resident Bush addressed the U.N. Thursday in an effort to convince the international body to take action against Saddam Hussein, who, according to the president, has the capability for nuclear weapons in his arsenal and commits horrific acts on his own people, like eating babies for supper.

"Iraq has the materials at present time, or will shortly come into possession of them, to produce nuclear weapons," the president told the United Nations audience. "If that threat is not enough, you should hear what he does to his own people. He eats babies, people. I am not kidding. Whole babies, for supper. He butters them like a baked potato and eats them in big bites—I have heard the babies are alive when he does it. I am not kidding."

Members of the audience became uncomfortable, and looked to each other for a proper response to the president. Several asked their translators to elaborate on the interpretation, believing them mistaken.

"I have heard from proper sources in the White House that Saddam Hussein has personally ordered his military to gather all needed materials to give Iraq nuclear capabilities, to be used in potential retaliation against the U.S. It is also common knowledge among people who have been to Iraq that the men make their wives have sex with their sons while they are watching. All of this is direct influence of Saddam Hussein's rule of Iraq."

The president further explained that nuclear material has been bought or requested for purchase from other nuclear powers like Russia and Pakistan, and that when the mothers and sons make love for the enjoyment of the father, they sometimes act out depraved fantasies about school teachers and troubled students.

"America cannot, and will not allow a man to retain power who would use nuclear weapons in harsh personal vendettas that would endanger our people and his own. A man who punishes his children by pooping on their plates and making them eat it when they have defied him. And in some of these cases, the offense in question was only trying to get a loaf of bread from the cabinet to eat because they are not allowed to eat on days he tells them not to. That's the truth."

The U.N., shortly following the speech, was reluctant to immediately respond. They said the president's remarks would be considered, but they had no plans to further pressure Iraq in the matter of refusing weapons inspectors access to their facilities.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan responded to the president, "We are aghast at the allegations by President W. Bush and intend to investigate these matters ourselves. Of particular interest to the member countries of the United Nations are the accusations that President Hussein passes out puppies to audiences before his speeches and tells them he will only continue if they rip the puppies apart. Actions of this nature cannot be allowed to go on."

On the home front, Sen. Majority Leader Tom Daschle stated Congress was reluctant to commit to action against Iraq until further information was available.

"If Iraq has the bomb, we must and will act," Daschle told reporters. "If it's true that you can just drive over children on the streets of Iraq with your car and the police will do nothing to stop it, likewise, in that case we will also be forced to act. A country that barbaric must be re-educated, and a man so despicable that he would set his ex-wives on fire on his birthday, such as Mr. Hussein, must be removed from power."

dispute over the rightful inheritor of the Miss North Carolina crown was settled Thursday when U.S. District Judge James Fox issued the ruling that both competitors were pretty.

Rebekah Revels had won the Miss North Carolina pageant, only to be forced to resign when a letter from her ex-boyfriend claimed he had topless pictures of her. Misty Clymer was chosen as Miss North Carolina afterwards, though Revels sued the pageant for the right to wear the crown. The winner of the lawsuit would go on to represent North Carolina in the Miss American pageant Sept. 21st.

The judge refused to pick one contestant over the other, leaving that to the Miss North Carolina pageant committee. Instead, the judge said in his ruling: "I see what this is really all about, Misty… Rebekah. Girls, you're both pretty. There's no need for all this fighting and competition."

The allegation of a forced resignation was the basis for Revels' case as she claimed the judges had rightfully chosen her to represent North Carolina. Pageant officials felt the nude photos taken by the ex-boyfriend tarnished the crown of the pageant and put dozens of future scholarships and sponsors for the Miss America and Miss North Carolina pageants in jeopardy. These photos, so crucial to the case, could not be obtained despite countless requests to both parties, but nude photos of Alyssa Milano were available on the Internet, as well as a compromising picture of Mandy Moore and two black men, but those pictures could possibly have been Photoshopped.

The case was settled amicably by the judge's declaration of equal prettiness. Miss North Carolina pageant representatives said Misty Clymer would go on to represent North Carolina in the national pageant. But the judge's ruling was a tremendous boost to Clymer's confidence.

"Like all girls, Misty needs a compliment every now and then to keep her going," said pageant representative Vill Gording. "And with all this stress of the case and the high pressure of being in a court setting, you can imagine she was a little down. The judge reminded her she was pretty—she knew it, but still, you like to hear it—and it made her day."

The declaration was also well-received by plaintiff Rebekah Revels and counsel. "Obviously, Ms. Revels is disappointed by the pageant's decision to uphold her resignation," said Revels attorney Wax Musstash. "But my client was more than satisfactorily compensated for her loss by the reassurance she is pretty. That's all she really wanted anyway—the judge was wise to acknowledge that."

"I'm glad that the court system is finally able to get past the frivolous lawsuits to the important stuff," said some smart-ass on the court steps as this reporter attempted to get better quotes from the lawyers involved.

The potential for future disappointments in both contestants' futures being high, the judge issued also his telephone number to both plaintiff and defendant, urging that they should call him sometime soon in the future for private rulings. That may or may not have been true, but this reporter certainly would have been disappointed to find the judge missed out on such an opportunity.

