n the two-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, many Americans marvel that in spite of the unanimously dire predictions of future attacks from the nation’s experts, the group thought to be responsible, Al-Qaeda, has been so quiet since. Too quiet.

“Weren’t we supposed to be writhing in the streets like the imperialist dogs we are by now?� questioned Doug Breiner of Minneapolis. “I thought for sure they would have nuked a bridge or drove an Amtrak train into the Sears Tower or something by now. What gives?�

“Don’t get me wrong, I mean, I’m glad nobody’s died or anything,� explained Breiner. “I’m not a sicko. But I’m kinda pissed we’ve been all worried for so long with no kind of payoff. It’s like hiding in your basement from a tornado all night and then finding out the guy on the news was talking about a Oldsmobile Toronado or something. Just kind of a pisser, sort of.�

The same sentiment has been echoed all across the country, as Americans come to grips with their lives not coming to a flaming, catastrophic end at any time during the last two years.

“Yeah, what the hell have those guys been up to?� asked an indignant Maury Jackson of Inkster, Michigan. “I guess maybe we overestimated them, I didn’t think they were the kind of terrorist organization that would just rest on their laurels after making a big splash. But I guess fame changes people. You know, that inner fire kinda fades out or whatever. It’s too bad, really. Hey, is it true Quentin Tarantino’s got a new movie coming out?�

Countless Americans remember with an air of awed nostalgia the many colorful ways security experts and politicians told them they would die only two short years ago. From jet-fuel infernos to anthrax-laced crop dusters, poisoned water reservoirs, truck bombs at day-care centers, botulism-infected milk hosed on toddlers, kamikaze suicide bombers at the GAP and nuclear power plants infiltrated by really smart Al-Qaeda moles, American security experts took an almost perverse glee in detailing the many varieties of heart-exploding terror that would inevitably follow in the wake of 9/11.

“I guess they’re probably pretty distracted now that we blew up their country and stuff,� mused NYU junior Patsy Washington about Al-Qaeda. “Which is good I guess. But it would’ve been kinda cool to see what crazy shit they dreamt up next, you know? Somebody told me they were gonna hide razor blades in all our toilet paper, that would’ve been nuts.�

“I guess it was inevitable that after a while all those constant terror alerts that never put out would lose their impact,� said retiree Sharon Henline, stroking her Yorkshire terrier. “Tell you the truth, at this point I’m more worried about that black guy who hangs out by the pay phone down on the corner. He looks kinda shady.�

That black guy who hangs out by the pay phone down on the corner, Tyrell Hughes, expressed similar sentiments. “Al-Qaeda? Nah man, fuck Al-Qaeda. How’ve I got time to worry about that when I’ve got some crazy bitch siccing her little dog on me every morning when I’m waiting for my ride to work? Damn.�

hipping clerk Charles McKinley mailed himself from New York to Dallas in a shipping crate last week, as was reported by every major news outlet on Tuesday in the face of an apparent total lack of actual news.

Authorities believe McKinley had help from at least one co-worker at the New York warehouse where he is employed, since it is extremely difficult to nail yourself into a shipping crate from the inside. The homesick McKinley, too broke to afford an airline ticket, came up with the idea after a friend complimented him on his ability to avoid buying a car by stowing away in other drivers’ trunks in order to get around town. McKinley also remembered a similar idea working in a humorous MC 900 Ft. Jesus video he’d seen years before.

McKinley took neither food nor water along with him for the 15-hour journey, only a broken cell-phone and a Game Boy Advance for which he soon lamented not buying a backlight.

“I brought my cell phone, even though that piece of shit’s been broken for two weeks, just in case we got up in space and all of a sudden I had service again,� explained McKinley. “That’dve been sweet, because I could call up Charles and be like ‘Yo whatup dog, I’m calling you from a box in space and shit!’ There’s no way Charles would believe that, man, he’d think I was drunk or something. But he’dve been wrong. I wish I was drunk, that probably would’ve made the fifteen hours in the dark with knees all crammed up in my face go faster now that I think about it. But yeah, I brought my cell phone because I think it’s the battery that’s all jacked from the time I dropped it in that toilet at the bar, and I figure it might not have enough juice to pull down the phone calls from the satellites all the way to the ground, you know? But maybe it’ll work on the plane ‘cuz we’re closer to the satellites and all that. But no dice, piece of shit was still busted.�

Embarrassed federal officials are still trying to determine how McKinley made it through airport security, which presumably has some kind of dogs or something that check to make sure crates being shipped don’t smell like sweaty morons. Officials refused to speculate what security measures might be in place to prevent this kind of occurrence, though they neither confirmed nor denied that a funny way to test would be to drop all packages from a height of several feet to see if any of them screamed.

Upon arriving at his parents’ suburban Dallas home, McKinley busted out of the crate with a crowbar, scaring the holy shit out of a deliveryman who thought he was dropping off a huge shipment of Triscuits.

