Extemporary Contemporary

Herman Delgado, in his landmark study Learning To Live With Contempt, inadvertently outlined three things he felt absolutely necessary for geopolitical maneuvering.  These were (in the order he suggested, or close to it):

1) Bad writing
2) Mendacity
3) Sincerity

Audrey Mellonballer, in her review of the study for Whoa! magazine, parsed these three meta-ideas thus:

"Through bad writing we see lack of concern; through mendacity we see fear; through sincerity we see desperation.  Through it all, we seethe."

Kinnith Weasel, appearing on the cable access show "New Jersey Will Fuck You Up," got into an exchange with a telephone caller about the published work, although it appeared as though the caller had in fact gotten the wrong number:

Weasel: Don't tell me what to do or say, I was an aide to the ambassador to Vatican City for six years!
Caller: I just want to know if Brenda's there.
Weasel: I have two philosophy degrees and a tattoo of Wittgenstein!  This is outrageous!
Caller: Are you her Uncle Barney?
Weasel: You need to understand, retard, that not all Americans disdain the diplomatic niceties!
Caller: Can you tell her she left her underwear here by mistake?

It is not usual for tedious academic exercises to make their way into the popular culture, but at least three people (Delgado, his editor, and his mother) was shocked outright when the squabble over his paper made it into a Carson Daly monologue:

[Unavailable, as no one remembered to record it.]

This left the social scientist with some tremendous leverage for his upcoming projects, which included a novelization of the study, as well as a two-act play starring Sean Penn, and a new desk chair on which to sit while he looked at himself on television.

"This time," he reflected in his blog, "I might even get paid for the work I do."

2013: The Year In Review (Part One)

2013 has barely begun but social scientists and their friends have already begun examining prevailing and countervailing trends in order to write the first articles which get the big bucks.  Among them:

A suspicious acceptance of double- and treble-chins.  Despite the overwhelming disgust normally felt by pretty much everyone when shown a picture of an old, white man (typically a member of the United States Congress), people in 2013 have not demonstrated the disapproval - if not downright hostility - people in previous calendar years have with regards to flab under the chin.  Several print journalists have bemoaned the loss of Newsweek in 2012, as this would doubtless have made a good cover story in a week in which Jesus was not on the cover.

Food as illegal drugs.  A shocking development in the counterculture (believed to have been instigated by the behind-the-counterculture) is the rise of edibles as means of "getting high."  While meat and other animal products have often been sold in the black market in "developing" countries, the rise (no yeasty pun intended) of wheat-based comestibles as recreational drugs has baffled experts and not a few amateurs.  Youtube videos of surly youths "snorting gluten" cause at least one European nation to forget all about how scared they are of Muslims.

Climate sex change.  While climate change deniers spent the year getting lost at conventions for "The Vampire Diaries," scientists have begun to publish tentative reports about research which suggests that Mother Earth - long a caring, feminine planet - may have, some time in the 20th century - changed into a dude.  Deep sea exploration in the Pacific Ocean will yield controversial evidence of the discovery of "the Earth's scrotum."

Opera on the beach.  Scores of people who never ever go out into the sun and prefer to sing on stages in giant, air-conditioned buildings paid for by very rich people who wouldn't do it if it weren't tax deductible have decided to bring "the scolding art" (as Da Vinci probably never called it) to beach bunnies and surfer boys at America's most popular clothing-optional beaches.  The humidity reportedly ruined not a few expensive musical instruments, which were also filled with sand, as well as the voices of obese Italian men who are often mocked as "dying whales" by uncultured young toughs on whose sandcastles they inadvertently trod.

With only 364 more days in the year to go, futurists and speculators have already declared 2013 "a wash," but people who just bought new calendars and dayplanners are not as ready to make such a judgment.  At least half of them have clicked the box on the survey that says, "Ask me again in February."  It seems at the very least safe to say: developments may be forthcoming.

