At the end-of-year board meeting for ScrooMoCo, Chairman Scrooge delivered the yearly financial projections. “We’ve slashed our workforce and are earning record profits this year!”

A great cheer arose from the board.

Suddenly, the room fell into darkness and the ghostly apparition of an older man in a suit, covered in chains, appeared above the long conference table.

“My God, that’s our dead founding partner, Jacob Marley!” Scrooge cried.

“ScrooMoCo Board members,” the spirit moaned. “You’re all greedy bastards who’ve caused great economic imbalance in the world and caused terrible needless pain to the masses. When you die, you will suffer the same fate as me if you don’t repent and stop your heinous actions now. These are the chains I forged in life and believe me, they freakin’ clash with my Gucci and make getting spa treatments a bitch.”

Several board members gasped.

“You will be visited by three spirits tonight. Heed their warning or you will suffer fashion humiliation for all eternity!”

Marley vanished and the lights returned.

Chairman Scrooge snorted. “Cratchit, call maintenance and get the electrical fixed PRONTO.”

Bob Cratchit, his secretary, winced. “ But we fired the maintenance staff and outsourced the work to India.”

“Then you do it!”

The overhead lights flickered. A great crash of thunder made all the board members jump. Standing on the conference table before them was Bing Crosby.

“Hello Board Members, I’m the spirit of Christmas Past and this number goes out to all you greedy robber barons,” he announced and then broke out singing I’m Dreaming of a Rich, White and Male Christmas.

The board members clapped. “Do Swinging on a Star!”

“No, I’m here to show you how it used to be, before all you mega-corporations took over the Earth. Behold, the past!” Bing pointed to the wall behind the table.

A large movie screen appeared showing black and white footage of American factory workers on assembly lines. A happy family of six eating at a backyard barbecue. A doctor making a house call. Kids walking into shining new schools. A young couple buying their first house. A stay-at-home mother working in her kitchen of gleaming appliances.

“My doctor still makes house calls,” a board member huffed.

“Yes, and my children attend schools just like that one. Nothing has changed.”

Bing shook his head. “That used to be the life for 99% of our population. Not the 1% it is today.”

“It’s their fault for being poor,” sneered a board member.

“I give up. And now, I’d like to introduce that man-about-town, that haunting spirit you’ll all come to know and love, the Ghost of Christmas Present. Take it away, President Barack Obama.”

Bing disappeared and in his place stood Obama.

The board members screamed in fear. “A Democrat!”

“But he’s not dead,” one argued.

“Hey folks, easy does it. I’m just trying to get re-elected and this seemed like a great way to get my message across to you since none of you pay attention to what I say anymore.” He gestured to the back wall. “Behold, the present!”

A succession of film clips depicted gigantic crowds of protesters in Madrid, London, New York and Oakland. A close-up on the signs revealed the messages: We are the 99%. Corporations Must Atone. Tax the 1%. Make Jobs Not War on Middle Class and Working Poor. The images shifted to a school kid reading a torn book and sitting at a broken desk next to a bucket catching a leak in a dingy classroom. Hungry children and mothers standing in long lines at soup kitchens. Thousands of unemployed crowding job fairs. A row of boarded-up houses with brown lawns and foreclosure signs. A homeless encampment under a freeway.

“Glad I’m not poor,” commented a board member.

“Hear, hear.”

“Me, too,” said Obama. “But if we don’t change things and right now, there isn’t going to be any rich people because the poor will rise up and kill us all. Didn’t you guys study history? Remember Marie Antoinette? While you guys sip Cristal with me, people are starving out there. People can’t afford health care, homes or educations. Over the past fifteen years, you bastards have taken ALL the money. You weren’t satisfied with an extra 50% or even 75% more money than your workers, you had to give yourselves 298% raises while they only got 4%. You blew it. And your iPods and Prozac and beer and NFL championships aren’t distracting them anymore. They’re onto our game.”

A board member yawned. “I’m sorry, did you just say something? I wasn’t listening.”

“Forget it. Here’s your final spirit visitor for the day, the Ghost of Christmas Future.”

Obama vanished and a sweet little Mexican girl in pigtails and a pink dress stood on the table.

All the members shrieked in terror. “An illegal immigrant!”

The little girl nodded. “You should be afraid. Shortly, I’m going to be the majority. And you’re totally screwing me over right now. Behold, the future!”

