the White House Press Secretary to President Donald Trump, was refused service at the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia based on “moral grounds.” The owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, simply did not want to serve somebody she found so politically offensive, and so she didn’t.

Since then the Red Hen restaurant in Washington, DC, which has no affiliation with the one in Lexington, has been getting attacked by both left and right on social media.

Keep in mind, this is not the restaurant that refused Sanders service. No matter, even after they explicitly stated that this was all a case of mistaken identity and they had nothing to do with the Huckabee Affair, people still demanded that they take a political position on the matter. The Red Hen responded by saying that businesses in DC are prohibited from discriminating against people for political affiliation because they are in a federal district. This wasn’t good enough. People still pressed them. Okay, we know you’re not the restaurant that was involved, and we know that you are subject to different laws and therefore don’t have a choice to make in the matter, but what if you did have a choice? What if you were the restaurant she walked in to? What would you do then?

And so it goes.

And now Donald Trump is tweeting furiously at the Red Hen in Virginia ( the right one) in the hopes of destroying their business.

The owner, likely seeing in herself a patriotic exemplar, stands by her act of micro resistance while the pitchfork and torch crowd– from both the left and right–gather, eager to burn some shit down.

So surreal and terrible and hilarious and scary.

It’s amazing to me just how quickly things are reduced to the symbolic. All the nuance, history, vulnerability and complexity that informs a person– or a restaurant, even–are swept to the side, reduced to little more than the baleful projections of a furious, roiling,  unconscious. The appetite right now is for enemies rather than friends, so if you’re caught in the public eye you become what that public needs you to be, not who you might actually be.

And so when I see Sarah Huckabee Sanders tossed about in the media, I think of Monica Lewinsky.

They really look alike.

 .      

I mean, they really do.

But beyond that, remember also how Monica Lewinsky was treated by the press and public? She was despised– crucified, by both the left and right, for the sins of Bill Clinton. Honest to God, I think it’s a miracle she didn’t jump out a window. But she survived, admirably, in fact, and it’s as if her ghost is now visible in “the perfect smokey eye” of Sarah Huckabee, and the antipathy that Lewinsky withstood is now being visited upon her. Both of them appear as privileged white girls, Beckys, really, and their ambition, greased by a system that favours people like them, propelled them right next to the most powerful man in the world, and this, this seems to be something our society simply cannot abide.

Ask Hillary Clinton.

And so these women rise up into the culture like cautionary tales. Reduced to cartoon figures, they float slowly above us, soft targets, while we, the rabble beneath cast stones and curses. If you’re a woman and your cultural centrality can in any way be traced back to a powerful man, you will be hated for it– by men, and by women, it would seem. This is America, and if you’re a woman and you fly too close to the sun, you’re declared a witch and you’re going to get burned, whether you deserve it or not.

The system, it turns out, was a terrifying fail, and as a result of this the government has decided to refine the system before launching it anew in a few months. I, along with a number of other writers, have been hired to help write clear, effective messages for the probable alert scenarios the government is most concerned about. These are some of the alerts we have been working on:

***********************************

Emergency Alert #1

Emergency Alert #2

Emergency Alert #3

Emergency Alert #4

Emergency Alert #5

Emergency Alert #6

And although Doug shares the same bullying, impenetrable forehead and tiny, receded eyes that characterized his younger brother, he is distinct in a few ways. Primarily, he has always been seen as the steadying brains behind the operation. Always a belligerent and pitiless protector of his misunderstood, addict brother, Doug was also seen as the intellectual wind beneath Ford Nation’s wings. Doug dealt dope, while Rob used it.

That sort of thing.

At any rate, Doug Ford is now running against Liberal Kathleen Wynne to become the Premier of Ontario. He is doing better than you’d think, and seems to be riding a conservative, populist backlash that’s shivering up the spine of so many nations right now. Doug Ford, a white, affluent suburban businessman from a political dynasty, has long fashioned himself as being “For the People,” and has been making a point of courting various communities that might find more in common with his traditional values than say, Kathleen Wynne.

Who is a lady.

A lady lesbian.

A lady lesbian who is not For the People.

A lady lesbian who hates your way of life.

At any rate, one of the ways that the campaign is doing this outreach is for Doug and his family to go to a different community restaurant each month and review it. It’s part photo-up, part promotion for small business, and an opportunity for Ford to network and get his face in media. This is his first review:

Doug N’ Dash Food Reviews

******************************

Pukka (Indian)

778 St. Clair

Toronto

I have to tell you, when I heard the name I didn’t want to go. Who wants to go to a restaurant with a name like that? Nobody, that’s who. Lazy marketing there. Imagine if my family had called Deco Labels and Tags, FIBROMYALGIA or something.

