Morning Satirical News

School to Track Students Like Cattle and/or Criminals

Junction City, TX, May 27, 2012--Following closely on the heels of the nearby Bexar County school board, Junction City's PS666 will begin tracking its sudents like cattle and/or criminals with RFID microchips when they (presmably, the students) return to school this fall.

"Like Bexar County, the Junction City School System is losing a crapload of grant money due to chronic absenteeism," said acting superintendant Clarence Cuspidor. "We feel quite strongly that the potential financial windfall trumps the potential loss of civil liberties once we start implanting the chips in kids' butts."

Informed sources said that while local regulations require chips in cats, dogs, cattle and criminals, the city's children are wandering around out there God knows where doing God knows what.

The RFID chips and monitors will be supplied by Cow Chips, Inc., a local company that has been tracking "Beef from Barn to Burger to Bathroom" for thosands of satisfied customers.

"Once our kids see that we care about them as much as we care about cons, cows and cats, they'll buckle down and learn the three Rs," said Principal Danny Dawkins. "The 'Big Brother Loves You' team stationed at the school's Watchful Eyes control center will know who's been naughty or nice--just like Santa."

Bob Jackson, president of the Junction City PTA said that the group reluctantly endorsed the plan when they were sent on a fully funded convention trip to Oahu where Cow Chips, Inc. put on a cocktail party that was so effective, no one remembers it.

"We do remember the demonstration prior to the party," said Jackson. "Using relatively inexpensive cow chips, company management simultaneously tracked the whereabouts of known criminal Carl Johnson and a pound of ground beef stolen from a local store that suspiciously ended up at a cookout at a politician's home. Speaking for myself, I love my kids more than I love my burgers."

Junction City Mayor Clark Trail said that since most city fathers didn't know where their children were--or how many they had--the new RDIF plan was "the miracle we've all been waiting for."

"This is a rough town for truant officers," Trail added. "Now we're giving them the same technology the FEDs have been using for years to keep track of known or potential criminals."

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Story by Jock Stewart

For more Jock Stewart, pick up your free PDF copy of "Jock Talks...Satirical News" from Vanilla Heart Publishing.

 

Send in the Clowns

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Swedish Serenade Singers Sent to Sanitarium

Rawlson, TX, April 27, 2012--Rawlson is a small, Swedish town in the northern climes of the county where all sins and cares eventually merge into one, and ja, you betcha, the Rillerah runs through it.

Police were called to Lars Sørensen's boarding house in the 200 block of Andersen Street late yesterday morning where they removed four residents on charges of disturbing the peace after they (the residents) sang the same serenade for sixty straight hours to the detriment of folks trying to enjoy their morning Muesli and kaffee.

According to Sørensen, the men became overly bawdy for a family-values establishment when they endlessly repeated the last line of their purported serenade, "Shood to soon shahoon la shoon da shoo shooga shoogan on the Rillerah."

Police took the men to the Rawlson Sanitarium on a 72-hour psychiatric hold.

Police Chief Erik "Hot Shot" Dawson told reporters that the men, whose names are being withheld pending the notification of next of kin, claimed to be protesting the poison oak planted on the banks of the Rillerah by members of the Rawlson school board.

"After the school marm caught kids having a little brawla brawla and a little hut-sut in the park next to the river instead of attending class, she convinced the superintendent that poison oak would solve the problem," Dawson said. "Needless to say, the hooky and nooky players gave themselves away when they kept scratching their shooga shoogans in class."

Informed sources believe it is highly likely that one or more of the serenading men works for the Thomsen High School grounds crew and began singing "Hut-Sut Rawlson on the Rillerah, add a little brawla, brawla too it" while tending the Forget-me-not garden next to the school band room.

At a town meeting, Thomsen High School Principal Ingrid Sooit said that while she was scandalized by the song, "the scratching of private parts proved that they (the parts) might have become a little too public."

The meeting ended when the city council passed a resolution stating that anyone singing "Hut-Sut Rawlson on the Rillerah" outside the privacy of his or her bedroom was to be considered a public nuisance and fined up to 100 kronor for every minute of serenading.

When asked by big city reporters for a little help with the song's meaning, Mayor Bridget Cass blushed and said that the town library had a Swedish-English dictionary at the reference desk for the edification of outlanders.

"Suffice it to say," added Cass, "'hut-sut' is a not-so-nice word for 'sex' and 'brawla, brawla' is a not-so-nice phrase for everything that leads up to it. But, nej, I will say no more about the intent behind such nonsense as ''Hut-Sut Rawlson on the Rillerah, add a little brawla sooit" because as soon as I sign the new ordinance, we can all be fined up to our shooga shoogans."

