the commune, 1/15/07: You'll learn to love it or die trying

Flatbush, NJ.

Various

2006, as it would have appeared to a fly on acid

’m serious, what the hell happened last year? Did we mix up our multivitamins and roofies again? Because if anything at all of note happened in 2006, we missed it here at the commune. Best to check the tape.

Ah, right. Who could forget the midterm elections, when even Republican candidates were voting to toss their own corrupt asses out of office? Never before has the term “midterm” meant anything near this good, usually it’s just a sign that the time has come to stop having sex with that pregnant girl at the office.

The Iraq War trundled on, if you can call it a war when we stand by and watch while a country tears itself to shreds like that one Superman where he tried to rip his Clark Kent suit off, but forgot he had already done so and ended up pulling off all his skin like a Halloween costume and got a superinfection. That’s basically what has happened in Iraq; only the country is infected with assholes.

Speaking of assholes, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was hung like a horse, only not in the good sense of the phrase. It turns out Iraq doesn’t hang many people, preferring execution by forcible blowupification, and so Hussein had to be put down in the capital punishment wing of a veterinary hospital. Tack-y, Iraqis.

Paul McCartney’s pirate wife, Heather Mills McCartney, filed for divorce on the grounds of emotional cruelty, on account of McCartney’s habit of singing her Wings songs during their tender moments. McCartney took the news in stride, citing the fact that he’d run out of good “one leg” jokes months ago anyhow. This, moments before he launched into an a cappella rendition of ZZ Top’s “She’s Got Leg,” bringing the room to an uncomfortable silence.

Ariel Sharon had a stroke, and millions of children cried. Until adults explained that this was not the Ariel from The Little Mermaid. And so, millions of children went back to playing with their food.

It was the year of K-FED, some kind of sexually transmitted disease the young people were going nuts about this year. And it says here they finally caught the guy who killed JonBenet… I can’t be reading that right. Anyway, a bunch of Amish kids got shot, if that surprises anyone after all the crap they’ve pulled.

A bunch of yabbos tried to bring down airliners with Gatorade, resulting in a ban on anything wetter than Tony Danza’s back going through airport security and spiking sales of $5 bottles of tap water in airport gift shops.

And how could we have forgotten the Foley sex scandal? Republicans proved yet again that they do everything better than Democrats, including falling flat on their faces in public after quizzing underage boys about their boner etiquette. Thankfully for all involved, Foley quickly entered alcohol rehab, the only known surefire cure for rampant pedophilia.

Oh shit! Cheney shot some dude. Yeah, that was pretty memorable. Anyway, it was a year, end of story. Unless you died or got laid, in which case it was the most important year in the history of mankind. Congratulations.

the commune news knows what you did last summer, thanks to your pathetically outdated MySpace page. Red Bagel is the commune’s fearless editor, and we’re not just blowing smoke up your ass when we say that. Bagel really did have his fear glands removed after a boogieboarding accident as a child, and as a result has never been able to enjoy horror movies. He’s also been bitterly disappointed to find that every “No Fear” support group he tries to join ends up being a bunch of t-shirt collecting dillweeds.

Bush’s MySpace Page Traffic Way Down

Plans for Tallest Ferris Wheel Scrapped; Yao-Ming Too Busy to Turn It

Entwistle Pleads Not Guilty of Murder, Last Several Who Albums

Condi Rice Hates the Way She Smiles in Pictures

Public Abscess

I am back, good people, and I am 100% as good as before. Maybe even less.

It was a ragged and wearisome climb back to right where I was before, but I made it at last. For the greater part of 2006, the commune stopped publishing, as you and the other guy who reads it might have noticed. If you did, commendations to your amazing perception. I myself continued to show up to the office even when they weren’t publishing my columns, and I kept writing them all the way through even when the paychecks stopped coming. In fact, when Red Bagel called to announce he was restarting the commune with the few staff members he had left on payroll, he was kind enough to explain that I had not been receiving any money and none of my columns had been published since early last year. My readers, let me tell you, I was outraged by what had transpired without my noticing.

º Last Column: Reunification
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Well, knowing I had not been making any money for most of 2006 meant I could no longer sit idly by. While most of our bills and the house payment could be suitably covered by my wife’s more than ample income (and breasts) as a real estate agent, it didn’t mean I didn’t need to be top breadwinner in our family. And since all those “Win a Lifetime Supply of Iron Kids’” contests are rigged, I had no choice but to get out there and seek new employment. Last week.

As the ghetto people say, Brother, it’s tough out there! Sure, you can find a low-paying job working at a fast food restaurant, or as a tenement manager, or a bike messenger, or executive administrative assistant, or songwriting bassist, but where, I ask you, are the jobs for political commentators? Where are the positions for the bemused observers who critique the ludicrous foibles of everyday life? Nowhere, I tell you.

And don’t let anyone sell you on these “guest speaker” positions at colleges. None of them have heard of the commune so they demanded many references to my other previous jobs, and those who had heard of the commune told me they were closing down the college forever starting tomorrow. I’m starting to think maybe it was just a way to politely get rid of me. Which was preferable to the dean who said he would eat all of my children if I didn’t get out of his office. Joke’s on him, of course—he’ll be eating for years.

