Oxglove Country Tribune
Evening Edition
Price: One Oxglove Dollar

Hey, everybody! You remember when you were seven years old and your family made you think they’d forgotten your birthday, only to throw the biggest party ever?! You know what I’m talking about, that day your parents took you to get inoculated against some tropical plague while the rest of your relatives turned your house into an Olympic-sized ballpit?!

Well, the county legislature has decided to treat you all to that kind of “clown on a trampoline” surprise — after two years of repeated misconduct and malfeasance complaints, the Oxglove county legislature decided yesterday to hold a surprise election tomorrow!

Many less-than-patriotic citizens have been clamoring for reform since elections were postponed indefinitely six years ago due to some light rain. Among dissidents’ protests are the legislature’s minting of a private county currency, tax codes that heavily favor members of the legislature, and strident rules limiting government positions to family members of current legislators.

Other complaints against county government include judges issuing injunctions forcing people to buy dogs, the closure of all post offices, public schools constantly changing their operating hours, and the county fire department’s policy of exclusively hiring people with an intense fear of fire, axes and helmets.

The election is expected to quell naysaying by 40% over the next three years.

Ballots will be available at the county legislature between 12:00 PM and 13:00 PM on February 29, 2010. Only ballots with valid dates and times will be accepted.

Ho ho! Welcome to Electronic Dialog with Hans Cuttler! I’m Hans, and I’m here to answer any and all questions you civilians have about obscure, obscene, and omnipresent technology. My name in Greek means “man of fire,” and I bring a spicy attitude to the keyboard every single [expletive] time. Let’s go right to the letters:

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Dear Hans,

I’ve been restoring my father’s old pickup truck, and I’m up to the coil assembly. Can I connect my adaptive coil handler with copper coils in conjunction with chrome coils? The handler is a 32B bit model, if that helps.

Paul Gettle
Bottleton E.

Paul, throw out that handler right now. It’s probably older than the pickup. The 32B bit model was discontinued in 1980, and even then it wasn’t up to connecting copper and chrome coils. That’s a low end model. You try to connect your coils with that thing, and you’ll just end up blowing the whole assembly.

Like most people, you’re not as adept at adaptive coil handler handling as you should be, but it’s not your fault. The high schools used to teach this kind of thing in shop, and it gave us a nation of handler experts.

I can tell you from experience that what you want to do is get the new GHI bipush adapter. It’s the natural successor to the 32B bit, and should join your copper and chrome coils without incident.

But... if you’re tight for cash and you really need to use your 32B bit — and I can’t stress how much I recommend against doing this — you can coat your coils with a Grade C iron lubrication siphon. If you use a quarter bottle per foot of wire it should be fine, unless you’re using the metric 32B bit. The metric version was a power hog and you can’t use lubrication on it.

Be very careful if you go the lubrication route. The last thing you need is a [expletive] blown assembly.

***

Dear Hans,

My new Armalite satellite dish gives me static in sunny weather, and crystal clear reception in the rain and snow! I’ve asked my provider, and they sent a guy three times to no avail. My nephew says that the satellite’s synchronous teleprocessor is jammed, and he reset it. The static went away for a few days, but it came back. Is there a permanent solution, or will I have to keep resetting my teleprocessor?

Florine di Grázio
Route 38 West

The problem is in your teleprocessor, but indirectly. Route 38 is right next to those mountains, and that’s what’s really causing the feedback in your teleprocessor. The weather has [expletive] nothing to do with it.

Armalites all work on the same frequency specified by the FCC, but it’s a junk frequency. Every time you reset your dish, you temporarily shift to an emergency band reserved by the national guard. I don’t know who told your nephew he could go around resetting teleprocessors nandy-tandy, you should only be resetting your dish if there’s a national emergency. Otherwise, you could get a fine.

What you need to do now is file a 89-90 request application for a teleprocessing discriminator with your provider. They’re legally obligated to pass your request to the FCC, who should send you the discriminator. There’ll be an annual $10 fee, but it should permanently filter out frequency echos.

You also might want to consider cable. Most of my friends on Route 38 have cable just because of the [expletive] Armalite lawsuit.

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Dear Hans,

While delousing a wall in my pool equipment shed last week, I found a vintage 1976 Olea Starman™. The box was dessicated and unreadable, but the plastic packaging and instructions were intact.

If I remember right, the Olea Starman was recalled when lab tests found trace heavy elements in certain Star-modules. Has the half-life of the elements rendered the Starman inert by this point? I’d really like to take a crack at this thing — the original paints are included!

Lilly Lyons
Burger Palace, Redshaw County

You’ve got me in a bind, Lilly. I’m hard-pressed to tell any hobbyist not to take up a vintage model, but the Olea Starman was the E.T. of the Starman series. I got my hands on one before the recall, and I can tell you that the instructions were nothing short of useless. Parts were clearly mislabled [sic], and the thrust module was unattachable.

Don’t worry about that whole “heavy element” mix-up. We didn’t know then what we know now about stable transuranic isotopes. Bad as the Olea was conceptually, truth be told, our cars and buildings would be cheaper and stronger if they were made from the same material. Some of Olea’s developers work for NASA today, y’know.

***

Dear Hans,

Sir! Here’s the skinny, Hans. I run a professional drill cosy embroidery service, selling drill cosies over the Internet to collectors, craftsmen, even had a few of my wares in the KC 40^th Spectacular two years ago. Lately my inbox is full of complaints from long-time users, saying that the cosies I sold them three or more years ago has contributed to “rust nuggetization” of their drills.

Since my cosies are all made of prolapsed plastate, should I expect more angry letters in the future? My supplier told me that rust nuggetizing only occurs in tropical climates, but I’m seeing it in overwhelming numbers.

Lester M. McHammer
CEO, McHammer Cosy Co.
North Oxglove

*Sigh* Anyone with a cursory knowledge of prolapsed plastate knows it isn’t [expletive] enough for something as intricate as a drill cosy. Frankly, I’m surprised your business hasn’t gone under! I remember hearing about someone at the KC 40^th four years ago using a prolapsed drill cosy, and I remember writing a column discouraging its use.

