Lee Harvey Oswald had just about had enough of waking up in a Holiday Inn bathroom with no memory of the previous night.

Actually, it was worse back in the days when he woke up in a Holiday Inn bathroom and did remember what had happened the previous night. Like the time his friends took him to a club and got him really drunk and convinced him to do karaoke. Or maybe it was amateur night at a comedy club. All he remembered was there was loud disco music and he was complaining about airline food.

Lee picked himself up off the floor and went to turn on the television. But all he found was CHiPS on every channel except CNN, which displayed those creepy color bars. Lee couldn't watch the color bars for very long because that feeling came back. The one that felt like someone was pouring red hot jelly beans all over him. The espresso-flavored ones.

He left the room and went down the hall to where the pop machines were. He put in his money and pushed the Mr. Pibb button, but all that came out were a hundred Troll dolls. Lee was growing accustomed to that. He took one and left the Holiday Inn.

That's when he realized that he had volunteered to be the first man on the moon that day. He had to get to Cape Canaveral, and fast! He hailed a taxi, which stopped only long enough for the driver to shout to him, "Sorry, all taxis are imaginary today!"

Lee was distraught. As the cab sped off he wondered how he would ever get to Cape Canaveral in time to be the first man on the moon.

Then he remembered that he had the power of flight! Much like our friend the bumble-bee, scientists have asserted that given his mass-to-wingspan ratio, Lee Harvey Oswald should be physically incapable of flight. But no one told Lee that, so he took off and sailed over the city.

But flight was hard, and Lee was hungry. Since he hadn't yet mastered catching large insects while flying, Lee soon had to land to get something at a dining establishment. There was a restaurant with a big, revolving, vaguely three-dimensional cow out front, and Lee went there. He sat on a stool at the counter and ordered a hamburger with the works and an apple pie.

"Anything to drink?" asked the waitress.

Lee thought a moment. "Do you have any Tang?"

"Tang? What's that?"

"It's what the astronauts drink. I'm going to be an astronaut today."

"Of course you are, Hon," the waitress said, and poured him a cup of coffee. Lee had not actually been an astronaut, so he didn't know that it wasn't Tang. He drank it and ate his hamburger and pie and left.

Lee couldn't fly now, he was too full. So he walked a ways until he got to the airport. He went up to the ticket counter, where there was a nice lady.

"One ticket to Cape Canaveral, please." Lee got out his credit card.

"That will be seventy-five cents."

"Excuse me?"

"Seventy-five cents."

"For a plane ticket?"

"Yes, sir. We're having a going out of business sale."

"The airport is going out of business?"

"No, sir. Cape Canaveral is." She handed Lee his ticket. "The Russians just landed on the moon. Put nukes up there and everything. So the space program isn't going to be funded anymore. We've just lost the Cold War."

Lee looked at his plane ticket and cried.

Lee Harvey Oswald was on the Internet, downloading porn and the Anarchist's Cookbook simultaneously. But why? Why should he be on the internet when today was the day he was to throw out the first pitch at the first Yankees game of the year?

Lee turned off his computer just before the virus destroyed it and went to Yankee Stadium. He was given a baseball and directed where to go. Once he was on the mound, he got very nervous. He felt as if thousands and thousands of eyes were upon him, watching him, anticipating his next move. But then, Lee was very paranoid.

Lee pitched, and the ball made a sharp arc downward and landed twenty feet in front of the batter. All of Yankee Stadium laughed. Lee Harvey Oswald threw like a girl!

Humiliated, he ran out of the stadium as fast as his legs could carry him, stopping only once to get a hot dog. Then he ran and ran and ran until he got to the ocean. There his dolphin friend, Cuddles, gave him a ride across the Atlantic to France. Lee didn't really like France; everyone talked funny there. But from his years living in Louisiana, Lee knew a little of their hostile alien language, so he went to a restaurant and the waiter asked what he wanted. Though Lee stumbled over his French, he managed to place his order. But the waiter just slapped him and left in a huff. That's odd, Lee thought, I could have sworn I ordered escargot.

He sat for a moment and wondered what to do next. Before he got up to leave, the waiter returned with a tray. It was his snails! Lee hadn't accidentally said something foul in French after all; the waiter just didn't like him. The waiter placed the tray on the table and slapped Lee again and left.

Lee ate his snails in silence and shame. Then all of a sudden balloons started falling from the ceiling onto him. He was the one-thousandth patron of the restaurant! The waiter came out and told him the meal was on the house, then slapped him again.

Lee'd had about enough of that. He got up and left, but not before taking one last snail and putting it in his shirt pocket. After walking a few blocks, he was at the Eiffel Tower. Lee was so mad at that rude waiter, he kicked the Eiffel Tower and it fell over. That's when Lee heard a voice. But this was a new kind of voice; it was actually real. Lee looked down into his pocket and saw the snail. It was alive!

"Thank you for saving me," the snail said. "As a token of my gratitude, I will grant you one wish."

Lee thought a moment, then said, "I want to be a more productive member of society, one whose sole purpose in life is to help keep this world beautiful."

So the snail turned him into a pooper-scooper.

Lee Harvey Oswald wanted to go out and play but he couldn't because it was raining. This was particularly depressing for Lee, because he was on the planet Skapow, where it rained every day except one, and that day was Radioactive Asteroids Falling From the Sky Day.

Lee was on the planet Skapow because he was doing a book tour. He had written a book called Lee Harvey Oswald's Rainy Day Fun Book.

Right now, he was more or less trapped in his hotel room. The guy from the Hotel Skapow promised him their spacious Executive Suite: two thousand square feet. What they didn't tell Lee was, the room was two feet wide and one thousand feet long.

It's a good thing Lee got inspired. He sat scrunched in the corner, writing a sequel to his interplanetary bestseller. He would call it, Lee Harvey Oswald's Radioactive Asteroids Falling From the Sky Day Fun Book. It would be a seasonal book, but Lee was sure it would prove profitable nonetheless.

After an unfathomable amount of time (there were no clocks on Skapow, because people were allergic), Lee had finished the fourth draft of his new book and still he waited to be summoned to the book signing. By the time Lee's manager called, Lee said, "It's about time! I'm climbing the walls in here!"

"You know, Lee, one of these days those suction cups are gonna give out and you're gonna get hurt."

"Is it time to go to the signing yet?"

"Sorry, Lee, it was canceled due to lack of interest."

"Lack of interest? But who on this planet wouldn't want a rainy day fun book?"

"That's just it. Everyone's written a rainy day fun book. The market is saturated. In fact, about the only thing stupider than trying to sell a rainy day fun book on this planet is trying to sell a Radioactive Asteroids Falling From the Sky Day Fun Book. Come on, Lee, we're going home."

A forlorn Lee peered out the window of the spaceship at the planet Skapow as it got smaller and smaller. Not that the ship was moving; the planet was just getting smaller because it was a cold night, and everyone knows that heat makes things expand and cold makes them contract. If you don't believe me, ask a man who's just jumped in an unheated swimming pool.

Lee was sad that he didn't get to promote his book. It was the only thing he'd done that he'd really been proud of. Except for in 1972, when he won the Miss Universe pageant.

He turned from the window and went to his room aboard the ship, just as radioactive asteroids plunged into Skapow's atmosphere and crushed thousands of innocent children who were reading their rainy day fun books.

But it's okay. Most of them were slowly being killed by the radiation from their televisions anyway.