ext Wednesday will mark the first anniversary of the Sept. 11^th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a day of tragedy that made Americans pause from their normal lives and rally together in support of the victims. In addition to fears of new terrorist attacks on the anniversary, most Americans are uncertain how to commemorate the event. Already, however, most are expected to resume their habits of complaining about the smallest of problems.

"I hope they give us the day off at work," said Texas cell phone salesman Bob Whiterich. "It's like a national tragedy and crap. How are people supposed to work on a day like that? And if I knew I could take a couple of vacation days Monday and Tuesday and head to the beach with the family."

Most companies and government agencies have decided against imposing a holiday, feeling the anniversary would be spent better keeping businesses and services functioning as normal. Even plans for restricting air travel on Sept. 11^th have been declined, feeling the statement to the rest of the world, including Muslim extremists believed to have launched the attacks, is a stronger exclamation of solidarity and a country affected, yet not shaken in their resolve by terrorism.

Mark Turnskit, a 42-year-old UPS driver and volunteer fireman in Piermont, North Dakota, however, thinks that is bullshit.

"It's bullshit, man," said Turnskit. "We need a day to remember the importance of it all and stuff. I have a lot of friends back east, in Ohio. A cousin of one of them was married to a firefighter and I think he may have been in the World Trade Center disaster and stuff. I haven't talked to them in a long time—I don't write letters and all, you know, and I don't have their e-mail address or anything. The worst part is not knowing."

Added Turnskit, "I'm a firefighter, so I know what it's like. I could have been in that place just as easy as all the guys who were."

California telemarketer Steve Gerber has made no change in plans for Sept. 11^th. "What is that, a Wednesday? I don't imagine I'll have time to think about the loss of lives and how great it is to live in a country that is still the most secure and wealthiest on the planet. Maybe some time in the evening, after work, if there's something on the Discovery Channel talking about it or—aw, shit. West Wing is on that night, right?"

"I would take a minute or two to stop and think about life and death and all that," said Howett, Tennessee factory worker Milt Darling, "but the Dodge has been crapping out on me a lot, lately. I'll probably have to worry about getting a ride to work. Life's so fucking unfair, man."

Decatur, Georgia realtor Shari Cartier summed up the feelings of most Americans on the subject: "It will be a dark day. This has been the greatest tragedy in history of all time. Something like 6,000 people died—that's more than died in Vietnam, you know. But, c'mon, I got my own life to worry about. Those damn Peel St. properties aren't going to move themselves. And the kids can't take themselves to karate."

The most significant commemoration of the day, outside of New York and Washington, D.C., is likely to come from Perkins, Nebraska, where button collector and local crackpot Vernon Heston is planning on building a scale model of the World Trade Center towers out of Popsicle sticks. Although, according to Heston, if the price of Popsicles continues to skyrocket, the whole thing will be scrapped.

ock musician and poet Bob Dylan received the ultimate honor Friday night from an unknown fan believed to be under the influence of several chemical substances. For all his years of service in changing the face of modern music, Dylan was knighted in a brief ceremony behind the Homebrew bar and grill that took only a couple minutes.

Dylan, who was performing an unannounced set at the Homebrew promoting his new album, was extremely surprised and delighted by the honor.

"It was very cool," said Dylan. "You don’t get into this life with thought of major rewards like being knighted. You do it for the music, or maybe the money. This is quite a big moment for me and I’d like to thank the drug-influenced guy who bestowed this upon me, wherever he is."

Dylan was on his way to the parking lot of the club with friends when the unidentified high guy stopped him in the alley, proclaimed Dylan the man, and knighted him with a very quick tap on each of his shoulders with an empty Thunderbird bottle, pretending it was a sword. He then pissed his pants and stumbled back into the club. Surprised but happy with the honor, Dylan continued on to his car.

"I thought about trying to find the guy, but I didn’t want to insult him after he had just done this very great thing for me. I was also a bit shocked by it all. Even if you expect this sort of thing is going to happen, some alley behind a club is about the last place you’re ready for it."

Columbia Records, Dylan’s label, has jumped all over the high-press event. New releases of all Dylan’s previous albums are being issued with a royal seal on them under the artist heading of "Sir Bob Dylan."

"Everyone at Columbia has always known America has a special genius in Bob Dylan," said Columbia V.P. of Advertising John Bonlee, "and now people everywhere will know that. The dude on heroin or crack or whatever behind that club knew it, and recognized Dylan for his years of service to the music industry and world as a whole."

Sources report that if the blitzed night club rambler can be found, Columbia Records would like to have him knight Dylan again, just for the sake of press, on a two-hour TV special with friends and fellow musicians playing songs in Dylan’s honor. Dylan, who has written rock ’n’ roll and folk staples like "Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man," "Blowin’ in the Wind," and "Like A Rolling Stone," could not verify the possibility of a two-hour TV event, but said he would definitely not want to air opposite Friends and Survivor.

