he United States Presidential Warning System (or “Terra Box� as it is fondly known around the White House, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the president’s speech impediment) reached its highest level Tuesday, signifying a major presidential gaffe or screwjob is impending. This news immediately scrambled foreign government officials, environmental groups and talk-show writers nationwide, who entered their own highest states of readiness and/or dread.

The little-known Presidential Warning System has been in place since the 1960’s, but it quickly fell out of favor during the Nixon presidency. Aides kept finding the siren-like device hidden in desk drawers or crammed beneath sound-deadening mattresses in the Lincoln bedroom over the course of Nixon’s term, and records indicate it was later disconnected under questionable circumstances involving a bottle of tequila and a fire axe. Efforts were made to bring the system back on-line during former president Ronald Regan’s first term, but upon being turned on the device immediately let out an eardrum-shattering blurt before quickly overheating. It then caught fire and had to be put out with a shoe.

The nation operated without a Presidential Warning System during the Bush Sr. and Clinton administrations, as the device reminded George Bush Sr. too much of his childhood nemesis, the board game Operation, and President Clinton found it seriously hampered his social life.

The current siren-less incarnation of the device, consisting of a black box covered in lighted rectangles that are color-coordinated to the various levels of presidential “terra,� was brought online at the start of the latest Bush presidency. The new system was even praised by the president himself early in his term, when he said of the device: “I made it to the fourth level last night. Take that, Simon.�

Tuesday the system registered an alert status of red, which according to the device’s manual translates to “Holy Shit� written next to a picture of a little stick man with a gun in his mouth. However, officials cannot say for certain how many times Bush has “bagged a red� since being elected, since Tuesday was also the day a White House staffer discovered the device holding up a candle in the presidential bathroom and no one was certain how long it had been missing.

“While this may seem like an opportune time to panic, it is important to point out that the red bulb on the device appears to be nearly burnt out,� explained system designer Elwood Bond. “This is a good sign that we’ve been on red alert for most of the last two years, so this is more a ‘business-as-usual’ kind of doom than anything.�

Asked if the system might be calibrated too sensitively, given that highest level of impending doom was continuously lit, Bond answered that the system really wasn’t designed with a Bush-caliber president in mind.

“I set up the system so it would go red only in dire circumstances, like when Bush Sr. approved the CDC sending samples of anthrax, botulism and West Nile to Iraq in the early 90’s, or when we gave them the helicopters they used to gas the Kurds in 1988. Or really any time after the Shah fell in Iran and we were providing Saddam and the Iraqis with arms, intelligence and free money to help them invade Iran. All those are red-level events. Maybe orange. But Bush Jr. goes red just taking a piss.�

But is there any way to tweak the system so that Bush isn’t consistently in the red?

“I dunno,� replied Bond, scratching his head. “It does have an ‘off’ switch.�

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O Director, Where Art Thou?

That's what semi-intelligent critics who love making minor alterations to famous titles or phrases should be asking. Nobody else seems curious as to what's happened to two-hit wonder Quentin Tarantino. The writer/director defined '90s pop-culture referencing in film with his fantastic works Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. He also did Jackie Brown.

And then what happened, I ask? Like many others I actually have no clue, just extremely curious. The title "The Gimp Has Claimed Quentin Tarantino" is just a creative way of referencing his previous work and posing the topic, I actually don't know.

It does make you think, though. Alright, stop now.

Chances are something happened to Tarantino during the making of Jackie Brown, the making of his last unreleased feature, or one of his infamous verbal battles with Spike Lee. With all the guns and swords and backroom raping that goes on in a Tarantino film, it's entirely possible something awful destroyed him before his next film could be released. This must have happened sometime around 1997. Unless it perhaps happened earlier…?

How do we know for sure Quentin Tarantino made Jackie Brown? In fact, how do we know for sure Tarantino did anything after Pulp Fiction? When he accepted the Oscar at the Academy Awards ceremony that year he seemed a little suspect to me. Not to mention all through that From Dusk Till Dawn film. I surmise maybe Tarantino never made it to either one of those events.

Now's the part where you smugly doubt me, saying that Tarantino has been seeing numerous places since Pulp Fiction debuted. Listen, toad, I don't need to be reminded of facts I have exhaustively researched. Take that tone with me again you'll be reading this column with your eyes in your ass. Don't make me try to figure out that physical nightmare, just shut up already.

Alright, I'm calmer now. The truth is, in theory, Quentin Tarantino, the talented writer/director, has been replaced with a lookalike. You might suspect an android replacement—I did at first, but the animations of most human beings are beyond current android technology, especially for the nervous manic animations of Tarantino.

