he scent of blood was thick in the air when withering mouthpiece for the Christian God Billy Graham met his legion followers in New York’s Flushing Meadows-Corona Park to bid them good-bye as he departed for the Middle East on this, his Final Crusade. Graham, long suffering from the many afflictions from God’s magic bag, vowed not to return alive until he had successfully converted the doomed to the one true faith.

“They will be saved, or their blood will stain their heathen streets,� said Graham, his voice failing and his body frail as the 70,000 true believers in attendance rained their approval down on him.

It marks Graham’s final attempt to convert the world’s worshippers of false idols, as the 86-year-old scion of the Lord, who started as a simple Protestant preacher before evolving into the leader of the final crusade of Christianity, continues to grow weaker from the countless ailments plaguing him, including water on the brain, prostate cancer, Parkinson’s disease, several fractured bones, and three arrows in the back sustained by a Cherokee attack in 1934.

“The devil wants to stop me, I don’t doubt that,� chortled Graham, clad in his shining suit of armor, and supported by six fellow Christians to keep from being ground into dust. “Let the devil come, I say! The Muslims, the Buddhists, and those—what do you call them… the Indian religious guys… not the Hari Krishnas… anyways, they’ll all call their false idols and the devil in to torture me, but I will not be stopped before each and everyone of them knows the true salvation of God. Or death. Either one works for me.�

Much excitement surrounded the event, the first church-sanctioned Christian crusade in almost a thousand years—noting that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are not officially church-sanctioned. Graham announced his plans for a Final Crusade months ago, and leaders of the Protestant church gave their approval as Graham built an army of supporters numbering in the low hundreds of thousands. Some in the know suggest the sanction for the Crusade is more of a tribute to Graham’s long service than any conviction he might be successful.

“The man is not even able to walk in his armor anymore, let alone smite the enemies of the Lord,� said an inside source we love to call “Reverend Blue Jeans.� “Add to that Graham hasn’t built a sufficient army for an attack of this scale, and the fact that they’re intent on utilizing medieval weaponry when even Middle Eastern radicals have access to missiles and firearms… you’re looking at a bloodbath. But Graham is convinced the Lord will give him strength for a final victory. You got to give it to the man, he knows how to go out in a blaze of glory.�

The ailing Christian soldier marched onward, if you count marching as being hoisted by a dozen men, and proceeded to board the large command ship bought by his ministry for the expedition, one of sixty paid for by the Graham Ministries and representing the first wave of the onslaught of the true faith.

“Victory!� screamed Graham in a raspy, failing voice from the bow of the ship, named “The Savior.�

The fragile Protestant then fell overboard, sinking instantly to the bottom of the bay, but was rescued by his followers before any more serious damaged was inflicted.

he trial of last century is making all the news in Mississippi and nowhere else, as the racially-motivated murders that inspired the film Mississippi Burning are underway after a lengthy ignoring of the whole thing. It took a little time to build a case and find a non-racist jury, but after 41 years, Edgar Ray Killen is being given as fair a trial as the white man's legal system will allow in a Philadelphia, Mississippi court.

The accused killer Killen is on trial for the premeditated murder of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, who came to the town to aid in black voter recruitment. The accused was originally tried in 1964, but the jury deadlocked and couldn't decide whether murdering a Negro and two Jews was a crime in Mississippi. "Killer" Killen, as this reporter's just dubbed him, was released and not retried for years, although he was punished then by enduring Southern cooking at a barbecue in his honor thrown by all his Klan kronies.

Thankfully, Hollywood intervened in 1988 with a film about the murders fueled by the performances of Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe that, while good, no self-respecting black man is going to sit through when they've actually lived the same shit every day. Embarrassed by the liberal ass-tanning, modernized Mississippi began a crusade to re-try Killen and put the killings to rest once and for all.

Since the accusations have resurfaced, Killer Killen has denied orchestrating the murders and downplayed his involvement with the charitable organization the Ku Klux Klan; or at least that's what his lawyer says he has said, the 80-year-old is a bit indecipherable over the loud sound of his wheezing and mumbling. Philosophers only I've talked to suggest maybe Killen will live another 30 years as his real punishment from God, long enough to see black culture completely co-opted by every white kid on his street and allowing black performers to dominate the box office, television, and every station on the radio. And there's always the White House, if God is particularly cruel to the poor peckerwood.

Some fellow good old guys and girls have come to Killen's defense, while denouncing the killings, and say the frail, birdlike man had nothing to do with the horrific murder of people they wouldn't have spat on back then. Among those testifying were other Killens, including Killen's brother and sister-in-law, and several associates with peculiarly pointy hairstyles, like Cricket Beechauser.

