U.S. Expects Iraq to Settle Down for NBA Playoffs

espite escalating violence across Iraq, US Marines remain confident that all will be well in the country once the NBA playoffs begin this week, distracting Iraqi insurgents from their anti-occupation agenda with dazzling basketball action. However, though the mesmerizing influence of fantastic NBA drama may likely sooth the current conflict, experts warn that new tensions could arise between the San Antonio Spurs-loving Iraqi populace and the largely Laker-friendly occupation forces.

The nation's Shiite majority is comprised overwhelmingly of San Antonio Spurs supporters, led by Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shiite rebel cleric and hardcore Spurs fan who is often photographed wearing a Tim Duncan jersey along with his traditional turban during basketball season. Experts are at a loss to explain Iraq's passion for the San Antonio team, which may be caused by that region's similarity to Iraq in arid climate and close proximity to hell. Despite their underdog status, Iraqis seem convinced the Spurs will prevail against the great white dragon of the Los Angeles Lakers.

"Fallujah my noojah, bitchaz!" al-Sadr mugged for television cameras on Monday, flashing some kind of bizarre Iraqi basketball gang signs.

"The thing you have to understand is that these fanatical loyalties in Iraq go back hundreds of years," explained Iraq expert and big eater Dr. Erwin Stagg. "Or however long the NBA's been around, that long. Imagine you were a Spurs fan and a bunch of Laker fans burst into your house and started bossing you around and eating your chip dip. How would you like that? Not much, I think. Now imagine they had guns and your house was the size of Iraq. Pretty weird, eh?"

In an effort to keep the peace, troops stationed in Iraq have been admonished to keep their team biases to themselves when dealing with Iraqi civilians, though President Bush did the coalition efforts no favors when he ended his news conference last week with a fist-pumping cry of "Go Lakers!" Pundits are calling this move a ploy to boost Bush's flagging public support, a desperate change in tactics after the president realized he had milked the tit of conservative Christian dogma drier than Phyllis Diller's snatch.

Complicating matters further, considerable pockets of Detroit Piston-loving Sunni Arabs dot the Iraqi landscape, increasing chances of further tribal violence in this already war-torn land should the Spurs and Pistons meet in the NBA finals.

"Yo, San Antone gonna smack you down when you come wit dat weak-ass shit," an Iraqi youth said through a translator, seeming to address more than the upcoming NBA finals. Though when asked to elaborate, he just pantomimed slam-dunking a basketball, which may or may not reflect upon the US's long-term prospects for democratic nation building in the region.

Even terror mastermind Osama Bin Laden wants a piece of the playoff action, offering an Arab cease-fire in exchange for US and European forces putting down a dime on New Jersey for him and maybe hooking up a little courtside seat action. Negotiations with Bin Laden apparently stalled out after coalition negotiators were unwilling to budge from their best offer of a generous satellite TV package and a game-worn jock strap from Nets point guard Jason Kidd.

The NBA finals are scheduled to wind down in June, which coalition planners feel will be close enough to the June 30th hand-over date for Iraqi sovereignty to allow US forces to get the fuck out of there before anything else blows up. Though if the Spurs are eliminated from the playoffs in an early round, the US may have to choose between extending their occupation of Iraq, or teaching the Iraqis to love baseball.

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I think it's about time we found out just what's going on over in Tunisia. Things have been a little too quiet over there for a little too long, if you ask me. Which, fine, maybe you didn't, but it's only a matter of time before it would have woken you up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. Some might argue, in their whiney little "hip-hugging jeans are out this year" voices, that we haven't heard much from Tunisia since nothing is going on over there, and besides it's a big freakin' desert with like ten people living there and even if something did happen nobody would be around to see it since they'd be huddled in their caves, avoiding the near-constant sand storms. To which I have to respond that Lil Duncan is most definitely on the rag this week.

And beyond that, isn't this just want the Tunisians want us to believe? That all's quiet on the Tunisian front, meanwhile they're building armies of giant baby-eating robots in the dead of night, planning a complete takeover of the Western world? And we're over here sleeping like a bunch of saps who don't know that the creaking, jittery Armageddon is fast approaching? Fuck that, I say! Fuck that right in the earlobe. Because Omar Bricks may not have any babies or anything edible like that to worry about should the invasion come, but I'm going to be goddamned if I let some shoddy Tunisian robots leave a trail of dirty diaper carnage across my lawn and I have to go out there in my bathrobe in the morning and hose-blast all of that shit into my neighbor's driveway. Fuck that right in the appendix.

