Sep

Boehner: Obama “Worst Black President Ever”

WASHINGTON, D.C. Representative John Boehner, who is likely to become Speaker if Republicans re-take the House this fall, ramped up his attacks on the President today, saying Obama is “the worst black president America has ever had.”

Left to right: Orange, white, black.

“We don’t need to wait for history,” Boehner said, retaliating for the President’s decision to make the Ohio Congressman an issue in mid-term elections. “Among America’s black presidents, Obama comes in dead last by any measure, including mid-range jumper and turnover-to-assist ratio.”

Scouting report: “High dribble makes POTUS #44 vulnerable to steals.”

Boehner is a former plastics executive who is a regular at Splash!, a Dayton, Ohio tanning salon. “He’s our best customer,” said Tammi McCaffrey, pointing to Boehner’s perfect attendance record on the salon’s “Sunny Days!” chart. The tanning industry has been hit hard by a tax imposed under Obama’s landmark healthcare legislation, and some feel the perpetually-orange Boehner is retaliating. “Thousands of bodacious young women with names like Krystal and Tiffani are out of work because of Obamacare,” Boehner told a raucous crowd of 47 bronze supporters at the site of the Tomb of the Unknown Tanner in Arlington, Virginia. “What are they supposed to do at a time when the economy is not producing any new perfume spritzer girl jobs?”

Tomb of the Unknown Tanner

Obama is America’s third black president. John Hanson, who served as third president under the Articles of Confederation, was the first. Bill Clinton was the second, but he was impeached after a largely-black audience heard him play saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show.

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Sep

The Corrections Department

Because of the wide range of topics covered by Gerbil News Network, and deadline pressures that limit average research time per story to thirty seconds surfing the internet, errors of fact or emphasis are sometimes made. Note the passive voice–it’s not like we made them. Alien life forms in the THX 1138 spiral galaxy caused them. Gerbil News Network welcomes information that corrects or amplifies stories that we publish–just don’t get snippy about it, okay?

Editor and Publisher

A story in the September 9th edition of Gerbil News Network stated that the song “Love Child” by Martha and the Vandellas was based on the life of former Supreme Court Justice David Souter, the illegitimate offspring of actress Debbie Reynolds and the Keebler Cookie elf.

The resemblances are uncanny.

“Love Child” was sung by Diana Ross and the Supremes, not Martha and the Vandellas. Gerbil News Network deeply regrets its error.

Vandellas and Supremes: There’s a big difference.

A graphic in the September 15th edition suggested that all fifty states have adopted Komodo Dragon leash laws due to the threat such giant lizards pose to children and small animals.

“Mom! Sparky ate through his leash again!”

Missouri and New Hampshire, two states in which the sale of fireworks is legal, do not currently have Komodo Dragon leash laws, although owners are required to carry “Pooper Scoopers” while walking them in such states.

“Oh, that Barry Bonds!”

In a story about performance-enhancing drug use by Major League Baseball players, Barry Bonds was referred to as the “pumpkin-headed, steroid-swilling, former infielder for the San Francisco Giants.” Mr. Bonds is a pumpkin-headed, steroid-swilling, former outfielder for the San Francisco Giants.

“You mean more to me than anything–more than a Channel 2 tote bag or a Three Tenors DVD!”

Because of incorrect information provided to Gerbil News Network by WGBH Channel 2, a public television station located in Boston, ratings figures for several high-toned programs based on British novels were misstated. “Bleak House” averaged 3.1 viewers per episode, not 3.1 million, and “Jane Eyre” averaged 5.1 viewers per episode, not 5.1 million.

“I say, old fellow–your Escalade is blocking my Lincoln Navigator and I’m afraid I’m going to have to give you some shotz with my full-clip double Glock.”

Because of a reporting error, a story about a drive-by shooting misidentified a club known for drug dealing, loud parties and fighting as The Country Club in Newton, Massachusetts, the oldest country club in America. The Country Club is located in Brookline, Massachusetts. We regret any confusion this error may have caused.

In the Labor Day Weekend “Lifestyles” pullout section Camilla Parker Bowles was referred to as the 2005 Horse of the Year. “Rocknroll Hanover” was the 2005 Horse of the Year, while Ms. Bowles was 2005 Filly of the Year. Gerbil News Network apologizes to Mr. Hanover for its error.

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Sep

Two Children, End of Summer, South Station

A young girl, clapping her hands under
      each upraised knee in succession,
      as she lopes down the concrete
      towards the bus station.

She’s on vacation; her parents
      lag behind, held back by
      suitcases they pull, like wagons
      in harness, as if pack animals.