Not Safe For Work

In a small town in Ohio - let's call it Byhalia for the sake of argument, which is a real town but not the one we're talking about - a man with an incredible fear of horses was born.  Physicians with big teeth spent his childhood telling him that his fear of horses - equinophobia, it is called - will actually add to the quality of his life, since it will encourage him to do things to conquer that fear.  To that end, his parents enrolled him in an agricultural college.  This proved disastrous, as he was trampled more than once by horses who can, he insists, sense his fear.


It was at a horse show in Dubuque that he met both the woman he wanted to marry & the woman he did marry.  This was symptomatic of his life: there were things he wanted to do (stay the hell away from horses, marry a blonde massage therapist named Minday) & there were things he was told he must do (become a large animal veterinarian, marry his mother's best friend's chubby niece).  He also at this time began a love affair with automatic weapons & expensive chocolate.


"How many people," he told a journalist at his trail, "think night & day about killing the things they despise?  Because do not get me wrong, fear turns sour & that sourness is hate."  He practiced a sympathetic face in the mirror & even once, accidentally, told his wife in the throes of passion, with his eyes slightly tearing up, "I'm sorry for your loss."


This was back in the day when someone might be hanged for what he did, but instead he became well-known as one of the more caring large animal veterinarians in the county.  He insisted on autopsies of the beasts, but did them alone, so no one could see him hack into the creatures that caused him such pain & anxiety.  Early on there was an impulse to keep souvenirs from his dead enemies, talismans that perhaps could protect him, battle his fears.  He even began to think his father was right, that he was actually conquering a fear instead of becoming more & more mentally ill.


He might even have continued all his life, but his wife, feeling ignored & jealous, suspected he was having an affair, & discovered his murderous passion.

This Position, Up For Grabs

Three Barons vie for the same Ambassadorship.  They meet in the early evening on a rocky shore.  Only one of them remembers to bring a companion: a gospel singer.

"It is agreed," says one, "we shall endure the wind & the dust."

"This is the region," says another, "where heavy metal videos are frequently shot."

"Oh yes," says the third, "this is a shockingly inept piece of teen sexploitation."

Is there an election?  Are there rules for succession?  Whose bread must be buttered to make sure this matter is settled?

"Is that," asks one, "a bobsled I see in the distance?"

"I am exhausted," says another, "by the terrible tyranny of imaginary numbers!"

"Of the one hundred and thirty people I know," says the third, "I am the most intermittent."

Telegrams are dispatched.  Menus are updated after meetings with local suppliers.  It is explained to the First Lady what granite is.

"Stand down, sirrah!" demands one, "I have voyaged more fully than you have!"

"Alcohol poisoning!" counters another, "you are less than a Polish nobleman!"

"Revival & regret!" shrieks the third, "you smell & dance like the opposition party!"

Once the credit card scores arrive, the deliberations begin in earnest.  One orderly notices that no-one has checked the "geosciences" box at the top of official form.  Special recommendations by the press corps are faxed to members of the film industry.

"You will be magnificent," says one, "you have a lovely Van Dyke."

"After so much experience in retail," says another, "this will seem like jury duty."

"I must regretfully withdraw my application," say the third, "for I am now ruggedized."

Brief Conversations! Future Solar Eclipses!

Blue: The local municipality is woefully understaffed.

Adam: My what big hair you have.

Blue: Can you speak like a computer?

Adam: I can drink like one.

Blue: As the secrets unfold, they reveal deception & cruel truth.

Adam: How cruel?

Blue: Penguin cruel.

Adam: My god!

Blue: Shall we rhyme?

Adam: I told you I have only grudging respect for magicians & commuters.

Blue: & I told you I have become "something of a classic."

Adam: To what do I owe this pleasure?

Blue: The political party has since become more moderate, ignoring its revolutionary past.

Adam: I would never marry anyone who liked salmon.

Blue: The color or the fish?

