Morning Satirical News

False Grit - A Father's Day Memory

The last time I saw Bubba McSmathers, he was teaching his son JB how to viably shoot crows out of the tops of the grit trees with a bolt-action .22 rifle on Father's Day in 1976. As it turned out, that wasn't going to be the half of it.

I was there because JB had stolen both my bright red truck and my honey-sweet girlfriend the night before.

"I'd rather have the 12-gauge," JB said, missing his 13th crow.

JB wasn't wearing a shirt and by the way Latrelle was watching him, I suspected he'd been wearing a lot less during the night. I'd already noticed lipstick on the talegate of the truck.

"Buck shot damages the grits," Bubba explained. "Even Jock knows that, don't you, Jock?"

"I do," I said, wondering who wouldn't know that picking shot out of a bowl of grits is pretty much of a fool's game.

"You want to lose our contract with Waffle House on Father's Day of all things? And put your shirt back on for hell's sake, you got claw marks all down your back."

Latrelle refused to make eye contact with me which was just as well because I was in what coach Peters down at the high school referred to as a "prickly mood."

"No sir, yes sir."

We were walking while we were talking because the crows had a way of fluttering one tree farther out of range every time JB took a shot.

"You can walk and load at the same time, can't you son?"

"Yes sir."

"I just don't see how you can miss with a peep sight on a day without a breath of wind," said Bubba, stepping over a copperhead sunning itself on a low slab of rock. "You're not using shorts or blanks, are you?"

"He wasn't last night," said Latrelle, with a smile wide enough for a whole drawer full of socks.

Bubba glanced back at her like she was one step lower on the food chain than a thieving Southern Grit Crow.

"Where's your Daddy?"

Latrelle's smile drained away faster than a pint of bourbon on prom night.

"He's still making license plates," I said.

The sound of Latrelle's hand slapping the hell out of my face served as an optimal exclamation mark.

JB laughed his ass off until Bubba kicked him in the backside hard enough to make him drop the rifle while tumbling head first into a palmetto. Unfortunately, the gun didn't go off and kill Latrelle.

"When's he getting out?" asked Bubba.

"August, if he doesn't fly off the handle in the warden's office again," Latrelle said.

"Good man with a gun," I said even though it hurt to say it.

JB smiled at that.

"Yes sir," JB said, more or less to the sky which was what he was looking at, "if Latrelle's old man were here, we'd already be walking back to the house with crow enough for everyone to eat."

Bubba helped his son up out of the palmetto thicket.

"The house, JB, you think we'd be walking over to the house?"

"Yes sir."

"House of the Lord is more like it so you could say 'I do' to your sweet bride."

"Damn," was about all JB could say.

"But Daddy's not here to give me away," Latrelle protested.

"I already did that," I said. "I don't mind doing it again. JB, you can keep the truck as a wedding present."

"You're a real man," Bubba said, "somebody for JB to take after."

"He took after my girl instead."

"That was plain sorry," said Bubba, "but what's done is done."

"It was done in less than a minute," said Latrelle.

"I still say you're taking this well, Jock." Bubba slapped me on the back where there were no fresh claw marks to feel the sting of it. "A lesser man would have had murder on his mind this morning."

I shrugged that off even though it was true. If I had to give the bride away, better for them to think I was a saint than a snake. When I managed a smile, I didn't feel it, proving to myself again that I wasn't a man with true grit.

"Let's get back to the house and tell Mama this is turning out to be my best Father's Day ever," said Bubba. "Quick, JB, see that crow sitting in the scrub oak. As close up and low as it is, you can't possibly miss it."

"Screw it," said Latrelle.

She picked up the rifle, hardly took aim at all, and shot the crow. JB looked worse than death warmed over but Bubba was grinning.

"Daddy taught me to do that," Latrelle told him.

"Ain't fathers grand?" I said.

"You've got that right," said Bubba. "JB, run over and fetch that bird down out of that tree. Latrelle, I hope you like the grit business. I hope you like it all from tending the trees, to slapping the grits off the limbs with cane fishing poles, to shoveling them into the wagon to take to the gin."

What Bubba didn't know about grits, nobody needed to know.

When she smiled and said "yes," I could tell her heart wasn't in it now and probably never would be. More false grit. But her pretense was more than enough to make Bubba happy.

"Best Father's Day ever," he told her.

"Why thank you."

"I just hope your Mama taught to how to cook; you're marrying a growing boy."

When Latrelle looked at the ground and didn't say anything, Bubba started laughing. He was still laughing when they got to the church. And he laughed all the more when JB and Latrelle drove out of town on their honeymoon trip in a red truck with a rope full of empty beer cans clattering on the pavement behind them like all hell was about to break loose.

Being Raised by Hyenas is No Laughing Matter

I woke up this morning with two empty Scotch bottles on the floor and no one else in the room. The phone was ringing louder than usual.

"Hi," a voice gushed with more cheer than the law allows, "I'm Lucille, a crack literary agent out of New York City and I was wondering if..."

