George's Alphabet, or how words can backfire...
One of the things you learn at school is the alphabet and you do so by associating letters with words. Here is a fascinating rewrite of the alphabet, allegedly by none other than George Bush, but actually put together by U.S. journalist Tom Engehardt. Those who lack a highly developed sense of irony--or those who don't read the news, well no doubt experience some sharp comprehension pains.
"A as in Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaedas all around. I know. I know. It's usually alligator or aardvark or ant or armadillo, but kids, really, it's a New World and it's never too early to be armed and ready for it. (By the way, boys and girls, prepare yourself for the first White House single-shooter video game, Armageddon Battles Al-Qaeda! In your neighborhood stores soon!) Amazing Fact: Did you know that, according to my friend Attorney Alberto Gonzales, at least ten terrorists could fit in your room and you wouldn't even know it?"
That is the first entry in "George's Amazing Alphabet Book of the Contemporary World, or Al-Qaedas All Around (completely cross-referenced)," a real hair pulling, tongue-in-cheek imaginary book concocted by Tom Engehardt, a journalist who has been publishing for 25 years, a teaching fellow at the University of California at Berkeley, who has an entertaining and informative online at www.Tomdispatch.com
It should be needless to say that the George referred to is none other than George Bush, the guy who presently occupies the White House in Washington.
"It's unprecedented for any official--high or low," writes Engehardt, "to leak information to TOMdispatch, but some weeks ago a Senior Official in one of our intelligence agencies--and since we have so many, that's a little like saying none-of-your-business--slipped me the text of a book allegedly written by our President and due to be published eary this Fall. (Unfortunately, the illustrations by Paul Wolfowitz, mentioned on the title page, did not accompany the manuscript, and a page and a half of the text was missing.)"
"I've delayed releasing the text at Tomdispatch," says Engehardt, "because I was suspicious of its provenance and authenticity, and because I've so often criticized the use of anonymous sources in mainstream journalism. Yet everything about the text rang true to me and, in the end, it seemed unreasonable to hold back a story of this magnitude."
We enjoyed reading the alphabet and so asked Tom for permission to republish it in this journal. Thanks Tom! Here it goes!
B as in Bases. Bases are for bashing bad guys (see A) A base is a little world built by the good guys of KBR (see H) for the good guys at the Pentagon to house our good guys who hunt their bad guys in the sorts of places--and, believe me, there are a scadzillion of them (other than your bedroom)--where they love to hide and that, until a few years ago, nobody even knew existed, and that nobody can spell like Youzebeckistan, write a letter of complaint to my friend Attorney General Gonzales (and spell any way you like), or report your teacher to the U.S. Air Force's Eagle Eyes program (see E). To get the bad guys before they get us, we build bases everywhere! My friend Paul Wolfowitz, who used to work for the Pentagon, likes to call our bases "lily pads," and we're the frogs who jump from one of them to the other hunting down the flies. You know how irritating flies are. (By the way, our bases have nothing to do with oil. (see O)
C as in Counting. See Rummy count the WMD! (WMD are three well respected letters--see W.M.and D--which put together are massively destructive! They mean Weapons of Mass Destruction, which can destroy massively, which is why we went to war with Saddam Hussein who was hiding in a spiderhole and threatening to spray WMD all over our country! WMD are still in Iraq even though we haven't found them yet because they're probably in one of those spiderholes like the one we found Saddam in, which is what my friend Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld says. Actually, here's an AMAZING FACT that will soon appear in a companion volume, RUMMY'S AMAZING COUNTING BOOK OF THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD: Rummy says: "You could put enough biological weapons into the room you're sitting in today to kill tens of thousands of people!" Now, how about that! For those of you who are Math wizards, how many rooms like the one you're sitting in would fit inside Iraq? Hint: it's 171,599 square miles of sand! By the way, I made a great joke about WMD at a media "roast" for all those stupid reporters a while back. I showed a picture of myself looking out the window of the Oval Office (which could have been a really good "O", a lot better than "oil") and I said, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere." And then I showed a picture of myself looking under the furniture and said, "Nope, no weapons over there." That cracked them up. Ha Ha HA Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha HaHee Hooo Haaa.
