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Dover DE – Post Apocalyptic Supply Inc., the nation’s largest supplier of survival gear for those who will be alive after the world’s next mega-catastrophe, has announced plans to go public this October.
The company’s recent introduction of its new E-Z Underground Shelter Kit has been a phenomenal success, says company CEO Walter Shakely.
“Our E-Z Underground Shelters are getting snapped up like there’s no tomorrow, excuse the pun,” says Shakely. “For just $99,999 you get everything you need to create a hidden underground refuge guaranteed to keep you alive for over a year after the apocalypse. Long before that time, of course, the cannibalistic phase will set in, and our motto is if they can’t find you they can’t eat you. You get over 2,000 freeze-dried meals, mostly dried peas, carrots, and peanut butter sandwiches, beer, enough water for one bath a month, a table, two fold-up chairs, a battery-powered lamp, a .22 pistol for when the beer runs out, ha ha, two cots and air pillows, so bring the missus, blankets, toothpaste, all the basic necessities, and even a subscription to our ezine, “Post Apocalyptic Survival Tips.”. We’ll even pay to dig the hole in your back yard or wherever you want the shelter. Just don’t disappear down the hole till your check clears, ha ha, that’s a joke.”
Reportedly, 2012 Mayan Calender End-of-World frenzy has been fueling growth for Post Apocalyptic Supply, says the Wall Street Journal, with revenues up 47% for the second quarter, and earnings per share hitting $4.71. The company is projecting cash-on-hand to reach $75 million by the end of the fiscal year, prompting Shakely to comment, “We would like to issue a dividend but since I am the only current stockholder, it’s not needed. I can dip into the trough anytime I want and nobody’s the wiser ha ha.”
With the daily news full of reports of suicide bombers, terrorist threats, kids shooting kids on the playgrounds, birds falling dead out of the skies, priests raping kids and sometimes other priests, U.S. soldiers wasting Afghan civilians, including allies, and in one undocumented case, a home computer printer reportedly becoming possessed, grabbing a man’s pajama collar and garroting him to death, there is a sense that something is out-of-joint in the world at large and maybe we really are in the End of Days.
“We feel we are riding a wave of incredible growth,” says Shakely. “It’s a case of being at the right place at the right time. We expect to raise over a hundred million on our IPO, and almost every penny will go into developing innovative new products to help the average citizen stay alive after the mushroom cloud. Long-term growth prospects could not be better for our industry and Wall Street has definitely got a hard-on.”
 Russian agent at time of arrest
Venice, Fla — Where the Sun Don’t Shine Nudist Camp in Venice, Fla was the scene of a recent major FBI raid as agents, posing as nudist camp members, sprang a trap on a dozen alleged Russian spies au naturel.
“This is the first major FBI operation in history in which agents went undercover in the altogether to investigate naked suspects,” says agent Julie Nubilstorm. “In essence our cover was to get uncovered. We were aware that this particular nudist camp was functioning as a staging ground for a group of unclad Russian agents who thought they’d be safe from surveillance since there is apparently no place to conceal surveillance equipment in a nudist camp and none of them ever dreamed FBI agents would show up in there in an analogous unclad state. Hence they frequently gathered in this place to exchange all sorts of classified intelligence, false passports, and secret code names, thinking they were not being observed by law enforcement. But actually FBI agents were lurking all over the place, taping and recording their every move using such high-tech devices as microphones disguised as pubic hair follicles, micro-cameras hidden in body cavities, and, in one case, an ultra-sensitive video camera in the tip of a pina colada swizzelstick.”
While details of the operation remain sketchy, it appears the FBI agents had been surveilling the naked Russian ring for months, eavesdropping and often even masquerading as fellow Russians by joining in on their thickly-accented jam sessions out on the beach. “Ve found not too deefecult to blend een,” quips Nubilstorm, “und mooch surprised they talk so mooch about same theeng always, und that eez American bazeball.”