Adam: What do you think?

Blue: I think if I took the throne, I could survive most but not all attempts at my inevitable overthrow.

Adam: Would you confuse - if you could confuse - your sons with your daughters?

Blue: It's a funny story - ask me about Lasik surgery.

Adam: Do you know Dave? He often says, "That's Latin for worm."

Blue: What can you get, you know, in your blood, that is bad?

Adam: Punishment, the military, toiletries.

Blue: I shall always be the last prominent supporter of new ideas.

Adam: We live with mixed reviews, though mostly negative.

Factual Truth! Same Time But Twice As Long!

The customization of the American television experience appears stalled out with the advent of mind-altering commercials. Too few people remember where they were when John Ritter died. In one study, the sex drive was amusingly confused with hunger.

Four-time Olympic hopeful Stamp Craig remembers the last time he endorsed a product. "Someone approached me with some food on a stick," he said, "& proceeded to paint a picture involving javelins & big booty girls in bikinis." He added, "It was the opposite of erotic."

Advertising executive Sam Jerky disagrees. "Whatever we say is sexy," he said, "is sexy. We create sexy. We once made eating a baby hippo sexy. How? We just did. A supermodel with a fork & spoon & even if she was crying it was sexy. Children downloaded it. That's sexy."

Children's rights groups could not be reached as it was recess time. One child who was, for good reason, left behind, pretended he was an extra on "Modern Family" & made faces that amused the production assistants in the crowd. Interns made bets on the intensity of his mother's obesity.

Where America's modern "Mad Men" will go from here will be outlined in an informercial on at 3 a.m. (no matter the time zone) from now until mid-July. Meanwhile, most regular viewers are encouraged to keep buying as much as possible. Virtually every product is guaranteed a stamp of approval.

Chin Chin Wasn't Just A Fox

Folklorists the world over (but mainly those who actually use the internet) were startled to discover, in 2011, a wholly new folk-tale which had escaped their attention, if not their notice. "Chin Chin The Fox," researchers revealed, was a hitherto unknown fable character with almost nothing in common with other folkloric foxes, nor those owned by Disney or Warner Brothers or Starbuck's (the coffee chain owns many children's story characters, but has chosen not to share).

Said self-styled "King Of Children" Reginald Hurry, "I recall I was sitting in my room tsk-tsking an article about Aesop when I see on the Porno Channel's news crawl that a collection of stories important to the Hoochie Coochie tribe had been unearthed by nosy Mormon missionaries, who took off with it on their bike. I told my parrot Erich Segal that surely this was a prank!"

Canadian leader-person Stephen Harper, whose house was down the street from the duplex where the manuscript was found, took two long breaths & privatized his old neighborhood. Twenty-three otherwise unassuming Canadians almost lost their methadone privileges. Said one inhabitant, "We've heard the stories around, you know, on the streets, sure, but sometimes we're too busy with our poutine which is, I assure you, as dirty as it sounds."

What are in these stories? Where did they come from? Were there pictures? Folklorists like pictures. Also strippers. To answer this question, several professional tale-gatherers left their favorite titty bar &, still a little drunk, with some glitter in their hair, appeared on the Cable Newsie Network's cross-cultural information spectacular, "Shambles & Lisp."

"Most foxes in folklore are, well, foxy, you know, clever, mischievous" said University Of Littleville Retroactive Professor Of Yesterday Elmer Elvis, "but not Chin Chin. He's hard-drinking. He rides a horse with three wheels. He's straight-talking, he gets the job done. In one story, he completely downsizes the entire Hoochie Coochie pantheon. Also, he steals a lottery ticket from his best friend, a squirrel, & doesn't tell him he won a few bucks. He's kind of a dick."

Adds famous clown Cody Blau, "What I was struck by was the way he chewed tobacco & swore like a priest. They told these oddball parables to their children! By all accounts, the kids who came into contact with Chin Chin's adventures grew up to be self-loathing sociopaths."

