rian Nichols, the world's most rightfully-imprisoned black man, appeared Friday in the same courthouse where he killed three people on March 11 in Fulton County, Georgia. Asked to enter his plea by a very timid judge, surrounded by trigger-happy bailiffs and police, Nichols pleaded "déjà vu" in his case.

While his attorneys very politely reminded him he could only plead "guilty" or "not guilty," though "not guilty" seemed an extremely unlikely choice, Nichols laughed off his odd feeling of having been through it all before.

"Sorry," the very large former linebacker told the court, as they listened with wide eyes and trembling lips. "It's just like, wow, I feel like I've been here before in some way. I have this whole memory of struggles with officers and gunfire and—anyway… guess we should get to trial and stuff. So, who's the misguided people who are going to testify against me?"

The judge, who asked not to be identified or even revealed to the suspect, addressed the court from inside a large crate he or she had hauled up behind the bench, and suggested they put off the proceedings and gave the prosecutors a chance to build up a rock-solid case against the defendant—who, the judge acknowledged, certainly may very well not be guilty, for all we know.

A little more than a month ago, the gigantic nasty African-American Hannibal Lecter wrestled out of custody of court officers, secured a gun, and shot three people, including a judge, before making his way outside for a spree of carjackings and hostage-taking that eventually ended in his arrest. Numerous charges were added to Nichols' already long list, which included rape, aggravated sodomy, and false imprisonment, the charges of the previous trial where the convicted badass attacked the court. It was the second trial on the charges for Nichols, after the first trial ended when the jury couldn't come to a decisive verdict.

"Boy, I feel like quite the ass now," admitted one of the holdout jurors from the first trial, who asked to remain anonymous out of embarrassment and fear of possibly being killed. "I owe a few of my fellow jurors some apologies now, that's for sure. Back then I sure didn't think him capable of rape and kidnapping, but now that I think about it, I was worried about him leaping into the jury box and bludgeoning me to death. I just assumed the two were mutually exclusive."

Court officials took no chances with Nichols this time, bringing the besuited behemoth into court in leg irons, shackles, and wearing a global positioning device on his ankle that would self-destruct upon walking out of the courthouse area. For extra safety measures, the gray suit Nichols wore was also packed with gunpowder by deputies and a twenty-foot fuse trailed behind him, just in case he tried to make another break for it.

Bailiff Vigo Metzel was in charge of Nichols' secure transportation to and from the courthouse.

"Some of us wanted to give him one of those half-hockey masks to keep him from eating people, but we thought that just made him look even more terrifying. No one would want to be on the security detail then. Besides, no one would volunteer to put the mask on him."

When questioned as to why anyone would want to defend a client with so much stacked against them, including verifiable security footage from the very court where he's going to be tried, Nichols' attorneys, who also asked not to be identified, said that even though it was unlikely Nichols would go free, they wanted Nichols to know definitively whose side they had been on in the event he ever breaks out again.

In the meanwhile, Nichols has privately told his attorneys and the prosecution that he only made his escape attempt from the courthouse in March so he could find the real perpetrators of the crimes of which he was accused. If he had found them, Nichols said, he certainly would have killed them, too.

t took congressional involvement to break the dyke, but baseball commissioner Bud “Charisma� Selig finally admitted to reporters this week that Major League Baseball has a serious problem with Gatorade. The performance-enhancing beverage, known in baseball circles as “The Juice,� has been giving modern ballplayers an unfair advantage over their historical counterparts for years, due to its advanced electrolyte-replacing technology and deliciously thirst-quenching lemon-lime flavor.

“Who knows how many home runs Babe Ruth could have hit if he wasn’t thirsty all the time?� questioned baseball historian and still living at home middle-aged guy Roger Bankercruff. “The number would have been astronomical. With all the hot dogs that guy ate, plus the fact that he never, ever drank anything but highly-dehydrating beer, even during games or when brushing his teeth, the evidence points to Ruth leaning heavily on death’s door for most of his playing career. Which makes the man’s accomplishments obviously all the more impressive. If he hadn’t been near-fatally dehydrated, not to mention completely bereft of vital electrolytes, for the whole of his adult life, we’d be talking about the one time he didn’t hit a home run, and how Barry Bonds isn’t fit to sniff the Babe’s grotesquely stained tidy whiteys.�

Pressed for an imaginary number of home runs Babe Ruth would have hit if we could go back in time with a case of Gatorade and convince the Babe that it was futuristic green beer, Bankercruff struggled with a calculator and his counting fingers for several minutes before deciding “10,000 home runs is not an unreasonable estimate,� had Ruth been hopped up on Gatorade during his playing days. Such a total would leave Bonds roughly 9,300 short in his quest to become baseball’s all-time home run leader, a number the Giants slugger may not reach without further developments in human growth hormone, Teflon knees, or Bonds’ head being re-attached to some kind of mechanical hitting machine.

