he entire Hundred Acre Woods were in a state of shock this week with the harrowing discovery of the bodies of local favorites Tigger and Piglet, in the aftermath of an apparent murder-suicide. Authorities are uncertain as to what motivated the affable jungle cat to such drastic action, but evidence points to Tigger having a long history of mental illness.

“In the end, Tigger just wasn’t able to bounce back from his manic depression,” the tiger’s psychotherapist, Dr. Melvin Dirth, explained sadly. “One day he’d be bouncing off the walls, driving everyone around him nutso! But then the next, you’d find him down at Eeyore’s place, watching sad old black and white movies and gorging himself on Valentine candies.”

According to friends, the effervescent tiger was also afflicted with mild schizophrenia, haunted at times by an imaginary beast known only as the “Heffalump,” which Dr. Dirth believes represented the exteriorization of all Tigger’s inner demons.

“I think we all have an inner Heffalump,” explained Dr. Dirth. “For some of us, it might be a weight problem, or a fear of heights. For Tigger, it was some kind of deadly woodland beast no one had ever seen. Tigger battled his inner demons by pretending to be a jagular on the prowl, though he’d usually only end up scaring Pooh and Piglet in the end.”

“I keep thinking about the last thing he said to me,” sobbed Hundred Acre Wood resident and Tigger acquaintance Kanga. “He said: ‘Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo! TTFN!’ I didn’t realize he really meant ta-ta-forever.”

A funeral service held Sunday featured a mournful poetic reading of the lyrics to the Tigger favorite “The Most Wonderful Thing About Tiggers” and a gag coffin filled with springy nut-can snakes, which everyone appreciated except for Eeyore.

Less is known about Piglet, the diminutive victim that friends describe as a shy, reedy-voiced pig with a fondness for taxidermy. Family friend Winnie the Pooh, a bear of very little brain and longtime Piglet confidant, paints a similar picture.

“Piglet loved nothing more than smacking his lips all the way down to the bottom of a delicious pot of honey,” Pooh reminisced fondly. “No, now wait a minute. That’s me! Who was Piglet again?”

Sentiment and remembrance gave way to practical concerns over the weekend, as industry insiders began to gossip over who would be taking Tigger and Piglet’s places in the two highly-anticipated upcoming Disney films about the Hundred Acre gang, A Roo with a View and Eeyore’s directorial debut, Jackass 2. Though final casting decisions have not yet been made, early rumor points to Tony the Tiger and Porky Pig as strong likely replacements for the deceased pair.

“If you ask me, and I realize that no one has, though they should,” rambled Tigger neighbor and woodland asshole Owl, “Tigger was a victim of cartoon violence. You can’t let children or large cats grow up watching millions of acts of senseless violence on the television and not expect it to penetrate their psyche. Just look at the violence with which Tigger lived his life, crashing around like a whirling dervish, the end result should have been obvious! I saw this coming a long ways away, which is why I’m the only Hundred Acre Wood resident with doorknobs on his doors. That stupid cat never did figure out how to use a doorknob.”

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Much bitching and moaning has been expelled over the course of human history about the unfortunate reality that man needs to sleep. Some women, too. From ruining slavemasters' productivity figures to making everyone late to the airport, sleep has always been a thorn in the side of humanity. But where does it come from, and why do we need it so desperately?

Modern science gives us the answer that we have no fucking idea. Sleep is as mysterious today as it was back before anyone knew anything, circa 1953. Scientists have come up with a lot of lame excuses over the years for why they can't figure out sleep, most of them revolving around them being too tired. A Belgian scientist claimed to have had a dream that explained it all in 1964, but the only parts he could remember didn't make any sense to anyone and revealed a disturbing internal fascination with snail anatomy.

The closest scientists have come to explaining the need for sleep has been to document what happens when you don't get any, subjecting some poor underpaid bastards to days of insanity-fertilizing sleeplessness. Rarely, if ever, has there been a more satisfying way to give money to people you strongly dislike.

After the first 24 hours without sleep, the average person retains most normal functionality, only with any asshole personality traits magnified by a factor of four. Normal people become assholes, assholes become giant assholes, and giant assholes are usually shot by research staff to prevent further incident.

After a second day of sleeplessness, motor skill coordination becomes impaired, which makes sleep-deprived Jai Alai one of the most entertaining sports to watch. Thinking becomes slower, and internal mathematical calculations are always off by five. Social skills erode further as well, causing most normal people to act like Gilbert Gottfried. Phone numbers and birthdays are nearly impossible to remember in this state, and anything softer than a dumpster full of broken glass begins to look like an appealing place to lie down for a nap.

Day three is best glossed over. Imagine a mental institution on "Free Cocaine Day," add a wolverine that's been soaked in gasoline and set on fire, and dub the whole thing poorly into Cantonese. Smart researchers usually schedule their days off to coincide with Day 3.

On day four, subjects seem to start acting normal again, only until researchers realize they have swapped personalities with each other, and underwear. Subjects in this state have a difficult time speaking in anything less than a full-throated scream, and most express a desire to learn square dancing. A spontaneous understanding of Japanese is often reported.

By the fifth day, complete bladder control is lost, and internal monologues are involuntarily spoken out loud, a hilarious fact that leads many scientists to subject their subjects to five days of sleeplessness even when two or three would have done the job for the research's sake.

