis, what they want doesn’t matter. What we want matters.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: You know what? If the fools complain, we’ll tell them that “Too many citizens are going berserk and murdering each other with kitchen utensils.”
Dr. Ramjet Singh: It’s the perfect excuse to take all sharp implements away from them!
Dr. Emil Twist: Once we explain that it’s for their own good, the dumber ones will embrace it. They’ll say “It’s about time someone did something to stop this rash of kitchen implement murders.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Of course, we’ll have to start by causing, or claiming, a rash of kitchen implement murders.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: There are thousands, maybe millions, of kithcen implement murders every year. They would all be stopped, if only there were no more kitchen implements.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah’ll betcha we got a coupla t’ousan’ flunkies in jails what can come up wiffin all the kitchen implement murders we need. We jus’ give ’em probation iffin they sticks their cellmates wiffin a fork.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Let’s hire writer-flunkies. We need books that feature lots of variations of “The Kitchen Implement Murders”. The books will be illustrated with hupers killed by butcher knives, vegetable peelers, and meat forks. We’ll tell ’em it’s common for people to be cut up with meat cleavers before being ground up in their Cuisinarts.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: TV shows with husbands getting rid of overbearing wives. Wives, getting rid of overbearing husbands, children, getting rid of overbearing parents, parents, getting rid of overbearing children. All using kitchen utensils.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: “Wives, getting rid of overbearing husbands?” What do you mean by that? Is that an insult to those of us with many wives? It sounds like you are encouraging them to murder their lord and master.
Dr. Emil Twist: Ramjet, you’re confusing your plurals. If it were what you thought, Sylvia would have said, “wives, getting rid of an overbearing husband.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Y’all got nuffin to wurry ’bout, Ramjet. You jus’ go on keepin’ all them wimmen of yers happy. We ain’ gwan ter use ’em ter make y’all the subjec’ of a chapter in “The Kitchen Implement Murders”.
Dr. Bemis Understood: We need more than a book. We need movies and TV shows that are so gruesome no one will complain about having to give up their kitchen implements. And, their kitchens. After all, once we get the entire country convinced they only need “One Ingestible”, and that the very best “One Ingestible” is a “Universal Foodsicle”, who’ll need a kitchen?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Maybe, a couple of TV shows. And, infomercials. We need to convince the fools that they need to know more about Universal Foodsicles. How the filter works.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I’d almost forgotten about the filter. We’ll have to have some Smart-flunkies figure out how to freeze just the right amount of food and water together so that the only thing they will ever ingest is what comes out of the mini-bag containing each Universal Foodsicle.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Sylvia, they will taste watery. They will be awful. People will hate them!
Dr. Emil Twist: Yes, they will! It will be such a joy, forcing the fools to eat this stuff. Every meal. Every day. For their whole lives. By the time we’re finished with them, the fools will have absolutely no expectations about anything.
Dr. Bemis Understood: The way I picture it, we’ll put the “food” into something like teabags. They’ll put the teabag in their mouth, and a pre-determined amount of nutrients will be released into their system. Like a popsicle in a bag! It’ll be disgusting!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: They won’t need teeth! They won’t ever have to expend energy chewing! Don’t anyone tell the dental clients! With “Universal Foodsicles”, we can have all their teeth pulled. We’ll save billions!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: And, we’ll make them recycle the teabags! They’ll have to be recycled, or our project won’t be “environmentally sound”. They’ll hate it. The only way they can get a new Universal Foodsicle will be to turn in the old filter bag.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Syl, tha’s a wonnerful idea! Iffin they swaller their l’il food bag, we’ll be able to charge ’em fer a new one.
Dr. Emil Twist: We have forgotten Central Locations. They will be able to trade in their used Universal Foodsicle, their One Ingestible, for a new one, only at a Central Location! We have succeeded! We have tied all THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE requests into one overwhelming theory of unity. Finally, total Field Beast control!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: How they will hate us! I can almost feel the hatred flowing into me,
energizing me! Oh, what a wonderful thing we are doing. Hate, hate, hate. Everywhere.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah shore hope yer wives don’ feel that way. Iffin one wife’ll make a husband miser’ble over takin’ all the joy out of her life, Ah cain’t ‘magine what a dozen er so of ’em’ll do after they got to try to make these here Universal Foodsicles taste good.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Dick, I never thought of that! Why, we could sell “taste additives”. You know, to make this awful stuff at least edible. And, just give it to people who are especially obedient.
Dr. Emil Twist: I don’t know. I think they should all have to eat the “Universal Foodsicles” just as they come from the, where will they come from? Who will make them?
Dr. Bemis Understood: We have to figure all these things out. We’ll need Smart-flunkies. And, Dumb-flunkies. Millions of them. And, celebrities. Celebrities will tell the fools how important it is that they get with the program. We’ll see if we can get London Ritz-Carleton. And, Oprah. Between the two of them, over half the people will believe anything we tell them. It’s a snap to get them to buy into Universal Foodsicles.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Martha Stewart won’t. She’ll complain like crazy. Accuse us of “destroying individuality”.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Then, we’ll put her back in jail. You’d think she’d have learned the first time that the fools aren’t to be encouraged to think and do things on their own.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That woman is the enemy of all that is good and decent. One time, she ran into three or four of my wives at a charity benefit, and told them they were fools, absolute fools, to devote themselves to “an egomaniac like Ramjet Singh”. I hate Martha Stewart so much I’d like to make her one of my wives. I would fix her, good.
Dr. Emil Twist: Oh, I bet you would! I’d love to see that! I hate that woman! Telling women to think. To make things. To do things. To look after their families. I hate her, hate her, hate her!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: You know, before we were talking about raw wheat. I think we should combine Universal Foodsicles with wheat. That way, the fools can have their perfectly balanced diet, and have something to chew on.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: That’s very important. If they don’t chew, they won’t need dentists, and we’d lose fees.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I believe that each field beast should eat two tablespoons of wheat every day. And, as many Universal Foodsicles as they can handle.
Dr. Emil Twist: “As they can handle”? Really, Ramjet. You’ve been here long enough to realize that they can’t “handle” anything. We have to decide how much, or how little, they will eat.
Dr. Bemis Understood: And, we have to tell them when they will eat it! And, where! Once we let them start to “handle” things, they’ll start thinking for themselves. We don’t want that!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah’m surprized atchu, Ramjet. Thinkin’ these ha’r fiel’ beasts kin do thangs on thar own. We don’ wan’ that.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I didn’t want to say anything, Ramjet, because you are a stranger here, but surely you realize that the whole point of our being is to take more and more control from other people.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Now, now. I’m just as sure as any of you that Ramjet has made a profound mistake, but I’m sure he’s very sorry.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Oh, I am so very, very, very sorry. I abase my humble self before you all. I am so, so, so sorry. I spoke with out thinking. I thought without speaking. I was wrong, horribly, horribly wrong. Never will I suggest that even the smartest field beast, if there is such a thing as a smart field beast, is capable of “handling” anything without direction from superior people.
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: YOUR PLANS WILL TAKE A LONG TIME TO THOROUGHLY IMPLEMENT. IN THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE, YOU ARE TO WORK ON LIES THAT WILL CONVINCE THE FOOLS THAT ALL OF THEM ARE EXCESSIVELY FAT.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: This will be fun! And, they are too fat! Disgustingly fat.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Skin and bones. That’s all they need to be.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: In my country, we keep them all very thin. If they are allowed to put on weight, they can go for hours, even days, without eating. That makes them harder to control.
Dr. Emil Twist: Ramjet, I’d never thought of that. People who carry around a few day’s worth of fat may be able to escape.
Dr. Bemis Understood: We can’t have that. We need them to be thin. Weak. Sickly.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah lak that! Thin ’em down so’s they’ll blow away in a breeze!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Where do we start?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Start with the girls. They’re insecure. We start out by making them think they’re “fat”. We tell them that “fat” is just another name for “ugly”.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Surely, they cannot be that insecure?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Oh, yes. We start out when they’re very small, in kindergarten and first grade. We tell them “You are smarter than the boys are.” Well, when they start doing math, the boys always do better. Then, we convince the girls that they’re smarter in “better ways”, and that their “special smartness” can only be seen if they’re very thin.
Dr. Emil Twist: They believe that?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Oh, sure. Every magazine they read, every movie they see, and every TV show they watch glorifies thinness. That’s all they want to be because that’s all they see. At the same time, we make them think that girls of normal weight are disgusting, fat, and ugly.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Poor, too. We show all rich people being thin, all fat people being poor. Fat people are dirty. Thin people are clean. Fat people wear ugly clothes and have ugly hair. Only thin people can wear pretty clothes. Fat people live underneath old doors they lean up against dumpsters. Thin people get mansions.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Bein’ thin makes ’em sick, too. They miss lots of classes, ‘n purty soon, ’bout all they kin be is “thin”. Even better, it helps ’em to not have children. Only immigrants should have children. They’s a lot easier to control.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: From what you’re saying, it’s easy to get the girls to waste away. What about the boys?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: You can’t deal with the boys as easily. So, you have to limit the kind of food that helps their minds and bodies develop. We put them on fat free diets, and drive their IQs down to the double digits.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Their parents are said to care for them. Don’t they complain?
Dr. Emil Twist: Ramjet, half their parents are women. They get the same brainwashing that the girls do. They see thin boys every time they read magaziines, watch TV, or go to movies, too. They think that’s how boys should look. Thin and “sensitive”.
Dr. Bemis Understood: So, they can be dumbed down, too. Good. What about sports? Sports makes them exercise. They eat and get stronger. How can we get rid of sports?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah hate sports! When Ah was on a skool bord, we got ’em to spen’ jes’ as much on sports fer girls, ‘n basic’ly defunded boy sports, usin’ them Fed’ral laws.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Wonderful! I’m glad to know those Title whatever-they-are regulations are working. We get rid of boys’ sports and get the girls to waste all kinds of time and effort doing stupid things better than ever before.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: And, they think it’s progress! What fools they are! We even made them have cheerleaders for the girls’ games, even if no one came to see them!
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: PROGRESSIVE STATES FORCE PEOPLE TO BUY LIQUOR IN STATE-OWNED STORES. THEY ARE STAFFED WITH LOYAL POLITICAL HACKS WHO MAKE, INCLUDING PENSION AND BENEFITS, ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS AN HOUR. ONE OF OUR BIGGEST, BEST, AND OLDEST CLIENTS, THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA, WANTS ALL FOOD TO BE SOLD IN STATE-STORES, AS WELL. YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We certainly do! First, we congratulate our client on this brilliant innovation.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: That’s right! That’s the smartest idea any government ever came up with.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: It is the duty of the State to determine what is best for its people to eat. We need state stores to be sure that the field beasts only eat healthy food.
Dr. Emil Twist: I just can’t believe no one ever thought of this before! Pennsylvania must be about the greatest state in history.
Dr. Bemis Understood: This is revolutionary! Just now, we were talking about those foul-tasting Universal Foodsicles. This is how we can force the filthy field beasts to eat them.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: And, that’s all they kin eat!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We need lies! Great lies! Let’s get the usual celebrities on board.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I just hate that. Celebrities are so stupid! They’re dumber than field beasts, and I can’t stand projects that involve giving them money. I just hate them!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: We all despise them. In my country, we round up all the celebrities after we’ve gotten all we can out of them and put them in the deepest dungeons we can find.
Dr. Emil Twist: They are so stupid they actually believe what they are saying. Certainly, they can read scripts. They can look and sound very sincere. But, their minds are not large enough to realize that everything they say is a lie. They actually believe the world is getting warmer, or colder, and that fat is bad, and mercury kills millions. They are just so stupid. We cannot hate them for that, surely?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah kin hate ’em. ‘N I do! Ah cain’t unnerstan’ how sumbuddy kin git so much munny fer jes’ repeatin’ one er two sentences in frunt of a camera.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Dick, someone has to do it. Celebrities have to have some sense. They don’t dress themselves, balance their checkbooks, and they certainly can’t be allowed
to drive. But, doing simple things in well-lighted locations while appearing to be believable, well, that takes some ability.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Hell, they’s no brighter’n bugs flyin’ ‘roun’ bright lights.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Attention, please. We all despise celebrities. They’re no better than warm-blooded puppets, and a lot harder to work with, but we have a job. We need to convince a state full of field beasts they they should buy food the same way they buy alcohol, in State-owned, State-controlled stores staffed with the lowest levels of political hacks.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: That’s a challenge. When I was a Public Television “personality”, I lived in Pennsylvania. The field beasts there just hated State-Store employees. They don’t want to buy food from such mindless drones.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: But, Sylvia, mindless drones are the best kind of drones.
Dr. Emil Twist: Besides, Sylvia, they aren’t going to have a wide choice of food. There will just be Universal Foodsicles. Maybe some tofu. Possibly, a little granola for them to snack on. That’ll be all the food there is.
Dr. Bemis Understood: That’s all the food they need. Maybe, we could make the Universal Foodsicles in different colors, and call the colors “flavors”.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah lak that! Give ’em sum red Unyversal Foodsicles, ‘n call it “cherry”. Tell ’em the brown one are “root beer”. Red and brown. That may be all we need.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: And, we’ll have celebrity “chefs” tell them how to prepare them.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Oh, that’s brilliant! I wouldn’t mind giving money to a celebrity who can convince the field beasts that mixing a brown Universal Foodsicle with a red Universal
Foodsicle can make them taste better.
Dr. Rajmet Singh: We do not need a celebrity chef. We need London Ritz-Carleton, wearing nothing but an apron, moving around behind a stove on which a lot of Universal Foodsicles are sitting in various stages of preparation. Have lots of containers and untensils.
Dr. Emit Twist: Ramjet, you really seem to like Miss London Ritz-Carleton.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Oh, I do. I do! It is true, she is as dumb as a stump, but every gesture, every expression, every motion makes everyone who sees her fall in love.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Do your wives know about these feelings?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Oh, yes. We always record her when she is on television. All my wives are expected to master at least one London Ritz-Carleton gesture or expression each day.
Dr. Emil Twist: Do you have them dye their hair blonde?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That was the first thing I did. Then, plastic surgery. Sometimes, a little “stretching” to get, and keep, them long and lithe. Now, all my wives are as blonde and beautiful as London Ritz-Carleton, herself.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: So, is it the recommendation of the committee that we suggest to THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE that all we need is Miss London Ritz-Carleton making faces at a stove telling people that “the only food any of us really needs comes from Pennsylvania’s Universal Foodsicles Outlets?”
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Sounds lak tha’s all we be needin’, Mendle.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Oh, of course we need more than that brainless twitette. We need to hire some Smart-flunkies to make up a lot of charts and graphs about calories and nutrition. Some field beasts need some especially brainless twaddle to be convinced. “Round foods” vs. “Square foods” and “Above Ground foods vs. “Below Ground foods”. You know the drill. There’s a lot to do.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: You are right, of course, Sylvia. It’s just that all those studies and tests and other Smart-flunky things are just so boring. Trust me, everyone would much rather just sit quietly and smile at their TV while London Ritz-Carleton smiles, enjoys her Universal Foodsicle, says silly things, looks sincere, and moves gracefully around. Like a fawn.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Wal, I thank we’s gonna have a prollum wiffin the pipple in the reg’lar groc’ry stores. They is all gonna be put outa business. Won’ they squawk?