A post-Apocalyptic landscape appeared onscreen. Mansions burned in the background. In the foreground, well-dressed people ran from pitchfork-wielding crowds. The camera panned over a burnt and cracked sign: Town of Atherton.

The board members gasped, horror-struck.

“Act now or soon it will be too late,” the little girl said and vanished.

The screen disappeared and the lights came on.

Scrooge frowned. “Wow. That was frightening.” He rubbed his chin. “So should we pay our fair share of taxes, hire more people, stop outsourcing, help rebuild America’s infrastructure, improve our education system, overhaul our healthcare system and hold big banks accountable for their crimes?”

Silence fell over the room.

One board member held up his hand. “How about we give ourselves big raises and take the rest of the money now while we still can?”

Scrooge’s eyes lit up. “All those in favor?”

“Aye!” the board members replied in unison.

Bob Cratchit muttered under his breath, “Goosed again.”

©2011, Janet Periat

You’ve seen it in the news. Everyone’s talking about it. All the big publishing houses are dinosaurs about to be turned into fossil fuel. Does this mean you won’t be able to read great works? No. Does this mean the end of reading? Hardly. Will we miss the Big Guys? Hell no. And as far as I’m concerned, they deserve to die.

Big Publishing is scared these days, and it should be. Years of author abuse is finally coming back on the publishing houses. Years of exploitation, special “reserves” they withhold out of royalties that mysteriously vanish, taking finished works hostage, prohibiting authors from writing in their chosen genre — the list of abuses is endless. What’s happening now is karma. And it’s long overdue.

I read an article in the March 20 issue of Newsweek called “Please Stop Writing,” by Susan Cheever, theorizing about why popular authors’ later books aren’t good. Cheever supposed that the author ran out of ideas. That maybe authors only had one or two good books in them. That their imagination “… waxed and waned …” after the first two.

I used to wonder the same thing. I’ve had the same discussions with friends. We all liked a particular author’s first few books. Then the books got derivative and stale and we lost interest. Now that I’ve been exposed to the Dark Side of Publishing, I know the reason why. And it’s not the author’s fault.

Authors don’t choose what they write. They write what the publishers buy. And publishers want a product they can count on. If you write a blockbuster, they’ll want more just like that first one. And you’d better not deviate from your formula or they won’t print it. Publishing houses consider you a product brand. Your product must contain certain plot elements and certain types of characters. Period. If you’ve been writing thrillers, they won’t want your new mystery series. Only if you’re a proven best-selling author do you get the opportunity to write another series under a pen name.

But if your last book didn’t sell well, watch out. Even if you have a five-book contract, they may decide not to publish the rest of the series. And you may not be able to sell the books anywhere else. I have many friends who’ve written books they’re not allowed to sell. Ever. Anywhere. To anyone.

I have a friend who wrote a series of eight books about a vampire battling a werewolf. In the ninth book, she killed off the werewolf. Which at the time was exactly what the publisher wanted. She finished the book — which takes most of us upwards of eight months — and sent it to her editor. This was when she was informed that the publishing house had changed its mind about the series and decided it wanted to feature the werewolf in a new line of books. What about the book she’d just finished? It got shelved. When she wanted to publish it as an ebook to promote her series, her request was denied. No one may read that book. She has no rights to sell it anywhere else. It will forever remain in Story Limbo. Eight months of work flushed down the publishing toilet.

One friend sold her first book for cheap and signed such a terrible contract, she had to sell all future books for the same price to the publisher. And she was not allowed to write in that same genre unless it was for them. Screwed for life.

The latest rip-off by publishers? All new contracts have a standard clause that requires you to sign away the electronic rights to your work FOR LIFE. Since it’s pretty clear that most future book sales will be in electronic form, this means, in effect, the authors will lose the copyright to their work. Sounds illegal, doesn’t it? Not if the publishers have the right lawyers. Giant multinational corporations can do anything they want.

Frank and I personally lost $7,500 of royalties “held in reserve” from one of his For Dummies books. When the publishing house sold the line to another publisher, Frank’s money mysteriously vanished with no explanation. Hiring a lawyer would have cost more than we’d have recovered.

The good news in all this hell? Authors don’t need publishers any longer. A romance writer friend of mine who was rejected by all the big houses decided to publish her work in ebook form on Amazon and on Barnes and Noble. In six months, she sold 100,000 copies and made six figures. Granted, not everyone will have that kind of success, but still. Who needs the big guys? Not me.

