Below is the latest The Pain -- When Will It End?
Updated 08/29/01

Artist's Statement

Here are a few footnotes to some of the nerdier references in the chart. Parallels to actual governmental figures are too much fun to leave to the reader to infer.

Cthulhu: the most ancient and hideous incarnation of evil in the deeply fucked-up mythos of horror/fantasy author H.P. Lovecraft. Basically a sort of alien/demon/demigod, all pulsating brain and writhing tentacles and dripping with goo.

Lords of the Sith: Jedi seduced by the Dark Side of the Froce in the Star Wars movies. There can only ever be two of them at one time, a master and an apprentice, otherwise they all kill each other off. (Not unlike our own President and Vice-President, huh? "But which was the master, and which was the apprentice?")

Nazgul, a.k.a. Ringwraiths or Black Riders: the dreaded servants of Sauron in Lord of the Rings. Once kings of mortal men, they've been rendered incorporeal and evil by the Rings they wear. (Think about it: nine of them, cloaked in black, corrupted and enslaved by the very power they had thought to weild, doing the bidding of their Dark Lord.)

The rest, of course, is just a bunch of crazy stuff I made up. Except for  the part about Nixon's brain. You don't think they've got it? They do. I could tell you all about it. They're keeping it alive inside a jar until they can complete construction of the Nixon robot."