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These stories and "news" items have been collected from several columns published elsewhere. The dates indicate when first published.

2001

Mozart demoted to shoe box!
Sioux Falls, S.D. -- Medieval scholar, Renaissance Fair organizer and local Taco Bell manager Jesus Gonzales took time over the weekend (he only had to work Friday at Taco Bell) to organize his CD colection. CDs had started to collect on the coffee table. The ten world music Cds got their own 20 CD plastic case ("I might get some more"), but his 26 Mozart CDs went to a shoe box, placed on a shelf in the closet. They were marked Mozart on both ends of the shoe box. "I think they will be quite happy next to the Haydn symphonies shoe box," commented Gonzales.

Suburban Mother Hides Presents.
Des Moines, IA-- Peggy Smith, mother of Alice (10) and Kelly (15) hides a good part of the presents she bought this year for Christmas. Her sister Gladys, and family, are flying from Buffalo to spend Christmas with them. They will only bring selected small size presents for their children, aged 4 and 8. Peggy will certainly hide a new Nintendo 64 as well as the Pokemon yellow version. She could only obtain one copy of that sold out item for Alice through her brother in law Carl, who works at a games store. Both sisters will select gifts for the shared unwrapping event based on strict criteria. Peggy feels Gladys' gifts are too educational and Gladys thinks Peggy buys her children "mindless crap." The husbands will unwrap sensible clothing items.

Milwaukee, WI-- Area man brings home yet another company gift. Marty O'Leary, a 20 year employee of a local meat packing company, brought home a blanket with a woven picture of the plant in 1939, as Mr. Zinselmeier originally had it built. The blanket was folded over an easy chair, but his wife Mary took it to their bedroom, as guests were coming. It may end up in a Goodwill box, or in the garage, where Marty has a clock, on which he never replaced a battery, and some sort of insulated bag, which he supposed was for cooling wine, but is not sure. These and 20 other gifts are somewhere in the garage.

Columbus, OH-- Area woman brings lawn chair to Christmas party. The aluminum folding chair, with faded plastic straps, was left at her house last summer, as the paralegal club had a get together. The owner of the aluminum chair did not show up at the party, and his home was out of her on the way home. She will try again at the spring party in April.

Husband lacks Christmas pants.
Elmhurst, IL— Mildred Hagstrom was faced with her annual Christmas problem, Ed. Once again he is not prepared. He wears out a lot of his pants at the nursery, and they are all work pants or jeans in any case. Some are coveralls. Mildred and Ed do not attend church, as Ed became a Buddhist in California in the 70s, so he has very few nice clothes. The children are stopping by on Christmas morning, with grandchild Ella as well. Ella is not afraid of Ed, but Mildred thinks his only good pants, the black ones, are not one bit Christmassy. She made him wear the brightest Christmas shirt, with lots of red. But with his black hair and beard, there was not one bit of Santa in Ed. It was too late to go to the store on Christmas day, and Mildred had few options. She solved the problem by having Ed wear her Christmas apron as they arrived, and Ed was actually baking pie in the kitchen in any case. However, it only worked briefly, as Ed pulled it off when he sat down, with Ella jumping on his lap. Mildred ran off for an extra present for Ella.

Austin,TX—Fat teenager plays guitar! Eric and Todd, classmates of Brad Johnson couldn’t believe it when the overweight teenager played flawless licks at a talent night at their high school. “I mean, we see him working at McDonald’s, where someone drops him off, and he seems so, you know, clueless.” Eric and Todd were also impressed by Brad’s brother mike, both the size of David Crosby, on drums. They had some skinny guy on bass and singing Van Halen and Metallica covers. Eric didn’t pay much attention to him as he surveyed the equipment. “It was a Fender American series double fat Strat and a Marshall amp head and cabinet, at the least 120 Watts in power”, said Eric. Eric and Todd are still playing through a shared practice amp, which they bought used, and Stratocaster knock-offs. “Maybe we should work at Taco Bell and make some money”, suggested Todd.

