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July 11, 2005 |
London, Jolly Olde England Junior Bacon London commuter and mylar balloon enthusiast Roary Tubbs wonders aloud why the subway’s so bloody late today ith their famously stoic façade put to the ultimate test, Londoners came through with flying colors this week, failing to register the slightest emotion in the face of stunning terror attacks on the city’s mass transit system that left 50 dead and over 700 wounded. “Oh yes, it was quite a mess,” explained commuter Harold Alburn, who was aboard one of the bombed subway trains and only survived due to being caked in a human cocoon formed by the flaming remains of his fellow passengers. “That rail line’s going to be down for weeks, you have to assume.” “This is to be expected of the British,” explained psychologist/ historian hybrid Dennis Mugrew. “I mean, what did you expect? Wild, hyperbolic shows of emotion? These people didn’t even have their...
ith their famously stoic façade put to the ultimate test, Londoners came through with flying colors this week, failing to register the slightest emotion in the face of stunning terror attacks on the city’s mass transit system that left 50 dead and over 700 wounded. “Oh yes, it was quite a mess,” explained commuter Harold Alburn, who was aboard one of the bombed subway trains and only survived due to being caked in a human cocoon formed by the flaming remains of his fellow passengers. “That rail line’s going to be down for weeks, you have to assume.” “This is to be expected of the British,” explained psychologist/ historian hybrid Dennis Mugrew. “I mean, what did you expect? Wild, hyperbolic shows of emotion? These people didn’t even have their pulses raised by WWII. Even when London itself was being bombed in 1940, people were still going out to the pubs and leading their lives as if there weren’t giant bomb craters in the street, and acting as if the pub itself was not on fire. Frankly, I don’t think total thermonuclear annihilation would have much of an effect on the English disposition.” “Yes yes, bloody terrible,” mumbled carpet-layer Damon Brink semi-intelligibly, hoisting his customary 7am pint. “This resolute façade of dour, dutiful melancholy has served the English well through eons of adversity and truly shitty weather,” explained England expert and grinder-sandwich-eating champion Maxwell Tuft. “It’s like American optimism or weird Japanese cartoon sex fetishes. You don’t mess with success.” “It’s a bloody shame about those people,” sighed stockbroker Theodore McCartney, who lost his entire family in the blasts. “You certainly feel for their loved ones. But, you know, life must go on.” “Nope, sorry, I’m afraid I’ve had my humanity bred out of me, perhaps eons ago,” explained tailor Nigel Ruffalo when asked about the attacks, with an upper lip so stiff he could be mistaken for a duck. Authorities believe the attacks to be the work of a terrorist cell with the inappropriately-hilarious name of “The Secret Organization of al-Qaeda in Europe,” which, as the name describes, is thought to be both secret and organized, and reportedly allows only cell members into its tree fort. The British have saved their strongest displays of emotion for these alleged terrorists. “That’s just not playing cricket,” complained Londoner Angie Lowell, the most enraged person in all of England. “Them bad sorts ought to be put to for what they done, had a real talking-to, you know. Can’t have this sort of thing going on, mucking about on the trains when we’ve got places to be.” Meanwhile, the reporting of this story was complicated by confusion over interview subjects who claimed to have been on the tube at the time of the attacks, which this American reporter assumed to mean the television, leading to a mistaken belief that everyone in England gets to be on TV. This reporter’s intense jealousy, however, soon abated as soon as he learned that “the tube” is a quaint British euphemism for the toilet. the commune news sends their deepest condolences to everyone who suffered through last week’s terrible tragedy, by which we mean of course the season finale of Dancing with the Stars. Ivan Nacutchacokov was disappointed by the lack of visceral tragedy and worldwide attention existing in the commune offices upon his return from London to report this story, and we were equally disappointed to have him back.
