ednesday's attacks in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, in which four former US soldiers were killed in a terrorist ambush before their bodies were dismembered, dragged behind cars and hung from a bridge by an angry mob, created a conundrum for television networks faced with the tough moral question of how to best profit from these shocking images.

"If we show them, we make a shitload of money," explained ABC News spokesperson Al Reuben. "If we don't show them, maybe we can claim the moral high ground and make a shitload of money down the line. It's a tough call."

Least troubled by the moral quandary was Fox News, whose plans to strap a helmet-cam to one of the dead bodies were scrapped when the angry mob grew impatient waiting for technicians to get a reading on the gray levels.

"Americans have a right to see this footage," opined Fox News Executive Producer Leonard Williams. "And we have the right to boost our ratings through the fuckin' roof by being the first to show the really awful parts that make you want to throw up. If anybody out there was blindly discharging a firearm into their Arab neighbor's house yesterday, you know they were watching hard-hitting Fox News."

Other networks took the debate more seriously, holding off on showing the footage through the morning, and then gradually releasing more and more of the horrible images throughout the day as it became apparent that Internet sites were kicking their ratings in the balls by showing the Fallujah footage uncut. By Wednesday evening the gloves were off and charred bodies were seen dangling from the Euphrates River bridge on most major networks.

"We really didn't want to show the footage of those kids beating the guy's flaming corpse with their shoes," explained CBS Evening News spokesperson Clint Adams. "But then we realized, 'Jesus Christ, we're losing money here!' I feel truly bad for the families of these men, and any children who may have been forever scarred by these images, but come on. You know how much money we made off that Somalia footage? Shit."

While the long-term impact of these images is yet to be seen, experts speculate that the American people being reminded that "Oh yeah, war is really ugly and horrible and stuff" can only harm the president's chances for reelection in November, not to mention driving the final nail into the coffin of Iraqi tourism.

"We owe it to future history to inform the American people of what's really going on over there," offered Marcus Graves of ABC News. "Maybe because of this footage being in the collective memory, next time we'll think twice about going to war again."

When asked by the commune news if he was shitting us, Graves admitted that yeah, he kind of was, but it sounds a lot better than saying you make your living selling people grisly video death. No argument here.

Lost Leaves Plotlines Half-Solved in Honor of Shooting Victims

MySpace to Offer Breaking News on What Ira Mankovics is Doing Right Now

Alec Baldwin Records Devastating Voice Mail Message for Shooter

Sony’s Poorly Timed “PS3 Price Massacre” Backfires

I'm not that big a fan of talking. I don't know what the big deal is. It seems like it's basically impossible to find a girl to date who isn't constantly nagging you about that. "What do you want to eat? What are you thinking about? Why did you put my dog in that Ziplock bag?" I swear, if I wanted to be interviewed I'd show up at the airport with lit fuses sticking out of my shoes. I'm just trying to live my life here, not run around in some kind of non-stop monologue nightmare.

It's not just girls, either, there's all kinds of social situations where people just won't let you shut up. You go into a restaurant, and right away, somebody's asking you what you want. And even if you point politely at the menu they still won't leave you alone, they've got to ask for some kind of verbal confirmation. What are you, retarded? I pointed at the duck nuggets, didn't I? You think I'm the kind of person who silently points at food he doesn't want? Think again.

That's why I started eating at fast food places exclusively. It's way easier to gesture your way through a meal there since they've usually got the menu in big pictures over the cash registers. But some of those geniuses have a hard time following an imaginary line from your fingertip to the menu, everything's all "Oh, you want Big Mac?" Even at the Chinese place, weird as shit. And you wouldn't believe the trouble you can get into if you decide to make it easy for them and just reach over to press the cash register buttons yourself. It's like they think you need a degree in nuclear physics to run the thing. I've seen them press the "Slow Loris" button enough times, I know where it is. If you want to have a one-sided argument with me about it, I guess that's just your prerogative.

Nobody's worse about the "no talking" thing that people who call on the phone. Jesus. I don't know where these people come from. If you're going to contact me over a non-visual medium, at least have the courtesy to learn your Morse code, people. I'm willing to meet you half-way in the auditory department, and you're just shitting all over my diplomacy with your "Hello? HELLO?? Is there anybody there? I don't know, it's just this weird tapping noise. I think my phone's fucked up."