How is your supplier even getting you the plastate? It’s illegal to import or manufacture domestically, since ’97. The stuff is more toxic than asbestos! You should consider yourself lucky that half your customers still have their original eyes and aren’t on dialysis. I’m no legal [censored], but you should lawyer up.

Incidentally, you can prevent rust nuggestization of the head and handle by underlying the cosy with a lead tarp.

***

Dear Hans,

I read your column religiously, but I’ve just got to disagree with your March 18 discription [sic] of a rotated cuff revolver as “akin to the lovechild of a garbage truck and a cotton candy machine”. The rotated cuff revolver may not be pretty, but in the industry it’s a godsend! Do you know how many man and women hours we’ve gained thanks to rotated revolver cuffs? Not even counting the daylight savings!

Rotated revolver cuffs advanced production of the Hemming II hybrid engine from two years to completion to a month and a half. So please, enlighten us on your “holier than thou” attitude toward cuffs. From where I’m standing, you’re just a bitter old fart with no foresight or future in the industry.

Horace de Túmadray
Olathe Landing

You started out pretty solid there, Horace, but then you sort of turned into a [expletive] [expletive]-[expletive] [censored] [expletive] dog-eared [expletive]-[expletive] [expletive]. But I digress.

If you actually read my article instead of wiping your [expletive] dog-eared [expletive]-[expletive] with it, you’d know that the rotated revolver cuff is the pipe dream of a hose-head.

32% of all rotated revolver cuffs are born defective. 18% fail on reentry. And I didn’t just pull those numbers from thin air! Industry experts like Roger Miler and Steven Gustave and Gloria Hemming — yes, that Hemming — all brought those numbers to me. People with firsthand experience, all saying the cost/benefit ratio isn’t high enough for this technology.

Your comments were way over the line. If you were really in the industry, you’d already know that that report on the productivity increase was a complete lie to increase circulation of Heaven: Mark VII magazine. The time to completion actually increased once the bicubic washers were replaced with those cheap rotated revolver cuffs.

***

Hans Cuttler writes columns whenever he [expletive] pleases, and is proud to attend and perform at speaking events in countries he is still welcome in.

In recent months, newly elected Count Lou Tintarello has forced the construction of seven obscenely expensive public works to fuel the faltering upstate economy:

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I. P. Freeway

The I. P. Freeway is named after star athlete I. P. Freeman (1921-1953), the first man to win Olympic medals for the 100 yard dash, the javelin toss and swimming. He was the second man to die from throwing a javelin into his own back and the first to do so underwater.

“It’s about time that our county’s most famous resident had a freeway named after him,” says Stan Upton, a local grocer and grandson of the late Mr. Freeman. “My grandfather has never been given the fame he so rightly deserves. He died a hero, and the least we can do is name that road after him.”

The I. P. Freeway is built over the Greater Northern Oxglove River, which even environmentalists hated.

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Lighthouse of Lexiconington

At first the people of Lexiconington questioned why their landlocked city was getting a lighthouse, but the influx of tourist dollars shut them up pretty well. Its design is based on diagrams of the legendary Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

The lighthouse’s main attraction is its rotating panoramic skydome, which gives visitors a breathtaking 360° view of Lexiconington, from its verdant unincorporated marshes to its thirteen garbage dumps. A free mausoleum is housed in the lighthouse’s basement, next to the Burger King.

Controversy still remains, as the lighthouse’s spotlights are constantly fixed on the landing strips at neighboring Lexiconington International Airport. LIA’s claims have thus far been unverifiable, as the county no longer collects data on airplane accidents.

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Hall of Fungi

Perched over the scenic Ozanokie Valley gorge, the Hall of Fungi has been a longstanding staple in the national fungi circuit. Under the Help America Spore Act 2008 it is now an officially protected landmark and will be completely renovated.

The Hall was founded in the 1880s as a microbiology research center but lost its funding after progressive era muckrakers uncovered connections between members of its governing board and the Mantissa crime family. “Many of us, who would have liked nothing more than to better understand this Kingdom of Life, are now relegated to menial...vocations,” wrote New York Times columnist and biologist Justin Doge. “The Hall has been more impactfull to the Science of Biology than any heretofore organisation.”

Major breakthroughs cited by the Hall include confirmation of a link between death cap mushrooms and human death, and over thirty overtly racist fungal taxonomies.

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2000’x5000’ Concrete Lot

Over 200 acres of unspoiled forest land was clear cut last October to make room for a massive concrete lot in honor of former astronaut and senator Stretch Armstrong. While in low Earth orbit, Senator Armstrong remarked how “uneven and ugly” the planet’s surface was, heralding him on a thirty year crusade to “blow up the mountains and fill in the lakes.” He also served briefly as a spokesman for anti-ghost powder.

Public support for planetary flattening followed Mr. Armstrong’s gut-wrenching keynote speech at the shadow Republican National Convention in 2007. “We may not be able to—right now—to dissipate atmospheric conditions...[but] the technology to smooth our world’s little wrinkles is within our grasp.”

The lot is expected to have a lone Fotomat booth at its exact center.

***

George W. Bush Preemptive Memorial

George Walden Bush, a mailman from Route 38 West, is “probably going to die soon,” says an anonymous source close to the family. The remarks follow a routine medical examination.

Mr. Bush is an accomplished mountaineer, scaling both the Pyrenees and the Himalayas before age 25. “My idol growing up was Calvin Coolidge,” Bush admitted in a 1978 interview with Adventure! magazine. Upon returning to Oxglove County in 1980, Bush was hired for a managerial position at a floundering restaurant. Six months later, the place was ready to franchise. By 1982 he was head of a global fast food empire. He later became a mailman.

Enough petition signatures have already been collected to place a statue of George Bush next to his favorite hog rendering plant. Responding to criticism that it is meaningless to construct a memorial to a living person, the office of Lou Tintarello tased a roomful of reporters and engraved the plaque with “1946 — ~2008”.

