resident Bush's Thursday morning speech to the National Endowment for Democracy was greeted by supporters and detractors alike as an important milestone, outlining more clearly both the president's thought processes and his positions on topics ranging from global terrorism to the increasingly chaotic situation in Iraq.

"Every rose has its thorn," Bush explained, addressing questions about the higher-than-expected casualty rate for U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq. "Just like every night has its dawn. Just like every cowboy… uhm. Hmm. Yep," Bush nodded to himself in closure on that thought.

"How do we explain something that took us by surprise?" Bush continued after a thoughtful pause, addressing his administration's planning for the post-war rebuilding of Iraq. "Promises in vain, what is real but in disguise. What happens now? Do we break another rule? Let the others play the fool? I don't know how to stop feeling this way…"

"Hold on to the nights," Bush continued, finding his voice in the words of popular poet Richard Marx before trailing off in dramatic fashion. "Hold on to the memories. Wish that I could give you more, that I could be your…"

Bush's comments were met by a stunned silence from the audience, except for one asshole who was waving a lighter. Coming under increasing pressure in recent months to justify the loss of life in Iraq, Bush also indulged the audience with his deepest philosophical thoughts on the subject of war and sacrifice.

"We are strong, no one can tell us we're wrong," explained Bush. "Lo... Iraq is a battlefield."

"Shooting at the walls of heartache, bang, bang. I am the warrior," Bush cocked his fingers in a pistol gesture to drive his point home.

"And heart to heart we'll win, if we survive," Bush assured onlisteners, possibly referring to the administration's campaign to win hearts and minds in the Middle East.

"Just a little more time is all we're asking for," Bush continued, amid questions of how long U.S. troops will remain in Iraq. "Cause just a little more time could open closing doors. Just a little uncertainty can bring you down. So if you're lost and on your own, you can never surrender. And if your path won't lead you home, you can never surrender."

"Never surrender!" repeated an excited Bush, striking something of a pose.

Addressing the recent flooding disasters in Louisiana, Bush dug deep again and offered words of consolation to the survivors, returning this week to their destroyed homes and ruined shit.

"Don't be afraid to lose what was never meant to be," consoled a paternal Bush. "After the rain washes away the tears, and all the pain, only after the rain can you live again. I know the emptiness you feel inside, you're thinking if you break away, you'll never survive. I'm waiting as my heart beats just for you. Come on and take my hand and I'll pull you through. But things will never change until you want them to."

"It cuts like a knife," Bush said in closing, when some wiseacre in the back row yelled a question about global terrorism. "Ooh, but it feels so right."

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I'm madder than a skunk who smells like flowers. 'Cause they usually smell like ass, is what I mean.

I just found out there's a usurper to my crown. That's how my sister, Cassandra, phrased it, and it seemed to fit pretty well. Really Branaghian or something. A usurper, for those of you who don't have a smart lawyer sister to tell you, is a real bitch who thinks she's hot shit and tries to steal what you own right out from under you. Picture Christina Aguilera snaking Britney's number one spot with a cheesy cover of some New Edition song.

The tart's name is Jayme Kristofson, and I know that's totally made up. Her real name's probably Shirley Hemphill or something, but she's all showbiz-smart and is trying to steal all my thunder. Her first target is the Metallichick comic book I do. I was too late to notice and before I knew it she went from being some kind of rabid comic book fan—I should have known something was wrong when a girl said she liked comic books—to Nat Herschel's girlfriend. Nat, if you're reading this, if I got the website address right for the first time, she's playing you, dude. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you to your face, but you were ignoring me and had your ears covered and shit. It's called denial, dude—look into it. But you should know better—no one with a body like that really thinks an Elfquest T-shirt is cool. Face facts, man.

I've had my share of hot-to-trot actresses trying to horn in on my business over the years, I'm no newcomer. There was this short teen-ager who used to stand in for me when I was on Who's Your Daddy? and she was always saying she could rehearse a scene in my place when I was too hungover to do it. She knew how to climb the ladder, always getting coffee for the other castmembers and complimenting the director on his work. But I was a smart kid, and Dusty had friends in the cement business who made sure she broke her leg and couldn't stand in so well afterwards. It's a rough game, that's all I got to say. Don't walk in to a fight without someone covering your back.

There are other examples, too, but some of those I was well over 18 and could legally be considered an accomplice, so let's just skip to the point: I know hardball. If this bitch wants to play, I'm bringing my ball. So to speak.

She may be pinning Nat's tail on the donkey, and suggesting costume changes and cover ideas and whatever, but if she thinks she's going any further than that, she don't know Clarissa Coleman. I can bide my time, I can wait in the shadows, but I'll get you in the end. I don't need Dusty's friends to keep you from stealing my role. Especially not since they're all in their mid-90s by now.

Besides, just between you and me, she'll never fit into the costume. Not without hoarding half the world's supply of Kleenex. Not that I'm scared or anything. The fans wouldn't accept it. They're used to my angry growl on the cover of that book each month. Some people may argue you can only see the bottom 25% of my face, like Nat once did, but I say it's enough to tell the difference between a genuine talent and a hack sleeping her way to the—well, slightly elevated above the bottom, anyway.

Truthfully, I'm not even all that happy with this assignment. Posing in a goofy vinyl/plastic costume with a big-ass sword in a freezing basement is good when you're just starting out, but I can do much better, as I keep telling people. But at this point, even if I wanted to leave the job, I wouldn't. She needs to be put in her place but good. If I let her steal this from me, even if I don't want it, the next thing I know she'll be showing up on the Archipelago Law reunion ten years from now. Then I'd have to get that sword out for real.

