sentimental value changes

Cradling the sawed-off baseball bat in her arms, 68 year-old grandmother-of-six Djieudee Bast-Hernandez remembered the day she had received the tire-thumper as a gift from the deputy mayor of Los Angeles. Standing on the corner of Vermont and Leeward Avenues, in the middle of Koreatown and smack-dab in the heart of territory controlled by the MS-13 gang, Ms. Bast-Hernandez shifted the bat to her right hand in one swift motion, dodging slightly to the side and striking with an upward thrust at the left temple of the urban youth standing in front of her, whom she guessed was no older than her youngest grandson. Ignoring the disbelieving gazes of the few people who had paused to watch her get robbed, Djieudee gingerly retrieved her purse from the young man's limp hands, kicked his knife down a storm-drain, straightened her patterned-silk blouse, checked her hair in the window of a nearby storefront, and slipped the bat back into the fold of her hand-knitted sweater.

Controlling the adrenaline-shakes and waiting to cry until she was inside her apartment and had locked the door, Djieudee allowed herself two whole minutes of stress-induced emotional release before going into the kitchen to make tea. Sitting at her favorite chair by the window and watching the afternoon clouds caress the top of the towers Downtown, Ms. Bast-Hernandez began to clean the bat while embedding the day's violent turn of events firmly into her long-term memory, where they settled in nicely.

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free things made

Working well into the night, and long past their usual quitting-time of Right About Now, a group of human beings working at a factory in a Vietnamese free-economic-zone bent to the task of making free shirts. “Remember,” their foreman had told them at the beginning of their long shift, the unpleasant man screaming at the top of his lungs so as to be heard over the cacophony made by the running looms. “These #7 through #16 upper-body garments will be given out free-of-charge to persons attending the Global Summit of Capitalistic Inequality in Dubai, next month, so they must be made well, and quickly!” The workers – mostly women belonging to an underprivileged ethnic group who were working for mere pennies an-hour – shared secret and contemptuous looks with one another before hurrying to their posts within the cavernous production-hall, some of them risking health and safety to access hard-to-reach portions of their respective machines. In an attempt to live up to the quality-control demands of their corporate slave-masters, the women produced the required quantities of shirts in just under the amount of time allotted for their task, which prompted further screaming and abuse from the foreman, who accused them of trying to pad their paychecks by lolly-gagging, and dragging their feet.

After walking in single file out of the factory under the watchful gaze of a pair of security guards who executed random searches of their persons and lunch containers, the women all but ran to the gates leading to the road outside. Waiting dejectedly in the rain for a shuttle to take them back to the outskirts of the slum where they lived (unaccompanied workers are prohibited from walking through, or existing in, the free-economic-zone), the women sang songs and told stories of their tribes' long-lost glory days as behind them a different group of underpaid workers loaded the free shirts into trucks for transport to a nearby seaport. “Someone mentioned that these were free garments,” said Humei Hong, a local truck-driver, as he was doing a voluntary inspection-walk around his leased rig. “I don't know for whom they are free, though, since they're not free for us – the last time I asked if I could have one for free, I couldn't find work for six months.”

Later that year, at the Inequality in Capitalism summit in Dubai, the shirts were indeed given out free-of-charge, mostly to corpulent rich people with lightly-toned skin arriving on tax-payer-funded corporate jets, who wore them for but a single day before tossing them in the trash.

(p.s. TANSTAAFL – There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch)

