human facial oil

Oil won from the human facial gland is a highly-prized, much sought-after industrial lubricant crucial to the operation of a number of America's most advanced weapons systems, among them the M1A tank and various drones, including the MQ7-1. Some of the highest-volume producers of this precious commodity are persons living in dry and desert climates, as, lacking abundant water ​stores, their skin cools and protects itself from the scorching sun by secreting rich and luxurious oils from glands located on the face, scalp, and neck. While persons critical of the war of aggression that America is waging against the Afghani people blame its addiction to fossil fuels as the reason it broke hundreds of years of honorable tradition by maiming and torturing and killing persons merely suspected of wanting to harm its people and government, the primary reason the United States of America put boots on the ground in the Middle East was to secure access to the region's richest facial-oil-producing tribes, families, and groups.

“The Yanki came and began to measure the heads of our children,” said Shiruf Muhammud, a 34 year-old Afghani shepherd, through an interpreter. “They poked them with sticks of cotton and put those sticks in bags, rushing the bags to a waiting truck which drove off as soon as the bags were secured in large plastic coolers in the rear.” After tea, Shiruf told us that the Americans had come back a few weeks later, at first inviting, then coaxing, then ultimately threatening the parents of the town to let their children move to a giant house specially-built for harvesting the superfine oils secreted by the very young. “In the end, the Ammriki simply took the children,” the man continued, close to tears. “Loaded them up onto their trucks and drove off without telling us anything or paying us any money. My son and a few others escaped, and walked back here, but others are still missing. My niece, a girl of four years, has not yet returned.”

By weight more valuable – combined – than the yartsa gunbu, a unicorn's tears, the short-hairs of an honest politician, and the powdered and dried pancreas of Saint Francis of Assisi, human facial oil (HFO) is gaining popularity in Southern and Eastern Asian cultures as a cure-all drug. “I proscribe face oil for skin problems such as eczema and shingles, for internal problems such as ulcers and stomach cancer, and for rubbing onto sore and swollen joints, in particular the knees,” said Dr. Song Yue-Shi, who operates a number of healing centers in Hong Kong and mainland China. “The success rate of HFO treatment is very high, especially for persons suffering from HIV and from disorders of the central nervous system.” Independent clinical studies of HFO are rare, due to the substance's limited availability and its recent classification, by the U.S. Department of Defense, as a strategic national resource. Said Howard K. Schandenbürger, Jr., spokesperson for the Secretary of Defense, during a press conference held to address concerns over the ethical harvesting of HFO from non-combatants and children: “Facial oil is a sustainable, natural resource collected humanely and with due diligence from willing, well-compensated individuals across the globe. To minimize our impact on production capacity of HFO in regions subjugated for the benefit of America's corporations, such as in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, however, we have begun to recruit individuals of Native American ancestry living in this country's South-West, most notably members of the Hopi and Cherokee tribes, who have long been known to excrete facial oils of high quality.” Curiously, America's teenagers of European descent, who produce copious amounts of HFO daily, were not mentioned as candidates for harvesting.

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local minds blown

This past weekend, the sight of three men walking along the side of Route 30 was all it took to blow the minds of the people of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The townspeople stared, honked, swerved, honked again, and stared some more, flabbergasted that three healthy-looking, employed-looking, and respectable-looking individuals would dare to move their bodies by muscle-power six tenths of a mile down the road to a local eatery, where they were reported to have eaten a hearty breakfast.

Gettysburgians appear to be so accustomed to driving everywhere, so used to seeing only dirty and unwashed vagrants physically walking on the sides of roads, that the actions of these three apparently confused, seemingly car​-less individuals shattered the locals' views of the universe itself, a universe which runs on fossil fuels pumped from the ground by terrorism-supporting Arabs living on the other side of the globe. “We could see the restaurant from our hotel-room window, up on the third floor,” said one of the pedestrians, who asked to remain anonymous. “And we did consider driving, but, as we all agreed, we needed to work off some of the residual booze from the previous nights and to kick-start our metabolisms, which were struggling after a long weekend of drinking.”

