Hot dogs. Reaaallly Hot Dogs! Happy Fourth, Y’all

William Bachman of the Campabello Bachmans stood with his wife, Cynthia, the ambassador to Ratonia, in the unbearable heat and humidity shaking hands with Ratonoian royalty at the entrance to the embassy.
The country was poor, ruled by an oligarchy that sucked life blood from the people.
Indeed, since the new cap and trade rules went into effect, the country had become wealthy beyond a caliph’s dream. A little known statute in the stimulus bill was triggered by the passage of the cap and trade bill making clean renewable energy for generations to come. A corporation that was full steam ahead into bringing good things to life announced that chicken dung would solve all of the world’s energy problems by 2030 (by then, they hoped to have the clean part licked).
It turned out that Ratonia possessed more chicken dung than anyone else and chicken dung futures soared bringing enough revenue to enrich every man, woman and child in the people’s republic. Not that it did. The Supreme Council used it to buy a Caribbean island.
Bachman was a man with old money, real money. Years before he met a stripper in Columbia. They had a wild romp that ended in scandal, divorce and a child. Cindy Aynor moved back to Campabello with her new husband.
Money agreed with her. Overnight, she began to dress like a successful business woman. No slouch, she, Cindy Aynor was a West Columbia girl who used her husband’s money to gain an education and erase a reputation.
She also used his money for the Democrat Party. William didn’t mind. He had plenty of it, and he quickly learned that if momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. However when Cindy was happy…
She soon became Cynthia, her past obfuscated by her work with the national Democrat party. Through her unflagging commitment to spending William’s money, she was rewarded by the new president with an ambassadorship.
So William dressed in Bermuda shorts and some happy-crap Hawaiian shirt was standing in the brutal heat next to his perfect wife shaking hands with men whose teeth had been filed down.
William didn’t want to be judgmental, but this was a wretched place, and the Ratonians were an unpleasant lot. He suspected that they stunk, but it didn’t matter, the whole damn place smelled like a chicken coop.
Still, it was the 4th of July. The embassy staff was up early making preparations for the festive event. Their activities: Thawing the hot dogs, making sure that the hamburger they were grilling was not cat meat, were mirrored all over the world as the sun covered one time zone after another.
All of the embassies were on a special alert. The Iranians had been invited to have hot dogs in every Americans embassy in the world. Although every effort was made to accommodate Sharia law just in case, one had to remember that this State Department was not big on protocol.
Sure each legate was to make sure that local dishes were prepared in honor of the local population. In France and Germany, the food was exquisite, in China, it was monkey brains. Many goats were being grilled this fine day next to the salmon.
Ratonians were problematic. They ate dogs. They liked to point out that they were free range dogs, but Bachman’s stomach turned as the thought of the dog ranches that dotted the countryside came full force in his head.
Indeed, as he made nice with the Viscount of the nation, a particularly vile fellow with teeth sharpened razor-thin, a gray pallor and a permanent sneer pasted on his face, the man’s eyes darted with lust as William’s golden retriever , Rusty, bounded across the brown grass.
The Viscount meanwhile praised his country for storing chicken dung to such an extent capacity. He did not mention the call to Congressman Charles Ricks (D-Cal), his brother-in-law’s sister’s husband, to warn that his country was all but drowning in chicken dung.
Adherents to a little known religion unpronounceable in English (it’s roman alphabet spelling would be roughly xczvbst), the Ratonians were told by their God that they could not kill chickens and had to revere them. Colonel Sanders would have found himself in 7th Heaven.
The Congressman slipped a chicken dung proviso into the stimulus bill well knowing that no one would ever read it. Later, during cap and trade, he slipped another arcane proviso specifically mentioning the xczvbstist religion. Anyone who accidently read it while desperately seeking a cure for insomnia would have thought it was a typo.
Even though there was no scientific proof that chicken dung would have served the green revolution any better than say, cow or horse dung, the fix was in. The multi-national corporation had its world headquarters (fitted, it should be noted, with the finest air purification system money could buy) devoted solely to the research on chicken dung right outside the Ratonian capital, Lice.
The Viscount smiled wistfully at the ambassador’s husband, “ Lice, went berserk — many a Boykin Spaniel was tossed on the barbie that night, let me tell you!”
Surprisingly, there were many Iranian engineers in the cosmopolitan chicken dung capital of the world. The official reason for the influx was, “We are here to learn the peaceful uses of chicken dung.”
That was regarded with some palatable suspicion throughout the world as many were caught unawares that there were actually bellicose reasons for possessing chicken dung. Indeed, one rarely — if ever– heard of someone in any corner of the world being charged with possession of chicken dung with intent to kill. Who knew?
There were great discussions of the menu in Lice that fine American Holiday. Even as the Marine bands in every embassy were playing John Phillip Sousa like Dire Straits, it was agreed that dog might not be appropriate to serve at the Bachmans’ this year.
The cell service in Lice was knocked out by a tragic pantyhose accident just as the message was being texted to the ambassador. Thus it was that ambassador Cynthia Bachman was stalling the religious leader of Ratonia, a rodent-faced spiteful little man with a Chihuahua-skull necklace around his neck.
His breath alone made the beautifully coiffed woman wish she were still giving lap dances. Her eyes widened as she saw two men dressed in leisure suits looking like they were trapped in a 1970s John Travolta film.
The Iranains!
The two men stood in the reception line chatting in Farsi:
“These Ratonians are a very unpleasant people, no?’
“They are dogs (an animal as unclean to Moslems of all stripes as pigs)!”
Ambassador Bachman watched with some trepidation as the Iranians glared with intense disapproval at Rusty frolicking across the lawn. Cynthia glowered at William. In a language known only to husbands and wives she demanded that he go get his damned dog.
What happened next became a You-Tube moment for the rest of time what little there was of it.
Thinking that the American was going to get a free lunch, the Viscount chased the lumbering middle aged man across the perfectly manicured lawn. Being small and wiry, the Viscount grew up as a dogboy on his father’s ranch. He snuck under Bachman, grabbed good-ole Rusty and darted for the back of the house where the grill had been fired up.
Everybody in the reception line heard the sizzle and yelp. The Iranians who already had stern countenances of disapproval began jabbering, “Death to the Great Satan.”
What no one had foreseen was that there actually were hostile uses for chicken dung.
The results were tragic, devastating and toxic. The entire American consulate was covered in it.
The world was never the same.
The moral of the story?
The idea of inviting Iranians for hot dogs could backfire leaving us covered in chicken… dung.