Day six is a nice break for the researchers, since everyone suddenly falls into a coma and dies. Reduced appetite is also reported.

Scientists didn't understand the importance of sleep until the early 20th century, prior to which people only slept involuntarily, like when you doze off behind the wheel of a carriage and trample sixteen epileptic children while dreaming of pastry. This fact helps to explain the whole of history prior to the year 1900, from the horrors of colonization, to wars, numerous creative forms of public execution, and the widespread belief in Jesus. It also explains how people used to get so much done in a day; however this was something of a small consolation for the millennia of balls-out worldwide insanity.

A few native cultures have always understood the importance of proper sleep, as evidenced by their completely boring histories. Eskimos, Jamaicans and Canadians have long been distinguished by their lack of berserk rampages of bloodletting, a fact not coincidentally tied to their shared cultural heritage of long, restful nights of sleep.

What we do understand about sleep, however, does explain another popular question every third smartass who rides the elevator with Griswald Dreck feels the need to ask. This pertains to the oft-repeated but seldom understood notion that human beings only use 10% of our brains. What most people don't understand is that this figure is an average. If you subtracted the small number of cogent individuals using large portions of their brains from the mix, the truth would be revealed that most people actually only use about 2% of their brains, which becomes even more frightening when you realize that it takes 1% of your brain to remember to breathe. The average person splits up the other lonely percentage point between the sections of the brain responsible for channel surfing, being hungry, and thinking Jeff Foxworthy is funny.

Incidentally, cows use up to 4% of their brains, and university research has shown cows can chew bubblegum and roller-skate at the same time. Food for thought.

So why do we use so little of our non-cow brains? Because they're there? Funny answer. But in truth, the reason is that the rest of the brain's vast potential is reserved for sexual fantasies and plotting out the upcoming night's dreams, a very complex affair since it is exceedingly difficult to weave talking penguins, long-dead historical figures, and inappropriately sexualized elderly relatives into the same dream scene. This takes up most of the brain's energy and is the reason everyone gets tired in the afternoon, that and eating four pounds of bacon for lunch.

So sleep shall remain a mystery, unless some berserk sleepless madman conquers the world tomorrow and decrees that we're all living in a dream world we return from only during our sleeping hours. Then? Not so much a mystery, by decree of the king. As Roger Daltrey observed on The Who's final album, "Who Cares?" in 1984:



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Ladies and Gentleman, I'd like to bring things down for a minute, if that's okay with all of you. Make things a little somber. Bring up an unflattering truth, even if we're all reluctant to hear it, because that's what rap is about: Making us face the unpopular realities of the world.

A lot of us have lost friends in the Las Vegas-Atlantic City Coast Wars, haven't we? It's sad, I know. Why, a friend of mine, MC Charles Laser, he was one of the first to go down in the dispute. I'd like to have a little hand for him, if we can, MC Charles Laser! A good man, if I ever met one. One of the best Las Vegas show-stopping rappers you ever could hear. Taken in the prime of his showbiz life—he was only 47.

But you know, as great as Charles was, he's not the only one. A lot of us have lost homies on both sides of this senseless war. I'm not going to stand here and dis Atlantic City. There are many, many fine hip-hop artists out there, who perform some of the finest old school rap there is. Why, my very own DJ, DJ John Waterhouse, actually started with an Atlantic City act called Smilin' Wiley and the Funky Bunch. To dis Atlantic City is to dis my own blood. Is that hip? I think not.

The Atlantic City rappers do their own thing, and we here in Vegas do our own, too. Cappin' Crunch and I aren't likely to share the stage, but it's just because our acts are so different. I don't begrudge him his success. He deserves every penny he's earned for every record he's turned. Give it up for Cappin' Crunch now, everyone! That's it!

Which is why it just burns me up to hear some of these rappers—and they know who they are—these rappers who insist on saying derogatory things about their "opposition" on the other coasts. I heard a rapper right here in Las Vegas say MC PawPaw in Atlantic City was a perpetrator. Now, I've met MC PawPaw, people. He's no perpetrator. He's the real deal, and I'd stake my own professional reputation as an old school rapper on that. Las Vegas, Atlantic City, it's all good, friends.

Frankly, I think these negative rappers are just unimaginative. They have nothing good to say about anything, so they stoop to saying the worst things about other rappers. Other rappers, I might add, whom they know are class acts and possess talents superior to their own. That's what really burns them up. You can sling mud all you want, but that's not what rap is about. I rap about perpetrators, sure, but I never name names. That's just low-class, folks.

But you all know the negative rapping isn't even the worst of all this Las Vegas-Atlantic City rap war stuff. Friends have died. Homies have been lost. We all know the tragic story of DJ Sugar Cane, who was so distraught when he heard the negative things said about him in some "nameless" naysayer's rap, he lost control of his car and crashed. Died instantly—that's not right. Or Atlantic City's own P. Party, who was so tormented to read the mudslinging in Rap-Happy magazine, he took his own life. Sad. And there's the story of my friend MC Charles Laser, who became so infuriated, driven to near insanity by the slaps coming at him out of Atlantic City, he boarded a plane to fly out there and give them a piece of his mind. And that plane crashed upon take-off.

Too much blood has been shed already!

That's why I'm pouring a martini for my dead homies—on both coasts—and ask all of you to stop the insizzanity. Make rap, not war.

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