Since I worked on it all afternoon, I thought I'd just run my weekly column here instead of a diary entry because ... well...dammit...I'm all thunk out. Keep in mind, this is just a rough draft of the column that I ORIGINALLY wrote last week when I got very little sleep and lost the column at the end. I will get up in the morning and fine tune it. Any suggestions for more chuckles, please leave them on the message board and I just might use them. If I do, you win a big fat plug for your website and I get a paycheck. God bless America.

A BAD STRAIN OF ELIAN GONZALES FEVER HITS AMERICA

For the past thirteen years or so, we as a nation have been infatuated with the saga of young Elian Gonzales as he tried desperately to get back home to his Auntie Em in Kansas.

We've laughed as we watched Elian skip school for the first time. We gasped when Janet Reno put on her boogieman mask and tried to steal Elian away from his family in the middle of the night. We cried when Drew Barrymore hugged E.G. and begged the government not to take him away.

Wait a second...hold the phone...stop the presses...

Do you see the eerie similarities here, or do I have to write an entire column explaining how the story of Elian Gonzales and "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" are basically one and the same?

Alright then...sit back conspiracy fans and read all about why I feel that Steven Spielberg created this captivating young robot, Elian Gonzales.

...As soon as this column hits the streets, I'm expecting a call from Oliver Stone, congratulating me on my imaginative display of investigative reporting ...

First off, "E.T." was one of the biggest movies of all time.

A movie Steven Spielberg said would never receive a sequel.

And because we as a nation need our movie sequels like we need our oxygen, we went into a panic over never getting "E.T. II".

Spielberg realized this. So he went out and hired a little Russian boy to play "E.G. The Extra Gonzales", a by-the-numbers sequel to "E.T.". Spielberg then manipulated the media into slowly forming yet another tale of a young alien who just wants all of America to embrace him and his foreign ways.

And, in return, Spielberg has captured America's hearts once again, including this big sensitive lug.

Or at the very least, he's gotten on our every last nerve.

My reasonings behind these ramblings:

Both E.T. and E.G. were survivors of crashes that left them here in America. E.T.'s space ship crashed in the woods, while E.G.'s space ship crashed in the Atlantic Ocean.

Neither E.T. or E.G. could speak English when they first arrived in America. And neither bothered to learn more than a few words at most during their stay. E.T. learned "Phone home" while E.G. learned "Sooo...are you from Dateline or CNN?"

They were both quickly adopted by families who wanted to keep them low-profile and not let them return home.

Except "E.T."s adopted family never went on Larry King Live with new hairdos and brand new Donna Karan suits.

Both were so incredibly funny looking that they eventually became cute to us. Except I still occasionally have nightmares about young Elian jumping out of my closet with his big head.

Both had to witness terrible tragedies first hand. E.G. had to watch his mother drown while E.T. was on the receiving end of several of five-year-old Drew Barrymore's alcoholic rages.

E.T. built a telephone out of barbed wire and quarters. E.G. built a sand castle for Barbara Walters.

E.T. had a secretary named "Lincoln" while "E.G." has a secretary named "Kennedy".

Both were chased down by the government for "personal reasons" that turned out to be little more than wanting to split them open and flip through their gizzards on an icy, cold lab table.

Both escaped the government by leaping onto flying bicycles and riding past the moon.

Well ...Elian hasn't quite done that yet...but his story isn't over yet either.

I had a whole lot more facts that I had spent minutes researching, but my computer just crashed and I lost them all.

Every single one of them.

And if I were a betting man, I'd say the guy that directed the Sandra Bullock movie "The Net" is somehow behind my computer crashing.

I'll let you know what I uncover on that.