Collect and Swap All 36 Rok Finger Trading Cards

Exciting news on the homefront here, people. If you recall my past musings in this column have been concerned with trying to help our boys overseas in the war effort. Those have all met with failing, as I glumly typed. Not anymore! Rok Finger is back in the morale business.

My good friends at Tapps Trading Cards came to me with a high-concept idea to raise money for the troops, and who else but Rok Finger was on their list? I'm not sure since I haven't seen said list, but I'm happy to help. Of course, the Tapps company is basically just my old neighbor Merle working out of his basement, cutting out cereal box squares and pasting pictures over them. But everyone has to start small, and Merle is starting smaller than ever.

Merle's genius idea was for a series of Rok Finger trading cards. Before you think you know where this is going, no, this is not another card-counting scam to bust the Atlantic City casinos. These are the types of trading cards only reserved for major athletic stars and serial killers. Or in some cases, pornographic actors of considerable achievement. That's right. Rok Finger is available in small cereal box squares for you to take wherever you like. Do whatever you want with them. Just don't tell me about it.

It was quite a photo shoot, just me and Merle and his wife Betty, who makes tea beautifully. Exhausting? Indeed. We went through five disposable cameras, but we got a series of shots that were simply incredible. Marilyn Monroe would have JFK put me on his enemies list, she'd be so jealous, if she were not a dusty skeleton by now.

Now, I don't consider myself a pretty boy, and I seem to side with the popular vote in that. But I am patriotic. And that's what I attempt to do, to bring a little bit of patriotism in these dire times to everybody, one and all. Each shot is a special injection of red, white and blue (though other colors are used amply). Costumes galore! Salutes, flags, the glory of America pasted to the back cereal box cardboard. With inspirational sayings like "Never trust a communist"; "America can survive a nuclear winter"; and "Only sissies talk during torture."

Even better for yours truly, I can paste a tiny resume on the back of each one and use it for auditions. Which is nice since I have yet to hear anything more about that small film I did a while back with that liar Piglet. But my first focus is helping, not personal gain. That's gravy.

Where will you be able to buy these exclusive one-of-a-kind Rok Finger trading cards? That's a little difficult to say, which is I can speak perfectly, but I'm not clear on the answer. Merle will be selling them out of his home at first, but hopes to step up production and get them into stores quickly. The manufacturing process has slowed considerably now that Merle is working nights at the lamination plant. But as part of my contract, which is to say the oral agreement we discussed over cigarettes and scotch, for every pack we sell we'll send one to a wounded trooper over in the war territory, as soon as we get a feasible address to work with.

Watch out, enemies of America! Rok Finger is coming for you all. And you'll be able to hear me easily with the loud popping of bicycle spokes that sound like a motorcycle. That's Rok Finger making that noise now.

I Have Been Certified A Dancing Machine
No one is more surprised than Rok Finger at the results of his latest physical. I will spare you the details I usually render in graphic description, inviting several letters of complaint to my mailbox, and instead inform you of the doctor's... (1/21/02)

Ask Not What Your Country is Doing
Good people, do you know there's a war going on? I trifle not. I just found out about it, much to my astonishment. It's apparently in Albania or Argentina, somewhere in that region, and yes, we are heavily involved. Our fighting boys and their dads... (1/7/02)

Why Not Have Two Christmases?
Ladies and genitalmen, I am filled up to my ears with Christmas cheer! And, to a lesser extent, liquid opium. Each year around this time I am amazed and bewildered when the same ol' jingle bellsy, silent nightish, away-in-a-mangeresque feeling... (12/24/01)

There is No "I" in "Camp Songs"
Kind friends, I'm more than aware of America's fondest for the individual. Actually, strike that, I'm simply aware of it, I doubt it's possible to be more than aware of something, it's the knowledge-based equivalent of being more than dead, you... (12/10/01)