It’s been less than 2 decades since the fall of communism, and apparently some people in Lithuania miss it already. To fill this void, a few clever people in Vilnius have created a theme park in an old Soviet bunker to help people relive those halcyon cold war days under Stalin and Khrushchev. They even hired former KGB and Red Army members just to add authenticity to the experience. The cost of visiting the Isgyvenimo Drama: only 120 LTL (about $220). Tickets available at Ticketmaster or at the door. Set the Wayback Machine to 1984.

Listmania: Top 20 ways to know you’re back in the USSR:

20. Spies are everywhere. Even your neighbors. Maybe a few family members too.

19. You find yourself standing in long lines just to see Lenin’s glow-in-the-dark corpse.

18. You’re crammed into a tiny studio apartment with 4 generations of relatives.

17. An odd little man in a uniform and funny hat keeps shouting, “your papers are not in order!” Or, “Ve haf plan for geeting moose and squirrel!”

16. You’re standing in long lines again. This time at a grocery store with 6 loaves of stale bread on the shelves.

15. Your meals invariably feature some kind of root vegetable.

14. You are asked to participate in KGB roundup of “dissidents.”

13. You go on a three-day vodka binge. Then the weekend comes.

12. You have to choose whether to become a neurosurgeon or a factory worker. You choose factory worker because the pay is better.

11. You start thinking that ugly Stalinist architecture isn’t so ugly after all.

10. You spend hours playing fun video games, like “Shoot down the Korean airliner.”

9. You notice guards walking around with East German shepherds.

8. You never miss the May Day parade.

7. Siberian gulags…snow!

6. You swear you just saw some kooky leader banging his shoe on his desk in protest.

5. The walls of buildings in your neighborhood are adorned with bright red socialist banners showing muscular guys swinging hammers and stout women driving tractors.

4. You look forward to watching reruns of 1980s propaganda films featuring scary Ronald Reagan character with subtitles.

3. All-you-can-eat borscht!

2. You have to pull up stakes and move because a nearby nuclear reactor just went into meltdown.

1. You collect souvenir Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev bobblehead dolls at the state-owned gift shop.

After facing immense public criticism for the lavish lifestyles enjoyed by American auto executives, Rick Wagoner, Chairman and CEO of General Motors Corp., has publicly announced that he and his family will set an example of frugality and buy all their groceries at local Aldi stores for one year. Wagoner’s personal executive assistant stated yesterday that it was an empathetic move on the part of Wagoner to “be more like the regular people.” Shortly after the announcement, the assistant, whose name was not revealed, was immediately pink-slipped as further proof of Wagoner’s cost-cutting dedication.

“I’m gonna show those people on Capitol Hill that I too can sacrifice and tighten my belt,” said the beaming Wagoner at a press conference later that day.

Scrutiny by Congress and taxpayers.

Company brass at the Big Three automakers ruffled some feathers over private jet usage in the face of massive corporate losses. Execs from all 3 companies even flew in their private jets to Washington to appear before Congress with their hats in hand begging for government bailout money. Response by lawmakers and taxpayers alike was swift and harsh, with many questioning the executives’ grasp of economic reality.

Reeling from the criticism, Wagoner now cuts back, flying coach on Northwest Airlines. “There’s not much legroom in those flying cattle cars and the seats are narrow. But my ass fits fine in those seats now, after a few Senators chewed half if it off,” joked Wagoner. “But we all must sacrifice, and I’m doing my part,” added Wagoner in a more serious tone. “Hell, I even gave all my frequent flier miles to some guy in the company lunchroom today. I said ‘go take your family to Disney World, son.’”

An Aldi adjustment for the whole family.

Having now sworn off fancy home catering and high-end grocery stores, the Wagoner family is doing their best to adjust to shopping the down-scale grocer. Wagoner’s wife Kathy and children were hit with a bit of culture shock during the first visit to the store. Since there is no Aldi in their posh suburban neighborhood, they must drive the family Lexus (!) 18 miles into a rather unsavory neighborhood in Detroit. But the Wagoners take it all in stride. And they find bargains too.

“This place is great!,” exclaimed Kathy Wagoner. “We can get a gallon of milk for under 3 bucks! The kids love Aldi’s microwave pizza, and it’s less than a dollar for a nutritional after-school snack. It’s amazing how much we can save! And it’s fun watching the creepy people who shop here.”

After the news conference ended a few hangers-on from the media quizzed Wagoner about his wife’s Lexus. Wagoner said they might “trade down” to a Corolla or Civic. When questioned further as to why they don’t drive a GM car, Wagoner replied, “What, are you kidding? I just work there. You don’t expect us to actually drive those boat-anchors we make! Nobody in their right mind would. What do you think got us into this mess to begin with? …Oh shit, you’re not going to print that, are you?”

