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 November 1, 2004 |
President-Elect Al Gore reacts in good-natured WTF disbelief when informed by Airhead the Good-News Lady and assorted supporters that he will be the next U.S. president
Though Gore has not been a frontrunner in most of the supposedly-reputable national polls heading into the election’s final week, a highly scientific sampling of unregistered voters within a two-block radius of the commune offices has confirmed the reports of future correspondent Future Bob, who recently contacted the commune from the year 2006 with the news that Gore is president and that pop music had gotten really, really shitty. Also: buy stock in flavored condoms now.
Th...
sing state of the art poll-tracking technology, the commune has been able to predict this year’s presidential election winner two days early with a probably 98.77439% accuracy, and the result may shock or disinterest you. That’s right; Al Gore will be our nation’s 44th president.
Though Gore has not been a frontrunner in most of the supposedly-reputable national polls heading into the election’s final week, a highly scientific sampling of unregistered voters within a two-block radius of the commune offices has confirmed the reports of future correspondent Future Bob, who recently contacted the commune from the year 2006 with the news that Gore is president and that pop music had gotten really, really shitty. Also: buy stock in flavored condoms now.
Though it is unclear as of yet whether the Gore win will be the result of an unexpected groundswell of support in the election’s final days, or the emergence of thousands of 2000 absentee ballots from Post Office limbo hell, one thing is unmistakably clear. More on that later.
Perhaps even more surprising than the Gore win was the news that both presidential incumbent George W. Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry finished well out of the money in the general election, trailing such surprise write-in candidates as The Rebel Billionaire, J.R. Ewing, and “that black guy from 24.” Also receiving strong shows of support were Candidate Zero from the NetZero Internet Service commercials, baseball commissioner Bud Selig, and the soothing, dignified voice of actor James Earl Jones.
Though the point may be moot due to the tenth-place showing of Jones’ voice, it is unclear whether the entire personage of James Earl Jones would have been inaugurated had the actor’s voice won, or if Jones would have had to stay out of sight while his voice was electronically matched, Wizard of Oz-style, to a projected image of either Darth Vader, the dad lion from The Lion King, or some kind of CGI morph of the two.
The revolutionary new poll, devised by the commune’s in-house expert expert Griswald Dreck using the latest Polish technology, also revealed some surprising news about America’s political affiliations. Long-though to be a nation composed almost equally of Democrats and Republicans, this latest poll shows a surprising 74% of citizens who list their party as “Yes!” Another 10% belong to the hard-line “Fuck Yeah!” Party, with a small but vocal minority standing behind their “Not Since We Had Kids” Party affiliation. Also of concern to the current establishment are the upstart “Where?” and “Can I Bring My Brother Dave?” Parties, which appeared to grow in size exponentially between our 10am and 4pm polls.
The demographic splits were even more surprising, with over 80% of likely white trash voters believing that gun control means using both hands. And in a minor note, a surprising 82% of Americans believe Gore is our current president, and are happy enough with the job he’s done to vote for a second term.
In other political news, 65% of likely voters expressed their strong opinion that commune reporter Lil Duncan belongs in the “Hot” category, while teen correspondent Boner Cunningham led the “Not” voting with a skyscraping 92%. Though disheartened by the news, Cunningham informed the commune that he hopes to do better in the upcoming 2008 election, by which time he expects his mustache to have fully grown in. the commune news has been accused of making premature calls on elections in the past, but we still stand behind our claim that Steve Toner was jobbed out of his rightful place as our student body president in 1989. Lil Duncan is the commune’s White House correspondent, a title we would have defined more specifically if we’d known she was going to buy a white house just so she could telecommute on a bullshit technicality.
 | Republicans Organize "Poor People Rock!" FestivalNovember 1, 2004 |
Washington, D.C. Dan Fathead Blueblood industrialist H.P. Cravenborg thrills the crowd of destitute onlookers with his impressive wealthiness
The inaugural festival was a star-studded day-long event which featured such poor people favorites as country superstar Toby Keith, Hip-Hop malcontents Deaf Niggaz, get-quick-rich guru Denny Cochran, radio shock jock Gray Baytor, and the hippie-bashing conceptual comedy troupe The Haight Mongers. Several of the country’s leading wealthy Republicans also spoke at the event, where festival-goers were let in free of charge after signing a waiver agreeing to be tested en mass...
esponding to years of baseless accusations that the GOP panders to the rich and disgustingly privileged, Republican leaders organized the first-ever “Poor People Rock!” festival this week to celebrate the decrepit and ramp up GOP support in the final week leading up to November’s crucial elections.
