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May 17, 2004 |
Washington, D.C. Whit Pistol A U.S. military prison fort: No girls allowed, unless they're holding naked Iraqi men by a leash. s allegations and evidence continue to mount that Iraqi prisoners were subject to abuse and humiliation in U.S. military custody, the administration promised a change would come to the way prisoners were held, and that every dollar at their disposal would be used to fix or hush up the problem.
"This is a disgrace to America and all it stands for," said a current U.S. president, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "This is not the way we do things in this country—torturing prisoners, committing sexual acts with those in captivity, and getting caught in the act. It is against all we believe in. It makes a mockery of America and takes away our moral high ground. What's worse, they took pictures of it, hard evidence. What are we teaching our soldiers today?"
T...
s allegations and evidence continue to mount that Iraqi prisoners were subject to abuse and humiliation in U.S. military custody, the administration promised a change would come to the way prisoners were held, and that every dollar at their disposal would be used to fix or hush up the problem.
"This is a disgrace to America and all it stands for," said a current U.S. president, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "This is not the way we do things in this country—torturing prisoners, committing sexual acts with those in captivity, and getting caught in the act. It is against all we believe in. It makes a mockery of America and takes away our moral high ground. What's worse, they took pictures of it, hard evidence. What are we teaching our soldiers today?"
The president assured the media money would be thrown at the problem until it went away or was solved, and that the budget would not rest until enough green stemmed the tide of outrage.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, under fire and pressured to resign in the wake of the scandal, laid out a more specific plan of monetary problem-solving.
"Here's a fifty-dollar bill," said Rumsfeld, holding the currency up for media scrutiny. "As reparations, the U.S. government plans to give each and every victim of prison abuse one of these. That's a lot of money for an alleged terrorist or Baghdad bagman. It's in dollars, too, not drachmas or anything. And if you can prove you were sodomized, actually sodomized, not pretend, we'll make it a hundred."
Rumsfeld also said monetary reparations would be made to any prisoners who didn't survive incarceration, if their deaths could be proven with pictures. Another method of solving the problem proposed by Rumsfeld is increasing the number of military troops sent to Iraq—with more troops to supervise, it makes perfect sense less abuse would occur within the prisons.
Some critics charge the U.S. is trying to buy its way out of a bad press situation, which is something the critics say is completely unlike the United States. Kim Meducci of the Washington, D.C.-area chapter of Amnesty International, called the offer of money an insult to human rights.
"This is the kind of thing other countries do to their prisoners, not America," said Meducci. "Surely if a prisoner had ever been abused in the entire history of the United States we would have heard about it. It's a shame a few bad apples, a few rogue Americans who snuck around abusing prisoners, got caught. Which is to say, shouldn't have been doing such things in the first place. It's clearly not the way a military force occupying a hostile country behaves. And the administration should be ashamed of itself, more so, for trying to buy its way out of a scandal."
the commune only managed to end the quote by agreeing to take several pamphlets and provide a tax-deductible donation to the organization.
Some sources inside the Pentagon defended U.S. interrogation tactics, which critics have said created an atmosphere of secrecy and implied consent which tolerated and even encouraged the abuse documented in thousands of photos, video clips, and even some popular barracks songs. An anonymous Pentagon source, Col. Gerald Fetchen, spoke to the commune.
"American forces, especially the special ones, need a free hand to move as they want in protecting American concerns. If we start having to charge prisoners, to show evidence of terrorist involvement, if we have to start accounting for who we put behind bars and why they're there, we'll never get justice done." the commune news is sorry for any abuse of reporters, staff, or people who happened to walk into our offices—check out the pictures on our pay internet site to see just how offensive it was and why we need to apologize. Raoul Dunkin makes our "most abused reporter" list every time, much to his personal torment.
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 June 7, 2011
Return to Zender (Week 8)Good news, commune fans: You exist! I know, I’d had my doubts as well. But the successful relaunch of the commune proves it: I can barely walk down the street now without being mobbed by commune fans. Maybe "mobbed" is the wrong word, commune fans tend to be of the solitary sort, ungroomed and not always masters of the social arts or their own bodily functions. But boy are they out there, and boy do they want me to pay them to wash my windshield. Which is indeed a strange request when I’m traveling to my destination on foot, but that’s commune fans for you. Irreverent to the last.
