he fat-walleted president George W. Bush embarked on a two-day road trip with his staff and advisors to promote a major revamp of the Social Security system, with stops in many western states to gather Republican and Democrat support for his latest plan: Solving the future Social Security problems with magic. With magic, Bush tells us, the problem of supporting a large non-working retired community with a small workforce paying taxes can be fixed, as a small amount of tax money is inexplicably transformed into "bunches."

The plan, first outlined in the State of the Union address, involves heavy investing in magic research, most specifically, figuring out how stage magicians can make a quarter become a dollar coin. Ideally, according to the president, the basic "science" of magic can be expanded until larger sums, such as billions of dollars, are doubled into money to preserve future Social Security benefits. The president's latest proposal replaces less feasible plans, such as just printing more money until we have all we need, or investing in "reliable" stocks and bonds.

"I'm not sure if magic really can be a viable solution to supporting Social Security benefits," said White House critic Rep. Hud Coker (D-Arkansas), "but at least he's not talking that 'privatization' bullshit anymore."

Bush took the lead in the Social Security argument by describing the system as being "in crisis" during his State of the Union speech, and then pushed the agenda further by loading into a van with his staff Friday for a support-building "road trip" to key states. On Friday, the president made stops at auditoriums and town halls, as well as "piss breaks" at gas stations and fast food restaurants, to speak on his hopes for magic as a resolution to the Social Security dilemma future generations will likely face.

"When the workforce is smaller than the community of retirees it supports, it's a big math problem," said the president, while eating from a small bag of Cheetos as he stood by the gas pump. "I'm not very good at math problems, but I know what it means when you need more money than you have. Then I remembered a birthday party I had a couple of years ago, where a magician made twenty-five cents into a dollar. That's what we need, I thought to myself. If this works—and let's face it, it's my best plan yet—it could solve more problems than just Social Security. Funding for perverted paintings and crap? Don't worry, we'll magicize it! And maybe you'll finally let us build missile defense systems and bombers without all the bellyachin'." Then an advisor reminded the president about his campaign promise to quit using the word "bellyachin'" to describe political opposition.

Many critics of the president, those knowledgeable in science and the laws of nature, bemoaned the difficulties of reproducing money through magic, but a few Democrats rallied behind the president's plan as a bipartisan solution to a hot-button old people issue. Ken "Amazing Kenny" Rublett, an unaccredited professor at Ithaca, New York's University of Magic & Illusion, spoke positively of the president's plan.

"I've been lobbying for the government to use magic and prestidigitation to solve national problems ever since Nixon's been president," said Professor Amazing Kenny. "Finally, someone is listening. I don't agree with the Iraq War and I've disagreed with the president's implementation of the Patriot Act, but magic can help us in ways not yet imagined. Have someone like Impresso the Clown put on a show at Guantanamo Bay, and ask for volunteers. When he does the Mystery Box, he can make any potential terrorists disappear—he doesn't have to bring them back. There. We've solved problem of due process without endangering the Constitution! Magic can solve anything!"

The cracker magician then made a ball of fire burst from his hands, at which point this reporter's aggressive instincts kicked in and unleashed a furious ass-whipping on the man.

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Ginger Baker, my long-loving wife, had the brilliant idea of donating our time to charity. I was happy to do it—you know me, anything for a cause of some sort—until I learned donating time was a lot harder than donating money. Then I wanted to give the money. But Ginger promised me it would be worth the time. I'm still waiting for that proof to show up.

We're donating our time to the children, since Ginger believes firmly that the children are our future. I partially agree. I think the adults they grow up into will be our future, but kids will always be leeches taking all our money and time and eating all our food without any compensation. Plus, what about nanotechnology? The nano-things could be our real future, and I bet you dollars to donuts they're not happy about all this wasted time messing around with children.

That said, I had already agreed to volunteer at the schools and couldn't get out of it by this point. Ginger and I offered our help with Health Awareness Day or some such thing. Ginger, being a real estate broker, gave an inspiring lecture about buying property in economically depressed areas, and then sitting on them until the zoning changed to really clean up. Turns out this has nothing to do with health. I wanted to teach the kids about the value of being under-tall, but was directed instead to assist in checking the kids for health problems.

I was assigned to examine the male children for back problems, specifically, a condition called scoliosis. No, I thought it was a new wave British pop band, too, but apparently it's some sort of back condition that comes from forcing kids to sit in cheap rigid chairs for hours at a time. I don't know about you, but looking at boys naked from the waist up too closely all day isn't the kind of charity I had in mind. It's nice to know such jobs exist, though, if you're someone who's been recently turned away from the priesthood. Still, for me, it was dullsville city. And I didn't want to ask to be transferred to the girls' division either. Partly because I'm not a pedophile, but mostly because I would likely strangle the first child I saw with one of those ass crack tattoos that all the young people seem to be ruining their bodies with.

