Political: The Lizard King

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

I got in a cab to Dulles airport last week to get my flight to LA. Only this time it's not my usual Mr. Louis Jones, Sr. driving. No, it's another gentleman who seems okay enough for a good part of the ride, telling me about his childhood here in DC, how he is 70 but still working with no plans to stop till he dies. A real bootstrapper who I decide is my kind of hard-working, no-nonsense, old-school chap, even if he isn't Mr. Louis Jones, Sr.

At about minute 23 of the 40 minute jaunt out to DC's exurbian airport, we of course (as all cabbies and passengers do) get to talking about politics. His concern was that the constant terror alerts are harming travel to DC, thereby necessitating that he start work at 4am in order to make the same number of fares he would have a couple of years ago by starting at 8am. And he's 70!! I agreed that terror alerts ought to be accompanied by some kind of actionable information for citizens, e.g., watch for unattended backpacks, large groups of young men at airports, whatever. But if you can't put into words what any of us should do in response to the alert, then you should shut your cakehole about the potential danger. Because to not do so would be Political Opportunism, which this administration would never stoop to engage in...

But I digress. At about minute 25 of the 40 minute jaunt out to DC's exurbian airport, I learned from my cabbie that this country and indeed the whole dang world is ruled by Lizard People. Yes, Lizard People. You heard it here first: "It don't matter none who wins, because you see that they are all descended from lizards, and they are all of the same bloodline, so whether Kerry or Bush wins, it don't matter none, because they are all related and THEY--the Lizard People--win either way."

Cue my academy-award nominated performance as "passenger NOT at all afraid of driver's sanity and potential for dumping her body on the airport access road as an offering to the lizard people." Yes, it was time for my closeup, and I knew that my entire career depended upon my performance in this moment. So I reached within myself and my memory as the thespian that I am, to find a past experience I could draw upon in order to truly inhabit my character and my role as "passenger not at all afraid of...etc." That moment was my first day at Connecticut College. {Stay with me here}.

When I met my roommate's (obviously very wealthy) parents on my first day at Conn College, her mom's first question after saying "how nice to meet you Esther" was "so what does your father do for a living?" Now, maybe as the daughter of a school bus driver, I didn't learn no manners nor nuthin', but I was always raised to consider questions of that nature, so quickly asked, to be the height of rudeness. Guess them thar folks in Newport and Greenwich didn't get the right kind of upbringin we po' folks got. Shame, really. Cause she seemed like an otherwise somewhat nice lady. Good thing she married well, or her rudeness would really have held her back in life.

But I digress again. My point was that, in the cab, at the moment of the Lizard People revelation, in an attempt to get out of the cab with a minimum of drama, I reached back to that day at Conn College and imitated, verbatim, my roommate's mother at the (I'm sure for her, equally shocking) moment of learning that her daughter would be rooming with the child of a {gasp!} "blue collar" worker. I even channeled the Martha Stewart faux-WASPy accent in that instant and replied through a fake smile to the cabbie, "Well, HOW INTERESTING! Isn't that something!? How nice!"

So I thank you, Mrs. Name Redacted, for saving my bacon with your snobbery 12 years later! And I thank you because it not only got me to the airport on time, but it got me some more info on the Lizard People who control our country. They drink blood and are descended from an alien race who came to earth as shapeshifting humans. They are part of the Illuminati--that nebulous and mysterious entity made famous by Dan Brown in The DaVinci Code.

The alien thing sounded sort of familiar, so I asked if he was talking about scientology, to which he immediately barked, "NO! It's not scientology! Why does everyone ask me that?!" Okaaaaay. Take it easy, big fella.

And then I remembered: David Icke, renowned Holocaust denier, "names names" in a hysterical book I read abouta year ago called "Them" by Jon Ronson. Ronson's book is, as the leaf says, "an extraordinary journey through the world of fringe dwellers," where he meets all manner of white supremacists, alien fanatics and an islamic fundamentalist in London who tricks "the Jew" into driving him around London to run his errands because he has no driver's license or car. Despite, and maybe because of, the subject matter, it is absolutely hysterical. Really! Buy it or ask me to borrow it. I laughed hysterically from cover to cover. And you know there ain't nothing funnier than white supremacists and anti-government militiamen. No sirreee.

Short Story Long: I sure hope Illuminati Lizard People don't read blogs.