Incoming EPA Head Pledges to Mine Earth's Precious Core

ichael O. Leavitt, the president's pick for head of the Environmental Protection Agency celebrated his first day on the job Thursday, with the promise to "eliminate the environment by 2010, and completely mine the Earth's precious core."

When questioned by reporters if eliminating the environment should be the aim of the EPA, Leavitt shrugged and said, "I gotta do something. I wasn't put here to sit on my butt."

Leavitt was a controversial choice for the four remaining liberals in the U.S., with a history of "fuck the environment" environmental policy in his former position as governor of Utah. Accusers point out Leavitt's passing of laws preventing lawsuits against agricultural polluters and his opening of Utah wilderness to build government roads through. Leavitt, contrastly, points to large sections of forest in California and makes bets on how fast they'll go up in flames if ignited.

The EPA's new leader arrived the day after the agency announced they were dropping 70 investigations of coal-burning power plants for disobeying local or national ordinances for output of pollutants. Leavitt confirmed Thursday it was part of the EPA's new policy, "I didn't see it. Did you see it?"

"The enviro-nuts out there can complain all they want," said Leavitt, munching on a California condor egg salad sandwich, "but tell me this: Did you see anything? I didn't see it. I wasn't there when they supposedly dumped all this smoke into the air. Who's to say it even happened?"

"Mmm," added Leavitt, "it's endangered-licious."

Critics accuse the White House of putting crony Leavitt in charge of the EPA in an effort to pussify the agency, part of an ever-growing trend by the Bush administration to save money and gain political favor with polluting companies by relaxing environmental laws. Leavitt has been denounced by environmental advocates before for his various outrageous plans to increase government income at the expense of the ecology. Some of his plans include lighting the Statue of Liberty's torch with real fire and allowing companies to blot out the sunlight so Americans can pay a surcharge to get it back.

Among Leavitt's most outspoken plans is to drill for fire in the Earth's core, a plan which he says could increase national income grossly and create exciting new areas of energy industry, and which opponents say will cause the Earth to collapse on itself and annihilate the human species.

"Where do we get heat from?" questioned Leavitt when he spoke at an alternative energy resources conference last month. "From coal, from gas, from the sun. We're almost out of the two and the other one is so far away we can't reach it. Coal comes from the Earth, right? Well, I'll bet you anything it's even hotter deeper in the Earth. We can take liquid magma, hot Earth core, and it can probably heat your home for a good two or three years."

When dissenters claimed the process of gutting the planet's innards would destroy all living things, Leavitt disagreed. "I say it's cheap energy. You say it's the apocalypse. The fair thing to do is let me try it and we'll see who's right."

"It's high time somebody did something about the environment," Leavitt said Thursday, at his inaugural conference. "We've been around for years and it just keeps getting worse. Everyone else may be tip-toeing around the obvious, but it's high time we destroyed it. And I'll be the one to do it, mark my words."

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My first month of retirement has been a rough one. Since I'm all out of acting jobs, I've had to go looking for a new source of steady income. I mean, I still get my commune pay, but that's about as steady as the San Franciscan fault lines. And about as big as the straight population of that city.

Have you ever had to get a job before? Man, they suck. People tell you what to do and expect you to get it done or they'll fire you. If you ask them about your motivation they'll tell you to do it or you'll get fired. No subtext work at all, these guys. And very few of them cater worth a shit either. I tell you, this is the 21st century. How am I supposed to watch the register without a break when I haven't had any rye bread and pimento-less olive snacks in more than twenty minutes? Not a good way to keep your employees happy.

So in the three weeks since I announced my retirement, I've gotten jobs at Pizza Hut, K-Mart, Home Depot, Uncle Macho's Family-Style Restaurant, Target, and Bed, Bath & Beyond. I've also gotten fired from Pizza Hut, K-Mart, Home Depot, Uncle Macho's Family-Style Restaurant, Target, and Bed, Bath & Beyond. If nothing else, I'm a completist, right?

All my jobs go through the same life cycle—I get hired, things are okay for a while, and then I'm fired for no reason at all. Right now I'm working for Ms. Diffy's Jewelry, and I'm in that middle "everything's cool" phase. I'll probably get fired by tomorrow or the day after. Wednesday, if I play my cards right.

