ollowing the September special election of Republican Bob Turner to fill the Congressional seat disgraced by Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, newspaper headline writers are entering into a devastating period of depression as they face the prospect of never again writing a Weiner-centric news headline.

Rep. Weiner, a U.S. Congressman with a strong Democratic record since 1998, was the subject of a scandal in May 2011 for sending women illicit pictures of his namesake via Twitter. The accusation proved disastrous for the New York Representative and Democratic Party, and a windfall for bored and humorless newspaper publishers who were thrilled to be writing about naughty bits at long last. Boldface text announcing "Weiner Hanging Out on Twitter" and "Weiner Exposed Online" besieged the sleepy culture of America, increasing newspaper sales for people who found it funnier to read than just listen to a description of the disappointing sex scandal on CNN.

A little more than a week after the incident, the Congressman admitted to emailing links to women he was interested in polling, and by the end of June, the 9th District Representative resigned his seat. Headlines continued to roll, tongues firmly in cheek among the newspaper industry, proclaiming, "Weiner Loses Standing," "Weiner Ejected From Seat," and the timeless classic "Weiner Suddenly Pulls Out." Bad times for the sexually mischievous Congressman, great times for headline writers; although the news cut short some of the fun of the journalism industry, they were still guaranteed months of fun as a special election seemed some months off to fill the vacated position.

A confidential source from the New York Daily News, whose name simply isn’t as funny as Tony Weiner, remembered the past four months as if they were last year.

"As a copy editor whose only functions are to proofread stories and write headlines, let me just state for the record you’re lucky if you get big news story in your lifetime—think about it. A big-time politician exposing himself on the internet? That it in itself is gold. But the guy is named Weiner. Jesus H. Christ, that’s better than Cox. You gotta savor it," said the anonymous dude. "Even after he resigned we spent days writing headlines about him, just because dammit, we earned the right. I think we left three serial killings without coverage while we came up with ’Who Will Replace Weiner’? That was my favorite. Man, we’ll never get those days back."

This reporter reminded the confidential informant of the now classic, "No One Big Enough to Fill Weiner’s Slot," then we laughed ourselves stupid.

The halcyon days of headline writing seemed to fade as the date of the special election approached, and dull-as-dishwater Republican Bob Turner defeated the even-less-spectacularly-named Assemblyman David Weprin. The Republican election not only means a big GOP win in a district they haven’t held since 1923, but a promise that future Weiner-related headlines will only seem a desperate play for attention by print tabloids and newspapers.

At the New York Post, there was a somber feeling in the air on election night, and boos went around as a Republican victory was announced. All eyes were misty, and the feeling was best exemplified by copy editor Dawn Draper.

"Gentlemen… that’s our last Weiner." Half-hearted chuckles were all that met the dour atmosphere.

Draper spoke further on the subject as deadline approached, the staff rushing about us like mad men.

"Of course we’ll miss the chance to make Weiner-related headlines, and not just because it sold more papers," Draper said. "We at the Post have been doing Weiner write-ups before anyone else. I myself am responsible for our coverage of the firing of his Chief of Staff in 2006, which spawned the immortal headlines ’Weiner Loses Head of Staff’ and ’Behind Weiner’s Big Sack.’ But it’s never going to be enough for us again to write more Weiner coverage, to give the full skinny on Weiner—sorry, hard to stop doing that. For a while, it was a perfect storm of scandal and ’you’ve got to be shitting me’ names—everyone was game, we were all on board. Oh, the nights we sat here, giggling like school girls over Chinese take-out and writing up new Weiner coverage. We’ll never have that again."

Despite the morbid pessimism of some, others in the industry hold out some hope for the future. The New York Times, famous for its conservative coverage of news and events, has already announced their support for a fresh batch of congressional candidates in 2012, among them 8th District contender Penny Dick, 12th District candidate Patrick Dong, and 2nd District dark horse Mike Dixon-Kuntz.

You’ve Got Mail, Iran’s Got Nukes

Da Vinci Code Author Found Guilty of Inspiring National Treasure

New .eu Domains Popular Among Gross-Out, Childbirth Video Websites

Sharon Still in Coma, Phyllis Still Total Slutbag

Who's to blame, good people? That's what I've been asking myself all week: Who's to blame? That and, on an unrelated note, "Why did they cancel Gunsmoke when it was just getting good?"

The earlier question has been inspired by an incident that happened last Sunday, friends. I was enjoying an issue of Hot Dog magazine, as I'm prone to do on occasion, when my charming neighbor Mrs. Hardlevilch stopped by for a visit. As you may or may not know, people who are very close to dying in their old age make a "visit" a huge event, and Mrs. Hardlevilch is no exception. She was dressed in her finest pantsuit and babushka.

The three of us--myself, Mrs. Hardlevilch and my long-suffering wife, Arvelyn--all sat around talking over the state of things, or more commonly the state of things in 1949, the last year before everything went to pot in America. Mrs. Hardlevilch became very flustered and excited when I did my famous Louis Armstrong-in-a-blender impression, and that's when it happened.