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boy invents everything

In preparation for creating a water-proof coverlet designed for tablet-computer-users who operate their devices while bathing or when trapped in flooded cars, 17 year-old big-thinking average citizen Brisdlom 'the Bri-Man' Torrandigan, of Fontaine du Lac, Minnesota (population: 335), first established a standardized system for measuring distances exactly, and then a portable measuring-stick he dubbed a ruler. After convincing half of mankind to adopt his system for measuring distances in something called inches and feet, he discovered electricity, then perfected the braided-copper electrical wire, then a method for extracting rubber from the South American rubber tree, then a method to vulcanize the rubber, then a method to manufacture large-diameter copper wires and a way to protect them from the elements using water-tight rubber sleeves, then long-distance electrical transmission wires as thick as a man's wrist, then electrical transformers for increasing voltage so as to allow current to be transported across long distances, then techniques for deep-seam coal mining, then a narrow-gauge railway system for hauling coal, then a chemical process for removing impurities from the coal, then an industrial-strength elevator system for lifting the coal, then the steel i-beam, and then the methods and materials needed to produce electricity using coal-burning steam generators the size of houses. Before getting started on the exact dimensions of his case, he invented the postage-stamp-sized computer chip, then random-access-memory, then the solid-state hard drive, then circuit-boards made of silicone, then the wireless-fidelity network (which he shortened to Wi-Fi), then the just-in-time manufacturing process, then the conveyor belt, then factory-based production, and then a touch-capable and screen-based interface.

After a noon-time snack, the Bri-Man invented the USB access port, then tiny but efficient speakers, then a way to allow users to pipe sounds into portable and head-mounted earphones, then a process for producing break-resistant but smooth sheets of glass, then a method for cutting said glass into small and perfectly rectangular shapes, then the slag-furnace, then the process for producing aluminum using bauxite, then gas-fired furnaces for heating aluminum to allow it to mix with bauxite, then wearable heat-shields for persons handling molten-hot metals, then efficient casting methods for making light but sturdy tablet-frames, then injection-molding processes for not just plastic but also steel and aluminum, and then a system for transporting large volumes of products over long distances using self-propelled and man-operated devices that roll over the ground or fly through the sky or sail upon the seas. He paused briefly to apply acne medication (he had a date later that night, with a girl named Francine) before putting the finishing touches on his case, which would allow users to interface with their devices through his coverlet's see-through plastic, but not before discovering crude-oil in the Middle East, inventing the processes and pumps and drill-bits and valves for removing that oil from the ground, then the process for refining it into plastics, then just the right balance of chemical additives to make the plastic translucent but not brittle, then a process for mixing and storing and transporting the chemicals and the crude oil across thousands of miles of open ocean, then a way to keep the plastic from deteriorating too quickly when it is exposed to sunlight, then a clam-shell design for computer cases, then a sturdy but unobtrusive hinge-mechanism, then a plant-based and odor-less lubricant to keep the hinge working smoothly, and then tiny bolts with nuts to screw onto them snugly and without loosening when jostled to hold the two parts of the hinge firmly together. Stepping back to view his handiwork, the teen inventor smiled a shy little smile before firing off a text-message to his father, who lives in Seattle, Washington. (Young Brisdlom had invented cellphones and the SMS system a day earlier.)

Explaining at a brief press conference its decision to shutter its operation and to elect Brisdlom to Supreme Master Of The Human Race For All Eternity, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Patent Office stated: “We are so happy that Mr. Torrandigan has pioneered such a wide range of technologies that will allow the inventors of tomorrow to come up with new ways to make our lives more efficient. All future inventions will rely upon the efforts of this young man, he who came before them, just as all supposedly new thoughts or discoveries are only possible because of the thoughts and discoveries that occurred before them in time. Naturally, the profits from the sale of Brisdlom's newest device, the water-proof tablet coverlet, as well as all profits from the use and further development of his neat-o and whiz-bang processes and materials – pretty much every last nickel in the world – will go to the rightful inventor of the modern age, teenage Bri-Man, he who crafted such wonders from thin air. From behind our padlocked doors, we shall watch patiently but with abiding joy as subsequent inventors build upon the miraculous achievements that this young man made in such a short amount time, perhaps at some point in the distant future accepting new requests for patents, once Master Of The Human Race Brisdlom Torrandigan's wonders age a bit.”

(p.s. This article is a hoax; any and all inventions rely upon all of the inventions made before them, including the inventions of our commonly-owned languages and societies. Our current practice of heaping piles of money upon individuals who supposedly invent new things is a farcical and broken system that is unlikely to stand the test of time. Mahalo.)