The inaugural festival was a star-studded day-long event which featured such poor people favorites as country superstar Toby Keith, Hip-Hop malcontents Deaf Niggaz, get-quick-rich guru Denny Cochran, radio shock jock Gray Baytor, and the hippie-bashing conceptual comedy troupe The Haight Mongers. Several of the country’s leading wealthy Republicans also spoke at the event, where festival-goers were let in free of charge after signing a waiver agreeing to be tested en mass for the effects of a new military-grade neurotoxin.
“I don’t know where this idea started that Republicans hate the poor, but it’s utter hogwash,” led off the event’s Master of Ceremonies, industrialist H.P. Cravenborg. “After all, who gave all you people jobs? Speaking of which; you, in the third row! I though you called in sick today? Get back to work!”
The day’s full slate of entertainers thrilled the crowd with bright, shiny visions of the good life surely waiting right around the corner for anyone willing to get off his lazy ass and stop being so poor. The massive throngs of stone-broke revelers went apeshit when speaker Denny Cochran informed them that they, too, could one day be one of the wealthy elite, with former neighbors and friends working in their factories for cutthroat wages. Similar messages were echoed by several of the day’s speakers.
“It’s time to stop blaming the Republicans for all your problems, poor America, and get yourself a slice of that big-old pie!” shouted former liberal activist Ron Somkins, who because a Republican activist after robust sales of his third book, “Fuck the System,” brought the author unexpected riches. Somkins’ latest book, “Re-evaluating the System,” is due in bookstores this winter.
Old money Republican speakers, perhaps less comfortable with the thought of the greasy poor clogging up the shower drains of their pristine social clubs, instead juiced the crowd with paeans to the many advantages to destitute living.
“You guys really don’t know how lucky you’ve got it,” Cravenborg moaned to the crowd while getting a continual back massage from a large Austrian man. “All this money’s more trouble than it’s worth, I tell you. Better to—ooh that feels good! Better to live the simple life, like you good people!”
After the event, envious members of the elite went out of their way to share their fondness for America’s 36 million poor and the refreshingly simple lives they lead.
“Me, personally, I love the indigent,” gushed a gracious Rupert Murdoch, media titan. “Hell, I’d be poor myself if I weren’t so goddamned wealthy.”
“Poor is definitely the way to go,” raved fashion mogul Chinsay Weintraub. “Poor is so in this year. It’s the new black.”
“I’ve always liked poor people, I think they’re quaint,” chimed in portly financier Gordon Stacks, smoking a cigar wrapped in $100 bills.
When asked how the day’s festivities might affect his voting preference in Tuesday’s presidential election, local fry cook and father of four Dan Henkle echoed the sentiments of the assembled wretched masses.
“Hey, fuck poor people!” the commune news has always subscribed to the notion that one who is rich of spirit can never truly be poor, unless they don’t have any money. Ted Ted is the commune’s resident enraged Republican correspondent, a position that has earned him the contempt of the rest of the staff and a half-off discount at Denny’s.
| Arafat sharing room with whining methadone patient Enron lawsuit settled for 3,000,000 ohms of free energy Red Sox outcurse Yankees to win World Series Money-starved NASA developing hurricane-powered shuttle |
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 November 1, 2004 The Costumer's Always RightSuffice to say, after last year's catastrophe, I will no longer be dressing up like Saddam Hussein. Also, the thrill is gone. Since his capture, I have realized he is a poor man's Hitler, and not just because he no longer has any money. His system of genocide against his own people didn't appear to be race-based, although they did all happen to be Iraqi. Well, enough of my political soapbox. Let's just say Saddam isn't scary anymore, and I don't want to be apprehended by a wayward team of National Guard soldiers, so I'm packing up the wax mustache and Iraqi military uniform.
Which leaves me with a very short amount of time, good people, to come up with the perfect Halloween costume before the commune's bi-annual Halloween party. Now I love a challenge as much as the next pers...
