hree masked bandits made off with the largest-ever collection of stolen sperm samples in a daring daylight heist of the McCullough Bank of Low-Grade Sperm in New York this week, amusing authorities and frightening one McCullough patron into premature donation.

Authorities believe they are dealing with extremely low-grade, and possibly mentally deficient, criminals, all likely the results of McCullough sperm in the first place. Common sense and eyewitness accounts point to the robbers mistaking the sperm bank for the usual money-filled kind, lured by the facility’s lax security and complete lack of the imposing 87-year-old security guards usually employed by banks in the movies. Even worse, the apparently dipshitted bandits also robbed the least desirable sperm bank in town, as McCullough has traditionally been a discount repository for the genetic material of over 5,000 winos, junkies, teenage heart-attack victims, the criminally obese and conservatives for the last 20 years.

“Yeah, this looks to be the work of some real gonads,� evaluated police captain Walter Diggs. “One of them even dropped his wallet at the scene, but since it was just full of coupons and a novelty driver’s license made out to Jesus H. Christ, this has been of little assistance in our investigation.�

The McCullough Bank of Low-Grade Sperm, known in the reproductive-assistance community as “The Island of Misfit Spank,� was created by wealthy thinker Nelson McCulloch in 1982 to counterbalance to the offensively Nazistic eugenics movement. McCullough hoped to counter the societal effects of eugenic tycoon Robert Graham’s Repository for Germinal Choice, also known as the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank, which aimed at improving society by giving more women access to high-grade spunk. The McCullough Bank went in the other direction, extending the reproductive power and reach of the very individuals who natural selection, and surely at least the Nazis, would likely have wiped out.

Authorities speculate that after McCullough’s long and proud history of creating the ugly, the short, the slothful and disinterested, the weak, the gene-poor, the flat-chested and the unlovable, the bank’s chickens may have come home to roost in the form of deficient McCullough alumni making off with millions of their potential siblings in a beige 1987 Chevy Nova with a “Big Johnson� bumper sticker.

Reproductive-assistance experts remain terrified at the thought of how the sperm samples might be used in the wrong hands, possibly as sandwich spread.

“I just wouldn’t want to be in that car when the skeet packet goes off,� chucked McCullough head Nigel Barmes, referring to the explosive packet of hot-pink dyed sperm that tellers mix in with stolen samples to foil robbers.

The McCullough incident marks the first occurrence of sperm bank violence in this country since 1991, when militant pro-choice activists blew up the Washington, D.C. Gentleben Sperm Repository in retaliation for several abortion clinic bombings nationwide.

Lawyers for Gitmo Detainees Lobby to Stop Calling Them “Gitmo” Detainees

Fans Mourn First 30 Years of Puckett’s Life

Serial Killer’s Neighbor: “He just wouldn’t shut up about serial killing.”

R.C. Car Enthusiasts Angered by Latest Mars Mission Snub

Anyone who's known me for any length of time knows the simple truth: I don't like midgets. Woah now, hold your ripe tomatoes and ceramic bricks, I know it's not a terribly PC viewpoint, especially in these liberal, midget-friendly times. I know what you're thinking, and it's the same thing people on the street tell me every day. They tell me that it's unfair to be prejudiced against someone just because they're in a minority, and that if I really got to know some midgets, I'd realize they're not all the same. Believe me, I know and understand this argument, and can see its merits. I'm not some kind of drooling Neanderthal here. When my neighbor's dog dug under my fence and peed on my garden-hose caddy, I didn't go out and shoot every dog in the neighborhood. I just shot that one dog.

I know you can't judge a book by its cover, and that there are good and bad in every group. But I challenge you to argue that you'd take the time to read a book whose cover thoroughly creeped you out, or one that had just pissed all over the side of your house like some kind of water-witch lawn toy. I didn't think so.

It tires me when people drag out the old "prejudice" argument whenever the subject of my dislike for midgets comes up during a party or traffic encounter. The mere mention of the word practically brands you as a mini-Hitler for the rest of your life. But let's really look at what this is saying. To have prejudice is to pre-judge, that is to judge beforehand. The negative connotation of the term is that one would pass judgment on another before all relevant information has been collected. For example, just because watching one Adam Sandler movie caused you to lose faith in humanity and decimated your sperm count, it would be prejudiced of you to suggest that Sandler's next film won't be Oscar-worthy. In order to prove that you're not some kind of knuckle-dragging Archie Bunker, it becomes necessary to watch every single Adam Sandler film that comes out, even if it gives you a peptic ulcer in the process. I don't know if he originated the concept, but Sandler sure has made out like a bandit on this whole PC liberal guilt deal.

But like I was saying, whenever some midget-lover and I lock horns on this issue, I try to explain that my distaste for midgets is neither ill-informed nor unfair. Arguments concerning the fantastic virtues of midget-sized individuals and the great contributions that midgets have made over the course of history fall upon my deaf ears, as I've never suggested that midgets were not productive members of society. The simple fact of the matter is that I find their proportions creepy and unnerving. This being the very trait that makes them midgets, I hardly think my distaste constitutes any unfair previous judgment against the midgets themselves.