D as in Detention. Ahmed, the terrorist, was detained in Guatanamo (See G).
E as in Empire. (E could have been Energy, but honestly, energy's not that important to the people I know, especially not to my friend Vice President Cheney and his Energy Task Force). My uncle empired at the Little League baseball game. AMAZING DOUBLE BONUS LETTER: e AS IN eAGLE eYES. i EAGLE-EYED Ahmed, the beady-eyed terrorist (see A). Kids, the Air Force has set up a special Eagle Eyes program just in case Ahmed, the terrorist, sneaks into your neighborhood. You can go to the cool USAF Eagle Eyes web page and study "categories of suspicious behavior." Be the first to report a terrorist moving in next door! If you're lucky, maybe you can be the first kid on the block to call in an air strike on a neighbor!
F as in Florida. I love Florida. It's the best F-word around! It's how I F-ed the Democrats!
G as in Guantanamo. My (excised) (classified) with the (classified) while my hands were (top secret). Guantanamo, which is a (classified) for the (classified) (excised) (classified), more than the (top secret) justice.
H as in Halliburton. See Dick run Halliburton. See Halliburton buy Kellog, Brown & Root. See Dick Quit Halliburton. See Dick become Vice President. See Halliburton get no-bid contracts for I-raq. See KBR build bases in I-raq. See Halliburton deliver oil to I-raq. See Halliburton and KBR take the taxpayer to the cleaners. See Dick smile. See Dick hund Quail. (See I, see Q).
I as in I-raq. I wracked I-raq! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Hee Hoo Haa. I-raq is a really, really interesting country. Lots of Moolahs live there. I visited once and, believe it or not, they even have turkeys...but they're plastic!
J as in Jee-whiz. I can't think of a J, except for Jail (see D, seeG), but kids, the truth is--and don't tell Laura I said this--you really don't need all these letters! I mean, honestly, 26 of them? You can just use G for J and C for K and some of them like U are only good to make funny names for ridiculous countries. Tell you teacher that George said it was okay to skip the weird and useless ones. If she objects, follow the instructions outline in B.
L as in lion. Lions live lively in Africa, where we're building new bases (see B) to protect Americans who want to take safaris and check out the lions and zebras (see Z), and not because of oil lwhich I haven't mentioned yet because it's not very important (see O).
M as in Mission. The Caped Crusaders went on a mission to rescue the I-raquis from Saddam's lterrorists (see A). Whoops, kids, never use the word "crusade!" Not that it's not a great word headed by an all-star letter, C. but I used it twice and you wouldn't believe how reporters jumped down my throat. See, when I was a kid, Errol Flynn went crusading to the Middle East and kicked some Arab butt, but thar's ancient history that you can't mention now. And you know whast? Dwight D. Eisenhower, another Republican president, used "crusade" in a book title, and no one said a word! But that was before the planet was filled with Muslims with TVs. These days, instead of "crusade" I use "global war on terrorism," or "spreading democracy," or I even speak of my "calling," which is a good Cristian word that leaves Muslims out completely. But just so you know, when I "call" you--or you8r daddies and mommies in the Reserves--to my Global War on Terror, I really mean Crusade! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Hee Hee Hoo Haaa.
N as in nuclular. The nuculus went nucular. Boom! Nucular weapsons are terrible things (see C). We went to war, as my friend Secretary of State Condi Rice used to say, to stop mushrooms from growing in American cities! Mushrooms can poison you and Saddam Hussein wanted to poison us! Buet don't worry, kids, we won't let the bad guys get nucular weapons! We're building lots of lnucular weapons right now to take them out!
