Satire: March 2005 Archives

Roy Schiff is finding it more difficult to find room on his walls these days.

"I treasure every one of them," Roy said as he described how he won each of them. "This one," He said, holding up a golden medallion held by a red, white, and blue striped ribbon, "I won by having the average score for diving in college finals. Coach said it was remarkable for someone with an average score up to that point make it into finals. And then to walk away with this baby. It was sweet."

Now Schiff needs to find more room on his mantle for the gold Average Cup that he won for having the average time of 2 hours, 3 minutes, and 46.3 seconds for the Larry Bud Mellman Memorial St. Patricks Day Marathon in St. Ives, Ohio.

Schiff holds averages in six different individual sports:

• Diving
  
• Marathons
  
• Model Rocketry
  
• Skydiving
  
• Surfboarding
  
• Competitive Staring
  

He also holds averages in three different team sports:

• Hockey
  
• Synchronized Swimming
  
• Tag-Team Hopscotch
  

Schiff looks forward to this spring, when he'll begin training for another, less well-known, sport. Competitive streaking.

"There are several averages that I want to break," Schiff said. "I hope that with some training I'll be able to average them."

Schiff doesn't have any illusions of averageness, though. He realizes that it might take him several years of light training to average those records.

-- Staff reporter -- bs

Parents struggling to control their hyperactive ADHD kids have a new weapon in their arsenol - NK-U-0T. Temporarily called "Wonder-Z" by its manufacturer, Dippy Drugs, Wonder-Z is expected to sell like hotcakes when it hits the pharmacy shelves this fall.

"We expect to ship a massive number of pills," Rob Thompson, CEO of Dippy Drugs said. "We plan to have Wonder-Z to all of the major pharmacy chains by the time school begins in the fall."

That should be a relief to parents as well as to teachers, who often complain that there aren't enough options when it comes to dealing with ADHD kids.

"They just bounce off of the walls," Judy Hankins, a teacher at Rosewood Middle School in Portland, Maine said. "They take their pills but it just doesn't seem to help sometimes. They need something stronger."

Mrs Hankins describes some of the most unruly behavior of one of her ADHD students. "He'll just be sitting there listening to me teach and then, BOOM, his hand goes in the air and he asks a question."

Mrs Hankins describes another time when the kids in her class were working on a project. "He always wanted to be involved. He would ask questions, do the work, and even redo some of it if he didn't think it was right. I thought he was just going to drop dead of exhaustion. He really scared me sometimes."

With diagnoses of ADHD on the rise, officials at the Centers For Disease Control are preparing to issue an ADHD epidemic warning.

"It's just spreading by leaps and bounds," Dr. Roy Tims, and epidemiologist at the center said. "Every time we think we have it cornered, it mutates." Tims and his collegues are planning to distribute a pamphlet with warning signs of ADHD infection to hospitals and clinics over the next few months. Some of the warning signs included are :

• Wakefulness during the daytime
  
• Inability to ignore teachers or parents during discussions
  
• Inability to disinterest themselves in schoolwork
  
• Reading
  
• Asking questions
  
• An excited but restful look during the day
  
• Normal bowel movements
  
• Desire for physical activity
  

Dr Tims recommends taking your child to see your family doctor if he or she exhibits two or more of these symptoms.

The new drug, Wonder-Z is in the same class of drugs as Valium. One capsule, they say, will put the unruly child straight to sleep. No more hyperactivity. You will need to make sure that the snoring doesn't disturb other children, though, which could be solved with another drug, tentatively called I-Kilz-U, which is due out early next year pending FDA approval.

--staff reporter--bs

Ramallah, West Bank - Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia gets a lot of mail these days. But while he was sorting through his mail last Wednesday one envelope caught his eye. "I just couldn't believe it," Qureia said. "There it was, right in my mailbox. I kept looking to it so to verify that it was for me."

It was Ahmed's lucky day. The front of the envelope declared that he may already be a winner. As the Prime Minister ripped into the envelope, thoughts of what the Palestinian Authority could do with $10 million (U.S.) raced through his mind.

Qureia and his staff rushed to fill out the paperwork and one staff member braved Israeli gunships to get the letter to the post office. The mail between the U.S. and the West Bank is slow, so Saeb made the extra effort. "I just dodged and ran," Saeb Shaath said. "I knew how important it is to Mr. Qureia. I wanted it to get back in time."

Prime Minister Qureia will have to hold his breath until March 17th to find out if he's won. If he has, the Prize Patrol will show up at his door with balloons and confetti to present him with Publisher's Clearinghouse's trademark oversized check made out to Mr. Qureia. The Prime Minister can pick up his real check from the Publisher's Clearing house corporate offices in the United States.

Congratulations Prime Minister!

staff reporter - BS

Kennet, Missouri -- In a shocking conclusion to 12-year-old Jason Williams' attempted murder trial, the jury has delivered another shocking verdict - death by electrocution.

On November 20th, 2004, the same jury returned a guilty verdict in nine of the eleven counts against Jason Williams, which ranged from "conspiracy to commit murder" to "attempted murder in the first degree with special aggravated circumstances" - the latter allowing capitol punishment to be considered. Parents and politicians were outraged and filed complaints with the court.

"Justice has been done," Judge Thomas Nelson said at the time. "Hopefully he'll get the chair."

