learly delighted to have an offensive position at last, President Bush lashed out at "safety ign'rant" airlines and the FAA for its low-wheel requirements on commercial aircraft. According the president's amusing new platform, safety could be increased a bunchfold with the addition of 8-10 new sets of landing gear on standard airplanes, and hopefully would prevent scenes like the dramatic emergency landing of JetBlue Flight 292 on Thursday.

The commercial airline flight JetBlue 292 ran into difficulty landing when its foremost landing wheel arrogantly faced the wrong direction and forced a tense landing situation. The event was made all the more worthy of national attention when it was revealed passengers/potential victims aboard Flight 292 were watching their own ordeal on satellite television, one of the perks the airline offers passengers willing to risk becoming human charcoal on their flights. In the end, the plane landed successful, jetting down the runway covered with foam and emitting sparks in a thrilling scene of real life danger only seen previously on repeats of Jackass.

The White House jumped on the story, beginning on Friday with the president's casual comment that the plane would have been a lot safer if it had been a bus, and not quite so high in the air. The peckerwood president had no further comment then, but continued his assault on the airlines Saturday with a slightly more thought-out commentary.

"It's a shame the airline industry would risk the lives of so many of its passengers to save a few bucks," said our monkeyesque leader of the free world. When asked to elaborate, the president spared no one. "I say, more wheels. Why not? Put 8 more wheels on them sum'bitches, or what the hell, put 10. Flight 292 was lucky to land on two wheels. I bet those passengers would have had an even better chance for each wheel more you added on that thing."

Some critics of the president claim Bush is not rushing to embrace a serious airline issue so much as desperately fleeing the political quagmires of Iraq and failures to respond to recent natural disasters, to which the president says "horsehockey."

"I'm a pilot myself," said Bush, stating a half-truth. "Back when I flew a plane, I petitioned my commanding officers all the time for more wheels on Navy jetfighters. Our boys need to be protected from potential crashing disasters, and when you have more to land on, you have a better chance of landing. It's a scientific fact. And if it's not, it sure sounds like one."

The airline industry was slow to slapdown the president's criticism, probably out of some gratitude for the huge-ass bailout he approved for them in the post-9/11 environment; but JetBlue, the company who owns the world's most famous plane with muleheaded landing gear, did reject claims its planes were currently unsafe.

"Mechanical faults are always an unpleasant reality of the airline industry," said JetBlue spokesperson Chico Rudatti. "We do all we can to make sure our planes are safe before they get into the air, but once they're up there—fuck it, you know? Shit happens. Our pilots are trained to react calmly and with all their skill, and as you can see, they can make the difference between a successful landing and a company-killing crash."

Asked if they plan on making any upgrades to their aircrafts in light of recent events, JetBlue did concede it might start using the V-chips in their TV sets to lock out all airline-disaster-related programming on foreign and domestic flights.

n the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the currentmath of Hurricane Rita hot on Katrina’s high heels, elderly southerners who’ve been there before are offering a reassuring voice of bitter calm to troubled Americans across the South.

“Today’s hurricanes aren’t worth a hot goddamn,� groused Boca Raton resident Carter Dunlop, 88. “You all can quit your bellyaching. Back in the day, we had hurricanes to remember. I don’t recall their names or any details, but you can rest assured these latest pipsqueaks are even less noteworthy. Trust me, you’ll all hear Carter Dunlop scream like a woman when a real hurricane hits.�

“Category 5? Pssh, they’ll call any old stiff breeze a hurricane nowadays,� griped Biloxi native Ted Knuck. “Back in my day, you wouldn’t cross the street for anything less then a Category 15. And that was only because it blew you across the street.�

“And they call this a hurricane,� sniffed Elmer Controse, 76, of Wicker Falls, who had his entire house flattened by Hurricane Katrina. “Blew my house down, big whup. This is nothing. Back in ’56, Hurricane Chuck blew my house down, then re-arranged it and blew it back up again so that everything was inside-out. All my pictures were hanging on the outside of the house, and my toilet and stove were on the outside, it was like some kind of crazy doll house. But inside, everything was all aluminum siding. Creepy as hell. Now that was a hurricane.�

“Today’s hurricanes aren’t worth shit,� opined Daisy Altamont, 91, of Baton Rouge, who had her wedding ring blown up a cat’s ass by Hurricane Beauregard in 1949. “Get back to me after we’ve had the kind of hurricane that ends with you giving an enema to a housecat. But a word to the wise: if that does happen, I’d advise against telling anyone what you did. Apparently it’s illegal to enemize a cat.�

the commune was unable to verify the legal status of giving a cat an enema, but we did discover that it clearly violates American Show Cat Association guidelines, as it can apparently harm a cat’s self-image and lead to problems with bulimia.

