nventive sports in Madrid, Spain have made extremely trivial history by performing the tiniest writing ever done, copying the first paragraph of Cervantes' Don Quixote onto a silicon chip. The physicists, apparently fighting their own windmills in the effort, wrote the letters so small they claim the entire novel could be copied onto the tips of six human hairs, though they didn't name anyone who volunteered to do so. Whether the hair would belong to Grace Jones or David Lee Roth, they didn't offer—surely they realize hair is quite relative.

"What a fantastic feat!" exclaimed book critic and hair enthusiast Alameda Ramirez, also of Madrid. "It's an amazing step forward for people who like to copy things really small onto objects not paper."

The physicists performed the chip-writing as part of a 400th anniversary celebration of Cervantes' classic work, and those involved are very insistent no beer was involved. The group used a very expensive atomic force microscope for their frivolity. While some stuffy scientist-types were enthusiastic about the possible use of the microscope for writing more information on smaller chips and revolutionizing the computer industry, intellectual literary-types were more excited about the possibility for easier-to-store books.

"If you could fit all of Don Quixote onto six hairs, imagine how much you could write on someone's entire head?" librarian Marcos Gally thought out loud. "Assuming you didn't kill them in the process, of course. I could carry the entire annotated works of Shakespeare and all the great plays of the twentieth century, in all languages, in my hairbrush. I wouldn't necessarily be able to read them. Which is my second point—we need to get to work on microscopic bifocals right away."

His colleague, bookstacker Londo, agreed. "Yes, but sad that intellectuals like John Malkovich and Michael Stipe would get no books at all. While Pamela Anderson would have them in abundance."

Both then agreed the complete conversion from paper books to hair books should wait at least until better transplant options became available.

Most appealing about the tiny writing possibilities, according to literary historian Bernadette Fopps, is making the wealth of the world's literature available in the least expensive format ever.

"A library of every piece of printed material ever, from the Bible in Esperanto to the latest issue of Ultimate Spider-Man, could easily fit into most modern handbags. That is, if you didn't mind a purse full of hair. But of course, not everyone is going to want a copy of everything. Personally, as a fan of early twentieth century British psychological literature, I would relish the opportunity to have a complete catalogue of George Orwell's fiction on a single pubic hair. Though, maybe that's more appropriate for the work of Henry Miller—I'm not the one to make those kinds of decisions."

A few detractors weren't ready to get on board the small hair writing train just yet. Such as author Tom Clancy.

"I'm as prone to mistakes as the next guy," said the Hunt for Red October author. "If I get to page 435 and Jack Ryan is about to knock out the bad guy, and I have a few type-O's, is my editor going to be able to correct those mistakes? 'Cause I'm not going to pluck a new hair and start over. I love my craft, but there are limits, you know?"

Also reluctant to embrace the idea was Denny's waiter Christian Meams: "The last added frustration I need on my job is someone's reading a copy of the latest Michael Chabon book, they forget about it, and I get blamed for bringing them the burger with the novel in it."

ope John Paul II staunchly refused to die this weekend, in spite of numerous reports to the contrary from an impatient media. Despite showing a complete lack of vital signs and near-total rigor mortis, “the tough old bastard is still hanging on for some reason,� according to Vatican doctors.

Thousands of people gathered in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican Friday night to pray for the pope, though it was unclear whether the assembled were praying for the pope to live forever or praying that the tired old man would finally kick it. Attempts to investigate this question further led to this reporter being rudely hushed several times and hit once with a bagel.

Anxious news organizations from around the world literally hung on the pope’s every breath last week, itching to be the first to report that the revered religious figure and patron saint of child molesters had gone on to meet his employer. Several trigger-happy reporters claimed that the pope had finally died on Saturday, exhaling a visible plume of stale pope smoke before vanishing like a Jedi Knight cut in two by an evil stunt man. The Vatican even went along with the announcement, apparently tired of providing hors d’oeuvres for the thousands of assembled reporters and candle-waving, tie-died burnouts camped out in the Vatican lobby.

But the jig was finally upped when the pope requested that the “loud music be turned down� during his own funeral mass on Sunday, and the international death-watch continued for the very small band of reporters remaining from hardscrabble news outlets such as the commune, Carob Baking Monthly and the Montana Cuntsman who either had nothing better to do or had vowed to see this story through to its true, bitter end, be that now or at some time between now and when our return trip flight vouchers expire.