Although it might appear to the casual observer that the twelve Russians (six men and six women) were actually just tourists on an X-rated fling in the West, agents claim to have captured audio of conversations in which incriminating things were discussed like rockets, Reds, pirates, nationals, rays (presumably referring to laser-ray weapons), heat (a slang term for guns), bucks, and supersonics.
When it was pointed out by a News-Ruse reporter that all those terms are actually names of major league baseball teams or NBA teams, Nubilstorm responded, “But you can ask how a bunch of Russkies can know so much about U.S. sports. That’s suspicious behaviour right there. Not that it matters at this point since they’re already on their way back to Russia. They’ve gotten swapped for two American spies, both coming home from Siberia. You might say our spies came in from the cold and theirs got rounded up on the beach.”
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New York. — Vinnie Gelano (“Big Jelly”) always knew he was really a girl.
“Even when I was collecting from deadbeats out on the street, breaking bones, whatever, I always knew I had this soft spot inside, a feminine side to my personality,” he says. “I always felt like, you know, fuggettaboutit, Vinnie this is not you, you moron. You were not meant just to crack kneecaps and break balls. You have other dimensions. Some day the real you will come out. Wait and see if it don’t.”
Last Thursday it happened. Vinnie, at age 35, became Veronica Gelano in a five hour sex-change operation at St. Christoper Medical Center in Evanston.
“I look in the mirror I can not believe my f—— eyes, I am one good-looking broad now. Now if I can just get a f—— date with Aston Kutcher, Ha ha ha.”
Vinnie says he understands at last who he’s really
been all his life under the tough Mafia gangster exterior, like why he’d go to “Twilight” movies on the sly, why he never could parallel park worth a damn, and why he always liked caramel latte’ with whipped cream and two pinks better than scotch or beer.
“The broad you see before you has been screaming bloody murder to get out my whole life,” he, uh she, told a News-Ruse reporter. “And I am going to flaunt it, baby, you watch me.”
So how do Vinnie’s, uh, Veronica’s old Mafia chums treat her now? “Truthfully it’s not a big issue with us,” she says. “We been having a problem of being called sexist anyway since there were no made guys who were women, if you get my drift. Unless you know a made guy named Veronica, because I don’t. Or Betty or Sue neither. So this solves that problem. Now we got a made guy with all the right stuff in all the right places. Hey, nobody can say the Mob is not equal opportunity any more.”
Sacramento, Calif. – California state lawmakers today debated approval of a controversial menage a trois marriage bill, setting the stage for the state to become the first in the country to allow triple-person marriages.
The action comes after a federal appeals court declared California’s ban on gay two-person marriages unconstitutional, saying it violated the civil rights of gay and lesbian couples, and the new bill is viewed by some as an extension of unconventional marriage rights based on that groundbreaking decision.
“I see nothing in the Constitution barring three-person unions,” says state lawmaker Bradley McAlmond. “Americans have a right to sleep with whomever they want and as many whomevers as they want, including several whomevers at the same time. Menage a trois marriages just make sense. I expect that the day is not far off when committed triples will walk down the aisle in churches and synagogues all over this nation.”
However opponents promise to fight triple marriages with a ballot measure that would allow voters to overturn any measure that gets passed. Says Millet Simony of the Citizens Against Menage A Trois Marriages, “We will take this to the ballot box if necessary. We think it is not only un-American and unconstitutional but plain revolting to think of three people all becoming each other’s spouses and I don’t much care if it’s male-male-male, male-male-female, female-female-male or female-male-female,” then after a moment of thought adds, “or also female-female-female, is that all of’m? Anyway, how on earth do you raise normal kids who have to listen to a crowd having mob sex in the bedroom every night is what I want to know.”
But despite such reservations, observers predict it is only a matter of time until manage a trois marriage takes its place on the American scene. In fact Alaska is said to be seriously considering it though for a more practical reason. Says State Sen. Balively Sycon, “It just seems to me this concept offers an excellent way to promote family values in a state like ours which doesn’t have enough women to go around.”
