Senator Mysteriously Defies Time, Lives in 1950s

ust when you thought the limits of science were established—girl, look out! Here comes Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the politician who magically defies the change of time and remains stuck in the 1950s.

Santorum alerted the rest of America, scared and turbulent, but still living in the year 2003, when he stated in an interview printed last Monday that the Supreme Court would endorse incest and other immoralities if they overturned a Texas sodomy law the Court is hearing.

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything," said the senator living in the decade of the TV dinner and TV westerns.

Some Democrats and fellow Republicans have denounced the senator's remarks and asked for his resignation, worried that living in a time period of 50 years ago would interfere with Santorum's ability to keep informed in current issues. Key Republican party leaders have guaranteed to study the senator closely and divulge his knowledge of important government and cultural stuff.

"I guarantee you," said a personal aide to Santorum, Jeff Richards, "the senator is in full control of his faculties and knows what year it is. I can't explain any more than that. I've seen the TV on in his house, I assume he must get the news and the usual programs… he's just somehow filtered them out." Girl, I tell you, that Richards gave this reporter the eye. Beep beep on the gaydar, that's all I'm saying.

Few from the scientific community have stepped forward to explain, though a group at Harvard's Department of Quantum Mechanics are posing theories of collapsing personal wormholes. Psychologists from around the world are seeking medical background from Santorum's representatives, particularly interested in previous incidents of head trauma or hallucinations. The extremely early onset of Alzheimer's has not been ruled out.

Other theories have been offered, but not yet fully explored. My girl Ladyboy Smacky, she say Santorum look just like this guy pick her up three nights in a row last April and call her "Mommy" while she dress up like Martha Washington, but that guy had a mustache and was in Frisco, but she swear that dude Santorum so deep in the closet he sittin' on the box to a Colecovision.

Despite the failure to pinpoint the source of Santorum's confusion, others are stressing the importance of bringing him up to date with the year 2003 before it becomes a problem.

"We have 50 years of history to cover with the senator, so obviously we'll have to pick highlights," said Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Chicago and real sweetie Isis Oviate. "We should start with telling him World War II is over—more than likely he knows, but we shouldn't take chances. The geographical maps and political make-up of the world should be explained slowly so he knows all of that, about Stalin's death and, eventually, the fall of the Soviet Union, of course. We would hate to offend an ally with some disparaging remarks against Russia. We'll tell him all about Iraq, but one thing at a time. Take it slowly. The sexual revolution alone ought to leave him quaking in his wingtips. Maybe we'll just sum up the Kinsey Report and see how he responds to that."

Appeals Court Rules Hilton Legitimately Too Pretty to Survive Prison

Climatologists Cross Legs Uncomfortably at Mention of Bangkok Conference

Merck: “Crazy-Ass Brazil Giving AIDS Drugs to People With No Money”

Poison Probe Reveals 90% of Packaged Foods Actually Dog Food

There's nothing quite like a global controversy to really bring an Olympic Games to the next level. Every Games worth its wound full of salt has at least one memorable knee-whacking or equestrian sex scandal to its name. This year the brouhaha has been all about the pairs figure skating championship that saw the Russians Anton Sikharulidze and Elena Berezhnaya take the gold over Canadians David Pelletier and Jamie Sale, in spite of the fact that Sikharulidze tripped over his own untied shoelaces and his partner farted loudly when she was lifted over his head during the routine's finale.

Scandal raged when allegations surfaced that French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne had been coerced to vote for the Russians after the Russian judge threatened to single-handedly conquer France. This prompted the French government to double their defense budget and send Le Gougne, a neurotic housewife who always votes for her janitor husband in political elections, the cryptic message "GIVE RUSSIANS SEX". Unfortunately for the Canadians, and possibly the Russian judge, "sex" is also French for "six" and Le Gougne misinterpreted the message by giving the Russian figure skaters a perfect score. The Chinese and Ukrainian judges also voted for the Russians, reportedly because Chinese and Ukrainian people think farts are funny.