Some blame the media’s impatience on the unexpectedly long death wait for American hospital patient Terri Schiavo over the previous two weeks, combined with the first signs of nice spring weather, which has reporters itching to get out of the dusty old Vatican and into some loudly-colored shorts. Others point to a growing suspicion among reporters, called paranoid by some, that the pope can’t die.

While scientists not from Italy doubt the feasibility of such claims, Pope John Paul II has already achieved a sort of longevity not seen since the currently late Strom Thurmond (R-South Carolina) refused to stay dead through the second half of the 20th century. This evidence, combined with the pope’s reportedly strong knowledge of hoodoo, has some concerned that this story could drag on for years.

“Mark my words, this is going to go on like those Friday the 13th movies, man,� prophesied pope-watcher Dennis Marbury. “You can’t kill the pope with a knife, gun, or by locking him in a tool shed and dropping it out of an airplane into the Pacific Ocean. That dude’s not going anywhere until he gets his birthday cake.�

Others wonder just why the pope is hanging on so long, considering that he’s supposed to be in so good with God and everything and probably should be happy about kicking off and clicking his heels on up to the big buffet in the sky.

Meanwhile, nervous Catholics the world over await the pope’s final words with constantly renewed baited breath, fingers crossed that the religious leader’s last utterances won’t be anything along the lines of “Psych!� or “Gotcha, suckers!�

It's been a rocky road since last year's election. Some would say we live in a different world now, even though we've agreed to keep calling it the same name. It's common knowledge the country has been split in half since the election—and I've, for once, been on the winning side. Eat that, elections of '92, '96, and 2000! But the time for gloating is over, or at least should be in another couple of weeks. The time for healing has begun.

Saying this as delicately as possible, you know who has the healing to do—yep, our liberal cousins. After all, the right's won the election, fair and square, at least as far as all the legitimate courts claim. It's time for the left and the right to come together, come together over where the right is. It's only fair. They got behind the Clinton administration when he won his victory in the '90s.

I don't think the reactionaries on the left have really considered the possibilities of an extreme-right government. Sure, they talk on and on about how many wars we're going to start, how the U.N. is falling apart and our old alliances becoming impedances on our path. You may have to put up with a lot of religious extremism, and moral watchdogs making life damn near intolerable on a daily basis—no enjoyable TV or radio, everything gone from 50 Cent to Spongebob. But look on the bright side. Or, if you're a religious fanatic, Mel Gibson-style, I guess that is the bright side.

Embrace the right side. At the very least, you won't feel guilty for being part of the richest nation in the world anymore. Hundreds of years of oppression, the genocide of the indigenous people, and lest we not forget all the crap we have to put up with about treating women as second-class citizens, and we didn't even start that. Our liberal consciousness, as instituted and maintained by the television set and virtually every other media source, can lay off already—we're right again.

No more feeling bad. It's time to feel good about being American again. Who cares if they hate us when we step on foreign soil? We don't need to go anywhere, really. The soldiers do—by the plane, truck, and boatload. Boy, do we need more soldiers, and quick. But us just normal folks, who have enough money where we don't have to join the military, we can stay safe and happy in our beds for the rest of our life without being exposed to the malice of the non-United States world. We've got everything we want here in the states. What do they have we don't have more of, and made better? History? We've got history. We don't even want what they got. Castles? We got White Castles. The only good thing they had that we didn't was The Office, so boo-yah! Now we've got everything.

I remind you liberals, you had 8 years with Clinton. It's only fair the right have its own 8 years to set everything back to zero. Personally, I think it's kind of fun. We move things a little to the left, then a little back to the right, and therefore keep ourselves in the exact same place for centuries. Which is what we all secretly want anyway, correct? Change is scary. All any of us want is for everything to stay the same from day to day, while we still have it figured out. You've never seen a normal person out in the street yelling for change, have you? It's always the leather-clad homosexual with his face painted and wearing the cornrows. If those kinds of people had their way we'd welcome just about anything people want to do as perfectly acceptable behavior. Next thing, we'd all be dressing like freaks.

I believe that's what happened in ancient Rome. One minute, someone makes an impassioned plea for letting people wear togas with no underpants. Next thing you know, the whole empire's crumbling.

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