Arcade Fire.

Twitter.

Your iPhone.

FaceBooger.

Social networking.

Williamsburg.

Tokyo.

China.

Egypt.

Hillary “Hot” Rodham Clinton.

Billiam Clinton.

Eminem.

Rihanna.

Green Day.

Sum 41.

April the Wine.

Toronto.

Cock Blocker.

Naoto Kan.

Right wing Japanese sound trucks.

Movies.

The University of Tokyo.

The University of Toronto.

Film school.

Snoop Doggie.

Dr. Dre.

Madonna.

Michael Moore.

Oliver Stone.

Atom Egoyan.

Bars.

The Simpsons.

Vice Magazine.

Mohammed El Baradei.

Cocaine.

Ban Ki Moon.

The Onion.

U2.

Stingk.

REM.

The Pixies.

Hole.

The Foo Fighters.

Ben Folds.

H&M.

England.

Afghanistan.

Iran.

James Cameron.

Tony Blair.

The British royal family.

The Japanese royal family.

Hip hop (rap).

John McCain.

Wilco minus Jay.

Radiohead.

Any current Japanese celebrity on television.

Kid Rock.

Beer.

Town criers and barely able to function baristas peppered Mrs. Clinton, whom also goes by the nom de plume Hillary, with questions about her height, favorite foods, and iPod contents. But the pleasant atmosphere was predictably shock-rocked when Clinton received an unscreened question via the fabulous Internet social networking service Fluffer, asking yet again, if she will run for president in 2012.

“No, no, no, no, no – No I will not,” Mrs. Clinton insisted, in response to the unscripted Fluff, sent by Chinese democracy dissident Richard Penn, 51, who is serving a life sentence somewhere in the People’s Republic for once upon a time in 1997 advocating a 2 party political system.

“How about in 2016?” pressed Brutal Times intern Pfaff Onclear, 15, in between bites of a medium chicken falafel.

“Well, there – as you know, Pfaff – that looks delicious – there probably isn’t going to be a 2016, but if there is I certainly won’t be running for president at that junction, Pfaff.”

And on it went. The questions come at a potentially sensitive time for Clinton, whom like anyone anywhere has a sensitive side, and when you get right down to it, prefers routine and structure to leading an unscripted life of threesomes and prescription drugs. Plus, as with so much somewhere, some things happen, get forgotten and maybe happen again? All afternoon, and into the next day, and the wee hours of in your face, shouts were heard and meanings to them were assigned, dropped and reassigned. And then… just as everyone had given up and was ready for a bedtime snack I remembered how there was no other choice other than Sarah Palin and McCain for president, since America certainly is never gonna elect a Romulan.

“What about…2110?”

“Styles, I’ll be 162 years old then.”

“And so will I – but you haven’t answered my question, lady”

“Well, I think – with all due respect to your question, Mr. Cradgerock – and that cheese falafel looks delicious – I think it’s too early to…to start talking about 2110, and things that are…a hundred and one years down the road.”

“OK, sure. Then, how about 2112? You’d be a fresh face by then.”

“Well, I think it is something that, given the right set of circumstances, and if there was some way Barack could be totally humiliated and made to apologize in some eternal way, that I would consent to do that.”

Understand?

“Yeah, I’m gonna meet – what’s his name?  George Thompson, an Iraqi envoy this week and get the lowdown on what the situation on the ground is over there,” McCain said, grinning like it meant something.

“Oh I get it, but what does your grin mean?” I asked the big loser.

“It means I’m happy, Barry. What do you think it means?” he replied to me.

“I thought maybe it means you want to eat me,” I responded in response.

“No, I ate earlier,” McCain said back to me, again with that grinning thing he’s always got going on.

Is it just me or are his eyes getting even beadier?

They’re mighty beady I’m telling you.

Anyway, I had booked a four minute interview with the Mcster so I plowed on.

“This, George Thompson, how come he’s gonna meet with you?”

“That’s what – envoys – do, Barry. I thought you might have looked that up at least on your Wikipedia.”

“Oh, do you use Wikipedia non-president McCain?”

“I’m learning how to use it to kill my enemies and those who speak against the country – idiot,” he shot back.

“There’s a country – named ‘Idiot’?” I asked, incredulously.

“Oh, you didn’t know? You could be easily mistaken for its’ president.”

“Well, at least you won’t have that problem, ha-ha,” I said in attempt to lighten the sudden dark cloud that seemed to have come over our springtime teat a teat.