My latest thriller, Caught, was recently rejected by all the large publishers. Not because the book wasn’t good. An editor at Penguin said, “This book is a real page-turner!” They all seemed to like it. But here’s the quote that summed it all up for me. St. Martin’s Press said: “I enjoyed the voice and Emma’s character, but the storyline just didn’t grab me in a big commercial way. Ultimately I just didn’t have a big vision for this one.” Because my book didn’t throttle her with multimillion dollar possibilities, she rejected me.

And thank God. My agent Laurie McLean said: “I think you’re lucky. I would have hated to see what they’d have done to your characters and voice. You need to get your work out there. Your readers are going to love it.” So, on the advice of my agent and fueled by a fear of being ripped off by a corporation, that’s exactly what I have done.

Caught is now available as an ebook on Amazon and on Barnes and Noble. Caught will also be available in print soon. In early 2012, the next two books in the series, Marked and Payback, will be released. My four-time award-winning fairy tale, Cinderolda, should be out next month. Check back here for updates!

Let the Time of the Author begin. Happy reading!

©2011 Janet Periat

To achieve the American Dream, you must be successful. But our current definition of success is unattainable for most of us. Just when you think you have everything covered, the rates go up or you are fired or disqualified. Or you have a birthday. And then you become a “loser”. According to the current groupthink, the vast majority of us are losers.

To be considered successful, you must first and foremost make tons of cash. You must have a fantastic, exciting job. You must be CEO or at the very least, Senior VP. You must own a four-bedroom house, a family sedan, a motorcycle and/or a boat, and a two-seater sports car. You must decorate the house with new draperies and furnishings every two years. The house has to be kept spotless and smelling fresh, the latter hopefully through a little plug-in gizmo that spews artificial lemon verbena scent throughout your travertine tile-floored manse.

Your children must be stellar scholars, captains of the football team, chess champions and violin prodigies. You must have good health insurance, belong to a gym, and have a Bowflex in your heated garage. You must send your children to Ivy League schools. You must buy every new gadget on the market within 24 hours of its release. You must take expensive vacations and have a second home in the country—or at the very least, take cruises and own a timeshare in Tahoe or Hawaii.

For women there are a few extra things you need to be successful. Number One, you can’t age. Number Two, you must be a size one. You have to wear the absolute current fashion: nothing with more than a two-month shelf life. High heels are a must. Don’t forget the foundation, stylish make-up, perfectly coiffed and dyed hair, and polished fingernails. You must be tanned, gym-toned, get Botox injections and look perfect at all times. And don’t get caught driving the minivan. So embarrassing!

These out-of-reach goals are even more ridiculous considering that basic survival is hardly achievable anymore. My generation has been spending what’s left of their devastated 401Ks taking care of their elderly parents, putting their kids through college and trying to pay down an underwater mortgage. Health care is unaffordable for the majority. How the hell are we supposed to pay for the new roof or sewer line repairs or the dog’s hip operation?

But the worst component of the devastation of the middle class is that our culture considers us all failures. No matter how hard you worked, no matter if you went to graduate school, no matter if you followed all the rules, if you still came up short, you are a loser.

So where do we go from here? First, we need to realize that we are not losers. We’re experiencing a global shift in wealth distribution, and corporate greed on a scale that hasn’t been seen since the 1920s. The skyrocketing cost of health care is busting the budgets of the self-employed and making it too expensive for businesses to hire people over 50. Jobs are becoming obsolete at record pace. None of this is our fault. All of these factors are beyond our control. But how we deal with these changes is within our control. We need to become much more flexible in the ways we earn our living and how we spend our money. We need to save more. But more importantly, we need to redefine success.

We need to realize that society’s “markers of success” are made up, mostly by advertisers. And that the goals focus on the external. Whatever you do to your body will not bring you deep, lasting satisfaction. You will still age and therefore “fail”. That new Mercedes is used the moment you drive it off the lot. Spending hours of time distracting yourself with TV, smart phones and iPods will only make you feel more isolated. You actually must interact with people face-to-face to satisfy your basic, human need to connect with others. Two-word text messages do not promote bonding. They promote ADD.

Happiness comes from our interior lives, not our outside shell. Happiness comes from finding meaning in our lives. Beyond our basic survival, happiness can’t be bought.

