From the Wabbit to the Wehrmacht

Cel-fueled Fascism

It now seems indisputable in the light of numerous and well-documented studies of North American television viewing habits that culpability for the chronic problem of worsening epidemic violence in our public schools including murderous episodes such as the Columbine rampage, now can effectively be traced to a too-long ignored instigator: Bugs Bunny.

Thanks to the decades-long mission of a squad of zealous monitors formed by the Florida Parent Teacher Association, which studied TV programs aired in Florida and other American states since the 1990s, we now have a comprehensive index of the most violent shows on the air. And the worst offenders have turned out to be Bugs, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Tom & Jerry even Rocky and Bullwinkle.

These meticulous findings--counting the number of violent acts per half hour--rated the Warner Brothers characters and others, including Batman, and an ecology-activist called Captain Planet among the worst offenders.

3Rs: Readin', Ritin' and Revolvers

In 1992, TV Guide commissioned a similar study of a typical 18-hour TV broadcast day to determine levels of violence. The US networks and the more popular cable channels were monitored for "purposeful, overt, deliberate behavior involving physical force or weapons against other individuals." There were 1,846 acts of violence that broke down this way:

* Cartoons (471); promos for TV shows (265); movies (221).
Toy commercials (188) actually had nearly three times the violent content of prime time dramas (69).

* Further studies done in both the United States and Canada have shown a positive relationship between early exposure to TV violence and physical aggressiveness as adults.

* The results of a study released in March, 2002 that tracked 700 male and female youths over a seventeen-year period showed a definite relationship between TV viewing habits and acts of aggression and crime in the later life. (1)

It is thanks to such diligent research we can now more accurately assess how mindless “toon” savagery has “desensitized” formative young minds and paved the way for proliferating weapons and gang violence in schools. And to think we were fretting about rap music lyrics, mayhem-themed video games, forensic crime-scene dramas, FOX News war coverage and gun shows for numbing our youth to violence and mayhem when the real culprits have been under our noses for 50 years or more.

Disney shadowed

Although a corresponding link to increased drug abuse to cartoons remains elusive, this is obviously a field for future study and perhaps grounds for additional taxpayer-supported research grants. And while the Disney Studios characters have been a bit less manic than their WB rivals, they were equally prone to violent outbursts, especially Donald Duck. I myself could be persuaded to undertake such a multi-million dollar seven-year study of Donald D and Goofy. In my view, Donald’s unintelligible speech and tantrums are undoubtedly the result of some sort of hallucinogenic delirium the source of which might be uncovered by a frame by frame digital analysis all DD features going back into the mid-1930’s. It’s common knowledge today that a nicotine-dependent Walt Disney himself voiced Mickey Mouse’s falsetto dialogue. But what we do not know is to what narcotic or pharmaceutical agents might have Walt resorted in pursuit of this bizarre vocal effect?

Armed with this with these extremely well documented analyses of decades-long chronic brutality on the animated screen we may now be able to establish that other social ills can be blamed on cartoons: battered wives, cruelty to animals, cheating in sports and in the classroom, income tax evasion, stock fraud, insider trading, tampered electronic voting machines and stolen elections.

Demonic Duck

It is entirely possible that we may also assign to these socially destructive cartoons a contributory role in the outbreak of World War Two and the Holocaust. Several of these hyper-aggressive characters date back to the Great Depression when they were seen across Europe by many thousands of impressionable children who subsequently became ardent members of the Hitler Youth and later the SS and Gestapo.


I myself clearly recall being highly agitated at our neighborhood cinema in Kiskunfelegyhaza, Hungary every time I saw Ignatz the Mouse throw a brick at Krazy Kat and then at home afterward hurling matsoh balls at my twin sister, Chava. Perhaps it’s nothing short of a miracle that today I am not a raving lunatic myself having been repeatedly exposed at a tender age to such animated depredations.



Professor Kurt Stanislaw Jacobi, a native of Northcentral Wallachia, holds a Ph.D. psychoharmonic engineering from Comenius University, Bratislava where he graduated summa cum laude in 1948. During the late 50's, Dr. Jacobi was a visiting scholar on the faculty of CCNY where he first postulated his now famous integrated theory of inversional constructs (ITIC) which ultimately made possible the Apollo moon landings, the Camp David Peace Accords and the inclusion of the annotated biography of Anna May Wong in the required reading curricula of Singapores' public schools.

