Three-dot journalism lives...
(Herb Caen's still dead)

Usually I can take disparate events and mold them into one mental obelisk called, quite rightly, a column.

My god, I'm turning gay.

Other times I'm bombarded with disjointed, random thoughts pleading to be released. When this happens I present to you:

Three Dot Journalism!!!

So I'm looking at this old headline in the Austin American-Statesman. "Supreme Court upholds limits on e-mail smut."

This little wrinkle in the Communications Decency Act makes it a crime to transmit a "communication which is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy or indecent with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass another person. This includes all fuck mail from Mike Jasper."

A San Francisco company called ApolloMedia Corp. -- owner of annoy.com -- made sure the case went before the highest court in the land. Tip a glass for CEO William Bennett Turner. At least he tried. He gets a Link of the Day from me.

Guess I'll have to tone down my e-mail and save all my smut for this Web site.

Former Dallas Cowboy football player Mark Tuinei (pronounced "dumbfuck") died of a heroin overdose. If I've told athletes once I've told them a thousand times -- stick to cocaine and alcohol. Athletes have a rep to maintain. Might as well stay away from pot too. Pussies.

Thing is, anybody who shoots heroin is ignorant. What you really want to shoot is Nubain. Same euphoria, same quelling of the existential hum, but no physical addiction. Or so I've heard.

True, you can still overdose on Nubain. But good breeding dictates you don't spike the whole bottle in one slam anyway.

The NYPD threw 42 bullets at Amadou Diallo. I know this is true, cause I heard about it on NYPD Blue.

Far be it from me to tell police officers how to do their job, but I think anything over 37 bullets is just show-boating.

I also heard only 19 of the 42 bullets hit on target. This is understandable. You have to fire a few warning shots, right?

The newspaper asked me to do a story on the Y2K bug. "What's really going to happen?" my editor wanted to know. Well, I talked to city officials, county officials, state officials and a few feds. I went to more than a dozen Web sites and read about infrastructure, the American Red Cross, housing costs in Wyoming, black helicopters and alien invasions.

Here are my findings: When the New Year rolls around, either nothing's going to happen or we're all going to die a slow, painful death.

A few weeks back I met a city council candidate. We had talked on the phone before, but he'd never seen my face. One look from him and I could tell he wasn't expecting me. He probably thought I was an environmental activist.

"Bob, it's Mike Jasper. Don't be alarmed, I only look like Charles Manson."

A female city council candidate sitting next to Bob said, "Oh, you shouldn't describe yourself that way. It'll give you low self-esteem."

I turned to her, slow and Manson-like. "I like to call it self-awareness."

A couple of weeks ago I read that the police in Littleton, Colorado hadn't talked to the parents of the shooters one week after, as one reader put it, "the incident which you wrote about far too earlier than decency and good breeding would dictate."

As I recall, the Denver police also refused to bring in Jon Benet's parents for questioning. What's the deal there?

"In Colorado, we'll prosecute to the fullest extent of the law but we'll never, ever tell your parents."

Catchy slogan.

I wrote a story last week about insurance fraud for the Oak Hill Gazette. Let me simplify: A guy buys two zebras. The zebras jump his five-foot fence and he hunts them down. One falls off a cliff and dies, the other zebra (Grant zebras, known for their broad stripes) dies at the animal farm where he purchased them. Over-darted, apparently.

The zebra owner -- a renowned developer in Oak Hill -- files a phony insurance claim. He says he never owned the zebras, in fact they were his neighbors' pets. His dogs chased them over a cliff, he says, and now he's being sued for $9,000. Oh please, State Farm, send me a settlement check.

He gets the check and it's made out to his "neighbor." The so-called neighbor is in fact the vice president of his corporation (read: office manager). She deposits the check in said idiot's corporate account. Three years later, she gets fired and blows the whistle on him for insurance fraud.

But here's the big news: You can buy a zebra or giraffe in Texas. And, like many do, you can have it killed, stuffed and mounted on the wall.

What's the point? You might as well go out and buy some bowling trophies.

I know. This story isn't funny. But it's really fuckin' weird.

By the way, zebras are good eatin'. Taste like a cross between a spotted owl and a bald eagle.

Here's the best joke I ever wrote:

I just realized the other day that I forgot the ontological argument. What's next, the Pythagorean theorem? Sometimes I think my college education was a waste of time.

See, this is funny because some people would think the mere knowledge of the ontological argument and the Pythagorean theorem constitutes a waste of time. Get it? No? Well, fuck you then.

I can't seem to let go of this joke, although it has bombed every single time I've told it. Here's an idea. Read it again and visualize (auralize?) Steven Wright's voice.

Now it's funny, isn't it? No? Fuck you, then.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: This column aims to be funny. If you can read anything else into it, you're on your own. Copyright 1999 by Mike Jasper.