embers of the red-hot "Minutemen Project" petitioned Congress for government funding to support their patrols of the borders of planet earth itself, fearing more illegal alien immigration, the small and green kind. The Minutemen darlings wrapped up their recent month-long patrol of Mexican-U.S. borders, and are hoping to extend their project and, in the future, even help safeguard the inter-galactic borders from unauthorized intrusion.

"If Martians, Venusians, Neptunians or whatever want to get into this planet, and by extension into this country, they can go about it the proper way," said Minutemen project founder Jim Gilchrist, speaking to Congress on behalf of his organization. "But there are laws in place to keep out those we don't want on this planet, at least in this country there are. We reserve the right to kick them out on their asses, wherever those asses might be located."

Angry populist shouting ensued in the wake of the claim, or more like the dull kind of irritated murmur you might here at a dance club when you're commandeering the floor and making all them skanks look amateur.

The Minutemen called their first patrol effort a huge success, a month-long venture in which vigilante volunteers watched for illegal crossings and reported them to the border patrols, never once taking the law into their own hands, we're assured, and hope it's all the proof Congress needs that ordinary citizens can deal with the problem of illegal immigration, without unnecessarily involving trained officials and people who are actually employed to deal with the matter.

"Illegal immigration is the number one country facing this problem today," said Rusty Hemlawn, exaggerating quite a bit. "If the government is too bloated and slowed down by legalities to handle the problem, then it's up to us normal armed citizens to do it ourselves."

Hemlawn and company make a good point, though, that if you are a middle-class, gun-toting white citizen who doesn't have family that's been ravaged by the economy or affected at all by military extensions overseas, illegal immigration by non-white people into your mostly-white country is certainly the biggest problem concerning you.

But, people who are semi-intelligent wonder, how much of a problem is illegal immigration by non-earth entities? The answer might surprise you, if you ask some of the redneck members of the Minutemen themselves.

"I's been sitting here for all my shifts all month," said Judd Bumper-Scruggs, a 42-year-old Minutemen volunteer and recent high school dropout. "I ain't seen but one or two Mexicans nosin' 'round the border, but I seen a mess o' them flyin' contraptions. We got a big problem with alien invasion, and I'ma be the first to warn you."

The Minutemen, not usually the reactionary type, were quick to report their findings to all the scientific bodies of the world, except for the unlucky fact they didn't know of any of them. So the group wrote to its Congressmen, and were invited by famous Senatorial inflammation Zell Miller to bring their cause to the legislators.

Gilchrist, speaking to Congress: "What happens when hard-working white—I mean, Americans, heh, of any color, of course—good Americans start losing their jobs to these green illegal immigrants? They control the laws of space and time, so of course they can afford to work for a lot less than an American doing the same job. They come here, all crammed in their flying saucers, looking to take work out of our mouths. I think we have a right to be protected from that."

Organizers of the Minutemen project claim their sweethearts are already guarding the skies with the use of high-powered telescopes (look in the small end, folks) and the occasional homemade heleocopter, but government funding would facilitate their private police force, as well as legitimize the group of angry crackers.

uthorities were just plain pissed off with the news that America's "Runaway Asshole" had struck twice more this week, further eroding the nation's confidence in the common decency of man, while thrilling asshole fans and vindicating the merely inconsiderate nationwide.

In the first such incident, officials claim the asshole struck in Illinois, defacing the hallowed image of the Virgin Mary formed by salt run-off and pigeon shit on the underpass of an interstate expressway near Chicago. The emergency turnoff area and impromptu holy shrine had become an instant tourist attraction almost overnight, drawing the devout and bored from miles around ever since a homeless man was spotted trying to piss a complete manger scene onto the underpass last week. The holiness would prove short-lived, however, when the "Runaway Asshole" allegedly spray painted the word "bullshit" over the apparition and drew a Fu Manchu mustache on the Virgin Mary with a Sharpie marker.

Authorities believe this to be the work of the same asshole that destroyed the Virgin Mary image appearing in the window of a Clearwater, Florida office building in 1996. Before the window was destroyed, thousands of hoopleheads had gathered to gawk at the colorful apparition, which scientists claimed to be caused by extreme maintenance neglect, and a nearby Target store had begun to sell special bottles of Windex adorned with apparitions of the holy virgin. Authorities later retrieved the slingshot round that had destroyed the window, but apparently some asshole had coated the ball bearing with grease, making fingerprint identification impossible.