(1) Visit the American Psychological Association for a
well documented study on this subject.

Debating the Pig Year Daikichi

Japanese Netsuke Boar

I have just been informed by our distinguished Japanese collaborator, Dr. Senji Hosokawa of Sapporo, that some of his astrological calculations regarding the forthcoming Year of the Pig (arriving February 18th in the Asian Lunar Calendar) have been regrettably misinterpreted by a number of financial publications in his country and in neighboring South Korea. Dr. Hosokawa’s extraordinary work in using traditional Oriental astrology and Zodiacal aspects to forecast economic trends in the major Eastern currency markets and commodities exchanges has earned him an unrivaled reputation in the boardrooms of Japan’s largest financial institutions and brokerage houses.

It was doubly surprising then to hear the “Sage of Sapporo” complaining about the “reverse spin” that seemed to be coloring reports of his generally auspicious Hokkaido Horoscopic Market Outlook for 2007.

In traditional lore, Hosokawa says, the Pig represents prosperity, abundance and fulfillment. It is the 12th and final sign of the Oriental Zodiac representing a culmination of the Heavenly Calendar. Each sign is also accented by a particular element which magnifies or sometimes dilutes the basic attributes. Those elements are Air, Wood, Earth, Water, Metal and Fire and it takes 60 years for an element to rotate across the Asian Zodiac. 2007 brings us the Year of the Fire Pig, last seen in 1947. It is also sometimes called the Year of the Red Pig since Fire is associated with that color. Hosokawa says the Fire element would normally intensify and energize the abundance and prosperity attributes of the Pig, but there is a catch. As the Sapporo Sage points out, the Pig has a Yin character and a Yin Fire is more prone to instability than a Yang Fire. Therefore the intensified prosperity of a Pig Year could be unpredictable and volatile.

Euro-boar in bronze

Kenji feels that the problems writers at other journals may be having seems to stem in part from a lack of understanding of the finer points of astrological interpretation and the complex interplay of elemental influences. The Korean-based weekly Seoul Sellers Guide and Satanic Star Chart (affiliated with the Rev. Moon movement) for instance mentioned a “Roasted Pig Forecast” while the usually respected Tokyo Traders Tout and Tipster Sheet spoke of a possible “Fire Sale” of tumbling Nikkei stocks as occurred in another Yin-Fire year, 1997.



Nikkei bored

Asian Markets ended 2006 (the Dog Year has one more month to play out) on a fairly upbeat note with the general expectation of even stronger economic gains in 2007, especially in China where it could really be a year for Red Pigs. Hosokawa says Japan’s outlook is good, too, particularly for machinery, computer and high tech industries along with property, hotel, mining, and insurance though not without the risk of a Yin-Fired third-quarter slowdown that could diminish the traditional Daikichi (good luck) associated with the Pig Year.


Pigs feeding at trough

Hillary: Happy as a pig in daichiki

Politically, the Sapporan says the year could likewise be excellent for some prominent Pigs in the US. Hillary Clinton is a Pig, indeed a Red Pig as some of her opponents no doubt will note. (Her husband is a “Hot Dog” as Fire Dogs are sometimes playfully termed.) Hosokawa says that historically the Democratic Party has been kind to Pig ambitions. Both party founders Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson were Pigs as was President James Buchanan and even Ronald Reagan who spent decades as a Democrat prior to changing parties.



Proving an Arctic Ark

The word that Canadian scientists have newly discovered a massive break in the artic ice shelf (matching the kind previously reported in the Antarctic) and news that the Polar Bear is in trouble due to Global Warming are unpleasant reminders of a climate change path humankind has been down at least once before.

My enterprising Dutch colleague (and onetime in-law) Viscount Wim Van Wynkoop of Utrecht has sent word from his latest expedition in Northeast Turkey that the most recent analysis of splinters from timbers located on the side of Mount Ararat has yielded the clearest evidence yet that he has found the fabled site of Noah’s Ark. The ice crystals found embedded in the timbers also contain ancient arctic plankton and therefore suggest confirmation of Van Wynkoop’s long-held theory of contact with an iceberg.

