hild, space enthusiasts and sci-fi nerds everywhere cheered the president on when White House officials announced this week the president was "seriously considering" a space war. Defense contractors reportedly wet themselves as well.

The buff and sexy White House brain trust released information this week that, among other considerations for the president's closing year of his first, and likely only, term were staging the most expensive and colorful war yet, with the space people. Or, the president's representatives allowed, other countries seeking to colonize the moon.

That's right: The moon. Nick-named in the documents accompanying the press release, "The 51st state," which is rumored to have pissed Puerto Rico off, but come on, you know they were just stringing you guys along—you all may dress to the nines, but the your GNP is lower than Utah's.

The policy, which is being "sincerely given a look," comes in response to a combination of presidential inspirations, including fear of China's recent feat of sending a Chinese guy into space, and another marathon of Starship Trooper DVD viewings by the commander-in-chief.

"The president," said an anonymous White House official who prefers French-cut underwear, "has always wanted to be a bold leader, and to strike preemptively against off-worlders looking to take advantage of our limited intergalactic colonization program. That's a failing of the Democratic administration that preceded us. But Mr. Bush says by the end of his term we'll have regular flights to the moon. And by the end of his clone's term in 2018, we will have established an impressive military force on the moon. With lasers."

Señor Bush is also not ruling out the idea of low-income housing on the moon, to help deal with the projected astronomical damage to the middle class expected to be caused by another term of his presidency.

"I've got plans for the homeless," Bush said in response to a question during a press conference last week, rubbing his hands together and laughing maniacally. Most reporters attributed the enigmatic statement to a possible new "eat the homeless" program or turning them into low-cost diesel fuel somehow, but it does seem to jibe with rumors of a homeless colony on the dark side of the moon, dubbed in White House documents "the Pink Floyd Province."

"The homeless are people," said the same unnamed White House source, while working on his glutes. "They are people just like us, and they want to work. And when we have established a moon rock mine, we'll definitely need all the slave labor we can get. Did I say 'slave'? I meant inexpensive labor. I mean minimum wage. Labor."

If the moon space fort idea pans out, the prez will likely begin making requests to Congress for allocation of outer space funding, including up to $15 billion for advanced space program designs. An additional $2 billion of that may be requested for construction of a one-man presidential shuttle, with more than half of that going to design a rugged-looking flight suit.

pparently feeling that the current national climate is as ripe a time as any for a complete break from any recognizable form of reality, the National Rifle Association is attempting to buy a television or radio station this week, in hopes of declaring itself a news organization exempt from spending restrictions in the campaign finance law.

"We're looking at bringing a court case that we're as legitimate a media outlet as Disney or Viacom or Time-Warner or any of those places," explained Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's own version of commune whale tampon Raoul Dunkin. An uncomfortable silence followed after this reporter stopped laughing.

According to LaPierre, the NRA is one of the biggest magazine publishers in the United States, with an impressive stable of nearly a dozen publications, including "American Rifleman," "Patriotic American Hunter," "Gun Nut," and "Buck-Naked Beer-Swilling Bitches."

Since the NRA has such extensive experience bringing news to the mullet-wearing portion of America's magazine-buying public, LaPierre argues that the NRA should enjoy the same political benefits enjoyed by organizations with less-embarrassing member ranks.

"I defy you to convince me that the NRA is any different from those organizations, just because they actually have news departments and wear pants around the office," said LaPierre, himself clad in pajama bottoms adorned with a machine-gun pattern. "We're just as legitimate a news source as any of them are, even more so when you consider the way they ignore the obvious gun angle in everyday stories." LaPierre further argued that paranoid gun freaks have as much a right as anyone to be represented in the media, but this reporter can't be sure of the exact quote as my notes just contain a doodle of a cow shitting on a scale for this part of the story.

The NRA's latest moves can be seen as a sign of the times, as there have been few periods in history when a lobbying group would so boldly admit to circumventing campaign reform legislation in hopes of buying influence in next year's elections.