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practicing for peace

Unlike the majority of his schoolmates and friends who received video games such as Modern Warfare or Call Of Duty for their b-days or x-mas this year, 9 year-old prissy pants Samwell Youlissees Chorrand, of Oxnard, California was elated to get as a present a copy of the first edition of Mashing Buttons 4 Peace, or MB4P. Available only in select areas and sold only to little fucking weaklings and their fucking weakling moms, MB4P is slated to underwhelm all expectations, and to sell poorly. Said a source at Electronic Arts (EA), the company that created the game, who demanded he remain anonymous so as to spare himself and his family a lifetime of public mockery, “We made MB4P because a group of parents – OK, moms – kept emailing us about the violent nature of most of our teen-oriented games, claiming they would sue if we didn't come up with something for the pre-teen and teen markets not focused on war-making, death, murder, terrorism, or the wiping out of turban-wearing baddies. MB4P is, well, it's something, but, well… fuck, man, you did promise not to print my name in this article, right?”

In Mashing Buttons 4 Peace, the player depresses various keys on a wireless controller in time to music or in synchrony with images displayed on the screen, which causes an elaborately-crafted avatar to twirl about and leap for joy in one of only a handful of locations, either in a field of golden swaying wheat, in the Great Chamber at the United Nations building in New York City, or in a sky-scape made up entirely of rainbows. (After forcing ourselves to play MB4P for long enough to reach the first save-point, it appears to us that the optimization of one's avatar for cooperative wheat-field-spinning is the game's primary purpose.) According to young Master Chorrand, the game is, “Awesome. So cool. Just look at the little guy who kinda looks like me dancing at the U.N. with all types of other avatars who have different skin-tones and different costumes. What a treat.” While looking on lovingly and filling out the insurance forms necessary to cover her son when he is beaten down and physically abused at school for being a little fucking pussy-ass bitch, Mrs. Tarranz Jaimms Chorrand, aged 42, proclaimed: “I am so very happy that EA bowed to our wishes and finally came up with a game that promotes Global Peace and that fosters peaceful coexistence between all humans, regardless of dress, religion, or choice of head-covering. The sole remaining task for us Mothers Against War-Making In Video Games, or MAWMIVG, is to convince the rest of America's parents to stop buying games that train young children in the art of making war or that convince kids it is OK to firebomb a shack filled with people, to shoot airplanes piloted by humans from the sky, or to daisy-chain claymores so as to create the most effective killing-zones. Land-sakes – we're so close, I can feel it.”

Electronic Arts initially fought demands to release a game for teens focused on practicing peace, claiming that it already produces a range of products aimed at children under the age of eight years whose tender brains and stunted views of the realities of life under American world-imperialism make them prone to cry and to wet their pants upon seeing violent images of war. Said the unnamed source at EA after he had returned from the greasy-spoon's bathroom to discover a hundred dollar bill sitting under his half-eaten plate of cheap diner food. “With none of the major television channels or news networks showing pictures of our ongoing wars of aggression or our continuing attempts to subjugate the peoples of the world to the demands of our homegrown corporate profit-mongers, it is our duty to harden the minds of our future soldiers and to get them ready for lives as hired guns in the all-volunteer Armed Forces of the United States of America.”

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lug nuts lugged

Excited by the prospect of having a pocket-full of loose change dumped onto his scabrous head, sometimes-local transient Frank 'Train-Track Eddie' Varudniwek, 56, spent the better part of the morning hauling buckets filled with rusty machine parts up one flight of stairs and back down another, setting them in neat lines alongside a crumbling brick wall out in the alleyway. The Louisville, Kentucky native huffed and puffed all the way into the early evening, missing the handing-out of food at the homeless shelter as well as his usual afternoon rendezvous with his mates down at the unused former utility-shed near that one bridge over Tussleville Creek that was never completed. Lamenting missing the rendezvous most of all, Mr. Varudniwek said while leaning against the railing at the top of the stairs, to catch his breath, “I hope the boys saved me some of the name-brand mouthwash, because the generic shit I got yesterday tastes like ass and don't even get me drunk.”

