Volume XV Nov. 3, 2011

Elderly Man Feigns Senility For Entertainment

Lancaster, Penn.— Henry Russell, who has been old for some time, finds most people assume he is senile anyway and plays the part in order to entertain himself.

Russell said that when he goes to the grocery store, he will walk up to young people and call them a made-up name and then carry on a whole conversation with them as though he has always known them. “Watching them squirm and try to find gentle ways to explain to me that they are not who I think they are is a hoot,” said Russell. “I like walking up to the flunkies who work there and telling them I need a diaper change. They hem and haw like they just got asked to be Hitler’s propagandist, and then they usually say they need to go get a manager.”

Strangers are not the only ones Russell zeros in on for his demented dementia diversions—when Russell’s grown children come to his house to visit, Russell always greets them with, “Who are you? Are you going to rob me?”

Jennifer Apperson, Russell’s second-born daughter, said, “Dad thinks he is pretty funny, but one of these times he isn’t going to be joking and we won’t know the difference.” Apperson denied plans to clean her father out if he ever does fail to recognize her.

-The Editors

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Cousins Tire Of Boy’s Asking Which Team Is Better, The Pistons Or The Bulls

Warren, Mich.— Allegations have arisen that current Sterling Heights councilman Lawrence Taynandez immediately jumped onto the Chicago Bulls bandwagon in ’92 after sensing that the Detroit “Bad Boys” era was over.

Cousins laugh now at the supposed loyalty of Taynandez who claims to now be a “Pistons fan for life” on his Website. “What a joke,” said Timothy Schwartz, cousin of Taynandez. “When Larry was a kid, he would always barge into Grandma and Grandpa’s condo for family birthday parties with his Bulls coat, plastic-rimmed glasses, and side spike, and loudly and nasally challenge, ‘Who’s better, the Pistons or the Bulls?’ like Goliath challenging the Israelites. Then when one of us would loyally, if somewhat timidly, reply that the Pistons were better, Larry would launch into his loquacious pontification that makes him such a quintessential politician now, demanding, ‘Then why did the Bulls win three championships and—blah blah blah.’ There wasn’t much we could say except to stare in amazement because just a couple years before he had been a Pistons’ fan like us.”

Cousins of Taynandez claim this Benedict Arnold-esque flip flop isn’t the only example of Taynandez’s turncoat ways. After being an obnoxiously defiant U of M fan for most of his childhood and teenage years, which spanned the eighties and nineties, Taynandez mysteriously changed loyalties to MSU around the time MSU won the national championship in basketball in 2000.

“He is as vociferously pro-MSU as he was U of M,” said cousin of Taynandez, Joe Sherman, “and all because of some supposed slight on the part of the U of M admissions department when they allegedly failed to admit him.” Sherman then turned his back and engaged in a standoff between his pinkie and his left nostril.

Cousin Timothy Schwartz disagreed: “It’s just because he sensed the turning of the tide in U of M’s ascendency toward MSU’s. It’s all political with him.”

Taynandez, who became a huge Pistons’ fan again when Detroit won the NBA championship in 2004, ignored questions about who is better now between the Pistons and the Bulls and launched into a trite and meaningless oration about the evils of a city council that refuses to allow its members to use modern technology during meetings.

-The Editors

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Salvaged Rat Pack Poster Still Haunts Homeowner

Warren, Mich.— Each time Warren resident Timothy Schwartz enters his basement, he is greeted by an unwanted, garish, thee-foot-by-four-foot poster of the Rat Pack playing billiards.

The poster harks back to the infamous day Schwartz’s cousin, Sterling Heights councilman Lawrence Taynandez, coerced Schwartz to help him move into his new house, and it serves as the sole compensation Schwartz received for his troubles.

“I have tried to get rid of it several times,” claimed Schwartz, “but each time, the rubbish collectors refuse to take it and it somehow ends up back in my basement. It is my black cat, and it serves as a stinging rebuke to me each time I look at it and am reminded about how foolish it is to put one’s trust in politicians. I am haunted by it; it lives in my dreams and creeps into my thoughts almost daily, and always I am torn back to the naïveté that led to the moment of weakness in which, after defenestrating couch cushions all afternoon, I saw, coveted, and took [the poster] after Larry enticed me [to take it]. I live each day in regret as a result of that decision.”

That day, Taynandez handed out one greasy George Forman Grill that appeared to have never been cleaned or even brushed off, several of his Nana’s homemade cookies, and a TV/VCR combo to squelch the mutinous undercurrents murmuring through those he leaned on for slave labor in his tyrannical rise to power.

“I now know what it means to be a part of the proverbial ‘Mussolini’s Rabble,’” said David “Dopey” Scaczynski, cousin of Taynandez. “The poster in many ways has become the impresa of political and authoritarian abuse. It is a touchstone of tacit government appeasement of the masses to teach them submission and keep them dependent on the State. It’s hard to imagine things ever going back to what they were before [Schwarz] accepted the gift.”

