he U.S. Government is maintaining its winning streak of leaking disturbing information to the public over decades, as this week two extreme dealbreakers came to public attention and the public once again answered with a resounding "enh."

First the American public was allowed to learn a memo circulating through the White House may have been an early alert to president Bush about the Sept. 11th disasters. A grumbling American public pretended to be surprised and outraged, lining themselves up for the seemingly superfluous revelation later in the week that populated U.S. Navy ships were the subjects of germ warfare testing in the 1960s.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer responded Friday with a firm, "Yeah. So?"

The covert operation, called SHAD (or Shipboard Hazard and Defense) among the hip Pentagon insiders, involved spraying toxic chemicals onto U.S. Navy ships to test the effects of germ warfare combat on troops in battle. Chemicals used included sarin, VX, and staphylococcal enterotoxin Type B, a viral strain guaranteed to "totally fuck up any soldier's weekend," according to one foul-mouthed Washington source.

Once again, the SHAD operation took place from 1964-1968, during the peak of the Vietnam war, not during the Gulf War of the early 1990s. Those chemical tests and their long-term damages are still classified information and aren't due to be released for at least another twenty years.

The revelation continues the U.S. government policy of allowing four or more White House administrations to pass before alarming truths about military and government experiments on people are told to the public. Particularly conducive to the release of alarming information is the mood of the country towards the current administration and how slow a news week it is. Information in danger of distracting the public from real issues, like Congressional sex scandals or anti-terrorist rhetoric, is often sat upon until a later release is available.

"We apologize to the American people, the soldiers, and the families that experienced any pain or damages due to the… well, you know where this is going," said Pentagon spokesman Gnute Harmschell, letting the press release fall against the carpet. "I will now take any pertinent questions about Chandra Leavy's remains, the Pakistan-India troubles, the War on Terror—trademark that—or the Catholic priests scandal. Hell, how about Star Wars or Spider-Man? Box office records are busting left and right, people."

On a sad, related note, The X-Files ended its 9-year run on Fox Sunday. During its time on the air the show entertained millions, made stars of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, started a film franchise guaranteed to make Fox money in the future, and softened America's reaction to the shadowy operations of its own government. Nerve gas testing and ignored terrorist intelligence information are welcome substitutes as long as there's no hard proof of extra-terrestrial bodies in Hangar 18.

n less than a week, 330,000 soccer fans from around the world will descend upon Japan for the biggest melee of apeshit social chaos since Cats: World Cup 2002. Japan is hoping the tournament will provide a boost for its belly-floating economy, and also hopes that soccer fans will leave enough of the country intact that it might be made livable again some time in the next 20 years.

Ever since Japan was selected along with South Korea to co-sponsor the games in 1996, Japanese and South Korean officials have been calling around, trying to figure out who nominated their countries and where they should mail the horse heads. Both China and North Korea are among the leading candidates.

The tournament will sprawl across Japan starting May 31st, destroying everything in sight and most likely leveling all 10 cities from northern Hokkaido to southern Kyushu, as well as virtually everything in neighboring South Korea.

"Oh yeah, there's no doubt about it. These crazy assholes are gonna soccer Japan and South Korea back into the stone age," noted Norio Kamijo, a senior researcher at Dentsu Institute for Human Studies.

Kamijo said the World Cup could generate some 3 trillion yen ($23.6 billion) for Japan — which should be more than enough to rebuild the Japanese cities that will need to be bulldozed into the Pacific and built up again from scratch after the tournament is over.

South Korea has offered to allow Japan to host the first several high-profile matches in the tournament, which some observers see as a sign of the warming of once-strained relations between the countries. Sources close to the events, however, suggest that South Korean officials merely hope that fans will be tired of smashing everything to shit by the time they get to South Korea.

