ednesday's attacks in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, in which four former US soldiers were killed in a terrorist ambush before their bodies were dismembered, dragged behind cars and hung from a bridge by an angry mob, created a conundrum for television networks faced with the tough moral question of how to best profit from these shocking images.

"If we show them, we make a shitload of money," explained ABC News spokesperson Al Reuben. "If we don't show them, maybe we can claim the moral high ground and make a shitload of money down the line. It's a tough call."

Least troubled by the moral quandary was Fox News, whose plans to strap a helmet-cam to one of the dead bodies were scrapped when the angry mob grew impatient waiting for technicians to get a reading on the gray levels.

"Americans have a right to see this footage," opined Fox News Executive Producer Leonard Williams. "And we have the right to boost our ratings through the fuckin' roof by being the first to show the really awful parts that make you want to throw up. If anybody out there was blindly discharging a firearm into their Arab neighbor's house yesterday, you know they were watching hard-hitting Fox News."

Other networks took the debate more seriously, holding off on showing the footage through the morning, and then gradually releasing more and more of the horrible images throughout the day as it became apparent that Internet sites were kicking their ratings in the balls by showing the Fallujah footage uncut. By Wednesday evening the gloves were off and charred bodies were seen dangling from the Euphrates River bridge on most major networks.

"We really didn't want to show the footage of those kids beating the guy's flaming corpse with their shoes," explained CBS Evening News spokesperson Clint Adams. "But then we realized, 'Jesus Christ, we're losing money here!' I feel truly bad for the families of these men, and any children who may have been forever scarred by these images, but come on. You know how much money we made off that Somalia footage? Shit."

While the long-term impact of these images is yet to be seen, experts speculate that the American people being reminded that "Oh yeah, war is really ugly and horrible and stuff" can only harm the president's chances for reelection in November, not to mention driving the final nail into the coffin of Iraqi tourism.

"We owe it to future history to inform the American people of what's really going on over there," offered Marcus Graves of ABC News. "Maybe because of this footage being in the collective memory, next time we'll think twice about going to war again."

When asked by the commune news if he was shitting us, Graves admitted that yeah, he kind of was, but it sounds a lot better than saying you make your living selling people grisly video death. No argument here.

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With all the fervor about cloned cats and cloned pigs and cloned sheep burping too much methane gas into the atmosphere lately, we've almost forgotten to consider the inevitable future of sci-fi bullshit come true: human cloning. Fertility researching eggheads have announced that an impotent husband's DNA sample fuel-injected into his wife's attention-starved egg can result in her giving birth to an exact clone of the husband, lousy slacking-off sperm and all. No shit! And word on the street is that human cloning has already occurred, and that they're a boy band named O-town. I've never heard of them, but I wouldn't put it past whoever would be in charge of that kind of thing.

Some are calling this the next frontier, as they talk into women's leg razors painted black and make strange hand signals to their other dorky friends. Personally, I think they've jumped the gun a bit: I say the real future is in celebrity cloning. What woman wouldn't pay through the nose to have her son turn out like Robert Redford instead of her boring husband, who's a nice guy and all, and has a great head of hair… on his back! Yeeeeick. I think the number may run in the millions.

Because of this, you have to assume we're going to see a booming market in confiscated celebrity biological material in the future. You won't be able to go to a benefit for Tibetan date rape victims or a boat show without seeing people fist fighting like wild dogs over discarded celebrity eyelashes and toenail clippings. Mark my words, eBay is going to have to create three different categories for nose hair alone.

I mean, what kind of loser spends her time pouring over old issues of People magazine for blurbs about Brad Pitt when, with a dash of ingenuity, she could have a little Pitt growing inside her? Then she's just a wig of Chinese women's hair and a name change to "Jennifer" away from being shot dead in the shower whilst clutching a Ginsu, making that beautiful dream complete.

Finally we won't have to put up with the disappointing progeny of celebrities any more, sucking their way through life and failing to live up to the talents and all-around fabulousness of their revered parents. No more eagerly waiting, with baited breath, for them to show some glimmer of hope that they'll be just like their parent, only young and sexy again. No more crushing disappointment in them turning out spoiled, odd-looking, untalented and arrested for drugs in an unexciting fashion.

In this brave new world, once Brad Pitt is too old and fat to titillate our feminine sides, we can just turn our attention to the eldest Mini-Pitt clone, who will just be coming into his prime hunky years without having to get his cock stuck in A River Runs Through It to get our attention. Thank God.

Granted, few celebrities will welcome being replaced by a younger version of themselves who they can't control or smother with unwelcome affection after a lifetime of childhood neglect, like they do with their kids. Undoubtedly it will become the in-vogue thing to see celebrities walking around in ridiculous baggy moon-suits to prevent having any of their DNA stolen. Photographers will swarm around anyone they see in a moon suit until they read the ID tag on the lapel and realize it's just Buzz Aldrin.

