isaster-relief officials in New Orleans made a stern announcement today to the thousands of celebrities descending upon the devastated city in hopes of providing humanitarian aid in exchange for career-boosting photo ops: We’re serious; you really need to leave now.

“We’ve got to get these fucking celebrities out of New Orleans,� sighed an exasperated Lt. Mark Bolio of the Army’s 92nd Airborne. “They’re drinking up all our bottled water and bitching about the catering all day.�

The influx of famous faces has weighed as a heavy burden on officials who have spent the last week scrambling to get everyone out of the city-shaped deathtrap. Receding water levels have exposed a nightmare world of toxic contamination, with nearly the entire city soaking in deadly levels of E. coli bacteria, lead, crude oil, PCBs, asbestos, leptospirosis, battery acid, herbicides, raw sewage, DDT, snakes, and according to at least one local, cooties. After busting a nut trying to remove the bulk of New Orleans’ stubbornly entrenched locals, many of whom refused to leave their pets or belongings, the Army was not prepared to deal with the celebrity occupation.

“We had this one crazy old lady who wouldn’t leave without her million cats, so we had to drown all her cats in the back yard,� anecdotalized Pvt. Jeremy Pankin, animal lover. “I mean, that is, all her cats drown in the back yard. Yeah.�

According to officials, 95% of the people now remaining in New Orleans qualify as celebrities, with the jury still out on John Stamos and a few others. Most are reportedly taking turns rescuing each other from various perilous locations around the sunken city.

“Thassa haw nyaom flawn dawg,� drawled local plumber Cornell Hughes, possibly speaking about the celebrity situation in New Orleans. “Shaw golla farn myaw.�

Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn, 45, has drawn the most attention after arriving last week with his entourage in a boat that immediately sank, despite frantic efforts at beer-cup bailing. Reports are unclear as to whether Penn was here to help the locals, or if he was rehearsing for his role in an upcoming Woody Allen comedy.

“When you see people in trouble on TV, as a celebrity you can’t just stand idly by,� explained singer Harry Connick Jr., who like every other jazz musician, claims to be from New Orleans. “That’s why I’ve been here for the last few days, walking around and telling people I’m Harry Connick Jr.�

Other celebrities either rescued or ejected from the city by the National Guard this week include Fab Morvan, formerly of Milli Vanilli, rapper Flavor Flav, the Dixie Chicks, Leonard Nimoy, radio personality Dr. Phil, the Oak Ridge Boys, Paul Reubens, Sista Souljah, writer Stephen King, the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir, tennis pro Ivan Lendl, Sting, actor Mickey Rourke, and three members of the alt-fluff quartet the Cardigans.

R&B singer Macy Gray wisely decided to give the highly toxic and in all likelihood instantly carcinogenic city a wide berth, instead volunteering to hand out t-shirts and condoms to refugees at the Astrodome in Houston.

“You kiddin’ me?� questioned Gray when asked about her decision. “That place is like the Chernobyl Water Park. I wouldn’t even drive past that state with the windows down. I already got curly hair, you know?�

Meanwhile, Fox crews have been on hand in New Orleans all week to film a new reality show based on the celebrities’ and locals’ exciting efforts to sneak back into the watery grave that used to be their city. According to network officials, I Forgot Something! will premiere on Fox later this fall.

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There must be some sort of law that says I, Rok Finger, can never live next to a normal neighbor. Well, I suppose the neighbors on the other four sides are normal enough. But that doesn't excuse the fact my neighbors to the right are the most obscene excuses for homeowners you've ever seen. You have seen them, haven't you? Leaving their vehicles on the lawn, setting fire to things at all odd hours, walking around the neighborhood in full Nazi regalia. I am not kidding—these are neighbor freaks.

They are the Joneses, if that is their real surname. I'm not sure if they're Eastern European or Russian or what, but they are clearly not indigenous to the area. They claim to be from Mississippi, but their accents are the worst I ever heard. If people in Mississippi all talk like that, I don't know how they ever get anything done—nobody could possibly understand that gibberish. Come to think of it, I'm not sure they get anything done in Mississippi at all. But that's another column.

