"I don't know about you, but maan, the world is getting to be one crazy place these days. And I don't just mean this war business in Iraq, and the fact North Korea is going to pull out of the nulcear nonproliferation treaty and that jazz. Not even those anti-war protests like that huge one we had here in Chicago. Far out. We're talking about the Bomb and we're marching on the streets - this is like 1970 all over again!

I mean some seriously weird sh** is going on. Like that giant sea-monster squid they found in the deep sea near Antarctica with eyes the size of saucers! I kid you not. I mean, this thing is bigger than the squid in Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Just unnatural, I tell you. Don't get me wrong, I love squid as much as the next person. I love that sunsai tako salad they've got at Green Tea down on Clark and Webster..mm, mm, mm. Little chewy pieces of squid in a sweet and sour dressing with sesame seeds. That is good.

Don't even get me started about that super-flu bug that's going around, you know the one, SARS? I mean, living in Chicago, with the world's businest airport and all these people coming through - I'm gonna have to start wearing one of them white surgical masks, like Michael Jackson. Just like Mama said in Cheap Trick's Surrender, "you never know what you'll catch."

But you know what really tips me off that these are some seriously wierd-ass times we're living in? It's that invisibility coat that those Japanese invented - I mean, it's not really invisible, you can tell that guy's just wearing a coat with some fancy gadgetry...but some things you should just not mess with. If Mother Nature wanted humankind to be invisible, she would have made us all transparent like jellyfish, you know what I mean?"