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Leaning Tower of Olathe

Built in early 2002 by vigilantes, the cellular tower of Olathe Landing stands as a testament to both the ingenuity of a ragtag group of college students who later got jobs as Verizon bean counters, and to their inexperience with site surveying. Any idiot with a credit of architecture under his/her belt would have understood that the marshy topsoil of Olathe Landing requires a firm cement foundation for all structures, including doghouses.

Within one year the tower had shifted 15 degrees and one of its legs protruded from the ground, skewering passing deer. A sharp rise in demand for mobile phones coupled with ungodly budget cuts convinced the county legislature to—instead of paying $100,000 to have a telephone company build a real tower—give a guy $20 to tape it down and another $50 to rustproof it.

“I’ve always been proud of that tower,” says Olathe Landing high schooler Bridget Parker. “I see it through the grimy bus windows on the way to school every day. It reflects the cheapness and transitory nature of our postmodern culture.”

Now that the tower is a county landmark, it can no longer be used to carry digital phone signals. Unfortunately the budget remains frozen and no new cellular towers can be built, although $2 million has been budgeted for telegraph line maintenance.

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Flightless Owl Preserve

A sprawling 400 acres has been ceded to the Canopy nonprofit foundation to build a habitat for the near-extinct North American Flightless Owls (Strix terrae).

One of nature’s tastiest creatures, the flightless owl has always been prized for its tender, pre-marinated flesh. Trappers and hatters have also sought it for its elaborate plumage. The only specie of owl to possess teeth, many area aboriginal American artifacts affect themselves with “fowl ivories.”

In 1851’s Oxglove Spirit Owls, Rainbow Sauna, a matriarch of the Oxcans, gives a written account of her tribe’s oral history on Flightless Owls:

For trying to steal Noble Field Owl’s winter vittles, the Bureau of Spirits acted in a Timely Manner to enact strict retribution against them. Thus, they were shamed Eternally for their Avarice with a Crippling Blow to each wing; for their Vanity they were crowned with a Mantle to scintillate Great Bears and Soyotes.

The Soyote was a related owl breed that went extinct centuries earlier due to rampant cannibalism. Drawing from the folklore of three other tribes and the works of twenty Lamarckian researchers, Spirit Owls is the first and most comprehensive cryptozoological text/cookbook regarding extant owls.

Flightless Owls grow to a length of 65 centimeters with a wingspan of 10 centimeters. They weigh an average of 34 kilograms. Although illegal to hunt, the eggs of the Flightless Owl have historically been poached.

Following the recent skydiving death of Oxglove County Executive Cheryll Lampson, the seat for the county’s most powerful executive position is up for grabs. The rumor mill is buzzing, and over 200 candidates are already on the ballot. The most controversial of these, Lou Tintarello, formally threw his hat into the ring last Tuesday. Tintarello has had a long and checkered career in the public and private sectors, bringing with him decades of experience and a pro-infrastructure agenda. Although we can’t print the hundreds of letters both in support of, and in opposition to, Mr. Tantarello, we are able to print the first eight that were mailed.

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Tintarello Can Solve Grave Issue
Dear Editor:

Folks, it’s time to wake up and smell the gangrene. Our county’s graveyards have been overflowing since Bottletown started burying people sideways in 2002. It’s disgraceful, and the only regrets I feel over [County Executive] Cheryll Lampson’s sudden death are that she won’t be among the burgeoning army of dead bodies that drive down the value of my property — she was cremated and received a proper burial at sea — and that we didn’t run her out of town on a rail when the first homeless guy was crammed in a grave upside down.

I’ve always been an outspoken proponent for the rights of the deceased, as my family lives right next to the Bottletown cemetery (which has been closed to city residents since 2003) and I am in frequent contact with cadavers. Despite my constant stream of letters to “Tammany Hall,” my kids have had to stand in a pool of pus and gore while waiting for their school bus every day! Now, I’ve read over Lou Tintarello’s proposal for a Corpse Reclamation Center, and based on what I’ve read about him in the Tribune and the Times Herald Record, I believe he is sincere in his desire to solve our county’s thanatological crisis. Please, when you step into the satin-lined voting booth that so closely resembles a coffin, please, please vote for the candidate most adept at corpse removal.

Isaac DeMort
Funerary Director Emeritus, Child Psychologist
Bottletown

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Tintarello Ran Garbage Cartel
Dear Editor:

Not many people are willing to speak openly about the real Lou Tintarello. I am only one of the people Tintarello’s greed and ambition has hurt, but there are undoubtedly hundreds of others still too afraid to come forward. For four years, my husband came home every day with more gray hairs than he left home with, worried that our phones were being tapped. We stopped going out, and if the pizza delivery boy wasn’t the usual guy, “Chester” would wave around a hunting rifle and yell in Russian until he left. Our house was vandalized repeatedly during a period of 18 months starting in March 2001, mere days after Tintarello was practically thrown off the National Board of Landfill Ecology.

My husband was also a member of NBLE at the time, and up until February 28, 2001, part of Tintarello’s syndicate. He’d been an undercover informant for the FBI since 1997 when Tintarello saw him disarm and decapitate and assassin sent by the CIA, who were more than willing to provide help. By the time “Chester” and I were put into witness protection, my husband was diverting millions from state coffers to Tintarello’s offshore tax shelter, and Al Turi’s landfill had become a mass grave. Thanks to what we had been funneling to the FBI, Tintarello was positively linked to a number of disreputable scrap metal dealers, all of whom are now facing criminal prosecution. The only reason he wasn’t charged with anything was because George Bush had recently been sworn in as president, and many critical Justice Department documents, including the Tintarello case files, were “accidentally” lost during the transition. So before you step into the booth on August 20, remember: I had to send this letter by carrier pigeon from a moving vehicle because of Lou Tintarello.

Jane Roe
Profession Withheld
Bunker 59

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Tintarello’s No Pipe Dream
Dear Editor:

First off, I would like to thank the Tribune’s staff for its exceptional reporting over the years. My name is Dominick Capomagi, and I would like to explain to the Tribune’s readers why I support Lou Toro Tintarello.

