hursday night’s presidential debate between John Kerry and George W. Bush had a strong ratings showing, and allowed the candidates to outline their future platforms, especially regarding foreign policy and Iraq. However, no candidate clearly fumbled the ball and shot himself in the foot with his big mouth, meaning the disappointing debate ended without a clear loser.

With a month left to go before the election, the debate provided one of the most visible opportunities for either of the two leading candidates to piss the election down his leg, whether through a verbal slip-up, a glaring faux pas, or farting directly into the microphone. Some election-watchers speculate the senior Bush performed just such a metaphorical gas outburst in 1992, when during a debate with future president Bill Clinton, he resignedly checked his watch to see if it was over. In Thursday’s debate, though he made some gas-appropriate faces, the second Bush, nor his opponent, did anything to completely obliterate their chances of election.

Most watchers generally felt the debate favored Kerry, who went on the offensive early and avoided appearing dead through much of it. The president, though being on the offensive, even managed to show a passing familiarity with the language long enough to fend off Kerry’s attacks and reiterated his platform that Iraq is safer today, unless you’re an Iraqi, since his administration got rid of Saddam Hussein. The word "beheading" somehow managed to stay out of the conversation.

While Kerry did not outline an escape plan for Iraq, he guaranteed he would bring in more European countries who hate Bush to help shoulder the responsibility for rebuilding the country and setting up its new puppet government. Not stated, but implied, was Kerry’s continuing the Democratic plan to not invade countries just for their resources. At least not overtly.

Recent polls exhibit Kerry’s apparent dominance in the debate. The numbers have again turned for the Democrat, showing he now holds a smidgen of a lead over the president among those polled, whoever the hell they are, showing 49% of them were more likely t vote for Kerry in a two-way race, versus 46% for Bush; in a three-way race with Ralph Nader, 47% favored Kerry, 45% favoring Bush, and whatever’s left over going for Nader or some weird-ass third-party candidate. In a three-way race with a well-dressed monkey, the president fared much worse, with 49% holding for Kerry, 40% preferring Bush, and 11% wanting to hear the monkey’s plans for improving the economy.

The same polls endorsed Kerry’s debate showing, as 61% feeling Kerry had won the debate, as opposed to a deluded 19% who believed the president had dominated. The remaining 20% thought C.S.I. really went to shit this week.

Still, the lack of a clear loser means, according to some, we’re still in the midst of one of the tightest presidential races in history, and time is running out for a candidate to win over the confidence of a large majority of the public.

"On one hand," said Professor Norm Chauncey of Newark University, some guy who watched the debate at the bus station with this reporter, "President Bush has failed to credibly justify his overextended military actions in the Middle East, as well as an economy that doesn’t seem to be improving. And on the other side of the table, you have John Kerry—a guy somehow failing to convince the entire nation he would not be a worse president than George W. Bush. We’re looking at a couple of real losers here."

The professor outlined his plan for America, if he were to become president, as we awaited the arrival of the 11:05 to Flatbush.

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A Gonit on a sled
races home to his bed
through the colon of a whale
sleeping on a bed of shale
snoring gently, without fail.

Through corridors the green sled slid
past hooks and nooks
where blue snails hid
by toreadors who long debated
how they'd come to be located
improbably, deep in these innards
and who was singing that Lynard Skynard.

The Gonit's sled shot past the belly
where several ships swayed in the jelly
each one's crew singing quite loudly
a different tune, and they sang it proudly
all except for an alien saucer
who's crew sat glumly, reading Chaucer.

And from the stomach's cavernous walls
sounded pounding, and muffled calls
to keep it down, we're trying to sleep
and we hope you drown, you bleepity-bleep.

The Gonit slid
the Gonit slipped
past a half-digested ship
and a clam who had the grippe
and a drunk who was quite ripped.

A school of sturgeons
were seen merging
with a herd of white sea horses
and a jar of jellyfish changing courses.

A submarine was wedged between
an obese dolphin and a walrus,
six antelopes who'd caught a virus
squeezed by in search of mint papyrus.

