SCANDALS! JOSEPH KONY: GRADE-A ASSHOLE FUNDAMENTALIST HORROR IN SUDAN Just when yer old pal Jerky thought his twisted, chemically imbalanced brain had come up with every torture/murder revenge scenario imaginable, along comes a band of Ugandan militants to prove him wrong. Fair warning, folks… the story that follows isn't for the faint of heart or stomach. While retreating from the Ugandan army in the neighboring nation of Sudan this week, members of the Lord's Resistance Army - who follow the mad prophet Joseph Kony - encountered a funeral procession of about sixty individuals, and were suddenly seized with a stroke of pure, evil genius that would make the Roman general Titus chuckle with envy. The words of Ugandan army major Shaban Bantariza sum up the ensuing attrocity as succinctly and graphically as is necessary. "Kony attacked a funeral procession of about 60 people, forced them to cook the corpse in sorghum and eat it. They thought that they would survive if they obeyed, but the rebels shot and killed them, all of them, after they had eaten the corpse." Since 1987, Kony and his LRA have been engaging in terrorist acts in Uganda from southern Sudan, in an attempt to overthrow the Ugandan government and establish a fundamentalist Christian state based on the Ten Commandments. One of their tactics is to steal children from their homes and force them to either fight for his cause, or be fodder for the LRA initiation ceremony, which - according to Amnesty International - involves killing a child in front of an assembled throng, to prove your unwavering allegiance. So far, over 12,000 children have been abducted. "You cannot begin to make sense of what Kony does," general Bantariza told Western journalists this weekend. "You will just go mad." DAILY DIRT EXTRAS! Have you ever heard anything by GARY WALKER AND THE RAIN? Neither have we, but after reading our old pal Rotwang's lurid description of their proto-heavy-metal sound, we sure felt like we did! And what of TROYKA, about whose choice cut our rockin' mad scientist declares: "That this cut is not only practically unknown, but the fact that it's not at the top of every rock n roll list ever made is an interminable, unpardonable sin!"

ON THIS DAY May 2 On this day, not one but two ultra-right-wing American lunatics kick the bucket! In 1957, Senator Joe McCarthy's internal organs stage a collective, body-wide strike, resulting in his death. In 1972, dress-wearing tough-guy J. Edgar Hoover dies from a toxic combination of throbbing homosexual lust and a profound hatred of homosexuals. The worst part about both these deaths is that they didn't happen sooner! A LOT sooner!

QUOTES! "We are so close. We are on the verge of something very dangerous and irreversible. You can hear Dick Cheney breathing hard, just aching to press The Button. The human animal is capable of staggering atrocities and deadly choices and the thick-necked frat boys in charge right now are the most darkly capable we've suffered in decades." - In his most recent editorial, Mark Morford hits the nail on the fucking head. *** *** *** "We've been fighting a war for the past 18 months, which is the harbinger of World War III. The world is going to fight, whether they like it or not. I'm sure. Sept. 11 was a watershed event, and things will never be the same. The battle lines have been drawn." - So declared Ra'anan Gissin, a senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel "the Tank" Sharon in an interview with the Arizona Daily Star last week.

JOKES Today's first joke was sent in by our new pal Wilmoth... A retiree was given a set of golf clubs by his co-workers. Thinking he'd try the game, he asked the local pro for lessons, explaining that he knew nothing whatever of the game. The pro showed him the stance and swing, then said, "Just hit the ball toward the flag on the first green." The novice teed up and smacked the ball straight down the fairway and onto the green, where it stopped inches from the hole. "Now what ?" the fellow asked the speechless pro. "Uh... you're supposed to hit the ball into the cup." the pro finally said, after he was able to speak again. "Oh great ! NOW you tell me." said the beginner in a disgusted tone. *** *** *** Today's second joke was sent in by our old pal Doc Kirby. A police officer came upon a terrible wreck where the driver and passenger had been killed. As he looked upon the wreckage a little monkey came out of the brush and hopped around the crashed car. The officer looked down at the monkey and said, "I wish you could talk." The monkey looked up at the officer and nodded his head up and down. "You can understand what I'm saying?" asked the officer. Again, the monkey nodded his head up and down. "Well, did you see this?" The monkey nodded his head. "What happened?" The monkey pretended to have a can in his hand and turned it up by his mouth. "They were drinking?" asked the officer. The monkey nodded. "What else?" The monkey pinched his fingers together and held them to his mouth. "They were smoking marijuana?" The monkey nodded his head. "What else?" The monkey made an "O" with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, and thrust his right fore-finger into it. "They were screwing, too?" asked the astounded officer. The monkey nodded. "Now wait, you're saying your owners were drinking, smoking and screwing before they wrecked." The monkey nodded. "What were you doing during all this?" The monkey put up his fists and made a circular motion. WORST JOKE OF THE DAY Today's worst joke was sent in by Mike Brooks. Two women palestinians are walking through Tel Aviv. One turns to the other and says: "Tell me honestly, does my bomb look fat in this burqua?"

