conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a description for a book titled Republican Party Reptile about Outrageous, O'Rourke, Western with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Classics?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Outrageous and funny as ever, O'Rourke examines sundry aspects of Western civilization in 21 collected essays. 5 cassettes.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for this book? Start with the sentence 'Republican Party Reptile
  I got ahold of a British Foreign and Commonwealth Office document stamped "RESTRICTED" (though it had been marked down to "Confidential")'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Republican Party Reptile
  I got ahold of a British Foreign and Commonwealth Office document stamped "RESTRICTED" (though it had been marked down to "Confidential"). This detailed several meetings in London between JAGS and British minister of state Nicholas Ridley. Ridley offered the Turks and Caicos £12 million to become an independent country. JAGS said they wouldn't do it for less than £40 million. Secretary of State Lord Carrington popped in on the conference and "expressed surprise" that the Turks and Caicos were turning down such a generous offer as £12 million "and wondered that the Treasury had agreed to it." JAGS hung tough. The meeting ended on a testy note. "Mr. Ridley... offered them a deal, which they could either take or leave. Mr. McCartney said that he would not accept that. Britain was, he said, the captain of the boat and should pay the crew. Mr. Ridley pointed out that we might reduce the crew's wages." JAGS "retorted that in that case, we might have a mutiny.... Mr. Ridley made it clear... that the problem could be solved by starting again with new people."
  In the end the islands got their £12 million and didn't have to be independent either. I asked the British governor what had happened. "It's the post-Falklands era," he sighed.
  Anyway, the political system in the Ts and Cs—whether created by narcotics money, crabby twits in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, or plain old vote-grabbing—is certainly different from ours. Ariel Misick, the minister of commerce, development, and tourism, wanted to talk about commerce, development, and tourism. Imagine a system of governance so unsophisticated that the head of a department knows what his department does. Misick (a distant relation to busted ex-minister Missick-with-two-s's) said there are two hundred square miles of empty Crown Lands in the Turks and Caicos. Two of the largest islands are uninhabited. There is half a mile of beach for every hotel room. The Ts and Cs are a last frontier for commercial development in the Caribbean.
  Governor Christopher J. Turner wanted to talk about development too. Balanced development—nice tourists in big boats, cruising, diving, sport fishing. His other points of hope for the underemployed: the fishing industry, financial services, and agronite mining. (Agronite being a kind of sea dirt useful in making driveways and chemical things. There's lots of it around the place.) Turner was also hipped on some Smithsonian Institution research being done about algae farming. It would be exactly like cattle ranching except underwater with algae instead of hay and with Caribbean king crabs as the cows. At least this is what I have in my notes.
  What about drugs? Turner, a career civil servant appointed from London with responsibility for the islands' foreign relations and internal security, said, "Yes." A simple fact of geography. The Turks and Caicos are 600 miles from Colombia, 575 miles from Miami. "We'll always remain an interesting possibility to people engaged in the drug trade." Are the Ts and Cs a hotbed of international dope crime? "No. A refueling option." But, said Turner, "In a British dependent territory things like this aren't supposed to go on." He was the one who'd called in the DEA for a "straightforward double sting operation" which stung his own chief minister. Was Turner shocked? Satisfied? Incredulous? Cheesed off? The governor plays the cards close to his chest. "In the event of his being found guilty it would be a personal tragedy and a tragedy for the islands. Saunders had managerial skills." Any turmoil? Turner said, "I told a reporter, There's been no protest, no public demonstrations, and nobody has taken to the streets.' This was reported as 'British Governor Urges Populace Not to Take to the Streets.'" Alas, that's what comes of using understatement on the press.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know three more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Naturally they like to try their weapons. When the press got obstreperous because Amal wouldn't let anyone into the school, the kids cut loose with a dozen rounds of AK-47 fire. Your stomach muscles contract, you go into a crouch, chemical zaniness spurts through the bloodstream no matter how many times you've heard close fire and no matter that you know the guns are pointed in the air. It's funny, too, seeing a hundred sweaty, red-faced newsmen in silly golf clothes duck-walking backward at sixty miles an hour.
