I’ll Get a Big Book Advance if I Land an Interview with Osama
Dear NSA:
Just so you don’t chew up a lot of your gigaflops monitoring me, I want to warn you that I will soon be placing calls to night clubs and bars in Waziristan and asking to speak to Osama.
I know. You’re going to say that this is the second time for me, that you find it tedious how I waste precious national anti-terror resources, and what would my mother say if she knew? You would be right in every case.
I’ll admit that the first episode of calls to Waziristan was somewhat hare-brained. But I had been drinking a lot after my wife left me for the FBI agent. All the guys at the Harry’s bet me I couldn’t get Osama on the phone and… Well, you know the rest.
But this time around it’s the real deal. I found this book publisher in New York City who said that if I could get an interview with Osama, he (the publisher) could almost guarantee that I would get a book contract out of it with a big, big advance. And, as you know from monitoring my phone calls, I could use the money.
It all started when I was in Paris — living off my credit card — and I missed my Metro stop one day. When I got off at the next station, there I was in this Arab city, right in the middle of Paris. So I went into this shop and asked the proprietor where I could find a list of bars and nightclubs in Waziristan.
Quick as anything, he reaches under the counter and pulls out a copy of the Waziristan phone book. I paid him a hundred dollars for it. I forget how many euros that was. Then, standing there at the counter browsing through it, I realized that I didn’t know what all the squiggly lines of print were saying.
So I said did he know anyone who could go through the phone book and pick out the numbers for bars and nightclubs. I was in luck, because he called a really creepy little guy with a long beard out from the back of the store, and we made a deal right there.
I paid another hundred bucks and then came back the next day and Mr. Creepy Beard handed over a list of Waziristan phone numbers. He said it was every bar and nightclub.
So there you have it. As soon as I make a payment on my past due phone bill, the phone company will restore my phone service. I think it’s an 11-hour time difference between me and Waziristan, so my plan is to start calling numbers on the list starting about 10 a.m. every day until I find Osama.
Once I have an interview set up, then I’ll figure out how to find the money for the air fare. And then, off I go.
Also, could you alert the people at Immigration and TSA about all this so that when I come home after the interview, they won’t give me a lot of lip about why I was in Waziristan?
Thanks in advance for your help.