Ivan Nacutchacokov, Embedded in Baghdad

oreign correspondent and champion lovemaker Ivan Nacutchacokov reporting, embedded at Baghdad with the 72nd Liquor Battalion. Which is not a true military battalion so much as a group of Iraqis heavily inebriated on 72 cases of wine and holding this reporter captive.

Originally the commune awarded me the assignment of traveling with the 108th Infantry, famous for their chili, a prize won in a raffle at the Washington, D.C. press party. However, growing suspicion's over this reporter's Russian background and "too many questions" about where we were and what we were doing led to a confrontation and eventual abandonment outside of Umm Qasar when the battalion moved on to other areas. Left to his own wiles, this reporter might have been fine had he not been found by the self-styled Iraqi defenders engaged in heavy drinking.

It has been a relatively painless five or six days of passing bottles of wine around a windowless bunker since then. Without the reaffirming vision of sunlight or the night outside, coupled with the sleeplessness as bombs and shells continue to wrack the city outside, time has become virtually meaningless to this reporter. Occasional games of Russian roulette with a group of unwashed civilians who don't speak English also add to the feeling of mayhem.

A small radio broadcasting the movement of U.S. troops as they approach the capital of Iraq is the only source of outside information available, but to listen to the rattling walls, breaking glass, and war-whoops from the surrounding drunken armed men, it's easy to believe the fighting has already begun here. Details as to what U.S. forces approach and from what direction are currently unavailable, but I can definitely describe the mood in Baghdad as foggy and raucous.

Though the Iraqi military impostors were initially mistrustful and showed extreme prejudice against this reporter, after the first few days they allowed me to be untied. It was at that point I was bricked up into a wall in the unknown Baghdad building I report from, though I thankfully learned enough of their language to convince them to leave a few bricks out so that I may breathe.

With enough ingenuity and an increased proficiency with the language, it is my plan to coax the intoxicated revelers to wire my report to Ramrod Hurley at the commune offices. There may be some confusing passages or grammatical errors, given the possibility of a mistranslation and the difficulty of carving a news report into a brick with a pocket knife, but it does seem to be going surprisingly well so far.

It is a troubling thing, to look the enemy in the face and not be sickened by the smell of wine and vomit. But after the initial terror and nausea subside, one cannot help but feel a kinship with the Iraqi people and a sympathy for their plight. In all likelihood Saddam Hussein will be overthrown and replaced with a more democratic leader, and it should be everyone's hope that despite years of disagreement all Americans will hope for these people, who have endured so much hardship, to find peace and prosperity under new leadership, as well as seek a 12-step program or something.

In the remaining days before the arrival of U.S. troops, and the intense ground fighting begins, this reporter still has enough time to find out more about the weapons, tactics, and morale of these challenged soldiers, and hopefully can change their mind about the intention to use me as a human shield.

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The original fast food was the apple, but nobody has ever liked apples so it just became the punchline to a joke all the time. Some self-important ass would run in and shout "I'm in a hurry, I need some fast food!" and somebody would toss him an apple, like "I got yer fast food right here" and everyone would laugh because it's not like he was going to actually eat the apple.

Back in those days nobody did anything fast. Water even took two days to boil. And you had to schedule vacation time to get your hair cut, because the barbers only cut hair when they felt like it. So you had to sit there for hours or days while they took breaks to read the paper and kept stopping to go take a shit or whatever they were doing. The newspaper came out once a year and was filled with news the writers hoped would happen, since if they covered actual events it would be hopelessly outdated by the time it came out.

In a word, back then everybody was fuckin' lazy. People had been fuckin' lazy all throughout history, and it had worked out fine for them so they had little incentive to change. Things stayed this way until the Industrial Revolution, when manufacturers wooed workers with tall tales of the vast riches they could earn through honest, hard work. This didn't fool people at all, but when the government started putting cocaine in the water supply production increased tenfold, and being an asshole became fashionable. Little has changed in the last 100 years.

America became a hard-working, industrious nation, while the rest of the world laughed at us behind our backs and took their six-week vacations and afternoon naps. Except for the Japanese, who started working 168 hour weeks and sleeping in desk drawers because they really wanted little telephones that took pictures and played video poker.

The last vestige of the lazy, half-assed spirit of previous generations had always been the restaurant industry, whose motto was "You'll get your food when we're done jerking off in it." This all changed in 1954, when Ray Kroc and his eight-glass-a-day water habit blew into San Bernardino, where he threw a colossally violent tantrum over not being able to find any decent French fries. After biting the head off a live parrot, he loudly declared ownership of the entire restaurant he happened to be standing in and proceeded to turn it into a hamburger factory, churning out burgers and fries by the hundreds around the clock, and convincing his employees that they didn't need sleep because if they did he'd kill them, electroshock them back to life and then kill them again just to make his point. People from miles around who'd heard the commotion hung around to buy hamburgers, which was lucky for the town since the burgers were starting to pile up and would have surely created a staggering beef stink within a few days.

