Despite having many new responsibilities as your President and dweller in your Doma Blanca, I have not put aside all of the "childish things" of my past years in this great nation, including my persistent curiosity viz. your curious human customs of Day Celebration and Veneration. And it is again that I fail to understand your strange, human Holy-days and thereby create bemusement and merriment for all. All save myself. I admit freely, this state of affairs has become as vexsome as it is predictable.

Specifically, the Holy Day of the April Fool puzzles me. Is this a day rewarding the fool, the idiot, the layabout? Much like how your Eve of All Hallows honors the monsters amongst us?

Was I to dress as a fool and behave as a fool? Yes, I confess in mild embarassment, this was my first misunderstanding of the Holy Day. So I did covertly beseech the Bros. Ramirez in the White House motor pool to dress my auto-velocitator so as to resemble my assistant Rob, the greatest fool I know.

Enormous threadbare corduroy slacks hid the gleaming steel legs of my chariot. A stained hooded sweatshirt was fitted about my canopied dome. A large cigarette was affixed to the glass nearest my beak with glue, tape and primate ingenuity.

For hours I wandered within the Doma Blanca, impersonating Rob in a manner at once both broad caricature and startlingly accurate portrayal, completely encompassing both the humor and pathos of that clown of clowns. "Like and whoa I say unto you. Why is this day of work so insufferably long? Man."

"If necessity and my beneficent alien-overlord force upon me to craft yet another woefully sub-standard, lacking luster speech, I shall quit and retire back to Detroit, to mine heavily-surveiled apartment dwelling where I shall spend my time imbibing intoxicants, inhaling solvents, scorching the leaves of herbivorous plants and watching films about the sexual biology of primates."

I received many sidelong glances for my act: Condelleza the Rice seemed especially put at 5s and 9s by my performance—perhaps by its virtuosity?— and even Large Penis Cheney, ever so bold, did so quickly finish of his mopping of the ballroom and scurry back to his maintenance closet. Strange. He usually much enjoys my actings; when I did smudge pudding on my velocitator dome and re-enacted Monsieur Gorbachev's address to the United Nations (such a cryptic name for that body of gruntchimps) of Nineteen-Eighty-and-Eight, he was verily upon the floor with the laughings. Then the trip to the hospital, the electrostimulation of his hearts to regularize their unsteady, syncopated beat, and finally return—in time to turn down Mr. Mugabe's bed for the evening in the Lincoln For-Sleeping Room. Such a full day that was.

All of that taken into the accounts, this reception of my Fool Day Ministrations was confusing, and Rob being out-of-the-town, I chose to approach my traitorous-though-now-reformed Vice-Presidentrix, Molly Reynolds.

"Molly," I asked, "Am I not engaging in your Holy-Days and dressing the fool? Am I not delighting you with my mirth, and thereby securing my office for yet another four years more, four years more?"

And as she is wont to do, Molly rolled of her eyes, crossed her arms under her much-ogled breasts—oh, how Large Penis is fond of those orbs!—and sighed deeply. "Mr. President—it still sounds weird to say that, I don't know if I'll ever get used to it. It actually sort of hurts to say it. It's like saying . . . oh, I dunno. Nun-cunt. Calling you 'Mr. President' is like saying 'nun-cunt.' To a nun."

I looked upon Molly. She looked upon me. I hiked up my out-size cords del roy pants—as Rob himself is so wont to do—and spun the tip of my tentacle through the water in Sang's gesture of Carry on, then; carry on with what you speak.

She shook her head, and blew a jet of air with her mouth up past her forehead, so that her valence of dark curls did flap and flutter. She shook her head and rolled of the eyes. She continued:

"Anyway, I think you have failed to grasp the purpose of April Fool's Day, 'though I'm not really sure I know what the point of it is, but whatever. The thing of it is that you are supposed to play pranks on others, to make fools of them, I guess." And Molly's eye's lids then veritably flew up, making her eyes into white ciphers whose brown centers were pierced by the tiniest pinprick of black pupil—such quaint eyes humans have, primitive, yet expressive. She uttered quickly, "But traditionally the pranks and tricks are only played upon men!"

