his week marks the 119th birthday of Buford “Old Man� Scarsby, the world’s oldest living human and recipient of the 2004 Marco Polo Award for getting lost in a famous way. Despite many spirited attempts on his part to disappear however, the famously lost Scarsby remains found at his family home in Cutrow, North Carolina this week.

As hardly a newspaper-reading soul in the country could have missed, Buford was lost for over 45 minutes last August, after wandering off and climbing inside a hollow tree, where he was later found, terrified and smelling of owl. Family members blame the resultant “media circus� on poor communication between Buford-finding family members and the newspaper-calling members of the Scarsby clan.

Scarsby, born in 1886, has lived a rich and varied life, none of which he remembers. The one fact of which he is sure, however, is that he was born in 1886, thanks to a faded daguerreotype photograph of a newborn Scarsby wrapped in that day’s newspaper in lieu of the expensive blankets or towels of the day. This compelling evidence convinced world standards-bearing organizations to verify Buford’s claimed age, despite the fact no birth records can be found due to no one being sure of the man’s real name.

Family members began calling Scarsby “Buford� in the 1980’s, following the lead of Scarsby’s then-98 year-old wife Emma, who thought she was talking to Buford Cubbins, a local pharmacist. Since his great-grandchildren grew up calling him “Buford,� Scarsby’s real first name is thought to have been lost to the ages. Scarsby himself believes he forgot his name around 1982.

“Lemon time,� explained Scarsby, clutching a packet of powdered lemonade.

Though certainly the most famous, last year’s incident was hardly a first for Buford, who has been wandering off and becoming lost on a regular basis since his early 80’s. In one notable incident in 1992, while on a walk Buford climbed into the back of a mail truck and fell asleep on a sack of letters. Buford was returned to his family later that day, thanks to a return address sewn into his trousers after a similar incident with UPS in 1989.

Some advocates for the elderly have decried Scarsby’s fame, arguing that the media’s handling of his frequent confused forays into lostedness only serve to foster stereotypes about the aged. Relatives, however, claim that Buford’s ways have nothing to do with his age, citing as example the seven years he spent wandering around lost behind enemy lines in Germany during and after WWI.

Buford’s great-grandchildren, who now care for and corral the remarkably aged man, had hoped that Scarsby’s longtime wife and sometimes companion Emma might reveal her husband’s true name on her deathbed in 1993. Emma Scarsby, however, had different plans, leaving the world instead with her immortal last words, “cartoon pussy.�

Though certainly happy that the old man is staying in sight these days, Scarsby’s great-grandson Lewford Scarsby remains guardedly optimistic about the future.

“There’s no way we can keep an eye on him 24-7,� explained Lewford. “But we’ve gotten pretty good at learning this old guy’s tricks and keeping him reigned in. Ain’t that right, Buford?
Buford? Aw, shit.�

frican politics managed a rare chance to draw the attention of the western world when good-natured white boy Mark Thatcher, son of Der Iron Girdle former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, finally answered accusations he and other exceptionally-Caucasian financiers backed a coup of the African nation of Equatorial Guinea.

Equatorial Guinea, a sub-Saharan country in Africa, established its independence in 1968 from Spain and has lived under a dictatorship ever since. In 2004, a group of mercenaries were arrested and charged with plotting a coup in the country when their plane landed in Zimbabwe, those on board demanding they find a movie other than Kangaroo Jack to play for the rest of the trip. Authorities in Zimbabwe, Equatorial Guinea, and South Africa charge a complicated web of white sugar daddies have fueled the coup attempt, and that Thatcher was among them.

Moss Chevalier, one of the wealthy foreigners implicated in the charges, denied personal involvement in a conspiracy, but praised the mercenaries and their efforts.

"Equatorial Guinea is a country suffering under the thumb of an oppressive ruler. Its people die in impoverished conditions while he channels the wealth of the country into his personal coffers. I have a great admiration for the generous—dare I say handsome—financiers who are risking their livelihoods to bring democracy to this long-suffering nation."

Coincidentally, Equatorial Guinea discovered off-shore oil in 1996, greatly boosting the country's economic value.

Overthrowing governments for oil are nothing new, even quite the rage in recent years, but the Equatorial Guinea case is a trendsetter for being a coup allegedly paid for entirely by citizens, rather than the traditional route of grassroots movements within the country or foreign governments. With the current U.S. administration trying hard to privatize Social Security and medical insurance coverage, could the privatization of colonialism be far behind?

