Ian Vandewalker, the comedic mastermind behind several humor websites and the popular college movie "How High," has been in a slump lately. His reintroduction to the medium of television causes him to spend half of each day in coma-like state in front of the flickering device. "Having no television for a whole year has really reduced my resistance. Now I see a promo on E! for the 'Anna Nicole Smith Show,' and it really sounds like a must-see," said Vandewalker in a taped interview Monday. "But then I can't actually watch any given show, because there's always one two other shows of equal mediocrity on another channel, so I'll try to watch 'Battlebots,' 'Sorority Life,' and 'Crossing Over' all at the same time." All this bad television is acting as a sleep substitute for the young funnyman. "The theta waves that normally show up in the brain during sleep are also transmitted by cable television. This allows people to miss a lot of sleep and still be able to function relatively well as mindless zombies as long as they get a lot of TV in place of sleep," suggests Mara Dunkirk, of the Carnegie Institute for Media Studies.
The residents and leaders of Lake Alfred, Florida are furiously preparing for an imminent pile of dirt. "The pile of dirt was predicted by one of our more ... ah, talented children around this time last year. No one thought much of it until the whole second grade class at Cesar Chavez Elementary started drawing pictures of their houses and city landmarks surrounded by shapeless, brown forms," said City Manager Ted "Eddie" Edwards, Jr. at a press conference downtown. "We got a lot of wandering dogs in this city, and they all have left these past couple of weeks. I think they know something we don't," said Tanandra White, a local resident. The town is preparing for the worst. As city leaders petition the governor to declare a proactive state of emergency, firemen and law enforcement officers pile sandbags around homes and historic buildings. "You might say we're trying to fight fire with fire, except with dirt," said Walker Algeforth Talkenstuff, an LAPD officer (Lake Alfred Police Department).
"I'm not sure if I've done this joke before or not" said failing web designer Ian Vandewalker this morning. "I know I've done jokes like it, but I'm fuzzy on whether I've done this exact one." Walking often provides a chance to get from point A to point B while enjoying the scenery in between--and more importantly, can foster a deeper understanding of the terrain than faster modes of transportation. This finding has come despite protests by people who can't--or won't--walk. "I like to drive to the corner market. What's wrong with that?" whined Mark Chagal, a plumber in Tacoma. "Sometimes I just really don't have the time to walk all the way to New York for business meetings. Flying is much faster, and even though it can be expensive from Sarasota, which has a pretty small airport, I think it's worth the money," quipped real estate broker Vincent Van Go. "See, now I know that, even if we've done this before, at least some of the details are different. The artists' names, and using "Go" in a bit about transportation, that's all new material," said Vandewalker close to press time.
A Tennessee woman was innocently licking envelopes one day last month when she got a paper cut on her tongue. Unbeknownst to her, the glue used on the envelopes was an old formula that is tasty and nutritious to roaches. In the weeks that followed, the cut on the woman's tongue developed into a painful swelling. When the swelling got so big that she couldn't talk or eat, she went to a doctor. The doctor decided that the pus needed to be drained, and so he punctured the growth. What came out was not pus, but thousands of tiny cockroaches. The woman's tongue eventually healed up just fine, but the doctor had to stop practicing medicine because he knew he would never be able to look at another tongue. He is now a monk in New Jersey and has taken a lifelong vow of silence. "This is actually a much more common event than many people understand," said Liah B.S. Baloney of the University of Minnesota's Urban Legends Research Department. "We have seen reports of people who had whole wasp nests in their mouths, or ant colonies, or even thousands of rat eggs. The moral of this story is that you should never lick anything that hasn't been sterilized. Also you should never give a ride to a hitchhiker who has a hook for a hand. But you should forward that email where Bill Gates is going to give that sick little boy money. God knows, it's the only chance that poor boy has."
More and more policy makers and business people are turning to a young generation of mutated freaks for clues as to what the future may hold. Top companies such as Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Pepsico, and Wal-Mart all have at least one mutant child on staff or held against their will. Rumors that these children are regularly trusted with billion-dollar decisions have often been denied by PR reps, but insiders tell stories of cryptic predictions rendered in crayon or Mojo-Jojo voices. There are even indications that Worldcom's resident predictor child was not psychic at all, just a deformed freak, which lead to some bad decisions on the part of the non-psychic adults running the company. The competition for these freak babies can be fierce. Top companies are rumored to have spies in maternity wards who will steal away a baby at the first sign of a swollen, glistening cranium or tiny, malformed limbs. This practice leads to many non-psychic freak stolen children being dumped in rivers near company buildings. Often these children have other mutant powers--such as laser vision or burning acid drool--which wreak havoc on those areas' ecosystems.