Aerial view of Ararat site

Possibly lending additional credence to this interpretation are the newly discovered Red Sea Scrolls, a set of cuneiform scriptural passages on sheepskin unearthed by Israeli construction workers near Elat in July 2003. The scrolls, now in the custody of specialists at Beersheba University, were found secreted in large terra cotta jars and are estimated to predate the Qumran scrolls from the Dead Sea by some 3,000 years. Several of the stories, crafted in an early Sumerian-type alphabet, parallel the Old Testament versions but with notable differences.

US version of Noah..note soaring American eagle

The tale of Noah (No-Hah) reveals the ark builder not as a pious patriarch but a sober-minded dealer in exotic animals captured to satisfy the extravagant tastes of Near East potentates and satraps. His noted brother was Hoo-Ha, an itinerant jester who entertained in various Mediterranean courts, often paired with their flamboyant sister Minnie-Ha-Ha, an exotic dancer. In this account, No-hah wasn’t trying to spare his family and the world’s wildlife from the wrath of God but attempting to find the quickest route for getting to India and back again ahead of Phoenician competitors. He was especially keen to secure a contract to supply animals to the new Hanging Gardens rumored to be in the planning stages at Babylon.

As a result of a just-concluded Ice Age and rising waters from retreating polar caps, Van Wynkoop says, this proved far more hazardous than in modern times. No-Hah’s floating menagerie was gashed by an iceberg before foundering on an Anatolian mountaintop. The dealer and his sons were able to recover a few of their precious cargo but both the East Sumatran Rhinoceros and the Himalayan Yeti specimens, in particular, got away. The Yeti also took No-hah’s youngest granddaughter, Shirley, with him. Local legends affirm that the couple and their hirsute heirs operated a popular Greek restaurant on Cyprus called “The Abominable Aegean” until it burned down during the Trojan War. Generations of their rowdier offspring were no doubt responsible for a subsequent spate of werewolf legends across the Balkans. Particularly those in which the lycanthropes seemed to be wearing yarmulkes since Shirley got the Yeti to convert shortly after their elopement in Asia Minor.

Monster ‘Mozzies’ Menace Oz Motorists

Big Mozzie - Big Road Troubles

As if the ongoing Bird Flu threat isn’t enough to trouble our friends Down Under, anxious specialists at the South Australian Royal Entomological Research Station still await additional evidence (such as the capture of a live specimen) of a wholly new crypto-biological phenomenon. According to my esteemed colleague, Dr. Barry Corrigan in Brisbane, who is in close contact with the Adelaide research team, preliminary testimonial evidence collected by state investigators suggests that a mutant strain of gargantuan mosquito (possibly introduced from Indochina) has begun to spread across the Outback and may soon threaten coastal cities.

These monster “mozzies” are nothing if not impressive--approximately eight-and-half-times the size of the largest native species-- and said to resemble fluttering tarantulas with their thick hairy legs.

Unlike ordinary mosquitoes, this jumbo variety has no stomach for blood but apparently feeds rather on a specific type of transmission fluid common to some of the priciest imported automobiles. Owners typically are unaware of the problem until several thousand dollars worth of damage has resulted.

Wealthy ranchers are justifiably alarmed at the prospect of breakdowns, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest petrol station, induced from these attacks. Mercedes and Acuras seem particularly alluring to these creatures although they’ve been known to go after a Volvo or even a Honda on occasion. There is, as yet, no reported instance of them feeding off an American or Australian make.



Iconic Ozzie Classics Ignored


Exactly how these big buzzing bugs (up close they sound roughly like model airplanes, according to witnesses) enter the transmission pan remains a mystery. It’s theorized that they fly close to the ground and obviously never attack a vehicle in motion. Owners of the most at risk car makes are being urged to park their vehicles in secure garages whenever possible.

Quite apart from the threat to the region’s imported automobile motorists, news of these extraordinary critters, if confirmed, could torpedo the tourist season already floundering in depressed revenues and bad press over drought and brush fires. The insects have no formal name as yet but migrant Chilean vineyard workers who have chased them off vehicles have taken to calling the creatures “coche-busteros volantes” or flying carbusters.