O as not in oil. The handyman put oil on the squeaky door hinge. Oil is good for fixing things and oild is something you change. Sometimes you even regime-change oil regimes. But it's not worth wasting a letter on, that's for sure. AMAZING FACT: Chevron once named an oil tanker after my friend Condi!
P as in Patriot act. Peter Patriot acts to protect the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act patriotized our country. It patriotized our courts. It patriotized our jails (see G). It patriotized our medical records. It patriotized our libraries. It patriotized your parents. Keep your eyes and ears open! If Ahmed, the terrorist, or anybody else in your neighborhood doesn't support the Patriot Act, call Eagle Eyes (see E) and let us know. We'll be sure to patriotize them.
Q as in Quail. See Dick shoot the Quail, all 400 0f them! Quail are tine, chicken-y birds with lots and lots of little bones and no meat, but Dick loves to...
(Note: A page and a half of text is missing here, assumedly including the rest of the letter Q and all of R)
S as in Social Security. The Department of Homeland Security should be responsible for our country's social security. Boys and girls, you know how when you're really little you have a security blanket you just drag around everywhere? And then, when you get older, it's kind of embarrassing, so you toss it away? Well, here's the funny thing, thanks to a bunch of ancient Democrats, old people have a money security blanket we call Social Security. Don't you think it's time for your grandmas and grandpas to grow up and toss that blankie away? My friend Dick thinks so. He says he doesn't need a social-security blankie. (see H) And neither do I, and neither do my Mom and Dad. And believe me, they're old. We all just want to invest our own money and make it ourselves. Don't you?
T as in 2000 election. (Kids, this is a trick one, but so was that election!) AMAZING FACT: 2000 looks lite it starts with 2, but it actually starts with T! I always liked what my olf Texas pard Phil Gramm said lwith a whoop when he won his Senate seat back in 1984: "We're going to keep on building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs." He was right. Now, when Democrats whoop--like Howard Dean did--we hunt them with Karl Rove's dogs like Dick hunts quail (see Q).
U as in Uzbekistan (or Oozebeakustan or whatever). I bet u can't spell Uzbekistan! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Hee Hee Hee Ho Ho Ho Ho. If you're looking for terrorists, they usually hide in countries whose names I can't spell--like Yousbekistan and Afghanistan and Yemenistan. Countries whose names I can't spell have lots of caves for terrorists to hide in.
V as in Camp Viper. Don't let the Vindow Viper near Camp Vijper! (Ha Ha, etc.) Ur was one those old, old U-places (see U) in I-raq (see I). A two-letter city! If that isn't suspicious, I don't know what is! Imagine if Duluth was Du, or Laredo was La, or Peoria was Pe (Hee Hee, etc.) Name a place Ur and it's bound to fill up with terrorists vipers. So we built bases nearby including Camp Viper and Ve Viped them out (Ho Ho etc.).
W as in Waterboarding. Wally waterboarded Ahmed (see A) Kids, it's not surfboarding, but almost! There's the board and the water and the person on the board, and it's the main sport of the Central Intelligence Agency (see G), and the great thing is--you can do it twenty-four hours a day. You never have to wait for the surf to be up.
X as in X-ray. Agent S S-rayed you car to see if it contained terrorists contraband or a secret nucular weapon (see N). No kidding, kids, our Homeland Security Department lcan do drive-by X-rays of cars in their constant search for terrorists. And if your teddy bear is filled with explosives, then it's Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay (see G) for you, which is (classified) for (classified) in which (top secret), not far from the Bermuda Triangle.
Y as in you're with us or you're against us. Ahmed was against us (see W) and he came from Yemenistan. Okay, "you're with us or you're against us" isn't one word, but how many words begin with Y, other than Yemenistan (and, believe me, you don't want to know about that)?