The poster, sitting portentously against the lime-stained concrete wall of Schwarz’s basement, remains a shadow blotting out happiness from all connected with the allegedly coercive councilman.

-The Editors

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Highly Active Boy Parrots To Cousins Sayings Adults Use On Him

Eastpointe, Mich.— A local youth shocked his young cousins with exclamations of frustration at their behavior and with recriminations generally reserved for use by adults of eminence against children.

Lawrence Taynandez’s young cousins claim the nine-year-old boy, at his cousin Thomas Marlippo’s birthday sleepover, stunned cousins when he shouted volubly such expressions as, “I don’t know who did it, but now you’re all going to pay the consequences,” “Your antics are not amusing me,” and “I’ve had it up to here with you, and my limit is here.”

“Frankly,” said a very frank and mature Joe Sherman, cousin of Taynandez, I didn’t even know his vocabulary included such words.” Sherman, who admittedly struggles to spell even the simplest words correctly, seemed most impressed by the mastery of language Taynandez displayed rather than at the ironic juxtaposition of roles when Taynandez, who is no stranger to receiving castigation himself, became the lecturer and chastiser.

The party went on as planned, however, although most of the cousins gawked at Taynandez’s impudence in asking his Aunt JoAnn if he could recline on her new couches and at his demands in the morning for her to “Fillerup!” while raising his orange juice glass. The resulting slap he received awed the partygoers and gave them a memory they were to carry with them well into their adult lives. This slap and the sayings of Taynandez may very well have been the springboard that launched the tradition of reliving the fun once a year that continues nearly twenty years later.

Taynandez, now a city councilman and slimy attorney, has found that his sayings work very nicely in the courtroom, and he purportedly slings them quite liberally at defendants he is cross examining.

-The Editors

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Wife Of Local City Councilman Unstable, Can’t Even Grasp The Simplest News Stories

Sterling Heights, Mich.— Local councilman Lawrence Taynandez has hit a snag in his upcoming campaign for reelection when reports surfaced that his wife and mother of Taynandez’s daughter has spoken out publicly against respected journalists.

Christina Taynandez, self-avowed Twitter snob and lover of brand-named, obscenely-priced handbags and boots, has openly expressed her repudiation of all things political and her desire to sit sedentarily in front of the mindless, inane banality of reality TV as her husband attempts to claw his way to the top of the city by any means necessary.

When confronted with good literature and the groundbreaking, game-changing news reporting of TSR, Ms. Taynandez replied, “I just don’t see the point; it’s a waste of time. None of it is real anyway.” She then turned back to her TV and flipped the channel from Laguna Beach to Jersey Shore.

Ms. Taynandez is the proud owner of a Macbook which she uses to shop Online for expensive purses and to delete her husband’s loser friends and cousins from following her on her Twitter account.

-The Editors

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City Councilman Lets Kitty Litter Box Get Out Of Control

Sterling Heights, Mich.— Constituents of city councilman Lawrence Taynandez fear that he will not be able to serve and represent them well if he runs the city by the same standards he keeps up with his kitty’s litter box.

Taynandez, who considers himself a cosmopolitan world traveler, often asks his male nurse cousin Thomas Marlippo to watch his house and take care of his dogs when he is out burning through the city’s money on exotic trips and cruises or traveling to Paris to satiate his wife’s ravenous, ever-increasing appetite for expensive, tax-funded boots and purses.

During one such trip, Marlippo invited some of his cousins over to watch a college football game on Taynandez’s seventy inch, tax-funded TV. Timothy Schwarz, one of the cousins, happened to glance into one of the bedrooms in Taynandez’s palatial mansion from which he observes the comings and goings of the hoi polloi whom he rules. Upon glancing into the room, Schwarz reports observing a kitty litter box “heaping over with poop and clumps of cat urine and surrounded by litter tracked out of the box by the expensive Persian cat Larry bought with tax payers’ money.”

Schwarz’s veracity is unassailable and his character incontrovertible when it comes to such matters. Furthermore, TSR unapologetically lends full credence to these comments which are backed by Schwarz’s sterling character.

With a councilman who cannot keep his own house in order, taxpayers wonder whether he is capable of cleaning the proverbial kitty litter box of the sordid streets and back alleys throughout Sterling Heights, a city plagued with scandal and controversy over the proposed opening of private drives to the unwashed proletariats from Warren and other surrounding cities who have become a scourge and a blight on the pristine reputation and beleaguered home values of Sterling Heights.

So far Taynandez has refused to comment on this situation, but a spokesperson from his administration stated, “Mr. Taynandez is busy serving the city, but the situation has been addressed and is being dealt with appropriately.”

Critics point out that residents still have no proof the kitty litter box has been emptied and replenished with fresh litter, but others point out that Taynandez would be foolish not to in this season of campaigning for reelection.

-The Editors