Pretty negative, pretty confusing, eh? So the first thing I would do is change the Puke name to something like: GOOD INDIAN FOOD THAT ISN’T TOO GODDAMN SPICY AND COMES AT AN AFFORDABLE PRICE.

The Indian people, so famous for their yoga, bright colours and diarrhea, aren’t stupid. No they just need somebody For The People, somebody who knows how to get the job done, to serve as a business mentor to help move them out of all the 7-11’s and into buffet style operations they can run themselves!

You will notice that Kathleen Wynne, who does not love minorities as I do, ever in a restaurant. This is because she has a finger disease in which the the skin is always peeling off. Really gross. Like a snake shedding it’s skin or something.

You watch her fingers.

You’ll see she’s hiding something.

So I had the butter chicken and the wife, who doesn’t much like the Indian food as it can give her the Aztec two-step, had something with kale in it.

You know women. Straight women.

Anyway, my chicken was good.

Not Swiss Chalet good, but good.

I’d give it a 7 out of 10.

Karla said her kale thing was good, too.

THIS RESTARAUNT IS FORD APPROVED!

******************************************************

I’m not going to give you any guff.

Ayahuasca is no walk in the park.

Like politics, it’s not for the faint of heart. Only the strongest will survive. You’ve got to be fearless to meet Mother Ayahuasca, and when I looked around the yurt at the lost and dirty hippies sitting around chanting and smelling like carrots, I knew I was the alpha and that I was going win. I knew that Mother Ayahuasca was going to choose me.

Now you’ve probably heard that the potion the little witch doctor guy gives you tastes horrible. That’s a fact, but if you’re smart like I was, you’ll just pour a little bit of chocolate milk into the cup and Presto! It’s still not the best thing you’ll ever taste– kind of like something you might get served on a Cuban cruise ship– but you can take it if you’re disciplined.

Anyway, after a couple of hours of trying to organize the hippies and teach them about the free market, I started to experience visual augmentations to the lights in the yurt. The lights seemed to get more vivid, like they were right up close to my eyeball. The yurt was getting hotter, too, and the hippies, with all their chanting and puking and moaning, were getting more irritating, so I took my shirt off and lay down for a power nap. With my eyes closed I saw all kinds of geometric shapes and started to experience things I’d never experienced before. I felt what it was like to fly through the jungle like a toucan. Eyes looking at opposite sides, I felt what it was like to crawl on the land and slip into the water like an alligator, I felt what it was like to sneak upon a prey like a puma, I felt the energy of a bull.

It was awesome, like playing football or throwing the shot put a mile.

I really felt like I was in the zone, so I started to do some push-ups. I think I was up to around 75 when Mother Ayahuasca appeared to me. Pretty average looking. You hope she might look like Cheryl Ladd or something, but that’s not the way it works.

Anyway, she looked at me, like really deeply into me, as if she was trying to intimidate me or something. Fat chance. So I stared right back at her. There’s not a staring contest, in any dimension, that Doug Ford can’t win, dammit. This seemed to throw her, so she spewed a whole bunch of snakes out of her mouth, but it takes more than that to scare a Ford.

Eventually she turned into a lake and invited me to go for a swim in her waters. Now I’m a happily married man, but I did as I was told, and I tell you it was like one of those Vulcan mind meld things. Suddenly, the sacred herb told me everything all at once, and I knew how essential strong governance and fiscal restraint were, not just to my life, but to all life. 

Dear Santa:

I hope you enjoy your protein shake for your long journey.

I would like to know what it’s like to be Santa Claus.

1. Is it fun to fly?
2. Do you like being in charge of your elves?
3. Do you like delivering presents to children?
4. What’s your favourite hobby?
5. What do you do over the weekend?
6. Do you ever think of moving to a sunny place?
7. Do you go on vacation?
8. What’s your birthday?
9. Do you deliver presents to pets?
10. Do you have a pet?

Love,

Talullah from LA

Dear Talullah:

You should know that Santa is very grateful to you for leaving him a protein shake. You are a very sweet girl. Unfortunately, Santa is very lactose intolerant and suffers acute gastric distress whenever he has a protein shake, so he had to give it to Dasher, his lead reindeer, who is a bit of a hippy and really very experimental in his tastes. Last year Dasher tried Ayahuasca– saw serpents and had diarrhea for two days.