Dr. Emil Twist: Oh, Dick, of course they’ll squawk.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: And, we’ll just have the beautiful Miss London Ritz-Carleton get up real close to the camera, so she fills up the whole TV screen, and say “It’s too bad that the greedy people who own the old-style food stores won’t help us all be thin and look good.”
Dr. Bemis Understood: Then, we imply that the “greedy food store owners” are enemies of the people, destroyers of children, polluters of our bodies. A few other flunkies, and we DO need a few other flunkies, Ramjet. London Ritz-Carleton, for all of her charms, can’t destroy a hundred thousand grocery stores by herself. We’ll need lots more people tellin’ ’em how bad it is to be greedy.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: ‘N it’ll be easy enuf to fin’ pipple to actshually go out ‘n burn down them gro’cr’y stores to “purify the peoples food supply.”
Dr. Mendle Meddle: And, why shouldn’t they burn down all those grocery stores? It is for their own good.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: We could pay bounties to store burners.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: “Ah’m on the commitee fer Energy Lies. Lot’s o’ times, we hare them Cleanfleece Thug Bands. They get rid of a lot of stuff that stands in ahr way. Iffin they burn down a coupla’ t’ousan’ gro’cr’y stores, ‘n don’ get arrested er prosecuted, wal, that’ll be a big halp.
Dr. Emil Twist: How do we get the new food stores built? Where do we hire enough mindless hacks to staff them? This is a big project, and we’re overlooking a lot of details.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Of course, we’re overlooking details. That’s our job. Details are for flunkies. They’ll figure it out.
Dr. Bemis Understood: That’s right, Emil. THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE tells us to come up with a lie. We do. Then, flunkies take over. Smart-flunkies do any necessary reading, writing, or arithmetic. Dumb-flunkies do all the talking and expressing we need to help sell the lie.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: So, how are we going all the ingredients to make all the Universal Foodsicles? Package them? Line up trainloads of tofu and granola? Package it? Get it to the stores? Is Miss London Ritz-Carleton going to drive ten thousand trucks?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Wa’l, I be guessin’ that we oughten ter be hiring sum of the pipple what used ter wurk in the grocery stores we be closin’ down. The hacks’ll manage
the stores, ‘n the field beasts’ll do the work.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: That’s just the way it should be! The way it’s always been, but better. Think how happy the people in Pennsylvania will be. No more confusing choices. No more meat. Milk. Cream. Eggs. Shopping will be fast. Maybe, they’ll save so much time they could work ten hour days.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: In my country, they work twelve. And, they like it.
Dr. Bemis Understood: They’d better, right Ramjet?
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: PROGRESS ALERT! PROGRESS ALERT!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: People! People! Attention, please! THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE HAS JUST ISSUED A PROGRSS ALERT! Take your places, please!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I hate Progress Alerts! I just can’t stand it when one of those filthy field beasts comes up with something new and different!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: In my country, such people are done away with at the first sign they’re able to think.
Dr. Emil Twist: Ramjet, you don’t know how lucky you are! Here, we have to live with them. Here, we have to suffer endless disruption. You get to live in a comfortable environment where nothing changes.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Does anyone know what “progress” the filthy bastards have made?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah shore don’. Ah ain’ herd nuffin.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: THANK YOU FOR RE-FOCUSING SO QUICKLY. WE HAVE A SERIOUS PROBLEM. ONE OF THE BRIGHTER FIELD BEASTS HAS INVENTED A NEW FOOD PRODUCTION PROCESS. HE TAKES A FEW STARTER CELLS FROM A COW, PUTS THEM IN A PETRIE DISH, AND HE CAN GROW MEAT. THE FOOLS CAN GROW ANY KIND OF MEAT OR VEGETABLE FROM A YEAST PACKET TYPE OF PACKAGE WITH THE DESIRED STEM CELLS.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Y’all mean tha’ sumbudy kin grow meat wifout usin’ a cow?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s what it sounds like. Why, they could eat like kings, on pennies a day!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: It sounds much worse than that. If they buy the cells, and
get new ones to start growing, they could eat for free, forever!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I do not understand. Do you mean that people could grow meat without an animal?
Dr. Emil Twist: That’s what it sounds like. Seems practical. If people can get yeast cells to grow just by mixing them with flour and warm water, why not starter cells from plants and animals?
Dr. Bemis Understood: You know, they could get starter-cells that would grow into steaks. Cells that would grow into bacon. Cells that would grow into eggs. They could have a farm without the farm! Sounds like a great opportunity!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah’m shore it is, but let’s ‘member who’s we’s wurkin’ fer, Bemis.
Dr. Bemis Understood: I am so sorry! It is such a great idea, being able to let every person grow whatever they want to eat by mixing some starter-cells in water that, well, I have to confess, I saw how much better it could make their lives and I forgot that our job is keep anything good from ever happening in their lives.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I should hope you’re sorry, Bemis. Though, I can see how you could get carried away with it. Maybe, we should have these things for us. I love a nice tuna steak, and what better way to be sure it’s fresh than to grow it yourself!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Mendle! You’re as bad as Bemis! This is a brilliant concept of food production that we are duty-bound to destroy! We must eliminate it from happening. Though, it would be handy, to be able to put a few starter cells in a dish, add warm water, and have a lamb chop ready to cook when I got home from work.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Sylvia! Now, you’re doing it! Please, can we focus on destroying this idea? Can we get some ideas why this is a bad idea that must be made illegal?
Dr. Emil Twist: Ramjet, slow down. Just listen. We start by finding out all the good things that this new idea can do. Then, we can develop a better way to destroy it. Although, I must say, there does seem to be an excessive, even dangerous, amount of enthusiasm for it among the field beasts who know about it.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Could you make real milk with this? Just put some cells into a glass of water and watch it turn into milk? Honey, too?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Good point, Bemis. Once them ‘ligious pipple get wind of makin a lan’ of ‘ milk ‘n honey frum a coupla’ packets of starter-cells, they’ll be hard ter stop.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Can we get vegetables to grow from a few starter cells, too? Wheat? Other grains? I mean, all they’d need is a supply of cells, and they’d hardly ever need to go to a grocery store, again. This has to be stopped! It will destroy our clients!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: ‘N it culd get rid of r’f’r’graters, too. They use lots of ‘lectri’ty. Cain’t have
‘um reducin’ their ‘lect’ic bills.
Dr. Bemis Understood: No, we certainly can’t have that. And, if they grew all their own food at home, in what, giant petrie dishes of some kind, they wouldn’t need to drive to their grocery stores. They could just stay home.
Dr. Emil Twist: You know, my little Bismark might like this for dog food. All pets might like it.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Every one of our clients will lose billions. Except for people who eat. They will save trillions of dollars. This has to be stopped.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I am very concerned. If they could computerize this process, they’d be able to put in a menu a week ahead of time. The meat, fish, vegetables, everything, would be programmed to start growing.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Then, the whole meal could be automatically micro-waved, flash frozen for future use, or,when appropriate, eaten as is. This is brilliant. It’s going to be hard to stop.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: The entire processing unit could be under a table. The food would be grown, then heated or cooled and pop up when it’s time to eat. Our clients will hate this!
Dr. Emil Twist: What do the food cells eat?
Dr. Bemis Understood: Same thing that yeast eats. Minerals, water, starch. Corn. Who cares what they eat? We want ’em to stop eating. We want to put an end to this whole thing. This could affect governments. Who needs a Dept. of Agriculture when there isn’t any more agriculture?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We can’t have a single bureaucrat lose a single job. Not unless it’s doing something useful!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Wa’l, Ah don’ rahtlee thank we be needin’ a Deepar’men’ uv Aggiecultrue anyhow. They don’ be doin’ nuffin ‘ceptin’ goin’ ‘roun’ both’rin’ the pipple what we got dressed up ter look like furmers. They give each pseudo-furmer ‘mos t’ree t’ousand pounds uv literactchure ever’ y’ar, ‘n them pseudo-furmers got ter read it all ur they don’ get no subsidiez. Iffin they don’ read it two yars in a row, they gots to get a job processin’ chickins.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s ridiculous, Dick. Pseudo-farmers can’t read.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah knows ‘hat. They gots ter have perfessional reeders ter go trhew them pamplets so’s they kin say they’s been red.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: But the pseudo-farmers, themselves, they still can’t read, can they?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah don’ thank so. Ah goes ter mah furms ‘mos ever’ weeken’, ‘n Ah nebber seen a furmer reed nuffin. They’s mos’ly gone ter public skuls, so they pro’ly can’t read a’tall.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Well, if we’ve exhausted all the good things about the home production of food, we should come up with some good lies to help stop it.
Dr. Sylvia Sween: You’re right, Mendle. First, we need a name, a derogatory name. We don’t want some moron of a newsspewer saying anything good about this.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Some of them will, you know. They may have a hard time not being enthusiastic about something that will save them, personally, thousands dollars and hundreds of wasted shopping hours every year.
Dr. Emil Twist: I have an idea for a name. “Microbe food.” People all know that microbes are bad.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Except for the good microbes, of course. The ones that help digest food in our own intestines. No, we need something stronger, something that indicates true “badness”. How about working in a phrase like “Tasteless, harmful, home-made food hurts family farmers.”?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Bemis, the las’ fam’ly furmer went out of business in 1974. Onlee wuns lef’ are a few “stage furms”. Dress up a coupla’ homeless pipple in bib over’lls, ‘n have ’em
complainin’ ’bout the weather wunce or twice a year on teevee. Have a few rusty ol’ tractors pullin’ a rusty impl’ment of some sort along busy highways, a few collapsin’ mobile homes wiffin their yards full of trash. But, mos’ of ’em know they ain’ no more fam’ly furms lef’ ter be hurt.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: A name! That’s all I’m asking for. Not a lecture on imaginary family farms. We need a name! You are a Lie Committee. Let’s get a name.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: “Powdered food.”
Dr. Ramjet Singh: “Freak food.”
Dr. Emil Twist: “Fake food.” “Phoney food.” “Fad food.”
Dr. Bemis Understood: “Put ’em all together. “Eating fake, phoney, fad food may turn your own grand-children into freaks. No one knows about the long-term genetic effects of what may cause a world-wide epidemic of death and disease.”
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Not bad, Bemis. No newsspewer in the worl’ dum’ enuf to git that wrong.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: None of those names are good enough. This is an attack on all governments’ total control of food production. We’re up against a powerful enemy. Imagine that we are kerosene producers, and that accursed Edison has just invented the light bulb.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Mendle, this may be too big to stop!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: No government can allow people to invent such things! Why, if people could grow better food for nothing in their own petrie dishes, who would need a government?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We need better names! We need better lies! If you people can’t come up with them, you will have to be replaced with better liars. This is an Emergency Situation! This is a named “Progress Alert!!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Let’s call it “Freak food”. It implies that both the food, itself, and those who eat it are freaks.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I cannot argue with that. We could have London Ritz-Carleton talk slightingly and insultingly about it on a hundred talk shows. I would be glad to help work with her.
Dr. Emil Twist: Ramjet, would you stop using every single opportunity that comes up as an excuse to get to work with London Ritz-Carleton?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: That’s right, Ramjet. Surely, you don’t want to make your wives jealous?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: My wives love Miss London Ritz-Carleton as much as I do. “Why don’t you marry her, too?” they ask me every time they see her on television. “We could learn so much about how Americans think from her.”
Dr. Emil Twist: Excuse me for interrupting, but there is a concern about clothing.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Is Li’l Bismark cold?
Dr. Emil Twist: Bemis, don’t start. Sometimes, Li’l Bismark is cold, and he does need his little jacket, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Quite simply, if the field beasts can grow their own meat, milk, bread, jam, and fish in petrie dishes, why can’t they grow their own fabrics?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Emil, y’all can’t grow rayon! Nylon, neither!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: But, you could grow natural fibers. Wool. Cotton. Silk. People could grow their own fabric.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: They could actually grow fabrics? Could they grow clothes that fit them perfectly? You know, wrap some silk starter cells around you, and when you woke up, you’d be wearing a new, silk dress? A vicuna sweater?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: How wuldja get it off?
Dr. Emil Twist: Dick, can’t you stop thinking about getting Sylvia’s clothes off? The point is that the fools could have free clothing. Just buy starter cells that produced green, or red, or whatever color, of cotton, silk, or wool.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Emil, you have discovered a truly big idea that could help billions of people clothe themselves for practically nothing.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: This idea of controlled cellular growth that lets people feed and clothe themselves for nothing is just amazing.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: I jus’ re’lized! Iffin them fiel’ beasts wuz to wurk at it, they could get
trees ter grow inter houses! Grow ’em fast as bamboo grows. Real nice houses. Lak the ones them Keebler Elves live in.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Dick, that would be awful! People just throwing seeds into the ground and getting a free house, that they could live in with free food and clothing! What would we do? Who would need a government? Who would keep them working?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Someone would have to tell them what colors to wear.
Dr. Emil Twist: Ramjet, my little Bismark could a better job of that than they could, and he’s a color-blind Pomeranian!
Dr. Bemis Understood: If they grew their own food and clothing in petrie dishes, and grew their own houses out of trees and bamboo starter cells, how would we tax them? If we can’t tax them, how could we live?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I just thought of something! Would they be able to use these replicating molecules to grow their own chocolate?
Dr. Emil Twist: My wittle Bismark would like that, wouldn’t ooo Bizzy? Wittle Bismark wuves his chocowate. All Pomewianians wuve chocowate. Would ooo like to gwow some chocwate, wittle Bizzy?
Dr. Bemis Understood: Emil, I wish you wouldn’t bring that dog to the meetings. It’s distracting, and, I’d swear he piddled on my shoe.
Dr. Emil Twist: Little Bismark would never do a thing like that! Not unless someone was mean to him. Was someone mean to you, my pwecious wittle Bismark? Let Daddy give you a big kiss!
Dr. Bemis Understood: Disgusting!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah’d lak ter know iffin they could grow diff’rent kinds of choc’lat. One of my ex-wives’d kin eat near a ton of choc’lat a month ‘n Ah’d get out of payin’ sum alleymoney. She laks dark choc’lat. ‘Mah second ex-wif’, she laks white choc’lat.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Could we get back to the business at hand? None of us need to know what kind of chocolate Dick’s endless parade of ex-wives prefers. Of course they can grow their own chocolate. Once they figure out how to get organic molecules to replicate, like the police do with DNA, they can grow anything.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Mendle, I’m beginning to understand. They could grow their own slab of prime rib? The field beasts wouldn’t have to eat the cheaper cuts? I mean, that’s awful! How can we feel superior if they can eat anything we can eat?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: In my country, many will not kill the cattle that destroy their fields and devour their gardens. If they could grow their own roast beef in petrie dishes, is that against their religion? I do not know. I do not know.
