oodbye, 2004. Thanks so much for biting the dong and hanging around for at least eleven months too long, until it finally took a forty-story tall wall of hauling ass saltwater to wash your taste out of our mouths. Thanks for finally dragging your skanky, broken ass off our calendar at last, and don’t think we won’t be calling the Goodwill in the morning to come pick up what’s left of your shit. The new year is here, and it doesn’t stink quite so strongly of Jovan Musk.

2004 dazzled us like strange, incomprehensible kabuki theater, in which a talking gonad was somehow re-elected president and the biggest group of losers this side of Color Me Badd accidentally won the World Series. Martha Stewart went to jail and Kobe Bryant didn’t, teaching America’s children a valuable lesson about the horrors of overly tasteful home décor. The country had to grow up fast with the revelation that Janet Jackson has breasts, while her brother Michael strangely has no interest in the same. Americans everywhere were up in arms about an unjustified war in Iraq… no wait, sorry. Americans everywhere were up in arms about a fertilizer salesman who snuffed his wife, vigilantly demanding to see justice done before more Modesto singles could be put in harm’s way.

Meanwhile, on the bright side of political news, Ronald Reagan and Yasser Arafat both died in “unrelated� incidents, leaving more Ben Gay for the rest of us.

There were also the usual run of celebrity mercy killings, though 2004 couldn’t even get those right, as nobody was especially eager to see Ray Charles, Marlon Brando, Rodney Dangerfield or Christopher Reeve go. Though the thought of the four of them all on the same bus to the afterlife offers many amusing possibilities, which isn’t a half-bad idea for a sitcom or at least a winning bar joke. Note to self: write down this million-dollar idea!

2004 was the year gays started getting married, Britney Spears couldn’t stay married, and somebody accidentally married J-Lo. Though thanks to a timely UN intervention, Ben Affleck remained single at year’s end.

But mostly, 2004 felt like a dead hooker rolled up in a carpet, which shrinks mercifully in the rearview mirror by the minute as we peel out bravely into the future. Both of the top grossing films of the year were sequels, which seems like a golden treat when you realize the third-place film was about Jesus getting the holy shit beaten out of him. And the top-selling album of the year was by some kind of disgruntled movie theater employee, likely having had to sit through one too many screenings of The Passion of the Christ or, even worse, Catwoman.

However, movies couldn’t sate our thirst for horribleness in 2004, so the real world had to oblige us with the Madrid train attacks, ethnic cleansing in Sudan, and the tragic first-ever meeting of the Russian PTA. By the time the south Asian tsunami rinsed what was left of 2004 down the crapper, few were sad to see it go. Unless they were wealthy, horny Republican NBA stars with points on The Passion.

We’ll miss you, 2004. Like we miss polyester underwear. Don’t let history hit you in the ass on your way out.

he whole wide world heaved a giant sigh of relief this week with the news that disaster had been averted: despite Mother Nature’s best attempts to rob us of one of our most beautiful people, pretty Czech supermodel Petra Nemcova has survived the Asian tsunami. Accidentally trapped in the midst of the ugly foreign tragedy while on a glamorous beach vacation, Nemcova soldiered through the big wet mess by clinging bravely to a tree while her photographer boyfriend was tsunamied to his apparent death. Nemcova sustained only moderate injuries in what international aid workers are calling “a miracle from God.�

That same miracle, however, killed over 155,000 foreign peoples, most of whom can charitably be described as “nobodies.� To date, the bodies of over 155,000 nobodies have been found in disaster recovery operations throughout southern Asia. The search for celebrities continues.

In the wake of the recent tsunamic free-for-all, American President George W. Bush has vowed vengeance against all nations suspected of harboring or supporting the deadly ocean waves. Early reports indicate that the Middle Eastern nations of Iran and Syria are already on the president’s tsunami “shit list.�

Other nations known to have studied tsunamis in the past, including Jordan and Turkey, are reportedly also under close watch. Lending credence to the theory that oil and evil go together like beef and cheese, Bush also suggested that Saudi Arabia is skating on thin ice regarding their own tsunami-harboring status.

