t was another surprise ending for The Bachelor, though this one was a little more Crying Game and a little less America’s Sweethearts. The question had been hanging in the air like a flatulent eagle all week: Would bachelor Andrew Firestone choose spunky Kirsten, whose ass he’d been blatantly checking out since the beginning of the season and who jealous former contestants gossiped was carrying his baby? Or would it be Jen, the slightly less stunning drama queen favored by the show’s viewers and the 23 catty former contestants who lay slain on the battlefield of bogusly contrived romance? Oh shit, dog.

When the answer finally came, it was with the bang of 25 pancake-makeupped jaws hitting the floor in unison. In an unprecedented and possibly illegal move, Firestone passed up both Kirsten and Jen to give his final rose, and we guess a marriage proposal, to former Bachelor star Aaron Buerge.

Asked on-camera what he was thinking when he made such an unorthodox choice, Andrew smiled to the audience and beamed proudly.

“Are you kidding, all those bitches is crazy!�

At that point viewers at home went berserk, throwing chairs and Kleenex boxes around like disappointed apes. In the background, Jen and Kristen held each other’s hair back as they vomited in tandem into a bucket of champagne.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not gay. I just couldn’t handle hanging out with those crazy bitches any longer,� Firestone confided. “If I hear one more girl talk about what font she’d use on wedding invitations, I swear to God I’m going to go all American Psycho on everybody. Shit! Anyway, I met Aaron backstage one night when he was cruising for some rejected bachelorette skank, and we really hit it off. We talked about handguns and the Red Sox, and not once did he bring up floral arrangements. It was the best time I’ve had in months.

“That’s when I realized marrying any girl desperate enough to let a gameshow determine her mate for life would be a huge boner. Woo, dodged a bullet with that one!� Firestone exclaimed, exchanging a high-five with Buerge. “Talk about ‘Until me wrapping my lips around a shotgun barrel does us part’! Damn!�

Buerge, star of The Bachelor season two, ended up not getting married to that season’s winner Helene Eksterowicz, invalidating the gift certificate to Crate & Barrel that was provided courtesy of the show.

“Yeah, things with me and Helene didn’t work out. After the excitement of the show had worn off, I realized all the bright lights and pressure made her seem better than she was. Kind of like on the old Wheel of Fortune when the winner would have all that money to spend, and they’d get the bedroom set with the porcelain Dalmatians. It seems like a good idea at the time. But when you get home, what in the hell are you going to do with a set of life-sized porcelain Dalmatians?�

Irate viewers expecting to see one woman’s heart crushed on national television, not two, flooded ABC’s switchboards with complaints, but Firestone insists it was all for the best.

“Are you kidding me? Aaron saved my life back there. I felt like I was headed down a dark tunnel with no way to turn around. Then Aaron pulled up in a sweet convertible, or whatever the analogy is, and saved my ass. I could kiss that dude. Not literally though, just ‘cuz he wears my ring doesn’t mean nothing but we’re buds. I go strictly for the easy poontang, as the last six weeks should have made clear.�

he United States Presidential Warning System (or “Terra Box� as it is fondly known around the White House, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the president’s speech impediment) reached its highest level Tuesday, signifying a major presidential gaffe or screwjob is impending. This news immediately scrambled foreign government officials, environmental groups and talk-show writers nationwide, who entered their own highest states of readiness and/or dread.

The little-known Presidential Warning System has been in place since the 1960’s, but it quickly fell out of favor during the Nixon presidency. Aides kept finding the siren-like device hidden in desk drawers or crammed beneath sound-deadening mattresses in the Lincoln bedroom over the course of Nixon’s term, and records indicate it was later disconnected under questionable circumstances involving a bottle of tequila and a fire axe. Efforts were made to bring the system back on-line during former president Ronald Regan’s first term, but upon being turned on the device immediately let out an eardrum-shattering blurt before quickly overheating. It then caught fire and had to be put out with a shoe.

The nation operated without a Presidential Warning System during the Bush Sr. and Clinton administrations, as the device reminded George Bush Sr. too much of his childhood nemesis, the board game Operation, and President Clinton found it seriously hampered his social life.

The current siren-less incarnation of the device, consisting of a black box covered in lighted rectangles that are color-coordinated to the various levels of presidential “terra,� was brought online at the start of the latest Bush presidency. The new system was even praised by the president himself early in his term, when he said of the device: “I made it to the fourth level last night. Take that, Simon.�

Tuesday the system registered an alert status of red, which according to the device’s manual translates to “Holy Shit� written next to a picture of a little stick man with a gun in his mouth. However, officials cannot say for certain how many times Bush has “bagged a red� since being elected, since Tuesday was also the day a White House staffer discovered the device holding up a candle in the presidential bathroom and no one was certain how long it had been missing.

