The Walls of Poop Come Tumbling Down....

Oh, this is just too precious. I knew this goose thing was going to come back to haunt me. In the original post, I mentioned that my (non)encounter with the geese had become “one of those ideas that just will not go away, very much like the song "It's a Small !*&#ing World After !*&#ing All...."” Turns out I was right. Lord, it'shard to be humble....

Anyway, the city of Greenwich, Connecticut recently hired a company called "Geese Relief"” to harass their local geese until the birds finally decide to move, leaving, no doubt, their protective walls of poop behind. Geese Relief has gotten a $5000 preliminary contract to loose the hounds of hell--—well, okay, Border Collies from Norwalk--on the fulsome flock. The idea is that the geese will get rattled and--—eventually, maybe, we hope--stop ticking off the residents of Greenwich.

Don't get me wrong. I couldn't be happier for the city of Greenwich and Geese Relief. For one thing, they found a nice middle ground between the demented liberal and unhinged conservative positions I concocted. I admitted at the time--—or at least implied--—that I hadn't really thought it through, having spun off onto some tangent, if memory serves, involving both Ralph Nader and Ross Perot, but it honestly never occurred to me that there might be a sane, sensible and even practical approach to the goose problem.

On the other hand, it strikes me that it's an approach with the same Mister Rogers Good Neighbor Quotient as starting up a leaf-blower at six o'clock of a Saturday Morning. "“Sure,"” you might say, "“geese are kinda fun to watch when they fly, and the goslings are always pretty darn cute, there on the Discovery Channel, but you know what? Don't want '‘em on my lawn. They poop a lot, and we think one ate the Steinmetzes' dog. Here, you take 'em."”

Say the boys and girls from Geese Relief come along with their Border Collies and successfully make the geese move, okay? They'll probably just do a short hop up I-95 to someplace like Stamford. So now Stamford hires a goose-eradicating service, which turns its secret anti-goose weapon loose on the foul things (har!), like an army of hungry housecats, angry mothers-in-law, whatever. And the geese, who are by now starting to get a little peeved (or, to be accurate about it, more peeved; they are not especially pleasant creatures to begin with), move again--this time to, for example, West Haven, where they are met by further resistance. And so on, right up the I-95 corridor, until, inevitably, the geese arrive in Groton and, now fully armed, seize control of Naval Submarine Base, New London, where they demand to meet famous submarine commander Sean Connery.

Obviously, this is a matter for urgent attention, and I can'’t believe the "Department" of Homeland Security” has let the problem go this far.

Well, yeah, I can.

I have written unkindly about Homeland Security before, I admit that. Now, it'’s the GAO's turn. According to the draft report of a GAO audit, "due to a lack of leadership," DHS has never finished writing its employee rulebook. This totally predictable lack of action has--—again according to the GAO--left "“DHS highly vulnerable to fraudulent, improper and abusive activity."” Duh.

There are a number of "questionable" purchases the GAO report mentions, but the highlight has to be the $227 beer brewing kit bought by some forward-thinking individual in the Coast Guard. Put down any hot drinks you might be holding before you read the next sentence, lest you sputter and spill. A Coast Guard official told the GAO--apparently with a straight face--—that the brewing kit was "a quality product for official parties attended by cadets, dignitaries, and other guests." Honest.

I can only surmise that Coast Guard parties (I don't even want to think about the parties at DHS itself: Oh, please, Mr. Secretary? Can you do that thing with your head and your butthole again?"”) are such supreme borefests that watching cadets brew beer represents an upgrade, entertainment-wise, for the visiting dignitaries and other guests, who have until now been made to watch, oh, golf, perhaps . I would have thought them--both the parties and the visiting dignitaries--well, saltier.

The Department of Homeland Security was nothing but a political ploy right from the beginning, an insult to every American with an IQ greater than that of brewer's yeast, and a way for inept, stupid, fawning and frequently criminal congresspersons to "prove" to their constituents that they are tough-minded and diligent when it comes to fighting terrorists. Then they went to a strip club.

And it's working out about as well as might be expected.

Not being invited to a Coast Guard party? Priceless. For everything else there'’s a DHS MasterCard.

Burp.