David Williams's Blog, page 52

Cutting Meals on Wheels

Every other Thursday, I volunteer for Meals on Wheels.

I get in my car, and drive to the nearby Baptist Church, where I pick up anywhere from a half dozen to a dozen hot meals, along with a cold dinner.  For the next hour and a half, I drive from home to home, delivering those meals to the those in need.  I've delivered to disabled veterans and the desperately poor.  Mostly, the people on my route are older women, widowed, living alone.

I say hello, wish them a good day, and...if it seems like they want a few moments of human interaction...I'll stick around and talk for a bit.

For some, I'm the only human being they'll see that day.  So I don't rush it, because I know how important that contact is.

Sometimes, no-one will come to the door, and that's my cue to contact our dispatcher, who contacts family.  Most of the time, it's nothing.  But I'm also aware that I may be the first line of alert if something's gone wrong.

I've been doing it for years, because it's a good thing to do.  As a Christian, and as the pastor of a small congregation, I have the time to volunteer as a private citizen.  I know that what makes a community moral is its care for those in need.  How a society treats widows and the elderly is the surest measure of its value, as written into the scriptures of my faith.

Meals on Wheels has struggled with budget cuts over the years, as "efficiency"-minded ideologues have nibbled away at funding for a program that is bare-bones lean to begin with.

The latest budget, however, goes the full Monty.  The current budget proposal from the Administration completely eliminates all federal support for Meals on Wheels, deleting the $3 billion in block grants given to the states and using those funds to offset the building of a border wall and new weapons purchases for the military.

In the wealthiest of communities, this will have less of an impact, as localities pick up the slack rather than allowing the disabled and elderly widows among them to languish or starve.

But throughout the American South and in small towns, this will impact a vital program providing food and human contact to the disabled and the elderly.  It will mean more older Americans having to leave their homes sooner.  And it will mean more people go hungry.  Period.

I understand that there are those who believe that the federal government should take no role in promoting the general welfare of all Americans.  I am not one of those people.  Our national government must reflect...in both its actions and use of our resources...our values as persons and communities.

I also understand that this is just a proposal.  It is not yet law.

From that understanding I would like to be measured in my response.

But as this shameless, morally bankrupt administration doubles down on its assault on the poor and the elderly, dismissing Meals on Wheels as "not showing any results," that is not how I feel.  I see the faces of those women as I bring their meals, hear their voices as we talk, and all I feel is anger.

Anger at this administration's willful ignorance of what makes our nation worthy, at their foolishness, at their crass, false, self-serving shallowness of soul.

And while recognizing that compassion and care for the poor are not uniquely Christian virtues, there can be no question: such a choice once again marks this administration as fundamentally opposed to the values taught by Jesus of Nazareth.

The Snow Day and the Internet

With the East Coast bracing for the only significant snow of this failed winter, I was hoping for just a taste of winter wonderland.  But no.  No dice.  This morning I awoke to a neighborhood covered in a thick, heavy mat of congealed sleet.

It's enough, though, to keep the family home.  We have a snow day.  Sort of.

Only we don't.  Not really.  Not the way snow days once were.  I'm not talking about snow days for kids.  I'm talking about grown up snow days.

My wife and I, being old and all, remember what snow days were like.  We were in our twenties, and recently married, and it was the mid-1990s.  Ancient history, in other words.  When it snowed enough to make the roads impassable, we'd stay home from work.

I'd dig out our trusty little used Toyota, and we'd go sliding and bucketing along half-plowed roads to friends houses.   There, we'd drink and eat and tell life stories.  Others would come to our little apartment, and we'd watch videos on the Vee Cee Arrr  and laugh and drink.  We'd call around to neighborhood establishments, finding places that were open, and we'd walk and laugh and pitch snowballs at each other on the way there, and come stumbling back through the snow on the way back.  The yards and parks would be filled with children, and the streets and sidewalks with little groups of adults doing what we were doing.

Snow made the day different.  It was notable.  It changed the pattern of our life.

It changed the pattern of life because work stayed at work.  It had not yet wormed its way into every moment of our lives.  The expectation that we would work from home, that we'd have meetings at home and read memos at home and never ever ever stop working?  That work would lurk on its charger at our bedside and vibrate in our purses and our pockets?  That did not exist.

It changed the pattern of life because our relationships and exchanges weren't mediated, because life had organic rhythms and patterns and seasons.