London, U.K.--Beatles archivists unearth another 3 seconds of studio noise. In the noise can be heard a cough, a mutter, a lone guitar chord and one snare drum beat. Experts place these items somewhere in the second album recording sessions, though they were on a later tape, spliced at the end. The cough is attributed to McCartney and the mutter, all experts agree, is Lennon. This is the 27,003th archived studio noise bit where all 4 Beatles are believed to be present.

Cedar Rapids, Iowa-- Ed McCarthy of 1382 Cedar St. has filed an insurance claim for "roof damage due to reindeer hoofs" as well as cracked chimney. Metropolitan Mutual, in turn, is suing Santa Claus Inc. for said damage. Damages and emotional stress were listed at $350 000, with $800 in actual physical damage.

Davenport, IA--Bachelor discovers 3 unmatched socks in laundry. All three are in shades of gray. No two are a good enough match for even weekend socks. The three socks will await in the sock drawer until there is uneven wear in the other gray socks at the heels, at which point they can be mated with the surviving sock of the worn pair. Provided the colors match.

New York, NY—Publisher denies wrongdoing. In the children’s book Porcupine’s Pyjama Part by Terry Harshman, Mole prepares cookie dough, they eat it, place the remaining three cookies in the oven on page 27. Then they watch scary movies and on page 64, the three critters (including owl) go to bed together. Molly Hanson, 7, of Fairfield, OH, wrote in to alarm the publisher that “they never took the cookies out!” Molly offered to edit future books for a small salary.

Washington, D.C. – George Bush gets 3 hours of college credit for a class from Condi Rice on foreign policy. For his field trip to Europe, after she grades his report in #2 pencil, he gets one more hour of credit. He may go for another political science degree. “I didn’t know it could be a science,” stated Bush. “It’s more like a religious conviction to me.”

Philadelphia, P.A.—Researchers working for the National Academy of Science discover that AMERICANS ARE DOING THEIR PART for the earth. Astoundingly, we are storing one billion metric tons of fat in our butts, removing it from the food chain, and thus, stopping its conversion to CO2. Now, if we could only design small, wide cars, for wide butts.

Washington, D.C. – Bush rejects metric system. After a visit to the Bureau of Standards, George W. Bush set a team to work deleting metric units from US products. A cost saving is also involved, as we will no longer need two sets of standards. Though they agree that the metric system has it is merits (it is used world wide), they declare that it is fundamentally flawed. Freedom loving Americans will still be allowed to buy metric yard sticks, but balances will only be in pounds and ounces, as grams seem to be used for weighing illegal drugs. Thus your box of cereal weighing 17 oz (1 lb 1 0z) will no longer have the 482g displayed on the box. For those Americans already used to the metric system, government subsidized converting calculators will be available for converting to traditional American units.

2003

Washington, DC-- Republican party declares a war on liberalism. As a slogan for the upcoming congressional elections, the party has already decided on "We're more patriotic." As an explanation, a party spokesman declared "we simply want to declare our expertise in the patriotism department. The democrats are behind our men in Afghanistan 95%, but we back them 1000%. Our war on liberalism will be ruthless, just and swift. God bless America."

Belleville, IL -- Man evaluates colored pills for newsletter.

Wendell Huston, office manager at Cahokia Mills, finished writing the company health newsletter (published about every 4 months, whenever Wendell has the time) late Sunday night. In this issue he reviewed allergy pills. He had some white ones left from his old bottle, and the new ocean blue ones from the latest prescription. Then he also bought some pink ones, over the counter. Wendell had one semester of college chemistry 20 years back in community college. "With two patients in our study, we examined the effects over 3 days. I concluded that the white ones were mostly hydrogen, with some sort of binder, and not very effective. The blue ones worked, so they must have a lot of nitrogen. The pink ones seem to have some oxygen, and did work a little. But as I am also taking antioxidants, I figured I did not need that oxygen messing up those. So we both go with the blue ones. And we won't run out, because I can always borrow one or two from my wife, while I get a refill."

