Police have identified the alleged letter writer as Peter McWhirter, a bakery owner and avid outdoorsman whom neighbours describe as “quiet and polite”.
The police finally traced the letters back to Mr. McWhirter after an arduous three month manhunt. The trouble began in January when the local paper began receiving anonymous letters protesting recent changes to gun laws. While the paper did not print the letters, they allegedly contained words such as “Orwellian”, “fascist”, “uxorious”, and “Sincerely”. “As a society, we cannot stand for this type of reckless language use,” stated Mitchell. “It is sad and disgusting”.
Throughout the lengthy ordeal, letters flooded into the Kingston Chronicle’s editorial office on a weekly basis. Staff member Susan O’Connel was the first victim. She innocently opened the first letter and was blown away by the words “obsequious” and “conundrum”. “My normal smug confidence instantly disappeared,” she later said from her hospital bed. “I had never known such shame and confusion before. I didn’t know what the words meant!” She was rushed to hospital where doctors pumped 500cc of Prozac into her with a rapid infuser. Doctors believe that if they had been even a few minutes slower Ms. O’Connel would have suffered irreparable damage to her self-esteem.
Three more staff members were hospitalized over the following weeks and months as police tried desperately to find the originator of the letters. Special precautions were implemented at the Chronicle: no one was allowed to open and read a letter without at least one other person being present.
Mr. McWhirter has been charged with 15 counts of intellectual assault and is scheduled for a preliminary hearing next week. If convicted, he could face up to 3 consecutive life sentences. “We hope this sends a message to all those sick thesaurus-thumpers out there who get their kicks from making other people feel inferior. Damn big word users...”
Bar-B-Q!
Summer’s right around the corner, and with summer comes the wonderful taste and smell of barbecue. Unless you are locked in a basement apartment, like I am. But here are some helpful hints for those of you who still have the wonderful option of firing up the grill:
1. The quality of a steak is directly
proportional to the amount of beer you’ve consumed before eating.
2. Having trouble mastering the
art of cooking vegetables on the BBQ? Here’s how: wrap in tin
foil with butter, punch a few holes in the foil to allow fluid to escape,
then toss in garbage can and replace with the steak you should have been
cooking in the first place.
3. Can’t decide who’s going to
do the barbecuing? Take turns beating each other with a tenderizing
mallet. Last one standing cooks.
4. When barbecuing chicken, make
damn sure it’s cooked all the way through before you eat it.*
5. Any barbecue can be transformed
from merely adequate to kick-ass by adding copious amounts of loud music,
sunshine, and scantily clad women. If you don’t know any such women,
you can just talk about them or watch them on TV.
6. If Marty isn’t passed out
by 7, you’re doing something wrong.
* Not funny, TRUE. We try to randomly intersperse the TRUTH with FOOLISHNESS to keep everyone on their toes.
Word Up!
(It’s a code word...)
Rik called me the other day wanting to know where the word “perk” comes from, as in a “job perk”. Unfortunately, my incredible intellect failed me and I couldn’t remember. So here’s the scoop from Mr. Dictionary:
per·qui·site (pûr¹kwî-zît)
noun
1. A payment or profit received in
addition to a regular wage or salary, especially a benefit expected as
one's due. See synonyms at RIGHT.
2. A tip; a gratuity.
3. Something claimed as an exclusive
right: “Politics was the perquisite of the upper class” (Richard B. Sewall).
[From Middle English perquisites, property acquired otherwise than by inheritance, from Medieval Latin perquisitum, acquisition, from Latin, neuter past participle of perquirere, to search diligently for: per-, per-+ quaerere, to seek.]
Cunning Linguist Finds Falsehoods in Old Adages
Professor Emeritus Lance Humous III has recently completed an indepth study of modern colloquialisms and their origins. Surprisingly, many adages that are taken for granted as being correct are in fact false. A sample, from Dr. Humous’ paper:
- Bears do not shit in the woods.
They prefer streams and wide, open spaces.
- You can have your cake and
eat it too. In fact, if you do not have any cake the chance of you
being able to eat it at all is statistically zero.
- The Pope is not Catholic, but
is the Supreme Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, which explains the strange
pointy hat.
- A bird in the hand is not worth
two in the bush, especially if the one in your hand is a peregrine falcon
which is ripping the flesh off your hands and pecking the eyes out of your
head.
- Everyone does not love a clown.
I hate clowns. I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus,
and a clown killed my dad.
(Aside: What do you say to
a rocket scientist when you’re trying to convince him what he’s doing isn’t
all that hard?)