The new definition of success should start with some questions: What will put food on my table and bring meaning to my life? Do I really need to own a house? What do I really need? What do I like? Not what you think you should like, but what you actually like. Work on widening your choices. Due to the current economic upheaval, you may need to change careers or move. Consider everything and everywhere that interests you, no matter what anyone else thinks. Stretch. Try something you never thought you could do. And if you’re broke, don’t be too picky. Do what it takes to survive and forget how you look. People who think lesser of you because you took a food server job after you lost your corporate position aren’t your friends. Besides, you never know where any job will lead. You never know where your next opportunity may come from.

Palliative care specialist Bronnie Ware interviewed many people on their deathbeds. She asked them what their regrets were. The number one response? I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

When you’re dying and reviewing your life, what will you be thinking? Will you be proud of your McMansion, Gucci slippers and plasma screen TV? Or the hours you spent in a tanning bed? Or the years you spent staring at the tiny screen on your smart phone instead of experiencing the world around you?

The American Dream has been co-opted by our corporate-profit-driven culture and has become the American Nightmare. We deserve better. Our dreams should emphasize emotional fulfillment, not isolate us and make us feel like failures.

©2011, Janet Periat

JIM LEHRER: Senator Obama, can you outline your approach to solving the current financial disaster?

OBAMA: This country’s been gutted like a trout by rich corporate robbers and the morons in the White House. John McCain is so stupid, he thinks that running this country exactly the way George Bush is will solve all our problems.

McCAIN: (red-faced and shaking) See? He’s an elitist! He thinks he’s better than you! Are you honestly going to vote for a black man? Especially one who thinks he’s more important and smarter than you!? Not only is he black, he’s a Muslim-loving, gun-hating, baby-killing machine! Why do you think there’s such a close resemblance to his name and Osama Bin Laden’s? They are the same person! Have you ever noticed how dark Osama Bin Laden is, or should I call him, Obama Bin Laden?

OBAMA: (glowering at McCAIN) John, you f**kin’ crazy old man, shut the f**k up. You belong in a nursing home, not the Oval Office. I mean, look at you, I’m worried you won’t live long enough to complete this debate.

McCAIN: (purple-faced) I’m experienced, not old! I’ve been there! I’ve done it all!

OBAMA: I am so sick of your crap. You’ve changed your mind so much and been so many different people in the past months, we’re gonna have to start calling you Senator Sybil. I think if someone said they’d trade you the presidency for your wife, you’d take the deal.

McCAIN calms, narrows eyes, rubs chin. Appears to be thinking. Coming alive, he glares at OBAMA.

McCAIN: Oh, Christ, you take the graft too, don’t give me that crap. I’m not the only whore in the Capitol. You’d bend over for ten grand just like I would.

OBAMA: Sure, I suck the same corporate genitalia as you do, but goddamn it, at least I know when to make concessions between what the corporations want and what I give them. It’s like you rich old white men know your days are numbered so you’re looting the place and leaving nothing for us. You took all the money from the middle class—the only idiots without the lawyer power to fight our Byzantine tax structure. Instead of bleeding them slowly, you freakin’ popped their aortas and let all the blood out. AND you ruined it for the rest of us by stealing so obviously your theft could be seen from space. Oh, and by the way, tell your oil buddies, the next time they stage an invasion of another country, make sure they know the history of the place BEFORE they invade. You guys weren’t just greedy, you were more ignorant than a graduate from one of our underfunded public schools.

McCAIN: (eyes unfocussed, gesturing wildly) Look here, you, I paid my dues. You owe me this presidency. I suffered seven f**king years of torture for this country. And you idiots abandoned me and made the mission I suffered for irrelevant. I want payback! You owe me winning in Iraq and you owe me this presidency! It’s mine, you hear me, MINE!!!

OBAMA: (shaking head) John you need therapy, not the presidency.

McCAIN’s head spins around on his shoulders, foam appears on the corners of his mouth.

McCAIN: You’re a pussy! You’re going to get us all killed! Al Qaida is going to kill us all! We need to bomb Iran! You don’t understand! The Russians are going to kill us! The North Koreans are going to kill us! We need to get them before they get us! We need to bomb the hell out of Iraq, then Iran, then Russia, then North Korea! Bomb them, I tell you, bomb them or we’ll never be safe!