Mrs. Hardlevilch wet my sofa! And floor, thanks to some unsightly dribbling, but mostly my sofa is what I'm concerned about.

Needless to say, I was perturbed. At first Mrs. Hardlevilch apologized rapidly, still laughing uncontrollably at my dead-on impression, and offered to build a time machine to go back fifteen minutes and put some plastic on the sofa before she sat down. I was intrigued, but it quickly became apparent her theories of time travel and plans to carry it out were extremely flawed. Within another minute, Mrs. Hardlevilch was convinced someone had entered the room and pissed on her, completely forgetting her role in staining my couch.

I'm now at my wit's end, and it wasn't far to go, let me tell you. I'm left asking, as I said before, who's to blame? Sure, I could sue Mrs. Hardlevilch in a court of law, but no jury is going to convict a withered old fossil of public urination since I'm not sure it's a crime and, truthfully, my living room isn't considered public domain. If I had deemed to shoot her, sure, it would have been legal, but her pissing all over my couch left me without much recourse of action once the moment for retaliation passed. Not that I would ever shoot the dear old women, she'd probably think it was the Kaiser shelling her homeland or something anyway.

If Mrs. Hardlevilch is not to blame, who is? Through some late-night detective work, I managed to find out Mrs. Hardlevilch wears Dapper Debutante brand adult "pads," so that offered me some hope. But so far all threatening letters have not received any offer to settle out of court, and I'm sure signing them with my real name wouldn't help. This means, of course, that there is a faulty product out there in Dapper Debutante adult "safety nets" and behind them is a company unwilling to admit they're responsible for the puddles of the greatest generation.

In the end, as Arvelyn pointed out, I probably have no one to blame but myself. There is nothing funnier in the world than my Louis Armstong-in-a-blender impression; I knew this and carried forth with thoughtless drive to entertain, floors and sofas be damned. More than a reasonable number of healthy young Americans have relieved themselves all over my property in response to my humoriffic comedy "closer." This might seem enough reason for anyone to stop, but I know I won't. The world needs hilarious impressions of famous loveable singers suffering severe torture in a comical fashion, and I think a sofa, after all is said and done, is a small price to pay.

º Last Column: I Have Just Seen American Booty
º more columns

It's recently been brought to my attention that the commune has not been appearing online for the last, say, nine months, give or take a full-term pregnancy. I guess the saying is true: you're always the last to know when your stuff stops getting published for the better part of a year. Anyway, spilled milk aside, it's clear wherein the blame for this blunder lies.

Gerbil tubes.

I'll be the first to admit I was the one who discovered the tubes, poking out of the walls in every room of the commune offices, including the shitter. I was scanning the walls with a studfinder, looking for espionage-style bugs, rather than the usual food-stealing bugs we've always had, when suddenly, tubes! Had covert, turtle-fighting plumbers snuck in overnight and installed them? Nope, turns out they'd been there all along. No gold star for the commune staff's powers of noticing.

But still, you can imagine our excitement at this discovery. Finally, a way to file our articles and columns without the constant drudgery of saving and emailing. Pneumatic tubes have always been the way of the future, and it was about time the commune got some, or barring that, realized we'd had them since the early 80's.

And let me just say that filing your semi-weekly columns by pneumatic tube is a joy and a pleasure. You crumple that shit up into a ball and stuff it in the tube, pushing aside last week's column, and say asta-la-deadline, asshole. Everything in life should be that easy, and involve crumpling.

Everything cruised along smooth as shit until last week, when Emil Zender got out of the hospital following months of recovery following a complicated tonsil-removal surgery and burst into the commune offices, apparently after driving straight from Vermont in his hospital duds to let us know the commune wasn't online anymore. We all made fun of him for not using the telephone instead, until he pointed out that no one answers the commune telephones and in fact we have them all in a pile on the floor of Rok Finger's office so we can close the door and not be bothered with all that ringing. True enough. So then we made fun of him for reading the commune.

It turns out the tubes actually run to a pet store down the block, and they were installed in the early 1980's after an earlier tenant's stroke of genius about revolutionizing gerbil delivery. So Big Stiff's Pet Pouch has been the sole benefactor of the last nine months of commune wit, wisdom, and panache. And he was using the shit for guinea pig bedding. C'est la vie, but suffice it to say you've missed some all-time classic My Friend Polio columns while you were gone.

Okay, that's not precisely true. Actually I've been mailing it in since around June, writing about shit I found in the trash and why nobody makes a barbecue big enough to cook a dolphin. So in fact you've rejoined us just in the nick of time.

Oh shit, I forgot to bitch about how lousy my Christmas was. Hurry up and join us next time, because I'm out of room and gotta piss like a fish. Bricks out.

º Last Column: The Deep Freeze
º more columns