Dr. Emil Twist: Well, put all your wives to work on it, Ramjet. If they aren’t too busy trying to look like London Ritz-Carleton.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: They like the challenge of making themselves resemble Ms. London Ritz-Carleton.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: It could be worse. They could be trying to look like Dakota Motel-Six. You know, tattooing huge Harley-Davidson mudflaps on their posteriors.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That’s, as London Ritz-Carleton would say, “Very NOT funny!” My wives are trying to adapt to the very best of western ways.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Do you tell them that when you get tired of them, tell them “I divorce you.” three times, then throw them out in the street without a penny?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Enough! Sylvia, you know that no one can be allowed to mock, malign, or belittle any practice of Ramjet’s religion, even if one of us would be jailed or executed for doing the same thing.
Dr. Emil Twist: Mendle is right. There are too many personal attacks going on. Who cares if Ramjet gets rid of his wives if he tires of them? Who cares if wittle Bismark may have an occasional accident when people are mean to him? Who cares how much chocolate Dick’s ex-wives eat?
Dr. Bemis Understood: Well, I care if it’s my shoes that are getting piddled on.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah care iffin Ah kin reeduce mah alleymoney pa’ments. How do we get us sum choc’lat starter cells? Ah’d lak to ‘speriment on ’em. See iffin Ah culd grow me a Milky Way bar. Mebbe a coupla truckloads of ’em. Ever’ week. Come to think of it, how do we know that’s not how the choc’late makers aren’t alreddy makin’ choc’late?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Dick, we’d have to hire flunkies. Smart flunkies. Really smart flunkies. The ones smart enough to develop these cells might not want to work for us. Flunkies that smart despise us. They think we’re a bunch of second-rate parasites.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Second-rate parasites! How dare they! I have the advanced degrees to prove that I am a first-class parasite! I, I mean, I am first-class! They are the parasites! They are the ones who need our help and guidance.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah don’ know iffin many of ’em see it that way, Sylvia. Mos’ of ’em think we’re a cumpleet waste of their money.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Ungrateful bastards!
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WE ARE VERY DISAPPOINTED IN YOUR PROGRESS. WE HAD A NAMED “PROGRESS ALERT” ABOUT A TECHNOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGH THAT’S VERY THREATENING TO NEARLY ALL OF OUR CLIENTS! WE EXPECT YOU TO FOCUS ON DISCREDITING THE ENTIRE FIELD OF “STARTER CELLS” THAT MAY BE USED TO PROVIDE VIRTUALLY FREE FOOD, CLOTHING, AND HOUSING FOR BILLIONS OF FIELD BEASTS.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: You all heard what THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE wants. Now, at long last, do you think we could come up with a program that will justify making “starter cells” illegal?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah jus’ wish that they’d give us some time ter develop a big, cohesive plan. We ain’ nebber heerd of an invenshun as brylliant as “starter cells” that’d let ever’buddy be free to, w’al, eat fur free. Furever.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I must agree with Dr. Dudewell. This is a big breakthrough, free food, free clothing, and free housing. It’s, well, like electricity, or something. We have to take time to understand all of it to be sure that our lies are big and broad enough to regulate it so thoroughly that our clients end up controlling it.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah jus’ love a big, broad lie! Ah reely do! Mebbe ussun’s culd think ’bout it better iffin we wuz on a beech on Bora-bora.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Dick, we all love lies. The bigger the better. A nice, tropical vacation may help us invent better lies. We don’t even have a name or description for our program to defeat this accursed progress.
Dr. Emil Twist: How about this: “Don’t let ‘starter cells’ finish you.”
Dr. Ramjet Singh: It is a start. It is not dramatic, but it could be built into a fortress of lies.
Dr. Bemis Understood: “A fortress of lies.” What a mellodious phrase. We must built a “fortress of lies” to discredit, and illegalize, the use of starter cells to keep people from growing their own food at home.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Frankensteinian monsters! That’s what we need. Show the petrie dishes growing a slab of roast beef that turns into a cannibalistic devourer of human flesh!
Dr. Bemis Understood: The slab of roast beef could turn an ordinary puppy into a mad, rabid dog. A vicious Pomeranian, eating children and peeing permanent dye onto carpets!
Dr. Emil Twist: Did ooo hear dat bad man, widdle Bismark? Dat bad man does not wike wittle Bismark. What did wittle Bismark do to him? Did widdle Bismark do his widdle business in the pocket of dat bad man’s overcoat?
Dr. Bemis Understood: Emil, if that miserable dog of yours . . . .
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Knock it off, you two. I like this cannibalistic monster idea. Maybe, the cannibal Pomeranian eats scraps of “Frankenfood”, grows huge fangs, and starts attacking children.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Or, it turns into a sneaky vampire that prowls around at night and sucks blood from the same people who gave him scraps of food grown from starter cells.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Les’ tell ’em that the “unpredictable starter cells” will turn dogs into rabid devourers of children and turn cats into vampires”. Have sum flunkees do sum studees, the kind wiffin little grafs sum of ’em lak ter look at.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s very good, Dick. They like a few details to remember. Especially if they’re very simple and wholly imaginary details that they won’t ever be tested because they’re always changing.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: We could use the same kind of lie to describe what happens when people wear clothes they’ve grown from starter cells. “At night,” we warn them, “the clothes may constrict. The people who wear them are often painfully suffocated in their own beds, unable to cry out for help.”
Dr. Emil Twist: Good thing you’ve got so many wives, Ramjet. One of them is sure to notice if your pajamas tried to choke you.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Good one, Emil. Ramjet, are you sure that all of them would come and help you if your pajamas started putting the squeeze on you?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: No. I am not sure about some of them. But, Wife Number One, she would help me. Unless, of course, she were being simultaneously suffocated by her flannel nightshirt.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ramjet, Ah thought yer wives all knew that London Ritz-Carleton don’ believe in wearin’ bedclothes of any kind.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: No, I did not. We all thought she wore a flannel nightshirt and little bunny slippers. That is what all my wives now wear.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Will all of you stop worrying about what Ramjet’s wives wear to bed! We have made some progress, with the idea that home-grown food and clothing will come alive and destroy those who created them. Now, let’s start getting this refined without any more distractions.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Thank you, Mendle. We have some good lies that need to be polished. “Food grown from ‘starter cells’ has an unpredictable effect on all those who eat it.” is a good introduction. Hey, what if the fools even go near the “starter cells”? We could tell the them that a few starter cells that stick to them may grow a new arm or leg somewhere. Like their forehead.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Oh, Sylvia, you are so, so, so smart! None of us even came close to thinking of an idea like that. People could end up with pork chops growing out all over their bodies.
Dr. Emil Twist: I like that ever so much more than the “Monster Pomewanian”. No one could ever bewieve that a sweet, tiny Pomewanian would ever do anything so un-Pomewanian-like. Instead, I think we should have the newsspewers announce: “Many ‘starter cells’ are able to launch themselves into the air, like grasshoppers. They try to land on people to form new growths of body parts in very inappropriate places. A cow’s nose, for instance, may start to grow overnight out of a woman’s cheek. It’s not their fault, it is modern science’s, for trying to use nature for our own advantage.”
(transcribers notes: Several moments of stunned silence follow)
Dr. Bemis Understood: Emil, that is brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! Turning the blame right where it belongs, to the dirty, useless field beasts, themselves! Emil, I am so impressed!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah’m mitey impressed, too. Emil, tha’s one of the best lies Ah ever heerd tell of! Blamin’ the dam’ fools ‘n makin’ ’em feel reel guilty. Tha’s reely smart! Heck’s fahr, it’s more’n smart. It’s sheer geniyus.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: It is your best work, Emil.
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: OUR HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS TO DR. EMIL TWIST. DR. TWIST, THIS IS ONE OF THE FINEST LIES THAT WE HAVE EVER HEARD, AND, WITH GOOD NEWSSPEWING, WILL HELP STOP THIS MONEY-SAVING FAD BEFORE IT GETS STARTED.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s a wonderful opinion from THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. I’m glad that they approved our work. Dick, you’ll be pleased to know that we’ve each been awarded a vacation for two to Bora-Bora.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That is not fair! I cannot go to Bora-Bora with only one wife! I need many tickets. One for each wife!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah’m in the same kin’ of a fix. Ah got five, mebbe six, ex-wives. Iffin Ah don’ take ’em all, the ones Ah leave behind’ll all put in fer more alleymony. Ah cain’t afford it!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Well, I only need one ticket. If you guys are going to get a half-a-dozen, it’s only fair that I get that many, too.
Dr. Emil Twist: What about me? Do I get a free ticket for Little Bismark?
Dr. Bemis Understood: None of this is right! We should each get one ticket and one hotel room. Dick, you and Ramjet would end up with a whole floor! We’d only get one suite.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: There does seem to be some unfairness in distribution. But, look at the fine work these two have done.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: It’s not fair, Mendle, and you know it! All of us are great liars, too.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I know it. We’ll have to limit it to one ticket and accomondation for each Committee member.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Now, that is what I call “unfair”! I am abiding by the customs of my culture. It is wrong, and illegal, for me to be held to any other standard that may result in any kind of culture-based loss..
Dr. Bemis Understood: If he and Dick get extra tickets, I want the difference between their cost and mine. In cash.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: That makes sense.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I have to say that I agree. Each of us will get the amount of money we’d get if we had as many wives and ex-wives as Dick and Ramjet.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah don’ think that’s altogether fair. Iffin they is gonna be gettin’ a big wad of cah why not me n’ Ramjet?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That is so very true. We are making endless sacrifices to help our government, so we should get the same extra days pay in cash that they get. It’s not our fault they don’t have many spouses to take care of.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: It’s not right to give them extra tickets and the extra money. It’s not our fault that they have so many wives.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: It is not my fault! My culture demands that I have many wives. I cannot disregard my culture! It is not fair to penalize me, or my wives, for their very being.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: It shore ain’ my fault that I gots ter have so many ex-wives. Ah’d still be married to two ur three of ’em, but the law said I culd only haf one at a time. So, ahm stuck wiffin a bunch of exes. They gots ter eat.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Not my lunch! There is only so much money available, and it must be distributed evenly among us.
Dr. Emil Twist: You do not see me asking for money to pay the expenses of taking Wittle Bismark to Bora-Bora. I pay for my responsibilities.
Dr. Bemis Understood: I do not want extra money. I am not asking for more. We should all get the same amount.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s right. We all need to get just the same amount. We all contribute equally, so we should be paid equally. Dick, you and Ramjet can appeal, but you may only find yourselves off the committee.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Wal, Ah don’ much like it, but there’s not much Ah kin do ’bout it.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WE APPRECIATE YOUR FINE LIES TO UNDERMINE THE CREDIBILITY OF STARTER CELLS. CLIENTS WOULD LIKE LIES THAT WILL JUSTIFY A NEW APPROACH TO FOOD MARKETING THAT WILL PROVIDE HIGHER MARGINS.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: This is a tremendous opportunity. I’ve always believed we should sell foods based on the shape of their molecules.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Exactly what shape are molecules, Mendle?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: How should I know?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: It doesn’t matter what shape they are. They are all different. I think.
Dr. Emil Twist: I think so, too. Maybe tall people should eat food with long molecules. Unless they wanted to be shorter.
Dr. Bemis Understood: And, if short people wanted to be taller, they should eat food with long molecules.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: That makes sense. Ah figger that mebbe we culd get food wiffin small molecules fer pipple that was fat.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Dick! There is no one who is “fat”. There are only people who are “heavy”.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s right. I hate it when I am called “fat”. “Heavy” is so much nicer.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Jes’ how “heavy” ahr y’all, Mendle?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I really don’t know. When I’m on the scale, I can’t see the little dial. When I get off the scale, it goes to zero. I must weigh more than zero.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Dick, we’re here to get some good marketing techniques to bamboozle the fools, not obsess about how much people weigh.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Don’ wurry, Sylvia. Ah warn’t gonna ask how much y’all weighed. Ah jus’ know it’s a lot less’n Mendle.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: If we could get back to the project. I agree that molecular shapes are an important part of diet. Or, they could be made to seem so. How do we find out what shapes the food molecules are?
Dr. Emil Twist: I’m sure I don’t have the slightest idea. Some molecules are soft. Some are crunchy. Some are chewy. Some are cold, too. Like ice cream molecules.
Dr. Bemis Understood: That’s a start. Since no one knows what food molecules look like, maybe we could use texture to classify food.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah laks crunchy food. ‘N, Ah lak chewy food. Let’s tell ’em that iffin they got strate hair, they oughten ter be eatin’ crunchy food. Iffin they got blue eyes, they shuld be eatin chewy food.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That makes sense. Or, it will after it’s polished up a little. If they have brown eyes, they should eat soft, warm food.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Do you think they’ll believe that?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Shore. They b’leeve all the other crap we spew out. What’s we gonna do fer pipple what got grey ur green eyes?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: We will tell them to eat runny food. Lots of soup.
Dr. Emil Twist: This could be an important breakthrough. We could assign different foods for the different kinds of people. Make them eat it. And, make them pay more for “Custom foods for the individUal in you.”
Dr. Bemis Understood: “We put the ‘U’ in ‘individUal’. They like thinking that people recognize the importance of their individUality. Then, we crank out a lot of highly seasoned “individUal portions” for them.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: We got to get some more scientifical informashun. Don’ we needs sum flunkies fer ter do sum studies?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Oh, Dick, I hope not. I hate flunkies. Can’t we come up with food requirements on our own? I mean, we already demonstrated how important it is that straight-haired, blue-eyed people eat food that’s either crunchy or chewy or both.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: And, we know that brown-eyed people should eat a lot of soft, warm food. That’s almost everybody in the world, so what more do we need?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Grey and green-eyed people need lots of soup. We’re done. We have everyone in the world classified into three scientific groups with foods for each of them.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WE APPRECIATE YOUR RAPID WORK ON THIS VITAL ISSUE. WE STILL NEED LIES WITH MORE DETAIL. MANY OF THE FIELD BEASTS MAY NOT BELIEVE THAT DIET SHOULD BE DETERMINED BY THE COLOR OF THEIR EYES.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I don’t believe it! It makes as much sense as diets named after towns. It makes as much sense as diets named after people. It makes as much sense any known dietary program.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah’ve alreddy called up mah sixth wif’, ‘n tol’ her that Ah wanted sum nice, crunchy food that wuz chewy fer dinner.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: My wives have been instructed to prepare some soft, warm food for dinner. We will be having something with curry.
Dr. Emil Twist: Wittle Bismark has brown eyes. I am going to feed him chili. Unless it upsets ‘is delicate wittle stomach.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Emil, y’all ahr a jeanyus! Mos’ pets gots brown eyes, so them soft, warm foods ahr jus’ what they need. Mebbe we shuld take pet food as a whole category. Then, we c’n make up what diff’ren’ kinds of dogs shuld eat.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Dick, I agree. Emil has had a brilliant idea. Maybe the dogs with long, straight hair should eat, oh, I don’t know, chicken-based dog food.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: My poodle would love a steady diet of curly fries!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: In my native country, wives often prepare dogs for feasts. Should brown-eyed people eat brown-eyed dogs?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Tha’s a reely hard qwestchun, Ramjet. Ah jus’ don’ know. Ah doubt iffin anybody knows.
