George Washington's Poisoned Peas

Paranoia

Part 16 of 30

And speaking of assassination attempts, what about George Washington’s brush with the poisoning of his peas? I certainly didn't see that coming and I doubt if he did. But obviously a certain Thomas Hickey not only imagined it but carried through with his devious thoughts. I haven’t looked up the details, not because I’m frugal with my time, but to avoid knowing anything more about it. I get something like that in my head and my paranoia's worse. So many times I've thought of things just to see them happen! Now this I've thought of -- poison peas! -- but I just brushed with it, so hopefully I won't have any worries.

But on a deal like this -- ha ha -- knowledge might be power. And the last laugh should be mine, because I don’t eat peas in any real sense. I never buy peas, no one I’ve ever lived with except my Mom, who’s now passed, even liked peas. Just having them in the cupboard made them the most secure food in town. None of us except her had any desire whatsoever to eat them. If pea farmers were waiting for me to keep them in business, they would’ve been bankrupt a long time ago or would be selling carrots.

Now that I think of it, though, sometimes there’s occasions where a few peas will be in something. You go out to eat, get a salad, and there’s a pea or two in it, since they’re supposed to be good for you. And -- I’m raising my hand -- I am guilty of eating the occasional pea in a salad if it happens to be there. Just so they’re not together by themselves in a huge quantity. Then it’s out of the question.

And now that I’ve heard this story about George Washington, it only demonstrates a hidden layer of wisdom to my life. I was already anti-pea. I never heard of his trouble with peas before. But somehow I knew to avoid them. I had to have been thinking there’s something about these that could be poisoned. Even though we honor Washington for whatever it is he might’ve done -- crossed the river once -- we’ve never been that excited about him surviving poison peas. Now, though, that’ll be the first thing I think about him in my remaining years.

It would’ve been great to have known that in school. The teacher calls on the class to enunciate a few syllables about George Washington beyond cherry trees and a desire to always be first at everything, even the presidency. I shoot my hand up, the other kids are about to laugh because I’m about to say something completely stupid, and out pops from my mouth this most important thing there is to know about the Great Man, “He was almost killed by poisoned peas, and I’ve got my eye on the lunch lady!” The lunch lady’s called forth and hanged by the neck from the gymnasium rafters until she’s dead. Then we cleanse the land.

Looking closely, they even have the perp’s name, Thomas Hickey, a Tory agent, But that’s a Tory for a different day. Next we consider that George Washington had a death mask, put it on and faked his own death, then got the hell out of there on his Early Limousine. And the Secret Service still hasn’t lived it down!

Anthropology: The Answer's Poison

Chapter 17 (1st part) of 25 -- Head Hunters of the Amazon

The Antipas

A short digression on the head-hunters and their mode of life will not be out of place, Up de Graff avers, and naturally in relation to the table I'm belly-up, "Tell me more, O great explorer..." That's no joke, he's a great explorer as far as I'm concerned. I'm here in the Big City with manageable challenges and plenty of police to help if there's something I need. Although I phoned in an abandoned car with a flat tire the other day and it took three notifications and something more than a week for them to get around to it. It was there only three weeks.

But today we're focused on the head-hunters, a living example of Stone Age Man, Up de Graff calls them. They lived apart at the time not because they were introverts or shy but because the terrain was more or less inaccessible. There was plenty of land, a good climate, lots of animals and vegetables, woods and rivers. It just happened to be missing the usual beaten paths. There were missionaries, sure, but at that time there had very little to show for their interference. 

The Antipas are semi-nomadic. The year is divided into three parts, not based on the seasons, but to the capacity of the crops they planted to stay alive. So they went back and forth in relation to sowing and harvest. Yuca takes six months to grow and ripen, Indian corn three months, and yams yearly. Sweet potatoes, peanuts, and tobacco are also cultivated in large quantities. Makes my weekly trip to Walmart sound pathetic, although it's also pathetic apart from comparisons.