A young boy, who’s just learned that
      by blowing out of the side of his
      lower lip, he can make his hair flip
      up. He’s been told to wait outside the rest room

if he doesn’t have to go, and not talk to anyone.
      He pays no attention, absorbed in the game
      of self-manipulation. He looks only as long
      at each passer-by as he has to.

Around them, commuters stream homeward,
      their garments stuck at the armpits, wet with sweat.
      The sun is still high in the west, and memories
      of lost baseballs and skinned knees return.

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Sep

The People Who Won’t Get Back to Me

Literary agents, also editors,
But most assuredly not my numerous creditors,
Someday they won’t mean jack to me—
The people who won’t get back to me.

Old girlfriends I find on the web—
One’s named Robin, the other’s a Deb.
I wonder whatever attracted me—
To the women who won’t get back to me.

Publishers, prospects, famous authors–
I’ve sent them all emails, they can’t be bothered.
Their silence speaks loudly this fact to me—
The people who won’t get back to me.

The people who’ve said to me “Let’s do lunch!”
Over the years I’ve collected a bunch.
There may be a hundred, I don’t know exactly.
The people who won’t get back to me.

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Sep

Biden Among Forty Percent Who Can’t Name Vice President

WASHINGTON, D.C. A new Pew Research Center survey revealing only 60% of Americans can correctly name the Vice President hit this city–whose residents overwhelmingly work for the federal government–like an earthquake today. But the aftershock was even stronger when it was learned that former U.S. Senator Joseph Biden was among those who did not answer the question correctly.

“It’s Dick Cheney.”

“I’m not going to get involved in the whole ‘gotcha’ game,” Biden told reporters at a hastily-assembled press conference. “That’s a trick question, like ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’ There’s no right answer.”

“Who’s the Vice President? Let me ask you a question–who wants to know?”

Biden carries “flash cards” with him at all times to be prepared for “brain teasers” such as “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?” and “Who wrote Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony?” His staff regularly quizzes him so that he will be prepared for unexpected questions at town hall meetings such as “If a plane crashes on the border between the United States and Mexico, where are the survivors buried?”

“Ask me the one about the rooster again–I think I’m entitled to a second try.”

In addition to substantive research, Biden has been trained to use verbal jiu-jitsu to throw questioners off balance with snappy comebacks such as “Oh yeah?”, “Sez who?” and “So’s your old man.” These rhetorical devices give Biden time, like a well-protected quarterback, to consider possible alternatives for the one least likely to offend a major voting demographic.

“Good question,” Biden responded to a woman who asked him which way an egg laid by a rooster would roll off a barn facing due north. “That’s something the President and I are very concerned about.”

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Sep

Denied Genius Grant, Kanye West Lashes Out at MacArthurs

CHICAGO. Kanye West, the rapper who has become infamous for his emotional tirades after losing entertainment industry awards, today lashed out at The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for failing to name him as one of its 2010 Fellows, the $500,000 prizes that have come to be known as “genius grants.”

“Gimme that thang!”

“Take a look at some of the washed-up nobodies and has-beens they gave them prizes to,” West said to reporters as his entourage stormed the stage at the award ceremony. “Lot of ‘em look like the kids that the onliest club they could get into in high school was National Honor Society.”

“You gonna give me that grant, or do I have to go crazy on you?”

In 2006 West won several Grammy awards, including Best Rap Album, but failed to win Album of the Year. He flew into a rage and set off on a six-state rampage, destroying hydroelectric dams and refusing to pay tolls on turnpikes.

“I’m gonna teach them suckers not to mess with me!”

Later that year, when his “Touch the Sky” failed to win Best Video at the MTV Europe Music Awards, West organized a squadron of mercenaries and invaded Poland, a violation of national sovereignty that some feared might touch off a world war or price increases at kielbasa stands in West’s hometown of Chicago.

World’s largest kielbasa, which thankfully survived the onslaught.

In 2009 West, who has compared himself to Jesus Christ and Moses, stormed the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards during Taylor Swift’s Best Female Video acceptance speech, setting the stage for a nuclear showdown if he didn’t win a MacArthur Fellowship. When this year’s list of recipients was announced, West flew into one of his signature hissy fits, singling out Jessie Little Doe Baird, a Mashpee, Mass. linguist who was awarded a grant for resurrecting the dead language of the Wampanoags, a Native American tribe.

Jessie Little Doe Baird

“I don’t know why she gets one and I don’t,” West said angrily. “My posse can whup her tribe any day of the week.”