“This terrible tragedy has earned the president precious political capital, and he intends to use it,� explained the Secretary of State Colin Powell, indicating that American troops were even now readying to kick the Iranians’ tsunami-loving butts back to Tehran.

Little is known about the elusive tsunami, whose name comes from the Japanese word for “big fucking milkshake.� First described in the 1964 pop hit “Love Tsunami� by Little Johnny Maxwell, scientists have been unable to determine where the giant killer waves come from, or where they hide out between attacks.

“A tsunami is apparently some kind of big wavy thing,� explained University of Minnesota geologist Hans Goering. “I know, woo—scary. But apparently a lot of those people didn’t know how to swim or something. In addition, we believe that this event may have featured an unprecedented number of surfing fatalities. Kids should take heart and remember to always wear a bicycle helmet while surfing. Also, don’t fall asleep in a hut on the beach.�

Nemcova’s miraculous survival has brought hope to millions in the region, who take heart in the fact that despite the widespread misery and destruction prevalent in so many countries bordering the Indian Ocean, no famous or really beautiful Americans were killed in the tsunami attack. Meanwhile, international aid groups continue to search the wreckage day and night for signs of anyone you may have heard of.

I have emerged from my underground bunker. The Thai place will no longer deliver food there. It was fun while it lasted, but since the world has yet to blow up under the leadership of George W. Bush, the international response might not be exactly what I predicted. They're probably taking a "wait and see rather than destroy the world" approach, and I will follow that lead. For now.

Personally, if I were a Thai delivery guy, I would be happy to give blood and urine samples to a customer who asked for them before letting you enter the domicile. But that's just me—security isn't a big concern in Thailand, I suppose. Not a lot of cases of stolen identity.

But let's put that behind us. I picked an opportune time to return from exile, as I can see. The new commune is looking sharp, thanks for the redesign go to Randy and Glynis in IT for that. My return was also timely in that Gay Bagel's influence here has been growing stronger in the meantime. They all hate him, of course, nothing new on that front, but without my steady leadership, Raoul Dunkin, commune nutsack, has entirely disappeared, and I think they have been getting ever-closer to making Lil Duncan some sort of woman leader here, to combat Gay's attempts to take over the commune. She tells me she's been running the commune since my absence, and I humor her. No one can run the commune, baby. It's like a tornado. Can you run a tornado? No, you can't—liar.

They have made some changes I'm not so sure about. Gay Bagel was all "statistics" this and "statistics" that, apparently referring to statistics of a site. Under pressure from Big Gay, as his enemies call him, Lil instituted a ratings system for the weekly commune pieces here. It's for advertising sales figures, she told me. I said that's Advertising's job, not ours. She said she went to advertising and Shelk's been waiting all this time for sales figures before proceeding. I told her to tell Shelk sales figures are somebody else's job, not his, and not ours. I don't know who should do that.

To get to the point already, goddammit, I had to bend a little to keep Gay from making another power play for control. We're wasting money, Gay said, paying all these people to do columns and news and having no way to make money off our endeavors. He argued that it's vital we figure out how many people are reading the commune, what they're reading, and the benefits and cons (business speak nonsense) of each piece. He told me I should no longer give people a column just because they buy me a drink, or I think seeing their picture in the commune staff photo will be funny. I ask him what other criteria are available to decide who to hire and who to not hire. Well, sir, don't ever do that. I got a list a mile long. The guy is such a knob, it's hard to believe we're related.

Hence you'll notice the new commune ratings system, just to the right side of the page, under the big picture that we put there because we think it's funny. These numbers are pretty raw, of course—judging by them, you would initially think no one is reading the commune. But we haven't properly interpreted the data yet. I just hired a guy, Perry "Bigger" Dunston, to research all those numbers and tell us exactly what they mean, with the idea that hopefully we'll be able to cut some deadweight around the office and keep on people who can make the commune more profitable. Dunston charges $2,000 a week for his service, but when you're trying to reduce spending, you can't spare any expense.

So bear with us, faithful readers. Or reader. We are doing what we can to make the commune the kind of online magazine you want to read—you, and hopefully, ten to twenty thousand white males ages 18-34.

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