“I thought it was funny that the thing smelled like a big box of snack crackers and B.O., but I still didn’t expect some weirdo to bust out like a jackass-in the-box,� explained deliveryman Billy Ray Thomas. “And yeah, the rumors are true, I may have screamed kind of like a girl when he popped out. And then I called the cops on my cell phone because, hey man, fuck you!�

When the police arrived they arrested McKinley on an unrelated charge of passing bad checks and sneaking onto a train in a large duffel bag. Federal officials are also considering charges of “stowing away on a plane,� the violation of a law created in the 1940’s to give police characters more to do in Warner Bros. cartoons.

Asked how much he saved by traveling in the cargo hold, McKinley made it clear that his employer had unwittingly footed the bill for his low-budget odyssey. “Oh shit man, I couldn’t afford to mail a box that heavy. You have any idea what that must cost? Damn. I just traveled cross-country in a crate, Jack, do I look like I’m made of money?�

Hello readers, we're going to take a little break from the Fad Wagon this week while I write more of that book to excerpt and you learn a thing or two about daylight-saving time. Sound fun? Tough.

Many common misconceptions survive regarding daylight-saving time, including the belief that we do it for a reason. Nothing could be further from the truth. And don't call it "Daylight-Savings Time," that just proves you're a part of the International Communist Conspiracy.

The idea was originally suggested by Benjamin Franklin, compulsive liar and great American. Franklin was always late to everything, and frequently explained away his lack of punctuality by bragging that he lived in a special personal time zone that everybody else was too stupid to understand. When questioned, he'd rattle off a bunch of bullshit figures about how he saved energy by living his life an hour later than everybody else, allowing him to sleep in, stay up later and avoid traffic by traveling while everybody else had already arrived at wherever they were going. Only his girlfriend believed this, and everyone else came to refer to any ridiculously late events as occurring in "Franklin Time." Whenever anybody needed him there for a meeting they'd tell him it started two hours before it actually did, and then laugh when they got there and he'd been sitting and waiting for an hour.

Franklin's various shenanigans and rocky relationship with the truth earned him the nickname "B.S. Franklin," which he told naïve girls was short for "Balls Franklin." He came to fame after publishing an almanac of bullshit weather predictions and claiming to have "discovered" electricity after being blown off his toilet by a bolt of lightning. For years neighbors had warned that the gigantic kite Franklin had attached to his house, in hopes of sailing to a better neighborhood, would get him blown off the toilet in the middle of the night by a gigantic bolt of lighting, but he'd done little to heed their warnings. A smug Franklin discovered fire later that week when his neighbors burnt his house to the ground, taking offense at the "Father of Electricity" banner he'd begun carrying around town.

In 1776 Franklin was late for a meeting of the Second Continental Congress, and just missed the vote to kick Benjamin Franklin out of the Second Continental Congress. Upset that he missed his opportunity to cast the lone dissenting vote, Franklin demanded that the colony of Pennsylvania adopt "Daylight-Saving Time," a new system of his extremely recent invention that would have made him, in fact, early for the meeting. Thomas Jefferson signed the motion into law as a joke to humor Franklin, signing the form "Upyour Penis," but in a tremendous gaffe the clerk failed to examine the signature and "Daylight-Saving Time" was passed as Pennsylvania colonial law.

Relations between the various colonies were highly bitchy at this point in history, and I mean like drag queens at an Easter buffet. The new time change law really chapped the asses of the neighboring colonies, and before long, each one had passed their own new laws, not about to give smug Pennsylvania the satisfaction of always being early to everything and looking down its nose at all the other colonies as slacking layabouts.

After the Revolutionary War this really got out of hand, with states changing their time zones on an almost weekly basis in an attempt to one-up neighboring states and psych out tourists. At one point when you traveled from Massachusetts to Connecticut, you actually went back in time two days and had to be careful not to step on any butterflies or do anything that might mess things up for your future self back in Massachusetts. Eventually the federal government stepped in and announced that everybody had to get with the same program and stop all the silly horseshit, and from then on there'd only be two wacky nonsensical time changes per calendar year.

States were grumpy about losing their individuality, for sure, but most complied. I say most because Arizona and Hawaii never actually adopted daylight-saving time after becoming states, they only pretended to whenever the feds were around. To this day whenever some government official steps into a bank in Arizona you'll see employees scrambling to set the clocks back and act like they've been saving daylight all along.

The other exception is the state of Indiana, which never got its shit together and still has different time zones for every neighborhood, but after over 200 years of trying the government has given up on that state as a lost cause. Federal employees often refer to any broken or inexplicably errant clocks as being set to "Indiana Time," a joke that's very popular among the employees who aren't from Indiana.

º Last Column: You Look Like An Asshole: The History of Fads Vol. 2
º more columns