If anything, I think I've been more than polite to the midgets I've run across over the course of my life. Many will no doubt point to the fact that it was a midget doctor who failed to revive my mother on her death bed when I was a child. They are quick to suggest that this childhood trauma left me with an unfair bent against little people. Yet, whenever adult-sized people gather to toss midgets at bowling pins, will you find me in attendance? Most certainly not. I have never tied a midget to a kite before proceeding to drag him behind my car in some twisted midget-bashing version of parasailing. Nor have I ever cruelly used the last available booster seat at a fast food establishment merely to ensure that a deserving midget goes without. I have never once kicked a midget, nor have I ever dressed one up all in orange for the purpose of slam-dunking him through a basketball hoop.

In spite of years of backwards-talking midgets haunting my dreams and even the highly traumatic viewing of Under the Rainbow when I was a teen, when my brother Mitch choked to death on a Mike & Ike during the film's climactic midget swordfight, I have refrained from midget-bashing in all of its tempting forms. And yet, simply because I will not ferry a midget about in a specially-made tote upon my back, or allow one to marry into my family, I am seen as a monster by some. And for the most part it's not even the midgets themselves who think so, though the gross disparity in our body sizes might cause one of them to take me for a monster in a completely unrelated event.

Before you let your imagination run away with you, let it be made clear that I'm not suggesting the creation of midget death camps here. That would be completely Un-American, not to mention costly. But what would be so bad about creating a separate midget nation, more ideally suited to their smaller scale? Wouldn't the skinny portion of Idaho be perfect for such a project? It would be almost like a kind of merry theme park, where midgets could wear novel hats and curly-pointed shoes without fear of reprisal from normal-sized folks. They could lead happy and productive lives in Littleville, making toys and candy for export back to Greater America, and would no longer be at the mercy of fringe pornographers and David Lynch for employment opportunities. Normal-sized people (or "Bigguns," as they would be known) who are fond of midgets could visit on their vacations and buy midget crafts and bumper stickers, and have their pictures taken while sticking their heads into holes cut in pre-painted scenes that make them seem like the midgets for a change. It sounds pretty idyllic to me. Heck, I'd want to live there myself if the buildings and people were all normal-sized, though I guess that would kind of defeat the purpose.

For what it's worth, I'd like to add that although my distaste for midgets has raised the most controversy, I also feel the same sense of unease and nervous tension whenever I find myself around small children of similar size, and I avoid them with the same fastidiousness. However, somehow I think that this revelation will most likely earn me even more detractors, rather than serving to foster greater understanding and sympathy for my point of view. Sadly, this is the way of the world in the 21st century.

º Last Column: Conundrums Along the Mohawk
º more columns

If I go into a restaurant at ten o'clock at night, and they are not closed this time, I should be able to order a venison sandwich and get it. I have said it before, I'll say it again.

Good people, is this America, or communist Italy? We live in the richest and freest nation on earth. Freest? That doesn't look right. Free-loving? Wrong implications, but I see little alternative. You know what I mean—we love freedom. We have endless resources and, Lord knows, if I can afford a venison sandwich, there is no good reason why I should not get it.

Don't tell me it's Christmas Eve, missy. I didn't order a calendar. I ordered a venison sandwich. Venison has to be the fifth or sixth most popular kind of meat in the world. How can a national chain like McDonald's run out of it so fast? That's pretty ridiculous.

As you can guess, this really did happen. I had something called a "Big Mac" instead, some kind of cow meat or something, with salad dressing slathered all over it. I prefer my meats not to be slathered. Basted, or painted, perhaps. Never slathered, and certainly not drenched. Unless it's with barbecue sauce, but this wasn't. So yes, a nasty cow meat sandwich with slathered-on salad dressing. I promptly threw up. That was my Christmas present.

Camembert and his girlfriend Elvis were quite embarrassed. I think they just like to challenge me now. I'm paying for Christmas dinner, I reminded them, I'm the one who should be embarrassed about throwing up. But I wasn't. Because as I said, they didn't give me what I originally wanted—my stomach doesn't compromise. It wanted venison, and it knows the difference between deer meat and cow meat slathered with salad dressing. McDonald should be ashamed of himself. I tried to get him on the phone, but those disrespectful slacker employees just kept calling him a clown. In my day, we respected our wealthy corporate founders.

I'm not sure, good people, what it is about Christmas that puts me in the mood for a tasty venison sandwich. It has long been my cross to bear. That and the large cross in my backyard, but I'm not finished building that quite yet.

Jesus had a cross to bear, too. It was called being the son of a popular Fellow. It's not easy being God's son. Everybody expects a lot from you, and they will not stop mentioning all the great things your Dad has done. And what have you done? That's all they want to know. And that's why Jesus made the venison sandwich—his gift to mankind.

Well, to make a bad column short, I got my venison sandwich finally, no thank you, McDonald's. It was Camembert and Elvis's gift to me. I was touched, right to the very heart. Girl Elvis apparently went and slaughtered a deer in the middle of the night just to make it for me. That's what Christmas means to me—deer meat, wrapped in a bow.

Their gift? I got them a subscription to Friday Magazine, the magazine for people who really like Fridays. It was the only thing I could get on Christmas morning at 7 a.m., they have a 24-hour subscription hotline. But I believe they both like Fridays.

What? Should I knock myself out for a gift on Christmas morning? I don't even have the sandwich anymore. I thought it was quite generous of me, considering.

º Last Column: The Two-Car Garage Problem
º more columns