aced with tough questions about the economy and pre-war intelligence failures this week, President Bush interrupted a press conference Thursday with an unusual display of astronomical panic.

“Look! Up in the sky!� shouted Bush, pointing upward in mock terror. “We’re all going to die!�

According to White House press secretary Scott McClellan, the airborne terror President Bush cringed beneath before darting out of the room was the “Evil Eye� galaxy, a distant cluster of stars recently photographed by the Hubble space telescope, which according to Bush staffers will soon spell our mortal demise.

“The President cannot stress enough the importance of putting aside divisive squabbling involving lost jobs or unnecessary invasions,� explained McClellan. “Our very lives may be in his hands this day, and it’s time for the American people to band together with the president, now and through this coming November to repel this terrible threat to the American way of life.�

All available scientists and high-school educated adults have dismissed the president’s claims that the Messier 64 galaxy, known as the “Evil Eye� for an unusual appearance caused by stars and interstellar gas rotating in opposite directions, will within the next ten months attempt to suck the United States of America off the globe like a small child sucking the sticker off an orange. While no scientific evidence exists to suggest this is even the remotest of possibilities, President Bush remains steadfast in his message.

“Holy shit, run for your lives!� Bush screamed before ducking out of the room during a press conference on Saturday, shortly after being asked to reconcile conflicting statements he’d made about rolling back last year’s tax cuts.

Political pundits have observed that Bush’s obsession with the M64 galaxy began shortly after the results of a recent AP poll were released, showing the president had taken a sharp nosedive in public opinion after a month of Democratic presidential candidates pointing out his ample flaws. For the first time during Bush’s term, polls showed more Americans likely to vote against the president than for him, and similar polls showed Bush losing to Democratic presidential hopeful and dead man walking John Kerry in head-to-head voting. Bush staffers refute these claims, however, pointing out that Poles are unreliable and often the butt of stereotypical humor.

Other results of the AP polls show Bush’s numbers across the board as down sharply from one month ago, signaling that the president’s attempts to distract voters with fantastical tales of moon bases and Mars adventures were largely unsuccessful and kind of silly.

“Obviously putting a man on Mars didn’t turn people’s cranks as much as the president had hoped,� commented political strategist Vaughn Casey. “So Bush has wisely returned to his ‘Greatest Hits’ playbook in an effort to parlay national paranoia into a second term. It’s a longshot, sure, but if the president could convince average Americans that Al Qaeda actually posed a serious threat in their everyday lives, then I suppose some kind of sucking space monster isn’t really a giant leap of faith from there.�

Further requests to question the president as to the scientific basis of his fears were turned down on the grounds that Messier 64 might be listening.

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As you may have heard from the local townsfolk, or from those smartalec kids who hang out in front of the TruValue over on fifth and Wayne, I've dedicated my life to a search for Jesus. For years I have searched far and wide, from the highest peaks to the deepest valleys, deep under the polar icecap and at the bottom of the mariana trench. I've looked in closets, I've looked under rugs, picnic tables and once even inside the girls' dressing room at a Foxy Boxing match. I've scoured the bus stops, the zoos and the trendy bars of our fair land and all of my searching has left me with but one question: Where the fuck's Jesus?

I mean, maybe I heard wrong, but he did say he was coming back, didn't he? I seem to remember something along those lines, maybe it was "Save my seat dude, I gotta whiz!" or maybe it was something a bit more poetic, but I was left with the distinct impression that he'd be draggin' his sorry ass back here sooner or later. And I'm about out of places to look.

Over the years there have been times when I thought I'd found him, but impostor Jesusi they were, every last one of them. Bogus Jesusitos. I was fairly sure I'd found him back in 1984 but then that guy ended up smoking all of my weed and sleeping with my sister, so I had to throw him out. I know, I know, whatever you do unto the least of my brothers, yadda yadda yadda. Well, in that case, Jesus got a Birkenstock crammed halfway up his ass that day.

And don't even get me started about latino guys named Jesus. I fell for that one a few dozen times too many and even spent most of the late 80's running guns down in Panama with Jesus and his brother Chuy. He may not have been a member of the holy trinity, but lord knows the real Jesus never saw that kind of money curing lepers and the blind and all that noise.