Snow days in the internet era are inferior things.

The Top Christian Critic

At the fellowship hour after church, one of my congregants came up to me to chat.  She's a delightful, creative soul, and her question for me arose from her knowledge that I love both film as a medium and literature.

Had I seen, she wondered, The Shack?  It's the number three movie in America, as of last week, one that explicitly explores themes of faith and loss and recovery from a more-or-less Christian perspective.

I told her that I had not, nor had I in my reading managed to get around to reading the book upon which it is based.

She told me she'd seen the film that prior week, and that not only was the theater in which she saw it packed to capacity, but that at the end of the movie everyone applauded.

What struck me, as she told me this, was that I'd already gone to Rottentomatoes.com to see what the reviewer consensus on the film might be.  I do this regularly, and particularly for films with Christian themes.

I'm not interested in the reviews of the moviegoing masses, not generally.  Nor do I tend to align with the reviews of the broader group of experts.  As a film buff, my aesthetic usually...enough to be a trend...is reflected in the perspectives of the "top critics."  Meaning, the folks who know the history of film, who've studied film as a discipline, who understand the dynamics of cinema as an art form.

The top critic score for The Shack?  A perfect goose-egg.  Zero percent of them gave a positive review to The Shack.  It was uniformly and without variance negative.

This did not surprise me.  The trailers for The Shack were mostly cast in oversaturated pastel hues, rich with intense color.  That tends to signal a film that is Hollywood-spiritual, redolent with the psilocybin visuals of films like What Dreams May Come.  The screenwriting was intentionally familiar, offering up soul-advice that we've likely heard many times before.  The film's trailer promises an experience that would be deeply earnest and ultimately positive.  And earnestly positive?  That doesn't fly with critics.  It's just not...critical.

So the critics universally panned it.

But then I looked at the "audience score," meaning the ratings of those who had gone to the movie.  Their assessment:  88% of them liked it.  Meaning, the significant supermajority of those who saw the trailer and chose to go to the film liked it.  It pleased them.  It met or exceeded their expectations.  By that standard, it was "Certified Fresh," meaning it'll give you a good moviegoing experience.

And herein, a conundrum.

The Shack, as a book, sold 20 million copies.  The movie may not be a roaring blockbuster, but it's easily one of the most successful explicitly Christian films in years.

Sure, its theology is squishy, as it couldn't care less about presenting darkness and subtlety, or describing the Trinity in a way that would satisfy the Aristotelian leanings of a Cappadocian Father.  It smacks of a personalized neo-Praxean Modalism, one might grump, with assumption that this is 1) meaningful and 2) a deal-breaker for most human beings.  And sure, it has a whiff of universalism about it, which of course bugs the bejabbers out of Pure Strain Christians.

Honestly, though, I think the dissonance between the critique and the response is worth considering.  If one is telling a good story, how important is it to tell that story so that people can engage with it?

How important is it to be accessible?

The Net Negative

Lent this year involves an additional discipline in my life, one that is increasingly common:  the social media fast.  I've deleted Facebook and Twitter from my phone, and installed a blocker plug-in on my browser that limits total social media time to thirty minutes a day.

I know, I know, Lent is all about finding spiritual disciplines that help us walk the Way, about committing ourselves to the Lordship of the Risen Christ.  "It's not just about losing weight and shedding habits, like Jesus is some self-help guru," one might cluck.

To be honest, now that we are 30 years into the great internet experiment, I'm reasonably sure that our engagement with the internet...and social media in particular...is a spiritual issue.

It was, or so we thought at the dawn of this era, going to open up a new age of openness and awareness.  We could connect with anyone, anywhere, and the walls of our mutual misunderstanding would fall away.  The full repository of all human knowledge was ours to encounter.

Perhaps in some alternate universe, that was so.  But in this one, humankind has made a hash of it.

I've felt this, as a growing irritation, as my interactions with social media have changed over the last fifteen years.  As it has evolved, I'm more aware of Facebook managing my interactions, as the design underlying the connectivity becomes more intentional and more insistent.  Perhaps it's my pathological introversion.  But it feels more and more...not the human souls I interact with over it, but the system itself...intrusive.

Endless, pointless "notifications," which used to represent actual human interactions, but now are part of a system of intermittent social reward.  Relentless marketing, intentionally interfaced with external systems that track and mirror back perceived interests as a way of reinforcing behavior.