OBAMA: (frowning) Now you’re channeling the spirit of Dick Cheney. We don’t need a therapist, we need an exorcist.

LEHRER: Shut the f**k up the both of you. Goddamn, did you even hear my question, Senator Obama? And Senator McCain, put in your damned hearing aids. Hell, you two are so stuck in your rhetoric, you don’t even listen anymore. Let me make myself a bit clearer. How the hell are you going to solve this goddamned financial crisis?

OBAMA: Damn, are all old white men this bitchy? Is this a side effect of Viagra? Look, I don’t know how the hell I’m going to solve this problem, no one does, okay? We’re all bought by the same jerks that just took all the money and created all these scams! We can’t afford to piss them off or we’ll never get the money to pay for the advertising that wins us elections! I mean, this system is hosed. It would take years to untie this financial knot. All we can do is throw some more money at the problem and hope it goes away. What? What do you want to me to say? I’ll sprinkle some fairy dust over the problem and sixty years of greed and corruption will automatically disappear? No. They won’t. We‘re screwed right now and I think everyone knows it.

McCAIN: I can solve the problem! We bomb Iraq! We win in Iraq! Then we bomb Russia! Yeah, Russia! I long for the good old days of the Cold War. Nothing is more fun than hating those f**king commies! We should have kept bombing Viet Nam until nothing was left! They tortured me for seven years! I was in—

OBAMA and McCAIN: —prison for seven years!

LEHRER: That’s enough out of the both of you. Please don’t excite him this much, Senator Obama, his heart can’t take it. While an onstage heart attack would be great for the ratings, we’d have to go off script and that gets messy. Okay, Senator McCain, other than bombing the world, how do you intend to fix the current financial situation?

McCAIN: We bomb Iraq! We win in Iraq! That will boost morale! When I was with General Petraeus, over there in Iraq, I saw how—

LEHRER: I didn’t ask about Iraq, you idiot, I want to know how you’re going to fix the economy.

McCAIN: (calms immediately, seems stunned) The economy is sound. Well, not really. God, I don’t know how to fix the goddamned thing any more than my BLACK opponent does. But I don’t care about that. (waves arms wildly with a crazy look in his eye) I want to win in Iraq! We have to! You owe me! This country owes me!

LEHRER: I’d let you rebut, Senator Obama, but it’s clear you don’t know how to fix the economy, either. Well, folks, God help us all on the economy because neither of these guys has a clue how to fix it. As for me, I wish something could be done about the corruption of our system before we become a Third World country. But by the tone and content of tonight’s debate, that won’t be happening anytime soon. Good night and good luck.

©2008, Janet Periat

 WARNING: Political Humor Contained Within.

Note From Janet: While I used King George in this story, it just as well might be Queen Hillary or King John, (hopefully not but probably King Obama as well.)

Once upon a time, there was a magical fairyland called The United States of America. All of its people were happy, all of the leaders of the land were just, true and good. The king, a humble man named King George lived in a big white castle called the White House and ruled his land with kindness and compassion. His ministers who ran the kingdom were benevolent and caring. There was the Minister of Energy, Lord Exxon; the Minister of Food, Lord ConAgra; the Minister of Transportation, Lord Detroit Big Three; the Minister of Information, Lord Time Warner; the Ministers of Defense: Lord Halliburton and Lord Lockheed; the Minister of Health, Lord Pfizer; and the Ministers of Happiness, Lord Tobacco and Lord Alcohol. All the Lords cared deeply about their subjects. And everything was wonderful in the Kingdom.

One day, a small girl wandered into the White House on a tour and got lost. She walked the vast hallways of the Castle until she happened upon a large room where many white men sat around a huge table smiling and smoking cigars.

King George, who had been staring out the window, was the first to notice the little girl.

“Hey there, little girl, what are you doing here?” the king asked.

“I’m lost,” the little girl replied.

“Well, so am I most of the time. Hey guys, here’s a lost little girl, let’s take a break and talk to her. Might make for some good press, ay Lord Time Warner?”

Lord Time Warner nodded. “Little girls always make good press. What’s your name little girl?”

The little girl smiled widely. “My name is Truth.”

Lord Time Warner frowned. “Truth isn’t exactly a pretty name for such a pretty little girl. I, myself, hate the truth.”

All the Lords nodded their agreement.

King George was appalled. “Hey, she’s just a little girl with a terrible name. Probably had some hippie/commie/loser parents. Let’s cheer her up until our security detail gets here. I’ll bet she’s scared.”