"Hooligan experts" from Britain and Argentina have been invited to give tips and suggestions on how to spot and handle violent lawbreaking fans, inviting derisive giggles from the governments of previous World Cup host nations and forehead-smacking from British and Argentinean con-men who never thought of fobbing themselves off as "hooligan experts." British expert Sidney Bockle comments: "Jesus Christ in a sushi bar. Did you see what those animals did at the Gold Cup last year? They're gonna eat Japan alive. You don't need to hunt down an expert to guess what happens when you let loose 80,000 berserk Argentinean soccer fans in a country where all of the buildings are made out of paper. This is gonna make WWII look like Thanksgiving dinner with the in-laws. They should hide the whole country under leaf clippings and hope the World Cup thinks it moved away."

In the city of Sapporo, where the much-anticipated match between Britain and Argentina is to be played at the Sapporo brewery to save on beer transportation costs, city officials have set up machine-gun turrets in strategic placements around the building. They also plan to have several dozen coked-up bulls ready to be set loose into the streets at a moment's notice, with hopes that confused Spanish fans will lead the rioting crowd in racing the bulls out of the city.

Japanese newspapers and TV feature a daily "Countdown to Armageddon," describing scenarios of possible hooligan attacks and featuring scary backlit profiles of black-listed uberhooligans thought to be hiding in Thailand. Police in Niigata city have even staged an exercise on a ferry boat to counter the hypothetical event of crazed fans tearing up the Pacific ocean and crippling the Japanese fishing industry.

The National Police Agency announced that for every major game, particularly the matches with the British national team, they plan to mobilize more than 7,000 riot police with the instructions to shoot at the first sign of a crowd. When asked if this approach might be considered overkill, NPA head Usaki Shinjo answered "No," speaking like a ventriloquist without moving a muscle in his controlled, icy stare.

I have to admit, when you fell off the top of that double-decker bus the other day, I couldn't help but laugh. Laugh and point. Then I laughed so hard I had to sit down. As a matter of fact, I haven't laughed that hard since mom shot dad in the head with that crossbow when we were kids.

Remember that? I'll never forget the look on dad's face, before he slouched forward, face-first, into his soup at the dinner table. Remember how the ass-end of the crossbow bolt that was sticking out of dad's head stabbed into a dinner roll, and then that roll was stuck to dad's head when his body flopped out of the chair and onto the floor? Holy shit! I peed myself, I really did. I'll never forget that. Dad was such a card.

And mom! Remember the look on the judge's face when mom gave him the finger during the trial? I've been held in contempt of court a couple of times, but that's the only time I've been arrested for laughing too loud. My stomach hurt for two days after that.

It reminds me of the first time I took you to a dance club, back when we were teenagers. You had your eye on that cute girl over at the bar and I talked you into going over to talk to her, remember that? I remember it like it was yesterday. You were so eager to meet her that you didn't watch where you were walking and somehow managed to step into the back of some girl's sandal who was walking in front of you. God knows you went down fast after that, but the best part was when you opened your mouth to scream on the way down and accidentally bit the girl you wanted to talk to on the arm. I couldn't believe my eyes! I was laughing so hard I cried. Boy, did you cock that up! I didn't even think it was possible to make a first impression like that. I swear I would have come to help you sooner but I fell down laughing while her boyfriend was kicking you in the head.

We've had some good times, you and me. We've shared a lot of laughs. Others haven't always understood our sense of humor, like the time when auntie Sue farted while she was choking on that marshmallow. I thought uncle Bill was going to smother you with a pillow when you started to hyperventilate from laughing so hard. But I understood. I would have been laughing harder myself except it was the last marshmallow and that meant no s'mores for me.

It figures that we'd get placed with a foster family that had no sense of humor at all. Life was totally wasted on those people. But hey, if they couldn't see the humor in the family dog being eaten by a lion at the zoo, then fuck 'em. Their loss. I swear, with all of their carrying on about who threw the dog over the fence I almost missed it when the lion coughed up his collar. Priceless.

I'll miss you buddy. You always knew how to make me laugh. Just like dad. I'll remember that every time I see some joker get run over by a bus, or think of those tire tracks we had carved into your headstone. Whenever I hear your laugh echoing down from heaven, I'll know somebody dropped a harp on their foot. And I'll be pissed that I missed it.

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