Austin, Tex. — An entire Komodo Dragon genome has reportedly got loose from a MySQL database at Infinite Loop Biological Research Co. in Austin, Tex. and is already starting to breed and reproduce itself in computers and computer networks worldwide.
The nightmare of a giant lizard taking up residence inside your computer is fast becoming a reality, say alarmed computer experts. “Forget about worms and viruses,” says Stanley Kubinowski of computer security firm, SKSF Inc. “Where those kind might
just crash your computer, this thing will eat it whole then burp it out. Trying to salvage your hard drive after a Komodo Dragon attack would be like trying to reconsitute a chicken out of Chicken McNuggets. It ain’t gonna happen.”
What to look for, he says, is dollops of foul-smelling saliva on your computer and keyboard, as well as gutteral burping noises coming out of the machine as you try to boot it up. Some victims have also reported a strange feeling of being patiently watched by unseen eyes while typing or surfing the Net. “Be especially vigilant about sterilizing your computer with bleach if you encounter the Komono’s saliva,” cautions Kubinowski, “as the animal is known to use the saliva as a killing weapon, and will patiently watch any prey who has come in contact with it for hours or even days until its 24 strains of bacteria take effect. Then it pounces.”
As for a fix, says Kubinowski, that can only come from one place, namely Infinite Loop Biological Research, from which the beast escaped and started making millions of copies of itself, but so far no one has been able to reach the company for comment. Reportedly, its phones just ring and ring and nobody answers.
MEMBERS TOO SHY TO ATTEND
Miami, Fl. – The Introverts Association of America has called off its third annual convention, scheduled to be held in Miami in April, according to Tim Sassidy, the IA of A spokesperson. This was to be the association’s third annual convention but, as in the case of the previous two, it had to be canceled due to the fact that its members are too shy to attend.
“It’s not that hard to understand,” says Sassidy, “when you consider the fact that attending the convention would require our members to actually meet each other, shake hands, intermingle, act sociable, maybe even have a beer together, and other scary things like that. As you know, by nature introverts much prefer to be alone, preferably with their doors locked, and they are particularly miserable in crowds, even crowds of other introverts. Therefore we have decided to offer only virtual conventions in the future, so that our members can attend without ever actually showing up in person. Instead, they’ll be represented online by means of atavars – little computer-generated people – in a virtual convention center setting. Members will be able to choose from a wide variety of atavars we’ll offer, some even representing famous extroverts like Winston Churchill or General George Patton.”
Sassidy claims that virtual conventions will enable even the most painfully introverted IA of A member to socialize and maybe even let his or her hair down a little at the convention. Not too much, though, he hopes.
“We do realize that the use of atavars may tend to elicit overreactions in the direction of extroversion from some of our introverts,” says Sassidy. “For example men who are afraid of women in real life may choose to become dashing virtual male atavars and make passes at women who have chosen be become busty female virtual atavars, and then we’re on the royal road to betraying the guiding principle of the IA of A, which says, `Life is a shell game. Stay in yours and don’t come out.”
 Hungry hands reach for Big Mac
Saint Sozy, France — French paleontologists have discovered a Neanderthal cave painting said to represent hands eagerly reaching for a Big Mac, or at least proto-Big Mac, according to the journal, Ancient Discoveries.
According to Jean-Claude Bouisquet, curator of the Museum of French Archeology, the painting was found during excavation of a Neanderthal cave encampment at La Roche-Cotard, and can be reliably dated to 25,000 B.C.
The painting — about 50 cm high and 40 cm across — depicts a pair of hands reaching hungrily for a stylized depiction of a Big Mac or similar hamburger.
“What is most striking about this painting,” says Bouisquet, “is that this is precisely the time period during which Neanderthals went extinct. One naturally wonders, Could the consumption of fast food have contributed to the extinction? As yet we simply don’t know.”
