Search for Joker Continues in Iraq

ontinuing efforts to keep the peace in we-torn Iraq turned for the worse with the White House revelation Sunday that the "top card in the deck," the nefarious "Joker," was still running around free in Iraq.

"We have attempted to protect the public from the horrible truth until now," said Pentagon spokesperson Gen. Amos Halftrack. "As is often the case with corrupt fascistic governments, prettyboy figureheads—like Saddam Hussein—are made frontmen for the real enemy. In Iraq, the real power is, and has always been held by the Joker."

With no other name for the suspected Iraqi dictator, U.S. forces and Iraqi police have begun circulating cards with the only known picture of the fugitive, to be added to existing packs of Iraq's "most wanted" cards, and possibly placed in special protective packaging since they're quite collectible. According to the White House, the Joker is behind Saturday's Fallujah jailbreak and other acts of resistance following the capture of Saddam Hussein.

"It was previously believed Saddam Hussein was behind the resistance cells still waging attacks on our troops," said press secretary Scott McClellan, "but that information had been gathered by U.S. intelligence, and we all know how that goes. I'm not saying they're two steps behind or anything, but the latest information they've obtained says Ruben Stoddard is the winner of last year's American Idol."

New information about the Joker sheds a new light on the war in Iraq, the White House claims, and election strategists advise the war on terror could be severely complicated by the revelation. Efforts to find the Joker might be accelerated to locate and arrest the superstar terrorist between now and November.

Reporters lucky enough to get a front seat at the press conference, while some of us were jammed up near the exit door in the back, asked McClellan about rumors he started that the Joker and 9-11 mastermind Osama bin Laden were linked.

"Almost certainly," McClellan agreed. "We have intelligence verifying it."

Saturday brought more bad news out of Iraq, as an attack on a county jail by resistance forces killed at least 25 people, mostly Iraqi police, and wounded more than 30. The number of prisoners freed numbered in the "plenty" range, but at least a quarter of them were speculated to be town drunks and parking violators. The Saturday raid was also believed plotted by the Joker.

"We're talking about an insane criminal mastermind," the Pentagon confirmed Sunday. "Most of those who were wounded were overcome by his deadly laughing gas, while several were killed by exploding pumpkin bombs. Or something. Make no mistake, the Joker is the greatest threat to world peace since Hitler—no, no! Napoleon. Napoleon. He was a sick bastard."

Even the arrest of number 41 on the most-wanted Iraqis list brought no joy to U.S. forces. The so-called "four of spades" Mohammed Zimam Abdul Razaq was picked up in a Baghdad suburb Sunday for the misdemeanor offense of threatening a cash machine that ate up his ATM card. The Pentagon expressed mixed feelings about it.

"It's number forty-one, for crying out loud," said Gen. Halftrack. "Nobody shits their britches over the forty-first NFL draft pick."

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The media is liberal and everybody knows that. You have to accept that it's not always going to cover the news fairly. The environment and war and education and all these left-wing things come first with the media. But all journalists have a duty to cover all problems even with minimal coverage. Where is the coverage of the nerd problem?

In this day and age with 22-hour media coverage on TV and the websites and the newspapers publishing once, even twice a day, you would think someone would focus on the nerd problem just once. I think it's proof that now, more than ever, we need to bring the nerd problem to the attention of everyone, because the nerds are obviously running the media as well.

This is no surprise to me. I warned people, loudly at social functions, that nerds would not go away if left unchecked. They have to be abused, verbally and physically, and their books knocked out of their hands—it works really well with nerds because they carry a ton of books. Yes, around the early 1980s, even then, I saw the nerd problem coming miles away. But I thought we were all on the same page, you and I, the normal persons. I have been doing my part to stop the nerd rebellion. What have you been doing?

The 1980s were a dream time for us fighting the nerd movement. Nerds were everywhere on TV, from the early 80s TV shows like Square Pegs to the late 80s TV shows like Family Matters. Even nerd-supportive movies like Revenge of the Nerds (God, I hope not) weren't all that bad. At least we were talking about the nerd problem. Nobody talks about the nerd problem.

The nerds haven't gone anywhere. A nerd is even the richest man in the world. A nerd, Stephen Hawking, is the smartest man in the world—well, yeah, they can have that, who cares, that's nerd territory. A nerd was the vice president and even ran for president, though I'm glad the American people came to their senses—but it was close people, way too close. Are we losing our anger and unrepentant anti-nerd rage?

I raised three kids, not one of them a nerd. There's Mike, my youngest, Bunko, my youngest, and Maul, my oldest, and they all know what to do to a nerd when they see him. But three good boys, no matter how athletic and quick to rage they may be, cannot do the work of the entire nation. You need to pick up the ball you dropped and get back on the nerd-busting wagon.

