nventive sports in Madrid, Spain have made extremely trivial history by performing the tiniest writing ever done, copying the first paragraph of Cervantes' Don Quixote onto a silicon chip. The physicists, apparently fighting their own windmills in the effort, wrote the letters so small they claim the entire novel could be copied onto the tips of six human hairs, though they didn't name anyone who volunteered to do so. Whether the hair would belong to Grace Jones or David Lee Roth, they didn't offer—surely they realize hair is quite relative.

"What a fantastic feat!" exclaimed book critic and hair enthusiast Alameda Ramirez, also of Madrid. "It's an amazing step forward for people who like to copy things really small onto objects not paper."

The physicists performed the chip-writing as part of a 400th anniversary celebration of Cervantes' classic work, and those involved are very insistent no beer was involved. The group used a very expensive atomic force microscope for their frivolity. While some stuffy scientist-types were enthusiastic about the possible use of the microscope for writing more information on smaller chips and revolutionizing the computer industry, intellectual literary-types were more excited about the possibility for easier-to-store books.

"If you could fit all of Don Quixote onto six hairs, imagine how much you could write on someone's entire head?" librarian Marcos Gally thought out loud. "Assuming you didn't kill them in the process, of course. I could carry the entire annotated works of Shakespeare and all the great plays of the twentieth century, in all languages, in my hairbrush. I wouldn't necessarily be able to read them. Which is my second point—we need to get to work on microscopic bifocals right away."

His colleague, bookstacker Londo, agreed. "Yes, but sad that intellectuals like John Malkovich and Michael Stipe would get no books at all. While Pamela Anderson would have them in abundance."

Both then agreed the complete conversion from paper books to hair books should wait at least until better transplant options became available.

Most appealing about the tiny writing possibilities, according to literary historian Bernadette Fopps, is making the wealth of the world's literature available in the least expensive format ever.

"A library of every piece of printed material ever, from the Bible in Esperanto to the latest issue of Ultimate Spider-Man, could easily fit into most modern handbags. That is, if you didn't mind a purse full of hair. But of course, not everyone is going to want a copy of everything. Personally, as a fan of early twentieth century British psychological literature, I would relish the opportunity to have a complete catalogue of George Orwell's fiction on a single pubic hair. Though, maybe that's more appropriate for the work of Henry Miller—I'm not the one to make those kinds of decisions."

A few detractors weren't ready to get on board the small hair writing train just yet. Such as author Tom Clancy.

"I'm as prone to mistakes as the next guy," said the Hunt for Red October author. "If I get to page 435 and Jack Ryan is about to knock out the bad guy, and I have a few type-O's, is my editor going to be able to correct those mistakes? 'Cause I'm not going to pluck a new hair and start over. I love my craft, but there are limits, you know?"

Also reluctant to embrace the idea was Denny's waiter Christian Meams: "The last added frustration I need on my job is someone's reading a copy of the latest Michael Chabon book, they forget about it, and I get blamed for bringing them the burger with the novel in it."

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Every once in a while I receive a reader question that really knocks me off the toilet. The latest came from Shane Bugelskow of Jersey City, New Jersey, wrapped around a rock and thrown through my bathroom window. Shane wonders, among other things, why there's no Channel One on his television. I promptly wrote him back and told him the truth: that it was because he has a small penis.

More discerning readers of my column, wherever you are, will likely want a more in-depth answer. None of you, unless you're insane or living overseas (or more likely, both), have a Channel One on your television, and you can't all have small penises. Some of you have no penises at all. My sincerest apologies to those unfortunate readers.

The answer to this question actually has a long and varied history. The original TV sets had no Channel One completely on accident due to a mishap at the first Zenith TV set factory, when an uptight quality-control engineer became paranoid that he'd get fired for signing off on a television that had a channel "L". Despite the reassurances from others in the factory who hadn't been huffing hair perm solution, the engineer couldn't be convinced that it was definitely a "1" and the further scrutiny also made him suspicious about the zero, which he began to worry might be a dial position for the letter "o". Since he had already nixed two of the television set's fifteen channels within the last ten minutes, the rest of the factory workers decided to drop the issue before they started producing expensive fish tanks that didn't get any channels.

The U.S. public back in the 50's was so mesmerized and confused by the first television sets that the lack of channels zero and one didn't strike them as odd at all. People in the 50's were accustomed to being told what to think, and if they had asked about the channels they would've bought any old ludicrous explanation about swamp gas and weather balloons anyway, so there was really no point in asking even if the thought had been coughed up in someone's primitive 1950's brain.

Other television set manufacturers like RCA and Philco were quick to follow Zenith's lead by starting with Channel Two, since the public was highly superstitious back in those days, and likely would have interpreted the addition of previously-forbidden television channels as serious bad voodoo. Unfortunately this decision spelled disaster for the RBC television network, which had outbid ABC, NBC and CBS for the coveted "first-channel" slot in the realm of broadcast bandwidth. RBC dutifully soldiered on and broadcast a full slate of shows for a year and a half after their launch, but eventually folded since only a small handful of people with broken television sets could tune in their network at all. RBC still beat ABC in television ratings, but advertisers never learned this fact since the results were only broadcast on RBC.