But scandal struck quickly, which was irritating, because someone was in the middle of a sentence. What if, suggested private story-collector & Ansel-Adams-lookalike Peabody Headhair, Chin Chin wasn't a fox at all? What if, as Headhair's reading posited, Chin Chin was a laid-off service station attendant from Bangor, Maine?

The uproar in this small academic community was almost audible. The etymologists downstairs actually considered calling the cops. But papers had to be written in order to be peer reviewed in order to be re-submitted with corrections (doesn't anyone use a spell-check?) in order to be queued in order to see the light of day in small, low circulation publications which collect dust on university library shelves.

These determined men & women of letters promptly went to work.

The Sad Plight Of America's Empty Clinics

In Danforth, Rhode Island (not the city's real name) (at least sources say), there is a Clinic For Hopelessness which also serves, perhaps appropriately, as the gathering place for Zumba refugees. Here, amid the stained, torn posters of Dance Dance Revolution & seventies teen icon Leif Garrett, a former doctor & television green-screen repairman named Henry Lickspittle remembers how to tie a shoelace & look directly into the camera.

"I am an odious man," he says, "but for all my life I've scorned people who collect aluminum cans."

When the Clinic For Hopelessness was thriving, dozens came to be treated & even more came to be mocked. Yet as the economy faltered - indeed, as hopelessness became its own world-view - the Clinic struggled, even once propping open its door to send the message that its doors were still open. This, says former janitor & part-time lisp dispenser Bald Hooligan, is how all the cats escaped.

"I miss them all," he says. "I miss Purrbox & Frown-Frown. I miss Snortstein & Speckles. I especially miss Too Much, Lap Dance, Flossylvania & Richie Rich. I didn't think I'd miss Gerberberry very much, & there were times I really wanted Salma Hayek to just run away, but I think," he sniffles as he wipes away a tear, "I miss those two most of all."

Across the country, in a clinic in the back of a grocery store in Van Capstan, Nevada, it's the pharmacists who have most to lose. Local pill-peddler Jake Potion shows a small delegation from Reuters where his former clients once got their prescriptions.

"The number of people who collapse in the aisles in our nation's supermarkets is growing," he says, tapping a picture of a brain on his tee shirt. "We don't know why it happens, or why it's always the Asian Foods section, or why everyone thinks it's freaking hilarious when the paramedics holler 'Clean-up on aisle ten!' We just know it's easier to wheel them back behind the dairy section & have a professional look at them there."

He has a downcast look. "Those robber-barons on Wall Street took all that away from us," he says.

But is that a fair estimation? One rich person, speaking pretty much on behalf of every rich person in America, says it's not. "Ha ha!" he says. "Tax breaks! Ha ha! Deregulation! Ha ha! Charter schools for our children! Ha ha ha! Job creation! Ha ha ha! I want a castle with a moat!"

In Texas there was once a clinic, called "The Never Say Die Clinic," inside the Alamo. In Louisiana, there was a clinic inside an alligator. In Nebraska, clinics could be seen for miles around after the corn fields had been harvested. Now, it's just a lonesome bison, perhaps, or a recreational vehicle being used to cook meth &/or make pornographic videos.

Bartbleby Oath said in a speech to children earlier this month, "If you want to see how broken is our health care system you can look no farther than fat children breaking their grandparents' arms & hearts with their obese kind of love. I have been meaning to say something about exercise but I am winded. Does anyone know of a low-cost place that doesn't cost an arm & another arm like a hospital emergency room, an intimate place where a health care professional might look at me without the need to be transported by ambulance? No? Not any more? Well, spit."

One of the last remaining clinics in the Pacific Northwest, the Hamster Clinic, survives thanks to private donations, mainly from wealthy rodents. But Lucius Hamster, the clinic's only employee & quite possibly a doctor, knows even his days are numbered.