When I did request a transfer, those jokers in the Health Awareness Day Assignment Committee really showed their spots. I was assigned to the Headlice Check—me, Rok Finger! I tried to remind them I'm practically a celebrity (college kids know my name, I promise you that), but there's no special treatment for anyone at Martin Van Buren Elementary, I guess. Or so they say in the school song, which I believe is sung to the tune of Chumbawamba's "Tubthumper." But I bet if Ralph Waite showed up and asked for a job, he wouldn't be fingering the scalps of greasy little kids looking for bugs.

I tried to speed up the process, streamline it, the same thing I do here at the commune when I hand in somebody else's old columns to run as my own. But the school didn't appreciate my new policy, which was to have the kids who think they have lice to wear red hats, while those who didn't think they had lice wore blue hats. I can tell you this, though, in my short amount of time I learned that kids have no idea whether they have lice or not. Virtually every one of them was wrong. It didn't help that we only had two blue hats and three red hats, and had to pass them around frequently.

Still, volunteering wasn't quite as unpleasant as I believed it would be. I did get a free lunch out of the ordeal (pizza square, green beans, tater tots, corn bread, and my choice of milk). And more than that, I got the feeling of being a positive influence in my community. A tax-deductible expenditure of my work hours in my community.

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Every one of you are cordially invited to attend the wedding of Rockwell T. Finger and Rutherford Ginger Baker this Sunday, at the Flatbush Mall of 'Merica. Invited, of course, as long as you actually receive one of those little cardboard notes saying you can come. They all should be in the mail by now, according to Ginger. They are handwritten, so we can save all the money for the honeymoon in Haiti. We are going there to save money for buying something we really want, like solid gold dollar-sign rims for our automobile.

If you haven't received an invitation, it probably means you're shit out of luck. We'll be sending out the shit-out-of-luck cards tomorrow, to verify to everyone. There are a lot of those. But fewer guests mean more catered food for us and our eight or nine close friends we invited.

Unfortunately, someone—I think that no-goodnik Omar Bricks, or probably one of those other many, many no-goodniks who work here, posted our wedding invitation on the commune bulletin board. Ginger doesn't believe many of them will come to the wedding anyway, since I'm generally hated here at the office, but we're serving fried baloney and hosting square dancing (with a real caller!) so you can imagine I'm fearing a rush of uninvited guests. Damn, I didn't want to have the squad dancing caller! Like putting an open bar at a wedding. But an old friend of mine from the Russian mob was available, so we decided to ask him.

It occurs to me only now I probably shouldn't have contacted the Russian mob again at all, given they have tried to kill me in the past for turning state's evidence against them. Let alone invited them to the wedding. I was so excited I didn't think clearly when I made up my list. Oh, well. Hopefully they'll be the sentimental sort and let our murky histories with each other slide. It's a joyous occasion, after all.

My betrothed and I have decided to write our own vows. We got off to a rocky start, but I think it's going exceptionally well now. At first, I admit, I sort of confused the vows with New Year's resolutions, promising her I would cut out chocolate and lose ten pounds by Christmas. But she corrected me, and didn't even use violence—what a woman!

So then I wrote the vows I'm using. I promise to take her in sickness and health, as long as the health outweighs the sickness by an 85% margin. I also promised to buy her a little red wagon for putting things in and dragging them from place to place; I wanted one so badly when I was a kid, and I swore then that no wife of mine would ever do without one when she was hauling groceries home from the store or doing other work-oriented wife things. I also promised her ten cents on the dollar, should we ever divorce, which I think is a pretty fair deal. You try reading that in a mall full of loved ones and see if there's a dry eye in the food court. I doubt you could find one.

Also, she doesn't know this, but I snuck a peek at her vows, too, even though she wanted to keep them secret. If you'll excuse a little bragging, I also edited them pretty cleverly. Hers went on a little too much, talking about searching all her life for a man who really understood her and would treat her like a princess, blah, blah, blah—stuff everyone's heard before, and pretty cliché. I cut a lot of that down, and I also snuck in some sexy rejoinders, just to keep the crowd from falling asleep. Like, "I also pledge to be your eternal love slave, you handsome beefstick. I vow to do the nasty nightly." Not that I want nightly nasty. The wedding's just a show for the audience anyway.

So once again, I hope to see each and everyone of you there, because I love you all like my family. That is, if you're one of the selected few who are related to me. The rest of you just ignore all that, and whatever you do, don't come to the wedding.

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