President Bush Accidentally Left Home Alone

fearful nation was relieved at the end of an 8-hour period in which President George W. Bush was left home alone in the White House. According to White House sources, though the potential for harm to the president, the nation, and the house itself was great, the president's 8-hour unsupervised period ended without incident.

It started as an evacuation of the White House after a lost pilot, flying a private Cessna, flew through White House airspace. Heightened precautions called for the White House staff and administration to leave the building until the potential threat was abated, and somehow in the confusion, the president was left unsupervised.

"I thought [secret service operative] Larry had him, Larry thought I had him," said secret service operative Todd Henry. "I guess the little bugger got away from us. It happens."

When it was discovered everyone had vacated the White House except for the president, secret service commander Dick Gautier immediately ordered agents to return for the president. It was upon their return they found the White House doors locked and the windows sealed shut.

"It's not uncommon for the president to lock us out of rooms inside the White House," admitted Gautier. "Either intentionally or by lack of understanding of the door locking mechanism. But this was the first time the entire secret service, indeed everyone in the White House, had been locked outside with the president inside."

White House officials took quick steps to keep the information silent, but White House press had already noticed the president missing from his outside emergency pen and suspected something was amiss. commune correspondent Lil Duncan broke the story with privileged information obtained from some masculine insider source who allegedly resembles Richard Grieco. With little other recourse, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer informed the press.

"At this time, the president is believed to be alone in the White House," said Fleischer, refusing to take any questions. "He will not come to the door and does not answer the phone, but it is possible he can't hear us knocking or ringing. Keep in mind, it is a big house. We suspect right now he is watching TV in the presidential den."

Initially the secret service offered no explanation if the president had been left inside by someone locking the door on their way out or if the president had locked the doors and windows himself intentionally. The president could be seen walking briefly past an east side window, pausing, holding a hand up to his ear, and shrugging his shoulders before leaving view, a beer in his hand.

The anxious waiting ended at 7:25 p.m. when a secret service agent returned from home with a wire coathanger. The back door of the White House was then jimmied open and the secret service led the return into the house. The president was found playing Grand Theft Auto 3 in the presidential game room, apparently oblivious to the evacuation.

An angry nation will no doubt demand attention to this situation for weeks to come, as long as the networks are showing repeats. It is expected that secret service and other government agencies will take steps to prevent the president being left unsupervised in the future. There is talk of hiding an extra key to the White House somewhere on the grounds, though for the sake of national security no one is saying where. the commune has it on good information that on top of a high window shudder or taped under the mailbox are leading good secret key spots as of press time.

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Well, it takes a big man to admit it, but I'm the big man who leaked that CIA lady's name to the press. Aim your cameras over this way, boys. I didn't know it was such a big deal, I thought it was obvious to everyone else that she'd bought her entire wardrobe out of the CIA's mail-order catalog, including those hideous navy blue pumps. Doesn't take a super-spy to notice this stuff, people. She even had the "CIA Agents Do It When You're Not Looking" bumper sticker on her car, for Christ's sake.

In regard to this whole hullabaloo, Laura Bush was quoted as reassuring the American public that "My husband wants the very highest ethics," which seems to indicate that a shaky grasp of the English language runs in that marriage. The funny thing is that I'm almost entirely sure she meant to say he wanted the very highest ethnics, since Bush prefers to streamline his day by only dealing with stereotypes, saves him a lot of time from what I hear.

Conservative commentator and man-sized Potatohead Rush Limbaugh is in trouble this week, after saying NFL quarterback Donovan McNabb is overrated because he's black. The connotation being that the liberal media is desperate to have black quarterbacks succeed and so they draw undue attention to McNabb's modest achievements. If I were McNabb I'd say it's okay, since Limbaugh's overrated as a commentator anyway because of his whiteness. Conservatives are desperate to have white mouthpieces so they don't have to listen to anybody of color. Kudos to McNabb for his tact, but I for one wouldn't have begrudged the man a "I guess it takes one to know one," schoolyard slam.

If you're not into politics or the world outside the U.S. borders, I guess the big story this week is that little 2-year-old girl who was found after her mother went to jail and left her home alone for three weeks with nothing but ketchup, mustard and dried pasta to eat. A touching story for sure but let's not get carried away here people. That was my exact diet back in college and nobody made a fuss about me back then, though I could have used the attention. If she'd fought off some burglars with frying pans and matchbox cars while she was doing it, now that'd be a different story entirely. A charmingly-hilarious different story.

Looks like the Russians are still bitching about that comrade who got married on the space station last month, accusing him of hot-dogging by not waiting until he got back to earth to get married. I think it's silly, if he really wanted to hot-dog he could have put a giant oversized tuxedo on over his moon-man suit and slow-danced with a mannequin out in space, while the rest of the crew videotaped it and played "I've Had the Time of My Life" over the station's patio speakers. That would have been hot-dogging it. This dude was just saving on catering expenses.

