at Robertson, the American founder of the Christian Coalition who in the past has called for the bombing of the state department and the assassinations of Kim Jong Il and Saddam Hussein, announced this week that the democratically-elected president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, must be assassinated because of his potential to spread Marxism and Muslim extremism across South America.

"These violent religious fanatics cannot be tolerated," Robertson explained, ducking under a salvo of gunfire from supporters of this point of view. "And so God has told me he must be murdered."

"What the fuck?" responded Chávez, when reached in Cuba for his reaction.

In a later interview Chávez theorized that Robertson must be thinking of a different Hugo Chávez, since it he and his entire country are either Roman Catholic or Protestant, and Chávez is a very common name.

"I know for a man like Robertson, the entire non-white world must be very confusing," offered Chávez charitably.

After a week of being shit on by the press, and nearly killed in daily assassination attempts, Robertson announced that the world must have misunderstood his comments, or taken them out of context or something.

"When I said 'the United States of America should assassinate Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez,' some people unfortunately misinterpreted this comment to mean I thought the man should be taken out by American covert-ops assassins or something crazy like that," Robertson explained. "This couldn't be further from the truth. Anyone who was really watching The 700 Club that day knows what I really meant: that Jesus loves everybody. End of story."

When confronted with video of the show, Robertson changed his tune, begrudgingly revealing that the episode in question was filmed on the The 700 Club's annual "opposite day."

"You got me! The cat's out of the bag," admitted Robertson. "We were going to have a big contest for viewers and award all kinds of great faith-based prizes for the viewer who could figure out which of our shows had been on opposite day, but not any more. You blew it! Good job, dingus!"

However, this was not the first time Robertson has denied his own remarks in the face of damning VHS evidence.

Last year Robertson claimed that President Bush told him before the invasion of Iraq that there would be no casualties, but that Jesus thought it was going to be messy. This came a few years after the reverend claimed that God allowed 9/11 to happen because the American government allowed abortion and pornography, and because people stopped buying Pat Boone records.

In 2003 came Robertson's infamous 21-day "prayer offensive," when Robertson took a break from being his normal offensive self to beg God to kill three members of the Supreme Court so they could be replaced with justices who would re-criminalize sodomy, thereby ending homosexuality forever.

At the age of five, Robertson organized a kitchen-table meeting to call for the head of his own mother, for the crime of naming him Marion Gordon Robertson, and thereby necessitating the use of a gender-neutral nickname like "Pat" so as to avoid being traded for cigarettes in elementary school. Robertson would later regret not taking on a more masculine fake name, like Bruce, Lance or Barry.

he whole world, or at least a very small percentage of us into geeky astronomy stuff, was floored by the discovery recently of an object that may well be a new planet. If anyone's still paying attention, they might be happy to know scientists have at last agreed the object is a planet, and furthermore, the scientific community has agreed on a name: "Tyler."

The discovery was originally made by the Spitzer Science Center, where a kid can be a dork, but was quickly verified by observatories all over the world, which frankly had little else to do. While the debate lingered on as to whether the object was a planet or just some shit stuck on the glass, the majority of the scientific community came together over the weekend to agree on the object's planet status. Attention quickly turned to naming it, with many renowned scientists claiming they had called dibs on the next planet long, long ago.

"Frankly, we haven't had a planet to name in a few centuries," said Astronomer and amateur astrologist Benton Leatherbelt. "That name-hog Galileo took up a lot of them. Mostly all the planet-namers went the Greek god angle, with Mars and Mercury and Neptune and what. But to name a planet something like that nowadays would be a waste, not to mention anachronistic. Plus, we're out of the best Greek god names. Unless they want to go with Hercules. I could see planet Hercules."

Many professional astronomers agreed, except for that "Hercules" bullshit. Super-hot U Ignorant professor of astronomy Bubbles Corkran:

"It's taken years of hard sky-looking, but finally we have a ninth or tenth planet. I can never remember which," said Bubbles, laughing intoxicatingly. "And I, for one, want to see a name that matches that little cutie. It was me who suggested 'Tyler,' because I wanted something that represents our modern age and to show that today's astromonists have their eyes to the future. Plus, I love Aerosmith. Who doesn't love Aerosmith?"

