Bucky Ball

This week's featured NFL playoff game: Baltimore Ravens vs. Oakland Raiders.

Baltimore update: Still lovely.

Oakland update: News from northern California is never good, but the world was put into a panic last week when M. Riad Manaa, a scientist at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, announced he had theorized the creation of a new, spherical molecule composed of smaller nitrogen molecules. The soccer ball-shaped molecule—dubbed the "Bucky Ball" after genius Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome and the extended-warranty contract—could be created under very high pressure, said Manaa, sitting on a throne, holding a Persian cat and flanked by two guys in matching jump suits. "This is computational work, based on theoretical computations," he said, adding, "Bwaahahahahahaha!" Manaa gloated that if such particles are produced, they could yield "a tremendous amount of energy," energy that could be used to provide a microscopic power source for futuristic micromachines like, say, a zombie love machine. There have been other attempts to make other forms of nitrogen, such as pyramidal nitrogen composed of four atoms, but those efforts were thwarted by World Government ninjas who infiltrated synthetic volcanoes in the South Pacific with the help of tremendously breasted women willing to have sex in small inflatable rafts. God bless us every one.

Baltimore second: There's a wonderful song called "Baltimore" by Randy Newman. You should listen to it.

Oakland second: In neighboring Berkeley, an intern for the city is suing it because, she claims, no one did anything when she complained about a supervisor who masturbated in front of her and offered her $40 to keep watching him. The intern said she was the subject of numerous sexual advances by male colleagues including several attempts to put her hand on their crotches. Don't you see? The soccer ball-shaped nitrogen molecule would be the end of a whole way of life.

Consensus: A world in which a man can't masturbate in front of a frightened woman—and then offer her 40 bucks to keep watching, and then offer her $10,000 to keep quiet . . . I prefer to think of the last four letters of AmerICAN. For all that is good and holy, go Ravens!