RIVER CITY JOURNAL: TO ARMS! TO ARMS! UNCLE AL NEEDS YOU!

Tension mounts as the invading battleship of the Time Warner Empire draws near to our harbor. Unite!

Most of what you are about to read is secret military stuff, so be careful. Loose lips sink ships.

When folks from Time magazine began calling the newspaper a few weeks ago, there was no apparent reason to be alarmed. The magazine, we were told, would be sending a team of reporters, photographers and editors down the Mississippi River starting Hannibal and ending in New Orleans.

Time magazine in Cape Girardeau?

Community pride puffs up in a hurry when big shots from Time magazine say they're coming to town.

We just want to get the pulse of America, the Time people said.

It's for a special Fourth of July issue, they said.

We want to get to know you better, they said.

We're interested in what you have to say, they said.

They sure say a lot, those Time people.

With the start of the river trip just days away, we've done a little snooping of our own. They sent spies. So we sent spies. It'll probably take the fellas in New York a long time to figure out those Girl Scouts selling cookies were really Girl Scouts selling cookies.

But they had mommies and daddies here in Cape Girardeau underground. Working for the good guys.

Let me say this as plain as I can, gentle readers: We are about to be invaded by the Time Warner Empire navy.

All hands on deck! Man the battle stations!

Time's clever ruse of sending chat-you-up scouts might work in Navoo or Natchez, but thank God there is an ever-vigilant newspaper right here in River City.

Pulse of America? Time has already done an autopsy on the City of Roses. In the process, the magazine had found what it thinks is our weak flank: the Good Hope riot. That's what they want to tell the world about.

We tried to get Time to listen to our stories about 45,000 people who sign up for Random Acts of Kindness week every May. We regaled them with stories of the hundreds of volunteers who hawk newspapers on street corners every September to raise money for YELL, the literacy program. We plied them with facts and figures about our university, our retail hub, our schools, our medical services, our church construction boom, the Indian basketball squad, our new sewers.

But what did Time want to hear about? The Good Hope riot.

After talking to city officials and chamber of commerce leaders, Time sensed this community has more going for it than riots. But volunteers who do good deeds don't cut it in the editorial meetings in New York.

Can you blame them? Look at us. We're a peaceful, try-to-get-along-with-everybody community -- except when drunk women come banging on our front doors, of course.

It must have made a real impact on the Time people to learn bucolic Cape is a hotbed for a riot every hundred years or so.

Obviously, the pulse-of-America bit is just a diversion. Let's be real honest. The Time Warner Empire is planning a full-scale invasion of the heart of America. It's objective is crystal clear. The merger-mad Time Warner Empire wants to swallow the middle of the nation into its hungry corporate belly.

The last time we went through something like this was the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. But that was pretty simple and didn't hurt anyone. We took down the Spanish flag and hoisted the French flag for a couple of years until Paris worked out a quick sale. Old Glory has been waving ever since. It was just a matter of cooking enchiladas one day and sliced barbecue with pimento cheese and chopped cabbage the next. No big deal.

The Time Warner Empire is sending its navy. It aims to take over while we sit around answering questions about community policing. (Wink. Wink. Nudge. Nudge. That's "riot" in Time magazinese.) The crucial hour will be a "community forum" the community can't attend unless you're one of 60 or so special people who got an invitation.

Heading up this invading navy is Admiral Walter "Skip" Isaacson, who works undercover as the managing editor of Time and will be skipper of the S.S. Gimmick.

I don't know much about Skip (his seamen call him Skippy behind his back), but I know the commander-in-chief of Time, which is an independent nation in the Time Warner Empire.

(This is where I get to do some name dropping. Please feel free to skip this part if you don't think you'll be impressed.)

Norm Pearlstine, who uses the secret identity of editor-in-chief of Time, and I worked together in the Dallas bureau of The Wall Street Journal. About the time of the Louisiana Purchase. Most of you don't know that Norm's favorite drink is a White Cadillac, which is basically milk and scotch. A funny thing happens to milk when it's mixed with alcohol. It curdles. I'm just a farm boy from Kelo Valley who thought clabbered milk was hog slop. But that just goes to show you. Norm, fortified by milk that's gone sour, went on to become executive editor of the Journal, editor of Fortune magazine and then top dog at Time. Me? I still avoid spoiled milk every chance I get.

So, now that we know what's coming, what do we do?

Thank goodness we're a walled city. That helps.

But face facts. We've got to spring into action. How?

Raise an armada.

That's right. I am personally pledging every red cent that has been donated to the brilliantly conceived but still unbuilt Downtown Golf Course to our own navy, the Port Girardeau Flotilla.

The city council needs to act fast. Start by commissioning Hizzoner to head up the navy. I think Commodore Al III has a nice ring to it, don't you?

The city will have to get a petition to the Pentagon right away to put the entire Missouri Veterans Home on active duty. These boys are trained and raring to go. We've got to have some experts in our time of need.

If you're scared, you'll want to take refuge in Fort D, which is a really safe place to go because no one knows where it is. Let's put the Salvation Army in charge there at the fort. They'll have cookies and milk. All you can eat. (Time probably doesn't know AYCE is our national pastime here in Swampeast Missouri.)

But if you want to meet the invasion head-on, bring your boat to the downtown waterfront next Wednesday afternoon. If you don't have a boat, wear your hip waders.

And come armed. You know what to bring. We'll use the same weapons on these invaders as we do on any other visitors to our fair city.

Smiles. Grins. Laughs. Giggles.

And load up on some extra chuckles.

Let's cuddle those Time Warner Empire forces into submission.

Let our rallying cry be the chant we are all so familiar with: Riverfest! Riverfest! Riverfest!

We don't have to become citizens of the Time Warner Empire except by choice. We're still a free country.

At least until Wednesday.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.