Commentary: Joe Bob's week in review

The Security Council voted 15-0 for a resolution calling on

Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction and not to use the old "Whoops, we forgot about that one" excuse. Iraq agreed to weapons inspections but said the place is kinda messy and they don't remember where everything is.

The Pentagon is constructing a new computer system that can search anyone's bank records, phone logs or Internet mail without a search warrant. Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, director of the new program, says the laws against spying on Americans don't apply, because a guy named Murray will make sure no innocent people get snooped on.

A strike by two New York liquor distributors caused a shortage of Absolut, Jack Daniel's, Bacardi, Cuervo, Remy Martin, Wild Turkey, Hennessey, Captain Morgan, Tanqueray, Stolichnaya, Grand Marnier, Bailey's, and Ketel One, resulting in tense nerves citywide and seven Wall Street deaths from dehydration.

Archeologists unearthed the world's oldest intact sarcophagus near the pyramids of Giza. If the 4,500-year-old body has been preserved, scientists will take DNA tissue samples, clone the mummy, and give him a job on "60 Minutes."

Ten Iraqi diplomats at the United Nations skipped the country owing $75,000 in credit card bills. That's a lot of lap dances.

Former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing said that

Turkey is not a European country and admitting it to the European Union would mean "the end of Europe." Well, you guys had a great ride.

Greece and Turkey agreed to play a soccer match as a sign of a new era of Greek-Turkish friendship, but at the game in Istanbul between Fenerbahce and the Athens club Panathinaikos, the two countries' foreign ministers were pelted with plastic seats and plastic yogurt cartons. Turkish fans then unfurled a banner depicting Mehmet the Conqueror, the Ottoman sultan who ruled Greece five centuries ago. The game ended in a 1-1 tie, but the upcoming rematch in Athens promises to be a gold mine for

Trojan Horse souvenir vendors.

Multimillionaire Robert J. Congel is building the world's biggest mall in his hometown of Syracuse, New York, a $2.2 billion project called DestiNY USA that will include 400 stores, 4,000 hotel rooms, 30 restaurants, a saltwater aquarium, rock-climbing and ice-climbing mountains, a 65-acre Biosphere, a 20-screen movie complex, a 15,000-seat concert hall, two Broadway-style theaters, a miniature version of the Erie Canal, a miniature version of the Adirondack Mountains, and a golf course. It will be bigger than Minnesota's Mall of America, the current World Mall Champion, and hooliganism will not be tolerated, young man.

Steven Spielberg spent eight hours talking to Cuban Premier

Fidel Castro, which is four hours more than Castro spent with Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura a month earlier. Both Spielberg and Ventura called for normalization of trade with Cuba, which could hasten Castro's plans for an El Jefe Celebrity Salon and Burrito Grill.

The syphilis rate rose for the first time since 1990, with outbreaks among gay men in New York, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco and Miami. Time to trot out those World War I sex-hygiene films, guys.

Winona Ryder, convicted last week for felony grand theft and vandalism at a Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills, had been stopped by security guards at Barney's New York and Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills in three previous incidents in which she carried merchandise outside the store -- but was not arrested. The incidents had been presented to Superior Court Judge Elden Fox in closed pre-trial hearings, but Fox said they couldn't be used as evidence at her trial. Her attorney argued that all security guards at all department stores in all cities of the nation are determined to frame her.

McDonald's shut down 175 restaurants and pulled out of three countries entirely in an effort to recover from declining market share against rivals like Subway and Boston Market. They also plan to give every Wall Street analyst a free toy.

John Tull and his wife Lucinda Marker were hospitalized in

New York with bubonic plague apparently contracted from rodents near their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. No-growth activists in Santa Fe denied any responsibility for sending the patients to New York.

Martha Stewart cancelled her annual TV Christmas special, despite one of her interns creating a mistletoe-lined cell phone cover perfect for those holiday calls to your broker.

An asteroid traveling at 23,000 miles per hour came within

75,000 miles of Earth, one of the closest calls in history.

Fortunately it ricocheted harmlessly off a bridge abutment in another galaxy.

Junior Mitchell and his wife Desiree, of the Great Deliverance Spiritual Baptist Temple in Brooklyn, attempted to heal a woman's circulation problems by cutting her feet open with razor blades, soaking them in hot wax, placing them on top of a bongo drum, and setting them on fire. Doctors were considering amputation of her feet, which would mean that her circulation problems would be solved forever, thereby validating the storefront preacher's healing method.

The Chicago Public Schools are advertising in military magazines for principals and teachers, hoping they'll take advantage of the new "Troops to Teachers" program approved by the Bush administration, which offers stipends or bonuses to soldiers who teach for three years after leaving the military. Chicago also has the country's first all-ROTC public high school, where lunchroom monitors pose as al Qaida operatives who have to be "taken out" with projectile mustard.

Scenes from our secure republic:

- Two days after Paul Gilbey died in the World Trade Center attacks, trying to rescue his co-workers at EuroBrokers, his wife Deena was told that she and her two American sons would be arrested and deported. Since she and her husband were both British citizens, she could only stay in the country as long as her husband's work visa was valid. When she appealed to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, she was told that her green card application hadn't reached a certain level of the process, and that granting her card would set a dangerous precedent, even though her 7-year-old and 4-year-old sons were born in America. Now she's living off her dead husband's life insurance and waiting to be sent to England -- because we can't be too careful about Brit stay-at-home moms who might harbor a secret admiration for terrorist killers of their husbands.

(Joe Bob Briggs writes several columns for UPI. Contact him at [email protected] or through his Web site, joebobbriggs.com. Snail mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas 75221.)