You Can Get Anything You Want…

This is a little story about how I got tasered on Black Friday.

You see I was at the Mall with some friends at 3 AM waiting for them to open the doors to Alice’s New Gadgets & Jump Starters, cause I want–I FUCKING NEED–more gadgets, and as good Republicans now, me and my friends thought we’d jump start the economy some more the old fashioned Republican way, you know, buying shit.

Well, like I said, it’s 3 AM, but there’s a whole lotta people lined up.  All kinds of people.  There was hippies and yuppies and yippies and peace people and anarchists and Tea Baggers and gays and vegans and Communist gay vegan libertarians and Second Vermont Republic folks smoking pot and what looked like the entire Vermont Progressive Party and little kids screaming and dogs barking from parked cars and some environmentalists holding candles and signs and a bunch of people even we couldn’t figure out who they were except they looked like those folks you see every day collecting empty bottles and cans from the garbage bins and Tom Salmon and Michael Colby were there too.  

Whew.  I’m glad we got there early cause as a good Republican now me and my friends practice FIRSTNESS.  You know, that’s how you gotta do it these days to get your stuff, and that Tom Salmon guy must know about it cause he starts in elbowing his way up the line telling everybody how happy he is that they voted for him only some folks must not of cause next we know there’s all this swearing and pushing and the environmentalists are hitting people with their signs and the anarchists are screaming at the Tea Baggers and the yuppies are yelling at the bottle people and the Gays start hollering too just like all the straight people and kids are running around whining and the dogs are going ballistic now and then I see Michael Colby handcuffing himself to a shopping cart.

Well, of course the police came.  They got everything under control except they couldn’t get the handcuffs off Michael Colby and they started lecturing him about that shopping cart being private property while somebody from the Tea Baggers I think pushed one of the Progs behind us up against the window hard and next thing we knew there was all this screeching coming from the alarm system and everybody started pushing and screaming and biting again, saying things like: ‘ I been in Vermont longer than you!’ and ‘I’m a real Vermonter cause I was born here!’ and ‘Why don’t you go back to fucking New Jersey where you came from!’ and ‘Just sign the fucking petition, you asshole!’ and next, a WCAX van pulls up and starts filming all this stuff and the reporter sticks a mic in my face and asks me what I came here to buy.  ???

See, I didn’t know how to answer that one cause the things a good Repubican buys are supposed to be secret so I says I was just here to get a pack of gum and a soda before they start taxing it and this cop looks at me and calls me a smart ass and I says ‘No sir, I’m a Republican,’ and next thing I’m on the ground writhing in pain and shock and awe cause this cop put the taser to me cause he must have been some kind of liberal or maybe even a hippie, and I can see them hauling away Michael Colby still handcuffed to the shopping cart and from there on the ground I can see Tom Salmon’s now got my place in line.

Well, I couldn’t get up and glad I didn’t cause the cops are tasering everybody now and cops are on the radios calling for backup and more tasers and helicopters to drop gas and straight jackets and Bill Sorrell pulls up in a car and tells the cops they should be checking to see if any of us are illegal aliens and now it’s 4 Am and they’re opening the doors and Tom Salmon gets in first and then they lock the doors again and this causes everybody to go completely nuts and they start jumping on the cops and grabbing their tasers and tasering them back and tasering each other and little kids are tasering each other and this National Guard helicopter drops a bunch of leaflets telling us all to go home and lock our doors and turn off our lights cause some Mexican farm workers are on the loose stealing organic vegetables and how this is the only National Guard helicopter and unit left in Vermont cause all the rest of the Guard is in Afghanistan and the ones who came back are on Holiday Leave and probably down there in the mob scene with us just trying to shop for new gadgets before they have to be assigned to Bill Sorrell for crowd control after he makes his next announcement about some great tax idea he’s got, so me and my friends got the hell out of there real quick cause we’re good Republicans and this is what happens when the liberals and the gays and Michael Colby conspire to ruin the traditional American civil right to shop for all the stuff we need to buy to help corporations fix the country cause you know sure as shit this mob of maniacs is going to fix anything and I even forgot what gadget it was that I needed so I’ll come back the next time they have a 4 AM sale and hope to hell this time there won’t be a whole bunch of non-violent offenders lined up on work release just to molest the little kids and sell dope to the anarchists and yuppies and do pre-versions with the barking dogs.

But I still say it’s good to get there FIRST.  I’ve never been tasered before.  Now I have a new, even longer song to write.  You can get anything you want in America.  You can be anything you want.  And now, like a good Republican, I’m going to sit back, light a big number, make a martini, put on some Neil Diamond, look at my bank statement and fill out my taxes late and cheat on them cause after all when a good Republican is tasered just for going shopping, I think it’s time all good Republicans just stopped paying taxes all together and let all those crazy anarchist-gay-vegan-bottle picking liberals take care of the mess they’ve made.  When a Rich Person like me can’t even go to the mall anymore, I tell you I think the Terrorists have won and we might just as well elect Sean Penn our next President so he and Madonna can turn the whole country into a Halfway House.  And give the keys to bin-Laden.  Or Ralph Nader.  Boy, I could use a nice sleigh ride.   I wonder if Michael Colby got released?

Peter Buknatski

Montpelier, Vt.