Wendie and Swekland Jonns, Train-Track Eddie's short-term employers, spent a few hours watching him work through a number of strategically-placed cracks in the rear hallway of the run-down theater they just bought, with Wendie kicking herself – and her spouse – for allowing the transient to see and to inspect the interior of the building they had recently purchased using some of the money Swekland inherited from his great aunt, who died from eating a spoon-full of powdered drain cleaner. “Now, he knows which windows have no locks, and which doors open when yanked hard enough,” Wendie said, twirling her greasy, straw-colored hair nervously. “I told you to hire a legitimate company to come in and clean out those basement rooms, but, no, you had to do the Right Thing, and hire a bum to do it. I told you this would happen, Swek – I told you.” Massaging his wife's sweaty shoulders affectionately, Swekland said, “Relax, Wen. He's costing us one twentieth of what a legitimate company would, and we can always come back tonight, or tomorrow, and re-lock all the windows and doors he unlatched and unlocked. Besides, we're tearing this thing down and turning it into a parking-lot, as soon as we've sold that metal for scrap and Frank has torn out all of the old copper wiring. So what if he and his buddies live in here for a few weeks? I sure won't miss sweeping up their empty mouthwash bottles and filthy cigarette nubs from around the loading bay out back; if they accidentally set the place on fire, we'll get tons of insurance money, and the town will have fewer bums, meaning that everyone wins.”

While creeping around and eavesdropping on the Jonns, Frank pocketed a large ring of keys he had found in a janitor's closet, with which he planned to open all the building's locked interior doors – once his employers stopped whispering to each other and finally left for the night, of course – so that he and his buddies could each have his own room to sleep in, for once.

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man avoids sex

Wishing to keep his mind pure and thinking he was doing himself a favor, a local whorphan has denied himself sex with other persons for the latter part of 2011, and all of 2012. While masturbating occasionally to keep his prostate flushed in hopes of avoiding future bouts of prostate cancer, the man admitted to us that even this type of self-pleasuring confused his mind and made him prone to lust and desire, and to covet attractive female humans in his immediate vicinity. “I have come to the conclusion that there is something seriously wrong with me,” the 35 year-old said recently. “Every relationship I have entered into during the past decade has failed, crumbled, or imploded. Since these liaisons were with different girls of different backgrounds, upbringings, hopes, dreams, and desires, I have concluded that it is I who is incapable of maintaining a relationship, that it is I whose fault it is that I now live alone in this dusty, cob-web-filled hunting shack. If there has ever been a true emotional cripple, it is I. Fuck, man, I can't even talk to a pretty grocery-store checkout girl without telling myself that I am unworthy of her attentions, without some part of my brain ridiculing me to the brink of tears. Double you, tee, eff?”

While escorting the man on his daily rounds, we noticed that he displayed a distinctive lack of selfishness, that he was painfully shy around women he found attractive, and that he was prone to sudden acts of kindness and generosity. When we mentioned that such traits were much sought-after among today's upstanding, self-respecting American women, he argued that it was just such traits that got him into his current mess, in the first place. “The women I dated would always like the way I act, for a while, but, then, it seems to me that their egos would get the better of them and they would start to resent me for my unwavering desire to serve others and because of my dangerously low opinion of myself. I attribute the way I act to growing up with an intellectually-brilliant but alcoholic father whose opinion of himself was so low as to border on disgust. My childhood role-model was a man who hated himself so much that whenever anyone discovered his self-loathing, he shower them with undue praise and was really, really nice to everyone in an effort to deflect attention from his deep-seated emotional instability, an instability that infected all aspects of his life, including but not limited to his interactions with others. In a way, I think that the last few years of sexual deprivation have been an attempt by my sub-consciousness to get me to grow up, to stop blaming my dad for things, and to take responsibility for my own emotional well-being. I try to be a big boy and to maintain a certain level of inner peace and spiritual contentment; it's hard, though, to reprogram one's soul – especially for someone doing it without guidance, or help – but I'm confident that spiritual purity and loving humility will eventually triumph over the machinations of my love-starved, self-pitying ego. Hot dog, guys, thanks for listening – it's great to finally talk to someone about this.” When we last saw him, the self-proclaimed whorphan was mowing his lawn using a cast-iron, muscle-powered push mower from the 1930s, getting swoll and looking right fit.

