Hamas Leader Demands One True Ring

September 29, 2003

Gaza City, Palestine

Snapper McGee

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin waits in line with other costumed fans for the 2001 premiere of LoTR: The Fellowship of the Ring

heikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of the Islamic militant movement Hamas, came out of hiding today to reject calls for a cease-fire with Israel. Yassin instead issued an impassioned demand that he be given the "Ring of Power," with which the Muslim cleric would rule the hearts of men and bring about Mideast peace through the total annihilation of all who would oppose him.

The wheelchair-bound militant leader spoke at a Gaza City mosque, flanked by Hamas bodyguards while making his first public appearance since nearly being killed earlier this week during Israeli air strikes.

"The time for playing games has ended," announced Yassin, gesturing to his rickety wheelchair with a resigned shrug.

"Israel can take my legs, but we will take the legs of their country! And eat them, like they were legs of chickens. Delicious Israeli chicken legs!" shouted Yassin, rubbing his tummy in a satisfied gesture. The largely Muslim crowd present cheered to show their support for chicken.

"And we will eat their wings and nuggets when we are done feasting on the drumsticks of oppression!" Yassin continued, making a face described by several onlookers as "kinda goofy-crazy."

Hamas has refused to give up its arms and join the government of incoming Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei, citing the August 22nd assassination of Hamas co-founder Ismail Abu Shanab as the latest unpardonable gaffe in Israeli-Hamas relations.

"In spite of the truce, the Israeli enemy did not stop its aggression, its massacres and its destructions for one moment after we bombed that bus full of children," added Yassin, refreshingly devoid of irony.

"Israel continues their aggressions and the United States has declared war on Islam," Yassin explained, referring to U.S. President Bush's recent "Let's Go to War with Islam" speech. "But Islam will be victorious, because it is stronger than Bush and his country. Or at least it will be once I have the One True Ring and take my place as the King of All Men. The infidels will scatter like cockroaches because I will be a huge Muslim man and they will be small like cockroaches, and I will be stomping on them. Look out."

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat expressed regret that discussions with Hamas leaders had taken this unfortunate turn into Lord of the Rings-themed dementia, greatly complicating hopes for stability and a lasting peace in the region.

Meanwhile, a group of 27 Israeli air force reserve pilots signed a petition refusing to carry out air strikes against Palestinian targets, citing apprehension about being on the wrong side when Yassin "gets that ring and starts kicking wholesale ass like an unstoppable 9-foot-tall voodoo zealot."

the commune news once made our own play for the Ring of Power, but were foiled when the ring-bearer we intercepted turned out to be an adorable tot gone missing from a local wedding. Still waiting for him to be claimed, by the way. Long-dead reporter Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown has finally found a useful niche at the commune, serving as the only reporter on staff who can find the Middle East on a map and is still willing to travel there. Refreshingly, he also has no issue with the legroom in coach.

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July 7, 2003

The Acting-Editor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea

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I open this column with a firm and hearty, "Thanks, dicks." This is not directed to you dicks reading at home, but to the dicks who neglected to inform me Red Bagel had returned and the commune staff was operating normally under his rule again. I was barricaded in that office since May, fearing swift and brutal retaliation, while at any time someone could have knocked on the door and said I was merely demoted again. True, I probably would have considered it an attempt to lure me out and not believed them, but it was worth a shot.

It's all meaningless what-iffery by now, since I was forced to come out to use a regular rest room after my coffee can filled up, and noticed the staff laughing rather than lunging at me with swords and daggers. When I asked, someone even told me Bagel had annexed the floor above us for his own new office, and I could have the dank dungeon I had made my own since January, if the smell of human waste didn't nauseate me. It doesn't, so I thank Bagel's kindness and take it as a minor promotion for all my good work in his stead.

As you can tell by all this, I'm no longer a big deal around the commune offices. But from what I understand, if the door to the office had been open when Bagel returned I would have been castrated and choked with a frayed electrical cord, so waiting had its advantages as well. After enough time, and self-prescribed morphine, Bagel was back in a friendly mood and decided to merely demote me to King of Dinks, a title which Raoul Dunkin had to relinquish to me.

Some could see it as failure, but I look at it as an inverted success. Sometimes you have to fall back to the bottom of the ladder and start your career over to move ahead. And that's what I'm doing at the commune. Also, as you can see, I was mightily addicted to sharing my thoughts with the readers after months of filling in on Bagel's "Or So You Thought" column, so I decided to introduce my new rotating column "Poop of the Century." True, I wanted a regular semi-weekly feature like Finger or Bricks, but it was Bagel's suggestion I do a periodic column or sit on it and rotate, hence the idea. He was right, too; now that I'm freed of the duties of Acting-Editor I can return to my first love, masturbationâ€”I mean, reporting. Sitting in my smelly office writing columns all day isn't my style, at least Bagel says so.

