 | 
 Profanity penalty fund comes to the rescue of U.S. October 27, 2003 |
A rare photograph of the swear jar overspill, which should also be allocated toward the rebuilding of Iraq's infrastructure. Or, perhaps, just a pile of coins our lazy photographer staged.
The swear jar, instituted in the 1960s during initial squabbles between Israel and surrounding Islamic nations, became a staple of public negotiations at the U.N. building in New York. Familiar statements such as, "Please, ambassador—there are ladies present," or, "Does the Prime Minister kiss his mother with that mouth?" became outlets for relief of tension with the high-strung representatives of many nations.
The legacy of the swear jar since its inception has spawned many rumors with U.N. fans, or "Unies," as they are called behind their backs. In 1967 the popular s...
fforts to rebuild Iraq achieved a success Friday when U.N. officials, voiced by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, pledged funding for the reconstruction from the official United Nations "swear jar."
The swear jar, instituted in the 1960s during initial squabbles between Israel and surrounding Islamic nations, became a staple of public negotiations at the U.N. building in New York. Familiar statements such as, "Please, ambassador—there are ladies present," or, "Does the Prime Minister kiss his mother with that mouth?" became outlets for relief of tension with the high-strung representatives of many nations.
The legacy of the swear jar since its inception has spawned many rumors with U.N. fans, or "Unies," as they are called behind their backs. In 1967 the popular story was the swear jar had accumulated $432,000, all of which would be used for a hootenanny-slash-barbecue that summer, until Cold War relations worsened and the jar was put aside for possible war reparations to the eventual winning side. In 1978, after years of U.N. members dipping in for candy bars and vending machine sodas, the swear jar funds were down to $1.3 million, despite accruing an estimated $3.9 million in the time since public discussion of its allocation, and popular sentiment at that time was to use the bounty to build a new recreation room with new pool tables, a 27-inch TV, and a sofa with its upholstry intact. In 1990, during the first Gulf War crisis, the U.N. elected to move the swear jar money to a ceramic Mickey Mouse bank so everyone would be less likely to replenish other funds from swear-earned income.
At Friday's donor dinner, which is fun to say, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed attendees from the United Nations and requested approximately $35.8 billion through 2007 or "best offer" for the rebuilding of war torn Iraq, in which we did most of the tearing.
Angry nations and their angrier representatives expressed disinterest in springing for rebuilding out of their own pockets after explicitly making their aversion to the war public. Miniature squabbles resulted in the aftermath, adding an estimated $43 to the swear jar before lunchtime, but U.N. executives managed to chill out the crowd with a copy of Bob Marley's Legend album.
With the uproar squashed, Secretary General Kofi Annan sparked a quiet hush in the room when he turned to Treasury Secretary Candy and asked, "How much is in the swear jar?" After conferring privately with the secretary, Annan nodded and turned back toward the microphone, pronouncing, "I think we can swing it."
Most countries found the pledge agreeable, but the allocation of the swear jar funding did have its opponents. French ambassador HenrĂ Bois-Bois was quick to voice his dissent.
"If the U.S. expects the rest of the Western world to step in and pay to make its repairs when it gives us no voice in preventing a war, we are setting a dangerous precedent by agreeing to do so," stated the dignitary. "Also, there are many of us who had not given up hope on getting jackets with our names on the back done up. Those are not going to pay for themselves. Does the U.S. propose to pay for those in exchange? This is so unfair."
The swear jar allocation, if it happens, could be the largest expenditure of U.N. community bank since financing a pizza party to settle the Falkland Islands dispute with money found in the rec room couch cushions. the commune news originally kept its own swear jars, but when you make bupkiss in revenue and swear like we do, let's just say it's not a wise investment. Ramon Nootles is keeping a sex jar, if anyone is interested in contributing—he hasn't said exactly what it's for, but swears it's a good cause.
 | Wal-Mart Justifies Illegal Alien Labor: 'It's Much Cheaper'Low cost of illegals makes low, low prices October 27, 2003 |
Washington, D.C. Whit Pistol Wal-Mart, defender of capitalism and alleged exploiter of the illegal workforce.
"Regular labor," said sexy Mike Dunphy, the regional spokesperson for Wal-Mart of America, "is extremely costly in this day and age. Federal law requires you to supply benefits and a certain minimum number of hours for full-time employees. Also, you have to pay exorbitant amounts in overtime for employees working more than 40 hours a week—which can be pricey. Fortunately, Wal-Mart can ...
mm, mmm, mmm! Wal-Mart stores around America were hobbled Thursday when bucking young federal agents swooped in and arrested hundreds of illegal alien contract employees to deport them back to wherever they came from, with a friendly, "Better luck next time!" Friday, Wal-Mart explained the hiring practices that allowed so many illegal aliens to be working in their stores: "It's much cheaper."