Santa isn’t sure how that “blessed” him with “spiritual advancement,” but whatever.

Santa will now try to answer all your questions!

1. It is NOT fun to fly. It is VERY dangerous, especially with all the drones terrorizing the skies! Santa is only able to do it if he gets gassed up and takes his medication: 3mg of Ativan and a magic gummy.
2. Santa is not in charge of the elves! Santa and the elves work as a team, functioning as a single unit without any hierarchy! Also, the elves are very well compensated for the work they do and the netting that surround Santa’s toy factory are NOT suicide nets like those at all the Apple factories in China! Also, any rumours you heard about elf slavery or elf sex slavery are not true! That’s fake news!
3. Santa has had worse jobs. Working at a poultry farm, for instance.
4. For hobbies Santa really enjoys Cosplay, voyeurism and experimenting with surveillance equipment.
5. On the weekends Santa usually just chills and watches Netflix with the wife. Highly recommends Mindhunter.
6. It is amazing to Santa how ill-informed people are! Little girls like you, Talullah, just live in little electronic silos, never learning anything you don’t already believe! Let Santa assure you, there is plenty of sun in the North Pole!
7. We have been to Mar-a-Lago a number of times. Just the best. Saw Melania changing into her bikini once. Not bad at all.
8. Santa will only tell you that he is a Leo with Pisces ascendent.
9. No. Santa would throw-up if he ever even saw a chicken again.
10. Several elves and a turtle.

This is a newsletter posted to the Super Yacht Community message board after the demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia :

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Recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia have shaken not just the USA, but the global community, too, including those of us who belong to The Super-Yacht Community.

Many of our members have been rattled by the proletariat uprisings in the US and across Europe, and have been wondering whether or not being a white supremacist is really grounds for termination.

First off, everybody should just stay calm and keep in mind that the vast majority of the people in the Super-Yacht Community are job creators, not job leaches (consumers), and so we really don’t have to worry about getting fired.

If you don’t have a job at let’s say, The Bulk Barn, then Black Lives Matters can’t take it away from you for wanting to protect history, can they?

Regardless, The Super-Yacht Community has never been an insensitive or selfish group, and we’re well aware that many of the people who help to sustain us ( Ferrari repairmen, avocado specialists, bikini makers, personal assistants, personal physicians, personal nutritionists, mindfulness coaches, topiarists, helicopter pilots, addiction specialists, nannies, hunting guides and taxidermists, high-end sex workers, off-shore bankers, professional sports teams, etc.), are still vulnerable to loss of employment and social standing due to unfashionable political beliefs.

For instance, supermodel and beloved Super-Yacht Community member Tanya Mityushina has a brother named Dimitri.

(Dimitri is the one on the far right holding the “Nog Ar Nog) shield.

He worked as a DJ at a nightclub in Miami called Waves of Fire. Here, Dimitri enjoyed multiple revenue streams and unprecedented sexual opportunities. This young man was going places, but unfortunately his image was caught on camera while he was exercising his freedom of speech at a demonstration in Virginia and this (as well as his spirited thoughts on eugenics) resulted in in his termination.

In order to combat this lynching, we at the Super-Yacht Community have decided to start a Go Fund Me for Dimitri so that he might buy his own nightclub. It is to be tentatively called Tsunami Inferno, and it will be twice as large as Waves of Fire. We are looking at a target of $25 million to help Tanya’s brother get back up on his feet, so if any of you have an spare properties lying around downtown Miami, please feel free to donate!

On a melancholy note, we within the Super-Yacht Community (no longer officially affiliated with the Illuminati) and are deeply saddened that we recently lost one of our own. Glen Campbell was a great member of our community and a transcendent talent who truly made the world a better place. He will be missed.

Pace et requiem est, Rhinestone Cowboy.

And finally, please remember, if America burns there will be plenty of economic opportunity for our community.

Nisi eliphaz,

The SYC

PS: Also, keep in mind that everybody is welcome aboard Bono’s Super-Yacht “Kingdom Come” for a barbecue next week in Fiji. And yes, Ivanka will be there, so be prepared for a little larger press and military presence than usual.

It’s was her son, I think.

They had the same eyes.

