Added McClellan, “I mean… Afghanistan? Iraq? The threats and endless implications of war in Syria and Iran… if anyone is the biggest threat to Islam, it’s us.”

Protests began following the publication of 12 cartoons portraying the prophet Mohammed in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten, an act prohibited in Islamic religion, and the protests have turned into violent rioting in many instances, including setting fire to a Danish embassy. The riots have spread throughout Europe, following the re-publication of the offending cartoons in other countries. As Muslim aggression turns against Denmark and the other European Union countries, the U.S. began to show clear signs of fearing second best.

“You think Denmark’s offensive?” President Bush said at a press conference on Thursday. “We put a Koran on the toilet, if you remember. Not us specifically, and we don’t condone that kind of thing—but that’s American handiwork for you. Let’s try to remember whose financial and military complexes you’ve suicide bombed. Ain’t we the Great Satan, folks?”

Some scholars and media pundits, who make the real money in the field of academia, have suggested the cartoon controversy may be behind the administration’s recent attacks on suspected Al-Qaeda targets, as well as the president’s verbal gaff on Saturday.

“You know what’s stupid? Long beards,” Bush said to a small group of White House visitors on Saturday. He added, “Oops,” in a less-than-convincing way.

Psychologists and political scientists both have tried to explain the effects of the Danish cartoon and the Muslim response, but if any academic field has gained the most from this debacle, it’s the newly burgeoning area of politopsycho science. Happy to answer questions was the field’s premiere and only representative, Professor Norm Chauncey of Newark University.

“Clearly the president, and to a certain extent the country and its administration itself, is dealing with a sudden loss of identity as the political landscape begins to change,” said Professor Chauncey, who was kind enough to buy the lattes. “As these times become more turbulent, and anti-American sentiment grows all around the world, particularly in the Middle East and Islamic cultures, we in the west have found comfort in the most reliable feature of modern life—anti-Americanism. Can you imagine how disoriented we would all be if the French stopped being pretentious overnight? What a confusing, frightening world that would be. It’s the same effect when the United States is no longer the first one to trample all over the nerves of Muslims. The Danes? If they’re going to start being insensitive to cultural differences, we might as well go the rest of the full mile and stop interfering in everyone’s world affairs. Let’s exactly how whacked out we can all be.”

Chauncey lectured further on the subject, but since he wouldn’t throw in a biscotti, the commune doesn’t see much reason to print that as well.

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That said, I had already agreed to volunteer at the schools and couldn’t get out of it by this point. Ginger and I offered our help with Health Awareness Day or some such thing. Ginger, being a real estate broker, gave an inspiring lecture about buying property in economically depressed areas, and then sitting on them until the zoning changed to really clean up. Turns out this has nothing to do with health. I wanted to teach the kids about the value of being under-tall, but was directed instead to assist in checking the kids for health problems.

I was assigned to examine the male children for back problems, specifically, a condition called scoliosis. No, I thought it was a new wave British pop band, too, but apparently it’s some sort of back condition that comes from forcing kids to sit in cheap rigid chairs for hours at a time. I don’t know about you, but looking at boys naked from the waist up too closely all day isn’t the kind of charity I had in mind. It’s nice to know such jobs exist, though, if you’re someone who’s been recently turned away from the priesthood. Still, for me, it was dullsville city. And I didn’t want to ask to be transferred to the girls’ division either. Partly because I’m not a pedophile, but mostly because I would likely strangle the first child I saw with one of those ass crack tattoos that all the young people seem to be ruining their bodies with.

When I did request a transfer, those jokers in the Health Awareness Day Assignment Committee really showed their spots. I was assigned to the Headlice Check—me, Rok Finger! I tried to remind them I’m practically a celebrity (college kids know my name, I promise you that), but there’s no special treatment for anyone at Martin Van Buren Elementary, I guess. Or so they say in the school song, which I believe is sung to the tune of Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumper.” But I bet if Ralph Waite showed up and asked for a job, he wouldn’t be fingering the scalps of greasy little kids looking for bugs.

I tried to speed up the process, streamline it, the same thing I do here at the commune when I hand in somebody else’s old columns to run as my own. But the school didn’t appreciate my new policy, which was to have the kids who think they have lice to wear red hats, while those who didn’t think they had lice wore blue hats. I can tell you this, though, in my short amount of time I learned that kids have no idea whether they have lice or not. Virtually every one of them was wrong. It didn’t help that we only had two blue hats and three red hats, and had to pass them around frequently.