Probably my worst near-Jesus experience was when I thought I'd found him back in '79, but it turned out the guy was really the Phoenix Kindergarten Killer, that guy who was abducting all the little kids and filling Tylenol bottles with their teeth, then sneaking the bottles back onto the shelves at K-Mart. I very nearly had to do some jail time over that one, when the police discovered that he was making muppet dolls out of their corpses and putting on a live-action variety show in my basement. Hell, I just thought the savior had some strange friends, y'know? I mean, who questions the son of God, anyway? You want to end up out in a cornfield with your head on a jack-in-the-box or something?

I'm sad to say, it looks like my latest potential Jesus is turning out to be a big disappointment as well. No corpse-puppets or anything (so far) but all he seems to do is lay on the couch and watch Happy Days. I also think he's been chowing down on my Chips Ahoy while I'm at work, so unless he starts turning water to wine some time soon I'm going to have to ask him if he can stay with his sister.

Frankly, I'm getting a little tired of this shit. If Jesus was going to take this goddamn long, he could have at least phoned ahead to tell us not to wait up. Personally, I'm petitioning my church to change their daily prayer from "Our lord in heaven who art merciful and kind" to "Dude! You fucking fall in or something?" I suggest you do the same.

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That's right, your honor, you heard the title. I've prepared this statement in my defense because this country's legal system is inherently biased against the kind of "shock and awe" courtroom antics that would most memorably and quickly prove my innocence, and so I've been forced to make humble words, and periodic karate gestures, my servants. I stand here before you today a man innocent of the baseless accusations that I personally bred and trained a small army of vicious and lightning-quick monkeys to keep government ninjas out of my house.

These charges are untrue, your honor, and I bear no responsibility for the power company meter reader who was torn to shreds by these cunning, genetically-modified apes. The berserk primates that witnesses saw fleeing my home on May 17th had invaded my innocent dwelling only moments before, possibly descending by rope from a blimp, or creating an elaborate series of underground tunnels leading to my basement, or possibly both.

The prosecution will be calling two witnesses, Reginald "Dickface" Tungstein and Charlize "Dirty Lying Bitch" Overborn, who are both professional liars hired to gain my trust, plant monkey-breeding evidence in my home, and to fake video footage of me running frighteningly-swift killer monkeys though training drills in my own back yard. Neither of these individuals, you will note, has ever seen the movie Congo. As your honor obviously knows, this seriously calls into question their knowledge of killer ape matters and the relevance of their testimony. Also, "Dickface" Tungstein once slept with my ex-girlfriend. Draw your own conclusions from that.

And I'm sure your honor will also be hearing a lot about these so-called "Velocimonkeys." That they have eyes dark as night and slender, scheming fingers. That I bred them by crossing insane howler monkeys with a Tasmanian devil. That when cornered, they go for the nuts like a nut-hungry piranha, and that three of them can skeletonize a bull in fourteen seconds. That at night, they sing beautiful, high harmonies to lure in birds and children for snack and sport.

I'm sure you'll also be hearing that after they tore the meter reader into confetti, the Velocimonkeys escaped, terrorizing a Dairy Queen and hijacking a 1998 Toyota Camry moments before driving it off a nearby bridge and into the river, where they all drowned at an alarming rate of speed. That no Velocimonkey bodies were ever found, because I rescued them with scuba gear and a tuna net, bringing them home and locking them in a titanium footlocker in my basement that nobody knows about. These charges and more, your honor, are horseshit times three.

I saw these monkeys, your honor, as they invaded my home while I was praying and working on the cure for childhood cancer, and I didn't think they were all that. I even hit one with a bottle of scotch and it was clearly phased, as all normal monkeys are when hit with booze. It wouldn't surprise me if that meter reader in fact suffered from a medical condition that predisposed him to falling apart like sloppy joe meat when threatened by apes.

Furthermore, your honor, in my defense I plan on exposing the powerful racism at work within our local police force. This case is clearly less about the facts and more about my Dutch-Irish heritage, and the painful stereotypes that persist about the Dutch-Irish and their love of breeding killer primate hybrids with a taste for blood. This is the case that might very well change the way we think about race in this country, and hopefully it will do so in the next 34 minutes since I've got tickets for Nickelback. Case dismissed.

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