Close Encounters Of The Turd Kind

My Day With Karl Rove

By OTOOLEFAN

I never thought I’d meet Karl Rove, let alone punk him. For my money there was a better chance of him answering a subpoena than coming anywhere near me. But life is funny. Turds have a way of showing up in the strangest places (See Dick Cheney).

I was blocked by Karl Rove on twitter months ago, believe it or not. Getting blocked by Rove is kind of like Nixon telling you that you suck. You know you’ve done something right. So when I heard Karl was coming to town to our local Books A Million for his Crook Signing, I leapt at the chance to be the turd in his drink, even if I had to buy his book.

I didn’t want to buy his novel, but it was the only way I could come face to face with “Bush’s Brain” and see that turd in the flesh.  As you all know, Karl has many names, “Turdblossom”, “The Architect”, “M.C. Rove” or, as I like to call him, “Notorious T.U.R.D.”

Right after buying the book we were all told that “Mr. Rove would not personalize his signature”. I almost returned the book right then and there, but something told me to press on so I took my place in that Honkey Conga Line.

This Honkey Conga line I found myself in was very diverse. There were white people of all shapes and sizes. It was like a Pat Boone concert had just let out. The hardest thing for me was to bite my tongue as I heard the various comments from among the sea of vanilla.

“We drove all the way from Maryland,” boasted one Rove groupie in socks and sandles.  I kept quiet at first as I didn’t want to blow my cover and reveal I wasn’t a moron. “Maybe Bush will be here next year with his book,” he continued.

ENOUGH!

“Yeah, he’ll be in the kids section,” I said. “Just turn left at My Pet Goat.”

With that, I turned back around and concentrated on live mocking the event via twitter. “Does anyone know how to spell subpoena?” I asked outloud. “Anyone? Anyone?”  I was having so much fun live tweeting the event, that it took me by surprise when suddenly I was next in line to meet Karl Rove.

I was one person away from finding out if he still remembered me from twitter. I had a feeling he might, because at least one person had told me he blocked them just for mentioning my name. Would Karl Rove remember OTOOLEFAN?

“Karl Rove,” he said, extending his hand and smiling.  I mumbled “yeah” as I shook his hand and made a mental note to buy Lava soap. “Who do I make this out to?” he asked.

“OTOOLEFAN.” I replied.

The look on his face changed completely. His eyes narrowed and the smile was gone as he said slowly, “Otooooollllle”.  The pen froze in his hand and we just stared at each other. “I’m a political junkie,” I said, breaking the silence. Then the pen began to move as he wrote To Otoolefan! and then he scrawled out his name. “Hope you enjoy the book”, he said, handing it back to me.

Mission Accomplished I said to myself, as I started to walk away.  “C’mon let’s get a picture”, he said. This caught me off guard for a moment but then I thought, this might be funny, so I played along. As they were getting ready to take the picture, it came to me that I wanted to have the same expression that Bill Clinton had in his photo with Kim Jong-il.

I could’ve caused a scene, or spit on him, or poured paint on his head, but I wanted this to be just between me and him, mono e turdo. I’m happy with the way it worked out.

An hour after the event began, it was over. Poor Karl was left standing there flanked by two security guards with two hours to go. And this is Lee County, the most Republican county in Florida. I hung around for a bit enjoying his humiliation and snapped a few more pictures of the rogue. On my way out, I took the time to put Karl’s book in its proper section.

When I got home, I sent the video contents to GottaLaff for her to assemble into a Blunt video. I opened Karl’s book to look at the autograph once more and laughed that I got him to make it out to OTOOLEFAN.  I decided I would try to read just one thing out of his book for the hell of it. I opened the book randomly to a page and this is what I read:

“At the age of nine, I decided I was for Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election. I got my hands on a Nixon bumper sticker, slapped it on my bike’s wire basket, and rode up and down the block, as if that alone would get him a vote. Instead it drew the attention of a little girl who lived in the neighborhood. She had a few years and about 30 pounds on me and was enthusiastically for John F. Kennedy. She pulled me from my bicycle and beat the heck out of me, leaving me with a bloody nose and a tattered ego. I’ve never liked losing a political fight since.”

So Karl Rove became the architect of dirty politics because he got beat up by a GIRL!

It’s clear from this passage alone, that even at an early age, Karl Rove had already lost his battle with his Inner Loser. He is what’s known in layman’s terms as an Outtie.

Imagine my surprise when a couple weeks ago I received an email with the photo of Karl and me. Even though these are two people who clearly don’t belong in the same picture together, this is real and has not been photo-shopped in any way. I know.  I was there. So was Karl. We’ll always have Books A Million.

Here’s looking at you, Turd.