MOCK YOU LIKE A HURRICANE

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"Actually, sir, we're LESS than meets the eye..."



Episode V: mock you like a hurricane (or, “I Stole FEMA’s Inkpen.”)


Sure…she took me in—you knew she would, at least for a little while. After which, I understand, I am to be loosed upon the earth for 1000 years, until the end of days or some such—I’ll be honest, I wasn’t terribly paying attention. I probably missed an anouncement here and there. I hadn’t had a lot of sleep, to be honest. But I don’t want to talk about that now; we’ll get back to all that later. Let’s move the picture forward scant days later, after days of food and rest had temporarily numbed me to the unsurety of my unsettling predicament...

Hope springs eternal; and like all hot springs, it’s pretty to watch from a distance, but you’ll be hideously burned should you ever try to reach for it. And as with other things which burn eternally (Hell, syphilis, etc.), it is an inescapable outcome of common life—either arriving with said life’s end, or virulently flung toward you like a jack-knifed eighteen-wheeler down the violent spiral highway of destiny itself; in either given instance, it’s a sensation not unlike having an itchy nose during the pain of childbirth, or receiving a scented love-note with a booger smeared beneath. This is to say, you count your blessings, and pray you are mistaken; or you count the blessings of others, and plot a hostile takeover.

Homeless, displaced, and alone, I resigned myself to fate; and once again, my resignation was refused. And as with many instances in which a sore truth is related, I am asked at some odd point if I can “dig it.” So…can I dig it? Well, if by “dig it,” you mean “tunnel like an Irishman,” then yes, I suppose I can, for now… The nipples of mother hope are spurtin’ powder, dust of death, like musky clumps of Gold Bond all around. Weathering all I’d rather not, the odds seem in my favor when against me.
I needed to find work, and by “work,” I mean toward something other than my inevitable self-destruction. But let’s cut to the chase: specifically, I needed cash. What’s a strapped and hastled, addled bastard left to do? Ah yes…I know this one:

I slap it to The Man.

I’ve paid my taxes, and tossed my rusty pennies into my nation’s massive well. And certainly, it has been well and long asserted that I am of unique disposition, and colorful; surely, this asserts that I am, in fact, a minority. Uncle Sam owes me a dollar, a hotel room, and a buzz. So I contact the Red Cross.

Let us begin basic and simple, like a trilobite in heat: After the cold, indifferent mockery by their phone droids, I finally received a call-back from a human—one finally not aimed at changing my long distance. The man was rude, and short with me like Willow. Rita? Oh, whatever—they’ve still got Katrina folks to fool around with at the moment. These hurricanes are awesome for government types: at long last, a lifetime of playing The Sims finally pays off.

The droll voice on the end of the phone, and possibly the end of a rope, begrudgingly gave me a smidgeon of information, much of which would later prove incorrect. Most unforgivable was that he gave the wrong directions to the office. He said it was on Olive, but what he really meant was “Old Olive,” much further out. He said to take a certain way to find it; but what he really meant was “get lost,” “please don’t bother me,” and “die.”

I found the place sheerly by accident. We took a wrong turn, toward a broken husk that once had been an IHOP—an International House Of Failure, it would seem; but truly, how often had I eaten that for breakfast in the morn?

We pulled into the parking lot, and headed toward the offices ‘round back, wherein the number he had given me was posted on the bricks. This looked about as promising as an episode of The View with Kid Rock, Sirhan Sirhan, and a giant squid; which is to say that I smelled failure and madness, but suspected at very least something to write about in the end. I roved past each glass office door—many, if not all, had been abandoned, or looked as if they’d never been set up. I reached the office with the title I was given on the door. It was furnished, but deserted. A print-out note read, “Call (some number), and come back at a later time." Fortunately, a friendly loitering gentleman directed me to go around the front of other building, and try my luck within. Tried I did, and still it tasted funny; but I was further on the path.

I asked the world-weary receptionist where refugees might seek assistance; she pointed toward a room distant down the hall. I paused, and remembered another burden needing dismount; I asked her where the Men’s Room was. She sweetly smiled her sweetest smile, and wished me diabetic with each wrinkle of her crinkly cheeks. My cheeks continued holding, as she pointed to the same place she had pointed to before. Apparently, this office only offered one sort of relief.

