Sometimes daily life here at Department Lemur is like a foreign movie. It is true, no? We live, we love, we dress up as religious figures and lop each other's heads off when we get snotty.

The Passenger refuses to be tied down to this mess. Even as the Lemurs act up, I sit here, calmly sipping my Pernod, heating up some leftovers and counting the seconds until I crack like a champagne glass hitting the cobblestones in arty slow-motion. Perhaps I should go easy on the subtitles for a while. Sample some pop culture, mesdames et messieurs?
 

"We should never lose our love of pranks," Dead Kennedys vocalist and onetime San Francisco mayoral candidate Jello Biafra once said. The Passenger doesn't know if Biafra ever made the acquaintance of Reverend Al and The Cacophony Society, but he does know that if they had hooked up just over a decade ago, the old school punk would be mayor of his hometown right now. The Society are easily the high priests of pranks, indulging in reality-bending activities that run the gamut from filling teddy bears with cement and foisting them on the employees of an unsuspecting Toys 'R Us outlet to "the Summer Solstice Human Barbecue". They've infested Venice Beach in numbers decked out in Santa drag - the infamous "Red Tide." They've donned clown gear - more than once - and stalked department stores, museums and Scientology headquarters, vexing the unaware with their cruel brand of comic irony. I wish I had some comic irony. Visit the Cacaphony's official site, and you, too, will wish I had some.
 

You've waited long enough. Today, this column welcomes its first personal homepage to its ranks with a testimonial to Tom Murphy VII, author of the unfortunately titled Tom's Utterly Insignificant Webpage. C'mon, Tom, you've got a winner here - own it, baby! There's so much monkey fun here that one could hardly make a dent in a month of Sundays; having said that, I recommend you check out his spoon collection, make use of his illustrated guide to destroying your computer and tap your toe to the official homepage of his band, Spastic Moose. Okay, so maybe the content is a little insignificant, stacked next to big and important stuff like the millennium bug, Salma Hayek and America's continuing love affair with punk/ska fusion, but at least Tom's honest about it.
 

"Don't panic! Don't ... take off your shoes!" This rallying cry, when first heard, inspired a nation to dab on copious amounts of Pyramid Patchouli, double its sugar intake and admit that its collective brain May No Longer Be The Boss. Audio theatre terrorists The Firesign Theater held these and a whole bunch of other truths to be self-evident, which is why we need them now more than ever, make no mistake. Set to release their first album of new material in almost two decades, the provocatively dubbed "Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death", it is the Passneger's fervent hope that Phil Austin, Peter Bergman, David Ossman, and Phil Proctor will be able to flip our big switch, once again. It is your duty as spawn of the global village to stop by this splendid unofficial site immediately, paw through its delightfully lurid minutia and vote with your money. Jobs are on the way!