For all of the human connection that can occur, I'm increasingly aware that I'm being played, that I'm being used by an increasingly sophisticated but subsentient learning system whose sole function is to distract and addict, to maximize my engagement for its own profit.

It's that motive, that corporate self-interestedness, that ultimately sabotages our efforts.  I trust for-profit social media to create healthy relationships in the same way I trust for-profit hospitals to provide the best care.  Or for-profit prisons to reduce recidivism.

There lies the soul-peril, because being part of any system that is itself selfish is a dangerous thing for the integrity of our persons.

Taking a break from that is a good thing.

Deleting The Leader

For the last several weeks, I've been listening to an extended mix of James Brown, one of those Youtube constructions that now make up a considerable portion of my listening.  It's a good deep funky mix, an hour and forty four minutes of sweet delicious licks, and it blares through the speakers in my half finished basement as I work out, keeping my pasty white behind bopping on through my weightlifting regimen.

It's a funny thing, this era, when "Music Television" has almost nothing to do with music, and an online streaming video service is a global repository of music.

What I enjoy most about this mix is that it's a paradox.  It's James Brown without James Brown.  Oh, sure, the Godfather of Soul is still there in the background on occasion, but what makes it such a delight to listen to is his absence.  He has been almost entirely edited out.  It's a little like the difference between Garfield and Garfield minus Garfield. 

It's just better...truer...without him.

Not that I have any great beef with Brown, other than noting his titanic ego, and his tendency to be more than a little bit abusive in relationships, and the PCP, and the...well...yeah.    He was a difficult person...creative and driven and often unbearably hard on those around him.

But the bands that gathered around him?  Those bands were amazing, made up of some of the most talented artists of the late 20th century.  Setting aside the insistent voice of their "leader" for a moment, their gifts are clear.  They laid down some of the sweetest, fattest grooves in the history of music.

Which they continued to do without him, moving on and forming their own bands, combining and recombining.

There's a truth there for the church, I think, one that needs to settle into the egos of everyone who calls themselves a pastor.  What made James Brown the Godfather of Soul was not James Brown.

It was Maceo and Fred and Bootsy and others, the soul all around him, a music that continued even in his absence.

In churches, that is equally true.  The measure of a good church is that it is, of itself, a gathering that understands its purpose.  That can be heightened by a pastor who tells the good story well, and who represents in their person what the church represents.  It can be helped by someone who guides and teaches, both in word and in their own life.  It can be strengthened by an individual who has a gift for articulating the vision that rises from a fellowship.

But ultimately, the gifts and graces of those who have gathered are a truer measure of a congregation.

Do the members of a church do Jesus on their own, even when the pastor isn't watching?  Do they show forbearance and kindness to one another, even if Dear Leader isn't there to tell them to?  Do they...when the fires of disagreement or misunderstanding arise...put out their own fires?  Do they serve from the joy of it?

It is in those places, I think, absent the presence of The One Who Holds Formal Authority, that the music of the Gospel is most truly sung.

The Ashes of A Year

They accumulated on my desk, by the two and the threes, more every Sunday.
Three by five cards, each of which has upon it a prayer, written by hand, in pencil or in pen.
We gather them in worship, where they become part of that Sunday's public prayer.  I take them afterwards and send them to our congregation's prayer circle, which lifts up those joys and sorrows to our Creator.
It's a soft sort of magic, as a small gathering of souls opens themselves to the needs of others.  It is, I think, a vital part of any Christian gathering.  We have to pray, but not because we feel it gives us power.  Instead, because it is a vessel for compassionate remembrance, and a place for us to humbly hope for the best possible future for those whose lives are part of our own.   It's an essential exercise in trust and compassion, a fundamental component of turning ourselves towards God and neighbor.
So on my desk, those prayers gathered this last year, until the stack was as thick as my fist.
I couldn't bring myself to recycle them.  It felt wrong.  These weren't pieces of junk mail, or old newspapers.  But neither were they just another piece of clutter on my slightly disheveled desk.  
And it occurred to me: these prayers will be the ashes for Ash Wednesday.  
I know, I know, it's supposed to be the palms from Palm Sunday.  I'd kept them around the office for a whole year for that very purpose, a great thick sheaf of light brown fronds.
But ash is ash, and carbon is carbon, and this felt...better.  More right.
So I found a good fireproof steel bowl, and gathered that thick stack of prayers.  I lit a match.  Then one by one, I gave them to the flames.
As I fed them to the fire, I prayed over them, each and every one of them, one last time.   Prayers for healing that came...and did not.  Prayers hoping for a new thing to come to pass, and the prayers celebrating its arrival.  Prayers for lives passed into God's care, friends and family, their names familiar.  Prayers written in the hands of friends, and in the hands of children.
Hundreds of prayers, one by one remembered.  
And then gone, the smell of their burning a rich smoke on my fingers.  As we, ourselves, pass.
Those ashes, I will mix with a little oil.  
And tonight, as we remember that we are dust and ashes, those sweet, mortal prayers will mark the cross on our foreheads.