Topical as such scandal may be, it's hardly anything new. We need look no further than the Summer Games of two years ago to find the last Olympic falderal to quake the globe. In the 2000 Summer Games, scandal cropped up around the gymnastics meet when disgruntled workers botched the equipment set-up by making the uneven bars even, the rings uneven, and setting up a leather loveseat instead of the short vault. Look back even further and you'll find that the Olympic trail of travesty is alarmingly well marked.

Rarely is archery the source of Olympic controversy, which made it all the more shocking in 1926 when Poland's Frederyk Speitzel errantly picked up his bow backwards and shot bronze medallist Fonzlow Proust of Germany in the neck while he was browsing a catering tray set up behind the contestants. From that day forward, bow safety certification has been required of all Olympic contestants in the archery event.

In 1930, Pierre Altmount of France was stripped of his gold medal in the high jump after it was discovered that he'd planted explosive charges in the heels of his shoes. Few could forget the emotional scene when the Olympic Commissioner stood at the side of the hospital bed and slipped the gold from around Pierre's comatose body.

In 1954 the equestrian show jumping event was won by what turned out to be two Bulgarians in a horse suit, who later apologized, said they'd learned their lesson, and asked if they could both be considered co-champions. Instead they were shot and made into a potted meat dessert by the IOC.

In perhaps the most infamous judging decision ever, the 1962 gold medal in the high-jump event was awarded to the German Hans Hansel, who suffered a brain aneurysm and died instantly while in mid-jump. Though his body flopped like a tuna under the bar and off the corner of the mat, judges argued that Hans' soul shot straight up to heaven, setting a new record for the event.

Few can forget 1966, the year that Austrian Molmo Zoop won the synchronized swimming event all by himself, sparking a heated debate over whether one should be rewarded for being supremely in synch with oneself.

An eerie harbinger of things to come, in 1986 table-tennis favorite Tang Zui was taken out of competition when a deranged fan pulled Zui's underwear up around his armpits and gave his ear a merciless flicking, an injury from which Zui never fully recovered. That year the gold went instead to Zui's rival Chaney "Dweebasaurus" Clarkson, who rose to the occasion in spite of having his arm twisted and his lunch money taken from him only moments before the championship match.

The lesser controversies of Olympic history are too numerous to mention, among them: the infamous "Ding Dong Incident" at the 1956 men's hockey final, the international vomiting incident in 2000 when Garth Brooks' hit song Shameless was played before the men's gymnastics preliminaries, Norwegian belching champion Leif Olafassen's alleged use of bicarbonates in the 1936 Games, the polyester running pants fire during the 1974 Games, the controversial inclusion of professional shot putters in the 1960 Games, the alleged rope-greasing of the 1982 German men's tug-of-war team, and the much-debated victory of the Canadian curling team in the 1972 Games, who defeated their only competitor in the Albanian men's team, then took the Albanians' money in a "double or nothing" match that was clearly a set-up.

A little knowledge of history helps put things in perspective and goes to show that even though a corrupt and ridiculous judging system may be a total bummer for skating fans, at least they didn't let any bears get loose on the ice like back in 1926. Talk about your low technical scores! It may not always be pretty, but the Olympics truly have come a long way, baby.º more columns

There is a very tricky method for applying a neutral shadow to animal consciousness. If a lion could talk, it would be too low for humans to hear, but he would tell the story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived. If we could hear him, which we can't. Duh. Squirrels don't warn the bourgeois because they find their hairstyles threatening and their accents an act of war. They're not seeing your make-up, they're seeing remarkable cariboo and gnats from Dusseldorf. According to the latest Gallup poll, at least. It also said that global warming actually makes you a better feminist and helps with Windows 95 conflicts. Though regardless I still can't get these birth control pills to load. The moon's reflective quality made the crab nervous so he took up smoking Virginia Slims, he was still using Windows 3.1. The lion whispered in my ear and it sounded like he said I needed to write a book called "Chicken Soup for Assholes", that it would sell like hotcakes. It was either that or "get me out of these hotpants", he was quite a mumbler.

You will affect the president's ability to act decisively in a crisis. Try again later.º more columns