Z as in zebra. Ziggy the zebra hates terrorists (see A) Zebras live in Africa where we're setting up bases (see B), but not because we're interested in oil (see O). No kidding! Just like that other George, the one who chopped down the cherry tree with that weapon of mass destruction (see N, see C), I would never lie to you.
"A as in Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaedas all around. I know. I know. It's usually alligator or aardvark or ant or armadillo, but kids, really, it's a New World and it's never too early to be armed and ready for it. (By the way, boys and girls, prepare yourself for the first White House single-shooter video game, Armageddon Battles Al-Qaeda! In your neighborhood stores soon!) Amazing Fact: Did you know that, according to my friend Attorney Alberto Gonzales, at least ten terrorists could fit in your room and you wouldn't even know it?"
That is the first entry in "George's Amazing Alphabet Book of the Contemporary World, or Al-Qaedas All Around (completely cross-referenced)," a real hair pulling, tongue-in-cheek imaginary book concocted by Tom Engehardt, a journalist who has been publishing for 25 years, a teaching fellow at the University of California at Berkeley, who has an entertaining and informative online at www.Tomdispatch.com
It should be needless to say that the George referred to is none other than George Bush, the guy who presently occupies the White House in Washington.
"It's unprecedented for any official--high or low," writes Engehardt, "to leak information to TOMdispatch, but some weeks ago a Senior Official in one of our intelligence agencies--and since we have so many, that's a little like saying none-of-your-business--slipped me the text of a book allegedly written by our President and due to be published eary this Fall. (Unfortunately, the illustrations by Paul Wolfowitz, mentioned on the title page, did not accompany the manuscript, and a page and a half of the text was missing.)"
"I've delayed releasing the text at Tomdispatch," says Engehardt, "because I was suspicious of its provenance and authenticity, and because I've so often criticized the use of anonymous sources in mainstream journalism. Yet everything about the text rang true to me and, in the end, it seemed unreasonable to hold back a story of this magnitude."
We enjoyed reading the alphabet and so asked Tom for permission to republish it in this journal. Thanks Tom! Here it goes!
B as in Bases. Bases are for bashing bad guys (see A) A base is a little world built by the good guys of KBR (see H) for the good guys at the Pentagon to house our good guys who hunt their bad guys in the sorts of places--and, believe me, there are a scadzillion of them (other than your bedroom)--where they love to hide and that, until a few years ago, nobody even knew existed, and that nobody can spell like Youzebeckistan, write a letter of complaint to my friend Attorney General Gonzales (and spell any way you like), or report your teacher to the U.S. Air Force's Eagle Eyes program (see E). To get the bad guys before they get us, we build bases everywhere! My friend Paul Wolfowitz, who used to work for the Pentagon, likes to call our bases "lily pads," and we're the frogs who jump from one of them to the other hunting down the flies. You know how irritating flies are. (By the way, our bases have nothing to do with oil. (see O)
C as in Counting. See Rummy count the WMD! (WMD are three well respected letters--see W.M.and D--which put together are massively destructive! They mean Weapons of Mass Destruction, which can destroy massively, which is why we went to war with Saddam Hussein who was hiding in a spiderhole and threatening to spray WMD all over our country! WMD are still in Iraq even though we haven't found them yet because they're probably in one of those spiderholes like the one we found Saddam in, which is what my friend Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld says. Actually, here's an AMAZING FACT that will soon appear in a companion volume, RUMMY'S AMAZING COUNTING BOOK OF THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD: Rummy says: "You could put enough biological weapons into the room you're sitting in today to kill tens of thousands of people!" Now, how about that! For those of you who are Math wizards, how many rooms like the one you're sitting in would fit inside Iraq? Hint: it's 171,599 square miles of sand! By the way, I made a great joke about WMD at a media "roast" for all those stupid reporters a while back. I showed a picture of myself looking out the window of the Oval Office (which could have been a really good "O", a lot better than "oil") and I said, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere." And then I showed a picture of myself looking under the furniture and said, "Nope, no weapons over there." That cracked them up. Ha Ha HA Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha HaHee Hooo Haaa.
