n an unprecedented display of brazen honesty, during a recent press junket for Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots referred to three-time director Michael Bay as "the universe’s most incompetent filmmaker" and co-star Shia LaBeouf as "the world destroyer of beloved 80’s icons".

"My strongest belief above all is that freedom is the right of all sentient beings," the 12-foot commander began, "but Mike should be thrown into a kangaroo court of Quinetessons, found guilty without a shred of proof, and dumped unceremoniously into a pit of Sharkticons."

When asked why he felt so strongly, Optimus’s eyes, normally a cool florescent blue suddenly changed to a sunflower yellow. "Have you seen Pearl Harbor? This is a man who earned his directing chops on Bad Boys. I’m beyond shocked Sean Connery didn’t go into early retirement after The Rock."

When asked to compare Bay with fellow director Uwe Boll, notorious for cinematic turns on little-known video game franchises such as Bloodrayne, Postal and Alone in the Dark, Prime had a bit more respect. "At least Boll was a prizefighter, and he’d kick anyone’s keester who dared criticize his work. Frankly, that’s one tough cookie I’d rather not speak out against. Mike just cowers behind his lawyers about criticism when he’s not clinging to the turned-out pockets of Stephen" (Spielberg, the film’s executive producer).

As for his costar LaBeouf, he seemed thrilled the young star had announced he wouldn’t be back for a fourth installment. "Having to listen to his incessant nasally voice screaming every single line nearly blew out my audio receptors. By the second film I realized he was actually causing some minor damage to occur in my memory banks. Fortunately I have the ability to turn them off and scanned his mouth to lip-read instead when it came to doing a line. This isn’t Othello we’re performing here after all—hell, it’s not even BioDome."

When asked to elaborate on his comments about Shia destroying a generation’s worth of entertainment icons, he had this to say: "Think about it. First it was Indiana Jones. The one you call ’Harrison Ford’ called him a ’fucking idiot’, which I assume is some sort of derogatory label in your language—either that or he’s quite promiscuous, and very bad at it. Then you have our films—enough said there—and then he even got into a sequel of Wall Street. As if anyone could believe he could take on Gordon Gecko! I’ll have to check my files, but was Mike behind that film too?"

Asked if there was anything he would change about the films, he did have a few ideas: "Maybe introducing a Decepticon that transforms into a bus that runs over Shia’s character Sam in the first five minutes. That’d be a start. Getting rid of Megan Fox was about the only thing we did right—she was fun to look at—and how many guys can say they had Fox inside of them?—in the end she was like a set of dub tires—sure, they make your rims look sweet, but they’re goddamn useless for everyday use."

he Global Commission on Drug Policy declared this week that the international War on Drugs has been a complete failure, filling jails and costing taxpayers millions while actually increasing drug use and bolstering organized crime. The commission, made up of the former presidents of Brazil, Columbia, Mexico and Switzerland, and a guy who tried meth once at a party, reached this conclusion after months of study and forty-five seconds spent in Rio de Janeiro. The commission’s official recommendation was to end the war by decriminalizing drugs and focusing on treatment options, but many feel the damage has already been done, as indicated by the simultaneously-breaking story that drugs spokesperson Willie Nelson and his band of pro-drug commandos have taken control of the entire U.S. state of West Virginia.

"We should have never started this war," admitted national Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske. "We clearly underestimated the resourcefulness of the drug users and their tactical expertise."

When asked how to spell his last name, Kerlikowske grew sullen and withdrawn, not unlike a drug commando after surviving a harrowing battle and pulling a full tube of reefer.

"Fuuuuuuck, maaaaaan," agreed drug user Tyler Bannister, from a guerilla base camp nestled in the Appalachian Mountains, high as shit.

Nelson’s forces reportedly met little resistance in commandeering the U.S. state, which had fallen into disuse and neglect over the years due to being completely awful.

"Wait, there’s a West Virginia?" responded former Drug Czar John P. Walters when asked for his take on the matter. "Are you sure on that? They must not have a Six Flags. If a state doesn’t have a Six Flags, I don’t want to hear about it."

Nelson has been a polarizing figure on the national stage ever since the war was declared, drawing grassroots support from drug fans around the world and confusing non-country music fans who thought he sang "All My Exes Live in Texas." His drug commando boot camps have been compared to Al Qaeda training camps, only more laid-back and with a lot more weed.

The invasion of West Virginia reportedly occurred overnight Tuesday, the only reported casualties being a Rite Aid security guard who shot himself in the scrotum trying to be a hero and a Nelson lieutenant who burnt his thumb on a bong stem.

"Hey man, you gonna eat all them chips?" pro-drug rebel Max Tulley asked when presented with a question about the skirmish by a reporter holding a bag of chips.