It's not as great as you'd think, working in a jewelry store. They make you sell things to people. Customers act like complete dicks and you can't tell them they can't shop there anymore. Which I don't understand, because when I'm on the other side of the counter, that's what I usually get. At least I'll know how things really work the next time some smart-ass employee tells me that bullshit.

I've never met Ms. Diffy. I guess she lives on some ranch somewhere in Arkansas, or wherever diamond magnates live. South Africa maybe. Ms. Diffy's second in command is Julie, the shift supervisor. I've been trying to get Ms. Diffy on the phone all week to let her know Julie is a real bitch who hires all her friends and treats everybody like shit, but the secretary I get on the phone at the head office keeps trying to tell me Ms. Diffy is only a corporate icon and doesn't really exist. I've heard some lame excuses to get out of showing up to work, but that takes the cake. I should probably call in sick sometime to Bagel and tell him I never existed, I'm only a corporate entity designed to sell the commune. He'd probably buy it, if you catch him early enough.

Oh, here's some more bullshit from the world of retail jewelry: Did you know you can't wear the stuff out, like, even if you have important shit going on later? You could've knocked me over with a fart when they told me that. I tried all the angles, too, like telling them it was good for the business, free advertising or whatever. I told them my doctor said I had a condition where I had to wear two pounds of diamonds or I get sick. Nothing. They knew it was all bullshit. At least the people at Uncle Macho's were more gullible, and let me wear all the chicken wings I could carry.

I'm not desperate enough to go back to acting or anything. Shit, I hope I'll never be that desperate. But I am almost ready for some major alternatives to working. Like going for a college business degree.

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Anyone who knows me should know I'm not political. Or at least I never thought I was. Which only means I never knew myself. Huh. How does something like that get by me? But it don't matter. I'm taking a stand, for once in my life. And it probably will be once. It's hard to take a stand for or against something. I keep forgetting I took a stand, and then I can't remember which side I'm on.

So I might as well tell you before I forget: I'm taking a stance against body grooming. Not all of it, mind you. I'm not some big slob or nothing. I'm still going to take my bath every couple of weeks, and I might even use soap. But no more of this bullshit about hair cutting and shaving and clipping nails and so on. It's all just a lot of crap made up by big business to sell us things we don't need, like electric razors and razors for the Amish and such.

Think about it: What would be the worst thing that would happen if you stopped cutting your fingernails today? Sure, a lot of fatcats who own nail clipper corporations would be out of luck. But you, with the long fingernails and toenails? If you get thrown out of a helicopter or airplane, you can just grab the side of a mountain or building on your way down. Save yourself from certain doom. That means we've been cutting our own throats by cutting our nails. And I'm done with all of it.

I'm done with haircuts, too. Done with lining some bigwig wig magnate's pockets with my hard-borrowed money by cutting off my hair and letting him come in after I've left to make some wig out of it. I recognize my hair, once in a while, when I see some bald guy wearing it on the street. Nobody else's hair curls just the way mine does. I'm losing all this hair out of ignorance and some greaseball with a dustpan and wig business is getting rich off my leavings. It's over, rich guys.

I'll just grow my hair out forever and ever. Grow it long, grow it high, grow it down to my ass, and then if it falls out from terror when it reaches that length, bury it proper and then grow it out again. I'm lucky to have hair. Even this hair. Some day I might be some old guy with huge bald patches and I'll remember all the huge patches of hair I left on a barber's floor in my youthful indiscretion. But that guy's not going to be me anymore. I'm keeping all of it, never cutting it again. And if any does fall out for any other reason, I'm going to develop an elaborate filing system to keep track of it all.

And I'm not going to cut or shave my crotch hair either. It probably goes without saying, but it always pisses off my mom when I talk about my crotch in my columns.

Face shaving is out, too. I've already got me the world's most beautiful moustache (despite what those elitists at Moustache Quarterly say) and I'm going to grow the world's coolest beard to be its buddy. They'll hang out together constantly, on my face, and go with me on fishing trips and to ball games. The best of friends until they grow old and gray together. I'll have a big thick beard and moustache, like that one famous religious guy—Manson.

The jury's still out on what to do with my urine and stools. But I've got plenty of jars, so there's lots of time before I have to come to a final decision on all that.

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