Every office has a couple of

frustrated animal lovers, and it

seems fitting that the veal pens

of New Media should have more

than average. While the HTML

jockeys behind Webmonkey might

not be thinking in that

direction, their icon-cum-TOC

certainly, er, raises the issue

of simian seduction. More

practically, the veggie burrito

concessions of South Park are

some of the few businesses that

really profit from the the web

"boom." Don't get us wrong -

vegetarianism has its place (at

Jack-In-the-Box, for example),

but our tolerance for lifestyle-

choices-masquarading-

as-ideology has always been

pretty low. It's too bad that

the carnivorous crowd is usually

represented by folks such as

those at The Bile Chronicles,

whose defense of meat-eating (as

the pinnacle of civilizaton) is

nicely illustrated, but itself

hopelessly misinformed. Ah well,

we find an expertly-cooked

softball-cut steak to be an

eloquent enough justification

for our own tender feelings for

flesh, fish, and fowl.

Customers of Mutton Bone, on the

other hand, have some serious

explaining to do. Whether the

sale of inflatable sheep is a

public service or practical

joke, it's certainly revelant to

today's workplace, where

sensitivity to sexual preference

is a big issue. Not that the

site's owners want to get caught

up in organizing the charter

chapter of NAMSLA (The North

American Man-Sheep Love

Association) - they emphasize

that the blow-up ovines are "The

Ultimate Gag Gift." Funny, we

thought that the ultimate gag

gift was stock in your favorite

New Media company.

The net has long been defamed as

a safe harbor for pedophiles,

but soon that could all change -

with or without the CDA. Steve

Johnson of Mercury Center's

science and technology page

writes this week about the

penile plethysmograph, a sort of

lie detector for sex offenders.

Rumored to have its origins in

the Eastern Bloc as a method of

weeding out gays (and fake gays)

from the military, the "P-graph"

consists of a rubber collar

filled with mercury which the

Unlucky Suspect gets to wear on

his penis. The Unlucky Suspect

is then exposed to dirty

pictures, videos, and sounds,

and the results are recorded

for, um, posterity. We (and

perhaps the market researchers

at Mutton Bone) await the next

iteration: a mobile model that

connects - where else? - to the

SCSI port of a fevered laptop.

Speaking of dirty pictures,

apparently JFK Junior and the

boys have been smoking ye olde

crack pipe and lounging on the

grassy knoll again. What other

rag would put Newt Gingrich, and

then Drew Barrymore on its cover -

"Happy Birthday, Mr.

President"? Makes you wonder

what young Johnny saw going down

in the Oval Office

way-back-when... But the real

draw of George is its regular

rant, "If I Were President,"

currently featuring former OJ

posse member and general-purpose

varnish remover F. Lee Bailey.

While some might question the

sanity of picturing Bailey at

the helm of our country for even

a second, when he extols the

insight gained from " [o]ne

careful visit to any of our

countless penitentiaries," he's

speaking from experience,

considering he just got out of

the pokey himself for allegedly

pocketing $20 million in profits

from stock he was to hold in

trust for the government. And

when our man weighs in on his

propensity for "kicking ass and

taking names," we don't doubt

it, given his comments in the

New Yorker regarding Dave McGee,

the prosecuting attorney on his

case: "He'd better never meet me

coming around the corner. No one

stands up in an American

courtroom and calls me a thief.

His family needs to know some

pain." But then, considering

criminals are the last great

American heroes, and that we all

want a hero for president, perhaps

Bailey's not such a stretch in

'96.