After defiling their facilities with a gulf wind of my own, I waited in line behind some displaced Houston Goth kids at a desk. “This is the place you get your assistance,” the more spikey-haired among them said. Given the line, I was tempted to ask if I also received a complimentary earring, as if Gulf Coast Relief was being handled in this area by Hot Topic and Claire’s.

The lady at the desk fumbled with my ID for minutes I will never know again. She made a copy…or tried. She then delegated the task…to someone who themselves delegated the task. Somewhere in this office sprawl, a small card bore my face—but Lord or Lemmy only knew if I would ever see it with my own two eyes again. Meanwhile, a brisk-walking gentleman with a Prozac-colored FEMA jacket stepped up to say hello, sig heil, and “May I see your papers?” I explained that my ID card was in transit. He groaned as one who knew. He kept pushing for me to step out of line, and speak to him in his office. I asked if he was offering assistance. The answer? Not per se—only a “talk;” Red Cross handled “relief.” I informed him I would chat with him when my ID card was returned, and the “relief” part was complete. He nodded, smiled a happy Hitler smile, and heiled on down the hall.
Ten minutes later, I was still waiting for my card. The secretary filed her vulture nails. The FEMAniac returned, and asked again if I was ready for their talk—imploring me to leave with him, even if I was not. He did this at least two other times, at shorter and shorter intervals. I stood my ground; I would not go see his etchings. I was simply going to spite him now, you see. And I wasn’t leaving without my damn ID.

The chaired vulture cushion queen mounted her office chair contently once again, as if to lay her eggs. She handed my ID back to me, and said to see a lady three desks over. As I sought to take a step toward her, Count FEMA swooped upon me like a Jehovah’s Witness bat with an interest in multi-level marketing. Trying to sound friendly, in that forced flare TGIFriday’s sort of way, he beamed, “OK buddy, got your stuff? Alright! Let’s go!”

“But I need to see that lady over there now, for my relief.” (I realized too late how wrong that sounded…)

“Oh, let us take care of that. We’ll show you where to go!” (And how, I thought.)

We got to the office, wherein a small cabal of equally green-and-yellow jacketed FEMAniacs gathered like a lodge of Masons set to kill the king. I explained what I was there for, and what steps I’d undertaken up to that point. One proudly asserted, “OK—I’ll take this!” He immediately proceded to guide me out of the office, and back into the line I’d left moments-precious-moments just before. No sooner than he left, the secretary broodmare eyed me curiously, crossly, and said, “We’re done with you, hon—go over to that desk I showed you earlier.” Indeed, the lady three desks over seemed rather impatient now. I walked toward her once again, as if toward the light of death and sweet release.

This is when I was stopped once more by the earlier FEMAniac—the buoyant goose-stepper—who again yanked me from the hope of rest eternal. “I heard her say you’re done…can we do anything else for you? Would like to speak with us some more?”

Madness, I say…madness! I love it!

“I think I need to be speaking to that lady over there,” I sheepishly responded, with confusion my sole guide. “I was supposed to do that last time, and…” I did not finish. Again, he persistantly escorted me back down the hall to his waving, smiling lodge brothers. I tried explaining once again…I just wanted my frickin’ meal card. Another one among them bumped his scalp across the beaming bulb of gnosis above his brow. “Oh, I know where you need to go for that. I’ll take you there!” (Like a prayer, I thought.)

He led me back into the previous area again…straight to the spectacles and paper piles of that bemused lady of the mythical Three Desks Down…the one I had tried twice to abscond to, before I was abducted every time. She chuckled to herself. The FEMAniac threatened imminent return, and marched off to plot some other Third World military coup, or whatever it is they really do when on the clock.

This lady interupted my paperwork every five or six minutes to tell someone goodbye. I myself waved off in the distance to my hope. It was later determined that she gave me the wrong PIN for my food card. But I’ll save that for another time.