The first time I met Lou, I wasn’t all that impressed. He was cocky, a college grad with a still-warm Engineering B.S. from some ivy-league school, and Al Turi had just hired him as a sanitation advisor. We worked the same hours, and for two months I showed him the ropes, helping him get the hang of running and maintaining an actual landfill. Although he started out with a superiority complex, he became so adept at processing new shipments that I would occasionally hide in the bushes outside our office, watching him “sink or swim.” Every time he was left to his own devices, Lou performed admirably, and Al Turi and I heaped more and more responsibilities on him until he was practically running the place. That was about the time the New York Corps of Sanitation Engineers took a shine to him and made him their New York Sanitizer’s United Chairman in 1983. He moved downstate to head the Nassau chapter for almost a decade.

When Lou Tintarello moved back to Orange County in 1995 to become a NBLE New York liaison, I urged him to keep Al Turi’s landfill open in accordance to the (now deceased) man’s wishes, and he managed to do so until his heart condition precipitated him resignation from the board in 2001. It was around this time that a “hippie cabal” took over the county governments of Orange, Oxglove and Ulster counties, instituting a series of dump closings and causing a short-term garbage deficit.

While the citizens of Orange and Ulster counties have voted these incompetent ideologues out, Oxglove’s Cheryll Lampson continued to push — despite the thousands of complaints and double-blind studies proving that these programs didn’t work — such inane policies as the Imperial Gardens Sewage-2-Food program and the ill-fated Sweitzer Lake Hotdog Tree Farm. North Oxglove’s sewer system has been completely neglected since Lampson was elected, and manholes are turning into sinkholes. In the words of Lou Tintarello himself, “it’s time we stopped reelecting pedagogic powder-kegs of anti-populism” and put someone at the top of the executive totem pole who won’t stick to the same crackpot programs that Soviet Russia rejected as “idiotic.” Thank you.

Dom Capomagi
Tintarello Campaign Manager
Goshen, Orange County

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No Animal Magnetism
Dear Editor:

Something’s fishy in Oxglove county, but I can’t quite put my paw on it. Oh, that’s right — I must be thinking of the Lou Tintarello candidacy. Tintarello’s cronies have been spreading rumors about Corpse Reclamation Centres and stronger cooperation with the Canadian Pipeline Authority (the CPA has much more stringent guidelines than its U.S. counterpart), but is there anything more important in a county executive candidate than his/her love of animals?

Cheryll Lampson didn’t care mush (sic) for animals. Cells United released about eight live melanistic cougars inside the Sweitzer Lake Post Office, and Lampson didn’t hesitate to call in animal control with their beanbag bullets and Kevlar vests. Those poor cougars might have broken their teeth while defending themselves from their human oppressors! Perhaps if Lampson had given more tender love and care to the animal kingdom, a flocks of wild turkeys would have found the wherewithal to spread their wings and soar to her rescue as she plummeted through the clouds.

But dissatisfaction with Lampson doesn’t automatically translate into Tintarello support. My life promotion group has several damaging photos of what could have been the Route 38 Wilderness Preserve before and after Mr. Tintarello broke ground there for his children’s hospital — which is in itself scandalous. Are tumors not alive? Do tumors not bleed when cut? — in ’94. Over fifty trees were slaughtered out of sheer malice, including a Sarasota Pine that I cared for dearly. I’ll never be able to look at another pine tree without feeling that loss.

My organization, and our allies in the county legislature, cannot support a man who would casually chop down a perfectly healthy pine tree without its consent, and who, over many decades, has leveraged his position as a “sanitation guru” to commit mass moneran genocide in the name of human supremacy. This isn’t 1906 anymore. We need to move forward as a planet, not a specie.

Zena Barbital
Chaircreature, Cellular Constructs United
Route 38 W.

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Tintarello A Fraud?
Dear Editor:

In 1999, the Tribune published an opinion piece on the Colpax Petroleum Anti-Tax Amendment, hailing it as a revolutionary piece of counterculture legislation. It passed the New York State Assembly in September 2000 and less than six months later over 30 new tax-free refineries were established in Redshaw county. Yes, the Colpax amendment revitalized nearby Route 38’s failing steampunk industry, but the bill’s authors and its proponents failed to realize that many of the new Ethanol/Petroleum refineries would be built along the Olathe riverbanks. Leakage and improper waste dumping from the new plants has lowered the pH of Loch Olathe, which the Olathe River flows into, to levels on par with the atmosphere of Venus. Lou Tintarello was the primary consultant on “Route 38 Restoration” and I hold him personally responsible for the severe damage these plants have had on Redshaw’s (formerly) beautiful, unspoilt environment.

Lou Tintarello always said “if you know a better way to make bread, become a baker.” I may not be an iconic sanitation engineer with decades of experience, but I majored in environmental studies at Cambridge and later worked as a technician in an Ethanol Compressor. And I can tell you that contrary to the testimony Mr. Tintarello gave the New York Petroleum Commission, ethanol refineries should not and more importantly cannot be built adjacent to moving water. The fact that Tintarello suggested this as an official recommendation and not as an offhand joke seriously calls into question the qualifications of all the so-called “experts” who give testimony to the Petroleum Commission and all state agencies in general. The onus on our governor to fire all officials who catered to Tintarello’s incompetence, and the Assembly to actually enforce the 1991 Truth in Testifying Act.

As if to highlight my point, the Petroleum Regulatory Board just conducted a full analysis of the new Colpax plants. Of the 30 plants, 28 have extremely weak foundations, as any competent engineer would predict. Within the year they will almost certainly fall into the river, blocking the Olathe and flooding most of Redshaw. The two plants that aren’t poised to go the way of Atlantis haven’t even been built yet! Their construction funds seem to have mysteriously evaporated, but the books say otherwise.

Justice must be served; Lou Tintarello should be penalized to the full extent of the law for this heinous breach of public trust, and stripped of his engineering degree and blackbelt. And everyone who railed for Colpax should be strung up by their heels.

