The Lizzard of Ozz

By Dr. Rufus T. Dingleberry

The Lizzard of Ozz is a rollicking satire of Washington DC, the Federal Government and the Military-Industrial Complex. Think of it as The Marx Brothers go to Washington DC. Eric Blair comes back from a job interview for a job he doesnt want, gets drunk, falls off a bar stool, knocks himself out and has a dream. Sound familiar? He trades places with the presidents son, meets the President and First Lady, gets chased by a gold-digger, meets the evil Secretary of Agriculture, falls in love, goes to the Pentagon, meets the evil Secretary of Defense, announces for president, goes to a hippie wedding, meets the evil Secretary of Health and Human Services, gets chased by all of them through a theater and brewery and winds up back in the Oval Office for a cat fight. He gets knocked out again and wakes up in a hospital. And there is a surprise ending. Enjoy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479701223

Dr. Rufus T. Dingleberry

Dr. Dingleberry worked for over 30 years in the vineyards of the Washington DC Military-Industrial Complex as a technical writer. He has advanced college degrees but prefers to remain penniless so he can be attacked by midget biker chicks in sleazy strip joints. He left the DC area after accruing well over 50 parking tickets and now resides in Shmoolabe, TX. He prefers to remain anonymous so he can watch the zoo in peace.

Book preview

The Lizzard

of Ozz

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Dr. Rufus T. Dingleberry

Copyright © 2012 by Dr. Rufus T. Dingleberry.

ISBN:      Softcover         978-1-4797-0121-6

               Ebook            978-1-4797-0122-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

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Contents

Forward

Chapter 1    Suicide Note

Chapter 2    Ozz

Chapter 3    Interview

Chapter 4    Varsity Grill

Chapter 5    Billy Gooch

Chapter 6    Press Party

Chapter 7    Mr. and Mrs. President

Chapter 8    The Washington Prosecutor

Chapter 9    Resume And Development Plan

Chapter 10    Dr. Arnold Ziffle, Secretary of Agriculture Department (USDA)

Chapter 11    Dr. Edward Zeller, Secretary of Defense Department

Chapter 12    Dinner With Terri and Jerry Scammin

Chapter 13    The Wedding

Chapter 14    Marcia Stewart, Secretary of Health and Human Services Department

Chapter 15    Tammany Hall

Chapter 16    The Computer Zoo

Chapter 17    Natasha Calls

Chapter 18    The Real Billy as a Teaching Assistant

Chapter 19    Eric Meets Betty Sue Again and Gets Chased Through A Microbrewery

Chapter 20    The Real Billy Gets Fired From His Teaching Gig

Chapter 21    Eric and Betty Sue Meet Natasha Again and Get Chased Through A Theater

Chapter 22    The Oval Office

Chapter 23    The Hospital

Chapter 24    The End

Chapter 25    Suspicious but Unconfirmed Sightings

This book is dedicated to

Dave, Nancy, Bob and Susan

Man plans and God laughs.

Jewish proverb

Life is a tragedy for those who feel,

And a comedy for those who think.

Horace Walpole

Prime Minister of England

There is no distinctly Native American criminal class except Congress.

Mark Twain

If you want a friend in Washington DC—

Get a dog.

Harry Truman

President of the USA

Forward

Dr. Rufus T. Dingleberry was an employee of mine for several years, but I knew him 10 years before that when we worked together for another company. Altogether I have known Dr. Dingleberry for over 15 years and he is absolutely the worst employee I have ever met. He is incompetent, slovenly and obnoxious. He would rather cut his own throat than do a decent days work and his work is just terrible. It looks like a three year old did it. When he isn’t ogling and saying obscene things to the female employees, he is picking his nose and farting. The only reason he didn’t give crabs to the whole office is nobody would sleep with the sorry sonuvabitch; although I did see him once have carnal knowledge of a Guernsey. Additionally, he spreads hate and discontent among the other employees and has a stupid opinion on every subject. He could not shut his mouth if his life depended on it. I rapidly came to the conclusion that Dr. Dingleberry could not do more damage to my company than if he had been a paid agent of disruption in the employ of a competing high-tech firm.

