enis knifing suspect Catherine Kieu Becker, a Southern California woman suspected of slicing off her husband’s penis with a knife and throwing it into the… oh God, I’m gonna be sick. Jesus Christ, she really threw it in the garbage disposal? That’s fucking horrible. Anyway, sorry, I’m better now. Catherine Kieu Becker was released from prison this week in hopes that the dismissal of her case will be the last time anyone in America has to hear the phrase "penis knifing" ever again, or the gory details of just how utterly knifed Becker’s husband’s penis truly was.

"We thought this would be best for everyone," Orange County Superior Court Judge Roy Hanson explained, wincing as he crossed his legs in an unconscious cringing reaction to the very concept of having his penis knifed.

The 48 year-old Becker had been charged with torture and aggravated mayhem after she allegedly drugged her 51-year-old husband’s tofu soup dinner, then tied his arms and legs to their bed frame, pulled down his pants and—I’m sorry, but this is what happened—slowly worked her way through his penis with a dull paring knife, pausing several times to saw through particularly tough cock sinews and to dig at uncooperative bits with a rusty spoon. After finally freeing the penis from its host, Becker allegedly carried it into the kitchen, where she tossed it into the garbage disposal and, wait for it, turned the disposal on. Guys, trust me, try not to imagine what that sounded like.

When officers reported to the scene, they found the victim "bleeding profusely" from the groin (sorry, non-ladies, I know it’s a painful image) and in-between spells of retching, managed to fish pieces of the victim’s penis out of the garbage disposal and transport them with the victim in a sandwich bag to the University of California at Irvine Medical Center, where an emergency cocktoplasty was performed. According to unaccredited medical texts, a coctoplasty involves fitting all of the remaining hunks of a penis into a penis-shaped mold, pouring in roofing caulk and honey, and baking for one hour at 375 degrees.

"At first we weren’t sure what was hunks of penis and what was hunks of pot pie that someone had thrown in the garbage disposal earlier that day," explained responding officer Lt. Randy Fletch. "There were some chunks and stringy bits I was sure were pork or tofu or something, but I showed ’em to Dan (fellow officer Daniel Strobridge) and he smelled ’em and was like Nah dude, that’s cock and I was like Yeah, I guess that does kind of look like cock. Anyway, I’m sorry these are horribly disgusting quotes."

Early reports indicated that the penis knifing was inspired by an argument over—God, does it even matter? Is there anything that can ever really justify a penis knifing? the commune news thinks not.

Judge Hanson is on record as having decided to dismiss the case after half of the jury pool passed out during meetings with the prosecution. According to reports, nine of the ten fainting jurors were men, and the other was a big, strapping lass with a deep voice like RuPaul.

"It’s time for America to move on from this penis knifing case," Judge Hanson explained. "And from all future penis knifing cases. I’m serious, we don’t want to hear about ’em. Work that shit out on your own, I don’t want it in my courtroom. If I ever hear the words ’penis knifing’ again, no matter when, it will be too soon for me to hear the words ’penis knifing’ again. Oh God, why can’t I stop saying ’penis knifing’?"

n an unprecedented display of brazen honesty, during a recent press junket for Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots referred to three-time director Michael Bay as "the universe’s most incompetent filmmaker" and co-star Shia LaBeouf as "the world destroyer of beloved 80’s icons".

"My strongest belief above all is that freedom is the right of all sentient beings," the 12-foot commander began, "but Mike should be thrown into a kangaroo court of Quinetessons, found guilty without a shred of proof, and dumped unceremoniously into a pit of Sharkticons."

When asked why he felt so strongly, Optimus’s eyes, normally a cool florescent blue suddenly changed to a sunflower yellow. "Have you seen Pearl Harbor? This is a man who earned his directing chops on Bad Boys. I’m beyond shocked Sean Connery didn’t go into early retirement after The Rock."

When asked to compare Bay with fellow director Uwe Boll, notorious for cinematic turns on little-known video game franchises such as Bloodrayne, Postal and Alone in the Dark, Prime had a bit more respect. "At least Boll was a prizefighter, and he’d kick anyone’s keester who dared criticize his work. Frankly, that’s one tough cookie I’d rather not speak out against. Mike just cowers behind his lawyers about criticism when he’s not clinging to the turned-out pockets of Stephen" (Spielberg, the film’s executive producer).

As for his costar LaBeouf, he seemed thrilled the young star had announced he wouldn’t be back for a fourth installment. "Having to listen to his incessant nasally voice screaming every single line nearly blew out my audio receptors. By the second film I realized he was actually causing some minor damage to occur in my memory banks. Fortunately I have the ability to turn them off and scanned his mouth to lip-read instead when it came to doing a line. This isn’t Othello we’re performing here after all—hell, it’s not even BioDome."