Each of the three individuals stands over six foot and two-inches tall, and each is muscular and physically imposing, which, when viewed side by side, may have made them appear freakishly tall; and while two of the three are Americans of African Descent (AOAD), the third is an American of European Descent (AOED), which compelled the men – who while perambulating discussed the locals' strange behavior – to rule out blatant, uncalled-for racism, for which the area is, however, known. “As with many strange things that happen in life, having people flash their brights at us, honk at us, and yell out their cars' windows at us, for no reason other than that we were walking along the side of a road, is something that we must simply accept in our hearts as inevitable,” said another of the individuals, who is expecting his second child. “I went to college here for four years, and we just dropped fifty bones on breakfast. Just because we decided to get some exercise before eating does not mean that we are worth less than people who decided to drive around, being fat. Fucking small towns, man – most times, they suck.”

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man rations watts

Stretching his personal daily allotment of watts to the limit, 52 year-old unemployed former systems administrator Rhieyan Humplesdorf avoided excessive toilet-flushing and unnecessary illumination in order to have enough electricity left over to watch his favorite television show. “It's really important to me to be able to catch Blazing and Crashing, a reality show, every other Thursday night, and, so, I spend time in the dark and only cook during off-peak hours, such as before dawn.” Mr. Humplesdorf is not alone in his quest to save wattage: reports indicate that millions of everyday Americans save their daily, weekly, and even monthly rations of electrical power (referred to here, and measured in, watts), using the precious commodity on special activities such as watching a movie at home, cooking during the breakfast hour, or powering a wireless router in order to access the world-wide-web.

America's capacity to provide a constant, seemingly-limitless stream of watts to its inhabitants waned shortly after the turn of the 2nd Millennium (Common Error), when several major dams were drained after having been declared structurally unsound and its supplies of coal and natural gas dried up or became too environmentally costly to tap. Since then, persons such as Rhieyan have tried to take matters into their own hands, setting up man-portable banks of solar panels and installing small battery farms in large, weather-proof plastic containers. “It's hard, sometimes, to recharge everyone's batteries,” said mother-of-four Vickie Hu-Eignot, former vice president for marketing at a communications firm. “What with our second oldest entering school and needing to charge his netbook battery competing for watts with our oldest, who has a bigger laptop, and then the two twins – our youngest – wanting to recharge everything from flashlights to portable gaming systems, and of course everyone needing to charge their cellphone batteries on a nearly daily basis, well, we quickly run out of watts, even with the bonus my husband receives for working twice a month on Community Labor Days.”

Similar to ration cards used in America while it was fighting both the Third Reich and the Japanese Empire, today's watt ration cards are a stark reminder that nothing is free in life, that few things come easily, and that TANSTAAFL (there ain't no such thing as a free lunch). “We thank the fine citizens of this land for being patient while we install more large-scale wind and solar farms, and for queuing patiently at their local power stations, waiting in both rain and shine with drained deep-cycle marine batteries balancing on skateboards or loaded into shopping carts,” said Thurmond P. Ristlethrace, spokesman for the federal Department of Energy. “It is true that the previous administration should have been focusing more on sustainable energy systems and less on waging war in order to gain access to fossil fuels such as crude oil, but, I am confident that the current administration is on the right track toward making this nation totally and 100% energy independent.” Reports of wide-spread looting of hardware previously used to transmit electricity from coal-fired power plants could not be officially confirmed, but sources did indicate that many communities had been erecting Wardenclyffe Towers to harvest the electricity that water creates naturally when it flows through subterranean limestone aquifers.