“While this may seem like an opportune time to panic, it is important to point out that the red bulb on the device appears to be nearly burnt out,� explained system designer Elwood Bond. “This is a good sign that we’ve been on red alert for most of the last two years, so this is more a ‘business-as-usual’ kind of doom than anything.�

Asked if the system might be calibrated too sensitively, given that highest level of impending doom was continuously lit, Bond answered that the system really wasn’t designed with a Bush-caliber president in mind.

“I set up the system so it would go red only in dire circumstances, like when Bush Sr. approved the CDC sending samples of anthrax, botulism and West Nile to Iraq in the early 90’s, or when we gave them the helicopters they used to gas the Kurds in 1988. Or really any time after the Shah fell in Iran and we were providing Saddam and the Iraqis with arms, intelligence and free money to help them invade Iran. All those are red-level events. Maybe orange. But Bush Jr. goes red just taking a piss.�

But is there any way to tweak the system so that Bush isn’t consistently in the red?

“I dunno,� replied Bond, scratching his head. “It does have an ‘off’ switch.�

You say I ruined your life, whatever.

Who gets machine-gunned to death these days, anyway? I mean, seriously. The chances have got to be astronomical. You practically have to be begging to be machine-gunned to death. My cousin was on the waiting list to get machine-gunned to death for three years when he was hit by a train. I'm serious! The way I see it, you should be writing me a thank-you note. I'd call you an inconsiderate prick if I wasn't certain you'd take it the wrong way.

Ruined your life, ha. That's rich. I'll have to remember that to tell my ex-wife, she'll get a real kick out of that one. She loves jokes like that, about me ruining her life or sucking out her will to live, all those old chestnuts. She has this great new one about me chewing up the best years of her life and spitting them out like tobacco juice, it goes over really well at parties.

Because really, how do you ruin somebody's life? Seriously. I can't even fathom it. A priceless Faberge egg, now that's something you can ruin. You can't play catch with one of those things without ruining it completely, trust me on that one. Friendships? Yeah, I suppose you can ruin a friendship. Especially if it's with a stuffy Faberge egg collector who doesn't keep his house locked securely at night. Those are both ruinable, I'll admit. But an entire life? Keep dreaming.

So what, so you have to get all your sustenance by licking pulp off the filter screen from a juicer now. Who doesn't? I'm serious, my grandpa lived off juicer pulp for years, and I didn't hear him complaining. Sure, after the kangaroo ripped out his voice box he had to talk by tapping out Morse code on a pair of spoons, but if he'd really wanted to complain I'm sure he'd have found the time. If he'd wanted to, grandpa could have sat around all day, bitching about how I took him to Australia and told him all the kangaroos were so tame you could get them to eat chewed-up peaches right out of your mouth. But did he? No way! Not after I took away his spoons. Who can sleep with that rat-a-tat-tat going on all night? Jesus. He acted like any of us actually bothered to learn Morse code.

You kind of remind me of my grandpa, actually. That fuckin' guy would believe anything. Well, I'm not sure he'd believe a tall tale like "Go on, stick your hand in there. It's not like they'd keep a loaded machine gun laying around!" but he wasn't an idiot. He was just old and feeble of mind. He didn't run around, sticking his fingers inside the gears of a loaded machine gun on a fool's dare, just because the fool had talked him into sneaking onto a military base in the middle of the night. But then again, grandpa always did hold his liquor better than some people who I won't mention by name.

(You.)

So come on, let's drop this tired old argument. Any reasonable person knows you can't really ruin a life unless it's two thirds of the way there already. Yeah, then maybe you can give it a nudge down the crapper, but hey, that's life. The important thing to acknowledge is that we're both a little to blame. Sure, I may have pulled the trigger, but whose idea was it to ignore me when I was yelling "Dodge! Dodge!" like a good friend? Sure wasn't mine. Granted, you might not have thought it was funny when I was shooting the machine gun down at your feet and yelling "Dance, motherfucker!" but I sure did, so that's really your word against mine when you think about it. And hell, if your fingers hadn't been caught in the gears I don't think most of those bullets would have even hit you, if you insist on calling a spade a spade.

I swear, when those doctors brought you back to life sometimes I think you left your sense of humor on the other side. Let me know if they ever sift it out of that sack of unidentified gristle that was left over after the operation. Otherwise, I don't even know why we're talking.

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