ednesday's attacks in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, in which four former US soldiers were killed in a terrorist ambush before their bodies were dismembered, dragged behind cars and hung from a bridge by an angry mob, created a conundrum for television networks faced with the tough moral question of how to best profit from these shocking images.

"If we show them, we make a shitload of money," explained ABC News spokesperson Al Reuben. "If we don't show them, maybe we can claim the moral high ground and make a shitload of money down the line. It's a tough call."

Least troubled by the moral quandary was Fox News, whose plans to strap a helmet-cam to one of the dead bodies were scrapped when the angry mob grew impatient waiting for technicians to get a reading on the gray levels.

"Americans have a right to see this footage," opined Fox News Executive Producer Leonard Williams. "And we have the right to boost our ratings through the fuckin' roof by being the first to show the really awful parts that make you want to throw up. If anybody out there was blindly discharging a firearm into their Arab neighbor's house yesterday, you know they were watching hard-hitting Fox News."

Other networks took the debate more seriously, holding off on showing the footage through the morning, and then gradually releasing more and more of the horrible images throughout the day as it became apparent that Internet sites were kicking their ratings in the balls by showing the Fallujah footage uncut. By Wednesday evening the gloves were off and charred bodies were seen dangling from the Euphrates River bridge on most major networks.

"We really didn't want to show the footage of those kids beating the guy's flaming corpse with their shoes," explained CBS Evening News spokesperson Clint Adams. "But then we realized, 'Jesus Christ, we're losing money here!' I feel truly bad for the families of these men, and any children who may have been forever scarred by these images, but come on. You know how much money we made off that Somalia footage? Shit."

While the long-term impact of these images is yet to be seen, experts speculate that the American people being reminded that "Oh yeah, war is really ugly and horrible and stuff" can only harm the president's chances for reelection in November, not to mention driving the final nail into the coffin of Iraqi tourism.

"We owe it to future history to inform the American people of what's really going on over there," offered Marcus Graves of ABC News. "Maybe because of this footage being in the collective memory, next time we'll think twice about going to war again."

When asked by the commune news if he was shitting us, Graves admitted that yeah, he kind of was, but it sounds a lot better than saying you make your living selling people grisly video death. No argument here.

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Don't wet your pants, readers, but the news is true: I have returned from my mission: impossible and can safely say it was more precisely mission: not-too-bad. At times with my traveler's discount I could arrange a pretty swank motel and it was mission: quite-enjoyable. However, on the darker side, there were certain areas of the South where it was more like mission: avoid-violation; the less said there the better.

When I left you all mysteriously shortly before the New Year began, I explained how everything was so hush-hush the details could not be revealed. Has anything changed? No, and don't bug me about it. I didn't say anything in that Barbara Walters interview and I'm not about to give it up so easily for you. Suffice to say that the problem was "taken care of" in a mafia/Navy S.E.A.L. sort of way, but—hey! That wasn't Barbara Walters at all! Didn't even look like Barbara Walters, but I just figured she had more cosmetic surgery. It seems so obvious now, with no tape in the camera and a ninja working the soundboard. Oh, well, no since dwelling on that.

I have returned, though, and I am almost nearly improved, or at least 100% as good as I was before. If anything, I have improved for my venture. There comes a time at which every man must go into the woods and go crazy for a stretch of time to really know themselves; that's what the Indians used to do. When you can turn your head, look over your shoulder, and see the other side of your face, then you know yourself sufficiently to return to the cozy life. Any minor neck injuries can be worked out with a chiropractor, or a large man in an alley who has had informal chiropractic training.

If there is a bittersweet part of my journey, it is that America will never know the sacrifices I have made to ensure its future. At least not until 2005, by which time Future Bob should have reported it sometime in the past already. But even if that day never comes and that article is never edited properly, I can live in anonymity. I didn't drag ass across America's outback and brave death and fire (and sometimes splinters) for fame and glory, or flame and gory. I did it for the future. Show's what that rewards. Don't count on me to do it again, everyone—bail yourselves out next time.

I've had enough of living in the past, though. Unless I could live in 1965 for a small period of time and see the Beatles play live, that would be sharp. But for me, I busted my ass for the sake of the future, and that's what I'm concentrating on.

