espite its popularity on Christmas wish lists the world over, Santa Claus called the commune offices this week to announce regretfully that he would not be fulfilling any requests for the Paris Hilton sex video this year.

The video in question features the 22-year-old hotel heiress engaging in several coal-worthy sex acts with then boyfriend Rick Solomon. While readily available for illegal download on the Internet, many had hoped for a handsomely packaged VHS or DVD copy they could proudly display in their movie collection this Christmas, a wish that Claus will be unable to fulfill for multiple reasons.

“Even if I approved of the content, I can’t even get my hands on the thing,� explained Santa. “They don’t offer broadband access at the North Pole, I’m still using this infernal dial-up connection. I can’t even download MP3s of the latest Christmas carols, it’s hopeless. Though from what I hear of today’s music, Santa may not be missing too much on that front, ho ho.�

Off the record, Santa expressed his concerns that hearing some godawful dance hit about Christina Aguilera getting fucked under the Christmas tree might shake his already strained Christmas spirit. Additionally, Claus wished to get the word out on several other hotly anticipated items he won’t be able to cram under Christmas trees this December 25th.

“The Gilligan’s Island DVD—that’s not even out yet. Just because I can breed magical flying livestock doesn’t mean I can time-travel here, kids. Have your parents check the street dates for these things before you send Santa your list next year, please,� the jolly fat man requested.

“Also, I’m not doing color picture phones this year,� Santa apologized. “My distributor in Korea said he could get me the parts but then he hit some kind snag with the displays and let Santa down big time. He can expect a big, dusty hunk of coal in his stocking this year, don’t worry. Though I sincerely doubt he’ll even notice, since most of those Asian countries don’t know Christmas from a crab cake. I stopped going to Singapore last year because everybody thought Santa was some kind of clown and they all wanted me to blow up balloon animals. Not that Santa minds getting a few fortune cookies on Christmas Eve, those can be a nice change of pace that go down surprisingly well with milk.�

Unfortunately, the Orient has not been alone in letting Santa down in recent years.

“Truth be told, some parts of Canada are even questionable these days,� St. Nick griped. “Last year I plopped down a chimney in Winnipeg and half the kids thought I was one of the X-Men, they wouldn’t shut up about wanting to see me extend my claws or shoot fireballs out of my armpits. None of those little children seemed too impressed with the old candy-cane behind-the-ear trick, either. I’m half inclined to skip Canada this year and see how much Christmas cheer their precious Wolverine brings them in my stead, the ungrateful little comic book geeks.�

Santa stresses that while full of good cheer and the Christmas spirit, most of his elves possess a third-grade education at best, and simply do not have the skills necessary to work with complex electronics.

“I thought it was bad back in 2001 when I had to have my elves dig up a bunch of old waffle irons and slap George Foreman decals on them,� Santa explained. “But now it’s just gone completely out of hand. Nobody wants a painted nutcracker anymore. Now it’s all Playstation 2 this and DVD burner that. I’ve had to farm most of my production work out to the Far East, and though small and well-behaved, I doubt those people are what most children envision when they think of Santa’s workforce.�

The resultant layoffs have hit the Christmas elf community hard, leading to rising levels of depression and substance abuse, aided in no small part by the North Pole’s harsh climate and the poor genetic tolerance for alcohol inherent in the Christmas elf population.

Due to rising tech expenses and soft sales of Santa-themed merchandise, Santa’s profit margins are razor-thin this year, children. Nice boys and girls can show their love for Santa by requesting less-demanding toys this Christmas season.

“Who wouldn’t love a little wooden toy train? That’s a classic. Those are pretty cheap to make, and we’ve got tons left over from the elf rehab workshops. Or how about a wooden dolly with a painted face? That’s pretty nice. And blocks. Kids used to have loads of fun with blocks,� Santa said, sighing distractedly.

Claus also wanted to stress with parents the importance of not arming their homes with high-tech burglar alarms and other security systems impervious to Christmas magic.

“Santa Claus doesn’t like to break a window, but he does what he has to do to deliver the magic of Christmas,� warned Santa in a stern tone.

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.

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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