Broken News: Biden's first weeks as VP spent dodging increasingly elaborate booby traps

WASHINGTON—In the week and a half since Barack Obama's inauguration, the young administration has been hard at work trying to put its agenda into action. But one man has been surprisingly absent from these efforts: new Vice-President Joe Biden.

While it naturally takes some time for any new administration to get up to speed, sources are claiming that Biden's notable absence is the result of an increasingly elaborate set of deadly booby traps and killing devices that the new VP has devoted his time to dodging.

Insiders immediately fingered former VP Dick Cheney as the man behind these mechanical death dealers. However, extensive document shredding by the office of the former Vice-President, as well as Mr. Cheney having "gone off the grid,” have given White House staffers little hope of learning the full extent of the horrible machinations hidden in and around the Naval Observatory, White House, and various places of government business.

“Christ, we just don’t know where the next one is coming from,” remarked Biden’s Chief of Staff and head of the disarmament team, Ronald Klain. “We knew to expect some of these, like the giant axe that swung from the ceiling when we opened the door to the Vice-Presidential office. Or the buzzsaw blades that come out of the floor when you step on the white tiles in the main Observatory foyer. But every time we locate and neutralize one, two more pop up the next day!”

Klain pointed to last Wednesday’s “desk chair incident” as an example. On Tuesday evening staffers had disabled a mechanism in the Vice-President's office that caused a giant log to swing from the ceiling into the person seated in the chair. On Wednesday morning an aide sat down in the chair while laying out briefing packets for the day, setting into motion an ejection apparatus that threw the first year aide out the window and onto the spiked metal fencing below.

“How do you defend against that?” an exasperated Klain asked. “How do you double rig a seat? Did he double rig a seat? Did Dick Cheney sneak into the office Tuesday night and jury rig a new trap? Does he have skeleton keys? How come the FBI, CIA, and NSA can’t track him down? This shit is costing me sleep.”

The situation is causing problems for security details at other government buildings as well. As he walked to a Middle East briefing with Secretary Clinton over the weekend, Biden was forced to dive out of the way of poison tipped daggers that shot out of the wall when he stepped on the seal of the State Department on the floor of the Truman Building.

“People walk on that seal every day and nothing happens,” said Herman Gutierrez, chief of security for the State Department. “Presidents step on it, ex-Presidents step on it, the Secretary steps on it, staffers step on it, and nothing happens. Suddenly Biden steps on it and it sinks into the ground and six-inch blades bathed in blowfish venom come flying out. Was it specifically weighted for Biden? Was someone watching and waiting for him to step there? Gotta give Biden credit, though; the old man ducked and rolled like a Judo champ. Wish I could say the same thing about the secretarial pool… so many bodies.”

Further searches of government agencies found a 40-ton stone boulder perched over the entrance to the IRS building, elevator cables cut over at the EPA, crocodiles loosed into the White House cafeteria, and the robotic sentries at the CBO headquarters set to kill anyone by the name of Joe.

With both the Vice-President and Dr. Jill Biden too terrified to continue to stay in the Naval Observatory, especially after engineers discovered their bed was little more than an industrial-sized bear trap with sheets on it, the couple have been moved to an undisclosed location. But with the former Vice-President still at large and God knows how many traps still left undiscovered, the Secret Service are being pressed to formulate strategies for how Joe Biden can conduct the duties of his position without getting blown up, gored by a rhino, or immolated.

“We’re thinking of going with a large bulletproof glass cube in which the Vice-President can reside,” said Frank Monroe, the Secret Service official in charge of Situation Biden. “He eats all his meals there, does all his work there, and the only connection to the outside is a slot just large enough to pass documents and food trays through. Of course, this leaves him vulnerable to gas attacks, but we’ll put in a mask and some oxygen tanks. The only real issue is ensuring Mrs. Biden can be made available for conjugal visits.”

Officials hope to have the cube fabricated and ready for occupancy by the middle of next month, provided Biden survives that long.