DATELINE–Miami Beach, Fla.

In the wake of relentless, coast-to-coast Cunanan coverage, an unseasonable chill has descended upon Miami’s exclusive and happy-go-lucky gay enclave: South Beach.

This cosmopolitan metropolis once known as the “northernmost capital of Latin America,” has recently seen its sun ‘n’ fun image eclipsed by the harsh and unforgiving lights of a national media hellbent on discovering this year’s O.J. Simpson.

For better or worse, South Beach Miami has been officially “outed” as the unequivocally homosexual hideaway of one equivocally identified Andrew P. Cunanan.

It was in South Beach, after all, that the infamous “spree” killer supposedly met his living end. But contrary to popular belief – and relief, – the real Andrew Cunanan is not yet dead.

Indeed, under expert scrutiny the only available evidence indicates that Andrew Cunanan may never have existed in the first place.

On Thursday, July 24, 1997, the alleged body of the suspected killer (Cunanan) was discovered, literally faceless, on a houseboat in Miami.

It was then and there that local and federal enforcement agents appeared to have finally caught their “chameleon” killer. But, yet again, they were denied a good look at Cunanan’s true colors: the body of the homocidal enigma was now without a proper face.

But even with a face, Cunanan was widely held as a chameleon. Why?

Was it because he was an exotic and invisible Asian man? Or was it simply because Cunanan was an even more absurdly incongruous figure: a man who unabashedly loved other men?

Asian or gay? Both or neither? Was he really ever dressed up like a woman? Was he really a real man?

As the FBI slaps “FOUND DEAD” banners on its “10 Most Wanted” posters across the country, onlookers and intimates alike can only wonder: “Was there ever an Andrew Cunanan?”

As Cunanan’s picaresque wends its way to a violent, inevitable end, his fable turns out to be not so much a puzzle but a crudely constructed collage.

How else could Cunanan have made his way across the country from San Diego to Miami undetected? The only logical explanation: he was not one man but many men – indeed, many persons all at once.

Televised snapshots were said to depict him alternatively as both stout and slender, grizzly and hairless, masculine and feminine, Caucasian and Asian.

Racist and homophobic slips on behalf of the media or simply factual statements?

And what of the singular motives of this multifaceted – yet mute – public figure?

After being labeled a “shapeshifter,” members of the gay community publicly postulated that Cunanan had embarked upon his killing spree after being notified that he was HIV positive. According to this contagious logic, Cunanan came to embody the carnage ushered in by the AIDS epidemic – a spectacle of repetitive ceremonial death no single gay man had been able to accomplish before him.

Even the dramatically ineffectual Miami Police Department attempted to pin their very own homophobia on Cunanan, arguing, in so many words, that “If this fag had outrun our Law it was only because he was disguised as a woman.”

Cunanan: a model minority gone awry or a changeling of preternatural origins?

Cunanan: superhuman criminal genius or your average, intelligent gay man and a cold-blooded killer, to boot?

In this mass-mediated game of double jeopardy, the press and the police have thus far disguised their helpless queries as frightening and bizarre answers.

Any true explanations of the Gay O.J. that never was will come only in the form of blunt questions.

Andrew Philip Cunanan, we hardly knew ye.

DATELINE–The Campus

Microsoft announced the institution of its own IRS – Internet Referral Server that is. Netday News attributes the following striking confession to Brad Chase, vice president of developer relations and marketing at the Evil Empire: “Using the Microsoft Internet Referral Server, users can get immediate access to the Internet without the delays and confusion that often accompany the selection of an Internet service provider.” With the incorporation of the IRS into Internet Explorer browsing software, Microsoft can automatically assign users to local Internet service providers that have been selected, approved or purchased by the company. The software does not currently have the ability to switch the user’s long distance carrier, but only time will tell how sticky Bill Gates’ fingers are.

While Kaiser Gates swears on a stack of DOS manuals that Microsoft isn’t attempting to create an information technology monopoly, the marketing elves are hard at work doing His bidding.

Once Microsoft has consolidated its vise-like grip on the vertical market, technology and media consumers will be relieved of the “confusing” burden of choice.

In related news, the SttF legal department is reportedly researching the use of RICO to prosecute marketeering infractions in order to arrest Microsoft’s spiralling control of the digital economy.

DATELINE–The Electronic Ghetto

In an unprecedented showing of co-operation between public and private sector interests, a new public works consortium based in San Jose, Calif., will address the lack of technology access within America’s poorest communities.

“Wired In,” the nation’s first non-profit organization to be funded by both high tech corporations and the U.S. government, will concentrate its initial efforts on housing and urban redevelopment. According to WI’s spokesperson, Mr. Corey Bussier, the consortium will target “the infrastructure needs of tomorrow’s communities” by providing access to the Internet as well as other emerging information markets.

At a black-tie gala held last weekend in celebration of WI’s first announced public works project, Silicon Valley CEOs hobnobbed with such Washington luminaries as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Vice President and top-level Justice Department officials. The networking opportunities were a big draw,” said the CEO of a well-known microchip manufacturer, “but the feeling that we are improving the future of America’s poor is the real reason we’re all here.”

A scale model of WI’s first initiative greeted the gala’s attendees, among whom were invited members of the national press corp. Code-named “Small Big House,” the urban housing project will integrate high tech gadgetry with modern architectural design in order to connect low-income residents to the same public venues and opportunities currently available to the middle class.

“We need to insure that the next generation of Americans, regardless of their financial standing, will be prepared to live in a high-tech world,” said Bussier. “On the level playing field of technology, the small can become the big, and differences can be turned into advantages.”

For years, advocates of the poor have pointed to the increasing disparity in technological know-how between middle- and low-income families as the makings of a potential national crisis. The “Wired In” consortium promises to put an end to that trend by placing cutting edge audio-visual components and computer terminals in every nook and cranny of future public housing units.

“The kitchen will be smart, the living room will be even smarter, and nowhere will there be an absence of information gathering and processing devices,” bragged one of the middleware engineers responsible for the “Small Big House” design. “Basically, these families are going to be networked like no one else on earth.”

Networking is nothing new to the project’s main contractor DiPannopti & Co. The centuries old family-owned business has built such revolutionary housing structures as the still controversial Petaluma State Penitentiary.

“Wired In” is scheduled to complete the first 120 “Small Big House” units by the end of 1998.

DATELINE–Havana, Cuba

After two bombings rocked Havana’s burgeoning tourist district on Saturday, July 12, 1997, Cuban authorities first claimed that the bombs were from the United States. But as the dust settles outside of the scarred Hotel Capri, the prime suspects appear to be Communist Cubans who live on the island.

Saturday’s explosions, both of which were planted in hotel lobbies, took place only hours before the remains of Ernesto “El Che” Guevarra were returned to Cuba after being disinterred by an Argentinean anthropologist several months ago. The tourism-related blasts also transpired minutes after Cubana Aviacion Flight 787 crashed into off the eastern coast of Cuba, killing an estimated 44 passengers.

Exactly two years ago, to the day, General Arnando Ochoa, the celebrated hero of Cuba’s disastrous military campaign in Angola, was tried and executed on Cuban national television. Publicly, Gen. Ochoa was accused and convicted of helping to smuggle drugs through Cuba – a remarkable feat considering Cuba’s highly aggressive stance towards “domestic security.” Privately, however, it was speculated that Ochoa had become too popular – undercutting the singular figure of General Fidel Castro, Cuba’s “jefe” for the last 40 years.

Indeed, almost four decades ago, the third leg of the Cuban Revolution, Camilo Cienfuegos, was also killed in a mysterious plane crash by the eastern capital of Santiago de Cuba. Cienfuegos had been Fidel Castro’s right hand man during their paramilitary campaign against then dictator Fulgencio Batista.

After his death, Cienfuegos became the first state-sanctioned martyr of the Cuban Revolution and is today revered as one of the four founders of the new Cuban state, along with Che Guevarra, Fidel Castro and Fidel’s brother, Raul. Of the four, only Fidel and Raul Castro are still alive and in power as the acting heads of the flailing Cuban state.

In recent years, Cuba has experienced a series of economic crises due largely to their longtime dependence on the Soviet Union. For the small island nation, the end of the Cold War has also meant the end of subsidies, petroleum, and of their largest trading partner. As a result, the Cuban government has begun an international public relations campaign to promote its tourism industry in the hopes of attracting European and American investors.

While the Cuban Revolution is celebrated throughout the world as a defiant check against the forces of imperialism, its recent emphasis on tourism and apparent disregard for a dramatic rise in prostitution and the tremendous discrepancy between tourists and its own citizens has garnered mild criticism even from its most staunch supporters.

Analysts speculate that the two bombings which took place last Saturday may, in fact, be the work of disgruntled revolutionaries who fear that the country is returning to its pre-revolutionary state as an exotic watering hole for well-to-do foreigners.

The recent popularity of “World Beat” music and a concurrent increase in “eco-tourism” has made Cuba the new Nepal for the affluent and xenophillic. Forty years ago, a similar taste for all things Cuban had reduced the island and its inhabitants to a series of consumable cliches.

