Vice President

ArgT's VP Pick Reveals His Thoughts

I was headed towards my office on the mezzanine, returning from CVS where I had bought a new shoelace, when I bent down to repair my shoe. A squirrel came up to me and introduced himself as ArgT.1 He said he was running for President of the United States, and his poll numbers, properly scaled, were rising like the escalator.

ArgT asked me to be his running mate. I2 asked how I was qualified in the matter, as it seemed to require more skill than repairing shoelaces. But I warmed3 to the idea when ArgT expounded about how I met the minimum requirements:

    1. I was “buff”, with good hair. This put me in the big league that previous VP candidates such as Dan Quayle and Al Gore.4 ArgT also liked the fact that I did not smoke.5
    2. I wore a suit. ArgT expressed perplexity about why outer covering mattered for governing, but focus groups had indicated it was a necessity. (Indeed both the suit and “buff” had been declared both necessary and sufficient by his campaign manager, V.)
    3. I would balance the ticket species-wise, and also provide city-wise balance to ArgT's humble rural background.
    4. I came prepackaged, with all accessories detailed on the box. There would be no surprises like Eagleton in '72.

ArgT handed me a folded6 copy of his campaign material. I had reservations, since so far the experience was surreal -- a talking squirrel picking me as his running mate -- but I reflected that many VP picks seem surreal.

I seemed a perfect fit, so I accepted, and ArgT said “Howie, we'll make a great team,” and invited me back to his house7 to plan our press announcement. The people will be so excited!8.

1I stared in disbelief when the squirrel first talked to me. But he seemed like a plausible candidate. Though his eyes lacked the fermata eyebrows of a philosopher, the size of his thoughts was immeasurable, and he seemed to have the support of vox populi.

2Most people remain ignorant about the secret life of vowels. As a child I was fascinated by the book U and I: a true story. Personally, I would like to be a schwa, for they are never stressed, and my life seems quite hectic of late, because I had to spend my lunch break getting shoelaces. The schwa is woefully under-recognized in today's society, considering that it is the most basic of vowels and the default form to which all others degrade when slurred in haste. Imagine my delight to discover that outside of my native language, I could find 28 vowels which could then be additionally contorted into new variations on the sound. I spent an entire day in front of the mirror practicing these wonderful new sounds, until L arrived and requested the mirror to apply her lipstick, and I could no longer derive quite as much joy in experimenting with sounds.

3The room temperature of the mezzanine never varied. It were as if the entrance was a checkpoint for the weather, allowing neither heat nor cold to pass through. I believe that I could light a whole box of matches there and not feel any additional warmth.

4My political education was limited, but when I was little, my bedtime story was the everlasting story of Nory the Tory, an American expatriate, considered by many to be the second coming of Margaret Thatcher.

5The anthologist for this campaign must record ArgT's distaste for human smoke. He said it left a stinky nicotine condensate on his fur that was hard to wash out. Washing nicotine fumes from fur is not something I have experienced, but I imagine it is akin to the frustration of removing beer and cooking smells from a wool coat. ArgT is unsurprised that some humans would be so imbecile as to purposefully inhale toxic fumes known to the state of Californa to cause birth defects and cancer, yet are still allowed, nay encouraged, to vote in the upcoming election.

6 It might have been a double fold. Definitely not a quadruple fold, which induces stresses on the cellulose fibers that would consitute an assault on paper, if paper were alive and had status as people. I later learned that some paper entities are, in fact, legally people.

7 I once visited a domicile with a terrible case of termites. It was a house of holes. I spent the entire time inspecting the bits of dusty waste fallen on the floor around me in gradually accumulating stalagmites, which I was careful to not disturb with even the slightest popcorn-scented breath from my lips. I was distraught when my host swept up the finest of these piles into a metal pan and disposed of it, each particle catching the light of the setting sun as it tumbled into the dark plastic recesses of the trash can, wherein the bag billowed and refused to properly consume the refuse, because the trash-bag trick had not been practiced properly.

8 ArgT For President Media Relations and ArgT's campaign manager9 owe an apology to Nicholson Baker, but probably won't give it because they are too busy with other things, like contemplating the ability to write a book that is mostly footnotes and considering if the same format can be applied to their memoirs, which they have not yet been offered a book advance for and are quite baffled what the reason behind it could be, and if it would be at all profitable to make a secondary career writing books not appropriate for high schoolers, rather than ones high schools are forced to read in an admittedly rather bizarre institution with relatively lax rules on such content compared to other similarly age-targeted institutions in the vicinity.

9 I found ArgT's manager, V, was far abler than ArgT's media relations person (nepotically her father) at capturing my style, indeed my essence, in these footnotes.

ArgT for President.

When Rationality Is Not Enough!

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