And still the Gonit sped along
from colonic locations far and yon
through endless twisting tubes and tunnels
that slowly narrowed like a pink funnel.

The tunnel's subtle turn and twist
lulled the Gonit like a hypnotist
and his eyes began to droop
by the three-hundredth loop-the-loop.

First he nodded, then he dazed,
his eyes took on a glassy glaze
as he began to dream and dream of sleeping
because quite shut his eyes were creeping.

Into a Gonit dreamscape he sweetly slipped
as his body slouched forward and his round head dipped,
a move he regretted, there can be no doubt,
when he missed his turn and was pooped right out.

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The most important thing we need to get clear right now is that Omar Bricks did not set the commune's roof on fire. When historians tell the story of the commune and why the whole goddamned building probably burnt down, they'd better not turn to the Bricks Excuse as a convenient solution to their own damned laziness. This has happened all too often already. Every last piece of furniture from the offices of our downstairs neighbors at Crochet! magazine goes missing one day, then turns up on eBay being sold in a "Readymade Office" auction by somebody called chxdigbrx, and all of a sudden I'm a prime suspect. Or somebody takes apart Red Bagel's new car, piece by piece, rebuilds it in his office, then wipes out into the hallway tearing mid-office donuts in the middle of the night and nobody bothers to look beyond the suspect whose wallet was found on the floorboards. Do you have any idea how many wallets I have? I can't keep track of that shit. It was probably still there from the time I tried to fit Bagel's car in the elevator as a surprise birthday present. Use your heads, people.

Any armchair Columbo worth his weight in assfat can see that the roof fire was obviously the work of Crochet! operatives. Do you think it's any coincidence that the fire was started on the roof, insuring that it'll hit our floor first, long before it ever gets to those Crochet! bastards and their precious fire-fuel-free empty offices? I think not. And who but those diabolical Crochet! skunks would think to plan it so deviously and so perfectly, to make it look like my roof-mounted potato cannon and homemade generator were the culprits? Hell, they almost had me convinced, that's how good they are. When I was up there last night, shooting potatoes out into the Flatbush night and reveling in the sweet music of airborne, starchy chaos, at first I thought it was cool as hell when the cannon started shooting those flaming spuds. Hell yeah! It wasn't part of the design, no, but some of life's greatest gifts are happy accidents like that, like the time I figured out you can sharpen your knives just by tying them to shoelaces and dragging them behind your bumper while tearing ass around the neighborhood.

But I hadn't shot more than seven or eight beautifully flammable taters arching out into the night sky before I realized those Crochet! bastards had somehow snuck in behind me, probably while I was trying to hit that hot air balloon, and had set the whole goddamned roof on fire. I got a few more shots off, no use in wasting a perfectly good potato cannon that wasn't likely to survive the fire, before I discovered the much more important fact that my shoes were on fire. Time to go.

I didn't sleep all that well last night, since I'd really liked those shoes. But the day just went from bad to worse when I got to work this morning and noticed that the building was still on fire. Everyone at the commune offices was still going about business as usual, and nobody had called the fire department because we aint a bunch of lousy snitches. The Crochet! staff was gone, big surprise there. Funny how they always seem to know when the building's on fire or dangerously brimming over with asbestos and radon.

I imagine we're going to have to evacuate at some point, once the fire sprinklers run out of water. They can't last too much longer, since we turn them on all the time when it's hot. I can't say I'll be sad to go, all those gay-assed solar panels Ramrod Hurley had installed on the roof smell like tofu when they burn, so it smells like healthy death in here. I've spent most of the morning throwing shit out the windows to save it from the fire. Okay, I've been throwing shit at the people below evacuating the building, but you can bet your ass none of those computers or fax machines or things are going to burn up in the fire, either. That's called multi-tasking.

Hold up, the rest of the staff has been playing hide-and-seek in the smoke and apparently I'm it now. I want to see how long they'll hide if I just leave and don't tell anybody. Wish me luck. Bricks out.

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