 | Gas prices expected to rise because oil companies just complete dicks
9/11 Memory Honored with Destruction of Sears Tower
Multiple back-to-school sales piss on last two weeks of summer vacation
Headless bodies found in Iraq listed in critical but stable condition
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Senator Wins Lottery, Quits "Shitty Job" epublican Senator Judd Gregg finally ran into a big steaming pile of luck Wednesday when he matched 5 of 6 Powerball numbers and won a lottery jackpot of $853,492. Gregg immediately called Vice-President Dick Cheney to let his boss know he would not be coming into work. “It’s about friggin’ time I got some good luck,” Gregg told reporters in front of his home in his home state of New Hampshire. Gregg waved his winning ticket in the air frantically and laughed. “Eat it, taxpayers! I’m gonna be my own boss from now on!” Gregg, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee and spent more than $2 million in his last re-election campaign, did admit to some sour grapes in not winning the $340 million jackpot won by an Oregon player in the same lottery. the commune's Fall Gadget Guide t’s almost the time of year to start pretending you’re Christmas shopping while you look for swanky new shit for yourself, and the commune is there for you with our first-ever annual Fall Gadget Guide. Join commune Tech Correspondent Mitch Kroeger as he guides you through the bewildering wilderness of the new and the shiny. Merck: “Crazy-Ass Brazil Giving AIDS Drugs to People With No Money” Poison Probe Reveals 90% of Packaged Foods Actually Dog Food |
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 July 3, 2012
Brush With Death, Floss With DangerFinger fans, I'm delighted to be writing you again sooner than anticipated. As I last said, I did not believe there was enough of interest to me to warrant continued commune writing, but we both lucked out, for since those premature words, I have discovered my dentist is a secret agent.
It must seem like I've gone mad, and I have—mad with international intrigue. I'm not at liberty to say too much, and of course I can't use his last name, but I am permitted to use his first, so we'll call him "Doctor." No one was more surprised than me at my last visit for a regular teeth cleaning, although the hygienist did seem shocked and dismayed when I elected to change into a hospital gown. I am not going home with a drool-drenched shirt again, I'm adamant on that point, and she's a dental assistant, she should be accustomed to a little nudity by now.
I would not have even found out this sizzling bit of news if it were not for a slip of the tongue. We were discussing film and I asked Doctor if he had seen that new James Bond film from three years ago. He said yes, and he enjoyed it very much, being a spy himself.
The secret was out! I asked him what kind of spy he was, he told me he would have to kill me if he told me, or if I laid a finger on his girlfriend. I of course promised I would tell no one, and would not touch the girlfriend, having not yet seen her or found out she was a model. Reluctantly, Doctor confided his history in his majesty's...
º Last Column: Ventriloquism For Dummies º more columns
Finger fans, I'm delighted to be writing you again sooner than anticipated. As I last said, I did not believe there was enough of interest to me to warrant continued commune writing, but we both lucked out, for since those premature words, I have discovered my dentist is a secret agent.
It must seem like I've gone mad, and I have—mad with international intrigue. I'm not at liberty to say too much, and of course I can't use his last name, but I am permitted to use his first, so we'll call him "Doctor." No one was more surprised than me at my last visit for a regular teeth cleaning, although the hygienist did seem shocked and dismayed when I elected to change into a hospital gown. I am not going home with a drool-drenched shirt again, I'm adamant on that point, and she's a dental assistant, she should be accustomed to a little nudity by now.
I would not have even found out this sizzling bit of news if it were not for a slip of the tongue. We were discussing film and I asked Doctor if he had seen that new James Bond film from three years ago. He said yes, and he enjoyed it very much, being a spy himself.
The secret was out! I asked him what kind of spy he was, he told me he would have to kill me if he told me, or if I laid a finger on his girlfriend. I of course promised I would tell no one, and would not touch the girlfriend, having not yet seen her or found out she was a model. Reluctantly, Doctor confided his history in his majesty's secret service. Bet you didn't know we were a monarchy-democracy, did you? Neither did I, until Doctor straightened me out. My grill as well.
