he entire Middle East got a warm fuzzy this week when leaders of Iran and Syria, two of the many points on President Bush's "Pinwheel of Evil," announced to everyone they were "best friends." Any attempt to attack one, the united leaders warned, would mean an attack on the other.

The announcement came shortly before a promise by Israel to "kick ass and take names" in Syria if the bombing of a Tel Aviv nightclub on Saturday could be traced back to the country. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon held a finger purposefully in the air for a moment, with the pledge that, "Seriously, we are no longer fucking around with you guys."

On Saturday morning, however, before the news of the night club bombing (Great White have so far not been implicated), Syrian Prime Minister Naji al-Otari and Iranian President Mohammad "Oh, Mammy" Khatami stood together, arms around each other's shoulders, and announced to a crowd their nations were "best friends."

"Make no mistake: We love these fuckers," said Khatami, shaking buddy al-Otari quite forcefully. "Anyone raises their hand to strike my brother, it will quite honestly be the opening of a great can of whup-ass. I cannot wait to pound on the infidel who would come between myself and my bro Huge Naj. Or, for that matter, between any member of our country and theirs. The same goes true for us all, on both sides of the border."

"That's right," affirmed al-Otari. "No one puts a hurting on this bitch but me." The two party leaders then engaged in playful shoving on the platform, as the crowd of Syrian and Iranian nationals cheered them on and blew raspberries.

The thinly-veiled threat of retaliation against any country who strikes one or the other worried some analysts, who had been much more at ease with the notions of larger, more well-armed nations batting around the individual nations of Syria or Iran like flies. Together, the two pose a slightly greater threat, like batting around a flying pig or some airborne equivalent, but others reason that it remains to be seen whether the proclamation of friendship is so much talk.

Pentagon Defense Strategist Michael Compt elaborated for the commune.

"As an historian on the alliances of rogue nations," said Compt, "I can only wonder: What the hell were the voters on American Idol thinking when they kicked off Jennifer Hudson? However, this has nothing to do with my field of expertise. So I instead illustrate with historical examples how claims of unified fronts between countries have seldom stood up to real tests. One that comes to mind quickly, was the 'friendship to beat all' Cambodia had with Vietnam. True, both countries ended up going to war with the United States, but only after Cambodia loudly declared Vietnam has misrepresented its intentions."

For other examples, Compt also cited the "private club" effect when Germany, Italy, and Japan formed their original Axis powers, only to have the alliance fall apart quickly when the group eventually broke up over creative differences. Other noteworthy failed enterprises included when the Soviet Union declared China its "soul mate," only to have the two break up years later, when the Soviets accused the Chinese of being incapable of love.

"It's one thing if a country says it has your back in a fight when things are all Jim Dandy," said Compt, doing a little two-step with his feet to punctuate his point, "but really stick with each other through thick and thin, that's a hard thing to find. It's not the same thing as when two countries are really meant to be together, like East and West Germany. Sure, they have the occasional fight—but what they got, that's true nationalism."

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Hi Grandpa. Mom wanted me to write to tell you that I'm not mad at you anymore for what happened at my birthday party. She says that you probably didn't mean to have a giant heart attack right when everybody was just starting to have fun. She says that I should learn to not be so selfish and learn to consider other people. But I don't know. It's not like it was anybody else's birthday.

Mom says I should forgive you even though my birthday party was a total bomb after the whole heart attack thing. She says I'll have another birthday next year, but I only have one Grandpa. But I bet none of those kids that were there this year will come back next year. Not after they got dicked out of a pony ride and ice cream cake and everything when you collapsed into the cake table. I don't think anyone was having much fun while we were standing around waiting for the ambulance to come, and I think it scared some of the kids when your eyes bugged out like that and you turned kind of blue. I definitely didn't think it was very cool.

But I guess I'm supposed to forgive you, even though I'm going to be a total outcast at school now. All of those other kids with their normal Grandpas who don't hog all the attention, or else are dead and stay out of the way like that, they're going to hang out together now, I can tell. That's the way it always works. I remember the one time Freddy Schneuder's grandma picked him up from school and she called him "Sweet Noodle" in a loud voice that everyone could hear. He still doesn't have any friends, and that was last year. And it's not like she destroyed a major social event, she was just being lame. I'm probably going to have to switch to a private school.

Mom says that if you'd had your choice, she thinks you would have waited until after the gift opening and the cake to have your heart attack. I think she's just trying to make me feel better. If you were that worried about it, why didn't you just stay home that day, or maybe hang out in the lobby of the hospital or something? You probably would have been safe, unless there was a little sick kid or somebody having a birthday party there. But I guess you didn't think of that. Thanks a lot, Grandpa.

Mom tells me that she bets you're really sorry that things couldn't have worked out better and that my birthday party was ruined. And I guess that's a pretty good way to look at it. But to be honest, all I can think is that unless there aren't any kids up there in heaven, you're probably up there pissing all over somebody's birthday party as we speak. Sorry Mom.

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"Growing up, Uncle Bing was like the uncle I never had. He was my father's estranged brother, who had been kicked out of the family for loving jazz. That's what he said, anyway, it didn't seem that bad to us.

Dad would secretly invite Uncle Bing to Thanksgiving dinner every year, and we'd pass him turkey and giblets through the doggy door. I was never sure who we were hiding Bing from, since mom always made sure to make extra portions for him. Maybe Stephanie had a problem with Uncle Bing I hadn't heard about.

When dad wasn't around, Bing liked to take my brother Goose and I under this wing, teaching us that money was for folks who didn't know how to pick a lock or sledgehammer a doorknob. For the bold, every neighborhood was like a department store and every kitchen a supermarket. Every garage was still a garage, but Uncle Bing had sent away for a correspondence course in hotwiring. So really every garage was like a used car lot, only not yet.

The neighborhood kids loved to make fun of Goose and I for our threadbare, out-of-season clothes, thanks to Dad's gambling and croquet habits. But only the really stupid ones were still laughing when we showed up wearing the clothes that had recently gone missing from their closets, thanks to Uncle Bing.

Goose and I looked up to Bing like he was our dad's brother, and we even baked him a giant oatmeal cookie the year he scammed the government into letting him stay at their big gray hotel for free."

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