Historically one of Washington's most powerful and twitchy lobbies, the 4 million-member NRA has spent millions over the years supporting pro-gun candidates. Since the organization is financed with corporate money, under the campaign finance law of 2002 it is currently banned from running ads mentioning candidates by name during the two months preceding a general election. News organizations are exempt from such restrictions, allowing them to cover the news and follow elections without being accused of shilling for political candidates.

Convinced that the NRA is capable of such impartial and unbiased political coverage, LaPierre promises that the NRA and its lawyers will continue to fight this attack on their "First Amendment rights," possibly even going so far as to broadcast pro-gun ads from ships anchored in international waters at election time. Another uncomfortable silence followed after this reporter stopped laughing.

The year was 1976, and communist cold war spies had infiltrated the U.S. government. Their mission? To convert America's God-fearing system of Imperial weights and measures to a devious red contraption known at the metric system. Did they succeed? What the fuck's the metric system? Think for a second and I believe you'll realize those two questions cancel each other out.

The metric system failed because the American people spoke in one voice, clear and proud, when they said "Wha? Hey, fuck the metric system!"

The system was developed in the late 1500's, after writer Simon Stevin skylarked that it would be trippy if you could divide everything by ten. Thomas Jefferson read Stevin's book while in college and the author's stoned musings inspired him to propose a decimal currency system for the U.S. in 1792, the first of its kind. France then converted to the metric system in 1795, which effectively ended the U.S. conversion to metric units. After the French started doing it, metric just didn't seem cool any more.

In 1812 Napoleon suspended use of the metric system in France, because he didn't like the thought of only being a meter and a half tall. It was reinstated in 1840 after Napoleon fell from power and his enemies loved the idea of him being remembered as that short.

Over the years the definition of the meter has changed several times. Jefferson thought it should be one ten millionth the length from the earth's equator to the North Pole, which made everybody nod and say that sounded like a good idea. Several years later they thought about it and realized they had absolutely no way of knowing how long that was, and that Jefferson must have been fucking with them. And sure enough he had already split town with his secretary and all of the money from their metric-conversion coffers.

France had been working from the assumption that Jefferson knew what he was talking about, so when they got word of his jape France had to redefine the meter. Somebody found a stick he liked while walking in the woods that afternoon and this became the new definition of the meter, which stood for over a hundred years. In 1960, the meter was redefined by scientists as "1 650 763.73 wavelengths in vacuum of the radiation corresponding to the transition between levels 2p10 and 5d5 of the krypton 86 atom," a gag definition proposed by one of Jefferson's descendants and taken as gospel truth by lazy scientists who didn't want to figure that crap out. Finally in 1980 the current definition was set, where you hold your arms about yea far apart and that's a meter. Except in Canada, where it's the length traveled by light in a vacuum during one 299,792,458th of a second. Canadian scientists are always hot-dogging like that.

Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 a year late in 1976, which stipulated that it would probably be a good idea to switch to the metric system some time. No target dates were set, and over the next seven years America made a half-assed effort at going metric, changing roadsides haphazardly and scaring schoolchildren into thinking they'd have to relearn all the stuff they'd just learned about footstools and midgets being called "pint-sized." This continued until 1982, when President Ronald Reagan signed the Fuck the Metric System bill into law, which disbanded the U.S. Metric Board and ran its members out of town on a rail.

In the twenty-one years since, the metric system has slowly crept up on Americans, seeping into our daily lives like the smell of your next-door neighbor's Jacuzzi, sneaking ludicrous numbers and little symbols onto cereal boxes and shampoo bottles in the dead of night. The American people have steadfastly refused its advances, wary of falling victim to the metric conspiracy the way every other country on the face of the earth has, excepting those strongholds of enlightenment, Liberia and Myanmar. Some mock Americans for our slavish dedication to a system of weights and measures few understand or can calculate, blinded by their own anal need to know things like how many feet are in a mile or cups in a gallon.

But if they want to go all metric and live someplace where it's only 32 degrees in the summer, let 'em freeze their metric asses off. 30 degrees in July? Fuck that, that's cold. You can have your Celsius scale.

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