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Republicans expand platform

Waiting for just the right mass-shooting or natural disaster to conceal its un-American and freedom-hating ways, the Republican Party in America (RePIA, pronounced “rape-ya”) plans to add to its presidential platform more sections based on the Christian bible. Said Paul Ryan, a religious extremist hoping to gain the vice presidency, at a press conference held at the Mexican border where a group of non-Christian Americans were being quietly banished from the land of their birth, “Once Mitt and I take the White House, you're gonna be seeing a lot fewer gays or women wearing pants around here, as we will be expelling or imprisoning anyone who does not adhere strictly to the old testament directives of YHWH, my personal, bloodthirsty god. Start reading Leviticus, today; if you find yourself violating any of its clearly-worded mandates – if you so much as look at another man's wife or think even the most tame of tainted thoughts – we'll dispatch the Faith Police to eradicate from the earth the last traces of your worldly passage.”

Abandoning Reason and ignoring fully our founding concepts of Liberty, Justice, and Equality, RePIA plans to revoke a woman's right to her body and to force girls – including victims of rape and incest – into risking their lives by carrying unwanted fetuses to term. Cowed into silence by a life-time of vituperative sermons and a religious text that demands they be treated in the manner of dumb and worthless beasts, upon hearing of RePIA's plans the women of America collectively left the room and found a nice quiet place to have a weep. “My youngest daughter slept with her boyfriend for the first time, last week,” said housewife Nancy Graise-Winstlomb, a meek woman from Yankton, South Dakota. “Now, with the Republicans banning marriage between persons of different faiths, I shall have to find a Christian man to marry her, but when he discovers that she has already lost her virginity, we'll have to stone her to death on our front porch, while the community watches. Good grief – we should have fled to Argentina when we had the chance.”

Interpreting into our founding documents mentions of the Christians' god, RePIA seems to have forgotten that there is no mention of Jesus, YHWH, Mary, Joseph, stray lambs, heaven, hell, Leviticus, or Deuteronomy in 99% the official correspondences of our founding persons, which include George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Abigail Adams, and Susan B. Anthony. “The opinions of Washington or Adams don't matter,” said Mitt Romney from atop a self-propelled, gilded, tax-payer-funded throne built on the ruins of the American companies that he has gutted and shipped off to distant free-economic-zones. “My advisers said that the Taliban's more dastardly and misogynistic tactics effectively controlled and subjugated the Afghani population, so Paul and I plan to put the worst parts of the Bible – the ones that were written for the Israelites, a desert-people who lived during the Bronze Age, five thousand years ago – we want to put those to work, right now, right here in America. Therefore, anyone who works on the Sabbath, who does not bathe correctly, who looks at or talks to a woman who is on her period, who eats impure meats such as pork, who curses his mother or father, or who dares to question the supremacy of the various church-fathers, those persons will be put to death by the explicit command of Jesus, YHWH, god – whatever you wanna call the Lord.” Pausing to glare at an area mother who was operating a passing motor-vehicle, the former Massachusetts governor wrote down the woman's license-plate number before continuing on, saying, “Shit, boys, I'm not even a Christian, but I'll pretend to be one in exchange for presidential power.”