Today, those cliches are newly draped in the mystified remains of Che Guevarra, a beacon whose mute light overshadows the mysterious disappearance of Camilo Cienfuegos. Guevarra’s remains will be interred once again this week in a specially designed mausoleum near Santiago de Cuba. And in the brave new world of politics as a tourist attraction, Cuba’s long history of terrorist bombings and tragic disappearances may be its best bet for a brighter economic future.

The Revolutionary Cuban government will celebrate its 38th anniversary in two weeks.

DATELINE–Department of Corrections

As most U.S. citizens celebrated America’s 221st Independence Day this past weekend, a group of California correctional facilities were preparing to wrangle with the U.S. Supreme Court over the issue of prisoner’s rights.

The outcome of this week’s Supreme Court case, “Esteban Caliban and Ed Douglass v. the California Department of Corrections,” will determine whether or not prisoners are constitutionally entitled to have access to personal computers.

For more than two years, a diverse group of prisoners serving life sentences in California state penitentiaries as a result of the state’s unique “Three Strikes” law –whereby defendants who have already been imprisoned twice are automatically sentenced to die in prison– have redirected the focus of their right to counsel, eschewing a possible retrial for themselves in order to put their prisons on the stand.

While the recent rush to settle Cyberspace enters a period of cruise control, America’s fastest-growing minority population, U.S. prisoners, are starting to catch up with the Joneses. In California prisons, computers are not available for prisoners to use during recreational hours. Instead, men who enter the penal system –a disproportionate number of whom are African-American and Latino–are encouraged to “work” on their bodies.

The result is gang-related tattoos, bulging muscles, and, in some cases, female hormone treatments. Michelle Foo-Kwo, one of the lawyers representing Caliban and Douglass in this week’s Supreme Court case, argues that this “exclusive emphasis on the prisoners’ bodies” is a violation of the same human rights charter perennially touted by the U.S. in critique of such repressive regimes as China, Iraq, and Cuba. “A prisoner in the California penal system is just another body to restrain,” says Foo-Kwo, “there is never a person behind bars.”

While recreational access to computers may not automatically assign a face and an emotional history to every inmate, advocates of the Caliban-Douglass case believe a de facto prohibition on a certain kind of social development within prisons is largely to blame for the increasing wedge between America’s “minority” and majority populations.

“There are two systems now,” says Esteban, one of the two prisoners whose name appears on this week’s Supreme Court proceedings, “there’s those systems Whites administer and make money off of and then there’s the system that takes us Blacks and Latinos in and never let’s us out again. All we’re asking is that the two be networked together.”

Although Mr. Caliban is not formally trained in computer science, like many other imprisoned Americans, he has witnessed the rebirth of the Information Age from a critical distance. Caliban feels that America’s prisoners are particularly suited to benefit from the thousands of virtual communities the Internet has reportedly created within both the U.S. and abroad.

“I am not permitted to live beside other Americans, Americans who are not prisoners, because of the crimes I have committed,” the 27 year-old Esteban continues, “but why don’t I have a right to learn from and talk with people outside of prison?”

In an era of gated communities, the concrete boundaries between those sentenced to a life of repression and those bestowed with the privileges of free expression grow more ponderous by the minute. Ironically, none of the “free” speech proponents who have recently waged a high-publicity campaign on the Internet using electronically painted blue ribbons and the word “netizen” have made any mention of this disparity between those who have access to the media and those for whom the media is just another White ghetto.

“Writing e-mail isn’t going to take away the pain of being separated from my family,” writes Douglass, in one of the documents to be reviewed by the Supreme Court this week, “but being able to use a computer now means being able to read and write…and I am not going to lose my right to speak in this country.”

Whether or not free weights will be replaced by free speech in California’s burgeoning prison cities will be decided in late August by the Supreme Court.

DATELINE–Las Vegas, Nevada

On the literal eve of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule,the spirit of Chairman Mao Tse Tung descended upon Mike Tyson in Las Vegas, Nev., persuading the African-American boxer to bite off a piece of another man’s ear.

The transcorporal and transcontinental bite heard ’round the world may have cost Tyson a $30 million purse, but it won boxing and foreign affairs observers, alike, a clear view to the mysterious pantheon of our modern heroes.

Tyson, a one-time champion in the world of boxing, had a portrait of Chairman Mao tattooed on his right arm while serving time in the Indiana Youth Correctional Facility on a highly publicized rape and assault conviction.

A recently published biography of Chairman Mao written by his personal physician, Zhisui Li, suggests that the long-time dictator of Communist China also raped and assaulted women on a regular basis. Unlike the women Tyson beat and raped, Mao’s teen-age victims were considered patriotic for sacrificing their virginity to the premier’s insatiable lust for power.

Ironically, this formidable political figure who inspired thousands of pretentious intellectuals across the First World to declare an ineffectual war on capitalist culture also captured the heart of frustrated pugilist “Iron” Mike Tyson.

“Being the leader of China is like being a father one billion times over.” –Mao

Like Mao, who is credited with the execution, unjust imprisonment, and starvation of millions of Chinese women, men and children in the name of “progress” and “industrialization,” Tyson also believes in the supremacy of his paternal authority:

“I have children to raise. I have to retaliate.” –Tyson

In the maimed body of Evander Holyfield, Americans can now take stock of the fate of Hong Kong and the history of Mao’s China. Who can blame a man for biting off another’s ear when the fate and fortune of the former’s children are at stake?

Such on the job injuries to others are commonplace in the world of pop star revolutionaries. It is well known that Che Gueverra once poked out a fellow guerrilla’s eye by accident while penning his now bestselling “Motorcycle Diaries” and even Cuba’s gentle giant, Fidel Castro, has been known to bust a kneecap here and there without batting an eye. But these flesh and blood men, overwhelmed by their own reckless and violent egotism, have noq been transformed into the spiritual icons of any and every struggle for self-determination.

Tyson, who once inspired young African-American men to wear t-shirts that read “Free Tyson” and “I’ll be back,” first became a celebrity by physically destroying his opponents–and first wife. Is the world of organized boxing really that different from that of civil wars? In the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, did anyone stop to ask if Mao’s “purse” would be denied him because of his egregious crimes against the Chinese people?

Not likely. Nor is it probable that President Bill “Punch Drunk” Clinton will have anything more meaningful to say after Saturday’s synchronous assaults on Holyfield and Hong Kong than the following official reaction:

“I don’t know what the federal role should be. I haven’t given any thought to that whatever. But as a fan, I was horrified…Horrified, horrified.'’

Boys will be boys. Cest la guerre. It’s a man’s world, after all. Love means never having to say you’re sorry. Long live the revolution!

DATELINE–Dallas, Texas

“The Southern Baptist Convention is sex-obsessed” declared Brother Luther Martinez, Jr., a small town preacher from Brownsville, Texas.

Martinez’ provocative statement was issued yesterday at a press conference in Dallas, Texas, where just last week the Southern Baptist Convention called for Christians to boycott Disney in protest of the entertainment company’s so-called “homosexual agenda.”

Martinez, who attended the Convention as a “messenger” for the Iglesia de Maranatha in Brownsville, hopes to dissuade his fellow Baptists from boycotting Walt Disney Co. et al.

The planned boycott would extend to the multinational media company’s subsidiaries, including ABC, ESPN, A&E, Lifetime, the syndicated television show “Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee,” The Mighty Ducks NHL hockey team, and the medical journal “Skin and Allergy News.”

According to Martinez, the critical issue facing Baptists at the close of the millenium is not the threat from without, but the threat from within. The baby-faced preacher, a rising star in the Tejano Baptist establishment, believes the call for a boycott is a “media stunt” and not a “long-term solution for the troubles afflicting American families.” In an address delivered via satellite to his congregation in Brownsville he exhorted:

If my fellow ministers see sex everywhere, they must be looking pretty darn hard to find it. It’s time to get real, and get down to the Lord’s business. As we are told in the Book of Matthew, Chapter 21: When Jesus entered Jerusalem, he threw the money changers out of the temple, exclaiming “My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.” I say the Southern Baptist Convention shall be called a house of prayer, but they have made it a den of sex-crazed hypocrites.

Martinez goes on to demand that Southern Baptists “drag their minds out of the gutter” and set to work addressing some “not so Mickey Mouse” issues such as poverty, hunger, racism and the growing alienation of America’s youth.

While Disney has been linked in the past to such unsavory subjects as psychedelic drugs, pedophilia and fascism, it is the company’s policy of offering insurance benefits to domestic partners of gay and lesbian employees that has gotten the Southern Baptist Convention all riled up.

Like last year’s attack on Jews-not-yet-for-Jesus and next year’s predicted offensive against financially independent women, the current campaign against homosexuals is yet another plodding attempt to garner media coverage for the Convention.

In the past, the “moral majority” and other fringe political parties have used like conventions and campaigns to get their narrow agendas publicized at no cost on the nightly news. During the Carter administration, the obsessive media coverage of televangelists like Jim Bakker, Oral Roberts and Pat Robertson catapulted a cadre of small-time demagogues to the national stage. Then, as now, sensationalist proclamations on family values could guarantee prime-time coverage, regardless of the seriousness or absurdity of the circumstances that brought them to the fore.