Professor Corkran's choice received much support among horny astronomers, but wasn't without challenges. Other top contenders were "Jacob," "Joshua," "Dylan," or "Abigail" if it turned out to be a rare female planet. Some were notably upset with the choice of name for the new planet, like Arizona State astronomy professor Wilson Bernardi.

"Naming the greatest scientific discovery of this new century 'Tyler' was unbelievably short-sighted and irresponsible. We had a burden upon us to apply a proper label to this new celestial body, and could have taken the proper amount of time to consider all potential choices. 'Isis' would have been a possibility… all I'm saying is, 'Tyler' seems like a very temporary and forgettable name. And I know you're going to hear stories, but this is not just because people didn't choose the name I proposed: Planet Faggot."

The debate continued into the first week after the planet's naming, but others among the world's astronomers called for a healing of the rift.

"We've all spent too much time and effort on the relatively unimportant process of naming this fantastic new discovery," smirked Lawana Kirk, professor of astronomy at the University of Colorado. "It's time to settle down with the name and concentrate on more important aspects: Who will be the first to conquer this new planet? I've already got my things packed, and I've begun construction on the world's fastest rocket to get me there before all you other carpetbaggers. Anyone want to call 'shotgun' on the window seat?"

Rest easy, faithful commune reader, and any friends you might have: the commune is once again back in our hands.

If the spate of month-long repeats we've been running haven't clued you in, the commune was in a bit of a sticky situation as of late. And it wasn't, contrary to popular belief, just an attempt for us to catch a few winks while our competition stomped us into the ground. I had planned a little time off for the loyal commune staff, and everybody else we employ, but something more like a week, or even a few hours with me just not poking everyone to keep them working at top speed. But it didn't turn out as expected at all. Not at all.

To sum up, terrorists invaded the commune offices. Nothing less than Al Qaeda terrorists, or at least it appeared to me when the small group of foreign men stormed our offices with machine guns and demanded we all choose who would die first. We all chose my brother Gay Bagel, of course, unanimous vote (can you beat Gay voting for himself? What's up there?) Raoul and Ramrod tied for second, somehow beating out my favorite, Ivana. I placed a distant fifth, and I think it has something to do with putting real caramel in the caramel apples at this year's commune Days fair. But anyway, back to the terrorists.

If you think we're going to sit around and let third-world demagogues gun us down, you're sadly mistaken. To stand there and let terrorists kill you would mean the terrorists have already won. So I "flipped out," in the modern vernacular, and began to toss body after body against the wall. Many were Ivan Nacutchacokov, always in my ever-loving way, but I'm sure I got a few terrorists in there, too. We had just enough time to vacate the offices and taking our most valuable possessions with us. I had just enough time to unleash my deadly security force of weasels for the bastards to choke on, while Gay Bagel had just enough time to change the website programming and select a variety of articles for a few "best of" issues, so we wouldn't lose precious advertising revenue after we fled the terror. You never know when you might be able to use ten bucks, I suppose.

The fact that Omar Bricks did not follow us, and was in fact found at his desk, business-as-usual upon our return, speaks volumes about the perceptive depths of Mr. Bricks. We did find he had strapped one of the terrorists to the back of a grizzly bear, but upon closer inspection it's apparent he had mistaken the infidel for Ramrod Hurley.

I could thrill you endlessly with tales of our life on the run, searching out hiding places from which to build a new commune and the way our reporters cobbled together stories out of dust and scraps so we could continue to get the truth out to you. But thrilling you would be contrary to the usual routine of this column. Let's just say we were stumped for days on end on how to get our offices back and rid ourselves of the invaders. Well, I was stumped. Everyone else told me to call the police, the FBI, or any number of establishment-serving official organizations who hunt terrorists for fun. I was convinced this was not the right path. Until I got sick of living day and nigh with my staff in an abandoned building. So a quick call to the feds and we had our offices back, and a hefty reward as well.

It turned out, by the way, that the "terrorists" were actually nothing more than some Middle Eastern mercenaries hired by Crochet! Magazine to end our longtime dispute once and for all. Needless to say, Crochet! gots to pay for its major league fuck-up. And if you see Omar Bricks on the street, thank him for that insightful 10-part investigative report on ben-wah balls he did, but tell him I can't publish it because he submitted it to the faux Bagel mercenary. Who is planning to publish it in a prison newsletter, I think.

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