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Story by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter

For more Jock Stewart, download a copy of "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire" for only 99 cents for your Kindle.

 

 

Night Beat: Octopus Books Grins at DOJ E-Book Antitrust Suit

Octopus, Nevada, April 23, 2012--Hidden away in the wild wastes of Nevada, Octopus Books maintains a world headquarters building taller than a redwood and wider than Rhode Island. When I had the gall to ring the doorbell, armed guards escorted me to the office of the conglomerate's executive offices where I met with Emperor in Chief, Sir John Falstaff.

He stood next to a Hubble-style telescope that was positioned on a tasteful system of girders in front of a window facing east.

"Take a look," he said.

"All I see is grey ants," I said.

"Those are the world's publishers," he said with a tasteful laugh. "Even though I've got the magnification on this thing maxed out, they're hardly visible."

"I'm guessing you don't view them as all-powerful and threatening as the Feds," I said, knowing it was a leading question.

"Mr. Stewart, the policy of Octopus Books is to step on bugs that don't play by our rules and to dole out addictive, but tasteful sugar water for those who play nice. One day soon, we won't need them. Until that day comes, we treat them as necessary pests."

According to informed sources, words like ants, pests and sugar water are never used in Octopus Books press releases. When Falstaff realized what he said, he stuffed a roll of hundred-dollar bills in the swear jar. (The jar is approximately the size of the U.S. Capitol building, though less transparent.)

"Let me put it this way, my board of directors was stunned when the Department of Jokers (DOJ) filed an antitrust suit against the, er, small fry we're watching through this maginficent telescope."

"Who are those red ants?"

"Government lawyers, agents, Senators and other insects the people of this great land of ours have sent to Washington to do whatever it is they do there," said Fallstaff.

"I assume you'll be in the courtroom when those red ants assemble and do their level best to prove the grey ants are dangerously close to putting Octopus Books out of business.," I said.

Fallstaff laughed tastefully as he stepped away from the window.

"My people will be there and they will say that Octopus Books is shaking in its boots."

"It's hard to visualize an octopus with boots," I said.

"You've got that right," said Fallstaff. "But, we can hardly say our tentacles are shaking, can we?"

"Probably not. What do you hope to gain from the antitrust suit?"

"A mom and apple pie reputation," he said.

"That's sweet," I said.

"We love eating apples," he said. "Chocolate-covered ants are pretty good, too, and we're thinking that the Feds are going to serve them to us on a silver plate."

"Unless the small-fry publishers win," I reminded him.

"Doesn't matter," he said. "Our Sucker E-readers contain subliminal messages that are tastefully convincing all the unwashed readers of this great land of ours that authors and publishers are obsolete, if not evil."

"Who will write the books of the future, then?"

"Machines," he said. "A few monkeys, perhaps. The Internet is training readers to have the attention span of gnats, so the books of the future will be less complex than today's books."

"More like Tweets?"

"Burps, coughs, snorts, or Tweets--doesn't matter much, really, because the Sucker E-reader is where them money is."

"Interesting," I said.

"Thank you for saying so," said Fallstaff. "Our computer--Prince HAL, we call it--says it's only a matter of time before Octopus Books owns all the words, in all the gin joints, in all the towns."

"A goal fit for a fool or a king," I said. "What Octopus do when that happens?"

"We'll flip a switch on HAL's primary console and the words will vanish. There will be absolute silence throughout the realm."

"As a reporter, I find that disgusting."

"Mr. Stewart, as the DOJ and all the other ants you see falling all over themselves through this telescope have discovered, you're either grinning with us or you're history."

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Story filed by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter

Parents Fed Up with Play About Cannibalism

Prarieview, TX, April 10, 2012--"I'm old enough to remember the good old days when students presented wholesome plays like 'The Moon is Blue' and 'Mrs. Warren's Profession,'" screamed Horace Walker as police led him away from the ongoing riot in the auditorium of Sam Houston High School last night.

Parents rioted during the third act of "The Cannibal Games," a new play by local author Caine Molasses, presented by the high school's Thespians Club. Billed as a "cautionary comedy," the play opened with a packed house but thinned out the crowd as it became obvious that the opening line "bite me" was a literal threat rather than a taunt.

"If we had it to do over again, we wouldn't," said Thespians advisor Sue Mockingbird. "I told my students the public was ready for a play that forces them to look at what society is doing to its children. I guess I'll have to eat my words."

The play tells the story of high school students Kat and Pete who fall in love during an after-school softball game that goes "horribly wrong" when the batter screams "bite me."