After the failure of RBC, the Channel One bandwidth was bought up by the U.S. government, which told an extremely gullible U.S. public that it would be used for ham radios. Americans rushed to stores to buy ham radios, and for six months in 1953 you couldn't get anybody to go bowling because they were all at home, trying to figure out how to turn on their ham radios. Three people succeeded, and were never heard from again.

In actuality, the U.S. government created their own network called USN to air on Channel One, mainly to give governmental higher-ups something else to watch while all the civilian slobs were watching I Love Lucy and Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. The network originally aired a stultifying blend of training and hygiene videos, culled from the government's massive collection of archived film strips. But eventually, poor ratings (even for a top-secret network) drove USN honchos to migrate toward racier fare, taking advantage of their security clearance by showing secret footage of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, nuclear tests, and grainy, flip-book footage of the Lincoln assassination. Channel One soon garnered a reputation as cutting-edge TV, decades before the advent of cable.

The Zapruder footage of President Kennedy's assassination made its network debut on USN in 1963, playing on a constant round-the-clock rotation that television wouldn't see again until Michael Jackson's video for "Thriller." Even after the footage hit the rest of the public networks, USN still had the upper hand thanks to their multi-angle coverage and exclusive first-person footage. The network wouldn't have another hit this big until they scored with their helmet-cam footage of the Watergate break-in in 1972.

With the advent of digital tuners being built into television sets in the 1980's, the U.S. government faced a new challenge. Rumors about Channel One had spread by word of mouth on college campuses and among lazy slack-ass pigs during the 70's, and the chances that nobody would ever bother to hit the one button on their new TV sets were fairly slim. The government briefly considered launching a Gestapo-style raid on all digital television sets nationwide, but this was considered impractical since television sets are really heavy and most soldiers and pretty lazy when it comes right down to it. Instead, the USN higher-ups developed an ingenious encryption technique that made the network's broadcasts look just like television static to average slobs, but added 3D visuals for government officials who were granted a special pair of glasses with one white lens and one black lens for USN viewing.

To further throw the slackers off their scent, the government also launched an "educational" program to bring "Channel One" to the nation's classrooms, a program that mostly entailed grade-school children sitting through commercials for Fritos on sputnik-era television sets that had to be wheeled in on a cart from the A/V room.

But the subterfuge was successful, and to this day, high-ranking government buttwipes wile away their non-productive hours watching real alien autopsies and how-to videos on crop circle formation, while the rest of us have to make due with American Idol and that great show where you turn off the TV and just stare at your reflection in the tube since it's more entertaining than anything being broadcast that night.

So that's why you don't have a Channel One, commune readers. Any other missing channels can be blamed on either your cable provider or your penis size. Good day.

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It's a day that will live in infancy forever and never, that damnable day the Kaiser gunned down ol' JFK. Who doesn't remember where they were the moment they got that news? Simpletons and little kids, 'cause they don't remember nuthin.

Ned remembers it like it was the third Tuesday of last month. It was the marrow-time, and the Swedes was hangin' in the trees like so much costume jewelry. This was back in the day when you could still stop at Uncle Otterbock's corner store and get a tube of Squeeze Bees to rub on your teeth for charm. Mashed yellowjackets make one highly magnetic, it's best to recall.

Back in them days Ned sailed the seven seas in a tin record player cabinet, the Victrola she was christened. At night the sweet high singing of the homesick weasels would carry Ned back to friendly ports on their drooping harmonies. These were the days, before Ned tried to walk across the ocean wearing giant-spring shoes and got himself blacklisted. These were the years when Ned would spend his days teaching the sky Portuguese and his nights pruning the stars with long-handled shears.

But then the Kaiser had to come and screw it all up with his jab-jabberin' about no taxation without relaxation and no beans without weenies and you know none of this jaw-flappin' struck JFK the right way. So he had to do what had to be done and he had that Kaiser stripped naked, dipped in hot tar, covered in penguin feathers and sold to a zoo in the Philippines.

Now granted, keep in mind that none of us at that time were opposed to this seemingly harsh treatment. Everyone was fed up with the Kaiser's tricks, from sleepin' with his shoes on to tryin to bake blackbirds in a pie. We figured he got what was comin' to him.

We were all taken by surprise though, when six months later, at JFK's Superbowl party, when that Kaiser popped up out of the cheese log like an appetizer from hell and gave JFK a shot in the nose with one of them guns that shoots the cork on a string. Some argue that JFK was surprised as well, and right they might be, 'cause at that moment he belched a surprised little belch and dropped dead of a heart attack right there on the presidential "touchdown boogie" rug.

That Kaiser was up to his old tricks again, only this time he robbed the country of a great leader, and Ned Nedmiller of probably his only chance to get that "touchdown boogie" rug. So let it be said for all to hear, that the Kaiser owes Ned a football-shaped rug, and until such a day as this is delivered, the Kaiser is not allowed to use Ned's sandwich griller, never again. Thank you.

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