Again, if any informant has laid hands on the photos in question, please contact Ramon Nootles at the commune and we'll talk finder's fee.

Johan Emmanuel Wiesel was an eccentric Hungarian immigrant who ran a pharmacy in New York in the 1830's. An amiable fellow with an impenetrable accent, Wiesel was fond of saying "Piss on Earth, and God wilt tard men!" which got him a lot of strange looks and the occasional thump on the head. When he wasn't busy "pepping up" the prescriptions he filled with copious amounts of cocaine, Wiesel occupied his spare time by inventing beverages. However, most of his inventions were completely impractical as beverages for actual humans, since they were all heinous in flavor and some ate through the bottle in less than a day's time.

But through some whim of serendipity, in 1845 one of his concoctions actually turned out to be fairly tasty, and only mildly corrosive. Wiesel was pissed, since he took this to mean that his arsenic had gone bad. But when he tested the drink on a young boy who he paid a quarter a year to do all the menial work in his pharmacy, he was surprised to find that the boy loved it. He burped until he threw up and suffered second-degree burns to his sinuses, but he loved it.

Wiesel decided to try selling his new beverage to customers in his pharmacy the very next day. He dusted off an old machine he had invented to dispense mustard into several pairs of shoes simultaneously, and in that moment the soda fountain was porn. Born.

The drink was a huge success, and before long his customers were demanding, sometimes at gunpoint, that Wiesel make his soda available to the wider market. Wiesel responded by buying a gigantic sack of empty beer bottles from a local orphanage, then filling them all with cole slaw. He was almost there. Realizing that this in no way addressed his soda-selling needs, Wiesel dumped out all of the cole slaw and filled the bottles with his sizzling new beverage instead. Despite the objections of absolutely everyone else involved, he insisted on naming his beverage Wiesel Piss, and it accordingly sold like sacks of dead leper babies.

Wiesel eventually went broke trying to sell Wiesel Piss, and died alone in the gutter after being stabbed in the ankle by a drunken orphan. His lone living relation sold the rights to the soda to a flim-flam man named Flannery McIntosh for one dollar. McIntosh renamed the drink Scrud and sold it as both a digestive aid and a carburetor cleaner. His memorable slogan, "Keeps your tummy firing on all cylinders," is still remembered to this day by people who are incredibly old and anal.

McIntosh built a modest empire around Scrud until 1892, when he was sued for being Irish and lost it all. The winners of that lawsuit, Daniel Freebanks and Benneton DuBois, renamed the drink Dope and sold it strictly as a new something called a "soft drink," a term of dubious legality that implied curative properties against erectile dysfunction. Their business grew hand over foot until 1910, when the US government cracked down on Dope since it contained cocaine, strychnine, absinthe, turpentine, a solution of fool's gold and high levels of cootineut, an imaginary ingredient that at the time was thought to quell dark humors in the pancreas.

Freebanks and DuBois went out of business faster than a pregnant hooker, and they were bought out by Farthington McIntosh, the grandson of Flannery. He promptly reformulated the drink in his bathtub, taking out the offending ingredients and replacing them with shitloads of sugar. But he was careful to also slyly rename the soda Coke, so that hipsters and conspiracy theorists would always think it still secretly contained cocaine, promoting sales.

McIntosh built Coke into an empire, branching out across the globe and fending off upstart sodas like Rammit, Jeez, and Wimpo. Though all of the sodas being produced were virtually the same in flavor, McIntosh retained his edge thanks to his uncanny knack for advertising. On top of plastering every vertical surface he could find with the Coke logo, McIntosh's true genius surfaced in his use of radio jingles touting the virtues of Coke. From early gems like…

Buy a Coke,
drink it up,
Buy another coke,
shut up, shut up.

to the legendary…

Buy a coke,
regret you won't,
you had a nickel,
and now you don't!

and finally the immortal…

Buy a Coke, it's nature's drink
Fizzy fizz that helps you think
You probably won't get cancer, too
Coca-Cola is the one for you!

…McIntosh's jingles were on the lips of every boob in the nation. Among other things, McIntosh is remembered for pioneering the practice of marketing frivolous items as if they were essential to the quality of life.

Unfortunately for McIntosh, all of the marketing genius in the world doesn't make you dagger-proof. He was later stabbed in the back by his own son, who sold the company for forty dollars and a magic talking mule.

The new owner of The Coca-Cola Company was Montgomery County shouting champion Eustace Turner, who ruled Coca-Cola with an iron fist for eight months before selling 40% of the company to L.P. Farnsworth, 40% to Jules Mather, 51% to Modest Cinderbrooke, and 117% to a very stupid man named Sty Covington. Turner then skipped town and laughed himself sick, which is more fun than it sounds.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Well, it's all history, if you want to get technical about it, but the rest of it is the kind of history you don't want to know about since it's is too long and boring to go into. Fear not, you got all the juicy bits. Nothing much else happens until the Cola Wars, and I'm saving that in case my book deal comes through.

º Last Column: The Bermuda Triangle
º more columns