Martinez fears that last week’s Convention antics could jeopardize the righteous role of churches in America.

Regardless of a growing distaste for multinationals and their brazen disregard for any moral or national allegiances, mainstream America is increasingly suspicious of the Baptists’ perennial preoccupation with homosexual sex practices.

It is expected that in the coming year Southern Baptists will finish the job they started last week by calling for a nationwide boycott of hairdressers, restaurants with table service, domestic airlines, Broadway musicals and the City and County of San Francisco.

In the his closing remarks at the press conference outside of the Dallas Convention Center, Martinez lifted his fellow Baptists up to the Lord in prayer:

Lord, we know that the time is come to clean Your house. And as it is written in the Holy Book, we set out to turn the money changers out of the temple. In our hearts we know that our work begins with the money changers–the banks, the stock brokerages, the multinational corporations. Sex is small change in heavenly accounting. For as it is revealed unto us in I Timothy, Chapter Six, it is not LOVE that is the root of all evil; nay, it is the love of MONEY that is the root of all evil.

DATELINE–Department of Corrections

African-American activists have seized upon a little known ancillary protocol to the 1949 Geneva Convention to secure the release of Geronimo Pratt, a Black Panther who had been held in captivity by the state of California for over 27 years.

Using the obscure “One out, One in” clause, African-American activists were able to secure the emancipation of Pratt by arranging for the simultaneous incarceration of Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh, who was found guilty of 160 counts of murder in the Oklahoma City bombing trial, was sentenced to death late last week. By admitting McVeigh into the correctional system, federal authorities had no choice but to release the long-time political prisoner Geronimo Pratt.

But how could such a stunning swap take place within the hallowed halls of the American legal system?

The answer lies with a coalition of African-American scholars who have aimed an unlikely weapon at the U.S. penal system: the weight of history.

History on their side.

Since 1987, a group of prominent African-American citizens, including several international relations experts and labor historians, have studied the prospect of filing a claim against the U.S. government in an international court of law. In this unusual collaboration between Black activists, academics, and the legal establishment, reparations are being sought on behalf of African-American descendants of U.S.-held slaves.

It was in the course of their research that the team’s legal counsel discovered a precedent that establishes an upper cap on the number of political prisoners that can be detained at any one time by signatories to the Geneva Convention:

When the population of prisoners of war interned by a State exceeds the limit established in article 18.7, prisoners of war must be released in order to bring the state in accordance with agreed upon political prisoner population goals… Prisoners of war must be set at liberty in the order of their incarceration.

Due to the nature of their trials, both Geronimo Pratt and Timothy McVeigh are considered political prisoners. Pratt, having been imprisoned nearly three decades ago was the logical beneficiary of McVeigh’s sentencing last week.

A tale of two nationalists.

Geronimo Pratt, a Vietnam veteran and Black Panther activist, was imprisoned in 1970 for allegedly murdering a white woman on a tennis court in Santa Monica, Calif. Surprisingly, Pratt was convicted of the Santa Monica murder even though federal agents could verify that he was present at a Black Panther gathering in Oakland, Calif., at the time in question.

It was well known that Pratt was under continuous federal surveillance at the time that he allegedly committed murder in Santa Monica.

Timothy McVeigh, a Gulf War veteran and militia activist, was arrested in April of 1995 for murdering 168 people (including 8 federal agents and 19 children) in conjunction with the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. Convicted two weeks ago on 160 counts of murder, McVeigh was sentenced to the death penalty on Friday the 13th of June, 1997.

In McVeigh’s case, the jury voted unanimously to impose the death penalty despite such mitigating factors as: the massacre of 72 Waco Branch Dividians at the hands of ATF and FBI agents, the murders of two white separatists at Ruby Ridge by FBI agents, the failure of the FBI and ATF to accept responsibility for said mishaps resulting in homicide of civilians, and McVeigh’s exemplary war time service in the U.S. Army.

McVeigh’s trial and, specifically, the jury’s decision to consider the above incidents as mitigating factors, mark the first public acknowledgments of federal wrongdoing in recent standoffs between White nationalists and the U.S. government.

While typical penalty phase mitigating factors would focus on such circumstances as a history of mental illness in the family, mental retardation, and/or victimization by sexual abuse, McVeigh’s defense arguments centered on his military service and the “recent imposition of martial law.”

A tearful homecoming and a boisterous bon voyage.

In the wake of last week’s simultaneous condemnation and emancipation, American families in Oakland and Oklahoma City, alike, find themselves searching for closure.

Unlike the strong-arm tactics routinely used by the U.S. government 30 years ago to quell such troubling political movements as the Black Panther party and the Anti-War movement, today’s “feds” appear unable to address the increasingly violent tone of contemporary political dissent.

At the time of Pratt’s arrest, political leaders throughout the country were being forced into hiding or exile at the hands of over-zealous and often paranoid law enforcement agencies. In eight years, when McVeigh is finally executed on prime time television, it is unlikely that any of his supporters will be frightened by that spectacle of federal might.

Instead, McVeigh will become a martyr. For unlike Pratt and other Black Panthers who have become unknowns in their community after being imprisoned for three decades, McVeigh’s case of swift and melodramatic justice will guarantee his place in the right wing’s pantheon of fallen heroes. No one knows what the future holds for Geronimo Pratt, but there can be no doubt that America’s fate is now bound, hand and foot, to Timothy McVeigh.

Is Bubba gonna take the bullet for the body politic? Will there ever again be a unified nation state in North America?

Against a somber backdrop of chronic low voter turnout, a government plagued by scandals, the rise of separatist militias, and Americans’ increasing distaste for the public life, ours destined to become an age of political executions.

We will once again be one nation, under God and indivisible – at the gallows.

Dateline–San Francisco

birthday celebration for a new breed of domestic partners.

The Cat’s Alley Club in San Francisco’s leather-and-platinum SOMA district is closed on a Monday night for a private party. It’s a birthday bash thrown by a local multimedia tycoon for his companion.

Inside, the staff is busy lighting candles and setting out hors d’oeuvres. A bartender wipes down the bar and carefully lines up shot glasses filled with a white liquid. A DJ starts to spin an eclectic mix of classic soul and country-fried rock. Jose Marquez, the party’s host, fidgets in a corner, calming his guest of honor as the two wait for the first invitees to arrive.

At ten minutes past nine o’clock, the door opens and a young woman wearing stylish spectacles and platform shoes breezes through the door. Along with her orange vinyl handbag and a meticulously wrapped present, the guest carries a large plastic box. After setting her present on the gift table, she approaches her host and asks, “Am I just supposed to let him out?”

Márquez suggests that a leash might be in order, at least until “Boo” gets used to his new surroundings. While Boo emerges from his carrier wearing a tether, the host’s own cat, Mus-Mus (pronounced Moose-Moose), is free to roam the vast, darkened club. But then, Mus Mus is the birthday girl.

By ten o’clock, the fashionably late revelers have all arrived with their kitty-cat companions in tow. At least a dozen felines and twice as many “parents” are imbibing the cross-species amenities that Márquez has arranged for the club to provide.

At the open bar, sweetened and salted varieties of milk are served to the cats, who perch in special booster seats while a bourbon-based cocktail dubbed Milk Punch is administered to their humans. Catnip has been liberally sprinkled on the floor in what the club manager describes as the “stoner corner.” Electronic music is now playing at full blast, peppered with audio samples of meows and purrs. Naturally, there’s sashimi and sushi galore for all of the guests.

Even in a city that prides itself on being the “nontraditional relationship” capital of the world, this unusual birthday bash for a 2-year-old named Mus-Mus is a bit over the top. But then again, just a decade ago, the idea of sending a kitten to the therapist or dropping a puppy off at canine day care was similarly unthinkable. As pet owners grow increasingly accustomed to lavishing luxuries upon their animals, full-blown cat and dog parties are on their way from the fringe to the mainstream.

“The pet-related service sector has experienced tremendous growth in the last few years,” reports Dev Chalworth, an analyst with Bain and Company who has interests in the pet-care industry and once named a limited-liability corporation after his cat. “In a strong economy, more and more young workers can afford to live alone. Combine this with greater disposable incomes and a trend toward starting a family later in life, and you find that people are having more pets and are willing to spend big money on them.”

Indeed there’s ample evidence in Márquez’s entourage to support this appraisal of the companion-animal market’s demand for high-end goods and services. From pharmaceuticals to beauty-care products to gourmet cuisine, many of the cats in attendance are as spoiled and fussed over as an only child. Partygoer Anne Etheridge went so far as to sedate her feline friend to preempt any unforeseen social anxieties. “My cat Darlene is a female orange tabby,” the thirty-something ad agency executive says. “They’re one in 10,000. She’s pretty high-strung so I got her some Valium from the vet before bringing her down here tonight.”

The Valium appears to have worked, as Darlene slowly licks the pâté icing off of the tuna fish flavored birthday cake. Six other cats join her in devouring the specialty dessert while the rest of the feline guests help Mus-Mus tear into a giant, mouse-shaped piñata that has been filled with a fresh batch of catnip and assorted kitty toys.