These people should be doing our work for us. Nerds exist for a reason, and that reason is not to run everything. These are the kids that used to do our homework back in high school! They're there to give us answers, not to make me come into the Chia Pet factory on my day off because we need to "play catch-up." They built the internet, but why do they have all the money from it? They should be running the internet so we can e-mail each other and fixing it when it breaks down and stop giving us guff about our modems and stuff. And get to work on that e-mail writing voice program already, I don't have time to punch typewriter keys all day. See? This is the kind of stuff we're left to do when nerds run rampant.

Nerds have been walking around without wedgies for long enough. I've made my point, and if I haven't made it in a all ooh-la-la writing way, well, it's only more proof I'm a normal guy like you. Let's gang up again, like we did in high school, and stuff these nerds in their collective lockers. Literally speaking.

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Few things get the public juices juicing like a good celebrity scandal. Seeing the rich and famous throw up on themselves on the national stage is like an instant cure for our collective Attention Deficit Disorder, sweet candy straight to the brain. The phenomena is so marked, in fact, that inner-city schoolteachers have begun to couch difficult lesson plans in the terms of celebrity scandal, quizzing children on riddles like "If it took OJ three stabs to cut off Nichole's head, how cut-off would her head be after two stabs?" Or, for example, "If car A left Paris going fifty miles an hour, and car B entered Paris going sixty-five miles an hour, how fast would car A be going when it ran over Princess Diana?"

It's the ultimate junk food of the news world, with one celebrity scandal upstaging another almost daily, blowing the old salacious headlines right off the newspapers and proving how quickly the public can forget who stuck his what where. Millions of desperate losers cling to their wretched lives for one reason only: sticking around in hopes of witnessing the ultimate, the most embarrassing celebrity scandal ever. And since losers make up the bulk of the commune readership, we're on the case to settle this national quandary once and for all.

So what is the most embarrassing celebrity scandal ever? Needless to say, the pack of challengers is thicker than Alabama backhair, and no pedestrian Hollywood fuck-ups need apply. It's got to be more embarrassing than Christian Slater kicking a pair of LAPD officers down the stairs because he was so coked up he thought he was filming Kuffs 2: More Kuffs!. And even more embarrassing than JFK Jr. being egged into a bar bet that he couldn't fly a plane without taking any lessons, and then getting his ass killed in the ocean like John Denver high on asshole powder. And I'm not talking about Jack Paar giving a titty twister to the Queen of England back in 1965 because he thought the queen mother was his buddy Merv Griffin playing a joke on him in drag, either. We're looking for really embarrassing celebrity scandals here.

Right off the bat we can eliminate the first time President Bush met with the UN and tried to buy a hot dog from Secretary General Kofi Annan. That would fall into the "crippling political embarrassment" category anyway and regardless, the president is so far off the public gaffe charts that an incident which would kill a normal politician is, for him, roughly on par with Roseanne Barr farting at a ballgame.

Few things are more embarrassing than accidentally setting yourself on fire, just ask Michael Jackson or Richard Pryor. Even worse is photographic evidence of the same, like the time Samuel L. Jackson's hair caught on fire right before the photo shoot for the Pulp Fiction poster. No one knows if freebase or the highly flammable Jeri-curl wig that Tarantino had on loan from Weird Al Yankovic was the culprit there, but either way moviegoers were left wondering about Jackson's schizophrenic bald/afro hair and if maybe that was his wig on fire inside Marsellus Wallace's mysteriously glowing briefcase.

Getting caught having sex with the wrong person in the wrong place can be even worse than setting yourself on fire, if you do it right. Having sex with any member of Wham anywhere certainly qualifies, as George Michael learned after being caught having sex in the park with George Michael. Hugh Grant kept the English penchant for embarrassing public sex alive when was busted in Hollywood having sex in his car with a poorly-disguised man in 1995, which says all you'll ever need to know about English women.

The last ten years of Robert Downey Jr.'s life would set some kind of "ironman" record for prolonged embarrassment if it weren't for the existence of escaped man-sized Muppet Michael Jackson, who scripts his own life as if he were writing for TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes. But nailing Jacko on a public disgrace is about as tough as falling off stilts in a hurricane, so I'm afraid he's out of the running at least until he gets pantsed by an alien some time next year.

The most embarrassing celebrity scandal ever wasn't Zsa Zsa boxing the cop, Jack Nicholson going Caddyshack on his fellow motorist, or Errol Flynn accidentally having sex with a loaf of raisin bread. Nor was it Kelsey Grammar's tip for the babysitter, Richard Gere's alleged tab at the pet store or America finding out that Milli Vanilli didn't even sing the shitty songs on their album, which technically should have helped their career.

No, I'm afraid the ill-fitting crown belongs to none other than Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee-Wee Herman, the children's TV star who was caught waxing his wane in an adult theater in 1991 and fell straight off the face of the earth promptly thereafter. Few celebrity arrests have inspired such "soaring eagle into the jet engine" career-trajectory imagery, and whether the death blow was Reubens being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the resultant mug shot photos where the beloved children's entertainer appeared looking like Charles Manson on crack, the effect was Godzillian. Is that a word, Godzillian? Should be.

Sorry, Pee Wee. I was hoping it would be J-Lo.

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