Active home run leader Bonds, as well as notorious Michelin men Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Jason Giambi, have all come under fire in recent months for their performance and inhumanly well-hydrated appearances. A recent congressional hearing saw fan favorite McGwire dodge the issue of his Gatorade use like a ninja frog, virtually confirming fan suspicions that Big Mac had been “hydrating� for years. McGwire’s suspiciously non-parched speaking voice did nothing to dispel these concerns, in spite of the slugger’s claims that he had only used questionable but unbanned beverages such as Red Bull and Diet Rock Star. Baseball stars Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa and Curt Schilling conspicuously drank large quantities of water during the hearings, drawing attention to their obvious lack of artificial hydration.

In response, Major League Baseball has instituted a new Gatorade testing policy and tougher new rules, including a ten-minute talking-to for fifth-time offenders. Critics, however, have been calling the penalties too lenient and point to the new pink passionfruit Gatorade flavor that is rumored to be undetectable during drug screenings, and the use of other beverages such as Mountain Dew as a masking agent.

So far, the only player punished for Gatorade use has been Tampa Bay salary moocher Alex Sanchez, who was singled out after league officials noticed the green sweat on his jersey, which Sanchez blamed on his intense diet regiment of wheat grass and lime Play-Doh.

Other suspected hydrators have offered up similarly lame excuses, including Gary Sheffield of the Yankees, who admitted to performance-enhancing beverage use during an interview earlier this year. Sheffield explained that he had used Red Bull accidentally after it was given to him by Barry Bonds’ trainer, who told him it was baby aspirin.

“It didn’t help me, though,� explained Sheffield. “I mean, it made my headache go away, but I couldn’t hit a fastball any better. And I was up for two days scrubbing the grout in my bathroom. That shit was nasty dirty.�

Red Bull and Jolt Cola are both currently legal under Major League Baseball’s rules, but have been banned by the Olympics for years due to their hyperactive benefits, starting when 230-pound pipe-fitter Mark Tungley of Ohio won the Tour De France accidentally in 1998.

“Iwasjustonvacation, outforabikeridetoblowoffsomesteam,� explained Tungley, speaking at a high rate of speed and sweating like a beer glass in spite of the cool weather. “Jesus,thisRedBull stufftasteslikecandy, Ican’tdrinkenough. Yourememberthose sweettartscandies? Thisislikedrinkingsweettarts, exceptwithout allthechewing. It’sawesome.�

By 1550, the Spanish, British and French were engaged in a linguistic arms race to secure for their countries the truly longest word in the world. Over the next several decades the crown of word longness was passed back and forth between the three nations, as each discovered more and more excessively long verbiage.

First, Spain took the lead with their discovery of the 49-letter Dutch word kindercarnavalsoptochtvoorbereiding- swerkzaamheden in 1551, meaning "I banged the holy shit out of Helen at the children's carnival." This word held the title for some time and was considered invincible by a generation of Spaniards. The Dutch were particularly pleased with their fame, since they previously had only been known as the punchline of a joke about fire fighters wearing wooden shoes.

Then around 1579, the English pulled a rabbit out of their asses with the discovery of the slightly longer Mohawk word tkanuhstasrihsanuhwe'tsraaksahsrakaratattsrayeri, which means "the inside of the evil of the housing for the having of the taking of the talking of the meat."

Their glory was short-lived, however, when the French discovered a Welch village in England's own back yard named Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, 58 letters of Wales-speak that meant "Saint Mary's Church in the hollow of the ground near trees with a rapid whirlpool to the left of the red cave and down the street from the Church of Saint Steuben." This was particularly embarrassing to the English, who tried briefly to claim the Welch town's name didn't count, since its namer had died at the typewriter, resulting in an overlong mash of key-strikes that created the unbelievably long name.

The English didn't have long to argue, however, since a year later the Spanish topped them again with another Welch town, this one called Gorsafawddachaidraigodanheddogleddolonpenrhynareurd- raethceredigion, a 66-letter way of saying "The Mawddach station that looks like dragon teeth if you stand on your head facing from the Northern Penrhyn Road on the nice sunny beach by that beautiful place called Cardigan bay."

