hiter-than-white white man Red Bagel, founder and sometime-Editor of the commune was awarded his own publication's "You the Man of the Year" Award for the sixth year in a row, to no one's surprise. Bagel has been missing and presumed paranoid since the November re-election of evil incarnate George W. Bush, and Bagel's brother Gay presented the award posthumously to his own brother at a ceremony at the commune offices in Flatbush, New Jersey, even as Bagel's Caucasian manservant Rascal insisted his "master" was alive and willing to accept the award behind closed doors.

Gay Bagel, a miserable shell of a man, praised his brother with backhanded compliments on Red's lifelong career of spending a lot of time on something never once profitable.

"What can we say about Red that has not already been said in the poetry of stoned hippies everywhere," said Gay Bagel, reading from a fill-in-the-blanks form eulogy he acquired from the Internet. "My brother waged a war against the mentally stable everywhere in his attempts to spread the word of liars and morons. Without him around, the world is a little less prone to idiocy. But I've come here to bury Red, not to praise him, if I could but find the body. If I found him alive, then I would have come to bathe him and get him a clean suit, or at least have him cut his fingernails and stop dragging the name Bagel down into the sewers he smells like. I suppose all I really want to say here is: Red, if you are alive, anywhere, there are a lot of bills that haven't been paid yet and nobody can figure out how to get into the commune lockbox. All you here are witnesses—the man is this much closer to being declared dead, and soon I will be the boss of all of you."

And for the first time, the entire commune staff burst into tears at the thought of Red's passing.

Despite the sombering moment at the event, things cheered up when Rascal, representing Red Bagel himself, took the stage and promised us all our fearless editor was in the best of health, and thankful for his sixth consecutive win, making him the only person ever to win the YTMOTY, or "Yitmotty."

"Crikey, don't it beat all?" rattled the Australian manservant, who wore his best T-shirt to the ceremony. "Red misses y'all, I can assure ya, and soon as he feels it's 'all clear' to return to the surface, he's gonna join us for a three-week binge party of nothin' but lager, mates! Now… what say we drink up, for Red's sake?" Rascal, already drinking heavily before the announcement, devolved into a parade of Australian caterwauling understandable to no one, Australian or otherwise.

The event continued on into early evening hours, until most of us had drunken ourselves into a haze and all efforts to keep Omar Bricks away from the stereo finally failed. As 1980s nostalgia bombarded us through twin speakers, a few reporters spoke well of Red Bagel and his missing ass.

"There will never be another like Red Bagel—a man entirely devoted to his vision of a better America," said former Acting Editor Ramrod Hurley, now acting like a drunk. "An America of tomorrow, without fear and prejudice, without the suffering of the common man, and with a government forthright and honest with its own people. And now that he's gone, I call dibs on the boss job."

Hurley was bound, gagged, and wrapped in garish paper. The stamp on his head ordered us not to open until X-Mas, and I had to heartily agree.

he pharmaceutical niche player Algor released startling fourth-quarter projections this week, a reversal of fortunes many in financial circles attribute to the company renaming many of its medications for the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. Realizing that social embarrassment may play a part in the afflicted avoiding treatment for their cursed states, Algor saw fourth-quarter sales of their best selling herpes treatment ClearVue skyrocket after the drug was changed from its longstanding name of HerpEase.

Finally bending to pressure from marketing experts, Algor has begun renaming its other not-quite-popular-enough drugs under the now commonplace industry practice of drug names that have nothing to do with a condition or its treatment. By the beginning of 2005, the company hopes to offer a complete line of attractively-named treatments for the unfortunately STDed.

GonorRid, the company's industry-standard drug for the treatment of puss-laden malcontents suffering from gonorrhea, will be shipped to pharmacies under its new label of SmoothOperator beginning in January.

A similar fate awaits the company's pride and joy, Crabex, Algor's floundering treatment for pubic lice. After months of focus group testing, Algor has recently decided to rename the drug PartyZone.

Last but not least is SyphiLess, the company's breakthrough treatment for syphilis sufferers. Though Algor has yet to make an official announcement on the renaming of this drug, early leaked reports indicate that the drug will be called either Blissex or PissFree in 2005.

But will Algor's new approach be a success? To answer that question, we went straight to STD sufferers for the real dirt.