"You can only make so much money treating pets," he laments. "I wish human beings would come in for health care. Perhaps I should change the clinic's mascot."

What will happen to all the empty clinics in this nation in decline? The "hazardous materials" trash receptacles do look, as some pundits have noted, rather tacky in a deli. Most are too small to support a roller rink. While many of the nation's mail carriers have eyed them voraciously, the postal service in Washington has reminded them they, too, are closing up many shops.

A troubled nation tries to find its insurance card &, with a sad sigh, drives to the nearest religious-themed hospital.

Inconvenient Prophecies! New Year's Irresolution!

Banish yes the furthermore thoughts of ill-repute in this divine sector of soul galaxy number one! Sub rosa ab ovo the fiercest of charlatans will converge on chatter-town & blatherskite within mere moments of the veil-lift in upper lower & sideways round! Come ye closer no more to always hear what lies aboveboard resisting both law & urge as scoop reveals what stab cannot!

Brethren? Is that thee? Hasn't harpies made killjoy of arse all? Sit if you can't stand, stand if you must, but one more glowing comet in the sky hand-shackles the dimly-lit mind of human racers! Didst thou not ken it were an competition? Sit or stand as my main man unfolds the map of the plan on the bandstand hand-to-hand & back again! The soundtrack of your laughter!

Were you never called Betsy as a rule? Didn't someone ever break a rose in your face? If wine makes you cry, do you keep bottles filled with winter & dew? When someone takes your pulse, do they hear the roaring twenties? Let us now in effect disregard the efficacious yes/no question as volcanoes ignore somnambulism! Let us give the slip to the on/off switch in print form!

Didst thou they think thirsty & thin thieve & thump in thy youth? Then it turns out there's no money in puzzling the proselytized! You have been given an entirely new year for manhandling, fondling & freakiness, faithful flukes - scratch out in greatest detail what graffiti has been painted in the brains behind your eyes! O indignity shake my left hand heartily! O grateful animals we!

News Item! Literature In 2011 Largely Contained!

The disheartening trend of early 21st century novels to be written by people with either one name or four continued this year, Publisher's Meekly reported in their annual We're Not Kidding edition. Writes editor Herman Candy Cane, "We encourage everyone this year to send us copies to read because it's really expensive for us to buy them ourselves. I'm not kidding guys!"

In Bavarian Poetry news, more verse about castles appeared on castle walls than ever before, despite the imminent collapse of the European Union & a healthy dislike of castles, as reported in Castles Semiannually. "At least they're not those hip-hop tags," says Castle Sales Manager Heinrich Rich at Royal Properties, Luxembourg. "They're just so gauche."

Reeling from not winning any awards for the tenth year in a row, former goat-cheese inhaler & now conservative novelist Newton Mean decided to boycott other writings this year, possibly even his own. "When I was in high school, & a white person was president, & Richard Dean Anderson smiled at me," he told his blog, "that was the America I wanted to write about."

A small group of book critics have, meanwhile, abstained from book reporting & end-of-the-year lists because "they just don't enjoy reading so much anymore." They join the Professional Blurb Writers Of North America in their disdain of modern letters. "You look at the title, you look at the writer's name," said Vice President Morey Moses, "& then you make shit up. No one cares."

Factual Truth! The Director Can Be Also An Actor!

Something unhealthy architects know to be true has also found its way to the theater, motion picture, & television industry (though not necessarily in that order). Former celluloid consumer Goodyear Blurp explains: "We have long assumed one is one where one is done & that is that, but I have seen that THIS IS NOT THE CASE."

Unhealthy speculation has long been a hallmark of the creatives and their ilk, but what observers have witnessed while voyeuristically watching a nearby spectacle has shaken up an already perennial flappable racket: actors directing, writers acting, set decorators suggesting dialogue, caterers fetching things, producers actually producing.

