BUSINESS: New 'MICROCROCK' Microwave Crock Pot hits market

by Lance Boyle
Business Editor
Denver, CO--Just in time for the holidays, every clueless husband's dream has come true, at least according to a small appliance manufacturer here.
"The RevelCo MICROCROCK (tm) will revolutionize home cooking," RevelCo president Tom Mayto said today. "Slow-cooking your meal can be done in minutes instead of hours!"
According to Mayto, every husband will want to get this for his wife for Christmas, because typically every husband never knows what to get his wife for Christmas.
"This is so idiot-proof that even after those poor saps and give one to their wives for Christmas, they can use the MICROCROCK themselves, because the wife will probably kick them out of the house," he said. "Everyone knows wives want jewelry and 4K TVs."
RevelCo is looking to Stage a comeback after their disastrous combination of rice cooker and toaster oven last Christmas.
"We're still hurting from the class-action suits  on that product," corporate attorney Ray Kitover said. "And we did that one to make up for the suits from the combination waffle iron/deep fryers from the year before."
Based on Black Friday sales figures, RevelCo will either rebound or be destroyed by future suits.

SCIENCE: Daylight Savings and Loan scandal rocks Alaskan community

by Trevor N. Deavor
Science Correspondent
Juneau, AK--Alaskan residents were shocked and angered when they discovered the entirety of their Daylight Savings had been squandered, leaving them in darkness for another long winter.

"This is complete bull***t," Juneau resident (and deputy mayor) Kevin Troutman said, carefully counting to make sure he had spoken the correct number of asterisks. "We paid good money for that g**damned motherf******g bank to build those solar panels! Wait. That was one too many asterisks in there, wasn't there? F***!"

The bull***t in question was the opening last spring of the All-Alaska Daylight Savings and Loan in downtown Juneau.

Troutman is standing in front of the now-abandoned building. He said he was there to start making "daylight withdrawals."

According to a brochure found in the abandoned DS&L's parking lot, the bank is a subsidiary of Daylight Savings Bank and Credit Card Services. It opened "Daylight Collection Centers" in the six largest cities in Alaska (or "three more Alaskan cities than 99-percent of Americans can name,") with the stated "purpose of collecting sunlight for proper redistribution in the winter."

"What about the kids?" Juneau resident Keta Salmonberg (and city comptroller) asked. "We did this for the kids! There's babies that'll be born today that won't see sunlight until April!"

At press time Daylight Savings Bank and Credit Services was unavailable for contact.

The city of Juneau has called an emergency meeting for next Thursday to consider returning to their original plans for animal sacrifices to get sunlight.

GRUNION: Small New England town "all-but destroyed" by "Hellfire-and-damnation" sermon

by Trevor N. Deavor
BATTLE HYMN STATION, N.H.-- When Rev. Ken G. Domcome moved to this idyllic community last month he had a mission to "set the town on fire for God."
Last Sunday, he -- and the town -- got more than they bargained for.
"I sort of engineered a 'fire from heaven' demonstration," Domcome said. "I got the idea from an old country pastor from my childhood."
According to the young minister, the idea was to duplicate one of the many miracles of Elijah (1 Kings 18) in which the prophet had a sacrifice to God, telling the local people to cover it with water multiple times.
"Essentially, Elijah and some worshippers of the fire god Baal were competing for bragging rights," Domcome said from his hospital bed.  "The Baal-worshippers were trying to call upon their god to consume their sacrifices with fire."
Domcome's nurse assisted the pastor with a sip of water before he continued.
"So Elijah is really trolling them, saying maybe their god was asleep or what not," Domcome said. "Then Elijah asks then to pour water on his sacrifice. I simulated the water with about a gallon of lighter fluid."
Domcome said the crowd watched intently as he climbed a ladder and then hurled a "match from Heaven" onto the fuel-doused prime rib.
The resulting explosive conflagration was much greater than anyone expected. People from the first three rows were treated for lacerations (the "altar" was a glass baking dish) and first- and second-degree burns. Domcome's Elijah costume (which had received some minor back-splashing from the accelerants) also burst into flames, causing Domcome's ladder to tip over, spilling him into the choir loft, which served as a hymnal storage area.
Associate/Youth Pastor George Willoughby-Dunn said that as soon as the choir loft went up in flames, "that sanctuary emptied faster than after a long sermon on Superbowl Sunday! In other words, faster than it did the last time the Patriots were in the Superbowl."
The flames did not stop there, however.
The fire quickly spread to several surrounding buildings.
Before it was over, two-thirds of the town's buildings were either destroyed or damaged. Total damages are estimated to be nearly $20 Million.
"Next time, I'll have a fire extinguisher for my sermon," Domcome said.

