Dogs of Orninica (10 page)

It's long past time our two great houses were joined again and I know you'll be in full agreement. Here's hoping we can keep this war going for generations. We should at least be able to create a whole generation of raging guerrilla fighters to fuel our money bins.

I'd also like to congratulate you on your purchase of the Boltech University. That surreptitious research team was getting dangerously close to finalizing yet another perpetual motion generator. Those damn things are popping up everywhere lately, it's costing a fortune to keep them all under wraps. It would have done untold damage to the market if it had gotten out. I trust you will now follow usual procedure and bury the dangerous device with great haste.

I myself have had to spend millions funding universities and labs over the years, to keep their blasted research from going public. You wouldn't believe some of the breakthroughs I've had to quash. There was one team a decade ago that actually came up with a way to transfer the canine brain into a robot body; prolonging life for centuries. I managed to sweep the project under the carpet to keep it from the plebeians, but now that I'm getting older, I'm thinking it's time to bring the project out of mothballs to make a few sturdy new bodies for myself and my closest friends. You're welcome to a couple of them, if you like, but I'm sure you have a similar project of your own on the cards.

My own grandfather of course took custody of the first free-energy project from a pesky scientist almost eighty years ago now, at the dawn of the electric age. The uncouth instigator had devised a way of harvesting infinite energy using ionization in the upper atmosphere to create electrical vibrations out of thin air, and he could beam this energy to every home, business and vehicle in the world at absolutely no cost.

Just think of where we'd be today if my grandfather hadn't had the brilliant foresight to fell that terrifying invention before it went public. Why, we'd all be living in abject poverty, and the plebs would be running amuck with no barriers to keep them down. Debt would be unheard of. It would be anarchy! I shudder at the very thought of such a dystopian nightmare world.

There have been a few occasions where brazen inventors of dangerous technologies have refused to sell their patents to me, and I've had to resort to, shall we say, less civilized methods to suppress their designs. I'm sure you've dealt with your fair share of fools like that in your time, your army certainly would prove useful in those sticky situations.

They just don't listen to reason. What kind of dog would turn down millions of oonos in favor of releasing to the public domain an invention that will throw our entire way of life into disarray forever? Utterly sickening, the self-righteous turnip-heads running around out there calling themselves intelligent dogs of science. What's intelligent about throwing away something that's been working just fine for generations? I don't even want to think about a world where energy isn't a pricey commodity. It's truly a disgusting concept.

The only thing more irritating than free-energy devices is the insane amount of cancer miracle cures that keep cropping up. Keeping those from reaching fruition is bleeding corporations all across Orninica dry. Something has to be done about all these cocky inventors eating into our bottom lines. Maybe we should be buying the universities and labs and immediately shutting them down, instead of allowing the little bloodsuckers to continue to operate.

The very least we can do is lobby the government to drastically slash the budget for funding universities and redirect it all to the war treasury. It's time the academics were seen for the horrible blackmail artists they really are. I'm absolutely tired of having to pay them off every time they make a discovery. We simply must formulate a plan to stomp them out permanently.

But I suppose they do have their advantages. I have a few teams working on some very useful devices. There's one group that's created an ingenious mobile cancer ray. Once mounted into an ordinary van, it can project an invisible beam of radiation at any target we choose. It's so accurate that we can even choose the type of cancer to afflict the sap with. It's still in testing right now, but I have very high hopes for it, we've already used it a few dozen times on random targets, and it worked wonders on every one of them. There's only one prototype right now, but I wouldn't mind if you loaned it for a few days. I know how much you love your toys.

Senior Citizen

The terrorist attack on our great nation, on our innocent little pups is unacceptable! The Nureongi have slaughtered our innocence, they've defiled our youth, and I for one, won't stand for it. I want justice. I want to see all their worthless pups die in retaliation. Little Nureongi corpses lining their scraggy forests as far as the eye can see!

How dare they plant bombs in our schools? How dare they even look at an Orninican pup with their ugly twitchy eyes? They're going to pay in blood. I can't wait to see the news footage of them being massacred by our brave troops for what they've done to us today. The fact that we've let the damned mongrels live this long is testament to our great patience. But the time for patience is ended. I demand the military launches a full scale invasion of their pathetic little country immediately!