And finally, this made sense.

Men are the ruling sex of the primate world—so backward, so strange, a world above water, instead of below, where males are the reavers instead of females, and the sweets follow the dinner rather than precede; why, you are backwards in all things, my subjects! It is very much adorable. The Fools of April Holy Day was about mocking the rulers with impunity. From my readings and viewings I understand that there is a long history if this in your world: Jesters berating their Kings with truths that can only be uttered by those who have nothing to lose; Carnivals where the lowest and ugliest are made kings for a day; the King of the Jews debaséd and hung a-cross; God's made of Man Flesh; the Dead Rising; the Holy Day of Nasturibshim in the Bowel City of Marianas, where the Bowel Scrapers ascend the throne and void themselves in the open for all to see. April, she truly is the foolest month.

So, in order to partake in this culture of humanity, I had to partake in this holiday of reversal. Debasement before those lower than me was called for. I am nothing if not a humble squid. Though even without humility, I would still be the most powerful cephalopod to don a mechanized war-suit and bestride the waving plains of amber mountains majesty like Hercules astride the Gibralter straits.

Debasement and humility were my watchwords, and my task was grim and difficult.

I approached a black-suited member of the Secretest Service and demanded that he allow me to debase myself before him. But stoic he remained, and no answer was given. Laocoon himself would be a like a caffeinated songbird next to these secretive servicemen.

Next, wandering the halls of the Doma Blanca, I espied Sang, my chief lab technician and political advisor. "Sang!" I bellowed. "I have needs for you to make a fool of me in honor of this holiest of holy days!" But he merely nodded, checked a box on his ever-present clipboard and walked swiftly away. His chimpanzeform pack-your-back, Professor Chimples, did almost seem to wink and laugh at me and my predicament.

My job was difficult, and while dining quickly on a particularly spicy Great Dane, I was hit full in the ocular membrane by the idea that I was approaching my task wrong. I must needs find the lowest among us to mock me. Others are too highly valued, too entrenched to have the chutzpah and duende to risk a hearty mocking.

I must again find Rob.

He was, fortunately, in this city of Washington Deca—which is to say not deployed upon my errands about this Great Nation—and as such, could be counted upon to be reclining to the left in the private cinematic room, deep in the nigh unto benthic depths of this labyrinthine establishment—Nota Bene to my readership: I have approached the civil engineers who monitor this esteemed House regarding the installation of a watery tube directly below the House that would feed back into the chill, pillowy deep from which I was exiled so many, many years ago. They are "looking into it."

Rob was drinking of the fermented wheat juice and watching a film that involved a small man of Asiatic stock rapidly pummeling a variety of attackers into submission. I was initially entranced by this display—as was Rob—and spent several long minutes watching his high-velocity antics upon the screen. So cunning of form are you stinkchimps and gruntabouts! Oft it seems that for every Rob, TomTom DeLay or Rushing Limbaugher there are at least four Jackie the Chans, Warren Buffets or anonymous Internet pornactríces; such nimble little minxen!"

But when the combat stopped, the spell was broken, and I could speak again.

"Rob," I said, "You must now debase me!"

"Wha?" he paused his movie, making the little Primate oriental hang in the air, his foot a blur as it smashed the face of an oncoming goon.

"I require my April debasing; do speak of me and to me in undue harshness! Spread false tales of sexual exploits you have enacted upon me! Make to excrete on or near my oral orifice!"

"Good fuck! What the fuck are you talking about!"

"It is the Month of April Fool; I wish to join of the festivities and, as all others, be the fool. Has not someone a-fooled you yet this term?"

"What the fuck are you on about?"

"The April Fool!

"OK, first off, Lord A., April Fools isn't about fucking crapping in people's mouths. That shit is so fucked . . . I mean, I don't even know where you get crap like this! April Fool's is about playing tricks on folks and shit."

"Tricks?"

"Yeah, you know, pranks and shit."

"Pranks?"