Márquez is not unaware that his largesse may appear odd, or even irresponsible to some. “It seems like a lot of money to spend on your cat. But when you live with an animal, you start to think of her as a member of your family, not as something you own,” explains the self-described bachelor. Still, he took heed of criticism from friends who thought it unseemly for him to spend several thousand dollars on a party for his infant cat.

“I know they have a point,” Márquez concedes, “that’s why my other present to Mus-Mus is a donation in her name to a local battered-womens shelter. She got a letter from them acknowledging the gift and everything. After all, Mus-Mus herself was once a stray.”

DATELINE–Central Valley, Calif.

Researchers from the University of Tennessee have identified a fungal agent that may soon threaten the stability of the global economy.

The virus-like mold known only as “MSIE-3,” short for Mildew Sporozite Invasive Exotic type 3, was apparently first introduced into the United States in 1993 by a shipment of laptop computers manufactured in Singapore.

The newly identified MSIE-3 mold is the only organism known to man capable of breaking down the coating used to seal computer microchips. The voracious mildew apparently uses a unique enzyme to reduce computer components into a “silicon soup.” The fungus can literally melt down a computer, from the inside out, in less than 24 hours.

In San Jose, Calif., where the majority of the nation’s microchips are designed before being mass-produced in Southeast Asian factories, the MSIE-3 fungus has already closed down three labs and seriously compromised the operations of over 140 computer companies.

Even after the UT report on MSIE-3 was published earlier this week, neither public nor private parties have officially acknowledged the presence of a Invasive Exotic in the computer world.

WORKERS SENT HOME, SCIENTISTS SHRUG

Invasive Exotics, or I.E.’s as they are known in the world of horticulture, are nothing new in America. First introduced by the successive waves of immigrants who colonized this continent, I.E.’s like the Kudzu plant have already destroyed entire sectors of the nation’s agricultural base. But before the recent discovery of Mildew Sporozite type 3 no species of I.E. was known to target strictly synthetic environments.

“Unlike the sometimes useful Bamboo tree, this mildew I.E. is only destructive,” said Dr. Adele Fertihumis, one of the UT scientists credited with identifying MSIE-3, “and there is nothing that can be done about it…but prevent it from spreading like a chemical wildfire.”

There is still no consensus on how the computer-hungry mold should be contained, and industry analysts worry that time is running out. According to the UT report, if the current growth rate of MSIE-3 is left unchecked, every computer in North America will have been dissolved into oblivion by the 1998.

A NEW UNION BETWEEN OLD RIVALS

In Silicon Valley, Calif., the threat of biological warfare has caught an entire industry off guard. With the exception of the occasional earthquake or a random monsoon in the Far East, few natural disasters have ever threatened the artificial growth of the computer industry. But the sterile world of Silicon Valley will not have far to turn to find assistance in fighting its fungal adversary: less than a two hour drive from the cubicles of San Jose are the fabled farming rows of the Central Valley.

The expansive Central Valley of California is the single greatest food source in the Western U.S., employing hundreds of thousands of migrant farmworkers each year to harvest everything from strawberries to pistachio nuts–often under torturous conditions. Though largely overshadowed by the stunning economic growth of the computer industry, California’s agribusiness may now hold the key to eradicating the cataclysmic MSIE-3 fungus.

Representatives from Silicon Valley have already met with engineers representing some of the largest farms in the Golden State. Both sides hope that their collaboration will yield a solution to the latest Invasive Exotic epidemic while strengthening the alliance between the agricultural and computer industries. And the first task on their agenda is tracing the ecological origins of the MSIE-3 fungus.

THE WORLD WIDE WEB OF THE LATE 1500′S

Unfortunately, the detective work ahead of the MSIE-3 task force may be too great a challenge for the team’s agricultural engineers and venture capitalists. According to Dr. Fertihumis, “the history of I.E.’s is too tangled a web in which to isolate a single species, no matter how noxious. ”

Horticulturists like Dr. Fertihumis warn that before the computer industry can even begin to explore its options for dealing with MSIE-3, it will have to confront the legacy of previous Invasive Exotics–possibly including the computer, itself, as an I.E.

“The history of Invasive Exotics includes all sorts of economic disasters,” relates Dr. Fertihumis, “sugar refineries in the Caribbean, cotton plantations in the American South, coffee harvesting in South America–each and every one of these monocultures led to the ultimate decimation of native life, both plant and human. Not to mention the reckless introduction of foreign life into the environment: African slaves as well as other beasts of burden and pleasure.”

Indeed, the MSIE-3 mold is thought to have originated in Singapore, where American economic standards and values have been adopted alongside feudal social codes. Imports from other countries similarly compromised by admixtures of American culture and local customs could very well become the MSIE-3’s of tomorrow.

Asia, Latin America, Africa, Europe: there is not a single continent in which the U.S. has not intervened with its culture and upon which it does not now depend for cheap consumer goods–each and every one potentially incubating an Invasive Exotic.

The age of the plagues is upon us.

DATELINE–District of Columbia Broadcasting System

“I’m practicing what I preach.” – Susan Molinari, Ex-U.S. Representative and brand-new member of the CBS Broadcasting Family on her decision to leave politics and enter the entertainment industry as reported by yesterday’s New York Times.

The quintessential Staten Island preacher’s daughter, Susan Molinari, who first rocketed to national stardom during last summer’s blockbuster Republican National Convention, has left the polluted bogs of her Staten Island district for the bright lights and big city of television newscasting. Of course, Molinari is no stranger to the demands of performing on plausibly live television in front of millions–it was suggested that she had already signed on as a CBS News personality during the 1996 Republican jubilee in San Diego.

Or is it a mere coincidence that Molinari’s climactic keynote address during the Convention was broadcast by CBS, the same network that has snatched the fetching celebrity-to-be from her dead-end job as U.S. Representative?

Industry analysts speculate that the Molinari hire confirms rumors that CBS is rapidly abandoning its moribund prime time lineup to concentrate on managing the future of American politics.

CBS News president, Andrew Heyward, recently told close personal associates that “the network has to expand if it’s going to survive” and reportedly views the current power vacuum in national politics as an easy target for his division. In light of Heyward’s remarks, the decision to install Ms. Molinari as co-anchor of a new Saturday morning news show might clear the way for future mergers between CBS News and the U.S. Government.

Molinari first gained brand-name recognition during her prime time oration at last year’s Republican National Convention, wherein she extolled the virtues of her long-dead immigrant grandfather while rallying the Republican troops to “stand guard” and defend this nation from the “hordes of crazed wetbacks” poised at the border. In sharp contrast to the colorless humor of the new Cosby show, Molinari’s crypto-fascist remarks may be the guaranteed draw CBS has been awaiting.

Unlike other politicians who are regularly paid to appear on television, Molinari–and other demagogues soon to follow in her footsteps–will no longer be restricted to chiming in with political “commentary.” Instead, Molinari’s legion of politicians-turned-anchors will be free to broach such critical issues as “pet grooming tips” and “5-minute dinner solutions.”

Although CBS is the first network to recruit a politician for anti-news programming, the trend is nothing new to broadcasting. Vidiot-savants like ex-Nixon speechwriter Patrick Buchanan have already made a killing in popular television programming. In fact, as the business of politics becomes increasingly indentured to multinational media conglomerates, it is highly likely that the line between paid spokesperson and elected representative will be obliterated beyond recognition.

One need only recall the Congressionally mandated “broadcast bandwidth bonanza” which took place earlier this year to confirm what few Americans already suspect: the broadcast industry can now dictate the terms of U.S. legislation. This anti-democratic leverage need not surprise the observant citizen. Our nation’s politicians are but a gaggle of moral pygmies who must stand on the shoulders of media giants in order to rise to the top of their deodorized dung heap.

Just recently, a highly publicized San Jose Mercury News investigative series suggested that the Central Intelligence Agency was indirectly involved in the distribution of Crack Cocaine to inner-city neighborhoods in Los Angeles during President Reagan’s “voodoo economics” offensive. While the Mercury News’ investigative journalist stopped just short of accusing the U.S. Government of employing chemical warfare against African-American citizens, congressional hearings were called to investigate the matter.

Drawing upon the seemingly inexhaustible resources of the U.S. Government, such a high-level Congressional investigation would no doubt have turned up some results–or, at the very least, a report on the effects of Crack consumption in the African-American community and the dubious role of several government agencies in that particular “drug war.”

But on the eve of said hearings, the Mercury News publicly repudiated its articles on the so-called L.A./CIA/Crack connection. In one bold stroke of the editorial pen, the Knight-Ridder Corporation, owners of the Mercury News, struck the controversy from the public record. The Congressional hearings will no doubt be canceled like any other doomed sitcom.

Consummatum est.

In the future, as the riots illuminate the night sky with an orange glow, we may forget that media empires chose to ignore and even ostracize the millions of Americans who live in poverty, but we will not forgive the U.S. Government for selling out to the entertainment industry. On the contrary, using our government-financed High Definition Television set, we will zoom in on the image of our capital cities aflame in class war and draw into focus the torched bodies of the (political) spokespersons who were dispatched to “cover” the story.

