The Environmental Protection Agency gave awards to several employees making around $120,000 a year who were caught viewing pornography at work. One admitted that for approximately 2 to 6 hours a day over a period of several years he viewed and downloaded over 20,000 pornographic images onto EPA computers, and spent much of workday organizing the porn into saved folders. When the employee was caught, he expressed surprise that what he was doing was wrong.
News item.
Every day when I come into work at the Environmental Protection Agency–at substantially less than I could make in the private sector, I might add–I take pride in the job my colleagues and I do protecting America’s natural resources and cute animals. It’s a constant battle; every time you turn around some dentist is shooting a lion, or some less-ferocious animal subject to our jurisdiction. Turn off the lights of regulatory oversight and the scumbags come out to feast on snail darters and other endangered species. Turn them back on, and the scumbags scatter like the cockroaches that they are.
Snail darter: Single-serving size makes for snackin’ good fun!
It’s grueling, and a guy can be forgiven for spending an idle moment here and there on something . . . fun. Diverting. Relaxing. Like HotSweatyBikerBabes.com. It’s free, unless you want to enter the private “chop shop,” where you can conduct one-on-one conversations with the Women of the Road, the gals who stay glued to their seats hugging hot gas tanks with their thundering thighs. For that you’ll need a major credit card. Good thing I’m in a senior position here and have been entrusted with an EPA-issued VISA card to defray expenses associated with my . . . uh . . . investigations.
My phone rings and I look down at the caller ID screen. It’s the damn Sierra Club gal again–what a nuisance. Just when I was starting to unwind a bit.
“Hello Ms. Mangel-Wurzel,” I say wearily after I pick up. A hyphen in the middle of her name–how novel! “What is it now?”
“Did you guys look at that stuff I sent you on the run-off in the Monongahela River basin?”
I rustle some papers to make a noise like I’m looking for the file. “Ah, here it is,” I say. Actually, I recycled what she sent me a long time ago. It was doing no good cluttering up my desk. Might as well get it back in the waste stream, where it could be made into something useful, like a post-consumer content coffee cup for Starbucks.
“So have I convinced you that the discharges and effluents are a threat to the environment? All you have to do is run a couple of tests on . . .”
Blah, blah, blah–tell me something I haven’t heard a million times before. A little email envelope shows up on my screen as she drones on and on. It’s from Chuck over in enforcement. “Check this out,” his message says, and I open up the attachment. It’s an image from lizardlove.com of a raven-haired bimbo getting it on with a gecko, one of the small to average-sized lizards found in warm climates throughout the world.
“If you look at the documents,” Mangel-Wurzel says, “you’ll see that the pollution comes from several companies that are under court orders already.”
“Jesus Christ,” I say. I turn on my computer speakers and set the volume on low, so I can hear the moans of the gecko, the only lizard that vocalizes.
“I love it when you flick your little tongue!”
“Exactly, that’s a big deal,” she says. “Are . . . are you okay?” he asks. “I hear a chirping sound.”
“Just clearing my throat,” I say as I turn the speakers off. Have to maintain the EPA’s standards of professionalism, which are a god damn nuisance if you ask me.
“So–are you guys going to do anything about it?” she asks. Who, I ask myself, died and left her boss?
“You know, Ms. Mangel-Wurzel,” I begin patiently, “in order to convict someone of an environmental offense the EPA must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an individual acted with criminal intent to–oh my god!”
“Oh my god what?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you guys for years!”