When asked to elaborate on his comments about Shia destroying a generation’s worth of entertainment icons, he had this to say: "Think about it. First it was Indiana Jones. The one you call ’Harrison Ford’ called him a ’fucking idiot’, which I assume is some sort of derogatory label in your language—either that or he’s quite promiscuous, and very bad at it. Then you have our films—enough said there—and then he even got into a sequel of Wall Street. As if anyone could believe he could take on Gordon Gecko! I’ll have to check my files, but was Mike behind that film too?"

Asked if there was anything he would change about the films, he did have a few ideas: "Maybe introducing a Decepticon that transforms into a bus that runs over Shia’s character Sam in the first five minutes. That’d be a start. Getting rid of Megan Fox was about the only thing we did right—she was fun to look at—and how many guys can say they had Fox inside of them?—in the end she was like a set of dub tires—sure, they make your rims look sweet, but they’re goddamn useless for everyday use."

Emil's Note: You won't believe your luck and mine, Rok readers! Did you know that, after the initial Sept. 11 attacks on American soil, nerves-of-steel columnist Rok Finger wrote his thoughts about the event for commune publication? For some reason known only to the Red almighty, it never ran. Maybe too controversial for its "barely coherent handwriting" and with uncommon levels of coffee staining, but it's been a decade, the standards have changed, even drastically lowered, and I'm willing to run what Señor Bagel did not. So here to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of the commune's Oct. 1st return to regular publishing, enjoy this nose nugget from a time gone by…

Good people, there are no words to describe what I am feeling today. Though "fuckdammit" and "cuntballs" are pretty close.

Here it is, Wednesday morning, and I have endured, with the rest of America, watching those glorious towers fall yesterday in New York City. Some bad shit also happened in the nation's capital, but I was getting a sandwich when they covered that. To hit the World Trade Center, all of those casualties, all that property damage done, it's the greatest tragedy of our lifetimes, or it would be, if all those people who were around during Pearl Harbor would hurry up and die off. Myself excluded, of course.

We must not rush to conclusions on this. No matter the anger that we all feel, it's more important than ever to remember the tenets of our judicial system. I trust as soon as the president comes out of hiding he will remind us that it's not enough to assume who did it, to round up every suspect and throw them away in prison for the rest of their lives without giving themselves a chance to prove their innocence at trials. No matter how it might seem, we need to investigate this great tragedy, find those responsible, wherever they are. Even if we already know who did it.

That's right: Mall developers. It was bound to happen, all of that beautiful expensive real estate taken up by those shining silver towers jutting up from the ground like twin robot erections, not a Sbarro or Spencer's Gifts among them. The best designers in the world couldn't make escalators that go up that high, and we knew it the whole time, we knew we were asking for foreign mall developers to come and give us the business. I keep hearing that the casualties might have been worse in the afternoon, after all the teenagers had gotten out of school, but I still wish it had been earlier in the morning, when only the old people were walking the towers.

Nor should we go out into the streets of our own country, like a mob, and take out our frustrations on people just because they're part of the same group. I've known many mall developers in this country, and no matter how scummy they are, some of them are good people. Why, here in Flatbush we have one of the world's most beautiful malls, not built as a beacon of commerce but as a town center, complete with a garden and library. True, the garden is mostly made up of Chinese food and goes by the name Mandarin Garden, and the library charges preposterous prices for every book you check out, but this is the town center of the 21st century. Mall developers have brought us that, good mall developers, not the monsters who knocked down our big buildings.

Some people have been quick to ask that the military involve themselves in this conflict, but I ask, what could the military do? The damage has been done here. The injuries we've suffered as a nation doesn't give us the right to go stomping around the rest of the world, throwing out weight around, exacting vengeance like a pissed-off Mel Gibson—not unless we get Mel Gibson himself to do it. Man, that guy's star will never fade. No, I say the military has no place in this. We must ask our brother nations and sister nation (I'm winking slyly at you, France) to join us in ending mall developer terrorism, forming a coalition of peace to arrest mall developer terrorists and dismantle their organizations. It's the wisest and most constitutional course of action, but I don't have to tell our president about doing the right moral thing. I look to you, Mr. President!

One final thought: Let this horrible scar in our modern history be a reminder, not a wasted opportunity. This closeness we all feel today should not be lost or forgotten. When I first got news of the tragedy, I saw a hot dog vendor hugging a Rocky Horror Picture Show fan—that's right, mortal enemies locked in an embrace, right out in the open. Just this morning I looked out my window and saw a child savaging my lawn with a flaming roll of toilet paper and I didn't have the heart to interrupt his fun. Things are getting back to normal, however slowly, but we will never be the same, and if we are all quick to remember we're more alike than unalike, we can be better from this.

As for the responsible party (cough, cough, mall developers, cough), don't worry. They will be brought to justice, even if it takes us another ten years. But not one single year longer than that, do you hear me? Not one.

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