Unfortunately, the call to write a column is muddled with the call to prove to the world I'm not dead, so that's mostly what this beginner's column is about. It's important I get my Social Security number reinstated so I can find a new apartment and re-open my bank account. Personally, I'd hoped someone at the commune might have mentioned I was in the office and hadn't been killed on the job as the death certificate said, but in fairness, as Lil Duncan said, everyone was extremely busy trying to bust the piÃ±ata when the investigators dropped by.

Don't expect this little corner of the commune to be another self-indulgent crybaby's story of the little things in life that piss him off. Let the other columnists engage in that ego-stroking. Ramrod Hurley is interested in tackling the bigger issues of the day, and blowing your mind in the process. That's a lot to do in one column, one particular edition might have more blowing and less issue-tackling, but in general I'll try to mix the two well enough.

I just hope you readers are into getting tackled and blown.º more columns

March 1, 2004

Gay-Rod and the Yankee Growth Hormone

º Last Column: That's a Great Merkin, Charlie Hustle
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Well, it's official, Alex Rodriguez is now a Yankee and that guy chanting "Hey Gay-Rod!" from the outfield seats will have a Boston accent this year. In a move that many are comparing to the last time Yankees owner George Steinbrenner bought whoever the hell he wanted for his team, a few weeks ago, the Yanks have once again stockpiled enough expensive but boring players to ensure their annual subway stop at the playoffs, and inevitable shitty demise at the hands of some little league team from Scranton, Ohio. Teeth have been gnashed, gripes registered, and the Pittsburgh Pirates have gracefully dropped out of the race during their first spring training workout. Early word that the Brewers have surrendered to the French could not be confirmed as of press time.

Regardless, another season will begin, hopes will be dashed, and someone, somewhere, will actually root for the Yankees. This is likely to be the same guy who roots for Microsoft and the Harlem Globetrotters, but we all have our self-esteem issues to contend with.

Meanwhile, Barry Bonds continues to deny taking steroids, despite his personal trainer being caught with enough steroids to grow another Bonds from scratch. But we're all innocent until proven guilty, and Bonds' denial is entirely plausible coming from a mutant so large he could destroy you for suggesting he wasn't born with eyebrow muscles the size of a normal human's thighs. Bonds instead credits his cartoonish physique to workouts so intense they caused his skull to grow into the size and shape of a football helmet and gave him a chest that seats four. Later, the always-ebullient Bonds charmed reporters with a lighthearted display of bat breaking across his chiseled crotch.

Yankee slugger and fellow steroid defendant Jason Giambi showed up for spring training looking like Shaggy from the old Scooby Doo cartoons, claiming that an improved fast-foodless diet and a new commitment to working out over the offseason helped him shed fifty pounds of muscle and the excess Wendy's fat that was making his head look like it belonged on a He-Man doll. Giambi is looking reasonably human now, though he does occasionally answer reporters' questions out of a small mouth he's grown on his back. The news is good for Yankees fans, however. Whatever home-run power that is likely to be lost by the Bronx slugger shedding his second "overcoat" layer of Michelin Man muscles is likely to be made up for by the decreased likelihood that Giambi's knees will fall off mid-season like they did last year, unable to support the massive pile of Manwich stacked atop his puny human skeletal structure.

Another accused performance drug-abuser, the lovely Gary Sheffield of the Yankees, attempted to disprove steroid claims by huffing three ounces of cocaine and beating a reporter senseless with a toilet seat. Though all present were convinced of his claims, it remains to be seen whether Sheffield will be able to charm the sportsgoing public in the same way.

What does it all mean, if anything, in the big picture? Is there any point when fans will turn their backs, refusing to pay out their fickle dollars to watch a bunch of thick-necked science experiments freebasing human Miracle-Gro, trying to slap baseballs into the grandstands with their bare hands? Will there be anyone left in the stands to notice when the Yankees, a baseball team on steroids with a bulging neckline and $200 million payroll, finally acquire the last of the All-Stars? I can't speak for anyone else, but I'll be there, cheering as always. I want to see these guys tear each other apart and eat each other alive when the psychotic part of their drug cycles kick in. We could be talking about some serious Roman times here, plus hot dogs.

And that sure beats the snot out of network TV in my book.

º Last Column: That's a Great Merkin, Charlie Hustle
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Quote of the Day

“What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is. Jesus, I'm wasted.”

-Dan Quayle

Fortune 500 Cookie

Don't stop thinking about tomorrowâ€”we hear if you're late to your own castration they charge double. Anyone can be a hero to a small child, just buy a monster truck and never take your sunglasses off. Try eating more greens: we find it hilarious and it pisses off those asshole golfers. This week's lucky medical procedures not covered by Medicaid: assectomy, therapeutic genital massage, gene therapy for "itchy taint," installation of a second "failsafe" spare heartâ€”baboon or otherwise, and goat removal.