I pushed the red button on my phone and hung up while a recording made for me by Clint Eastwood in his Do You Feel Lucky persona informed Lucille that I don't respond to unsolicited queries from agents but remain ever hopeful that they will find clients on their own side of the tracks.

Pica, my ass-kicking teddy bear said, "that'll teach her a lesson."

"You got that right," I said, or imagined saying, just as my cell phone burst into song with its haunting "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling" ring tones. This lovely music, which doesn't mix well with a Scotch hangover, gave to way my hard boiled reporter greeting:

"If you're a regular person calling for regular reasons, press 1.5

"If you're an irregular person, for Pete's sake, don't press anything.

"If you're Monique calling to thank me for last night, press 98.6."

"Hi," said Lucille, "this is Monique calling to thank you for last night."

"Were we drinking Scotch or Vodka before the gun went off shattering the Oscar I stole from Katherine Hepburn that night she got drunk while reprising her Tracy Samantha Lord Haven role behind the Wal-Mart?"

"Scotch."

"Right answer, wrong accent."

"You can't blame a girl for trying," she said.

"I often do," I snapped.

"I still want to make you a star. Now, about the book..."

"Being Raised by Hyenas is no Laughing Matter."

"I didn't know that," she said. "Most strange people are raised by wolves, or should it be reared, wolves rear people don't they, out in the woods and stuff?"

"Presumably."

"Stop being coy, Jock, a little bird told me you just finished the shocking sequel to They Shoot Agents, Don't They? and that for obvious reasons you needed a new agent."

"Why should that agent be you?" I asked.

"Experience," she said. "I was with Random House before they became random. So, tell me about the book. I know you want to."

I sighed loud enough for plenty of effect.

"I've moved from magical realism to subliminal realism in a chilling tale in which an innocent, potentially lame brained reader, leaves his or her normal life and becomes during a 376-page beach read, a child of hyenas."

"Oh, like the movie Total Recall where people hook up to machines and have vacations they didn't go on," she said.

"Yes."

"Hyenas, though, I imagine that must be quite frightening," she said. "How many people have been affected by the manuscript so far?"

"I'm the only one. It happened while I was writing the story."

"I want to read it."

When she said she wanted to read it, I pressed the SEND button and a copy of my novel showed up on her screen before she had time to light another cigarette.

"Call me back in a couple of hours," she growled.

"You shouldn't have done that," observed Pica from the top shelf after I showered and put on fresh clothes and poured breakfast into a tall glass.

"She was already a predator," I said. "I saw her name on the Editors and Predators list online."

"I didn't know that," said Pica. "Humor me, though. Call her now and see if she's all right."

Her phone almost rang off the hook.

"I know it's you," she said, panting and slurring her words. "Look, you've got a good story here, worth 10 big ones at Harper, but that subliminal stuff isn't working."

"Why did it take you so long to answer the phone?"

"I was in the woods eating small animals and drinking foul-tasting water out of a ditch."

"Shucks," I said, "the manuscript didn't change you any."

Department of Homeland Security Implements Reincarnation Controls to Protect Nation from Dangerous Influx of Former Dead People

Washington, D.C., May 3, 2008—“Who, I ask you, is more dangerous to this country’s security, the living whom we can track, monitor, order number and divide, or the previously dead who can infiltrate through porous astral borders from multiple time periods and planes of existence with agendas outside the scope of Congressional mandates?”

Sub-Tsar Sara Xiaowen-Smith told the department’s first graduating class of  200,000 Reincarnation Incident Control Officers (RICO) here today that that is not a rhetorical question within the widening arena of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) influence and concern.

Named as the Sub-Tsar of the newly created State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA), a wholly owned sub-agency of DHS, Xiaowen-Smith told reporters that she had never been anybody before she was born in Two Egg, Florida 48 years ago.

“Currently,” she explained, “over 23,000 purportedly loyal Americans swear they were, and still are, Queen Elizabeth I while 4,000 swear they were and might still be Visigoth strong man Alaric I. Just ask yourself: to whom do these people swear their allegiance?”

According to a SARA Order Number 5 (the reincarnation of four previous drafts), no individual may reincarnate or plan to reincarnate as himself/herself or as any other individual, living or dead, without prior approval via Form J38-005.

“We consider this to be an important move to institutionalize the management of reincarnation,” Xiaowen-Smith said, “and I’m hard fried enough to make that concept stick to the pan.”

SARA attorneys, 98.6% of whom claim the new regulations will “pass Constitutional muster,” said that without compromising sources and methods, the government “clearly knows” that the top ten Queen Elizabeth I claimants actively plan to “bring back” the monarch’s Star Chamber tribunals. A “shockingly high” percentage of the “Visigoth crowd” dream of re-sacking Rome without first asking “paper or plastic.”

