LAKEHURST (NEW YORK CITY): before liftoff sterns will make an apointment at one of the finest hair salons in manhatten. as he reaches the altitude of the jet stream (west to east flow), he will will open his hair like a japanese fan and sail across the atlantic with amazing speed.

PARIS: unfortunately, although warned to be on his best behavior, sterns will let slip that france is a third world country. while true, this will infuriate the french, who will down sterns' balloon with a couple of heavily armed mirage fighters. fortunately, sterns will survive, as he is too thin to of a target to show up on radar. rush will catch up and use his conservative rhetoric to pose as charles de gaulle's nephew. the french, overcome by their love of the man who masterminded the maginot line and was overrun by the nazis, will send him on ahead.

MOSCOW: rush will stop for food at the moscow mcdonalds. this will give sterns the weeks he needs to apologise profusely and repair his balloon (with the help of the highly technically minded french). while i don't want to minimize rush's ability to gorge himself, there just isn't that much food in russia. therefore, rush will still have a moderate lead when he leaves for tokyo.

TOKYO: sterns has closed the gap, using his hair-sail advantage over the siberian wasteland. unfortunately, his rodan-like hairstyle alerts the japanese military as he approaches tokyo. hypersensitive to monster attacks, the japanese down him with surface-to-air missiles. he will survive (see PARIS), but will again need to repair his balloon. rush will have long left the country, being infuriated with the small food portions, high prices, and public transportation.

HONOLULU: rush will make a brief stop for food. oahu is a small island and the food reserves will be depleted quickly. i have to give the u.s. military enough credit to identify that sterns is a baloonist and not a russian backfire bomber. rush will lead, but sterns will close the gap.

SAN FRANCISCO: after the gruelling pacific legs, i see rush with a slight lead. assuming that the bay area liberals do not kill rush and use him as a float for a parade of some sort, rush will make a quick exit, sensing his life is in danger. sterns will invariably stop to be the grand marshal of a gay rights parade of some sorts.

CHICAGO: as the rail link to the bread basket of america, chicago offers rush a chance to truly fill up. he will have acess to more rice, wheat, corn, and other complex carbohydrates than anywhere else in the world. This is the first chance rush has had to get a decent meal over the entire trip, and he will make use of it.

FINISH: its tough to call, but i have to give the edge to rush. i think that rush will overtax even the food transportation network of the chicago area and have to leave for new york to avoid starvation.

i have got to get a life.

- jeff

Howard Stern has hardly been a model of consistency in his career; witness his run at the New York governorship. Rush, however (as he and his followers are so fond of reminding us), is right. Always has been, always will.

The result, then, is clear: Stern won't even make it to Moscow before he gets distracted. He'll head off north or south; feel a need to broadcast an accurate, feeling account of the turmoil in Bosnia; turn back west to find some Baywatch chicks, etc. Rush, meanwhile, will steadly plug to the east (right on a map!), finishing well after Stern has forgotten the race altogether.

- Robert Travis Dunbar

- Tim Motoh

- Ron Hetrick

- King

-- The man loves to talk.  He never has guests which might infringe on his
   own wisdom - Howard Stern uses anybody (or any body) including groups of 
   transexual-wizards-who-wish-they-were-gay-strippers.
-- To overcome the mv factor for stopping on target, all Rush needs to do 
   is to pause while he rattles his papers.

All in all, the biggest reason Rush will win is that he will make it into the Jet Stream, and stay there until his "phone-guy" (I can't believe I forgot his name) tells him to rattle his paper or play the condom song - ensuring he lands on target at each check point.

[I won't be able to go to sleep tonight until I remember that name... Rusty? Buddy? No, that's not it...]

- Andy

- Andy

However , there will be mass destruction as a result of Rush's efforts. Firstly New York will be consumed in a giant fireball, when Donahue asks Rush "How did you beat Howard." Rush borrows Donahues lighter and demonstrates *vooooshh* *kaboom* , no more new york.

The gas remaining in the atmosphere after rush's round the world farting spree, will accellerate the greenhouse effect and after three weeks , everything on the surface of the earth is burnt to a crisp.

The moral of the story is , dont play with matches. Especially if you fart a lot.

