(Colin) Blargh...

As a forewarning, I'm rather iiillllll right now, so this is one's going to be rather wierd. It's the assignment I was "given" by Joe.

---

"That man," Ed remarked, "is an absolute ti-"

It was exactly one third of a second after he'd spoken when a blur of motion came and struck him upside the face.

"Watch your mouth," a short and rather stout woman said. "The president's about to speak."

Ed rolled his brown eyes. "Amazing that the man is smart enough to even talk, isn't it, Edna?"

"Whatever," Edna said shortly. She hefted--delicately--a cooler containing their "package."

"Are you ready?" She asked simply. Amid the huge crowd, no one was really paying attention to them. In truth, they merely looked like a another couple of hillbillies coming to admire their Texan hero.

Ed snorted. George W. Bush - Texan "hero". The man couldn't even pronounce "nuclear proliferation" right, and the total number of Freudian slips the man made in the speeches throughout his abysmal career could be made into an entire book and sold. On the first anniversary of 9/11, he tortured all of America with a nine-hour television special of that fateful day. Martha Stewart would likely have a field day decorating the cavernous space between his ears.

In short, somewhere in Texas, a village was missing its idiot.

Add to that all the downright bad moves he'd made in his career. Trying to save New Orleans after the hurricane? Billions of Federal dollars spent, and months later, refugees are still living in shanties. Deliberately revealling that he'd done pot in the recent past? Big no-no.

All that led to popularity in the low-40s, and nearly every single voter wishing they'd gunned for Kerry rather than this...this...

"There he is," Edna said.

The crowd was silent as a man with the ears of Prince Charles stepped up to the podium. He withdrew a few papers from his inner jacket pocket, laid them on the podium, cleared his throat, and began to speak.

"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages."

The crowd stood in silence.

"What...what's he saying, Edna?" Ed asked.

"I think...he's quoting Shakespeare."

Ed stood agape. The man was so stupid that when all attempts at crafting a speech had failed, he resorted to Shakespeare of all people.

"This thing of darkness I, acknowledge mine... Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears! I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him...What's gone and what's past help should be past grief...I have a kind of alacrity in sinking..."

Ed couldn't help but snicker at that last one. Gingerly, he opened the cooler and withdrew a pair of radiation-shielding gloves and pulled them on. They were stiff and inflexible, but it was preferable to contracting necrosis.

Bush took a pause in his speech.

The crowd started glancing at each other and murmuring incredulously. Ed pulled out a small black box from the cooler and opened it at arm's distance. Radioactive vapor threaded into the air from the deadly package inside. Carefully, Ed tipped the box on its side and allowed the cold contents to roll into his gloved hand.

An atomic snowball, in all its radioactive glory, sat in Ed's hand. It looked no more ordinary than a regular snowball, but it pulsed with a throbbing green glow. Carefully Ed drew the hand holding the snowball in preparation for a throw.

"Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?" Bush continued, Smiling jovially.

"Behold the winter of my discontent!" Ed yelled. "Pull!"

Ed was rather proud of his throwing arm. He watched the ball arc through the air, trailing green whisps behind it as it flew, until it began falling towards the podium. Bush looked up.

"I am fortune's fool," he said just before the snowball hit.

The effect was rather pleasing, but Ed wished he'd brought a pair of sunglasses with him. The blast bombarded his eyes with pure, white light for a full three seconds before dying out. He blinked several times to clear his vision. Most of the crowd had apparently fled or were fleeing after the explosion. There were screams as people were leaving in a hurry, and leaving behind them bits of trash on the field where they'd once stood.

Ed and Edna surveyed the scene. The podium, and the stage it was resting on, had been completely destroyed. The pair smiled at their handywork.

The smiles quickly turned to looks of shock when they saw a slightly disheveled figure pick himself up from the ruins of the stage.

George W. Bush stood tall with a demented gleam in his eye. His suit looked slightly rumpled, and his tie was out of place, but he otherwise looked...intact.

"My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go," he said, smiling stupidly.

"Wha-? Buh-! How...?" Ed spluttered. "How did he survive? There's no way he could have escaped that!"

"Well," Edna said, looking at her feet. "I...do know for a fact that, when he was in high school, George Bush didn't do particularly well in Physics class..."

"Are you saying," Ed said incredulously, "that the man's so stupid he can't even obey the laws of physics?!"

"Yes," Edna admitted, somewhat embarrased.

"But the man is an absolute ti-!"

Smack!