I got run over by a bike messenger last week at the corner of Clark and Division. Like all accidents involving bike messengers, this one wasn't his fault. Oh no. I was foolishly standing still at a crosswalk, thereby providing an excellent target, and I am deeply sorry for my carelessness. I'm sure that bike messenger has a very sore shoulder, on account of how the collision broke my nose and gave me a concussion. I wish he had waited around long enough for me to apologize and get his address. If nothing else, I owe him a deep tissue massage of that shoulder. Oh, yeah, and he owes me 4,000 dollars in hospital bills.

I think it's safe to say that most Chicagoans sort of, you know, hate bike messengers. By and large, they're a pretty unpleasant lot of people, what with their flagrant disregard for the sanctity of human life. I know I'm not supposed to say that, since bike messengers are young and poor and trendy like me. But a funny thing happened to me as I lay on the ground bleeding profusely from the face. I didn't care about defending the young and poor and trendy anymore. I just wanted to kill me some bike messengers.

So here's my question: Can I go after this guy even if I have to beat up a lot of innocent bike messengers on my way to the evil one? See, all I remember about the individual in question is that he was Caucasian and blurry, so in order to be good and sure I get him, I'll need to beat the holy living heck out of every white, male bike messenger in Chicago.

At first, I worried my plan might be either illegal or immoral, but then I remembered President Bush's exciting new foreign policy initiatives, which encourage me, so far as I can tell, to exact vengeance upon my iron-shouldered nemesis by any means necessary.

The President has argued that Saddam Hussein, the President of Iraq, poses a threat to the world and therefore must be toppled. Well, if you aren't convinced that the bike messenger who mauled me poses a threat to Chicago's pedestrians, let me invite you to gaze upon the festering pool of flesh that used to be my face.

Clearly, we have to eradicate the twin tyrannies of evil bike messengers and evil dictators. I can trust President Bush to take on Saddam, but if I don't take dramatic measures to make Chicago's streets safe for walking, who will? The wusses at the United Nations? They'll just debate over whether my nose is actually fractured for months before deciding that while my nose IS broken, it wouldn't be fair to hold thousands of bike messengers accountable for the misdeeds of one.

I would love to have broad support for my cause, but if I have to act unilaterally, I am not afraid. If necessary, I will defy the world to avenge my crooked nose, and I salute President Bush for sharing my vision of vigilante justice.

After all, Saddam Hussein IS a pretty bad guy. Not only is he a ruthless tyrant, he has also written three novels, each of which is by all accounts unimaginably horrid. I find it impossible to forgive the sentimental prose of dictators, and so I'm all in favor of doing away with Hussein and replacing him with someone who is either a better person or a better writer.

And I have no doubt that we WILL kill him. Look what we did to Manuel Noriega! Oh, wait. He's still alive. Well, Mullah Omar, then. Oh, yeah, still alive. And Milosevic is still alive, too. Bin Laden? Still alive, unless he died, in a stirring testament to the precision of American smart bombs, of kidney failure. So I guess maybe we aren't so good at killing the evildoers. But we're sure good at killing the regular folks, which is good enough for me, because secretly, I don't want justice for that bike messenger. I just want revenge.