Setting an example for others.

Wagoner is serious about living more frugally, and encouraging others to do likewise. “I’m not gonna be like those decadent UAW guys, who order stuff from Wolferman’s, Harry & David, or Godiva chocolates. I have to set an example for the people who really are struggling in this economy. Besides, if they spend a little less on food, maybe they can buy more of our cheap cars and trucks. It’s my hope anyway, ’cause those board members have been giving me the evil eye lately, and if things don’t pick up around here, I might be the next guy out of a job in this place.”

Still, Wagoner remains hopeful for an eleventh-hour miracle by lawmakers. “Maybe if I show them I can conserve at the personal level, they will fork over the twenty five billion I just spent the past day groveling for,” said a tired Wagoner as he was leaving the press conference to catch his bus home.

ABC’s hit reality show Extreme Makeover Home Edition has helped over 100 worthy families across the United States by rebuilding homes. The show has provided new digs for people of all stripes: firefighters, returning Iraq veterans, adoptive parents, people with disabilities, and more.

But the show’s producers were not prepared for the video plea they were to receive from one Myrna Jenkins of Quincy, Illinois. Jenkins, 87, shared her dilapidated 100 year old farm house with 215 cats that she had acquired over the past several years. She could barely walk across a room without stepping on a half dozen of them. The conditions inside were deplorable. Cat urine and feces were everywhere, makeshift litter boxes were strewn about, and the only way Jenkins could feed the cats was to scatter 25 pounds of cat chow across the floor each day.

Ty Pennington, star of Extreme Makeover, was visibly moved by Jenkins’ plight. “This remarkable woman has been taking in strays for years, giving them a better life,” said Pennington. “But her house is in real need of repair. We have to help this lady and her feline family before it’s too late.”

Bellowing into his trademark bullhorn, Pennington stoked up his cohorts on the bus: “Whaddaya say everybody…let’s do it!”

The next day, Pennington and his crew pulled up in front of Jenkins’ house. Bullhorn in hand, Pennington let out a jarring wake up call. “Good morning, Myrna Jenkins!!!”

The door burst open, and Jenkins emerged, cradling a double-barrel shotgun in her arms. “What the hell do you people want? I told you I ain’t movin,’ now go on outta here! Get off my property! And get that goddamn bus off my lawn!”

After several minutes of explaining by the production crew, Jenkins realized who was at her porch and her paranoia suddenly switched to joy. “Oh, I’m so sorry, young man. My temper just goes from hot to cold, sometimes” Jenkins admitted sheepishly. “I’ve gotta get back on my meds one of these days! Anyhoo, I just hope you can help out me and the kitties. They’re all I’ve got since my dear Edwin passed on back in ‘89.”

“Were going to give you and your clowder of cats a better home,” assured Pennington. “So pack your bags, you’re going to the Cat Fancier’s Cat Show in Shreveport, Louisiana!!! And your cats…they’re going to Sears! The pet department there will fix them up with shots, worm pills and flea and tick collars.”

“Why don’t you c’mon in and meet my kitties,” Jenkins coaxed Pennington.

“Uh…I’m sure they’re a nice bunch of critters, but believe me, I’ll just take your word for it and stay right out here,” replied Pennington. “Hey look! Here comes your ride! Time for you to go…see ya’ in a week!”

Immediately after Jenkins left in the big black limousine, and her cats were removed by the Adams County hazmat team and taken away in several vans, Pennington and his crew brought down the old house. With 30 pounds of dynamite.

All that remained was a smoldering crater littered with splinters of wood from the blast. Men in bright yellow biohazard suits and respirators proceeded to spray down the area with disinfectant and insecticide. A few hours later, bulldozers had covered the site with dirt and the construction began.

Within a few days, a structure emerged on the site. Designers from the show incorporated various cat-friendly features into the house, including rooms filled with carpet-covered “cat-trees,” several dozen scratching posts, and a huge, 12 by 12 foot indoor litter box room equipped with a robotic self-cleaning scoop. All the floors in the house were lined with a waterproof neoprene sheeting, to keep the inevitable urine from seeping into the floor. There was even a fenced-in patio out back, with a big catnip garden for the cats to lounge in.

Seven days after leaving, the black limo triumphantly returned with Jenkins and her ABC entourage. Almost a dozen onlookers from the area were in the yard for the big television event. Humane Society volunteers were busy ferrying the cats out of the vans and back into their new home. Purina  donated a truckload of cat chow. The local police chief even showed up for the unveiling, ready to tear up the 15 or so health department complaints and condemnation order filed against Jenkins, as a gesture of goodwill.