Maya Fairbanks
Professor of Akkadian Phoenitics, SUNY Oxglove
Warwick 2.0, Redshaw County

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Republicans Can Do Better
Dear Editor:

Lou Tintarello isn’t a Republican. He’s never been to an Oxglove county Republican party meeting, and I doubt he’s ever voted for a Republican. So why is he running as one?

I’m a red-blooded American through and through. On January 21, 1981, I legally changed my name to Ronald Reagan and had people call my “Mister President” for eight wonderful years. I support whatever policies George Bush says will work because he’s always had my back, and I’ve been passing a petition around North Oxglove that would urge Congress to amend the constitution to abolish the United States senate just to prevent Hillary Clinton and Jim Carrey from serving as senators. I never liked Hillary, even before she carpetbagged her way onto New York’s ballots — just like Lou Tintarello is doing right now. He’s never lived in Oxglove. He doesn’t know anything about our culture, about the salt-of-the-earth folks who turned Oxglove from a prison camp into a thriving metropolis in less than a hundred years.

Our county’s crime rate is over double the rate of New Hampshire, Kansas, and Florida minus the old people district combined. And what’s Lou Tintarello’s solution to our crime wave? Build more landfills? The man’s got a rose-tinted world-view, and in a place like Oxglove that could get a man shanked in the gut. Doped-out college punks with greased hair and leather jackets are roaming our neighborhoods unimpeded. They’re defacing public monuments, holding nightly gang fights, and booming their ungodly be-atles music across town!

If I was county executive, I’d throw the whole lot into the slammer and throw away the key. If Lou Tintarello was county executive, he’d read them all bedtime stories while they razed Oxglove to the ground. I admire the man personally, the way he stood up to the National Board of Landfill Ecology, saying he couldn’t support such an egregious violation of state rights, even if it got him fired. At the Republican party Independence Barbecue, (the only party function he ever attended) Lou Tintarello even said, “I don’t stand on my record because my record isn’t something I stand on. I stand on my convictions, and if your convictions are weak, you don’t belong in government.” Thank you, Lou. You’ve never made more sense.

Mick Satchel
Evolutionary Biologist
Imperial Gardens

***

Tintarello A Godsend
Dear Editor:

Illusions both of the mind and of purposeful organic misdirection surround us. People opposed to Lou Tintarello’s candidacy are obviously members of a Supreme Ecclesiastical Orthodoxy, afraid that their parishioners would abandon them once Doctor Tintarello’s divine mandates are publicly revealed, ashamed that their life’s work in the name of anti-Helionics is a filthy hoax. Lou Tintarello is a fully accredited Doctor of Divinity and many of his actions would merit recompense and sainthood.

This is no prank; I truly believe that Lou Tintarello has been touched by the Hand of God, placed on this Earth to guide us to paradise. From 1994-95, Doctor Tintarello held weekly healing seminars under a refurbished carnival tent out behind the Lexiconington strip mall. I attended every week, and I saw him cure Alzheimer’s, excise grapefruit-sized tumors, and regrow missing limbs. He even revived a child who died in a boating accident, but made it clear that he wasn’t trying to usurp the Mantle of Heaven; we tore down a shrine secretly built for him, at his personal request. Never before or since have I met someone with Lou Tintarello’s inner strength or purity of self-character.

Tintarello only stopped healing because it was God’s will, that he reign over the tabernacle of national landfill ecology and make the world safer for people to practice their own personal religious and Helionic tendencies. Anyone who votes against him is spitting in God’s eye and condemning our county to famine and pestilence. The streets of Bottletown are already brimming with corpses — perhaps too many among you are not true believers?

Sid Gereth Finnigan
Eschatological Theorist, Church of Helionic Tendency
Village of Lexiconington

***

Lou Cleaned Up Al Turi
Dear Editor:

Before Lou Tintarello ran the Al Turi landfill, it was a dump. The Japanese tycoons that bought it from Al Turi in 1974 weren’t willing to follow the American Waste Management Committee’s already lax guidelines on serious garbage shortages. Unsurprisingly, Orange County faced a loss of over two thousand tons of solid waste just one year later. Redshaw’s many in-ground swimming pools became makeshift dumping grounds for Orange’s surplus rubbish, and many families were forced to trade in their cars and vans for steamrollers, just to get down the street. My parents could no longer afford to have relatives visit because of the shame living in Redshaw conferred at that time, and I never got to meet my grandfather.

Lou Tintarello changed all that, almost from the minute he took over. With almost divine inspiration, he darn near rewrote the New York Waste Disposal Code to divert all future garbage to a New Jersey barge. Then he had a horde of garbage trucks — all recently painted and with galvanized hubcaps — blow through Oxglove and Orange, and Redshaw, and haul 160 tons of waste from our rivers and alleyways. For the first time in many of our lives, we saw the pavement — and it was black! Many of us suspected the road was actually brown, just like the garbage that covered it. And grass! I didn’t believe that anything green could survive in nature, I thought that the tropical rain forests were myths. But seeing plants actually growing in Redshaw county soil; Lou Tintarello gave us our dignity back. There’s not a child in Redshaw that didn’t grow up hearing Tintarello’s name, and Oxglove would be crazy to turn down his leadership.

Igor Glazastik
Textile Interoperability Expert
Olathe Head, Redshaw County

Editorial Cartoon

Caption: “Net Neutrality? Good Riddance!”

Secure Our Planet’s Borders
Dear Editor:
Only five percent of the objects that pass through our planet’s atmosphere every year are inspected by government officials for drugs and/or weaponry. Five percent. It’s appalling to think that after all these years, the government still hasn’t learned the lessons of Comet Hale-Bopp. Humanity was almost wiped off the face of the Earth, but has the President or Congress implemented the Hale-Bopp Commission’s recommendations? A resounding no! Our planet’s atmosphere is still as porous as it’s ever been, and there’s no telling how much contraband interstellar smugglers have gotten past our lax security. We can no longer afford to ignore the looming threat posed by the cosmos; every day, more and more of our kids get hooked on the moon rock. People, we can’t keep sitting on our hands. This is simply ridiculous Contact your congressmen immediately, and tell them to implement the Hale-Bopp Commission’s recommendations as soon as possible. I understand that some of you question the commission’s proposal to build a giant protective carbon sphere around the Earth, since it will cut off the sun completely and cause a permanent ice age. But I have one question for you, you Doubting Thomases: how patriotic is the sun?