Obviously, I would never have hired him if he were not my own illegitimate son by a Filipino stripper whom I impregnated on shore leave in a drunken stupor. Rufus asked me to write this foreword for his book. I sure hope the book sells so that he will stop calling me.

Chapter 1

Suicide Note

My name is Eric Blair and this is my suicide note. I don’t blame anybody for my death. Well, yes I do—but I’ll get to that in a minute. Firstly I think that you should have the right music to listen to when reading something as important as a suicide note. I suggest Find A River by Lowell George from his Thanks I’ll Eat It Here album. Put on the music and then begin reading. And if you want to smoke a doobie while reading, that’s okay too. I suggest Jamaican Red Bud as the weed of choice. And as your favorite alcoholic beverage—I’d pick Mickey’s malt liquor—a good, cheap drunk. But don’t drink it if you’ve just been eating pickles—sweet gherkins especially. Okay. Get all that together and then start reading.

I don’t blame my father, Commodore Schnouzer, who gave me every opportunity. I don’t blame my mother, who tried to love me despite her terrible mental illness. I don’t blame my sister even though she is an irredeemable hippie. I don’t blame my life-long friend Dave who I owe at least a million dollars; his brother Bob who I owe at least two million dollars; Dave’s wife Nancy who feeds us and puts up with our shenanigans with Buddhic calm; Dave’s little sister Susan, who just hopes that we will stop terrorizing her boyfriends and embarrassing her. I don’t even blame the five women and two goats crazy enough to sleep with me and then run screaming into rush hour traffic seeking the sweet release of death.

No, I blame the French—and the Arabs. They blame us for everything, so I’m going to blame them for my suicide. Fuck ‘em. And I blame the Washington Redskins for being such an unrelenting disappointment after Coach Joe Gibbs left, exceeded only by the Chicago Cubs, the Washington Wizards, the entire city of Cleveland and the Roman Catholic clergy.

You see—I have given up hope. I cannot see any part of my life getting any better; especially with the French and the Arabs conspiring to destroy America and my life. How can the French destroy America? Well, the French New Wave soft-core romance porn of the ‘60s led directly to the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Who else but Bill Clinton, himself a product of the ‘60s besotted with free-love romanticism, would risk his presidency and all of America for (and I’m not making this up) Monica Lewinsky? The best thing about Monicagate was that it showed that Jewish American Princesses (JAPs) could be just as stupid and slutty as chicks from any other ethnic group.

And all droughts in America can be directly attributable to the Arabs; who have a direct phone-line to Allah and thereby cause the desiccation of American cropland in retaliation for us enjoying ourselves in modernity; and the Redskins’ losing ways. For it is written that even Allah is a Redskins fan (He enjoys the smash-mouth NFC East), and enjoys a well-executed Flea-Flicker better than any of the other Supreme Deities. Buddha doesn’t even like football. (Strange—considering his physique.) When the Redskins lose, Allah waxes wroth upon the American Heartland via drought. Therefore is the correct execution of the Prevent Defense directly tied to the fecundity of rutabagas.

I had, at one time, a bright future. I was on my way to earning Bachelor degrees in at least half a dozen majors; with minors in home growing pot, home brewing beer and home making wine, and oh, yeah, flashing the freshmen co-eds. I had just gotten a new job and was looking forward to something resembling a nice, boring career. And then it all went to hell.

It all started about 10 years ago when I was driving to a job interview in the Washington DC area where I lived . . .

Chapter 2

Ozz

If I was God, Eric thought idly, I’d take the Antarctic continent from the bottom of the world where it’s not doing anybody any good, and put it in the middle of the Pacific where plants, animals and people could live on it.

Eric was stuck in traffic, on the Washington DC beltway, on a broiling hot mid-summer morning and was daydreaming again. Eric’s car overheated every time he turned on the air-conditioner so he had to turn on the heater to cool off the engine—which only made him hotter and his life more intolerable.