Mere days after the Chicago incident, the asshole appeared again in Wilmington, North Carolina, ordering a pint of frozen custard from Kohl's Frozen Custard, which is in no way affiliated with the Kohl's chain of department stores known for their lousy custard. Only minutes later, custard worker Brandon Fizer, distracted by some asshole in line yelling for him to "hurry it up with the custard, dickless," somehow managed to chop the end of his index finger off in the custard machine. Authorities remain uncertain about how this is even possible, considering that the machine consists of little more than a lever and a custard nozzle, but few deny that Fizer somehow miraculously found a way.

According to witnesses, upon finding Fizer's digit in his mouthful of custard, the asshole spit the fingertip into a nearby baby's eye, then snatched it up off the floor and ran straight to his lawyer's office. Numerous attempts to recover the tip so it could be surgically reattached to the rest of Fizer proved unsuccessful, as the asshole claimed to need it for evidence of emotional suffering in the upcoming civil suit.

Extremely amateur detectives have questioned whether there could be a connection between America's "Runaway Asshole" and Georgia's recently-famous "Runaway Bride," either by blood or through a marriage in the family. Some have even gone so far as to infer that the asshole may have talked the bride into buying her infamous bus ticket, or maybe he was even the one driving the bus, you never know. Others are intrigued by the possibility that the two could get together to record a cover of Soul Asylum's 1992 hit "Runaway Train" for charity.

Though the identity of the "Runaway Asshole" remains unknown, authorities claim to have several compelling asshole leads, and are currently seeking out both Donald Trump and the commune's own Omar Bricks for questioning.

I have important matters to discuss. How important? I don't even have time to talk about my favorite conspiracy (World's Biggest). No, this concerns matters of the laws of nature themselves.

I'm talking, of course, about evolution in Kansas. That's not an insistence that evolution did happen in Kansas—my last drive through Kansas, I doubted evolution had occurred there at all. But it's not up to me to decide such matters, sir, and I think everyone who's not a science teacher should stay out of it. Yet in Kansas, evolution and creationism is once again a political battle between the hardcore fundamentalist Christians and normal people.

Why involve myself, you ask? It's not hard to figure out. Everything we teach in the science classroom is fact—am I right? Of course I am. Years ago we started teaching evolution. It was in all the papers, you might have read about it. The teaching of evolution gave the theory validity. And I'm scared shitless about teaching Creationism in science class. What happens if we validate "intelligent design"?

This is crap we don't need. God is dead—haven't you read the papers? If you want to go to your church and chat up the ceiling, that's perfectly fine. It's in the Constitution, I understand, though I think I may be paraphrasing. But you make God a part of my science class and that makes him real again. The last thing I need is God to come back, all pissed off about our erasing his existence by not teaching Him in science class. And how do you think He'll feel about the rest of the world and the state it's in? He probably won't even care about the evolution business, too busy freaking out about subjecting the third world to poverty and the stockpile of nuclear armaments. He got pissed about eating a single apple off his tree, how do you think he'll feel about destroying the world?

I've traveled to Topeka to take part in this state argument. It's not like everything's going to topple if the unintelligent "intelligent design" forces win Kansas—halfway there already, you ask me. But if they get encouraged by their victory, the Creationists will probably take their fight somewhere more important, like Fly Creek, Alabama, or the Bayou. If they conquer enough school boards—or worse, the hearts and minds of the America itself—science will be forever changed. God will return, wished into existence by the demon we call science, evolution will go the way of the dodo, and science will be subject to extremists, instead of hard-thinking, boring scientists. What will they go after next—gravity? That's all I need, all my papers going flying around and my entire staff falling off the surface of the earth. Which will probably be flat again, by the time all this is over.

To prevent this paradigm shift, I'll no doubt make this argument to the Kansas School Board itself. But if I go as myself they'll surely recognize millionaire playboy/publisher/conspiracy-buster Red Bagel. Fortunately I've had a lot of disguise experience lately, so I'll be making my arguments as other personas. I plan on playing Edgar C. Bummington, an esteemed Professor of Evolution from England (my accent is top-notch), arguing the case for evolution and against Creationism. I also plan to play concerned parents Bill-Joe and Marjorie Cutler (both roles, though I'm not sure how I'll pull that off just yet), and, time permitting, the precocious show-stealer Joe "Stinky" Bagel, arguing it from a kid's perspective. Sure-fire ways to convince Kansans to respect science and keep evolution? Maybe not, but I'm giving it everything I've got. I've come to like gravity too much to give it up.

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