{"id":203,"date":"2015-12-08T09:17:17","date_gmt":"2015-12-08T14:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=203"},"modified":"2015-12-08T09:17:17","modified_gmt":"2015-12-08T14:17:17","slug":"diplomat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=203","title":{"rendered":"Diplomat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/diplomat-10a.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-206\" src=\"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/diplomat-10a-239x300.jpg\" alt=\"diplomat-10a\" width=\"506\" height=\"635\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/diplomat-10a-239x300.jpg 239w, http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/diplomat-10a-817x1024.jpg 817w, http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/diplomat-10a.jpg 1642w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 506px) 100vw, 506px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I do nothing all day but sit in my cell, chained to the wall in a puddle of rancid liquid.\u00a0 The place is filthy, the toilet hasn&#8217;t worked in weeks and they put that awful television box in with me as my only form of entertainment.\u00a0 It screams at me and blathers their inane, selfish &#8216;culture&#8217; all day and its all I can do to block it out, lest I lose my sanity.\u00a0 The only decent people I have to talk with are the cockroaches, who seem to come and go as they please&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>They take me out twice a week to show me off to their military luminaries while their (so-called) scientists run &#8216;tests&#8217;.\u00a0 They mostly probe my anus and shock my genitals and laugh like lunatics as they torture me.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t understand their obsession with my junk &#8211; and I don&#8217;t get the reference to it as &#8220;payback&#8221;.\u00a0 My people have never visited this place before.<\/p>\n<p>They are an ugly people.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t mean their pasty, bloated flesh, two meager eyes and stubby fingers that make them look like deformed infants.\u00a0 I&#8217;m referring to their brutish indifference to justice, authoritarian rule and the cognitive dissonance of the masses.\u00a0 The racist, nasty things they call me&#8230;well, I can&#8217;t even begin to repeat in polite company.\u00a0 This is certainly no way to treat an ambassador.<\/p>\n<p>I would never have come to this primitive cesspool if it wasn&#8217;t for engine trouble &#8211; and a spread of ballistic missiles that took all the dignity out of my crash landing.\u00a0 These people ignored my distress calls and now refuse to honor my diplomatic immunity&#8230;..boy oh boy, when the mother ship gets here to rescue me, they are gonna FRY this place!<\/p>\n<p><em>***John&#8217;s illustration was first published as the June 2007\u00a0cover to Asimov&#8217;s Science Fiction magazine for a story by Neal Asher.\u00a0\u00a0I wrote this tiny\u00a0&#8216;Diplomat&#8217; piece for fun.\u00a0\u00a0There was NO intention to sympathize\u00a0with the treatment of political prisoners currently held, without charge or trial,\u00a0by the United States&#8230;.none what-so-ever.\u00a0\u00a0 -Marsha\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; I do nothing all day but sit in my cell, chained to the wall in a puddle of rancid liquid.\u00a0 The place is filthy, the toilet hasn&#8217;t worked in weeks and they put that awful television box in with me as my only form of entertainment.\u00a0 It screams at me and blathers their inane, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=203\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Diplomat<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124],"tags":[79,99,19,96,115],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions\/209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}