The abrupt — in archaeological terms — extinction of the Neanderthals has been a scientific mystery for decades. Some have argued that encroaching Cro-Magnons, ancestors of modern humans, hunted and even ate them, presumably devising a wide array of Neanderthal dishes in the process. Other scientists think the Cro-Magnons mated with the Neanderthals, resulting in Cro-Magnerthal offspring, many of which can be seen riding New York City subways today.
Finally, a third (though minority) view among paleontologists is that male Cro-Magnons mated with and then ate female Neanderthals, in effect turning them into edible playmates. This theory is based on evidence in the paleolithic record that as the Neanderthals declined in number, many of the Cro-Magnons put on weight. However a majority of scientists believe the weight gain is more likely attributable to between-meals snacking on elk and bison during cave-painting sessions.
In any event, with the discovery of a stylized hamburger painting in a Neanderthal site, together
with bone and tool discoveries indicating this cave was the upper paleolithic equivalent of a fast food franchise, all bets are off regarding the fate of the Neanderthals.
“Suddenly, a brand new can of worms, or should I say “worm holes” is open,” says Bouisquet. “So naturally we ask: How do such dumb brutes know so much about hamburgers, eh?,” he continues. “Can it be these roughhewn cave men are, as we say, time travelers, able to visit our present-day cities and forage for food at McDonalds and Burger King? Can we imagine that — somehow, perhaps with the l’aide of extraterestials, they manage to escape Ice Age Europe and make their way through worm holes to our warmer present-day climes, probablement Arizona and Florida? And if this is true, as I myself think it may well be, then there was no extinction of the Neanderthals at all –instead what we see is the Neanderthal becoming a sort of primeval snow bunny that has migrated to the American Sunbelt along with everybody else!”
New York – According to informed sources the government has come up with an imaginative solution to the problem of invasive image scanning at airports. Many travelers, especially women, have complained about the fact that the new scanning technology in effect showed them naked to the TSA screening attendant. And they have been equally unhappy about the alternative, being “patted-down.”
Now federal planners have devised a solution, says a knowledgeable insider. “To defuse the sexual intimacy issue,” she says, “all personnel who operate invasive scanners and do pat-downs will undergo mandatory castration at government expense. In effect, only eunuchs will be allowed to view airline travelers by means of the new scanning technology or conduct pat-downs. Since these personnel will in effect be
neither male nor female, and will be without any sexual orientation whatsoever, no one need fear being exposed in a lascivious manner while passing through airport security.”
The source added that wannabe eunuchs chosen for this task will receive a 4.38% pay differential plus a $375 hardship bonus for agreeing to undergo the surgical procedure needed to qualify for the newly-created position of “Neutered Level I Scanning Technician” but will not be invited to federal employee social functions.
Nuevo Laredo, Mexico – The Nuevo Laredo Tourist Department (NLTD) has announced its newest tourist attraction, the Narco-Terrorism Tour for Gringos, which is to be launched August 10 from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.
“This exciting adventure will appeal to many rich gringos, we think,” enthuses Alberto X. Rodriguez, deputy chief of the NLTD. “For just ten thousand American dollars you can visit Mexico’s border regions and towns where even la policia won’t go. And we’re sure Americans will be safe the whole time and not be shot or kidnapped.”
Participants will be loaded onto armour-plated buses with bulletproof windows and blowout-resistant tires and taken on a 500 mile journey of discovery along the Mexican border through a region where over 817 Mexican civilians have been shot just during the last month. Several of the towns are virtual ghost towns and a couple of the others even lack sheriffs since most have long since vamoosed to the U.S. or been riddled with bullets by warring gangs.
“Nobody comes down here anymore,” says Rodriguez, “so this is our idea to bring more tourists. There’s a great chance to see history in the making. Some towns even have active gang wars going on and monuments and cemeteries worth seeing. All Americanos will stay at good hotels, not four-star maybe but not too many roaches either, ha ha. In the hotel at night you get free roasted goat meat sandwiches and tequila in the bar, and one free trip to the barmaid for the guys, ha ha.”
