oming hot on the heels of February’s “Black History Month� bacchanalia, the U.S. government threw a surprising ceremony last week commemorating March as “Black Histrionics Month,� celebrating the overly dramatic and frenetic behavior famous to the black stereotype. American actor Cuba Gooding Jr. was tapped to inaugurate the memorial month, in a nod to his lifelong efforts to keep the stereotype alive.

“You know you want to hear it! Show me the money! Show ME the MO-NEY!� Gooding screamed to the assembled crown, before turning three consecutive backflips and tearing off his shirt. Gooding thrilled whites everywhere with his comfortably overblown black antics.

Before he could be shouted off the stage by self-respecting blacks who for some reason decided to attend the ceremony/travesty, Gooding Jr. ran through a terrifying recap of the last 50 years of black movie stereo types, leaving the audience either horrified or hilarified, depending on the color of their skin.

“Lordse, we got to have a doctor! I don’t know nothin ‘bout birthin’ babies!� clowned Gooding, simultaneously over the top and under the bottom. “Bitch! I will kick the bulimia outta yo’ ass!�

The well-publicized ceremony has also drawn unwanted attention from Latinos, the country’s largest minority group, who are upset that they don’t have their own month. When asked about this discrepancy during a recent interview, President Bush was clever.

“No Latino History Month?� asked Bush thoughtfully. “Why, that’s because every month is Latino History Month!� The president smiled slyly, impressed by his own deft maneuvering.

Prominent Latino leaders, however, find such statements to be caca.

“We want our own history month,� explained Latino community leader Hector Villanova. “And not some bullshit that’s all about the Alamo, either. We’re not falling for that again.�

The attention drawn to the new black month two-for-one has caused America’s racial shit to hit the fan at a high rate of speed as a dizzying array of other races have demanded their own months. Early reports indicate that some pushy races have even demanded two months, in order to even the playing field in the impending race race. Asians, Norwegians, East Indians and even the Irish have all chimed in with their hunger to make sure the black man doesn’t have anything special for himself.

Native American groups, on the other hand, have taken the high road, explaining that they’d rather take a pass on reliving their history and would be satisfied with having the whole of Las Vegas declared a multi-tribal reservation.

Several Newscasters Fired for Reporting Death of Don Ho

5 Million White House E-Mails Missing, All About Low-Cost Cialis

Sanjaya Unites Indian Fans, People Who Hate American Idol

IRS: Excessively Needy Girlfriends Can’t Be Declared “Dependents”

While your average American gives no thought to the complicated world of politics, concerned more with trivialities such as "Will my job survive the year?" and "How can I afford to keep my family medically insured?" the think-tankers in the upper echelons of the U.S. government are asking only one question: "Is Saddam Hussein alive, and if so, where is he?" Yes, if you check, that's technically only one question, hence the single question mark.

The short answer is: No. But wait! Before you think I've become boring in my old age, I haven't cracked your brain with the baseball bat of conspiracy yet, and I assure you there is more to the Saddam Hussein story than you've considered before. And always more than they're telling you.

The reason Saddam Hussein is no longer alive is that he was never alive. Saddam Hussein, was, is, and always has been nothing more than a computer program. Surprised? Good, I say. You don't think I hold off on telling you all this shit simply because it slipped my mind, do you? I get my jollies watching your jaw drop, friend.

Has anyone ever seen the movie Virtuosity? Of course not. Some would chalk this up to the film being predictable and fairly empty of any real enjoyment, but I say this underestimates the part played by the American government to make the movie go unseen. The film is a roundabout way to propose that many of our society's villains are nothing more than distracting computer creations, and it took a lot of government operatives countless hours to make the film so utterly forgettable as to slip through the box office cracks unnoticed. But there was good reason for all the time spent doing so.

If we open ourselves up to the possibility that one villain is really just a souped-up Atari made to look like Russell Crowe doing a decent American accent, where do we stop questioning everything? Consider this: Have you ever been in a room with Saddam Hussein, the actual man? I didn't think so. That should make it abundantly doubtful a real Saddam Hussein even exists.

Everyone knows Iraq was only targeted by the military for one reason, and that's oil; this is only up for debate by people who enjoy deceiving themselves about everything, such as the government has only altruistic motives, or J.A.G. is a really good show. In fact, whenever you hear a government official say they want to bring democracy to another country, it should automatically translate as they have natural resources vital to our economy and are holding out. Hence we decided to bring democracy to Iraq, in exchange for barrel upon barrel of yummy oil.