Chief Attorney Clarence Jones, whom SARA officially recognizes as the reincarnation of Clarence Darrow, said that “while the government is interested in the Star Chamber concept as a means of institutionalizing the management of free speech, it strongly believes such a chamber cannot be run by private individuals who simply want to throw an unsanctioned wrench into the works.”

Uninformed sources “poo-pooed” the charge that either DHS or SARA continue to believe that reincarnation is “really just a bunch of bed-wetting liberal hippy voodoo.”

“We are not expediently playing the ‘reincarnation  card’ as just another means of controlling the lives of people we haven’t been able to shut down up to now,” stated Xiaowen-Smith.

Savvy China watchers were quick to point out that SARA itself is the reincarnation of the still-living Chinese agency working diligently since last year to manage the reincarnation of living Buddhas in or anywhere near Tibet.

“America is, or should be, dedicated to the concept of One Team, One Mission Securing the Homeland,” said  Xiaowen-Smith. “God help us if we allowed everybody to just be anybody. Just ask yourself: do you want an unlicensed Lizzie Borden knocking on your door in the dead of night asking to borrow a teaspoon of sugar and an axe?”

Nile Books Tells Publishers ‘We’re Only Game in Town’

Junction City, April 6, 2008--Geoffrey Nile, owner and operator of Nile Books (NB) on Virginia Avenue, has served notice on American publishers that he will no longer sell their books in his store if they persist in doing their own printing.

In a sizzling NB Spam-o-Gram, Nile warned publishers that any book not being printed via his BookPurge subsidiary by All Fools Day would “have its ass remaindered out of the store.”

When Penguin, Doubleday, and Riverhead refused to sign, People of the Book, The Appeal and A Thousand Splendid Suns were the first books "carefully" packed into a Waste Management truck and shipped out of town.

“Getting rid of People of the Book was so wonderfully symbolic,” said Nile, “I’m actually thankful that Penguin Group didn’t sign on with BookPurge. The point I’m trying to make here is that Americans are no longer people of the book. We don’t have time for such old fashioned luxuries any more.”

The BookPurge System, which Nile claims will make him “bloody rich” with a reasonable amount of “collateral damage" due to bad PR and antitrust investigations, replaces regular books with shoddy, more expensive imitations.

Ultimately, Nile hopes to get rid of paper books, replacing them with his patented Spindle System in which proprietary “BookRadio” implants that are totally incompatible with other book reader systems will beam fiction and nonfiction directly into people’s brains.

“People can switch from regular ‘reading’ to speed reading just by wiggling their ears,” Nile told an angry mob outside his store.

BookPurge President, Elmer Mewtylate told reporters that the company also produces books that fold and books that roll.

“Folded books, produced on heavily leaded Chinese-made print-on-demand machines, will turn out books that look more or less like the books once sold at NB,” said Mewtylate. “However, to keep profits high, we may be forced to skimp a little on quality control issues.”

With a twinkle in his eye and a spring in his step, Nile led a bevy of industry gurus, librarians, English teachers, and book reviewers into one NB’s pristine restrooms and flung open the doors to the stalls.

“Here, my friends, are books that roll,” he said, explaining that books and toilet paper are a marriage made in heaven since 98.6% of all Americans do most of their reading in the bathroom anyway. “Read, dump, recycle,” he added.

Librarian Lulu I. Universe welcomed the change, noting that it would reduce the confusing number of players, programs and principles that naturally occur in a world of diversity and competition.

Book reviewers P. America of the Times and Buck Locher of the Star-Gazer said Monopoly is only fun when it’s a game with “itty bitty” little houses and hotels, free parking and people rolling the dice.

“In real life,” said Locher,  “Nile isn’t going to have any free parking or a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

“When my dear old book-reading mother named me ‘Geoffrey’ instead of ‘Jeffrey,’ whined Nile, "she made life a lot harder for me, people called me a sissy and ‘Death on the Nile’ and bet money that I’d grow up and own a book store rather than a gun shop or a Harley-Davidson dealership. Well look who’s laughing now.”

Industry experts predict that authors who complain about being screwed will “simply do out of print” while the country’s remaining readers will “simply put up with BookPurge” as just another example of today’s generally lower standards across the board from Marvin Gardens to Park Place to Mediterranean Avenue.

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Copyright (c) 2008 by Malcolm R. Campbell

City Council Lambasts ‘Earth Hour’ Campaign

Junction City , March 20, 2008—“If you turn out your lights for an hour on March 29 at 8 p.m., you’re not saving the world, you’re just putting yourself in the dark,” resolved the City Council in a 4-1 ‘Lambasting Earth Hour’ vote last night.

The solitary nay vote came from Jason Andrews who said that the city shouldn’t be getting into the “lambasting business.”

According to Mayor Clark Trail, the City Council was advised its legal department that lambasting was the strongest stance it could take.

“As it turns out, we’re not allowed to ban voluntary stupidity,” he said.

Earth Hour came to the attention of the City Council when the Department of Web Surfing and Random Information Gathering discovered that conservation organizations around the world are pushing for individuals and businesses to turn their lights out for one hour at 8 p.m. local time on March 29 to “send a powerful message about global warming to whoever notices things are darker than usual.”

