fter years of staunch, stiff-jawed and clenched-buttocksed opposition to human cloning research, President Bush issued a startling reversal to his January "Pig Men" State of the Union address this week, and now is apparently in favor of the controversial scientific pursuit.

A tearful Bush, admittedly "a little behind" on his TV viewing due to "the usual work b.s.," finally got around to viewing the fifth and final season of HBO's acclaimed drama Six Feet Under on DVD this week, an event that seems to have had a profound effect on the president.

"Just being reminded that everyone you know will die one day, that really makes you think," explained the president, not previously known as a fan of thought.

"Keith!" Bush suddenly shouted, mid-sob. "Why'd he have to go so young?"

Those in the terrifying position of being close to the president's thought processes claim that a recent twelve-hour DVD marathon viewing of the show left Bush in a deep near-thoughtful funk, a condition aides hadn't seen the president in since the cancellation of Timecop in 1997.

"Seeing that documentary really got me thinking about the people close to me, and how to keep them from ever dying, ever," explained Bush. This reporter chose not to take this opportunity to explain the difference between drama and documentary, or the inevitability of death, to the president.

"At first I was thinking about time travel," continued Bush. "But that never worked out so hot in those Michael J. Fox movies. Plus, it gets all confusing and hard to follow the story. Then I thought about the fountain of youth, but I couldn't think of any movies where that really worked either. I just kept thinking of the end of Gremlins where that scary thing melts in the fountain—yuck. Anyway, then I turned on the SciFi Channel and that got me thinking about human cloning."

Reports indicate this is not the first time the president's opinions and policies have been changed by popular entertainment, including Bush's proposed tax breaks for hot rod owners last year after viewing The Dukes of Hazzard, and the president's call for storm windows to be installed in the White House after finally getting around to seeing Twister in 2001.

Critics have long suggested that most of Bush's policy moves and public statements over the course of his two terms have been inspired by old Clint Eastwood movies and various Chuck Norris action vehicles. Debate rages concerning the timing of Bush's 2002 statements about clamping down on whistleblowers, coming as they did days after the president reportedly attended a screening of the environmentally-themed Steven Soderbergh film Erin Brockovich.

"I guess it's easy to feel one way about a subject, until it potentially affects someone you care about," Bush explained about his change of heart in the cloning debate. Asked if he would then be sending his daughters to Iraq to help with the nation-building efforts, Bush ignored the question and asked if this reporter had time to stick around for a spontaneous viewing of Top Gun on DVD.

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Anyone who's ever driven in traffic or attended a sporting event in Los Angeles no doubt has been given pause to marvel at the wide array of human emotions that can be expressed through simple hand gestures. From "Hello!" and "I bet you'd look good giving me a blowjob" to "Go ahead and merge, I'm in no hurry" (reportedly seen in Canada one time in the 70's), commuters and sports fans alike rarely need audible sounds to communicate. Borne of necessity in situations when words are impractical or likely to confuse the point, hand gestures have evolved over the eons to, if not an art, at least a really complex hobby. I'm reminded of the deaf man who just last week used a complex series of sign language gestures to indicate that I should go fuck myself, give myself AIDS and then die.

But one doesn't have to be a sign language prodigy to use the most versatile of signs, the raised middle finger. This can stand for anything from "Hey, fuck you!" to "Fuck ALL you guys over there!" or "Hey, fuck you and that chick sitting next to you who looks kinda like Julia Stiles!"

Sure, it's handy, but where did the middle finger come from? Assholes place the gesture's origin at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, when in the course of talking trash the French boasted that they would cut off the middle fingers of the English archers after they'd won the battle. The joke here being that archers kind of need their middle fingers if they're going to properly flip somebody the bird after shooting them, adding insult to injury in the proper etiquette of the day. Unfortunately for the French, they weren't as good at fighting as they were at boasting, and after the battle was over the victorious English soldiers stood in a line and gave the French the one-finger salute, showing off their still-intact digits. Fortunately they didn't remember the other French boasts, which included forcing the English to eat their own food and using the English flag as a diaper for their most incontinent horse, because God knows what we'd be doing in traffic today if that had been the case.

It's a great story, but like I said, that's the asshole version of history. Believe it at your own risk. Another take on this gesture has it that the bird dates back much further, all the way to dinosaur times when it likely meant, "Hey, look up there, it's the Tyrannosaurus that ate your family. Shit, we pissed him off, run!" Though I find the notion of cavemen flipping off dinosaurs hilarious, and the possibility of a Tyrannosaurus Rex returning the gesture with one of its own tiny little hands even funnier, I can't reconcile the fact that the people telling this story are, without exception, absolute dipshits.