The Kindness of Strangers

As my upcoming novel gets closer and closer to publication, I find myself realizing something that's more than a little intimidating.

I've done a whole bunch of self-publishing, writing books for a small circle of people that know me, dumping them out into the shouting noise of the world.  I have this little blog that is, again, mostly read by friends and acquaintances.  I share what I'm doing, regularly, but I'm lousy at the relentless self-promotion that is necessary to succeed in the self-publishing business.  I'm too introverted, too aware of my own motives when I'm pitching something, too willing to subvert my own efforts.

There are people who have that skill, who have by some miraculous combination of luck and fortitude succeeded at self-publishing.  They are rare.  I am not one of those people, and that's OK.  I'd come to terms with my limitations.  They felt...manageable.  Within the boundaries of my control.

As I'm discovering, publishing with a traditional publisher will be different.  It has to be, because they need to stay in business.  To succeed in that milieu, my novel needs to have a reach that is significantly beyond my capacity.   Meaning, not selling in the hundreds of copies, which is pretty much what all my other efforts have managed.  Not selling in the low thousands of copies, which would be a factor of ten higher.  But selling twenty to thirty thousand copies, at a bare minimum threshold of success.

This is a fearsome thing.  Because, sure, I could relentlessly pitch myself, going full on monomanaical with my novel.  Hey!  I have a book!  Hey!  Buy it!  Hey!  Hey!

It wouldn't make a difference.

To get to both profitability and a modicum of success, it would require every person I know on social media to buy a copy, and then every single one of their friends on social media to buy a copy.  And then some.  I am not delusional enough to believe that's probable.

Success will not happen by my efforts.  It is outside of my capacity, in the same way that building my own rocket from scratch and attempting a journey to Trappist-1 would be beyond my own capacity.  It might make for an entertaining blooper reel, although that fiery explosion at launch probably would take the fun out of it.  I would not succeed.

The book will need the gifts and blessings of countless people...most still strangers to me...if it is going to fly.   It has needed the inputs of beta readers and gifted, insightful editors and sharp eyed copy editors.  It will need experienced marketers, thoughtful, literate salespeople and enthusiastic store owners.  It needs reviewers and bloggers and readers willing to share it with friends.

Countless strangers, a crowd of faces I do not know.

That requires trust, such a hard thing to muster in this jaded, cynical age.  But trust is the sister of faith, and faith?  Well.  I suppose I do know how to do that.

Laughing at the Stupid People

A memory resurfaced this morning, an old one, like a dream rising from the haze of my past.  It's an imperfect memory, stuttering and pixelated.  It's so old I'm not even sure it wasn't a dream.

It was decades ago, and I was a young man, as young as my own sons are now.

It was the Fourth of July.  I was in Utah, sitting out in a park in Salt Lake City as twilight fell.  I had just recovered from strep, and was sitting with my girlfriend and her family, waiting for the cool night to be filled with thunder and fire.

Around me, America, in the earnest way that Utah was and is American.  Families picnicking, children running and playing...really rather a whole lot of children, now that I think about it.   It felt wholesome, perfect, just so.

But then there was that one family, a family settling in near us.  A mom, bony and angular and clumsy of feature.  A group of boys, equally clumsy.  All awkwardly dressed, their clothes mismatched.  Their hair, poorly cut, clearly done at home by someone without the skill or inclination to do it well.

They'd brought their own fireworks, bottle rockets of an array of sizes.  Though the gentle slope was crowded with other families, they were clearly going to set them off.    It was the wrong place, and the wrong thing to be doing, a reality that was self-evident to everyone else there.  But not to them.   There was murmuring.  There were disapproving glares, a word or two of questioning and rebuke.

The boys did not notice, oblivious to the disapproval, eager about their project.  The mother noticed, snarling back, profane and defiant.  No-one was going to tell them what to do.   The grumbling around them deepened.