Nelson refused to comment on the coup directly, offering this reporter only a glazed grin and a mumbled "Later, man," while wandering away, which turned out not to mean he’d give a quote later.

Some Americans have argued that the commission’s findings are obvious and long-overdue, especially those still smarting from the Bush Administration’s "Take No Prisoners" approach to the war on drugs, which resulted in many family members shooting each other during small-scale living room skirmishes. The Obama Administration’s "We’re Not the Bush Administration" approach has proved only marginally more successful.

There was no news as of press time regarding whether or not the U.S. would attempt to retake West Virginia, or if the government would instead try to trade it for forgiveness of Nelson’s legendarily unpaid back taxes.

In a side-note, The Global Commission on Drug Policy also declared that word on the street is that Ricky Martin is probably gay, not that it matters.

Greetings, communistas! Apologies for the long gap in writing, things have been moving too fast and furious here at commune headquarters to allow much time for reflection. I just realized the other day that I’ve been wearing the same pair of socks for three days, and trust me, I have showered in that time. So hopefully that adequately reflects the level of hubbub going on around here lately.

No update from the last four months would be complete without mentioning the Gnarlap. Sometime around week 11 it became clear there was some kind of mythical beast living in the crawl space underneath my mother’s house. Not the basement, mind you, but the crawl space beneath the basement. Don’t ask me why we have a crawl space under our basement, faithful commune reader, I’m not a damned architect, and the police have already pursued that line of questioning to its fruitless conclusion. Just rest assured that it is there, and there is some kind of troll-like monster living in there and making a lot of noise and generating some kind of awful smell that Griswald Dreck is convinced is unmistakably the stench of a Gnarlap web. Raoul Dunkin was skeptical of this until the day he came home and found that the Gnarlap had eaten all of his Chicken in a Biskits, at which point he was convinced, and enraged.

As you might imagine, an exterminator was called, and as you might also imagine, if you’re particularly imaginative or an especial fan of the mid-1980’s series Amazing Stories, after the exterminator disappeared into the crawl space he was never heard from again. Ivan Nacutchacokov suggested that the exterminator just took my "imaginary creature removal" money and laughed his way to the bank, but I attribute that skepticism entirely to Ivan’s irrational hatred of the Vietnamese. It was obvious to everyone else that the poor man was eaten by the Gnarlap.

And if you thought running an internationally unknown news outlet out of your mother’s basement on a budget that’s not even enough to buy shoe strings was tough, just imagine trying to pull off that miracle while there’s some kind of horrible damned monster living under your house and eating people and snacks willy-nilly as it sees fit, not to mention stinking up the joint like Andre the Giant’s jock strap. It has been trying, to say the least. I’m tempted to apologize to our readership for the slow pace of recent updates, however none of that would be necessary if the Gnarlap hadn’t eaten two entire issues worth of content I had printed neatly inside the long-forgotten Hello Kitty notebook I found among my sister’s old things in the basement. If anyone already knew that Gnarlaps find spiral-bound representations of Japanime kittens delicious, they neglected to post this factoid on the internet.

I’m also inclined to beg the pardon of our long-suffering readership for the complete lack of Griswald Dreck output since Mr. Dreck rejoined our winning team, but somebody has to guard the crawlspace hole while the rest of us sleep, and we theorize that Dreck’s long stories about who invented cotton candy are the only thing lulling the Gnarlap into a non-commune-eating stupor.

But enough about that! On with the updates: As you’ve probably noticed, we have a new reporter on our staff, the aptly-named R.J. Handsomelots, who is indeed lots of handsome. In case you’re worried, don’t be, it’s not gay at all to say that. He really is that good looking. I met Mr. Handsomelots while buying gas at one of our insanely-overpriced local gas marts, and the fact that he knew how to write in cursive was all it took to convince me that he had what it takes to continue the fine commune tradition of excellence in journalism for no pay whatsoever.

I also figured out where the hell Red Bagel was getting those Book Revolt entries from, at long last. Turns out if you send a money order for $5 to a post office box in Bulgaria, Bulgarian wordsmiths will write you a book about whatever the hell you want in six days or less. God bless Bulgaria.

So, as you can see, we’re bravely plugging away here at the commune, bloodied but not humbled, afraid to go in the basement at night but not afraid to bring you the finest in American uber-journalism on a wildly unpredictable schedule. It will take more than a Gnarlap to stop us, commune readers. Unless the Gnarlap eats the entire staff while we sleep. Actually that would probably stop us pretty effectively.

Oh, shit, yeah, I also tracked down Rok Finger and Orson Welch. So there’s that.

Zincerely,
Emil Zender

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