fter weeks of suggesting that patients who had gone blind while using the company’s best-selling erectile dysfunction drug were pussies, the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has assumed a new tack this week, as explained in the recent publication of the company’s informational packet entitled “Viagra Doesn’t Cause Blindness, Yanking Your Wank for Five Hours Causes Blindness.�

“Not only does Viagra work, sometimes it works all too well,� Pfizer spokesperson Dennis Baylor chuckled knowingly in explanation. “And sometimes it takes a little ‘self control’ to get that horse back in the corral, you know?�

Baylor continued to speak in baffling euphemisms for several minutes.

“Like if a business meeting’s about to start, or your wife’s pulling up in the driveway and you’ve still got your pants off and the Ken dolls and Candyland pieces strewn around the bedroom, well then it might be time to take matters into your own hands, if you know what I mean,� Baylor inferred, possibly speaking from personal experience.

“But too much of a good thing can be a bad thing,� Baylor continued. “And the old wives’ tales might be right about how being a little too friendly with your member might just lead to a little condition we like to call the blind man’s buff.�

Doctors like to call the condition non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION), or in English, the sudden, permanent loss of vision due to swelling of the optic disc. Pfizer argues for a coincidental association, given that the NAION condition is most common in the sadly overweight and the diabetic, both prime markets for the company’s dick pills.

Pfizer’s Viagra has been for years the leader in the lucrative Erectile Dysfunction market, known as “ED� to everyone but guys named Ed. A serious health side-effect like blindness could torpedo the company’s profits, since being blind is nearly as much of an obstacle to scoring chicks as is not being able to get it up. Add the two together, and you’re in some serious deep shit.

Baylor was evasive when asked to clarify, in simple terms, what exactly the company was blaming for the incidents of blindness.

“What, are you daft?� Baylor balked. “Choking the chicken, slamming the ham, paying a visit to Peter O. Johnson, tree-hugging, the friendly fist!�

“Uh… spanking it, giving a slap-down to the little man, torquing your tuna, performing the holy handshake!� continued Baylor, growing frustrated and less nice by the minute. “You know, kid, dong massage!�

Unable to get a clear answer from Pfizer, this reporter turned to men’s men on the street for answers.

“Yeah, my mom always told me that would happen,� explained disco-ball installer Trent Yardbird. “Going blind because of, you know, taking your little buddy out for a skipper. Pulling the pud, slapping the salmon. The man’s crank handshake. You know what I’m talking about.�

This reporter’s further requests for clarification were all met with a withering “Man, you stupid.�

However, this reporter will not rest until he finds the truth, commune readers. At the suggestion of commune editor Red Bagel, I’ve scheduled an interview with my high school health teacher, Mr. Thorpe, as I continue my dig for the truth. Apparently Bagel believes he may have inside information relevant to this investigation.

Mohammed Confesses to 9/11 Attacks, “Falling Down A Lot” During Interrogations

Castro Announces 2008 Candidacy; Clinton, Obama Drop Out of Race

Conditions at Walter Reed Upgraded to “Nightmarishly Clive Barker-esque”

Unveiling of First Black Disney Character Raises Some Concerns

Dear commune:

With the gruesome bursting of the dot com bubble and the growing trend of online businesses moving from a advertising-driven profit model to one in which profits are generated by user fees, how does the commune expect to remain economically viable for the foreseeable future? Do the commune's readers have a pay-for-content system to look forward to in the future?

Sandy Levine
Elmhurst, CT


Dear Sandy:

True, the commune may not have come out of the economic downturn unscathed; After all, few did. And some may argue, rightfully so, that when touring the commune offices the stench of desperation wafts up one's nose like the smell of stale sweat on a freshly dead corpse. But if there is only one absolute in life, it is this: the commune will never, ever, not in a million years, not ever pay people to read the site. Nice try.

the commune

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Dear commune:

What is the commune doing about the deplorable treatment of Dalmatian dogs in this country? Every year, thousands of families, fresh off the spotted-dog high of watching Disney's 101 Dalmatians or one of the dozens of films in that series, bring home a Dalmatian from the pet store or registered breeder. There is much joy and love in the beginning, but the honeymoon is short: before long these families learn that they are ill-equipped to deal with these untrainable, couch-pissing, spontaneous nervous barfing beautiful dogs. And instead of shackling themselves to a lifetime of ruined furniture and canine servitude, the vow these families made to these dogs when they brought them home as innocent puppies, all too often the Dalmatians end up on death row at the pound or at the bottom of a lake inside a huge Tupperware container filled with rocks. These crimes against the Dalmatian nation cannot stand, and it is up to the commune alone to be their advocate and protector!

Leelee Fromberg
Arlington, TX


Dear Leelee:

The staff of the commune was incredibly touched and moved by your letter. Except for Ramrod Hurley, who was in the can. Regardless, we here at the commune feel your pain and will do everything in our power to ensure that this inhumane treatment of Dominicans does not continue. It's sad to think that in this day and age… Wait, did you say Dalmatians? Jesus H. Christ, you got us all worked up over some freakin dogs? Shit, lady, I think I had some Dalmatian in the noodle dish I had for lunch today. Whatever. Anyway, thanks for your letter and the tip about the Tupperware container, that's a good one.

the commune

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Editor's Note: the commune is not responsible for those debilitating headaches you've been having lately. Contrary to what some doctors may think, the headaches are not caused by reading the commune's cost-efficient, low-resolution fonts or images. In actuality, you have a brain tumor the size of a kiwi that your doctor is just too much of a pussy to tell you about. Have a nice day.

