’m serious, what the hell happened last year? Did we mix up our multivitamins and roofies again? Because if anything at all of note happened in 2006, we missed it here at the commune. Best to check the tape.

Ah, right. Who could forget the midterm elections, when even Republican candidates were voting to toss their own corrupt asses out of office? Never before has the term “midterm� meant anything near this good, usually it’s just a sign that the time has come to stop having sex with that pregnant girl at the office.

The Iraq War trundled on, if you can call it a war when we stand by and watch while a country tears itself to shreds like that one Superman where he tried to rip his Clark Kent suit off, but forgot he had already done so and ended up pulling off all his skin like a Halloween costume and got a superinfection. That’s basically what has happened in Iraq; only the country is infected with assholes.

Speaking of assholes, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was hung like a horse, only not in the good sense of the phrase. It turns out Iraq doesn’t hang many people, preferring execution by forcible blowupification, and so Hussein had to be put down in the capital punishment wing of a veterinary hospital. Tack-y, Iraqis.

Paul McCartney’s pirate wife, Heather Mills McCartney, filed for divorce on the grounds of emotional cruelty, on account of McCartney’s habit of singing her Wings songs during their tender moments. McCartney took the news in stride, citing the fact that he’d run out of good “one leg� jokes months ago anyhow. This, moments before he launched into an a cappella rendition of ZZ Top’s “She’s Got Leg,� bringing the room to an uncomfortable silence.

Ariel Sharon had a stroke, and millions of children cried. Until adults explained that this was not the Ariel from The Little Mermaid. And so, millions of children went back to playing with their food.

It was the year of K-FED, some kind of sexually transmitted disease the young people were going nuts about this year. And it says here they finally caught the guy who killed JonBenet… I can’t be reading that right. Anyway, a bunch of Amish kids got shot, if that surprises anyone after all the crap they’ve pulled.

A bunch of yabbos tried to bring down airliners with Gatorade, resulting in a ban on anything wetter than Tony Danza’s back going through airport security and spiking sales of $5 bottles of tap water in airport gift shops.

And how could we have forgotten the Foley sex scandal? Republicans proved yet again that they do everything better than Democrats, including falling flat on their faces in public after quizzing underage boys about their boner etiquette. Thankfully for all involved, Foley quickly entered alcohol rehab, the only known surefire cure for rampant pedophilia.

Oh shit! Cheney shot some dude. Yeah, that was pretty memorable. Anyway, it was a year, end of story. Unless you died or got laid, in which case it was the most important year in the history of mankind. Congratulations.

fter years of staunch, stiff-jawed and clenched-buttocksed opposition to human cloning research, President Bush issued a startling reversal to his January "Pig Men" State of the Union address this week, and now is apparently in favor of the controversial scientific pursuit.

A tearful Bush, admittedly "a little behind" on his TV viewing due to "the usual work b.s.," finally got around to viewing the fifth and final season of HBO's acclaimed drama Six Feet Under on DVD this week, an event that seems to have had a profound effect on the president.

"Just being reminded that everyone you know will die one day, that really makes you think," explained the president, not previously known as a fan of thought.

"Keith!" Bush suddenly shouted, mid-sob. "Why'd he have to go so young?"

Those in the terrifying position of being close to the president's thought processes claim that a recent twelve-hour DVD marathon viewing of the show left Bush in a deep near-thoughtful funk, a condition aides hadn't seen the president in since the cancellation of Timecop in 1997.

"Seeing that documentary really got me thinking about the people close to me, and how to keep them from ever dying, ever," explained Bush. This reporter chose not to take this opportunity to explain the difference between drama and documentary, or the inevitability of death, to the president.

"At first I was thinking about time travel," continued Bush. "But that never worked out so hot in those Michael J. Fox movies. Plus, it gets all confusing and hard to follow the story. Then I thought about the fountain of youth, but I couldn't think of any movies where that really worked either. I just kept thinking of the end of Gremlins where that scary thing melts in the fountain—yuck. Anyway, then I turned on the SciFi Channel and that got me thinking about human cloning."