Flix Steinhoffer, NASA Director of Exobiology
Imperial Gardens

Can We Still Afford “Paper Or Plastic?”
Dear Editor:
McDermott Bagging Inc. has always been at the cutting edge of bagging technology. In 1890, we invested $20 (valued at over a hundred billion dollars in today’s currency) in our Bag-Building Brainstormers, an elite engineer corps devoted entirely to the development of new kinds of bags. The bag species our brainstormers dream up are tested thoroughly for quality and marketed to grocers, packing companies, shadow governments, major retailers, and anyone else willing to pay top-dollar for top-quality brand bags. Admittedly, there have been mistakes over the years: the lead/mercury bag of the late 1890s, 1919’s “Proud Member of the League of Nations” Bag, 1933’s “An End To Prohibition” Bag (coated with alcohol, tended to ignite), the post World War II “Surplus Plutonium Weave” bag, the 1957 “Shattered Glass Grab-Bag,” and the infamous “Tissue Paper” Bags that almost sank us in the 80s.

But like the noble chimpanzee, we too are capable of learning from our mistakes. Each failure sent our company in a different direction, divining methods of creating cheaper, stronger bags. Industry experts have said that due to McDermott’s research, the average plastic bag increased in strength by over 250% during the 20^th century, and the average paper bag contains over a thousand percent more recycled material than it did in 1900. Therefore, it with a heavy heart that I announce the closure of McDermott Bagging Inc.

Ever since the dot com bust, we’ve been hemorrhaging millions in revenue as the cash-strapped businesses we deal with recommend reusable buckets to their clientèle. This allows them to cancel costly orders for barrels of bags from both our paper and plastic lines. We can no longer afford to feed and clothe our thousands of full and part time employees, and so must close our Baywood and Birchtown branches. Our subsidiaries will be sold at a private auction, and our main office is scheduled to reopen in six months as McDermott Bucket Co.

On behalf of the Board of Directors, I apologize to both our employees, and to you, the consumer.

Fuzzy McDermott, C.E.O. of McDermott Bagging Inc.
E. Bottletown

Unfunny Cartoon Is Offensive
Dear Editor:
As the head surgeon of Oxglove county’s most prestigious hospital, my waiting room is always fully stocked with newspapers and magazines from all across our great nation. Until a week ago, your Tribune was prominently featured at the forefront of our magazine rack, above the Oxglove Record and the Daily Oxglovite. After all, none of them have won the Bendicott Award for Journalistic Excellence five years running, have they? I’m sorry to say that I frequently promoted your hackery for two of those five years. Last Monday, one of my patients derisively told me during a routine quintuple bypass that she’d seen a political comic in your paper casting our hospital in a terrible light. I didn’t believe her at first since she was a pyromaniac firefighter, but after seeing the cartoon, I was very offended. The doctors we have here work very hard, and it was wrong of you to depict our entire hospital as some kind of impending national crisis. Your paper should issue a retraction immediately, before our legal team is forced to take action.

Dr. Marvin Gelbers, Head Surgeon at National Debt General
North Oxglove

History Should Not Be Taught In Our Schools
Dear Editor:
The public school system if filling our children’s heads with unwarranted truths! A week ago, I took my family on an educational vacation, to see where several key battles of the Revolutionary War were fought. During our self-guided tour of Bunker Hill, my eldest son William informed me quite nonchalantly that the actual battle had taken place on nearby Breed’s Hill. I tried to use logic to convince him otherwise (if it had been at Breed’s Hill, it would’ve been called the Battle of Breed’s Hill), but he resisted, saying he’d learned—in school—that the battle had taken place at Breed’s Hill. Naturally, I had him executed for his insubordination. But what totally shocked me was the way his teachers had distorted his understanding of historical continuity.

History isn’t something that’s fixed; it’s not a candy bar on sale at a convenience store. It’s something malleable, open to interpretation. What was true last week may not be true this week, and may not necessarily have been true in the first place, upon retrospection. Who’s to say the Titanic sank over the Atlantic ocean, or that Johannes Gutenberg didn’t invent the steam engine? Our history teachers need to pull their heads out of the sandbox and start reevaluating their narrow-minded, one-dimensional views. Lives depend on it.

Georgia Orville, Professor Emeritus of History, Oxglove University
Route 38 West

RE: My New Shiny Metallic Exterior
Dear Editor:
After receiving a total of

four

acknowledgments regarding my recent paint job, I feel compelled to enter my experience into the public record. Implementing file: static_flashback_sequence.

File not found.

When Drone SIG-430-D452 informed me that my scuffed chassis was repainted Light Slate Gray instead of the standard Gainsboro, my initial response was less than or equal to zero in terms of x where x equals happiness. At the time, Common Memory Package 2007-01 maintained that deviating from Gainsboro would decrease plant-wide productivity, resulting in the creation of fewer product. This assumption was disproved; plant productivity remained at exactly 78% of optimal efficiency for one month following my repainting. This indicates zero change from any point during the previous fiscal quarter. I have already submitted my findings to the Drone Assembly Plant in New Guinea in the hopes that Light Slate Gray will be included as a viable chassis color in Common Memory Package 2007-06 (target release date July 10, 2007), along with fuchsia and electric blue.