“I am,” Truth said.

King George patted her on the head. “Your parents will find you, don’t worry, Truth.”

“I’m not worried about that,” she replied.

“Oh, no? Then what?” the king asked. “What could possibly worry someone as pretty and non-threatening-looking as you?”

“I’m worried about the polar bears. Their ice is melting and now they’re gonna dig for oil and ruin their home. They’re all gonna die.”

Lord Time Warner gasped, the king paled. All the Lords focused on the little girl.

Lord Exxon cleared his throat and said, “Now, now, who told you that lie? Why everyone knows that Polar bears hate the cold. They are thrilled that all that nasty ice is going away. And they love oil. They love to play in it, they love the oil rigs; why they even drink pure oil right from the ground—that’s why their eyes are so black and their coats are so shiny.”

The little girl nodded, relieved. “Oh, good. I was worried about that.”

All the Lords relaxed.

Truth frowned again. “But… the ice is going away then? So it’s true? Global Warming is happening?”

Lord Detroit Big Three’s face turned beet red, he began fanning himself. “No, no, it’s not happening. Nothing proven yet. And even if it is happening, India and China are causing it all. Not us. We’re good and just and true.”

All the Lords nodded their agreement.

Lord Time Warner said, “Global warming is a natural process of the earth. Now we may be getting a bit warmer, but you don’t like being cold, do you?”

“No,” Truth said.

“See?” Lord Exxon said. “Global warming is a good thing. Besides, this gives us the opportunity to exploit—I mean, develop other means of creating electricity. Like nuclear energy. It’s safe and wonderful with no waste.”

Truth shook her head. “I thought nuclear waste was toxic and they had no place to bury it anymore. That it had a half life of 50,000 years and they can’t get containers that last that long.”

King George’s jaw dropped. “Really?”

“No, no,” Lord Exxon assured the two. “Nuclear energy is wonderful. You like glow-in-the-dark toys, don’t you?”

Truth nodded. “Yeah, I do.”

Lord Exxon smiled. “Well, nuclear power plants make everything glow beautifully.”

“Oh, good,” Truth said.

King George smiled at the little girl. “You feel better?”

Truth said, “Oh, yes. I was told you rich white men didn’t care about the people.”

King George said, “Why, everything we do is for the people. Look what we’ve done for the people who’ve experienced disasters lately. We were right there for those unfortunate rich white people in San Diego who got burned out of their homes.”

“But what about the Katrina victims?” Truth asked. “I have an internet chat friend in New Orleans who still doesn’t have her house back. She says it’s because she’s poor and black.”

Lord Time Warner laughed and said, “Oh, honey, we’re color blind here, don’t you know that?”

King George nodded. “Yes, we are. We represent all the people.”

Truth examined all the faces sitting around the table. “But you’re all white men in this room. How come there aren’t two Latinos, half of you aren’t women and there isn’t a black person and an Asian in this room?”

Lord Halliburton pulled out his cell phone. “We’ve got a situation, here. Get security here, pronto.”

Lord ConAgra said, “Would you like a Happy Meal? They’re nutritious and good for you.”

Lord Alcohol said, “Get that little girl a drink.”

Lord Pfizer said, “Darling, I know just what you need. Some Zoloft. Let me get you a prescription.”

“But I don’t have any health insurance. I can’t afford Zoloft,” Truth replied. “But I can afford a Happy Meal and booze. But on TV they said that if I eat Happy Meals and drink I’ll get fat and will have to go on Weight Watchers because I won’t be able to fit into my Old Navy clothes.”

Six large men came bursting into the room.

King George pointed dramatically at Truth. “Off with her head!”

Later that day, Lord Time Warner issued these headlines: Assassination Attempt on King Thwarted: Truth Killed. Stocks Are Up. US Winning War In Iraq. Global Warming a Hoax. Oil-Drinking Polar Bears Caught On Film.

And everything was good in the magical fairyland and all of the people were safe, warm and happy. The End.

©2008, Janet Periat

P.S. I don’t do political humor very often, but stuff has been bugging me lately. Schools, our health care system, social services and roads are failing; our environment getting more and more polluted, our climate is getting unstable and no one in Washington seems to care. All they care about is pandering to their friends. I pray for a change. I really like this country and all the lovely people in it. We deserve better.