Good people, I'm a simple ventriloquil stage performer, I'm not used to the fast-paced life of spydom, or even dentistry. I lived a quiet life, immune to all the intrigue just hanging in the air around me like humidity. Now my eyes are opened, the little crusty booger things cleared out by the truth. We are surrounded on all sides by spies.
I asked Doctor how he got into the spy game, he said it's all who you know, and he's good friends with the secret king. I'm not supposed to use his full name outside the Circle of Mystery, which I'm not allowed to be a part of unless they don't have enough people to make a circle present. But I guess I can give you something to call him, differentiate from everyone else in this story, so call him King Steve.
The secret monarchy ruling our country and the plethora of spies disguised as every day members of the service industry has provided me with some distraction from the humdrum routine of entertaining people by pretending to speak. If you're wondering who are the enemies of the Circle of Mystery, you're not alone, but Doctor won't tell me anything more unless King Steve grants me full access. That will cost $40, and I don't get that kind of money in my line of work, not until my crimson tuxedo is paid for. Yes, I am on the waiting list to be inducted into this hidden world, so wish me luck. Rok Finger may be protecting you from the most evil and insidious threat to this nation neither of us has ever heard of. So sleep well, once I get forty bucks.
I learned all this from a night of fascinating conversation with Doctor. After my cleaning and semi-annual uvula scraping, I invited Doctor out for a night on the town, but when we realized the cost of drinks would add up, we instead decided to share a mask of nitrous for a few hours. What amazing secrets were revealed, probably a lot more than I can remember since I think I forgot to switch off the tank just before I passed out. Did you know our spies go on vacation twice a year to stunning locations like Fort Lauderdale to monitor the international diamond trade? Of course you didn't. You don't have $40 and you're not in the Circle of Mystery. As soon as they get a few dozen more membership fees added to the Circle, a sweepstakes will decide who is the best spy, and that candidate will travel to romantic Monte Carlo to enter a high-stakes poker competition and thwart the evil Professor Glove. He's not the most terrible criminal mastermind of our age, but he's the equivalent of a comptroller for said most terrible criminal mind. I can't wait to get my $40 and find out who it is! My money is on Red Bagel, who ironically owes me $40 in unpaid commune checks.
Doctor was quick to remind me this is all fantasy, insisted that I remember that when I left and promised to dig up the money for the entry fee into the Circle. Of course it's fantasy. It's been my boyhood dream to defend the country and the western world from the unimaginable despotism of a villain whose name I don't know. And I didn't even have a boyhood.
I do hope they give me bullets with my membership kit. I already have a gun and an ankle holster. º Last Column: Ventriloquism For Dummiesº more columns
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|  July 21, 2003
Saddam Hussein: Dead or Alive 3While your average American gives no thought to the complicated world of politics, concerned more with trivialities such as "Will my job survive the year?" and "How can I afford to keep my family medically insured?" the think-tankers in the upper echelons of the U.S. government are asking only one question: "Is Saddam Hussein alive, and if so, where is he?" Yes, if you check, that's technically only one question, hence the single question mark.
The short answer is: No. But wait! Before you think I've become boring in my old age, I haven't cracked your brain with the baseball bat of conspiracy yet, and I assure you there is more to the Saddam Hussein story than you've considered before. And always more than they're telling you.
The reason Saddam Hussein is no longer alive is that he was never alive. Saddam Hussein, was, is, and always has been nothing more than a computer program. Surprised? Good, I say. You don't think I hold off on telling you all this shit simply because it slipped my mind, do you? I get my jollies watching your jaw drop, friend.
Has anyone ever seen the movie Virtuosity? Of course not. Some would chalk this up to the film being predictable and fairly empty of any real enjoyment, but I say this underestimates the part played by the American government to make the movie go unseen. The film is a roundabout way to propose that many of our society's villains are nothing more than distracting computer...
