Perino: 'Obama quite the nuisance'

Departing White House Press Secretary Dana Perino says that with today's press conference being the last one for the outgoing administration, she's ready to start cleaning out her desk. And in an interesting aside, she claims that the best thing about her quickly approaching retirement will be "finally getting Barack Obama out of my hair." "The man has really tried my patience," admits Perino, who for the past few months has acted as an informal liaison between Obama and President Bush. "Even today, eight days before he's supposed to be taking the keys, there he is on my incoming. 'Dana', he asks me, 'would you mind telling George that I need the other half of those bailout funds?'. Sheesh." "And I say, like I always do, 'George? You want to talk to George? What George do you want to talk to? George Clinton? George Clooney? I'm afraid you'll have to be a bit more specific'. And he chuckles at that, every single time, and he'll say something like 'You know what George I'm talking about, Cutie Pie'. Or maybe he'll call me 'Green Eyes' or 'Sweet Pea' and sometimes 'Mona Lisa'. I really get quite tired of it." "For one thing, I don't think he should be calling the president 'George'. It's very disrespectful. I don't call him George, and he doesn't call me Dana. He calls me 'Boopsie', and I don't particularly like that either. Boopsie makes me think of the little remote control fart machine that the president hides under his desk and keeps activating whenever Secretary Rice is in his office. Or so I hear." "He set it off one day when I walked in, and I turned all kinds of scarlet. 'Oh, if you think farts are so funny, then check out this', I said, angrily cutting a big stinky one. That didn't work out so well, because he did think it was really, really funny, which pretty much left me without a decent comeback." "But anyway, Barack Obama seems to think that I'm his personal secretary, all the time with his 'ask George this' and 'tell George that' and 'Michelle wants to come by and measure the windows in the Blue Room'. That was back in September when he hadn't even won yet! 'Already measuring the drapes', I chided him, and he tells me 'Sweetheart, you don't measure the drapes, you measure the window and then pick out the drapes'. I didn't know that, which is kind of sad, I guess, because, you know, I'm only 36, but that still seems like something I should have learned somewhere along the way..." "I guess in a way I hope Barack Obama continues to call me after he's the president... I think the next few months are going to be a bit of a letdown, and, well, if I can tell him how to unjam the ice machine, that's still... something."