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Grigovia remains unaffiliated

As its former Warsaw Pact allies either line up to join NATO, bow to the demands of American military-logistics planners, or grovel at the doorstep to the European Union, the Glorious Republic of Grigovia (GROG) has managed to go it (mostly) alone. While still technically a member of the United Nations, GROG has boycotted the General Assembly ever since 2002, when the United States of America launched an illegal war of aggression against Iraq, a Central Asian country rich in natural resources. Bursting with rare earth metals and home to vast stretches of endangered cold-weather rain forest untouched by ax or saw, Grigovia has safeguarded its independence, its natural resources, and the dignity of its human population by fighting off all efforts to incorporate it into international bodies or alliances. Said Hennu Yiptlend, GROG's Secretary of the Interior, Natural Resources: “We have watched as our neighbors in Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan caved to the murderous and incessant Yankees, sacrificing freedom, airspace, and honor at the altar of conspicuous consumerism and standing by helplessly as their countries became infested with fast-food restaurants and television advertising. The people of Grigovia were asked in a referendum if they wished to support the American invasion of neighboring sovereign lands, and if they wanted to join the E.U., and maybe the IMF, and 98% of the people answered with a resounding NO. Various international election-monitoring agencies tallied the results of the referendum, verifying our initial counts.”

Founded in 1904 as a parliamentary republic by King Hyu-Yennd Yündlennd, who abdicated shortly thereafter, Grigovia quickly became known throughout the world as a free and unaffiliated state similar to Switzerland. Whereas Switzerland became rich by stashing gold for the Nazis, gold that they had looted from the corpses of millions of innocents and non-combatants, Grigovia did not. Leading a quiet existence and laying low for the first few decades of the 20th century, GROG was one of the only nations to refuse Nazi gold as well as being among the first to grant women's suffrage and to outlaw the discrimination of persons based on skin tone, nation of origin, height, weight, sex, hair-style, health, wealth, beauty, and joi-de-vivre. Known for its liberal banking policies, raucous night-life, and refusal to sign any and all extradition treaties, Grigovia remained free until the ascendancy of the Soviet Union, which incorporated it into the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics (CCCP), ending its sovereignty and forcing it to adopt central-planning policies designed to enslave it to Moscow's corrupted will and to crush the spirit of its people.

That spirit simmered quietly until 1956, when, in lockstep with the Hungarian Freedom Movement, Grigovians rose up, unarmed civilians swarming Soviet tanks and dying in droves trying to re-take the high mountain passes. The Grigovian spirit kept simmering until 1989, when, in lockstep with the Polish Solidarity Movement, Grigovians erupted in violent protest, throwing off the last, dying vestiges of the Soviet Union and liberating themselves in just a few short days. Old habits die hard in this fierce little country, however, where communal gardens, public transportation, and neighborly helpfulness are still considered vital to a peaceful, healthy, and happy society. “Who needs fancy foreign taskmasters when we ourselves are free?” asked thirty-four year old Ninna Chueryennd, avid gardener, bicyclist, social activist, and lifelong inhabitant of Grig. “I was on the front lines when we threw off the mantle of Soviet oppression, and I shall die before I let this nation enslave itself to the theory of capitalism for the sake of conspicuous-consumption.”

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rain goes away

Suffering greatly at the hands of a group of children that would simply not stop chanting, “Rain, rain, go away – come again another day,” a cluster of cumulonimbus clouds that was just about to drop some precious moisture on the region's parched fields up and left. “At some point, even I can't stomach the constant and continuous demands for us to leave,” said Sir Dumps-A-Lot, a budding strato-cumulonimbus who was on the verge of tears. “We're only here to make sure everything stays nice and moist, but those damn kids just kept singing, and singing, and singing, and singing.”

The clouds, which were scheduled to stick around all weekend and maybe cause a stream or two to flood, vanished quickly, leaving no buffer between the thirsty soil and two whole days' worth of hot, direct sunshine. When asked where they might be headed next, a big-bellied cloud with a dark and swollen center said, “The wakinyan – the thunder beings that make the flash and the boom – they told us to avoid this area for a while, since they too had had curses and hatred flung at them for knocking out a few transformer boxes and setting a patch of forest on fire. I'm not calling the shots around here, but Senior Soak-Em-Good and Miss Daisy-Drizzle-Bottoms thought it would be fun to go rain over the ocean for a while, just to show the humans that we are not to be trifled with.” Rumor has it that the clouds and their ilk have been avoiding the central and western portions of the North American continent because of a series of nasty news reports blaming them – and not the propensity of humans to cover the Earth in layer upon layer of impenetrable asphalt and to move around in gasoline-burning, self-propelled steel chariots – for the area's lack of rainfall.

