Five years ago, Dick Cheney personally hacked my leg off with a chainsaw. I was at the mall, in the parking lot, walking past a van. Someone tapped me on the shoulder; I turned, took a face full of some chemical gas. The next thing I know, I'm waking up in the abattoir.

Dick Cheney stood there in a butcher's apron, the chainsaw held casually in one hand, dangling down at his side. He announced his intention to hack my leg off; he showed me a dotted line he'd drawn on my leg, mid thigh. I begged him to reconsider. I begged him not to cut my leg off, that I needed it. He just smirked; he seemed amused at my belief that I had a say in the matter. For decades, he said, he'd wanted to saw someone's leg off, but had never been able to pull the plan off. Public opinion had thwarted him time and again; no more! The days of kowtowing to the weak whims of the polls were over.

Five years later, I admit, there are times when I still resent what Cheney did. Still, if I'm objective about the whole event, I must concede that — compared to the moment he revved up the chainsaw, held it aloft for me to see, to watch, as he ever so slowly brought it down on my leg, that first splash of blood, the blade inching deeper — that things are getting better. My situation is much better than it was at that moment.

The night terrors have become banal through frequent repetition; Oh! and the phantom pains have almost completely stopped. That is a HUGE improvement right there.

It was a great speech. Please, god, just let go of this issue. What do you need from him, to make another great speech, and then another and another until he finally throws his pastor to the wolves? Do you need blood? Is that it?

I swear on my sainted mother's name, I'm on my knees here, begging you with as much fervent humility as I can! For all you might hold sacred — I'm begging you, BEGGING you — stop poking the ashes for promising embers. It's over! Please! Just let it be over.

Laurinda Calongne is mentally ill. Seriously. One very sick puppy. God, what is this, high school campaigning? Skit day at the election assembly? I'm voting for Pedro; Napoleon Dynamite's weird ass dance was just too convincing.

If she's elected based on crap like this, if her constituents really are that completely brain dead, it's just more proof to support my theory that this country is, in fact, too stupid to live.

That runs: It's early in the morning on an ordinary school day. Two planes have just crashed into the World Trade Center. Your children are being turned into a pointless photo-op by the President when the news comes in. Who do you want taking the call?

Cut to the footage of Bush sitting there with that thumped up the side of the head thousand yard stare. I think that would be an effective ad.

As always, remember, they hate us for our freedom.

Now, Dick, imagine you are an average iraqi, Dick. Your streets are patrolled by these heavily armed Robocop looking dudes, Dick. Neighborhoods are separated by giant cement barriers and checkpoints, Dick. Hundreds of thousands of your fellow Iraqis are still homeless and in exile, Dick. No actual death toll is even really possible, only guesstimates, Dick.

Stand in those shoes for even one second, Dick, and now deliver your verdict on whether the whole think, Dick, was like "totally worth it."

Dick, you asshole. You fucking psychotic sociopathic asshole. You are such a dick, Dick.

I can't remember a time before Opus or Kansas O'Flaherty. Now that the one is gone, the world is a darker and less interesting place. How about it, Salon? A special Kansas O' for Saint Patrick's Day? Not too much to ask. One farewell strip, for old time's sake?

For those wishing that Opus would waddle off into the interior of Antarctica, no frigid blast of polar wind could be colder than the despair that thought wraps around my heart. I beg you all, please, to reconsider. If Opus was gone, admit it, within two weeks you would be yearning for his return from the core of that dark and frozen land.

Sane people look at Iraq and Afghanistan and see a quagmire from which a dignified exit is virtually impossible.

Bush looks at it and sees himself as Peter O'Toole in "Lawrence of Arabia," no doubt imagining himself moving through the world to Maurice Jarre's magnificent music score, soaring and noble. You can see that in his eyes sometimes, that look of conviction that he is an extraordinary man rising to the challenge of extraordinary times, the rest of us just haven't keyed into that yet, but give it time... give it time, and all the while never realizing that his theme song is more like "Dueling Banjos."

Every time he opens his mouth it just breaks my heart. His pronouncement the other day that he's not finished yet, and that he plans to sprint to the finish scares the crap out of me.

What, for the love of God, could be cooking around in that overheated romantic brain of his?