OP leaders announced at a press conference yesterday that Vice President Dick Cheney would be gradually written out of the Republican party over the next few months.

"As everything progresses," said President Bush, "you'll be seeing less and less of Dick Cheney until his contract expires. He'll sink more into the background, with the idea being eventually we'll replace him entirely."

Insiders say that disappointing approval ratings and a lack of appeal among female constituents 18-49 led to the decision to do away with the Vice President. An unidentified source, namely some guy we didn't know, described the Vice President as "a bad idea from the get-go."

For months rumors persisted that the diminishing role of the Vice President was a sign that producers of the Republican party were unhappy with his performance. Continually the president denied such claims, but with recent announcements, many are taking it as proof positive the Vice President failed to live up to expectations. President Bush disagrees.

"Dick Cheney was fine for the time and place, he was instrumental to early success of the Bush administration," the president said. "But he's grown artistically, as we all have, and would prefer to pursue solo projects at this time. And we in the administration feel like the Vice President position would be better served by someone else as well, so the parting is amicable."

GOP analyst Milton Monopoly has another version of the story.

"Let's face it, the president is a much bigger hit than anyone expected. You got this fairly young tough-guy president and who's covering his back? An ancient legislator," Monopoly said. "Okay, he was interesting in the beginning, the reckless young president and the wisened old congressman with the bad ticker, sort of like a 'Jake and the Fat Man' team up, or 'Hardcastle and McCormick.' But he never pulled the ratings like Bush did, so they axed him. It was obvious from a few months in he was on his way out, then when the terrorist plot was in full steam he's mysteriously missing all the time when as Vice President he should be knee-deep in it like the president. Everybody in Washington knew Cheney was being written out, especially Cheney."

Monopoly suggested Cheney would be replaced immediately, and a replacement may already be on the way in.

"Some people are saying Guiliani, but that's unrealistic, the president won't have some guy who's a huge threat to him. The more obvious choice, and what I think they're going to do, is Colin Powell. There's a lot of excitement there, with Powell being a former military man and Bush an administrator with not as much 'street' experience. Plus, there's always the exciting racial tension. You're talking a party that everybody will be tuning in to."

truck laden with hundreds of packages of a mysterious white powder attempted to cross the border here today, drawing scrutiny from the Border Patrol and local law enforcement officers concerned that it could be just the latest in a series of terrorist attacks involving Anthrax. After closer investigation, a spokesman revealed, with some relief, that the substance turned out to be simply 94% pure Colombian cocaine.

"We were awful worried at first," said Sheriff Fluff Drivel of nearby Littlehead City. "These days everyone's on edge whenever they see white powder. Hell, my wife refuses to bake anything that involves using flour right now."

Drivel's partner, Officer Roy Dither, added, "I was the one to investigate the powder itself. You remember that TV show, I think it was 'Banacek' or maybe it was 'Mannix,' that one back in the '70s? Anyway, it was just like that episode of 'The Streets of San Francisco,' where they caught that guy with the big bag of white powder, and George Peppard or Karl Malden or whoever stuck his finger in the bag, right up to his knuckle, and then tasted the powder and said 'Pure horse.' Well, I just went ahead and scooped up a big handful of the powder in question, and I was all ready to say that, to say 'Pure horse,' but before I could, my mouth had got all numb and everything, and then I was thinking about how my neighbor used to have horses when I was a kid, and he used to race them, and I used to see him giving them some white powder before the races, and that got me to thinking, well, maybe it was something else. Then I remembered how these ants used to be all over the stable where he kept the horses, these really interesting little black ants, you know, and they would just all follow each other in a big long line up the wall, and I always wondered what made them do that, and then-"

Sheriff Drivel then gently interrupted his partner with a friendly, two-handed smack to the side of the head with his baton. Officer Dither reeled off, twitching spasmodically, his arms flailing and blood streaming from his nose and ear, while Sheriff Drivel continued.

"To make a long story short, we had the powder analyzed, and it turned out that it wasn't Anthrax at all. It also wasn't 'pure horse,'" he snorted, casting a glance at his still-convulsing partner. "All it turned out to be was your plain old garden-variety cocaine, so we sent these jokers on their merry way. I can tell you, we were awfully glad to find out it wasn't Anthrax, though. We hate that kind of music down here."

Every year around this time I get a lot of mail from readers asking about the holidays. It seems like everyone's got a question on their mind like: "If you run over a kid with your car on Halloween, and you're dressed as a giant baby, can you still be tried as an adult?" or "Is there a statute of limitations on stealing thirty turkeys?" or "Omar, I think you got my sister pregnant at the Christmas party last year." Unfortunately, I can't answer every question personally, since as Twain said, "Time is money," and nobody's sent a valid cashier's check or money order along with any of their questions so far. (Incidentally, the answer to all three questions above is "It depends on which state you're in." That's a freebie to get you started.) But this year I thought I'd do a column answering some questions about the holidays, since all I've had going on lately is jury duty and I can't tell any of my hilarious court stories here until they fry that pigfucker.

