In national news, we are out of gasoline. That recent tankful you got will be your last. We are also out of money. Your local bank will soon be converted to a pawn shop. Finally, we are out of food, because everything but corn is poisonous, and all the corn is going to ethanol production. Ethanol is supposed to go into the gasoline, but since we are out of gas, the U.S. government will soon begin stockpiling the ethanol, because the Farm Lobby doesn't want to go back to the outdated practice of selling corn to people who actually want to eat it.

In response to the lack of gasoline, President Bush called for drilling in Alaska and along the coasts. Liberals reply that this won't help because it will take years to bring gas online, by which time we should all be enjoying wind-powered SUVs. Conservatives agree, but say the potential environmental destruction makes drilling worthwhile nonetheless.

Speaking of dried-up commodities, Jesse Jackson, finding himself outflanked on the right by Bill Cosby, on the left by Moveon.org, and on the left and right by Barack Obama, has recently developed a comedic act in which he impersonates a Klansman. This has received mixed reviews.

It has been a rough summer in the entertainment world. Tom Cruise perished in a plane crash. Will Smith died from a heart attack. New Kids on the Block is staging a reunion tour.

This just in: It turns out Tom Cruise and Will Smith are alive and well. A new form of spam email announces the death of someone popular in an effort to trick the unfortunate recipient into opening it. Our News Department apologizes for the error. They also apologize for the fact that the New Kids rumor is, unfortunately, completely true.

On the political front, Hillary Clinton is now homeless. Our man on the street tells us she has alienated her fellow panhandlers by insisting on the best corner in downtown NYC and berating passersby who give her anything smaller than a twenty. She dismisses these allegations as fabrications concocted by the right-wing panhandling machine.

Barack Obama, meanwhile, is furious that the uber-conservative New Yorker magazine's latest cover depicts him as a radical Muslim. Through a spokesman he denounced the image and issued a fatwa against the New Yorker's publisher and cartoonist.

John McCain is not, in fact, dead.

In sports, everyone in the Tour de France is a junkie. In response, Brett Favre has decided to enter the race, riding a yellow and green Huffy.

And for my local readers, Kansas remains hot, flat, and windy, politically schizophrenic, and filled with people who own their own homes and know how to farm. All things considered, at least it's not New Jersey.