by FREDERICA VON McTOAST-HYPHEN, Alternate Reality News Service People Writer
Fascism is not just about the leaders who make policies and explain to the masses how they benefit from those policies even when they don’t. Especially when they don’t. It takes thousands and thousands of lower level functionaries the masses are never likely to have heard of to make fascism function. In its dysfunctional way. It’s kind of in the job title. This is one of their stories.
Calendria Lickenchikensauce likes everything to be just so. On the wall of her office in Homeland Insecurity Investigations, a division of the Department of Injustice, a sampler of the phrase “A place for everything and everything in its place” hangs under a painting of a shark, mouth open, body twisting for attack. She likes a cup of tea (130 degrees, plus or minus 10) waiting on her desk when she arrives for work in the morning (typically six am, which requires her assistant to be there before the sun comes up). Six pens (four blue, two red) lie on her desk next to a notepad; they are always firmly capped, their lids pointing east towards Jerusalem.
Could her…fussiness bordering on anality have anything to do with the fact that Calendria was raised by hippies? (In the 1980s her parents were late bloomers.) “No, I was born craving order,” she responded with all the warmth of a member of the last Mayibefranklin Expedition.
Calendria’s job is to vet legal documents for HII before they enter the public record. These include: indictments, discovery and the expense accounts of agency employees. “The key to ensuring order is to be thorough,” she explained, with all the warmth of the battery of a car that hadn’t been used in over 30 years. Expense accounts? “You can be sure that if there is any hanky panky, some enterprising…journalist will make it public. I flag these things so that my betters have time to prepare a response.”
The furniture in her office had to be scaled down to fit her four foot four frame; it sometimes strikes visitors as more appropriate for a child’s tea party. A tea party with subpoena power. This may explain why the moment I appeared for our interview, Calendria jumped out from behind her desk, took me by the hand and led me to the basement cafeteria. (I was grateful. I am a…girthful woman by nature, but even were I not, I cannot imagine sitting on one of those teeny tiny chairs would be comfortable.)
Most recently, Calendria signed off on the warrant to raid the home of Dumbopratic Representative Ilhan Omarikayyam to find evidence that she was not a legal citizen of Vesampucceri. She and President Ronald McDruhitmumpf had been at odds from the moment they were both elected: Omarikayyam was an outspoken critic of the President, while President McDruhitmumpf claimed she ate the pets of her neighbours and was actually married to an elephant named Mohammed.
I asked if Calendria had flagged the possibility that the raid was politically motivated. “I hate politics,” Calendria told me with all the warmth of the iceberg that sank the Titanic. “Hate them! Hate them! Hate them! Hate them! Politics are messy. Very messy. They get in your hair and ooze all around your fingers, and after you’ve had to deal with them, you have to have a nice, long soak to feel like yourself again. No, I did not flag the possible political motivation of the search warrant. I deal in facts, not…politics!”
But wouldn’t the possibility of political interference undermine the case if it actually went to trial? Calendria’s shoulders looked like they were ready to shrug, nothing but an iron will holding them back. “That’s for a jury to decide,” she told me with all the warmth of a politician who had to make a concession speech after losing an election by 37 points.
I noticed that Calendria played a rosary over her fingers as she talked. She explained that she had been raised in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but broke with it as a child because it was too silly, too chaotic, too…messy (she so hated the CFSM that she would never be able to look a plate of linguine in the eye again). She was drawn to Catholicism because it gave her the structure she craved; the fact that she acquired a taste for sacrificial wafers soon after converting was just a pleasant bonus.
Some pundits (a group which might have included me if I hadn’t been relegated to…this beat) have suggested that the raid was meant to hurt the Dumboprats chances in the coming mid-term elections. If so, is there a point to continuing legal action now that Representative Omarikayyam won reelection?
Calendria didn’t shrug (it would have ruined her feng froid). “I just process documents,” she commented with all the warmth of a vacuum tube. “What happens after they leave my office is out of my control…”