We Cover the Universe

      This memoir is like a sperm that inseminates an egg. It’s had a long and fast, hard swim. It’s breached the egg and no other sperm can enter. The genetic makeup is complete. What you’ve got is what you’ve got. There’s no going back. No embryo-editing in these pages. A digital rewrite is not in me. No ghost writer this time for me either. For the last 50 years, I’ve been writing and reading a good bit, building up my speed and endurance. I’ve developed my craft. You’ll want to savor this read. Chunk it. Absorb it. I encourage you to post some of my gems on your socials. It’s got layers, maybe not Submerged Smith Island Cake layers, but Shrek layers at least. Truth be told, there’s a bit of masculinity. 

     I’m not known as a storyteller because that can take patience. But I ask that you set aside any bias, unconscious or conscious, and consider my deep penetration. I’ve had plenty of time up here in “space prison.” I have participated in a lot of great stories. I’ve been active. So, take your time. A good place to read might be the bathroom. I like the bedroom myself. Absorb the nuance. Go slow, speed readers. No scanning please, except for marketing info. I’ll  jump right in, but I may bounce around quite a bit. No, his isn’t all about my politics or my sex life, which have been widely discussed; it’s just peppered with that stuff. Granular pepper, not the powder. 

     For you prudish grannies or great-grannies reading or browsing, I’ve got an appendix for you. I created a concise, G-rated, standard memoir of my first term as President. You’ll find it at the very end. Overall, this memoir contains some saucy stuff, so consider yourself warned if you decide to carry on. 

     Funny word “appendix.” It’s also used as a word for the vermiform appendix, a muscular, worm-shaped tube attached to your large intestine. To this day, with all the advances in medicine, scientists have not proven what the appendix specifically does. They just know you don’t need it. They also know an average appendectomy costs roughly $20,000. That says a lot about medical science in my opinion. 

     In my mind, my start as a politician began in my first presidential debate on September 26, 2016. The debate was held at Hofstra University and was moderated by ENBC’s Lester Bolt. For some reason, I was taken seriously, which I still find astonishing. We talked about job creation, trade, taxes, and my take on immigration and the Iraq War. My opponent, Jillary Cliton, was a disgusting woman. Be really seemed like a queer-looking man. Cliton was a Democrat, and, secretly, I was leaning that way. But the Republicans believed all the crap that came out of my mouth, so I was officially one of them. Honestly, I did like their basic platform, Republicans that is, but they rarely created policies that reflected their platform. 

     Politics is full of liars. The debate was a perfect opportunity to see how far my antics would take me. I really am a good guy. It’s not my fault my family has a lot of money. Overall, the Democrats did quite well while I was in power my first term. Not that I wanted to hang out with them. But I know what’s good business, and I knew I wouldn’t get reelected the first time, and it’s amazing to me how much crap people will believe is true. You can fool a lot of people a lot of the time. I’m an endgame type of guy. 

     At Hofstra, I remember seeing a hair coming out of Jillary’s nose. It was black, thick, and contrasted with ber pasty skin. When be talked, I didn’t hear much of what be said. White noise. All I could do for much of the debate was fixate on that black hair. It really didn’t matter what Jillary said anyway. You’d think someone would have said something or done something about her nose hair prior to the debate. “You could see that?” you might ask. Yes. I have great distance vision. And I have a great gift of foresight, not so bad at foreplay either. I’d say 

my best characteristic is that I’m broadminded, very broadminded. 

     Jillary was not pleasant to look at, a pear-shaped harridan. Younger, she might have been decent looking. Most older women are not attractive. It’s a rule of nature, and Jillary was not an exception. Be wore a light blue suit and looked like Mrs. Freeze with a wig. So, my tactic was to tell it like it was, like I was a regular downtrodden American, fed up with overzealous government intervention—not necessarily sure of the facts, but looking for some payback. Jesus, baby, the fucking IRS. I pictured myself drinking a beer, many beers, and rambling on about how awful government was, but doing it in a tasteful suit and tie and waving the American flag. Good god, what saps Americans are when it comes to the American flag. It was a cinch. Plain-old Jillary (no one liked her) versus a 6-foot-3 flag-infested clown. 

     The specific point when I knew I had a real chance to beat Jillary was when be said I was chummy with Russia, and that Russia might be involved in cyberattacks. That came after Bolt asked about cybersecurity and the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s emails. I said, and I remember this, “Might be Russia, might be China. It could be anybody. It could be somebody in bed that weighs 600 pounds.” With that one statement, I showed consideration for Russia and China, but perhaps more importantly for lazy fat people, assuring that many Democratic defectors would vote my way. I pictured Jillary as a 600-pound fat lady sitting on ber bed after just finishing a box of chocolate caramel turtles—quite a few chins going on. Jillary, the American people wisely knew, wouldn’t be tough on China or Russia or fat people. Who wants to see a pasty shrew for four years anyway? 