It was Abe, Honest

Even as a trickle of true believers continue to seek out a West Hollywood, FL home each year in hope of seeing yet another vision of the Virgin Mary on one more cheese sandwich, we are informed that another as yet unexplained South Florida phenomenon has occurred at a Miami Beach deli where witnesses allegedly reported seeing an image of the Prophet Abraham clearly defined on a poppy seed bagel. A local rabbi summoned to the restaurant carefully examined the object with a panel of six Yeshiva graduates before he pronounced the object stale (the Prophet’s “beard” was actually mold) and asked for a cheese Danish instead.


Raysin with the Moon

Cheeky actress trains

One time Edinburgh adult film actress Tracie Raysin is threatening litigation to stop her former personal manager from re-releasing a series of X-rated DVDs shot (on Betamax) when she was only 17-years-old. The titles include the notorious Debbie does Davey in which a spectacularly endowed Australian soccer player impersonates a member of the Monkees. In Murmur on the Orient Express, Tracie exhibits considerable cheek in a train compartment window during a passionate rail trip to Istanbul.

Miss Raysin, who sports a 52-inch bust, has been trying for several years to make the transition toward mainstream movies and recently had a cameo appearance in the adult Civil War epic “Gettysburg Undressed” as a Confederate manatee. She is hoping to land a supporting role in Oliver Stone’s forthcoming between-wars saga “Get Thee Hither, Hitler” based on the controversial memoirs of Bavarian actress Jenny Lipmann, Eva Braun’s drama coach at a Düsseldorf University.

Glades Estate Owners Make a Stink

Possible Perth flag
(Artwork by Nellie (Jonelle) Green)

A recent federal court decision in Western Australia finding that members of the aboriginal Noongar tribe have a legitimate claim to the entire state capital city of Perth reflects growing concern over native title as peoples elsewhere around the globe -- including the U.S. -- seek legal recognition if not restitution of stolen lands.

Residents of Skunkwood Estates in South Florida are hoping they can get the Rancida Development Corp. to change the name of their neighborhood since scores of children have come home complaining that youngsters from nearby communities ridicule them.

But the developers say they must abide by certain restrictions imposed by the Skunkasookee Tribe from whom the land was leased, one of which was to continue honoring the sacred tribal namesake. Like other Southeastern bands, the Skunkasookees revere a particular animal as a tribal totem and protector which in their case is that pungently resourceful black-and-white member of the weasel family.

Tribal Icons

Rancida executives unsuccessfully sought tribal consent to name the development Gator Glade Acres but the Indians were adamant. “Skunkwood Estates” was actually a compromise from “Realm of the Great Skunk Father Who Eats Swamp Grubs” that the tribal elders had originally wanted. Rancida executives managed to convince them that such a name would pose insurmountable marketing problems.

Skunkwood homeowners, many of whom paid upwards of $850,000US for their 6-bedroom ranch houses, say their children are appalled at the prospect of attending the soon-to-be-opened Skunkwood Elementary School. The children say that kids from nearby Sawmill Runoff Lakes (also a Rancida project) are already calling them the Skunkwood stinkers.

“A deal is a deal,” says former NFL place-kicker and tribal attorney Willie “Bullskunk” Holdnose, who insists that the agreed-upon name remain unchanged.

Homeowners likewise are concerned about the tribe’s plans to expand their giant mumblety-peg arena to include a casino on an adjacent 75-acre parcel. The Skunkasookees were the first tribe in the country to foresee the pari-mutuel possibilities of the traditional knife-tossing pastime. Residents say they’re worried about increased traffic congestion and the noise from ambulances called whenever a wild throw nicks onlookers.

Holdnose says the expansion is nobody’s business but the tribal council and Chief Eddie “Skunkwind” Holdnose. Tribal sovereignty over the land is clear, he says, and now that the drive to legalize casinos elsewhere in Florida is stalled, the Skunkasookees will take fullest advantage to benefit the tribe’s 1,492 members.


Meaner than a Junkyard Dogma

Two students from the Nova School of Applied Archaeology happened to be scouring a portion of Tampa landfill last month looking for an accidentally tossed theological Masters thesis on Obscene Essene Essays when they happened upon a startling discovery. There, under a three-meter layer of Domino’s Pizza boxes and carefully wrapped in a September 1896 issue of New York Post, the students uncovered two golden plates inscribed with what looked to be cuneiform markings.