But there are even more perks. According to Rodriguez, all participants will receive free use of bulletproof vests during the tour and will be accompanied by knowledgeable tour guides armed with automatic weapons.
“We don’t think many old ladies, senoras, will come on this tour,” says Rodriguez. “Our target market is rich young male gringos. We think we will get everybody through in one piece and they all will have a good time. So tell your readers, Hey, come visit Mexico, see what all the news coverage is about. Maybe be in the news yourself.”
Athens, Greece — Archaeologists digging in the Greek Peloponnese in the region of ancient Sparta have reported the amazing discovery of a virtually intact Spartan high school once attended by at least 100 students.
The Spartans were the ancient Greeks known for their warlike society and, well, spartan lifestyle as depicted in the popular Hollywood animated movie 300. Some historians claim they were even a model for the Nazis of the 1930’s and 40’s, with their ruthless practices of eugenics (killing babies), unenlightened child rearing (killing nerds), brutal warfare (killing neighbors), uneatable food (self-mutilation) and a type of romance based mainly on rape.
Close analysis of the excavated site of the high school has provided priceless knowledge about what it was like to be an ancient male Spartan high school brat around 500 BC. “There was no goofing around in this school or not doing what they told you, I can promise you that,” says lead archaeologist Aristotle D. Anatole of the Greek Institute of Archaeological Science. “You fuck up, you die. Period. No `Go to the principal’s office.’ They drop you off a cliff in the Aegean Sea, that is that.”
What kinds of classes did ancient Spartan kids take at this high school? According to writing on some stone tablets it appears there were only specific skills taught, not classes, the most popular being spear thrusting, sword hacking, eye gouging, ear biting, balls squeezing, and shield banging, the latter possibly an ancient form of band practice. In any case, the Spartans clearly were not into social studies.
Even so lunchtime was apparently much like at present-day suburban American high schools though with a bit more restricted menu. While today’s American students complain about having to eat spaghetti-o’s and macaroni-and-hamburger the Spartan lunchtime menu consisted of only one item, chicken blood mixed with finely ground grain meal, an ancient type of sports drink referred to as soliorana, roughly translated as “shit shake.”
Also like today’s high school kids, the ancient Spartans went on field trips. But theirs were different. “The fields and woods around the school are littered with bashed in skulls and fractured bones,” says Anatole. “They liked to chase down Helot slaves and bash their heads in. This was their idea of a learning experience, like today kids dissect frogs. Remember, the Spartans were trying to produce stone cold killers, not doctors and lawyers, and murdering people is something you can only learn by doing.”
What’d the Spartan boys get in the way of sex education? The answer was gym class. Most days the Spartan girls would show up and exercise naked out on the athletic field while the boys watched. “But it was all watch, no touch,” says Anatole. “Even less fun than cyber-sex, if you ask me. In fact this may be the only form of sex education ever known that was even more masturbation-inducing than going to a Catholic school.”
Eventually, the Spartan superman culture faded away, he says, especially after the Helot slaves revolted and the neighboring Thebesians invaded. “It just got not-fun anymore to be a Spartan killing machine,” says Anatole. “Just like the Nazis 2500 years later, they found out being Superman can be a major pain in the butt.”
Raleigh NC – For unemployed twentysomething Reginald J Wainsborough the good news was that when his Uncle Harley died a month ago he left Reginald a diamond brooch worth $1 million. The bad news was that Uncle Harley’s will neglected to mention where the brooch was stored. That left Reginald hiring an expensive P.I. to track down the brooch.
“I was fairly sure it was in a safe deposit box,” says Reginald. “But the P.I. couldn’t find one in Uncle Harley’s name anywhere in the U.S. I was getting desperate. That brooch was my sole source of income or potential income and I could not find it.
“Then I happened upon a Facebook ad for an iPhone app that said it would let you talk to the dead. I put two and two together and realized I could use that app to communicate with Uncle Harley and score that safe deposit box number and address.”