Dr. Emil Twist: We may need to hire a bunch of smart flunkies to find out.
Dr. Bemis Understood: I think we’re doing just fine on our own. We already have a lie for every human being, and a couple of kinds of dogs. The Executive Committee should be pleased with our output.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WE ARE VERY PLEASED WITH YOUR PROGRESS. WE ARE PREPARING COPY FOR NEWSSPEWERS, AND WE THINK WE HAVE ENOUGH TO GO ON. OUR ONLY QUESTION IS WHETHER OR NOT WE SHOULD LEGISLATE YOUR RESEARCH INTO LAW SO THAT FIELD BEASTS WITH INAPPROPRIATE DIETS MAY BE FINED OR JAILED.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We could tie this in with Central Locations. All the brown-eyed people would have their own Central Locations for soft warm food. Let’s put them in Scandanavia. Only way they’ll get to eat is to move there.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Mendle, that’s a good idea, but it won’t get through THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. It’s too extreme. We could maybe get away with a Central Location for each hundred or so thousand of them, but that’s about all.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I would like to have all the people in my country, who are all brown-eyed, have the food fired into their villages with huge cannons.
Dr. Emil Twist: Huge, steel projectiles full of curry plunging down from the sky? I don’t know if that’s a good idea. It may wipe out the same people we’re trying to feed.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That is exactly my point.
Dr. Bemis Understood: And, a great point it is!
Dr. Emil Twist: Sorry. I didn’t get it. It is a great way for delivery. We could build “food shelters” in each village. Whenever a food delivery was on the way, they’d all run to their assigned “food shelter”.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Iffin there got to be too many of ’em, we could target the “food shelters”. Wipe out whole villages iffin there was min’ral deposits ur sum’thin’ we needed. Ramjet, you’ve combined proper diet with populashun control. Congratulashuns!
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WE NEED A NEW ROUND OF LIES ABOUT WATER WELLS. PREVIOUSLY, OTHER COMMITTEES HAVE LOOKED AT THIS, BUT THEIR LIES HAVE GROWN TIRED FROM OVERUSE.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I hate the idea of drilling into the earth.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I hate the idea of the fools getting free water.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I hate the fools, themselves.
Dr. Emil Twist: We all hate the fools. Hating isn’t the same as lying, and we’re supposed to be lying. That’s what we get paid for, working, not having fun.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah ‘member, one of the oth’r Lie Committees, we talked ’bout this. Didn’t get anywhere. We be needin’ a purty good bunch of lies.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I think we should focus on “Geo-Pressure”.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: What the hail is “Geo-Pressure”?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Is sounds fascinating!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: It is! We’ve already gotten the dumber fools to think of the earth as “alive”, in some unique way. Well, if people can go around drilling holes in the earth, it’s exactly like us, drilling hole through our own hearts.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Oh, Mendle, that’s wonderful! What a lie! The fools can be led to think that drilling a water well is the same as drilling a hole, right through their own hearts!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Are they that stupid?
Dr. Emil Twist: They are now! After fifteen or twenty years of public “education”, they’ll believe this!
Dr. Bemis Understood: They’ll not only believe this mindless crap, they’ll think that believing it is a sign that they’re “above average”, intellectually. “Geo-Pressure Protection” would be a great name for the Legislative Lies we’ll need to keep the fools from getting drinkable water for nothing.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: “Geo-Pressure Protection” could be applied to farmin’, too. We’ll tell the field beasts that “Farming gouges the surface of the earth. It’s lak scratchin’ yerself wiffin a stiff wire brush, openin’ up the skin fur ‘nfecshuns ‘n ‘venchual death, ‘n it lets the earf bleed our its ‘nvisible spirit.”
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Dick, that’s just an absolutely super lie! Just like blood would leak out of deeply scratched skin, Geo-Pressure oozes the “earth spirit” out of plowed fields! We’ll be able to use “Geo-Pressure Protection” to stop them from both drinking and raising food!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Every government needs big, new departments for “Geo-Pressure Protection.” They could declare “War on Geo-Pressure deplection”.
Dr. Emil Twist: “Geo-Pressure Protection” should regulate all the dirty field beasts who drill for oil. They depressurize very deep areas, causing unimaginable damage to endlessly collapsing layers above the bottoms of their disgusting wells.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Brilliant, Emil! These accursed holes will cause “Crustal Deflection”, and we all know how bad that can be.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: It kin be purty bad. It kin be ’bout the wurst thang that kin happen to ahr dear Mother Earf.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: “Geo-Pressure” cannot be maintained when field beasts are strip mining! Or, open-pit mining! No field beast must ever be allowed to change the surface of the earth. For the good of everyone!”
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I think that when there is a “Geo-Pressure drop “, that the earth actually cries.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: And, those awful wells that the fools drill actually bring the tears of a weeping Mother Earth to the surface.
Dr. Emil Twist: Oh, the pain! The pain she must feel! I think that my widdle Bismark can hear her crying. His ears are so sensitive.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Emil, your “widdle Bismark” drinks out of the toilet and I saw him chewing on a dead, stiff mouse in a trap. He’s about as sensitive as a pig.
Dr. Emil Twist: How dare you! Widdle Bismark only drinks out of the toilet because it’s the only way he can recycle. And, he was trying to rescue that smelly mouse. Widdle Bismark didn’t know it was dead.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: W’al, Ah’m reel shure Ah don’ know what’s goin’ on in widdle Bismark’s brain, but he seems like an OK dog ter me.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Could we PLEASE stop talking about widdle, I mean, little Bismark? We have lies to tell.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Mendle, I think looking at this from Bismark’s perspective could be important. A lot of people like their pets so much that we may be able to concoct imaginary “animal feelings” about the importance of protecting Mother Earth from these evil drillers.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I thought it was only developers who were “evil”. Shouldn’t we have a different adjective for drillers? How about “uncaring”, “cold-hearted”, “money-grubbers”, or “intrusive”.
Dr. Emil Twist: I think some of those words might describe Dr. Bemis Understood.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Blow it our your rear end, Emil. That dog of yours is a neurotic mongrel. I wouldn’t be surprised if his papers were forged.
Dr. Emil Twist: That’s the most terrible thing you’ve ever said! I think you shoujd apologize to widdle Bismark!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Tha’s the prollum whem we get Bismark involved. Bemis, Ah think y’all ahr jus’ mad ’cause widdle Bismark piddled on yer shoe the otter day.
Dr. Bemis Understood: I’d like to drop-kick that disgusting Pomeranian into the middle of next week. Emil, why don’t you just leave that neurotic mongrel at home?
Dr. Emil Twist: Widdle Bismark needs me! He needs to feel wuved! He’s wike Mother Earth. Only smaller and more wuvable.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Sylvia, how would you suggest that we get people to look at Mother Earth the way widdle Bismark does? That’s what we need to do! Make ’em think that not thinking is the best way to spend their wretched lives.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: We’ll tell them that animals are ahead of us, mentally. Little Bismark is at one with the world. He has forgotten yesterday, and doesn’t even know what tomorrow means. He’s timeless.
Dr. Bemis Understood: I wish he was out of time.
Dr. Emil Twist: You are a hateful man! I hate you! Widdle Bismark hates you!
Dr. Bemis Understood: He’ll hate me until I give him something to eat.
Dr. Emil Twist: I will hate you forever. You have wounded Widdle Bismark’s feewings.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Now, Emil. You shouldn’t hate Bemis. At least, you shouldn’t hate him any more than you’d hate a field beast.
Dr. Emil Twist: I do hate him! I do!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Could we get back to lying? After all, we have a job to do. I think Dr. Sweem was going to come up with a lie about looking at the world the way Bismark does?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Thank you, Mendle. We should tell the fools to think, well, like dogs. Like Little Bismark, for instance. All they should look forward to is their next meal. Someone puts some kibbled something or other in a bowl, and they’re happy. They let their owners do the heavy thinking involved in running vacuum cleaners and washing windows.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: And we, their rightful owners, will tell them what to worry about. What to think about. What to do and when to do it.
Dr. Bemis Understood: And, give ’em a good kick when they need it.
Dr. Emil Twist: See! He’s doing it again! He’s threatening to kick widdle Bismark.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We have to stop letting that dog distract us! I do not want any of us to get a reprimand from THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. Emil, if you can’t keep Bismark quiet, you’ll have to put him somewhere, and that’s final.
Dr. Emil Twist: I will be sure he’s quiet.
Dr. Bemis Understood: And, I won’t tease him any more. So, let’s get back to lying. We’ve got “Geo-Pressure drops” labeled as a really big problem. We’ve got a name for a campaign, “War against Geo-Pressure droppers”, or something like that. But, it needs to be refined.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah agree! We needs sum reefinement of it! A “War on the enemies of earth.” Make the fools think it’s like some real war. WWII, fer instance. “We are fighting a deadlier enemy than the Nazis!”
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Don’t say “Nazis”! Some of the field beasts know they are socialists. “War on Facists!” is much better.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: “War on eco-terrorists”?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: “War on earth-movers”?
Dr. Emil Twist: “War on selfishness”?
Dr. Bemis Understood: “War for earth”?
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WE ARE PLEASED WITH YOUR PROGRESS. THIS IS A VERY HIGH-LEVEL LIE, AND WILL REQUIRE FURTHER WORK. IN THE MEANTIME, WE ARE STILL WORRIED ABOUT PEOPLE GROWING THEIR OWN FOOD WITH ‘STARTER CELLS’.
VEGETARIANS ARE AMONG OUR MOST GULLIBLE, RELIABLE ALLIES AMONG THE FOOLS. WHAT WILL THEY DO WHEN PEOPLE CAN GROW THEIR OWN MEAT WITHOUT INVOLVING ANIMALS?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I never thought of that! What will the silly nincompoops do?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I don’t know! I just don’t know! They’ll be eating meat that reallyl isn’t meat! Would they still be vegetarians?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: We have never had anything like that in my country. I am so utterly confused I do not know what to say or think! Meat, real meat, produced without an animal. Could I eat it? I do not know. I do not know.
Dr. Emil Twist: I think that we reduce the problem to Widdle Bismark. If Widdle Bismark would eat it, then it is food. No one should think they are better than Widdle Bismark.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Emil, that miserable cur of yours will eat week-old road kill. Do you?
Dr. Emil Twist: How dare you! You are trying to make me out to be a hypocrite! That is against the rules. We are only allowed to point out hypocrisy if it confuses the field beasts, and you know it!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: He’s gotcha thar, Bemis. Cain’t go ‘roun’ pointin’ out weaknesses in each other’s argyments. Otherwise, couldn’t none of us say nothin’.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Emil’s argument may work for the really stupid field beasts, the hard core morons who could switch from global freezing to warming in a couple of weeks. But, it won’t work for the smarter ones. They may laugh at it!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Ohhhh, I hate it when they laugh at our lies! I just hate it! It’s so cruel of them.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Then, the other ones sometimes join in.
Dr. Emil Twist: No one should be allowed to laugh at my Widdle Bismark! Those people should be jailed for insensitivity!
Dr. Bemis Understood: Emil, there aren’t enough jails to hold all the people who’d laugh at your Little Bismark.
Dr. Emil Twist (actually screeching) I hate you! You mean, mean man! No one would laugh at my Widdle Bismark unless they were mean, mean, mean!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Emil, Ah hates ter say it, but Ah think Bemis is raht. Ah think a whol’ passel ‘o pipple’d be laffin’ lak crazy. Usin’ Widdle Bismark as a universal diet guide ‘ud get ’em all laffin’.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Dick, I’m not so sure. “Approved by Little Bismark” may replace “Recommended by Goodhousekeeping”, or some seal of approval or another.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: But, won’t Little Bismark eat anything? Don’t I remember, once, that he ate a mouse that had been dead so long it had rigor mortis?
Dr. Emil Twist: Well, he should be congratulated for not wasting food. Wouldn’t that be better than criticizing, criticizing, criticizing all day long?
Dr. Bemis Understood: It would be for people who thought we should eat dead, rotting rodents!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Bemis, Bemis, we won’ be eatin’ any rotten rodents. Jes the fiel’ beasts.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s right Bemis. What difference does it make what they eat?
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WE NEED GOOD, SOUND LIES ABOUT ARTIFICIAL MEAT. WE MUSTN’T OFFEND THE VEGETARIANS, AND, FRANKLY, NONE OF US KNOW WHAT TO DO.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: This is an incredibly difficult problem. Those pesky scientists are able to make food that looks, tastes, and smells just like meat.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Vegetarians are fad-driven nincompoops. Some of them will say “It’s all right, because it didn’t kill any of our fellow-creatures.” Others will say, “Real vegetarians don’t eat anything but vegetables.”
Dr. Ramjet Singh: And, we need them eating vegetables. Feeding nothing but vegetables to their children. Keeps them dumb and docile. In my country, that is very important.
Dr. Emil Twist: It’s important everywhere, Ramjet. We need to make it illegal for people to eat meat. Or, fat. They should eat like cows and be as dumb as cows. Weak as mice.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Well said, Emil.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: W’al, Ah guess is that we oughten ter be usin’ evey’ argyment we kin ter be real shore they eat nuffin’ but their preshus veggies.
Dr. Mendel Meddle: There’s another bonus to that. It takes enjoyment out of their lives, reduces their food costs, and gives us a chance to raise taxes before they notice.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: “Real Vegetarians are Pure Vegetarians”. That has a nice sound to it, almost as if it’s meaningful.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: And, a great improvement on “Real Vegetarians are morons.”
Dr. Emil Twist: Oh, how true that is. I hate it when people tell them they’re morons!
Dr. Bemis Understood: There should be a law against that! No one should be allowed to insult any of our major support groups!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah don’ know how we’s gonna shut ’em up. Why, talk shows on the radio ‘er enuf to make you sick. Them whate pipple tellin’ ’em that the gummit’s a fraud.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I’ve heard them! They have to be stopped! People should never be allowed to criticize any government program, no matter what they think about it.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: They should be forced to praise their government! Sing its praises! All day long!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I think we’re getting off target. We have decided that we can do far more damage to the fools by making them thinking “Real Vegetarians are Pure Vegetarians”.
Let’s make that our plan of action, a platform on which we can get the newsspewers to stand and spew!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: We’re agreed. We want the fools eating “organic” vegetables. That’s it. No artificial lamb chops, no home grown filets. Just vegetables.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: The other advantage to “organic” vegetables is that they’re filthy. Covered in filth. Make the fools sick.
Dr. Emil Twist: And, they’re much more expensive. They’ll be sick and broke. We win, with organic!
Dr. Bemis Understood: Let’s go even farther. Let’s call artificial meat “counterfeit”, and have the Congressoids pass laws prohibiting it, like they do with counterfeit money.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah thank tha’s a mitey fine idee! Make it illegal. Get’s rid of a whol’ passsel ‘o thinkin’ ’bout it. Just git rid of it!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I agree! We could say, “It’s not right to mimic Mother Nature.” Work in some crudola about “natural laws being violated”.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I just thought of something! What if someone tells the vegetarians that “If you eat artificial food, plants will not be murdered!”?