These are the salad days, my friends, and not just because I’ve been eating a lot of salads to be able to afford sending Raoul Dunkin jet setting around the country to cover the latest and greatest in the world of news. Thankfully that hasn’t been quite as expensive as you might imagine, since during his last two years in the employ of the original commune, Raoul was paid exclusively in frequent flier miles. Apparently this was a common practice back then, as I’m told Omar Bricks was paid entirely in Camel cash and Boris Utzov was paid in camel shit. I shudder to think of what Boris was doing with all that camel shit, though I’ve heard rumors he used most of it to erect a camel shit statue of Saddam Hussein in the middle of Central Park. As the story goes, this understandably upset the natives, but Boris claimed it was actually a likeness of his cousin Boguslaw Sadowski,...
º Last Column: Return to Zender (Week 2) º more columns
Good news, commune fans: You exist! I know, I’d had my doubts as well. But the successful relaunch of the commune proves it: I can barely walk down the street now without being mobbed by commune fans. Maybe "mobbed" is the wrong word, commune fans tend to be of the solitary sort, ungroomed and not always masters of the social arts or their own bodily functions. But boy are they out there, and boy do they want me to pay them to wash my windshield. Which is indeed a strange request when I’m traveling to my destination on foot, but that’s commune fans for you. Irreverent to the last.
These are the salad days, my friends, and not just because I’ve been eating a lot of salads to be able to afford sending Raoul Dunkin jet setting around the country to cover the latest and greatest in the world of news. Thankfully that hasn’t been quite as expensive as you might imagine, since during his last two years in the employ of the original commune, Raoul was paid exclusively in frequent flier miles. Apparently this was a common practice back then, as I’m told Omar Bricks was paid entirely in Camel cash and Boris Utzov was paid in camel shit. I shudder to think of what Boris was doing with all that camel shit, though I’ve heard rumors he used most of it to erect a camel shit statue of Saddam Hussein in the middle of Central Park. As the story goes, this understandably upset the natives, but Boris claimed it was actually a likeness of his cousin Boguslaw Sadowski, which no one could argue with because they couldn’t understand what he was saying.
But back to why these are the salad days. Running the commune out of my mother’s house is like a dream come true. It’s an impressive scene I assure you… I wish you could see it. I mean that literally, I wish I had a camera so I could take pictures and post them to the site. That’s a subtle hint for any of you commune fans doing some early Christmas shopping. We could also use a computer, because running down to Kinko’s to upload new articles to the site is becoming a serious pain in both of my balls. News doesn’t always break during Kinko’s business hours, as the old journalism saying goes.
But I assure you it’s quite a scene. When Raoul isn’t globetrotting to bring you the poop most in need of scooping, he’s here, bitching that I don’t even have a computer. But I’m not even here myself, because I’m down at the Safeway checking for new Roland McShyster reviews or down at the library scouring back issues of old porno mags for new-to-us Rok Finger columns. In a side note, I am truly surprised at just how well stocked our local library is when it comes to pornography. If more people knew this I think libraries would be a lot more popular.
But that’s not all! the commune family is expanding like Paris Hilton’s belly after she eats a paperclip. I’m proud to announce that commune favorites Griswald Dreck and Ivan Nacutchacokov have both rejoined the flock, and not a moment too soon! I mean, it’s not the kind of operation someone could join too soon. I suppose they could have joined us before the original commune building burnt to the ground, that would have been kind of strange and maybe too soon, but any point after that was pretty much ideal for us.