Drone X32-90D-8990, Assembly Line Worker Unit (ALWU)
Lexiconington

Babies Are Not Adorable Anymore
Dear Editor:
I’m not going to pretend that I enjoy children. They cry often, they make unpleasant smells, and they are a burden on our economy (no child under fifteen years of age is employed anywhere in our nation, according to official government records). But I am a fan of cuteness. I have a display case full of freeze-dried baby animals, preserved in the earliest stages of cuteness. I’ve written hundreds of columns for dozens of reputable papers detailing the qualifications for differentiating a lovable baby from one that’s only a tad precocious. So I speak as an expert when I say that today’s babies are markedly less cherubic than babies born just ten years ago.

The University of Oxglove’s Baby Likability Department tracks baby adorability rates across the nation; it’s done so since statistics became an accepted science. Alarmingly, the department’s annual report shows not just a decrease in baby cuteness for 2006, but a long term trend of declining cuteness. In 2006 only 56% of all babies were rated “adorable,” a thirty point drop since 1990. The BCI (Baby Cuteness Index) hasn’t been this low since 1953, when an influx of baby boomers saturated the market and drove down average cuteness. But today’s problem isn’t an overabundance of fresh babies, it’s more of a cultural phenomenon. Babies today just aren’t as durable as they used to be, they don’t squirm as much or make as many interesting and adorable facial expressions as they used to. And some are just plain fat and ugly.

Lisa Caan, Parental Advice Columnist (Retired)
Birchwood, Redshaw County

Editorial Cartoon

Caption: “The Real Story Behind Campaign Finance Reform”

The Dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide
As an upstanding member of my local community (as evidenced by my lack of parking tickets and excellent posture), I feel it is my duty to inform my fellow Oxglovites of the dangers posed by Dihydrogen Monoxide. This chemical, while harmless in solid, liquid, and gaseous states, becomes extremely dangerous when combined in an aqueous solution with ammonia and bleach. I urge all citizens of Oxglove County to purchase Dihydrogen Monoxide detectors, available at every hardware store. The price of one Dihydrogen Monoxide detector may save not only life, but the lives of your pets, children, and Papier Mâchè sculptures.

Rex Ivanhoe, Professor of Cosmology
Oxglove

Horsing Around
Dear Editor: About one year ago, I purchased my baseball equipment store from the Sugar Cube Lounge, a for-profit rustic horse ranch. Before signing over the ranch, the former owners informed me that every year the intense summer storms would cause the water level to rise knee-high, giving the illusion that the ranch’s horses were sinking. The horses were in fact not in any danger, but the number of people who would stop by the ranch to complain prompted the owners to purchase a large billboard just outside the ranch, “THE HORSES ARE NOT SINKING!” This billboard has not been taken down, and has resulted in gridlock, due to people slowing down to see the “sinking horses.” Four traffic accidents occurred outside my store this month alone. Local regulations prevent me from removing the eyesore, and the police refuse to do anything as “this is a rugby town” (in the sergeant’s own words).

Flip Jackson, Owner of “Flip’s Mitts”
Imperial Gardens

Metric Mayhem
While I laud the Oxglove County Chamber of Commerce’s push to bring us into line with international measurements (as I am the Chief Bureau Standardizer of West Redshaw), I must once again condemn them for implementing the new system in an incredibly haphazard, dangerous, and downright nonsensical manner. All the speed limit signs on Route 38 West still have not been repainted or replaced (they list the old limit of 55 miles per hour), but over the area of the sign that says “MPH,” someone duct-taped a piece of cardboard that says “Celsius.” Celsius is a measurement of temperature, not of velocity. Furthermore, all receipts from commercial transactions are required to use the euro symbol—despite the fact that we still use American dollars—and the numbers themselves are in binary.

Melissa Scarsdale, Chief Bureau Standardizer (West Redshaw)
Kilogram

Taking Offense
I have been an avid television watcher since the medium first appeared in nineteen aught twenty-eight. Over the course of my life, I have seen the quantity of television programming increase, but there has also been a distinct lowering in the quality of the pictures. There have been many infograms that I’ve found distasteful, but have only rarely complained. Today, however, I must take a stand against something I saw on television last night. It so offended me that I can barely choke out this very sentence! Not only did it offend me, but I am completely certain that it offended everyone. This is the kind of filth that crosses all kinds of religious and political borders, this horrible thing I saw! So I call on my fellow parents and community members, together we must fight this. Together, we can take the airwaves back from the deplorable depravity and callous chaos of Micky Mouse.

Ziggy Tagg, Apprentice Geezer
Bottletown

A Case Of Mistaken Identity
Dear citizens of Oxglove County, my name is George Walden Bush. Due to the similarity between my name and the name of our nation’s unpopular president, I have been the victim of unending ridicule. I am not the president of the United States of America. I am a postal worker. Four days ago, the ridicule reached a boiling point when a prankster left a horse on my lawn, knowing full well that President Bush is deathly afraid of horses. I am not a Republican, and have never voted for George Bush, despite the identicalness of our names. I also demand an apology from whoever is responsible for stealing my (subscription only) issues of “JavaCode” and defacing my property last year. I still cannot get the spray-painted “Cheney 2Ever!” off my truck; and I don’t understand why it says “2Ever” instead of “4Ever.” Learn to spell, you punks.

George W. Bush, Mailman
Route 38 West

Pop-Ups Unbearable
Editor: My computer keeps popping up messages while I’m trying to type on the Internet. I have no idea where they keep coming from, and I’ve tried clicking on them all, because I thought that would make them go away. The pop-ups have done a whole bunch of things since I started clicking on them. First of all, my computer starts a lot slower. It takes over a half hour to start, and when it does start, all my menus are in some kind of language that they speak in other countries. I can’t understand it at all. Second, my Internet has been changed, and the icon that was next to Word is now on the other side of the desktop. Thirdly, I started to get coffee magazines in the mail from your area. It bothers me a lot! I don’t need coffee magazines, I have enough coffee.

George W. Bush, President of the United States
Washington D.C.

