Future Bob Fails to Prevent Senator's Death

onfound it all!

Anger and severe frustration were the mood Monday, October 31—Halloween—2005 when Future Bob checked his notes for things to do and realized he had forgotten to prevent the death of Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone.

Wellstone, a passionate former college professor and left-leaning Democratic Senator from Minnesota, was killed in October, 2002 in some sort of plane crash that also claimed the lives of members of his family and those aboard the plane. The details are long since lost to the ravages of time to 2005-dwelling Future Bob.

Prevention of the plane crash was on Future Bob's "to-do" list in the year 2005, though like many other events of that year have been unfortunately forgotten in time to change the future. Future Bob, as you may or may not know in 2002, has extensive bills and has to work two regular jobs in addition to his charitable contributions to the commune.

Had Wellstone's death been prevented, as per Future Bob's plans, the key Senate race in Minnesota could have been won by the Democrat and prevented Republican control of Congress and the White House in 2003, which of course led to several dark moments in recent American history such as the revoking of the 4^th Amendment and the passage of the "Sell the Homeless into Slavery Act of 2004."

With Wellstone's survival, a better period was possible for those crucial years of American history. Wellstone could have won re-election and unmasked his Senate opponent former St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman as the evil KGB mole Dmitri Raszokoff. As it stands now, history is unchanged and Coleman will not be revealed until the great Soviet Reunion of 2005.

Among other items on Future Bob's long list of regretfully-unchanged history: The Sept. 11^th attacks, a reign of terror by a trio of snipers, Will Ferrell leaving the cast of Saturday Night Live, the election of George W. "Nightmare" Bush, the release of Britney Spears' Oops… I Did it Again album, and several type-Os in his last commune article that weren't corrected.

To Future Bob's credit, he did prevent the noxious gas attack of December, 2001; the death of celebrity Tom Cruise at the hands of a gay lover; and the publication of Oprah Winfrey's Sex book.

Future Bob extends his deepest sympathies and sorrows to Wellstone's family, friends, and constituents, and hopes he can do more in the past (your future) to change history for the better. Please do not bog him down with e-mails questioning why he cannot change the past at any point in time from where he is now, it is a miserable experience trying to explain how the timeline and time travel works and it costs a lot of money to keep his futuristic past-broadcasting ham radio operating.

Once again, Future Bob is called upon to report to Long John Silver's for his first shift. Until next time, guard the country like the future depends on it—mine does. Future Bob signing off.

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First off, I wanted to apologize to our newly loyal readers about the comments form not working, I know some people have been trying to use it but something is messed up the code, so all that comes through is nonsense about Viagra and oatmeal cookies.

But more importantly: Orgasmic news, everyone! I’ve found Raoul Dunkin! I know, that phrase has never before in the world been uttered. I kid, Raoul, just a little old-school commune humor. But seriously, you could peel me off the ceiling when I got an anonymous tip on our commune reunition hotline (1-800-COM-MMIE) the other day saying that Raoul had been running a political news and commentary site called www.spankrag.com until it recently folded, and since then he’s been bagging groceries at a Pamida in Scottsdale. Before you could say "Spankwhat?" I was down at the library digging up a Scottsdale phonebook and within hours I had Dunkin himself on the line. After seventeen minutes of explaining who I was, Mr Dunkin’s memory was violently jogged. And better yet, he agreed to join forces with me at the commune redux! On the condition that I get the word out about the Spankrag saga. And so I’ll waste no time doing that, here in Raoul Dunkin’s own words:

"Although the website did fail, I disagree wholeheartedly with those who claim it was because of the name. Some insist that Spankrag.com was an inappropriate name for a cutting-edge political news site, but that’s only because they didn’t understand the name’s many clever layers of meaning. I chose the word "spank" because I wanted my site to spank the forces of ignorance and oppression with the big, meaty palm of information. And I chose the "rag" part to express my rage at the status quo and the complacency of everyday Americans in the face of having their rights stripped away one by one. To answer the obvious question, yes, I did originally want to name the site www.spankrage.com, but this was already taken by a pornography website."

Welcome back, Raoul! I have it on good authority Mr Dunkin will be providing us with cutting-edge news content for the commune in the exceedingly near future. Which is a good thing, because I had tried my hand at penning some news pieces myself to fill the gap and they were so terrible my neighbor’s dog broke into my bedroom and ate them. So I guess the world will never know about the disturbing goings-on down at the Shanesly Senior Center’s shuffleboard courts. Perhaps it’s all for the best, some news is so dark it serves no useful purpose other than to turn one’s soul away from the light.