º Last Column: They Canceled My Favorite Show
º more columns
Suffice to say, after last year's catastrophe, I will no longer be dressing up like Saddam Hussein. Also, the thrill is gone. Since his capture, I have realized he is a poor man's Hitler, and not just because he no longer has any money. His system of genocide against his own people didn't appear to be race-based, although they did all happen to be Iraqi. Well, enough of my political soapbox. Let's just say Saddam isn't scary anymore, and I don't want to be apprehended by a wayward team of National Guard soldiers, so I'm packing up the wax mustache and Iraqi military uniform.
Which leaves me with a very short amount of time, good people, to come up with the perfect Halloween costume before the commune's bi-annual Halloween party. Now I love a challenge as much as the next person, but considering I'm near flat-busted since I invested all that money in the World Series (Yankees all the way this year!), this is one challenge I'm not up for.
The children's Halloween costumes at my local Wal-Mart fit reasonably well, although they clearly weren't planning on children having shoulders as broad as mine. But still, the fit I can manage. But who are these damned characters they expect me to dress up as? I am familiar with Snoopy dog, but not Snoop Dogg. What the hell is a Shrek? Where are the Hogan's Heroes costumes I had hoped for? Does no one else want to dress up as President Ulysses S. Grant? I know who Martha Stewart is, but I'm not dressing up as a girl. Not for free.
That leaves me no other choice than the old reliable home-made costume. I am no slouch when it comes to making creative things out of whatever's left lying around the house. One year, I wore my ex-wife Arvelyn around my shoulders and went as some sort of bizarre alien bourgeois widow, with a human stole. True, it wasn't all that impressive to look at, and I did supreme damage to my back and lost a good half a foot in height, and I had to spend all night explaining the elaborate premise of my costume, but… no, it was a bad idea. No defense there.
I have before, on short notice, annexed Camembert's wheelchair and gone as Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a child, but this year Camembert's bruiser Elvis girlfriend is watching for me to make my move. I'm better off not trying anything. By the way, Camembert is going as a handicapped robot and Girl Elvis will be wearing her usual Halloween costume, Buddy Holly.
I'm left with very little, and no imagination, to pull this one out of the fire, friends. Even my calls to Arvelyn have gone unanswered. If only I had a woman who would let me wear her around her neck, I would have something!
Perhaps nude body painting is the answer… then again, my mother might have been right when she told me nude body painting was not the answer to everything.
A quick rummaging of my house has revealed next to nothing to use for a costume, but it is all I've got. I'm tempted to stick a spatula between the crack of my buttocks and go as a fried egg. But the last thing I need is another costume with a lengthy explanation.
So here are my choices: I can put on a diaper and go as a giant baby; I can put on the diaper and go as a small geriatric man; or I can put on the diaper and go as a man totally out of his mind. Which is your favorite?
Hmm. No time to do that phone poll I had hoped for. Maybe I'll just go with the diaper on and let people guess what I am. Winner receives… I don't know. A spatula. º Last Column: They Canceled My Favorite Showº more columns | 
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Quote of the Day“Any man who serves as his own lawyer has a fool for a client. Because think about it, stupid, why you gonna pay some guy who didn't even go to law school? That's just dumb. And how do you pay yourself, anyway? Take your money out of one pocket and put it in the other? Silly. Or maybe you've got to hire a neutral third party to take the money and then hand it back to you, like a lawyer or somebody. Shit, this is gettin' expensive.”
-Dred Scott DrummondFortune 500 CookieYou're simply the best, and that depresses us all. The next time you're on trial for murder, don't forget to mention that a Klondike bar was involved. And if you must ask for a lawyer who can get you off, at least try not to do it with that smarmy leer in your eye. Try chewing your food an odd number of times this week, like 6,372. This week's lucky injuries: hangnail, hangankle, ruptured spleen, stabitosis.
