NEW YORK - Controversial cartoonist & columnist Ted Rall prefers the smooth shave offered by Gillette's improved Mach 3 Turbo brand to the iron-clad logic of choosing the least complicated of available hypotheses, he announced on a comics discussion message board Monday.

"A choice between the triple-blade action of the Mach 3 Turbo and rejecting my theory that the war in Afghanistan, rather than being a logical response to a horrendous attack by that country's theocratic totalitarian/terrorist coalition, is in actuality an arcane conspiracy to construct a prohibitively expensive, fundamentally useless oil pipeline across the backwards-ass countries of Central Asia is no choice at all," said Rall. "And anyone who disagrees with me is a fascist Republican Bushie stooge."

Rall went on to explain how those who opposed his lawsuit against artist Danny Hellman, his Village Voice diatribe against Maus author Art Spiegelman, or his strident attack on terror widows are, in actuality, members of the Bush administration's Skull-and-Bones-based plot to murder Senator Paul Wellstone.