n a move that surprised the slow and feeble-minded alike, President Bush appointed diplomat John Negroponte as America’s first Director of National Intelligence this week, in an attempt to shore up the nation’s failing mental defenses.

“Now this may be a case of the pig callin’ the posy pink,” folkified Bush, our national leader and self-described folk hero. “But y’all is dumb as shit.”

Surprised and appalled by his own re-election, sources report Bush quickly decided something needed to be done about national intelligence, and the lucid and well-coordinated Negroponte was the obvious answer. Speaking in complete sentences and rarely attending to bodily itches with his house keys are said to be the strong suits that brought Negroponte to the president’s attention.

Negroponte, dressed in matching colors and with all button-holes and buttons lined up correctly on his vest, accepted the new position of Intelligence Czar graciously.

“It’s about time you dumbasses got your shit together,” announced the charitable-yet-firm Negroponte. “Though the fact that you all did something this smart frankly worries me. Is there a bucket of crap dangling over my head or something?”

According to the strangely-named Negroponte, whose last name does not mean “Black Dude” in Spanish or Italian, national intelligence has been going downhill for almost fifty years, pretty much ever since The Andy Griffith Show debuted in 1960. As a corrective measure, the new Intelligence Czar has called for the immediate canceling of all reality TV, switching all broadcasts of the Spice Channel to PBS, and outlawing country music. Whether these early remedies will be successful, however, remains to be seen since slack-jawed apathy remains so firmly rooted in the national character. Word on the street indicates that Negroponte may have his work cut out for him.

“What Russian royalty have to say about intelligence is a mystery to me,” sniped freelance quote-whore Dennis Murphy. “He should put on his big fuzzy hat and go back to Eskimoland.”

A surprising number of men on the street (and two dumb-looking women) seemed to confuse the concept of an Intelligence Czar and the famous Russian leaders of antiquity. Several half-educated men were convinced all the Czars had been murdered by the Bullshitiks in the Industrial Revolution. As a result, the commune has decided to refrain from using colorful or figurative language in the future, to avoid further misunderstanding and possible bloodshed.

Oppressed Bullshitiks, however, can find Negroponte at the White House during his office hours.

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Wisconsin Man Takes in Jazz Band

Merck: “Crazy-Ass Brazil Giving AIDS Drugs to People With No Money”

Poison Probe Reveals 90% of Packaged Foods Actually Dog Food

Dear commune:

I’m an idiot. Let’s just get that out in the open right now so there’s no confusion on the subject. Judge me if you will, and egg my minivan if you must, I won’t put up any kind of lame, face-saving argument to the contrary. As you may have guessed, I completely forgot to send out thank-you notes for the Christmas presents I received last year. Totally slipped my mind. Didn’t even think of it until last Tuesday, when I was shopping for a Christmas bone for my dog and I suddenly realized I was the one in the doghouse. Figuratively.

My immediate urge was to correct this oversight, posthaste. I even had a box of thank-you notes and a pair of wavy border-cutting scissors in my cart when it dawned on me that Christmas, this year’s version, is less than a week away! So what should I do? Should I send out the belated thank-yous now, only to follow them in less than a week’s time with additional notes of gratitude for this year’s presents? What if they get the first one and think this means I didn’t get this year’s presents? What if they sent me the same thing two years in a row and they think I opened it early? That’s not very nice. Should I wait until after Christmas and send dual thank-you notes? Or would that just be rubbing it in their faces that I spent a whole year not appreciating their present? Or should I just consider last year’s gaffe water under the bridge and hope they didn’t notice? But then I might have to start pretending like I did send a note last year, should it come up, and that’s one web of lies that could prove sticky. Maybe I should just say piss on it and not send any notes this year either, rather than drawing attention to the fact I forgot to last year. I could even return to sender any notes I receive, like "What the hell is this? I don’t want your charity. Asshole." Yeah.

It’s times like this I often ask myself that timeless question: WWtcD? What would the commune do?