"I love Killen," said the comparatively young 75-year-old Beechauser. "Killen taught me everything I know, not that I'm braggin' or nothin'. I'd do anything for him, that's how much I respect Killen—I'd go to jail for Killen. I'd go to hell for Killen, if that's what I had to do. Killen ain't any more racist than anyone here in this courtroom." To which at least the defense agreed.

The only irregularity in the Killen trial came on Friday when an angry protestor in the courtroom objected to the Beechauser testimony. A young white woman stood up and began shouting at the witness, still on the stand, insisting if the Ku Klux Klan liked Killen so much, they deserved Killen.

"Order in the court!" clichéd Judge Marcus Gordon. "If there's any more outbursts I'll remove the defendant. Then there won't be any Killen to shout about."

The prosecutor Mississippi Attorney General James Hood, for those of you who like irony, said the state would win this time against the Klansman.

"This time we will get Killen for these killings—hey! I just noticed how that sounds. Weird. But in all seriousness, my office is seeking the death penalty. And we'd better hurry up because this old Nazi is half in the bag already."

So declare the men of law in Mississippi, where the state motto in racial killings is "better late than never."

Every time I get into a fistfight with a prominent scientist, it always seems like it's over the subject of perpetual motion machines, and whether or not I could build one. So this week I decided to put my guns in the ground and settle this argument once and for all the mature way: by making them look stupid. I knew this was an engineering problem that had vexed scientists for millennia, and I figured I had an entire weekend to kill, so what the hell.

My first thought was that kidnapping the Energizer Bunny was the answer, but then I read on an Urban Legends website that that thing actually runs on Ethanol or cow gas or something, it's really all just a fraud. Bummer aside, I was glad I read that before I went to all the trouble of renting a full-body wolf suit.

Then I was thinking the key had to be in one of those M.C. Escher drawings, since that dude seems to have the inside track on mind-bending bullshit. So I pulled some plywood off the walls of my neighbor Hamms' tool shed and set out to build an M.C. Escher staircase inside the Bricks Manor, since once I had one of those, pretty much anything would work as a perpetual motion machine: a slinky, a softball, a random drunk off the street. Pretty much anything that can fall downstairs forever would do the trick.

Let me be the first to say that M.C. Escher shit is confusing as hell to build. That dude might have had a good eye for color or whatever, but he definitely flunked the class where they teach you to make easy-to-follow blueprints. Twice I ended up with staircases that descended into themselves, like a snake crawling up its own ass, only not as funny. You can only bang your shins or your chin so many times before that shit gets old. The third time I ended up with a staircase into some weird parallel dimension I didn't recognize at all. My neighbor Mitch said it was my attic, but I told him I didn't order a house with one of those, since I couldn't afford a lot of fancy options back then.

The fourth time I figured I'd just keep building until I got it right, and I ended up in Hamms' basement again, where I ran out of sky to build into. Then Hamms was complaining some bullshit about how there was a staircase coming out of my bathroom window, arcing over his house, then running back in his living room window, through his house and down into his basement, and also that his shed was missing. I told him this was impossible, but he didn't see the Escher drawing as compelling evidence the way I did.

So I had to give up on the whole Escher plan, thanks to Hamms' lack of vision. But that's when that famous scientific maxim hit me: it's not the size of the boat; it's the motion of Laotians. What I needed was some cheap immigrant labor.

A quick trip to the Dollar Store cleared up my misconception that the people there will do anything you want for a dollar. But I did find my perpetual-motion answer in the place I was least expecting it: the balloon aisle.

You know those balloons with the rubber band attached that you make a fist around, then you punch the balloon like it was your boss and it bounces back and forth on your hand forever? I love those things. And we all know how awesome they are in old-folks homes and china stores, but I didn't realize until right then that they're also a scientific breakthrough. You've only got to hit one of those things once, hang on, and whamo! You've got yourself perpetual motion. So I wasted no time buying out the store's entire stock and headed home, with a punch-balloon pumping on each hand.

Granted, that made driving home kind of tricky, but I got there. And further experimentation in the Bricks laboratories proved it: I was a genius. I'm not sure what my punch-balloon perpetual motion machine is going to be good for, but if you need something that makes a lot of noise, pisses off everyone in the room and makes the elderly uneasy without using up any power, then this thing is made to order. And I'm sure it's only a matter of time before I figure out how to harness the punch-balloon's power. I've already taught Foghat to use one, and I can tell it's going to save him a lot of time and energy.

I was excited to share my discovery with Hamms, but he was too crabby that the workers he hired to tear down my staircase didn't speak any English, so he wasn't in the right mindset to appreciate the thrill of scientific discovery. But late tonight, after Hamms has had time to calm down some, I'm going let Foghat loose in Hamms' bedroom to demonstrate the magic of punch-balloon energy, and that should make a believer out of him. Either that or the constant wob-wob-wob noise emanating from Bricks Manor 24 hours a day will draw him over like a moth to a bug zapper. Bricks out.

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