Up de Graff sketches how their houses were made, how they were situated, etc., which is way too much to summarize. I'll just assume that's where the folks lived when they were at home, and that little Johnny and Susie had their own room, the walls with posters of the latest South American teen idols, and the Mrs. with a little semi-attached garden foyer like Morticia Addams complete with plants that ate meat, tapir, hedgehog, and anything not too bony. They might take your hand, which would be awful. You'd need a witch-doctor for a quick hand job to get you back to normal. 

Our author went with the Antipas one day to see how they fished. They went to a small stream a couple miles from their settlement. The women cut down barbasco wood along the way, a vine whose sap is deadly poison. Arrived at the water, they looked for a good pool. The barbasco was beaten between heavy stones and thrown into the pool. Within a minute or two the fish came floating to the surface and swam aimlessly. You can guess how easy it was to catch them. Up de Graff says that's the only method of catching fish they know except netting! Hmm, it's interesting, even I know more about fishing than an entire tribe of people!

It looks like the Antipas also kill monkeys with poison, so I don't know, they sound completely lazy. But how about this, Jivaro women also used the same barbasco poison when they committed suicide (p. 216)!

She Died of Water Poisoning

First, there was no evil chemist, no pharmaceuticals, and no concoction that he made, pouring it into a vial that was then passed on to his friend, the woman's boyfriend. Nothing of the sort. The chemist is for illustrative purposes only, showing what might have been. Certainly no arrests are forthcoming in that regard, but with further investigation, I suppose anything's possible.

However, no one saw what the boyfriend may have had in his coat pocket. According to his own testimony, sworn testimony, it was nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing he'd confess to. No vial, no poison, no weapon of any kind. Just ordinary stuff, a napkin, his wallet, and a few buttons, all quite irrelevant.

This much is definitely established: The couple was eating at a pizza place. They had iced tea, but then, because the restaurant has a funky policy on refills, when the tea was gone they availed themselves of free water, available in pitchers by the silverware. The man offered to get her water, and went to the pitcher to accomplish the task.

He returns and she drinks. He says, "I figured you'd just drink it." "What was I supposed to do?" "I would've sniffed it to make sure it wasn't poisoned, which it was. You ought to see the effects of it any minute." She looked amused, knowing he was kidding. He was kidding, right? He had to be kidding! Wasn't he?

Apparently not, because he had the serious demeanor of a shark, an expression that looks expressionless. Big blank shark eyes. Teeth. He says blankly, "It should be any minute..."

Then it becomes a situation where she can't win. Everything she does, he's able to claim it as an effect of the poison. She knows he's kidding, or hopes he is. She laughs at him, an effect of the poison. She sticks her tongue out, an effect of the poison. She shakes her head in disbelief, turns to the wall, goes suddenly quiet, laughs again, rolls her eyes, straightens her hair, scratches her ear, and on and on, every single thing he claims to be an effect of the poison.

"The worst part of it ... for you ... is you'll be dead in ... exactly one minute." But one minute passes and nothing happens, she's still alive. Ha, ha, he was kidding! But she remained very quiet, when all of a sudden she lets out a shriek. Indeed, she feels the poison work its way up through her throat to her brain, like a cobra rising from a basket. It seizes her, she clutches her throat, and that's it. Her eyes roll back in her head and she's gone.

He -- we'll call him Walt -- thinks he might run, but of course by now a group has gathered around, and with her passing they're set to restrain him if he does. Someone calls an ambulance, and they call the police.

The police come in like gangbusters and take him into custody. They want to know what happened. Walt recalls the whole terrible story. She failed to sniff the water, then they spoke of it being poisoned. He faithfully recalls all the steps, all the effects of the poison, the head shaking, looking at the wall, going quiet, her laughter, and the rest. Finally, he remember the sad ending, she had dropped dead. Even though, he claimed, there actually wasn't any poison.

The tests came back on the water and revealed that he was telling the truth, there was no poison. It was ruled something like this, maybe the woman had a death wish, and Walt, with his serious-faced joking had triggered it. He probably shouldn't have. As he sat there in sorrow, he had a vain thought, if it could only be: "Next time, sniff the water." Even though -- how terrible -- there can be no next time.

Walt is single now, if anyone good-looking out there is looking for a boyfriend.

