Americans Unsure Who is Evil in Haiti

ll over the United States the average viewer is being treated to the site of black people running through the streets, burning flags, and throwing shrapnel as well as shooting guns, in the midst of full-blown rebellion. Unfortunately, this isn't in America, it's in Haiti, and Americans everywhere nervously wonder: Who exactly is the bad guy and whose side am I supposed to be on?

It's a fair question, as the White House has yet to make an announcement on where they stand on the Haiti situation, pending a review of the situation by a panel heading south, which should have an answer this coming week. Of course, angry black people are something the Bush administration traditionally stands against, and this is no exception; but the real question for them is, can President Jean-Bertrand Aristide keep the population down and the bucks flowing to America for a few more terms? Or is it time to scrap him and install a new puppet government?

That's right, the p-word: Puppet. The unofficial word is a claymation Gumby would have more spine for standing up to the U.S. than Aristide. Now the U.S. seeks damage control as Aristide finds himself the victim of a coup yet again. The wonderful "liberal" administration of Bill Clinton helped put Aristide back in power after his earlier ousting in 1994, and he was certainly a good lapdog after that. Clinton defended the action as restoring the rightfully-elected Haitian president to power, but nobody in the country bothered asking how he was elected or by whom. In recent years Haitian voter turnout has peaked at about 5%—even for Americans, that's pretty low turnout.

For those Americans with your average high school education, Haiti may seem like a mystery. It is one of Caribbean island nations not communist and therefore of little interest to U.S. diplomats. It is populated almost entirely by black people, but it's not the one Bob Marley is from, and it's not a popular resort. It suffers from extreme poverty and high occurrences of AIDS and HIV, and the last time you saw it on TV may have been when a boatload of refugees were drowning in an effort to reach the continental United States, unless they were being turned back by U.S. coast guard.

There are positive things about Haiti, though, like its friendliness to American investors. When it's not in the midst of revolution, which is admittedly quite often, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere with a per capita income of $250; less than half of its population is literate and 80% of its people live in poverty, which means low, low wages for investors. The U.S.-friendly puppet government, put in place and held there by military force, means no minimum wage and bizarre laws that lower tariffs on imports and punish exports—a country with a high yield of agricultural products can't even produce rice for its own people, since it is cheaper to import it from American agricultural concerns, thanks to commerce legislation.

For the Bush administration, it's obviously good business to enforce "trickle down" economics and protect investments there by reinstalling a U.S.-friendly government by whatever means possible, even militarily, but since it's an election year and the American people are already getting a little sour about our efforts to protect business concerns in the Middle East, the stance our country is going to take on recent Haitian uprisings isn't quite square yet. But if it can be done without lowering anyone's approval rating, you can bet Haitian rebels and their underclass associates, maybe even Aristide himself, will soon join the Octagon of Evil, or whatever shape evil's taking these days.

Cheney Comrade Injured During Hunt for Bin Laden

Arizona Border Patrol Installing Landmines

Serial Killer’s Neighbor: “He just wouldn’t shut up about serial killing.”

Heather Graham’s Career Found Dead in Apartment

Over the course of my life, any time I've had a gripe about the way things were going or if I had things that I thought were unfair, my mom was always there to remind me that there are people out there who have it worse off than me. No matter what your problem is, there's always some poor S.O.B. out there whose wretched existence made yours look like a complimentary trip to a Bangkok whorehouse.

My mom's the undisputed master of this line of reasoning. No matter what happened when I was growing up, she always had some reason why I should be happy about it. Any time I took the guys to meet Mr. Bike Frame after riding my Huffy into a gopher hole or a curb or something, while I was on the ground in the fetal position, writhing in pain, she always reminded me that at least I didn't have spinal meningitis. I'm not kidding! Needless to say, that's not the kind of thing a guy wants to hear when he's just had his family jewels knocked back into his earlobes, so I spent a large portion of my childhood years sucking on a bar of Ivory soap.

But she never faltered. Your dog got hit by a car? That's a piece of cake compared to having cystic fibrosis. Pulled a 300 on the SATs? That'd make your day if you had hooks for hands. I don't know where she got half that shit. Every once in a while I'd catch her blatantly making something up, like the time in Jr. High when I got kicked in the nuts by a mule and she told me it was better than having Herkemer's Syndrome. I asked her what the hell that was and she just muttered something vague about having your bones itch and said I didn't want to know the details.

To be perfectly honest, I never really appreciated my mother's philosophy when I was growing up; actually I thought she was sick in the head. But now that I'm older I'm really starting to understand where she was coming from. It's taken me a long time to find my purpose in life, but now I think I've really found it. I'm here to remind people that no matter what kind of foul shit is going down in their own lives, hey, at least their last name isn't Fagerbakke.

