fearful nation was relieved at the end of an 8-hour period in which President George W. Bush was left home alone in the White House. According to White House sources, though the potential for harm to the president, the nation, and the house itself was great, the president's 8-hour unsupervised period ended without incident.

It started as an evacuation of the White House after a lost pilot, flying a private Cessna, flew through White House airspace. Heightened precautions called for the White House staff and administration to leave the building until the potential threat was abated, and somehow in the confusion, the president was left unsupervised.

"I thought [secret service operative] Larry had him, Larry thought I had him," said secret service operative Todd Henry. "I guess the little bugger got away from us. It happens."

When it was discovered everyone had vacated the White House except for the president, secret service commander Dick Gautier immediately ordered agents to return for the president. It was upon their return they found the White House doors locked and the windows sealed shut.

"It's not uncommon for the president to lock us out of rooms inside the White House," admitted Gautier. "Either intentionally or by lack of understanding of the door locking mechanism. But this was the first time the entire secret service, indeed everyone in the White House, had been locked outside with the president inside."

White House officials took quick steps to keep the information silent, but White House press had already noticed the president missing from his outside emergency pen and suspected something was amiss. commune correspondent Lil Duncan broke the story with privileged information obtained from some masculine insider source who allegedly resembles Richard Grieco. With little other recourse, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer informed the press.

"At this time, the president is believed to be alone in the White House," said Fleischer, refusing to take any questions. "He will not come to the door and does not answer the phone, but it is possible he can't hear us knocking or ringing. Keep in mind, it is a big house. We suspect right now he is watching TV in the presidential den."

Initially the secret service offered no explanation if the president had been left inside by someone locking the door on their way out or if the president had locked the doors and windows himself intentionally. The president could be seen walking briefly past an east side window, pausing, holding a hand up to his ear, and shrugging his shoulders before leaving view, a beer in his hand.

The anxious waiting ended at 7:25 p.m. when a secret service agent returned from home with a wire coathanger. The back door of the White House was then jimmied open and the secret service led the return into the house. The president was found playing Grand Theft Auto 3 in the presidential game room, apparently oblivious to the evacuation.

An angry nation will no doubt demand attention to this situation for weeks to come, as long as the networks are showing repeats. It is expected that secret service and other government agencies will take steps to prevent the president being left unsupervised in the future. There is talk of hiding an extra key to the White House somewhere on the grounds, though for the sake of national security no one is saying where. the commune has it on good information that on top of a high window shudder or taped under the mailbox are leading good secret key spots as of press time.

n the lighter side of the news, in dark days where most of the news consists of political scandals and terrorist strikes on the domestic front, a national story about a couple's blazing love has captured America's attention.

The couple in question is U.S. Forest Service worker Terry Barton and her husband, whose identity has yet to be released by police. Barton and her husband came to the attention of the nation after Barton was recently named the prime suspect who started the fire that currently ravages through Colorado forest land.

Since the fire started June 8, it has destroyed many homes, required the evacuation of nearly 9,000 residents, and spread to 136,000 acres. The extent of the devastation is so vast it is the leading reason to doubt Barton's assertion that she started the fire by accident after burning a letter from her estranged husband. It's a new level of destruction caused by a postal delivery, especially for a letter containing no anthrax.

Upon Barton's Thursday indictment, prosecutors in the case would detail no clear motive or Barton's reasoning in setting the fire that has caused so much damage, but they did state Barton's account of the fire accidentally escaping her control did not match forensic facts recovered at the scene.

FBI and other police agencies, however, have stated that they have re-opened previous wildfire files as arson cases. In particular, neighbors and acquaintances of Barton are being interviewed to discover the welfare of her lovelife around 1871, and if she was around Chicago at the time.

Police and media are working to put a negative spin on Barton's actions, focusing on the damage to property and endangerment of innocent lives, but it's hard to deny the romantic side of the story. Already, nationwide, fires are being set in the name of love, following Barton's original response to her break-up.

"It sounds real cool to say, you know," said 20-year-old college student Naomi Blooger. "I burned down half of Colorado because I love you so much. I mean, I key-scratched a guy's car once, but I've never loved anybody enough to kill wildlife and clear major acreage."