Try again later.Top Upcoming Bourne Sequels| 1. | The Bourne Pregnancy | | 2. | The Bourne Insolvency | | 3. | The Bourne Cat Fancy | | 4. | The Bourne Schenectady | | 5. | The Bourne Macaroni and Cheez | |
|   Sinclair Networks to Air More Anti-Kerry Films BY roland mcshyster 11/1/2004 Yoho, America. It hasn't exactly been a pirate's life for Roland McS lately, though I did get seasick the other day after taking a nap on a friend's waterbed. Okay, you caught me in a lie there; I didn't actually know the guy. But this isn't a column about my recent Goldilocks antics, though I'm sure many a pirate wandered into the wrong apartment (or boat) and slept in some stranger's bed until they were awoken by an insane Chicano woman waving a pool cue. No, I seem to remember this column having something to do with movie reviews, and taking the best and brightest Hollywood has to offer and exposing it to the harsh, shit-flinging light of day. That's what pays the bills, anyhow. Let's take another stab at that flabby Hollywood ass, shall we?
In Theaters Now:
Yoho, America. It hasn't exactly been a pirate's life for Roland McS lately, though I did get seasick the other day after taking a nap on a friend's waterbed. Okay, you caught me in a lie there; I didn't actually know the guy. But this isn't a column about my recent Goldilocks antics, though I'm sure many a pirate wandered into the wrong apartment (or boat) and slept in some stranger's bed until they were awoken by an insane Chicano woman waving a pool cue. No, I seem to remember this column having something to do with movie reviews, and taking the best and brightest Hollywood has to offer and exposing it to the harsh, shit-flinging light of day. That's what pays the bills, anyhow. Let's take another stab at that flabby Hollywood ass, shall we?
In Theaters Now:
The Grunge
According to urban legend, when an Alterna-rocker dies in a fit of angst, his or her soul carries on to haunt the living in suspenseful and self-pityingly gothic ways. That's what I heard from the guy down at Kinko's, anyway, and apparently the suits down at Columbia Pictures talked to the same guy and decided to make a movie out of it. So leave it to Generation Y to clean up the lazy, ironic messes their older Generation X siblings left behind, as forever teen Sarah Michelle Gellar takes on The Grunge using nothing but her innate spunk and a spray bottle of spunk remover.
The film's mood and suspense were first-rate, since I didn't believe that Gellar would ever be able to get Layne Staley out of those drapes. Though I did have to question the film's inclusion of Blind Melon frontman Shannon Hoon, since that guy had about as much angst as the frothy head on a cappuccino. But I admit it did give them a decent excuse to bring that terrifying bee girl back from the grave. I don't know about you, but this is one film reviewer who won't be putting honey on his corn flakes for months.
Ralphie
Jude Law stars in this unlikely sequel to the much beloved 80's classic A Christmas Story, the harrowing tale of a school shooter's childhood years in a dysfunctional Midwestern family. Loved though the original film was, few were demanding a sequel, unless they were demanding it in a private, secret shame kind of way. I sure as hell never heard them. Jesus, you think you know people.
Regardless, they did make a sequel, this one taking place twenty years after the original, which follows an adult poon-hound Ralphie on his rounds through high society. Law's tender narration is a little grating this time around, since he's mostly talking about how much he wants to scrooge some dilettante, and frankly it's a little confusing at times since Law is all grown up now, so he and his mental narrator use the same voice. It might have been best to find a really old Jude Law sound-alike to do the voice-over narration, to reduce the confusion and possibly to add a touch of poetic perspective to the young Law's desperate ass fancy.
Teen America Womb Police
Those screwballs behind the R-rated antics of the Peanuts gang are at it again, only this time they're at something totally unrelated to what they did before, so it's not really "again." Sorry for the confusion. This time they're taking on the world of puppetry like a bee sting in the penis. Cashing in their two cents on America's hysterical reaction to the teen pregnancy epidemic, Teen America Womb Police finally gives Sly Stone and Peter Parker a chance to show the world what they think crappy marionettes say about the current state of our union.
If you're not a fan of the Morning After pill (or its generic equivalents, the Lost Weekend pill and the What the Fuck Happened? pill), let me warn you that you may come away offended. Also, if you happen to have a problem with violent gay sex with polar bears, you might want to leave shortly after the opening credits. And a note to my friends over at the Parent Alert movie ratings site: this is not the film to see with your fragile Catholic mother. As for me, Roland McShyster tends to fall into the Keep Your Laws Off My Body camp (unless we're talking about Jude Law, then I say Bring It On), so I wasn't nearly as offended as the little girl sitting to my right who threw up during the polar bear rape scene.
That's it, America. Fuck off, you've overstayed your welcome.   |
