Common ground.

• Author: Durst, Will
• Position: Political humor - Off The Map - Column

In 1950, perhaps under Orson Welles's porch, scientists discovered a mutant obese mouse. Forty-five years later, they managed to isolate the gene this mouse failed to produce and now they think they might have an anti-fat drug. A lard balm. A corpulence capsule. Porky pills. That's right, we Americans are on the verge of realizing our dream to lose weight by eating ice cream. "Exercise? Dream on Big River--I got a prescription." Marriages will be saved because husbands will no longer be terrorized by having to answer the question: "Honey, do these pants make me look fat?" The universe may continue to expand, but we won't have to anymore. Of course, as we speak, industrial espionage is being carried out by a consortium financed through Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and Slimfast, to discredit the research. Richard Simmons's undies are in a massive, quivering bundle. The thing is, man is an excluding animal. If everyone can be skinny, thin won't be in. Fat will start being where it's at. Trendy clubs will feature lots of whipped-cream drinks, and lovers will reminisce about when they were first sucked into the folds of each other's flesh by gravitational force.

L.A. What's the difference between L.A. and yogurt? Yogurt has an active culture.

Pete Wilson's campaign slipped into overdrive, as he received high praise from another Aryan Nations leader, Richard Butler. At the Aryan World Congress, in Hayden Lake, Idaho, the seventy-eight-year-old pastor of the Church of the Stunted Cerebellum said Wilson "is beginning to wake up," and went on to criticize Caucasians who deny the superiority of their own race, calling them "traitors who are white outside, black inside, and have Jewish minds." Wow. Doesn't have a very inclusive ring, does it? Pete Wilson needs this kind of help the way a field mouse needs a hawk convention. There's an old saying, something like, "If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas." Welcome to the flea circus, Pete. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Won't be long before South Africa starts slapping sanctions on California.

* Edinburgh, Scotland, where it rains so much it is theorized by some that Scottish redheads are nothing more than English lassies overcome with rust.

Oooh, Clinton has really climbed out on a political limb now. He's come out against teen-age smoking. Next thing you know he'll lodge his unequivocal aversion to chigger mites. Can't wait for his position paper on crib death. Banning brand-name...