As a parting insult, the wakinyan spent ninety minutes lighting up the heavens with what is commonly known as heat lightning, more than likely to strike fear in the hearts of any persons sitting in darkened houses trying to keep the fridge doors closed. When last seen, the cluster of clouds was loitering over a major national airport, flooding pipes and causing delays, as usual.

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private sector triumphs

Last Thursday evening, quietly, and with little fanfare, the private companies constituting America's military industrial complex declared success in their efforts to undermine and ultimately destroy liberty, democracy, and free speech at home and abroad. During a lavish ceremony held at an opulent dining room located in a convention center built using local taxes-dollars, these enemies of freedom toasted themselves, each other, and their cronies in Washington, cronies who used the federal 2012 defense bill to enrich these fools by nearly $400 billion. “NASA just spent $1.6 billion sending a miniature laboratory to Mars,” said the head of a powerful aeronautics contractor, to uproarious applause. “One point six billion? I can see from this here podium seventeen different fellow defense contractors who made that much in stock options in the ten minutes after the President signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA 2012). It warms my heart to know that those $400 billion were used to make the persons in this room rich instead of being wasted on launching more scientific labs into space, feeding malnourished children, or developing methods for raising crops in Earth's barren and waterless places. We have done it, gentlemen – hoodwinked hundreds of millions of clueless motherfuckers into making us wealthier and more powerful than they could possibly imagine.”

Called in 1961 by outgoing president Dwight D. Eisenhower the greatest threat to democracy that this country has ever known, a few tens of thousands of defense contractors routinely cheat over three hundred and ten millions of common American citizens out of roughly half the money we commoners give the government in the form of taxes, every year. “With four hundred billion dollars, we could refurbish a thousand schools, explore the seas and space, pay a hundred thousand school-teachers decently, rebuild a thousand bridges, cure a dozen diseases, and perfect renewable-energy-gathering-systems such as solar, tidal, wind, and thermal,” said Shurucq Tamzal, PhD, spokeswoman for the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). “But no matter how many recommendations this office makes to leaders in the White House or Congress, they keep shoveling hundreds of billions of dollars into the pockets of private individuals who profit from constant and continuous conflict – war on a global scale. So, basically, when the U.S. makes war, defense contractors get rich. This is a disgrace, a farce, not at all how the persons who founded this nation intended us to be doing things. At least, that's my opinion; please don't quote me on it.”

Defense contracting is as old as war itself, a business which in the age of modern warfare and endless armed struggle has no time for or interest in maintaining freedom and democracy for an uneducated, disinterested, television-addled population. In his closing remarks before ceding the stage to Creed – a religiously-conservative music group – the aforementioned aeronautics contractor said, “Frankly, we need the general American public to stay stupid and glued to the idiot-box for five hours every day, because, otherwise, it would ask too many questions, wanting to know who keeps giving us hundreds of billions of its tax-dollars. I thank my lucky stars for the wizards who make compelling, high-drama, high-quality TV programming.”

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secret lair completed

Tamping the building's last brick gently into place with a brand-new trowel, Fiyodor Kironislav Tscherovnikov turned with apparent glee to bask in the smattering of applause running through the assembled crowds. Gazing down upon the festive scene below him, Mr. Tschernovnikov noted with joy that someone had fixed the leaks in the bouncy castle, and that the snow-cone vendor had finally arrived. His symbolic task completed, he descended the extending aluminum ladder, and, on terra firma once more, hugged and kissed his mother, brothers, lieutenants, sub-lieutenants, henchmen, lesser henchmen, assembled members of the press, and the town mayor.