Don't try complaining to the neighborhood block association either. There's clearly a strong foreigner sympathy streak running through them—maybe they have a soft spot for those who live behind the Iron Curtain, I don't know. But they always take their side. They let them burn animals at all weird animals, calling it "barbecue," an American tradition. But you throw firecrackers at one cat and all of a sudden they're the SPCA.

Nazi-lovers, too, obviously. You'd think that would faze their liberal sensibilities, but they just became very offended and told me I was mistaken. I know the symbols of hate when I see them, good people. A vicious eagle swooping down on the poor and defenseless, and he has it all over his little stormtrooper outfit. Blue shorts and short-sleeved shirt, and that huge bag of dastardly evil he carts around everywhere. If he does work for the post office like the block association says, than how come a different man delivers my mail every morning? Caught you in a lie, Sigfried.

And those little miniature dwarf spies of theirs leave their riding instruments in the yard all day long. For quick and easy get away, should the FBI ever come in, guns blazing, to finally do their job. I've called them three times now and all I've gotten is a tap on my phone and a flower delivery van sitting outside my house. Where are those damned flowers anyway? They should have been here four days ago.

Ginger, the missus, my missus, says I shouldn't worry about it. Especially since I only go outside to throw firecrackers at passing animals. I'm inside every single hour I'm not at the commune, it shouldn't bother me, she says. But it's for her sake I'm worried. What happens when these Nazi freaks kick open the door and try to drag her away to a concentration camp? Or worse, a fat kids camp? Ginger's practically a size 5 now, she'd waste away down to nothing in one of those horrors of human nature. But I do have to go to work sometime. Red Bagel is starting to suspect that beard on Camembert isn't real, and as soon as he remembers I don't wear a beard anyway, my job may be in the stew.

So I'm going to buy a gun. Long and short of it. Hey! Long and short… barrels are long and short. That was almost a pun. But not quite.

Ignoring that, believe me, a gun is the best solution. In fact, I may buy two, since if I'm attacked by multiple opponents, it looks pretty ridiculous to slide across a floor, one gun blazing, to take them all out. And my biggest fear, other than my wife being subjected to inhuman torture, is looking stupid while killing attackers. So… I suppose I'll let you know how this gun thing works out.

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As every high school yearbook from the era can attest, "What the Hell Was That??" was the catchphrase of the year for 1908 in Russia, thanks to the infamous Tunguska Explosion in Siberia earlier that year, which rocked the fallacious common notion that an entire forest wouldn't suddenly just blow up for no apparent reason. Exactly that happened to 2,000 square kilometers (10,000 miles) of forest on a remote central Siberian plateau on June 30th, at 7:14 am. Some historians argue that it was actually at 7:13 am, but researchers have independently verified that every one of them, to a man, is an asshole.

So what the hell was that, exactly? Ask a hundred different people and you'll get seven different answers, and ninety-three people who look at you like you just crawled up out of a manhole naked. In truth, they're all wrong, unless you ask the question while participating in a Gay Pride parade and really are naked on the street. But that's obviously never happened to anyone so let's drop the subject and never bring it up again, regardless of any "Griswald Dreck Gone Wild" photos you might have seen circulating on the Internet.

Let's start with what we know. That morning began like many others, with simple Siberian farmers and herdsmen going about their regular business, planning a communist revolution. Some commented it was strange that they couldn't hear any birds singing that morning, but were quickly reminded that all the birds had been shot for treason. Then suddenly, without warning except for the fact that all the animals and insane people in Russia began digging like mad in unison, a huge fireball brighter than the sun erupted from the earth, incinerating everything within miles of ground zero, including a herd of reindeer who had come into work on their day off. Traders 60 kilometers (14,000 miles) away saw the fireball shoot high into the sky, felt intense heat, and then heard a deafening explosion fifteen minutes later. The noise later turned out to be an unrelated event, when a local herdsman conducting scientific experiments attempted to boil a bathtub full of gasoline. But few could deny it added to the drama.