º Last Column: Roll On, Columbia º more columns
While your average American gives no thought to the complicated world of politics, concerned more with trivialities such as "Will my job survive the year?" and "How can I afford to keep my family medically insured?" the think-tankers in the upper echelons of the U.S. government are asking only one question: "Is Saddam Hussein alive, and if so, where is he?" Yes, if you check, that's technically only one question, hence the single question mark.
The short answer is: No. But wait! Before you think I've become boring in my old age, I haven't cracked your brain with the baseball bat of conspiracy yet, and I assure you there is more to the Saddam Hussein story than you've considered before. And always more than they're telling you.
The reason Saddam Hussein is no longer alive is that he was never alive. Saddam Hussein, was, is, and always has been nothing more than a computer program. Surprised? Good, I say. You don't think I hold off on telling you all this shit simply because it slipped my mind, do you? I get my jollies watching your jaw drop, friend.
Has anyone ever seen the movie Virtuosity? Of course not. Some would chalk this up to the film being predictable and fairly empty of any real enjoyment, but I say this underestimates the part played by the American government to make the movie go unseen. The film is a roundabout way to propose that many of our society's villains are nothing more than distracting computer creations, and it took a lot of government operatives countless hours to make the film so utterly forgettable as to slip through the box office cracks unnoticed. But there was good reason for all the time spent doing so.
If we open ourselves up to the possibility that one villain is really just a souped-up Atari made to look like Russell Crowe doing a decent American accent, where do we stop questioning everything? Consider this: Have you ever been in a room with Saddam Hussein, the actual man? I didn't think so. That should make it abundantly doubtful a real Saddam Hussein even exists.
Everyone knows Iraq was only targeted by the military for one reason, and that's oil; this is only up for debate by people who enjoy deceiving themselves about everything, such as the government has only altruistic motives, or J.A.G. is a really good show. In fact, whenever you hear a government official say they want to bring democracy to another country, it should automatically translate as they have natural resources vital to our economy and are holding out. Hence we decided to bring democracy to Iraq, in exchange for barrel upon barrel of yummy oil.
Of course, Iraq was a foreign culture and has virtually no strategic value, following that we have no enemy after the Soviet Union dismantled and had no strategy against no enemy. The original leaders of Iraq, looking pretty dopey and smiling all the time like they just squeezed out a silent fart, weren't much motivation for the American people to go to war. So the U.S. war machine created the Saddam Hussein computer program, based an old Abbot & Costello routine beloved by Sec. Jim Bakker. "Who's in charge of Egypt?" "Hussein." "I'm sayin', I want to know." Love that one.
But if you build a computer program too good, as any hack movie producer knows, it can develop its own intelligence and decide to take things over. Which is exactly what happened when we installed the Saddam Hussein program on Iraqi Amigas. Pretty soon we did have a Saddam Hussein threat to overthrow—our own. He even generated independently more pictures of George Bush's Uncle Herb in full Iraqi military guard and had him doing ridiculous Herb-like things, such as waving a shotgun around or reading threatening messages to the U.S. government in great big glasses from his underground bunker.