  I can't tell you much about how it all ended. The next time you think to ask somebody about something "because he was there," think again. I was there. Some towel-head from Hizbullah marched up and down the street twice. There was a certain amount of what passes for horseplay in these latitudes. "I blow you camera away," said one of the older Amal guys to a network crew. He aimed his pistol. He pulled the trigger. Click. It wasn't loaded. "Ha ha ha ha ha." There was a lot of standing around in the sun with no beer.
  A convoy was standing ready behind Amal lines. I hustled for position so I could witness the send-off. But there are about seven ways out of the Burj and I picked the wrong one. The convoy went down another street and I was left watching a gaggle of French photographers bribe their way onto a balcony that overlooked nothing but more French photographers.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last four paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I held precedence at this council, by virtue of my inheritance and tactical ability, but I knew that with the end of the colored war we would all fall back to quarreling with each other. And I also knew that some of the other high school commanders had no love for me. At least two, in fact, wanted to command a united army of high school students and use it to take control of the city just as I planned to. Therefore I made a diplomatic move unbeknownst to my comrades in arms. I arranged a secret meeting with the leader of the colored forces. I told him of our intention to massacre his people, and he was very upset about it. But I offered to make an arrangement with him. If he would ensure that his troops killed each of my four co-commanders, then I would allow him to surrender on liberal terms with no massacre or rape or looting by the white armies. He agreed, and I showed to him the exact position that each commander would be occupying during the battle. He swore that he would do his best to see that each was killed.
  It was a terrific fight. Every Negro person in Sandusky had armed himself as best he could with knives and shovels and rocks and bottles, and the police had cordoned off that whole part of town so that we could fight without tying up traffic. Of course, the colored troops were no match for our mounted knights, and our archers and crossbowmen cut them down in waves. But they fought well, giving no quarter and asking none. And, while they fought, the captain of their high school's guard fulfilled his promise to me and sent his best knights in at just the place I had told him so that by midafternoon three of my rivals were dead and the other so badly wounded that he had to go home. I alone was left in charge of the field, and when the Negros at last began to wave white bedsheets attached to broom handles and garden rakes, I called a halt to the killing. I gave the colored people a place to live, between the freightyard and the river, on the edge of downtown as far south as the Delco battery plant, and they remain loyal subjects to this day.
  It happened at the dinner table. Mom had just brought in the roast when Count Ralph, unhinged by my taunts while we'd been eating salad, drew his rapier and, made clumsy by his anger, thrust into a bowl of potato salad. I leapt on my chair and, grabbing the pull-down light fixture in my left hand, slashed at him with the heavy saber I had carried to the table for just this purpose. I missed and cut one of the dining-room drapes in half. Ralph parried my backstroke and cut me beneath the arm. I kicked a gravy boat at his chest and, as he flinched, caught him with a glancing blow that cut off his ear and killed my sister Jill. He had his dagger out by now, but dagger and rapier were no match for my heavier weapon, and I backed him into the family room, slashing furiously at his bleeding head. He did me some damage, I must say. I was wounded again in the thigh and lost a finger of my left hand to his knife. But I laid open his chest right through the sport shirt so that a strip of flesh fell open like a flap. Ralph ran out the back door onto the patio. I could have skewered him then, from behind, but I wanted a death that was face to face. He poked through the screen as I came out after him, and I stumbled off the steps. He would have had me if he'd been quicker, but he was too fat from beer and too soft from sitting watching TV every night. I regained my footing and we went at it for a moment more until I had him backing away into the yard. It was then that he tripped on the lawn chair and fell backward into it like he was sitting down. His head went back, and I gave a mighty slash and severed it from his body.
  King Bob had no choice after that but to make me Captain of the Royal Guards. I accused most all of them of corruption, cheating on their income tax, or violating parking regulations, and had them executed. I replaced them with my own soldiers. Now I'm waiting for my uncle to die. I believe Princess Annie is going to poison him. And then I'll be king and move out and get a place of my own and buy a four-wheel-drive Jeep.