isaster-relief officials in New Orleans made a stern announcement today to the thousands of celebrities descending upon the devastated city in hopes of providing humanitarian aid in exchange for career-boosting photo ops: We’re serious; you really need to leave now.

“We’ve got to get these fucking celebrities out of New Orleans,� sighed an exasperated Lt. Mark Bolio of the Army’s 92nd Airborne. “They’re drinking up all our bottled water and bitching about the catering all day.�

The influx of famous faces has weighed as a heavy burden on officials who have spent the last week scrambling to get everyone out of the city-shaped deathtrap. Receding water levels have exposed a nightmare world of toxic contamination, with nearly the entire city soaking in deadly levels of E. coli bacteria, lead, crude oil, PCBs, asbestos, leptospirosis, battery acid, herbicides, raw sewage, DDT, snakes, and according to at least one local, cooties. After busting a nut trying to remove the bulk of New Orleans’ stubbornly entrenched locals, many of whom refused to leave their pets or belongings, the Army was not prepared to deal with the celebrity occupation.

“We had this one crazy old lady who wouldn’t leave without her million cats, so we had to drown all her cats in the back yard,� anecdotalized Pvt. Jeremy Pankin, animal lover. “I mean, that is, all her cats drown in the back yard. Yeah.�

According to officials, 95% of the people now remaining in New Orleans qualify as celebrities, with the jury still out on John Stamos and a few others. Most are reportedly taking turns rescuing each other from various perilous locations around the sunken city.

“Thassa haw nyaom flawn dawg,� drawled local plumber Cornell Hughes, possibly speaking about the celebrity situation in New Orleans. “Shaw golla farn myaw.�

Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn, 45, has drawn the most attention after arriving last week with his entourage in a boat that immediately sank, despite frantic efforts at beer-cup bailing. Reports are unclear as to whether Penn was here to help the locals, or if he was rehearsing for his role in an upcoming Woody Allen comedy.

“When you see people in trouble on TV, as a celebrity you can’t just stand idly by,� explained singer Harry Connick Jr., who like every other jazz musician, claims to be from New Orleans. “That’s why I’ve been here for the last few days, walking around and telling people I’m Harry Connick Jr.�

Other celebrities either rescued or ejected from the city by the National Guard this week include Fab Morvan, formerly of Milli Vanilli, rapper Flavor Flav, the Dixie Chicks, Leonard Nimoy, radio personality Dr. Phil, the Oak Ridge Boys, Paul Reubens, Sista Souljah, writer Stephen King, the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir, tennis pro Ivan Lendl, Sting, actor Mickey Rourke, and three members of the alt-fluff quartet the Cardigans.

R&B singer Macy Gray wisely decided to give the highly toxic and in all likelihood instantly carcinogenic city a wide berth, instead volunteering to hand out t-shirts and condoms to refugees at the Astrodome in Houston.

“You kiddin’ me?� questioned Gray when asked about her decision. “That place is like the Chernobyl Water Park. I wouldn’t even drive past that state with the windows down. I already got curly hair, you know?�

Meanwhile, Fox crews have been on hand in New Orleans all week to film a new reality show based on the celebrities’ and locals’ exciting efforts to sneak back into the watery grave that used to be their city. According to network officials, I Forgot Something! will premiere on Fox later this fall.

EMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, proved itself unprepared for the post-hurricane situation in Louisiana, and now will have to prepare itself for an even more deadly assault on its reputation. The publicity disaster follows reports in The Washington Post and other media outlets that FEMA fem and director Michael Brown may be less than qualified for the position he holds. Federal agency historians are describing it as possibly the worst media-related catastrophe to ever strike the organization.

Damage to the agency's character hasn't been fully assessed, but early estimates predict anywhere from one to five careers may be permanently injured or even extinguished. Early signs of the disaster's effects came when the White House reversed its original "FEMA good" public statements for the more critical "FEMA can do better" statements of recent days.

The fallout comes from public outrage over the slowness and inefficiency of relief efforts in the wake of the hurricane Katrina disaster and the extent of destruction from floods in the Louisiana area. As the outcry increased, media outlets investigating FEMA Director Michael Brown uncovered sources who say the director may have misrepresented his qualifications or been misrepresented by people in the administration. Some are accusing the administration and Brown's supporters of making him the director because of his work on the Bush campaign, rather than his experience with disaster relief—not that the Bush campaign was unofficially a disaster, but such a designation doesn't put it on par with the flooding of New Orleans.

Last week, the president commended the FEMA director with a resounding and dignified, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." Quite a contrast to the administration's more recent admission the relief efforts were going abysmally slow, and Thursday's remark by the president, "Brownie, get your shit together. Quit dragging ass and get 'r' done or we're gonna shitcan you."

But some are asking, given the degree to which Brown's resume may have been misrepresented, if the FEMA director shouldn't be shitcanned already. With the poor relief efforts attracting media attention and adding lead to the president's always-precarious approval rating, Brown was removed from his on-site duties in the relief efforts. Such an action may precipitate Brown's stepping down from his position to make way for some other Bush crony with slightly more experience.

Reports surfaced this week that 5 of 8 top FEMA officials, including Brown, had little or no previous disaster relief experience, and at least 3 played vital roles in the Bush 2000 election campaign. Director Brown himself cited only one disaster-related job, allegedly overseeing disaster relief efforts in Edmond, Oklahoma, but sources now say the job was closer to "administrative assistant" or "intern," or in the common parlance, "little bitch" to the real boss.