In lighter news, I also found Roland McShyster! Sort of. I was buying some milk down at the Safeway when I realized there was a wet sheet of paper stuck to the carton. It wasn’t even glued on or anything, just stuck on because the milk carton was wet. All the milks had them. And as I squinted to make out the waterlogged type, I suddenly realized I was reading Mr. McShyster’s inimitable take on the art of modern cinema. Holy moley! (Seriously, spellcheck? You’ve never heard of moley?) I instantly bought three cartons of milk and raced home to upload Roland’s column to the website. After I got home I realized all three were the same, so now I have a shitload of milk for nothing, but it was still worth it to see the Safeway manager’s face when I casually name-dropped that I know the guy who’s been sticking movie reviews to their milk. You can imagine he was impressed. He was less thrilled that I didn’t know where Roland could be located, and my memory was too poor to provide an accurate sketch they could give to the store’s security guards, but I still think my stock has gone way up at the local Safeway.

If you have a tip about where more ex-commune staffers might be hiding, and for some reason have something against telephones (not that I blame you), I encourage you to let your fingers do the talking. Email me at Emil_Zender_remove the space, add the year Spain achieved independence times three, apologies if I don’t get back to you right away, sometimes I mix up that date in my mind, for like a month I thought it was 1847, I don’t know why I thought that, it was just weird, but anyway I couldn’t get into my gmail for a whole month until I realized that wasn’t the date at all… wait, isn’t that the date? Shit, now I’m confused again@gmail.com. Sorry for all the subterfuge but you have to be careful about Spam these days, Hormel will send entire cases of that nasty crap to anyone who isn’t careful with their info online.

This is really happening, folks! Get in on the ground floor so you can say you were here when the commune rose from the ashes like a crack fiend who had fallen asleep on the couch!

Zincerely,

Emil Zender

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"God and I have an understanding. I don't argue He doesn't exist and he won't argue it about me."

You know how some people are really smart but they're no good at tests? I'm like that—no good at tests. I'm not good at remembering stuff or thinking of things real fast either, and I'm not really good at coming up with ideas of my own or knowing things that people just sort of know. But I'm really bad at tests.

Some people call it test anxiety, like where you get really worried about how you're going to do and forget all the stuff you know. But that's not it. I mean, if I knew the stuff and forgot it, that would be bad enough, but I have no clue what they're talking about. One teacher tried to tell me I was dyslexic, but I told him I don't really go to church at all. I can't believe God would be such a dick, if He exists, and take away all my knowledge of everything just to be spiteful. If that's the way he's going to be about it, I'm never going to church. Just to be spiteful.

I have gone to church before, technically. You always hear about how a church is supposed to be a place where anybody is welcome at any time of day or night, no restrictions, but they're just hypocrites. Next time you're driving home Sunday morning with a little whiskey still sloshing around in your gut drive up the steps and into their doors while the dude, the what you call him, is giving his big God speech. See if you'll be welcome then. I can tell you first hand you won't.

Every once in a while I feel bad about what I've done, or what I am, or the box of Cracker Jacks I got that didn't have no surprise in it, but it's not like I need someone to tell me it's God's plan or something dumb to make me feel better. It doesn't make any more sense to me that God thinks it's funny there's no prize in my snacks exactly when I'm in the mood for a lick-on tattoo.

Just for laughs I went to a church once and the church guy there told me they were full. It didn't sound full, that's what I told him. He said it wasn't full, but they were closed for the holidays, and he didn't want to hurt my feelings. Then he pushed me off the steps and ran back inside. I could hear him locking the doors and him and his friends were laughing. What do you call them? Monks?

I guess I could take better tests if I read books and such. I tried reading the Bible but all that "begat" stuff really pissed me off. They introduce like a hundred and something characters in the first few pages. I'm not much of a reader, but I can tell you that's the kind of bad writing that can keep your screenplay from being produced. I still read about five pages of it, two columns on each, and then nobody ever tested me on it. So you can see why I don't ever want to read a book again just because they say there's going to be a test on it. You never know, they're probably lying.

Nine out of ten times they aren't, yeah. Maybe even ninety-nine out of 100. But reading, you know… it's boring.

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