Volume XXIX Feb. 17, 2012

Elderly Couple Struggle With Noisy Candy Wrapper Entire Service

Harrisburg, Penn.— Shirley and Charlie Boufford took fellow parishioners’ nerves to the very breaking point during their thirty-minute struggle with a hard candy wrapper.

The Bouffords, who have been attending First United Methodist Church together for over forty years now, enjoy a nice piece of hard candy during the service to keep their saliva flowing, but sometimes when fighting the good fight against pesky wrappers, the wrappers refuse to concede and the Bouffords are forced to engage in battles of the will with the recalcitrant wrappers.

Parishioners allege that the Bouffords began the struggle during the final congregational hymn and continued through the end of the minister’s message. “If they would just open the candy at home,” complained a red-faced, increasingly petulant parishioner Mellissa Ferrer, “and put them in a zip-loc® baggie, they wouldn’t have to crinkle and struggle all service, and the rest of us would be able to focus in the message instead of their hard candy situation.”

When approached for comment, the Bouffords appeared confused and continued walking toward Charlie Boufford’s magnificent Buick.

-The Editors

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Old Passions Reignite In Civil War Reenactment, Hundreds Slaughtered

Fort Donelson, Tenn.— Close to 300 men lay dead or wounded after an inexplicable explosion of stabbing and bludgeoning among a group reenacting a famous Civil War battle.

No one knows quite why the close-knit, traveling group of dedicated Civil War enthusiasts escalated their famous reenactment to actual bloodshed, but conflicting reports allege that one man in gray from Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, stood and screamed, “The South shall rise again!” sending the men into a hysterical mêlée resulting in what some reporters are calling “the worst brotherly bloodbath on American soil since the real thing.”

George Roripaugh, one of the few survivors of the combat, stated, “My great-great-great-grandpa fought for the Union, and I like to think that he was smiling down on me as I bayoneted close to a dozen Rebs.”

The greatest tragedy of the warm, sunny afternoon was the horror that played across the faces of the more than 200 school children ranging in ages from kindergarten to high school. “I thought it was just an extra realistic reenactment,” said sixteen-year-old Stephen Tomlinson who was there with his social studies class, “Until I saw a guy get stabbed in the face.”

In response to the growing number of parents who have lodged complaints with the school districts, the company who presents the reenactments has issued a statement claiming that “although there is always a danger of a situation escalating when a group of men are armed with weapons, [the company] will issue refunds to any student in attendance who was upset or unsatisfied with the performance.”

-The Editors

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Hard-up Teacher Makes A Quick Three Bucks By Renting Blackboard Space To Students

Taylor, Mich.— Barry Kendall, a middle school history teacher, has devised an ingenious new method to profit from his naive young charges.

Kendall, who has been teaching in the Taylor district for seven years, found he was constantly forgetting money to buy pizza at lunch. Thinking quickly after forgetting his money one day, Kendall, despite the welling panic as lunchtime approached, quickly blocked off a top corner of his board and wrote, “This space for rent, 25¢ per word.” By the end of the hour, Kendall claimed, several students approached him inquiring about the space. “I was able to sell two dollars worth of words in just that hour and pay for my pizza,” said Kendall.

The first blocked-off section began selling so quickly each day that Kendall soon added one large block of prime space in the top-middle of the board for which he charges fifty cents per word per day. Students on a budget can procure a smaller, out-of-the-way block at the lower left-hand corner of his board for ten cents a word, and Kendall claims that so far each block has been rented out every day since the experiment began.

“Most rented space is filled with inside jokes and middle school nonsense,” said Kendall. “Like a few of them were ‘Taco Momma forever!’ and ‘mystical mangos.’ Some students, during the Valentines week, even utilized the space to confess their love for fellow classmates. As long as the comments are appropriate and not disparaging, I will allow them,” said the enterprising Kendall

-The Editors

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Man Grows Beard In Desperate Attempt To Ward Off Stares By Strange Women

Canton, Mich.— Jordan Tamoshunas, father of two and husband of one, has been fiercely growing a beard for the past two months to hide his dangerously beautiful face.

For years, Tamoshunas, an automotive engineer, has been plagued by a face that draws unwanted and unsolicited stares from women. Tamoshunas’ wife, who seems oblivious to her husband’s beauty and the danger it poses in traffic, has consistently opposed his decision to grow a beard, even in the face of his admission that he fears for his life.

With the beard a mere two months along, Tamoshunas reports an already noticeable decline in stares from women he encounters in public places. “Where they used to do double and triple takes,” said Tamoshunas, “they now just look, seem to sigh resignedly, and go about their business. It has been downright liberating.”

Tamoshunas describes his beauty and symmetrical face as a “curse” that has always stood in his way. Throughout his youth, he lamented, he could never decide which girls loved him for his earnest and sincere heart or for his beautiful, flawless yet rugged features. He often went off and brooded in sullen thoughtfulness, struggling with the “burden of beauty” and wondering how he could reduce its deleterious effects. Through his beard, he claims, he has finally found a measure of peace.