The $0.99 app, it turned out, had been developed by Haisi Pellinican, a Haitian witch doctor, who did not return repeated phone calls from a News-Ruse reporter. However our technical staff analyzed the app and found that it works on the same principle as a Ouija board and requires the user to chant a prescribed incantation over his or her iPhone while lighting up a nonfilter cigarette as a burnt offering, and then calling out the dead person’s name three times in a loud voice. Our technical staff tested the app on one of her own dead relatives and sure enough did receive two messages back, the first being “You will have a party,” followed by “Financial well-being is coming your way.” Our technical staff reported that both are apparently word-for-word copies of messages often found inside Chinese fortune cookies.
However Reginald, when he received the message “Go where your heart tells you,” assumed this to be an oblique reference to his Uncle’s former mistress, Marilyn Hart, and immediately confronted her.
Amazingly, Ms. Hart admitted having received the diamond brooch a year earlier, and revealed that she had sold it to purchase a condo overlooking Tampa Bay. Reginald, threatening legal action, was able to negotiate a period of free rent from Ms. Hart in exchange for the missing brooch, and he now resides with her in the condo. A happy ending? Not quite, as Reginald soon encountered a brand new problem caused by the iPhone app he had downloaded.
“I found the app had caused my iPhone to become possessed by a demon,” says Reginald. “It was tremendously upsetting. One morning the iPhone woke me and Marilyn — Miss Hart — up making strange noises and vibrating. When I tried to turn it off it made a shrill screaming noise like an alarm clock. Marilyn — Miss Hart — had to throw the damned thing off the balcony into the Bay to stop it.”
How can you tell if your iPhone is possessed? “You know it is if it starts making spitting static-like noises like a radio between channels,” says Reginald, “in which case the best thing to do is just ditch it. As far as I know there are no anti-demon firewalls available out there.”
 Living Dead Attend Reunion
Collegetown, Penn — Penn State’s 75-year college reunion was disrupted Tuesday by the arrival of a horde of living dead from nearby Collegetown Cemetery. Based on cemetery dental records, all of the living dead who showed up at the reunion are believed to be bona fide graduates of the Penn State Class of ‘35.
Six men and seven women — mere skeletons at this point, though two of the women were wearing wigs believed to have been filched from the local Beauty Express Wiggery — arrived en masse at the reunion held in the mansion of Bernice Dowderston, heiress to the enormous Dowderston eyeglasses nosepad fortune.
“Actually there were only four of us old women still alive to attend the reunion,” says Mrs. Dowderston. “Myself and three others, all pushing 100. It was a pretty dismal affair so you can imagine
how delighted we all were to hear the doorbell ring. But when I opened the door and saw those living dead on the front porch I nearly had a conniption. Of course I asked them in, dead or alive, that’s just how I was brought up. And they were served punch and hors doeuvres like everybody else.”
Apparently the living dead had somehow picked up on email invitations sent out to a list of ‘35 grads Mrs. Dowderston had obtained from the Penn State registrar’s office. How the living dead intercepted those emails is unknown unless it was through the cemetery custodian’s Android on which he customarily chatted while riding on the cemetery’s Ride-a-Mow lawn mower.
But in any case it soon became apparent that the living dead had arrived with an agenda of their own.
Refusing punch and hors doeuvres they immediately launched into a wild danse macabre in Mrs. Dowderston’s living room. Forming a circle the thirteen skeletons forcibly joined hands with the four
old women and danced a kind of high-stepping polka, knocking over lamps and breaking the punch bowl, which spilled its contents onto the carpet.
“That punchbowl belonged to my great-grandmother,” fumed Mrs. Dowderston. “Now it was in a thousand pieces with huckleberry punch all over my carpet. That was the last straw. I went and let Old Sam out of the basement.”
Old Sam is Mrs. Dowderston’s watchdog, an aging but still capable pit bull. Apparently Old Sam viewed the dancing skelatons as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to increase his cache of bones under the house and soon had reduced several of the now-alarmed skeletons to piles of debris, then proceeded to chase the others in a disorganized panic down the block.