“Thank you all so much for coming out today to witness the last major steps in the construction of our branch of the New Slavic Mafia's newest secret lair, right here in semi-rural West Ganderssonville, New Jersey,” said Fiyodor, his remarks broadcast not only from the town's newly-refurbished public-address-system but also via shortwave radio and Morse code by operators stationed in a squat, drab-colored canvas tent nearby. “This new location will allow me to protect my family and closest friends should war break out among the Families, and it will serve as a safe-house in which we can hide alike from nosy federal police and from enemy gang members seeking revenge. Furthermore, it shall serve as a processing and distribution center for most of the crack-cocaine and crystallized meth-amphetamine we produce before those dangerous and toxic drugs are transported in nondescript and inconspicuous soccer-mom-vans to major regional markets, among them New York City, Reading, Philadelphia, Providence, and Boston.” Blinking awake as if coming out of an addled stupor, a group of local police officers rushed as one over to the food tables to marvel at the unveiling of an enormous plate of the area's finest donuts.

The crime-boss concluded his speech by tossing handfuls of freshly-minted dollar coins onto a rutted and dusty patch of earth nearby, watching with tearful amusement as otherwise upstanding, employed adults gouged and shoved and kicked as they fought each other and a troop of Wilds, Wind & Water girls for the cash, the small metal discs winking and flashing in the thickening, bloody mud. Distributing envelopes stuffed with cash from a calfskin leather briefcase held by his tallest and slimmest henchman, Fiyodor paused next to the mayor, stuffing one envelope after the next into the fat man's silken pockets, clutching him as one would clutch a brother, both men smiling broadly for the cameras. When asked if he were concerned about the complete lack of secrecy surrounding his supposedly secret lair, Mr. Tschernovnikov said, “You fool! People remember cash, not details. In six months, these sorry fucks will be so stupid from having wasted their lives watching television that they'll forget to buy food. I watch it happen, all the days long. Thank the gods for TV, the most effective and addictive drug in the world.”

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Grigovia boycotts Olympics

This year, in London, the long jump will be a little less joyous, and the newest sport – bouldering – will be a little more bleak. As usual, America will win the most medals overall, with Russia and China taking second and third, or vice-versa. But, this time around, there will be no fights at the horse track and no shoving amongst the women's cross-country runners, no hostels set on fire and no main subway lines shut down due to rioting on the tracks. Yes, dear friends, the 2012 Olympics, being held in Great Britain's capital, are progressing in predictably subdued fashion, with just enough controversy to hold the fickle interest of the general public and just enough flash to keep the masses from asking why their governments are spending billions on shot-put and synchronized swimming when millions of people are poor, tired, hungry, and out of work. Regular spectators of the Games have already begun to lament the omission of one shining star from the usual roster of nations – the Glorious Republic of Grigovia (GROG). A country that in the past has made strong showings in militaristic events such as track-and-field, target-shooting, archery, long-distance running, judo, karate, and break-dancing, Grigovia announced it would boycott this year's celebration of peaceful competition through sport due to the participation of the United States of America, a country which invaded the sovereign nation of Afghanistan a decade ago and which continues to occupy that mountainous, arid, and landlocked Central Asian nation.

Said Baiyal Yennd, spokesperson for the Grigovian Ministry for Athletics and Sport, Interior (MASI), in an official press release at the start of the Games, “Beyond the fact that we as nations are both mountainous, arid, and landlocked, we Grigovians condemn any fascist state that perpetrates illegal and inhumane acts of war-like aggression against sovereign peoples – especially against peoples such as the Afghanis, who live nearby. Grigovia has rich deposits of rare-earth-metals, which Western companies found in Afghanistan last year and which they have already begun to exploit. Are the Yankees coming for us next? Will they bomb us next, and maim our children next, and kill our women next, in the name of their rapacious and capitalistic world-order? Until we know that America plans to abide by resolutions passed by the United Nations and by laws passed by its own government, and that it has removed itself from any sovereign nations where it has no business being, only then will the citizens of Grigovia even consider engaging the various peoples of the world in fair and honest athletic competition.”

