I Am a Barbarian!

Gerry's World: Forgive the long absence. I just emerged from a two-week Dungeons & Dragons game. Yes, I was locked in mortal battle with Dukakis and his nerd friends. Dukakis is, of course, a dungeon master - figures. People who were never president are always doing humiliating things like that. He made me into a barbarian, and awaaaaaay we went!

First stop in the Enchanted City was Applebee's, because when you're in the Enchanted City, where else are you going to eat? I mean, really. Then, our bellies full, we went in search of a tribe of villainous unicorns who were trading in fairy blood. Now, I had lots of questions about things we passed on the path - Saturn fly-traps, prehistoric Blackberries, endoplasmic reticulums - but Dukakis treated me like I should know what all those things were doing there in the first place. He was really mean about it. I know that we've gotten pretty close since I faked my own death at the behest of the McCain campaign, but it really felt like I didn't know him at all when he was in full on D&D mode. And since I know he reads the blog, I've decided to air our differences here:

• Dukakis is condescending when you ask him a question on a subject about which he knows a lot.
• Dukakis did not shave any of his eyebrows when he lost our bet on Best Picture nominees. Rather, he grew them even thicker.
• Dukakis refused to recognize how hard I was working to fit in with him and his nerd friends. I mean, they're all I've got right now in this lonely world. I don't want him to think I can't hang with their intellect. But in the middle of the game, he turned to me and said, in front of everyone, "I guess this isn't really your thing."
• Dukakis's deoderant is not effective enough.

Anyway, around a bend in the road paved with leprechaun whiskers, we came to the Sorcerors' Deli ("where every sandwich is a work of magic!"), and encountered the evil unicorns enjoying shish-kabobed pastrami-on-rye. I wouldn't eat there because it's not Applebee's or Hard Rock Café, but these unicorns were having a grand old time. I wondered aloud how they'd paid for their meals since they hadn't done an honest day's work in their lives - one of Dukakis's nerd friends, a dwarf cleric, nudged me in the side and whispered, "Shhh! They'll hear you!"

That was when I slapped him. "They won't hear you, idiot," I said, unwilling to be calm in the face of inanity. "None of this is real."

"But what is reality?" asked a spectacled guy with horrible acne, who'd actually worn a cloak to the secret location where we'd met to play.

"Reality is the world that's not dictated by cards and fantasy, and where unicorns don't exist," I explained.

"But you're saying what reality isn't, not what it is, as I had requested," Cloak Kid retorted.

"Leave him be," Dukakis said in my defense. Finally, he was coming to my defense. What a true friend. "He's just a simple-minded barbarian, unable to comprehend more than one dimension of existence."

I felt betrayed and angered by his words, and though I tried to stop it, I couldn't help but start turning green. My muscles grew and began to shred my clothes. Hair painfully burst through my scalp. My expression and demeanor morphed from that of friendly ex-president to that of fiendish beast.

I had, for the first time in years, become the Incredible Gerald.



Everyone at the table was taken aback, but it was no shock to me. You see, my vice-president, Nelson Rockefeller, had been an amateur nuclear physicist when he was in office. I walked into his chambers one day without knocking and he accidentally shot me with a gamma ray, changing me into a physical manifestation of my anger. I had to be careful to lead a mild-mannered life from then on - I'd been on medication to control it (Ritalin, I think?) but Not-Betty wouldn't let me continue on it for fear that I would become addicted to it.

Now, though, the Incredible Gerald was back, and he wasn't going to play nice anymore. I pounded the table, yelling, "Gerald Smash!"

"That is so cliché," Cloak Kid whispered to one of his friends. I picked him up by the head and tore him in half. His friends were doubly taken aback.

Dukakis said, "Gerald! You're embarrassing me in front of my chums!"

I growled, "D & D not fun!" and then I ran through a wall to the outside, mounted a unicorn that had been patiently waiting for my transformation and escape, and rode away. I haven't seen Dukakis since. It's been a couple days now. I've calmed back down, but I've got nothing to apologize for. I think we might head to New York, where I and my unicorn friend won't stick out too much. Plus, I love New York, and will accept no substitutes. It is grand in the image of the Great American City. After pardoning Nixon, I'd wanted to move the capital there because DC is so freaking humid all summer and because DC pretty much shuts down when it flurries, even though the entire district is flat, but my aides had talked me down from that. It's still a great idea, though.

Here's a not-great idea: after I went underground, I hired this girl to repair my credit, as I'd been in debt for years (mostly because Not-Betty paid off bills with credit cards). She had the biggest eyes I'd ever seen, and when I looked into them, I thought I saw trustworthiness. Imagine my shock, then, when I read the following on her credit repair blog this morning:

"Apparently I underestimated how quickly that nickel-and-dime stuff added up, and to make matters worse, the rent check HADN'T gone through yet. When I checked my account yesterday, I discovered I was $200 overdrawn. Worse, I had several charges still pending, and had already racked up $33 per "check" that bounced (I use my debit card for all sorts of little things, i.e. buying new headphones at the airport). I needed to get money into that account - and fast. I put together about $100 in cash left over from all those withdrawals (the tickets were only $60 each) plus emptied out my change jar and ran the coins through the bank's machine. But that still wasn't enough. 'Can I make a payment from a credit card?' I asked the teller desperately."

Pardon my ignorance, but if you're in the credit repair business, shouldn't you yourself be avoiding these pitfalls into which your clients typically fall? Sigh - I mean, I've got several bajillion dollars from McCain to make sure this isn't a big problem, but what about the folks without such riches who are working with her? It seems, to say the least, problematic. Even my unicorn buddy agrees with me.

There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,
Gerry