Tunisia can take a flying leap at a short Pierre if it thinks Omar Bricks and other Omar Bricks-like Americans (you know who you are) are going to stand for that kind of sci-fi bullshit. Maybe back in the 50's, when the sight of a 40-foot-tall galvanized behemoth with an Osh-Kosh-clad leg dangling from its titanium jaws would have made for a charming anecdote at a Tupperware party, but not today. By now, Americans have put up with Vietnam, Watergate and Family Matters and we've got a seriously short fuse. The slings and arrows of everyday life have pushed us beyond common courtesies like signaling for lane changes or recognizing crosswalks, and you can forget about the quaint 50's concept of "warning shots." A truly large, mechanical fuck-up like a Tunisian Cannibot invasion would undoubtedly snap our pajama elastic for good and it wouldn't surprise me if you saw the American people banding together and forming into some giant anthropological Voltron figure that mercilessly beat the living shit out of everything in sight, including the entire Middle East and Robin Williams.

In short, I don't think Tunisia has any clue what kind of flaming shit bag it would be stomping on, should it go forward with this whole half-baked baby-eating robot plan. Sure, we can't "prove" that this is exactly what they have in the works, and little is known about Tunisian robot technology beyond Red Bagel's book on the subject. But we're writing one dangerous IOU if we don't send a diplomatic envoy over there to scope out the situation. Maybe they'll find nothing but a whole bunch of desert and some tan-assed turtles. But will this mean that there never was a Tunisian Baby-Eating Robot Project, or just that they got wise before they strapped on the parachutes and loaded them into the man-cannons?

Only the desert will know for sure. Bricks out.

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The media is liberal and everybody knows that. You have to accept that it's not always going to cover the news fairly. The environment and war and education and all these left-wing things come first with the media. But all journalists have a duty to cover all problems even with minimal coverage. Where is the coverage of the nerd problem?

In this day and age with 22-hour media coverage on TV and the websites and the newspapers publishing once, even twice a day, you would think someone would focus on the nerd problem just once. I think it's proof that now, more than ever, we need to bring the nerd problem to the attention of everyone, because the nerds are obviously running the media as well.

This is no surprise to me. I warned people, loudly at social functions, that nerds would not go away if left unchecked. They have to be abused, verbally and physically, and their books knocked out of their hands—it works really well with nerds because they carry a ton of books. Yes, around the early 1980s, even then, I saw the nerd problem coming miles away. But I thought we were all on the same page, you and I, the normal persons. I have been doing my part to stop the nerd rebellion. What have you been doing?

The 1980s were a dream time for us fighting the nerd movement. Nerds were everywhere on TV, from the early 80s TV shows like Square Pegs to the late 80s TV shows like Family Matters. Even nerd-supportive movies like Revenge of the Nerds (God, I hope not) weren't all that bad. At least we were talking about the nerd problem. Nobody talks about the nerd problem.

The nerds haven't gone anywhere. A nerd is even the richest man in the world. A nerd, Stephen Hawking, is the smartest man in the world—well, yeah, they can have that, who cares, that's nerd territory. A nerd was the vice president and even ran for president, though I'm glad the American people came to their senses—but it was close people, way too close. Are we losing our anger and unrepentant anti-nerd rage?

I raised three kids, not one of them a nerd. There's Mike, my youngest, Bunko, my youngest, and Maul, my oldest, and they all know what to do to a nerd when they see him. But three good boys, no matter how athletic and quick to rage they may be, cannot do the work of the entire nation. You need to pick up the ball you dropped and get back on the nerd-busting wagon.

These people should be doing our work for us. Nerds exist for a reason, and that reason is not to run everything. These are the kids that used to do our homework back in high school! They're there to give us answers, not to make me come into the Chia Pet factory on my day off because we need to "play catch-up." They built the internet, but why do they have all the money from it? They should be running the internet so we can e-mail each other and fixing it when it breaks down and stop giving us guff about our modems and stuff. And get to work on that e-mail writing voice program already, I don't have time to punch typewriter keys all day. See? This is the kind of stuff we're left to do when nerds run rampant.

Nerds have been walking around without wedgies for long enough. I've made my point, and if I haven't made it in a all ooh-la-la writing way, well, it's only more proof I'm a normal guy like you. Let's gang up again, like we did in high school, and stuff these nerds in their collective lockers. Literally speaking.

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