Few things on this earth are more vile than a topped-off pair of Pampers with the space-age plastic ass all pooched out from an unfortunate run-in with some cruel infant's monstrous movement. Of the things that are more vile, a packed diaper exploding on a porch in the hot Texas sun and mayonnaise sandwich day at the old folks' home are the only two I'm permitted by law to mention here. But there is one creaky sunken battleship from the annals of viledom that I can resurrect here, just to see retired parents get that far-away look in their eye and that fire-away feeling in their queasy gut. An invention that will live in household infamy for all time:

The cloth diaper.

What few remember, and even fewer believe, is that before the disposable diaper came along, babies, the elderly and the fabulously lazy shat their days away in low-tech cloth diapers, not much different from the shammy you use to dry your car today. Actually, smell that shammy before you use it again, just a tip. But the kicker, the part that will really roast your oats is this: because of shortages caused by over-harvesting in the shammy forests of South America (as documented in Dr. Seuss's whistle-blowing novel, The Lorax), you couldn't just use the things and then throw them away. You actually had to find some way to wrap your mind around washing these horribly soiled crimes against nature, and then press them into service once again. I know, I know, and let me be the first to say it: history is gross.

The man who liberated us all from this ammonia-scented hell was an unassuming young fuddydud named Arthur Ringbaum. Ringbaum was a fast-rising idea man in the Proctor & Gamble Company, and at the crisp young age of 32 had already enjoyed numerous well-advertised successes. He had invented the three-dollar enema, and it was his idea to shoot rabbits out of a cannon to make sure makeup was safe. Ringbaum would have been known as the MacGuyver of product design, excepting for the fact that the show didn't exist in that day, and its star, Richard Dean Anderson, was but a quizzical swelling in his father's Sunday school trousers at that point.

But it would have been an apt comparison nonetheless, as Ringbaum was famous within the company for turning executive incompetence and planning blunders into hot, in-demand products. Legend had it that when presented with hundreds of decapitated horses' heads from a recent train accident, Ringbaum created the hobbyhorse, which became a huge success after the dead horses' heads were replaced with stuffed-felt facsimiles.

None of his past successes would prepare Ringbaum for the fame and adulation that the invention of the disposable diaper would bring him in the early 1960's. He became a worldwide celebrity who was loved universally, except for the people who mailed him soiled cloth diapers pinned to harsh notes questioning why he didn't think of it sooner, dammit.

In early April of 1960, Proctor and Gamble executives were faced with a dilemma. They had a huge amount of plastic left over from the poofy plastic chef's hat craze that had failed to take off as expected the year before. Fearful that they might have to resort to feeding their families big bowls of shredded plastic, the executives turned again to Ringbaum, who was still riding high on the success of his "meat thermometer," a regular thermometer made more profitable by the addition of the popular word "meat" to the packaging. Ringbaum took one look at the thousands of surplus plastic hats and he knew it. They were screwed.

But while having his ass kissed in London later that week, Ringbaum stumbled across an idea that was just crazy enough to work poorly. He rushed back to Proctor & Gamble headquarters and ordered to have all of the plastic hats filled with confetti left over from the planned parade to celebrate the success of the chef's hat division, which, for obvious reasons, never took place. After punching a few thousand leg holes and debating for months over the product name ("Snugglers," "Growlers," and "Ass Wraps" were all considered, but ultimately rejected), Pampers were released to the general public. They were an instant hit, and after print ads clarified that they were for use on babies, sales really took off.

The original Pampers had to be duct taped onto the baby's skin and only did their job for about forty seconds, but the prospect of never having to wash a nasty diaper again, not to mention the convenience being able to fling a bag of putrid scat onto your hated neighbor's roof on a moment's whim in the middle of the night, won over consumers regardless. Over the years the diaper has been improved in countless ways, with its absorbent core gradually refined to contain tissue, cardboard, pulp, liver & onions, and ultimately a super-absorbent chemical gel that will one day destroy us all.

What was a happy story for parents the world over turned out to be a sad one for Arthur Ringbaum himself. He never again reached the dizzying highs of his success with the disposable diaper, and his subsequent inventions such as the Vacuum Corral, the Coin-Eating Pope and the Couch Potato met with limited public interest. In 1988 he was shot dead outside his Maryland home by a West Virgina woman who had just the week before found out about disposable diapers. Sadly, he never lived to be old enough to enjoy the ultimate fruits of his labor, if it's not too disconcerting to refer to adult diapers as fruits. The New Jersey Division of Solid and Hazardous Waste currently has plans in the works to open a new landfill in his honor.

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