"It's 'The Hunger Games' for grownups," said Marty Fisher who played the part of Pete. "Unfortunately, none of the parents in the audience were mature enough to hear me shout, 'To the victors belong the spoils' followed by that hideous scream."

The riot began at the end of act three, scene two, when the public address system played a "scream track" made from a pirated recording of a wailing Hippogriff from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban while Kat, played by Lucy Trenton, yelled, "Mates, their dugout is our smorgasbord!"

Principal Frank Collins tried to calm the crowd by assuring them that no students were consumed during the production.

"The pile of bleached bones in the spotlight in the center of the stage in act three, scene three," he said, "came from a dinosaur bones toy company. Who knew somebody would see the plastic skull of a toy Tyrannosaurus rex and scream, 'that's my little Jimmy'?"

Molasses told reporters that the play was an "inspired repurposing" of segments from CBS's "Survivor" and the the Food Network's "Chopped."

"My purpose was satire," said Molasses. "Society is treating child rearing like a reality television show. Little did I know, the parents on opening night were going to become a part of the play."

Walker and five others who threw "spaghetti balloons" at the stage were charged with disorderly conduct. The school has not yet announced whether the play will go on as scheduled for the remains of the week.

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by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter and author of "Jock Talks...Outlandish Happenings"

ASSBOOK Goes Live Today Across the Internet

New York, New York, February 7, 2012--A new anti-social networking service was launched today in a small office deep in the bowels of the city so nice they named it twice. Called "ASSBOOK," the service allows users to compile enemies lists, comment on each other's mundane behavior, add daily anonymity updates, upload strange photographs from around the house, and keep track of what's happening on the "G String" listing of "news."

According to ASSBOOK founder Joe Bum, "we provide a forum for people who like to make asses of themselves and/or sit on their asses all day watching others make asses of themselves."

ASSBOOK International's Mission statement reads in part, "Dedicated to those who freely invade their own privacy in order to provide online advertisers with the demographics they need to target their pitches."

"If one enemy tells another enemy, 'my ass hurts,' you can be sure there's going to be a proctology advertisement appearing on his profile within nanoseconds," Bum said. "We are especially proud of our YOUR ASS IS GRASS chatroom that encourages folks to tell below-the-belt secrets while advertisers, and maybe the FEDs listen in and participate in real time as though they're harmless people."

Informed sources promised Internet "Social Networking Experts" that the company's motto, THE BUTT STOPS HERE would apply to the site's functionality as well as it's clientele. Software engineers will make weekly changes to default settings, screen design, G String sorting, and picture resolution requirements.

"Our approach will separate the sweet asses from the bad asses, user-wise," said Chief Webmaster Craig Bottoms. "Those who put up with us and keep on keeping on will be sitting ducks for the site's advertisements."

Like other social networks, ASSBOOK will encourage people to copy and paste material into their profiles from sources all around the Internet. making copyright infringement less of a pain in the ass than it was in the old days.

"Most ASSBOOK types will find it much easier to paste proverbs, videos, photographs, and headlines into their profile pages rather than coming up with new material on their own," Bum said.

Bloggers, as opposed to actual reproters, were quick to say in some 100,000 posts on Typepad, Blogger, Xanga and WordPress to date that "the whole thing looks like a suppository for the huddled asses yearning to be free."

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Story by Jock Stewart for "The Star-Gazer

Octopus Books Launches TDP-or-Else Publishing Program to Control Reading from Cradle to Grave

Gig Harbor, Washington, December 10, 2011 - Octopus Books launched its new TDP-or-Else publishing program today with a billion-dollar treasure chest filled with enough loot to temp even the shyest of authors into a restrictive contract that keeps their books out of competing stores and online bookseller websites.

"We firmly believe that Tentacle Direct Publishing (TDP), when combined with our Octopus-only author's contract, will provide the best cradle-to-grave entertainment service for readers," said Octopus Books founder and chairman J.D. Rock.

According to informed sources, TDP-or-Else "has the potential for harming everyone who reads, writes or sells books except for Octopus Books."

Yet Rock and his two primary business partners Hank Flag and Roger Henry discounted such objections from competing Internet booksellers and independent bookstores as "cry baby stuff" at the company's annual sardine roast where the new publishing program was unveiled.

"We think we have enough bounty to keep authors loyal to us and to understand that it's not in their wallets' best interests to shack up with other booksellers," Rock said.

Publishing insiders said that once Octopus Books is finished building its from-here-to-eternity corporation, publishing insiders will be a thing of the past.

Speaking off the record, the president of a bookseller association said that Rock, Flag and Henry modeled Octopus Books after such famous vertically integrated cartels as Standard Oil and Paramount Pictures.

