Further Foot Funk

My partner, A, just came back from a writer's conference in New Orleans yesterday. When she leaves town on business, she usually brings me something back from where ever she has gone. It's almost always something to eat, which is the surest way to my heart. We spend the evening catching up, and when it comes time for gifts, she brings me two bags of my favorite coffee called "Wake The F UP!" It really does just what it advertises. Then she presents me with a jar of "Volcano" foot mask. I look at the label and read: "Afraid To Take Your Socks OFF?" Yikes! So she does find my feet offensive. And after all these years she still loves me. How Sweet! So I apply the foot mask and wrap my disgusting feet in a couple of layers of Saran Wrap, just like the directions say, and wait the required thirty minutes for my dismal dogs to emerge born again, oder free and refreshed. I get bored after 2 minutes of waiting, and hobble over to my computer. My feet make this squishing sound inside the Saran Wrap, and I am careful to avoid getting it on the rug. I log onto the Washington Post and read about the current Newsweek scandal that is the talk of the media.

When I read news stories that seem sort of wrong, I get this kind of nausea. It's like I have this BSometer in my gut that tells me when someone's trying to hose me. When Bush landed on the "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier, I almost ralphed. When ever I read about Bush trying to fix Social Security, I go immediately for the Tums. When the Administration speaks about democracy and freedom, I get the double whammy, I have to eat handfulls of Tums and drink soda water.

Whatever. So I'm sitting at my desk, waiting for my foot mask to dry and I'm reading this story about the Koran, and the toilets, and the riots, and after all of this violence, Newsweek retracts the story. Why did they do that? If it's already out there, how can you take it back? They're not saying it's not true, even the Pentagon isn't saying it's not true, they're saying that whoever confirmed it in the first place is hiding out in an office in Pentagon City about to shit himself because he told the truth. And now Newsweek is getting the same treatment that Dan Rather got last summer for the desertion story. No one in the Administration said it wasn't true, they focused on the documents as being untrue. NO one challenged the facts.

So what is happening here is that we are trying to shoot the messenger.
My gut is telling me that this is one of those instances where the Pentagon doesn't dispute the facts, instead they smear the person who comes forward with the facts. Yikes. I'm feeling kind of sick to my stomach. Oh no. The Tums are downstairs. My feet are encased in foot splooge and layers of cellophane. I can’t get downstairs to get to the Tums without leaving a trail of foot by-product all over the rug. I’m stuck with my nausea, and my Saran-wrapped feet. I look around for the waste basket in case of emergency, and courageously begin to remove the cellophane from my feet.

Oh Wow! They smell like cinnamon! Minty Fresh!

But in my gut, I can still smell the stench of something foul, and I’m pretty sure it’s not my feet.