After a quite a lengthy hiatus, it turns out that we are still publishing. The presses were temporarily stopped as we waited for the end of the world. When the University of Tennessee won the college-age professional football championship and Dook had the best basketball team in the country, it seemed clear that the end was near. These events are straight out of Nostradamus, folks. He says in Century 10, Quatrain 72, "The King of Terror will rise to power as a leader of young men, and he will dress them in dark blue and call them Devils, and he will have no vowels in his name, and he will be revered by all except those who recognize his true identity, which they will do by noting his little rat mouth."

So anyway, following the Fiesta Bowl, Volunteer fans were happy, if misguided, and they proclaimed their joy all over the Internet. For example, one email we received included several repetitions of:

I SAID ITS GREAT! TO BE! A TENNESEE VOL!

Now, alert readers will recall that we are sticklers for the correct use of apostrophes. We believe they should be used to indicate either omitted letters, as in "don't," or possession, as in "your's." For that reason, we suggest the UT fans stick to the following corrected version of the cheer:

I SAID ITS GREAT! TO BE! A TENNES'EE VOL!

Volunteer fans are excited that UT finally beat Florida for the first time in recorded history. This put them in a position to win the national championship by breaking their long string of third place finishes in the Southeastern Conference, or as the cheer goes in Knoxville, "We're number Earnhardt!"

Seriously, we took our brief hiatus because MWC is based on current events, and let's face it, nothing much of historic significance happened in the first seven weeks of the year. Okay, that's not quite true. In this issue's "apocryphal quotes" section, we have these newsworthy statements, which followed the death of the King of Jordan: Pop singer Mariah Carey said, "I can't believe he died so soon after retiring from basketball," and the CIA issued a somewhat defensive statement, saying, "Look, George Bush should have been more specific when he told us to 'Give Hussein cancer.'"

Also in the news, Larry Flynt revealed Georgia congressman Bob Barr's somewhat controversial opinion that lying under oath is absolutely never ever acceptable without any exceptions unless you're testifying about abortions you really didn't want your new wife to find out about it, in which case some leniency might be given. Also, the abortion in question must not have been federally funded. Or something like that.

More to the point, we were too busy traveling to write, in the sense that we were in Las Vegas for three days of the seven-week break. We had never been to Las Vegas before, and it was quite an experience. You've all heard the tales about the decadence and the perversity and the lawlessness that are endemic to Las Vegas, and we are here to testify that it's all true. For it was in Las Vegas that we saw something that threatens to rend our very social fabric. Something that may throw the nation into turmoil and cause a social-fabric-rending crisis of morality of never-before-seen proportions. And no, we did not see the President. No, it's something far more serious than that. For the first time, we saw a video of the Teletubbies.

If you have turned on the TV or opened a newspaper in the last few weeks, then you have heard or read that Jerry Falwell has outed the Teletubby known as "Tinky-Winky." [It's already been in Newsweek, so you know MWC is way behind the curve on this story.] The conclusion is obvious, according to Falwell's reasoning: Tinky-Winky has a triangle, "the gay pride symbol," on his head; Tinky-Winky is purple, "the gay pride color;" and Tinky-Winky carries a purse.

Well sure, that makes sense. We thought the rainbow was more associated with gay pride than any individual color, but purple is part of the rainbow, right? Let's see, ROY G. BIV stands for red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Wait a minute, there's no purple in there. That seems to cast some doubt on Falwell's follow-up assertion that the entire Minnesota Vikings football team is also gay. "But they're always hugging and patting each others' behinds, and I'm not even going to touch the phrase, 'Purple People Eaters,'" Falwell reportedly said.

Frankly, we thought Falwell was digging too deep for evidence. We thought the giveaway was when Tinky-Winky said, "Hello, other male Teletubby Dipsy. I would like to date you, and when we grow up we can go to college together at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, and if we aren't accepted there, then we will go someplace where college students don't have to be afraid to be gay, such as Wyoming."

Falwell was also in the news a couple weeks before that, when we heard A) The Antichrist is walking the earth, B) He's a Jewish man, and C) Which we know because Jesus was a Jewish man. We forget how the logic falls together, but we believe the argument is all set out in Falwell's new autobiography, "Mein Kampf."

Falwell's comments so far this year give him a commanding lead in the annual game of "Who can attack the largest number of groups of people who have historically been killed simply for their demographic characteristics." We think Falwell would have been much more efficient if he had issued the simple statement, "The Jewish Ethiopian lesbian who plays Tinky-Winky is the Antichrist."

Speaking of Larry Flynt, we should take time to point out that not everything we just said about Jerry Falwell is true. We are allowed to do this because of a 1970's court case pitting Falwell against Flynt in which the Supreme Court rewrote the First Amendment to say, "You can pretty much suggest anything you want about Jerry Falwell, including the idea that he has sexual relations with his mother, and when we say 'sexual relations,' we are thinking of acts so explicit that even the Paula Jones lawyers would consider them sexual relations."

Speaking of acts the Paula Jones lawyers wouldn't consider sexual relations, we close with the news that the Alabama state legislature has passed a law forbidding the sale and use of vibrators. [Editor's clarification: According to the Paula Jones lawyers, during standard use, the user is not engaged in sexual relations but the vibrator is.] The new law will be strictly enforced, according to Alabama law enforcement officials. Attorney General Jim Joe Bill "Fob" Pryor declared, "Anyone we catch violating this law -- they're not getting off." (rimshot)

Confidential to certain readers in Alabama and neighboring states, and you know who you are: Fortunately for you, the new statute outlawing sex toys does not forbid the making of "fart noises" with a laptop computer, unless you experience excessive pleasure from doing so.

Confidential to alert reader My Mom: Have a great trip!