Stock car racers & former Hare Krishna apologists have led the field in active criticism of what former president G.R. Ferd calls "Cross-pollination in the worst cross-dressing way." News channels have rushed hungover reporters into the melee, asking questions like "How long has this been going on?" & "Does anyone hear that strange smell?"

To get to the bottom of this, many fictional characters have promised to tell "their side of the story" in the nutrition information box where high fructose corn syrup normally dominates. Meanwhile this tendency may have moved on to other walks of life, not limited to but including housekeeping, usury, & stripping.

Where will it end?

Factual Truth! Empty Town Opportunity!

In America, towns disappear all the time. But where do they go? It's the subject of a new Phlogiston Channel's "reality" series called "Waffle Station." Hosted by the star of the sitcom "Wombat," Clash Squeeze, the program examines communities & spends too much time napping in scenic graveyards. UFO Groups provide the commercial support.

Says Squeeze, "I never even met a woman who rollergirls or ultimate fights. There's just no way it's me dressed as a bimbo in those online galleries." Executive Enforcer Damon Mooser cites a 1997 clinical trial as inspiration for the series: "I have virtually no sense of spatial recognition & it has served me well."

American audiences can expect the show if they want, but previews in the former Soviet Russia as well as war-torn Canada have had little or no effect on the local economy. "If it's motor sports they want," critic Perl Gootbloot wrote in the San Salvadore Daily Hurrah, "it'll be like propaganda radio from World War Two all over again."

Already many small American villages have volunteered to abandon their townships in order for a chance to appear on the show. "We have even poisoned the soil with radioactive aluminum," said one resident of Dallas, Texas, before being carted away. "Waffle Station Fever" is a term no one has yet used.

Check your local listings.

News Item! Holiday Census Scandal!

Former mining executives have reportedly entered into a plea bargain with prosecutors in a case involving wild west-style saloons & bordellos. One lawyer for the flea circus, on condition of ambiguity, has issued a series of word balloons in an attempt to enliven the proceedings. Those still on the fence have been asked to get down.

Soon enough the government has felt the need to get involved. Former Census Taker & current Secretary Of The Interior Monologue, Herbert Umbrella, revealed previously unclassified, now redacted, documents which establish place, time & mise-en-scène but don't give away the plot in the manner of modern movie trailers.

"There are evil people in high places," asserts Umbrella, who holds a chain letter for no apparent reason. "Do you know how thin the air is in high places? No? Ask an Inca if you can find one. Or a llama if you're so inclined." Nearby a crowd of volcano divers passed out petitions for funding for a reality television series.

With Christmas this year grievously undermanned (but, tellingly, not underwomanned), officials unwilling to sit down & be still now charge representatives from rival parties with obstruction & conundrum. Experts warn now that the decision may end up at the Supreme Court, as if that's a bad thing, though non-experts can't say either way.

News Item! Photographers Overextended!

While taking digital snaps of a failed supercomputer in Maracaibo, veteran shutterbug Morey New Amsterdam had a revelation. "It's all this Saxon blood in me," he explained to representatives from the Children's Television Workshop. "I'm always apologizing to people for sending email when really a telephone call would be more appropriate."

This & other news rocked the photojournalism world in a week where paid & non-paid camera jockeys realized that they're more threatened by habitat loss instead of, as they previously believed, hair loss. The other news, incidentally, involved interesting facts about German South-West Africa that had to be seen to be believed.

As always, fear has its detractors. & no one detracts more than Marvin Demagogue, owner of Pete's Pictures & a part-time pizza pie admirer. "Listen, we can be afraid of Michael Richards or any other cast member from Seinfeld," he told a crowd of one admirer & her friends, "but at the end of the day we use flashes for light. We always have."

As a nearby building is demolished to make room for other nearby buildings, artiste & paparazzo alike gather sullenly to contemplate the end of an era, & fight over whose pictures of it are better. "We pretend we're older children," one darkroom veteran mutters grimly, "if only we'd been invited to all the spelling bees we never won!"

