So I was enjoying my weekend when one of my friends hit on a brilliant idea: drugs! Being knowledgeable about such things, he goes out and manages to score a substantial amount of a certain type of plant material. The next thing I know, I’m in an altered state of consciousness with an odd desire for Fig Newtons. Now if the commercials are to be believed, I should have immediately gone and killed someone with a car or knocked up some random female. That would have made for a more exciting story, but it could not have been any more horrifying than the reality.
We chose to forego the wacky drug hijinks and instead watch a little T.V. Surprisingly, we discovered that daytime television programming was lacking in quality. We were shocked and dismayed, but pressed on with the vital task of channel-surfing. Eventually we gravitated to the entertainment powerhouse that is C-SPAN. The Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was giving an interview on one thing or another. I’m not sure, he may have mentioned some kind of war. Well, I’m sure it wasn’t important. Besides, everything pales in comparison to the discovery I was about to make.
Many of you have probably seen photos of Rumsfeld before. I’m sure I had too. But have you ever really looked at him? This fateful day, I gazed deeply into the countenance of Rumsfeld. For those of you who may be unaware, he looks more or less like this:
As you can see, he’s not an unattractive guy. He looks confident and only mildly smarmy. He wears great suits, though I think he should take it easy on the shoulder padding. But such superficial observations were not what I noticed on this unusual day.
As I was mesmerized by his mouth-magic, I started to notice something fishy. The movement of his mouth, his face… something wasn’t quite right. That’s when it hit me- this wasn’t the Defense Secretary at all. It was a man in a Rumsfeld mask! Through some feat of plastic surgery, some unknown agency had managed to graft an authentic Rumsfeld visage onto an imposter! For a moment I wasn’t sure what to make of it. There was absolutely no possibility that I could be wrong. The only question on my mind was what I was going to do with this information. I briefly experienced the burden of the guy in that movie who is the only one who knows the Truth but nobody will believe him. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. There was conspiracy afoot. After all, could it be mere coincidence that all the letters that make up the word “conspiracy” are found in the SAME ALPHABET? One or two I could dismiss as random chance, but all of them? This was big.
I tried telling my friend, but it was too late. He had fallen for the siren song of the imposter. Who was this masked man? What sinister agenda was he hiding? Could I, a lone man, put a stop to this shadowy deception? Of course not- I wasn’t leaving that couch for another hour or two. However, I vowed to remember and do what I could to spread the Truth.
To my surprise and embarrassment, I actually did remember the incident and now I find myself dispersing it across the vast wasteland known ominously as “The World Wide Web.” An appropriate name, for it is a web. A web of deception! A web of conspiracy! Don’t beleive what you see. The Secretary of Defense is not as he seems. If Donald Rumsfeld knocks on your door, don’t let him in. If you get a letter from him, give it to your least favorite relative to open. I suspect the Rumsfeld imposter may be behind some of the most diabolical schemes of the twentieth century like the Iran/Contra affair and powered flight.
Oh yeah. And don’t do drugs, kids.