D as in Detention. Ahmed, the terrorist, was detained in Guatanamo (See G).
E as in Empire. (E could have been Energy, but honestly, energy's not that important to the people I know, especially not to my friend Vice President Cheney and his Energy Task Force). My uncle empired at the Little League baseball game. AMAZING DOUBLE BONUS LETTER: e AS IN eAGLE eYES. i EAGLE-EYED Ahmed, the beady-eyed terrorist (see A). Kids, the Air Force has set up a special Eagle Eyes program just in case Ahmed, the terrorist, sneaks into your neighborhood. You can go to the cool USAF Eagle Eyes web page and study "categories of suspicious behavior." Be the first to report a terrorist moving in next door! If you're lucky, maybe you can be the first kid on the block to call in an air strike on a neighbor!
F as in Florida. I love Florida. It's the best F-word around! It's how I F-ed the Democrats!
G as in Guantanamo. My (excised) (classified) with the (classified) while my hands were (top secret). Guantanamo, which is a (classified) for the (classified) (excised) (classified), more than the (top secret) justice.
H as in Halliburton. See Dick run Halliburton. See Halliburton buy Kellog, Brown & Root. See Dick Quit Halliburton. See Dick become Vice President. See Halliburton get no-bid contracts for I-raq. See KBR build bases in I-raq. See Halliburton deliver oil to I-raq. See Halliburton and KBR take the taxpayer to the cleaners. See Dick smile. See Dick hund Quail. (See I, see Q).
I as in I-raq. I wracked I-raq! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Hee Hoo Haa. I-raq is a really, really interesting country. Lots of Moolahs live there. I visited once and, believe it or not, they even have turkeys...but they're plastic!
J as in Jee-whiz. I can't think of a J, except for Jail (see D, seeG), but kids, the truth is--and don't tell Laura I said this--you really don't need all these letters! I mean, honestly, 26 of them? You can just use G for J and C for K and some of them like U are only good to make funny names for ridiculous countries. Tell you teacher that George said it was okay to skip the weird and useless ones. If she objects, follow the instructions outline in B.
L as in lion. Lions live lively in Africa, where we're building new bases (see B) to protect Americans who want to take safaris and check out the lions and zebras (see Z), and not because of oil lwhich I haven't mentioned yet because it's not very important (see O).
M as in Mission. The Caped Crusaders went on a mission to rescue the I-raquis from Saddam's lterrorists (see A). Whoops, kids, never use the word "crusade!" Not that it's not a great word headed by an all-star letter, C. but I used it twice and you wouldn't believe how reporters jumped down my throat. See, when I was a kid, Errol Flynn went crusading to the Middle East and kicked some Arab butt, but thar's ancient history that you can't mention now. And you know whast? Dwight D. Eisenhower, another Republican president, used "crusade" in a book title, and no one said a word! But that was before the planet was filled with Muslims with TVs. These days, instead of "crusade" I use "global war on terrorism," or "spreading democracy," or I even speak of my "calling," which is a good Cristian word that leaves Muslims out completely. But just so you know, when I "call" you--or you8r daddies and mommies in the Reserves--to my Global War on Terror, I really mean Crusade! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Hee Hee Hoo Haaa.
N as in nuclular. The nuculus went nucular. Boom! Nucular weapsons are terrible things (see C). We went to war, as my friend Secretary of State Condi Rice used to say, to stop mushrooms from growing in American cities! Mushrooms can poison you and Saddam Hussein wanted to poison us! Buet don't worry, kids, we won't let the bad guys get nucular weapons! We're building lots of lnucular weapons right now to take them out!
O as not in oil. The handyman put oil on the squeaky door hinge. Oil is good for fixing things and oild is something you change. Sometimes you even regime-change oil regimes. But it's not worth wasting a letter on, that's for sure. AMAZING FACT: Chevron once named an oil tanker after my friend Condi!
