There are mice in my attic. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the mice seem to be a lot smarter than I am, and self-sacrificing, too. I have laid traps up there like I was Jacques Marquette around the Great Lakes, for pity's sake, and I only ever catch one of them. One of them always gives himself up, and then the rest of them go back to kicking the stupid human's ass for another month.
I can hear them, late at night, toasting their fallen comrades. I think they're building a monument to them out of some old bowling shirts I've got lying around up there. At this very moment, there's probably a famous anchormouse scribbling away at a lengthy tome, explaining how these mice are the greatest mice who ever lived.
I admire these mice for a number of their fine qualities, but I want them gone and, frankly, I'm obviously not up to the task. I need an expert. Somebody who's got some experience ridding people of pests.
I need Tom DeLay.
You see, I like our new full-service congressional majority. Going to the halls of Congress is like going to Wal-Mart these days. Steroids making you feel bad about baseball? Sporting Goods in Aisle 7. Tough medical decisions bothering you? Try Housewares. Other people's business? Throughout the store.
No problem is too small when it's yours, is the new motto. We deliver, is the new promise.
Ordinarily, I wouldn't want congresspersons quite this involved in the everyday decisions of my life. I don't like the whole notion of having to have my annual NCAA basketball pool scored by the Finance Committee. I can get from Frozen Food to Housewares without a continuing resolution. But, because they are so all-fired anxious to do it, well, here's my list:
We start with the mice. I want Tom DeLay to go out to the shed -- the one that sleeps 19 and has the phrase “INDIAN BINGO TONITE!” in red neon above the weed whackers -- and dig out his old coveralls and come to my house and rid me of these mice. He can trap them. He can poison them. He can put them on staff with the rest of the rodents. He can play on his little flute until the mice and all the children go marching off in one direction and Hamelin Town is redistricted into a Republican majority. I don't care.
You see, DeLay was once an exterminator, and not just as a political metaphor, either. Over the past week or so, you may have noticed, the previous jobs of various Republicans, especially the doctors, have become central to our great national debates -- i.e., the issues that make Nancy Grace sprout wings and hang from the studio ceiling. Mostly, it's been the doctors, but there's no reason to stop there. I need Tom DeLay to get up on the floor of the House of Representatives and commit himself to killing these mice for me.
Also, I want Dennis Hastert to teach me how to wrestle.
You all know that Hastert once coached wrestling. I've always wanted to learn, and he's just the guy to do it. He could even do it from Washington. That way, he wouldn't even have to see me in my current pudgy state. He could just assume that, somewhere in here, there's a 150-pound wildcat just straining to toss my neighbor into a grand amplitude. Plus, if Hastert stayed in Washington, there would be no need for us to, you know, put our arms around each other. This seems to me a bonus.
I want Bill Frist to give me a checkup.
He doesn't have to come here, either. I'll just mail him the documents. He can conclude whatever he likes from them. He can conclude that I am perishing from beriberi and need a few months in a tropical climate (that's the way I'm rooting). Or he can conclude that I'm in the pink, robust and healthy for a man of my obvious years. He can do it from the Senate floor, if he likes -- The Charles Pierce Looks Great For His Age Act of 2005. There's no need for any of that turn-your-head-and-cough constituent service, thank you very much.
I want Rick Santorum to clean up my lawn.
That's not too much to ask. The snows of a formidable New England winter have devolved into mud, much in the same way that lofty conservative rhetoric usually does, and I think Santorum is just the guy to come and spruce up the place. There are sticks and branches, and fungi, and all manner of icky dead things. I think Santorum would feel right at home out there. It would remind him of his caucus.
Charles P. Pierce is a staff writer for The Boston Globe Magazine and a contributing writer for Esquire. He also appears regularly on National Public Radio.