Department director ‘webvixen99’ said that while turning out the lights during the high school basketball tournament might help the PS 98 team do better (“since nothing else has worked"), the darkness would frighten the 10-15 fans who are still coming to the games.

“If God wants global warming, we’re going to have it lights or no lights,” cautioned the Reverend Cotton Mouth.

Acting on Mouth’s recommendation, the City Council suggested that faithful and patriotic residents can “fill the city with light while fighting the darkness perpetrated by the Earth Hour weenies” by burning fuel oil in 55-gallon drums, turning on extra lights powered by gasoline-powered generators, leaving flashlights on, and by igniting piles of coal and/or old railroad crossties at every street corner.

“Junction City will be like one hell of a ferocious candle burning in the darkness,” Trail bragged to reporters after the meeting.

Church Announces New Sins in Time for Ides of March

Junction City, March 10, 2008—On March 15, Sin-o-Meters posted throughout the sanctuary and education building of the Church of the Painful Now will be recalibrated to include a heaping helping of fresh new sins dished out by the all-powerful Penitentiary Committee (PC).

PC Committee chair John Frank told reporters at this morning’s God-Don’t-Let-It-Be-Hillary prayer breakfast that it’s a “funny coincidence” that the Catholic Church is also super-sizing everything on its sin menu.

“We reviewed the Vatican’s updated sin recipes,” said Frank, “and quite frankly we believe many of the additions to the appetizer section are simply examples of kids having fun, while most of the new whole-meal sins are just plain bad luck.”

According to the Reverend Cotton Mouth, the Church of the Painful Now convened a Sin Focus Group (SFG) last summer to field test proposed new sins and then report its findings to the PC.

“The elders manning our Sin-o-Meter cameras became convinced during the last few years that men, women, children and pets were having too damned much fun but weren’t going to hell for it,” said Reverend Mouth.

During his four-hour sermon yesterday, the reverend praised the “beyond-the-call-of-duty” work of the 25 SFG members who “tried out” each prospective  new sin on the elders’ list. In some cases, multiple members field tested some of the proposed new sins multiple times.

“I came to church with a dress so short, people could see my ass,” said SFG member Bambi Krack. “The more I did it, the better I liked it, so that proved to the witnesses following me around that I was being very naughty.”

“I spat tobacco juice into a passing hearse and felt so terrible about it, the act was considered completely harmless,” said John Yellowcorn, the church’s token Red Man.

SFG members Glen Livet and Talisker Scot field tested substances that some say "weaken the mind and obscure intelligence" and decided that while it was “damn stupid” to buy bottled water that tastes like strawberries, it wasn’t wrong enough to condemn.

After 40 days of “relentless, ecstatic, and humorous” field testing, the SFG told the PC that 27.7 new sins needed to be added to church the Sin-o-Meters' algorithms. The top ten new sins are:

1. Walking with your ass hanging out of whatever you’re wearing.
2. Voting for Hillary.
3. Laughing so hard at intelligence-challenged individuals that water/coke/coffee sprays out your nose.
4. Having a brief, one-Sunday stand with another church.
5. Skipping church with nothing better than a sissified note that says “I had the flu.”
6. Kissing your kissing cousins with too much enthusiasm.
7. Permitting your ugly and/or rowdy kids to run loose at Wal*Mart.
8. Attending a sexy movie while claiming you were "only there for the violence."
9. Reading books by J. K. Rowling and Philip Pullman.
10. Thinking for yourself about religious matters rather than consulting the church brass.

Church technicians expect to have the new sins uploaded to the sin server by March 14. The devices on church property will continue to fire a red paintball at the guilty while recording the infraction in the Church Book of Naughty Deeds.

The new ankle Sin-o-Meters will record instances of sin that occur off church property while playing embarrassing mega-decibel announcements such as, “Spank me, spank me, I’ve been bad” and “I’m going to hell in a hand basket.”

“We had a bit of trouble getting the ankle Sin-o-Meter idea past the congregation,” said Frank. “But our fast-talking Reverend, bless his heart, convinced folks that only the unfaithful needed to be afraid, very afraid.”