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“Spaghett, Shorty” in production

Abandoning all previous artistic endeavors and venturing forth on a more subdued and serious track, Eric Wareheim and Tim Heidecker of the 'Tim & Eric Show, Great Job' publicly announced the filming of a full-length film called 'Spaghett, Shorty.' Speaking last week to a group of reporters whom they had herded into the space between a couple of dumpsters behind their Hollywood production studios, the creative duo defended their stab at serious drama, saying, in unison, “This stab at serious drama is utterly defensible.”

Known more for producing material featuring pelvic-thrusting, tongue-waggling, eye-popping, awkwardly-snorting, fake-crying quasi-celebrities than for releasing products of any value to society, Messieurs Heidecker and Wareheim claim that the idea for 'Spaghett, Shorty' came to each man individually while washing off the crusty remains of simultaneous bouts of explosive diarrhea. “Yup,” said a source close to the pair. “I was near the toilets mopping up their wayward butt-juices, while, nearby, them two were in adjacent showers scraping at and cleaning their filthy dirt-holes. I heard them cry out in what could have been joy but what was more than likely recurrent diarrhea pangs, saying, in unison, 'Of course, old brother, of course we do Spaghett, Shorty!' I shall never understand how the artistic mind works.” The source then insisted on selling us a pound of bunt cake his mother had sent with him for his lunch-time dessert. (We relented; it was delicious.)

Set primarily in Miami during the mid-1980s, 'Spaghett, Shorty' tells the tale of one Thrankdon E. Kürzenschimmelreitersmann – or Shorty, for short – who falls in with a bad crowd after his parents are killed while ballooning in foul weather. Descending into utter madness and abandoning friends and family alike, Shorty eventually finds redemption, and love, in the arms of one Spaghett, a familiar character from the Tim & Eric Show, Great Job. According to insiders working on the film, it features not fart jokes or cameos by celebrities playing retarded people but serious topics such as man-rape, psychological self-indentureship, the vanishing rights of the flightless kiwi-bird, and a detailed history of the Nazi occupation of the Lower Western Friedrich's Islands, whence Shorty hails. “We wanted to serve up some serious fare to our swollen fan-base, which consists mostly of sex-deprived, canned-noodle-eating homebodies who can no longer stomach our usual light-hearted banter and family-oriented content,” said one of the two artists from under a stained and soggy bed-sheet that they had pulled from a dumpster and used to cover themselves. “'Shaghett, Shorty' is set to shatter all box-office records,” either Tim, or Eric, continued saying. “Those selfsame peeps who shelled out thirty million smackers to see our Billion Dollar Movie will lose their marble-sacks when they get a load of 'Spaghett, Shorty.' The final knife-fighting sequence alone cost big bucks to shoot, but, since it was directed by Ang Lee and choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping, who both worked on Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, we expect our fans to get a really, really big kick out of it – huge, like, this big.” 'Spaghett, Shorty' will release to selected American markets before taking over the world.

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'Slow' Leigh butts shore leave

To the surprise of only the vessel's newest crewmembers, Captain Briyan F. Leigh of the U.S.S. Abu Ghraib canceled all requests for shore leave during the attack group's scheduled docking at Cebu City, Philippine Islands. (Procurement officers shall be allowed access to markets on shore.) Said executive officer Lieutenant Quincy Klein-Trask, a sleep-deprived man who appeared to be overseeing work on a half-dozen different tasks: “Captain Leigh deliberated at great length over whether or not to grant his sailors access to the Philippine population while this ship is tied up securely in her berth, deciding only after much soul searching and many long, midnight walks, to keep everyone on board.”

Captain Leigh's efforts are being mirrored by some of the group's other senior officers, including Captains 'Hesitant' Horace Greysound, Jr. and 'Deliberate' Dean Kwantzik. Said ensign Tieresza Rainnholds, of the U.S.S. Guantanamo Bay, who hails from Great Bend, Wyoming, on condition of anonymity, “We suspected that old Slow Leigh would cancel shore leave after those mishaps during our recent training in the Sea of Japan. This crew, however, was innocent in the matter; Captain Boris 'Be-There-In-A-Jiffy' Yu even admitted during his court martial that he authorized the shelling of that village. I'm pissed – the boys and I have been looking forward to snorkeling C4A Mile Bay for months, now. But, at least this time, we got a few hours' warning; last time, half of the ship's crew had been lined up at the gangplanks with packed bags for a good hour before a passing bosun's-mate crushed our spirits, telling us to go stow our bed-rolls.”