Try again later.

Least-Anticipated Holiday Movies

1.	Miracle in an Alley Behind 34th Street
2.	Walking in a Winter Wonderbra
3.	It Would Be a Wonderful Life if I WasnÃt So Suicidal
4.	Christ, itÃs Christmas Already
5.	Frosty the Snow Dealer

North Korea Pissed Their Real-Life Hunger Games Nowhere Near as Popular as Movie

BY Roland McShyster

5/12/2003

Time to stretch whatever you need to stretch, America, we're gearing up for the Summer Blockbuster season. Take your time, though, since nothing looks worse on a time-off request form than the term "pulled scrotum." Ouch. Once you're good and loose we'll warm up with a few of the opening salvos in this summer's "War Against Just Staying Home and Downloading MP3s All the Time," as the industry has dubbed it. Or as we like to call it here, "Operation: Rehash."

In Theaters

The Lizzie McGuire Movie

Leave it to Disney to put a happy-assed spin on anything, including the bitch who chop-sueyed her family with an axe and then wrote a song about it. Equal parts American Bandstand Psycho, Britney's Dance Barmitzfa and every Nickelodeon movie ever, the film is a singing, dancing, cute-boy-kissing good time that pauses briefly for ass-chopping parent slaughter mayhem between the mall shopping spree and a hilarious visit to Buckingham Palace. It's all in good fun, but I warn you that if this one does well, an animated Disney musical about the Holocaust is sure to follow. Scoff all you want, but I'd bet cash money they've got sketches of singing showerheads and songs like "Life's a Gas" waiting in the wings.

Owning Mahowny

Eventually you have to stop numbering Police Academy sequels since people are going to start thinking the title refers to the name of a submarine or something and get confused. So you have to applaud the producers of the series for heading that train-wreck off at the pass by naming Police Academyâ€¦ whatever number this is Owning Mahowny instead. Sure, the premise is some bullshit about an eligible-bachelor auction gone wrong, but at least they had the good sense to leave Steve Guttenberg in the deep freeze and instead tap pudgy white chameleon Philip "Feed Me Seymour" Dustin Hoffman for the role. The resulting movie still sucks, but it sucks in a different way than you'd expect.

The Real Cancun

Just when you think the girls have gone as wild as they're going to go, the big smut machine in the sky serves up another steaming helping of underage skank. The real question isn't when we as a culture are going to get enough of seeing the same drunk 17-year-old's well-traveled funbags. It's when are the religious weirdos going to run out of abortion clinics to bomb and have to turn their attention to Sony and Bicardi, the major contributors to this home video skankery? Unfortunately it won't happen any time soon, not while being opposed to anything disgusting is still considered unpatriotic. Instead, I predict 10 years from now we'll have a reality show about these loose co-eds trying to keep their fiancÃ©es from catching wind of the cock-soaked debauchery of their youth at their own bachelor parties. Now there's some potential for drama.

Whale Rider

Probably as topical as a movie can get, this tear-jerker revolves around one grieving family's battle to collect on their departed father's life insurance policy, even though he voided the thing by eclipsing the policy's gross tonnage ceiling as specified in the little-known "Whale Rider" of the title. A probing drama that asks important questions about where to draw the line between just really goddamned fat and legally culpable obesity. In the end, we learn that a person who's made themselves too fat to breathe is still a person, and love knows no gross tonnage ceiling.

X2: X-Men United

Even a cynical Hollywood insider such as myself dropped his Maxim when he heard they were doing the sequel to Spike Lee's Malcolm X as a comic book action movie. That takes some serious AC/DC-sized balls, my friends. Even Ben Kingsley's nasty turn in the controversial Gandhi sequel Sexy Beast pales in comparison to these robust cajones. Man. But in all fairness, when you think about it, the notion of racial justice being restored in America by a crew of ass-kicking circus freaks of confusingly mixed ancestry just seems like common sense. Sure, they made both magnet-assed Malcolm and his wheelchair-bound arch-nemesis Professor MLK a little too white in an attempt to sell them to suburban moviegoers, but if people are going to insist that skin color doesn't matter, then they really shouldn't complain when everybody in the movies is white. That's a little hypocritical when you think about it. Regardless, even with the unfortunate product tie-in angle of making Werewolf a pilot for United Airlines in his spare time, the film did kick a lot of ass-shaped racial injustice.

And that's the that we were here to deal with this week, Americanos. Now you've got only 14 short days to prepare yourself for your next dose of Entertainment Police, so get preparing! If you don't think that's enough time, well that's just tough. I used to accept reader requests to postpone the column in the past, if they were for a good reason, but it soon degraded to requests like "You suck!" and "Up your mother's ass!" so now we just stick to the strict biweekly schedule. Sorry a few rotten apples had to ruin the pie-pocket for everyone.