Then the moment came. Through his bullhorn, Pennington shouted his call to arms: “Move that bus!” The bus rolled forward and three cats bolted out from under it, just in the nick of time.

“Oh, it’s a godsend…it’s so wonderful!” exclaimed the exuberant Jenkins upon eyeing her new home for the very first time. “How can I show my gratitude?”

“Umm…well…you can start by not bringing home any more fucking cats,” muttered Pennington, not realizing he was still on-camera. “Uh, yo, better edit that part out, boys, he he!”

The crew proceeded to show Jenkins around the new house, with lots of tears of joy, and lots of cats scurrying about the place. Cat heaven, indeed.

The new episode, renamed Extreme Makeover, Cathouse Edition, is scheduled to air the last week before Christmas. Check your local listings for times.

Just before the elections, we had a few yuks when a Montreal radio DJ punk’d Sarah Palin (remember her?) with a gag phone interview, posing as French President Nicholas Sarkozy. While that brilliant hoax kept us in stitches for quite a while at AITS, that feat pales in comparison to the body of work by Joey Skaggs.

Skaggs, a longtime New York artist, has led a 40-plus year career of pulling off various stunts, hoaxes and media pranks - all in the name of political or social satire. He has fooled the best of them: Entertainment Tonight, To Tell The Truth, Geraldo, and other media entities that should’ve known better.  And he’s still at it today.

Skaggs created a cathouse for dogs, a celebrity sperm bank, promoted a bogus lottery for the renaming rights to the Brooklyn Bridge, and advertised cure-all cockroach vitamins. He tied a 50-foot bra across the front of the U.S. Treasury Building, appeared on the media as various fictitious characters and has suckered people with urban legends long before that started happening on the Internet. People all over the world have fallen for his schtick, hook, line and sinker.

Skaggs is a little bit of P.T. Barnum, Borat, Orson Welles, and the Blarney Stone all rolled into one.

All of us at Alligators In The Sewer would like to dedicate this post to Joey Skaggs, and bow to the master. We stand in awe of your evil comedic genius, sir.

Enough is enough. The crew here at AITS headquarters decided we weren’t willing to take second seat anymore. We all had a little heart-to-heart with Norm, and told him if he was going to stash beer in this place, he needs to share the love. Don’t bogart the Bud. A workers’ rebellion, it would be, if we didn’t get a few creature comforts around here.

Amazingly, Norm was receptive to our plight. No yelling, no rants, no name-calling, no objects thrown. “I can’t be a dickwad…all the time,” Norm admitted. “I guess you all earned a little diversion in this rathole where we toil every day.” Norm decided that the Alligators in the Sewer newsroom needed a refrigerator. It’s a quality of life issue, after all. We were stunned. That was soooo incredibly easy, and Norm didn’t raise a single objection. Such generosity from The Big Guy lately. First a Halloween party, now this. To what do we owe this extreme pleasure?

Norm informed us that if we purchased a fridge, he’d stock it with Budweiser. Cold Bud for a change! If we wanted anything else on hand, we would have to buy it ourselves. Like a few microbrews for really special occasions. We have finally arrived.

We scoured the classifieds on Craigslist, looking for a cheap refrigerator. We did one better than that. We found a free one. Just one catch: they said we would have to haul it out of their building ourselves. Bring lots of help.

The next day, we all drove to the location in the AITS utility truck during our lunch break. Norm and Maynard even came along to help. It wasn’t the nicest neighborhood. But then again, AITS HQ isn’t exactly in a posh neighborhood either.

We discovered that the fridge is on the fifth floor of an old apartment building and the only way to get it down is to carry it down the fire escape. Good times. It was like Laurel & Hardy hauling that piano, only down. But we made it down all 5 flights without getting hurt and had the refrigerator on terra firma and loaded up before we knew it. Which only made us thirsty…

On the way back to HQ we stopped at one of our favorite liquor stores (we have many). Can’t have an empty fridge, can we?  The refrigerator is now in its final resting place along the side wall of the newsroom, plugged in and well-stocked with various liquid refreshments. It’s enough to make our kinda-sucky job a bit more tolerable.

With more than 40,000 uncounted votes in Alaska’s still-contested Senate race between incumbent Ted “series of tubes” Stevens and his challenger Mark Begich, election officials are using whatever means necessary to get the remaining ballots tallied. But in a sparsely-populated state covering over 500,000 square miles of mountains and tundra, just bringing them to in to be counted is a daunting task.