"Such companies control all aspects of the supply chain from the devil to the deep blue sea," the association president said.

In spite of recent cries of "Gig the Octopus" and "Eat a Tentacle for Lunch," many long-starving authors and industry outsiders are viewing the bait dangling on the end of the line with "guarded naïveté."

"Now every author can be a contender," said emerging author Terry Malloy ("Calm Weather Tails"). "Octopus Books is really the only game in town and as soon as the small fry realize this, we can get onto writing great stories and controlling the readers' habits."

In a white paper published by a suddenly failing independent publisher whose name has not been released pending the notification of next of kin, author Ida Minerva wrote ''With Mr. Rock’s genius for detail there went a sense of the big and vital factors in the publishing business and a daring in laying hold of them which was very like military genius. He saw strategic small-fry publishers and mom-and-pop bookstores like a Napoleon and he swooped on them with the suddenness of a Napoleon."

When asked about Minerva's book, Rock laughed and said, "Now there's a little writing gal I liked to wrap my tentacles around."

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--Story by Jock Stewart

 

 

Fabricated Life Stories, Inc., Comes to Town on a Wing and a Lie

Junction City, October 24, 2011--Three months ago, Robert L. St. Ives had another name and an identity that nobody would sneeze at. His longest term of employment, not counting the License Plate Shop at State Penitentiary 666,was 38 minutes as a produce washer at the old A&P Grocery on County Road 3724.

Today, Robert L. St. Ives is a Rhodes Scholar with a high-profile job as Dean of Admissions at Albino College.

"Even though I'm dean of admissions," St. Ives said, "I'm not admitting anything that may have happened before I got my new life, compilments of Bob and Ray at Fabricated Life Stories, Inc. (FBL)."

St. Ives had to hitchhike all the way to Dallas to purchase his new life with $100,000 in funds from a variety of undisclosed sources and locations. Today, thanks to some well-placed favors, Bob Smith and Ray Jones are moving the corporation's headquarters to the former crack house behind Ghost-of-a-Chance Cemetary on Deadline Road.

According to the ABOUT US page on FBL's website, Smith holds a PhD in advanced basket weaving and Jones holds a PhD in alumni physical education coordination.

"We provide hope to the hopeless, clues to the clueless, and new lives to people who botched up their former lives," Smith said. "Our work is so thorough and above verifiable reproach, that everyone from the Social Security Administration to Homeland Security believes all paperwork flowing out of our vast network database."

According to sources who didn't know they were being taped, "FBL Certificate Holders have such flawless, fabulous and highfalutin credentials, they inevitably succeed wherever they're hired based on their celebrity status alone."

Local psychiatrist Puer Aeternus said that even though paying for a new identity at FBL has a dark side to it, most of those who use the company's services spend the rest of their lives growing into the lives that were fabricated for them.

"They become what they are pretending to be," Aeternus said.

Smith and Jones explained to local ministers who "had reservations about dancing with the devil" that 98.6% of the facts available via the Internet are variously massaged, tweaked, ramped up or totally fabricated."

"Lies tend to cancel each other out, leaving us with Pure D truth," said Jones.

"He's wrong," said Smith, "but that's why you can take what he said as gospel."

According to Chief Kruller of the Junction City Police Department, most of the residents of the former crack house behind the cemetery were "given a free ride" by FBL and how hold positions of trust in the community.

"Only in America," said Kruller, "could a man be who was wanted for grand larcency on the first of the month be the president of the bank on the last day of the month."

FBL's move to Junction City will be completed during the dark of night on October 31 when, sources say, "honorable people will be inside their houses with the blinds closed."

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Story by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter for the Star-Gazer. For a free Jock Stewart "Jock Talks Satirical News" e-book, click here.

UNCLAIMED FRIGHT Coming to Town on Halloween

story filed by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter

Junction City, TX, October 2, 2011--Unclaimed Fright, the mega-corporation founded by de-archetyped Jungian analyst Frederick Anima in the Haight-Ashbury District of San Francisco during the "heady days of the Vietnam War," announced plans to turn the former Border's Book Store on County Road 3724 into a super-sized Primal Scream Center (PSC).

Anima (prounced enema) said that Junction City presented Unclaimed Fright with "overly ripe demographics" for the company's famed electric chair PSC intervention therapy because Albino County is a "seething mass" of humanity with no sense of personal responsibility.

"Figuratively speaking," said Anima, drawing a stick-figure hangman game on a large flip chart, "at least 98.6% of county residents are hung up with fears. They are literally being scared to death by everything that goes bump in the night, but won't admit it."

