n a move that surprised the slow and feeble-minded alike, President Bush appointed diplomat John Negroponte as America’s first Director of National Intelligence this week, in an attempt to shore up the nation’s failing mental defenses.

“Now this may be a case of the pig callin’ the posy pink,� folkified Bush, our national leader and self-described folk hero. “But y’all is dumb as shit.�

Surprised and appalled by his own re-election, sources report Bush quickly decided something needed to be done about national intelligence, and the lucid and well-coordinated Negroponte was the obvious answer. Speaking in complete sentences and rarely attending to bodily itches with his house keys are said to be the strong suits that brought Negroponte to the president’s attention.

Negroponte, dressed in matching colors and with all button-holes and buttons lined up correctly on his vest, accepted the new position of Intelligence Czar graciously.

“It’s about time you dumbasses got your shit together,� announced the charitable-yet-firm Negroponte. “Though the fact that you all did something this smart frankly worries me. Is there a bucket of crap dangling over my head or something?�

According to the strangely-named Negroponte, whose last name does not mean “Black Dude� in Spanish or Italian, national intelligence has been going downhill for almost fifty years, pretty much ever since The Andy Griffith Show debuted in 1960. As a corrective measure, the new Intelligence Czar has called for the immediate canceling of all reality TV, switching all broadcasts of the Spice Channel to PBS, and outlawing country music. Whether these early remedies will be successful, however, remains to be seen since slack-jawed apathy remains so firmly rooted in the national character. Word on the street indicates that Negroponte may have his work cut out for him.

“What Russian royalty have to say about intelligence is a mystery to me,� sniped freelance quote-whore Dennis Murphy. “He should put on his big fuzzy hat and go back to Eskimoland.�

A surprising number of men on the street (and two dumb-looking women) seemed to confuse the concept of an Intelligence Czar and the famous Russian leaders of antiquity. Several half-educated men were convinced all the Czars had been murdered by the Bullshitiks in the Industrial Revolution. As a result, the commune has decided to refrain from using colorful or figurative language in the future, to avoid further misunderstanding and possible bloodshed.

Oppressed Bullshitiks, however, can find Negroponte at the White House during his office hours.

Lost Leaves Plotlines Half-Solved in Honor of Shooting Victims

MySpace to Offer Breaking News on What Ira Mankovics is Doing Right Now

Alec Baldwin Records Devastating Voice Mail Message for Shooter

Sony’s Poorly Timed “PS3 Price Massacre” Backfires

My God, sir, the future is in jeopardy! And not the good kind, like Celebrity Jeopardy.

I found this out most recently, with my keen inductive powers, and a little help from my ham radio. Longtime commune readers, a species rarer than the bald eagle, are familiar that we frequently receive transmissions from Future Bob—it's this constant flow of information that keeps us reassured our actions in this time period don't louse up the future for generations to come. We've upheld this burden well for a long time. But then guess what happened.

That's right. The future's gone flunky on us. Well, not all of us, perhaps, but flunky on me, and that's more than enough. I was sharing a delightful conversation with Future Bob most recently, discussing the various odors of cheeses and our favorites, when I asked him about the Bagel clan of his time. He was puzzled, and told me he hadn't met any Bagels in his time. What a disaster! Only a few years ago, when we first met, he assured me the Bagels were around and quite prominent in his time. Either he was a complete fake, not in the future at all, or the future had been devastated by our actions in their past. Being a huge fan of The Terminator movies, the obvious choice was the latter.

I could hardly believe it, but it wasn't quite the first time. Other incidents reported by Future Bob, such as the Fruit Famine of 2003, or the complete nuclear annihilation of the world in 2004, have failed to come true. Not without a great amount of work on our part, I assure you—everyone at the commune reported these incidents and made major changes to their lifestyles to make these possible futures not come true. Omar Bricks gave up eating genetically-altered nuclear apples altogether. Future Bob himself, for his part, was quite happy to hear we had made his stories become complete works of fiction. But it's been a constant battle, needless to say, and all the stories he's reported on so far have never hit so close to home as this apparently innocent remark.

No Bagels in the future? What's gone wrong? Where have I failed? Was it not asking out that checkout girl at One-Stop? The mole put me off a little, that's all. Good lord, what if that was the future mother of the Bagel dynasty? I would ask Future Bob if the matriarch of the Bagel clan was a Rosie Bagel, as the girl's name tag read, but unfortunately, he's not been shielded from the time transition by a quantum bubble. Damn that Star Trek technology! Where are easy-to-use, low-cost quantum bubbles to protect us from ripples in the timeline? If the future doesn't have them, we're screwed. Maybe it's another thing one of my offspring would have invented, had I bothered to boink them out already.

It's quite depressing, to realize you're as old as I am (let's not deal in numbers here) and have inadvertently doomed your name to extinction. Who's supposed to carry on the Bagel legacy? My brother Gay? He will never have children, for quite obvious reasons—he despises them. So is this truly the end of the Bagels? Once and for all, the gene pool dries up here?

I will not allow it. Sir, I must make it my personal mission to go out into the world this very night and have as much unprotected sex as humanly possible. But this time it's not to win a wager, although I do enjoy the small TV/VCR combo I won from all that. No, this is to save the Bagel name, and perhaps time itself, from disappearing into history's cornhole. Wish me luck, and many coupling experiences.

º Last Column: Ratings Bonanza
º more columns

Good people, it is not very often a movie can change your life. That a movie can make you feel good to be alive, and can make you feel, after all, maybe the world is not a heaping pile of dung. I have just seen such a movie. American Booty.

Yes, you may be saying that the movie I speak of is over two years old by now, that it was over-hyped then and why see it now? Or, like the young smarmy film snob who checks me out at Blockbuster phrased it, "Dude, you ain't seen this yet? How weak."

Maybe it takes Rok Finger a little bit longer to catch on to a trend, you always have to beware passing fads like pop music and insulin. But once the hype had died down, I try to check out every meaningful piece of media in our culture. I can say with positive knowledge now that American Booty is among the most meaningful pieces of Americana produced in the past ten years.

For those unfamiliar with the film, I'll describe it briefly. An American Everyman husband, Slam Scrotum (played ably by Jock Large), is having a midlife crisis at twenty-five. His wife, Tits Ahoy (Janet Jackoff), is having an affair with some uncredited black guy, while his daughter (Kris Cum Loudy), who is also blonde and looks about the same age as the mother character, is having an affair with two midgets and their horse. Slam begins to daydream about sleeping with six of his daughter's friends (the Ass Girls of the Pretty Kitty Club, Houston, Texas) in long scenarios throughout the film.

As touchy as the subject may be, American Booty doesn't shy away from graphic portrayal of male-female conjugation. It's brutally honest, especially the scenes with the black guy, but if you allow yourself to experience American Booty you'll walk away, after a few minutes, forever changed.

Best of all, it doesn't pamper the viewer with a clearly-linear storyline or an explainable resolution. From what I could tell, soon after Slam mates with all his daughter's friends at once, the film fades out, allowing us to draw our own conclusions about morality and what possible repercussions await Slam in the future.

I usually don't "get" critically-lauded movies, no sir. Therefore I seldom recommend movies. But I have to urge you to see American Booty as soon as you get the chance. It has amazed audiences and critics everywhere--the box said Cream Machine magazine gave it "four stiffies"--and now I recommend you let it amaze you.

º Last Column: I Will Destroy the People Living in My Trash
º more columns