he world of professional spelling garnered national attention this week, as well as controversy, when under-age spelling wunderkind Anurag Kashyap went first in the National Spelling League draft to the Anaheim Syllables. Kashyap is the youngest wordsmith to ever skip college and high school to go straight to the pros.

Pro spelling has had to face criticism from those who claim the major leagues have gone after younger and younger wordsmiths ever since the formation of the National Spelling League in 1998. Detractors claim the NSL is luring away some of America's brightest young minds from academic careers that could help them in the non-spelling world.

Mere mortal Kashyap was selected from among 150 other stellar spellers for a lead position on California's Anaheim Syllables, a major contender in the Eastern division of national spellers. In previous drafts, students as young as 15 have skipped completion of high school and college to enter professional league spelling, but Kashyap, a "spelling monster," according to sports writers, will be foregoing high school and college in entirety for a 3-year $18 million contract.

"People raise hell when an athlete, or even a mathlete skip college to go pro," said Kashyap's coach, Oxford Associate Professor of Spelling Chip Bustero, "but these are Anurag's prime spelling years. He's only got another few years of language mastery before the memory starts to go. Every year he puts off going pro he not only loses that salary, but all the lucrative endorsement deals. Nike is thinking about going into notebook and paper production—Anurag's just the kind of brainiac they're looking for to promote those products. And we're already in talks with Bic and Pilot. Whoever's got the deeper pockets can lock in a deal now, before he really puts professional spelling on the map."

However, opponents among the living argue that word jockeys like Kashyap not only lose college opportunities and training for careers outside the spelling world, but other prospects, like being a part of the 2008 Olympics spelling team. Spelling Coach to the American Olympic team Ruben Fartstarter expressed worry about the future of Olympic spelling if other star Englishologists like Kashyap lose eligibility.

"We were beginning to make real headway in the 2004 Olympiad. Then Hattie Page and Yukio Konichi both go for top dollar to the Seattle Suffixes and the Pittsburgh Homonyms, respectively. We're losing top talent and the word nerds of tomorrow aren't even going to college teams anymore. We were ranked third to England and Australia last time, which means we're only beating countries that don't speak English. Can you imagine a few under-scoring amateurs getting up on a stage in front of the whole world and misspelling 'misspell'? We'll look quite the fools."

The potential scandal comes at the worst time for the new professional sport, following accusations over the last few months that some of the sport's most notable stars have been taking spelling-enhancing drugs. The damaging allegations came in the form of a book by 19-year-old retired San Francisco Palindromes speller Anita Watt, I Before E Except After Steroids. Also in the book are damning accusations of excessive alcohol use and well-known spellers taking cocaine, even during the 2004 Olympics, including harrowing descriptions of all-night "speed-spelling" matches.

he White House faced embarrassment this week when their usual method of distracting the population with lesser problems backfired, leading them to unintentionally misdirect public attention back to the original problem. While the administration hoped to draw notice from earlier remarks misdirecting national awareness to the slave trade.

Popular theory is the White House misdirected media attention to the Middle Eastern slave trade to distract from the continuing aggression in "free" Iraq, and possibly some of the Nixon comparisons President Bush has endured over the course of the week; when Middle Eastern allies such as oil magnate/American investors Saudi Arabia took offense at the promise of sanctions, the White House sought to avert public outcry against the ally by launching a new attack—this one, accidentally, drawing notice back to the failing economy and bleak financial prospects for most Americans.

"It's a shame in this country that men and women can work all their lives and having nothing to show for it," said Condoleezza Rice, as a few aides standing by gave each other quizzical looks. "Especially in America, a country recognized world wide for having so much prosperity. And yet, we're losing quality jobs everywhere but the service industry. The president is most definitely angered by this, and is sorry he's passed so many economic policies to keep it in place."

Failing to recognize that the disparate situations between the rich and poor in the United States was the same initial social ill so many wars were started to draw attention away from, Rice continued to assault the very structure of American finance.

"America continues to make advances in industry, medicine, and of course, commerce—advantages only a handful of Americans will fully experience, since the system is built to allow only partial upward mobility, preserving a luxury status for a privileged few, who triple their earnings by sending skilled jobs overseas and cutting the bottom out from the working classes."

