he fat-walleted president George W. Bush embarked on a two-day road trip with his staff and advisors to promote a major revamp of the Social Security system, with stops in many western states to gather Republican and Democrat support for his latest plan: Solving the future Social Security problems with magic. With magic, Bush tells us, the problem of supporting a large non-working retired community with a small workforce paying taxes can be fixed, as a small amount of tax money is inexplicably transformed into "bunches."

The plan, first outlined in the State of the Union address, involves heavy investing in magic research, most specifically, figuring out how stage magicians can make a quarter become a dollar coin. Ideally, according to the president, the basic "science" of magic can be expanded until larger sums, such as billions of dollars, are doubled into money to preserve future Social Security benefits. The president's latest proposal replaces less feasible plans, such as just printing more money until we have all we need, or investing in "reliable" stocks and bonds.

"I'm not sure if magic really can be a viable solution to supporting Social Security benefits," said White House critic Rep. Hud Coker (D-Arkansas), "but at least he's not talking that 'privatization' bullshit anymore."

Bush took the lead in the Social Security argument by describing the system as being "in crisis" during his State of the Union speech, and then pushed the agenda further by loading into a van with his staff Friday for a support-building "road trip" to key states. On Friday, the president made stops at auditoriums and town halls, as well as "piss breaks" at gas stations and fast food restaurants, to speak on his hopes for magic as a resolution to the Social Security dilemma future generations will likely face.

"When the workforce is smaller than the community of retirees it supports, it's a big math problem," said the president, while eating from a small bag of Cheetos as he stood by the gas pump. "I'm not very good at math problems, but I know what it means when you need more money than you have. Then I remembered a birthday party I had a couple of years ago, where a magician made twenty-five cents into a dollar. That's what we need, I thought to myself. If this works—and let's face it, it's my best plan yet—it could solve more problems than just Social Security. Funding for perverted paintings and crap? Don't worry, we'll magicize it! And maybe you'll finally let us build missile defense systems and bombers without all the bellyachin'." Then an advisor reminded the president about his campaign promise to quit using the word "bellyachin'" to describe political opposition.

Many critics of the president, those knowledgeable in science and the laws of nature, bemoaned the difficulties of reproducing money through magic, but a few Democrats rallied behind the president's plan as a bipartisan solution to a hot-button old people issue. Ken "Amazing Kenny" Rublett, an unaccredited professor at Ithaca, New York's University of Magic & Illusion, spoke positively of the president's plan.

"I've been lobbying for the government to use magic and prestidigitation to solve national problems ever since Nixon's been president," said Professor Amazing Kenny. "Finally, someone is listening. I don't agree with the Iraq War and I've disagreed with the president's implementation of the Patriot Act, but magic can help us in ways not yet imagined. Have someone like Impresso the Clown put on a show at Guantanamo Bay, and ask for volunteers. When he does the Mystery Box, he can make any potential terrorists disappear—he doesn't have to bring them back. There. We've solved problem of due process without endangering the Constitution! Magic can solve anything!"

The cracker magician then made a ball of fire burst from his hands, at which point this reporter's aggressive instincts kicked in and unleashed a furious ass-whipping on the man.

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Look out, everybody, I'm on the war path. And if you're on the war path we better be going in the same direction or I'm going to roll right over your sorry hindquarters.

And my path leads to Carl Tomlin. Does that name mean nothing to you? It didn't mean much to me until I recently started my war path.

Carl Tomlin is the insurance agent who sold us our life insurance policies, me and my soon-to-be-ex-wife Arvelyn, back when she was my as-yet-unknown-soon-to-be-ex-wife. Put short, Carl sold me a sweet insurance policy in which my survivors received quite a substantial financial settlement if something happened to me. If I am eaten by a large fish, my family receives $200,000. If I am kicked in the groin by a non-family member with such force as to cause my death, my family receives $500,000. If I am poisoned by a mysterious, undetectable poison, my family receives $1,000,000. This was shortly before my wife tried to poison me and we broke up.

