029 - Oregon Marionberry

[deadly_ned]

Show of hands;

Are there any new inmates bored and interested in taking a bit of a side vacation? It's just for a day. Half a day.

Food will be served.

[Private to River]

How's...everything? Your first week, I mean. How are you doing?

[Private to Alpha]

If you're not busy, I need your help for a project.

[Private to Ben]

Do you mind if I borrow Abigail for a day?

Comments

[mightthinkthat]

Usually.

[deadly_ned]

How about not usually?

[mightthinkthat]

Chalk it up to adventures in the constituency. [There are some terrible cooks out there, Ned.]

[deadly_ned]

I'm not your constituency. I hope that doesn't make a difference in how we interact.

[mightthinkthat]

You don't get to prime minister by bootlicking. Or if you do, you don't last very long.

[deadly_ned]

Good to know, if I ever decide to give up pie-making and run for office.

[mightthinkthat]

I wouldn't. [It doesn't do well to be anxious in that job.]

[deadly_ned]

I wasn't even a hall monitor when I was young.

[mightthinkthat]

If you're of a nervous disposition... I've known people to drop dead.

[deadly_ned]

From...what?

\

[mightthinkthat]

The strain.

[deadly_ned]

Ah.

Only I've met politicians who died supposedly from stress but actually turned out to be more the flavor of homicide.

[mightthinkthat]

Well, usually when you kill a politician, you want to send a statement. Hiding it as something else does your message no good at all. Stress is a surefire way to get him postmortem sympathy... which is a rarer concern for whatever killer might decide to snuff one out.

[deadly_ned]

You don't have to kill a politician for political reasons.

[mightthinkthat]

In the House of Common, yes you do. Otherwise, you really ought to wait until he's made into a Lord. Far better stipend.

[deadly_ned]

People kill for other reasons besides money and politics.

[mightthinkthat]

They certainly don't do it for love if that's what you're suggesting.

[deadly_ned]

Of course they do it for love. And jealousy, which is a meaner version of love.

[mightthinkthat]

You don't understand. Either politicians or political wives. It becomes about the politics. Love might bring a couple together but it's valued against their political career and if it's a danger, used by their enemies to lead them to destruction.

Jealousy becomes jealousy of position. They either rob it off them, or leave it in tatters and walk out knowing that they leave behind a broken husk.

Politics is not divisible from the politician. Whether they like it or not.

[deadly_ned]

I don't understand politics, sir. But I do understand death and why people kill.

Sometimes there are exceptions.

[mightthinkthat]

You're very anxious to prove me wrong, aren't you. I do know a lot about politics. I know the winners and the losers. I know the sex maniacs and the prudes and how often the two coincide. I know the perverts and the power hungry and the ones who still cling on to their principals no matter the consequence. I've been at the forefront and the back end of the corridors of power and I know, intimately, how they think. And I know how they die.

Perhaps, in America, it's simply different.

[deadly_ned]

Not anxious to prove. No.

I wouldn't know. I just know how people die.

[mightthinkthat]

But not everyone.

[deadly_ned]

Almost everyone.

[mightthinkthat]

[He's not getting into this argument.]