As of this publication, Tamoshunas has yet to shave his beard, although his wife refuses to smooch him until he does.

-The Editors

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Teacher Leaves Profession, Devotes Life To Raising Awareness For Tragic AXE Body Spray Epidemic

Parma, Ohio— Adam Harris is addressing the tragedy comprising millions of adolescent boys across America who find veracity in the AXE marketing campaign and are drenching their bodies in the putrid stench of cheap body spray.

Harris, a former middle school PE teacher, has been fighting the dreaded scents of AXE throughout the halls, locker rooms, and classrooms of his former place of employment for over a decade. Harris claimed to have banned AXE completely after several futile attempts to publicly shame olfactory offenders proved ineffective. Harris claimed that his sense of smell had been significantly diminished over the course of his teaching tenure due entirely to the eroding effects of AXE and other similarly harsh and offensive odors.

Harris quit his job in disgust last month and walked off school property without any official resignation after having walked into a bathroom in which several pubescent boys had just had an “AXE fight.”

Harris, who forwent any sort of severance because of his refusal to ever walk back onto school property, decided to provide for his family by taking his message to a national audience. Harris now hosts a one-man traveling “didactic fragrance workshop” in which he attempts to educate the ignorant masses on the proper uses of commercial fragrances.

Part of his message is geared toward reeducating the public about the proper uses of perfumes: “Since the mass availability of deodorants, soap, and shampoo, the need to drown out unpleasant scents is all but eliminated. The new etiquette for ambrosia is not to drown out but to subtly suggest the faintest adumbrations of scent when a wearer walks close. People should be left with an almost subconscious idea that the wearer smells dulcet, causing the smeller to want to be closer without realizing why.

“A person should never, under any circumstances, be able to clearly and flagrantly smell your fragrance unless he or she is close enough to you to embrace you. Anything less subtle is obnoxious and offensive. The problem is that what you might consider scintillating and pleasant, others may find rank and sharp. Take AXE for instance. I would contend that most young boys would be far less offensive if they sprayed themselves with scented Lysol than if they continued dousing themselves with AXE. The Lysol might even kill a few germs in the long interim periods between showers.

“Keep in mind as well that our noses grow accustomed to certain smells—pleasant or otherwise—and will not give us an accurate measurement of what we smell like to others. Invest in a name-brand cologne or perfume after testing to see if it smells good on your skin—many scents react differently to the oils in different people’s skin and therefore may not smell as good on you as on someone else. Keep in mind that a seven-dollar smell-alike is seven dollars for a reason and will not last as long as a real scent, nor will it retain any semblance of good fragrance beyond the first few minutes.

“Start with about a half spray on your neck and ask someone you trust to evaluate how strong it is on you by doing an ‘increasing proximity’ test until he or she can smell it clearly. If he or she can smell it clearly after the first hour at about eight to twelve inches from the point of contact, your scent is plenty strong enough. You might even consider toning it down.

“The worst possible scenario is to walk into a room and have your scent—good or bad—slam everyone you walk by like the wake of a doomed Italian cruise ship.”

So far Harris has made numerous appearances at schools and seminars to packed audiences, eager and curious. Harris claims he does not derive joy from the money so much as he does from the knowledge that he is actually making a difference in the all-to-prevalent perfume pollution in today’s society.

-The Editors

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Allegations Suggest Prince Fielder Not Actual Royalty

Detroit, Mich.— While most Tigers’ fans are still intoxicated with excitement about the stout and doughty slugger’s coming to Detroit, some have had their enthusiasm tempered by the news that Fielder may have no actual royal blood flowing through his veins.

AP reports surfaced late Thursday morning alleging that investigations into Fielder’s family history and ancestral records yielded absolutely no indication that Fielder has any legitimate ties to royalty. Some critics have gone so far as to say that the whole assertion is a sham and a travesty and that Fielder should immediately release a statement denying his ties to royalty and declaring a renunciation of his fallacious title.

“I just thought he was British,” said Tigers’ fan for life Joe Sherman in his atrocious, misspelled spoken words. “It seemed odd to me that he was black or whatever, but I just thought maybe there had been some mutually beneficial union between the British royal family and some Ethiopian royalty years back in an effort to make an alliance through marriage. Naturally, that would explain The Prince’s superior athletic skills and super-human strength.” Sherman seemed skeptical about any allegations questioning Fielder’s genuine royalty.

While all evidence points to the contrary, a spirited, faithful core of Fielder supporters have begun an Online movement asserting the legitimacy of Fielder’s royalty and are predicting his ascendency to the throne of Comerica Park where they hope he will reign as Home Run King as the only legitimate successor to his father, King Cecil.

-The Editors