As you can imagine, I flunked speech class in college. I thought I could Pictionary my way through it, but my professor was a hard-ass about the talking part. And the rest of the class were horrible guessers anyway. A cow? If you people can't tell the difference between a horse and a cow, remind me never to accept a barbecue invitation over at any of your houses, all right? That was a hard year, both semesters. Eventually I got the requirement waived after arguing (in pictures) that speech class was an illogical requirement for a culinary arts degree.

Of course, that was before I discovered the cruel reality of the world, that nobody wants to hire a chef who doesn't talk. Talk about your discrimination, you're lucky if you can even get past the first interview.

I don't even want to get into the time I was asked to speak at my dad's funeral. There are still a lot of family members who haven't forgiven me for that Mexican standoff or the way the funeral home closed with all of us still in there. I've had half a mind to tell them all off, but they're even worse at Pictionary than my college class was.

But I've said too much already.

º Last Column: A Martini for My Dead Homies
º more columns

You see, there were these teeny tiny people who lived in a doll Tamara bought at the mall and though they were quite peaceful and kind, when they came out to introduce themselves she thought they were fleas and sprayed the whole lot of them with an industrial de-lousing agent that really was chemically harsh and probably not something pregnant women should get within 50 yards of.

The people, who were called Unids, by the way, didn't die from the spray but rather developed a thick tolerance for the stuff, like French people with sarcasm. As the old saying goes, that which doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, but the part they left out is that it also gets you high as shit. When the Unids finally came down after a fantastic three days of psychedelic reverie and a full-body buzz, they no longer cared about uptight square concerns like whether the inside of the doll was a mess or if they had a contingency plan in place in case the vacuum cleaner came around again. They cared about one thing and one thing only: gettin' some more of that happy juice.

For a while, this was easy, since all they had to do was pop out of the doll when Tamara was around and wave their arms around. Before you could say "Louse in my house!" they were swimming in the good stuff like bennies from heaven. It was wild, I'm talking high on the hog like the '86 Mets. They'd call it the "Salad Days" if salad came with crack as a dressing option.

But the problem was, before too long, Tamara figured out that the Unids weren't fleas at all. Nor mites, nor any kind of vermin she'd ever seen before. After a few weeks the shock wore off and she started looking at the Unids a little closer, and that's when she realized that they were kind of cute. Sort of like tiny little wooden dolls with stylized, painted-on faces. Pretty happy-looking really. And once she'd figured that out, well, then there surely wasn't any reason to de-louse the poor little buggers, was there?

Big, big problem for the Unids. Their connection had dried up like an Arizona housewife hitting menopause. Their future wasn't so bright as to require the wearing of shades, but they wore them anyway, to hide their bloodshot, bugged-out eyes. The Unids were going cold turkey like a third grade class on a picnic field trip to the North Pole, and they liked it about as much as they liked Sarah McLaughlan. Which is to say, not at all.

Finally one day one of the Unids, who shall remain nameless since none of them ever had any names, so why should we start now? They didn't have telephones or fax machines or anything, so they hardly had use for names, "Hey you!" always did them fine and they hated the stuck-up little prick types of little tiny people like the Omits who insisted on everyone calling them by their absurdly long snooty full names, like Alexandarium Mananavicholious Tooterflute.

Anyway, one day one of the Unids figured out that the only way they were going to score again in this lifetime would be if they all put their heads together and came up with some really freakin' scary costumes. If they could manage to scare Tamara bad enough, she just might send some of that sweet, sweet de-lousing spray their way in a panic, and then my friends, the train would be made of gravy. That's what he said anyway, I'm not sure what the train thing supposed to mean, some kind of cultural slang thing that doesn't translate well probably.

So anyway, this is how the Unids honed their now-legendary costuming skills. First, they were dressed as fleas. Then, when Tamara got wise to that, it was skin mites. Then ticks, then moose fleas. I don't think there really is any such thing as "moose fleas," but Tamara didn't know that so I have to give them some points for creativity there. Before long, word got out that the Unids made some pretty wicked costumes, and they soon went into business for themselves and did well enough that they could buy their own delousing spray and they nodded off happily ever after.

A pretty heartwarming story, true. But if you ever get any of those little junkie pricks living in your beanbag chair, you might as well just throw the thing away, because it's just going to stink after that.

º Last Column: Shinto the Pinto
º more columns