He was staring through things, his eyes fixed on some invisible, stabilizing horizon off in the distance. His knees were trembling, and it seemed like it was taking all his energy and concentration just to be out of bed and sitting in a chair. He wore tiger-striped pajama bottoms that looked like they were bought by somebody who loved him, somebody who wanted to add a little spark to his long hospital stay. And as the woman pushed him by the assembled strangers who cluttered the hospital, she reached out and touched his hair, letting her hand fall to his face where she caressed, and then cupped his cheek. I’m not sure that he noticed, or even if he was able to respond if he had, but it didn’t matter. She loved him for eternity, through all fires. He belonged to her, he would always belong to her, and she touched him with such tenderness and heartbreak, such solitude, that this small, personal moment became something transcendent. As if phosphorescent, it hung there, suspended for a moment or two before receding and returning us to the day.

***************************************************************

Me: Oh.

Me: I didn’t know you were getting a massage.

Me: I thought you were at the Dufferin Mall trying to improve our phone plans.

Me: Sure was off with that one!

Me: Well, I hope the massage is doing the trick, anyway!

Me: Awesome. You really do deserve to have a “tender yet forceful experience that lifts you out of your body and punishes you in all the right places.”

Me: What’s the masseuses name again? Yana? Didn’t she used to be a hot Russian long jumper before some sort of sex scandal? 

Me: Pierre?

Me: He’s your masseuse?

Me: I thought he was your power skating coach.

Me: Both, eh? That’s a little weird.

Me: I see.

Me: He’s a renaissance man.

Me: I do too know what that means.

Me: It means he’s a douche.

Me: You know he lied about being in the NHL, eh?

Me: That’s something sacred, you don’t lie about stuff like that!

Me: Oh, he was in the German league then.

Me: Not. The. Same. Thing. 

Me: Like playing in Peewee.

Me: I would dominate that stupid league.

Me: Whatever.

Me: Whatever.

Me: You did what?

Me: Look, my Fantasy Baseball Stats file is private.

Me: I have no idea why you found a bunch of racy photographs of Kristen Stewart in there.

Me: Not a clue.

Me: Maybe Jones put them there.

Me: Really? That’s the stupidest thing you ever heard?

Me: Look, I’m not stupid just because I failed math a bunch of times.

Me: Or French.

Me: Or any other subject!

Me: I’m Alt-Smart.

Me: No, it’s different than being “special.”

Me: You’re being a bully.

Me: You are not a safe space!

Me: Look, look, why are we fighting? It’s Christmas!

Me: Sure.

Me: Of course I’ve been doing my Christmas shopping!

Me: I’m no rookie.

Me: Practically done.

Me: You and Pierre wanted tickets to that Pentatonix concert, right?

Me: Or was it the travelling version of The Price is Right?

Me: Maybe I’ll get you two both!

Me: Yes.

Me: Wow, that would be great!

Me: I had no idea they made Kristen Stewart sex dolls!

Me: What do you mean, “That’s not what my Internet history says?”

Me: Well, I don’t know.

Me: Must have been some mistake.

Me: Maybe the baby sitter was looking up Kristen Stewart sex dolls? How would I know!?

Me: Also, maybe my account was hacked by a Russian?

Me: Well, I’m a pretty important writer.

Me: The Russians know that if they attribute something to me it will have great influence on the public.

Me: They’re smart, the Russians.

Me: You ever see them play hockey? So very clever!

Me: I did not think that Aleppo was a type of dog food two months ago!

Me: I’m pretty keyed in to world events. Always have been.

Me: I have always stood with Syria.

Me: Sure I did.

Me: I gave away that old bathroom scale to a Syrian refugee family.

Me: Well, yes.

Me: The organizer never did come to pick it up, but that’s on her!

Me: She’s the one who doesn’t care about Syrians, not me!

Me: I care about their weight, about how they adapt to the North American diet!

Me: Don’t want them to get diabetes!

Me: Sorry?

Me: Why did I text and interrupt your massage?

Me: I don’t remember.

Me: Oh, now I remember!

Me: If the last three women on the planet were you, Kristen Stewart and Jennifer Lawrence, I would choose you.

Me: Yes, I am very sweet.

Me: I love you, too, see you soon! xoxo

Recently, he’s gone so far as to start referring to the man as Saint Donald, and as absurd and even ironic as this strikes the vast majority of the populace, people have been reporting miracles involving Donald Trump for quite some time:

A golfer who lives in Anaheim claims to have seen an apparition of Donald Trump floating above the 13^th green at the prestigious Trump National Golf Club. Normally, the golfer would have laid up and played for a par, but the Trump apparition seemed to be telling him to go for it, and so he did, holing the 260 yard shot for an eagle. “It was a damn miracle,” Chip Anger said, “I’d never done anything like that in my life.”

