Volume LI July 22, 2012

Vietnam Vet: Charlie Bit My Finger Too During Heavy Jungle Combat

Evanston, Ill.— Burl Hartka claimed he had no idea he was sitting on an Internet goldmine for four decades after having his finger bitten by “Charlie” in 1968.

“We had been wallowing through the muck and slime of the deep South Vietnamese jungles during the height of the Tet Offensive,” said Hartka, “when we were ambushed by Charlie as we passed through thick brush. Because of the proximity of the attack, the fighting quickly deteriorated into hand-to-hand combat—ripping, gouging, punching, stabbing—anything we could do to protect ourselves from wave after wave of Charlie. I got entangled in a particularly spirited scuffle with one particular Charlie and was quickly gaining the upper hand when Charlie bit my finger. I screamed, ‘Charlie!’ and my buddy Harrington asked if I was hit. I said, ‘I’m not hit, but Charlie bit my finger, and that really hurt! Ouch, Charlie!’ Then I was able to overpower and incapacitate Charlie as he giggled with maniacal glee over the pain he had caused my poor, bleeding finger.”

Hartka said that the first time he watched the “Charlie Bit My Finger” video on YouTube, he immediately had horrible flashbacks to ‘Nam and the day that “Charlie” bit his finger.

“I wondered if somehow they had heard my story and were making a mockery of it,” said Hartka, “and then I read that they were getting TV appearances and raking in money from the video—and I thought that if only I had gone public with my story earlier I could have capitalized on it the way they had, but it was too late.”

Hartka claims that his finger still throbs when the weather is quite humid, and on quiet evenings he still hears his own voice ringing through the jungle canopy, “Ouch, Charlie! OOOOWW! Oooooo. Charlie bit me, and that really hurt. And it’s still hurting.”

-The Editors

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11:59 Thursday Night Finds Rebecca Black Giddy With Anticipation

Irvine, Cali.— No one exudes excitement about the sixth day of the week quite like pop sensation Rebecca Black who has saliently expressed her exuberant enthusiasm for the day of Frige in her deeply moving hit single “Friday.”

Black, who has gained worldwide fame and notoriety after repeating the name of the sacred weekday relentlessly until she burned it into the public’s subconscious so that every time someone hears the word “Friday,” he can’t help hearing the poignant and sententious chorus play over in his head like Arnie Grape rocking back and forth singing, “Match in the gas tank, boom boom,” allegedly finds Thursday evenings pregnant with anticipatory glee.

Friends and family members of Black say that on Thursday nights she can be found staring at her clock-radio clenching and unclenching her fists in excitement as her cereal bowl and carpool seating arrangement choices already begin to take top priority in her mind.

Siblings of Black complain that nearly every Friday morning at the stroke of midnight she begins crooning her popular song with uninhibited gusto, stomping around her room and improvising Pato’s part herself until she wears herself out and falls asleep, only to wake up singing the song with urgency and abandon bordering on hysteria.

“The YouTube community has been relatively spared from further torment as [Black’s] popularity has waned,” said Black’s youngest brother, “but it is a nightmare we continually live out each week at home.”

-The Editors

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Brash New Hip Hop Artist Afro D. Z. Ack(!) Tops Chart With Hit Single, “Afro Of Love”

Hollywood, Cali.— As if in response to the overwhelming feeling that hip hop is on its way out among blacks and Hispanics, break-out hip hop megastar Afro D. Z. Ack(!) has breathed new life into the dying genre with his edgy and raw single, “Afro of Love.”

Take a stroll through the Bronx or a jaunt up to Harlem, and you will find gangsters blaring “Afro of Love” from old-school ghetto blasters atop their stoops while just next store you can see straight-laced, preppy book-nerds humming along and tapping their nerdy loafers to the infectious words and beat of the song.

Already number one across all charts, “Afro of Love” has been linked to a dramatic fall in crime rates, dropout rates, and racism while still retaining “the edginess of the streets” that helped propel Ack(!) to the top.

“My music represents my roots,” said Ack(!) while conspicuously fluffing his ample afro, “and my afro symbolizes the love I have to give.”

Already afros are beginning to spring up from the hard streets of Harlem to the hipster hives of trendy yuppie coffee houses as Ack(!)’s music transcends traditional music genre borders and begins to unify all races, religions, and creeds under one afro—the Afro of Love.

-The Editors

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Speeding Motorist Has Pretty Good Idea Why Officer Nortwynn Pulled Him Over

Southfield, Mich.— David Allen Tiemann didn’t have to think very hard when State Trooper Nortwynn asked if Tiemann knew why he had been pulled over.

Tiemann, sitting in his teal Chevy S-10 amongst piles of peanut shells and Twizzler wrappers, had a pretty good idea that the incident was a result of his going nearly twenty miles-per-hour over the posted limit.

