report released Friday disclosed that savage viruses that shred most human flesh and destroy normal mortal bodies will not even mess with people on American soil. The study, researched at Bolchek University in Ames, Iowa, and financed by the American Family First organization, had been going on for more than five weeks when it made its findings public in Friday's press release.

The news comes as a great relief to weary earth-dwellers in the United States, as word came of a deadly Ebola-like virus continuing its rampage through Angola, some country most Americans aren't familiar with in Africa. The World Health Organization (WHO, sometimes known as the Teenage Wasteland Group) announced shortly before the Bolchek press release that 173 people in Angola have died from the virus known as Marburg, and four more non-U.S. countries have been placed on the warning list.

News media assured American citizens the country will be alright, since they have something of a track record for surviving problems without U.S. intervention, and have even survived some caused by them.

The Bolchek study findings, however, provided a large relief from worry about viral invasions by other dangerous contagions such as Marberg and Ebola, including CCHF, Dengue, SARS, Lassa fever, and the Kinks. According to research, done in Bolchek's famous $3 million Sid Caesar Facility, virus cells, when given the choice between healthy cells of different nationalities, will always shy away from American DNA.

"It's totally awesome," said project head, 18-year-old super-genius Nills Van Raftan. "We stumbled on it a bit by accident. We were testing the effect of Ebola on the blood cells of African mice—since we wanted to save the American mice for better experiments—when one of the team members had a nosebleed and accidentally contaminated the sample. Imagine our surprise when we saw the Ebola contagions were scared shitless of messing with the American cells. And who can blame 'em?"

If the results are verified, and frankly nobody's doubting the outcome of a second test much, it answers a great number of questions for the world's nerdy virus-following community. Such as why have SARS and Mad Cow and other disease variants been too chickenshit to mess with the U.S. of A.?

"For any number of reasons," posited spindly weakling Van Raftan, "virus cells simply will not infect American cells, at least those of the United States. It could be because U.S. cells don't brook backtalk from foreign viruses. But, if my personification of American cells is way off, it might also be because viruses know that if they mess with American cells, they're risking a massive investment of money in destroying their asses. They can work their way through Africa, Asia, and even Eastern Europe for years, and we'll leave them alone—but first time they start infecting Americans on American soil, they're on our list. Companies even drop all the new dick pill technology they're working on and concentrate on the hot new market for pharmaceuticals to keep Americans healthier than foreigners."

When asked about AIDS, a virus long plaguing even American citizens, Van Raftan made a squeal, smiled sheepishly with his braces on display, and shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe some viruses are retarded. But it does give us something to work on when we get frustrated with erection research."

n the wake of the pope’s alleged death last week, the Vatican has released John Paul II’s will and personal diary to the media. Among the juicy tidbits revealed with the publication of the papal diary was the 84-year-old man’s dying wish that the bloodthirsty media would please, please, please keep their grubby mitts off his motherloving diary.

Published in newspapers, and on websites and Happy Meal boxes around the globe in over 90 languages, Catholics and heathens alike thrilled to the pope’s private inner thoughts and the great man’s eloquent musings this week, drinking in the pope’s thoughts on the nature of privacy and his joy at having this one small respite from a life lived on such a public stage.

Hounded all his life by an overzealous media desperate to know what made the pope tick, John Paul II poured his thoughts into the small, leather-bound volume in a scrawl that some have called “Pope-script.� Among the nuggets revealed with the diary’s publication are the details of the pope’s third-grade crush on Margo Holzarian from the Ukraine, and his strange, life-long fascination with American actress Mariel Hemmingway.

“Thank God no one is ever going to read this diary,� the Pope wrote in one of his last entries, dated March 2005. “It is only through this precious cove of privacy that I cling to my very humanity.� According to various sources, the pope misspelled “humanity� in the original text, but newspaper editors have universally agreed that it is highly unlikely the pope was clinging to a humanatee.

Many readers have been especially touched by the earliest entries in the diary, which date back to the pope’s youth.