     Jillary and I and Lester talked about the usual political claptrap. The debate was divided into six segments. I’m refreshing my memory now by using Lickipedia. The transcripts are on Polititko. It says here that “the debate set the record as the most-watched debate in television history, with 84 million viewers across 13 channels that carried it live and were counted by Nielsen.” 

     At one point, mean-old Jillary said, “In fact, Ronald was a big fan of the housing crisis. He said, back in 2006, ‘I hope it does collapse, because then I can buy more properties and make some money.’ Well, it did collapse.” To which I said, “That’s called business. Something you know nothing about.” 

     This is what Americans were really upset about. I said, “Our energy policies are disastrous. Our country is losing so much in terms of paying off our unfathomable debt. You can’t do anything you say you’re going to do, when our country is $20 trillion in debt. The Alibama administration, from the time you’ve come in, has incurred 230 years’ worth of debt. You’ve doubled it in less than eight years. We have to do a much better job helping companies to grow and expand. All we have to do is look at Michigan and Ohio and all the places where companies are leaving. They’re gone. So Jillary, you’ve been doing this for over 30 years. Why are you just thinking about solutions now? What have you been doing? At the same time that you’ve been promoted for ineptitude, I’ve been building projects that employ huge amounts of people and make a lot of money. You’re not going to be promoted again.” 

     That was good. I am good. It helped that everyone was tired of Jillary’s chubby pasty face. There’s a bunch more of all that freewheeling banter if you want to look at it. I’ll pick out a few more tasty bits, share them, and move on from politics. 

     Damn! What was that?! 

     Something banged into my office window hard. I bet it was a bird. That’s happened before. It’s pretty hospitalish in here, so it’s pretty quiet. That other one, a sparrow, I put in a box and left outside on the porch. I was at my country place, and it wasn’t there when I went back a half-hour later. Sometimes they’re just stunned, not dead. No cats were around, so I think it survived to fly another day. I’ll get some help to check on this one. … 

     Well, Chancey, who’s a fantastic singular valet by the way, very handsome, very tidy, did the same thing as I instructed, but it’s been an hour and it looks like this bird won’t make it. It was a bluebird be said, a male with all the colorful trimmings. X’d out. Done in by bad eyes or some megalomaniac just as capable of destruction as creation.  

Okay, so back to my memoir and a little more politics. In the debate, we were talking about race in America. Bolt reminded me. I said: “Look, the Black community has been waylaid by our politicians. Oh, they talk nice around election time, but after an election, it’s like, ‘See you in four years.’ Blacks in our inner cities have been so badly treated, and the Democrats act like they’re helping them. They’ve controlled these communities for like 100 years.” 

     And then there’s this: “I have a son. He’s 10. He is so good with computers, it’s amazing. The security aspect of cyber is tough stuff, maybe hardly doable. But we’re not doing what we should be doing, and that’s true throughout our governmental systems. We need leaders. We need public-private partnerships. We have so many things that we could do better, Lester. Cyber is one of them.” 

Vote for me. 

     And that’s what the calculated minority of people did. It certainly helped that Jillary’s campaign sucked.  

     If you want to know what really got me into politics. It was altruism. I hinted at the end of “The Art of the Steal” that I was looking for more to do. One government letter that turned up on my desk also ignited some passion. I paid the fine and threw it out, but retrieved it from my trash can, and it’s framed now in my Pump Tower office down on the globe. It was a form letter from the New York Department of Transportation. 

     Ever since I’ve had a driver’s license, one of the ordinary things that I like to take care of personally (did take care of personally) is the registration for my go-to car of the time and all the stuff necessary to keep it legal. Yes, I used to make trips to the DMV. Well, I cancelled my insurance on my Bentley because it started making some weird noise and I was getting tired of it. I thought I’d save a few bucks. Why pay for insurance when I wasn’t going to drive it. It was just sitting in a garage. I had a Cadillac that I liked. But I was busy and didn’t think about it for a while. But in the commie state of New York, you have to turn in your license plates prior to cancelling your insurance. You’re guilty before being proven innocent, one of many injustices made possible by the corrupt established insurance racketeers. 

     I got the letter but didn’t take enough notice of it because it looked like a regular registration renewal letter, which usually isn’t a matter of urgency. They give you like 60 days. One day, I had some time to clean up my desk a bit and opened the letter. It said my insurance had lapsed and that uninsured motorist penalty fines for each uninsured car is $150 for the first 30 days and increases by $7 for each additional day, with a maximum penalty of $2,500. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t using the car. So, I don’t like to pay fines and fees, so I drove my white Caddy, named Whitey, to the DMV the next day to turn in my plates. It had only been a couple months, but my fine was a little over $365. I told the clerk I didn’t want to pay to insure a car that I wasn’t using. Be said, “It’s a common thing.” I said, “That’s horrible.” Another clerk leaned over and said I could possibly get some relief if I filled out another form, so helpful in their caring extortion double-team. But this “looks pretty accurate,” be added. 