So anyway, last week I was at the courthouse on a Bicardi break during this big-shot trial I was telling you about. (And like I said, I can't discuss the details or who it is or whatever, but suffice it to say this is one guy won't be buying his wife any hats any time soon. Because she's dead, and also because he cut her head off with a chainsaw. And also because he's a cheap bastard... and also because his name is Steve. That's all I can tell you though.) While I was on my break, I ran into commune research editor Griswald Dreck out in the hallway. Turns out he was on the jury for a trial down the hall, something about this chef at a restaurant who was putting Comet in everything, he was a crazy bastard or some shit like that. Anyway, while we were on break we started talking about the upcoming holidays, and how those dumb-assed Canadians don't even know what month Thanksgiving is in. And that got us started on where the holidays came from and who thought to cram all that bread up the turkey's ass or if that was an accident the first time. It turned out that Griswald knew a lot about this kind of stuff, and it dawned on me that I could probably hash out a column on the origins of the holidays during some of those long-winded eyewitness testimonies.

We all know the story of Thanksgiving that they taught us in school, about how the Pilgrims came over on the Mayflower and ate the Indians and we should be thankful that Inidans taste pretty much like chicken, or else there would have been trouble since the Pilgrims didn't think to bring any Tabasco sauce with them from England. Turns out this is really a crock that they taught us as kids so we wouldn't ask too many questions or complain if they served Indian in the cafeteria.

Griswald clued me in on the real story, which goes like this: the Pilgrims were all Puritans from England, a radical religious cult who wouldn't wear white wigs like everyone else and instead wore green ones, like it says in the bible. They were pissed off at the king for not getting their royalty payments on sales of oatmeal, which they needed to pay for all of their wig dyes and the printing of their "The End is Near: Eat More Oatmeal" shirts and their huge stockpile of muskets. Just when they were about to get all of the back-payments straightened out they suffered a huge setback when the Puritan's lawyers and the king's lawyers were all thrown into the sea during the Great Lawyer Dunk of 1643. The Puritans decided that screw it, they were moving to America, where the squahs were easy and all of the streets were paved with shell beads. So they sold their wigs and changed their name to "The Pilgrims" to keep from being made fun of in the new world.

The Pilgrims actually came over on three ships: The El Nino, The Fredo and The Challenger, the last of which blew up half-way here because they'd picked that ship to carry all the fireworks for the 4th of July party. The El Nino and The Fredo made it to America though, which was known at the time as West London. The Pilgrims settled and assimilated into the local culture, but they were sad because all of their sports teams were getting their asses kicked by the Braves and the Redskins and Indians and all that (this is before the Yanks had Mussina, BTW) and they didn't have any food and they were all sleeping in this old Camero at night. And so the Indians held a food drive and brought them some cans of green beans and butter squash and some other stale shit they wanted to get out of their teepees. And now everybody was happy, except for the Pilgrims who had to eat that nasty canned shit. The Indians had ribs and hot wings and some bitchin' stuffing with sausage in it and they drank and watched football while the Pilgrims had to sit at the kids' table and they couldn't even have any of the lousy fruit salad with marshmallows in it until they'd eaten all of their asparagus spears and other inedible soggy crap. So the first Thanksgiving really sucked the big tit but the Pilgrims had the last laugh because along with all of their knick-knacks and ugly-assed hats and Big Ben and the other shit they brought over from England, they also brought rats and mosquitoes and the plague, and the Indians hadn't had their shots since they were away for a pow-wow or something on that day in school, so they all died. Except for Crazy Horse, who was off carving his face in a rock and babbling about the CIA and mind-control beams from the moon.

So every year we celebrate Thanksgiving to give our thanks that we're not eating any of that mushy canned shit, except for hobos and orphans and people like that, but if they had a wall to hang a calendar on to know it was Thanksgiving, they wouldn't be homeless in the first place, so it's kind of a tough shit kind of thing for them.

Griswald also told me the story of the first Halloween, but right then this great big fat guy in the hall fell right on this ice cream cone he was carrying, and we were laughing so hard I think we both forgot where Halloween came from. It had something to do with giving out candy to keep people from dying on your lawn during the plague or something, trust me you're not missing a lot there.

Not long after that our break was over and we had to go back to deciding the fates of the damned. It's demanding work, but hell, I made four dollars and got to dress up as a judge for a while, so I'm not complaining. Okay, before we go I'll take a second to answer three more reader questions: "No", "Yes", and "Use the whole fist." I hope all of you out there in commune territory live it up this Thanksgiving and don't forget to give something nasty from your cupboards to those less fortunate than you. Bricks out.

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