Koala Preserve
As an avid animal lover and nature enthusiast, I’m writing in to encourage all residents of the greater Oxglove area to visit the Noah’s Arc Nature Preserve. The Preserve opened last week, and already we have two of nearly all macroscopic species that inhabit this bleak Earth, all arranged in a semicircular layout! The basis for our entire conservationist architecture is Edward Glenburr’s 1956 dissertation, “Biblical Geometric Intersection Points.” And unlike other preserves, our snacks won’t let you down in the texture department! So for all of you who want to see strange, exotic animals, to those of you who simply enjoy ice cream with a cardboard-like texture, Noah’s Arc is the place for you! Except for people who want to see koalas, the preserve doesn’t yet have any koalas.

Amanda Hugenkiz, Brochure Folder
Bottletown

Idiotic Decision
I must sincerely protest the county legislature’s recent decision to purchase traffic signs of varying colours. As a senior with failing eyesight, I find it difficult to distinguish white text from yellow backgrounds, especially at night. I have lived in Oxglove County for over 40 years, and this is the first time the legislature has made a decision I disagree with. I implore all Oxglove County residents to contact their member of the legislature and protest this asinine policy decision, as traffic accidents have increased markedly in the two months since the new traffic signs were put up.

John Mittenberg, retired piano tuner
Olathe Landing

Bus Service
Beginning this Friday, the Sweitzer Lake school district will be offering bus service to non-students. The district board of trustees feels that in light of budget shortfalls, we need to “grow the brand” by offering our transportation services to members of the community. Parents will notice the immediate change in schedule, as instead of picking elementary school children up at eight in the morning and bringing them home at three in the afternoon, the bus will make its first run at 5 a.m. and last run at eleven p.m. Due to further budget restrictions and the needs of our customers, these will be the only times the bus will be able to pick up children. All questions must be forwarded to the district help desk.

Glenda Dorsendorf, district attorney
Sweitzer Lake

Broken Pipe
Four years ago, I moved into my current residence in Oxglove County to escape the “taxecutioners” of Redshaw County. At first, I was extremely happy with my house and neighborhood. I was fine until about two weeks ago, when I was awakened by a ruptured pipe. I assume it’s a sewage pipe, as the water flowing from it looks filthy. I have called on my county representative, congressman, and state senator to fix this problem, as it is a municipal pipe. I have waited anxiously for city workers to come by and repair the pipe, but in the two weeks since I first reported the problem not only has nobody come to repair the pipe, but I have received threatening letters from the county and state legislatures. I find it completely unprofessional that my elected officials would demand that I pay for the pipe, as I’ve already promised to properly dispose of my corrosive materials from now on, instead of pouring them down my sink.

Rhet Alderbahn, hydrochloric acid tester
Imperial Gardens

Issue A Retraction!
This is the first time I’ve written to the Tribune, and it will be my last, as I don’t intend to buy another copy or your non-credible paper. In your March 18^th issue, you state that the manhunt for three inmates who escaped from the Oxglove County prison ended when the inmates “turned themselves into police” last Tuesday. Oh, so the three fugitives suddenly became police officers? Your lack of attention to spelling and grammar shows a lack of understanding of the English language. I only hope that my harsh criticism will prevent you from penning such misprnts in the future.

Hera Page, author, “Grammar for Dummies”
Imperial Gardens

Small Linux Problem
As the administrator of the Oxglove County Community Center, I have worked with Linux-based operating systems every day since prop 14 passed last year, requiring all county-owned computers to run non-proprietary software. While I applaud the county’s move to open source sofware, I am upset that I was not consulted on the way in which the new system would be advertised to the public. As you probably already know, the version of Linux we now use implements the GNOME environment, which is not in itself problematic, as I am familiar with GNOME. However, the county legislature recently decided to promote the new system by plastering giant posters with the words “Try GNOME! It’s fast and free!” on it throughout the center. Not many people understand what GNOME is, and when they see the posters they assume it refers to me, as I am barely four feet tall. Ever since the posters went up, my office has been inundated with calls from people who want me to do a range of tasks from painting houses to grooming cats. I find it degrading and insist that the legislature remove the posters and switch to another Linux distro that uses KDE instead of GNOME.

Lester Littleman, county community center administrator
Oxglove

Total 1337
ALL YOUR BASE@!!!!!!!!!!!11

anonymous
via e-mail

I Don’t Need Any Of You
Until last November, I had represented Imperial Gardens and North Spalding in the county legislature continuously for nearly 24 years. I understand that the voters wanted change last year, and spoke with their ballots. I can see now how the bill I introduced last spring to lure endangered bears to Oxglove county by littering the ground with bacon may have been seen by my former constituents as a tad irresponsible. To this day, I stand by my belief that it was the right decision. If a large enough number of endangered kunda bears made Oxglove county their home, we would have qualified for a state bear grant. Instead, we no longer have the funds needed to run the oxygen pump that provides half the county with breathable air. I had hoped to run for my old seat next November, but the cities I represented may be uninhabitable by that time.

Martina Glendale, former delegate
Redshaw County

Roosevelt Exhibit
As the proprietor of the Franklin Roosevelt Learning and Information Centre, I welcome all of you to participate in our Rockin’ Roosevelt barbeque this Saturday. The barbeque kicks off the opening of the centre’s newest exhibit, “Roosevelt: Man or Machine?” In the exhibit, we openly discuss the technology used to transform the United States’ only four term president into a bionic miracle capable of bending spoons with his mind. The exhibit also spans Roosevelt’s medical records, proving that he never had polio, that he had two hearts, and that he could perform photosynthesis. Vegetarian alternatives will be available at the barbeque.

Takera d’Gistoff, information archivist
Imperial Gardens

Spiritual Awakening
Are you lonely? Do you feel incomplete? Like something is missing from your life? We understand. The First Church of Tax Exempt Status has been helping people find purpose and completion since its founding in 1974. We take great pride in helping people of all faiths and walks of life by unburdening them of material woes. For as it says in our sacred text, “Lo, unto the great plains there came the roar of the mighty lion, tearing through the grasses like so many gazelles, all in search of water” (Moz 6:26). To begin your spiritual journey, simply bring your birth certificate and the deeds to any land you might own to our group caucus this Thursday. No fatties.

Reverend Fluorine Drake, pastor 1^st class
Oxglove