ederal authorities are weighing criminal charges against the Dateline NBC staff members who blew up the Wakasakpie River bridge in Delmont, Wisconsin on Sunday, despite claims from NBC that the terrorist act was merely part of an investigative piece on homeland security. NBC is calling for all charges to be dropped in relation to the incident, which caused over $10 million in damage and left seven dead in the small Wisconsin town.

“In our view, we do not believe we are in violation of the law, because it was not our intent to cause mayhem or destruction,� said NBC News President Neal Shapiro. “Those were merely inevitable side-effects of blowing up a crowded midtown bridge. We were just testing the system.�

According to the video footage shot for an upcoming episode of the NBC News program, staffers received little resistance while rigging the bridge with enormous quantities of high-powered explosives. The lax security did not mean the production was without its difficulties, however, as curious locals were constantly asking “Whatcha doin’?� and a nosy Wisconsin state trooper had to be tied to a large boulder and pushed into the river after being knocked unconscious by Dateline NBC staff members.

“It really makes you think,� said victim Dennis Tyson, nursing a severed arm. “If reporters could do this, just imagine what the bad guys could do if they had a whole crew of people and NBC funding behind them.�

As part of a Dateline NBC special report titled “Achilles Heel,� the investigative piece succeeded in exposing security loopholes in this northern Wisconsin town, as reporters were able to destroy the bridge after telling local authorities they were in town to tape a fictitious segment entitled “Who Has All the Beanie Babies?� Authorities authorized the crew’s presence after recognizing Dateline NBC reporter Sara James, and then being pistol-whipped and corralled into a back room at gunpoint.

These latest journalistic terror actions came on the heels of reports earlier this month that several ABC reporters successfully smuggled 15 pounds depleted uranium into Los Angeles from Jakarta, Indonesia. Although it was unclear what the arrested reporters had intended to do with the uranium, industry observers unanimously agreed that a domestic thermonuclear explosion would have been awesome for ratings.

The events in Los Angeles and Wisconsin have led some federal officials to suggest that the greatest threat to national security may currently be domestic investigative news shows. Unconfirmed reports have staff members of ABC’s 60 Minutes changing cars on an hourly basis in an attempt to foil increased federal surveillance efforts, so that they might still bring America a special report on why Harry Potter is so popular.

NBC heads have yet to say how the arrests will effect their plans to fly three hijacked airliners into rival ABC’s network headquarters as a test of national security on the upcoming season finale of Dateline NBC.

oted American physicist Edward Teller, known as the “father of the H-bomb� and the “swearingest man alive,� died Tuesday of acute pulmonary pneumonia. He was 95 fucking years old.

“That guy said ‘Hell’ more than any man alive,� remembered son Arthur Teller. “And we’ll miss him.�

Outspoken and influential in matters of national defense, Teller enjoyed a long career in pushing for bigger and badder ways to blow the United States’ enemies into a mist of lukewarm spittle. In 1939, Teller encouraged Albert Einstein to inform President Roosevelt of the “awesome fucking power� of nuclear fission. Teller thought the splitting of an atom’s nucleus could be tapped to create a weapon that would “make our dickless enemies wish they’d been born dead.�

Soon after the atom bomb was envisioned, it became clear that nuclear fusion, not fission, was a quicker path to realizing Teller’s vision of a “real fucking ass-wiping, holy shit tit-ripping weapon of ball-waxing mass destruction.� Teller quickly took to the idea.

“Yeah… fuck yeah! We’ll blow their asses out through their teeth, the commie fuckers!� Teller enthused.

Teller’s enthusiasm and foul-mouthed pursuit of such a bomb – he called it the “Motherfucker� – won him the title “father of the H-bomb,� a term he thought was “fucking stupid.� The first one-megaton hydrogen bomb was exploded in 1952, blowing the living shit out of a stretch of desert in northern Nevada.

“Gotcha, cocksuckers!� Teller was heard to scream in a westerly direction when reached with word of the successful test.

According to family sources, Teller died in Stanford, California last Tuesday, in a “shitty little room� that “smelled like horse piss,� tended by “frigid dyke nurses� intent on stealing his “goddamned meds� and devouring his “motherloving soul.�

“Hell’s bells, I don’t know what the hell they were thinking when they invaded that fuckin’ hellhole,� were Teller’s last words, dropping his trademark H-bomb several times in reference to the Vietnam War. “We’re gonna kick the runny shit out of those brown bastards like it was a fuckin’ sport, Jack.�

Teller’s dark worldview was thought by some to be caused by his experiences with the communist revolution in his native Hungary in 1919, in concert with the rise of Nazism in his adopted home of Germany in the 1930’s.

“Nazis? Fuckin’ pricks,� Teller once said of the Nazis, fucking pricks. Biographers have marveled at Teller’s apparent knack for living through the shitty side of history, though many who knew him argue that he would have turned out the same either way.