Keep in mind, I still think the Saddam Hussein program is a threat, and if one mainframe carrying the program survived the Baghdad bombing, the danger remains. But all of this could have been dealt with much quicker and efficiently by planting a virus in the Iraqi intranet, or installing Windows 2000 on one of the network computers. º Last Column: Roll On, Columbiaº more columns
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Milestones2003: The infamous "Battle of the Bulge" breaks out at when office wench Ivana Folger-Balzac mistakes Ramrod Hurley's beerbelly for a birthing alien larvae and sets into the Acting-Editor with a can opener. The skirmish and resultant standoff lasts 18 hours and claims the lives of several Crochet! magazine staffers, for whom the commune observes a moment of near-silence.Now HiringSexecutioner. Why does everybody keep laughing when we say that? We need a dude who can kill some fucking people in an official capacity, okay? What's so funny about that? You guys are sick. Anyway, pay commensurate to experience. Must provide own mask, axe, electric chair, whatever floats your boat.Top Pants-Missing Explanations| 1. | Busted out Hulk-style | | 2. | Told one lie too many | | 3. | Busted out Louie Anderson-style | | 4. | What, aren't you hot? | | 5. | Talked out of them by gay Casanova | | 6. | Made ass look big | | 7. | Donated to killer mandroid from future | | 8. | Realized parachute pants went out of style in 1986 | | 9. | Sat in ham | | 10. | You kidding? Pants are so 2002 | |
|   North Korea Pissed Their Real-Life Hunger Games Nowhere Near as Popular as Movie BY Clarise Sickhead 1/31/2005 The Road to BudokanOn the road to Budokan
I met a man named Rama Dan.
And Rama Dan had a dog
named Frog,
who hopped like the same.
Frog also wore
a green polystyrene suit,
serving to make
the resemblance more acute.
Frog didn't know what a frog was
or that his way of moving,
for a dog, was
quite strange and notably unique.
Or that a proper frog should ribbet,
not squeak.
Frog could be said
to be more stupid than a dead
ocelot or a pile of socks.
Frog liked to eat rocks.
And on the way to Budokan
he ate a turtle with a rock-like tan.
And the turtle's brother was Steve
who followed us and wouldn't leave
even when we asked him to.
Or threatened him with...
On the road to Budokan
I met a man named Rama Dan.
And Rama Dan had a dog
named Frog,
who hopped like the same.
Frog also wore
a green polystyrene suit,
serving to make
the resemblance more acute.
Frog didn't know what a frog was
or that his way of moving,
for a dog, was
quite strange and notably unique.
Or that a proper frog should ribbet,
not squeak.
Frog could be said
to be more stupid than a dead
ocelot or a pile of socks.
Frog liked to eat rocks.
And on the way to Budokan
he ate a turtle with a rock-like tan.
And the turtle's brother was Steve
who followed us and wouldn't leave
even when we asked him to.
Or threatened him with much kung-fu.
The turtle followed, then stepped on an ant,
who was the aunt of an ant named Kant,
who joined this motley caravan
and kept up pace, even when we ran.
And the ant Kant offended an ostrich jerk
named Murray who was out of work
and looking for trouble, so in a hurry
our larger group was plus a Murray.
And before very long Murray had flipped the beak
to a herd of tuna who'd stopped to take a leak
on a beach by the road where a high-strung toad
had taken offense when Rama Dan called him a choad.
So then the tuna were swimming in pursuit
and the toad had crawled inside Rama Dan's boot
and was biting his ankle like a toothless piranha,
which pissed off a goldfish bowl full of Arowana
who quickly proved how much ass they could haul
by rolling that bowl like a demented hamster ball.
And I don't even know where the pterodactyl came from
or that Eskimo bitch that smelled like spiced rum.
But I'm pretty sure those Quakers, they had their reasons,
like the way Murray always screams "Fuck You!" when he's sneezing.
And the jugglers and panda bears
were likely just unaware
that Kant looks at everyone like that
and Rama Dan meant it like "phat."
But there was truly no convincing
the trick riders or the lobsters mincing
behind us like an army of freaks
that Frog means no offense when he squeaks.
At first we were trailed for malice or spite
but then just because it looked fun, quite the sight
and the sun was out and it was nice outside
so more people joined in, walking side by side.
Then somebody thought it was a goddamned parade
and a marching band came and the marching band stayed
and we marched into Budokan like a conquering Army
while the people were cheering something luscious and smarmy.
And I actually started to enjoy it, hey what the hell?
Rolling with the punches has always served me well.
But then that goddamned ostrich Murray screamed "Fuck you!"
and started the famous riot that leveled Budokan.   |