The Great Cheese Conspiracy is a 1969 children's book by Jean Van Leeuwen featuring a gang of three rats who attempt to knock over a cheese shop. ISBN 0440430801.

It's a quick read--maybe an hour--and quite enjoyable. The mice have been compared to The Three Stooges and Alvin and the Chipmunks, though I'm not sure how accurate that is. Their dynamic reminded me a bit of Bertrand R. Brinley's The Mad Scientists' Club.

The story is told in the first-person perspective by gang leader Merciless Marvin the Magnificent. He's a born leader: brave, inspiring, quick to take credit. The rats are living in a cinema in New York City and Marvin quite enjoys crime flicks.

Second in the gang is Raymond the Rat. Raymond is the intellectual of the group. You can tell because he wears glasses.

Fats the Fuse is the comedy relief. He's fat, he's wimpy, he's dumb, and he likes to suggest explosives as the solution to every obstacle.

These three rats have been living in the cinema for some time, engaging in petty larceny involving popcorn machines and candy bars. Marvin decides they're ready for something bigger. The Big Time. Something on the Outside, a place no rat has ever returned from alive. But Marvin has courage and daring. He hitches a ride in a knitting bag and does a bit of exploring. Imagine his excitement upon discovering a cheese shop four doors down. No doubt about it: The Cheese Barrel is a prime target for an experienced gang of rats. Filled with cheesem and nothing guarding it save for the plump owner (Deemed 'The Enemy' by Marvin)

Don't go no further, kid, unless you're ready for the spoils.

Upon returning to the cinema, Marvin informs his gang of the wondrous opportunity, and they all agree, this is worth going after. Fats wants to blast their way in with explosives, but Raymond presents them with a better idea: breaking in once and running off with all they can carry would be nice, but infiltration is better. If they can acquire permanent access to the joint, they can waltz in there any time they'd like. Marvin and Raymond decide that the gang should enter the shop in disguise.

The first entry fails. They get in, but their popcorn box disguise gets taken outside and tossed in the trash before they can do anything. Strike one.

Their second attempt is more sophisticated. Raymond believes he spotted the key to the shop last time, so Marvin sneaks in at night in order to retrieve it. This time, though, he discovers something they'd missed: a Cat. Though Marvin escapes this time (without the key), it's apparent that something had to be done. Raymond constructs a cat trap involving pulleys and a garbage can in the alley behind the shop. Unfortunately, Marvin (the bait) ends up getting trapped instead. But in this attempt, they discover that the cat (Giovanni) is hard of hearing. So a heist is still possible so long as it's quiet. Fats suggests explosives. Marvin suggests gnawing a small hole in the back door. Since this plan is quieter, and Marvin is the leader, the gnawing plan is what they go for, and after a lot of work, they finally make their way inside, where they quietly fill their sacks. Unfortunately, Fats decides to fill his belly as well, and can no longer fit through the hole to get back out. In the process of pulling him through, Marvin sets off the burglar alarm, and the police arrive followed presently by The Enemy.

The Enemy takes them inside and seeing them looking repentant and ashamed (at Marvin's quick advice), decides to keep them. From then on, the rats live in a cheese carton and are fed all the cheese they can eat by The Former Enemy, Mr. Sammartino. It's the easy life.

But it's not the life for Marvin. He decides to leave to do bigger things, whatever they may be. But don't worry, he'll be back for Raymond and Fats in the next book. He can't knock over Macy's by himself.

There's a 'next book'?

Indeed, and a next next book. And so on. Second in the series is The Great Christmas Kidnapping Caper (1975) in which the rats move in to Macy's and rescue a kidnapped Santa Claus, and third is The Great Rescue Operation (1982) in which they rescue Fats from the person who bought the dollhouse he'd been sleeping in. Forth in the series is The Great Summer Camp Catastrophe (1992) in which they get swept off to a Summer camp. Fifth is The Great Googlestein Museum Mystery (2003) in which they visit the Guggenheim Museum.

Let me tell you about some things you might not be aware of if you limit your viewing to the liberal media.

