he small remainder of the world that follows the news applauded the escape of more than 200 Iraqi hostages Thursday, who freed themselves from an unidentified terrorist group in the heart of the war-torn country. Just outside of Fallujah, U.S. military discovered a traveling band of 40 or so escaped hostages, and within hours began to receive word of other hostages who had also escaped the same small terrorist encampment, numbers totaling 213 freed hostages, who credited their successful escape to U.S. Army Captain S. Hilts.

Hilts, who was debriefed by U.S. military officials but did not speak directly to the ravenous western press, said the escape was the result of weeks of planning, tactical distraction, digging, and the production of some high-quality potato moonshine. Instead of taking credit for the escape himself, Hilts remarked on the bravery and ingenuity of his fellow hostages.

Added Hilts: "It's the duty of every freedom-loving military man to work day and night to escape." The statement marks a drastic turnaround from hostage philosophies of the past, including 1980 Iranian hostages Commander Shears, who was intent to ride out the situation without drawing attention to himself, or British Colonel Alec Nicholson, who actually aided the Iranians by building a bridge over a local river to aid terrorist movement.

Who exactly is Capt. S. Hilts? A son of an Indiana mechanic, Hilts served in the Army in both the original Gulf War and its poorly received sequel. Hilts was among the 213 hostages, both military and civilian, who had been abducted in recent weeks by terrorists believed to be allied with either Al-Qaeda, the Saddam Hussein loyalists, or one of the other 300 groups who simply like to kidnap and kill westerners. Hilts had been used as leverage in video taped messages urging the freeing of all Iraqi prisoners. While this strategy has traditionally worked remarkably well against all sorts of enemies, this time there was little to no response from U.S. or coalition governments. The lack of reply might have something to do with Hilts' outburst in the final frames of the video tape:

"Listen to me!" shouted Hilts, tossing aside the written statement he had started to read, standing up and resisting efforts of jackbooted Iraqis to hold him down. "We're Americans! We don't roll over and do something when we're at the end of a gun! Don't worry about us! We'll be alright—we're gonna walk out of here one day, into a free land and back home to our wives and families. You hear that, Susie? I'm comin' home to you before you know it!"

Though the tape abruptly ended, the message was clear: America didn't plan on being pushed around by the huge terrorist machine.

And sure as his word, Hilts was found wandering the desert, looking to reconnect with his unit as soon as possible. But not walking as he had promised, but riding a state-of-the-art Iraqi military motorcycle, with which he jumped the walls of the compound. According to the U.S. soldiers who recovered the escaped hostage, Hilts' first job was to eat a hearty plate of pork chops and apple sauce while giving military intelligence all the information he could about his captors, a group of 15 or so terrorist insurgents who actually did a keen job of keeping 200+ Americans hidden in a detained area of an occupied country.

What's next for Hilts and his fellow escapees? "I guess we'll be going back into service, those of us that can. We've got us an occupation to win!"

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You know me, I don't like formalities. Let's get right to what's on my mind this minute.

Do you remember in grade school, those cafeteria lunches where they used to hand out a rectangle of pizza? I never got mine.

The best thing you can do in this world is to make your enemy a friend. If you can't do that, kill his pets while he sleeps. Hopefully he'll get the message.

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night. Boy, that was a weird dream.

Why is that some remote controls you have to point right at the TV, and others you can point them anywhere and they work. I don't know the specifications of remote control airwaves ownership, but they should make all remote controls like that.

The world's greatest dancer is that Riverdance guy, no question. Kill him, who's left? Really?

You know, if I were to suddenly die tomorrow, I doubt any of my friends would be surprised.

If you got the chance to pick your own nickname, what would it be? Wait—don't jump the gun too soon. Remember, this will have to last you forever. Unless you change it.

I wonder why they didn't decide to call it Kraft Cheese & Macaroni. Seriously, this keeps me up at night. I'm not sleeping well.

I'm going to buy a houseboat. Then I'll get boat owner's insurance and homeowner's insurance. Then, God forbid, I get torpedoed by a lost German sub still fighting the war, I can get paid twice.

You know what I really like? Loose women.

If I could have any band write me a theme song and play it for me everywhere I go, I would choose the Ventures. You know, Hawaii 5-O. Who's better than that, you tell me?

They say loose lips sink ships, but poor hull maintenance does it just as well.

Technically, if you take some video of your nephew falling off a slide, aren't you an independent filmmaker? I believe so, but try telling that to those assholes at Sundance.

I wonder when we're going to get that technology that verifies your identity by lasering your retina, for security purposes. A lot of people have been making long-distance calls on my line lately.