Larry Belfast
Lower Bend, MO


Dear Larry:

Thank-you notes? Jesus Pete! No time to write, Larry, the commune has about 30 years of poor manners to catch up on and time is short! Last thing we want is to get crushed under a bus tomorrow and sent to Emily Post’s own personal version of hell. Quick, how do you spell bar mitzvah?

the commune

---

Editor’s Note: the commune is not responsible for any embarrassing misspellings or grammatical boners on the gravestones of your dearly departed. “the commune’s Gravestone Proofreading Service” was a woefully misbegotten brainstorm courtesy of commune stone-bleeder Gay Bagel, and we must stress that what goes around should come around specifically to him some time when the rest of us are all out of pistol range.

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It seems like every time you buy a box to mail something in these days, it comes with the phrase "Handle with Care" pre-printed on the side. And I have to wonder, am I paying extra for this? And even further so: what the hell's wrong with the postal service that they need special instructions not to beat the shit out of your package with baseball bats or feed it through the air intake of a jet engine? I want to print out a sticker that says "No, you know what? Don't handle with care. Drop kick the goddamn thing if you want to. It's not like I'm mailing eggs or something. Jesus Christ, what are you people, gorillas?" But to make this legible the sticker would have to be so big that mailing any package it would fit on would probably be cost prohibitive.

And you just know that if I went to all the trouble to get the sticker spell-checked and printed up and all that, it would practically guarantee that my mailman would make it his personal mission to fuck up my packages something good from then on. I already caught him backing his truck over a box of sausages I ordered once, and that was before I'd even done anything to piss the guy off. I haven't even had time to brainstorm on what he'd dream up to do to my poor packages should he ever get some serious motivation.

Personally, I'm not even sure if the Postal Service is an actual federal employer, or if they're just some kind of well-organized religious cult of some sort. The more I think about it, I'm leaning toward door number two. I mean, what kind of federal agency delivers you a letter that's crumpled into the shape of an accordion, stained brown, and stamped with the words "Damaged in Handling at the Post Office"? No shit, huh? Thanks for the stamp, otherwise I might have thought freemasons were fucking with my mail. That's a real load-off.

Whatever their bizarre cult is all about, I think it definitely involves cloning. I've developed a theory over the years that there are only two actual people working at the post office, no matter where you go, and all of the other employees are just clones of these two. See if this sounds familiar: there's a lady there behind the counter who looks like she'd rather cough up a spiny blowfish than offer you any assistance. She has no answers to any of your questions, no explanation for how your package caught fire en-route or why it was doused with moose urine afterwards, and no discernable pulse. Her co-worker is a scary older version of Mr. Rogers who's suicidally chipper and possibly made out of an advanced plastic polymer. He's too eager to help you and you check in your back seat and under your car twice before you drive home.

If real federal agencies, like the police, were this inept, we'd all be long-dead by now. Have you ever had the postal service lose a package you mailed? They have you fill out a form describing what was in the box and where you mailed it from, which I think was only for my benefit as I'm fairly sure they just took it in the back room and threw it away. What am I supposed to think they're going to do with it? Rustle up the bloodhounds so they can catch the scent? Have a couple of slow-witted guys in hats drive the route all night with flashlights, scratching their heads? I should have made a copy of the form, just in case it got lost somewhere on the way to postal headquarters deep in the underwater city of Atlantis. I wouldn't trust these guys to get my trash to the curb.

I have it on good authority that this cult has been raising their funds by creating all of the junk mail in the world themselves. I mean, who the hell in their right mind tries to sell dog-sized hockey masks through the mail? I've received three offers for those this week alone. This definitely sounds like the work of an organization that thinks raising stamp prices one penny a year is a smarter idea than just jacking them up a dime and leaving us alone for a decade or so. I think I've got at least one of every one-cent stamp ever made, including the rare misprint of the Norman-Rockwell mailman toting an AK-47.

Any way you slice it, I'm done with the postal service. Those jokers have dropped my parcels in shit for the last time. I'm going to find some dumb little kid with a bike for all of my package and letter delivery needs in the future. Kids have two distinct advantages over the postal service when it comes to delivering things: they have no concept of geography and they think a quarter is a lot of money. So the next time you're on the highway and you see some flat-topped little moron with a package strapped to his back, pedaling his way toward Maryland, give a honk and a wave. Unless he's walking his bike or sitting under a tree or something, then give him a smack for Omar because I don't tolerate slacking on my dime and three nickels. Bricks out.

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