he world remains shocked and eerily obsessed with the mortal departure of ABC news anchor Peter Jennings after his short but well-publicized battle with cancer. With several primetime memorial specials, newspaper editorials, and lots of merchandise on the way to local stores, people are remembering the legacy of the deceased newsman. But no matter what else people might say about the mark he left, one thing all can agree on: He read the news.

"He not only changed the way we thought about the news, but the way we watched the news," said media kiss-ass Earl Shmonster. "I have no examples to back that up. But you name any news event in the past twenty years, you can bet Peter Jennings covered it. Or introduced us to the guy who was covering it. He was faithfully at his desk whenever something happened that the nation needed to be told about."

Jennings' death, both tragic and timely, has seized the consciousness of a nation that had all but given up on paying attention to the news. His terminal illness has been a dazzling source of conversation and meditation on our own mortality. While some people are already talking about who will be the next ABC news anchor, one thing is patently clear: They will have to die in a really horrific way to steal back the nation's focus from the late Peter Jennings.

"Jennings was a consummate reporter," said a national news editorial copied nearly word for word a thousand times over since the anchor man's death. "He was always in the field, when he wasn't behind the anchor desk. His soothing voice and rugged good looks kept us all calm and placated while he told us about AIDS, rising poverty, election fraud, space shuttles blowing up, and, more recently, terrorism. He was more than the face of ABC network news: He was its voice, too."

The Peter Jennings' death frenzy has carried over beyond a hurricane of media coverage, including a bevy of Jennings-related items for sale on eBay and a series of Jennings news pieces headed for DVD to offer consolation to grief-stricken Jennings fans who possess money. But Jennings' death has affected the world in non-marketable ways, too, convincing several in the population to find out more information about lung cancer. The first thing most of them learn from Jennings' experience: Don't get it.

Spokesperson Nanny Freedmont from the Rubb-Houston Center for Celebrity Deaths: "The death of Peter Jennings was more than the loss of a father, husband, and media professional: It was the loss of someone famous. A person who we saw regularly on the TV every night for years, and whom we've developed a perfectly healthy attachment to. We considered him a friend, and we feel the void he's left behind, and will continue to until at least the next celebrity passes away tragically."

Jennings' departure sparked hundreds of responses from people everywhere, but since we've never heard of most of them, we only selected a few to cover. Like this one from the American Cancer Association:

"Hundreds of thousands of people die from lung cancer every year. But none of them were famous. God bless ye, Peter Jennings, America's nightly news Jesus."

Another fond farewell came from colleague and friendly nightly news rival Dan Rather.

"Jennings was a fine newsman and always read the news without error. He was never stymied by the more challenging words, like 'fiduciary responsibility.' He will be missed. Me, on the other hand, going out in a puff of smoke and a blaze of scandal. I mean, what the fuck, America? What would it take to get a simple friendly good-bye from you people? I'm not on the news anymore either, you know. I guess I'll have to burst into fucking flame or something to get a 'So long and fuck off, Dan!'"

Speaking of bursting into fucking flame, the commune news pays its own final tribute to the world's greatest news reader, Peter Jennings: Out, out, brief candle.

n the wake of a landmark $253 million lawsuit that found the company liable for heart damage caused by its arthritis painkiller Vioxx, things went from bad to shitty bad for drug giant Merck this week, as a group of prescription drug abusers announced they were suing the company for taking Vioxx off the market during the shitstorm of controversy last year.

“We were all hooked on Vioxx, and Merck left us high and dry,� sobbed prescription painkiller addict and group spokesperson Beth Simmons of Noodle Cove, Maine. “Somebody needs to pay for all the bedspreads I shit while I was detoxing after Merck’s short-sighted decision to yank Vioxx off the market.�

“Just because a few pussies had heart attacks is no reason to put good people through the hell we’ve all been through,� added group member Tom Cripe. “Shame on you, Merck.�

“Vioxx got you high as shit,� agreed fellow abuser Dennis Melvin, staring off into space.

Though unusual, the lawsuit is not as revolutionary as many might assume. It follows in the footsteps of last year’s landmark State of Louisiana Vs. BDI Pharmaceuticals settlement, which found manufacturer BDI liable for the productivity lost and emotional damage caused when they reformulated their Mini Thins ephedrine tablets under the new name Mini Two-Way Action, to prevent abuse by truckers and to boost sales among rhinoceros horn-grinding aphrodisiac freaks.

