he United States Department of Homeland Security has been given the difficult task of dealing with the recent spate of hurricane attacks and, after weeks of standing back and assuring the public everything would be alright, settled into the more familiar job this week of arresting non-white people, taking into custody New Jersey boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. The arrest, according to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, is only designed to verify Carter is in no way connected with recent Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, or any other potential natural disaster threatening the country.

With a proven record of preventing catastrophes on U.S. soil, the Department of Homeland Security seemed the natural choice for protecting the populace from acts of God as well as acts of Allah, but some are already accusing the government-sanctioned Klan of overreacting with the Carter arrest. After all, according to detractors, Carter is a 5’8" middle-weight African-American man in his late ’60s, and doesn’t even have a windspeed, compared to the 150 mph windspeed of some of the recent hurricanes that have dealt damage to the Gulf Coast area.

"No one’s accusing Mr. Carter of anything," Chertoff told the press, "at least not yet. But if the safety of the American people is in question, I have no qualms about unlawfully detaining an old black man until the danger subsides. And if it means reducing the amount of disaster-related coverage cluttering up season premiere week, I believe the American people will back me up on this."

It isn’t Carter’s first famous bout with the law. The one-time contender for the middleweight boxing crown was jailed 30 years by a racist judicial system that convicted him of murder and robbery based on false testimony and a sham trial. It is, however, the first time Carter has been mistaken for a category-2 tropical storm, but these days he isn’t surprised at all by what white lawmakers will attempt to get away with.

The Department of Homeland Security refused to give a projection for how long they will hold Carter, and exactly what they hope to find out from him in regards to other weather-related assaults on the U.S., and they reminded the media that thanks to legislation passed after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, they are no longer accountable for anything they do, so shut up or they just may come after us next.

But if there’s anyone not sitting down for Carter’s legally-questionable detainment, besides Carter, it’s America’s celebrity community, always quick to champion a very public cause of injustice. While Bob Dylan was too busy writing new songs for Victoria’s Secret commercials to come to Hurricane Carter’s aid once again, his son, Jakob Dylan, did offer to fill his dad’s monstrous shoes.

"I’m organizing a benefit concert to pay for Mr. Carter’s legal bills, and we’re pushing to get him a new trial," said the forever-in-dad’s-shadow rock singer. When reminded Carter had not yet been brought to trial once on any recent charges, Dylan conceded it was true, but they had to have something to say in between songs at next week’s benefit concert.

"We’ve got everybody coming to help out," said Dylan. "Nash is going to be there—that’s right, of Crosby, Stills & Nash fame. We couldn’t get Willie Nelson for this one, but we did get Nelson, Ricky’s boys. And I’m in talks right now to get Patrick Swayze to perform a revamped version of his hit, ’She’s Like the Wind,’ but we’re in disagreement over the busfare. Keep your fingers crossed. We’ll get you out of this, hurricane!"

And if a B-grade roster of celebrities like that doesn’t keep Hurricane Carter fighting mad at the system, nothing will. Fight the power, brother—again.

learly delighted to have an offensive position at last, President Bush lashed out at "safety ign'rant" airlines and the FAA for its low-wheel requirements on commercial aircraft. According the president's amusing new platform, safety could be increased a bunchfold with the addition of 8-10 new sets of landing gear on standard airplanes, and hopefully would prevent scenes like the dramatic emergency landing of JetBlue Flight 292 on Thursday.

The commercial airline flight JetBlue 292 ran into difficulty landing when its foremost landing wheel arrogantly faced the wrong direction and forced a tense landing situation. The event was made all the more worthy of national attention when it was revealed passengers/potential victims aboard Flight 292 were watching their own ordeal on satellite television, one of the perks the airline offers passengers willing to risk becoming human charcoal on their flights. In the end, the plane landed successful, jetting down the runway covered with foam and emitting sparks in a thrilling scene of real life danger only seen previously on repeats of Jackass.

The White House jumped on the story, beginning on Friday with the president's casual comment that the plane would have been a lot safer if it had been a bus, and not quite so high in the air. The peckerwood president had no further comment then, but continued his assault on the airlines Saturday with a slightly more thought-out commentary.

"It's a shame the airline industry would risk the lives of so many of its passengers to save a few bucks," said our monkeyesque leader of the free world. When asked to elaborate, the president spared no one. "I say, more wheels. Why not? Put 8 more wheels on them sum'bitches, or what the hell, put 10. Flight 292 was lucky to land on two wheels. I bet those passengers would have had an even better chance for each wheel more you added on that thing."