30 kilometers (9.7 miles) away huts were flattened, pigs were eaten by wolves and Russians were knocked the fuck off their couches. Forest fires burned for weeks afterward in the region until the locals got tired of the rich, soothing campfire aroma and decided to put them out. Unfortunately, the preferred firefighting method of the day was to drop napalm from a plane and run like hell, waiting for the trees and the fire to duke it out in a battle royale of natural forces, so due to this an additional 1,500 square kilometers (6 miles) of forest were lost.

Tremors from the impact were recorded over 5,000 kilometers (87 feet) away at a meeting of tremor enthusiasts in Jena, Germany, and noctilucent "night-shining" clouds were seen all over Europe for weeks after the event. Repeated requests for an encore by excited Europeans annoyed Russia for years, and led indirectly to the start of WWI a few years later.

The Russian government finally got around to investigating the explosion in 1927, after years of complaints that Siberia smelled like burnt reindeer meat. Conventional wisdom said that the Tunguska event was the work of a giant asteroid hitting the earth, so that was obviously wrong. Scientists were unable to find any evidence of an asteroid in the region, except for the fact that everything was flattened like it was hit by a giant asteroid or something. Neither the months of half-hearted looking around nor the posted 1 million ruble ($14) reward for anyone returning the 100,000 ton asteroid believed responsible turned up any tangible evidence.

Since then, numerous theories have been developed by scientists and the bored to explain the Tunguska event. As with any mysterious event, it's much easier to determine what didn't happen than what actually did, and these theories are a wonderful overview of what didn't happen. Just to rankle the scientists who supported the asteroid theory, some others argued that it must have been a comet instead, which would explain the lack of debris since comets rarely stick around and wait for the cops to show up. The first group of scientists countered that it couldn't have been a comet, because comets are gay, and so it had to have been a stony asteroid that disintegrated before reaching the ground, commonly known as a Houdini. The second group of scientists thought that sounded made up.

Scientists who were snubbed for inclusion on either the asteroid or comet teams formed their own club out of spite, centered around the idea that the explosion was actually caused by a chunk of antimatter, or even better, an anti-chunk of matter. Everyone agreed that was definitely made up, but it was ruled admissible as long as the third group of scientists agreed both that Houdinis were real and that comets definitely weren't at all gay. After that, everyone was happy.

That was, until the mysterious superstar astronomer Carl Duck appeared briefly from his Haight-Ashbury lair in 1968 to announce that the "Tunguska thing" was all about a black hole, dig? Most of the other scientists of the day agreed that Duck was a really cool guy and if he said it was a black hole, then 'nuff said.

Unfortunately, more would still be said on the subject. During the 1970's, when restrictions on who could be quoted as a "scientist" were relaxed to help out news organizations, all kinds of new theories came out of the woodwork. One of the more popular ideas was that the nuclear engine of a Martian spaceship had blown up over Siberia that morning, probably one based on Ford Pinto technology. Another competing theory had it that the blast was the effect of a laser shot from extraterrestrial civilization trying to contact Earth, though none could explain how a race sophisticated enough to build a powerful interstellar laser could be that stupid. Scientists hoped that if this theory were true, with any luck the extraterrestrial race would not prove to be too friendly, as a couple more calls on the bomb phone could spell the end of life on Earth.

But enough with the theories, Dreck, you demand, what really happened that day in Siberia?

Two words, faithful readers: Nitroglycerine fertilizer.

Due to a quirk in the Russian alphabet, the words for "nitrogen" and "nitroglycerine" look almost identical, enough to fool a generation of Siberian farmers into turning that region into one giant, growing bomb in the early 1900's. They learned a tough lesson that day in 1908, as much as you can learn anything when you're vaporized into a mist of carbon dust that catches on fire after some asshole drops a lit cigarette out of his blimp. But, as the president says, learning's overrated.

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