If Brown is asked to stepped down from his role at FEMA, some are already anticipating a quick appointment by the president for his old supporter. Insiders at the White House are talking about the possibility of a Federal Emergency Public Relations Agency (the less-interesting acronym FEPRA), who will need someone to run it with the kind of publicity disaster experience only this most recent crisis can provide.

Just now the question may be dawning in your Pre-Cambrian brain: Wait a minute, what happened in New Orleans? Last time I was down there, it was a drunk, titty-flashing good time. I don't remember all these poor people smashing windows at the Piggly Wiggly to get at some Doritos, or floating around on air mattresses through a soup of toxic dogshit. And since when have they had canals instead of streets? You think you'd remember something like that, even while lying drunk on the sidewalk with your fly open.

Don't worry, gentle idiot, your brain's not playing tricks on you. It didn't come with such fancy features. No, something did happen to New Orleans this month, and it wasn't just an incompetent government run by a man with a sixth-grade understanding of adult reality and all the savvy of a small child lost at an astrophysics convention. Hurricane happened, readers, and it happened but good.

I'm sure you've heard of hurricanes before. After all, it's what killed JFK. But do you really understand how they work and why they always strike in threes? I didn't think so.

Hurricanes are nature's douche, a natural remedy for when Mother Nature's got that "not so fresh" feeling downstairs and needs to clean house. Regardless of what you may have read in irresponsible academic journals growing up, hurricanes are not "Nature's Fart." In fact, they're not a fart at all. That would be silly. "Hurricanes are Nature's Fart" was a rumor started over 30 years ago by Airologist Walter Zoloft, who though that the wind smelled like beef during Hurricane Yolanda in 1972.

In scientific terms, hurricanes are caused by heat energy from evaporating water. Confused? Think of it this way: When you get out of the shower, you feel cold because the water evaporating off your naked ass is taking your body heat with it. This heat energy does not disappear, it has to go somewhere. And it goes into hurricanes.

The first hurricane in Earth's history happened in 1964. You've likely heard of "Hurricanes" previous to this date, but all such references were to the nicknames of boxers or hookers with grossly oversized egos. The first actual hurricane hit the town of Papa Old Money on the coast of Papa New Guinea in August of 1964, and it scared the living daylights out of the town's seventeen residents, who thought God was whistling at them. No one was sure how to interpret such behavior from the universal creator, and this frightened them.

The world's first hurricane was, as you may already have guessed, the direct result of the invention of the shower in 1963. Previously, nature had been held at bay thanks to the prominence of the bathtub on the world's body-cleansing scene, though the balance had already been somewhat upset by the invention of the "European shower" in 1960, which consisted of standing over the bathroom sink of a gas station and splashing water near your armpits while rubbing an automobile air freshener on your chest.

But the invention of the shower and its catastrophic convenience changed all this in less than a year's time, as the residents of Papa Old Money and their demolished straw huts could attest. It took the town's residents seventeen months to find all the straw again, which had been distributed evenly over the surface of the island, and rebuild their huts in time for the Great Catastrophic Hut Fire of 1966.

The devastation would only grow worse over the next forty years, as millions of people turned to showering to ease overcrowding in the world's gas station restrooms. Hurricanes would grown in strength and number every year, except for a brief respite in 1969 when the hippies took over and it briefly became uncool to rinse off your butt musk and most Americans received all their needed hygiene from police water cannons at protest rallies.

Many famous hurricanes would ruin kite-flying contests and destroy property in nations that had not learned from the legend of the three little pigs during the 1970's, including the famous Hurricane Harry in 1973, the legendary Hurricane Delmon in 1976, and the altogether disappointing Hurricane Pip in 1978. Government officials were able to placate the devastated masses by holding fun write-in contests to decide the name of the latest hurricane, which remained popular until some smartass ruined the fun by naming a hurricane Hurricane Hurricane in 1985, and the federal government had to step in and start naming hurricanes after ex-girlfriends in 1986.

So what can we do to cause the scourge of hurricanes to abate before the entire globe is as flat as a wet T-shirt contest in North Dakota? Besides granting every child's wish by outlawing all bathing, our only real hope is to figure some way to take a break from humanity's true passion: finding new and exciting ways to fuck up the planet with the most noxious chemicals possible. Instead of dumping thousands of gallons of DDT into rivers and streams, why not dump wildflowers, honey and mint? Or whatever they put in douches, I'm no expert on their contents. I only bought one that once because I thought it was a cocktail mix.

You look me in the eye and tell me summer's eve doesn't sound like a good name for a cocktail, that's misleading advertising plain and simple. If they didn't want guys to buy douches, they shouldn't put a woman on the box, that's Advertising 101. You put a vagina on the box and accidental guy purchases will hit zero in a hurry, I guarantee you. Unless the wording on the package is vague enough to leave open the possibility there could actually be a vagina in the box, then all bets are off. But now we're detouring far from my original point.

The fact of the matter is, if we don't like the effects that nature's douche has on our country's barbecues, straw homes, tents and brothel-heavy southern cities, we need to stop making them necessary by continually inundating the entire American South with battery acid, asbestos and Agent Orange like we have been for the last 100 years. We need to clean up the South, or better yet, cover it in several feet of fresh, clean saran wrap and never speak of it again. Only then will we be able to shower with a clean conscience, knowing that the big, tidy nothing the hurricanes are blowing over down there isn't going anywhere any time soon.

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