The damned Progressive Conservative idiots are at it again with their hike in the tobacco tax when they still haven't seen to the damn immigrant problem. I don't mind paying taxes, but they need to make it worth our while. Why should I pay even more for my already expensive imported cigars when there are still immigrants flooding into the country everyday?

I do hope we invade Nureongi, but couldn't they take the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone here? If they do the right thing and invade that useless savage country and take their oil, then I'll be cheering them on all the way, but the military should take all our damn foreigners with them. We're still fighting a war in our own backyard everyday against all the freeloading migrant workers moving in next door. They could easily sign them all up for military service and drop them onto the front lines. That would thin their numbers nicely.

You know what the problem is, don't you? The foreigners take all the jobs and then our damn lazy youths, unemployed and fat with welfare checks, keep on voting for the damn Progressives. It's time the Reformist Conservatives came back into power and showed the lazy layabout youth of today what for. Old President Milt C. Rexworth would have never just stood by and watched these ungrateful loafs picking away at the rainy day fund with their greedy little mitts. Now there was a real President. Knew how to deal with so-called asylum seekers too, just kept them in detention cells for a few months, barely fed them, until they got sick of it and bought a flight back out.

There was a cheeky migrant pup outside my house today, relieving himself on my petunias. I couldn't believe my eyes. When I told him he'd better get away from my property lest I call the drones in, he even had the gumption to tell me to go hump myself! The little punk didn't look so smug when I hit the panic button on my belt and a drone came out of the sky and grabbed him. Didn't even have time to do up his zipper, so his shorts floated down a few minutes later. Little pook. Took me hours to fix the mess he'd done to my flower patch. Trampled them good, he did. Should have seen the look on his face when he got yanked up. I was laughing about it with the boys at the club for hours afterwards.

What I really can't stand is when little runts like that are running around the Kostsaver unsupervised, shouting and screaming and crashing into my trolley. There's nothing more annoying than having to hear a bunch of spoiled-rotten welfare pups screaming at the top of their lungs when you're trying to decide what brand of petroleum jelly to go with. If dogs can't look after their own kin, then let the government take them and put them in a facility or something. They'll keep them out of our way at least, even if we have to keep paying to feed the fat little gits everyday.

The second thing I needed from the Kostsaver was weed killer, but they write the damn instructions in such tiny print that you'd need a microscope to read it. I had to just wing it. I had a look out the window earlier and the damn weeds don't look any deader, so I'll have to give them a stronger drenching later on. There's nothing uglier than big stringy weeds in a neat little flower bed.

I just forwarded a joke someone sent me to everyone in my address book, it was the funniest thing I've ever read. Almost broke my spine laughing. Let me see if I can remember it... Something about a pook that got on an elevator... Oh, and there was a Soup monk that was looking at him funny, and the pook... No, the pook was looking at the Soup funny. And there was something about a flat tire. Oh, and a naked Rongi medicine man dancing about like a lunatic. Anyway, it was damn funny.

A scruffy young insurance peddler knocked on my door this morning, wanting to sell me a sick joke of a policy. His shirt wasn't tucked in, his tie crooked, and he needed a good haircut. Now, I sat him down at my kitchen table, told him to listen up, and I shared with him everything I learned in the two years I spent, right out of college, as a strapping young insurance agent. How I was spectacularly dressed, shoes so shiny you could see your face in them, a brilliant smile, and above all else; impeccable manners.

I mean, you don't come to someone's door all wishy washy, “Er... Do you wanna buy some boat insurance, Granddad?” What the hell is that? Didn't they give him any damned guidelines before setting him loose on a neighborhood that decent dogs live in? He kept making excuses, getting up, saying he had to go, and I kept sitting him right back down again until he listened and learned how to sell insurance the right way. I made him practice with me, and I went with him to the next house and watched and told him when he went wrong. He didn't learn a damn thing, though. Couldn't sell rain to the desert. Complete waste of my valuable time.