When the USA invaded Iraq and Afghanistan in the years following the September 11, 2001 attacks, it violated international agreements signed in the wake of victory over the Nazi Third Reich and its ally, the Japanese Empire, which had invaded sovereign nations illegally, subjugating their populations and forcing them to dance to a tune not of their choosing. By following in the footsteps of Hitler and Hirohito and committing illegal acts of aggression (which are crimes against humanity), the president of the American Union at the time, a Mr. George Walker Bush, along with complicit Houses of Congress and Senate, mislead fair Lady Liberty by spreading among peaceful peoples not goodwill and freedom but avarice and death. “We have no interest in talking to or dealing with or buying things from greedy cowards,” said Uliyana Utlennd, head of GROG's Ministry for Athletics and Sport. “Just as we boycott murderous Soviets back in 1980, and I had to wait until '84 Games to win gold in both biathlon and women's cycling, now we boycott murderous Americans in 2012. A pox be upon the enemies of freedom, democracy, and free speech.” Grigovia has made just one bid to host the Olympic Games, in 1922, backing out only after the economic crisis known as the Great Depression – which was brought about by American and European avarice that persists to this day – ruined not only the country's nascent national athletics program but also a perfectly good pair of khakis.

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fundamental crisis averted

In keeping with years of rote tradition, middle-aged former accountant Ollivyr Henri Motiss avoided long-pent-up feelings of aggression and self-doubt, losing himself in the gossamer embrace of self-pity and forgetting the joy of selfless contentment. Comforting himself in the dregs of wine bottles and between the legs of any woman but his fourth and least-favorite wife, a disagreeable girl in her late twenties named Lacey, Mr. Motiss was seen this week binge-eating free nacho and salsa at his favorite local bar and complaining to anyone within earshot about his so-called life problems.

Reports indicate that Ollivyr had the option of throwing off the mantle of self-oppression and freeing his mind of torment after falling down on the way home from a party and hitting his head on a stone way-marker. Thrown by the impact into a trance-like state of pure and transcendental knowledge which granted him the capacity to face his demons and to conquer them through just the slightest bit of loving effort, Mr. Motiss failed to act, mostly because for the first time in his adult life he was experiencing the full mass of the sorrow and woe he has been carrying around with him since his first wife cheated on him with a coworker. Such was the weight of his emotions that he was simply not mentally equipped to handle them; as a defense mechanism, his psyche buried the hidden feelings ever more deeply and calcified his soul even more extensively than before.

Initiating a number of relatively small and insignificant crises, Ollivyr managed to keep his mind off of the true source of his pain for nearly two whole years, until the winter of 2010, when heavy snows trapped him inside his home, forcing him to have a nice quiet sit and to think about why he felt miserable being alone at home with few distractions and no booze. Dusting off an old yoga DVD, Mr. Motiss began to practice this ancient martial art, finding in its unusual poses and difficult movements the key to unlocking his deep and pent-up anger, soothing it and jettisoning it completely on the eve of his forty-fifth birthday. While shaving before a meeting with his aging mother, Ollivyr looked at himself in the mirror for the first time in a fortnight and smiled, realizing that yoga had helped him to clear his life of sorrow and torment.

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treasure found within

After searching in dozens of different destinations around the world – burning many fossil fuels and causing much pollution in the process – and sampling alike of legal and illegal pursuits, 35 year-old former do-nothing Juan Pablo thinks to have found his treasure in the last place he would have thought to look – within himself. Barely escaping South Asia with his sanity intact and spending a month's worth of rent money on a single Teutonic whore, this once-proud person of now meager overall worth has finally begun to disassociate his Happiness from the tenuous grasp of the outer, waking world.

“It is fascinating to discover at the center of my being a pit of calm, to cherish and nurture its fragile potency, and to reshape my psyche around a core of abiding love for that-which-cannot-be-named,” the avid bicyclist said after we had prodded, goaded, and begged him to speak. “May I fetch anyone another glass of water?” Moving about his hunting-shack's kitchen with calm and steady purpose, Mr. Pablo shared richly of his cool, pure well-water, urging us to hydrate aggressively so as to combat the intense heat of these high summer days. His task done, he perched himself on the least-plush seat available, hovering in apparent readiness to serve us further.