In all likelihood, the true origin of the dirty digit was the Greek playwright Aristophanes. Known to friends and onlookers as "The Bird" for his habit of regurgitating food into the mouths of the poor, often against their will, Aristophanes was also moderately well-known for compulsively inventing hand gestures that only he knew the meaning of. While the playwright and philosopher's name came to signify an unwanted act of charity in his own day, future generations are more in debt to his habit of giving the finger to political enemies and ungrateful paupers when they passed on the street. Aristophanes got away with the inside-joke gesture for years until he slipped up and started including it in his plays around 423 B.C., after which word spread about the gesture's meaning. After receiving several black eyes and an unfortunate black ear, the playwright was forced to invent a new "fuck you" gesture, which he wisely told no one about and took to his grave, literally, as he was buried with two fingers making a "V" on his forehead.

In time the gesture spread around the world like a game of telephone, mutating as people flipped each other off at border crossings and the half-seen insult was carried to a new land. By the time it got to China, the gesture was now a raised pinky finger, a custom which remains to this day. Though according to local legend China did have the middle-finger gesture first, but somehow the Chinese figured out how to turn that into a lethal karate move known as the "Bird of Prey" and it had to be switched to the weaker pinky finger for reasons of safety.

By the time the finger made its way to Italy and the Middle East, it was a thumb. Remember that if you're ever reviewing a movie in Sicily. Two upturned fingers in Australia will get you more than an etiquette lesson stuffed up your ass. By the time the finger got to Africa it was an open palm, however this gesture's literal translation of "eat shit" makes one think twice about shaking hands with an African.

By 1976 the finger had reached nearly to the top when Vice President Nelson Rockefeller was photographed greeting New York hippies with a rather uncreative standard bird, though at the time an embarrassed Rockefeller claimed he was just announcing that he'd found his lost contact lens. The modern flipped bird has since adapted for the 21st century, morphing into show-stopping variants such as the Cell Phone, Can You Hear This?, the Blow-Up Balloon, Peel the Banana, and the ubiquitous Sit and Spin. Even politically correct variations such as the Read Between the Lines have been developed for the dextrously-challenged.

Though "the finger" is hardly the only interesting hand gesture out there, it's not a bad place to start, and in future weeks we'll manhandle the subject more completely with in depth looks at the thumbs-up, the high-five and the peace/dos-tequilas-por-favor sign. Until then, you'll just have to read between the lines.

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Things have been gloomier than usual here at the commune offices, as Flatbush, New Jersey goes through another rain-drenched March. Some have always admired rain, looked into the gloomy darkness overhead and the water fluttering down from the sky and seen it as some kind of cleansing of the earth, a washing-away of the dust and grime coating the planet and the nourishing of its lush green life. I say that's horseshit. Rain is nothing but the entire population of a city, state, or country being thrown into the swimming pool a teaspoon full at a time.

God's laughing at us when it rains. That's right—I accept the Judeo-Christian concept of God, and sometimes He's a right asshole. If He's so perfect, couldn't he find a more productive way of doing whatever rain has to do? Why make plants that grow in the middle of a landlocked mass need water at all? It makes less sense than a movie starring Adam Sandler as a romantic lead. God's capable of making spiders, who reproduce with hundreds of offspring and spin elaborate webs to feed themselves, but the best he could do to get water around to all the soil is just to drop it out of the sky. I'm surprised He stopped there. Why not just have chicken wings plunge from the clouds whenever people need feeding? Hold your mouths open like turkeys staring at the sky, spit out the bones, there's no need to even take lunch. It's better than getting soaking wet through some ill-conceived water delivery system.

Imagine the scenario, good people: You've put on your best work suit, combed your hair into a stylish pompadour that's a magnet for the ladies, and you strut out the door early in the morning. Then some obstinate little shit pelts you with a condom full of mineral water. I suppose you addle-minded hippies would look up at him and blather on about the inherent beauty of getting pranked by a little preteen bastard. You'd write songs about water balloons and lovers would curl up next to the fire telling each other they sure like the smell in the air after you get socked in the face with a swishy prophylactic. To hell with that. You've been punked, nature-lover.

I'm not sure why I alone have this special insight, that rain is nothing but an amateur April Fool's joke. Perhaps standing at 3-foot-eight-inches and being particularly vulnerable to floods and watery basements makes me warier of water falling from the sky than most people. I don't accept all of the Bible as a literal interpretation, but I do believe there was a flood. I admit, I skipped around through parts of it, but I think I have the general gist—40 days and nights of rain (yeah, God, real funny), build a monstrous boat, take two of each animal. I'm not sure the wisdom of that, taking a couple of dinosaurs that are bound to eat the rest of the animals, instead of taking your hundred or so best friends. But I'm not concerned with that, I only want to keep a close eye on rain in case it gets the wise idea to do the same thing again. I haven't exactly kept up with my boat-making skill, and if I were hard-pressed to start collecting animals right now, I would only be able to find a couple of diferent breeds of dogs and a cockatiel.

However, let's make one thing clear: I will not hear a word against snow. Snow is the antithesis of rain—it's light and flickering instead of pelting and obstinate; it's pure and charming, instead of cruel and clothes-ruining. Plus, it sticks together and makes snow men. Anything that allows itself to be shaped by men into mock people cannot be bad. You just try and make a rainman, see where that will get you—a watery retarded man who counts matchsticks easily. Yeah, that was a great idea.

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