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Reader questions come to yours truly in all sizes and forms, from folded paper ninja throwing stars scribbled with questions about loneliness, to strange marriage proposals that wander off on a tangent like "Will you marry me and what the fuck's up with dollar bill changers on vending machines?" But my favorite has to be messages left on the commune's answering machine, like the following:

"Yo, I was just thinkin' about something. I flush my toilet, it goes out in the ocean, right? I mean, not my actual toilet, though that would be kinda funny if I was still sitting on it. Actually, funnier if it was my wife or my friend Ronnie and not me. Not both of them, cuz what the fuck are they doing on my toilet together? But you know what I'm talking about. The loaf. So that shit goes out in the ocean, or like if I puke on the sidewalk in front of Dairy Queen and the dude hoses it off into the drain, that goes into the ocean too, right? And if they're flying elephants on a cargo plane over the ocean and one dies, they just shove it out the back and it falls in the ocean, right? Fast, too, no need to waste a parachute on a dead elephant, you know what I'm saying? Whoooooooo-KERSPLASH! Wow. Anyway, so if all this crap goes in the ocean, what the hell are we doin' swimmin' in there? I'm gonna kick somebody's ass for not telling me the ocean was the world's toilet."

Not exactly the Maserati of reader questions, but it is the least stupid one I've received this month. Roll that factoid around in your head when you can't sleep at night, and see if suicide doesn't appeal. So before you roll your eyes too violently, remind yourself that in an alternate universe, you're reading my latest column on why some ninjas wear red, and whether or not that's supposed to be camouflage for fighting inside volcanoes.

I'll begin by answering one of the questions that came up later in the above caller's ten-minute ramble: Yes, if God took a piss, he'd probably take it in the ocean. It only stands to reason. As a matter of fact, everything that has ever taken a piss, ever, eventually all that ended up in the ocean. Keep that in mind the next time you're water skiing.

How do marine animals cope? Well, they're pissing in there too, so it's not like they can throw stones. The ocean is basically like one gigantic hot tub, and you know nobody crawls out of a nice warm hot tub and scurries wetly into the house just to piss in the sink like a civilized person. The ocean is like one big let-it-all-hang-out party where anything goes, which is why the church has always taken a hard line anti-ocean stance.

The reason all the animals in the ocean don't get diseases from swimming in pee all the time, like you or I would from using the pool down at the YMCA, is that ocean water is jam-packed full of phytoplankton, which is nature's answer to 2000 Flushes Blue. Phytoplankton are tiny, microscopic bugs that don't care what they eat. Seriously, they're so small everything looks like food to them. Try shrinking yourself down to one-tenth the size of a pinhead and see how well you can tell the difference between a turd and a Coney Island corn dog. Hell, try to tell the difference at your normal size.

Phytoplankton turn the world's shame into the basis for the oceanic food chain: themselves. Everything eats phytoplankton, usually on accident since they're so tiny and the water's packed with them like pedophiles at an Aaron Carter concert. Lazy fish just swim around with their mouths open all the time, receiving sustenance from the millions of phytoplankton that get stuck between their teeth. This provides a golden opportunity for marine pranksters like the sea otter, which love nothing more than floating unwrapped candy bars on the ocean's surface just to freak out open-mouthed-swimming fish.

Even phytoplankton won't touch whale shit, however. Once they settle, these colossal loads, known as "coral," provide shelter for thousands of other marine organisms that have no idea where coral really comes from. Everything else though, stupid phytoplankton gladly devour and ask for seconds.

So, the obvious question is, could you just buy a bunch of phytoplankton to keep in your toilet, freeing you from the constant daily grind of flushing and refilling the tank with a hose from the yard because the water company cut off just the water to your toilet to spite you for an unpaid bill and it doesn't rain enough this time of year to justify leaving the lid off and your bathroom window open? In theory, you could. In theory, you could also collect all the little broken bits from the bottoms of bags of pretzels and repackage them as a salty new breakfast cereal, but I wouldn't count on that ship coming in any time soon.

In actual practice, the problems with the phytotoilet are two fold: One, they stopped selling little packets of phytoplankton through the mail after Sea Monkeys really took off and fickle kids forgot all about the magic of microscopic pets. And two, even if you could get them, eventually your toilet would just become completely clogged with phytoplankton themselves, and then it's back to the soul-deadening grind of flushing after each use. Unless you trained your cat or ferret or something to eat phytoplankton, but that might be messing with evolutionary forces that could have disastrous effects millions of years down the line, I don't know.

So the next time you're swimming in the ocean, look for phytoplankton. Because if you don't see any, you're probably swimming in piss. I'm just kidding, they're microscopic and you're definitely swimming in piss. Until next time, I'm Griswald Dreck.

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