Ahhh, DC. The District of Columbia—Baghdad on the Potomac, OZZ on the Tiber. Eric called this swamp OZZ—the Official Zone. Washington had literally been a swamp when the Founding Fathers decided to build it just below the small village of Georgetown. Today OZZ is no longer a malarial swamp, just a moral one. People no longer die of malaria, they die of thwarted ambition. Every high school and college class president in North America came to OZZ. And every one of them was absolutely sure that their every utterance contained the wisdom that would save the planet. Obviously such people are not kind, unselfish, caring, nurturing listeners who live their life according to the Golden Rule outside of the desire to be the one with all the gold who makes the rules. Your average street-smart Washington DC bureaucrat knew that there wasn’t much percentage in altruism and bravery—greed, theft, lying and obstruction—yes, altruism and bravery—no. Therefore DC was the home to more haughty, condescending, contemptuous, pompous assholes in Christendom outside of a headwaiters convention in Paris.

The best illustration of over-inflated egos is the following story told about Dr. Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, during the Nixon administration, who, it was said during the height of his fame in the early ‘70s, hailed a taxicab outside the State Department building one night in Foggy Bottom.

Where to, Doc? asks the driver.

It doesn’t matter. I am needed everywhere.

Never have so many DC bureaucrats deserved a collective pie in the face thrown by so many of their fellow citizens for accomplishing so little. If federal Washington had its own football team, called the Bureaucrats, they would come in late, make up their own rules and do nothing. The only difference between the IRA and the IRS is the IRA admit they’re terrorists. What’s the difference between the Mafia and the CIA? The Mafia dress better. Not only is OZZ the place where no good deed goes unpunished; perceived slights or imagined carbuncles of unkindness frequently prompt preemptive attacks. OZZ is also a maddeningly disorganized, disparate archipelago of constantly conflicting and colluding atolls. And as anyone who has ever worked in an office quickly learns—the biggest atoll always wins. Each executive branch cabinet agency operated as an independent Balkan state in a zero sum game; aggressively trying to steal budget money from their enemies by the time-honored bureaucratic tactics of foot dragging, stone walling, press leaking, lying, cover up, investigation, scandal and, most entertainingly of all, bluffing.

And of course there was the endless mating dance that was Capitol Hill. Not only did corporate lobbyists corrupt elected and career federal officials with bribes—called honoraria. Just as often, venal elected and career officials shook down the corporations by selling their vote to the highest bidder. This was consensual, symbiotic legislative corruption. Both parties kissed with their eyes wide open.

There were two kinds of integrity in this world. There was the integrity of the elected official whose motto was If you can’t take their money, drink their whisky, screw their women and still vote against them—you don’t belong in Washington DC. And then there was the integrity of the corrupt politician or bureaucrat whose loyalty remained to their first corruptor, regardless of the higher bribes to be had. This is the loyalty of the married man to his first mistress—something that could be misconstrued as misguided love by somebody else’s wife or constituents. Someone who sold out to the highest bidder was considered gauche, crass, a whore, a fine professional. Some of these fine professionals became famous. Eric didn’t want to become famous. He just wanted to appear on TV so that women all over North America could jump up and yell I refused to fuck that guy!

Of course, Eric was born and raised by federal bureaucrats. His grandma asked his name. He mailed her a form—in triplicate. He told her he would get back to her in 60 to 90 days. He was 6.

There were liberals and conservatives in OZZ—but it didn’t mean much. The old joke was that a conservative was a liberal who had been mugged; and a liberal was a conservative who had been fired. However, the only real party was the bipartisan federal bureaucracy party, whose only political platform was the status quo, only more of it—the maintenance and expansion of as many federal jobs as possible at all times. And remember, members of the armed forces are federal employees.

How can you tell if a congressman has died? The kickback drops from his hand.

Eric had just come from another of an endless series of interviews for jobs he didn’t really seem to want, and couldn’t seem to stop being interviewed for; writing training materials for the ever-metastasizing military-industrial complex. His life just seemed like poorly organized out-patient therapy. Eric was a life-long college-bum who was working on four—or was it five—majors at the University of Maryland at College Park, Maryland. The last time he counted it was poli-sci, biology, history, and radio-TV; called RATV (pronounced ratvee). He might have added paleontology to it, he couldn’t remember. It really didn’t matter much. He would do anything to keep from graduating and joining the real world. Eric’s father, Commodore (retired) Emiliano Zapata