Upon closer inspection, we found that Juan Pablo seems to only use certain parts of the small house he owns with his siblings, eschewing most areas so as to keep them clean, for guests. Furthermore, it appears that he bicycles nearly everywhere he goes, that the house is not wired for television, and that he avoids gasoline-powered tools when maintaining the grounds, using a muscle-powered mower and a hand-held weed trimmer, instead. As it was nearly impossible to get the man to speak, this news team left after going on a nice tour of the property, which includes a sizable patch of bamboo and acres of overgrown woods. It remains unclear whether we shall visit Mr. Pablo at his house again, although each of us experienced feelings of sudden joy and buoyant lightheartedness – feelings that seemed to well up from deep, as-yet-unplumbed inner depths – for days afterward.

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forgotten memories rediscovered

Opening just one of those dusty boxes that had been shoved against the rear wall of the lower garage when grandma Nell passed away more than ten years ago, Ila Guerze-Rozen, forty-something mother of two children under the age of 6 years, rediscovered items that triggered long-forgotten memories. “Oh my word, these are pictures of Roberto and Juan, my brothers, from when we were just children,” the petite brunette said while wiping tears from her brimming eyes. “I had forgotten that we traveled so much back then. Look at little Juanito crying in the arms of that mascot that resembles a bipedal rodent, whose name rhymes with Sticky Blouse.”

Since none of the other boxes contained sentimental treasures nearly as emotionally-moving as the contents of the first box, so Mrs. Guerze-Rozen threw them out following a merely cursory pawing-through. After a bit more shuffling and a thorough sweeping, Ila stood back to look at the fruit of her labor, a clean, out-of-the-way area where she might sew, mend, darn, and sit quietly with a nice cup of tea and ruminate on her station in life.

While in the process of putting away her cleaning implements, Ila started upright, bolting to her new sitting area and tearing into the box of treasures, searching for something she had seen earlier but not recognized until bending over to pick up the smaller, blue dust-pan, which had itself triggered within her an odd but powerful sense-memory by falling from her hand and coming to rest at a peculiar angle against the closet's back wall. Picking carefully at the corner of a small wooden box, an item that she had previously overlooked, she pulled away a strip of paper tape concealing the sliding cover to a small hidden compartment. The secret drawer was empty except for a slip of yellowed paper upon which was written – in the large, boxy letters of a child – a simple message, that being, “Love.” With a smile as wide as the Rio Grande and a heart buoyed with sheer joy, Mrs. Guerze-Rozen shifted her weed stash to the hidden compartment, slid its little door shut, reapplied the paper tape, and went upstairs to wake her children from their afternoon naps.

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a Catholic beating

Brazenly violating the teachings of her purported savior and the rules of common courtesy, a supposedly-pious area mother assaults and batters her own, unruly child. “We just can't control her anymore,” the mother is reported to have said. “She curses at us, complaining because we only listen to the Christian radio stations while driving in our car. I went to smack her on the mouth the other day, for saying something stupid and for using a bad word, and the child jerked away from my hand and tried to run away from me. What kind of little shit won't stand still and take her just licks? Incredible.”

Contrary to this news team's initial speculation, the woman's priest, an anal-retentive man with painfully fair skin and a disproportionately large food gut, was not troubled upon hearing about the woman's physical abusive of a child supposedly in his flock, saying, “YHWH gave that woman's husband absolute power over her and that child, but, since the husband is a spineless lightweight and the woman bore the child for nine months, squeezing it out of a tiny hole in her nether-regions, she has the right to discipline it as she sees fit, which, of course, includes smacking it on the mouth whenever she wants to. So long as she does not stop publicly praising Jesus and making regular donations at the church office, she could even kill the child without us so much as batting an eye; in fact, YHWH demands that parents kill unruly children.” (Leviticus 20:9)

