The Secret Blog of Patrick “Patos” Manning

So it turns out that Hazel has hired a deejay for tonight’s Obama informercial-watching after-party. Who the attendees at this function are, however, I haven’t a clue, as it seems they’ve been made to enter the mansion using the tunnel leading past the secret chamber where we plan on sealing up Calder Hart (à la A Cask of Amontillado), were things ever to come to that. Hazel has also commandeered half my security detail and posted them at all twelve entranceways to the living room to bar me from entering. All I know is that there must be menopausal women present, as they have the a/c turned up way high.

One thing I do know is that “Brickhouse” isn’t the best tune to have playing in the background when you’re trying to fiddle with a country’s draft constitution.

Hold on, was that the sound of breaking glass? On the other hand, maybe I don’t want to know.

Can’t wait till the Shanghai Construction Company replaces the acoustic tiles in my study with ones that aren’t contaminated with melamine, so I can work in there once more.

The deejay segues from the Commodores to Cheryl Lynn. “Got to Be Real” is one of Hazel’s favourite dance tunes, so I’m imagining she’s wining on top of a table by now, Oma Panday style, which would account for the sudden burst of cackling and applause. As I said: better not to know.

Speaking of real, I had a little scare this afternoon with Twitter, the micro-blogging service I’ve been using lately to post my thoughts. Twitter messages are limited to 140 words or less, which is about the length of one of my more developed thoughts (though why it’s so hard for my speechwriters to grasp this and prepare speeches of a corresponding length I cannot understand. Sometimes I wonder if they’re trying deliberately to make me sound like an jackass). There are a number of other heads of state using the service, including Robert Mugabe and Nicolas Sarkozy, so I figured it could also be used as a tool for diplomacy.

Naturally, as soon as I sign up for Twitter, who do I find there too but damn Panday. Apparently it wasn’t enough for him to copy my blogging AND my blog template (though, to be fair to him, he was on Twitter quite some time before me). And who knew it was possible for anything to be more annoying than the flesh-and-blood Panday? As it turns out, in annoyingness the Twitter Panday beats the corporeal version hands down. Today he (it?) even made obscene–though thankfully virtual–overtures towards me. Nasty.

But I’m straying off point here. What I’m trying to say is that I’d been noticing that a few of the head of state/politician types on Twitter append the prefix “fake-” to their usernames (fakejohnmccain and FakeSarahPalin, for example). Now ever since I got booted off Facebook (see scandalous image below), allegedly for impersonating myself (which is ironic, since I am me), I’ve developed a high degree of sympathy for anyone who is persecuted by people who don’t believe he’s really himself. I also thought that in this case McCain and Palin might be trying protect themselves from self-slander or auto-libel, which I heard Wade Mark saying the other day can get you jail time in the US.

Today, however, while perusing the Twitter terms of service searching for language to borrow for inclusion in the draft constitution, I discovered that Twitter, like Facebook, has issues with impersonation! After issuing the “tweet” pictured below, I did indeed add the prefix “Fake” to my name.

So now I’m officially known in the Twitterverse as the “Fake Patrick Manning”. So nobody can accuse me now of impersonating myself, and now I’m free to let my hair down and be the real Patos, just as I used to do on Facebook before that “friend” who didn’t realise the real Patos was a warm, generous person with a sense of humour reported me to the FB authorities.

  

As you see, I have more followers than Panday, which means little to me but bugs the bejesus out of him. I, too, would probably have had time to concern myself with such trivialities had I been banned from parliament.