Gustavo Bocanera and Arthur Bialystock-Smythe quickly noted the similarity between this find and descriptions of the famous “lost plates” of Pater Nicholas Piscattaway, the 19th Century founder-prophet of the flourishing Church of Latter-day Land Speculators, whose major tenets include a belief that heavenly paradise is attained only though inspirational discount mortgage debentures and speaking in tongues during closings.

"Pater Nick" receives the miraculous plates from
Saint Moronicus of the Blessed Assessors
in a forest glade outside Stuebenville,
Ohio in 1836.

The “Pater Nick” faith originated in the Midwest but the devout were forced to flee to California by competing revivalist realtors who branded them fiduciary heretics. Most made the journey safely except the tragic 1847 Gonner Party that got as far as Reno. There in a savage blizzard, they became disoriented, drank heavily, gambled away their convertible bonds and in a subsequent fit of guilt, converted to Pentecostalism.

Nova students Gus and Art, who suspected that the Mother Church in Azusa might pay millions for recovery of the fabled plates, hastened to an antiquities dealer in Kissimmee to have them authenticated.

You might imagine their dismay when the objects were found to be nothing more than yellow-bronzed Delaware tags from a nearby rusted out ‘52 Desoto sedan. However the badly soiled copy of the Post was worth four dollars.

The dejected students would have considered their dig an absolute failure were it not for the simultaneous recovery, from a second Domino’s box, of a six-page translation (in original Aramaic) of the notorious late-Mesopotamian tale Salome Does Damascus.


Professor Kurt Stanislaw Jacobi, a native of Southcentral Wallachia, holds a Ph.D. from Comenius University,Bratislava, where he graduated magna cum ondown in 1948. During the late 50's, Dr. Jacobi first postulated his now famous integrated theory of inversional constructs (ITIC) which ultimately made possible the Voyager space probe, microchip Pringles and Madonna’s line of Japanese reversible spandex rainwear.

Worsening Disability Outbreak Feared in Florida

Grounded - on a par with US electors

These are indeed exciting and grueling times in the field of epidemiology with the onslaught of mutating pathogens and viral threats such as Bird Flu and ebola continuing to challenge research laboratories all over the globe.

And if these weren’t worrisome enough, we just learned that a crack squad of Centers for Disease Control specialists from Atlanta will be arriving in Florida shortly to probe an alarming incidence of ELI cases detected in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area.

ELI or Earthworm-Level Intelligence is the most advanced form of the virulent and highly contagious subintellecta debilitosis syndrome first associated with viewers of Geraldo Rivera programs in the 1970s. In its most endemic manifestation, ELI victims find it utterly impossible to distinguish reality from the most puerile fantasy portrayed in the media no matter how preposterous or patently absurd.

One notably tormented Ohio patient in 1985 actually mailed 6,819 letters to the US Department of the Interior in a single week demanding that the Snuffleupagus on Sesame Street be added to the Endangered Species List. This particular individual was institutionalized for seven months under heavy sedation before being released back into the community and later elected mayor of Cincinnati. A concurrent rise in the numbers of Americans watching FOX-News more or less confirmed the rapid spread of ELI across the country during the past 10 years.




Anatomy of a FOX News fan


According to research done in Canada -- where ELI is mostly confined to the Prairie Provinces -- normal incidence of this disorder should be no more than one case per 250,000 inhabitants. Imagine then the panic at CDC last month when a mind-boggling 37 new cases were detected here in Broward County. Eight of the cases were discovered during a single evening in the city commission chambers of an unnamed municipality including two persons on the dais!

The appalling gravity of the ELI problem first became evident across the entire US 12 years ago when a band of free-spending draft-dodger patriots took power in Washington and chose a man nicknamed for a salamander to lead Congress. Six years afterward thousands of voters in Florida improperly marked their ballots resulting in the current tenant of the White House and a corresponding nadir of U.S. influence and prestige around the globe.