“Well, he walked up to my window and asked if I knew why he had pulled me over,” said Tiemann in a booming and matter-of-fact voice that seemed to roil in his stomach, rampage up his larynx, and explode with certainty and a tinge of annoyance from his mouth, “and I said, ‘Uh, yeah, probably because I was speeding.’ He says, ‘Yeah,’ and I said, ‘Well OK. I guess the next step is the ticket,’ and he said ‘You got it’ and went to write the ticket. That’s about it. What? No, I was not driving illegally. I haven’t driven without my license in over five years.”

Officer Nortwynn said that Tiemann was, allegedly, singing “Silver Bells” to himself when Nortwynn approached him to deliver the completed ticket.

Tiemann, a former fireman and pizza parlor operator, is currently employed by his brother-in-law Tom Biltmoore of Biltmoore Construction (We Built More For You®) as a construction site superintendant on a three-month stint that has lasted over twelve years.

-The Editors

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Hospital Body Count Continues To Mount As Male Nurse Relaxes On N. Carolina Beach

Royal Oak, Mich.— Male nurse Thomas Marlippo doesn’t understand or else just doesn’t care that people don’t stop getting sick just because he wants to vacation on the beach.

Marlippo, who took a hiatus from the Hippocratic oath to indulge himself in the hedonistic pleasures of the sun, surf, and sand, posted flippant comments on his social network site expressing a lack of concern and even some disdain for those toeing the line back home, desperately trying to make up for Marlippo’s deadly defection.

“Eh,” said Marlippo insouciantly, “they called and said they were short, but I was like, ‘Sorry, I’m in North Carolina!’” Marlippo then allegedly reached for another beverage under his big red beach umbrella that evidently was not a poignant reminder to Marlippo of the pints of blood that were draining from bodies in hospital gurneys while Marlippo drank from cups with miniature umbrellas in them, effectively sentencing each of the patients to slow, agonizing deaths—people with families, pets, and dreams of going to the beach themselves that would never be realized thanks to Marlippo’s navel-gazing.

While no official death toll has been released from the Royal Oak hospital yet, many locals are already naming the incident “The Marlippo Massacre.”

-The Editors

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Boater’s Protection Of Canada Geese Fueled By Steroids And Recreational Drugs

Harrison Township, Mich.— Whoever coined the phrase “A snort of coke saves waterfowl” made a prescient prediction of Nate Rickborn’s weekend activities at the Metro Beach Metropark.

Rickborn and his buddies were “hanging out” next to their docked boat as they are wont to do when not back at the trailer, when three hooligan bicyclists began disturbing the Canada geese near Rickborn. Witnesses say that the three young men rode their bikes over by the geese, and one of the young men “got off his bike and began chasing the geese around while flapping his arms and honking,” much to the puerile amusement of the two other delinquents.

“I was just about to clear out after joking around by the geese,” said the alleged goose galler, “when I heard a loud, ‘Hey! Leave those geese alone!’ I looked over and saw a guy in about his late thirties, big barrel-chested, red-faced, huffing guy, who looked like he could take on a charging rhino. I just looked at him a little surprised, then he started storming toward us and said, ‘Don’t give me dirty looks—leave those geese alone!’ When he approached us, he looked like he wanted to engage in a physical altercation, so I said, ‘We weren’t hurting them,’ but he screamed in some kind of super-charged ‘roid rage, all the while getting more worked up and getting closer and closer to us, ‘They were bedding down for the night!’ I wanted to ask him if he was some kind of wildlife expert, but the way he looked at me like he wanted to tear out my spine made me not say it.”

Witnesses claim that Rickborn became increasingly belligerent and ordered the youths to take their bikes and clear out before he threw their bikes into the canal. Sources say that the second unnamed youth spoke up and said, “This is my dad’s Diamondback,” to which Rickborn allegedly replied, “Well bring your daddy down here and I’ll throw him in the canal too!”

By this time, witnesses say that Rickborn’s friends began to stagger toward the fray and stand blankly by. One webbed-footed, cut-off jean-wearing friend with only a handful of teeth said, “Y’all probably should just leave; he’s ly-vle get violent,” while his woman whom he referred to as “my woman” nodded her assent. Rickborn then allegedly added, “I don’t care if they send me back to jail” with obnubilated and ominous ambiguity.

While witnesses questioned Rickborn’s methods and wonder why he became so enraged at the youths whose actions were, admittedly, juvenile, no one could help admiring his passion for the geese, even if it defied logic.

After Rickborn took several more menacing steps toward the young men and continued voicing threats, witnesses say that the suspects turned their bikes around and began reluctantly pedaling away.

Rickborn, reveling in his triumph, stood nodding his head and sneering after the suspects. As he turned to walk back to his lawn chair, witnesses say that the young man who had been flapping his arms came racing back by on his bicycle and allegedly shouted, “I’m going to throw your mom into the canal!” as the other youths watched from afar, hooting and jeering their approval of the cowardly jab that Rickborn pretended not to hear.

Rickborn, who spent several months in the county jail for drug abuse, enjoys boating, taking “perfectly legal” performance-enhancing drugs, and getting kicked out of local gyms because the other patrons “don’t know what to do when they meet a real man.”

-The Editors