As a result of this, the majority of stars will request that they be replaced in their movie roles by computer-generated facsimiles of themselves, since except for a few isolated examples, most roles would require them to take off their moon suits. And fat chance of that, lest some intern on the set has dreams of selling lip skin he scraped off of coffee cups on eBay. Understandably, this will give new meaning to the term "phoning in a performance," though of course the lingo will be updated to the techno-chic term "downloading." "Did you see J-Lo in the new Farrelly Brothers movie? Boy did she suck." "No shit, she must have downloaded that one while she was having her butt waxed."

Obviously this will cause a huge shake-up in the Hollywood power structure, with whiz-kid programmers coming into high demand and replacing acting coaches to make sure that even CindyCrawford.exe can turn in a convincing performance as something other than an overpaid bimbo. Granted, there will still be problems, like CatherineZetaJones.exe conflicting with all of the other software, MarlonBrando.exe being too large for system memory and RobertDowneyJr.exe showing up all corrupted and with the wrong drivers. But I have great faith they'll iron out all of these problems in time to make another great buddy cop picture, which is what it's all about in the end.

In the mean time, Omar Bricks has a trend to head off at the pass. If you hear in the news next week that some mustachioed mystery man has made off with cells from Balthazar Getty's stomach lining, just smile knowingly to yourselves and wish me good luck on my yacht shopping. Bricks out!

º Last Column: A Sorry State of Affairs
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Don't wet your pants, readers, but the news is true: I have returned from my mission: impossible and can safely say it was more precisely mission: not-too-bad. At times with my traveler's discount I could arrange a pretty swank motel and it was mission: quite-enjoyable. However, on the darker side, there were certain areas of the South where it was more like mission: avoid-violation; the less said there the better.

When I left you all mysteriously shortly before the New Year began, I explained how everything was so hush-hush the details could not be revealed. Has anything changed? No, and don't bug me about it. I didn't say anything in that Barbara Walters interview and I'm not about to give it up so easily for you. Suffice to say that the problem was "taken care of" in a mafia/Navy S.E.A.L. sort of way, but—hey! That wasn't Barbara Walters at all! Didn't even look like Barbara Walters, but I just figured she had more cosmetic surgery. It seems so obvious now, with no tape in the camera and a ninja working the soundboard. Oh, well, no since dwelling on that.

I have returned, though, and I am almost nearly improved, or at least 100% as good as I was before. If anything, I have improved for my venture. There comes a time at which every man must go into the woods and go crazy for a stretch of time to really know themselves; that's what the Indians used to do. When you can turn your head, look over your shoulder, and see the other side of your face, then you know yourself sufficiently to return to the cozy life. Any minor neck injuries can be worked out with a chiropractor, or a large man in an alley who has had informal chiropractic training.

If there is a bittersweet part of my journey, it is that America will never know the sacrifices I have made to ensure its future. At least not until 2005, by which time Future Bob should have reported it sometime in the past already. But even if that day never comes and that article is never edited properly, I can live in anonymity. I didn't drag ass across America's outback and brave death and fire (and sometimes splinters) for fame and glory, or flame and gory. I did it for the future. Show's what that rewards. Don't count on me to do it again, everyone—bail yourselves out next time.

I've had enough of living in the past, though. Unless I could live in 1965 for a small period of time and see the Beatles play live, that would be sharp. But for me, I busted my ass for the sake of the future, and that's what I'm concentrating on.

First and foremost is shaping up the commune. Any fool can see leaving Ramrod Hurley in charge while I was gone was the worst mistake I made since suggesting to Rob Schneider he had a viable film career. I apologize whole-heartedly for the devil-embracing way he ran the commune, and mostly for the blasphemous columns he ran in my stead. Ramrod is entitled to his own opinions and beliefs, of course, but he is wrong. If I ever get him out of my old office I'll take my revenge out of his ass with methodical, metric-based accounting procedures.

Yes, the commune will be the commune of the past from now on—challenging authority, walking hand in hand with the outsiders, and giving voice to the voiceless, as long as they can do sign language or something. We shouldn't have to just make up what they're saying. the commune is not a tool or puppet for the rich gluttons who run this country—just this one. When I started the commune, I had a vision that one lone reporter with nothing but a stout heart and true vision could call the president a gaylord and there was nothing he could do about it. I still think that's true. Especially now that the tide seems to be turning against ol' "president" Bush again.

By the way, you may hear allegations of a missing columnist by the name of Sampson L. Hartwig who was last seen in my company. This is just more establishment rhetoric to bring down the threat that is Red Bagel. There was never such a columnist, no matter what the spin doctors or Hartwig family says. This ratty old hat? It's mine. I bought it while on the road.

It's good to be back.

º Last Column: Little Deuce Coup
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