alling the jurors who acquitted Robert Blake last week “low-grade retards,� District Attorney Steve Cooley’s post-trial sour grapes rose to a level rarely seen in our modern, politically correct era Thursday during a 40-minute interview with reporters. Cooley delivering a rambling, profanity-laden tirade punctuated by “Fuck Yous� personalized for each member of the twelve-person jury, each one more cutting than the last.

“This was an open and shut case,� fumed Cooley. “What did they think, that Blake really forgot his gun in that restaurant exactly at the exact same time somebody decided to shoot his batshit grifter wife in the back of the head? I’ve heard little autistic kids come up with better lies than that. I hope none of those jurors have children, sheesh.�

“God! I can’t believe how stupid you people are!� Cooley continued, as if the jury was assembled in his presence. “What did I have to do, put a black cowboy hat on the guy? This was one evil, wife-killing dude! Was his wife not pretty enough? Maybe if the papers hadn’t used those pictures of Bonny shoplifting that watermelon we might have got some jury sympathy. I can’t believe they were all huge fans of Our Gang.�

“Did he really say ‘a pack of inbred monkey-fuckers’?� asked legal expert Chelton Baines. “I hadn’t heard that part. Wow, that’s strong language.�

After the formal interview ended, Cooley continued his onslaught over drinks with this reporter at a nearby bar.

“I swear, this human bungwipe made O.J. Simpson look like Tom Selleck in An Innocent Man,� griped Cooley further. “Or if you haven’t seen that, think of the guy from that Harrison Ford movie.�

“Did you see that juror in the first row? Was he actually eating paste during the trial? Somebody told me it was mashed potatoes, but who brings a jar of mashed potatoes for a snack? That guy was four genes short of a wardrobe, no doubt.�

An assortment of legal experts, however, contend that while Blake was definitely guiltier than a morbidly obese fox in a chicken processing plant, attorney Cooley may have, in legal terms, “screwed the pooch� in his handling of the prosecution.

“Aw, settle down, Steve,� countered Blake’s attorney, M. Gerald Schwartzbach, in a separate interview not held in a bar. “The fact of the matter is, Steve bungled this case. Sure, MENSA wasn’t beating down these jurors’ doors, and many of them had to have basic legal terms like ‘trial’ explained to them numerous times, but I don’t think anyone was ‘clinically brain-dead,’ to use Steve’s term. I mean, what did he expect after parading all those junkies, snitches and piles of walking human shit up onto the witness stand? I’m surprised he didn’t subpoena Jose Canseco or Scott Peterson. What, were Benedict Arnold and the boy who cried wolf too busy to drop by?�

“Playing ‘Blame the Jury’ is the oldest cop-out in the Lawyer’s Handbook,� agreed smug attorney Nelson Arbuckle, waving a copy of the Lawyer’s Handbook. “Everybody knows the jury is just a blob of stupid putty that you need to mold into a coherent mass of guilty-voting.�

“Anybody who doesn’t know that doesn’t deserve to wear the Lawyer’s Ring,� concluded Arbuckle, brandishing a gaudy turquoise ring on his pinky finger.

taunch pro-death advocates applauded court refusals to reconnect Terri Shiavo's feeding tube over the weekend. The court hearings were seen as last-ditch legal efforts by Schiavo's parents and pro-life groups to keep the brain-damaged woman alive, but judges of the state court of Clearwater, Florida bizarrely sided with science over politics and religion, to the lament of fans of life everywhere.

Terri Schiavo has been in a persistent vegetative state since 1990, when prolonged blood loss to the brain brought on by heart failure induced her current condition. The case has become a focus for pro-life and anti-life groups, as Schiavo's husband, based on alleged comments made by Schiavo before her condition started, wants his wife's feeding tube removed, and her parents want her to live a long, long time. While most medical specialists have concluded Schiavo will never recover, doctors who put their religion convictions ahead of flimsy scientific evidence have come to bat for the parents, saying Schiavo demonstrates some degree of awareness of her environment. The woman's feeding tube was removed March 18, the only means for pro-death advocates to euthanize patients under current laws.