“Dear diary: Man, being the pope is hard. I miss my mom and dad, and sometimes I just want to go home. Everybody says I’ll get over it though, once I make some new friends. Well, gotta go. Love, The Pope.�

Some less-scholarly Catholics have been equally surprised to learn that John Paul II was referred to as “the pope� even as a small boy, which made for several humorous anecdotes about grade school roll-call.

Garnering somewhat less attention has been the publication of John Paul II’s last will and testament, which some Catholics awaited with great suspense over who would inherit the pope’s collection of pointy hats. In the end, however, it turned out that the pope’s will was written in Polish, so the Vatican instead handed out his belongings on a “first come, first serve� basis to the assembled masses.

“This is fucking awesome,� raved German tourist Himmel Blaus. “I got the pope’s toenail clippers and a pair of boxers with the dude’s initials on them!�

“I got the pope’s soap! The pope’s soap on a rope is dope!� shouted another ecstatic inheritor, dashing out of the room, apparently in a hurry to bathe.

Publishers worldwide are currently in negotiations for the hardcover publishing rights to the pope’s diary, though as of yet, none have thought to tap the gold mine that is the commune’s recent “Pope’s Diary Mad Libs� feature.

As much I regretted it, I had to take a break from the world's greatest conspiracy last week. Nothing more than I can handle, of course. Maybe I'll benefit from the break, it will give me a chance to put everything in perspective, possibly have one of those great conspiracy epiphanies I've always longed for. But I'm such an important player I couldn't just take a vacation, so I had Stigmata Spent put on my fake beard and fake trenchcoat and take my place at all the secret meetings. But the conspiracy will wait for me. I had to take off for more pressing matters. The world's highest-stakes poker match.

I'm not a member of the Illuminati, of course—I wish! But I'm quite wealthy, so me and some other wealthy friends started a sub-Iluminati. We call ours the Niluminati, and we control everything the regular Iluminati doesn't want to control. Mainly the stuff we own. But being a member of the Niluminati has its own benefits, like our covert annual picnic and our annual high-stakes poker match. The highest stakes, as I've mentioned before.

No slouch in the poker department, I've won three of the last fifteen matches I've attended. Doesn't sound impressive? How many of the world's highest-stake poker matches have you won? I didn't think so. But it had been a while since I've had any real success, I've been on a losing streak for long time. Approximately since I started publishing the commune, oddly enough.

I decided, despite the conspiracy barking at my back door, that I'd put everything on hold and go back and claim my crown. Mind you, the crown itself is rather chintzy, but what I want is the respect that comes with wearing it. Sure, I've made my own crowns out of cardboard before, but when people find out you didn't get it winning a card game, all the respect vanishes.

I was happy to board the ol' riverboat Pressure Cooker and see my old colleagues and rivals, the nameless members of the Niluminati—"Buggy" Bob Hedges, Krisco, Flatella Morgan, B'Twana Modge, Catarast Winton, and Dave Pogo ("The Instigator"). They all sized me up with their eyes the minute I came through the door, though Flatella hired somebody to do it with his hands, and they took me for a rube whose bad luck streak was going to continue for another year. I said nuts to that, and quite loudly. They asked me not to do it again.

I made my presence known right away, starting the first game with an unheard-of bet of $75,000. They called me overeager and told me I would not be invited back if I insisted on betting so high first time out. But we played for a while, I won my share of games and kept my bets wise, and eventually we raised stakes to $250,000. That's American dollars, mind you, and not Niluminati dollars, which weren't even accepted in the Niluminati swear jar.

And in the end, believe it or not, I won it all on a bluff. I won the game with a bet of $800,000, then we doubled the bet, and I had jack shit in the way of cards. Not even a pair, I tell you. Nothing wild, all my options run out, so I bluffed—I yelled "Fire!" and we all abandoned the boat. Since we didn't finish the last game, that made me the winner for this year.

Quite a bluff it was, if I must say so. And I had Rascal in the engine room ready to throw a stick of dynamite into the fire if they called me on it. Always keep an ace in the hole.

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