John McCain, the Maverick Republican Senator from Arizona, has disappeared from the public eye. The rumors as to his activities have been wildly divergent. Some claim that McCain is working as a short order chef in Gary, IN; others swear that he has become a lady-boy pleasure slave in a Laotian karaoke bar; strangest of all are the claims he is running a presidential campaign. Indulging, or worse propagating, these sorts of silly unconfirmed speculations is, of course, beneath the editorial standards of Receiving Me?. Fortunately, we now know where the good Senator has been, and so have no need to make silly things up.

The source of our knowledge is a manuscript that was found by an intern earlier this week. Initially we were quite skeptical of the manuscript, believing it to be yet another hoax. Still we ordered a full battery of forensic tests on the off chance that it might be real. Our in house handwriting expert, Pates Baroni, was able to confirm that the writing in the manuscript matched other writing samples from the senator. Further confirmation came from analysis of the ink. It was found to be a mixture of saliva, Potomac River clay, and human blood. The blood type was O-, the same as the senators. We are still waiting for the DNA tests to come back, but we believe that the evidence we currently possess is sufficient to confirm the manuscripts origin. The following is a short excerpt for the edification of our readers.

And this also has been one of the dark places of the earth. We live in the flicker–may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Sand-banks, marshes, forests, savages,–precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but Delaware water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay–cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death–death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been dying like flies here. Oh, yes–he did it. Did it very well, too, no doubt, and without thinking much about it either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his time. Perhaps they were men enough to face the darkness.*

From this passage it is clear that Senator McCain has been summering in South Jersey.

*Abject apologies to Joseph Conrad who, if he weren’t dead, would probably come after me with a hatchet.