Due to the ever-present threat of violence at home, the unruly child has been staying with her aunt and uncle, who do not beat children, since they are worthless fucking heathens. The abusive mother declined our request for interview, stating that she had to organize the next session of 40-days-for-life, a wearisome series of public protests during which the Catholic community labors to restrict a woman's right to her own body, attempting to codify the more radical Biblical teachings into law by legally banning such things as abortion, and birth-control. When cornered at a local discount retailer and asked – in light of her youngest child's severe mental retardation – if she would consider not having any more children to avoid making more handicapped babies, the 43-year-old woman began to scream uncontrollably, lashing out at anyone who came within her reach and babbling incoherently about religious freedom. When we explained to an inquisitive onlooker what was going on, he said, “Jesus tells us to do unto others as we would have done unto ourselves; I don't think he intended for some dumb bitch to discipline her kid by punching it in the face.”

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit

$7 a day

Nanjing – On an otherwise nondescript Wednesday morning earlier this year, 13 year-old Chinese national Zhou Fu Shi changed into a set of worn coveralls and headed to work. Earning the equivalent of seventy U.S. cents an hour, and working ten-hour-long days, Miss Zhou makes roughly seven (7) dollars a day fabricating cellphones and other electrical devices for export to markets in the Europe and America. “I used to spend summers working in my grandparent's rice paddies or tending the local communal forests and gardens with friends from school,” Fu Shi said while sprinting to the bathroom during her single, ten- minute-long daily break. “Things were better then, I think. It is hard to remember, even though it was not that long ago, but I think that despite having less physical money in hand, I was creating bonds with the land, with my family, and with the people in my community.” We continued to speak with Miss Zhou on her way home from work until a pair of censors overtook us, demanding to see our passports and grilling us about our involvement with an innocent factory girl. By the time the censors had left (taking many of our yuan with them), our new friend had vanished into an enormous tenement-housing block.

“I don't want to work, but the state forces me to work,” Fu Shi was saying just before the censors' arrival. “I don't want to work because I don't really need to buy anything. I see the new advertisements, I listen to them on the radio and television, but I don't need any of those useless things. And speaking of useless, who is buying all of the mobile telephones that my fellow workers and I are making? A friend of mine has an illegal, uncensored Internet connection, and he and I were looking up prices for the things that we make, and the phone we are making right now costs almost two hundred American dollars. Two hundred dollars? I assembled one hundred models after lunch today, for which I was paid roughly three dollars and fifty cents. Last week, when a friend was blinded at work by corrosive gases, she was fired, and is now very, very poor. Is there any justice in this world? Somewhere, someone is making a lot of money on the backs my factory-sisters and me.”

Upon reading our story, two American politicians – a Senator and a Congressperson, who both asked to remain anonymous – contacted us, saying derisively that the girls in our story should be happy that they have jobs at all, let alone paying jobs, and that they should see those jobs as stepping-stones of opportunity, and not worry so much about how much they might be getting paid right now, or who might be profiting immensely from their hard and continuous labor.

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last bite taken

True to his word, and exhibiting exceptional control over otherwise uncontrollable urges, 16 year-old MMA enthusiast Henry David Thoreau Plasset – oldest son of Mr. Egbert Plasset Jr. and Ms. Yolanda Gu-Plasset – took one, single, last, final bite of cake before pushing away a plate still thickly scattered with morsels of gooey chocolate frosting and perfectly moist angel-food-cake. Glancing over at the remnants of the cake itself, a mouth-watering, three-tiered numbered that Mrs. Gu-Plasset had made to commemorate her daughter's 8th birthday, Henry David patted himself on the belly, wiped off his mouth, and settled with obvious contentment into the deep folds of his favorite couch. Being alone in the house, young Master Plasset fell asleep briefly with the small paper plate of cake crumbs balancing on the couch's armrest and threatening to fall onto the newly-shampooed carpet; before it could fall, however, he was awakened by a text-message from his younger brother, a boy of 6 years, who alerted him therein to the rest of the family's impending return from the mall.

Rushing to clean up the most obvious of messes he had created in the kitchen, H.D.T. Plasset cut himself another piece of cake, which he ate slowly and with great relish, claiming to the rest of his family in loud tones that it was not just his first but also his last piece of cake for the day, of which he was just about to take the last and final bite.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit