yslexia rereffus Mark Dingus-Smith held the world in awe this week after news broke that the central Indiana resident, no shit, talks to God on a regular basis. Thankful that the nation's latest God-talker is neither a Republican politician nor a New Age fruit, pious Americans have swarmed from miles around to gawk at the modest man's Indiana home, many hoping to eavesdrop on these heavenly conversations and catch a hint of what God really thinks about gays, contraception, and the red-hot topic of gay contraception.

Many were intrigued to find this simple man on a first name basis with the universal creator, with trivia buffs particularly interested in the discovery that, according to Mark, God's first name is Rufus.

"Who's a good boy? Rufus is a good boy! Rufus is the best boy in the whole wide world, isn't he?" gushed Dingus-Smith, offering encouragement to the singular deity, who surely must find his awesome responsibilities dispiriting at times. "Yes he is! Rufus is such a good boy!"

According to local news reports, neighbors discovered Dingus-Smith's gift after overhearing several one-sided conversations emanating from the house where Dingus-Smith lives alone with his dog, and asking the lifetime dyslexia sufferer just who he was talking to. Though unaccustomed to the national attention, Mark was already locally famous for unintentionally starting a minor Martian-invasion scare in the region last year after claiming in a bar that the nation's breast implants were full of aliens. After the shooting stopped, it was discovered that Dingus-Smith actually meant "saline."

Although the affliction of dyslexia is most often associated with difficulties in reading caused by the mental transposition of letters, in some extreme cases it can lead to the confusion of entire concepts. The most famous recent example of such being U.S. president George Bush's mistaken belief that Iraq had acquired WMD's, when in actuality the rogue Middle Eastern nation had just opened their first Wendy's.

According to Dr. Nikolai Balsvet of the McClurg Institute, dyslexia effects over 20 million Americans, though to those afflicted it only seems like 0.2 million, adding to their sense of isolation.

Some of the religious pilgrims who have made the trek to central Indiana and spent weeks camped out on Dingus-Smith's lawn have been disappointed with meeting Dingus-Smith and observing his decidedly laid back God-talking routine, which often involves playing with this dog and drinking Coors Light. Many untrue believers decried the entire story as "bullshit," peeling out in their RVs and pausing only long enough to throw trash on Dingus-Smith's lawn.

Others were upset that Dingus-Smith was taking his time working hot-button political issues into his dialogue with the eternal source of all life.

"I'm still pissed Mark hasn't asked God about gay contraception," groused lawn-camper Colman Slank of Nebraska. "He's always too busy playing with that goddamned dog of his. But this is one issue that really gets my goat. It's like the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of moral outrage, that one. 'You got sinful perversion of man's natural sexuality in my blasphemous triumph of modern technology over God's natural plan!' 'Oh yeah, well you got blasphemous triumph of modern technology over God's natural plan in my sinful perversion of man's natural sexuality!'"

"You remember that commercial, right?" followed-up an uncertain Slank.

he newest pope has been elected and chosen the name Pope Benedict XVI, and already the supreme being of Catholicism has taken a fierce stance against faded fascist groups by renouncing his own brief history with the Hitler Youth. In the world's entire Catholic population, it would seem to be an easy task to find one respectable cardinal who wasn't previously involved with the Nazi party, but apparently Joseph Ratzinger of Germany has some inside dish that landed him in the pope seat.

Responding to accusations of being a fascist, Ratzinger addressed his Nazi history and reassured detractors he was generally against the extermination of non-Catholics. In memoirs, Ratzinger described being "forced" into joining the Hitler Youth against his will as a youngster in Nazi-fied Germany. He left to study for the priesthood, aided by his anti-Nazi family (who kept their anti-Nazism secret), but was drafted into the army in 1943, where he put his hate for fascism to work foiling the Nazi machine from the inside, until he deserted and arranged capture by U.S. troops before moving on in fascism-free Germany to become a priest.

Ratzinger renewed his fight against Nazism Thursday, answering challenges from those who opposed his Popedome.

"I have always been an enemy of fascism in all its forms," said the Pope. "And I look forward to laying down a rigid doctrine of Catholicism, the one true religion, to be obeyed by one and all."

The selection of Pope Benedict came in the wake of the death of Pope John Paul II, who some sources only at the commune claim is still alive and has been taken into hiding by Vatican officials. Why? So a younger, fresh pope of Bel-Air could reinvigorate the stagnating Catholic church.

Pope Benedict has been an advisor of the late/missing Pope John Paul for years, and an opponent of reform within the Vatican. As Ratzinger, his secret pre-Pope identity, he argued against such church-devastating movements as religious pluralism, gay rights, feminism, communism, and liberation theology, which argues that the church should play an active role in politics of change.

Before his election, Ratzinger lectured the selection committee on "relativism" in the Catholic Church, and dedication to principle was unfairly labeled "fundamentalism."

"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires." Then, the officials still elected him.

As the new pope, Benedict compared efforts to change and reform the church to following whims and fads, and ended his early speeches by extending his arm and shouting a rousing, "Hail the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!" He was then asked by Vatican consultants to not ever do so again.

Theologians believed the selection of Ratzinger a clear attempt to distance the modern Catholic Church from the hedonistic reign of Polish Pope John Paul II.

"The 'anything goes' days of the old pope are gone," said professor of Theology at the Newark University Norm Chauncey, whom this reporter interviewed for strictly vindictive reasons. "The Church was obviously sick of becoming the laughing stock of the world, out of touch with the rigid morality of the modern era and its uncompromising dedication to religion. What better way to bring the wayward back to the fold than to force closer adherence to the guidelines set for Catholics in the 1960s?"

Thanking the professor, this reporter then went home and reaffirmed his commitment to atheism.

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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