Portland, OR – Nature enthusiasts gather for Christian birdwatching. Every Sunday at the Fred B. Jones Sanctuary, Christian naturalist Eve Thomas leads a group of nature lovers through trails, narrating and explaining birds in their habitat. “Other naturalists were emphasizing this evolution approach way too much for our group, so we broke off and formed our own informal group.” God apparently created all the birds and vegetation 10 000 years ago. All change in the environment is simply movement of plant and animal life, created by God, to other areas as climate, naturally and through God’s plan, changes. “We realize there is competition in nature, but in 10 000 years, this simply is not enough to form new breed, let alone species.” Eve lead the group through the woods, spotting Thrushes, Warblers and those other little birds.

Washington, DC -- The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency, Ariel Rios Building, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20460) limits New Car Smell to 10 PPM. The announcement came after scientists conclusively linked "new car smell" to Alzheimer's disease. The weighted average of all five new car smell components was set at 10 PPM. "This will still give owners with a normal sense of smell some of the new car smell, which some consumers find pleasant." Automobile manufacturers are working on a new car smell substitute.

Washington, D.C. -- President Bush is ready to jump start the economy. In a ceremony this morning, the president personally attached jumper cables to a Sears Die Hard battery. The ceremony came to a halt as the president, jumper cables in hand, and his advisors were unable to locate the plus and minus poles of the Economy, hitched by a rope to the National Hitchingpole at the Capitol mall.

Bloomington, IN -- Graduate student Greg Nichols compares AAH and TBW behavior in men over three generations.
Men selected for the study fell in two groups, AAH (aggressive ass hole) and TBW (timid book worm). AAHs were likely to drive expensive SUVs, whereas TBWs drove a Toyota Corolla or a small sation wagon.
AAHs were looked at backward in three generations, and were five times as likely to pass on their AAH genes than TBWs, who had no gene that could be spotted. They merely lacked the AAH gene.

Des Peres, MO -- Soap rack falls after 20 years of service.
Matt Murphy, a bachelor living at Hunter's Meadow condos was taking a shower last night, when the soap rack collapsed, releasing soap containers and a water proof radio onto his feet. Matt observed, that the rack, on the shower head, had served him in three homes so far. " I guess it was the radio I added last month that broke the camel's back." Middle Schoolers compare dads’ jobs.

Chesterfield, MO -- Middle schoolers at recess at Parkway West Middle School today compared their dads’ jobs. Most that would even tell what it was (insurance, car sales for a lame brand, marketing, etc.) were labeled lame. One came out so so (dad does technical stuff with cell phone company), pretty good (dad works at Best Buy in office job, but gets discounts on cool stuff). The rest of the recess was spent around Todd Whitman, whose dad actually owns a Game Exchange store. Todd finally left burdened by requests for this and that when they come to the store.

Madison, WI -- Ag student refuses to believe in God, evolution or atoms Three undergrads from the college of agriculture were having a few beers Friday night, debating life, the universe and everything. Suddenly Brad McKinley, a protestant from Appleton, blurted out the above claims. "I don't believe anything I have not seen or experienced."
Scott and Fred asked how he passed chemistry last year. "I just pretended to believe in atoms for the class," he explained.

Salt Lake City, UT-- Snow crews out of salt
This tuesday snow and ice crews at the department of transportation ran out of salt. It appears that the workers at the salt processing plant all have the flu. Struggling to make paycheks by friday, plant manager Ed Fallon sold all the salt on hand to out of state buyers. "This happens every few years," stated road crew foreman Bradley White. I'll just send four guys and two pick ups to the salt flats with shovels. We only had a little bit of ice this week on hills. We also use some sand."

Copyright Esa Järvi 2001, 2003