Puer Aeternus, chairman of the Junction City Psychotherapist's Club interrupted Anima's presentation thirteen times--based on security cam footage. He shouted, "You've got that right!" six times and hit Anima in the head with a spit wad seven times.

After being subdued by police and given 5cc of Valium, Aeternus explained that while Texans are "mean sons of bitches" on the outside, they live in a state of denial about their fears on the inside.

According to a Junction City Psychotherapist's Club white paper, Albino County needs a massive "infusion of sanity" that will not be found by screaming for hours in one of Unclaimed Fright's mock electric chairs.

"Primal Scream Therapy is a meaningful intervention for patients with neurotic disorders," said Anima. "We've simply enhanced the process to keep the cost to the patient well within the amount insurance companies are willing to pay. It's widely known that insurance companies think talk therapy is 'just paying for friends,' so we cure folks in our unfriendly, 'Old Sparky Electric Chair Room.' Patients are taught to own their fears with reasonably safe jolts of persuasion from an old car battery and leave feeling much better about the outside world."

Anima said that the company's award winning and highly controversial "GOT FRIGHT? CLAIM IT HERE" advertising campaign will begin running in the obituary section of the Star-Gazer next week.

An informed source for the nearby Saint James Infirmary, speaking on condition that he would not be referred to as the "Boss Shrink," said that it was "unlikely" that any of the "therapists" working for Unclaimed Fright would be allowed to commit anyone other than themselves to the infirmary.

Unclaimed Fright officials promised that its PSC would keep neurotics off the streets with the same effectiveness that the state's lethal injection program keeps criminals off the streets.

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Got unclaimed laughter? Put it to good use by reading Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire, the comedy/satire about Junction City, Police Chief Kruller, and the seething mass of fictional humanity of Albino County.

Minister challenges 'Lust in All the Best Places'

by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter

Junction City, TX, September 28, 2011--Zeke Quick's tragic story about two star-crossed lovers who experienced passion on a hot tin roof only to end up end up with hot crossed buns, Lust in in All the Best Places, was ripped off the PS93 library shelf faster than a wet bodice on a steamy afternoon.

Arnold Pratt, the self-appointed pastor of the Church of Randon Saints, asked the school board to remove the novel from the library during Banned Books Week as a way of "spitting in the eyes of readers who have nothing better to do than read sordid books."

After a meeting at an undisclosed location late last night, the Junction City School Board voted 5-2 to remove Quick's book because it included a "highly explicit" list of the best places in Texas to experience lust without getting caught.

Principal John Phillips said that the Reverend Pratt cited as evidence a printout of questions his (Pratt's) son Billy posed on his (Billy's) Facebook profile.

"He wanted to know where his friends were doing it," Phillips said. "He was stealing his questions about farmer Jones' haystack, old lady Wilmont's basement, and a 'steamy swamp' on County Road 3724 right out of the novel."

Upon investigation, police said nobody was having sex in old lady Wilmont's basement except old Lady Wilmont.

"Bless her heart," said librarian Lucile Edmonds. "She used to date Zeke Quick when he was a student here many years ago. But he shouldn't have told, especially in my library where students in the Pulp Fiction class are crying for something practical to read."

Informed sources said that several members of the school board were observed cavorting in the aforementioned haystack after the meeting.

Glen Jones told reporters that he was cutting together an eye-popping video compiled from his security camera footage.

"All but one of the school board members look better with their clothes on," said Jones. "You can decide for yourself, though, when I upload my 'Haystack Hooters' video onto YouTube at high noon tomorrow unless the book is returned to the library."

An emergency session of the school board has been called for late this evening in "that little love shack in the Great Abysmal Swamp two miles past the covered bridge."

Quick, who was busy autographing another box of books for the library "just in case they were needed" said--off the record to avoid libel problems--"Pratt, Phillips and Edmonds are jealous that the fictional characters in the book are more normal than they are."

"Zeke always did think he knew everything," said Edmonds after slamming down a few shooters in the faculty lounge. "The reason I don't want that darned book in the library is because the publisher used a candid photo of me and coach what's his name on the cover."

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You can find more absurd stories from Jock Stewart on Kindle in "Jock Talks Outlandish Happenings." It's a hoot and a half and only costs 99 cents.

The e-book is also available on Smashwords in multiple formats.

 

Organized Crime Eyes Rising Sagebrush Revenue

Reno, Nevada, August 9, 2011--Vinnie "Big Bonanza" Romano is finally a happy man. While sales at his International Romano Cheese Company are merely modest, street sales of his sagebrush products are finally going up in smoke.

According to sources who claim their lives "wouldn't be worth a played out silver mine" if they talked openly, Romano moved from Detroit to Reno three years ago when he realized the Sagebrush State was "a place where the big cheese in a well-organized family" could corner the sagebrush market.