Amphibious leader of chickenhawks

Work on an effective vaccine, meanwhile, has continually been stalled by federal funding cuts due to the burgeoning budget of the Iraq war (the conflict itself a symptom of widespread ELI throughout the U.S. government); Recent political developments in the U.S. suggest the epidemic could be abating in some areas of the nation but it remains to be seen if the rest of the planet can recover from the collateral damage already inflicted.


Alligator Mitigator

A more upbeat environmental note for those Florida friends worried about the seasonal upsurge of quarter-ton reptiles in neighborhood lakes and waterways. It seems the frequency of alligators turning up in West Broward lakes and canals has been climbing steeply in the warmer part of each year usually accompanied by hyperventilated media reports concerning close encounters of the scaly kind.

There’s nothing that will dampen a suburban Fort Lauderdale garden party faster than a 500-lb (230-kg) gator sloshing into the pool, devouring the neighbor’s Shih-tzu or scaring the bejeezus out of Aunt Sophie from Scarsdale.

But Dr. Percival Swinton, a distinguished pioneer on the leading edge of tropical research may have a solution: Piranhas! Ever wondered why the Amazon and Orinoco rivers in the South American interior are relatively untroubled by alligators and crocodiles? Piranhas. Only a runtish cousin, the caiman survives in these waters and in numbers kept in check by ravenous schools of these finny cuisinarts.

Now Dr. Swinton, who has spent 17 years in Venezuela studying the Orinoco Basin ecosystem for Puerto Cabello Petroleum & Potash, wants to stress he’s NOT talking about those common piranhas capable of reducing a human being to skeletal remnants in minutes given the right seasoning. Introducing those fellows into Florida waters would be asking for trouble, he says. Overseas news outlets, for one thing, would be sure to sensationalize accounts of any European tourists who tumbled off airboats.

Amazonian kissing cousin

But the Piranha piranha osculati, (distant cousin to the kissing gourami), a curious subspecies found the backwaters of Guyana, is toothless and must energetically gum its prey into submission. Swinton says that while these fish can’t actually kill alligators, the nuisance of hundreds of little clinging suckers making normal gator locomotion, hunting and reproductive activities impossible, ought to drive the offending reptiles out of local lakes and canals permanently.

Swinton expects an EPA response to his suggestion this summer. And if that population control scheme is rejected, he is ready to advocate another method -- introducing juvenile alligator populations to cigarette smoking assuming, however, they can be taught to keep their heads far enough out of the water.


Professor Kurt Stanislaw Jacobi, a native of Southcentral Wallachia, holds a Ph.D. psycho-harmonic engineering from Comenius University, Bratislava where he graduated summa cum laude in 1948. During the mid-1950's, Dr. Jacobi was a visiting scholar on the faculty of CCNY where he first postulated his now famous integrated theory of inversional constructs (ITIC) which ultimately made possible the Apollo moon landings, biodegradable chewing gum and revival of the Bulgarian nose harp as a serious concert instrument.

A Canadian Core of Belief

Mary on toast: Hollywood icon for sure?

About two years ago a woman who lives down the road from me, sold on E-bay what was purported to be an image of the Virgin Mary still visible on a decade-old toasted cheese sandwich. The Hollywood, Florida-made morsel fetched a tidy $28,000 when the bidding ended despite the fact that the iconic face resembled Toronto-born film star Mary Pickford more than any Holy Virgin of note.


Still, in age where cynicism and gloom are rampant, it is uplifting to note another faith-related event that took place last month in the Alberta township of Cowpie Corral, about 50 km southeast of Calgary. During the bus ride to Meadow Muffin Middle School, eighth-grader Barton Gilhooley opened his lunch box and discovered, staring back at him from the obverse side of his Granny Smith apple the discernible image of a youthful Pope Benedict XVI (!) as identified by bus driver Blanche Slocum.

The 12-year-old, not knowing whose image it was, promptly took the possibly miraculous fruit to the school office where stunned counselors and an assistant principal summoned a priest, a rabbi and an orthodontist to examine the object more closely. Upon closer inspection, the somewhat indistinct image was determined not to be the pope at all but, in fact, the controversial British patriot Benedict Arnold! At that point, the priest, New York-born Father Elvis Flanagan declared the apple to be possessed and telephoned the Archdiocese in nearby Moose Poop Flats to arrange an exorcism while Rabbi Sharon Shipperton and orthodontist Javier Kawasaki got into an argument over the proper pronunciation of the town name. Newcomers prefer the vaguely French-sounding “Ko-PAY Corral” to the earthier original. Old-timers say such trifling with tradition would only confuse the town with Tombstone, Arizona and a celebrated gunfight there.