Anyway, you’ll never guess where I found Mr. Dreck. A few weeks ago I was eating some garlic ice cream and let me tell you, it left a pretty funky taste in my mouth. So I reached for a delicious hunk of Bazooka bubble gum to tame that garlicy tongue beast and as I was happily chewing away, eager to lose myself in the adventures of Bazooka Joe and his dog, Walkie Talkie, I was instead treated to a byzantine comic about the history of penile implants. Gobsmacked as I was, I still had enough blood flowing to my brain to instantly recognize this as the work of none other than commune answerman Griswald Dreck. I dialed the Bazooka bubble gum emergency hotline just as fast as my fingers would carry me, and after navigating through a bewildering forest of options ( If you’re choking on bubble gum right now, press or say "I’m choking on bubble gum right now") I was eventually put in touch with a Human Resources guru. He informed me that Dreck had been fired from his post for drawing comics that weren’t about Bazooka Joe at all, or that covered the origins of things like pencil sharpeners or democracy, or that were too densely packed onto the wrapper to be legible, or, usually, all of the above. Thankfully, they had Dreck’s home address due to him sending them regular letters explaining how their "New Adventures of Bazooka Joe" wrappers weren’t canon and contained factual errors about eye patches. Before long I was in touch with Mr. Dreck himself, and it didn’t take much convincing to get him to travel to Vermont and rejoin the team, since he’d been scraping together a living on the brutal underground bar trivia circuit and was ready for a change.
It was some time shortly after that when I discovered that Ivan Nacutchacokov had been living in my basement the entire time since the original commune folded. This was awkward at first to discover, but it worked out fine since it meant Ivan had to make less of a transition to living in my basement than the others. I’m not sure how he feels about Dunkin and Dreck invading his turf, but there haven’t been any knife fights or anything yet. Ivan agreed to rejoin the commune on the condition that we don’t tell his ex-wife Ivana Folger-Balzac where he is. The truth is she’d already been here looking for him, months ago, but at the time I had no idea he was in the basement so I imagine I provided pretty good ignorant cover. Truth be told I might have cracked when she started hitting me with her car door if I’d actually known he was down there.
And so we’re off. Keep those tips coming, commune fans and assorted law enforcement personnel nationwide. You’ve made my wish come true, and I didn’t even have to get cancer to make it happen. Emil Zender: 1, Make a Wish Kids: 0, for those keeping score at home.
Zincerely,
Emil Zender º Last Column: Return to Zender (Week 2)º more columns
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|  January 6, 2003
Volume 33Dear commune:
What the hell is Damon Wayans doing on Delta's in-flight video? Did he bitch-slap the president and get some kind of harsh community service sentence or something? Damn.
Peace.
Rodney Shue Belmont, LA
Dear Rodney:
That's not the in-flight video, Delta shows programming from E! on their flights now, which is more entertaining but less helpful when the fuselage rips open at 20,000 feet and everyone thinks the oxygen masks are treehouse telephones. Who Damon Wayans bitch-slapped to end up on the E! network is another question entirely. And for future reference, you can't bitchslap the president unless the president is a bitch, which won't happen until America gets over its backward prejudice against bitches. Right now it's only possible to dipshit slap the president, though as a progressive, forward-thinking organization, we here at the commune hope that the days of presidential bitch-slapping are not far off. Lastly, though we appreciate your stimulating questions, we must ask that you have the navigator or someone transcribe your letters for you in the future, because we understand about the control panel being bumpy and all, but you've still got the worst pilot's handwriting we've ever seen.
the...
º Last Column: Volume 32 º more columns
Dear commune: What the hell is Damon Wayans doing on Delta's in-flight video? Did he bitch-slap the president and get some kind of harsh community service sentence or something? Damn. Peace. Rodney Shue Belmont, LADear Rodney:
That's not the in-flight video, Delta shows programming from E! on their flights now, which is more entertaining but less helpful when the fuselage rips open at 20,000 feet and everyone thinks the oxygen masks are treehouse telephones. Who Damon Wayans bitch-slapped to end up on the E! network is another question entirely. And for future reference, you can't bitchslap the president unless the president is a bitch, which won't happen until America gets over its backward prejudice against bitches. Right now it's only possible to dipshit slap the president, though as a progressive, forward-thinking organization, we here at the commune hope that the days of presidential bitch-slapping are not far off. Lastly, though we appreciate your stimulating questions, we must ask that you have the navigator or someone transcribe your letters for you in the future, because we understand about the control panel being bumpy and all, but you've still got the worst pilot's handwriting we've ever seen.
