The Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion are unlikely traveling companions bent on getting Dorothy out of Upper Emerald City Bay and back home to Kansas before the Wicked Witch's out-of-work husband throws her the pork, or some deranged teen-ager peppers her with .22 longs, or those flying monkeys in the V-22 Ospreys corkscrew into her crown like no many defective Taiwanese propeller beanies. And if they can collect a little something for themselves along the Yellow Brick Road, well, so much the better.

  Auntie Em, Auntie Em! Maybe Bush should play Dorothy. He certainly seems lost enough. Every time he gets settled in that big chair and tries to puzzle out the speed-dialer on the Oval Office phone, Cheney commences to gurgle like a plugged toilet and staggers off to the hospital. Or The New York Times reports that Bubba pardoned Slobodan Milosevich, Hannibal Lecter and Rodan the Flying Monster before slipping out the back door with all the White House toilet paper. Or Alan Greenspan inflates his wattled throat like some giant poison toad and the economy sinks faster than a Japanese fishing boat cornholed by a Navy sub full of non-essential personnel.

  It must be a terrible distraction when one is busy trying to deed over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to Exxon, get Jesus confirmed as the new head of Health and Human Services, and deliver that $1.6 trillion dollar tax cut to every single American who makes $1.6 trillion dollars a year. Not to mention decipher that gosh-darned phone system.

  But it could be worse. He could be back in Texas, cleaning up the mess he made there in six years as governor. So take a deep breath, Dubya, and hit star-69 to see whose incoming call you just re-routed to the White House kitchen. Let's all hope it wasn't Vladimir Putin calling to say that Mir is going to land, not in the South Pacific, but on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

  If I Were King Of The Forest... And we wonder why Americans occasionally shoot one other for no discernible reason. I have a house full of guns, plus enough attitude for two TV talk shows, the Final Four and a Johnnie Cochran summation, and there are days when the only reason I don't shoot people is there are none handy.

  So, instead, when things are going badly around the Dog Pound, I scatter an armful of empty Guinness cans off the deck and make them hop about with my Ruger 10-22 carbine, the Custer County version of what beleaguered American presidents do to Saddam Hussein, with more or less identical results.

  I almost always regain my serenity as a consequence, and can calmly stroll back into the house, crack open a fresh can of Gaelic brain remover and tap out a few socially useful sentences about boning the Statue of Liberty, turning Japanese into sushi, and the psychological benefits of random gunfire.

  Somewhere, Over The Rainbow... Even this cheap satori may soon be out of reach, however. Most bicycle magazines lately have been exhibiting the robust health of Dick Cheney, and for some months now my paychecks have been on time about as often as a United flight out of O'Hare, though the bills arrive right on schedule, just like sundown.

  Plus the Eternal Revenue Service is said to be turning its attention to those of us in the lower income ranges, for some reason, and once I've sold the house, trucks, guns and computers to pay the back taxes and penalties, I'll be making my little japes with a spray can of Krylon on the overpass that keeps the acid rain off my sleeping bag.

  Still, "The Wizard of Oz" had a happy ending, and we can only pray that "Bush II: Dumb & Dumber" will follow this traditional Hollywood blueprint. Sure, Dubya wants to uproot all the poppy fields and plant oil derricks, Glinda the Good Witch is liable to wind up serving soup to disheveled dot-commies down at the Sally Ann, and a lot of the Munchkins are listening to Eminem, packing heat and wondering how many student-council jocks they'll have to snuff before they can forget the horrible towel-snapping they endured at the hands of some anonymous gym-class bully.

  But there has to be a rainbow out there somewhere. Just click those red child-labor Nikes together three times and repeat after me: "There's no place like home ... there's no place like home ... there's no place like home...."