The boys set the rockets into the ground, pointing the rockets skyward, the sticks sunk into the dirt.  Deep in the dirt.   Which is not how you launch a bottle rocket.  You need a bottle.  Or a pipe.  That is where the stick goes, before it provides flight stability.  Because if you root that rocket's stick into the earth, it will not fly.

It will explode, right there next to you, the thrust blackening earth as it strains screaming and helpless against the anchor you have created.

Which is what happened with the first attempt with their smallest rocket.  Then again, with the second, the lesson unlearned.  And then a third time, with their largest rocket, which detonated with such force that it panicked that sad, broken, angry family.

Around them rose laughter, the laughter of the gathered righteous at the harm these stupid people had inflicted on themselves.  Laughing at their ignorance, at their incompetence, at their thoughtless, foolish plans for the most American of American holidays, so blind to those around them, so selfish.

I remember it.  I also remember not laughing.

Because there was nothing whatsoever funny about it.   It just felt irredeemably sad.

Strange, how memories rise, unbidden.

Donald and Melania: An American Love Story for the Ages

February 14, 2017
Dear K-
This is that book project I was telling you about, the one that just fell in my lap. So here's the pitch:

No-one who sees them together can miss it.  Of all of the lovers in the history of human love, Donald and Melania are unique.  Their love, a verdant field of spring flowers in bloom. Their love, as warm and radiant as the summer sky.   Their love, the glory of the woods in autumn, the soft silence of a winter snowfall. Their love, so perfect the angels weep for joy in heaven.  

To see them together makes the knees buckle at the sheer intensity of their passion, of the unfathomable depth of their caring, two souls, intertwined as one, destined for one another from the dawn of time.

Romeo and Juliet?  Wesley and Buttercup?  Gomez and Morticia? Hah. They are but flickering, faint, battery-powered tea candles against the glorious golden sun of Donald and Melania's love.

What mother does not hold her infant son in her arms and whisper, one day, my child, I want you to be loved as Donald is loved? What father does not see his daughter blossoming into her womanhood and not say, oh, my child, one day you shall find your Donald?

How could such a perfect thing be, America asks, as we together swoon at the sight of their touch?  How could their divine paragon of storybook romantic bliss have ever taken shape in a cruel and heartless world?

There's a cover story, of course.  We've all heard it.  But I now know the true-truth, the real-truth, the secret story of their love that Kellyann Conway may or may not have whispered to me as she mistakenly drunk-skyped me at two-thirty in the morning last Thursday.  This happens all the time in DC lately.

I found it hard to believe, at first, but it was Kellyann, so I know it must be true.

There's a runaway bestseller in this, I'm sure of it, and if we can get to market with it quick, it'll blow the doors off the Valentine's Day book-gift market in 2018.

I've enclosed the standard format book proposal. We'll talk soon!

Sincerely,

D-----

BOOK PROPOSAL:Donald and Melania: An American Love Story for the Ages

1) Summary:It begins, of course, with a gypsy curse.

The year is 1945. Fred, a wealthy New York real estate developer, is tearing down a tenement in Queens to make room for new apartments.    As he evicts the tenants, one of them...an old gypsy woman...hisses these words at him as she is dragged away:  "Till he ze hand of True Love Takes, He vill... sometink... sometink....makes.  Ach, the hell with rhyming!  He vill haff TINY Hands!  Tiny Haaaaaaands!"

Those words haunt his nightmares, nightmares that come true when his otherwise perfect firstborn son Donald is born with impossibly small hands.   GI Joe Action figure hands, and not them man-doll 70's action figures, neither. Little plastic mini-figure hands. Tiny, tiny, preemie-baby-lemur hands.

The best surgeons can do nothing.  Though Fred spares no expense to provide his beloved son with atomic-age clockwork prosthetics, he knows the curse can only be overcome by true love's hand in marriage.

Fred tells his son the truth of the curse on his deathbed. Suddenly aware of the truth, Donald begins a lifelong quest to find true love. Donald--now a charming, debonair man of international adventure with perfect hair--travels the globe with his nuclear steampunk cyborg hands,  driven always by his father's dying wish to reverse the curse.
Donald samples all the women the world has to offer, countless women, very very beautiful, all of course completely willing and entirely receptive to his advances. But none of them, not one, are his true love. It's a mighty struggle, just as hard as fighting a ground war in Southeast Asia, but he forges on, a man possessed.