It is my opinion that FEMA should transfer their offices to the red-curtained corridors of the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks. It’s a compatable corporate culture, and hey—there’s dancing midgets. I’d easily go through all of this again for just one dancing backwards-talking midget…but then, I’m easily amused. As promised, they returned, promptly as a comet bearing mankind’s doom. This is to say that they arrived perfectly on time, but were anticipated earlier by my ever-blooming cynicism.

I followed them, content I had my goods—I also received a list of mafioso Papist charities and a bag of bathroom items that the clerk sensed I was lacking. Into the Den of FEMA I went, and sat. They thanked themselves again for their invaluable assistance; I suppose it was just as well—I hadn’t planned on it. They then went over everything that the other lady covered. I was given a few Xeroxed sheets with such previous revelations typed out again, in case I lost the other lady’s sheets I suppose. Finally, they presented me a sheet with useful information, and discussed it briefly. This sheet, of course, was their last copy, which they couldn’t part with. I was handed a workbook of some sort, as if expected to take a test. The Femites explained that they were “pretty sure” that information would be in there. “Go to the website,” one FEMAlien helpfully intoned.

I’ll give them this: they were certainly a cheerful, enthusiastic lot. They happily explained that many Katrina and Rita victims fail to receive their aid money because they do not have a permanent address. “They move out of those hotels before the check gets to them,” one Femite said, “so the checks bounce back, and we have to wait for the people to contact us to receive another, which means the process starts all over again…because if the first check bounces back, the money goes back into the pile, so to speak, and they have to apply for it all over again from scratch.”

Curiously, I inquired, “How long does it take to process a request?”

The elder FEMAlien replied, “It depends…but six weeks seems like a safe bet.”

So how many weeks of hotel stay do these people get? The Red Cross lady said, “Four weeks.”

Hmmm…am I the only one still paying attention? Let’s move on.

As I got up to leave, I made casual small talk with the FEMAsters. It was unavoidable, really. I joked that I had come out of a hurricane right in time for the New Madrid Earthquake, which the Midwest is overdue for by 100 years. They nervously chuckled amongst each other, while one said, “Oh, we’re definitely waiting for that. Have you seen the map projection with the new coastline. It’ll be something." He smiled wistfully, as if for his long-lost sweetheart back in Dixie, before that incident with the angry, leprous armadillos, the brightly-flashing vibrator, and a poor, poor decision call. The elder FEMAniac shook his head, and said, gruffly-yet-aglow, “Well, actually, the one I’m waiting for…hey, have you been to Yellowstone Park? The ground around that thing has been swelling up for years; I remember when I was…” One of his fellow FEMAtes nodded at the watch. They collectively shook my hands, and walked me out.

Determined to obtain something useful out of all of their surrealist bedlam bureaucracy, I continued doodling with the pseudo-fancy pen they lent me to take notes, and stuffed it in my pocket as I left. My notes consisted of a drawing with FEMA MIB’s harassing an alien gray in a storm-ravaged stilt-house, while an Illuminati pyramid basked in the glow of frightening incompetence.

Remember when we thought FEMA would take over the government, and eventually the world, by martial law and military coup via powers allegedly granted them by Bush Sr. and Clinton? They were a conspiracy nut’s dream. And let me tell you—we paranoiacs know our way around a nightmare. Today, I am pleased to report that our fears were greatly, grossly misattributed—FEMA, I suspect, could not police a nursing home, much less police a state; they couldn't knock over a convenience store.

The Red Cross? Understaffed and perhaps disorganized, but essentially they were functional, and well-meaning. On the other hand, Bush Sr.'s Federal Emergency Goon Squad were oily sausage-fingered bureaucrats, its higher-ups held captive by the gripping pinches of the assprints in their chairs—desks slicked like the shoreline with vaseline and coffee rings, bourbon sweat and hooker smell from their three-martini lunches... Their grips are firm by sheer virtue of Masonic handshakes and late-night disaster-picture beat-offs. Worry not; the revolution will not be televised, but rather, telemarketed.

I got my bleeding-heart moneycard, and my friggin’ ID back. I got an info-pack from madmen. And I stole FEMA’s blue inkpen...

It’s a sick, slick thrill, and I’m a sicker bastard still. But I shall be the last one standing on this hill.


TO BE CONTINUED, AND—SURPRISE!—CONCLUDED SOON…

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