State election officials have been scrambling to resolve the open issue and have put out a call for volunteers around the state to help bring in the unrecorded ballot forms. The people of Alaska have stepped up and are helping in the ballot retrieval chore, volunteering to pick up and deliver ballots using whatever means necessary, including bush planes, logging trucks, and snowmobiles.

But the most common way to haul anything in these parts requires the use of sled dog teams. Civic-minded dog-team mushers from around the state have been hauling sacks full of ballots across mountain valleys, frozen rivers and wind-swept tundra, heading toward the capitol in Juneau. Along the snow-covered trails throughout the state one can often hear the sounds of barking huskies, pulling their election cargo across the frozen white wasteland.

“It’s my patriotic responsibility as an Alaskan to help do this,” said a beaming Matt Rubideaux, a dogsled musher from Fairbanks. “Besides, it gets me  away from the little woman for a while, eh?”

While Stevens initially held a slight lead, it appears Begich is nudging ahead as more ballots are being counted. It may be a month or more before a clear winner is declared.

It seems like we’re always hearing of some religious icon appearing on an inanimate object. Christ in someone’s bowl of oatmeal or Virgin Mary on a hospital window.

Troy Eckonen ordered french toast at Mack’s Cafe in Pompano Beach, Florida. The toast he was served bore what appeared to be a bearded man resembling Jesus scorched onto its egg-encrusted surface. Knowing he had something potentially valuable on his hands, Eckonen took the toast home in a doggie bag and immediately put it up for sale on eBay.

As the “Jesus toast” phenomenon started to draw media attention, Eckonen received a phone call from Hector Ortiz, a cook at the cafe. Turns out Ortiz had unwittingly dropped his pack of cigarette rolling papers onto the griddle just before he placed the bread on it to be cooked. The 500-degree heat of the griddle seared an image of the Zig-Zag logo into the surface of the toast. Ortiz went on break later that day and saw the news of the discovery on TV. And since he was jonesin’ for some weed because his rolling papers were missing, he put two and two together. Sharp guy, that Ortiz.

Though disappointed at the food item’s lack of religious significance, Eckonen remains hopeful that his toast will still net a tidy sum. He changed the eBay description but kept it open for bids.

What initially drew offers from church leaders and other religiously-devout people has now started to attract head shop owners, old ’60s radicals and stoned rastafarians. Typical comments on Eckonen’s eBay page have shifted from “Praise the Lord, it’s a miracle!” to “Yo dude, I’ll give ya’ 65 bucks and my favorite Harley Davidson skull-head bong for that.”

So far, bids for the Zig Zag toast are approaching $150 and climbing.

“…And, mysteriously, the Mbaye brothers were never heard from again…”

After months of speculation over his apparent declining health, and even death rumors, Kim Jong-il (aka Kim Jong II) has now shocked and surprised the world by surfacing alive and healthy in Florida. The wily North Korean dictator was spotted for the first time by local media at Disney World in Orlando (right), enjoying the sights with his nephew.

When approached by reporters, Kim sheepishly confessed that he had been living incognito in the U.S. for several weeks already. “I needed to get out of Pyongyang,” admitted Kim. “It is such a dreary place, especially in late autumn when the cold winds begin to blow from the Yellow Sea. I just had to get away from that winter gloom.”

Kim had quietly left North Korea with a few of his closest advisers, secretly hopping aboard a Chinese freighter bound for a toy import company in Miami (left). From there, Kim and his posse rented a Hummer and headed north to Orlando, stopping at a few beaches and strip clubs along the way. “I’ve always wanted to see Disney World and Epcot Center,” added a giddy Kim Jong-il. “And I have a sister who lives in the area (right), and wanted to look her up.”

Kim and his entourage have been staying at a Days Inn at an undisclosed location in central Florida. “Please understand that we prefer a bit of privacy as we enjoy our warm winter here in your beautiful autonomous province of Florida,” said Kim. The dictator’s stay in Florida has been a boon to his health, as he appeared tanned and more fit while enjoying a couple cold ones and watching South Park in his hotel room (left).

Kim has kept himself busy during his stay, going  fishing in the Gulf of Mexico and visiting Kennedy Space Center by day, and hitting several of the area clubs at night.

When news reporters inquired as to who was back home running North Korea during Kim’s absence, Kim scoffed at any notion of him abdicating his power.

“I am not seeking exile in your country,” retorted a slightly defensive Kim Jong-il. “My nation is in very good hands and it will continue to be so upon my triumphant return. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea will continue to be the glorious paragon of prosperity, political stability and world peace.”

Asked when he would return to his native country, Kim replied, “in the springtime, when the weather back home doesn’t suck so much. And of course, after I’ve spent a week or two in Daytona Beach enjoying some spring break action.”