Pointers For The Next Ricin-Attacking Idiot

We've had a couple of cases just recently of idiots "allegedly" sending ricin in letters to the president and other government officials.

We know this much about it: 1) Someone sends the ricin; and, 2) They have a person of interest in about the time it takes to gargle. The SWAT team breaks down the door and you suddenly realize, "My life's over."

And yet -- Oh, how you can picture them rubbing their hands earlier in sinister delight -- it's obviously the perfect crime ... No one will ever know! All you have to do is buy the beans on eBay in your own name and have them shipped to your own address. Then you grind them (I guess) and have traces of the powder everywhere. Then you mail it, getting tricky here, from the mailbox down the street. Then all you have to do is lay back and picture the president getting up and hustling out to the mailbox, somewhere there at the curb next to the White House. He's like, "Hmm, something about this mail smells weird, sniff-sniff ..." And that's it!

The perfect crime? In case you haven't been keeping up, law enforcement has everything at their disposal. Did you catch the word I used: They have everything at their disposal. Even if you use the mailbox on the other side of town, they're going to nail you. Even if you spell your name backwards on the return address, they're going to know it was you. In fact, that's the first thing investigators do. They hold things up to the mirror to see if you wrote it backwards. They know how to find evidence. And the president's never going to see your letter.

Seriously, folks, you really have this image of the president running out to get his own mail? Maybe Abraham Lincoln did it like that, I don't know. We know security was very lax back in those days. But it certainly hasn't been done since. I think it's even been very well publicized that they have big mail sorting places around Washington, D.C., or somewhere, for the president's mail and that of Congress. By the time they get the mail, it's been cleared. And perhaps everything is photocopied before it gets to them, so there's not even the slightest threat of anything getting through. I know that's how I'd do it if I had anything to do with security. Then if underlings were dropping dead -- like the old food tasters kings had -- we'd see the wisdom of our caution.

So the biggest pointer is: If you think what you're doing is a worthwhile thing, think again. If you're really so troubled, get a stick and a cardboard box and go to the backyard and whack it. Or if that's too violent for you, take a deep breath, count to 10, and be thankful you won't have to spend the next 40 years in prison. Go gargle in peace, knowing the SWAT team isn't right outside.

The Pop Goes The Weasel Killings

As a crime boss -- Hi, Machine Gun Ricky Wayward here, boss of the Skids organization, centered in the Skidrow district of our town -- I have many talented underlings at my disposal. Pickpockets, arsonists, snipers, bookies, scientists, prostitutes, drug runners, pool sharks, bootleggers, and a couple of IT kids who can get any illegal MP3 download you want. What a team!

I had an idea for offing some of my worst enemies. I want to terrorize the crap out of them before their death, to make a more sinister and memorable reputation for myself. I myself could do the same old same old, walk up to a guy and just kill him. The big trouble there is they're not exactly going in their pants for fear, and that's what I want. I want, I demand that the name of Machine Gun Ricky Wayward strike absolute terror in my victims.

That kind of reputation is what I need to take over the entire town. Skidrow of course only rules over the central part of town. The rest is divided between four other gangs, The Aristocrats, The Outlaws, The Ciggies, and the ethnic El Conquistadors. I want to loosen those bozos' control, their iron grip, and make it all mine!

OK, anyway, I'm busy thinking, what are some of the scarier things in life? Clowns, zombies, midgets, carnies, gypsies, psychos, teenagers, fundamentalists, hoarders, repo men, and last but not least, jack in the boxes. Then, of all these, which could you trust most? It'd have to be the one non-human thing, the jack in the box.

I've always thought, since I was a little kid, there's no more mysterious toy than a jack in the box. Because there's pieces in there you never see, forever enclosed and hidden under the jack. It's a hiding place. You could retrofit one of these to be a weapon of mass destruction. I said it 10 years ago, and I'll say it again: Saddam Hussein would still be in power had he only catapulted jack in the boxes at the American invaders!