"Obviously countries rich in natural resources have faced a history of invasion by private companies and corporations," said University of Trenton History Professor Bobby Shockes. "This goes back to the early days of capitalism, as well-backed private merchants brought their own bodyguards and miniature armies so they might claim native lands as their own. Traditionally, though, these eventually call for government intervention to protect them, such as the United Fruit Company incident in Guatemala, when the U.S. interceded on the company's half against the rule of that government in the 1950s. But this changes all the rules. The message here is a positive one for businesses and wealthy individuals: 'Don't wait for the people or our government to make for better business conditions—do it yourself!"

On Friday, Mark Thatcher left a South African court in Cape Town, saying it was "patently clear" he had no involvement in the attempted coup. The trial for the coup itself, ended in November 2004 in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, while Thatcher's friend, Simon Mann, is serving a sentence in Zimbabwe for his role in the coup. Thatcher's involvement centered around the purchase of a helicopter that purportedly would have flown opposition leader Severo Moto from his exile in Spain to the seat of power in Malabo, upon success of the coup. Thatcher now plans on using the helicopter for personal Cape Town weather reports, or perhaps selling it to pay off the 3 million Rand fine he received for violating South Africa's anti-mercenary laws.

The White House chose not to respond to indignant questions from this reporter if they were interested in using the new privatized invasion style for Iran and Syria, or if they would prefer the time-tested CIA shadow-intervention plans.

Sweet, sweet Nancy: Another year passes with us, and we enjoy the grandest of all dates on the calendar—Valentine's Day! Oh, blessed Valentine, saint of all things love-oriented. No single day stands more important to me than his day, which should explain why I always forget out anniversary. I save my mental energy for love day. Valentine's.

Centuries ago, when the Roman gods and their saints still walked the earth, St. Valentine bowed down to the people, who were as big to him as chihuahuas are to us, and said, "Let one day stand as a testament to the greatest gift of all that I've given you—love." I may be paraphrasing. I read it all in a book. But that's the kind of love we have—exact quotations aren't necessary.

So we celebrate the day of Valentine's, this giant of a saint, in our favorite traditional way: dinner for two at T.G.I. Friday's. Appetizers of potato skins and mozzarella sticks set the tone for the evening. As I give you the last mozzarella stick out of the basket, you know it's not because I dislike the taste—if anything I'm the one who loves mozzarella more, between the two of us. But that's not the point. I would sacrifice the mozzarella stick if cheese were the very thing I breathe, in some sort of parallel universe of cheese-breathers, and the mozzarella stick were some kind of tiny scuba tube for breathing. It's probably not enough cheese to really breathe for much longer, but you understand my meaning. Also, you don't breathe cheese. Does that grab you by the throat? I would sacrifice my life just so you could enjoy the taste of cheese. I'm serious about it.

The truth is, I do not even like T.G.I. Friday's all that much. I would rather eat at Tango's Barbecue, or perhaps at Domino's, and get take-out to celebrate our love at home, in our bedroom and living room, and perhaps later in the kitchen. But fate cannot be roped around the snout and directed around by us mortals. We met at T.G.I. Friday's that fateful New Year's Day, when they refused to serve me any more alcohol. You came to my rescue that day, as you have come to my rescue ever since, inebriating my heart with your love so I do not need quite so much alcohol as I used to. And that's why T.G.I. Friday's is so sacred to me, and why it still turns me on when you wear the uniform in the bedroom.

Would that I had the power—that I were a man with all the powers of the universe, or at least handy at carpentry and masonry. I would build us a temple to represent all the things our love is to us. Pillars, twenty-feet high! A throne for you and you alone, rising fifteen feet high, so high you could not even sit in it, and quite pointless indeed. But you could stare on that temple from whatever higher point you are at, and realize that I, Chals, have built you that temple just to look on. A temple so big the building code people would likely condemn it for being too big, and possibly a fire hazard, depending on what I built it from. I'm thinking stone, but I wouldn't be adverse to wood, if it were cheaper.

Nancy, isn't this love bigger than the both of us? Would you have me spend next year's Valentine's Day at T.G.I. Friday's alone? The "threesome" suggestion was only a joke. I never would have asked that waitress if I knew you would take it so seriously. Please, come back. Your mother keeps hanging up the phone on me.

º Last Column: Virtues of the Modern Pop Star
º more columns