Our government is hiding something from you.
Sure, as a sophisticated, cynical Sacred City reader, you know all about Watergate, Filegate, Nannygate, Twinkiegate, ColdInaugurationgate, the Bay of Pigs, Roswell, Hangar 18, Area 51 and all the other nonsense. These "scandals" and "secrets", promulgated by the saps and blowhards of the mass media, are puerile distractions -- smokescreens concocted by the intellectual elite to distract YOU from the REAL goings-on inside the fabled Beltway.
As a card-carrying member of the intellectual elite and a devoted supporter of the independent press, I have taken it upon myself to shed light on one of the nation's deepest, darkest secrets...a story so profoundly demented that even the high-ranking officials that know of it refuse to discuss it...
THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION'S NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, UNDER THE AEGIS OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT, HAS BEEN SLAUGHTERING INVERTEBRATES AND PRESERVING THEIR PICKLED CORPSES IN A VAST MAUSOLEUM FOR OVER A CENTURY.
I have been inside. I have pictures. I am going to tell all.
Behind the vaulted facade of the National Museum of Natural History (henceforth referred to as "the Museum") is a repository for hundreds of thousands of dead invertebrates of all shapes and sizes. Of course, the Museum also has boxes of bird feathers, crates of mink bones and drawers full of ancient human skulls from central Arkansas (the spooky details of these holdings may be revealed in future essays, if I can stay one step ahead of the feds for the next few months). But, today, the invertebrates need our help.
On the surface, the Museum is a beautiful building, in that heartwarming large-blocks-of-marble Washington way. Children frolic near the large stuffed elephant in the Rotunda as exasperated adults rotate maps in their hands trying to find the Hope Diamond. By all appearances, it's a rather cheerful place. Beyond the "Staff Only" doors, however, evil lurks. Museum curators flit, very slowly, from office to "collections" and back again...secretaries of all kinds run a bewildering array of forms through their typewriters...the security guards hang out by the candy machines...all seemingly unaware of the Museum's hidden purpose. Just out of sight in the research wings, often behind locked doors, jars and jars of pickled invertebrates lie resting on metal shelves.
I have worked in the Division of Mollusks. The majority of my experience has been with dead cephalopods, squids in particular. I have personally worked with (and actually dissected!) hundreds of squids, embalmed in toxic chemicals for some foul purpose -- in a sense, their formaldehyde is on my hands as well. The mollusk "collection" contains thousands of these jars, filled with squids, snails, clams and octopuses. I have been unable to gain access to the "collections" of the Division of Worms in the West Wing, but undoubtedly thousands of worms of all types share the fate of the pitiful pickled mollusks. And then there's Entomology...I shudder to think what may lie in their dusty wooden drawers!
Researchers at the Museum seem to use these dead animals as part of their twisted research agendas. I have yet to ascertain whether or not these individuals are fully aware of the nature of their work. Are they simply mindless government drones, or do they do this grisly work of their own free will? When asked about their research, they prattle on about "evolution", "taxonomy", and so forth, using a wide array of arcane terms and making their actual agendas impenetrable to normal ways of thinking. As you know, big words and garbled mutterings of this sort are a sure sign of government conspiracy. The actual roles of these researchers in this foul research programme remains unknown.
Throughout my studies, it has become apparent that the officially sanctioned mass murder of invertebrates is not new to our government. I have indirect evidence, revealed by statements of leading politicians and researchers at the time, that this dark agenda was initiated as early as the early nineteenth century. I have direct proof (i.e. really well-labeled jars) that invertebrates have been entombed at the Museum since the 1860's! This did not begin with President Clinton, as nearly all other government scandals have. This is deeply entrenched federal policy.
Did the honorable sixteenth president of these United States, Mr. Abraham Lincoln, know of these evil deeds? Did FDR know that, while our country was taking the moral high ground in the fight against Nazi Germany, U.S. government operatives were combing the world for their spineless booty? These are good questions. Only through complete disclosure of the facts to the members of the independent media will our nation come clean, and have any hope of coming to terms with its shadowy history. I urge everyone who reads this to contact their U.S. senator or representative as soon as possible to demand disclosure of the facts.
I will continue to investigate this matter as a Sacred City operative. As long as I can avoid detection (my adopted persona -- a disgruntled graduate student working at the Museum -- seems to work well, since I actually am a disgruntled graduate student working at the Museum), I will continue to update the situation and report on other heinou--