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OH MY GOD SNOW

The call to alert had come! Or perhaps it was a call to alarm, there's a tricky subtle difference between the two that's always been tough to nail down. But whichever it was, the phone was ringing! Snuffles sprang into an action pose with his patented super-sound: "SPRAAANG!" This could only mean one thing: Snuffles' super-hero compatriots, Trophy Wife and Token Gay Friend, had been taken hostage by Dr. Crossbaum and were being held captive in his secret industrial park lair! Oh no! With several other patented super-sounds, including "BRONK!" "FDDDDT" and "Pbbbbbb…" Snuffles shot across the floor like a runaway meatball. With unprecedented smork, Snuffles leapt into the air, pausing briefly to explain that "smork" is a measure of canine superpower on a scale of one to twelve, and shot like a pot-bellied rocket toward an open window.

With paws feverishly skittling at the wallpaper, Snuffles impacted the wall two feet below the window and slumped down to the baseboards, landing in an upside-down canine super-heap. "Interesting," thought the Wonder Dog. "Looks like Dr. Crossbaum has raised the windows once again!" With that sly remark, Sunuffles scratched behind his ear for a few minutes before falling asleep in a sunbeam.

Snuffles awoke with a start, his super-ears already working double-time even though they were only being paid for time and a half. There! In the distance! The neighbor… mowing his lawn! This could only mean that Snuffles' super-compatriots were still in ever more perilous peril! Snuffles hurried over near the closet to find a super box he could pull over and stand on to see out the window. He then quickly became preoccupied with sniffing under the closet door and a new mission arose: There's beef jerky in this closet!

Sniffles pawed at the bottom of the closet door and barked in a manner signifying that he did, indeed, mean business. Few present doubted him, especially not a pill bug hiding in a crack between the floorboards. Pawing to no avail, Snuffles cursed the diabolical contraption. Could it be Trophy Wife and Token Gay Friend trapped inside? Bound and gagged silent, with the package of beef jerky tucked into Token Gay Friend's Jansport backpack as their only means of sending a distress signal? It was looking increasing more likely as the only plausible explanation.

For a time, Snuffles considered fashioning a crude lock-picking device out of a chicken bone and a shoe string, as he had in Snuffles Gets Spayed and Wonder Dog Gone Missing. Snuffles chewed on an old tennis shoe distractedly for several minutes while weighing his options, then it hit him like a bolt out of a licked electrical outlet. It was so obvious, and he'd almost fallen for it! Clearly, the jerky was a trap set by Dr. Crossbaum and his minions: the ear-pulling baby or the nameless man who's breath always smelled of Ding Dongs. Clever, Dr. Crossbaum, but not clever enough! Snuffles smiled a satisfied dog smile as he humped a discarded high-heel shoe. Snuffles, Wonder Dog: 37. Dr. Eli Crossbaum, VMD: 0.

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That's right, I said it: America's fat. You won't see Red Bagel challenge the readership like that, will you?

It's high time America took responsibility for its big fat weight. Doctors will tell you maybe you're eating too much and not exercising. Genetecists will tell you it's because of a fat gene, but what they mean is "fat jeans"—your ass has to squeeze in them. Ha. That's one for Ramrod.

What is the secret behind our obesity? Is it that we've become complacent watching TV and living high off our conveniences? Like the ancient Roman privileged classes, are we feeding off the sweat of underclasses and foreign labor? Never getting out to plant and reap our own crops, to pull our own chariots, to have to put on tight-fitting slave tunics instead of circus tent-style togas? Well, of course that's not it, I wouldn't have phrased it as a question if it was. No, it's something more insidious.

The Illuminati! That's right, you humps, I'm into the big boy conspiracy stuff now.

There is no fat gene, and you are eating too much, but that food is packed with surplus calories. And those non-fat cardboard rice cakes you eat, only to gain more weight? Pure re-constituted lard, dipshit. Don't think they can't get to you, too. They get to everyone.

Americans are being fattened up, like candy-seeking German kids wandering a forest. Except no witch is going to eat us, with some rare exceptions. We're not being made to be meals, although good luck with that rather on-the-nose conspiracy theory, Johnny Smallpicture. If you're wondering what other purpose it serves to fatten up America, I've got two words for you: Militia.

That's right, minute men. That's the two words I implied, hopefully you got that. America's is the only constitution anywhere that guarantees the right to form a militia—other countries may think their constitution does, but of course nobody ever actually reads the constitution but a small group of politics and history nerds and an even smaller group of revolution-era handwriting fetishists. Look again, Pierre—no militia for you.

If you were the Illuminati, poised to take over the world and yet stuck with this "militia clause" in the handgun-filled United States, what would you do? Well, scratch that, you'd probably spend all your money on lottery tickets and marry your cousin. But the Illuminati has a serious group of strategists, and if you can't make them lie down and roll over like the French, you make them too fat to fight. Here, have some more Twinkies. Sure, they're low-fat. Unless you count the additives we injected at the factory! No, they're just for coloring! Ha ha ha!

I wasn't really laughing at you that time, just pretending to be the Illuminati. But that's what's happening, America. The Freemasons are sitting behind their brick-built desks and cracking up as your scale spins further and further to the right. Pretty soon all those precious handguns won't mean anything—you won't even be able to get your fat fingers through the little trigger circle thing, whatever it's called.

Even our right-wing reactionaries are getting too fat to do anything. Rush Limbaugh used to weigh a trim 240, now he's ballooned up like a… balloon. And you don't want to see Ted Nugent lately.

As for me, I'm in prime physical condition. This is all muscle. Well, yeah, some of it's not, but I'm working that off as soon as the weather warms up. I urge you all to get into shape, and arm yourself heavily. See you at the gym/gun show.

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