DATELINE–The Research Triangle, N.C.

The Journal for Applied Medicine & Technology released a report earlier this week which suggests that a recent increase in computer use has led to a dramatic decline in literacy among adult Americans.

Entitled “A Qualitative Analysis of Computer Use and User Literacy,” the already controversial study was a collaboration among several universities and anonymous test subjects drawn from America’s best-known corporations. Over the course of three years, researchers in eight different cities tracked the reading habits and literacy skills of over 5,000 professionals who use computers in the workplace or at home.

The researchers claim to have found what they call “unambiguous” and “compelling” evidence that a decrease in reading comprehension and related cognitive skills closely followed any increase, no matter how slight, in the use of personal computers.

Wisconsin State University professor Dr. Ruhig Hurmes is one of the study’s lead researchers. Hurmes believes that the main factor behind this negative correlation can be found in the “nature of the computer, itself” which, he believes, “discourages readers from spending any serious length of time with a difficult task…especially if a solution or a simpler problem can be reached by merely clicking on a graphic.” Dr. Hurmes also points to the rising popularity of celebrity news programs, infomercials, computer magazines, and the Nick at Nite cable network as major factors contributing to the decline in America’s reading skills.

“Let’s face it, if the choice is between spending 5 seconds with a info-bite or 30 minutes with a thought-provoking essay, what would the average American choose?”

Professor Hurmes went on to answer his question with an exhaustive series of charts outlining the choices of his real-life test subjects. According to the results of the Computer Use & User Literacy study, nearly 92% of professionals working within a computer environment repeatedly opted for the 5 second info-bite while only 5% of those polled chose to spend time with the headier essay. An additional 3% failed to distinguish the one from the other and asked shortly thereafter to be excused from the test.

The study goes on to state that among the 92% of Americans who chose the info-bite, almost 78% of them preferred their information exclusively in the form of images, while another 15% percent expressed a preference for some combination of image and text. Only 7% of the info-bite crowd chose a strictly textual format for their 5 second data feeds.

The facilities used to conduct the Computer Use & User Literacy study were set up to mimic real world scenarios. Subjects spent half of the test in an artificial living room with a couch and the other half in an office cubicle with a captain’s chair. In addition to the simulated decor, scientists provided the test subjects with a television monitor in the first scenario and a computer terminal in the second. Finally, the study’s participants were offered printed matter at regular intervals during the testing procedure. The printed matter ranged from magazines without color illustrations or color photographs to independently produced news, commentary and historical analysis periodicals.

In only a handful of cases did test subjects actually let go of the computer’s mouse or the television remote control long enough to pick up one of the readily available printed materials. In fact, many subjects could not even recognize what the printed materials were due to the fast-paced and psychologically-intensive nature of their computer use.

“Some of our participants actually refused to go home after several hours of Internet access and/or spending time with a high-definition TV,” writes one of the study’s technicians, “we were even forced to physically restrain one participant, a young man, after he stumbled across both a pornographic satellite TV channel and a Web site dedicated to instant sports scores within the same testing session.”

Critics of the study have a very different take on the published results. Just hours after the Journal for Applied Medicine & Technology hit the newsstands, computer industry representatives charged that the researchers had “stacked the deck” against their products by providing “cutting-edge Internet services” and “unavailable television technology” to unsuspecting test subjects. The study’s detractors also claim that if the test participants had been primed for the enhanced information they received during the course of the study, no significant behavioral changes would have come to the researchers’ attention.

Dr. Hurmes dismisses such criticisms as irrelevant and misleading. “The real proof,” he adds, “is in our algometric scores. Not one subject complained of physical discomfort during hours of repetitive and uninformative computer use–that’s a shocking omission considering that we set up the testing environments to produce maximum distress in almost all subjects.”

For their next study, Dr. Hurmes and his colleagues will test the “moral thermometer” of computer users. It is uncertain what the doctors will find when they venture into the realm of morality and social responsibility, but one thing is for certain: their next study is guaranteed to generate a controversy of like proportions.

DATELINE–Equitable Center, Midtown Manhattan

Behind all the fanfare and hoopla surrounding world chess champion Gary Kasparov’s melodramatic defeat to the “Deep Blue” computer lurks a secret story too sordid for the culture critics and technologists to publicly acknowledge. True, Kasparov was beaten fair and square by a machine on Sunday, May 12, 1997… but the machine that beat him was not simply a computer by the name of Deep Blue.

“I’m a human being. When I see something that is well beyond my understanding, I’m afraid.”

Kasparov was right to be afraid. The IBM RS/6000 SP computer system, known as Deep Blue, is not only capable of playing against any grandmaster–it can also dispense a powerful electrical shock to its opponents. IBM’s decision to equip Deep Blue with a circuit capable of delivering 50,000 volts of raw electricity provoked only a momentary nod of confusion from chess officials who reasoned the workings of such an advanced electronic device as Deep Blue were beyond their limited, human comprehension.

After playing against Deep Blue on six separate occasions, Kasparov’s nervous system must have been as fried as a Kentucky chicken wing. According to Monday’s New York Times, Kasparov, humiliated and anguished, said: “I have no idea what’s happening behind the curtain.” After the final match, a close advisor to Kasparov told the press that he felt it was highly unlikely that Kasparov would have fared any better had he seen the portable generator humming gently alongside the twin, six-foot computer towers that comprise Deep Blue.

The use of electricity as an agonistic tool is not a new development. For over a decade now, United States police officers, correctional officers and even judges have been equipped with remote control electro-shock devices capable of rendering a human target instantly unconscious and leaving the stunned victims collapsed in a pool of their own vomit, feces and urine. In fact, the use of “stun belts” and “stun guns” is now so popular in the American justice system that the U.S. firms which produce these weapons of torture have begun to export them to such prisoner-friendly nations as Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

What does represent a significant development in the world of technology, however, is IBM’s decision to introduce electro-shock into the computing environment. Kasparov’s humiliating defeat marked the first public use of strategic electro-shock at the hands of a disembodied computer “opponent,” but it wiIl not be the last. According to market analysts, in today’s economic climate of downsizing, flat wages, and general job insecurity, providing computer system administrators with the power to literally shock their users may be the next step in increased productivity and decreased labor activity.

For years, corporate managers have sought a cure-all for the perennial demands of a human, all-too-human workforce and, in most cases, they have succeeded only in reducing their workers into a pliable mass. Previous breakthrough’s include the right to lay-off employees for quasi-official reasons and the ability to discrimate against entire sectors of the employable population based on an applicant’s age, language and formal educational background. Nonetheless, IBM’s shining performance in the Kasparov vs. Deep Blue chess match lights the path of docile repression which is still ahead of us all.

As torture-ready business applications vie with artificial intelligence software for first place in the race to bring humanity to its knees, America’s prison population is already a step ahead of the competition. Now that chain gangs and high-tech torture devices have been redeemed as civilized courtesy of a media culture literally sold on vigilantism, it is only a matter of time before the distinction between prisoner and captor, guilty and innocent, winner and loser, machine and man is finally blurred for all of eternity.

Long live efficiency!

DATELINE–Nashville, Tenn.

“Gambling is by definition the attempt to profit without labor.”

Thus begins a typical sermon by The Rev. Will B. DeVine, dean of the Nashville, Tenn.-based Your Own Free Will Baptist Bible Junior College. Billy Bob, as the Rev. DeVine is known to the eighty or so members of his congregation, is a dapper ex-Navy man with a history of proselytizing that reads like a roll call of every major city in the American South.

But these days, Rev. DeVine’s sermon is being heard by more than just his parishioners or even just in the South. The fiery DeVine is now spearheading “Only By the Sweat of Our Brows,” a campaign to bring his anti-gambling crusade to America’s economic capital: New York City.

“Investing in the stock market is also, by definition, an attempt to profit without labor,” DeVine’s sermon continues, “We learn in Genesis that Adam was expelled from the Garden of Eden and commanded by God to eat and profit by the sweat of his own brow. The Lord made no exception for those of us who eat and profit by the cold, clean hum of computerized stock trading. The New York Stock Exchange is a house of sin.”

With the Dow Jones index cresting at record highs this week and conservative celebrities like Rush Limbaugh hawking “Christian activist” investment funds, DeVine’s “Sweat of Our Brows” anti-stock market crusade promotes a message which seems far out even to the far right.

DeVine’s radio and television spots has already proven too trying for Ralph Reedes, the former leader of the Christian Coalition, the evangelical Political Action Committee (PAC) which enjoyed a favorable audience in the White House during the Reagan era.

Reedes has publicly dismissed DeVine’s contention that speculation in the stock market is considered a sin by the Bible and on occasion has called DeVine’s sermons “ridiculous” and “heresy.” In a press conference delivered from the Christian Television Network’s “500 Club” studios, Reedes repudiated DeVine’s anti-gambling message by citing the needs of his own religious values movement: “Jesus wants his people to have a strong economic base. The Pro-Family Values movement must not oppose reputable financial practices that grant us the urgently needed means to support our first, second and third families.”