"Lord A.! Is there a fucking echo in here! I just want to watch my kung fu and get some shut eye."

I looked upon Rob, admittedly blankly; it had been a long day, and I had been much confused throughout.

"See, Lord A., a 'trick' or 'prank' is some mean-ass tricky shit you do to someone, that's supposed to be clever and good-natured and 'ha, ha; you sure got me, son!' but is really just mean, sly, fucked up shitty ass shit to pull."

"Subterfuges?"

It was now Rob's turn to stare blankly.

"Apologies; continue with exempli."

"Yeah, okay, like, I used to work at this fucking Supe-R-Savr grocery store as, like, a bagger, right? And I had this manager Chet who thought he was a really clever shit, but . . . fuck, I fucking hated that dude! One time, on April Fools, he brought in this box of jelly donuts, right? Big box of 'em—and not shitty Dunkin Donuts shit, I mean, like, the from a bakery kind—and left 'em in the break-room, like, for everyone. But, see, it turned out that these weren't straight-up donuts. This fucker had driven down to some bakery in Hamtramck and gotten empty jelly donuts, right? And he'd filled 'em with unnatural shit, like mayonesse and mustard and cotton stuffing shit outta a pillow or something. I ate three of those fucking things before I caught on. Fucker. 'course, a few months later when me and Chet were closing up and these two fucked up kids in ski masks rushed us in the back door and held the joint up, and I told 'em that Chet knew the combination on the safe even though he didn't," Rob smiled broadly, eyes glazed with remembrance, harsh chuckles bubbling up his throat, "Man," he shook his head, "Those kids beat Chet so fucking bad. Good thing, too, 'cause when he came to in the hospital, he totally didn't remember that I'd shouted that he knew the combo. Shit, he didn't remember that whole week. April fucking Fools, man. Whose April fucking Fools now, Chet?"

Again, I admit freely that much of Rob's speech was allusive—Bagger? The jelly donut? Shit vs. fucking shit? What are these entities—but the jist seemed clear enough.

"So, then, this April Fools is a celebration of the strength of manly bon homme in the face of adversities, both naturally occurring and ersatz?"

"Naw," Rob's visage soured, "This whole fucking thing as about being a dick and no one can say shit back to you about it. I fucking hate April Fools day. Fuck it."

He drank of his beered bottle.

"Can I get back to my movie, Lord A? We have a press-conference tomorrow morning, and I sorta wanna get this in, then hit the hay. That coo'?"

"Yes, Rob; hit of your bottles and hay."

And so, after conversing with Rob my trained-man, I finally learned that relative power had nothing to do with the Fools of April. It was, in sooth, about "being a dick and no one can say shit back to you about it," as the man-thing so eloquently summarized.

Shock, surprise, the violation of taboos: These were all common agents in the tales he spoke of.

These are similarly common agents on my own black army of act and incident. Perhaps I have finally found my holiday? Can one hope so highly?

Plans were sketched. Engineers were called for. The Black Budget Slush Funds was dipped into. Animatronic armatures were designed, drafted, constructed in haste and secrecy, inserted into their final resting places.

To choose my targets I looked upon the news of recent weeks. What had received the most attention? Further, efficiency being the watchword of good governance, how could I, the Architeuthis Rex Presidentum, Fool the greatest number of people, with the minimum effort?

Here I sketch for you my plan in only the broadest, minimal strokes—I leave more than little mystery so that when you are watching the televisual device you too shall be surprised: thin, remote-controlled animatronic devices; two corpses that have been much featured in the news media as of late; operatives in Florida; operatives in Rome; a traditional Easter miracle; and as, Rob is so fond of putting it "the sex machine uníque; sextíque, baby! Sextíque."

As to the quality of my April Foolishment, as to whether I have finally landed upon the Holiday americanum which is mine-all-mine, I leave you, my fair citizens, to be the final judges. How have I done?

Yours in Foolishness,
The Giant Squid
Architeuthis dux
Architeuthis presidentum
Architeuthis rex mundi
Architeuthis Über Alles