Anyway, I hope McCain’s not gonna put the nice Iraqi envoy George Thompson in an headlock because they or it (the lock) is sure hard to break and I thought anyone could get out of an headlock put on by a 72-year-old.

It was a teachable moment.

By Styles Cradgerock, WASHINGTON – Despite his good looks and boyish smile, despite his taste in music (Springsteen) and way with words (“Yes we can”) it appears that fewer and fewer Americans want to touch his bulging stimulus package.

Plans to reveal the package were met with shrieks and flush red faces in the House of Representatives, the ruling body of the good old USA. This turnabout in attitudes towards Mr Obama’s efforts to stimulate the economy may be due to a change in strategy says Dr Ray Goolens, a political scientist at York University in Toronto.

“I think that it’s fair to say that when Obama was talking about stimulating the economy – in other words limiting himself to orally stimulating the economy, most people besides religious wackos were ojay with that. But when he jumped trains and started moving towards actual penetration of the root causes people felt he was stuffing it down their throats.”

Could be.

Still, some like JJ Montgomery, 23, (who has aspirations of becoming Obama’s speech writer one day), say they have booked hotel rooms, made ham sandwiches and plan to travel to Washington for Mr Obama’s January 20th inauguration in hopes of catching a glimpse of his package.

“Obama’s six foot, right, like me and my stepdad. Therefore his package is going to be commiserate with that and may even cause him minor discomfort – I myself have to deal with that,” said Mr Montgomery so softly I had to strain myself to hear it.

“If I could just add something else,” said Dr Ray Goolens. “It’s extraordinarily important to remember that people are going to have mixed feelings about this – it’s natural. They’re going to be on one hand attracted to Mr Obama’s package, while on the other hand they’re going to find themselves repulsed by it; so there’s going to be a lot of self-loathing in the mix as well.”

Despite the despiters some say the soaring deficit makes pushing Obama’s stimulus package all the more urgent.

“I say we should push it and see if it stands up to the test. If it does I’m the last person to say we should go and slap controls on it; I’d be the first one to suggest we all stand up and salute it,” chimed in one Congresswoman, who asked not to be identified because she was not officially approved to comment on the story.

Typically though it looks like maverick senator John McCain is left to save the day by proposing a bipartisan comprise that has been attracting attention on both sides of the aisle in the House of Representatives.

“Look, I’m not going to sit here and stand in the way of the new president’s plan to, to unveil his stimulus package. That’s his right to do that. I, heh-heh-heh, if I had won the last election the American people would be looking at my stimulus package right now and given the choice I’m not going to lie here and tell you I’d prefer to look at a 71-year-old’s package rather than say a 47 year-old’s package.”

The bipartisan generosity of McCain’s rhetoric was tempered however by his actual suggestion made toward uniting house members behind Obama.

“My proposal my friends, is that before we see whatever it is heh-heh that Mr Obama intends to stimulate the economy with, that we get drunk, I mean not totally totally drunk, but just a little, maybe one or two beers – just enough to create a kind of halo around it or a, a Japanese mosaic, I think that’s what they use in ah Japan to cover up or a soften something and make it a little easier to go down,” McCain went on.

Or did he?

Mr McCain, who is running to be the oldest white US president, will wear a red tie.

Perhaps as a way of toying with his campaign’s critics, Mr Obama will appear as a 47-year-old black man, which is expected by analysts to undercut McCain’s chances of becoming the first black US president.

“Obama is not taking any chances this time around,” says Charlie McNutty, long-time pollster for NBC-MyGoodies. “A lot of people are going to say, ‘sure, he’s being bold by showing up as a younger black man at the debates, but this is politics and you do what you have to do to win’” he added.

Likewise, reports this week have McCain refraining from plucking grey hairs until “after the debates”, in order to look more older, and powdering his face with cocaine in an effort to look “well, let’s face it – whiter,” according to Gerry Weeks, my next-door-neighbor.

Critics of such antics on behalf of the candidates would do well to remember that Hillary “Hot Rodham” Clinton refrained from similar in-your-face reminders aimed at “rubbing her womanness in people’s faces” at her own peril.

“She was running to become the first US woman president and Mr Obama was losing, but a lot of folks say her that she lost directly as a result of not rubbing her womanness in people’s faces,” said Gerry Weeks, my next-door-neighbor, over drinks.

Team Clinton staffers all agreed with this assessment after a few drinks.

“People…are dumb,” said Mandy Campo, who supported Clinton in the tight fight with Mr Obama. “Some people…think he’s a woman.”