Rare "Jesus Gull" Performs "Miracles"

by Dereck Alito
Bangorzanmash, ME--
What started as a frustrating last meal for Martha McCatskill turned into something that was nothing short of miraculous.
McCatskill, one of the world's seven licensed and certified "Seagullogists" (a scientist specializing in the biology sociology of seagulls,) suffered a mishap at her work site.
"I was at a remote location studying how gulls interact with Caspian Terns," McCatskill said. "We'd just gotten back from McDonald's with two of the 2-for-$5 Filet-o-Fish sandwiches to share with a colleague."
The colleague in question is McCatskill's roomate Cindy Peck-Vogel, the world's only licensed and certified Caspianternologist. Peck-Vogel, (who used her employee discount at McDonald'sI) is working in conjunction with McCatskill on a comprehensive book (Tern for the Worst) about gull-tern relations.
"Martha had just unwrapped her sandwich, and a huge gust of wind caught her just right in the windbreaker," Peck-Vogel said. "Her arms billowed out like a scarecrow, and her sandwich went flying."
McCatskill picks up the story (but not the sandwich.)
"It landed in what had to be about a year's worth of goose poop," McCatskill said. "No way I was eating that."
According to both bird-lovers, "about four- no- five thousand seagulls" converged on the sandwich.
"But before they could make it a Filet-o-Fish Free-for-all, the crowd became completely calm... completely tranquil," McCatskill said. "Then this bird, kind of a hybrid between a seagull and a Caspian tern, makes its way through the crowd, and walks right up to the sandwich."
According to both women, the bird appeared to "bless" the food.
"Then it started breaking up the sandwich and sharing it with everyone there," Peck-Vogel said. "Every bird got its fill, and there were twelve piles of sandwich left over."
"Then, while the other birds were floating on the water, this one walked," McCatskill said
Both parties were too shocked to snap pictures with their cell phones.
In the end, McCatskill used her own employee discount to replace her lunch.

Best-selling author Stephen King revealed to be 87 year old great grandmother from Southern California

by Ivan Ideear
OXNARD, Calif.-- Everything you knew about your favorite horror fiction author is wrong. (Unless your favorite horror fiction author is Dean Koontz, and then ultimately you may be wrong.)
Millions of horror-fantasy fans were shocked on Saturday when it was revealed that "Stephen King" is the pen name for an 87-year old great grandmother who lives in Southern California.
"I mostly started out writing children's books, " said Bertha Granderson, sittting in the living room of her humble 2-bedroom rambler in Oxnard. "But once the editors got ahold of them, whew-eee did they ever get ahold of them."
Granderson said she had no idea what was happening to her works. But once she saw the edited copy of her first novel, she realized she didn't want her children and grandchildren to think she was obsessed with horrible things. She requested that the publisher change her name to something regal.
Stephen King was the name upon which they finally agreed.
"Christine? That was a 30-page book about a picnic in a grandfather's classic car," she said.  "Green Mile? That was about a picnic in a nature preserve."
Granderson said that the Dark Tower series was probably her most challenging work, stating the books were loosely based upon the Chronicles of Narnia series.
"When I wrote It! I had this idea about several children on a camping trip near a mine shaft," she said. "It gets scary because they tell spooky ghost stories."
Granderson said the two books that most-closely resembled her original manuscripts are Misery (an author having a picnic with his biggest fan ) and 11.22.1963, which was about the birth of her youngest son, (the timing of which coincided with the Kennedy assassination.)
Granderson said she isn't ready to hang up the quill just yet.
"I'm pretty sure I've got a few more stories left in me," she said. "There's one about a picnic at an old abandoned carnival site. I'm sure that'll be good. And I think I'm going to do one about two groups of people having a picnic in the Antarctic."
Granderson added with a cackle that the latter would be a "real chiller."
But what of the man whose photos have graced the covers of your favorite fantasy/horror/thrillers?
Leonard Patrick DuFrense-Ackley is a Maine resident whose image was selected from several hundred "Stephen King Candidates."
DuFrense-Ackley, a self-published novelist in his own right, said he hopes this "big reveal" will help boost his own book sales.
You can find DuFrense-Ackley's novels on Amazon or his home page on Smashwords.
King/Granderson's newest novel Death Picnic will reach bookshelves in October.