It was reported the Donald Trump came upon a Miss Universe contestant taking a bath and that she tried to entice him to bathe with her.

However, she was not Donald’s type, as he does not like small breasts, and so he refused, but not wanting to leave the young woman devastated, he turned her bath water into Trump Super Premium Vodka.

An evil and disgruntled contestant on The Apprentice had been making designs to assassinate Donald Trump, as she was certain she was to be the next who was to be fired. While in the boardroom she poured some poison into his glass of Trump brand water, and sure enough, just as Donald uttered the words, “Ereka, you’re fired!” his glass of water spontaneously shattered.

A man’s wife would not have sex with him. She would not even stimulate his genitals with her hand, and was planning on leaving him, so this man asked Trump for some advice on how to bring back her love. And Trump blessed a Trump brand steak for him, and said: “Serve your woman this steak, and after she has eaten of the Trump brand steak and tidied up, her lust for you will be huge.” And after the man had done that, his wife gave him great love, and it remained that she could not be far from him and was always eager to please him.

One day while some of his luxury condo dwellers were busy enjoying their opulent homes of burnished marble and luxurious platinum, all the power went out. When Donald Trump was told of this problem, flames, like flashes from a flint when struck, leapt from his tiny, vulgar fingers and all electricity was immediately restored.

**************************

Me: Hi! I really want to thank you for taking the time to talk with us, and add what a personal honour it is for me to be speaking to a woman with with such a dizzying literary capacity. You are truly one of the greatest writers in the entire world.

Atwood: That’s very sweet of you, thank you.

Me: I think an awful lot of people would be surprised to learn that you played Fantasy Baseball.

Can you tell us here at The Knuckler how you got into it?

Atwood: As people may or may not know, I’ve always been very interested in speculative fiction, and when I heard about Fantasy Baseball, I thought it was in the same vein. You know, like Fantasy Literature, so I looked in to it. Alas, it was not, but I became fascinated by it and all the marginalized, impotent men that play it so obsessively. It’s role playing, really, where all these limited, in many cases arrested men, bond together and pretend that they’re something much more powerful than they are in the ordinary dirt of their relentlessly disappointing lives.

It’s like a religion for them, I think, a little treehouse they can retreat to and act as supreme ruler of a secular male kingdom. I have always thought that without Fantasy Baseball there would probably be an awful lot more mass shootings. Anyway, I got involved in order to research a character for one of my books and have been playing ever since.

Me: Oh.

Atwood: And I have to say, I’ve done very, very well.

Me: Good for you.

Atwood: I’m sorry, are you being sarcastic?

Me: Oh no, a marginalized, impotent shooter-type such as myself wouldn’t have a clue how to do that!

Atwood: I see.

Me: I guess you’ve just been a very lucky player!

Atwood: Lucky?

Me: Plucky. A very plucky player.

Atwood: Really?

Me: Well, let’s not get side-tracked with semantics here. So, I’m sure all of The Knuckler’s readers would love to hear what your Fantasy Baseball team is called!

Atwood: The Blind Assassins.

Me: Oh.

Atwood: Mister Murray, I have to say, you sound disappointed.

Me: Well, coming from a “literary genius” you’d expect something a little more imaginative and eloquent. It seems lazy and nakedly self-promotional to name your team after one of your own books, especially if it wasn’t good enough to be an Oprah Pick or made into a movie.

Atwood: What is your team called?

Me: Mike’s Mashers.

Atwood: That’s very clever. How are they doing this year?

Me: They’ve been savaged by injuries I’m afraid, so it looks like I’ll be rebuilding again.

Atwood: Again, eh? So, how long have you been playing Fantasy Baseball?

Me: I don’t know, 25 years?

Atwood: Have you ever won?

Me: Ha, ha, ha! Have I ever won? What a funny question! Let me tell you, I’ve more than held my own.

Atwood: But have you ever won? Have you ever finished in first place? Have you tasted the sort of victory that for a moment erases all those memories of being the last pick, of being mocked for throwing like a girl, of all those many, many times of being over-looked by the more talented and beautiful?

Have you ever had your revenge, Mister Murray?

Unfortunately, I suffered an asthma attack at this point during the interview and we had to suspend our chat.