"The landscape around Carson City, Virginia City and Reno is badder than the Badlands," Romano purportedly told his friends around a Vegas roulette wheel before there numbers were up. "But look at all the damn sagebrush, ripe for the picking."

Romano set up a factory in an abandoned silver mine near Virginia City in spite of the fact nearby signs told him the place was dangerous. The plan: to introduce a new product called Nevada Rubbed Sage that would steal business from the venerable McCormick Company.

Factory manager Mario Bruno sent gangs of sagebrush thieves out into the bad Nevada landscape to bring the stuff back to the mine by the light of the moon and a few well-placed flashlights. Beneath the rotting timbers where men once became rich extacting silver from the earth, Bruno's machines hacked, chopped and rubbed sage before depositing it into thousands of .5 ounce bottles with silvery labels.

According to chief marketing goon, Bill Smith, McCormick's sage is imported from Croatia which "last I heard, is unAmerican. Our home-grown product will help the poor Carson City and Reno economy while undercutting McCormick's $2.98 price."

Introduced at $1.00 a bottle three years ago, initial sales of Nevada Rubbed Sage were brisk even  though Trader Joe's, Safeway and Walmart refused to carry the product.

"Who are you going to trust to rub your sage," quipped Romano, "sage from a company founded by a guy named Willoughby or a jet-setter named Vinnie?"

Vinnie's rubbed sage hit the fan, informed sources believe, on Thanksgiving Day 2008 when everyday families dipped into mama's best turkey and dressing and realized that the ground up and rubbed sagebursh growing on Nevada's bad-looking landscape tasted bad.

Sagebrush expert Rider Purple explained to reporters gathered around a Nevada Rubbed Sage outlet on U. S. 395 that while the toxic sagebrush, Artemisia tridentata, smells like common sage (Salvia officinalis) when it's wet, it "tastes lousy and bitter and more or less like weeds on a plate."

After trying "weeds on a plate" as a green-oriented, natural-sounding, family-friendly slogan for his Nevada Rubbed Sage, Romano concluded late this summer that his rubbed sage was simply rubbing people the wrong way. According to uninformed sources, he said, "hell, maybe we can get those turkeys out there to smoke it."

To the chagrin of the legal and highly taxed cigarette companies, sales of Vinnie's Bad Smokes have been brisk.

--Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter

This e-book parody of “helpful hints” newspaper feature articles is inspired by "In a Flash," by Smoky Trudeau Zeidel and by "Morning Satirical News," a weblog by Malcolm R. Campbell. Available for only 99 cents.

 

 

 

 

 

Night Beat: Andy Williams no longer sings 'Loon Liver'

Got up this morning and heard a raucous cacophony of screeches, hisses and flutes outside the window. Sounded like the crap we used to hear on the first day of band practice back at Sam Houston High School.

Since I'd fallen asleep in my clothes--just in case--I grabbed my Glock-17 out from under the currently un-used guest pillow and ran out on the desk to investigate. The world looked normal which meant it probably wasn't.

"I love that big old gun of yours," said my sexy neighbor lady Label Ranks who just happened to be peeking over the fence.

"Thank you, Label."

"Stop calling me Label. The name is Mabel Franks."

Franks? No wonder she always looked at me funny. Before I bought a pair of hearing aids yesterday for the reasonable price of $57,000, I never could hear the letters "M" and "F." Every time I walked into the press room at the Star-Gazer, the purported employees shouted, "Uck you, lover ucker." Always thought they were daft.

Turns out, I was deafer than I knew.

"Sorry, Mabel, but today is the first time I've been able to hear much of anything other than gibberish."

"Two years of my sweet nothings have been wasted on you. Is that right, Jock?"

"Right as rain."

"Pity," she said, lighting up a cigarette that I'd always called Larboro, prompting fast food clerks to scream "Uck you." I never saw the humor in it as the time. "So, what's up other than your gun?"

"The racket," I said, wondering if she were deaf or daft.

"What racket?"

"That crap in the trees."

"Birds, Jock, the joyful song stylings of your fine feathered friends."

"They sing?"

"They do."

"My goodness."

I ran inside and called Lucinda at the Star-Gazer.

"Birds," I shouted. "They sing. The bird books are right. All those italicized words describing what birds sound like are true. They (both the sounds and the birds) are right here in my yard."

"You finally bought your hearing aids."

"About 57 grand just to hear birds sing, to learn my neighbor's name isn't Label Rank and to realize the guys in the press room never did yell 'Uck you' when I pressed the red button to stop the presses like they do in the old black and white movies."