He marries, sure it is love, then marries again, but to no avail. Decades of earnestly seeking, yet the curse remains. Then, just when all hope seems lost, true love! But there are sinister forces at work, dark powers seeking to stop Donald from gaining the big love hands that could one day unite America...nay, the world...in love.

Donald and Melania is the very, very true and entirely factual story of this magical journey, a trail of hope, romance, and high adventure that leads to a love for the ages, a beacon for lovers everywhere.

2) Chapter Outline:

Chapter 1) Daddy and the Gypsy Curse

Chapter 2)  The Boy with Tiny Hands.  So Sad!

Chapter 3)  Robot Hands for Christmas.  The Best!

Chapter 4)  Donald Makes His Fortune With No Help.

Chapter 5)  Daddy's Deathbed: The Curse Explained!

Chapter 6)  "But I Must Grab You There!  It May Lift My Curse!": The Wharton Years

Chapter 7)  Is it Ivana? The Hands? Unchanged!  True love? NOPE!

Chapter 8) That Little Girl By the Side of the Road?  She can't be more than SEVEN!  But those EYES!  Could it be HER!?  IMPOSSIBLE!

Chapter 9)  Is it Marla?  Still Not Right.  Not true love? UNACCEPTABLE!

Chapter 10)   The Quest Continues: Perhaps She Is One of These Slovenian Strippers!

Chapter 11)  The Little Girl!  NOW ALL GROWN UP!  MELANIA!  Love? TRUE LOVE!

Chapter 12)  The Wedding Planned!  ALMOST THERE!

Chapter 13)  MELANIA VANISHES!  WHERE!?  TERRIBLE!

Chapter 14)  Melania: Prisoner of Belgian Vampire EU Bureaucrats?  Bad Dudes!  ONLY HE CAN SAVE HER!

Chapter 15) Donald and Bannon Put a Team Together.  THE BEST!

Chapter 16)  Melania Rescued!  Hero!

Chapter 17) True Love!  Marriage! The Curse Lifted!  Hands, now the Biggest!  So Big!

3) Author Biographical Information

The author is an American who loves America.  He loves a great America, an America where flags fly and the air is rich with the smell of fresh baked apple pie.  He loves an America where big rear-drive cars with V8 engines ply perfect, empty roads that wind through purple mountain majesties.  He loves an America where the rumble of his Harley Davidson Twin Cam 88 Dyna Glide throbs as he rides through the cool desert night in the moonlight, his fine lady pressed warm against his back.

He loves an America filled with big bright dreams and city-light striving.  He loves an America filled with fresh faced country girls smiling from the beds of pickup trucks, as their strapping boyfriends hold the wheel in their calloused, honest hands.  He loves an America that stands tall and proud, an America that reaches up with her big hands and touches the stars.

A full resume is available upon request.

4) Platform/Marketing

What, are you kidding me?  All of America is crying out for this book.   Totally sells itself.  Every American, everywhere, will buy it.   Because we're all about love.  True love!  It's what has always made America great!