I don't know, I really don't know what it is with youths. They're just not proper. Maybe we should send them all to war, teach them some real life skills. But they'll probably cry their little delicate eyes out for their mothers the moment a drill sergeant raises his voice a little bit. They're all a bunch of mopey money-holes, all of them.

When I was their age, I had three full-time jobs and responsibilities up to my ears. You didn't ever see me lining up outside the welfare office, or paying for pornography and video-games with food stamps. I didn't have time for that nonsense, I had a wife and three pups to support. Even on weekends, I had a stall at the market selling flip flops during the day, and I operated the ferris wheel at the fair at night. I didn't even talk to my wife for years, I was so busy making scratch to feed her and the litter.

Of course, neither her nor my damn offspring talk to me now, the ungrateful sods. Haven't seen any one of them for twenty-three years, since she left to paint trains or some nonsense. She was a whore anyway, always walking around in public with no bra under her dress. Feh.

If they would just let me be in charge of the country for one full day, I'd fix this place right up, boy would I. I'd cram all the useless migrants on a big barge, push it out to sea, and blast it full of holes. I'd cut off all the unemployed layabouts welfare benefits, and see if a little old-fashioned starvation makes them get to work. I'd round up all the tree-huggers and pacifists and Nureongi sympathizers and drop them right in the middle of a Nureongi slum. We'll see how they like their precious savages when they're cooking them up in a big barbecue.

As for the convicts, I'd put them all to work in the coal mines. Sixteen hours a day. We could fuel the whole country for pennies if they put more work on those prisoners plates. Forget about trying to teach them to read, just hand them pickaxes and shoot anyone that won't work.

I tell you, make me president for a day and the country would be back to normal in no time. Then we'd all have a big parade with feisty little dancing girls, roasted marshmallows and corn on a cob, and a fine Orninican personality like Mr. Harvey Fidelbrook would take off his hat, firmly shake my hand and lead in reciting the glorious national anthem in my honor. The whole country would thank me for saving the Orninican dream. They'd name history books after me and teach little pups about my great leadership for generations. The man that saved Orninica when it was almost finished.

But no, no one listens to Buster Smigle's ideas because I'm not college-educated. Well, excuse me for being too engaged with raising a litter of ungrateful little bonks to lounge about on a college campus all day learning about soppy philosophy and 'gender and feminist studies'. Bunch of malarkey. Damn lazy students.

That's another thing President Smigle would do. I'd take away all the funding for useless waste of money programs like college scholarships. If you're too poor to go to college on your own dime, then shut up and get a proper working class job like the rest of us. Don't be expecting special treatment just because you scored high on a stupid exam. Here in the real world, there's no tests or term papers to make decisions for you. You just show up at a job and say “Yes sir. Right away sir.” That's all there is to it. It's not rocket science.

I'd also do away with all that pointless 'save the environment' guff. If a factory needs to get rid of some waste, and they pay their taxes, then they can go right ahead and offload it on land no one's using. Damn tree-huggers don't own the planet. And so what if some of it gets into the rivers? Big deal. It's not gonna kill you, you pansies. You've gotta expect a little pollution if you're wanting to maintain a thriving industry and expand the market. These company managers have a lot of responsibilities on their heads as it is, they can't be spending all day stressing out about how they're going to get around thousands of government environmental regulations so they can actually do some business.

No, if they gave me the power, I'd rescue this country in 24 hours flat. It's easy, I've got all the big-ticket issues down. Single mothers? Employ them as maids for the hard working rich. They can do it for just bread and board. Homosexuals? Shame them all into offing themselves. Could even enlist them and send them on suicide missions. That way they get to pay some penance before they die, and their lives wouldn't have been completely worthless. Feminists? Give them all boob jobs, great big ones. That'll change their tune, when males start paying attention to them for the first time. Fleas? Incinerate all the damn hamsters. It's sickening. Whenever I see a pup playing with a hamster in one of those stupid balls, I stamp on it with my boot until it's flat. Filthy disease-ridden animals. Or better yet, feed them to the homeless.