Delve into your collective sitcom psyche and ask yourself, if it's not a robot, not a future or past self (trust me on this one), and not another Tarantino from another universe, what is it? If you said "twin brother," you're right on the money. If you said "mask," please, you're wasting my time and yours with your bizarre fantasies.

I'd bet dollars to dildos Quentin Tarantino's less popular, less talented brother has imprisoned or eliminated his brother and is parading around as him. This other brother—let's assume his name is Quincy since parents always name identical twins with an alliterative name—lacks the technical film knowledge Tarantino himself, a former video store clerk, possesses, and therefore had ground to a halt any filmmaking Tarantino was in the midst of.

He's riding around on Tarantino's kick-ass coattails, hobnobbing at all the parties and rubbing celebrity elbows and squawking like a chicken while his brother remains missing. Tarantino has become the victim in his own crime-drama, tied to a chair, ball-gagged, while some smarmy redneck hollers to bring out the gimp. We must find him and free him before the gimp is brought out. And when I say "we" I mean "you."ame way—a little painful at first, not without some mis-steps, but ultimately for the better of everyone.

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Did I mention I had to break down and get a job? Yeah, turns out the New Mexican tit isn't as milky as I had assumed and they actually expect me to drag my own load here. What a bummer. But the upshot is that I'm not entirely sure what it is I do at my new job. Hard to get too stressed out when you have no idea what's going on.

I'm working for a company that makes the nameplates that go on a certain brand of walkers for the elderly. I couldn't make that up. I'm in the office, but downstairs there's a warehouse full of boxes of little metal tags that say "GERIATRIX" on them. I wandered down there once when I was trying to find the can and it was like remembering a Twilight Zone episode where you can't quite remember what the twist was. But I did survive my brief foray across the white-collar/blue-collar divide, possibly because my fuchsia shirt denoted me as a neutral party.

I definitely started here on the right week, since yesterday I just got paid to attend the company picnic. The pic-a-nic (I've been possessed by the spirit of Yogi Bear lately) was a raging blast, before it was over the lawn was soaked with keg beer and vomit. Frumpy CEOs and buttoned-down executive-types got naked and rode the mechanical bull, which turned out to actually be the third-shift supervisor from shipping. There was a contest to see who could hit a marshmallow the furthest with a golf club, and traffic was stopped on I-25 due to an unusually heavy marshmallow coating in the right three lanes. I ate three chicken sandwiches and an orange dreamsicle, then spent the rest of the afternoon practicing stomach-stretching yoga postures to keep food from squirting out when I opened my mouth to speak. Viva la picnic!

My access card stopped working today. I feared for a second that Big Brother may have made me an unperson for my transgressions against the greater good, but it turns out there's just a server down. This seems to only effect me, so it makes me feel pretty cool to think that I have my own server. I wonder if it could bring me a club soda? *ding ding* Stewardess!

So far I've gotten in twice with other people, and once I snuck to the back door and did the secret knock and some Hispanic guy let me in. Next time, I'm going over the wall with both guns blazing. Either that or I'll just hang around by the door until someone with a working card decides to go in. Still undecided on that one.

So between the pic-a-nic thing and the access card thing, so far I've managed to go three days without learning what my actual job is here. I'm hoping to make it a month, but hey, you know I like to dream big. And in two hours I have my half-hour nap, which should seem like a thick, juicy, two-pound steak to an underfed Ethiopian boy. Come to think of it though, I could also go for a thick, juicy, two-pound steak, which would seem like a long nap to someone who stayed up too late bowling last night.

Tonight it's me and the bed 'til the cows come home. Then, it's me, the bed, and the cows. The possibilities are needless. I mean Endless. Yeah. But seriously, the thing that gets me through the day is remembering that no matter how long the day is, I know that it will end with me naked in bed, with about a half-dozen codfish. Wait a minute.

Though Mr. Timeclock tells me that I have an extra 15 minutes from Monday (though I think this is bullshit and I have at least an extra hour, but it's not been good to argue with Mr. Timeclock since his wife left him, he can be a little rough around the edges), so I should be able to cut out of here like a pair of retarded left-handed scissors at 5:15, for an arrival time at Umbrage International Apartment of 5:35pm. And you can be sure my tray tables will be in their upright and locked position (any idea how to get the tray tables DOWN in my car?) and I most certainly won't be locked in the lavatory, smoking a blunt and leafing through a porno magazine, with my socks hung over the smoke detector, muffling its cries for help.

God, I hope that clock isn't fast. And I hope a guy in a big fiberglass Droopy Dog suit gets elected president and his inaugural speech consists of grabbing the microphone in both oversized paws and shouting "LET'S GET LOOOOOADED!!"

We've all got to hope.

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