Of course, Iraq was a foreign culture and has virtually no strategic value, following that we have no enemy after the Soviet Union dismantled and had no strategy against no enemy. The original leaders of Iraq, looking pretty dopey and smiling all the time like they just squeezed out a silent fart, weren't much motivation for the American people to go to war. So the U.S. war machine created the Saddam Hussein computer program, based an old Abbot & Costello routine beloved by Sec. Jim Bakker. "Who's in charge of Egypt?" "Hussein." "I'm sayin', I want to know." Love that one.

But if you build a computer program too good, as any hack movie producer knows, it can develop its own intelligence and decide to take things over. Which is exactly what happened when we installed the Saddam Hussein program on Iraqi Amigas. Pretty soon we did have a Saddam Hussein threat to overthrow—our own. He even generated independently more pictures of George Bush's Uncle Herb in full Iraqi military guard and had him doing ridiculous Herb-like things, such as waving a shotgun around or reading threatening messages to the U.S. government in great big glasses from his underground bunker.

Keep in mind, I still think the Saddam Hussein program is a threat, and if one mainframe carrying the program survived the Baghdad bombing, the danger remains. But all of this could have been dealt with much quicker and efficiently by planting a virus in the Iraqi intranet, or installing Windows 2000 on one of the network computers.

º Last Column: Roll On, Columbia
º more columns

Hey, Shorty, get me a glass o' buttermilk, will ya? Ah, thanks… nothin' like a nice cold glass o' buttermilk, no sir. Hey, I ever tell you the one about the milkman's boy? No? Well, listen up a spell…

You remember that ol' boy Floyd that used to deliver the milk, don't you? Long time ago. Guy was always pissed off at everybody, couldn't nobody talk to him for very long or he'd go off on 'em? You remember. Anyway, it turns out that ol' Cecil , who brings the milk now, is his son. I know, he's Moira's boy, rest her soul, and no, it didn't happen the natural way. Ol' Floyd was too mean and lowdown to ever spend enough time with a woman for that. And crazy Moira… well, you know I don't like to speak unkind of the dead. But anyway, here's what happened…

See, Floyd, he was always pissed off about something, like I said. And for a long time he held a grudge against Moira and her sister Penelope. Somethin' about 'em not givin' him a Christmas tip or some damn thing, I don't know. The thing was, he was in a position to do somethin' about his grudges if he wanted, and I guess he did, too. What I heard was that he used to take a bottle o' milk and get in the back o' the truck and whack himself, then he'd stick it in the bottle and get his duck butter all in there with the milk. He called it a "protein shake," and if you was on his shit list, pardon my French, you had to watch out that he didn't deliver you a protein shake with your regular order.

Well, I guess he had been givin' them ol' girls Moira and Penelope some o' them protein shakes for quite a while. And the way Penelope tells it, Moira didn't always use the milk to pour on her corn flakes. She said that if Moira coulda afforded it, she woulda bought enough milk to take a milk bath every morning. Now you know, them ol' girls wasn't rich, so Moira never did get enough milk at one time for that. Instead, she used to take one bottle each morning and wash her lady parts with it. Dutchy, I think they call it. So anyhow, turns out that she uses one or two o' them protein shakes and dutchies herself with 'em, and bingo, whaddaya think? Couple months go by and she realizes she's fragrant.

I'm tellin' ya, Shorty, no one in town could believe it, and not just because Moira and Penelope were about as ugly as monkfish left out to dry for a week. Thing was, they never had no truck with the men in this town, none of 'em. And they didn't have no truck with no men from no other towns, neither, far as anyone knew. They was suspected of being lebanese, to be perfectly honest.

That ol' Moira, though, she didn't try to hide it or nothin'. She said it was a sign from God, a whaddaya call it, one o' them unmasculate deceptions. She walked around town like she was givin' a watermelon a ride, just as proud as could be. Then when ol' Cecil gets born and grows up, whaddaya know, he's the spittin' image o' Floyd. Damnedest thing I ever heard, but it's one hunnert percent true. Ask anybody.

'Course now, Cecil, he's a little easier to deal with than ol' Floyd was, but that don't mean he don't got a temper. You just gotta stay on his good side, that's all.

Hey Shorty, you ever notice how chunky buttermilk gets sometimes?

º Last Column: Roll On, Columbia
º more columns