- If cleanliness is close to
Godliness, why does Georgia smell so bad?
This Month’s Biography: Shane Goguen, International Man of Mystery
Like so much about Shane Goguen, his origins are shrouded in mystery. Some believe he is a descendant of deported Acadians, others think he is a deep cover operative for the fearsome Dutch secret service. Or perhaps the prodigal son of a famous dictator. Without a doubt, however, he cannot be the simple country boy from Baxter’s Corner he claims to be: far too many secrets lurk behind his steely blue eyes.
Shane’s first brush with infamy came when he managed to convince the people in his village (mostly dullards and professional wrestlers) that he had invented soup. After several years they realized that soup had actually been around for about 200,000 years and decided to take the $30,000 he had collected in licensing fees out of his hide. Shane barely managed to escape the mob in his shiny new car (which he had purchased on the advice of his parents).
Many historians and Goguen buffs believe that this was when Shane learned several lessons which changed his philosophy of life and helped turn him into the man he eventually became: First, never take by force what you can take by trickery. Second, trickery can sometimes be called “contingency fees”, and finally, if you’re ever driving somewhere in a car, go really fast.
Stanley Native Invents
Time Saver
A special report from the field
by Aldo Von Gertrude III, Chaser
of Electrons and All Things Shiny
Inventor and native Stanleyan Dr. Martin Foreman has come up with a novel new approach to cooking. Over the past few months Mr. Foreman, through his upstart company Past-Time Inc., has been working feverishly on a new device he calls a "Time Machine". In a recent press conference his company demonstrated the first prototype of the device.
Dr. Foreman explained that through a complex process of localized gravitation and quantum oscillation the device is able to bend the very fabric of space-time, allowing the user to gain access to any preselected moment in the timeline. Dr. Foreman went on to admit that he had "not a fucking clue" what he was talking about and that the whole theory had been concocted by his PR department. In fact, further questioning revealed that nobody at Past Time really understands how the device works. Dr. Foreman eventually had to concede that it was thrown together by an accountant, a small orangutang, and a class 4 tornado (who are collectively known as “the research department”) in what may well turn out to be the most stunning series of coincidences since the Big Bang.
Dr. Foreman seems undaunted by the random way he obtained his product, and plans on marketing it immediately. He envisions only one practical use for his invention: "We intend to use it as an instantaneous hotdog cooker. We set the machine for 10 minutes in the past, put a hotdog on the BBQ and push the whole thing through the portal. A cooked hotdog instantaneously re-appears after experiencing 10 minutes of cooking in the past." When asked if the device could be used to send people into the past to do such things as solve ancient mysteries or prevent catastrophes he responded, "not really...I don't see how that would be useful...nah, I can't see it."
With the final production release only months away the industry is abuzz and can only speculate at the success and impact his new product will have. One industry analyst who spoke on the condition of anonymity stated that he was somewhat skeptical of the claims made by Past-Time Inc. "I still can't forget their first product, The Extenda-Arm, and what a flash-in-the-pan that turned out to be. " Past-Time Inc. promised that the Extenda-Arm would make the lives of bed ridden and lazy people more bearable by extending the reach of their immobile bodies. The product turned out to be a marketing nightmare as sales were hampered by widespread speculation that the device was nothing more than a pair of rabbit ears and two wads of chewing gum.
Where Have All The Slogans Gone?
Find the one fake add slogan among these classics:
“You’re not the Herb we’re looking for!”
“Where’s the beef?”
“Tweet tweet, twiddle twiddle, there’s
only one candy with a hole in the middle.”
“Eat all you want, we’ll make more.”
“Sun In, and Sun Out, and you could
be blonder (you could be blonder...)”
“Wal-Mart: It’s Cheap ‘Cause
It’s Crap”
“And you tell one friend, and she tells
one friend, and so on, and so on....”
“Who wears short shorts? We wear short
shorts! If we all wear short shorts Nair for short shorts...”
Wise Sayings
“Give a man a fish and he eats for
a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for life. Turn a man
into a fish and he can eat himself. If a man can eat himself, fish
just don’t matter.”
“An eye for an eye makes the whole
world blind. But if I get your eyes first, good luck being able to
find me.”
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket:
philander.”
“A calm answer turns away wrath.”
“Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
“Answer calmly, carry a big stick,
wear a pair of aviator goggles, mutter constantly about your infatuation
with goats, and no one will ever bother you.”
“A man who represents himself has a
fool for a client. A man who castrates himself has a fool for a patient.
A man with a comb-over isn’t fooling anybody.”
“Does a rhetorical question require
an answer? No.”