The secret to success," says entrepreneur Ray Brent Marsh, a prominent figure in this small town in Georgia, "is finding a need and filling it. And that's exactly what I've done."

Marsh is up for Georgia State Businessman of the Year, thanks to his aggressive campaign to corner the market on purveyors of the undead and newly-dead. With an inventory that numbers in the hundreds of bodies—"Hell, I've lost track of how many there are out there myself!" he laughs—Marsh is miles ahead of his nearest competitors.

"Most of the suppliers in the past have been small-time operators, people like John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Andrea Yates... I've just taken what they've done and turned it into a large-scale distribution network."

Marsh paused to take a deep drag from the large Montecristo he was smoking, then spent a few moments staring at the considerable ash and reflecting on his new-found success. "You'd be surprised how much demand there actually is for my product," he went on to say. "Down in New Orleans, you've got your Marie Laveaux voodoo wannabes, they're always looking for fresh meat, so to speak. And down in Haiti, you've got your Tonton Macoutes. Hell, they can't get enough of my product. I can't ship them out fast enough for that bunch. And then further down, in the smaller islands, there's always a demand for what I've got to sell. Always will be."

"The thing you've got to realize is that it's cost effective for these folks. I mean, all you've got to do is feed these bodies a little of the zombie cucumber, cut the head off a live chicken, do a little chanting and dancing around a fire, and boom, you've got yourself an obedient member of the undead, ready to do your bidding. No worries about coffee breaks or overtime, either. Yes sir, the market starts in the bayou country in New Orleans, and is active all the way down the Caribbean to Venezuela."

Asked about possible plans to expand, Marsh warmed to the subject.

"Oh, hell yeah!" he crowed. "I've been in negotiations with Kathie Lee Gifford for a few weeks now. She's looking for a new, more servile work force. Martha Stewart, too. And because these folks don't care where they're located, we're getting feelers from a lot of major corporations that want to move their operations offshore. They need cheap labor, and we've got the cheapest around."

Marsh then lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and delivered his biggest news yet.

"Don't let this get around, but I've also heard from George Romero in the last couple days. Seems he wants to film yet another remake of Night of the Living Dead. He says this time, he wants the living dead to all be low-level employees of a big, high-profile energy company based in Houston."

"I'm gonna be in show business!" Marsh cackled. He then concluded the interview by stubbing out the Cuban cigar he had been smoking, putting a lid on the ashtray and offering it to this reporter as a "decorative urn."

n a move destined to boil the blood of the fourteen Americans who still associate the Oscars with outstanding achievement in film, the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences announced Tuesday that it has added a supplemental Best Actor nomination to the field for this year's awards.

The additional nomination was given to Australian actor Russell Crowe for his performance in a 30-second Ben Gay commercial from 1991, which featured Crowe touting the virtues of the medicated ointment from a locker room after a taxing squash workout.

Reaction has been swift and fast from film critics and movie buffs alike, who suggest that the Academy's butt-kissing of Crowe has reached an unprecedented level now that they have run out of film performances for which to nominate the actor.

Some feel that the academy jumped the gun when it nominated Crowe for the low-budget Aussie children's fantasy Roadblock and Wanker last year, arguing that they should have saved the film, which features the voice talents of a 16 year-old Crowe, in case he went a year without making a feature film in the future. Others point out that Crowe was already nominated in the same category this year for A Beautiful Mind, and that the commercial in question came out in 1991, technically making it ineligible for this year's awards. And even if it were, it wouldn't be since it was a commercial and the Oscars tend to be reserved for feature films. Many others feel that this level of praise is unreasonable for an actor who's basically Clint Eastwood with an accent.

The Academy had already come under fire in recent months for its controversial creation of the Kevin Spacey Perpetual Award, which honors American actor Kevin Spacey on a yearly basis. But even the harshest critics of that move suggest that it made a lot more sense than the Academy's constant sucking up to Crowe, who many feel represents a "cool, slightly-dangerous older brother" figure to Academy voters.

"Of course it's a controversial nomination," stated Academy spokesperson Emeril Juanna. "Everyone knows that, and don't think for a second that there aren't members of the Academy who think Russell's work in that 'Fast Actin Tinactin' ad he did in 1990 was the superior performance. But we made our choice and we could only choose one Russell Crowe commercial. This year, anyway."