DeVine and his growing cadre of followers remain undaunted despite the continuing protests of the official Moral Majority. While on a recent tour of the NYSE, DeVine commented that Jesus was a rebel Jew who was also unpopular with both the governmental and religious establishment of his time. As his face reddened with passion, DeVine burst into the following screed: “If Ralph Reedes was there when Jesus was hanging on the Cross and soldiers were casting lots for His clothing, would he be shouting ‘Come on seven, Daddy needs a new pair of sandals?’ I ask you, as Our Beloved Savior was being crucified on Calvary, would Ralph Reedes get his broker on the cell-phone and start demanding, ‘Dump all of my blue chip holdings and roll everything I’ve got into that new company that mass produces crucifixes?’

Financial analysts who track the burgeoning religion industry suggest that DeVine’s crusade is not a wholly unexpected development. As more and more middle-income individuals are lured into stock market speculation by “Wal-Mart"-like trading houses and America’s online investment schemes, the social costs of investment are becoming apparent to a segment erstwhile excluded from this “game of princes". The non-profit organization Gambler’s Anonymous has begun stock market-specific programs in Alabama, Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia and Oklahoma. The organization believes a national caucus is necessary to stave off the epidemic of market gambling that has recently spread to the working class and is calling on the president to take a public stand on the issue.

The wife of one such “stock market junkie” recently appeared on the cable financial news network CNBCNNFN to share her tragic story with the gambling community. The mild-mannered housewife from Mississippi, who spoke on the condition of anonymity and was seen only in disguise, stated that at first she thought her husband’s interest in the market were harmless, only to realize the ill that had befallen her family when “it was too late.”

“It all started with the Netscape IPO,” she blurted as her tears began to flow, “He became obsessed with hitting the big jackpot and started to bet money on a few more computer stocks here and there. Little by little he was spending more time at the self-service brokerage and less and less time at home. But I supported him in the beginning. Technology stocks, they…well, they’re just a ‘gateway’ investment, you know, like they talk about that marijuana. Pretty soon he started hitting the hard stuff, the junk bonds, futures trading. I’m frightened now for my family’s financial and emotional safety. It’s like I don’t even know my own husband anymore.”

The executive counsel of DeVine’s “Only By the Sweat of Our Brows” contend this woman’s story is just one of thousands of similar tragedies occurring throughout America. Their literature chronicles the rise of consumer-level stock deals and points to a concurrent increase in organized crime.

“As with casino-style gambling,” begins one of their latest news releases, “Mafia involvement, political corruption, and a de facto regressive tax structure will follow this popular obsession with small-time investment gambling. As the Senate threatens to cut down the Capital Gains Tax, even greater incentives will await gamblers who chase the so-called American and certainly un-Christian dream of an unearned income.”

Rev. DeVine’s crusade has called for federal legislation that would outlaw the individual ownership, in whole or part, of companies for which an investor does not work. The Justice Department has not yet issued an official response to DeVine’s inquest.

Despite the sudden fame that has visited their spiritual leader, the congregation of Billy Bob’s Your Own Free Will Baptist Bible Jr. College exhibits a steadfast commitment to the religious underpinnings of their campaign.

It is not difficult to understand why. DeVine’s rhetorical style is point-blank and deadly accurate. The former Navy seal does not rely upon the typical flourishes of Southern preachers who came before him. Instead, the earnest Billy Bob chooses to pitch his vision in terms that are all-too-familiar to today’s families.

As his “Only By the Sweat of Our Brows” campaign made a stop in the predominantly African-American and Central American District of Columbia, DeVine closed his homily with this benediction, as political as it is spiritual:

Gambling, whether based upon a spike in the Dow Jones or a roll of the dice is not a victimless crime. Both the Church and the State are bound by covenant to protect our members and citizens from harm, even if that harmful threat comes from within. From this day forward let your so-called ‘disposable’ income be granted to the church or re-invested in your local communities. Do not allow your hard-earned money to be expatriated to godless and nationless companies.

As it is written in the Book of Proverbs, Chapter 13, Verse 11: ‘Wealth gotten by vanity be diminished, but he that gathereth by labor shall increase.’ Go forth from this place and increase not the wealth of the rich, but the wealth that enriches your life.

Dateline–Baltimore, MD

Researchers at Johns Hopkins make disturbing connections between PDA use and cognitive dysfunction in young, mobile professionals.

Like most young business professionals, George Willard has a personal digital assistant (PDA). He also has a debilitating cognitive disorder. According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Willard’s handheld electronic organizer is to blame.

At 32 years of age, Willard is a promising consultant for the Boston-based Monitor Company, where he specializes in Internet-related industries. Shortly after he began using his PDA in the fall of 1998, the analyst discovered he was having increasing difficulty taking notes in meetings. Says Willard, “I would pick up the pen, start writing, and nothing but doodles would come out – it was scary.”

After visiting a number of specialists, including at least three different neurologists, he was referred to Dr. Katia Miezkowsky, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore. The Russian-born Miezkowsky is only one of a handful of researchers in the world investigating the connection between handheld computing devices and cognitive dysfunction. When Miezkowsky examined Willard, she diagnosed his “handwriter’s block” as an acute form of neuromuscular failure stemming from his use of a personal digital assistant.

“We’re starting to see more and more otherwise healthy professionals complaining about their motor skills,” says Miezkowsky, “and in almost all cases it’s a result of straining the brain’s ability to adjust muscle memory while using miniaturized, stylus-based computing devices.”

It’s what the medical community has begun to refer to as “PDA-Induced Paralysis,” or PIP. In most of the nearly 200 cases of PIP reported to date, subjects lose the ability to write by hand in varying degrees after mastering the peculiar writing style often required to operate handheld computing devices. For Willard, the culprit was the PalmPilot, from 3COM, the most popular such device on the market today.

In an age when secretaries are called “administrative assistants” and the word “mobile” refers to a communications product more often than it does to a career, the PDA has become the high-tech tool de rigueur. Salespeople use the lightweight electronic gadgets to store contacts, consultants employ them to schedule meetings and read e-mails, and mostly everyone else has found them useful for an occasional round of solitaire.

According to International Data Corp., 7.4 million handheld computers were sold worldwide in 1998. The Farmingham, Mass., research company estimates that more than 10.7 million of the silicon-bound planners will be sold in 1999. The PDA’s success is due in large part to its small size, with most models designed to fit inside the pocket of a men’s dress shirt. But its size and portability preclude the use of a keyboard in most situations. While it is possible to download data into a PDA via a personal computer, most users rely on a small plastic stylus to access and enter information.

The stylus or pen tool that comes standard on the PalmPilot allows the user to write comments onto a small, two-by-three-inch LCD screen. Unable to run software powerful enough to recognize everyone’s handwriting, the tiny computer will only accept entries made in its own alphanumeric code. For example, the letter “k” closely resembles the less-than symbol. Moreover, users must draw these characters one atop another, in a virtual stack, rather than writing them from left to right. Researchers like Miezkowsky blame this unusual approach to writing as the most likely cause of PIP.

“By the time our signature stabilizes,” explains Miezkowsky, “so does our personality. Hence, a change in signature often signals a major shift in personality. With PIP, it’s not a signature change but a radical departure from one’s individual style of writing, and this alteration can lead to big, big problems.” Chief among the PIP-related disorders is the eerie onset of an inability to write despite the absence of any physiological failure.

Fortunately for Willard and others apparently suffering from PIP, the symptoms may be reversible. After disposing of his PalmPilot, Willard began an intensive course of therapy that includes several hours of handwriting exercises every day. After a few months, he is once again able to jot down addresses and names on paper, but says he still has a hard time writing entire paragraphs.

“Actually,” notes an upbeat Willard, “I do a lot of typing, but at least now I don’t have anxiety attacks about signing the check on a dinner date.”

DATELINE–Fort Davis, Texas

TEXAS REPUBLICANS PITCH IN

In a tragic turn of events, private citizens in Fort Davis, Texas, have taken up arms against the U.S. government in response to President Clinton’s calls for increased volunteerism in America. Clintons remarks, which were made in conjunction with the historic Presidents’ Summit for America’s Future, may have touched off a wave of violent insurrection throughout the heartland.

The Texas Republicans, not to be confused with Texan Republicans, have taken two hostages as “prisoners of war” and are currently engaged in a standoff with law-enforcement agents in the sleepy, West Texas resort town of Fort Davis. The Republicans’ leader, Richard McLaren, claims that Texas was never legally annexed to the U.S., thus forcing him to volunteer as the head of the new, independent Republic of Texas.

While liberating states from the Union may not have been specifically enumerated in the President’s “Summit Declaration of Commitment,” a document signed by four former ex-presidents including Nancy Reagan, it certainly does not violate the spirited ethos of the Summit.

BIG PROBLEMS FOR LITTLE GOVERNMENT

“The era of big government may be over, but the era of big challenges for our country is not. And so we need an era of big citizenship. That is why we are here.” – President Bill Clinton, Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pa.