The Schindlers, Schiavo's parents and the key speakers on the pro-life side of the debate, have brought aboard anti-abortion-rights activist Randall Terry, who, since Schiavo cannot speak now on her own behalf, argues the woman must be fought for like a big fetus, despite claims by her husband, who knew her before the tragedy, that she would not want to be kept alive in such a state. The Schindlers have accused all judges who have sided with husband Michael Schiavo of being part of a "crusade to kill" his daughter.

Governor Jeb Bush, brother of the country's most legal president ever, has in the past interceded on the Schindlers' behalf to reconnect Schiavo's feeding tube on one of the many occasions it's been disconnected, but legal efforts by the Governor have so far failed to pass muster with the Florida Senate. Though he has not taken more direct, controversial action as of press time to keep Schiavo alive, Bush's sentiments are clearly pro-life.

"I've consistently said I can't go beyond what my powers are and I'm not going to do it. There are 90,000 abortions that take place in this state every year. That troubles me more than I can ever describe," said the Governor, finding a comparison where few would dare. Bush also negatively compared the decision of Judge George Greer not to reverse his decision, based on the testimony of a doctor affiliated with the Schindlers, to court decisions to review death penalty cases.

On the pro-death side, representatives for Michael Schiavo pleaded with the media and legislators to not involve themselves in the family's most painful ordeals for the sake of political or religious agendas, and for the love of God, quit calling them "pro-death advocates." The media responded by splashing the story, covered from multiple angles, on page one of every national newspaper and running constant updates in between television shows. Politicians responded by making resentful speeches and making deals in the House and Senate over the woman's future. When asked if anyone in Congress planned on interceding to bring soldiers home from Iraq, Afghanistan, or other dangerous locations overseas, most Congressmen said it didn't seem like any of their business.

I saw something today that has me very concerned for the direction our culture is headed in. I was strolling past the vending machine in our downstairs neighbor Crochet! magazine's offices, which I do frequently both because I'm the only commune employee obscure enough to show my face down there without setting off an incident of feud-based violence, and also because the commune's own vending machine has been stocked with nothing but ginger snaps ever since Omar Bricks pissed off the restocker by filling the entire machine with aerosol contraceptive foam last month.

As I was marveling at Crochet!'s wondrous selection of gingerless snacks, one in particular caught my eye. There they were, on the top row and in bold typeface: "Effin' Crackers." I couldn't believe my eye, so I checked with the other one. Same result. Are we truly living in a society so rude that now even our snack foods are insulting me? I'm afraid so, occasional readers.

And when even your crackers are rude beyond the pale, you know you culture's in serious trouble. I bought some of the offending snacks just to further investigate what they were all about. They didn't taste especially offensive. They didn't taste particularly like food either, but that's to be expected of vending machine offerings. If you can't taste the oxypropyl 13, Keebler's not doing their job.

No, aside from the name these are your normal, everyday, run of the mill animal crackers shaped like midgets with a Victorian sense of fashion. At first, the midget shapes put me off a bit, but then I realized that you have to be pragmatic about these kinds of things. If I'm prepared to bite the head off an endangered panda or a tiny inch-tall camel coated in sugar, I'd be a hypocrite to beg off snapping a crunchy midget in half with my bicuspids. Animals are people too, you know. Well actually, they're not, but neither are dwarves. So same difference.

No, the startlingly brusque moniker these chips bear is clearly just a marketing attempt to reach out to the youth of today, rude fuckers that they are. Teenagers who have grown up immersed in a briny, electrified soup of oversaturated media cacophony are growing more and more difficult to reach through traditional marketing channels, necessitating that companies cut loose with all-out profanity to shock these kids into addressing their mild hunger needs. "Eat it—You'll like it!" and "The official snack cookie of the Bolshoi Ballet" just don't cut it anymore, readers. These days, it's "Here's your effin' crackers, jerkweed! What, do you got a poop in your mouth? Eat 'em up!"

What this says about our parasitic marketing experts is one thing, and a sad thing indeed. But what this says about our very souls is the true pants-shitter. Have we really traipsed so eagerly down this road, on the way to the total annihilation of Western culture as we know it? Have we really missed all the neon-yellow signposts along the way, warning us to turn back before we devolve into utterly debased and wretched creatures?

Oh, wait. These say "Elfin Crackers." Nevermind.

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