Since we're celebrating a big anniversary this month, we thought it would be fun to revisit some of the biggest mistakes we've made here over the last eight years. I'm not talking ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill type mistakes. I'm talking huge errors in judgement. I'm talking bigtime Joey-Buttafuoco-ish bungles. I'm talkin' massive-attack- on-Iraq type boners. We still think that there was a lot of overreaction and exaggeration involved with some of these, but here are a few of our biggest screw-ups...

There was the time back in '95 we thought that it would be funny if we joked around a little bit with the Church of Scientology, so we published a little article that gave away (and made fun of) the big "secret" at the heart of their "religion." You know the one about Earth being invaded millions of years ago by Xemu, and alien beings called Thetans that possess all of us and cause all our psychological problems? All that stuff? Oh, you don't? That's probably because you haven't spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to reach that level in their church. We thought it was all just a big joke made up by some 1950's science fiction writer--oh wait... it was... Anyway, they went around and stole a bunch of our magazines, and lied to the police, got caught, and threatened us with a Tom Cruise-John Travolta movie... Damn. They cornholed us on that one. Big mistake.

Let's not forget the big hullabaloo over Monica Lewinsky and President Clinton. How were we to know she'd take it so seriously while she was interning here with us and attending Lewis & Clark University. Monica, Monica, Monica... I always told you to be more careful. Huge blunder on our part. Sorry, Bill.

And of course there was the time I accidentally terminated the contract with our salesman Christopher Lloyd-Baron just because he was an arrogant, dickheaded jackass. Well, he took things way to personally and has spent the last few years trying to "destroy" Exotic magazine, as he so eloquently put it. So instead of the Worldwide Publishing Empire we were building up to just a few years ago, Exotic has been reduced to a pathetic, bitter little porn mag in podunk Portland, Oregon. Wow. Some people just can't take a joke.

But by far the biggest problem arose when we mistakenly declared war on Eritrea back in '99. At the time it seemed like the right thing to do, those Eritreans are just plain buttheads, they have a funny-sounding name, and they just seemed like such an easy target. Who knew they had an elite Hesbollah-trained guerrilla division and access to a large cache of Soviet-made weapons? Damn Eritreans kicked our pornographic asses.

So, after eight years, I like to think we've learned a lot from our mistakes. And, in the spirit of reconciliation, can't we all just say, "Sorry," and leave it at that?