WTF Is It Now?!?

OPERATION TIPS ISSUES HANDY HOME-SPYING CHECKLIST
Saying that “now is the time for all good Americans to snoop on their neighbors,” Attorney General John Ashcroft today unveiled what he called a “helpful home-spying checklist” as part of the Justice Department’s Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System):

1. Go through your neighbor’s garbage, looking for suspicious foreign food containers. Good foreign food: pizza, chop suey, fish and chips. Bad foreign food: everything else. Hard to tell: French food.

2. Put on a fake moustache and wig, ring your neighbor’s doorbell, and tell him that you are collecting signatures for a petition to insert the words “under God” into “Take Me Out To The Ballgame.” If he refuses, contact the Department of Justice immediately.

3. When your neighbor isn’t looking, attach a miniature Geiger counter to his poodle. When the dog runs into the house, put your ear against the door and wait for that distinctive ticking sound.

4. Get outfitted in scuba gear and hide at the bottom of your neighbor’s pool. When your neighbor dives in, check to see if he is merely swimming for recreation or practicing for a scuba-based terror attack on the Eastern seaboard.

5. Shimmy up your neighbor’s rain gutter and peep through his bedroom window to see what he’s watching on TV. If he is desperately channel surfing to avoid seeing Ann Coulter again, contact the DOJ.

6. Impersonate a postal employee and wait behind the service window of your local post office. When your neighbor arrives with a package, nonchalantly say, “Shipping any hummus today?”

7. Repeat steps one through six, only this time, perform them on yourself. You’ve been acting awfully fishy lately.

- Andy Borowitz, in Bushwatch.