Whenever they show the space station I really have to wonder who in the hell designed that thing. They always get it right on the movies: Sleek, futuristic decks with recessed lighting and dramatic, expansive hallways, bay windows overlooking Jupiter, all that fantastic crap. Then they show some footage from the real thing, and it's like some kind of sick joke. It's just a bunch of pathetic astro-geeks crawling around these cramped little erector sets that make a Winnebago look like the freakin' Taj Mahal. When they sold us on the majesty of space exploration, I think they forgot to tell us about the guy crawling around like a dog and shitting in a can. Sounds more like modern-day Turkey to me.

Would it have killed them to make those things man-sized? It's not like space is at a high premium out there in space. Maybe they were expecting the astronauts to add-on once they got comfortable, but were as surprised as the rest of us that they just sit around and bitch about the TV reception. Not that I can really criticize the astronauts too harshly, I suppose I'd get tired of eating that astronaut ice cream after a while too. Sure, a couple pieces are fun, but after that I really start thinking about how it's not Dryer's and I should have saved some of my gift-shop money for that giant moon lollipop.

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Regular readers of this column know me to be neither rash nor impulsive. So when I say that we need to bring back the eighteenth amendment (or whatever it was) and once again prohibit the sale of alcohol to minors in this country, you know that I've given the shit some serious thought.

Plain and simple, something has to be done about these slack-ass teenagers who drink until all hours of the night and then pass out on my doorstep. They buy lousy booze and almost always finish the bottle, and half the time they get into fights with my friends who have also passed out drunk in the doorway. And I don't think I need to tell you, commune reader, that when you wake up at the crack of eleven with a hangover the size of Elvis Presley's sweaty liver and shit all the way up the back of your shirt, the last thing in the world you want to see is Regis Philbin French-kissing a sheep. Egads, right?

But after that, the second-to-last things you want to see are a couple of fifteen year-olds arguing about who would win in a fight between Korn and the Doors. Because even though you know the answer is obviously the Doors, those dumbass kids don't listen to reason and they don't realize that Ray Manzarek knew judo. But that's their own problem and hopefully for them they'll never get caught talking smack during a book signing for Light My Fire at Borders or something and have to learn the hard, ass-flattening oriental smackdown way.

Now don't get all carried away popping words in my mouth that I didn't cough up first myself, I'm not saying I want a return to the rum-running, big-fat-gangster days of the twenties. From what I've heard those guys were serious assholes who would kill a man for farting out an open window. Or something, they had some kind of bizarre code of ethics that nobody understood. Bottom line is people got tommy-gunned and baseball-batted left and right and it was just generally an ugly scene all around.

Nobody today needs that, especially not over a couple of fuzzy-faced high school geeks getting cranked on a case of expired Zimas. But can't we do something about all of these kids riding their bikes around with a case of beer balanced on the handlebars? That's got to be some kind of public-safety hazard or at least bad for Budweiser's image. Whatever happened to teenagers sniffing glue or whiteout or huffing furniture polish, anyway? Since when is that not good enough for them? Now we've got to put up with all of these twist-n-win contests for Britney Spears tickets printed on bottle caps of Red Dog, not to mention having to wade through rack after rack of different packs of Pokemon cigarettes to find some Marlboros. That's some serious bullshit and we're fresh out of shinola.

Aren't teenagers supposed to be out cramming for their SATs or getting knocked up or something? Alcohol should be reserved for adults, or at least all of the good stuff. If they want to sell their overstock of Lucky Duck Ale or Sgt. Zippertongue's to kids who are too dumb to know better then that's their business, I guess. But good alcohol should be reserved for adults who know how to drink responsibly, and how to line up your thumbs on the steering wheel with the lane markings so you don't drive into a ditch or a condo. The last time I checked they don't teach that shit in Driver's Ed, and kids have to drive into a few IHOPs in the dead of night or take out a Taco Bell Drive-Thru before they figure that trick out and make the transition into responsible adult drinker-drivers.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the rights of kids and all of that happy-assed bullshit myself, and it's not like I want mandatory explosive tracking collars like in that Schwarzenegger movie. Nobody under the age of 40 wants that. Though that would make going to the mall more fun, especially if by some fuck-up they ran on the same frequency as those car door keychain clickers. Damn! But the simple truth of the matter is that there are just some experiences that come with age that can't be bypassed. Rites of passage like backing your car at fifty miles an hour through a carwash at two in the morning because your buddy didn't believe you'd do it, and then you realize he was passed out so you have to smack him awake and do it again. Experiences like that build character, and character should be rewarded with the right to drink and discount rates on auto-body repair.

So, before we're all reduced to drinking our beer from a little foil pouch with a straw, let's take a minute and write to our Senators, demanding that they reinstate the eighteenth amendment. Or whatever it was. Bricks out.

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