Beginning in the 1980s, liberals took advantage of a grand policy of the great Ronald Reagan to give people five pound blocks of cheese they would never be able to eat. They were forbidden to share it with anyone under penalty of arrest and had to finish it within a set period of time. As Reagan and his top advisors watched everyone on small monitor screens, absolutely laughing their asses off at these jobless scum as they forced more and more cheese into their mouths until it was coming out of their ears. I remember one time they had the National Guard dispatched to housing for the elderly (waste of money and oxygen burn them burn them all) wearing black helmets and had them go into people's apartments, shoot some of them in the face, drag them out into the lobby and throw blocks of cheese at the others point their guns and laugh.

That was good television and a great time in America. We were able to mock the poor and the insignificant and that was good for America. But a liberal conspiracy destroyed Reagan's dream.

Next time on Behr Expose: The Liberal Conspiracy!

We continue.

The conspiracy started for form around one of those clubfooted liberal senators like Ted Kennedy or the guy with the face I always hated. They spread it to others. The idea was to create a black market for the government cheese so that stupid old people and stupid non-working people could trade it for things they hadn't earned like medicine and bran muffins. They had no right to more regularity in their bowels and they knew it but they defied the law and needed to have their kids taken away and put in damp cells where guards could urinate on them and mock them as Reagan did with the elderly. Rightfully so. There is no doubt about that and that ain't no chicken fat.

You're letting this get away from me. Would you stop fucking with the lamp next to your desk Scott and read the damn writeup for fuck sake?

Very distracting when people do things like that because I am a fully tenured professor of ethics at a for profit university in Baltimore where I live now except for brief forays to the Midwest to get work as a pony boy for widowed farmers and part time slaughterhouse employees. This is hobby and not a job it is what I do for vacation aside from attending informative white nationalist meetings in the part of town where the street lights never work on purpose.

Getting back to the nature of this conspiracy you are all hot and bothered to learn more about. It involved selling and trading this cheese the government had graciously forced people to eat over a short period of time which was excessive in nature. And this was illegal. You are poor, you eat the fucking cheese. You are old, get down there and eat you pile of human dog shit that wastes my taxpayer money. You ought to be lucky we don't stuff dog food in your face. Get back to work or die. That is MY America. I resent it being illegal to kick the elderly in public and being forced to do it in private. This is going to change and how.

Enough with the dog already Scott.

I once forced this old man who fell out of his wheelchair to eat an 18" kielbasa without cutting or chewing it. I'll say he learned something that day about taxpayers and people who are out there working every day so he can wheel around wherever he wants looking at flowers and birds and I have to buy him lobster at night. Enough of that. Saint Donald of Our Blessed Future will fix it. Better watch your shins, grandma. It is coming and I have steel toed boots.

What they do is go down to Nancy Pelosi's offices and they bring their cheese that they are required to eat by themselves in a dark room BY LAW and Nasty Nancy and her elves cut it up into small pieces and they distrubute it like communists to people who need cheese to make a pasta dish when they can afford to buy some at the store and help the economy but instead they get free cheese and damage the economy and then they give this other stuff to the sick and old and they didn't earn any of it. At least whore them out if you aren't going to make them work factory jobs 16 hours a day like we should be doing to make up for their sloth.

So they have this place with the Nasty Nancy and the elves and Hillary and her goddamned evil nature all sniffing around. At the center of it all is this cheese that Ronald Reagan created out of thin air as a joke so he could make fun of old people with that portly little fellow who used to be around him a lot. But this wise plan got messed around with by Nasty Nancy and now instead of a wholesome family humor style joke we could all laugh about, it became something awful. It became communism right in our midst.

And that is where it starts. It is where the rot from within begins, proud Americans. This is where the rot begins. From within. I wanted to emphasize that in case Scott is doing something with the dog or needs another break from reading because there is a dog nearby or on his mind. It is very distracting.

Instead of wholesome we get communism. This was like when people started trying to end sitcom segregation in the 1970s. It just doesn't work. It isn't economically viable. That is the problem with liberalism.

Force grandma to eat the cheese. Don't fall into another liberal conspiracy.

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