Leaked Text of Bannon Executive Loyalty Order

The White HouseOffice of the Press SecretaryFor Immediate ReleaseFebruary 27, 2017Executive Order:  RESTRUCTURING AND LOYALTY WITHIN THE EXECUTIVE BRANCHEXECUTIVE ORDER- - - - - - -RESTRUCTURING AND LOYALTY WITHIN THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH     By the authority vested in me as President of the United States by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 301 of title 3, United States Code, and sections 3301 and 7301 of title 5, United States Code, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1.  Loyalty Pledge.  Every employee in every executive agency hired on or after January 20, 2017, shall sign, and upon signing shall be contractually committed to, the following pledge upon becoming an employee:     "As a condition, and in consideration, of my employment in the United States Government in an executive branch position invested with the public trust, I commit myself to the following obligations, which I understand are binding on me and are enforceable under law: "1.  I will not, within 5 years after the termination of my employment in any executive agency in which I am chosen to serve, engage in political activity that acts counter to the stated policies and implicit purposes of the executive branch under which I served."2.  If, upon my departure from the Government, I am covered by the post-employment restrictions on communicating with employees of my former executive agency set forth in section 207(c) of title 18, United States Code, I agree that I will abide by those restrictions.Section 2.  Executive Chain of Command Protocol Revision.  Effective March 15, 2017, the White House Office of Personnel will lorem ipsum blah dee blah dippity doo OK I stopped reading midway through the second paragraph because I don't have the patience to actually look at anything Steve Bannon puts in front of me, no matter how late Steve Bannon stays up working on it and how much real effort Steve Bannon puts in.  Which is why I'm signing my name to the following:"1.  I hereby resign from the Presidency of the United States of America, effective March 1, 2017.  All executive powers for the period of the transition are hereby bequeathed to Steve Bannon.  The period of the aforementioned transition will be no less than twenty (20) years, or the lifetime of Steve Bannon, whichever comes last."2.  I hereby formally and forever declare that my hands are in the bottom decile of human manual physiology, being more like the hands of a pygmy marmoset somehow grafted onto the arms of a homo sapiens sapiens.  All public renderings (paintings/sculptures/pinatas) depicting my brief and misbegotten presidency must integrate this hideous deformity into my likeness."3.  I declare that my hair is a violation of the natural order of the universe, unlike Steve Bannon's elegantly graying, abundant, and remarkably impressive coiff, a glorious sweep of alpha male dignity which represents the kind of hair you find on the healthy scalps of real men who don't have something desperately wrong with their psyche."4.  I hereby formally direct my daughter Tiffany to go on at least ten (10) dates with Steve Bannon, who has the best hair in America, and who has noted repeatedly in my presence that she is by far the most attractive of my daughters.  Plus, she must dye her hair black and wear a Jasmine costume from Aladdin, so that she'll perfectly match the Jafar outfit Steve Bannon has started wearing to NSC meetings."5. It is formally decreed that Jafar is, in point of fact, the best of all Disney characters, hardly a villain at all.  Despite a terrible and misleading script, he's clearly the hero of "Aladdin."  Clearly.  He is strikingly handsome, cunning, and powerful, and really does have the security interests of Agrabah at heart.  In point of fact, he most resembles a young Steve Bannon, or Steve Bannon the way Steve Bannon still sees Steve Bannon in the mirror in the morning.  "6. The Disney Corporation is hereby ordered to remake the motion picture Aladdin, and to entitle it: "Jafar: a Grand Vizier for the Ages."  It will be R-rated, mostly for the scenes between Jafar and Jasmine, who must be drawn to bear a remarkable resemblance to my daughter Tiffany Trump."6.  As I always skim every document and stop at section three and go, hmmm, interesting, as I pretend that I've read it, every single freakin' time at section three like Steve Bannon doesn't notice and struggle not to roll his eyes, here we go:"Section 3. Waiver.  (a)  The President or his designee may grant to any person a waiver of any restrictions contained in the pledge signed by such person.     (b)  A waiver shall take effect when the certification is signed by the President or his ok I've gotten bored and started watching Hannity again.Section 4.  National Bannon/Jafar Day.  It is hereby decreed that President's Day is to be renamed "Bannon/Jafar Day."(a) Bannon/Jafar Parade.  On every Bannon/Jafar Day, the nation will celebrate Bannon/Jafar day with a great parade through the nation's capital.  At least one hundred (100) elephants will be provided, upon the largest of which Steve Bannon shall ride dressed as the great Jafar with Tiffany Trump (as Jasmine, in the aforementioned costume) on his lap.(b)  My Bannon/Jafar Day Costume.  On every Bannon/Jafar Day, I, former president Donald J. Trump, must by the provision of this executive order be dressed as Iago, Jafar's obnoxious parrot.  I must follow behind the elephants cleaning up, all the while grumbling and saying things like, "Bigly!  Bigly! AAAACK," like I'm just a parrot and I don't really actually know how to talk, even though I do.  Barely.(c) Alright, we're getting near the end and I always make a very public show of reading the last bit, not that I have a clue what any of it means, so:     Section 5.  General Provisions.  (a)  To the extent that this order is inconsistent with any provision of any prior Executive Order, this order shall control.     (b)  If any provision of this order or the application of such provision is held to be invalid, the remainder of this order and other dissimilar applications of such provision shall not be affected.     (c)  This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party (other than by the United States) against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.     (d)  The definitions set forth in this order are solely applicable to the terms of this order, and are not otherwise intended to impair or affect existing law.     (e)  Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:(1)  the authority granted by law to an executive department, agency, or the head thereof; or(2)  the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.     (f)  This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.DONALD J. TRUMP