- 'ME'

The race started with much promise for supporters of both racers. Limbaugh was seen writing crib notes on a variety of controversial subjects in case the air got too thin and affected his remaining 11 brain cells to the point that he was unsure of his opinion. Stern was busy entertaining a collection of bimbi in his wicker basket in honor of his eventual triumph over that "fat doodyhead".

The race started with both subjects expounding on a variety of subjects to get their balloons afloat. As they started to head across the Atlantic, Limbaugh took an early lead by ranting more than Stern, causing him to rise higher and use stronger winds to propel him along. Limbaugh reached Europe first, but having never been outside of the US, Limbaugh got lost and spent a frustrated hour yelling louder and louder at "these damn uncooperative foreigners", in hopes that they would eventually understand English. During Limbaugh's stop in Ireland, Stern landed safely at the first checkpoint in Paris. Several French bimbi were invitied into his basket for a "refeuling party".

Both competitors were even upon arriving in Moscow. Limbaugh, having been mistaken for a Moscovite, was allowed to proceed with great fanfare. Limbaugh was heard to say "Stupid commie suckers" in order to take off. Stern was greeted with typical Moscow bureaucracy and was detained by Russian bimboskis until his papers were in order. Although Limbaugh was the first to arrive in San Francisco, he could not continue his journey because gay rights activists had tied themselves to his baloon. Stern arrived and by the time he had been noticed as a homophobe, he had already departed for Chicago.

Stern decided to enlist the help of Chicagoans by touching down and hurling insults at Oprah Winfrey and the Chicago Cubs. Winfrey and Cubs fans generated enough wind by flapping their gums that Stern was halfway to New Jersey by the time Limbaugh reached the penultimate checkpoint. Deciding that the only way to beat Stern was to start talking about democrat-endorsed socialized medicine, "like those puckheads in Canada". It is estimated that Limbaugh reached a top speed of Mach2 and and he was neck and neck with Stern as they arrived at the New Jersey border. In a final attempt to win the race, Limbaugh mentionned Hillary Clinton's name. His effort would have worked had it not been for the fact that the accumulated hot air finally melted away the ozone layer and allowed billions of UV rays to fry Limbaugh's greasy hide. Limbaugh and his ballon fell to earth like so much BBQ'd bacon and Stern landed on top of Morton Downey who was using a can of Micatin for breath spray, to combat his chronic case of athelete's mouth.

- HotBranch!

Even with all of his pit stops, Rush commanded a huge lead. Stern's hair created so much drag for him, that he averaged only 2 miles per hour, which allowed Rush to make hundreds of pit stops to eat dinner, reload on Twinkies, and preach his right-wing propaganda to everyone along the race course.

This worked great until after Hawaii....

Rush, with a 3000 mile lead, was sailing over the middle of the Pacific on his way to San Francisco, when he realized something. He was in 5000 mile stretch of open ocean with no source of Twinkies. Then he fell into the ocean, and the resulting splash wiped out 26 coastal cities, and required an immediate disqualification for getting Morton Downey, Jr.'s hair wet, who was waiting at the San Francisco checkpoint.

Three months later, after catching the jet stream, Stern sailed across the finish line, only to find out he had been replaced on his show by one of the over-stressed, dismissed O.J Simpson jurors.

- 'Mr. Cody'

Neither one of them will deal well with talking to someone who responds in a foriegn language or even in English with a strange accent. When in a face to face verbal confrontation with someone Rush is likely to become flustered and confused and sweat alot. He won't know what to do when someone challenges his assertion that "Paris isn't thataway" and will probably flee before the person can give him decent directions. Rush will make two or three pathetic attempts at getting directions and then quit, lost somewhere in the Himelayas. He will never be heard from again, but there will be rumors that he has become a Tibetan monk.........

Howard, on the other hand, lives for verbal confrontations. He won't understand what the person said, and will probably insult the person quite a bit, but he will be able to recognize the direction in which the person is pointing. He might even get someone to climb aboard for a round of aerial butt-bongo. What's more, the whole interaction will give Howard fresh ammunition for riduculing whoever he happened to talk too (especially the French). This, of course, will only increase his speed. After 15 hours and over 100 stops to ask for directions, Howard is back in Jersey. Soon after, his radio show will be broadcast in several european cities-do to the popularity of butt-bongo.

- TB

- An alum

Back in your day did they have the net? Did they have computers? Not to worry, most of this work is done between 2-6 PM. We're graduate students. -Eds.

- Nemo

-Charles W. Kraebel