Reporter Wakes Up, Finds World Running on Square Wheels

Junction City, December 16, 2007—When I woke up this morning next to an empty Ancient Age bottle, I knew the day was already running on square wheels.
     The TV was blaring away with an alternative version of “A Wonderful Life” in which Clarence loses his wings after flirting with the dark side. (“Jump George Bailey, jump.”)
     I missed the end of the movie when the network cut in to tell me that Eva Longoria, while potentially still a Desperate Housewife, is “standing by her man” as a tidal wave of Tony Parker cheating on his wife rumors “ripped Hollywood off its pretentious foundations” during the weekend. Wisteria Lane is seldom tranquil.
     I called up a remotely informed source to see if Eva  was okay and learned that “the world has temporarily moved on” as reporters focus on tonight’s “Survivor China.”
     Turns out, early predictions that lead paint would be a factor in who made it into the final four have proved to be without foundation as brainwashed viewers put their lives on hold waiting to see which playing strategy would bring a million-dollar win: Nasty, Coy, Sad Sack, or Sweet.
     Odds makers say it’s a toss up between Nasty and Coy, just like real life because, frankly, Sad Sack and Sweet don’t sell newspapers or provide high television ratings.
     As I sat there trying to listen to the snap, crackle and pop of my breakfast bowl of Rice Kispies, the “Breaking News” droned on, and I wondered “where have all the reporters gone?”
“Gone to drivel every one,” my mentor Professor Caslon told me moments ago via Ouija board while I added another teaspoon full of sugar. “If I hadn’t been cremated, I’d be turning over in my grave at what passes for news these days.”
     “So, you wouldn’t be interested in, say, Jennifer Love Hewitt in a bikini?” I asked.
     “Only if she rang my doorbell while wearing it,” he said.
     The transmission became garbled after that as the Ouija board began informing me that Paris Hilton is looking for Mr. Right and might be ringing my doorbell.
     Now that would be news! 

City Council Approves Voluntary ‘Water Give-Back’ Program to Ease Reservoir Woes During Drought

Junction City, October 5, 2007—“During the drought, Dry Creek Reservoir (DCR) has been like an old man with a prostate problem,” said Councilman Boyd Kendrick. “It barely produced a trickle.”

Kendrick was all smiles last night as the City Council gave his voluntary Water Give Back Program a flood of support, unanimously passing the measure.

According to Public Works Director Ann Waters, the 505-acre, 53-million gallon reservoir will no longer contain “viable raw water” by the end of November if the drought continues.

Kendrick, who confessed to reporters that he’s not a rocket scientist, said that in spite of water restrictions, Dry Creek has been pumping 3,000,000 gallons of water per day, drawing the level down to 13 feet below full pool. To forestall outright rationing, 5,000 households will be asked to voluntarily return 3,440,000 gallons of water per day to the reservoir.

“Check my math,” said Kendrick, “but I’m calculating that since a ¾ inch garden hose can deliver 23 gallons per minute, that 5,000 houses can, in only 30 minutes per day, can actually start refilling DCR at no cost to the taxpayers!”

Waters said that the plan was “rather like pissing into your own water glass while drinking from it,” while Mayor Clark Trail called it “typical of the City Council brain trust.”

Councilman Dick Peters said that he voted for the plan because his hardware store has more than enough garden products to hose the entire community.

“If there’s a run on Premium Rubber/Vinyl Heavy-Duty ¾ inch x 100 feet garden hose, we’ll be happy to order more,” said Peters.

According to highly misplaced city officials, Mayor Trail was “visibly hurt” when the council cancelled the ceremonial rain dances that have been held every Saturday since the severe drought began late last year.

“Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit,” exclaimed Kendrick after the meeting, “dressing up in costumes and dancing in the creek bed hasn’t done spit to solve our problems. It was good for a few laughs, but not as many as we’re going to hear after the Water Give Back Program shows all the doubters out there just what it can do.”

“It’s about sharing,” Peters explained to no one in particular.

 

Stooges Challenge New Brit Science Book ‘Lucy and Her Great Tits’

Junction City, September 29. 2008—Local Chapter 808 of the Reviewers of Fine Libraries, Museums and Orchestras (ROFLMAO) watchdog group wants Lucy and Her Great Tits removed from the library at PS93.

“Imagine my extreme level of unadulterated chagrin,” said Eleanor Stooge, vice chairman of Chapter 808, “when my sweet and previously untainted son, Joey, walked home from school with Lucy and Her Great Tits."

According to voyeuristic sources, Robert Stooge “hit the ceiling” when he arrived, discovered the “forbidden fruit” on the kitchen table, and heard his wife “sobbing her mascara off” over a book “assigned, if you can believe that” by his son’s fifth grade teacher.

“Banned Books Week is the best possible time to expose Lucy and her Great Tits,” Stooge said. “This is the week when we’re encouraged to take the trash off the shelves.”

Stooge acknowledged that neither he nor his wife had read the book.

School Superintendent Melinda Standish confirmed that the Junction City ROFLMAO chapter placed Lucy and Her Great Tits on its ever-evolving Index Librorum Prohibitorum and issued a formal “Book Under Review Notice” (BURN).

“School system policy requires us to take Lucy and Her Great Tits, or any other challenged book, to the principal’s office whenever we receive a BURN order from ROFLMAO,” Standish said.

Principal John Phillips said that while he enjoyed Lucy and Her Great Tits, he could understand how the Stooges and other nonreaders might be “uncomfortable or aroused” by the title.

“We have a sound materials selection policy that governs every book, tape, DVD, magazine, newspaper, and pamphlet we purchase for our library,” Phillips said. “Lucy and Her Great Tits was handled thoroughly by everyone on our staff before we purchased the book.”