Still, volunteering wasn’t quite as unpleasant as I believed it would be. I did get a free lunch out of the ordeal (pizza square, green beans, tater tots, corn bread, and my choice of milk). And more than that, I got the feeling of being a positive influence in my community. A tax-deductible expenditure of my work hours in my community.

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The closest scientists have come to explaining the need for sleep has been to document what happens when you don’t get any, subjecting some poor underpaid bastards to days of insanity-fertilizing sleeplessness. Rarely, if ever, has there been a more satisfying way to give money to people you strongly dislike.

After the first 24 hours without sleep, the average person retains most normal functionality, only with any asshole personality traits magnified by a factor of four. Normal people become assholes, assholes become giant assholes, and giant assholes are usually shot by research staff to prevent further incident.

After a second day of sleeplessness, motor skill coordination becomes impaired, which makes sleep-deprived Jai Alai one of the most entertaining sports to watch. Thinking becomes slower, and internal mathematical calculations are always off by five. Social skills erode further as well, causing most normal people to act like Gilbert Gottfried. Phone numbers and birthdays are nearly impossible to remember in this state, and anything softer than a dumpster full of broken glass begins to look like an appealing place to lie down for a nap.

Day three is best glossed over. Imagine a mental institution on “Free Cocaine Day,” add a wolverine that’s been soaked in gasoline and set on fire, and dub the whole thing poorly into Cantonese. Smart researchers usually schedule their days off to coincide with Day 3.

On day four, subjects seem to start acting normal again, only until researchers realize they have swapped personalities with each other, and underwear. Subjects in this state have a difficult time speaking in anything less than a full-throated scream, and most express a desire to learn square dancing. A spontaneous understanding of Japanese is often reported.

By the fifth day, complete bladder control is lost, and internal monologues are involuntarily spoken out loud, a hilarious fact that leads many scientists to subject their subjects to five days of sleeplessness even when two or three would have done the job for the research’s sake.

Day six is a nice break for the researchers, since everyone suddenly falls into a coma and dies. Reduced appetite is also reported.

Scientists didn’t understand the importance of sleep until the early 20th century, prior to which people only slept involuntarily, like when you doze off behind the wheel of a carriage and trample sixteen epileptic children while dreaming of pastry. This fact helps to explain the whole of history prior to the year 1900, from the horrors of colonization, to wars, numerous creative forms of public execution, and the widespread belief in Jesus. It also explains how people used to get so much done in a day; however this was something of a small consolation for the millennia of balls-out worldwide insanity.

A few native cultures have always understood the importance of proper sleep, as evidenced by their completely boring histories. Eskimos, Jamaicans and Canadians have long been distinguished by their lack of berserk rampages of bloodletting, a fact not coincidentally tied to their shared cultural heritage of long, restful nights of sleep.

What we do understand about sleep, however, does explain another popular question every third smartass who rides the elevator with Griswald Dreck feels the need to ask. This pertains to the oft-repeated but seldom understood notion that human beings only use 10% of our brains. What most people don’t understand is that this figure is an average. If you subtracted the small number of cogent individuals using large portions of their brains from the mix, the truth would be revealed that most people actually only use about 2% of their brains, which becomes even more frightening when you realize that it takes 1% of your brain to remember to breathe. The average person splits up the other lonely percentage point between the sections of the brain responsible for channel surfing, being hungry, and thinking Jeff Foxworthy is funny.

Incidentally, cows use up to 4% of their brains, and university research has shown cows can chew bubblegum and roller-skate at the same time. Food for thought.

So why do we use so little of our non-cow brains? Because they’re there? Funny answer. But in truth, the reason is that the rest of the brain’s vast potential is reserved for sexual fantasies and plotting out the upcoming night’s dreams, a very complex affair since it is exceedingly difficult to weave talking penguins, long-dead historical figures, and inappropriately sexualized elderly relatives into the same dream scene. This takes up most of the brain’s energy and is the reason everyone gets tired in the afternoon, that and eating four pounds of bacon for lunch.

So sleep shall remain a mystery, unless some berserk sleepless madman conquers the world tomorrow and decrees that we’re all living in a dream world we return from only during our sleeping hours. Then? Not so much a mystery, by decree of the king. As Roger Daltrey observed on The Who’s final album, “Who Cares?” in 1984:



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