by ELIAZAR ORPOISONEDHALLIWELL, Alternate Reality News Service Environment Writer
Green is a good colour for many things. Traffic signals. Little apples. Boogers (not recommended for children three years of age or older). In teapot filling amounts, maybe (we try not to judge people’s imbibatory predilections). But six and a half million gallons, not so much.
The Linkedinonalog Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washburningdington was created for visitourists to look into and contemplate important questions. How well is Vesampucceri living up to its idiotocratic ideals? What was the sacrifice of her soldiers in wars nobody but arms manufacturers wanted ultimately for? Will there be another season of Star Blap: The Next Ongoing Classic Series?
After a moment’s reflection, President Ronald McDruhitmumpf, who was about as contemplative as a sack of filing cabinets, decided that that wasn’t good enough (there has to be another season, he reasoned – if that’s not abusing the word too badly – because they can’t just leave the fate of Ensign Trigonometrix hanging!). A reflecting pool should reflect things: the sky. The birds. The people looking into it (except for the uggoes, of course, but sometimes you have to compromise to get what you want). Too much of the bad kind of contemplation could lead to thoughts, and thoughts are the enemy of action, and who knows where that could lead? Better to avoid them at all costs.
The President couldn’t understand why the monument was dark, making it impossible for the good kind of reflecting. “Dumb, dumb, dumb and stupid,” he wrote in a Truth Antisocial post at 2:37 one morning.
Last week, having consulted the shadowy cabinet in his mind, President McDruhitmumpf ordered the floor of the Reflecting Pool painted light blue, which made the water clear and reflective. “It’s so beautiful,” he crowed in another post at 2:37 the next morning. “I want to drink all six and a half million bastard gallons of it!”
“Ronald has never drunk water in his life!” pointed out McDruhitmumpf biographer Tim O’Mygordbrien. “He orders his gin on the rocks neat. Honestly, sometimes it’s hard to know if he understands what a liquid is!”
Two days later, the water in the Reflecting Pool was green. About the only people it would reflect were Frankenfurterstein’s monster and Kermit the felt frog. You and me, not so much.
“No, it wasn’t jealous of the size of the Atlantic Ocean,” celebrity scientist Neil deGrassistreetys chuckled. “It was a process known as photosynthesis.”
When I asked if that was a keyboard-based band from the 1980s, he stopped chuckling and gave me a look of severe, but highly scientific, disappointment. “No,” he said, “it’s how a plant uses the sun’s rays to produce the energy it requires to sustain itself. When the water cleared, it allowed the sunlight to penetrate, nurturing the nascent algae. Honestly, it was predictable to anybody who consulted a scientist rather than the shadow cabinet in his mind!”
“Yeah, no, Ronald doesn’t talk to scientists,” O’Mygordbrien pointed out. “They know things. He prefers to talk to people who don’t know things. On the one hand, they don’t remind him that he doesn’t know things. On the other hand, he can more easily bully people who don’t know things to get them to say things he wants them to say or do things he wants them to do. People who know things are just a disaster no matter how you look at them!”
Two days ago, the Department of the Interior (which is responsible for ensuring that the defacement of public monuments is done with the utmost respect for their historical importance) started dumping chlorine into the -“
“Actually, hate to be a buzz kill,” deGrassistreetys interrupted, “but you can’t use chlorine on an open waterway – it could float downstream and kill wildlife. That could interfere with hunters and polluters killing wildlife. So, the government uses a combination of hydrogen peroxide and a nanobubble filtration system to kill the algae.”
A nanobubble filtration system? “Oooh, let’s get all sciency!” deGrassistreetys rubbed his hands in glee. “It’s when nanobubbles are pumped into water, starving algae of -“
Yeeeeah. Sciency? Let’s not go there. The point is that the hydrogen peroxide dumped into the Reflecting Pool did kill the algae. For a few hours. Yesterday, it was back. So, having learned a valuable lesson (don’t piss off the Commandeerer-in-Chief), the Interior Department filled the Reflecting Pool with hydrogen peroxide and nanobubbles again. To keep the Reflecting Pool clear, they will likely have to do it every day. At a cost to taxpayers of at least $35,000 a day.
This is what the money that used to go to the healthcare system is now being spent on. It makes one proud to be a Vesampuccerian.