While waiting to masturbate to Friends last night, I caught some of the President's address.  I didn't have the sound on - Ross's nasally whine kind of ruins it for me - so I'm not sure exactly what was said.   I did notice a caption that read "Peace In Kosovo," and it got me to thinking that maybe it was time for an abrupt end to our own military action.   The Mushroom, by putting up, then sheepishly removing, their response to our attacks, has unambiguously raised an unfunny flag of surrender.  We'd like to land the killing blow, like Mario kicking a supine Koopa Troopa right into the fucking drink, but William Jefferson Clinton is right: It's time for an end to hostilities.  The chance that collateral damage might harm someone we do care about - the children - increases daily.  For instance, thanks to this pointless war, a pair of six year olds searching the internet for Mario hints could skip innocently, hand-in-hand, to this very article, see the phrase "fucking drink", scroll back in confused horror only to trip the psychic landmine that is this picture of my ass, then promptly purchase shotguns at WalMart and blow each other's heads off.

Who convinced this pair of old-time whores to attack that dapper gentleman?   Kevin Murphy.

Kevin Murphy, while attempting some semblance of damage control, has treated countless numbers of our dear readers to entertaining exchanges of email.  And for that, I think we're all grateful.  What did our readers learn?  Just this: For the editor of a satirical e-zine, Mr. Murphy has no sense of humor.   Like Adolf Hitler, we believe Kevin hopes to breed a race of unfunny supermen and would like nothing more than to see the retarded and old melted down and made into candles, their bones ground up and used to prepare the cheap, pulpy paper on which he will furiously scratch the closing chapters of his autobiography, Mein Stylebook.   As Kevin himself said, "The Internet is not all about sharing anymore..." 

Call us dreamers and romantic kooks, but we think that that is exactly what the internet is about, from the Arab housewife sharing her Tabouli secrets, to the Japanese grandfather sharing pictures of schoolgirls being brutally raped, to the Siberian hacker sharing the Japanese grandfather's violent porn site's password.  While the rest of us dance merrily around the internet maypole that is Seanbaby's huge, erect penis, Murphy is feverishly plotting to turn our utopia into his own fascist Final-Fightocracy in which he is Mayor Mike Haggar and each of us is G. Orber.

But the battle is over.  We believe Kevin Murphy, like the postwar Saruman, is now capable only of small mischief, and bid him go in peace.  We beg him, though, to heed these words:

Kevin, you're a professional journalist, so it goes without saying that you are familiar with the journalistic oath, "first, do no harm."  Have you seen Patch Adams?  It's wonderful.  It shows clearly that the power of laughter can heal a sick child, better even than half a bottle of aspirin.  What would happen if a sick little girl visited The Mushroom in a last ditch effort to find some healing comedy?   She'd die before she found any, wouldn't she?  Do you want that on your conscience?  I think if you look deep into your stylebook, you'll find that you don't.  So, please Kevin - and this goes for you too, Budrick - shut down your site.   If not for us, then for the world's sick children; some of whom have cancer, you idiots.  Come to think of it, why don't you both just go to the hospital and, one by one, smother each toddler with a pillow?  Because that's basically what you're doing with your comedy.  Your legal threats are going to seem like a city bus filled with Pokemon dolls compared to the Mr. Toad's Wild Ride of suing that will occur should the two of you continue on your present baby-endagering course.

For you vultures saddened by this end to hostilities, we're currently looking into peacekeeping misadventures at other sites.