Some critics of the president claim Bush is not rushing to embrace a serious airline issue so much as desperately fleeing the political quagmires of Iraq and failures to respond to recent natural disasters, to which the president says "horsehockey."

"I'm a pilot myself," said Bush, stating a half-truth. "Back when I flew a plane, I petitioned my commanding officers all the time for more wheels on Navy jetfighters. Our boys need to be protected from potential crashing disasters, and when you have more to land on, you have a better chance of landing. It's a scientific fact. And if it's not, it sure sounds like one."

The airline industry was slow to slapdown the president's criticism, probably out of some gratitude for the huge-ass bailout he approved for them in the post-9/11 environment; but JetBlue, the company who owns the world's most famous plane with muleheaded landing gear, did reject claims its planes were currently unsafe.

"Mechanical faults are always an unpleasant reality of the airline industry," said JetBlue spokesperson Chico Rudatti. "We do all we can to make sure our planes are safe before they get into the air, but once they're up there—fuck it, you know? Shit happens. Our pilots are trained to react calmly and with all their skill, and as you can see, they can make the difference between a successful landing and a company-killing crash."

Asked if they plan on making any upgrades to their aircrafts in light of recent events, JetBlue did concede it might start using the V-chips in their TV sets to lock out all airline-disaster-related programming on foreign and domestic flights.

Ginger Baker, my long-loving wife, had the brilliant idea of donating our time to charity. I was happy to do it—you know me, anything for a cause of some sort—until I learned donating time was a lot harder than donating money. Then I wanted to give the money. But Ginger promised me it would be worth the time. I'm still waiting for that proof to show up.

We're donating our time to the children, since Ginger believes firmly that the children are our future. I partially agree. I think the adults they grow up into will be our future, but kids will always be leeches taking all our money and time and eating all our food without any compensation. Plus, what about nanotechnology? The nano-things could be our real future, and I bet you dollars to donuts they're not happy about all this wasted time messing around with children.

That said, I had already agreed to volunteer at the schools and couldn't get out of it by this point. Ginger and I offered our help with Health Awareness Day or some such thing. Ginger, being a real estate broker, gave an inspiring lecture about buying property in economically depressed areas, and then sitting on them until the zoning changed to really clean up. Turns out this has nothing to do with health. I wanted to teach the kids about the value of being under-tall, but was directed instead to assist in checking the kids for health problems.

I was assigned to examine the male children for back problems, specifically, a condition called scoliosis. No, I thought it was a new wave British pop band, too, but apparently it's some sort of back condition that comes from forcing kids to sit in cheap rigid chairs for hours at a time. I don't know about you, but looking at boys naked from the waist up too closely all day isn't the kind of charity I had in mind. It's nice to know such jobs exist, though, if you're someone who's been recently turned away from the priesthood. Still, for me, it was dullsville city. And I didn't want to ask to be transferred to the girls' division either. Partly because I'm not a pedophile, but mostly because I would likely strangle the first child I saw with one of those ass crack tattoos that all the young people seem to be ruining their bodies with.

When I did request a transfer, those jokers in the Health Awareness Day Assignment Committee really showed their spots. I was assigned to the Headlice Check—me, Rok Finger! I tried to remind them I'm practically a celebrity (college kids know my name, I promise you that), but there's no special treatment for anyone at Martin Van Buren Elementary, I guess. Or so they say in the school song, which I believe is sung to the tune of Chumbawamba's "Tubthumper." But I bet if Ralph Waite showed up and asked for a job, he wouldn't be fingering the scalps of greasy little kids looking for bugs.

I tried to speed up the process, streamline it, the same thing I do here at the commune when I hand in somebody else's old columns to run as my own. But the school didn't appreciate my new policy, which was to have the kids who think they have lice to wear red hats, while those who didn't think they had lice wore blue hats. I can tell you this, though, in my short amount of time I learned that kids have no idea whether they have lice or not. Virtually every one of them was wrong. It didn't help that we only had two blue hats and three red hats, and had to pass them around frequently.

Still, volunteering wasn't quite as unpleasant as I believed it would be. I did get a free lunch out of the ordeal (pizza square, green beans, tater tots, corn bread, and my choice of milk). And more than that, I got the feeling of being a positive influence in my community. A tax-deductible expenditure of my work hours in my community.

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