Factual Truth! Nothing Remains!

Somewhere near the American side of Lake Huron, the little camp where Balthazar Montgomery became a Boy Scout Junior Class lies undiscovered by modern methods. "How the green could grow over so many of my childhood memories is disconcerting," Montgomery said, his voice scarlet & quivering. "Can we blame Hitler?"

More people who live near the lake would rather blame Singapore, the country in which, in the 2010 National Day Rally, one junior minister who shall not be named twitted from his Tweeter account some vague disrespect for three girls he had met from Michigan who had no desire to return to his apartment to watch Thai ladyboy videos.

But in a Bingo Parlor with a condemned sign out front in Alpena, former grandmother Dorothy The Rain unlights a cigarette and commiserates with a reporter who hasn't won a single game yet. "It's not like people I used to know to take things so sensually," she tells him. "It's more like my former lovers in the Newark Tornadoes, rest their souls."

By used skyscraper salesman and H.P. Lovecraft impersonator Byron Coastal sees something like sentimentality in such earnest winsomeness. "Without vague remnants of our rumbling past," he says, "surely we're just another channel on Uruguayan television that some insomniac skips past before throwing up his dinner." He adds, "Aren't we?"

Factual Truth! A Failure Of Cogitation!

The phrase "lose one's mind" has an interesting etymology which no-one has tried to suppress, & that has bothered Rogue Linguist Betty Pebbles. "What good is transgression," she asks in her new portfolio, Sailor, "if it does not transgress - or to put it another way - I am nothing like my father or my mother you jerk!"

For many who are not, as the saying goes, "in their right mind," such polemics disrupt the natural flow of pith & gobbledygook. Fifteen people standing around no more makes a "flash mob" than seven people accidentally hearing "The Streak" makes a Ray Stevens fan base. There is no such thing as "vintage" prescription pills.

Some psychological grifters exist primarily among celebrity endorsements. Other mavericks in the head-shrinking game find it difficult to convince their CPAs that liquor and whores constitute a "deduction." While fashion travesties such as the "modern straight-jacket & tie" still sell in Milan, they rankle professionals here.

"Am I led to believe you believe everyone else is Batman?" asks prime rib enthusiast & oftentimes doctor Mel Goddard. In lieu of an answer, he also asks, "Why do you think they pay me for this clap-trap?" Controversy as circumlocution: when the checklist of sanity is only half-way finished, it gives the mind so much more to do.

News Item! Incidents On The Rise!

At the end of the last fiscal quarter, retailers & the abject projected another dismal round of economics jargon. Because someone who has read about the foreclosure crisis is bound to talk loudly, the uselessness of convincing family members was added to the by-laws. Meanwhile, in Osaka, three farmers watched their rice wine ferment.

When if ever did the legal profession hire as many prostitutes as in 2010? Data hidden on the government's computer are not suitable for children or the mentally giddy. One such program in Ames, Iowa, is teaching dollar bills to talk, cry, & fold themselves. It was, it turned out, a good year for organized crime & disorganized religion.

The FCC may ban programmers who chew gum & sing on the air. The current administration, somewhere rated as "impatient" to "hasty," wants more fines but is fine if "fine" is finally redefined to curb inflation. Two celebrity chefs suspected of insulting vegetarians were accidentally fed each other's feces without condiments.

Broadcasters & auto body repairmen alike bemoan our nation's tragic but inevitable declension. It will take more than everyone buying one newspaper a year to save the auto industry. Before this generation leaves its polluted lake of fire to its children, it must pause to reflect on how little is known about the colors on the average map.

News Item! Orlando Vanishes Overnight!

After the excitement of the latest "World Series Of Croquet," thrill-seeking time-killers are chasing another demonstration: high-flying illusionism. One buff fellow with a dyed cowlick explained, "Staying hydrated is fine, but it's just not enough for the mentally bankrupt, the upwardly moderate, or the tail-draggers anymore."