Others agreed with Blooger's reaction.

"Who wouldn't be impressed?" said Penelope Fitzsimmons. "I wish I had someone who loved me enough to torch miles and miles of forestry. I've got a new definition of true love."

Despite the charm of the felony, prosecutors fail to see the human side of the crime and are instead focusing on displaced people and animals, as well as the countless numbers of both placed in jeopardy by Barton's actions. Even worse, at the time of press, her actions had failed to woo back her husband. No telling at this time if Barton planned further vandalism or arson.

Try this on for size, commune followers: Inexplicably, I am sitting in a chair reading or, more likely, watching old stock footage of World War II to find proof Hitler escaped disguised as a Von Trapp, when I get up to do something. The next moment, I find myself in a room I did not intend to go into and have no idea how I got there or why I would have entered the room. What's up there?

No doubt you've figured out, as I immediately surmised, aliens are clearly using advanced teleportation devices to break down my molecular structure, turn me into a mass of unformed atoms, then reassemble me in exact working detail in another room of my house. That much is obvious. But why?

In all my years of studying the vast underlying conspiracies that affect us all on every level, I've never encountered one both so brazen and yet so curiously without motive.

My first thought was I'm likely being studied by said aliens, they beam me up to their ship, poke and prod me in every place, then return me, though they're always off by a few feet when they drop me off back in a different room. However, that falls through on several levels. For one, first and foremost, I show no other signs of alien abduction. There is no loss of time, and it would take quite a while to study this superb specimen, let me tell you. Plus, I have no feeling of being anally probed when I recover my senses, and after the commune's Christmas party a couple years ago I would certainly know if I'd been probed while unconscious. Also, speaking frankly, aliens would certainly not be so dumb as to return me without leaving me in the exact same spot, at least not anything but an extremely disappointing race of aliens.

No doubt about it, aliens are involved, but they are most certainly not taking me aboard their ship, at least not to study me. So what is their purpose if they're not adding to their vast knowledge of the human physique?

I asked Corey P. Myler, a physics professor, astronomer, conspiracy buff, and A-Team trivia master, a good friend who I sometimes catch in the laundry room of our building without explanation. Myler considered the facts I gave him and smoked three of my cigars while we were waiting for my whites to dry, then reminded me that recent crop circles outside Edinburgh appeared to resemble the giant footprints of an enormous alien who had pegs for feet instead of regular feet. This was of virtually no use in my query, though Myler said the evidence was too thin to speculate further.

On the other hand, I can speculate until the cows come home. I often do. I speculate day and night, sometimes without much to start me off. I've made a career, at least a column, entirely out of speculation, and I'm currently writing a sitcom about speculators. It's my favorite past-time, next to punching pigeons, so I figured it's up to me to speculate alone on this one.

My first explanation, and the easiest, is that I'm merely part of an alien psychological experiment. But that's boring! That's just off the top of my head. I have not yet begun to wildly speculate.

My next guess is that aliens are indeed taking me aboard their ship, forcing me to masturbate until ejaculation with nude pics of that top-heavy girl who used to play Punky Brewster before she grew up and out. They then take the "deposit" back to their world and use it to propagate their species since years of space travel have left the males flaccid and sterile. They then erase my memory and travel back in time to drop me off in my house where they found me, though because they are jealous I am able to provide healthy sperm when they are not, they exact revenge by putting me in another room. It confuses me, but I'll live on unchanged.

Or, and this may sound a little silly, but I am being observed with observing rays from the computers of the alien race, in an attempt to graph a precise robot duplicate of me to set up an alternate world of robot humanoids, or possibly even a robot world of Red Bagels that can form conspiracy theories to save the world. Perhaps just for worship on their homeworld. But the observing rays can only observe for very short moments before I am totally disintegrated. Using what they have learned, once I am disintegrated, they reconstruct me short seconds later. They cannot put me back in the same spot otherwise I would see the stain where my previous incarnation used to be standing.

Whew! That was damn fine speculating. I'm tired. I'm going to grab a Shasta.

Now… what was I talking about? Who wrote all this nonsense on my computer?

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