This is not the first time that Captain 'Slow' Leigh butted shore leave; he canceled it back in 2008 after weeks of teeth-grating contemplation, deciding at the last minute to jeopardize crew morale for the sake of decorum and as a way to remind junior officers to take things easy, saying in a memorandum that he considered it poor form to run about making decision all half-cocked, and willy-nilly.

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infitfada street

fortune comes true

While sorting through the family's collection of fortune-cookies fortunes, Doreena Absalduntian opened a yellowed envelope she found crammed under a flap at the back of the third carefully organized ring-binder. Sitting down and peering through a jeweler's loupe so as to read the rows of tiny print, Doreena was astonished to find that the little slip of paper contained not only detailed information about the previous few days of her life but also predictions about how things would shake out for her during the rest of the week. Just as the young lady was getting to the good stuff, to the part that mentioned her finding a sack full of money in a certain alley near her work, her younger brother, Hir, threw open the basement's back door, creating a sudden draft that blew the tiny slip from her fingers, whence it fluttered over to the far wall and was sucked into an air duct. Screaming with all her might and ruining her nails scratching at the duct's ventilation cover, Ms. Absalduntian gave up after failing to recover the lost fortune. She descended into a funk that fouled her mood for weeks, never reading the remaining slips of paper, which, unbenown to her, foretold her loss of the first fortune and predicted that she would descend for a few weeks into a foul mood, only emerging from it, toward the end of October, to meet her true love.

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foreboding forgotten, ignored

Against the advice of more than a half dozen friends and close associates, an area man ignored feelings of foreboding and deeply-rooted worry and set out alone on an arduous, five-day-long bicycle ride through Death Valley. Planning on sticking to side routes, old Indian paths, and animal tracks so as to prove to himself his ruggedness and ability to read the land, 55 year-old chain restaurant owner Nivan Laurentz of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania made it halfway through the first day before disaster struck. According to entries in his diary, as soon as he had moved beyond sight of his car, “GPS batteries died trying to acquire signal; compass gone – lost, or dropped; backup water-sack leaking; backup to backup water-sack rank, foul; two front bicycle tires shredded by sharp rocks; forearms sunburned badly, cheap aloe gel runny and ineffective.”

The only traces of Mr. Laurentz's passage found during a search conducted by Park Rangers and area sheriffs were his diary and a trail of detritus dropped alongside the remnants of a path leading into the deepest and hottest regions of this barren and forsaken land. “The missing person's belongings lay strewn about, as if he were trying to lighten his load, or to find a precious commodity, which out here includes even a mouthful of water,” said Officer Dolores Ovillia, of the California Highway Patrol, who has combed the desert many times in search of lost or wayward citizens. “Then, of a sudden, all traces stop, as if the land had opened up and swallowed him – his bike, his bags, all traces.” Nivan's vehicle was unmolested, leading authorities to rule out foul play. “If this had been robbers or highwaymen lying in wait for an unsuspecting traveler to stop and park and get out for a stretch, then the vehicle would have been entered forcibly, and its contents – even those of comparatively little monetary value – would have been removed to another vehicle or to a different location,” said Agent Padraig Raian O'Malley of the federal Bureau of Land Management, who joined the search on its second day. “We see it out here occasionally, desperate people robbing and killing others and then selling their things at swap meets farther west, but, in this case, we have the trail of detritus and the diary, so we can rule out foul play by all parties but Mother Nature herself.”