First and foremost is shaping up the commune. Any fool can see leaving Ramrod Hurley in charge while I was gone was the worst mistake I made since suggesting to Rob Schneider he had a viable film career. I apologize whole-heartedly for the devil-embracing way he ran the commune, and mostly for the blasphemous columns he ran in my stead. Ramrod is entitled to his own opinions and beliefs, of course, but he is wrong. If I ever get him out of my old office I'll take my revenge out of his ass with methodical, metric-based accounting procedures.

Yes, the commune will be the commune of the past from now on—challenging authority, walking hand in hand with the outsiders, and giving voice to the voiceless, as long as they can do sign language or something. We shouldn't have to just make up what they're saying. the commune is not a tool or puppet for the rich gluttons who run this country—just this one. When I started the commune, I had a vision that one lone reporter with nothing but a stout heart and true vision could call the president a gaylord and there was nothing he could do about it. I still think that's true. Especially now that the tide seems to be turning against ol' "president" Bush again.

By the way, you may hear allegations of a missing columnist by the name of Sampson L. Hartwig who was last seen in my company. This is just more establishment rhetoric to bring down the threat that is Red Bagel. There was never such a columnist, no matter what the spin doctors or Hartwig family says. This ratty old hat? It's mine. I bought it while on the road.

It's good to be back.

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True, I got fired from my job. I prefer to think I moved on to bigger and better things, and just didn't tell them about it, continuing to use my desk and other facilities for a higher purpose than ameliorating cost-volume reports. They may not have seen it that way, but it could be argued that my superiors were too close to the action to truly see the big picture. My 9 to 5 duties there were, to be frank, just a job. But my newfound mission to figure out what was the worst animated show of the 1980's can only accurately be described as a calling. And I don't have call-waiting, guys, so I've got to run with this now. Sorry for the hurt feelings and the slap fight in the hallway.

First, before we start, can you believe that Perfect Strangers ran for eight seasons? That's fucked up. Okay, on to the cartoons.

During the first phase of my quest to find the worst animated show of the 1980's, the period I like to call my "Gettin' Paid For It" phase, I was working from the misconception that there couldn't possibly have been a worse show than Beverly Hills Teens, which debuted in 1987 and sucked a hole in your TV for an entire season, teaching kids the valuable lesson that being rich is fun. But then I remembered The Care Bears and realized I had a lot of work still to do.

The Care Bears were truly awful, as must be any show created by a greeting card company. But The Care Bears wasn't even the worst show made by that company, as Strawberry Shortcake stank her way up the same path in 1980. And any conversation about bad cartoons made from greeting cards began and ended with Rainbow Brite, which Hallmark spooged onto our collective consciousness in 1985.

Easily more terrible than shows made from greeting cards were shows made from toys. For every semi-tolerable animated commercial like Transformers or G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, there was an antichrist like the Pound Puppies or My Little Pony 'n' Friends. To this day, no one can be sure which side of the fence He-Man and the Masters of the Universe falls on, since this tale of a skinny, bespectacled prince fond of Monty Python and math jokes being zapped with an intercosmic ray that turns him into Dolph Lundgren could be viewed as either wish-fulfillment or supreme nightmare depending on one's point of view.

But stranger still were the cartoons made from things you'd never think they could, or would think to attempt to, make into cartoons. There were cartoons made from prime-time sitcoms (Alf), hit movies ( The Ewoks and Star Wars Droids Adventure Hour), and scary folk legends (The Smurfs). There was even an animated show made from the hit video game Pac-Man, which followed the adventures of Packy and his wife and son, which taught kids the valuable lesson that "Packy" is a really rude thing to call somebody from Pakistan.

But strangest of all those was Rubik, the Amazing Cube, which was a remarkably insane attempt to cash in on the popularity of the Rubik's Cube puzzle. For some reason the show was centered around a Hispanic family in Los Angeles, most likely because the white studio execs thought "Rubik" was a common Latino name.

Then there's the Wuzzles. The Wuzzles were strangely interbred animals formed by either unadvisable jungle mating or unscrupulous laboratory experiments carried on my former Nazi scientists, depending on whose version of their origin legend you believe. Living in the Land of Wuz, where everyone remains firmly fixated on the past, the show followed the adventures of Rhinokey, Bumblelion, and Asparagiraffe, an unfortunate accidental combination of a giraffe and asparagus, who was an outcast even among the Wuzzles. Suck ensued.

All of these, however, held something back from their true powers of awfulness for commercial reasons, and so must be relegated to runner-up status. Because nothing, and I mean nothing, ever sucked as much as The Berenstain Bears. You may disagree, but you'd be wrong. Suck this hot has to be handled with asbestos mittens.

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