One Down, Three To Go
Someone’s broken into a Children’s Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota and stolen a pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in the making of the Wizard of Oz. The museum’s curator ruefully recalled the encounter with the suspect, posing as a travelling farm implement salesman stranded in Grand Rapids.
“I told him he could sleep in the barn (where the museum is located) as long as he locked the door and didn’t open it when my daughter inevitably came knocking. Little did I know that guys who are interested in Judy Garland’s clothing items, well, wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about my daughter.”
It would be an amusing tale if that’s as far as it went. However, a review of the farmer’s DairyCam tapes (installed, he maintained, for security purposes, but, well…) disclosed the following image of the perp:
FBI agents ran the image through their database of men who have taken flying lessons in the last six months AND checked out the latest Harry Potter book from the library, came up empty, and left town without comment. However, Mindy Lingstad, a copy editor for the Grand Rapids Lutefisk, recognized the individual as Vice President Dick Cheney, and the game was afoot.
The article states that, in all, there were four pairs of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland during the course of making the film. Speculation leaked from the most forward-thinking liberal think tank in residence at the Blue Moon Tavern in Seattle, WA centered on a theory that the administration, following loosely on the theme of the Lord Of The Rings, was attempting to acquire all four pairs of the coveted ruby slippers.
Once obtained, the Chosen Four - George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and Condi Rice - would slip them on, click them 3 times in unison, and whisk the Administration from it’s insoluble conundrum in Iraq to the friendlier climes of Kansas, where the tenets of evolution would not be applied to their pre-Cambrian concepts of foreign policy.
In a related rumor, it is speculated that the Administration is importuning NASA to nudge tropical storm Katrina towards New York, there to deposit an unprepossessing wood frame house on Hillary Clinton as she bicycled from the Bolshevik Nostalgia Museum to a rally for Cindy Sheehan. Just for insurance.
And Toto, too, if Roseanna Arquette can play Dorothy, and gets it on with the Tin Man.