JERKY KNOWS! Relationship troubles? Philosophical quandaries? Nagging doubts about your spouse? Jerky knows the answer! Send your letter to the feedback address at the bottom of the page: Jerky; You have documented well the fact that you don't believe in God. I was raised in a Christian home, and taught that I'd go to Hell for being on the wrong side of the "curtain" so to speak. You say that you were raised Catholic, and you were "deprogrammed". I often argue, quite successfully, against what the Bible says with people. The answer I usually get is, "If God wanted us to know everything, he would have told us." There are many other incongruencies within the Bible I'm sure you're aware of. My question is this: What made you FINALLY quit believing in God? What was the final straw? I admit, I have my doubts, but I still have the fear. How did you get beyond your fear? Thanks. Signed: Rockrules214 As far as "the fear" goes, Rocky, I don't know what to tell you. All I know is that no matter how hard you try, simply wishing for something to be true doesn't necessarily make it so. Pointing out the lack of atheists to be found in foxholes - as the old apologetic saw goes - isn't so much proof of God's existance as it is evidence that the survival instinct is strong in man, and that many Christians take great delight and comfort in the illogical extremes of human desperation. Though their iconography, alone, is evidence enough of their sadistic fetishism. You know, now that I think about it, I probably never really believed in God - or, more exactly, in the divinity of Jesus - in any serious way. Being the son of practicing Catholic parents, I was certainly aware of the concept of God, and had no immediate, compelling reason to question the validity of this concept. But the same could be said of my non-questioning of Santa Claus, the Holy Ghost, or Big Bird. I had no reason to doubt what I was being told by my parents, by the priest, or by the Children's Television Workshop. But then something happened... I started thinking. And when I started thinking, I started noticing absurdities, inconsistencies, and impossibilities. I also started noticing that big people had a habit of telling useful lies, both to kids and to themselves. And this whole God thing definitely seemed to fit into that mold. Just as I wondered how Santa managed to visit all the boys and girls in the world on a single night, when it took my family a week just to visit our cousins who all lived within fifty miles of each other, I also wondered why, whenever I prayed (as my parents insisted), I felt like I was telling a hollow, pathetic lie to myself. I knew I couldn't be the only one who noticed these things, who had these nagging doubts. And I was shocked when I found that very few people were willing to discuss these things with me. "That's crazy talk," they said. "Who put such thoughts in your head?!" they said. "You must have FAITH!" they said. And even though I didn't like disappointing my elders, I knew it was bullshit. So I learned to shut up about it. But I never gave in. If asked whether or not I believed in God, I always answered truthfully. When I went to confession, I made up sins. When I went through confirmation, I mouthed - but didn't speak - the oath. Communion was a snack that helped break up the dreaded monotony of church, which I learned to avoid by skee-daddling out the house early Sunday and feigning deafness when my mom called from the back porch. I'd rather sit in the swamp, thank you very much. So there's your glimpse of Jerky as a youngster: already a morose, contrary little misanthropic know-it-all. It's a good thing I was the biggest kid in my class, otherwise, the beatings might well have been merciless.

READER'S SOAPBOX! Got a gripe? Pet peeve? Have your say in the Daily Dirt! Columns can pretty much be about anything, as long they meet the following criteria: 1) don't write shit that'll get us in trouble. 2) Keep it interesting. 3) Keep it short. 4) We don't edit your mistakes. Oh yeah! feel free to send a picture of yourself if you want. Today’s Topic: REBUTTAL TO JUICY'S ABORTION ARGUMENT. Care of: White Knight. Regarding Juicy Lucy's abortion argument [see Soapbox from two Dirts ago - Jerky], I agree that a woman has the right to carry, or not, the group of developing cells in her body. Heck, in the beginning, a fetus and cancer act the same. What I think women across the world need to think about is this: If it shouldn’t be legal to make a woman do something to her body that she doesn't want, then why in the hell should a man?! If a woman decides to abort but the man wants to keep his unborn child, guess what? He has no say, because it’s a woman’s right. (This isn’t hypothetical, This happened to me! I wanted our child and the woman didn’t. I found out she was involved with her ex and didn't want to deal with the complications of that. I even begged, telling her she wouldn’t have to do anything after the first nine months. She got the abortion even with my objections. It was ruled it was her body). If the woman has the baby after the man pleads to have an abortion because he knows he isn't ready yet, guess what? Well, he'll just have to provide, even if he has to give up his plans and work at any menial job. A man should not be forced through 20 years labor or more to support a child that was not his decision to keep. If women who want a choice think their argument is "What right does a government have to control my body", then realize that is exactly what you are doing to men. I think that all involved should make the decision to have a baby and all involved should be in agreement about aborting a baby. The argument goes now that if a man doesn't want to support his child keep it in his pants. Well, sperm didn't just climb up an unexpecting ladies leg. If both had to realize that they might have to do something they didn't want to. Then maybe there would be less of a problem. Imagine if the abortion issue was a right for both men and women? It would be a right for a woman to have an abortion if she choose, as long as the father agreed. If the father didn't agree and the woman still wanted one, then she would have to have the child and then give it to the man and she would no longer have any say over the child. He would then be responsible to raise the child with no support from her. If a woman wanted a baby and the father wanted an abortion, then she would be able to have it and she would be the sole provider for the child and the man would not have any further say over the child. Both parties would be able to make agreements as they chose but could not force the other party into anything they didn't want to do. It wouldn't be fair to make someone do something with their body that they wouldn't want to. Whiteknight [The problem with your hypothetical solution, Wizznite Kizznite, is that it contradicts your stated intention of "not forcing someone to do something with their body that they wouldn't want to." Imagine you were the one who got pregnant, and your wife said she wanted the baby despite your not wanting to go through with it. Would you consider it an equitable, fair solution to the problem if you were then forced to carry the baby to term, through delivery? Obviously not. No, White Knight, the only solution to this connundrum is common sense, practiced by a mind which isn't as addled by the impotent, internalized aggression as is your own. In other words: 1. the woman should be the ONLY one to make the final decision on whether or not to go through with a pregnancy, and 2. no man should be forced to pay for the results of a sexual tryst, above and beyond half the price of an abortion at a reputable clinic. THAT's fair. - Jerky]

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