Nobel Laureate and renowned genius Professor Richard Cheney, famed for ending the world's dependence on fossil fuels by inventing the button-sized fusion cell and revered for ushering in an era of world peace and prosperity, today fired up his newest invention -- a device capable of retrieving visual information from what he believes to be alternate and parallel universes -- and was thoroughly stunned to discover newspaper accounts of his longtime friendship with Donald Rumsfeld. Professor 's Cheney's blood congealed as he read about his vice-presidential alter-ego:

It is part of Washington lore that Donald Rumsfeld gave young Dick Cheney his start in government, hiring him as an assistant in the Nixon administration.

But Mr. Cheney revealed today that 35 years ago, when Mr. Rumsfeld was still a congressman, he flunked his first interview with the man who would eventually become his mentor, boss and hawkish ally.

"It was clear that we hadn't hit it off," the vice president said of his ill-fated 15-minute meeting in Mr. Rumsfeld's Capitol Hill office in 1968. "He thought I was some kind of airhead academic, and I thought he was rather an arrogant young member of Congress."

Professor Cheney stated: "I remember that meeting. Rumsfeld was an arrogant young man and now he's an arrogant and unrepentant convict." Reading of a purported 35-year long relationship with Rumsfeld, Professor Cheney added, "I don't know what bothers me more, my friendship with Rumsfeld or that that crook Nixon was President. I want to puke."

Professor Cheney, known for his glowing, positive demeanor and a joie de vivre that is the envy of all, not to mention his phenomenal health, has never been so publicly demoralized. "In this other world," Professor Cheney said, "I'm a penny-pinching miser bent on destroying the environment just so I can make a few lousy bucks. I am arrogant, my friends are arrogant, and we are bent on world domination. No wonder this other Cheney has heart trouble."