Fifth Grade teacher Jeanette Hardy told reporters that the Stooges wouldn’t be claiming PS93 “had library committee malfunction” if they’d gotten far enough between the covers with Lucy and Her Great Tits to notice the dedication by the author, Sister Maria.

Hardy, who appeared at a high-noon press conference today with Standish, Phillips, Mayor Clark Trail, and the three Stooges waved the book high in the air while defending her choice of the book as a resource for the passerine birds science module.

“Listen to this,” shouted Hardy, “and then tell me if you want to kiss Lucy and Her Great Tits goodbye: ‘With my humble appreciation, I dedicate this book to my ornithologist mentor and dear friend, the late Dr. Weston Whiteside-Smythe of the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology at Oxford University.’  It’s a bird book, folks, Parus major, in this case.”

After stipulating that he “was as ignorant as the next guy” about tits, chickadees, and titmice, Mayor Trail pulled his wife, Lucinda close to him on the school house steps after the meeting.

“Heck,” he said, “if Lucinda here had Great Tits, I wouldn’t be putting them in a book for kids.”

Mom, Dad and Granny Jailed for Calling Junior 'Fussy'

Albino County, August 6, 2007—Heavily armed sheriff’s police staged a pre-dawn raid on the quiet home of Dan and Doris Darling on Seven Mile Road here today after residents on Eight Mile Road reported hearing nine-year-old Junior Darling being described as “fussy.”

“When the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) files a Fussy Report, we intervene immediately,” said Sheriff Mort Clewless, “because we believe kids deserve a nurturing environment where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day.”

DCFS implemented the Fussy Monitoring System after bed-wetting liberals in the department read an article in Parents Magazine stating that parents’ number one job is making their kids feel great 100% of the time.

According to Hillary Rose-Thorne, acting DCFS director, the Darlings have been using a “shit load” of profane words to describe their “impressionable” son.

“What’s the little bastard supposed to think?” Rose-Thorne asked rhetorically. “Disadvantaged kids like him who grow up without being programmed to think they’re great won’t have the necessary sense of infinite entitlement required to navigate through life as we know it.”

According to officious government sources, the DCFS Fussy Report cited Mom, Dad and Granny Darling with three counts of inappropriate parenting language:

• Wednesday, 4 p.m. “After Junior Darling screamed “like a banshee” at the Kroger store on Ten Mile Road for 32.8 minutes, Granny Darling told Doris Darling (in the child’s presence), “Don’t worry, the child’s just being fussy.”

• Thursday, 3:16 p.m. When Dan Darling picked up his son from school, lead teacher Lucy Lake told him that Junior “buggered up” show and tell by “telling frigging squat.” Dan replied, “Junior’s always been a shy child.”

• Sunday, 11:17 a.m. Elders and deacons at the Church of the Painful Now “police the sanctuary” in case anyone starts using politically incorrect language. (The church’s Sunday bulletin warns sinners that “crappy words” are forbidden on the premises.) Allegedly, after Junior helped himself to a “couple of grand” from the collection plate, Doris told him to stop being “stubborn” and put the money back where he found it. The lead deacon shouted, “you’re really pissing off God, Doris, and in the sanctuary, for Christ’s sake” before placing her in the basement timeout room for remainder of the service.

Following the Parents Magazine prescription,  DCFS has banned the use of words such as fussy, shy, stubborn, slowpoke and defiant. Approved alternatives for these damaging words are selective, careful, stubborn, thoughtful, and courageous.

Latrelle Archer, English Studies Director at Albino University (AU) said that “no reasonable person” would claim that those pairs of words are synonyms.

“Whoever dreamt them up was probably using an out-of-date or ill-made thesaurus module with their word processing software,” Archer said.

Joe Smith, director of the Center for Reasonable and Accountable Parents (CRAP) doesn’t think the list of words goes far enough in setting boundaries for parents’ use of language in front of their children.

“Basically, we want to get rid of the ill-advised ‘Just Say No,’ mentality,” Smith said. “Once you stop saying ‘no’ to your kids, it will never occur to you to further warp their personalities past all understanding with profane labels like ‘fussy’ and ‘stubborn.’

Pending the outcome of Doris, Dan and Granny’s “speedy trial” scheduled for early next year, their little Darling has been removed to an undisclosed foster home where the deer and the antelope play.

Nightbeat Column - 'You're It,' She Taunted

Great Dismal Swamp, June 21, 2007--Moments after I pushed my ancient Old Town canoe out into the waters of Lake Drummond, the klaxton-level alarm on my cell phone cleared the area of wildlife.

"You're It," taunted the first text message from a lady named Showintale.

"You've been tagged," explained the second text message from the same source, presumably a highly questionable source, given her on-line alias.

Using a highly technical and attrociously expensive satellite phone restricted for "official newspaper business," I called the usual sources and learned that simply because some babe out there has tagged me in the latest game to sweep through the lunatic world of blogland, I'm honor bound to divulge here in public seven random things about myself.