     Not returning a $2 license plate on a car that I wasn’t using cost me $365, chump change for me, yes, but the government got $365 for doing nothing. I thought about all the poor shmucks who paid even more than that. The average person needed a car back then to survive and contribute to society. I was reminded of Donald Regan’s most interesting quotation. “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” Why then, would I want to get into politics after that?  

     You see, the national debt tripled from $1 trillion to $3 trillion dollars during the Regan years. Be was basically full of shit. I have to give ber credit for the downward spiral of moral obligation by our federal government. Be did that through the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 and the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which reduced the top tax rate for ordinary income from 50% to 28% and raised the bottom tax rate from 11% to 15%—the first time in D.S. income tax history that the top tax rate was lowered and the bottom rate was increased at the same time. Trickle-down economics my butt. I knew it wouldn’t work like be said it would, but what could I do about it? 

     A funny myth related to that is that Regan once sent me a letter asking me to run for president. Didn’t happen. Weed-smoking macho man Jamey Garner once said: “Donald Regan wasn’t qualified to serve as governor, or president. I was vice president of the Screen Actors Guild when he was its president. Basically, my duties were attending meetings and voting. What I remember about Donnie is he never had an original thought. We always had to tell him what to say, not the best way to lead a union, or a state, or a country.” I always wanted to bang Garner’s lawyer, the blond one on The Rockfish Files. That was one hot, smart dish there. I did steal Regan’s campaign line from 1980: “Let’s make America great again.” I left out the “Let’s” bit because it seemed a bit unifying and wimpish to me. 

     How did I become rich? I became rich the old-fashioned way—a relative gave me a lot of money. So many people are too busy working and hating life to pay attention to the rich and famous. Some simply are happy to be alive. I simply was born rich and was smart enough not to blow all my inheritance or let government steal it. My dad, a real estate guy, left me $200 million. The rich get richer is a cliché because it’s true most of the time. You just can’t be a schmuck. It’s my value as a persona, though, that’s ultimately got me where I am now.  Where am I now? I’ll offer up a few visual clues, but I’m not giving up everything this early. We’re in this together. If I’m taking all this trouble to write this down, I’ll appreciate it if you read till the end. I’m not going to stop you if you speed-read a bit. I can’t, of course, and I really can’t blame you for that.  

     I’m in space as I previously mentioned and as you might already know I’m on Island 6, built by Geoff Pesos’ people. One day, Pesos said to me, “Ronald, your time is almost up. You’ve served your purpose. You actually still might have one. I need your construction expertise to build me some space islands. I’ve got the designs for places where you can live virtually forever. We’re working on improving our quality of life, but you’ll be alive for now and your brain won’t deteriorate. And, believe it or not, we’ve figured out how to make sex better. And if you did die, we could just make you again.” 

     More on all that later, but back to the visuals. As you might know about my public image, my orange skin has cleared up a bit and I’m partial to a cool orange hairdo. What you might not know is that I can choose my skin and hair color with a voice or mind cue. My insides are basically organic computers that support my brain. I can be handsome or not (I usually choose handsome), and I can still have my trademark hair when I want it. I was kinda freakish looking in my 90s anyway, a bit too portly for sure. More on that also later. 

     Pesos is a fascinating man. Ber first ex, MacKenzy, was an attractive brunette. So nice as well. So nice. Nice smile. Beautiful. I can see Mac’s smile now. Be got a bit manly like most women but was the best-looking woman I knew with over $50 billion. Some men might want to sleep with a woman who looked a bit mannish and had $50 billion, depending on whether or not all the vital parts checked out. I can visualize that.

      Written as a satirical memoir, Chump tells the story of the 45th President of the Divided States of America, beginning with his years as a real-estate developer to becoming a controversial figure who irrevocably changed America's political landscape. Ronald John Pump had a complicated relationship with his mother. In 2052, he found his place in one of Geoff Pesos' private islands in space, where he found the time and inclination to write this tell-all memoir. Pump reveals how he borrowed a few hundred million from his father to become a self-made man, wrote the infamous book "The Art of the Steal," overcame his opponents during the political debates, used disinformation and "opposite control" to manipulate the populace for his own ends, met his wives, raised his kids, helped take down a wanted terrorist, and more.

     Hilarious and alarming in equal measure, Chump parodies the career of the current president of the United States with a satirical and sci-fi flair. What's interesting about this book is that the character of Ronald John Pump is probably only slightly exaggerated compared to the personality of Donald J. Trump. Some of the dialogue used in this book seems like actual quotes from the mouth of the real-life Donald Trump. The book is not only funny but also sheds light on the ridiculousness and absurdity plaguing American politics over the past decade or so. Apart from the star protagonist, other notable people are also featured, including Pesos, Tusk, Jillary, Lindsay Spam, etc. Some of my favorite stories were Pump trying to explain his strategy on foreign relations involving countries such as North Korea, China, and India. If you're a fan of well-written satire, don't miss this book!