BOB JOHNSON RIDES AGAIN! 95

95. CRUEL, UNFAIR WORLD, GOODBYE!

95. CRUEL, UNFAIR WORLD, GOODBYE!

Heading north on Highway 101 in a stolen I.C.E. van, former NSA chairman and current hot-ticket on all the Sunday morning gang-o’-liars television news panels, John Bolton, was driving and talking as fast as he could. In the opinion of his buddy and current wing-man, Captain Spaulding, the walrus-mustachioed lead singer and garbage-lid percussionist for the Warpunkers would probably never shut up.

“Don’t you hate it,” John-John fumed, “when they let these much-worse-than-me war criminals bomb a sovereign nation on some dubious Trumped-up (sorry) charges of building nuclear weapons under a mountain–the very idea of which, I’m pretty sure, they stole from that really excellent first IRON MAN movie? Of course nobody would let me bomb that peculiar sovereign nation because they didn’t seem to think I was good enough! Or let me bomb families standing in line for food, or let me send military drones into Russia, or give Bibi a big wet kiss whenever we stood side by side on podiums saving the richest countries in the world from the poorest ones–please don’t get me started! I could’ve been a much more successful war criminal if only the deep state had given me half a chance! And now I’ve got practically nothing! Just this smelly van, a couple of cheap dog portraits painted by that idiot Dubya everybody seems to love so much now, and an even smellier dead girlfriend in a cave somewhere in Humboldt County. And boy do I hate seeing so many goddamn trees! I can only hope we find her before it’s too late!”

Meanwhile, back in Los Osos, the War Punkers have piled their amps one on top of the other until they broke through a skylight at the Rusty Fender, an illegal garage bar that does weddings and bar mitzvahs. Sitting at one of the wobbly tables, aspiring war criminal Pete Hegseth can only glower into his pint of scotch while many of the people he admires most–Hilary Clinton, Madeline Albright, Tony Blair, and of course Henry Kissinger on nachos (at least we hope they’re nachos)–are breaking into one of their happiest numbers–“Hegseth’s a Baby Who’ll Never Match Us in Fatalities!” It’s like adding insult to injury, Pete reflected gloomily. Not only do they get to swing those cool instruments around on stage and wear fire-red hot pants, but they get to sing about it, too!