The case began in May 2004, when Jason fired off a series of rubberbands at his 7th grade history teacher.

"I was terrified," Mrs Alexander said. "He could have killed me. I didn't know what was going on," She recounted. "One minute I was teaching the class, the next minute projectiles were whizzing by my head. I dropped to the floor to keep from being shot."

When Mrs Alexander had dropped to the floor, she dropped onto the supplies that she was carrying to create a map of the world. One of those items was a compass and another was a wooden ruler.

The compass entered her chest point first and punctured her left lung, while the ruler entered between two ribs and punctured her liver. As she rolled off of the equipment, the ruler broke off, leaving more than eight inches embedded in her liver.

She was rushed to Kennet Memorial Hospital, where surgeons worked feverishly to stop the bleeding and seal her ruptured lung.

"It was touch and go," Dr Bill Pike said. "It was more go than touch, actually. We thought we had lost her several times, but she pulled through."

Mrs Alexander spent six weeks undergoing liver treatments and cosmetic surgery to heal the wounds, followed by two months of physical therapy.

Based on accounts by other students, who testified that Jason had planned to shoot Mrs Alexander while she passed his desk, the jury concluded that his intention was to catch her unawares in the hope of doing considerable harm. At this time it is difficult to speculate how the jury made the leap to attempted murder.

The jury's recommendation, which was accepted by Judge Nelson, was for death by electrocution.

Jason's sentence was scheduled to be carried out on May 29th unless an appeal is filed.

-staff reporter-bs

Nakuru, Kenya -- Scientists studying cave paintings in Kenya have announced that they have translated some of the oldest cave paintings ever found there.

"We believe that we have deciphered what most of them mean," Dr David Drummlin said on Thursday. "There are quite a few that we're still working on, but I think we've figured out the gist of what they were painting about."

Drummlin explained that all of the paintings in the cave are between 8,000 and 10,000 years old, making them some of the oldest ever discovered. That they are in one of the dryest caves in the world has helped to preserve them over the millenia.

The paintings near the mouth of the cave are the oldest, dating around 10,000 years ago. The paintings get younger as they move deeper into the cave, the youngest dated at about 8,000 years old. The age difference between each set of paintings gets shorter, indicating that as time went on, the painting activity increased.

"We speculate that there may be as little as a few years' difference between some of the newest sets," Drummlin said. "There was almost a frenzy of paintings at the end. Then, all of a sudden, they stop. Poof."

It is speculated that some major event happened in the area that either killed the painters or drove them to another region.

"The interesting part is what the paintings are about," Drummlin said as he gave reporters a tour. "It seems that they were concerned about some of the same global issues that we are concerned with today. The main one, it seems, is global warming."

Drummlin explains that the deciphered paintings are warnings to other cavemen that excessively large fires were contributing to greenhouse gases. The prehistoric scientists had predicted a major catastrophe like the one that had wiped out the dinosaurs. Little did they know, however, that the dinosaurs were actually wiped out after a meteor struck the Earth about 65 million years ago.

The cavemen had noticed that the grasslands that they had hunted over centuries had been steadily getting more sparse. The scientists among them blamed lack of sunlight and increases in temperatures for the changes.

"What causes things to heat up?" Drummlin asked. "Fire, of course. The cavemen blamed the rapid spread of cooking and heating fires for the increases in temperatures and more smoke in the air. The smoke blocked out the sunlight, which stunted grass growth. And those increases in average temperatures for climate change that reduced the average annual rainfall amounts. Consequently, grasses became more sparse and the game that they hunted began to migrate away to find greener pastures. It was a serious problem for them."

The newest cave paintings showed a frenzy of activity that lead up to a certain event. "The same symbols appear over and over again. There was something in particular that they were worried about. The particular event, though, evades translation."

Drummlin's team will continue their work over the summer months and will return to the U.S. to begin planning their next expedition for 2006.

The team's findings will appear in next month's Caveman Quarterly.

-staff reporter-bs

Tallahassee, Florida -- Jeb Bush was so upset with the Supreme Court for not defending his quickly-crafted Terri's Law that he punched a hole through a filing cabinet. After he calmed down, he began working on a new law to try to sidestep the courts.

In 2003 Jeb Bush quickly rushed through the Florida Legislature a bill that became known as "Terri's Law". This law made it illegal to allow Terri Schiavo to die by witholding feeding. The courts subsequently declared the law unconstitutional. Jeb Bush had hoped that the U.S. Supreme Court would take up the case and create a national precedent for disallowing the intentional withholding of vital nutrients or hydration. The U.S. Supreme Court decided to not hear the case, which let the lower court's decision that the law was unconstitutional stand.

The new law, enacted on March 7, goes even further. Since one of the downfalls of Terri's Law was that it applied to only one person, Jeb Bush decided to write the new law to apply to everyone.

So, as of March 7, 2005, it is illegal to die within the state of Florida. If you are caught in the act of dying, you will be fined up to $10,000 and may have to spend a year in jail. If you are caught discussing or planning your own death, it is punishable by a fine up to $5,000 and six month's in jail.

"We just think that death is unnatural," Bush said. "It's an alternative lifestyle that we're just not willing to accept anymore. We're not going to let dead people push their lifestyles on us any more."

staff reporter - BS