NOT PARTICULARLY FUNNY, NO, BUT IT FILLS THE SPACE:

So, how's everybody gonna be spending their Nueve de Mayo? A random sampling of passers-by:

FNORD HYUCKMAN, Cutislaxa, WV - For the first consecutive year, I will be officiating at the annual Neuve de Mayo Pond Fire, where citizens from yards around come and toss their spare flaming rags into the kerosene-coated waters of Condyloma Pond and others come along and stare at it.

YUNIS VARON, Floating Harbor, MN - Binge drinking Clamato juice. Just like every night, I know. But today it's for the troops.

PICK NEIMANN, Nystagmus Gorge, VT - Celebrating the twelfth anniversary of the weekend after my uncle Ellis Van Creveld invented Fauxfu, the world's very second man-made synthetic tofu substitute. Celebrating it the only way we know how. Which always seems to involve sodomy for some reason.

HOLT ORAM, Kernicterus Falls, FL - Same as the day before, I suppose: tirelessly lobbying on behalf of The Constrained Free Speech Amendment. I believe you should be able to say anything you want so long as you say it within a very specific set of verbal strictures. What am I talking about? Two words: two words.

PAPILLON LEFEVRE, Otopalato, GA - Taunting Lutherans.

SCHWARTZ JAMPEL, Iganephopathy Township, CO - It'd be redundant to do anything specific to Nueve de Mayo here in Polyposis County, seeing as it falls smack dab in the middle of our annual "Beat 'Em Literate!" week, where we encourage young folks and the slow-moving to appreciate fine literature by hitting them repeatedly with large leather-bound volumes of Proust. And whenever anybody recoils, traumatized, from the sight of a book thereafter, we remind them that that's more or less how that dude Swann reacted when he ate that cookie. Kind of. It changes every year - I won't give away what we have planned for 2005, but it does involve the Penguin Classics edition of Ulysses and an acetylene torch.

GALLOWAY MOWAT, Ruvalcaba, TX - Playing Russian roulette, only with quoits.