"Whatever you say goes on your permanent record," said blogging expert Shirley U. Jest, author of the rapidly remaindered book Blogging's Lamest Games.

"Screw my permanent record," I shouted as I wondered where has all the privacy gone.

"Jock, when you say 'screw my permanent record,' an algorithm on the Fed's nearest hunter-tracker-record-keeper satellite records everything you say."

"Why?"

"In case?"

"In case of what?"

"Nobody knows what," she said, "but you can bet your bottom dollar that the next time you run for President, the New York Times will use the freedom of private conversations act to discover every tidbit fit to print. I can see it now, a 72-point Bodoni Bold headline: 'SCREW MY PERMANENT RECORD.'"

I hung up. Nobody uses Bodoni Bold any more because--guess why--it's not in the basic Windows typeface pack.

Reading Showintale's words, I was reminded of a dame I once knew in Shanghai, a dame who was trouble, and I wondered if this was her and if it was her did it matter and would she know the truth I I mailed it to her on a silver platter at the USPS' recently implemented exhorbitant rates.

I decided to make up the following stuff before all the fish in the lake had time to hide wherever fish hide while folks in Old Town canoes are typing text messages into their cell phones:

1. I was raised by wolves next door to the house where my real parents kept the doors locked and played like they were never home.
2. Madonna and I really do meet on the porches of Cracker Barrel restaurants to dip biscuits in saw mill gravy and watch the world go by while people come up to us, ignore her, and say, "hey, aren't you that ass-kicking reporter Jock Stewart?"
3. The first time somebody came up to me and said, "hey, aren't you that ass-kicking reporter Jock Stewart," I said "who the bloody hell wants to know?" Turns out, it was my soon-to-be ex-wife.
4. Pica, my teddy bear, uses more profanity than I do, but people just think it's cute.
5. Pica is still in a snit because I always used an Elite typewriter because it gave me more characters per inch and everyone knows readers like characters even if they're lying to everyone all the time.
6. When I'm angry, I swear in Gaelic even though people who really know how to speak Gaelic laugh at my lousy pronunciation.
7. If I hadn't gotten in the wrong line at on my first day of college at Slippery Rock, I'd be a rocket scientist rather than a journalist. That dame Showintale never could have tagged me if I'd been up there on the International Space Station with Yurchikhin, Kotov and Anderson watching Atlantis undock.

Casually informed sources say that once I've divulged these highly ludicrous "truths" about myself, I have to tell seven other unsuspecting souls that they're "it." Okay, here are their names: deorre, ashok, merryone, TXKjun, quantamama, fornls, wordvixen. I fully expect more than one of them to shout, "Screw my permanent record."

Book Review Editor Takes New Job as Wal-Mart Greeter

Junction City, June 13, 2007--While officials at the Star-Gazer will neither confirm nor deny that the paper's long-time book review editor West Virginia Woolf was fired because "people don't give a rat's ass about book reviews," paparazzi cruising the Sprawl Shopping Mall on the bypass located the former "the first lady of the arts" welcoming people to the town's newest big box store.

"She was out there with all the other old people marking register receipts with a yellow marker, sweeping up cigarette butts, and acting like there's no place she'd rather be," said ace photog Zuke Riviera.

Star-Gazer editor and publisher Marcus Cash told reporters that "certain financial realities and related ineptitudes" have forced the newspaper to look at the state's premier arts & books section with a "jaundiced eye, giving us the impression that the book review section has yellowed with age. We can't market an arts & books section solely for people who already have one foot in the obituary section."

The same thing recently happened in Atlanta, sources on the street reminded all who would listen which was, when it came down to it, nobody.

"We're not giving up on books," said Cash. "Bambi Bikini, our entertainment and cleavage editor, will be doing books for us as soon as she beats that trumped up prostitution charge compliments of the local police after a bust that went horribly wrong one night when too many people were drunk in the wrong place and got scared when they were asked why they were walking the streets."

Industry analysis expect that most of the country's newspaper book review editors will end up at Wal-Mart looking for grey market jobs long before hell freezes over.

"The Star-Gazer will no longer have a voice in the local arts scene," said Jim Exlibris of the Main Street Book Emporium. "They want you to believe that commie book reviewers from Taxachuetts and other up-east places like that have a clue what we want to read in Junction City."

Exlibris noted in passing that the Main Street Book Emporium can no longer afford its prime location across from the Main Street Krispy Kreme, having been forced by the "monopolistic pricing" of chain stores to move to Dingle Berry Alley six months ago.

Speaking through her attorney, Woolf told Wal-Mart shoppers that her 30 years experience as a book review editor was "pretty much worth squat" when she started looking for a new job.

Mort Tort of Shaft and Shaft, Attorneys, explained with as little legal jargon as possible, that Ms. Woolf once lived in a "fairyland world" where "she presumed" a Wal-Mart society of "unwashed" readers still cared about literary fiction and high caliber reviews and commentary.

