The night the lights went out in Texas

"That's the night the lights went out in Texas/That's the night the veep shot an innocent man/Well, don't trust your life to no backwards, figurehead president/'Cause the real head of state has powder burns on his hands . . . ."

Vicki Lawrence, where are you when we need you?

Nothing like a little gang-bangin' between those two well-known, East Coast-Gulf Coast, thug rivals--the Neo-Straussians and the Quails--to get the ol' comedic juices flowing.

Not to mention the blood flowing.

Here's to you, P. Dicky, and to the proof that you are capable of changing your rigid, my-way-or-the-high ways. Why, instead of assaulting someone using the standardized Wyoming Method--tying them to a fence, beating them severely, and letting them freeze to death--you've adapted to a kickier, more "Don't Mess with Texas" style.

Now you can start shootin' whenever the wind rubs the sagebrush the wrong way. Perhaps you'll work your way up to running over cheatin' spouses in parking lots or will start recommending the ever-popular Lone Star "medically induced coma," aka the lethal injection, for those meddlesome Guantánamo detainees--or for the journalists who won't let the subject, erm, die.

Now please back away from the dirty martini and put down that atlatl, Mr. Cheney, before someone else gets hurt.

* * *

"Everybody run . . . Dick Cheney's got a gun." (Sung to the tune of Julie Brown's "The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun.")

Man, I finally understand how these rappers do it. This shit just writes itself.