You don't even have to know a thing about be, beyond my name, to know that I didn't have an easy time of it growing up. All my life, I've been like some kind of nickname magnet. You can try to surprise me with something new, but I'd advise you to save your breath, I promise I've heard them all: Froggerhockey, Fan-of-Balki, Faggotbacon, Fag-bot, Fuckerbacker, Fingerbecky, Shag-her-buddy, Fizzledick, Dr. Lousy Lay, Sir Fucksafreshman, Tommy Hatesajew, Dildo on Wheels, The Cunnilinguist, Tom the Racist Wonder, Tommy Comesponge, Mr. Nazi-cock, Tommy Two-Minutes, Tommy Knockmeup, The Back-door Bandit, Tom Thumbs-a-stranger, Tommy Inchworm… the list goes on and on. I'm sure I'm forgetting some good ones, too, you can email my mom if you want the complete list.

The point is, I got stuck with the Spruce Goose of bad last names. And for a long time I thought that was a curse, you know? But now I realize it's a blessing. Just like how Superman got super-powers and used them to help out humanity when it got in a pinch, Tom Fagerbakke got a super-shitty last name and he's going to use it to raise humanity's spirits. No matter who's pissing on your parade or what kind of crap life is trying to pull, all you have to do is stop and reflect on the fact that your last name isn't Fagerbakke, and that kind of puts it all in perspective. Sure, maybe your wife left you for your boss and your mom joined a cult and your son just got into Weird Al Yankovic, but you know, at least you're still doing pretty good in the last name department. So maybe everything isn't as bad as it seems, right? Feel better?

No need to thank me, it's the work I was born to do.

º Last Column: Way to Cock Up My Birthday Party, Grandpa
º more columns

Ah, my sweet Nancy. Another year, another anniversary, and our love endures. Why does it last? Is it because ours is a love meant for the ages, without judgment or fear of reprisal, a shared connection between two people who are soulmates? Yes, a smidge. Mostly it continues to grow stronger because we never let ourselves lapse into staleness.

As you know, Nancy, I am not simply a heart that never stops loving and a mind that never stops obsessing over our love. I am also a penis. I am a testicle. Two testicles, in fact. I am a body, the throbbing impulses of a man. And you are more than love to me. You are the rounded hips, the supple breasts, the plush lips, the honeyed cave hole of a woman. We satisfy each other's bodies as we do our eternal longing for companionship. Yes, Nancy, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we express our love with constant humping.

The years pass, Nancy, but our physical love continues to bring us closer. No matter how many times we do the nasty, my darling, I never tired of the act, and I know you feel the same. For no matter how we may copulate in familiar ways, when things grow too familiar and comfortable for us, we always choose to raunchy it up with a little romantic experimentation. Your leg here, our backs bent this day, dangle these here and lick them—our imaginations are limitless when it comes to our storied love-making. Even if we were blithering retards, dear Nancy, we still have that dirty Japanese comic book with all the pictures of weird positions to try.

What a treasure the fables positions of the Comic Sutra has been to us. We've tried all of them, I believe, Nancy, some of them in other rooms of the house. Some say there are only 103 positions, but you know what I say to that—do them twice. And then do them underwater. There is no spice for a relationship like an aquatic sexual adventure, and as long as our neighbors leave their gate unlocked, we will continue to follow our inner Neptune and Neptilla.

Sometimes, dear Nancy, what we hide is more exciting than what we reveal. A sheer negligee may give a breathtaking hint of the beauty of your naked body, inspiring more excitement and ecstasy than I have ever known. Just as the small football helmet on my wang does the same for you. Sometimes, for an added touch of sensuality, we may play our own erotic game of Blind Man's Bluff, feeling our way to each other's bodies in the dark. At least once we remove the furniture, there's no way I want my dick in a sling again, but that probably goes without saying.

What does not go without saying is that I always prefer your naked body in the light. Do not think my talk of concealing your goodies or making love in the dark means I'm ashamed of your body. Though both of us have aged, Nancy, I find you just as sexy as you were ten years ago, on the sliding scale that we've both aged and, sure, you're not as hot as you used to be. Your sister has your body from ten years ago, but I would not sleep with her Nancy, since I love only you. I may think of her to inspire my erection, but I will make love to you with that erection, Nancy, and almost all the time I'm picturing your head on that body. That could not possibly be cheating.

No matter if you have gained a little weight, if your thighs now rub together in a disconcerting way, and if your breasts do not rise like fluffy couch pillows as they used to. If you have pancake boobs now, it's all the better for me to lay on top of you and cram my love inside. You complain about your cottage cheese buttocks, but I say those indentations are the dozens of dimples from the many wrinkly smiles your ass gives me whenever I look at it.

It's for our erotic life together, and no other, that I keep all those pornographic magazines in my workshed. I don't know why you're getting so bent out of shape, Nancy—you should only be bent out of shape for our coupling. The magazine may be called Chicks With Dicks, but the reason I have those is obvious: A chick with a dick is still a chick. I don't need chicks with vaginas. That's why I have you, my love.

º Last Column: Suicide is Too Good For You
º more columns