(Transcribers notes: Complete silence for over a minute.)
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That would be awful! It would be terrible! But, there is an element of truth in it.
Dr. Emil Twist: I just hate it when there’s an element of truth in anything we do. But, there’s no getting around it.
Dr. Bemis Understood: I agree. Plants are alive. Eating plants kills them. Vegetarians are such morons that if someone tells them that, they’ll stop eating plants. Especially, if there’s an alternative, like artificial meat.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah’ve gots ter say, Ah’m plum’ puzzled. Iffin we tell ’em “People can’t haf an arr’gant disr’gard fer their ‘animule kin”, how kin they help but be worried ’bout their ‘veggie fr’en’s?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: None of them are smart enough to even conceive that there could be a problem. All of them will think however we tell them.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: But, what about those awful cretins on talk radio? What if they tell the vegetarians that eating vegetables causes the unnecessary deaths of helpless plants? What if they tell the vegetarians that eating plants is the sign of an insensitive person?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: In my country, many would respect that.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Sylvia, no vegetarians listen to talk radio. They listen to network news, PBS, and read approved “news”papers. Nothing to worry about.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That is true. I find those talk radio people to be very disturbing. So, I tune them out. So do all my wives.
Dr. Emil Twist: Widdle Bismark and I never wisten to them. They are not nice people.
Dr. Bemis Understood: So, we can continue with our current program. Is it “Real Vegetarians are Pure Vegetarians”. Or, is it “Pure Vegetarians are Real Vegetarians”? I forget.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: It don’ make no diff’rence. Let’s have the first one on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Use the second one on the other days.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That makes a lot of sense. Make ’em think a little bit.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: When I was an anchorperson on PBS, we like to vary things a little bit. Deciding what words to use gave us an excuse for endless staff meetings, all devoted to analyzing sentences like ours for vegetarians. Some of our discussion groups would last for years. Once it took us three years to decide if it was better to say “Please, give.” or, “Give, please.” during our hourly fund-raising speeches.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: What did y’all decide?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Just what exactly what we decided, here. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Friday’s we’d say “Please, give.” The other days, we’d say “Give, please.”
Dr. Ramjet Singh: My wives and I always wondered what the hundreds of people at every PBS station did all day. Thank you for explaining.
Dr. Emil Twist: Discussion groups are very important. The less important the thing discussed, the more important the meeting. And, the longer it can go on!
Dr. Bemis Understood: I agree with you, there, Emil! It weeds out smarter people. You get somebody with an IQ of 80 or 85 in a PBS discussion group, he’ll want to solve the problem and get on with it. Keep the median IQ about 60 and things go a lot better!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: ‘Course, we all got reel high IQs. We got ter be smart enuf to feed lies to the morons.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: And, no one does it better.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: What is our median IQ?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: We don’t ever talk about that, Ramjet. Besides, that information is classified.
Dr. Emil Twist: Once, Bemis and I had a big argument about that.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Yes! Bemis accused me of being a smart person pretending to be dumb.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Do smart people pretend to be dumb?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Yes, they do. Once they find out how much money we make, lots of them pretend to be drooling idiots, just to get on a Lie Committee.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Have they no shame? How do you weed them out?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: We don’t know that we do. Over time, smart people usually get tired of lying, and disappear. Or, we let them go. Most of our janitors are vastly smarter than most Lie Committee members.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: ‘Mos’ of ’em used ter be Lie Committee members. THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE wants to keep ’em close by ‘n under a lot of supervision. Wouldn’t do to let word get out.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WHILE YOUR LIES ABOUT FOOD NEVER CEASE TO AMAZE US, IT HAS BEEN NOTED THAT THE PROCESS OF INGESTION HAS NOT BEEN CONSIDERED.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We just never thought of it!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I should say not! All of us are grateful to THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE for having thought of this wonderful opportunity for more lies!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: What, exactly, does this mean?
Dr. Emil Twist: It means we have to get the fools to think about getting the food from their plate to their greedy little mouths to their bloated stomachs.
Dr. Bemis Understood: There are endless possibilities. We have to be sure that each piece of food is cut to the “proper size”.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Tha’s brillyant! Each kind o’ food shuld haf a diff’ren’ size of “perfect bite”.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s so true. A bite of jello could be vastly larger than a piece of tough meat.
Dr. Sylvian Sweem: And, each flavor of ice cream could have micro-differences, “That are so important when totaling up a lifetime of ice cream.”
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Surely, the fools will not believe that?
Dr. Emil Twist: What we do, Ramjet, is get some third rate actor dressed up in hospital scrubs. He shows up on “Oprah”, who thanks him for “dropping in”. Then, he tells the female fools, who still do most of the food preparation, that “The right size of bite helps food taste better.”
Dr. Bemis Understood: And, that it’s “healthy. Especially, for the children.”
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah figger that Oprah could find a reason to “Blame the entire epidemic of divorce on big bites.”
Dr. Mendle Meddle: So, lets get some smart flunkies to come up with a system. We’ll have ’em get the ideal size of bite for every conceivable type of food.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I do not think that any potato chip should be bigger than a postage stamp.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That is a wonderful lie!
Dr. Emil Twist: We’ll make it so that lawyers are able to sue any restaurants who do not post a “Bite Chart”, showing the maximum, and minimum, bite-size of every single food that they sell.
Dr. Bemis Understood: That’ll keep the millions of people who choke to death every year from dying! This is one of the most important things we’ve ever worked on!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: What ’bout sumthin’ lak mashed ‘taters? How we gonna get ’em to eat jes’ the raht am’nt? Or, puddin’? Ah thank we shuld have the congressoids pass laws orderin’ the fools ter buy a set of properly-sized forks ‘n spoons fer ever’thin’ they eat. Mebbe, have forks wiffen jes’ one tine.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Make the fools take classes in “Bite Size”. Not let ’em eat anything they aren’t licensed to eat!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I like that! The schools have all that free time, now that they aren’t allowed to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. This is a course of study that will help teachers and administrators kill endless hours without actually benefitting anyone!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That makes it the perfect public school subject!
Dr. Emil Twist: First, we make people aware of the immensity of the problem. Then, we make them have charts showing proper bite sizes. After that, we get special silverware designed for every type of food. But, how do we ensure they’ll eat properly?
Dr. Bemis Understood: Inspectors! They could drop by homes, restaurants, schools, wherever people are eating, to be sure they were eating “safely”.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah lak that! Ah reely do! Ah still got mah basement ‘n garage full of unemployed in-laws jes’ waitin’ fer a gummit job! That’s the only kind of wurk they want, ’cause they knows they won’t haf to wurk vurry hard. Ah’ll shore be glad ter get ’em offen mah propurty!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Fines. Jail terms. Without those, our Ingestion Inspectors will have no authority. People will laugh at them, tell them that they’re useless parasites, you know what kind of hurtful things they say to so many government workers.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: And, if they don’t say it, they think it! I’d like to get into their little minds and just get rid of the parts that do the thinking.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: We must not waste time on idle fantasies, no matter how enjoyable they are. I feel that there should be a sliding scale of penalties. If a person ignores proper Bite Size, then that person should not be allowed to eat.
Dr. Emil Twist: I like that, Ramjet. Or, we could make them only eat one or two things. Yogurt, maybe. Or, dry oatmeal.
Dr. Bemis Understood: And, we could insert sensors into their mouths. If they ate any food besides what they were licensed to eat, they’d go to jail. For their own good, of course.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah got me an idee! Let’s move on to chewin’.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Chewing?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I see what Dick is getting at. There have to be rules for proper chewing. You know, which side of the mouth they should chew on, versus chewing an equal amount on both sides. When to use the front teeth, and what angle is the best, say, for eating an apple. These are very complicated problems.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Oh, they are wonderfully complicated! The staffs of entire universities could take a century to answer all the questions.
Dr. Emil Twist: While we’re waiting for all those flunkies to be hired and all those studies to be done, let’s focus on something simple. “Closure Frequency”.
Dr. Bemis Understood: What in the world is “Closure Frequency”?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Mah guess is that is has ter to wiffin how many times the fools chew sumthin’.
Dr. Emil Twist: Exactly! We can count jaw movements. Even the dumbest Ingestion Inspector could count that!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Too much like work! We should put little counters in their jaws so that everyone could tell how often they’d chewed whatever they were eating. A little dial on their forehead would let anyone know how many times they’d chewed their last bite.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Lets have the counter hooked up to some sort of a flap in their throat so the fools can’t swallow unless they’d chewed something, oh, a hundred and fifty times or whatever our smart-flunkies say is best.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I think that all meat should be chewed two hundred times before they are allowed to swallow it. Make them chew for hours and hours, every single day of their wretched, little lives.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Give them something to chew on! Hahahaha. I love American jokes. “Give ’em something to chew on.”
Dr. Emil Twist: This isn’t funny, Ramjet. A million, maybe ten million jobs, can be produced to have Ingestion Inspectors travel from house to house, club to club, cafeteria to cafeteria, restaurant to restaurant making sure that our nation’s health is being protected!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: N’ Ah kin tell y’all, Ah got plenny of in-laws who jes’ gots ter get jobs as Ingestion Inspectors. Payin’ a cuppla hunert t’ousan’ a year! Yessir. Ah gots more’n a dozen in-laws jammed into my garages ‘n twenny more in most all mah basements’, ‘n Ah cain’t stan’ ’em no more. Let’s get goin’ wiffin these Ingestion Inspectors!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: So, we get some scientists, ooops, I mean, smart flunkies, and we come up with both the proper size of bite for every known food. Then, we come up with a formula that lets ’em know how many times each bite has to be chewed.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Then, we have some really smart flunkies to engineer a counter to count how many times they’ve chewed a bite. Then, we invent some sort of mechanism that keeps them from swallowing before the correct “Chew Number” is reached.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Let’s start with school cafeterias. The kids are dumber’n ever, and we can convince both them and their parents that “We have to protect the children.”
Dr. Dick Dudewell: School lunches’ll take ferever! The l’il bastards’ll be chewin’ n’ chompin’, chompin’ n’ chewin’ mos’ all day long.
Dr. Mendel Meddle: Their jaw muscles will be as big as light bulbs! They’ll look like chipmunks with cheek pouches full of acorns.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I do like this program. I like Dick’s wonderful idea about making them use one-tine forks. Can you imagine, making them eat rice with a one-tine fork?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: What if the fools made mechanized chewers? You know, like those wind-up false teeth? They could mechanically chew their food before they put it in their mouths.
Dr. Emil Twist: Why, that wouldn’t be right! No one should be allowed to avoid following a regulation, especially one that’s designed for their own good!
Dr. Bemis Understood: That is so true! We’d have to have the Congressoids pass a law making it illegal to mechanize the chewing process. Why, what if they used little meat grinders to grind up everything before they ingested it? We wouldn’t need inspectors!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: W’al, Ah thank y’all better come up wiffen a reason fer that. Ah mean, we gots to give ’em some sort of reason. Ah mean, iffen we cain’t think of a reason fer the Congressoids to make artificial chewin’ ‘n grindin’ illegal, this here program ain’t never gonna get offen the groun’.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We could tell them that the food must be acclimatized to the unique chemicals that each individual person has. Therefore, mechanized pre-chewing must be made illegal because it keeps people from establishing the immediate chemical bonding with their food that’s so important to good health.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Mendle, I am amazed! You just rattled that off like it made sense. And, it does make sense. I believe it, and I only heard it one time. What a lie! What an incredible lie! Now, I see why you were selected to be head of our Committee.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: It was brilliant. Truly, brilliant.
Dr. Emil Twist: What about this? Let’s pull all their teeth, and feed ’em gruel.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Emil, that’s the best idea you’ve ever had! If the bastards didn’t have teeth, we wouldn’t have to spend money on mechanized chewing. We’d just make it so they didn’t have anything with which they could chew!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah got’s ter take mah hat off to ya’, Emil! Jes’ pull their teef. We kin have sum smart-flunkies make up sum sort of gravy fer ’em.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Actually, I first mentioned pulling their teeth, oh, months ago, when we were coming up with the ‘foodsicle’ lies.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I can’t remember that far back. But, no matter who thought of it, it’s the best idea ever! With no teeth, we’ll save billions, trillions, in dental bills. We can get rid of all the dentists, after they’ve pulled all the teeth!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Oh, the ovewhelming grandeur of it all! Taking all their teeth away! How brave! How bold! What an idea!
Dr. Emil Twist: I don’t know if we have to have dentists pulling their teeth. I’d think anyone could pull teeth. Car mechanics, plumbers, jail guards. Why should dentists get to make all the money? It’s not fair!
Dr. Bemis Understood: And, we should pull them without anesthetics. It’ll be much cheaper!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah shuld say it will be! Iffin we needs ter put ’em under, jes pop ’em on the head wiffin a small sledgehammer. Won’t cost hardly nuffin’. And, boppin’ ’em on the head’ll lower their IQs. It’s a win-win!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I don’t think we should worry about eliminating pain. My personal preference is to tell the fools that “It would be unnatural to deaden the pain, and it’s ‘vital’ that we be as ‘natural’ as possible.”
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: What if think there’s nothing “natural” about having a government so oppressive that they have to have all their teeth removed? Won’t they revolt?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Revolt? Why, they wouldn’t dare!
Dr. Emil Twist: I just wish that the Political Lie Committee would get rid of their guns! No guns, no teeth, no nothing! That’s what they should have! Nothing! I hate them so much I just can’t stand it!
Dr. Bemis Understood: I know it, Emil. That hatred is what moved you from mere bureaucrat to esteemed Lie Committee member.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: ALL OF US ARE DEEPLY APPRECIATIVE OF YOUR FINE LIES. BUT, FOR US TO BE ABLE TO ‘DE-TOOTHIFY’ AN ENTIRE POPULATION, WE ACTUALLY NEED SOME REASONS. PLEASE COME UP WITH SOME REASONABLE JUSTIFICATIONS FOR ‘DE-TOOTHIFICATION’ THAT WE CAN RUN BY SOME FOCUS GROUPS.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah figger we culd tell ’em that “Yer teef is way too hard. They’s so hard that they’s dangerous to yer tongue. ‘N yer lips. They mite get bit. Y’all needs ter be talkin’, n’ iffin y’all bites yer tongue, y’all cain’t tell us what y’all think ’bout things, n’ yer opinyuns are reel ‘mportant to us, so we’s jes’ gots ter take outcher teef so’s you kin tell us whatcher thinkin’ ’bout things.” That’s won thang we culd tell ’em.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s certainly a good start. Do you think any of the fools are dumb enough to believe that we care about what any of them think?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Of course they are! That’s why we have public opinion polls! The fools think we care about what they think! They’re so dumb they deserve what we do to them!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I like the idea of just injecting gravy, or gruel, or some semi-liquid nutrients straight into them! They wouldn’t need knives, forks, or spoons, any of which can be used as weapons against us!
Dr. Emil Twist: That’s why our beloved Chinese tyrants in the old days made them have all the food pre-cut by licensed knife-users and made the people eat with bamboo sticks. We need to get rid of sharp, metal instruments just as much as they did!
