There's One, Only!

Filthy Lie: Evil Glenn's Rehab Clinic

I was sitting in the hammock in the back yard reading the news. I noticed my hand tremble a bit as I turned each page. Well, what did I expect? It was only a little above freezing and there I was sitting a few inches above a snowdrift. (Cabin fever can make you do strange things at the beginning of March.)

Then an item caught my eye. It was an article about the opening of the latest Insta-Rehab Clinic® in my neighborhood. Part of a large chain of them stretching across the country.

I slowly closed the paper. This time, the shaking of my hands was not a result of the cold. I had a bad feeling about this.

As if on cue, my cell phone started ringing. I checked the caller-ID. *whew* It was only my Dad.

“Hi Dad,” I answered.

“Agent GEBIV.” The voice on the phone said. “We have a mission for you.”

“Harvey! What are you doing with my Dad’s phone!?” I yelled.

“I don’t have his phone,” was the answer. “I just have his caller-ID. You have no idea how handy this is when I want to call 900 numbers… but I digress.

“Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to find out what goes on in Evil Glenn’s Rehab Clinic.

“If you are discovered or killed, hey it’s no skin off my nose. I mean, they can’t even trace this call back to me. I am invincible! …er, I mean we will be forced to disavow all knowledge of your actions.

“Out of the kindness of our hearts, we won’t self destruct your new cell phone.”

Gee that was nice of him…

“However, your newspaper will self destruct in 5… 4… 3…”

I quickly wadded up the paper and threw it as hard as I could. Then with the same motion, flung myself behind the… hammock. Oh great. This is really going to protect me. I covered my head with my arms as best as I could and waited for the worst.

*KAAAAAABOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!*

…when I came to, I could see the hammock swinging slowly, without a singe. Unfortunately, I was now lying in a snow bank in the woods a good forty feet from where I had been crouched. A trail of broken branches led back to where my body had crashed through the stockade fence.

As I walked back through the debris and picked splinters out of my skin, I knew that it was once again time for another…

MISSION: IMPLAUSIBLE!
(Cue Theme Music)

I knew that I would need a disguise to get into the Insta-Rehab Clinic. Those places were known to only cater to the rich and famous. They wouldn’t take just anyone in off the street.

I dug through my closet, and was able to come up with a reasonable disguise that made me look like a relatively well know actor. (I can’t remember his name, but remember in the movie Princess Bride, when the main character confronted Prince Humperdink outside the fire-swamp? Remember the Prince’s chief henchman Count Rugen? That’s right, I impersonated the soldier-extra who was standing to his left.)

I drove over to the new Insta-Rehab Clinic®. I didn’t want them to recognize my Jeep, so I parked a few blocks away, and perfected my drunken stagger on the walk there.

At the door, I saw an Insta-henchman escorting out a young woman who, even to my untrained eye, was obviously going through withdrawal. “I don’t care how sick you are.” He growled as he threw her onto the sidewalk. “We don’t treat sit-com actresses here.”

Uh oh. I thought. This might be tougher than I expected.

Fortunately, my worries were unfounded. As soon as I walked into the lobby, the check-in guy and the henchman came running over. “I loved you in Princess Bride!” they both shouted in unison. Then following the whole “Jinx, Jinx. Buy me a coke/ double hits, no punchbacks” argument they had, I was finally able to check in.

The clerk was nursing a shiner and a Coke as he checked me in. He smiled knowingly when he saw me, with shaking hands, illegibly scrawl a signature at the bottom of the standard alcoholism form.. “I see that you’ve gone a little while without a drink.” He said. “Don’t worry, we’ll fix you right up. We have all of your credit information already, so let me lead you to where you’ll be staying.”

We walked down a large foyer, and he ushered me through a set of large double doors.

It was a huge room! The mini-bar was so big that it had an actual bartender! This was puzzling. Why would they put someone they thought was an alcoholic in a room with so much alcohol?

I looked around a little more and realized that I was standing in an actual bar! There was no one else in it at the moment besides the bartender and myself, but this was obviously no bedroom. Then I noticed someone quietly snoring in the far corner, and revised that. I could even see a restaurant through an archway at the other end of the counter.

The only conclusion I could come to at this point was that this Insta-Rehab Clinic was definitely not trying to cure people of alcoholism. And if the “Weight-Watchers All You Can Eat Buffet” sign next to the restaurant entrance was any indication, they weren’t trying to cure anyone of anything!

I knew that I would have to break into the office computers to get to the bottom of this. After muttering something to the bartender about needing to make room for more beer, I pretended to go looking for the restrooms, and slipped out of the bar.

A few minutes later, I was staring in frustration at the computer in the clinic’s main office. There was no way I was getting anything out of it. There was no way I was even going to be able to figure out how to turn it on! (Stupid Mac.)

I was defeated.

Suddenly, I heard footsteps in the hall outside. Someone jiggled a key in the lock. I looked around desperately! Just as the door started to open, I ducked behind a large, curiously plush object in the corner.

I heard two voices as the lights came on and I saw that I was hiding behind a five-foot tall stuffed penguin.

But that was nothing to the shock of realizing that one of the voices was Evil Glenn himself!

“But sir, I don’t understand.” Said the other voice, which I identified as the check-in clerk. “Could you explain again why we aren’t curing any of these people?”

“Oh, but we are!” exclaimed Evil Glenn. “We are curing them of the awful habit of having money that should belong to me.

“And do you know what I’m going to do with all of that money?”

“Um. No, sir.”

“That was a rhetorical question, you dolt!” Evil Glenn sneered. “I’ll use all of that lovely money that they’re giving me, and I’ll buy Bubba-the-giant-lobster’s carcass.

“And do you know what I’ll do with that lobster?”

“Cook it, sir?”

“No! …I mean yes,” sputtered Evil Glenn. “And then I’ll throw the largest lobster party that congress has ever seen. And that will get my Blog Tax Law passed.”

“Is that the one where they tax bloggers by every word they type?”

“Mwahahahaha!” laughed the Evil Bloglord. “And since I only type one or two words per post, I’ll be paying only pennies why they are paying through the nose! No one will ever be able to get as big as me! I’ll own the blogsphere forever! Heh! Indeed!”

“But sir,” the timid clerk said, “it’s taken you years to build all of these Insta-Rehab Clinics®, and it will be at least five more years until we break even. Plus, some of the Congressmen are allergic to shellfish. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to give the money right to the Congressmen in the first place?”

“What? I never thought of that!” he exclaimed. “Drat!”

He started muttering, and then told his lackey, “Leave me. I need some personal time with Mr. Opus."

I heard his footsteps getting closer, and then I remembered that I was hiding behind Evil Glenn’s stuffed penguin.

“AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!” I ran, screaming, from his office. But at least I knew what he was planning.

His Insta-Rehab Clinics® are all part of his intricate plan to continue to dominate the blogsphere!

Posted by GEBIV at March 4, 2005 10:02 PM