Nominees for Best Actor are decided by the acting arm of the Academy, which consists of several-hundred industry people who have claimed to be actors at parties or when filling out product registration cards. Academy member and unemployed soap opera actor Kenny Middle attempts to explain the reasoning behind the Academy's unprecedented move:

"Well, I think you know how the ladies on the committee voted, so there's no need to go into that. And as for us guys, I don't know, you know? I think maybe there's a little part of each of us that thinks it would be pretty cool if one day we got to hang out with Russell, and his band 30 Odd Foot of Grunts. Maybe sit in on bass or something, you know? Maybe bum a cigarette and just hang loose. That's a factor that can't be denied. And really, at the heart of it all, wouldn't it just be awesome as hell to be Russell Crowe for a while? To have the famous chicks all over you like bimbos on a Kennedy? Getting fat paychecks and awards left and right just for mumbling your way through movies? And how about that roguish charm? Plus you'd get to cash in on the whole 'foreign guy' angle, which is huge with the ladies, without having to ever live in a mud hut or eat English food or anything like that. Instead, you run your own sheep farm or some bullshit like that and come off sounding like a real badass. And you look white as anybody else, so no problems there; you just get a cool accent and the credentials to back it up. Talk about sweet. So anyway, when you take all of that into consideration I don't think it's at all surprising that Russell got nominated again. We're all big fans."

Imagine my dismay when I was driving in the great state of Arkansas earlier this year, the window down and enjoying the smell of oppression, listening to Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" on the radio, when the local newsboy interrupts to tell me the news that the space shuttle Columbia had blown up on its way to landing. I could not have been more infuriated—everyone knows "Heart of Gold" is the best Neil Young song ever. The astronauts would not have been any more expired had they waited another few minutes to give me the news.

Not that I take the death of astronauts lightly. They are the pilgrims of space, without dressing in the stylish black as much. It was a shame, but I have been writing angry, rambling letters to NASA for years advocating the use of weaponry on shuttles, and it was sad that someone had to get killed before they'd realize the wisdom in the suggestions.

Yes, hopefully when they file the official report on the Columbia shuttle disaster, of course blacking out the good parts with ample use of a Sharpie, the one good piece to come out of all this will be the recommendation of equipping future space shuttles with high-tech cannons and other defensive machinations. The fact Columbia was wiped out so efficiently only proves we are getting closer than ever to the alien lifeforms we've been seeking all this time.

I'm the first person here on terrestrial earth to sing the praises of peace, of trying to work out all our problems through non-violent means; but these green-blooded bastards have never heard of Gandhi, and non-violence means about as much to them as blassalbe grizzlesnorp means to us. Which is alien for "Whatcha cookin'?" if you must know. Yes, I say if the aliens want some, we bring it. Bring it hard.

Laser weapons are effective, true, but mighty costly and really only more visually fun to look at, not any strategic value. It is plain to the most uninformed observer, as I have observed, that laser weapons as used by the unidentified aliens, were used to some effect while Columbia was in space to wound the shuttle so mortally it wouldn't survive the return trip. But if these fancy pants think our weapons don't have enough pop to show them a thing or two, let's show them how it's done down here.

Traditional repeating firearms are more than enough for these pricks. Ample streams of gunfire will make our point quite nicely, and the fact you don't see a neon stream of green hurtling toward you gives you, as an alien, less chance to move out of the way. The real cool thing about space, should we engage in orbital dogfights, which I'm excited enough about prospecting to wet myself, is that with no friction in space and very little in the way of safe cover, these bullets will go on until they hit something, somewhere. Aliens can't outrun them! And even if they did, the things would keep coming, slow and steady, like the tortoise following the hare. Only this tortoise turns alien flesh into sloppy joe meat.

It goes without saying, until I say it, our first intentions should be to get on friendly terms with these aliens. No doubt they can help us with their endless advanced technology in areas of space travel and medicine and convincing an entire species to wear the same outfits. And we can help them become more profit-oriented and learn to argue amongst themselves.

But, just to make it clear, don't let them think we're pushovers. A size 10 shoe leaves a mighty big footprint on gray alien ass.

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