{"id":2678,"date":"2004-07-15T11:56:01","date_gmt":"2004-07-16T01:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/07\/15\/in-the-not-very-distant-future\/"},"modified":"2019-12-10T16:48:42","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T00:48:42","slug":"in-the-not-very-distant-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/07\/15\/in-the-not-very-distant-future\/","title":{"rendered":"In the not very distant future&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:10571,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/metatalk.metafilter.com\\\/mefi\\\/8041#160385&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20060613203124\\\/http:\\\/\\\/metatalk.metafilter.com:80\\\/mefi\\\/8041&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-11 06:32:52&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-11 06:32:52&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>One sunny day in 2005 an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Ave, where he&#8217;d been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the US Marine standing guard and said, &#8220;I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Marine looked at the man and said, &#8220;Sir, Mr.\u00a0Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The old man said, &#8220;Okay&#8221; and walked away.<\/p>\n<p>The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, &#8220;I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Marine again told the man, &#8220;Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr.\u00a0Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here.&#8221; The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.<\/p>\n<p>The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same US Marine, saying &#8220;I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, &#8220;Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr.\u00a0Bush. I&#8217;ve told you already that Mr.\u00a0Bush is no longer the president and no longer resides here. Don&#8217;t you understand?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The old man looked at the Marine and said, &#8220;Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it,&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, &#8220;See you tomorrow, Sir.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>(via <a href=\"http:\/\/metatalk.metafilter.com\/mefi\/8041#160385\" title=\"Happy Birthday!\">amberglow<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One sunny day in 2005 an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Ave, where he&#8217;d been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the US Marine standing guard and said, &#8216;I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.&#8217;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2042],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-2678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}