In one of his last recorded interviews in 2001, Teller seemed to lend support to President George W. Bush’s plans to once again pursue the “Star Wars� Strategic Defense Initiative, an improbable missile defense system of space-based lasers, when he responded to the reporter’s question with an affirmative “Goddamn!� But those close to Teller stress that this was also the same way the late scientist answered the phone, so that conclusion might have been premature.

I'm not going to shit you, after the fad orgy of the 1950's any other decade is going to leave a little something to be desired in the fad department, even the go-go 1960's. But that doesn't mean the era of civil rights and dirty young people didn't have its share of fads worthy of posthumous ridicule. And few can get this embarrassing party started like the limbo.

The limbo originated in Trinidad, an island nation famous for its undersized novelty houses. The native people of this isolated island were so cut off from the rest of the world that they only heard of larger global trends and ideas through rumors, passed through a chain of nearby islands like an absurdly drawn-out game of "telephone." Because of this fact Trinidad developed many absurd traditions, including a virulent bias for shortness, which came about in a confused misunderstanding of the greater world's preference for tall individuals.

Trinidadians took to this adopted prejudice with a passion, and before long every native was trying to out-short the others. Trinidadians blessed with impressive squatness would revel in their ability to pass under low tree branches and would cruelly taunt the island's unfortunate taller inhabitants, asking them if would kindly clean out the ceilings of caves with their hair and screaming for them to duck when birds flew by.

Eventually this short one-upsmanship became ingrained in society, and a huge premium was placed on living in shorter and shorter houses. Soon most homes were barely three feet tall, and residents had to enter by leaning way back and waddling forward with bent knees, a practice visitors to the island dubbed "limboing" due to their lack of imagination.

In time, pretending to be shorter than you actually are became something of a sport in Trinidad, and in 1958 national limbo champion Dolores Reyes set a world record by limboing her way into a casket 6 1/8 inches tall before she expired. This feat caught the eye of Hollywood producers, who promptly made the world's first limbo movie in 1960. The grammatically-incorrect "Where the Boys Are?" featured the hottest young milkfed stars of the day limboing under various objects to try and find out where the heck all the boys went. The film was terrible but a huge hit, as teens of the day loved any odd, kitschy behavior and bright jazzy images flickering on the big screen. The trend caught fire and spread to the wider world, and almost instantly people everywhere were hurting themselves trying to limbo.

Meanwhile back in America, superballs were created when scientists at Cornell University were trying to develop bouncy-shoes that would allow them to bound into treetops and peek through the windows of the girls' dormitory showers next door. The shoes were a failure, as the first scientist to try them broke his neck after bouncing through the window of a nearby umbrella factory. But the scientists discovered something interesting while they were throwing the leftover shrapnel from the shoes at each other: It was fun. The ball-shaped fragments were outrageously bouncy, and seemed to have a special knack for gaining speed immediately before they ricocheted right into somebody's eyeball. They also made a hilarious sound when deflected off an unsuspecting skull.

These superballs became a huge hit as toys, gaining initial popularity only because guys wanted to tell girls they had "super balls" but then growing into a national mania as their considerable potential for mayhem was realized. Flinging superballs into cramped men's rooms and running away became a popular hobby, and several hit comedy records were released that featured nothing but the startled screams of superball victims.

Sea Monkeys were the hit pet of the 1960's, which should go a long way toward answering any questions about how much drugs people actually did in the 60's. Discovered gumming up California toy mogul Walter Gallagher's pool after he got back from a six-month peyote binge in Sri Lanka, sea monkeys were originally marketed as food for pet baleen whales. Realizing he was aiming for something of a niche market, once his swimming-pool stock ran out Gallagher changed gears and began selling packets of the tiny brine shrimp as pets for retards and mental patients.

Under Gallagher's original scheme, he sealed the "Sea Monkeys" in little paper packets so that they were cheap to mail, and if anybody complained that they had a bunch of dead brine shrimp floating in their aquarium he'd just tell them that's what "Sea Monkeys" do: float around like they're dead. It was a genius plan, since only a few of the nation's top nerds knew what brine shrimp actually did in the wild. As long as he didn't sell any Sea Monkeys to those guys, Gallagher would be fine.

To his great surprise however, the brine shrimp not only survived the mailing process, but actually seemed to enjoy it, as it imitated the way they are shipped in the wild. Soon, every kid in America had a plastic bowl of fetid tap water sitting on their desk, clouded with a bunch of tiny wet fleas. And fun was had by all. Actually, most kids added Kool-Aid to the water so they'd have psychedelic Sea Monkeys for a few days before they all died, but this was a natural response to being jobbed into thinking they were getting some magical mermaid king and queen pet family when they bought the kit.

The 1960's saw the birth of many other short-lived trends, from granny glasses to glassless glasses and glass underwear. America was also introduced to the skateboard, one of the rare fads you could break your neck enjoying. Tune in for our next installment where we'll further examine America's century-long aversion to wising up. I'm Griswald Dreck, and if you didn't hear it here, it's a load.

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