"I laughed in her face," Tort said, assuming he was speaking off the record when he wasn't.

According to the Wal-Mart Greeters Association of Albino County, greeters perform the very real function of checking the store's shoppers for ticks.

Random Lapses - The Forever Stamp

Random Lapses

“You clowns really want to know why we named it the "Forever Stamp." Well, I'll tell you. The more anachronistic we become, the more we've got to charge and the whole shebang of lower service and higher prices is going to be going on forever. I mean, it's not like a surrey with a fringe on top doesn't cost more now than it did when they really needed such things."

--Robert Stamp, USPS Spin Doctor

Atlanta Journal-Constitution Book Review Editor Just About Gone With the Wind

Atlanta, May 6, 2007—“Once all the fuss and feathers about our killing the book review editor position ends up at the bottom of the parrot cage, tomorrow’s just another day,” said Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) reorganization tsar Machiavelli Peachtree.

AJC insiders told reporters that once the newspaper goes digital, there won’t even be enough space on its web site for the who, what, where, when, why and how, much less book reviews.

“We seldom cover the why and the how anymore anyway,” Peachtree said.

Avid readers, still recovering from the protest "read-in" at the newspaper’s Marietta Street offices on Thursday, crawled out of their beds and down their driveways this morning to see if the Arts & Books section of the Sunday paper still had books in it.

“Like Tara, the book reviews were still there,” said Ashley Wilkinson of nearby Gwinnett County where school libraries have not yet been forced to remove Harry Potter from the shelves. “I feared it was going to be Arts & Nothing or Arts & American Idol or maybe even Artless in Atlanta.”

“I took pictures of today’s book reviews because I didn’t think I’d see such a thing again,” said Rhett Buttless of Barrow County, where Atlanta’s growing sprawl is more thorough than its declining news coverage.

While the paper pretended in print that the read-in—sponsored by the National Book Critics Circle—didn’t happen, random editors who are not yet part of the downsizing purge assured readers that even though the paper was losing its arts voice, stringers and wire service reporters wandering through town would soon be contributing dumbed-down copy suitable for “today’s Wal-Mart culture.”

“Let’s face it,” said Peachtree, “if Margaret Mitchell and former editor Ralph McGill weren’t dead, we’d still have to kill off their positions as part of today’s climate of trendier, more illiterate newspapering.”

According to police crowd control experts, over 1,000,000 people attended Thursday’s read-in, including authors who didn't live to see the death of the book review section.

James Joyce, reading from Finnegans Wake, said  “Trickspissers vill be pairsecluded,” while Dylan Thomas exhorted the faithful to “rage against the dying of the light.”

“Well fiddle-dee-dee if I hardly recognize this place,” said Mitchell. “That poor Teresa Weaver is another book review editor just about gone with the wind.”

Local Church Buys Limbo from Vatican for $100 Million

Junction City, April 23, 2007—A few days before Pope Benedict XVI announced that the Catholic Church was spinning off Limbo of the Children, a pastoral negotiating team from the Church of the Painful Now signed a $100 Million agreement with the Vatican for all rights to a realm described as slightly less joyful than Heaven.

The Reverend Cotton Mouth told reporters assembled for this morning’s Waffle House press conference that while the Church of the Painful Now has always been “very supportive” of  Limbo, it could never utilize its resources due to patent, trademark and copyright restrictions.

“I’m here to tell you that unbaptized unfortunates still have a home with us,” said Mouth. “Let me also assure you that there will be a smooth transfer of Limbo and all of its assets from the Catholic Church to our church without the need for downsizing or any Limbo staff layoffs.

According to informed sources, the congregation of the Church of the Painful Now became “irked” when it learned that the Pope’s International Theological Commission (ITC) had concluded that there are now “serious” reasons for doubting centuries of speculation about the need for Limbo.

“I’ll neither confirm nor deny that our congregation thought the ITC reached 'a rather lazy conclusion coinciding more with popular demand than Heavenly decree,’” said Deacon Increase Mouth. “Suffice it to say, none of us wanted Limbo to be lost forever.”

Comptroller Augustine Aquinas said that a binding joint resolution passed by the Deaconate and the Session Sunday afternoon authorized the pastoral staff to “aggressively ramp up the Painful Now Morning After Baptism Program” to cover the costs of Limbo and to reduce potential overcrowding.

“Couples who ‘just do it’ are encouraged to stop by the Church the following morning for an in utero virtual  baptism that covers whoever, if anyone, might have been conceived,” said Aquinas. “Not only is it the best peace of mind $1000 can buy, the morning after baptism can be upgraded to a standard baptism at a reduced cost when the child can no longer walk under the Limbo bar.”

At press time, the Holy See Press Office could not be reached for comment.

Director of Painful Now Education Molly Tollhouse said that she "wants to change the color scheme and create more or a warm and fuzzy Limbo" for today's end-users.