Kroc employed production techniques he'd learned after violently overtaking a rubber nipple factory in Bakersfield, and his unpredictable coked-up pirate persona kept staff mutiny to record-low levels, leading to a revolution in the food service industry. Over the next ten years Kroc created a chain of these burger stands across the country by barging into existing restaurants and challenging their current owners to a face-biting contest, which he usually won. He called the restaurants McDonalds, because it kept people guessing as to whether he had an even tougher Scottish business partner behind the scenes or if he was just that crazy.

Kroc eventually became known as much for his exacting quality-control standards as he was for his berserk fits of rage. He was particularly anal about his French fries, and if he could cram an entire order of fries in his mouth at once it was sent back for being too small. Eventually he grew dissatisfied with traditional French fry technology, since it left the fries tasting too much like potatoes, and the last time he'd checked, nobody was beating their grandmother to death with a shoe to get their hands on some potatoes. After extensive experimentation, he devised a process that involved cooking the fries four different times and infusing each one with enough oil to kill a cocker spaniel. Nobody ever confused Kroc's fries with a potato product ever again, and the modern French fry was born.

Over the last 40 years fast food hasn't changed much, though after Kroc's death from a projectile stroke in 1988, his employees have become noticeably more lackadaisical. Trends have come and gone, like the "bun made of meat" and the "vegetable". But the meat and potatoes of the industry have remained meat and potatoes, though in unrecognizable heart-attack forms. Over time other types of restaurants caught on to the concept, and eventually we had fast Mexican food and, regrettably, fast Italian, which was a phrase that hadn't been heard since the 1916 summer Olympics. Other foods, such as stew and bologna loaf, failed in the fast-food format, but may still catch on in the South given time.

Today the popular trend is to decry fast foodery for the epidemic of heart disease it has spawned, but what special interest groups fail to mention is that all such deaths still add up to less than half the number of people who used to die every year while waiting for their appetizers in traditional restaurants. Modern Americans simply choose to go out with a coffee-table-collapsing bang rather than a whimper.

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At every turn someone is yelling at me, "Take responsibility for your life!" Or something clever like, "If you're looking for someone to blame, look in the mirror." That's very fine if you're a rock song writer or something, Mr. Smart Guy, but what about Nick At Nite? No, nobody ever blames Nick At Nite.

I, for one, put the blame squarely on Nick At Nite. It's quite obvious their weekly marathons of old classic TV shows are blatant attempts to get me to sit and stay tuned for the entire weekend.

When I was younger, I used to do things. I would go out on the weekends with boys, I would visit places, I would often leave the house in doing so. I had activities to do. One time I read a book. It was more of a magazine, I guess, but I read it. From front to back, even the ad on the last page. No kidding. I read the whole damned thing. Not anymore.

I was married for a time. My husband was one of those "active" people I met back when I left the house a lot. I married him, we got jobs, bought a house, and then got cable. And down the pooper it all went, let me tell you. The first marathon I remember was All in the Family, and I don't know about you, but when Archie Bunker talks, I listen. Just like that commercial says, remember that? Ha ha.

That was my first, but not my last. Some of them blur together, but I'm pretty sure it was a Mork & Mindy marathon when my husband was yelling and screaming something about potatoes and couches and whatever and then he disappeared. Some lawyer brought me something to sign sometime later and I think it means we're divorced, all I know is nobody's sat in his spot on the couch in quite a while. And I always thought he liked Mork & Mindy.

After a while, one of my friends—alright, the cable guy—set me up on a blind date with some guy named Murdock. No, wait, Murdock was the name of the guy on The A-Team, and that's what I was watching that weekend when I was supposed to go out with him. Anyway, every once in a while I've answered a personal ad or two but they always want to get together on the weekend. Or at night, which is when Nick At Nite starts, duh—it's called Nick At Nite, stupid!

And I sure don't deliver pizzas like I used to. On the days I actually show up to work I always end up making a delivery to some house with cable. And everybody there's watching Nick At Nite! Or maybe they aren't, but while they aren't looking they usually don't hear me turn on the TV with the volume low and watch for a little while. A lot of times Taxi will be on, that's pretty weird, I think. And after a while they ask what I'm doing there, didn't they pay me and all, and I have to go. I hurry home so I can watch the rest of Taxi on my own TV.

I ask you now, how is any of this my fault? I didn't start a cable channel with America's most beloved sitcoms and action dramas airing all night. I didn't choose to run those adored shows all weekend from hour to hour. I'm perfectly willing to accept responsibility for any mistake on my part, but surely I'm only a human being, I'm not a god. I have the same weaknesses as anybody—

Ooo. Can't talk. The Wonder Years is starting!

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