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The fourth era of video games marked the downfall of Nintendo, Atari, Sega, and the British Empire. Ineptitude and folly finally came to roost as video games became a multi-boobjillion dollar industry and the jokers who'd been running it up until that point were rightfully eaten alive like a clown-meat gyro. And thus we enter the cruel endgame of this rainbow-colored saga.

After forming a partnership with Sony to develop a CD-drive add-on for the Super Nintendo, Nintendo ultimately decided it would be a better idea to pull out at the last minute and piss-off the powerful and insanely proud Sony, a slumbering consumer electronics giant that needed only a perceived dishonor as an excuse to enter the video game market and kick an extra poophole out Nintendo's backside. Rolling in the good ideas like a pig in cologne, Nintendo opted to work with Dutch nice guys Philips instead, on a CD add-on drive that never came to fruition. Sony, in a scene likely moodily backlit and scored to weird Japanese gourd instruments, vowed to develop their own 32-bit system with which to crush Nintendo into sugar-coated boot grease. Hence the PlayStation was born.

Despite the gay-sounding name, the PlayStation took the world by storm in 1995. Considering that the only 32-bit competition on the market at the time was the Jaguar, which Atari claimed was a 64-bit console only because they had printed "64!" on the case, the PlayStation's success seems less than surprising. Panasonic released the technologically superior 3DO that same year, but the console's sales were limited by the system's embarrassing pack-in game, SmartFartz.

In response, Sega released the Saturn, a CD-based system which sucked like a circus seal in a popsicle factory. So completely misguided was the development of the Saturn that the system's surprise launch in 1995 was kept a secret even from game developers, and as a result the system's only software was an old Commodore64 Mah-Jongg game that came built into the motherboard. Sega had succeeded in surprising the crap out of the industry with the stealth Saturn release, but ultimately this proved to be a poor business strategy.

Around this time Atari went down in flames, announcing that their poor-selling Jaguar console was actually a magic flying dream machine that could make you big like in that Tom Hanks movie. Jaguar sales actually went down after the announcement, due to the bitter lesson about adulthood that audiences had learned from the Tom Hanks movie years before.

Rather than release their own 32-bit console to compete with Sony, Nintendo decided to throw the industry a curve in 1995 by releasing their VirtualBoy portable system instead, a weird goggle-based gaming system that induced nausea three times faster than trying to read a novel on a roller-coaster. After six months of terrible sales and numerous in-store vomitings, Nintendo announced that they were just kidding about the VirtualBoy.

Nintendo finally released their next home console, the Nintendo 64, in 1996. Despite the fact that only seven games were ever made for the system, the console sold quite well thanks to rampant rumors that the system's controllers tasted like strawberries. Nintendo's usual practice of succeeding despite doing everything wrong continued with the Nintendo 64, which kept second place warm behind the PlayStation despite a reliance on expensive, antiquated game cartridges, and the cannibalistic practice of shoehorning Mario into every game released for the system, including such unlikely titles as Star Wars: Battle for Naboo and Foxy Chix Strip Poker.

By 1998, Sega had sufficiently recovered from falling face-first in shit with the Saturn to release the Dreamcast, a 128-bit system so awesome gamers decided to wait until Sony put out something, anything, new instead of spending their money on Sega. Sony did not disappoint, releasing a poster with a picture of the upcoming PlayStation 2 later that year. Sony's poster outsold the Dreamcast 3-to-1 in America and Japan.

The PlayStation 2 was finally released in 2000, wowing gamers who already thought it was going to be awesome. Sega's Dreamcast faded quickly from near-obscurity into nearby total obscurity, and Nintendo's new GameCube console slid comfortably into the company's familiar spot in the back seat behind Sony, eagerly wondering if they were going to stop for ice cream. Once the king of a very inept hill, Nintendo was reduced to catering to small children and gamers with a thing for fat Italians.

Software giant Microsoft released their Xbox in 2001, a mammoth console roughly the size of a suitcase, which featured controllers larger than most other entire gaming systems. Giants and the obscenely-handed were pleased, making Microsoft a real competitor for Sony, and relegating Nintendo to the role of cute little pretend toy console maker.

Unbeknownst to the computer-illiterate, parallel to these home console wars, computer games were gathering steam as a way for adults to avoid doing their taxes and to kill time until the Internet was invented. Even adults who didn't know a Super Nintendo from a poop-covered shoe were playing Doom on their home PCs by 1993, making the gory first-person shooter a giant hit. While console gamers were farting around with Sonic the Hedgehog and Donkey Kong Country Music Seminar, bored accountants everywhere were blowing the shit out of Satan's housepets inside the labyrinths of Doom. That same year saw the release of Myst, a gorgeous first-person puzzler about losing your keys on a deserted island. Myst was a huge hit, finding an audience among millions of computer geeks who resonated with the game's storyline about wandering around alone with no friends.

Later, even more PC hits would follow, allowing PC gamers to enjoy superior graphics and sound for only thousands of dollars more than their console-gaming brethren. Whether it was ogling ass cheeks in Tomb Raider, blowing up Republicans in Quake, or gleefully ruining lives in The Sims, PC gaming was where it was at in the 90's.

The 2000's find video games more popular than ever, with new technology breathing life into console gaming, even as the list of competing consoles is mercilessly stomped into shortness. Computer games hang on to market share as the line between PCs, consoles, DVD players and cordless phones is blurred beyond recognition.

But where does the future of video games lie? What am I, Kreskin? You see a column around here titled "The Future of Video Games"? If you do, I sure as hell didn't write it, and I'd take whatever Rok Finger has to say on the subject with a grain of salt the size of Cincinnati. I've brought you up to date on video games, which is more than I set out to do, ingrates.

Ten years from now? We'll probably be hunting each other in the streets like deer, how's that for the future of gaming? Enjoy your first-person shooters while you've got 'em, Bambi.

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