Dr. Bemis Understood: Oh, this is wonderful! And, since teeth can be used as weapons, we have to get rid of them, too. Good government means total safety! It’s not safe to let them have sharp teeth! It’s for their own good. It’s the only way to stop them from biting each other.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah thanks we’s onto sum’thin’ here. All we do is jes’ have the field beasts show up at a central location ‘n have sum gravy pumped rite down their throats!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We could make the central location a train station. Have a train full of gravy show up, and use gasoline hoses to shoot it down their throats. Is there a better way to give them the safe, nutritional diets that they know they need?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Why do they have to have throats? I mean, billions of them are dying of cancer of the esophagus. Let’s just pump the gravy straight into their stomachs!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Tha’s a mitey fine way to do it. Jes’ put a little flap on their side, stick in the hose, ‘n fill ‘er up! Be a lot easier fer ’em than swallerin’.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: All over the world, gravy trains would make sure that everyone got exactly what they needed! Healthy eating! No dangerous cholesterol! No bad carbohydrates! No vein-clogging protein! No salt at all! Only vitamins and minerals! Finally, we could have a government that actually took care of it’s people.
Dr. Emil Twist: And, we could put cattle cars on the gravy trains. Let the fools travel in them, so they can enjoy their good health!
Dr. Bemis Understood: And, if we needed some work done, the gravy trains would take them there. There’d be plenty for ’em to eat, as long as they stayed close to their gravy train.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: ‘N iffin they didn’ wurk, they wuldn’t get no gravy. That’d be fair.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: ALL OF US ARE ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT YOUR BOLD, VISIONARY PLANS. WE WANT TO THANK YOU FOR YOUR CREATIVE THINKING ON THESE VITAL ISSUES. PLEASE CONTINUE ON THIS IMPORTANT TOPIC.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: The best thing is that we can be sure they’re getting exactly what they need. Different diets for different climates and times of the year. Lots of minerals in the winter, and lots of, oh, I don’t know, margarine, in the summer.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I’ve got a bunch of smart-flunkies who just worked out the seasonal adjustments in dietary requirements for hamsters in Norway. Won’t take them any time to do that for people in every climatic zone.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Why go to all that trouble? Just use the charts for the Norwegian hamsters, and make a few selective adjustments. Like they do for global freezing. Or, is it warming?
Dr. Emil Twist: It’s “climate change”, Ramjet. You really should keep up with things. Too many Mrs. Singhs wearing you down?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Oh, no. My wives do not wear me down. Quite the opposite. Some of my wives work in a coal mine, and each is expected to bring up several tons of coal every day.
Dr. Emil Twist: Maybe, you need to run a gravy train down the mine so they could work longer?
Dr. Bemis Understood: What a wonderful idea! Gravy trains in mines, fields, and factories could keep people where there’s work to be done. No wasted time going somewhere for lunch! No need to go home because they wouldn’t need homes!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: ‘N, they could sleep in the cattle cars! It’s another win-win, I tell you! The workers don’t waste time eatin’ ‘n commutin’ at the same time they be getting a balanced diet ‘n a free place ter sleep! Cain’t beat that wiffin a stick!
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WE HAVE RECEIVED A NEWS FLASH. A SET OF TWINS IN AN IMPROPERLY HANDLED GROCERY CART FELL OVER. THEY MIGHT HAVE BEEN SERIOUSLY HURT. YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah shuld say we do! We gots ter make grocery stores safe fer l’il childrun. That’s what we’s gots ter do!
Dr. Bemis Understood: Oh, we do! Why, there might be millions of children hurt in badly managed grocery carts.
Dr. Emil Twist: Thousands may be dying painfully in grocery carts. I’ve never thought those things were safe.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: My wives ride to the coal mine in grocery carts they steal from local supermarkets. Grocery carts save me a lot of money on gasoline and insurance. The older wives ride, the younger ones push.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Even wife number one?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Oh, she does not work in the mine. She stays home and takes care of the children. There are so many children that she would rather be in the mine, but, as Number One Wife, she has to stay home.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Ramjet, that’s rank sexism!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Since it’s part of my native culture, it’s okay.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: He’s got you there, Sylvia. You know the U.N. ruling. “If women, children, religions, or minorities are oppressed, killed, or sold as part of a ‘cultural pattern’, it is illegal to criticize any who participate.”
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I’d forgotten! Sorry, Ramjet. If a person from some formerly Christian culture did what you did, he’d be put in jail, but your duty is to your culture.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Yes. I am standing firmly for what my culture believes, so I am right.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ramjet, iffin y’all figgered that two ‘n two was five, wouldja be right?
Dr. Emil Twist: Dick, that’s not fair! You arne’t allowed to ask any question if the answer may make a person feel bad about his culture!
Dr. Bemis Understood: How true! There’s another ruling on that. “If a person who belongs to a ‘technologically superior culture’ makes a person from what may be perceived to be a ‘technologically inferior culture’ feel any anxiety about that person’s intellectual ability, the insulting person is liable to fines, imprisonment, or both.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah thank tha’s a mitey fine idee! Ah was jus’ wonnerin’ ’bout errors in objective jug’ment. Tha’s all. So’s, to reepeet, Ramjet, iffin yer leaders figgered that two ‘n two was five, would it be?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Of course it would! Feelings are far more important than mere intellectualizing.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: That’s right. Ramjet and his culture have the right to determine what’s right for them! If they feel it’s right that two and two are five, then, that’s what it is!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: We do not, of course, think that two and two is five. We all believe that two and two is four. But, we do believe that our wives should help to support our families, and that’s why my wives cart themselves off to the coal mine every day. They are honored by the opportunity to help.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Ramjet, do you have any rules requiring them to be paid minimum wage?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Minimum wage is not a concept with which I am familiar. If they meet their quota, they are allowed to eat dinner with me and all the other wives who met their quota for that day.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s a great way to economize! If they don’t meet their quota, do they have to eat by themselves.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: If they do not meet their quota, they do not eat. That’s how we get rid of lazy, unproductive wives.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: And, if you raise your quota, you get rid of the less capable wives. That lets you improve the wife-pool. Sounds like a wonderful system for you. It’s Darwin at work.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: It is! It is! In my country, Darwin is like a god.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ramjet, Ah gots me a whol’ passel of ex-wives. The alleymoney is killin’ me! Iffin Ah was ter join yer religun, culd Ah get outten the alleymoney?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Dick, that’s a profound question. Bemis, what do you think?
Dr. Bemis Understood: That’s a very hard theological question. Dick is a member of a ‘technically advanced culture’, so he should obey its laws. On the other hand, shouldn’t he have the right to become a member of a less technically advanced culture if he wants?
Dr. Emil Twist: It wouldn’t be right to keep him in a culture he doesn’t want to be in.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: No. And, who are we to deprive a religion of an important recruiting tool?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I do not understand, Mendle.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Well, if Dick were to join Ramjet’s cultural group, he would get out of paying vast sums of alilmony to his six or eight ex-wives. So would lots of other alimony payers. Shouldn’t they be allowed to convert, if they want? It would help them fulfill themselves and get their ex-wives, a flock of bon-bon eating dronettes, back to work. Better than having them sit around watching Oprah and finding new things to complain about.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: DR. MEDDLE, WOULD YOU PLEASE GET YOUR LIE COMMITTEE BACK ON TRACK. WHILE THE THEOLOGICAL AND MARITAL PROBLEMS YOU ARE DISCUSSING ARE AS INTERESTING AS THEY ARE IMPORTANT, WE NEED LIES TO HELP CONTROL INTRA-STORE FOOD MOVEMENTS.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Thank you, honored sirs, for getting us to re-focus.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Back to business. I personally hate shopping carts. The handles are usually dirty and greasy because many of the people who push them have dirty hands.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Tha’s ’cause they be wurkin’ fer a livin’.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Well, shoppers should have to wash their hands before and after they push a cart. Maybe, a handle inspector could examine each cart handle with a microscope.
Dr. Emil Twist: No, no! Make them wear gloves. Special “Shopping Cart Gloves” will only be available from one of our subsidiaries! We’ll charge them a fortune!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That is wonderful! My wives could go into the glove business! They always whine about the mine.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Ramjet, we’re here to make up lies for the greater good, not to provide jobs and opportunities for your wives!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Sylvia is right. Ramjet, let’s try to be a little less self-interested.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: But, being interested in benefitting oneself more than others is part of my culture! I have a duty, as Bemis pointed out, to protect that culture, even if it means that my wives and I must make a lot of money.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Mendle, he’s gotcha there!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Back to the twins in the grocery cart. They might have fallen against something hard. Maybe a shelf. There should be no shelves in grocery stores.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Getting rid of shelves would get rid of a lot of variety. I’ve always thought there were too many choices to make when shopping. Why do we need more than one kind of, oh, I don’t know, potato chips? There must have been fifty different kinds of potato chips. One potato chip would be enough.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: One is one too many. The fools shouldn’t be worried about enjoying their food. A handful of wheat, that’s all they need.
Dr. Emil Twist: That’s all the Roman soldiers got, and look how well they did. Obedient, too.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah figger that’s a mitey fine goal, Mendle, but we be needin’ sum lies ’bout thangs the way they are. What we gonna do to make grocery stores safer?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Once, my wives went around a corner too fast on the way to the mine, and all their carts tipped over. I believe sincerely that every grocery cart should have the wheels sticking out at least two feet on each side. There is safety in stability.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: And, that means there can only be one direction that grocery carts could travel in every aisle. It would jam things up wonderfully!
Dr. Emil Twist: Better yet, they’d have to tear out every other cash register! The “Safety Carts” couldn’t fit through the existing aisles. With half as many cash registers, the fools will have to stand in line twice as long!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Oh, I like that idea! Keep ’em in line when they aren’t working, that’s the goal. I remember, back in the old days, in Moscow, the filthy field beasts would have to stand in line all day, to buy a couple of pounds of stale, moldy macaroni. It was heaven, I tell you, heaven!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Oh, what a glorious past you have had! In my country, we do not even have many stores. They just have to wait and wait and wait for something good to happen to them, and it never does. Not if we in the government have anything to say about it.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Mebbe we shuld jus’ get rid of groc’ry carts. Make ’em carry ever’thin’.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: But, not in plastic bags!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Dick, that’s a wonderful idea. They could carry, maybe, a box of soap, or a bag of potatoes, and then take it to their car, if they have one, and make another trip through the register!
Dr. Emil Twist: Now, that’s progress! They’ll spend whole days shopping in one store, just to feed their famlies for a week! What could be better?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: This is just what THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE wants! Nearly perfect control of all intra-store food movements. And, if a fat person brought something fattening to the register, it could be sent back to return it, and forced to buy, oh, some asparagus or something non-fattening.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I like it more and more. With all my wives helping to carry, they will still be able to get all their shopping done without missing work.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: But, what about us? I certainly don’t have time for my servants to spend all day in a grocery store and bring home three cantaloupes and a gallon of skimmed milk.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We would have our own stores. Or, have all our food delivered. Whichever we wanted. We have flunkies to burn, and there’s no reason they couldn’t be assigned to us as personal shoppers.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah love that! Ah’d love a coupla dozen personal shoppers! So would all my ex-wives. They culd get jobs, ‘n Ah culd reeduce their alleymoney.
Dr. Emil Twist: Are we going to eliminate the health hazards of shopping by getting rid of grocery carts, or are we going to widen the grocery carts so they can’t tip over?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Maybe, we could do both. Make people get licenses to handle big, wide grocery carts, or else they have to check out no more than they can carry with their hands.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I like that! By making them buy licenses, but only after being trained and tested, we could generate countless fees!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: That’s wonderful. Field beasts shouldn’t be allowed to operate grocery carts without extensive training. And, making them pay for Cart Licenses would make them poor and our side rich! We can’t lose!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: It’s a wonderful breakthrough!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: It shore is! Take sum’thin’ they used ter like ter do, lak shoppin’, ‘n making it slow, painful, ‘n ‘spensive! Mendle, this here is won of yur bes’ lies! Ah’m amazed nobody ebber thought of it, ‘fore now.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Why, thank you, Dick.
Dr. Emil Twist: It’s not enough to be sure the carts can’t turn over. We have to put something on them so that they can’t go so fast. Once, while I was standing behind my cart reading labels on all the cereal cartons, some woman ran her cart right into the back of my leg. My Achille’s tendon might have been injured.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That is a very astute observation, Emil. Many times, I, too, have had people bump their carts into me. They simply go too fast!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: You know, I’ve been run into, too. I shop very slowly, and read every label to be sure that none of my food contains trans-fats, salt, sugar, or any chemical preservatives of any kind. So, it takes me a long time to go down an aisle.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Sylvia, tha’s plum’ terr’ble! That a fine, t’oughtful wommin lak yers’lf’d get run inter by sum dum’ fiel’ beas’ in a big hurry! S’awful, that’s wat it is. Awful!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: You know, I’ve been bumped by grocery carts, too. I always carry my own scales with me to be sure that packages weigh what they should. If grocery carts were forced to go more slowly, we’d all be safer.
Dr. Emil Twist: How can we slow them down?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: We could take the wheels off! Make them push the carts on the four metal stubs. That would slow them down.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: It would make them work harder, too! They’d be too tired to complain about anything after they’d pushed a cart with those screeching stubs all over the store.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I like that! I really like it! We’ll make shopping the most unpleasant experience they can have, big, wide carts, screeching stups, and a lot of sweat!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: ‘N iffin they was still goin’ too fas’, we culd last a couple concreet blocks to ’em wif barbed w’re. that’d slow ’em down!
Dr. Dr. Emil Twist: Let’s put sharpened spikes on the cart handles. If they push too hard, they’ll puncture their hands!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: What wonderful lies! We’ll fix ’em. We’ll fix ’em just for bein’ what they are!
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: SOME OF OUR CLIENTS WANT TO GREENMAIL THE COMPANIES THAT SELL BOTTLED WATER. TO FORCE THOSE COMPANIES TO TURN OVER SOME OF THEIR PROFITS, THEY NEED LIES TO JUSTIFY TELLING PEOPLE TO DRINK TAP WATER RATHER THAN BOTTLED WATER.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s brilliant! Those bottled water people just make up catchy names, fill bottles with tap water, and sell it to the fools.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: In my country, people drink out of streams and rivers. They die much younger, but they save a lot of money.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Ramjet, no one cares what anyone does in your country. It’s a wretched hellhole, and it’s so poor that there aren’t even any taxes! None of us could make a living there!
Dr. Emil Twist: Now, now, Sylvia. Ramjet’s country is just what we want all countries to look like. People are poor, malnourished, and die at young ages.
Dr. Bemis Understood: That’s right. Personally, I think Ramjet’s country is one of the best examples we have of what we’d like every country to be.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I know that! I’m just sick and tired of him going on and on about it like he’s responsible for it. His country has been a squalid blight on human civilization for a thousand years, and he had nothing to do with it.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah be thinkin’ we shuld be doin’ sum lyin’ ’bout wha’ the client wants. ‘Bout how bad bottled water is fer ’em. Furst of all, them bottles gots ter be bad fer the envirunment.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Thank you, Dick! The actual beginnings of a lie. We tell the field beasts that “Bottles are, by their very nature, bad for the environment.”
