Is everyone here for the editorial meeting? Ok, good. Heavy news week this week, so only the best stories are going to get space. We'll start with Cheddar Headlines. Ten words max, and the headline can be self-explanatory as in 'The Independent', or horrendously convoluted, as in, erm, The Cheesy Headline Game. Once the headline is finished, I'd like a few words containing the story in a news style, please. Subs, clear your desks, and let's get the presses rolling. Spike it once we reach the usual back page move.
An unusually smooth coup d'etat occured in the Peoples Republic of Crudistan last week when a crowd of amateur players staged a special show to celebrate their beloved presidents birthday. The premier, 96 year-old Vladmir Tyrantski, was wheeled out onto the presidential palace balcony by his bodyguard but they panicked when the performance of the Mikado bagan. A spokesman for the new revolutionary government party, The New Crudistan Vaudeville Players, said: "All hell broke loose when the chorus of 'Behold! the Lord High Executioner' began. The guards seemed to get confused. First of all the president's wheelchair was tipped over the balcony and the national guard began piling their guns in the Square of the Brave Peoples of the Revolution 1917. The next thing we knew was that Nanki Poo (played by Yuri N'thashit) had been hoisted up into the palace and declared president. The audience then stormed the governerment offices to get out of the rain."
Submariner Walter E. Graves is up to it again. Returning to the wreck of the sunken clipper ship SS Nutty Shark just off San Francisco Bay, he has now reported the retrieval of additional artifacts from Davy Jones' locker by his robotic rover Our Sea Ditty (aka RCDT). He reported that yet another gold tooth was found in one of Jones' many mouth organ cases just as in his previous dive last year. Davy Jones, of course, was the foolhardy '49er prospector, who having made his fortune in the Gold Rush, went and had his long-neglected teeth filled with gold by the noted dentist Chu Wing in San Francisco's Chinatown. Shortly therafter he acquired a substantial harmonica collection and bought himself an aged clipper ship to set sail for the International Harmonica Convention of 1850 held on the South Sea Island of Cacophonia. Being an inexperienced sailor and inebriated as well, he got lost in the fog shortly after embarking on this voyage and sunk the clipper in the bay after colliding with some submerged rocks. Graves' theory is that Jones was fond of playing naughty nautical songs on his mouth organs, but his loose golden teeth would occasionally get stuck within them and then fall off. These, Graves surmises, were stored carefully in hs locker by Jones in his mouth organ cases. The teeth are on display at the Monterey Museum of Maritime Dentistry until July 10 and the decorative mouth organ cases may be seen at the San Jose Salon of Musical Memorobilia until July 16.
[penelope] This is well spooky. See the post I made on Orange in Holmes Raided in Mystery Dawn Swoop to irach shortly after you made this one. I swear I hadn't looked here first...penelope - BOLD Botherer - TEXT
The Campaign for Plain Text announced today that it was "offended" by the latest development in text messaging: the ability to send messages using multiple fonts, sizes, styles, and colours. A spokesman said, "This is just a ploy to get people to replace their phones more often by offering new, glitzy features that no-one really needs. If your message is worth sending at all, it doesn't need jazzed up with dingbats and Star Wars fonts. Children should be taught proper texting in school, and not be encouraged to do the equivalent of scrawling a letter in crayons."
Uganda's Ministry of Wildlife today announced the alarming news that the rare subspecies of wildebeest Connochaetus boombamii which is found only in that nation's most remote Meanamin National Park is close to extinction. Ministry spokesperson Idono Nathan said that global warming is the likely cause. This wildebeest variety has a unique built-in mechanism of controlling its own population (as do lemmings), in that aged animals who can no longer digest the native grasses adequately build up vast quantities of methane gas in their abdomens which cause them to explode in the midday heat. But now due to global warming, another grass species had proliferated in the park, which when grazed, builds up vast amounts of methane in the abdomens of even young animals, causing them to explode prematurely. This has led to the unfortunate decimation of the population of this lovely animal. The World Wildlife Fund is expected to announce a grassroots campaign to save this unique species of wildebeest.
BBC4 spokesman I.M. Sanguin announced that July will be "Vampire Movie" month. Movies, informative documentary features, plays, musicals and operettas, ballets, Kabuki and Noh dramas and chat shows relating to Dracula and vampires in general will be broadcast around the clock. As a promotion, they are offering the first 100 viewers who sign up on their website and complete the sentence "I'd like enlarged Dracula teeth because...." to receive free of charge (and post paid) a set of oversized glow-in-the dark canine teeth. Further details can be found at www.special_offer/bbc4Canine/VV.
A scientific report on the influential and much respected website www.davidicke.net has shown an alarming increase in cat's addiction to cheese. The report outlines research that was initiated quite by accident as researchers from the University of Nothingbettertodo, Utah were investigating how domestic cats keep themselves fit in the face of owners keeping them housebound in order to avoid the perils of the real world such as cat fights, being chased by dogs and eating too much fat saturated tinned catt food. Chief researcher, Fritz Klutz said "we were amazed to find that cats liked cheese. There seems to be no natural instinctive link between the hunting instinct and the consumption of prepared foodstuffs." He went on "some cats were eating several kilos of cheese per day." He continued, getting even more animated, "What is more interesting the the profile of addiction. At first we offered cats "soft" cheeses, such as Brie or Lymeswold, but we soon found them wanting stronger cheeses such as Danish Blue or Stilton. But many cats got hooked on "hard" cheeses, such as Parmisan or Full Mature Cheddar. It was at this stage we found certain cats developed a fetish for cheese, many tom cats turning down offers of sex with attractive feline females in order to continue their fetishistic attachments with particular types of cheese." Fritz Klutz is 24.