Of course, no state could offer up bigger citizens than Texas, where the U.S. government–at any size–has proven to be more than McLaren’s Republicans can bear. As Clinton’s advisors scramble to distance the administration from the violent standoff in Fort Davis, it is unclear whether or not other concerned citizens will take up arms. The crisis appears to stem from the vague and impassioned rhetoric of the Presidents’ volunteerism summit, which beseeches individual citizens to assume responsibility for the social programs that have recently been dismantled under Clinton’s Welfare Reform bill.

AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE FOR AMERICAN VOLUNTEERISM

Until now, separatist militants operated on the fringes of the American political scene. The President’s Summit may have changed all that, by delegating both the authority and mandate of the state to private groups and citizens. While Clinton’s support for the Summit may have been little more than a transparent attempt to shift attention away from the already devastating effects of his recent anti-poor legislation, he may remembered as the president who ushered in an era of secession.

The ambitious tone of the Summit may have led citizens to conclude that the U.S. government no longer in exists. In order to satisfy the terms of the Summit’s “Declaration of Commitment,” which include feeding the poor, housing the homeless, hiring the unemployed and otherwise caring for the infirm, private citizens and their associations may also have to collect taxes, print money, and secure the nation’s borders. However, no specific mention was made during the three-day conference as to how existing law enforcement branches would deal with volunteer zealots like the Texas Republicans who have been drafted to serve as private “governmental agencies.”

The Fort Davis standoff could not have come at a more inopportune moment for the Summit’s mastermind, Bill Clinton. As the first democratic president to serve two-terms since Franklin Roosevelt, Clinton planned to dedicate the new FDR memorial on Washington’s mall this weekend. Instead, he may have to retract his rhetorical exhortations on volunteerism and dissuade Americans from taking an active interest in their communities, lest the example of the Texas Republicans repeat itself in cities and towns across America.

DATELINE–Cervix Merchandise

A quiet storm is brewing in the “feminine” aisle of your local drugstore: a silent revolution in women’s hygiene. At the heart of the matter is a “feminine” technology so advanced it could bring menstruation out of the dark ages and off the “rag,” forever. Say “ta-ta” to tampons, “sayonara” to sanitary pads, “adieux” to absorbent underwear and “Hello, stranger!” to a new generation of Plastic Period Prostheses.

The future of womanhood has arrived and her name is INSTEAD™.

Perhaps, you’ve seen the commercials. Sedated spokeswomen introducing a “unique” and “new” form of “feminine protection.”

For what modern woman doesn’t yearn to be protected–literally, shielded–from the vagaries of her period, not to mention the vicissitudes of today’s fast-paced world? What product could simultaneously block menstrual flow and bridge the gender gap?

We found the answer in next month’s issue of Ladies’ PC HomeLife & Garden Magazine. We have republished the text of their monthly “feminine technology review” below as a service to our readers:

———–clip & save————

INSTEAD
Advanced Feminine Protection Technology

BACKGROUND

There’s a new menstrual management tool for the 21st Century, and it’s called INSTEAD. It may very well be a high-tech silver lining to the dark cloud of being a woman in today’s advanced world. In fact, considering the lack of attention paid to “women-only” medical problems such as breast cancer and female infanticide, it’s surprising that doctors could take time out of their busy schedules to “gild the tampon,” so to speak.

But INSTEAD wasn’t designed by gynecologists, not even by lady doctors. Audrey Contente, a mother and a triathlete, invented INSTEAD because she felt conventional tampons and pads weren’t adequate “hosts” for her “monthly visitor.”

INSTEAD is made by little-known Ultrafem Inc. but in size and shape it’s quite familiar. In fact, INSTEAD is merely a disposable diaphragm with a reservoir tip. To install INSTEAD, simply fold it, leaving the rubber basket hanging down, and insert into the vagina. The product can then be pushed back and down until it comes to rest in the space below the cervix. Once in place, INSTEAD acts as both a dam and collection cup, sealing menstrual fluid off from your “personal environment,” even before it reaches the air. INSTEAD claims to provide non-stop protection for up to 12 hours.

It may concern some women that “damming up” menstrual blood within the body has a vaguely endometrial ring. Ultrafem, however, suggests there is no demonstrated link between using INSTEAD and developing ENDOMETRIOSIS. Others may be troubled by the contraceptive connotations of the product. Again, Ultrafem clearly states in its literature that INSTEAD is neither a CONTRACEPTIVE nor a PROPHYLACTIC.

THE TEST INSERTION

INSTEAD was thoroughly tested in the Ladies’ PC HomeLife & Garden lab. Pushing the flexible ring with its rubber reservoir through the vagina to the space below the cervix was not the easiest task for our fem-tech benchmarking team. We wondered, how easy can it really be to position a bloody rubber cup the size of a White Castle hamburger under one’s cervix? Some of the more unpleasant side effects of this “installation bug” included the undesired distribution of menstrual blood onto both hands. Compared to the strictly digital requirements of installing an O.B.-brand feminine protection device, INSTEAD insertion turned out to be quite a manually intensive chore.

We should note, however, that Ultrafem customer service provided adequate assistance via their 1-800-INSTEAD help-line, where Registered Nurses were available to answer our questions. A call from our lab made at around 3 p.m., PST, was handled as follows:

“Thank you for calling to inquire about INSTEAD. How can I help you?”

“I purchased your INSTEAD and am having trouble inserting it correctly. It’s really huge.”

“Have you used a diaphragm before?”

“Uh, no. I’m a Lesbian.”

[pause]

“Oh.”

THE BENEFITS OF INSTEAD

Hopeful that INSTEAD could somehow turn the tide around we decided to turn to the company’s extensive product documentation for some insight on the benefits of using this creepy “new feminine protection” device.

What are the advantages of INSTEAD?

Due to INSTEAD’s longer wear time and incredible comfort, you have the freedom to sleep, swim, shop, even have sexual intercourse… INSTEAD is the only feminine protection product that allows you to engage in clean and comfortable sexual intercourse. INSTEAD will not leak, dislodge or get pushed inside you. You or your partner most likely will not feel INSTEAD. Of course, if you are likely to engage in strenuous physical activity or intercourse, please remove INSTEAD and replace with a new one before engaging in any such activity.

Sometimes I get an embarrassing odor with tampons or pads. Will there be an odor with INSTEAD?

Most odor associated with your period occurs when blood comes in contact with air and starts to decompose. Also, urine and feces cause odor when they come into contact with the tampon string or sanitary pads. Because INSTEAD holds the blood away from the air, you will always feel clean and fresh. Many women have told me how pleased they were at the lack of odor with INSTEAD.

Back in the Ladies’ Lab, our analog tests of INSTEAD could not conclusively confirm higher levels of “FREEDOM” in the traditionally feminine spheres of sleeping, swimming, shopping and submitting to sexual intercourse with men. Additionally, we could not determine for whom the INSTEAD insured “clean and comfortable” sexual relations. Some staffers indicated that they liked the smell of their periods and missed it when using INSTEAD. There were even some Lab techs who said they actually enjoy getting their menstrual “time off” from their “stinky boyfriends” and everything else they’re juggling these days. Product satisfaction in these areas is likely to vary from user to user.

What did draw rave reviews from our lab was the long-term pay off of using INSTEAD–removing the cup full of menstrual fluid after up to 12 hours of sloughing off uterine lining. For the woman (and we know you’re out there!) who relishes staring in wonderment at the resulting congealed chunks of blood-clotted tissue, INSTEAD serves those little tasties on a silver platter.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Unlike other feminine hygiene products, which simply address the needs of a woman’s body during menstruation, Ultrafem provides an “instead"–"an alternative or substitute” for being a woman during menstruation.

INSTEAD, if used according to the manufacturer’s instructions cited above, can actually transform a menstruating female into a bionic woman, technologically-enhanced and, thus, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, virtually Period-Free! By giving today’s modern woman the tools she needs to hide her period very, very well, INSTEAD has brought to market a final solution for all female trouble–a product that can fill the void inside of all women, or at least plug it up for up to 12 hours. ##

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It’s sad–but all of the above Ultrafem copy is true. Menstruation is “embarrassing,” disgusting even. [Make a mental note: check and see if you or someone you love has teeth “down there."] Women are essentially unclean by today’s high-tech standards. However, if their bloody contamination can be cleverly concealed by a diaphragm-like cervical cup, women can be finally liberated to do the things they really want to do while menstruating: sleep, swim, shop, have sexual intercourse, take healthy doses of anti-depressants, do more work for less pay, bang their heads against the glass ceiling, etc.

DATELINE–IRS Form 1040c

After celebrating the one and only truly national holiday, tax day, some Americans are about to get billed for the festivities. The Internal Revenue Service, which sponsors the yearly season of national lamentation and mirth-making, announced this morning that it will be sending out a second wave of tax forms to America’s legal residents.

For those unfamiliar with American tax law, a “legal resident” is a permanent guest of the American state, but unlike other guests, legal residents are not allowed to receive government benefits in return for the federal and local taxes they pay. That is, legal residents pay taxes (sales, income, etc.) but are no longer entitled to receive such government benefits as Medicare.