Dr. Ramjet Singh: And, it takes energy and labor to put the water into the bottle! That’s wasteful!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: And the bottle has to be recycled. Nothing wastes time and energy as much as recycling!
Dr. Bemis Understood: Worse, the bottle might be thrown away. Let’s get some photo-flunkies to get some pictures of cute little animals trapped in empty bottles.
Dr. Emil Twist: And, let’s show the suns rays shining through empty bottles and starting fires! Herds of frightened polar bears running from the flames!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Herds of buffalo might be more believable. I don’t think the ice packs will catch fire, Emil. But, you’re on to something.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Let’s get pictures of beaches, with millions of empty water bottles glistening in the sun. Have the Ass. Press run headlines, “Another scenic vista ruined by water bottles!”, and have lead-in sentences, like “Why can’t people just drink tap water? Wouldn’t that be better than ruining our planet?”
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Not bad, Ramjet. Let’s get some Oprah-flunkies to go on her show. Dress ’em up in safari clothes, so the field beasts’ll know that they’re “really concerned about nature”, ‘n have ’em talk about elephants dying from getting water bottles jammed up their trunks.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Sylvia, that is pure geenyus! Pipple allus likin’ ter see sufferin’ eleyphants. Y’all kin jus’ see their li’l hearts goin’ out to ’em. Be reel shure to have sum baby eleyphants tryin’ to nurse at the dead mommy eleyphant. We got a lot of old file footage of that. Won’ cost hardlyl anythin’.
Dr. Bemis Understood: That’s a good idea. What was the last thing we said was wiping out the elephants? Disposable lighters? Pop cans? Plastic bags? It’s amazing that there’s any elephants left.
Dr. Emil Twist: There may not be, after we get through with this water bottle business! If we can’t find file footage, we’ll have to go over there and super-glue a bunch of water bottles in their trunks. Then, pay for autopsies after they die. That’s what we had to do with the campaign to eradicate latex balloons that we said were killing herds of hippos. Said they blew over on the jet stream from birthday parties in Florida. Those autopsies cost a fortune!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Well, we can jigger some of the old file footage. Hippos and elephants are the same color. Then, we bill the client what all the actual elephant killing and autopsies would have cost. This could be a very profitable venture!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: There are other animals being wiped out by plastic water bottles. Pythons think they are birds’ eggs, and will swallow a dozen or more.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Don’t forget the plastic gizmo that holds the water bottles together in the store! We know how many thousands and thousands of helpless squirrels and bunnies are throttled by them every summer.
Dr. Emil Twist: And, the bottle caps! Many careless American pigs throw the caps away. Millions of them are eaten by precious seagulls who think they’re, oh, I don’t know, squid eggs, or something. We’ve got file footage of whole rafts of seagulls, floating in the water. We can tell people they’re dead, and floating out to sea, slaughtered by the self-centered drinkers of bottled water!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: By the time we’re dun, those bottled water pipple’ll be sendin’ truckloads of cash to ahr clients. Hope they send sum ahr way!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Let’s try to get some scientific-sounding lies. A lot of the smarter field beasts just roll their eyes when they see pictures of dead and dying animals.
Dr. Bemis Understood: How about “Plasticizers in plastic water bottles leach into the water, itself, and go DIRECTLY into the body.”
Dr. Emil Twist: That’s good. “Plasticizers” sounds like something real. And, dangerous. So, it must be a problem, and saying it goes “DIRECTLY” into the body is, after all, a scientific fact. Nothing more needs to be said.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: It’s one of those “less is more” lies. I like it.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: How’s ’bout havin’ sum more complycated scieentific trufs. Tell the fools that “Water is not as simple as it seems to be. It has vurry complex reacshuns with ever’thin’ it touches. We cain’t be too careful wiffin it.”
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Oh, how I like, “We can’t be too careful!” The simpering fools just sit at home and watch TV all day, where they must hear every two or three minutes, “You can’t be too careful.” God, I’ll be happy when they’re all dead.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Mendle! Remember our income source! If we didn’t have the fools, we’d have to do things. Oh, I don’t know, make carrots, or something.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Sorry, that just slipped out. We do need them. But, not as many of them as there are. Each of us may need a couple of dozen to provide our requirements.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That’s right. There are too many of them. But, at least we won’t be seeing them drink bottled water.
Dr. Emil Twist: We should also consider the very exclusionary nature of the bottle, itself. A bottle tries to keep one thing in and everything else, out. That’s wrong. Very, very wrong.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Emil, I never once thought of that, not in my whole life. Why, each and every bottle is a vicious attack on “oneness”.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah neber heerd sech a grate lie! Neber! It jes’ ain’ helthy fer the humin spir’t ter be isolatin’ thin’s frum eech udder. We kin tel the fools that “havin’ isolatin’ devices jes separates us all frum the vital oneness we shuld be tryin’ ter acheeve.”
Dr. Mendle Meddle: This is real progress! Attacking the very nature of the entire container industry. Think about it, paint cans that force colors to stay out of the rainbow, milk bottles that keep nutrients from flowing freely where no less a force than gravity wants them to go, why, bottles are an attack, a vicious, deadly attack, on the essence of oneness!
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: REMEMBER, OUT LIENTS WANT YOU TO BE SURE AND MAKE THESE LIES IMMEDIATELY REVERSIBLE AS SOON AS THE BOTTLED WATER PEOPLE START PAYING GREENMAIL. WE’VE GOT TO BE ABLE TO GET THEIR CASH FLOWS BACK OR THEY WON’T HAVE THE CASH FOR OUR PAYOFFS.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Now, they tell us! All that hard lying, and now we have to start over from the beginning.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Reversible lies are the hardest! First, we have to get millions of dead-brain field beasts to STOP drinking bottled water. Two weeks later, we’ve got to get them started back to drinking it again! That’s hard!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: W’al, we culd tell the fools “Since a small part of each bottling company’s profits will be donated to THE ENVIRONMENT”, we can support further research that may negate the negative consequenced of water bottle usage . Ah luv ter say “THE ENVIRONMENT” in reel hushed, rev’rent tones. They’ll nebber even notice the new, higher prices.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That always works! The fools actually think the donations are being made to someone besides the greenmailers! If they ever knew that half the media drivel they hear is driven by greenmail, they might stop taking it seriosuly.
Dr. Emil Twist: I’ve got an idea! Let’s tell the fools that the money is going to be used to fund, oh I don’t know, a “battalion of armed eco-warriors” who will travel the world, “fighting environmental injustice.”
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Emil, I love that! Get some pictures of simple-minded leftists getting out of their Volvos and enlisting, turning into hard-eyed “protectors of us all”, and, I don’t know, get some video of them bayoneting some fishermen! Snipers, shooting people running large farm machines! Blowing up some giant combines and tractors! Sinking ships! Bringing down airplanes! “A world safe for all life!” would be on their flag. Get ’em some helicopters, jets, tanks, whatever they need to be “Making the world safe for all life”.
Dr. Bemis Understood: I like it, but people might think they were pro-life. You know, against abortion.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Oh, you’re right. I hate it when we have to be for both life and death at the same time. It’s, well, it’s just plain confusing. That’s what it is, and I don’t like it.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WE LIKE YOUR LIES ABOUT HOW BAD BOTTLED WATER IS. WE WOULD LIKE YOU TO GENERATE ADDITIONAL LIES ABOUT WATER. SHOULD THE FIELD BEASTS BE DRINKING MORE, OR LESS, OF IT?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Sometimes, they should drink more. Other times, they should drink less.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Maybe in odd-numbered years, they should drink more.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: That makes a lot of sense. In even-numbered years, they shuld switch ter what, ‘erbal tea?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Yes! They cannot drink enough herbal tea!
Dr. Emil Twist: I give Little Bismark two tablespoons of herbal tea every day. It makes his coat nice and shiny!
Dr. Bemis Understood: Emil, if I hear one more story about that disgusting Pomeranian . . .
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Now, Bemis. Emil has every right to give Little Bismark herbal tea. It’s nice that he cares so very, very much.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Mebbe, the field beas’s oughten ter go on ‘water fasts’, whar they don’ drink no water a’tall.
Get ’em dried out reel gud.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: What would be the point of that?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: It’d give ’em sum’thin’ ter do. Sum’thin’ ter talk about. Think ’bout. Worry ’bout.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: It’s too easy for them to get water. If we could control their access to water, it could generate a lot of income for whomever was picked to supply substitute liquids for the disgusting fools.
Dr. Emil Twist: That’s what I’ve always believed! But, think how easy it is for them to get water! It falls out of the sky! It’s in every river and lake. They can dig holes in the ground and pump it out. It’s not fair. We can’t be expected to limit their use of water!
Dr. Bemis Understood: Sure we can! We start out by telling the fools that drinking water will cause medical problems.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: What kind of medical problems does drinking water cause?
Dr. Bemis Understood: Oh, I don’t know! We can’t be expected to answer hard questions like that! Let’s hire some smart flunkies and tell them to come up with some good medical reasons for the fools to stop drinking water.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: They have to drink something. They might die.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: So? Iffin they was ter die of thirst, they’d be dyin’ knowin’ that their death meant sum’thin’ good fer the res’ of humanity.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: They do not really die. When they think they die, they merely turn into another life form. In my country, we are glad when people die. For one thing, they might leave us money. For another, they may go on to a happier, better life, like being a circus monkey.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: What’s so different about that than what the fools already are? That’s what I’d like to know.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We could tell the fools that regular water isn’t good enough for them. Tell them “You are so special that you should only be allowed to drink some kind of special, treated water that only an ‘authorized source’ could provide safely.”
Dr. Emil Twist: Oh, I like that! The fools love to think they’re special! If we tell them they’re special, they believe everything we tell them. We could have water with, say a molecule of iodine every billion or so parts. Some of them remember that iodine is a disinfectant. Of course, we’d have to keep them from getting ahold of a nickle’s worth of iodine and making the whole Mississippi River into safe drinking water.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Oh, this would be so hard if the fools could think!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Well, we got the fools to believe that carbon dioxide was a deadly poison, even though their disgusting lungs each exhale over two pounds of it a day. If we can get them to believe that the same thing they absolutely need to stay alive is, at the same time killing them, we can get them to believe anything!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Could we put carbon dioxide into water? Say that it’s good for people when it’s ingested, but not when it’s breathed?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah be thankin’ that they alreddy be doin’ that. They calls it “carboniated water”. It’s lak 7-Up, but it don’ have no taste ter it. Ah laks ter put gin in it, wiffin a coupla lime peels.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Oh, I think I’d like that!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Will you two stop it, already! We can’t have the fools going everywhere drunk. There has to be a better lie! THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE wants us to limit their water intake.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Mendle, maybe we can have the fools going everywhere drunk. If we made them drink alcohol, instead of water or anything else, they would. Besides, if they were all drunk all the time, they’d be a lot easier to handle.
Dr. Emil Twist: I’m sure I do not want to take my Little Bismark to a drunken veternarian to have his nails trimmed!
Dr. Bemis Understood: That would be the best reason for doing it! Why, if I thought we could get rid of that useless, miserable, dog, I’d . . .
Dr. Emil Twist: You are so mean! So nasty! My pwecious L’il Bismark is my best friend in the whole world, and I won’t have his precious nails trimmed by some drunken brute or brutette of a vet!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: W’al, we’d haf ter be reel shure that we keep sum of ’em sober. Mebbe let vets, docs, ‘n dentists stay sober.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Only if they’re ones we use! I’d love to see the fools all have to use drunken professional people. Especially, lawyers!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Are there still sober lawyers?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: I hope so. I’d hate to think what could happen to me if all my pre-nups were drawn up by inebriated attorneys!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Tha’ happ’ned ter me. Local lawyur drew up mah pre-nups, ‘n he did sech a bad job Ah gots ter pay alleymoney. Lots of alleymoney.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: That’s terrible! How much did they make you pay, Dick?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah had ter pay each of ’em two hunnert dollars a munth, ‘n on top of that, Ah had ter pervide a mo-bile home fer each wun of ’em. Ended up havin’ ter buy a whole mo-bile home park wiffin a coupla dozen trailers in it.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: You had twenty four ex-wives?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Nah. Ah jes’ had half-a-dozen ur so. But, they all had kids. Six of the trailors wuz fer my exes. The res’ of ’em was fer the kids. ‘N the dogs. Cats. Rabbits. Minyachure hosses. Ah got a coupla extry’s, too. Ah leeves ’em emptee. Case Ah get married agin.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Oh, Dick, do you think you will?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah jes’ don’ know. Sometimes Ah figger Ah’ll nebber marry agin. Sometimes, Ah figger Ah prob’ly should. Ah am purty good at it.
Dr. Emil Twist: Shouldn’t we be talking about lies for our clients? Or, are we going to talk about how Dr. Dudewell houses his growing horde of ex-wives, children, and pets.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I just think it’s interesting, that’s all.
Dr. Bemis Understood: It is interesting. But, talking about Dick’s ex-wives isn’t what we’re here to do.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: No, it isn’t. There’s absolutely no connection.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Shore, there is. We’s s’posed ter be comin’ up wiffin lies ter cut down how much water the field beasts kin get access to, right?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That is our latest assignment, yes.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: W’al, when the court ordered me ter pervide mah exes wiffin a place ter live, they didn’ say nuffin ’bout makin’ shore they had water. Not one of them twenny four trailers gots any water ter ’em.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Well, good for you, Dr. Dudewell! American women get too much as it is! They think they should get the same things their husbands have! It’s very hard for me to keep my wives in line when they hear about what other American women are getting in divorce settlements!
Dr. Emil Twist: I never thought of that. How do you keep them in line?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: First of all, I never let them watch American television. All those uppity women whining about their precious “rights” all day long. Second, I never let them learn to speak English. If we can keep our women from understanding English, it helps keep them in their place. And, I make sure they know about “honor”. We have no choice but to permanently dispose of any woman who insults our “honor”.
Dr. Bemis Understood: I hate to digress from limiting the fools’ access to water, but that was a good idea, Ramjet. If we can more than two or three people speaking the same language, they’d have a harder time complaining.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Let’s get back to the subject at hand. It’s water lies we need. It sounds like Dr. Dudewell has found a way to keep at least a few people from getting access to large amounts of water. How did you do it, Dick?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: W’al, Ah did what the judge said, ‘n Ah bought the l’il trailer park, Buckin’ham Estates, ‘n Ah kicked out all the illegal imm’gran’s what was livin’ thar. Then, Ah saw the well. Ah says ter mahse’f, “Dick, they ain’ nuffin’ sayin’ ’bout you gots ter give them ungrateful bitches ‘n whinin’ kids ‘n useless pets any water.” So, Ah cut off the lectracity ter the well. No mo’ water.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Didn’t they complain?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: ‘course they complained! That’s why Ah deevorced ’em in the furst place. They was allus complainin’ ’bout mos’ ever’thin’. Ah calt ’em all together, ‘n Ah held up the deevorce deecree, ‘n said the judge didn’t say Ah had ter give ’em no water. No sewage neither. Ah guess they jes’ goes outside ‘n squats som’whar’s.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Perfect! Serves them right! American women have it too, too easy!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: They have to have water. How do they do it?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Mos’ly, they jes’ goes inter town, ‘n use the res’rooms at the Exxon stashun. When they gets thrown outen there, they goes ter the Dunkin’ Donuts. Ah don’ know whar they go iffin they gets throwed outta thar. Don’ care none, neither.