Thus far, a consensus of scientists have been unable to confirm the elderly’s claims of mega-hurricanes from the past, arguing instead that hurricanes have been at about the same strength throughout history, and incidentally, the scale of hurricane categories has always gone from one to five, no higher.

“Bullshit,� disagreed longtime Hollywood, Florida, resident Angus Roper, 95, in spite of not having heard the previous paragraph. “When I was a boy, Hurricane Delphina blew my dog inside-out like a sock, right before it blew my grandmother through an oak tree. Not the branches, mind you, the trunk. Granny was never the same after that, chirping like a chipmunk whenever the barometer dropped. You don’t see hurricanes like that anymore.�

“Absolutely,� agreed Cape Hatteras, North Carolina’s Archie Slobertson, apparently displaying some kind of cross-state old-person telepathy. “Hurricane Dandy, now that was a… well, a dandy. Back then the hurricanes didn’t blow sideways like they do now. Nope, hurricane blew straight down. Pushed my whole town underground, no foolin’. Don’t believe me? Look on a map for North Jigglebarrow, you won’t find it! Better get yourself a shovel if you want to visit. Still folks livin’ there from what I hear tell. Yep.�

Readers and the rest of you, please take a few minutes of silence right now in remembrance of all the dead people out there. And really take it, because if I find out you just read this paragraph and moved on to the next without taking that few minutes of silence, I'll be tremendously pissed. Just being quiet while you're reading doesn't count. It needs to be a few agonizing minutes, looking discreetly at the clock and hoping like hell it will soon be over. They deserve nothing less.

Thanks for that. I didn't mean to be so touchy, sir. It's just that we've had a lot of them lately—dead people, I mean. Whether they've been killed in floods, hurricanes, mudslides, suicide bombs, or by hanging out on a weekend with Omar Bricks, a lot of people, American and foreign citizens alike, have lost their lives in the past few months. No doubt about—death is the number one killer out there right now.

There are some out there who say you can't stop death—to which I say, "you're not the boss of me." Just because it seems difficult doesn't mean we shouldn't try anyway. The first step in our war against death is raising awareness. Sure, you might think everybody everywhere knows about death, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't remind them it's still out there waiting for them.

That's why I've chosen the perfect symbol to be our constant reminder of death—a peppermint ribbon. Why peppermint? Basically all the other colors are taken. But that doesn't mean it's not a perfect choice. I want the peppermint ribbon to be instantly linked to death in the minds of everyone in the world. People lying under some rubble in the Gaza Strip should be able to see a peppermint candy and know that, one day, they too will die themselves.

Actually, it's hard to believe no one's pressed this "cure death" agenda more over the centuries. All this "cure aids," "cure cancer," "cure heart disease" stuff hasn't really gotten us anywhere. I say it's time we take the direct approach. Death is what we're really afraid of, and it's about time we stopped dealing with its miserable toadies. Take out death once and for all and we'll all feel safe. Malignant tumor? Who gives a shit? What's a tumor going to do to you, if death is already vanquished. You go around for eternity with a headache, maybe, but that's a small price to pay for living for eternity. Morticians and Goth music stars may go out of business, but let's face it—these guys were downers at parties anyway.

If you say conquering death is impossible, I'd call you a pessimist. I might feel the desire to call you fatass, too—depending on your physique. But please, let's keep it about the issue, not personal attacks. It just so happens I have some of the leaders in the field of anti-death research at my beck and call, and whenever I beck or call them, and drop them a few hundred dollars for information, they give me the inside skinny.

Yes, it turns out, the final cure for death is just around the corner, according to my contacts. What will it take? Five million? Thirty million? One-hundred and fifty million? Ten dollars? Is there any price too high to cure death? Let's put a limit of five billion on it, right now, just for the sake of not going crazy with this thing. But I say, at this moment, less than five billion dollars would be worth it if we could forever cure death. No more sad losses for families, no more fear of the unknown for all the billions of people out there. And you know, if everybody in the world chipped in one dollar (I'm talking to you deadbeats in Central America, too) we'd have the five billion we needed. That's not too much to ask, is it?

And all I'm really asking for is $25,000 to start making some goddamn peppermint ribbons. When you put it that way, I don't see any reason you can't all start sending me the money today.

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