Manexposinghimself’s Hero: JFK
From time-to-time, Manexposinghimself, Shalampax’s Prime Minister, actually takes his job seriously. When that happens he usually downs a few drinks and gets laid to take his mind off it, but these attempts at diverting his mind from politics and governance occasionally don’t work. It is no secret among Shalampaxians that, during those rare prime ministerial moments, Manexposinghimself idolizes John F. Kennedy.
As Manexposinghimself will be the first to tell you, JFK challenged a whole generation to engage in the world beyond themselves, as epitomized by his famous words, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for you country.”
Manexposinghimself often repeats those words, to little avail, when speaking to Shalampampaxians in his political capacity. It should be said that, because Manexposinghimself holds a much more exalted opinion of the position of Prime Minister than most of us hold, he equates the country with himself. Thus, he is able to proclaim the words, “ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for you country,” with much more passion than even President Kennedy was able to muster.
Words are one thing, but deeds are another. Manexposinghimself has long been looking for a more concrete way to emulate JFK than just mouthing the words.
For a time, he considered challenging Shalampaxians to start a space program and send a Shalampaxian to the moon within a decade. Then he realized that Shalampax is so small that the flames and blast from a rocket’s engines would obliterate our island. Not only that, but there are no Shalampaxians with adequate aeronautic engineering skills to build a paper airplane, let alone a rocket. As a result, Manexposinghimself quickly abandoned his dreams of a moon shot.
Next, he came up with the idea of putting together a team of Shalampaxians to invade the Bay of Pigs. He pursued that plan until he found out that the area known as the Bay of Pigs was not occupied solely by pigs, but also by humans.
This discovery made the invasion plan considerably less appealing. In the fights staged between Shalampaxians and paper bags (yes this has happened; we’re starved for entertainment), the paper bags have always won. It was never even close.
Thus, a fight against pigs would have been an immense challenge. A fight against humans would have been out of the question. Consequently, the Shalampaxian invasion of the Bay of Pigs was cancelled before it was launched.
Manexposinghimself has now set himself what he considers to be a less demanding way of emulating his hero, John F. Kennedy. He is going to try to find a Marilyn Monroe look-alike and screw her. However, considering the gene pool on Shalampax and the near impossibility of him having access to any non-Shalampaxian women, this objective may be no more attainable than the others.
He may be reduced to orchestrating his own assassination to emulate his hero – but it would be a spectacular way of honoring JFK – kind of an immolation by gunfire – and every society reveres self-immolation.
Of course, he can’t compete with being shot from a grassy knoll riding in an open convertible what with there being no grass on Shalampax as well as no convertibles or roads on which to drive them so some creativity and poet license is called for. I suppose he could have an erstwhile chauffeur pull him in a red rider child’s toy wagon about the grounds of the Shalampax while someone shoots at him from the roof.
@David: I think that possibility has crossed his mind. There was a slight rise in the land in our palm tree patch, a knoll, if you will. He had it flattened. And he’s forbidden the importing of grass into Shalampax. He’s lucky because all of our windows are sealed and bulletproof.