"Regular labor," said sexy Mike Dunphy, the regional spokesperson for Wal-Mart of America, "is extremely costly in this day and age. Federal law requires you to supply benefits and a certain minimum number of hours for full-time employees. Also, you have to pay exorbitant amounts in overtime for employees working more than 40 hours a week—which can be pricey. Fortunately, Wal-Mart can get around this in most cases by hiring part-time employees, for whom the law offers no protection, and staff our stores with those employees without paying benefits. If we give them few enough hours, we don't pay them overtime, we can sufficiently run our stores for a reduced cost and string along employees for years before they realize they'll never get a full-time position."
All illegal aliens arrested in the federal probe, Dunphy was quick to point out, were not direct employees of the Wal-Mart corporation, but contract employees through other firms, allowing Wal-Mart complete exoneration. The hiring of illegal aliens, the Wal-Mart corporation noted, is against everything they publicly endorse.
"The Wal-Mart company and its subsidiaries has never employed illegal aliens," stated Dunphy, "directly. Now, we're not responsible for who our contractors hire to clean our stores. All we know is we're talking some serious coin to staff people to clean our filthy stores all night. If a contractor comes up to us and says they can get the stores cleaned for a ridiculously low price, what are we going to do, ask them how they can afford to do it? Of course not. Wal-Mart shoppers aren't asking us how we got those Sanyo TVs so discounted. We cut the costs and pass the blame on to you. Did I say blame? I meant savings."
The illegal hiring allegations come at a bad time for Wal-Mart, and Mike Dunphy in particular, who was losing his job at the end of the day. The corporation has recently begun downsizing after years of non-stop growth since its boom in the 1980s. Many believed Wal-Mart a teflon company after it survived past recessions without a scar, and continued to expand, but the announcement that hundreds of jobs would be cut came as a harsh call to reality for some. Damn shame.
"It's no surprise to those of us who work for Wal-Mart," said Dunphy, over cocktails at a local dive. "For years the corporation has barreled ahead to expand in areas where they've already eliminated most of the competition. Creating the illusion of growth is more important than real growth in the modern economy. Bringing superstores to small towns that could barely support a regular Wal-Mart, practices like that. It's like you're outrunning a drunken ex-wife with a butcher knife, sooner or later it catches up with you. The bitch is always right on your ass, economically speaking. You got pretty eyes, angel."
Wal-Mart had not been announced culpable for the employment of contractors who hire illegal aliens at press time, but federal officials said they hope it did not raise the cost of jeans in their area. the commune news only employees one alien, if you count the Great Gazoo, but Red Bagel, the only one of us who can talk to him, claims all his work papers are in order. Stigmata Spent is so damn good-lookin' it should be illegal, but she keeps getting off on a technicality.
| Mark Buckles Some Sort of Cockwad Everyone kind of a little relieved Bob Hope finally dead Yale bombed, Harvard too drunk to walk home Study finds low I.Q. causes lead paint eating, not other way around |
|
|
| 
 November 10, 2003 They Don't Call it a Blood Drive for NothingWeek Four of kicking doors and slamming tires In the movies, whenever a guy's driving a convertible there's always some honeyed blonde sitting in the passenger seat in a tennis outfit or something, without fail. I'm serious, you start to think the girl comes with the car or maybe they just hang out on street corners waiting for some random guy in a convertible to pull up. A pretty sweet gig if you can get it, that is unless you get picked up by the guy from that Outrun game and you're destined to fly out of the car and tumble up the road again and again.
I decided to check out this theory by test-driving a convertible last weekend, and I'll be damned if it didn't sort of work, except the blonde was a seven-foot-tall transvestite from Yugoslavia. If you've ever wondered what kind of person just hops into a stranger'...
