We are four months into the new year, and I have heard nary a public peep from President-for-Life Jimmy Carter, our Ambassador to Outer Space Cynthia McKinney or noted land baron Ted "Buffalo Boy" Turner.

Churning out breathtaking prose week after week is hard enough without having this crowd go mute on me. Their loose lips are generally good for at least a half-dozen columns per annum. If I didn't know better, I would think they are plotting against me.
Ring! Ring!

JC: "Ted? Ambassador McKinney? Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedules for this conference call. I want to discuss what we can do about this Yarbrough fellow. I believe you will all agree that he shows us no respect. My friends in Hamas have suggested I dress him up as a goat and send him to Palestine in time to be the entrée at the next Moose Club banquet. I wanted to see what you two think. Maybe we should all ..."

TT: "Mr. President, I wish I could help you, but I am very busy buying the state of Idaho to hold some of my buffaloes."
AOS: "Is Idaho anywhere near Saturn?"

JC: "What fries my hide is that he won't stop harping on the racist campaign I ran for governor. If I hadn't acted like a racist, I could never have been elected governor, then president, then Nobel Prize winner, and today nobody would buy my bad paintings. Every time I ..."

AOS: "I wish I was back on Pluto. Ever been to Pluto?"

TT: "I think I bought Pluto a few years ago. Or, maybe it was Peru."

JC: "He thinks my criticizing a sitting president while on my world travels undermined our foreign policy. I am an expert on foreign policy. Remember, it was I who got rid of the Shah of Iran, which enabled the Ayatollah Khomeini to take his rightful place as the head of the country. Things have gone swimmingly in Iran ever since. I don't know foreign policy? Forgive my language, but Pish!

TT: "Where is Pish? It sounds like a good place to raise buffaloes."

AOS: "We have buffaloes on Uranus. At least I think they are buffaloes. They are green, have three eyes and light up at night."

JC: "And when I refused to go the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. but made my sanctimonious speech at the services for Coretta Scott King, he found that hypocritical. Pish! What he doesn't understand is ..."

TT: (Yelling off line): "Rufus, find out where Pish is and let's buy the place. The president keeps talking about it."

AOS: "I am beginning to see moonbeams in my head."

JC: "After I wrote my book accusing Israel of apartheid, he thought I should debate the issue publicly. What is the point of debating when you know you are always right? It is obvious that he ..."

TT: "If you think it would help, I could coat the guy in salt and let my buffaloes lick him to death, but I'm trying to buy Australia right now and it is going to be a month or so before I can get to it."

AOS: "The moonbeams are getting brighter. It's time to go."

JC: "And then you both remember the time he said ..."

TT: "Mr. President, I hate to cut this short, but I have Jane Fonda on the other line. I'm thinking about buying Vietnam. If I do, she wants to get her helmet and go sit on a tank and say stupid things. I don't have the heart to tell her she has already done that."

AOS: "Good-bye, earthlings. If you need me, I'll be in San Francisco. It is just like being in Outer Space, except the food is better."

TT: "I'll probably be in Pish. Thanks to your recommendation, Mr. President, Rufus just bought 4 million acres there."

JC: "I could just scream."

Dick Yarbrough is a North Georgia resident whose column appears Saturdays and on gainesvilletimes.com. You can reach him at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, GA 31139; Web site.