Study shows less than 3% of calls from bathroom stall graffiti result in a 'good time'

by Sam Annticks
What started as a doctoral thesis in 1976 has finally culminated in the longest effort by one person to receive a Ph.D from a major university.
Albert Schreiber said he got his inspiration while using a rest area bathroom on his way to a bicentennial celebration in New York City.
"So, I'm in this bathroom, and I look on the wall and I see the words 'for a good time call' and then a phone number," Schreiber said in his doctoral defense. "I was young, dumb, and you know the rest. I was a graduate student, and just trying to really have a great Bicentennial summer. So I wrote down the number and I called it from a pay phone at the rest area."
Schreiber got anything but a good time.
"It was really embarrassing and awkward," he said. "This guy answers the phone, and I asked for the female name that was written on the stall. The guy said that that was the name of his adult daughter who had moved out two years earlier, because she kept receiving harassing phone calls."
Schreiber said he apologized and disconnected. Being a good citizen, he returned to the restroom and tried to remove the graffiti from the wall.
"Back in those days, they still had soap dispensers that produced that soap that was like comet, essentially soapy sand," Schreiber said.  "So I got a couple paper towels got them wet and covered them with the soap."
While he was trying to scrub the stuff off the wall, he noticed something.
"It was written with a ballpoint pen and so it was very difficult to get off," he said.  "While I was trying to erase the one phone number, I noticed there were several others written all over the bathroom walls. I jotted down those numbers and called them as well."
Of the 27 phone calls he made, he had juat one conversation that he deemed to be 'fun,' or a 'good time.'
That one time, he spoke to a woman who said that she gets lots of calls because she had dumped a boyfriend for being "too frisky."
"I was running out of nickels, and I had to get back on the road," Schreiberr said. "But I knew this is what I wanted to pursue after I got my MA."
Once he got his graduate degree in Sociological Anthropological Physical Education, he immediately pursued a doctorate in Anthropological Communication, deeming that bathroom graffiti was the equivalent of "modern cave art."
"I have been in just about every bathroom in this great nation," Schreiber said. "Additionally, I have visited several thousand in Canada and several dozen in Mexico."
He said that what he has learned is that "the vast majority of times you read something written on a bathroom wall, it does not result in a good time."
"More than nine times out of ten, I found the phone number to belong to a school teacher, an ex-girlfriend or some person who was the victim of a vicious prank," Schreiber said. "Occasionally I would get ahold of someone that was actually interested in talking. In most cases that person had written their own phone number on the wall just to find someone to talk to."
According to Schreiber, bathroom graffiti is starting to disappear, partially because restroom stalls are much less private than they used to be.
"Also great effort has been made to make it harder to write on the walls," Schreiber  said.  "However,  the advent of the 'Sharpie(tm)' marker has sort of tipped the battle back in the favor of the graffiti artists."
However now that someone can place a phone call from inside the stall using a cell phone, it has died down a lot, Schreiber said.
"The whole thing really spiked in 1982 with the release of the song 867-5309/Jenny by Tommy Tutone," Schreiber said.
"More often than not, that was a number that turned up in a lot of bathroom stalls. I called that number in a lot of different area codes, but most of the time it was disconnected.
"Occasionally it connected me to an elderly person, or a bakery."
This didn't stop Schreiber from trying.
"Although, one time I did get a 'Jenny,' " he said. "We talked for a long time, and even met at a Denny's for coffee. However, I wasn't really her type, so nothing really happened. But it was a good time."
Schreiber will receive his doctorate this June. At 64 years of age, he is one of the oldest, longest-tenured full time students at Cornell University.
"On a positive note, once I get my Ph.D, I can probably get a real job," Schreiber said. "To be honest, working graveyard shift as an assistant shift lead at Taco Bell just isn't paying the bills."