“Merck formed a good-faith pact with their customers,� explained prosecuting attorney Ray Longam. “An implicit agreement that said: you get hooked on our pills, crushing them up and snorting them up your nose, or shooting a solution into your ass fat, scamming your insurance company out of thousands to feed your addiction, or turning to the black market to buy Vioxx pills stolen out of the medicine cabinets of old ladies, you hold up your end of the bargain, and we’ll keep you high as fuck all the time. Only Merck didn’t live up to their end of the bargain. And that’s just not right. Somebody’s got to stand up for the little guy.�

Joe Borchard, a little guy who estimates he snorted over $10,000 in powdered Vioxx pills during the painkiller’s short reign, is happy to know his voice will finally be heard. “I had to switch to OxyContin after they took Vioxx off the market. And that was a major pain in the ass. I could never remember how to spell it. One time I snorted a whole bottle of pimple cream on accident, and that shit dried out my brain for like three weeks.�

A Merck spokesperson, however, finds the lawsuit to be absurd.

“These people are clearly stupid,� explained Merck spokesperson Charles Ludlow. “Vicodin will get you so high you shit your pants and don’t even know it. So what were these people doing messing around with Vioxx? If we give these people a few million dollars in a settlement, they’re probably just going to blow it trying to get high off asthma medicine or something.�

Legal experts contend that an unfavorable judgment could cost Merck millions in expired Vioxx tablets, rumored to be buried in bunkers in the New Mexico desert. Industry insiders suggest that the pharmaceutical giant would be better served by paying off the plaintiffs before the trial even begins with free samples of Arcoxia, the company’s Vioxx replacement, which is twice as addictive as Vioxx and gets you so high there’s no way you’d get to the courthouse on time.

Don't even start with the nonsense about this all being Omar Bricks' fault. Because I won't stand, sit, or recline for it.

In case you've been living on Planet Asshole in the Out-of-Touch Nebula for the last month, you probably noticed that the commune's been running third-string filler for the last month. And maybe you're the curious kind of son of a bitch who wondered why. Good for you, kissass.

First, the facts: No one is sure how all those weasels got into the commune's offices, where they came from, or what they were eating in there for a month, besides Ivana Folger-Balzac's expired birth control pills and possibly Gay Bagel. But whatever the reason, the last month at the commune has been like some insane cross between War of the Worlds and Gremlins. I also want to throw Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke into the mix, for no other reason than that I really like that movie.

Having 1,200 weasels suddenly descend upon the office at 7:15 one morning did surprisingly little to interrupt business at usual at the commune for the first few days. We just had to turn up the talk radio a little louder to hear over the sounds of all those weasels fucking and killing each other. But then the rapidly-reproducing weasel population spread to our downstairs neighbors Crochet! magazine through the heating ducts and those candyasses had to learn how to use a flamethrower, which threatened to throw off the balance of the commune-Crochet! arms race, so Bagel decided to call in an exterminator, a safari guide and an exorcist to handle the problem.

This somehow gave the exterminator the wrong idea, since he joined forces with the weasels and killed both the safari guide and the exorcist before being double-crossed by those devious weasels, who were then all the more dangerous for being armed with chemicals and mousetraps.

Naturally, once the shit had completely hit the fan, they called on Omar Bricks to solve the problem. Or, more accurately, we all got locked out of the building after the weasels declared it an independent state and I had to call home for Foghat to come bail us all out, because I had left my car keys in my pants pocket up in my office and there was no fuckin' way I was walking all the way home.

Twenty minutes later Foghat showed up wearing his favorite trucker hat, went upstairs, and took a shit so nasty the weasels cleared out like an afterbar party when Truman Capote shows up, or at least the ones did that didn't turn to stone instantly upon contact with that toxic dog-funk.

But then it turned out we'd only traded one problem for another, since after Foghat dropped the ass fantastic nobody could figure out how to get that Chernobyl crap out of the office without sacrificing anyone smart enough to operate the elevator. Finally Bagel called the police, but the bomb squad refused to go in, so they had to send in their remote-controlled bomb robot, which kept rebooting every time it got within twelve feet of that epic turd.

Eventually they just decided to set the building on fire, or else that may have been the result of one of the flaming arrows I'd been shooting in the windows in hopes of taking out Ramrod Hurley or some other weasel, I'm not sure which it was. But the building definitely caught on fire and through some weird alchemy Foghat's ass-baby turned into a gnarly, turd-shaped cubic zirconium, which I'm now using as a paperweight on my desk.

commune fans or PETA freaks might remember a similar incident three years ago, when the commune offices were overrun by a staff of monkeys hired by Red Bagel to help the commune appeal to a more upscale readership. Similarities to that incident aside, this was definitely the worst time the commune has been overrun by small animals. Except of course for the great bass attack of 2003, but that goes without saying. Bricks out.

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