Reports indicate this is not the first time the president's opinions and policies have been changed by popular entertainment, including Bush's proposed tax breaks for hot rod owners last year after viewing The Dukes of Hazzard, and the president's call for storm windows to be installed in the White House after finally getting around to seeing Twister in 2001.

Critics have long suggested that most of Bush's policy moves and public statements over the course of his two terms have been inspired by old Clint Eastwood movies and various Chuck Norris action vehicles. Debate rages concerning the timing of Bush's 2002 statements about clamping down on whistleblowers, coming as they did days after the president reportedly attended a screening of the environmentally-themed Steven Soderbergh film Erin Brockovich.

"I guess it's easy to feel one way about a subject, until it potentially affects someone you care about," Bush explained about his change of heart in the cloning debate. Asked if he would then be sending his daughters to Iraq to help with the nation-building efforts, Bush ignored the question and asked if this reporter had time to stick around for a spontaneous viewing of Top Gun on DVD.

What lurks inside the human heart? Even the most fickle of love muscles has moments where it is full of nothing but joy, and I would only seek these moments for us.

I do not believe the heart can be judged when it is not in love. For a heart in love is at its most pure, like a Hershey chocolate bar with absolutely no nuts, no nougat, nothing but the chocolate you want. A heart in love is a heart as it really is. These moments when we're not in love are moments where we are not even truly existing. It is like love is the band we came to see, the big name on the marquee, and every other moment is us sitting in our seats in the dark, or watching Big Country and calling them assholes while we really seek U2. U2 on stage is akin to the love in our hearts, and that is why we are all really here.

Oh, my Nancy—the Nancy whose heart is mine and no one else's. I am so convinced of our perfect union that I need no proof of our entwined fates. I can see into your heart, and I stare intently at your chest while you try to sleep just in case I could ever do so. But it is in your eyes that I recognize we are the one love either of us will ever have. If your heart were a tax return, I would never audit your heart. Even if some of the math were a little shady and you clearly didn't have 9 dependents like you filled in, I could not bring myself to ask you to bring in your love receipts to my office where I could pore over them and see if everything added up—it doesn't matter. Love has ruined my math skills. The only math that makes sense to me now is 1 + 1 = Us. And even that would not get me through a second grade elementary school.

I wish I could be tested on other subjects, for even the most elementary of things I am stupid about since accepting you into my heart. Basic English skills are unwelcome in my mind, phone numbers are quickly forgotten. I have become retarded for love. People should write notes about where I'm going and who I had to see and pin them to my shirt so that I might remain functional in a world where loving you is my only competent skill. I would drink Liquid Plumber right out from under the cabinet, if I momentarily forgot its lethality in the face of your beauty. You would have to rush me to the hospital and get my stomach pumped so I could continue to love you, and in my stomach they might well extract pure love along with the Liquid Plumber, because love is the only thing that fills me.

Nancy, why must we ever disagree? You should know when I called the ending to that Reese Witherspoon movie total horseshit that I could never second-guess your opinion. We've already talked about how completely helpless I am, roaming the world like a blithering idiot due to my obsession with you. It is an obsession that everyone would call unhealthy and dangerous if I were not so handsome and you did not return my love even a fraction, which you do. I am incapable of rational action as long as you are alive. Killing you would be the only way to return me to regular intelligence, and I would sooner die than let someone kill you. I love you too much to be intelligent.

Allow me to take that I.Q. test as a I offered last night. You will see that you are in love with an unmistakable moron, and that any opinion I ever offer that offends you should count for nothing. Even my opinion on this love is collectively worthless, given I'm two brain cells away from drooling into a bedpan for the rest of my life.

I love you that much. At least, that's my perception of it, given my extremely limited capacity.

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