Dr. Emil Twist: Maybe we should start by making all the field beasts unplug their wells. Tell them that “Unavoidable underground electrical leakages are putting negative charges in the precious ground water.”
Dr. Bemis Understood: That sounds good! That’s also why they shouldn’t be able to flush toilets. “The flow of water through drainage pipes causes electrostatic charges that disrupt the vital subsurface ecosystems.”
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: That’s wonderful! We have lies about why they can’t have water flowing through pipes of any kind! They’ll have to carry incoming water and outgoing waste around in buckets! Serves ’em right!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That’s what the fools do in my country. It’s not fair that American and European fools should have more than our fools.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Makes sense ter me.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WE APPRECIATE YOUR WATER LIES. DO YOU HAVE ANY LIES THAT WILL HELP CONVINCE THE FIELD BEASTS THAT THEY SHOULD ALL MOVE INTO MOBILE HOMES?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We’ll get started right away. THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE approves of our water lies, and wants us to accompany them with some lies to get them out of their huge, convenience-filled mansions and get them into mobile homes.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Oh, I like that idea! The fools are spending money on carpets, draperies, and who knows what else! That’s all money that should be coming to us!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: They need nothing like that. They do need floors, but tamped earth is sufficient. And, windows do nothing but waste energy! Windowless mobile homes are what they need!
Dr. Emil Twist: I think we all know that, Ramjet. Our job is to convince the fools that they should move out of their homes and into more Spartan quarters.
Dr. Bemis Understood: That’s a great phrase, “Spartan Quarters”. They should all live like Spartans. And, eat like Spartans, too. In community dining halls where we can keep an eye on them.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: We’ll tell ’em, “Be like Spartans! It’s yer duty!”
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Some of them will believe that. Hey! I’ve got it! The first ones who agree to leave their homes and move into our ecologically vital mobile homes get to enslave anyone who won’t relocate!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Actually own them? If they don’t move out of their houses, we get to keep them as slaves?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That’s what the Spartans did! That is what we do with people who do not obey in my country. It is a great help in every way. It speeds up the process of getting the fools to do what we want.
Dr. Emil Twist: I like it! I really like it! There’s no reason they should be allowed to decide where they get to live. No reason at all. That’s the great thing about the mobile homes. We can put ’em where we want ’em! And, I can get free helpers to take care of L’il Bismark! The kind of care he deserves!
Dr. Bemis Understood: We’ll move ’em to Death Valley in the summer and into the High Rockies in the winter!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah hates ter be a party pooper, but how we gonna move all those mo-bile homes ’round?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We’ll make the fools pull them! They can’t be allowed internal combustion engines, because of what they do to the ozone layer and the carbon dioxide levels. We won’t let them use horses or oxen to pull them because that would be demeaning to fellow species. They’ll have to pull them, themselves!
Dr. Bemis Understood: I was going to suggest hooking up L’il Bismark to pull one during the migrations!
Dr. Emil Twist: You are an evil, disgusting man! To even think of L’il Bismark pulling a mobile home! That’s work for field beasts, not dogs!
Dr. Bemis Understood: Sorry, Dr. Twist.
Dr. Emil Twist: No, you’re not. You aren’t sorry at all. You’ve never appreciated my precious L’il Bismark. You’re always insulting him! Demeaning him! And, he knows it, too! I tell him when I get home, what a mean, vile brute you are!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Now, now, Emil. Ah’m shore that Bemis don’ mean nothin’ by it. Why, Ah’ve heerd him say that he wisht he coulda had a nice Pomeranian like L’il Bismark, hisself.
Dr. Emil Twist: Really? He said that?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Yup. Ah think he’s kinda jealous of you fer havin’ a Pomeranian like L’il Bismark.
Dr. Emil Twist: That explains everything! I can certainly understand why anyone who didn’t have as pure and fine a dog as Little Bismark would be jealous of anyone who did!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Could we get back to work? We’ve made some progress. Moving the field beasts into mobile homes, and letting the first ones to move enslave the others is a great idea. But, who’s going to actually build the mobile homes?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah wuz figg’rin’ we’d use priznurs. ‘Course, we’d haf ter put a lot more pipple in prizun.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Let’s put Martha Stewart back in jail, and let her make them. Not all of them, but she could make a lot of trailors. So could all the prisoners. I just thought Martha could make the fools think that it was “tasteful” to live in a mobile home. So much better than their huge mansions.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: ONE OF OUR CLIENTS IS IN THE CANNED VEGETABLES BUSINESS. HE WOULD LIKE LIES TO ENCOURAGE THE FIELD BEASTS TO EAT ONLY CANNED VEGETABLES.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: How do they expect us to turn on a dime? A minute ago, we were lying about why bottled water was bad. Then, we had to have lies ready to prove that bottled water was good as soon as the bottled water companies paid us greenmail. Then, we needed mobile home lies, and this isn’t even the right Lie Committee!
Dr. Emil Twist: Yes, but if we’re able to get housing lies added to our Committee, we’ll get paid more!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I know! I want those housing lies, all of them, for us! But, it’s this changing around. No sooner do they give us the mobile home lie assignment, they they turn around and assign lies to justify forcing the fools to eat canned food. This is going to take some good lying!
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: It certainly is! I hate canned vegetables! Can’t stand them!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: In my country, canned vegetables are considered a delicacy.
Dr. Emil Twist: Bet you’re glad you’re out of there, Ramjet! Even Little Bismark won’t eat canned food.
Dr. Bemis Understood: That’s one thing Little Bismark and I agree on! How in the world will anyone believe anything we say after we tell them that canned vegetables have any reason at all to be eaten?
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Sum times, Ah’ll gits a chance ter buy a carload of canned vegytables frum a local cannery what’s got some splits in the seams ‘n the vegytables ahr leakin’ out. I send ’em over to Buckin’ham Estates fer all mah ex-wives ‘n kids ‘n pets. Ah gets ter take it offin my alleymoney, so Ah lak canned vegetables!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Very clever of you, Dick, but I don’t think that will encourage the fools to think well enough of canned vegetables to actually want to eat them.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I don’t think so, either. About the only way we can get the fools to eat them is to make them eat them. School cafeterias could be required to serve only canned vegetables. Nothing else! Just lots and lots and lots of canned vegetables!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That’s one way to do it. Little kids can’t fight back. We could also send them overseas. In my country, people have so little food that they would love to have boatloads of canned vegetables.
Dr. Emil Twist: How do they get them open, Ramjet?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: They smash them between large rocks. In my country, it is against their religion to have Western gadgets, like can openers. They think such things are an insult to those peoples who did not think of them.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Then, how do they justify eating the canned food, itself? None of ’em thought of canning food, or making steel, or paper labels, or tin coatings, did they?
Dr. Ramjet Singh: That is a mystery of our religion.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah figger we’s all been talkin’ ‘n talkin’ ‘n talkin’, but we ain’t got no lies ’bout why the fools shuld eat canned food. Ah got an idee. Why don’ we tell ’em that the metal the can’s made of’ll help ’em get their “vital min’ral nutrients”?
Dr. Mendle Meddle: That’s the sort of thing we usually tell the fools is bad for them.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: It’s also ’bout the only lie we’ve got. We could tell them that “Nachural vegytables absorb only healthy minerals from the insides of cans, and help people live longer.”
Dr. Ramjet Singh: It is about the only lie we have. It would be suitable for an Ass. Press release, but not worthy of a network news show or a Public Television program.
Dr. Emil Twist: I tried to give Little Bismark some canned dog food. He wouldn’t eat it! He’s smarter than any field beast!
Dr. Bemis Understood: Emil, that doesn’t help up with any lies. I think we should tell them that since the cans are recyclable, “Canned foods are the most environmentally sound.”
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Ah figger we got two purty good lies, ‘tween Emil’s ‘n mine.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Three! Let’s tell the fools they should buy canned food because no known form of insect can chew through them, so “Strong, safe, steel cans are the best way to buy protected food.”
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: “Protected food”. That’s good! We could say, “You keep your valuables in a safe. Cans let you do the same with your food.”
Dr. Emil Twist: Oh, these are such good lies! How’s this: “Compared to paper, plastic, and glass, the safest food is canned food.” Have some pictures of field beasts bleeding from broken glass, choking on plastic, and cockroaches chewing through cardboard pizza boxes and paper bags full of potato chips.
Dr. Bemis Understood: These are good lies! Let’s tell ’em how usable the cans are around the house. They can keep their pens and pencils in them. Pocket change. Screws and bolts.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: We should tell the fools that “Canned food is traditional, and keeps us in touch with our roots.”
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Lot’s of ’em lak bein’ tradishunal. We kin git lots o’ fiel’ beas’s doin’ sum’in’ iffin they t’ink it’s tradishunal. “Canned punkins is part of ahr heritage”, er som’pin’ lak dat.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: I always like to stick a comma or so in. “Canned pumpkins, a part of our heritage.” makes it more believable, somehow.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: It shore does! Why, Miss Sylvia, Ah am mitey ‘mpressed! Ah nebber wuld haf t’ought of that l’il, teeny comma as bein’ able to make that lie soun’ reel classee.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: FRANKLY, WE ARE IMPRESSED. WE NEVER THOUGHT YOU’D COME UP WITH SO MANY CANNED FOOD LIES SO QUICKLY ON A COMPLETELY NEW SUBJECT. A SQUAD OF SMART FLUNKIES HAS BEEN PUT TO WORK. RELEASES WILL SOON BE GOING OUT TO TELL THE FOOLS TO EAT MORE CANNED FOOD. ADDITIONAL LIES ABOUT WATER ARE NEEDED. THE FOOLS ARE DRINKING TAP WATER FOR FREE, AND THAT COSTS OUR NEW BOTTLED WATER CLIENTS BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN REVENUE.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: I thought we’d be back to water lies. Once the bottled water makers started getting hammered by the envrios about packaging waste, they simply had to pay them greenmail to shut them up. Now, we’ve got to get ’em thinking bottled water is the perfect thing for them and that tap water will rot their livers, or something.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: We could have the smart flunkies in universities figure out how much water each field beast actually needs. Then, we cut that by twenty percent, and issue them vouchers, for a fee, allowing them to access that amount of water at Central Locations.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Oh, I love having them go to Central Locations!
Dr. Emil Twist: I do, too! L’il Bismark and I love to watch them lined up for endless hours, sweating in the summer, freezing in the winter, watching them stare blankly at the Big Screens filling their minds full of confusing drivel.
Dr. Bemis Understood: I hope it doesn’t have a bad effect on L’il Bismark’s fine mind!
Dr. Emil Twist: You are a nasty, nasty man!
Dr. Dick Dudewell: Now, now. Ah’m sure L’il Bismark enjoys watchin’ ’em suffer as much as Ah do.
Dr. Emil Twist: He does! He really does! If one of them is happy, Little Bismark can sense it, and I can feel him quivering with rage. Once, he wriggled out of my arms and bit a laughing child!
Dr. Bemis Understood: That’s a relief.
Dr. Emil Twist: Are you being sarcastic?
Dr. Bemis Understood: Of course not. I was afraid that since you love that dog so much that he might have feelings of affection for the field beasts, that’s all.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Could we get back to work? I’d like to suggest that we give the fools some sort of heavy, smelly bladder for their personal water. They could go to their Central Location, fill their bladder with enough water to last them, oh, I don’t know, a week or so, and go back to their assigned work detail.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: And, they’d have to carry their water bladder around with them? Wonderful! It will stink when it gets hot, and freeze solid when it’s cold. And, they’ll onlyl have part of what they need to stay alive! They’ll be fighting each other for every additional drop they need!
Dr. Ramjet Singh: It’s so gratifying to watch them fight among themselves for what there’s plenty of, all around. But, how do we keep them from drinking from puddles? Streams? Lakes? Collecting their own rainwater to drink?
Dr. Emil Twist: Stoolies! We’ll pay large bounties, maybe give an extra quart or so of water, to anyone who turns in a field beast that’s been drinking water from unauthorized sources.
Dr. Bemis Understood: Make ’em hate each other! Keeps ’em from organizing and revolting against us. Wonderful idea, Emil.
Dr. Emil Twist: Why, thank you, Bemis. I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: We’s gots ter be reel shure we’s givin’ ’em water bladders that’ll not jes’ smell reel bad. We want ’em ter be leaky, too. ‘N reel fragile, so they’s always splittin’ apart.
Dr. Mendle Meddle: Good idea, Dick. And, we want to be absolutely certain that they have to buy their weak, leaky water bladders from us, and us alone.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Do you mean that we, ourselves, could sell them? We could make billions!
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO TELL YOU THAT LIE COMMITTEE PERSONNEL ARE NOT ALLOWED TO PERSONALLY PROFIT FROM THEIR OWN LIES? OF COURSE YOU, YOURSELVES, MAY NOT SELL DEFECTIVE WATER BLADDERS TO THE FOOLS. ONLY CLIENTS CAN DO THAT. NOW, IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO LEAVE THE LIE COMMITTEE, AND BECOME CLIENTS, YOU MAY BE ABLE TO PROFIT.
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Oh, no! I do not want to become a mere client. None of us want that! All of us are good, loyal liars. This just seemed like an opportunity, and I am deeply ashamed of myself for saying something that would lead you to believe that I wanted to personally profit from a lie.
NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: WE ARE CERTAINLY HAPPY TO HEAR THAT. PLEASE PROCEDE. WHEN CLIENTS HEAR THAT OUR PROFESSIONAL LIARS WANT TO PROFIT DIRECTLY FROM THEIR OWN VERY BEST LIES, THEY WILL OFTEN PAY MORE FOR THE USE OF THOSE LIES.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Not only should we make sure that their recyclable water bladders are fragile and leaky, but also, we have to be sure that the water, itself, is contaminated. We could make sure that they’re all sick and weak. All the time.
Dr. Emil Twist: Oh, yes. I would suggest using water from sewage treatment plants that hasn’t been adequately purified. We could save money.
Dr. Bemis Understood: And, if the field beasts were doing something useful, we could give them cleaner water so they could live longer, or, at least, live long enough to finish what they’re doing.
Dr. Dick Dudewell: ‘N we’ll have ter be reel shure that them water bladders is recyclable. Make ’em reel thick ‘n heavy, but use material that’ll break down reel fas’. We’ll fix ’em good!
Dr. Mendle Meddle: What will we make them out of? Plastic?
Dr. Sylvia Sweem: Plastic! Plastic water bladders would be indestructable! They’d last for years. We should make them out of clay.
Dr. Ramjet Singh: Clay! What a brilliant idea! We’ll tell the fools that “Clay is a natural material.” They’ll think they’re doing something real smart by dragging around heavy clay pots that’ll crack and break. Truly, Dr. Sweem, you are a genius! I am glad that all my wives are much dumber than you are!