Day #2-Hello, Tim

Day #2 of the MN government shutdown. A pink dawn, like tender raw meat from a lamb with pink eye, and with it 20,000 Minnesotans without power, having barely survived an apocalyptic thunderstorm with winds reaching 100 miles per hour. Yes! High winds! Winds of evil!

The night before, around 9 PM, I think I saw a cow flying past my apartment window, hoofs up in the air as it bellowed frantically. But I couldn't help it, of course. Not with the shutdown. Not with so many state workers now unemployed, released to the July purgatory of their up north summer cabins and all the family time they can stand. And so, unable to help the cow, I drank to its health and brooded in my living room, forgetting to turn on the light as darkness swallowed St. Paul whole. Yes, I fell asleep in my recliner after I downed an entire bottle of peach schnapps and eleven wine coolers, unaware of passing time as I mused.

Without a state, what is a man? Without law, we are savages. Flying cow watching savages.

But then, around noon today, a brief moment of hope! A knock on my apartment door! I answered it quickly, hoping it was FEMA with a gift basket (government cheese!), but no, just former MN governor and all around smiley guy, Tim Pawlenty. He was dressed in a Hazmat suit with its own silk Hazmat tie.

"Hello, ass face," I said, "Have you come to gloat over the devastation you so happily wrought?"

"Dave, Dave, Dave," Tim replied, his teeth gleaming like little tiny white lightsabers. "You've got me all wrong, dude! I feel as bad as you do about how I fucked this whole state over!"

"You do?" I asked wearily, eying him from askance.

"Yeppers. And I've come to make it up to you. To you and all of MN!"

"How's that?"

"With a great big Tim Pawlenty hug!"

And with that, the son of a bitch hugged me, enveloping me in his crinkling hazmat suit that smelled like the dry side of a big condom. And, for one brief moment in time, the world was right.

But then I remembered I might not get my $1,000 MN rent refund check at the end of the month and lo, my great rage returned ten-fold.