Embedded Files
Warren, Mich.— Joe Sherman, best-selling author and accountant, has done it again with his latest book.
Sherman, who drew largely upon his adolescent experiences for his first three books, has ventured into his current experiences with a wife who he claims “loves jelly beans, snow globes, and packages of Oreos in all stages of consumption.”
Sherman’s first two books deal with the tragic and traumatic upbringing he endured during which his mother chased him around the house with a dishrag, slapping him across the face with it and calling him an idiot. His father, he alleged, called him hurtful and disparaging names like “King Tut” and “The Man of Leisure” while accusing him of “living in the lap of luxury and contributing nothing,” all while “the Japanese kids are heading from school to cram school for their second daily eight hours of school.”
Sherman laments in his second book, “All I wanted to do was rest on my top bunk and read my Hardy Boys books and pick my nose with my pinkie in peace.” He went on to allege that so perturbed was he with their not leaving him alone that, in a fit of frustrated rage, he exclaimed, “I wish I lived in Russia!” to which both parents shook their heads and “looked as though they would like to send [me] there to teach me a lesson about life in the then Communistic Russia.”
Sherman wrenched tears from horrified readers as he described the harrowing rides in his aunt’s blue Chrysler minivan during the years he and his sniveling, immature brothers car pooled with her and her children. “At least,” states Sherman on page 343 of My Crazy Aunt down the Street, “she didn’t leave without me as my mom was throwing my duffel bag out the front door before I would storm out yelling, ‘Mom, you’re such a pain!’ My mom, on the other hand, would leave without me if I was even five seconds late getting out to the van, then she’d ground me from everything I wanted to do for the next year if I didn’t walk or bike the six-plus miles to school. It’s a wonder I didn’t become a mass-murderer.”
So far Sherman’s tome has garnered almost universal praise from literary critics, but he credits most of his success to his editors who were “somehow able, with a Herculean effort, to clean up the horrible, nearly impossible spelling” in his manuscripts.
-The Editors
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Mother’s Worst Nightmare Becomes Reality When Son Is Denied Admission To Truck Driving School
Youngstown, Ohio— Kate Deprisco’s world came crashing down around her when her youngest son Dan flunked his entrance examination at the Melvin M. Mullholand School for Truck Driving.
“Ever since Danny was a little boy, I had visions of him being a trucker, but I guess that won’t happen now,” said a bitter and disillusioned Deprisco. She went on to suggest that the only reason she was OK with Dan’s living in her basement until he was thirty-two was that she thought he was down there studying for truck driving school since his last day of high school in 1996. “As it turns out,” said Deprisco, “he had been playing video games and watching football with his loser friends.” Deprisco claimed she found “evidence of video game paraphernalia” when she stormed into his “lair” after he announced he had flunked his test. “I warned him about those friends!” said an impassioned Deprisco. “Not one of them has any interest in driving big rigs cross country! I warned him they’d be his downfall.”
Dan Deprisco said he has no intention of retaking the test. “I have never wanted to be a truck driver,” said Deprisco. “That has only ever been her dream for me, and I will not allow her to relive her lost youth through me. I meant to fail that test just so I could get her off my back once and for all about driving a stupid truck.”
“That kid has no clue about real life,” said a sniffling Deprisco through gritted teeth. I was never afforded the opportunity to get an education and drive trucks, and so how does he thank me for ensuring that he does have that opportunity? By squandering it on his Nintendo and his no-good friends.”
As of Wednesday, Deprsico is actively seeking a job that doesn’t involve driving and possibly an apartment.
-The Editors
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Boardman, Ohio— North Boardman High School announced late last week that the newly re-dubbed “Bartholomew P. Taub Memorial Athletic Facility” would be open to tourists and eagerly curious residents of Boardman.
In preparation for the large influx of interested visitors and alumni of the high school, district officials have installed security checkpoints at the athletic facility’s entrance and have instituted a system of reserving time slots for guided tours of the facility.
The facility, which has been the home of the Boardman High School Badgers for over sixty years, underwent absolutely no physical changes, inside or out, besides the changing of the lettering over the doorway of the facility to reflect the new name honoring a recently deceased longtime donor and alumnus.
On the first day the facility was open to the public this week, three retirees reserved time slots for guided tours and underwent extensive security pat downs after removing their belts, wallets, shoes, keys, and teeth, and stepping through the metal detectors. Other than the retirees, a few students peeked into the gym, but little other interest was shown.
After the first dismal week of tours, district officials are revisiting the budget proposal they passed to fund the full-time security guards and maintenance of the controversially intrusive equipment.
-The Editors
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McKinley, New Mexico— Few experts could have predicted the devastating effects that the decline in McKinley’s one-time cardboard boomtown would have on the homeless across America.