“It turned out to be an interesting reunion, all in all,” says Mrs. Dowderston. “I had always wondered what happened to all those wonderful young, ambitious people I went to college with way back in the thirties. Now I know.”
Vail, Col – Bernice J. Sommerstein has sued ski instructor and admitted gigolo, Brad Chadley, for failing to perform according to an oral agreement entered into following Sommerstein’s ski lesson on February 3, asking $250 in monetary damages and $1 million for extreme emotional distress.
“Somebody should do something about these good-looking ski guys who prey upon us unsuspecting housewives,” says Sommerstein.
“In my own business, which is running a pet spa, if somebody turns over a dog to me, I take care of that dog. I expect the same treatment when I fork over my own money to another professional person, even if it is a gigolo. I gave payment for services to be rendered and no services were rendered, far from it, which cost me not only money but also a personal scar on my emotions.” The defendant has not yet hired an attorney to represent him and has failed to respond to several News-Ruse emails and chat invitations.”
Vancouver, BC – In what may finally put to rest the perennial “Does Bigfoot exist?” controversy, a team of Canadian scientists from Saskatchewan State College announced Tuesday that it has discovered a race of pygmy Bigfoots living deep in the remote pine forest of British Columbia.
“We tracked a trail of their massive footprints for three days,” says lead archaeologist Jacob Standunsky. “In terms of shoe size, these were fourteens at least. The tracks had all the earmarks of Big Foot footprints and after three days we finally spotted the creatures, four of them, both male and female, crouched around a campfire, feasting on a slaughtered rabbit.”
The Big Foots, it turns out, are “big” in foot only, being tiny hairy people with gigantic feet. When they spotted the scientists, they immediately scattered helter-skelter into the forest and disappeared. “Apparently they have evolved snowshoe-like feet to enable them to walk over the frozen crust of the snow” says Standunsky, “together with extreme self-consciousness about their big feet, which is presumably why they stay hidden in the forest.”
Cambridge, Mass – As if there weren’t enough catastrophes hanging over the world already, Harverford University’s World Crisis Laboratory has identified a brand new threat to planet earth, namely, early risers.
What are early risers? They’re those zombie-like folks seen haunting subway platforms at five and six o’clock in the morning; driving cars with headlights on in the gloom of early winter mornings, even in dense snowstorms; ascending in office building elevators eager to get to their offices at a time of day when normal people are still under covers in warm beds hitting the snooze button on their clock radio for the sixth time.
But what is most disturbing and destabilizing about early risers, says Professor Alvin Woolenheiser of The World Crisis Laboratory, is their almost inhumanly sunny dispositions, chirpiness, and enthusiasm at very early hours of the workday morning. “These people cast a shroud of shallow cheerfulness over what should be a time of profound stupor in the American workplace,” says Wollenheiser. “Imagine the morale effect of dragging yourself into your office at 8 AM hoping for a private conference consisting of you and a cup of coffee and maybe a gluten-laced donut, and instead finding yourself face-to-face with a crowd of early risers who’ve been there since 7 AM or earlier. Equally disgusting, they’re all wide-awake, full of vim and vigor, and expect you to be the same.”
What’s especially alarming is that early risers are spreading, says Woolenheiser. “During the recent recession, early riser syndrome, as we call it, affected more and more people nationwide and worldwide, apparently eager to protect their jobs from other early risers. It has reached crisis proportions in the U.S. already.” Wollenheiser predicts that at its present rate of advance, drastic societal effects are inevitable. For example, Denny’s may stop serving breakfast after 10 AM. Lunch hours could start as early as 10:30 AM. It could become impossible to get a Big Mac after nine at night.
“The writing’s on the wall,” says Wollenheiser. “It’s like a replay of Body Snatchers. Right now, these people are in the minority, but in a few years, if you’re not one of them, you could wake up one morning very early in your bed and find a cold hand on your shoulder and one of these people staring down at you. It could happen. Believe it. They’re taking us over, one by one, and there’s no going back.”
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