"You haven't heard a word I've said for years," she quipped. "I wanted to liven up our sex life with a little conversation, but you always ruined it singing that gosh awful Loon Liver."

"Ah, Baby Cakes, it's my favorite song."

"Here, listen to this MP3 file of Andy Williams singing your favorite song."

The lyrics, which began on the top floor of the Star-Gazer building downtown made their way from one cell tower to another, bypassed the fine feathered friends in the trees, and reached my cell phone as a very celestial rendition of the humorous song about loons I'd been singing to girl friends and hookers ever since the comedy Beak Ass at Tiny's came out in 1961.

"My goodness, what has Andy done to our song? Moon River, wider than a mile? What is that about? Send in the loons." I spat on my new hearing aids and put them back in my ears. No help. Same new lyrics, lyrics that made a mockery of everything I knew and loved.

"Indeed," she said. "Other than you, there isn't a loon in sight."

"I'm guessing the movie never was called Beak Ass at Tiny's was it."

"Maybe yes, maybe no."

The thumping noise tangled up in her voice was starting to get irritating. "What's the deal with the jungle drums in the office?" I asked, not wanting to know.

"That's my heart beating, Jock."

"You have a heart?"

"Yes, and it starts beating faster and faster whenever you say those naughty words 'Loon Liver.' It's a conditioned response. Those words usually mean I'm about to get lucky."

"Hold that thought," I said. "I'm already in the car."

"You slept in your clothes again, how crude!"

"Crude!" I exclaimed. "I liked it better when I thought it was lewd. I'm taking my hearing aids out as soon as I get to your executive suite."

"Please do," she cooed.

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Jock Stewart appears in the novel "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire" by Malcolm R. Campbell as well as a series of cool e-books.

Malcolm R. Campbell is also the author of "The Sun Singer," "Bears; Where They Fought," and "Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey."

What's the sound of one cat clapping?

Junction City, June 24, 2011--Albino County homeowners from Prairieview to Moorseville are reporting a "disturbing upsurge" in cat vandalism in spite of the best efforts of county commission chairman Dick Cheshire's Cat's Cradle Task Force.

According to spokesmen for the sheriff's police, incidents of hairball vandalism, shredded rare books, missing parakeets, torn furniture and midnight caterwauling outside bedrooms where innocent children are reading exotic books under the covers with flashlights are up 330% since the last time anyone checked.

"It's a catastrophe," said Cheshire as he admitted that "little cat feet" had depleted the task force's budget of $350,000 in only three weeks. "Our finances smell like a bad litter box."

The latest known incident occurred before dawn at the home of Coralie Poodlestone of 666 Dante Street in Mooresville where the scalloped apron rail and sweeping cabriole legs of Baker provincial draw table were "shredded to smithereens." A note next to a broken dining room window said, "What's the sound of one cat clapping?"

Two weeks ago, a group calling itself Cats is Us sent an e-mail to the editorial department of the Star-Gazer, claiming responsibility for the violence. While the Sheriff's Department has asked the newspaper not to release the full text of the message, Editor Lucinda Trail said that the message was typical of the kind of "cat and mouse acts that run rampant through innocent communities like unclipped claws through a cat lover's arms when pet stores and veterinary clinics become so obsessed with booze and reality TV that they forget to close their doors when night flies into town like little crows' wings."

Poodlestone said she believes cats from Cats is Us are targeting homeowners in her neighborhood due to the Man's Best Friend Acres sales department's "hazardous preoccupation with homeowners having doggy sounding last names." The Rex family at 75 Dogrun Avenue and old lady Fido at 387 Broken Leash Road discovered, when they went outside to take a leak this morning, that their yards were covered with hairballs and empty tuna cans.

According to Cheshire, the county's crack philosophers are trying to figure out the answer to the sound of one cat clapping riddle. "So far, the answer is 'nothing,'" Cheshire said with a grin that hung there in the air long after he had left the building.

Sheriff's Police detectives label the demands of Cats is Us "excessive and out of sync with the traditional kinds of demands made by garden variety kidnappers and other hooligans.

"All cats love fish but fear to wet their paws," explained Bill "Cat's Eye" Morgansterne. "They want what we can't give them and don't want what we are offering which, if I do say so myself, is a cat’s pajamas kind of deal."

According to Trail, all of the notes received from Cats is Us and copycat gangs indicate that the "litter will hit the fan" if the demands are not met prior to the dog days of August.

"I feel like a detective on a hot tin roof,"Morgansterne admitted.

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Click here for more wild stories from the famed Star-Gazer.