Thoroughly demoralized, the English fired their word-searching officials and passed a decree that the Welch couldn't name any more of their towns without English supervision.

Eager to piss another quart onto England's etymological grave, Spain took their turn in 1600 with the discovery of the incredible German word donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitaetenhauptbetrieb- swerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft, meaning "a club for men."

Though certainly impressive at 80 letters and clearly representative of the German sickness for excessive word-lengths, England got their revenge and topped them all with the discovery of a hill in New Zealand called Tetaumatawhakatangihangakoauaota- mateaurehaeaturipukapihimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuaakitana- rahu. Though some accused the English of naming the hill this just to win the competition, the English insisted it was a real aborigine name meaning "This is the top of the hill where bony-kneed Tammy, that land-eating bitch, sat down, slid on her ass, climbed back up, swallowed some mountains and clouds, then played her nose flute until everyone was annoyed."

But just when England was getting their air of dry superiority back, Sweden came out of nowhere with their own longest word, the 130-letter behemoth nordöstersjökustartilleriflygspaningssimulatoran- läggningsmaterielunderhållsuppföljningssystemdiskussionsinläggs- förberedelsearbeten, which according to the Swedes meant "the longest word in the whole goddamned world."

Shortly after England declared war on Sweden, the Thai snuck in the back door and laid their proudest redundant verbiage on the table, the true motherfucker of a word Krungthepmahanakorna- mornratanakosinmahintarayutthayamahadilokphopnopparatraja- thaniburiromudomrajaniwesmahasatharnamornphimarnavatarn- sathitsakkattiyavisanukamprasit. One-hundred and sixty-three letters, and Thai as the night is long.

Though it was claimed at the time that the word was the name of a city in Thailand, all of the westerners present that day came away with the distinct impression that the word actually meant "Eat shit and die, England." Whatever the word's true meaning, its revelation plunged the world into chaos and strife for several hundred years as England attempted to make the whole world its bitch out of a deep insecurity over its word-length prowess.

American comedian Red Skelton entered the fray in 1946, re-opening the debate with his observation that the longest word is the word that follows the announcement, "And now a word from our sponsor!" Skelton was killed by an English assassin minutes after making the comment, so it remains unclear whether he was working for the Spanish or French at the time.

All of it proved moot, however, when modern technology allowed for the creation of new words beyond the wildest dreams of even the Germans. In 1961, an asshole epidemiologist named Theo Dingley from Vermont coined the name Acetylseryltyrosylseryliso- leucylthreonylserylprolylserylglutaminylphenylalanylvalylpheny- lalanylleucylserylserylvalyltryptophylalanylaspartylprolyliso- leucylglutamylleucylleucylasparaginylvalylcysteinylthreonylsery- lserylleucylglycylasparaginylglutaminylphenylalanylglutaminyl- threonylglutaminylglutaminylalanylarginylthreonylthreonylgluta- minylvalylglutaminylglutaminylphenylalanylserylglutaminylvalyl- tryptophyllysylprolylphenylalanylprolylglutaminylserylthreonyl- valylarginylphenylalanylprolylglycylaspartylvalyltyrosyllysylva- lyltyrosylarginyltyrosylasparaginylalanylvalylleucylaspartyl- prolylleucylisoleucylthreonylalanylleucylleucylglycylthreonyl- phenylalanylaspartylthreonylarginylasparaginylarginylisoleucy- lisoleucylglutamylvalylglutamylasparaginylglutaminylglutaminy- lserylprolylthreonylthreonylalanylglutamylthreonylleucylasparty- lalanylthreonylarginylarginylvalylaspartylaspartylalanylthre- onylvalylalanylisoleucylarginylserylalanylasparaginylisoleu- cylasparaginylleucylvalylasparaginylglutamylleucylvalylarginyl- glycylthreonylglycylleucyltyrosylasparaginylglutaminylaspara- ginylthreonylphenylalanylglutamylserylmethionylserylglycylleu- cylvalyltryptophylthreonylserylalanylprolylalanylserine for the Dahlemense Strain of the Tobacco Mosaic Virus, because he hated his research assistant and knew she would have to write the 1,185 letter name out several times a day by hand. Dingley also refused to accept any abbreviations when referring to his virus in conversations, which eventually led to him being beaten to death with bars of soap rolled up in hand towels during the International Epidemiologists convention in 1971.

So the next time some wise-ass tells you he knows the longest word in the world, or he's just a moron who takes the song "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" too seriously, you can kick him in the balls with the confidence that you're doing the right thing. Until next time, I'm Griswald Dreck.

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