Political Satire: Having trouble surviving these times? You’re not alone. Join us in columnist John F. Di Leo’s exploration of an alternate universe, where we imagine the impossible:
Joe Buckstop, an aging, corrupt old fool, somehow becomes president in his basement, and every night, an aide has to bring him his soup and discuss the events of the day as he prepares to receive his nightly meds…
Dateline, March 14. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, boss! I have Sunday Farmhouse Soup for you on Pie Day!”
“What”
“Pie Day! Happy Pie Day, sir!”
“I’ve never heard of it. Is that some foreign holiday that your ethnic group celebrates or something?”
“Uh, no, sir… it’s March 14, sir.”
“So?”
“Well, sir, you know, March 14. That’s Three Fourteen, sir. Three Fourteen, sir. You know?”
“Are you on drugs?”
“No sir!”
“Then what are you talking about, boy?”
“It’s March 14, sir. Three fourteen is the beginning of Pi. You know, 3.14159 and so forth.”
“You’re still talking gibberish, boy.”
“It’s March 14, also known as three fourteen, right? Which is the way that people customarily refer to Pi, the mathematical key to circles, sir.”
“Circles? Circles don’t need keys. Locks need keys.”
“Umm, no sir, that’s not what I meant, sir. You must remember from math class as a kid, that you calculate things having to do with circles by using the magic number known as Pi. If you have the radius, then pi can tell you the circumference and the area. If you have the radius and the height, then pi can tell you the volume of a cylinder. Mathematicians and engineers love it.”
“Well, I’m not a mathematician or an engineer. I’m a retired politician.”
“Retired? You’re not retired, sir!”
“I’m not? Oh, right. I’m not. I keep forgetting they talked me into staying for a while. Anyway, I sure don’t have to care about math.”
“Well, sir, respectfully, um… isn’t everything in government all about math?”
“No. Why would it be?”
“Well, sir, you know, sir… tax rates and revenues, duties and punitive tariffs, and stimulus and department spending and annual budgets, you know… and grants and welfare and foreign aid…. everything that goes into the budget. Everything you vote on, everything you consider, is judged to some extent on whether we can afford it, right? Figuring out the annual budget is just all math, really, isn’t it?”
“Come on, Man! We haven’t had an annual budget in years.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“We stopped doing budgets fifty years ago. It’s all continuing resolutions now. We don’t have to do math. You just take last year’s numbers and add ten percent, and then argue about whether that doubling is enough of an increase or not.”
“Umm, adding ten percent doesn’t double it, sir. Adding ten percent just increases it by a tenth, sir.”
“You sure, son?”
“Yes sir, quite sure, sir.”
“Oh. Well, that’s the only math we do in the senate, anyway.
“So it’s math, sir, just very basic math, then?”
“I guess.”
“And you do it wrong.”
“I guess.”
“Well, that explains a lot, sir.”
“I guess.”
“Well then, in any case, I’ll still wish you a Happy Pi Day, because I want to get at this soup!”
“Oh, there’s soup?”
“Well, certainly, sir, there’s always soup! This is Farmhouse Sunday Soup, sir. It’s Italian. Little raviolis, basically. Cheese raviolis made with parmesan and romano, in chicken broth.”
“What does that have to do with pie, son?”
“An upper crust, a bottom crust, and a filling, sir. Raviolis are about as much like pie as anything could be, don’t you think, sir?”
“Hmmm… I guess so. This is good. You’re right, it does work. Ravioli soup. Who’d have thought it.”
“Glad you like it, sir. I’ll tell the cook when I go back up. I liked it too.”
“Think there might be any more up there?”
“Oh yes sir. Big pot.”
“Then I’ll want more when I’m done with this cup. This is really good. Reminds me of a chicken dumpling soup I used to have when I was a boy in Scranton. I’m from Scranton, you know. Did you know I grew up in Scranton?”
“Umm, yes sir, now that you mention it, I do believe I’d heard that somewhere, sir.”
“This is good soup. How much do you think is in here?”
“Hmmm… well, sir, it looks like about double the size of a regular cup, so I’m guessing this bowl is about 16 ounces, sir.”
“I could’ve sworn 16 ounces was a pound. Isn’t that a pound?”
“Well, umm, yes sir, if we were measuring by weight, sir… but we’re measuring by liquid ounces, not by weight. So, 16 fluid ounces make a pint.”
“I never knew you could find out something’s volume from its weight.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Well, if you know something weighs sixteen ounces, now you know how many pints it is. I never realized that before, son.”
“Umm…. no, sir, just, umm…. no. They’re different ounces. They aren’t necessarily related unless you’re talking about water., sir.”
“You said they were both ounces.”
“Well, sir, yes, but different KINDS of ounces, sir. English weight ounces and English fluid ounces are completely different things, sir.”
“Oh. Well, how do I get more of this soup?”
“How much more do you want, sir? Another bowl the same size? More? Less?”
“Umm, how about we do with another ten percent.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Ten percent more than last time. I liked it. A lot.”
“So that’s basically the same as last time, just a couple of spoonfuls more, sir.”
“When we want to double something on the hill, we say we’re adding ten percent.”
“Well, sir, you may say that, but that’s not what’s happening. It’s just not how math works, sir. To double something, you multiply it by two, sir. Or, I suppose you could say, you’re adding 100%. Hmm, maybe that’s the issue. Maybe you put the decimal in the wrong place, sir?”
“What’s a de-small?”
“Decimal, sir. It’s the little dot in a number to differentiate the whole numbers from the fractional ones, sir.”
“Oh.”
“When you guys make math mistakes on the Senate floor, don’t people ever question you, or correct you, or anything?”
“They wouldn’t dare! We’re senators!”
“Ah, well, sir, this explains a lot…”
“Well, I finished my soup. Get me some more.”
“And to be clear, sir, you want another bowl like that one, sir?”
“No, I’m not drinking the broth, I’m just having the raviolis, and there aren’t many, so you better give me about three times the size.”
“Three times the size, sir? That’s a pretty big bowl. That would basically be a mixing bowl, sir. Is that what you mean?”
“Sure. Just get me a bowl that’s three percent bigger, and that should do it.”
‘Umm, no sir, 3 percent is tiny, sir. Not enough to make a big difference sir.”
“You sure? I thought 3% was a lot.”
“Not in this context, sir. 3% growth is okay for the economy… a 3% annual raise is standard in some companies… a 3% error rate at a factory would be way too high…. I mean it depends, you know, sir? But if you want to triple the amount of soup, sir, then that’s multiplying by three, not increasing by point zero three, sir.”
“Point zero three? What does that mean?”
“That’s the same as saying three percent, sir.”
“Come on Man! Look, you’ve lost me, son. Just get me some more soup, all right? And crackers. Lots of crackers.”
“Yes sir. I’ll head up right now, sir. Be back in a few minutes with your soup, sir.”
“Thanks! Man, that was interesting. I sure am glad I don’t have to do any math for my job…”
Copyright 2021 John F Di Leo
Excerpted with permission from “Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volume One,” from Free State West Publishing, available in paperback or eBook exclusively on Amazon.
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant. A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I and II) are available only on Amazon.
His latest book, “Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volume Three,” was just published in November, 2023.
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