"Oh yeah, I'd definitely buy more if it was named something like Smurfies or something, that would definitely boost sales," according to porn impresario Tori Anus, a frequent Crabex user. "Then I'd stop getting those dirty looks from the dried up old bags at the Wal-Mart pharmacy. They'd just think I'd been fucking Smurfs or something."

Determined to dig deeper into the beans of the story, this reporter conducted further research among the loose women of 1-900-HOT-DATE, likely to be experts on the treatment of cock-borne illness. In addition to providing hours or stimulating conversation, Misty and Chakra also provided great advice about writing off the cost of the toll call as a business expense.

"Algor definitely has a hot idea on their hands there," insisted Misty, a buxom brunette with smoldering green eyes. "You're getting me hot just talking about it."

"Hot and naughty," agreed Chakra, a Thai-Scottish delight who insisted on conducting the telephone interview in the nude.

No doubt the executives at Algor have done similar research, since it's loads more fun than the alternative of company execs experimentally contracting STDs themselves to see if they feel embarrassed about getting treatment. So the New Year looks to be a happy one for Algor shareholders, who haven't heard news this good since the company changed its name from Cock Rot Ltd. in 1999, amid reports that investors were too embarrassed to purchase their stock.

Good people, if there are any of you left, I am outraged. Old school outraged, the way I used to get before Rokwell T. Finger jumped the shark and started involving myself with pro-wrestling and the Russian mob. For some reason, domestic annoyances bother me more than all the lost-at-sea pirate trials and tribulations I've ever experienced. I'm telling everyone, no matter what the realtor says, I have a two-car garage.

I hardly think it's the right of some tubby woman named Sandy to decide how many cars I can fit in my garage. Yet when she sold me this house, Sandy got all high-and-mighty telling me what I could do with it. Three bedrooms, one and a half bath, a basement, and a one-car garage. Well, needless to say, I was offended. It's a big garage. What official garage-judging organization ruled mine could only hold one car? I threw her out of the house immediately, and regretted having already signed the papers to buy it. I can't help that. I don't feel right stepping into an unowned house.

Ever since then I've been fighting the one-car garage demon. There's got to be a way around this tyranny. You can store five motorcycles, side by side, pretty comfortable, and up to 29 non-motorized bikes if you lay them on their side and stack them. Not very convenient, but I still take pride in knowing the ultimate capabilities of my garage. Not that it helps in the matter of cars.

Now, my car is a Lincoln with some homemade fins on each side, so it hardly makes for a good test subject for maximizing garage efficiency. I had to find a way to get my hands on at least two cars, preferably compacts. But who knows, I could have fit three in with enough resources at hand.

I first approached my friends at the commune and asked to borrow their cars for my experiment. They weren't very willing to oblige me. Omar Bricks threatened to throttle me and implied I was making fun of him. But I had no luck borrowing any cars, so I had to rent some from one of these new-fangled car-renting places. I would rather have had the Knight Rider and the Dukes of Hazzard car, but all they had left were boring ones. Still, I got enough for the experiment.

I will grant Sandy, filthy, conspiring Sandy, that it is quite difficult to fit two cars into my garage, but it's far from impossible. Inconvenient, I'll grant. Perhaps even dangerous and a foolhardy gesture. But I did it, damn you, Sandy. I could not park two cars parallel, either facing the back wall or the sides, and there was no success in parking them perpendicular. Sure, technically you're in the garage, but since the door wouldn't close I doubt it counts. I was ready to give up, to park Camembert's wheelchair next to the single car and call it a one-and-a-half car garage. Then inspiration struck, when I recalled my failure to get the Duke boys' car at the rental place. Surely some clever stunt driving could put one extra car in a garage with so much headroom.

Trying to simply jump the car into the garage failed. I flattened the bottom car on the one occasion I didn't hit the garage itself. Perhaps if I had landed the top on the bottom perfectly, I could have gotten the door closed, but I found it impossible to do. My success came, instead, when I set up some half-ramps and got the second car on two wheels—I practically glided right into that garage. It scuffed, scratched, maybe even crushed the bottom car's side, some could say, but I think I've proven my point, Sandy. Your one-car garage is a limited concept whose time has come. My garage is a two car garage, for the seasoned driver. Not that those two cars can ever be returned to the rental agency, and I may need expensive repairs to the garage. But as I've stated time and again, nothing is more important than being right.

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