God, I'm shivering even at the thought of a jack in the box. I can remember my heart racing when I heard "Pop Goes the Weasel" and knew the damned thing would erupt in my face. Now, what if it's full of explosives, what if knives suddenly jut forth and the thing flies around the room, or what if a massive blast of poison spews forth from the jack's mouth? You'll be dead!

So I gave the boys in the lab a bunch of jack in the boxes, and they've been working with them. They're making great progress rigging them up. Different variations, just like I said, with explosives, knives, a machine gun, poison, a canister of muffler fumes for asphyxiation, a Star Trek phaser (which in testing never seems to work), battery acid for spewing, a heat-seeking noose, a poisonous monkey's claw, meat infected with rabies, rubbers tainted with VD, a jar of fumes from a grill used indoors, cancerous organs extracted from cadavers, and, to make it really deadly, a DVD of the Republican debates.

Imagine that. You're one of my enemies. I have an underling put a jack in the box on your desk, then we quietly seal the room. You're looking through some mail and -- WHAT?! -- you hear the box start playing "Pop Goes The Weasel." You know approximately how long the song is -- something like 7.1 seconds -- before the jack pops up. Only long enough to frantically rush the door, then finding it closed, start your final prayer, "Dearest Heavenly Father--", then POP, and poison fills the room. You gasp, you feel your head quickly bloating, you claw the desk, your eyes are bulging, you feel your heart slow, then it stops with a sad whimper, and you think your last thought. Your very last clear thought is one of God's grace and happiness: "At least it wasn't the DVD..." With that, you're dead.

My Name Shows Up In The Daily News

OK, Daily News, we get it: You hate crime! Which is a little hypocritical, because you don't have any qualms about playing it up with big garish headlines and profiting from it! Huh? Did I hit a nerve?

MURDER RING PROBE ON -- Oh, really? A few bozos get killed and they need to do a whole probe? Oh yeah! It's ON, their word. And they call it a "Murder Ring." LOL, that might be a bit overblown, but anything to sell newspapers, right, Daily News?

I might be a little sensitive, I realize it. I'm still fairly new at being a criminal, so I'm touchy. It's the first time I've ever seen my name in the paper in connection with a crime. But there it is, big as life:

Police are seeking the whereabouts of Machine Gun Ricky Wayward in connection with the murders, and other clues as to his background and identity.

It turns out there aren't any Waywards in the area. They must have checked around. "Have you ever heard of Machine Gun Ricky Wayward?" "No, I've never heard of him." They probably looked it up in the mugshot book, and of course I'm not in there. At this point, I'm probably safe. I doubt if the Tastee Freez had video surveillance, and probably the funeral homes were cool too.

To me, though, the most obvious thing in the world would be to Google me! Although, thank God, they'll probably never think of that. I mean, really, what's the chances I have a blog that I update virtually everyday? And a blog that I've had since 2008 at that, with my grandmother's picture and name, as well as my real name, always featured prominently? If they thought of that, they'd catch me in no time... Ouch! As for my recent whereabouts, which the "Police are seeking," the idiots, I've written right here that I'm staying in the hotel downtown, of which there's only one! LOL, the dumbasses will never catch me!

As for the Daily News, they're not helping matters. Who knows? Could someone there really be intrepid enough to Google me? That's definitely conceivable, now that I think of it. Getting warm, I'm starting to perspire a little. I guess my defense on the murders will have to be, It was all just bluster, I didn't really do it! Someone else hacked into my account and wrote all that! Everything I blogged about, it was for entertainment purposes only! Anyway, search me, you won't find the gun!

LAKE IS DRAGGED FOR GIRL -- I don't know one damned thing about it! And the less said, the better...

BARBECUE CAUSES DEATH -- This is one I do know about. The meat was fine when I put it on the grill. Hell, I was even eating it, picking at it, when it was almost done. All I know is, I had to go back to the kitchen to get a platter. And someone else might've gotten to it in that little bit of time. Whether someone spritzed poison on it, or whatever, I don't know. And it might've been meant for me, perish the thought! The next thing I know, the girl takes a few bites -- suddenly no one else was hungry -- and collapses. How she ended up in the lake, if indeed that's where they took her, I, Machine Gun Ricky Wayward, have no clue...