º Last Column: Test Drive
º more columns
In the movies, whenever a guy's driving a convertible there's always some honeyed blonde sitting in the passenger seat in a tennis outfit or something, without fail. I'm serious, you start to think the girl comes with the car or maybe they just hang out on street corners waiting for some random guy in a convertible to pull up. A pretty sweet gig if you can get it, that is unless you get picked up by the guy from that Outrun game and you're destined to fly out of the car and tumble up the road again and again. I decided to check out this theory by test-driving a convertible last weekend, and I'll be damned if it didn't sort of work, except the blonde was a seven-foot-tall transvestite from Yugoslavia. If you've ever wondered what kind of person just hops into a stranger's car uninvited, well there's your answer. To be honest I didn't get to know Unga all that well since after about thirty seconds she saw some guy on the sidewalk who owed her money, and she leapt out of the moving car at a full tackle. If they ever need to update the dictionary picture illustrating the word "surprise," they don't need to search any further than the look on that dude's face when Unga broadsided him at forty-five miles an hour. To be honest I don't know what picture they're using now, but unless it's the silhouette of that chick's dong from The Crying Game, it could probably stand an update. After that there was a minor hassle at the dealership when I returned the car with a mariachi band in the back seat. You'd think I'd be charging them for that kind of shit, since trust me it's not easy getting a mariachi band delivered in the city at that time of day. Those guys could have done a lot for the dealership's business, since they knew how to play "Slow Ride" and everything. Mainly I think they were just pissed because I ditched the dealership lackey they sent to tag along for the ride, as if I'm the one who made the car too small for a mariachi band, a seven-foot-tall Eastern European drag queen and an asthmatic dealership goon to fit in all at once. I even went out of my way to tell them which block we let him off at, though nobody could recall if he rolled to the left or the right. Needless to say, the Omar Bricks car search continues. In the last week I've weeded out quite a few of the pretenders from the field, and am currently leaning towards either a truck, a dune buggy, or a really big truck with a dune buggy in the back. I figure this would be the best of both worlds, because good luck to the cop trying to give me a speeding ticket when the truck's on cruise control and I'm dune buggying out the back in the opposite direction. I don't think even Burt Reynolds ever thought of that one. You can tell they don't design many of these cars with Omar Bricks in mind, because none of them indicate your speed in reverse. And that's just bullshit. You think you can shine the law just because you're driving with one arm wrapped around the passenger seat and your head craned way around to the back window? Well good, but you still need the proper instrumentation to give your story detail later. I actually got turned down for a test drive at one dealership the other day, because the dude was freaked out by the shirt I was wearing from the commune's third annual Blood Drive. That's what seemed to bother him anyway, the thought of handing over the car keys to some guy wearing a shirt that said BLOOD DRIVE in big red letters. And truth be told, there was some blood on the shirt, but I explained to the guy that was old blood from the charitable Blood Drive, not evidence of some bloody test drive from earlier in the day, so no worries. Come to think of it, he did kind of act weirded out after I asked if the Malibu could pull a sleigh, so maybe it was just the whole situation that smelled like a lawsuit to him. I can't blame the guy really, I probably wouldn't have turned over my keys to a dude with windshield glass in his hair, either. Besides, if I decide I really need to test-drive a Chevy I can always go back next week dressed as the Tin Man or Charles Manson or something, the costume stores always have some bitchin' sales after Halloween is over. Bricks out. º Last Column: Test Driveº more columns | 
|
| |
Quote of the Day“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our capacity for customer service. Yes I'll hold.”
-Elvin EinschwartzFortune 500 CookieYou will find Love in a new job this week. Unfortunately it's Courtney Love, and she's your second-shift supervisor. Cheer up, it's not that nobody cares about you; it's just that nobody's willing to admit to it. Everyone's right: Your irrational hatred of the Chinese is starting to hurt your chopstick business. This week's lucky stars: Sirius, Orion, Omega 13, Pauley Shore.
Try again later.Top Reasons for Quitting Your Job| 1. | Nobody likes my dancing | | 2. | Lunch hour five minutes too short | | 3. | Work keeps getting in way of Star Trek marathon | | 4. | Time clock too high to reach | | 5. | Sick of endless "get dressed, get undressed" grind | |
|   "Sunfart" Wreaks Havoc on Earth  BY roland mcshyster 10/27/2003 Hello America, how've you been? Those shingles clearing up all right? Solid. As you might have guessed, we're back for another installment of the column that cares, Entertainment Police. Prepare to have your heart and other tender anatomical portions touched, buffed and spit-shone! If you're like me, you're ready for Hollywood to cough up another weekend's worth of movies, and as usual they haven't disappointed. Meaning they put out some movies, I'm not crazy enough to suggest the movies aren't disappointing. So let's take a gander at the who's, what's, and why's of this weekend's letdown.
In Theaters
In the Cute
Meg Ryan and Mark "Buffalo 66" Ruffalo shed their cute puppy-dog images for thi...
Hello America, how've you been? Those shingles clearing up all right? Solid. As you might have guessed, we're back for another installment of the column that cares, Entertainment Police. Prepare to have your heart and other tender anatomical portions touched, buffed and spit-shone! If you're like me, you're ready for Hollywood to cough up another weekend's worth of movies, and as usual they haven't disappointed. Meaning they put out some movies, I'm not crazy enough to suggest the movies aren't disappointing. So let's take a gander at the who's, what's, and why's of this weekend's letdown.
