neaking up on an enduring place in music history like an albino in a snowstorm, the platinum-selling English grunge band Bush has dropped completely from public memory in record time, a study found Tuesday. Previous record holders The Escape Club could not be reached for comment, as nobody could remember who was in the band or what they looked like.

Bush rose to fame behind the success of their 1994 album Sixteen Stone, which sold over 15 million copies worldwide and settled hundreds of bets over how long it would take alternative rock to turn into Def Leppard. Bristling under the weight of overwhelmingly poor reviews and tired of not being taken seriously by anyone over the age of fourteen, Bush donned indie producer Steve Albini like a credibility hat for the release of their second album, 1996's Razorblade Suitcase. Despite sporting an title that Spinal Tap thought was artsy, the album was another critical failure, sending the band into a deep prettyboy funk. They returned in 1999 with The Science of Things, an attempt to succeed where U2 had failed, by half-heartedly aping popular trends in techno music and alienating every last one of their fans.

Bush drew massive ire from music critics and hipsters on both continents for their 2000 release We're Nirvana, then promptly dropped off the face of the planet when the record-buying public lost its taste for generic bands copying good bands and developed a passion for homogeneously generic bands and rich white teens pretending to be angry and black.

Tuesday's report included a poll of over 3,000 households, none of whom could recall the grunge quartet in any meaningful fashion. Polls of the commune staff and random yokels on the street provided similar results.

Professional man-on-the-street Rodney Brown came the closest to remembering the band with his comment "What was their big song? Crazy Train?"

Others were not so lucky. commune reporter Lil Duncan feigned memory of the band with her claim to have toured with Bush as a groupie in the mid-90's, but her stories of wild debauchery and pharmaceutical excess quickly revealed the band in question to actually have been Scottish uberdorks The Proclaimers.

Other staff members confused the band with similarly forgotten, yet not completely eclipsed pop acts such as The Crash Test Dummies, Fun Lovin' Criminals and Frente.

"I got it. They were the ones with the two drummers, and the guitar player would always get naked for the last song," convenience store clerk Rasham Levin nodded with barrel-scraping conviction.

Whoever the members of Bush were could not be reached for comment as of press time.

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.

In 1923, a pilot named Skeech Mulroony set out from Miami on a course for Corpus Christi, Texas, by way of the Orient. Never accused of undue intelligence or even basic map-reading ability, Mulroony headed due east and steeled himself for what he expected to be a fifteen-minute flight. Soon after, however, excessive engine noise and lightheadedness forced Mulroony to close his cockpit window, and in doing so he fumbled and accidentally dropped his keys out the airplane's open window and into the sea.

He never saw them again.

Few place names elicit the kind of pants-shitting terror associated with the Bermuda Triangle. Even reasonable people who have never heard of it before reflexively clutch their scrotums with trembling fists at its mention, intuitively sensing their own impending doom. This is great fun at parties, especially if you want to make some cocksure blowhard look like a putz in front of all the mateable ladies present.

But what is the Bermuda Triangle, and how did it earn this frightful reputation? The short answer is that if you don't know by now, you'll never understand, and you're a dick for asking. The long answer is harder to sum up in a single sentence.

The "Bermuda or Devil's Food Triangle" is an imaginary area located off the southeastern Atlantic coast of the United States, which is noted for a high incidence of unexplained losses of ships, small boats, aircraft, passenger pigeons and kites. Over time, it has also gone by the names "Limbo of the Lost," "Hoodoo Sea," "The Twilight Zone," "Teddy Boy" and "Shitbird Alley." The apexes of the triangle are generally accepted to be Bermuda, Miami, Florida, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, though some claim that the junk drawer in Murray Baumenstein's garage in lower Queens is definitely a part of the triangle.

The area features a unique collection of geographical and weather phenomena that have vexed travelers for years, including an unusual magnetic field that causes a compass to point to "true north" rather than magnetic (or "bullshit") north, a powerful gulf stream, frequent tropical storms and also a gigantic floating devil head which gobbles up everything that wanders into its vicinity.

The lore of the Bermuda Triangle began with Columbus' observation of "great balls of fire" splashing into the sea near his ship as he sailed through this region, though some argue this was merely a reference to a member of his crew seeking relief from a bout of the clap. The lore grew over the years as people lost other things over this stretch of the Atlantic: keys, wallets, dentures, virginity, an especially rare Mickey Mantle baseball card, unmatched socks, several Siamese cats, etc. Eventually larger and larger things began turning up missing, including an entire squadron of the Navy's Avenger bombers, the tanker Sylvia L. Ossa, and president Truman's cherished Tuesday underwear.

Among the other incredible phenomena experienced in the triangle include flights gaining or losing time unexplainably, a mysterious fog appearing out of the blue sky and enveloping vessels, planes and expectant teenage fathers suddenly vanishing into thin air, and airline food tasting delicious. Numerous explanations have been offered for these experiences, including time warps, alien abduction, giant pissed-off squid and Red Bagel's assertion that McDonaldland headquarters are located deep beneath the sea in this region, where magnetically disruptive McRays are emitted to keep ships and planes from discovering its location.

The incident that points closest to the truth of the situation, however, is the story of licensed pilot Carolyn Casico, who was piloting a chartered flight to Turk island in 1964. When she arrived, grounds crews spotted her plane in the air circling the island and attempted to contact her by radio. They received no response, but instead overheard a conversation between Carolyn and her passenger.

"I can't understand it. This should be Grand Turk but there is nothing there. It's the right place on the map, the shape is right, but this island looks uninhabited - no buildings... roads... nothing". After a few more circles, she turned around and flew away. Carolyn and her passenger were never seen or heard from again, and her cat had to resort to eating dry cat food for nearly two weeks.

This story and many others point to an alarming trend of acid use among pilots, ship captains and the guy who wrote that Twilight Zone about the plane that goes back to dinosaur times. Acid has long been a major export for the island nation of Bermuda, ranking behind only surfing shorts and little statues of a monkey riding a unicycle. It's only natural that the sea surrounding Bermuda would be rife with pilots who believe their planes have a "submarine" button and ship captains who want to see if their oil tankers can do a barrel roll. After all, what's more likely: that these mishaps were the result of garden-variety drug-addled whimsy, or that a big purple dinosaur really burped them all to Narnia? Hmm.

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