Despite all that early negativity, I did find a job. When all the traditional employer outlets were closed to me, I took a rusty knife and carved out my own place in society’s ribcage. Yes, that’s right—public access television. You may have seen me already if you live in the Flatbush, New Jersey and surrounding areas cable community. “Rok the Finger” “roks” the broadcast airwaves between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, at which point it has to clear the channel for “Kool B’s Get the Fuck Up Show.” Kool B may have the market corner on reggae-jazz fusion, but it’s my show that provides the longest and most in-depth analysis of all things Rok Finger hates, and don’t let anyone tell you different.

At first, my wife was less than impressed that the new “job,” as she says it (she can actually pronounce quotation marks), doesn’t pay anything. But then I explained to her by any civilized culture’s definition, a job is something that takes you out of the house for more than five hours. Like my previous job, guarding my desk at the commune, or my son Ira’s job at Leavenworth Penitentiary.

It’s only a matter of time before I get myself another job, since that 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. slot is bound to open up when they find out Father Mike from the “Touch Therapy With Kids” show isn’t really a priest at all.

º Last Column: Reunification
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Christmas: Don't Try This at Home

It’s recently been brought to my attention that the commune has not been appearing online for the last, say, nine months, give or take a full-term pregnancy. I guess the saying is true: you’re always the last to know when your stuff stops getting published for the better part of a year. Anyway, spilled milk aside, it’s clear wherein the blame for this blunder lies.

Gerbil tubes.

I’ll be the first to admit I was the one who discovered the tubes, poking out of the walls in every room of the commune offices, including the shitter. I was scanning the walls with a studfinder, looking for espionage-style bugs, rather than the usual food-stealing bugs we’ve always had, when suddenly, tubes! Had covert, turtle-fighting plumbers snuck in overnight and installed them? Nope, turns out they’d been there all along. No gold star for the commune staff’s powers of noticing.

º Last Column: The Deep Freeze
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But still, you can imagine our excitement at this discovery. Finally, a way to file our articles and columns without the constant drudgery of saving and emailing. Pneumatic tubes have always been the way of the future, and it was about time the commune got some, or barring that, realized we’d had them since the early 80’s.

And let me just say that filing your semi-weekly columns by pneumatic tube is a joy and a pleasure. You crumple that shit up into a ball and stuff it in the tube, pushing aside last week’s column, and say asta-la-deadline, asshole. Everything in life should be that easy, and involve crumpling.

Everything cruised along smooth as shit until last week, when Emil Zender got out of the hospital following months of recovery following a complicated tonsil-removal surgery and burst into the commune offices, apparently after driving straight from Vermont in his hospital duds to let us know the commune wasn’t online anymore. We all made fun of him for not using the telephone instead, until he pointed out that no one answers the commune telephones and in fact we have them all in a pile on the floor of Rok Finger’s office so we can close the door and not be bothered with all that ringing. True enough. So then we made fun of him for reading the commune.

It turns out the tubes actually run to a pet store down the block, and they were installed in the early 1980’s after an earlier tenant’s stroke of genius about revolutionizing gerbil delivery. So Big Stiff’s Pet Pouch has been the sole benefactor of the last nine months of commune wit, wisdom, and panache. And he was using the shit for guinea pig bedding. C’est la vie, but suffice it to say you’ve missed some all-time classic My Friend Polio columns while you were gone.

Okay, that’s not precisely true. Actually I’ve been mailing it in since around June, writing about shit I found in the trash and why nobody makes a barbecue big enough to cook a dolphin. So in fact you’ve rejoined us just in the nick of time.

Oh shit, I forgot to bitch about how lousy my Christmas was. Hurry up and join us next time, because I’m out of room and gotta piss like a fish. Bricks out.

º Last Column: The Deep Freeze
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Quote of the Day

“Don’t stop eating out tomorrow. Don’t stop, the fries will soon be here. The food’ll be better than before. Breakfast is gone, breakfast is gone.”
—Fleetwood MacDonalds

Fortune 500 Cookie

Don’t give up on your search for unconditional love this week: it’s keeping the rest of us amused. Try finding a breakfast cereal that doesn’t contain quite so much garlic. You will be arrested for taking off your pants this week, and assaulted by the stranger you take them off of. This week’s lucky way- underground dance moves: The Drunken Swordfish, The Statue, Degenerative Disc Failure, The Herpe, Clap Your Thighs Say Ouch, The Go Home Alone, The I’m Getting My Ass Kicked This Ain’t a Dance Move Please For the Love of God Help Me.

Try again later.

Least-Watched Holiday Specials

1.	A Bush Family Christmas
2.	I’m Dreaming of a White Krishna
3.	VH1 Behind the Music: That Guy Who Sang Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer
4.	Christopher Walken in a Winter Wonderland
5.	Gerald Ford Reads “Twas the Night Before…” Oh Shit

US Vows to Regain Most-Hated Nation Status

It’s been far too long since my sarcastic commentaries have ridden the internet nodes. So let’s have no tarrying and move right into a look at the best movies of 2006.

…

Ha! Ultimate sting, villains. Now let’s take a look at some movies widely regarded as having debuted in 2006.