In Theaters
In the Cute
Meg Ryan and Mark "Buffalo 66" Ruffalo shed their cute puppy-dog images for this light serial killer comedy. Taking the romantic comedy "Will they do it?" conceit a step farther to "Will they do it before the dude cuts her head off?" In the Cute ratchets up the fluffy tension notch by notch with every dismembered corpse and bit of funny first-date hijinks. While the obvious question is "Does it work?" and the obvious answer is "Who kicked your pregnant mother down the stairs, doofus?" the more compelling point to ponder is really "When is the right time to tell the girl you're dating that you're a serial-killing detective madman? Before you meet her parents? Or after the wedding?" Director and athletic sock magnate Kate Champion does an admirable job of keeping the two plates spinning at once, even if it does mean that nothing in the film is ever the slightest bit in focus, figuratively nor in the fuzzy-eyed literal sense.
The Human Stain
I got excited when I first heard this movie was coming out because I thought it was going to be about my brother, since that was his unfortunate nickname in High School. No such luck however, as it's just another potboiler about the extreme inconvenience of a hit-and-run accident. Anthony "Psycho" Hopkins stars as the inattentive driver who spends two hours going from body shop to body shop in a vain attempt to get the weird purple butt-cheek marks out of the hood of his Audi. Extreme tedium can be a powerful motivator, and I doubt anyone will be talking on his or her cell phone while jerking off a transvestite on the way home from the theater after seeing this cautionary tale.
Radio
According to commune fact-machine Griswald Dreck, the radio was actually invented by Italian racecar genius Macaroni Vivaldi, not some retarded black guy from Alabama. As the story goes, Vivaldi got tired of not having any music to listen to while he was driving endlessly in circles, and he thought it also might be fun for when he was racing. So Vivaldi developed the world's first radio, which he installed in the dash of his racecar. A few months later he followed this up with the crucial invention of the world's first radio station, which not-surprisingly played only Vivaldi's favorite Chechnyan oompa music. You'd think this story would be compelling enough to make into a hit movie, but apparently Hollywood thought Cuba Gooding Jr. would have a hard time passing for Italian, so they rewrote Vivaldi's story as Forrest Gump meets Rudy and slopped it onto our plates with a ladle. Sorry Hollywood, but even we're not that stupid.
Scary Movie 3
Looks like the poofs at Merchant Ivory are at it again, trying to deceive the American moviegoing public with yet another misleading movie title. Anyone who went to Howard's End expecting a classy gay porno or walked out of Remains of the Day after a pulse-pounding slasher flick never materialized can feel my pain here. After The Golden Bowl failed to live up to its billing as the second coming of Cheech & Chong, I gave up on these guys for good. Scary Movie 3 is indeed scary, if the thought of paying nine bucks to sit through a long, boring chick flick terrifies you as much as it should. Though if seeing nerds dress up in period costumes and act boring does it for you, and the Renaissance Fair isn't in town, then this should be right up your twisted alley.
The Swinging Detective
Hollywood's latest ploy to squeeze every last drop of spunk out of the lousy turnips they've been producing (spunk's turnip juice, right?) is the highly-dubious practice of releasing the same film twice under two different names. Sometimes they score the doublecross of getting people to pay to see the same film twice (i.e. Jurassic Park and Godzilla or Under Pressure and Vanilla Sky), but the strategy is mainly employed so they can market one film to two wildly different audiences. That's the case here with The Swinging Detective, released simultaneously with In the Cute and raising some suspicions by being exactly the same movie. But while trailers for In the Cute play up the film's grisly serial-killer elements, The Swinging Detective looks like a straight-ahead romantic comedy that just happens to be going on around the same time the cops are trying to find a serial killer who cuts women's heads off and balances them on his shoulders so he can re-enact his favorite scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Some might find these marketing tactics deceptive, mainly because they are, but the studio may have hit just the right balance this time around since romantic comedy and serial killer audiences rarely overlap. Plus it's funny to envision the scenario where some guy drags his wife to see In the Cute and she tolerates it so she can drag him to see The Swinging Detective the following weekend, neither of them ever the wiser.
That's all America. Even if there were more movies out this week, we wouldn't have reviewed them, because enough is enough. Knowing when to quit has never been a Hollywood strong point, so the discerning consumer has to know when to yank the gin tap out of their puckered maws and kick the rascals curbward. Join us again next issue when we answer the eternal question: "Yuck! What?"    |