the commune Editor's Note: the commune is not responsible for whatever it is you're complaining about. the commune is also not ignoring you. Nope, not ignoring you. Nope, nope. Chatter on all you want, we're not ignoring you. La la la la la.º Last Column: Volume 32º more columns
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Milestones1821: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua all gain independence, consequently leaving them ripe for U.S. corporate invasion and political meddling.Now HiringMark Buckles is a Cockwad. Holy shit I don't believe we got that in print! Man, you were right, Sammy, they don't ever proofread this shit. This is better than that time we got "Mark Buckles sucks balls" on the CNN website poll.Worst Country Songs Ever| 1. | She Left Me for an African-American | | 2. | I Don't Feel Like Drinkin' | | 3. | Here's a Quarter, Go Buy Some Bubblegum | | 4. | What's the Capital of Tennessee Again? | | 5. | If Anyone Needs Me, I'll be Down at the Nail Salon | | 6. | Regretfulness is the Hardest Word to Spell | | 7. | Mama Didn't Raise No Episcopalians | | 8. | I'm So Lonesome I Could Call an Escort Service | | 9. | I Got This Hat on Sale | | 10. | You Mispronounced My Name for the Very Last Time | |
|   North Korea Pissed Their Real-Life Hunger Games Nowhere Near as Popular as Movie BY John Boy Swick 9/2/2002 Gullible TravelsChapter One: A Prince Among Pansies
I set out on the fifth of May, in a sturdy craft packed with provisions. The Metro she was christened, and her maker assured me of many safe returns from far-flung voyages, and chicks like Chamberlain. I was held aloft by her chariot wheels, crafted by the master B.F. Goodrich himself, and I carried forth under the thundering power of nearly seventy horses.
The voyage was itself long and hard, like a Kennedy at a dorm shower window, and carried on for some days. Weather patterns were unfavorable for navigation, and a map confiscated from a fast-food eatery proved unreliable at best. Yet still I traveled on, through the thatch of roadways and bypasses which bore me forward across this great land.

Chapter One: A Prince Among Pansies
I set out on the fifth of May, in a sturdy craft packed with provisions. The Metro she was christened, and her maker assured me of many safe returns from far-flung voyages, and chicks like Chamberlain. I was held aloft by her chariot wheels, crafted by the master B.F. Goodrich himself, and I carried forth under the thundering power of nearly seventy horses.
The voyage was itself long and hard, like a Kennedy at a dorm shower window, and carried on for some days. Weather patterns were unfavorable for navigation, and a map confiscated from a fast-food eatery proved unreliable at best. Yet still I traveled on, through the thatch of roadways and bypasses which bore me forward across this great land.
Brave like an Indian, I sallied forth to lay claim to an uncharted land, one which I could then chart, so as not to be lost all of the time. And though this heretofore-uncharted land would then cease to be as such, it would be my own charted land, as indicated by the flag tied around that tree over there. Yes, the one that looks like an old ripped up work shirt. It is but a humble flag and knows it, your comments are not necessary.
Along my journeys in search of uncharted, or at least unattended, land, I've come across many a fantastic and unbelievable place. Many scoff at my tales of Friscopolis, but I assure you that there is such a location; I have seen it with mine own eyes and have carried the memory of that place in the seat of my pants for many years.
I was headed for the north of Wales when an easterly wind and a sale on box wine blew me off course, and I awoke in a roadside motel in a strange city by a beautiful bay. The people of this place looked to be normal but spoke in a strange, lisping dialect as if their tongues had been clipped in some unspoken primitive ritual. Their customs were also strange to me, and at first inflamed my anus. But with time I became acclimated to their culture and the strange physiology of the people, where many of the men had breasts and the women penises.
Stranger still was the general absence of children, as the women instead spent their time dancing, cooking and donning fantastic wigs for public exhibition. Their means of procreation were unknown to me, as the only children I saw while there were apparently shipped from another land and bore no resemblance to either parent.
I lived with the people of Friscopolis for several weeks in a latex-scented reverie, drinking in the culture and customs, having my hair done several dozen times, and being assaulted by the local police department several times in a string of unrelated misunderstandings. But before the month was out I contracted a strange itching rash around my genitals, which the natives told me was an allergic reaction to the high saline content in the Friscopolis air. Sadly, I had to depart this magical land, as I also owed a lot of money to a local element that could charitably be described as disagreeable.
I left Friscopolis with mine eyes opened to a wider world, and with several piercings and Cher tattoos that would later ensure a hostile reception in the next fantastic land I visited accidentally: Kentuckiana.   |