As is the custom, I drove over to mine and Arvelyn's house around midnight to sneak in and watch her sleep for a little while. But she had company—Carl Tomlin's car, complete with his TONG ASS personalized plates, was in my drive way. That's right, at midnight. Of course it was then I realized I have unfinished business with Carl Tomlin.

My best guess is that I never signed the insurance policy we agreed on. I suppose he could've stopped by urging me to get a physical or something, perhaps offering to do it himself as he was always a helpful insurance company servant—he even examined Arvelyn for her policy. I know I at least have some form of unfinished business with Mr. Tomlin. I could call Arvelyn and ask him what was so urgent he stopped by so late in the hour, but talking to her only brings up the heartache of my attempted murder and our breakup. I'll just call Carl at his place of business.

Okay, I just tried the number for Carl's office and they said he wasn't there, he was taking the day off and could be reached at a new number, which they gave me. The curious thing, and see if this doesn't make your jaw drop, the number is my home phone number, or the number I had before I moved out of our house. Do you believe that?

There are two possibilities as I see it: One, a little far-fetched, is that Arvelyn changed the home phone number and Carl coincidentally got a new phone number that happened to be our old one. Right, I don't buy that either.

Or the second possibility: The unfinished business I have with Carl Tomlin is of such an urgent nature that he is taking all his free time up going to my house to await my arrival, and he has left my own number for anyone to reach him there.

What service!

Carl Tomlin is the last of a dying breed, I tell you. The dedicated insurance salesman, the service-oriented salesperson who puts the customer first before all else. I'm impressed beyond all measurable English phrasing. I could only hope that Carl Tomlin is representative of all the other insurance agents at his company, for Rokwell T. Finger is in awe.

I must call Carl right away, at my house, and settle all unfinished business so he can go back to serving his other customers. The universe does not revolve around yours truly. Carl has other places to see and people to be, and they are just as fortunate as I am.

I've needed to call him for some time anyway, and ask him to quit fucking my wife until she at last succeeds in killing me.

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Buddha?

Buddha who?

Indeed. Well, it's time to set the record really straight, like Tom Selleck straight. Because I'm tired of people on the street arguing with me that Buddha was one of the original members of Cypress Hill. So strap on your thinking caps boys and girls, we're embarking on a magical journey to the Land of Not Being So Stupid.

For starters, you probably know Buddha as that big fat Oriental guy smiling and giving the thumbs-up in ads for Chinese restaurants across the country. What few know and may be surprised to learn is that he was also the father of a worldwide religious movement, sort of like Jim Jones without all the mass suiciding. Or think Eddie Murphy in that Holy Man movie. I haven't seen the movie, but it seemed like it had something to do with religion.

The problem with the Buddha is that everyone has their own idea who the man was. For some, he's known as the source for the famous philosophical quote "It ain't easy, bein' cheesy." For others, he was an inspiration to the morbidly obese worldwide. Others are just crazy.

Case in point: feminist voice Liz Gromer of the Humboldt, California Daily Bitch.

"If you want to buy into the bullshit Hollywood image of Buddha, you go right ahead if it helps you sleep at night, thinking of Buddha in this glamorized image of some great big fat fucker from China. But the truth remains the truth, and the truth is Buddha was an 87-pound woman from Chicago, and she had an ABORTION. That's right, and I hope it rocks your pathetic little sanctimonious world, you fucks."

On this side of crazy, the real Buddha was born in Northern India in 565 B.C. as Siddhattha Gautama, which isn't that bad once you consider that this was a country where people were naming their kids things like Dikshit and Assum. Gautama was born as royalty; real royalty, not the crap we have now like Paris Hilton or a bunch of inbred Brits. As a child he rode around on pygmy elephants and his feet weren't allowed to touch the ground until he was seven, that kind of thing.