P as in Patriot act. Peter Patriot acts to protect the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act patriotized our country. It patriotized our courts. It patriotized our jails (see G). It patriotized our medical records. It patriotized our libraries. It patriotized your parents. Keep your eyes and ears open! If Ahmed, the terrorist, or anybody else in your neighborhood doesn't support the Patriot Act, call Eagle Eyes (see E) and let us know. We'll be sure to patriotize them.
Q as in Quail. See Dick shoot the Quail, all 400 0f them! Quail are tine, chicken-y birds with lots and lots of little bones and no meat, but Dick loves to...
(Note: A page and a half of text is missing here, assumedly including the rest of the letter Q and all of R)
S as in Social Security. The Department of Homeland Security should be responsible for our country's social security. Boys and girls, you know how when you're really little you have a security blanket you just drag around everywhere? And then, when you get older, it's kind of embarrassing, so you toss it away? Well, here's the funny thing, thanks to a bunch of ancient Democrats, old people have a money security blanket we call Social Security. Don't you think it's time for your grandmas and grandpas to grow up and toss that blankie away? My friend Dick thinks so. He says he doesn't need a social-security blankie. (see H) And neither do I, and neither do my Mom and Dad. And believe me, they're old. We all just want to invest our own money and make it ourselves. Don't you?
T as in 2000 election. (Kids, this is a trick one, but so was that election!) AMAZING FACT: 2000 looks lite it starts with 2, but it actually starts with T! I always liked what my olf Texas pard Phil Gramm said lwith a whoop when he won his Senate seat back in 1984: "We're going to keep on building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs." He was right. Now, when Democrats whoop--like Howard Dean did--we hunt them with Karl Rove's dogs like Dick hunts quail (see Q).
U as in Uzbekistan (or Oozebeakustan or whatever). I bet u can't spell Uzbekistan! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Hee Hee Hee Ho Ho Ho Ho. If you're looking for terrorists, they usually hide in countries whose names I can't spell--like Yousbekistan and Afghanistan and Yemenistan. Countries whose names I can't spell have lots of caves for terrorists to hide in.
V as in Camp Viper. Don't let the Vindow Viper near Camp Vijper! (Ha Ha, etc.) Ur was one those old, old U-places (see U) in I-raq (see I). A two-letter city! If that isn't suspicious, I don't know what is! Imagine if Duluth was Du, or Laredo was La, or Peoria was Pe (Hee Hee, etc.) Name a place Ur and it's bound to fill up with terrorists vipers. So we built bases nearby including Camp Viper and Ve Viped them out (Ho Ho etc.).
W as in Waterboarding. Wally waterboarded Ahmed (see A) Kids, it's not surfboarding, but almost! There's the board and the water and the person on the board, and it's the main sport of the Central Intelligence Agency (see G), and the great thing is--you can do it twenty-four hours a day. You never have to wait for the surf to be up.
X as in X-ray. Agent S S-rayed you car to see if it contained terrorists contraband or a secret nucular weapon (see N). No kidding, kids, our Homeland Security Department lcan do drive-by X-rays of cars in their constant search for terrorists. And if your teddy bear is filled with explosives, then it's Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay (see G) for you, which is (classified) for (classified) in which (top secret), not far from the Bermuda Triangle.
Y as in you're with us or you're against us. Ahmed was against us (see W) and he came from Yemenistan. Okay, "you're with us or you're against us" isn't one word, but how many words begin with Y, other than Yemenistan (and, believe me, you don't want to know about that)?
Z as in zebra. Ziggy the zebra hates terrorists (see A) Zebras live in Africa where we're setting up bases (see B), but not because we're interested in oil (see O). No kidding! Just like that other George, the one who chopped down the cherry tree with that weapon of mass destruction (see N, see C), I would never lie to you.
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