America has been spoiling to

declare war on teenagers for a

long time, and Littleton is

increasingly looking like our

Tonkin Gulf incident, providing

the panic setting we need to go

after the enemy in force.

Compelling as the crackdown on

Dylan-and-Eric "copycats" is,

there isn't much talk of the

collateral damage: young bards

getting psychiatric suspensions

for writing too-angsty essays on

Of Mice and Men, law-abiding

students forcibly restrained

while reaching for concealed

packs of Breath Savers. We had a

front-row view at our local high

school Tuesday, as an

inter-curricular argument over a

stolen Walkman quickly escalated

into a rapid response mission

involving two firetrucks, two

ambulances and enough cops to

protect the Democratic

convention from a city full of

hippies. But to torture our

Vietnam analogy a little

further, it appears the crafty,

determined enemy has already

figured out how to use our power

against us. The latest batch of

Know Your Foe instructional

pamphlets neglects to mention

that kids tend to prefer smoky

mid-mornings propped in front of

A Change of Heart to laborious

sessions in the Earth sciences,

and with even the flimsiest bomb

threats now sufficient to shut

down the school, nobody but a

remedial reading layabout

can fail to find a way to skip

classes. And you can call us a

bunch of turncoat Hanoi Janes,

but we find it slightly

encouraging. We've long

suspected today's teenagers are

smarter than we were but never

thought they'd figure out how to

make it snow on a school day.

cutoffs may be new, it's

encouraging to see that some

students are keeping alive more

traditional classroom antics.

Like dosing the teacher. Two

students at Irving, Texas'

Winfree Academy High School were

busted this week for slipping an

LSD Mickey Finn into their

teacher's coffee cup. "The

students are pretty amazed,"

another instructor noted. "They

are like, 'How could someone do

this?'" ... and not spare a tab

for me? We can't say whether

this new flavor for the

overpriced beverage will become

a Starbucks regular, but

happily, the well-caffeinated

teacher was quickly treated and

returned to the job, where he

kept students intrigued by

making hair grow out of the

blackboard.

"Rosie O'Donnell has made it her

public position that she is

against gun ownership and

that gun owners should go to

jail ..." reads the petition .

"Please register me as a

dissatisfied Kmart customer ..."

And with that, gun owners

launched a retaliatory strike

against the daytime talk-show

host's latest foray into

punditry, citing remarks

O'Donnell made after the high

school shootings in Littleton.

("I think there should be a law

- and I know this is extreme -

that no one can have a gun in

the US. If you have a gun, you

go to jail.") But targeting

O'Donnell's lucrative

advertising deal is only the

first step. More than 100

pro-gun webmasters have claimed

free pages offered on Rosie's

domain - and installed scathing

criticism. "We must find a way

to keep TV personalities from

spouting gibberish about topics

that they have absolutely no

knowledge about whatsoever,"

reads one. "Welcome to my Right

to Keep and Bear Arms page,"

says another. "Boycott Kmart

until they fire Rosie

O'Donnell," adds a third.

Ironically, Rosie herself has

played a gun-wielding

law-enforcement officer in at

least two films. Maybe that's

why her remarks contained the

Diallo-insensitive caveat that

only the police should have

guns. In a related story, irate

Laverne and Shirley fans are

demanding that Kmart beef up

Penny Marshall's role in the

chain's frequent TV spots.

The discovery of Mount Everest

explorer George Mallory has

kicked the community of Everest

geeks into a frenzy, with the

possibility that Mallory, coiner

of the "Because it's there"

aphorism, may have beaten Sir

Edmund Hillary to the top by

some 29 years. At press time,

investigators were still

determining whether Mallory had

in his possession photographic

evidence of having reached the

Himalayan summit. It's already

been determined, however, that

the legendary climber's

possessions contained several

copies of the special gift

edition of Jon Krakauer's

Into Thin Air.

Penis envy comes in many shapes

and sizes. Our own hefty

packages have no doubt made us

the objects of some jealous

urinal perusals. But still, we

were taken aback by the "dude,

check this out" spam for

Tinypenis.com. Even for the

highly specialized porn

offerings online, this seemed

like a rarefied attraction. When

we visited the site, though, all

we could see were a batch of

you-need-Shockwave warnings

like, "you can try to play with

our site ... at your own risk,

but if your shit starts

exploding or hitting the fan,

you've been warned" and

"goddamn! upgrade to a 4.0+

browser already! if you are not

in charge, tell whoever is that

your Web browser software is WAY

out of date." Our habits of

Quaker simplicity keep us

content with a Netscape 3.0

browser, and we aren't willing

to upgrade just to look at a

site that one correspondent

tells us consists of "references

to Dairy Queen, ranch dressing,

putting Peeps in the microwave,

and some sort of protest against

jive, known to the enlightened

as ebonics," all grouped in

categories, like Frarority, Lisa

and Her Boys, Misc, Party Pics,

Road Trips, and Nerds. It's not

so much the site's unfriendly

design that puzzles us; after

all, the Web is still crawling

with incompetent "professional

Web designers" who are still

foisting their lousy wares on an

unsuspecting public. What's odd

is the way Tiny Penis honcho

Ryan Seabury feels the need to

moon about his manly and

menacing site-building skills.

Not to put too fine a point on

it, but the proprietors of

Bigpenis.com and Hugepenis.com

don't bother with such

overcompensating braggadocio.