By denying legal residents their due access to tax-funded government programs, America now holds forth a beacon to the civilized world previously born by such esteemed nations as France, Germany and Turkey. For only in these other xenophobic societies do legal residents receive such an orchestrated hazing at the hands of violent mobs of unemployed young men and “employed” public officials. In fact, the renowned and perennial bigotry of the French towards French Jews and of Germans towards Turks and of Turks towards Christians is only a dim candle compared to the blazing bonfire of U.S. laws which now formally scapegoat legal residents.

While this assessment may sound a bit far-fetched, the facts of the matter are even more absurd. Officially, immigrants who are granted permanent residency in the U.S. are referred to as legal residents. Though confusing and, perhaps, a touch insane, many prominent U.S. officials, from the President on down to the Speaker of the House and even many state governors and city mayors, regularly refer to legal residents as “legal aliens.” Aliens? The exact meaning of this unconscious slip of the tongue is elusive, but the very real consequences of this slippery slope are quite imminent.

With national tax day behind us, America can now begin preparing for a riotous celebration of a new Independence Day. Spurred on by the crypto-official use of the term “alien” and the blockbuster success of alien-invasion motion pictures like the German/American “Independence Day,” America’s legal residents (a.k.a., “legal aliens") are now gearing up for the only political response in their means: death, mayhem, massive destruction.

Unable to vote, legal residents, like other, law-abiding Americans, have nonetheless paid their taxes. They are excluded from receiving the same benefits due to other “tax-payers” only because they are not card-carrying U.S. citizens – a technicality our more red-blooded leaders apparently cannot tolerate in this era of “Peace and Prosperity.” Although foreign-born residents are allowed to pursue U.S. citizenship, they often choose to abide by their national allegiances, preserving family ties and/or adhering to religious convictions, and remain in America as permanent guests of our great nation. The question, then, is not why there are legal residents in America, but how long our “modern” and “civilized” nation will allow them to stay.

In the meantime, as these same “legal aliens” find out that their tax dollars no longer serve them or their families (e.g., in cases of extreme medical emergencies), can they not rightfully expect to retrieve these same funds, by force, from the coffers of the U.S. government?

No one knows for certain whether “legal aliens” will actually take to the streets on this year’s Independence Day. Perhaps, it will take more than a spectacular alien-invasion disaster movie to rile them up into a vengeful frenzy.

Or, perhaps, this time, the U.S. will actually be destroyed as aliens leave it for a world with more intelligent native life forms.

DATELINE–Las Vegas, PRA

As more and more Americans confront an unfriendly future filled with underemployment and racial strife, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) are meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada this week to outline their own survival strategy.

After only a few hours of debate and several days of all-nude revues, their three point plan is ready: first, eliminate analog television; second, introduce digital television; and finally, eliminate television altogether and introduce a pure digital signal into the brains of every American.

A digital signal (comprised of 0’s and 1’s) would allow Broadcasters to turn Americans “on” and “off” at the appropriate intervals. After decades of experimentation, Americans will finally be able to immediately receive the direct programming feed they’ve always dreamed of enjoying. The forgotten promise of cable, satellite dishes, and even the Web pales in comparison to the automatic benefits of having a one-to-one correspondence between broadcaster and receiver, advertiser and consumer, master and slave.

The television as multimedia alarm clock and sleeping aid, pretend friend and simulated family, has finally come into its own.

Using the business plan now popular with “online information providers,” future digital television channels will simply charge the viewer (or “user") for accepting information already mass-produced and pre-packaged for their viewing pleasure. The advantages of receiving pre-digested news are too obvious to mention – we need only turn to the natural kingdom and the feeding habits of young birds to see the treats that are now in store for us.

Typically, some technophobic pinkos have already voiced the concern that eliminating broadcast television (after all but destroying the printed word in American culture) will leave poor folk and the elderly even more out of sync with our televised nation state. As Americans, we recognize that all technology comes at a steep human price. We know and accept that our absurdly cheap gas prices come at the cost of any peaceful resolution to the perennial carnage in the Middle East. In fact, even our most expensive designer clothes are mass-produced by indentured Asian women working like dogs in far-off places like Malaysia, Taiwan and Korea. We are surely prepared to pay an even greater price at home for our crystal-clear digital TV’s.

Out with the “New” and in with the old news.

As for that $200 analog television set you bought last December: no need to throw it out the window (unless you live on top of a Starbucks), because there are hundreds of clever projects your whole family can do with its now obsolete state-of-the-art electronic components. We picked up the following suggestions (for local television stations to share with their viewers during news programming time) from the NAB’s own convention guide: …For the home-improvement crowd, a static-filled screen or one that broadcasts multiple cell-phone conversations (now to be transmitted in the analog TV frequency range) can make a great electronic scarecrow in just about any gated community. A nationwide survey shows that police officers recommend a steady stream of white noise over tear gas nearly two-to-one…"A lawn jockey made of one or multiple analog television sets may be your best protection against predator hoodlums from the projects….”

…Even if you’re not handy with electricity, you can still get something out of that good-for-nothing analog set by taking it down to your local “Good Guys” or “Brand Central” where the nice gentlemen in gray suits will give you a voucher worth up to $200 in educational programming. That’s almost 10 hours of top-quality children’s programming at no extra cost. But make sure sure to buckle up your little Johnny, ‘cause that digital signal is going to make those Power Rangers’ explosions sound like little Hiroshimas in your very own living room… Remember, improved picture quality, enhanced sound, and even features like high-definition broadcasts of AOL and the Microsoft Network are only some of the great reasons why television technology is about to be completely revamped whether you like it or not. Our compliments to America’s television industry (AKA, the People’s Republic of America).

Next year, look out for bread slicers and the square wheel – just a few of the life-enhancing innovations we help subsidize by scapegoating welfare recipients and the loosey-goosey regulation of our natural resources.

DATELINE–Rancho Santa Fe

The videotape doesn’t lie. All of the 39, mostly-white Heaven’s Gate cultists were wearing black Nike sneakers.

All of them. Black. Why?

Nike, you may recall, was the winged Greek Goddess of Victory. But a victory for whom?

Follow us down the darkest alleys of the online underworld as we unravel a conspiracy bigger than anything the mainstream press is willing to divulge. Before this story ends, you’ll find yourself face to face with the sixth richest man in America, an inner-city economic development agency, a ten-year-old police cover-up in the City of Brotherly Love, and the most exciting technology to hit the Web since the browser. Brace yourselves, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

How did the Heaven’s Gate organization support 39 baby boomers in a $7,000 per month luxury mansion by “putting up Web pages"? Their astonishingly successful revenue model has thus far eluded thousands of corporations with considerably less overhead costs. Even Wired Ventures, the very bastion of straightlaced cyber-corporatism, cannot answer this seemingly innocent question.

Perhaps, they cannot. Perhaps, they can. Perhaps, the answer is buried deeper than the surface of your monitor. Consider the black sneakers. Let the public record show that each and every one of them was an identical model of Nike brand footwear.

According to Wired News (again), “Nike brushes aside reports that it’s interested in buying a cable channel or - failing that - using the Internet in place of television.” What would a shoe company want with a dedicated cable channel, let alone an electronic hearth? Do they really need that much mass media power just to sell a pair of rubber slippers?

Maybe. Maybe not. Do we really believe that’s all they’re selling? The British charity Christian Aid quotes a Nike representative who explains: “We’re not just selling a sneaker, we’re a lifestyle.” Note the omission of a verb in the latter part of his pronouncement. Nike doesn’t sell a lifestyle, Nike is a lifestyle.

Nike, a lifestyle? Just what are the contours of a sneaker-based life? Without a Nike channel in our midst, we turned to their Web site for answers. The following may shock you.

Vivid, the “architect” of the forthcoming Nike Web site, describes its staff as “vividians", a name all-too reminiscent of Waco’s own Branch Davidians. Their Web site even makes explicit references to their cult ties: Here at vivid we’re not ready to shed our containers just yet - but we are sending our Fearless Leader to Jupiter Communications’ upcoming @Travel ‘97 Conference in Chicago. (http://www.vivid.com/news) And deeper within their site: Who are we? How did we get here? Not a day goes by that we don’t ask ourselves the same thing, truthfully. Near as we can tell, we were all drawn together by a mysterious force, more powerful than our meager human brains could comprehend. In the meantime, we’ve formed this spiffy company to keep ourselves busy until we receive further instructions. (http://www.vivid.com/vividians) But instructions from whom? Aliens riding on the crest of a comet? And why would a multimedia production company be in the business of recruitment literature (as in their widely-published “Careers in Multimedia” guidebook)? What is really going on behind this thin veneer of “a lifetime in multimedia and Web design"?

Consider the comet. To many, a comet is not unlike the “swoosh” logo known worldwide as the Nike seal. Nike’s vice-chairman, Richard Donahue, describes his company’s identity as follows: “The commitment is to be a global company - one management, one theme, one value, one ethic around the world.’

One ethic, one value, one theme, and, lastly, one “management” around the world. But who, or what, will be the manager?

Unearthing the planned Nike administration takes us around the world, visiting