I had lunch at Great Expectations the other day. It wasn't so good.

As an artist, would it personally offend you if your entire catalogue of albums was remastered? It either implies they weren't mastered correctly to begin with or they somehow got reckless over the years and needed to be reigned in. Could you go back and put a harmonica on every track, would that qualify as remastering? Or is that a remix?

Hoot. That's what my nickname would be.

Sometimes I think I'm still paying for the sins of man in the Garden. You know the Garden, that Chinese place on Fifteenth Street. I was smoking in the non-smoking section and got banned.

That's all for this presentation. I'm off to hunt cashews in the wild. I wish you the best of luck, as long as it's not mine.

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Few would deny we're living in troubled times: gas is really expensive, the air is polluted and you can't sleep with a hippie these days without hearing about alternative energy. Though most still tune out at the mention of windmills or crystal meth, others are fed up with shelling out at the pump or dealing with a collapsed lung on their morning run. And many are starting to think this alternative energy talk might be more than just the price you pay for a night of free love. So what the hell is it, and why hasn't Ben Affleck been in a movie about it yet? Good question.

Contrary to popular belief, the world hasn't always run on gasoline and Mini Thins. A countless array of fuels have gone in and out of favor over the course of history. Early man preferred to use dirt as fuel, even though it wouldn't burn, because he liked that it was soft and brown. With advances in science, humanity moved on to wood, coal, and witches for its energy-burning needs.

Eventually, man discovered that he was crapping up the planet by running around and burning things in hopes of making his life easier. This didn't concern man much, he actually thought it was kind of cool, but woman was pretty pissed about it and nagged man into searching for alternative non-polluting energy sources. And by this she didn't mean that smelly old donkey he'd had since he was a kid and wouldn't get rid of because it had hilariously large nuts.

In the fourteenth century, Dutchman Happy Goetner made a name for himself as a major proponent of "rainbow power" and was soon after stoned to death for being silly. This setback to the cause of alternative energy was only temporary, however, and Goetner became a martyr for generations of quasi-scientific flaky dreamers everywhere.

The first windmills were built solely to lure in monsters, who could then be burnt to death in a dramatic fashion by bored villagers, and they served this purpose well for hundreds of years. Then, in 1681, townsfolk chased a monster to his supposed doom only to discover that it was just "Big Ed" Chuntrock, the ugliest man in five counties but a hell of a nice guy and pretty decent at horseshoes. After the misunderstanding was straightened out, and Ed forgave the townsfolk for burning down his house, hanging his wife, raping his cat and cutting off one of Ed's own ears with a six-foot-long saw, the village was stuck with a windmill and nobody to burn to death inside it. Thankfully for all, it was soon after discovered that the windmill was also useful for grinding corn and beans, and fans of bean-powder sandwiches danced the night away.

Bean-powder sandwiches fell out of popularity along with farting in the 1930's, and today windmills are used primarily to generate electricity. The machinations of this process are highly complex, with local residents pledging a certain dollar amount for each time the windmill's blades go around, much like a charity AIDS walk, and these funds are used to buy coal to generate electricity. While windmills are considered by some to be an inefficient source of energy, others love to watch the blades spin when they're drunk.

The 1960's saw a rising public interest in flower power and pyramid power, neither of which turned out to be a feasible energy source on a national scale. A scientist from Berkeley named Johan Bertelbong did develop a car that ran off flower combustion, but the thing took so many flowers to run it was like some kind of Dr. Seuss nightmare, and Bertelbong was soon kicked out of Northern California for fucking up the scenery. He was last scene driving slowly out of the region in his flower car, followed by an enormous swarm of bees.

In the 1970's, many pinned their hopes on solar power, until it was discovered that a square mile of solar panels in the Mojave Desert only produced enough electricity to run a small handheld calculator for four minutes. Solar panels are still in use as a fashion statement on the roofs of many flaky liberal dwellings, and proponents argue that they can still be used to heat a small home if you take the metal parts out and use them as skylights.

Many consider hydrogen to be the fuel of the future, and doubters should remember that hydrogen is the magic fuel that made the Hindenburg burn so brightly. Most agree that it'll only be a matter of time before our cars are hydrogen-powered, which will go a long way toward making every day like an exciting video game, with cars blowing up all around you because a leaf landed on somebody's hood or a careless motorist ran over a lollipop stick. Could this really be the future? Shit yes.

But until that day, it's up to us to keep the planet clean. So the next time you're thinking of burning a big, smelly stack of coal to meet your energy needs, remember alternative energy and see if you can get a non-polluting hippie to do the work for you instead.

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