Autopen Signs Patriot Act Extension While President in France

Washington, D.C., May 27, 2011--An autopen, purportedly acting with Presidential authorization, signed an extension of the Patriot Act on the other side of midnight before many of the unconstitutional portions of the law expired.

White House insiders, who may or may not have been standing inside the White House at the time, claim that the autopen will serve as "a marvelous scapegoat" if and when the law is used improperly.

Jefferson Thomas, president of Where Have All the Freedoms Gone, said that the administration will probably never need the plausible deniability provided by the autopen because the government won't tell the public how the law is applied.

"You can be arrested for breaking the law," said Thomas, "but you'll never know for sure whether you did or you didn't because whether or not you'll be arrested for breaking the law is classified. Privately, many law makers laugh at just how Kafkaesque the Patriot Act and its enforcement really are."

While President Truman used an autopen to answer mail from people who didn't know where the buck stopped, the autopen has enjoyed White House priviledges as far back as the administration of Thomas Jefferson. In those days, the autopen was called a polygraph, a notion that proved inconvenient in later years to those trying to use the pen to sign things they didn't believe in.

According to political analysts, autopens are responsible for most of the nation's laws due to the fact that most elected Representatives and Senators don't have the time to properly frame, much less read, prospective bills in either house of Congress.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy jokingly told President Obama after the law was signed that he was quite sure an autopen has been responsible for most of the insulting things the French have said about the United States after "you Yanks saved our butts in the 1940s."

Patriot Act Enforcement Tsar Bill Smith (not his real name) said that most Americans don't need to worry about the freedoms that have been abridged by the law because they weren't taking advantage of them anyway.

"If you don't know you're free," he said, "you might as welll be in chains."

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For more Jock Stewart, sample the "Jock Talks" series of satirical e-books available on Kindle for only 99 cents each. The latest, co-authored with Smoky Trudeau Zeidel, is "Jock Talks Lightning Safety."

This parody of “helpful hints” newspaper feature articles is inspired by In a Flash, by Smoky Trudeau Zeidel and by Morning Satirical News, a weblog by Malcolm R. Campbell.

Zeidel, who was struck by lightning twenty-two years ago, recounts her true story of the event and its aftermath in her e-book In a Flash. Campbell, who has seen lightning outside the window, uses his “Jock Stewart” alter ego on his weblog to satirize real and/or imaginary events. For legal reasons, Zeidel and Campbell warn that while real lightning has probably occurred in Zigzag, Oregon and on Mt. Hood’s Zigzag Glacier, the story you are about to read is as fictional as a bolt of lightning in a fabric store.

Use of this volume as a lightning rod has not been authorized by the NOAA National Weather Service.

 

 

 

Minnesota GOP Seeks Pencil-Necked Weasel Bounty

St. Paul, Minnesota, May 4, 2011--While Minnesota residents are accustomed to the occasional "ha ha" that flows out of the state capitol building, they were alarmed to hear that the cute, pencil-necked weasel is likely to loose its legacy funding.

As House Republicans re-examined whether or not legacy funding for arts and cultural groups needed to be re-examined, the Majority Leader stated that he hated "pencil-necked weasels."

Sources close to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) stated categorically that only three species of the vast Mustelidae family are running wild and free in the state, the short-tailed, the long-tailed and the least.

Assistant Weasel Tsar Matt Chancellor stated that the purported pencil-necked weasel "must be something out of the mind of a cartoonist or a representative who doesn't know a true weasel from a hole in the groud."

Revamped legislation flying the Elephant Banner introduced by the House Legacy Funding Division Panel includes a "Pop Goes the Weasel" rider that mandates a new competitive bidding system in which weasels will now have to compete with other elongated predators for state monies.

Lawyers examining the 25,000-page bill for "meaning and general sense," told reporters they found no references to pencil or pencil-necked.

The proposed bounty has "law enforcement agencies in a dither" since the weasel--including the short-tailed species better known as the ermine--is already unprotected in the state.

Noting that most of the state's predators are in and around the capitol, Head Predator Control Officer, Dean Bleistift, said that "the new bounty plan is likely to put Minnesota arts in the toilet along with the weasel."

An International Weasel Society white paper noted that "nature doesn't normally place weasels and elephants in the same habitats because those sweet little critters would be randomly trampled while the Elephantidae family is busy grasping at peanuts."

Clarifying the proposed arts funding bounty legislation, a leading Republican said, "Every night when I get home, The monkey's on the table, Take a stick and knock it off, Pop! goes the weasel"

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Potentially related news: "Pencil-Necked Weasel" Neil Gaiman Bites Back

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Story filed by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter. Download Stewart's free "Jock Talks...Satirical News" e-book from Smashwords.