McKinley, one of New Mexico’s greatest success stories, has in the past year had to shut down three of their four major cardboard plants as paper prices rose exponentially, effectively eliminating the profitability of the cardboard industry.
Economic analysts called the cardboard industry’s collapse “the cardboard equivalent of the Great Dust Bowl of the 1930’s” and stated that the problem has been further exacerbated by the inexplicable shortage in markers.
One unexpected consequence of the meltdown has been that millions of homeless Vietnam vets from high school age to the elderly have been unable to advertise their patriotic service and bequeath God’s blessing on would-be contributors to their paper coffee cups.
Vietnam vets across the nation sit in confused and Cimmerian dejection as they jangle the few lonely coins in their cups, completely oblivious to the large, unfeeling forces that have conspired to take away their livelihood.
Taking a hit as well are those who have been alerting the general populace for decades to the impending end of the world. For all the droves of people milling downtown know, the end may be very far away since they have no one to alert them otherwise.
Finally, those who are trolling the downtown areas for day laborers but are unwilling to compensate with cash are wandering despondently as they find no one willing to work for food.
So far there is no indication that the cardboard/marker downturn has bottomed out, and few are willing to offer predictions about when the depression will end, leaving thousands of vets, most of whom must have served in Vietnam as toddlers, very little recourse.
-The Editors
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Indians Selfishly Hoard Breathtaking Views Throughout Pennsylvania For Thousands Of Years
Sweeping panoramas of age-old mountains and magnificent rock formations spread Pennsylvania’s beauty over thousands of square miles, but for most of this land’s existence, that beauty could never be appreciated by anyone but the native residents.
While Europeans struggled to survive in ugly, sooty, filthy, overpopulated cities like London, Paris, Lisbon, and Vienna, Indians sat on millions of acres of unspoiled wilderness but didn’t have the decency to let anyone know about it. It wasn’t until some misguided explorers stumbled across the land and asked the natives, in effect, “You knew about this all this time and didn’t tell anyone?” that Europeans were finally able to see for themselves the spectacular natural beauty of Pennsylvania—and even then, the Indians greedily tried to keep them out.
After settlers discovered the land and cut highway systems through the wilderness to give everybody a chance to see the carefully guarded secret of America’s beauty, experts cried foul as they began discovering that the Indians had been here for centuries—probably millennia—without sharing the land.
“There’s no way to describe [the Indians’ hoarding the land] besides ‘Bad form,’” said historian Jeff Bouliane of Stanford University. “They had a chance to do the gentlemanly thing, and they just plain blew it.”
While most settlers are willing to forgive this Indian indiscretion, Bouliane points out that the Indians have yet to officially apologize for their actions.
-The Editors
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Belton, Missouri— Little Tommy Dicesare had no idea what a shocking and traumatic afternoon was in store when he set out for Raging Rock River last Saturday with his cat Mr. Mistoffelees and his favorite burlap sack.
The river, which boasts a fast current and some of the best fishing in town, is a favorite Saturday setting for the youth, who enjoys fishing, pulling girls’ pigtails, and scaring countless members of the fairer sex with toads and lizards. This Saturday, however, spelled disaster for Dicesare’s crotchety and cantankerous kitty.
“I just thought he wanted to go for a swim,” said a sniffling Dicesare over a protruding lower lip.
Dicesare claimed he had no idea that placing the cat in a burlap sack and then throwing it as far out into the river as he could would pose any danger to the cat.
Dicesare’s mother, who stroked the lad’s sandy-colored hair as he rested his tear-streaked, freckly face on her blue, checkered dress, stated, “Of course Tommy didn’t mean to hurt Mr. Mistoffelees. He doesn’t have a mean bone in his body! Poor baby—shhh! There, there.”
Local storekeeper Pat Donahue was fishing downriver and got the Dicesares’ information from Mr. Mistoffelees’ collar after he spotted the sack and retrieved the carcass. He brought the cat to authorities and immediately placed blame for the felicide on Dicesare, stating, “I knew right away it was that little hellion. I’ve had to replace my storefront window three times because of him, and each time his mom says, [in a mocking falsetto] ‘My little Tommy would never break anything!’ Then I saw him down by the river Saturday carrying that cat by its tail—I said to myself, ‘That kid’s gonna be a serial killer someday!’ and sure enough, I find the cat drowned in a sack not two hours later.”
While authorities concede that circumstantial evidence seems to point to Dicesare, most seem reluctant to place blame on him. Donahue insists “It’s because that harpy mother of his is on every board in town and will censure or crush any opposition to her or her delinquent son.”
Mrs. Dicesare maintains her son’s innocence and claims they are both most sensibly in grief for Mr. Mistoffelees’ death. She expressed her desire that “those spiteful and ruthless monsters who have no sense of appropriateness in this time of mourning” would leave her and her son, who has already suffered enough from this traumatic experience, alone.
-The Editors
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