The Porcelain President

By James Yarwood
The Voters were tired. Two terms of a Legacy Ape with a penchant for vendetta had made them so.

You see the country had been attacked once. Hive Minded Zealots had crashed a couple of Sky-Flyers into a couple of edifices and everyone had gotten really upset.

So the Legacy Ape went to war. He flung some shit and soldiers round about where the Hive Minded Zealots were, but not near enough. He sent those soldiers and that shit to the Man with the Walrus Moustache, care of the Ape’s foot in his ass.

You see: the Man with the Walrus Moustache had stolen a banana refinery or something from the Legacy Ape’s dear old Chicken-Necked Daddy; and the Ape was still pissed about it. As was his Vice President: a Snarling Vulture with a heart condition who himself had had stock in the refinery or whatever it was.

So the Voter’s land was at war and for eight years nobody really talked about it. Somebody would say something like my son or daughter is in the service, and someone else would say “Good for them, servin’ their country” or “Oh that’s too bad, damn this pointless war.”

Whatever anybody had to say about it they were all stuck with it when the time came to finally say goodbye to the Legacy Ape. Who had also stuck them with a down turned economy and a pock-marked international face, both due to the war.

So, when a smart speaking Porcelain Man came around spouting “Hope and Change” from between his pretty porcelain teeth, the voters voted him in. And that was that.

But the problems that the Legacy Ape left behind were of a tough, hard nature and could have broken men of plaster or clay. So the Porcelain President chose to be careful.

He was out of the country more often than not and he was making a grand time of it. He observed all the local customs, bending stiffly at his jointed waist, and talking wittily with foreign dignitaries of any ilk. He was keen to keep his shiny veneer.

But there was still a war on. So a bunch of Boars with pips on their chests pushed with their tusks and chipped at the Porcelain President and broke his resolve. More troops with less experience were sent to sink in a quagmire many miles from home.

The Money Lenders (Shifty Snakes and Whining Weasels) ran out of money to lend, and in fact had only been lending the idea of money for years. They cried, they coiled and clawed at the Porcelain President, and they, too, broke his resolve. So he threw money at them and hoped they’d chase it and go away.

But he looked so very good behind a podium and he said such intelligent and handsome things.

He wanted to close down the Isle of Pain, because it had been a bad draconian idea of the last administration, and he was a nice Porcelain guy. He wanted to make sure sick people could get well without having any money, because there wasn’t any money to have thanks to the Snakes and Weasels. He wanted to chase windmills and capture the sun. Some of the Voters thought he was crazy.

They yelled and threw stones; the Porcelain President did speeches behind hard plastic. What would he do with the detainees from the Isle of Pain? None of the Voters wanted them tortured on Voter soil, but nor should the detainees be let go. Because they might have actually done something, or surely would if let go because of course they were angry about being detained.

Then they thought that when the Porcelain President had said that he wanted to help the sick, what he meant was help them to die. You see a fair portion of the Voters had actually really liked the Legacy Ape. They were made up of Praying-Baying Sheep, Old Rich Lizards, and other Legacy Apes too stupid to believe anything else.

And all these Voters listened to everything that they’re told by programs hosted by a range of various Flapping-Mouths without any brains. Coincidentally the Brainless Mouths are on a network owned by one of the Old Rich Lizards, who in conjunction with other Old Rich Lizards and Legacy Apes had a vested interest in the current medical system.

But these Mouths would tell these Sheep the craziest, stupidest things, and the Sheep would believe them. Because that’s what Sheep do. And so the Sheep got angry and mean (because the Mouths had told them to) and they threw more rocks and they chipped at the Porcelain President’s shiny veneer. And he got scared of breaking altogether.

Then one day he cracked. The terrible things the Sheep said, the slings and arrows, shot through and began shattering his dreams. And rather than risk himself shattering, the Porcelain President tucked himself away in a velvet lined drawer in his big White Play-House. Until by and by Hope and Change became Wait and See.