Meeting online & sometimes by your leave, these party-poopers-with-a-purpose delight in learning things & often forgetting them later. One small enclave in Washington Heights has spray-painted its ideas for pseudonyms on the side of the company van for seventeen days straight. Neighborhood vandals have complained to their union.

In downtown Salt Lake City, naked skateboarders frighten passers-by, but do-or-die DIY freak Headly Underwater applauds this audacity in a note read out loud anonymously: "We are passionate people in a passion-fruit world, drinking the very tea of ourselves without sugar or cream. We floss while we drive. Our teeth may be how you identify our corpses!"

With a movie discussed, an audio book listened to, & a new kind of snack to be added to popular "pub mixes," this spunky & vibrant movement predicts it has a future, albeit one that will happen later. Self-described "librarian" Amy Speck has written its "vision plan" on her neck: "It's none of your business how many jazz albums I own!"

Factual Truth! Area Friends Abandon Shaving!

Hirsutism is on the rise in many American cities including non-contiguous ones. While this makes the members of dozens-strong United States Association Of Delipatory Enthusiasts (US-ADE) optimistic, a strong contingent of the Non-Gay Hairdressers Society, as well as Scissors & Razors Unanimous, have pressed government agencies & well-meaning scientists to discover the cause before it's too late.

"I'm not queer!" wonders Atlanta barber-like person Irving Limp. "Just because I cut hair doesn't make me any more homosexual than you holding a notepad makes you a stenographer." His companion, a lovely piece of cheese named Mortimer, added, "You so hairy you like Cousin It hee hee." Customers to Limp's shop, The Straight Razor, have often left with more hair than they had when they arrived.

While physicists admit to hearing about this phenomenon on public radio, biologists & medical doctors play it close to the vest. "So what if some shaggy folks have decided to emerge from wherever the fuzzy live?" murmured famed life science model Dr. Elton Sorry. "Do you really think we give a hoot? What happened to all that government money anyway? Do you sometimes think I'd look better in blue?"

But what of those stricken with this generally uncomfortable condition? What options have are available to them? "We could donate their hair to children without any or little hair," says part-time philanthropist & former head-butter Christine Clocks. "Most children, through no dint of their own, remain stunningly hairless." With few solutions & almost certainly no problems on the horizon, a nation takes its own pulse.

Factual Truth! Trotskyites In Louisiana!

Everyone knows how Leon Trotsky (born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, 1879-1940) died, but there are, as always, conflicting accounts on how he wiled away the hours. That inconvenient groups often gather to mimic his notorious moustache has been widely attested to, and even imitated in animation, but the rise of "Trotsky Cosplay Clubs" in Louisiana, almost an American state, has caused turmoil there.

Bobby Jindal, not the former governor but a female impersonator with the very same name, is among the fevered many who fear for their parish's livelihood: "Why Trotsky? Why now? Why not Mao? Why not Deng? I've seen the Stalinist Jazz Band down in Norleans, but Trotsky sang off key! Get these rabbits out of my house! I own a mansion & a yacht! If you're going out can you bring me more sugar!"

People who don't apparently have "indoor voices" notwithstanding, professional jailers like local celebrity Burton Gator appeared ambivalent: "Political theory is not my strong suit. My strong suit is armor. Like from King Arthur days. & King Arthur would tell you now, one, stay away from my wife! & two, Marxism was discredited by the rise of telemarketing & the fall of the Soviet fried chicken franchise. The end."

Since it's almost certain these assertions are false & just being reported to rile people up, this reporter has found no Trotskyites in or around the state of Louisiana, despite a few Leninists who have a bait shop in Texarkana. That's why authorities have arrested some long-haired Dungeons & Dragon players & made them confess to being male cheerleaders. As National Guard troops are prank-called, the story remains elusive.