"I WAS A NAÏVE FOOL TO BE A BODY DOUBLE FOR SADDAM!"
By William Grim
TORONTO -- In a rambling interview with this reporter, 28-year old David McAngus of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada -- a cat shelter employee and lay minister with the 1st Mississauga United Church of Canada -- expressed deep regret at having gone off to Iraq where he became a body double for Saddam Hussein.
"Well, I was like, so inspired when I saw Margaret Atwood on CITY-TV denouncing American imperialism and everything, that I thought, gee, maybe I should go to Iraq and become a body double for Saddam Hussein," said Mr. McAngus. "He seemed like such a nice man, and I really liked his bushy mustache. Kinda reminded me of my Uncle Bob."
Although Mr. McAngus did say that he didn't mind the 14 hours of plastic surgery he underwent to change his facial characteristics from a pale Canadian of Scottish ancestry to that of a swarthy middle-aged Arab despot, he did express regret at having to have a tattoo of a heart with the words "Saddam Loves Fatimah, Haliyeh and Scheherazade" engraved on his left arse cheek.
"What can I say?" mused Mr. McAngus. "I was a sucker for the cause."
The distraught Canadian went on to say that his initial disenchantment with Saddam's regime came when he found out that the Iraqi dictator regularly tortures, kills and rapes his citizens.
"Well, it did give me pause," recalled McAngus, "But even though a number of these things did seem to go against some of the doctrines of the United Church of Canada, I didn't want to be too judgmental."
"But it was when Saddam said to me, 'So you work at a cat shelter, huh? Well, I like cats. They taste like chicken' -- well, I knew right then and there that I couldn't work for a man who is so casual in making jokes about violence against felines."
Currently looking for work, and without a girlfriend, the visually-altered Mr. McAngus says that he is getting used to the stares of passersby and has decided to either join a freak show or to become the body double for Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien.
NEW FRENCH-MADE SIT COM IS SMASH HIT ON EURO TV
By The Iconoclast
PARIS -- According to the latest Euro Nielsens, the new French sit com, "Everybody Loves Saddam," was the number-one rated TV program in France and Germany on Tuesday night. Audiences throughout "Old Europe" evidently were smitten with the hilarious half hour of delightful mayhem depicting the mad hijinks of the loveable Third World dictator Saddam, his two sadistic sons, and his jocular parents who are murdered by Saddam -- along with entire population of Kurdistan -- by the end of the first episode.
German audiences seemed to be especially taken with the very funny botched torture scene, in which son Uday mistakenly cuts off the ear of his elder brother while trying to torture a dissident and then rapes the family's Kurdish cleaning lady when she's summoned to clean up the blood.
Enthused veteran Berlin TV critic Horst Weltschmertz: "'Everybody Loves Saddam' makes mit der big laughs, just like in the good old days of the Fuhrer. I laughed so hard, I thought I'd plutz when little Udi tried to hide his older brother's severed ear in his sweat pants, after Saddam dropped in to check up on the interrogation!"
In related TV news, producers of the newest French sit com, "The Robert Mugabe Show," are predicting spectacular ratings for their new Euro TV comedy when it debuts tomorrow night. Producers say the first episode, entitled "The Famine," is even funnier than last night's "Everybody Loves Saddam" debut episode. It will be followed in tomorrow night's TV lineup by the new French reality show, "The One Million Franc Bribe," featuring France's top Defense Department bureaucrats competing for cash payoffs from Third World arms merchants.
AMERICANS UPSET AT LACK OF TERRORIST ATTACK AT THE OSCARS
By William Grim
HOLLYWOOD -- In overnight polling done by the Roper Organization and Iconoclast, 86.9% of Americans have expressed deep regret that there wasn't a terrorist attack at last night's Oscar ceremony.
"We're still going over the data, but the preliminary results are pretty conclusive," said Sidney Farnsworth, director of statistics and polling for the Roper Organization. "The people we contacted -- 1276 scientifically-chosen Americans representing all races, ages and possible demographic configurations -- seemed to hate Hollywood stars with a passion, and incredibly, want to see most Hollywood stars die violent, excruciatingly painful deaths in slow motion to the accompaniment of a heavy-metal musical score."
Mr. Farnsworth went on to explain that the numbers are roughly the same for both men and women. "Yes," said Mr. Farnsworth, "88.7% of all women thought that vaporizing Courtney Love and Sean Penn would be doing the world a great favor, which was higher than the 85.3% of women who thought that Cameron Diaz' new haircut was 'cute'"...............