Benedict or Arnold? We'll never learn the apple "apparition"

But before any of this could be satisfactorily resolved, a ravenous sixth-grader, Wendy McDonald, sent to the office for tardiness, grabbed the apple from the assistant principal’s desk and gnawed it to the core, utterly obliterating the image. And despite the frantic efforts of orthodontist Kawasaki to extract evidentiary fragments from the child’s braces, the apple apparition was irretrievably lost.

The most remarkable thing about the entire episode was that young Wendy later that day passed her first history quiz since third grade. It has to make you believe.

Are we there, Yeti?

Still in the Canadian hinterlands, we are greatly relieved that our sources report that those repeated sightings of a “Big Foot” or Susquatch in the Yukon Territory on two November weekends has turned out to be nothing more frightening than US Vice President Dick Cheney returning from previously undisclosed hunting forays in over-sized Wal-Mart sportswear. Though, the notion of “Robo-heart Richard” with any sort of weapon in hand is a bit scary.

Meanwhile, those who sought to connect the repeated “creature” sightings with a recent spate of cattle mutilations in Northwest Canada will have to look elsewhere for a culprit. Equally remarkable, none of the veep’s hunting companions were injured on this trip but an angry grizzly bear (whom the NRA life member missed by a mile) nearly advanced incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to within an unassisted heartbeat of the presidency until Secret Service agents and an off-duty Mountie rescued the surprisingly agile 65-year-old from the branches of a Whitebark Pine near the Alaska border.

Cheney: missed the bear by a mile but thankfully shot no humans

Perhaps the Moonwalker was really there

It may sound incredible but our intrepid psychic investigator Herschel Gomez of Miami confides that those Michael Jackson child molestation accusations of the 1980s and 90s have turned out to be absolute fabrications perpetrated by malicious extraterrestrials.

Gomez says he has been allowed to see compelling evidence that one of the purported 13-year-old “accusers” is actually an octogenarian alien named Merzunngthhh from the Crab Nebula and that poor Michael himself is the product of clumsy extraterrestrial experiments performed at a secret lunar base on an otherwise normal but talented black child briefly abducted from a concert tour with his brothers in 1977.

The ghastly pallor, disfigured nose and limp stringy hair were all produced by exposure to intergalactic isotopes that likewise rendered Jackson incapable of relating to beings his own age unless they are chimpanzees.

Rising Number One Son

Determined to rebound from 2006 Congressional losses, Florida Republican party stalwarts have just about persuaded dashing Fort Lauderdale tax attorney Fu-Tze Fong Feldman to make a race for the U.S. House in 2008 and win back the in the state’s 22nd district from freshman Democrat Ron Klein.

Should he secure the nomination it will be “Footsie” Feldman’s task to convince thousands of Northeastern retirees that they would not be losing a Jewish voice in Congress but gaining a Chinese mensch on Capitol Hill.

One thing is certain, a Feldman campaign wouldn’t be likely to run short of cash thanks to doting Hawaiian-Chinese grandparents controlling the multi-billion dollar Fong-Wam-Bang Electronics empire based in Hong Kong. Back in 1968, these folks spent $750,000 on Footsie’s bilingual (Hebrew-Cantonese) bar-mitzvah at the Honolulu Hilton which featured Jan Peerce, Don Ho and maternal uncle Senator Hiram Fong on the electric horse-headed fiddle.

Professor Kurt Stanislaw Jacobi, a native of South Central Wallachia, holds a Ph.D. psychotropic engineering from the Comenius University of Bratislava, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1948. During the late 50's, Dr. Jacobi was a visiting scholar on the faculty of CCNY where he first postulated his now famous integrated theory of inversional constructs (ITIC) which ultimately made possible the Apollo moon landings, the Camp David Peace Accords and the introduction of Pizza Hut outlets to Antofagasta, Chile.