One hot, dusty search-party after the next returned to the tent village that sprouted in the parking lot where the missing man's car was found, each group throwing up its hands in defeat and sinking despondently into folding chairs to drink cup after cup of hot green tea. Among the searchers was the California People-Finders Collective, a non-profit organization that specializes in… finding people. Said Webster Dulvishnakov, who canceled plans to attend a friend's wedding in order to help with the search, “We've been using methods developed to find persons buried in avalanches, lining up next to each other in rows and poking long sticks into dunes, trying to locate the body, the bike, anything that might offer clues. In his diary, Mr. Laurentz even talked about being really worried that things might go wrong, foreboding feelings he obviously ignored. I've seen scenario such as this before, though – guy starts feeling old, and, after bicycling around his town for a month, he thinks he's ready to do a Death Valley loop trail, alone, with untested and insufficient supplies, cheap stuff bought at big-box retailers. We People-Finders have located individuals who lost their way after walking ten feet into the woods to take a leak. Talk about one less mouth to feed – some people should just stay at home, and stay alive.” After three fruitless days, the search ended, everyone going home to take cold showers.

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Grigovian receives Nobel

In a long-anticipated show of support for peaceful co-existence amongst the human races, the Nobel Committee shall award its Peace Prize to her somewhat-royal-highness Thallandia Yündlennd. Granddaughter of King Hyu-Yennd Yündlennd of Grigovia, a full regent who abdicated in the early 1900s at the age of 12 years after signing legislation that ushered in a time of wide-spread egalitarianism, democracy, justice, and liberty, Princess Thallandia carries on her grandparents' tradition of harmonious and environmentally-friendly living and sacrificing oneself for the betterment of mankind. In a written press release, the Committee said its decision rested on her somewhat-royal-highness's work in bringing attention to, and in helping to end, America's more than decade-long occupation of sovereign Afghanistan.

“We made a mistake awarding the Peace Prize to Mr. Obama, an American president who makes war on foreign peoples and restricts the rights of his own constituents, subjugating them with police-state tactics,” said Nobel Committee spokesperson Hana Fiistendun, via telephone from Stockholm, Sweden. “With the selection of Princess Yündlennd, we shall prove to the world that we award Peace Prizes only to persons who actively propagate peace throughout the world, not to those who have neither regard nor respect for the frailty of human liberty.” Miss Thallandia enraged the U.S. Department of Defense when she traveled from one coalition airstrip to the next throughout Eastern and Central Asia, putting her body in harm's way and disrupting the flights of dozens of Hellfire-missile-equipped drones. When asked how she managed to keep gaining access to these highly-secured sites, the Princess stuck out her tongue and flipped everyone the bird as she was loaded, again and again, handcuffed and shackled, into unmarked black sedans, which whisked her away to points unknown.

Somehow managing to avoid being tortured and killed at the hands of America's brutal interrogations specialists, Princess Yündlennd stayed tight-lipped even at trial, preferring rather to take her licks in silence than to speak of the hardships she endured at the blood-stained hands of a once-honorable nation originally founded by individuals who abhorred all types of prisoner abuse. Perhaps her most daring achievements was saving a village full of refugees – mostly women and children – from being shelled by blind-firing Army National Guardsmen, which she accomplished by besting their commanding officer in hand-to-hand combat before blocking the barrel of one of the guns with her own arm. Then, a few months later, she used an inflatable dingy to stall an American naval armada headed for the Straights of Hormuz, thus preventing a shooting war with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which claims the Straights as its own. “I want to stop tyranny, to put an end to war, and to sew liberty and justice where there is now strife and discontentment,” Princess Yündlennd said during an interview held at a trailer-park outside Ghent, Switzerland, where she owns a modest single-wide with her husband-to-be, infamous LA scumhound Reginald Augustus Steele. “As long as the United States of America values profit over peace, torture over compassion, materialism over sharing, and the rights of corporations over the dignity of mankind, I shall be out there on the front lines fighting to preserve that to which monetary value cannot be assigned, and to which no price-tags stick.” When last seen, Miss Thallandia was spot-welding the finishing touches on a low-cost, autonomous rover designed to detect and destroy land-mines.

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