To make sure no such cock ups occur at the debates Obama and McCain campaign officials are waxing and coating the candidates to seal them from spoilage due to inclement weather or hurled fruits.

The key is “keep it simple” agree McCain spokesman Harleck Gart and Obama spokesperson Sheena Kelog. “If people want an old white guy president, we want them to vote McCain,” said Gart. Perhaps unsurprisingly Ms Kelog said that Mr Obama was “running to be the president for everybody,” but indeed had decided to debate Mr McCain “without undergoing plastic surgery or taking hallucinegenic drugs to alter his usual physical or mental state”.

Make sense?

Four years ago, in a small town outside Anchorage, little Styler Bruhennan had just scored the winning goal in the city’s ‘Little Moose’ Ice Hockey tournament for under 10s. He was awarded the game puck which was presented to him by the mayor. The local newspaper quoted little Styler as saying, “This is the happiest day of my life, I’ll cherish this puck ’til the day I die.”

Enter Sarah Palin, affectionately known by neighbors as ‘that woman who hates hockey’. Relations with a rebel group of 8 year olds who played street hockey on the road in front of her house had steadily been growing colder for weeks. Amidst growing tensions in the region, the young renegade little Styler showed up to the game brandishing his magic puck, of course an uproar ensued.

The cacophony pushed Palin over the edge, she emerged from her front door with fire in her eyes. In an unprovoked campaign of shock and awe Palin snatched the puck from little Styler’s tiny fingers, and tossed it deep out into Sleeping Duckling Lake, which lay just beyond the hockey net.

Needless to say Styler was devastated, he missed three days of school and forgot to finish his math homework twice.

Palin however appeared unremorseful when approached by brutal times award winning war correspondent, Styles Cradgerock. “The Brutal Times?! You want a quote? Here’s a quote you scumbag, I don’t regret throwing that little punk’s puck in the lake, if I had the chance to do it again I’d have thrown him in the lake as well!”

Could this be the incident for which the McCain campaign dubbed Palin a ‘Hockey Mom’?!?

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) anticipated this morning that come the time its’ new budget comes into effect in April-May later this year the war in Iraq, which has stimulated the imaginations of all ages for the past six years, will cost approximately $12 billion US a month ($1000.00 Canadian dollars).

Some administration cheapskates say it’s not worth it.

“The exchange rate is lousy; no one speaks English; and the service industry is just not going to bring in the tourists needed to jump-start the economy,” said Lance Barnes-Whitman, of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which is overseeing the war. “I’d much rather see us getting a better return for our investment come April or May. I’m suggesting we take a good look at some of the opportunities that are opening up in Europe; Portugal may be an option.”

Top Iraqi officials, including Iraqi President Jalal Talibani, have in recent days staged all-night bull sessions with their US counterparts in efforts to salvage the long-running war.

During a midnight hour iphone video conference with US President George W Bush, Talibani, according to press pool reporters present, “looked Mr Bush in the eye” and “reassured him the war would be cheaper” in the next few months.

“I can’t give you a specific number at this moment, this is true,” said Talibani. “But I think we can safely say that 11 billion, nine hundred and ninety-nine million dollars a month is not unrealistic; and this could go cheaper if the circumstances are right.”

But as-yet-untested presidential newbies and US senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton seemed skeptical after poring over VHS copies of Mr Bush’s powwow with the Iraqi head honcho.

“Well, first of all, I think we’d all be best to remember that when the costs for this war began to oscilate I was the only one to stand up and say ‘Hey, this is wrong – the costs are going up, they’re oscillating – and we have to act to make sure they don’t keep going up’,”said Mr Obama, who is trying to be the first black president.

“Well, frankly, I think Barack and I are basically in agreement here, but I have to say that what is really important right at this moment is that the American people choose someone who can sit down with someone like Jalal Talibani – who is a known compulsive shopper – and communicate to him that the American people are not insisting at this point that the entire war be a bargain, but that at least we want to feel we didn’t make a mistake by going into Iraq. And that’s what I’ve been talking about with my Customer Service Plan,” responded Mrs Clinton, who is trying to be the first woman president.

Freshly-cemented Republican presidential nominee John McCain has also weighed in, suggesting recently, on Good Morning America, that the US simply buy the country.

“I think if we made them a good offer, they’d let us buy it, yes,” McCain commented in response to a question by host Sandi Oots. “After all, we bought Canada – and Japan; and those have been pretty good deals I think.”

McCain is trying to be the oldest white male president.

So far, he’s winning.