Concluded Rice: "That seems to me a much more devastating problem affecting this nation than the 800,000 slaves reportedly trafficked through the fine countries of our allies, right?"

It was a classic clusterfuck as only this administration could manage, doing potential damage to four and a half years worth of social reform rollback and securing the position of the upper classes. Realizing their mistake the Saturday after the statement was made, the White House had little choice but to keep the misdirection rolling.

"The War on Terror is at its worst," said Press Secretary Scott McClellan, rushing into the press room Saturday morning, while most of the reporters were still pretty hung over for a long night's/morning's drinking. "We have elevated the terror level to 'fantastic,' which is uh… pretty bad. We've heard rumblings throughout the Middle East that Al Qaeda may be preparing for another strike on U.S. soil. And if intelligence hasn't picked up anything on that yet, they most certainly will within the next few hours."

Though the War on Terror is a subject that hasn't unified Americans with the same strength it originally did in late 2001, it seemed like the safest place to leave public scrutiny until everything had blown over, or at least until the next major summer blockbuster got everybody talking about Batman or alien monsters or something again.

My first month of retirement has been a rough one. Since I'm all out of acting jobs, I've had to go looking for a new source of steady income. I mean, I still get my commune pay, but that's about as steady as the San Franciscan fault lines. And about as big as the straight population of that city.

Have you ever had to get a job before? Man, they suck. People tell you what to do and expect you to get it done or they'll fire you. If you ask them about your motivation they'll tell you to do it or you'll get fired. No subtext work at all, these guys. And very few of them cater worth a shit either. I tell you, this is the 21st century. How am I supposed to watch the register without a break when I haven't had any rye bread and pimento-less olive snacks in more than twenty minutes? Not a good way to keep your employees happy.

So in the three weeks since I announced my retirement, I've gotten jobs at Pizza Hut, K-Mart, Home Depot, Uncle Macho's Family-Style Restaurant, Target, and Bed, Bath & Beyond. I've also gotten fired from Pizza Hut, K-Mart, Home Depot, Uncle Macho's Family-Style Restaurant, Target, and Bed, Bath & Beyond. If nothing else, I'm a completist, right?

All my jobs go through the same life cycle—I get hired, things are okay for a while, and then I'm fired for no reason at all. Right now I'm working for Ms. Diffy's Jewelry, and I'm in that middle "everything's cool" phase. I'll probably get fired by tomorrow or the day after. Wednesday, if I play my cards right.

It's not as great as you'd think, working in a jewelry store. They make you sell things to people. Customers act like complete dicks and you can't tell them they can't shop there anymore. Which I don't understand, because when I'm on the other side of the counter, that's what I usually get. At least I'll know how things really work the next time some smart-ass employee tells me that bullshit.

I've never met Ms. Diffy. I guess she lives on some ranch somewhere in Arkansas, or wherever diamond magnates live. South Africa maybe. Ms. Diffy's second in command is Julie, the shift supervisor. I've been trying to get Ms. Diffy on the phone all week to let her know Julie is a real bitch who hires all her friends and treats everybody like shit, but the secretary I get on the phone at the head office keeps trying to tell me Ms. Diffy is only a corporate icon and doesn't really exist. I've heard some lame excuses to get out of showing up to work, but that takes the cake. I should probably call in sick sometime to Bagel and tell him I never existed, I'm only a corporate entity designed to sell the commune. He'd probably buy it, if you catch him early enough.

Oh, here's some more bullshit from the world of retail jewelry: Did you know you can't wear the stuff out, like, even if you have important shit going on later? You could've knocked me over with a fart when they told me that. I tried all the angles, too, like telling them it was good for the business, free advertising or whatever. I told them my doctor said I had a condition where I had to wear two pounds of diamonds or I get sick. Nothing. They knew it was all bullshit. At least the people at Uncle Macho's were more gullible, and let me wear all the chicken wings I could carry.

I'm not desperate enough to go back to acting or anything. Shit, I hope I'll never be that desperate. But I am almost ready for some major alternatives to working. Like going for a college business degree.

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