Buddhists believe that Gautama was born after having a go at reincarnation innumerable times in an attempt to become the Buddha, or "Bitchin' Guy." In nearly all of the lives he ended up being a gay hairdresser in New York, so he had to start the whole thing over again too many times to count. Eventually, however, he fulfilled the Ten Paramitas, a Mexican entrée that is very difficult to prepare, and was ready to be born as the Buddha.

While she was pregnant, Gautama's mother had visionary dream of a magnificent white elephant handing her a hamburger, which was delicious but needed relish. She took the dream to mean her son-to-be would either be a great success, or would just love bun meat.

A seer who had crashed the party for Gautama's birth told the father, King "Dan" Suddhodana, that his son would either grow up to be a great king or a kick-ass spiritual leader. Dan quickly set out to prevent his son from having any kind of character-building experiences, so that he would go the king route and Dan wouldn't be stuck with a lousy spiritual messiah for a son, forsaking material excess and laying around the house all day.

The young Buddha spent his childhood like any other boy, trying to kill small birds, but because of his wealth he was able to forsake throwing rocks and just paid the birds to fly into the rocks themselves. After seven or eight years he tired of this and turned his attention to spiritual matters. Ten minutes later, he discovered girls, and it is best to gloss over the next several years in the Buddha's biography.

In 545 B.C., Buddha was kicked out of college for boning the Dean's daughter, who was then 16 but had tits like a 24-year-old. A dissatisfied Buddha would drift aimlessly for the next few years on the George W. Bush plan for character development, except they didn't have cocaine back then and you had to juice a lot of toxic berries to get high. Eventually, Buddha was married and had a child in 540 B.C., though he was unaware of either fact and ended up deserting the family he didn't know he had to embark on a pilgrimage to find his lost shaker of salt, i.e., Enlightenment.

On his way out of town, the Buddha famously saw his "four sights": a dying man, a sick man, an old man, and the smug fucker who got the sick guy sick and killed the dying man and who kept pointing at the old man and laughing that he was so old. It was then that Buddha realized the four sufferings of existence: to be old, to be sick, to be dead, and to be an asshole. Buddha decided then and there that none of these were for him.

Gautama wandered in the wilderness for three years and in an act of self-denial, he ate nothing but Pringles the whole time. He would never eat them again. After the Pringles phase he tried eating nothing at all for two more years. After the second year, Buddha realized that denying the body the pleasures of food is "boddhishiti," or "bullshit." He then immediately ate three large pizzas and spent the rest of the week contemplating indigestion. Pretty much from then on the Buddha was Marlon Brando fat, but nobody gave him any crap about it.

Buddha then traveled to Rajagaha and studied meditation under the eccentric masters Alara-Kalama and Uddaka-Ramaputta, who argued constantly over who was uglier. Under their tutelage, Gautama achieved a transcendent state of deep meditative peace, which he summed up as "big whoop," before telling Alara-Kalama and Uddaka-Ramaputta they were both equally ugly and leaving.

Gautama decided he would have to go it alone to find true Enlightenment, and so spent the next four years contemplating why hot dogs come in packs of ten while buns come in packs of eight. After the fourth year spent in contemplation, Buddha realized he didn't even like hot dogs, and was enlightened.

From then on, Gautama was known as the Buddha, or as a bodhisattva, which is Hindi for "Big Deal." He quickly attracted legions of followers, to whom he passed on his wisdom about low-maintenance haircuts and not eating yellow snow. The Buddha would travel the countryside for the rest of his life, enlightening the masses and terrifying All-You-Can-Eat buffets across the land.

Though many in the West have a hard time taking the Buddha seriously as a religious figure because he never wrote a best-selling book (Jesus) or built much of a self-help empire (Hubbard), many slackers have adopted the Buddha as their patron saint, allowing them to camouflage their persistent sloth as a sign of low-grade Enlightenment. But their more-industrious neighbors are quick to remind them that while ancient people had to put up with the Buddha crashing on their couch all the time, at least they got some clever haikus out of the deal.

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