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Sep

Gritty City Creates Knowledge Zone, But Some Feel Left Out

WORCESTER, Mass. This gritty central Massachusetts city is known to some as the Industrial Abrasives Capital of the World, and to others for its numerous railroad car diners. What it is not known for, to the dismay of many, is its educational and cultural attractions.

Boulevard Diner

“We’re sort of a country cousin to Boston,” notes civic leader Emil Niland, and even though Worcester is the second largest city in New England, it is the Rodney Dangerfield of the region, getting less respect than Hartford, Connecticut and even Providence, Rhode Island.

Historic scenes of picturesque decay

But a new generation of boosters is out to change that by creating a multi-pod “Knowledge Zone” around the city in recognition of the many institutions of higher learning located here, including Clark University, Holy Cross College, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Assumption College and UMass Medical School. “People need to know we’re a world class intellectual center,” says Niland, before excusing himself to yell at his daughter. “Karen, take that pigeon out of your mouth, you don’t know where it’s been!”

Miss Worcester Diner

But some are feeling slighted by the designation, and even a bit miffed. ”If they’re in the Knowledge Zone, what are we in–the Ignorance Zone?” asks Richie Stevens, a carpenter, as he downs a shot of ginger brandy and sips a Narragansett beer chaser. “Those guys can kiss my ass and call it a love story for all I care.”

Worcester pigeons, looking resentfully at more attractive and graceful swans.

Town-gown tensions between students and academics on the one hand and blue-collar residents on the other, tend to remain submerged beneath the surface of everyday life until a minor incident at a neighborhood bar located near a campus flares up. “You get a lot of New Yorkers here who couldn’t get into Tufts or Brandeis,” notes Brian Padraic “Smitty” Moynihan, proprietor of Moynihan’s Tavern in the tough Main South district. “They’re insecure, and all hell will break loose when they make some condescending crack about an industrious yeoman carpenter like Richie here,” he says, and it is clear that he is kidding about his patron’s work ethic.

What makes matters worse is that Moynihan, Stevens and the other customers in the bar are fictional characters in a play–”Breakfast at Moynihan’s”–by this reporter, and thus are ineligible to vote out members of the City Council who approved the Knowledge Zone concept. “It’s not fair and it’s not right,” says a long-time patron known to one and all only as “McNiff.” “My grandparents came here from Ireland long before a lot of your Johnny-come-latelys,” he says with a trace of bitterness as others nod their heads in agreement. “Just because they live in a prose world doesn’t mean they’re better than us.”

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Sep

Growing Unhappiness Among Clams a Concern for Obama, Dems

WASHINGTON, D.C. With mid-term elections little more than a month away, new polls showing historically high levels of unhappiness among clams has Democratic Party leaders concerned their losses may exceed even the gloomiest forecasts by political prognosticators.

In happier times.

“I would say that happiness among clams is a bellwether, except that a bellwether is a sheep,” said Norman Scudateri, Professor of Political Science at the Warren G. Harding Institute for the Study of the American Polity in Reston, Virginia. “It’s like the furriness of caterpillars in the fall as a predictor of winter weather. You can’t go wrong working it into a boring monograph for a little color.”

Focus group

Clams, like senior citizens, have a high voter participation rate and are consequently wooed avidly by politicians. “I’ve never figured out why that is,” said Bill Simonds, a marine biologist in Woods Hole, Mass. “There’s no point in wooing something that reproduces by discharging eggs and sperm into the ocean. Don’t fall for that ‘dinner and a movie’ line.”

Bet you never saw this in Penthouse.

Clams frequently change their sex as they grow older, making it harder to predict their voting pattern on gender-related issues. “Just about the time you’ve got a guy pinned down on the right to bear arms,” notes Scudateri, “he gets all worked up about your position on abortion.”

One way to solve the problem.

Another demographic that has been rattled by the shaky economy is long-tailed cats in a room full of rocking chairs, and Democratic Party leaders have all but abandoned their quest for votes among the group, seeking instead to energize their base.

Make Way for Sucklings!

“You want to go after low-hanging fruit, or low-lying mammals,” says Furman Muller, a county extension agent and caucus leader in Iowa. “There’s nothing happier than a pig in shit.”

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Sep

Knee-Jerk Moderate Caught in Political Crossfire

NEWTON LOWER HILLS, Mass. This quiet village just west of Boston looks much like any other suburb on a rainy Monday morning; well-tended lawns sprinkled with a few early-fallen leaves that are sent swirling by a gust of wind. There’s one striking difference however; yard-signs, considered a tacky declaration of partisan politics in Wellesley Falls, one town further west, are par for the course here as election day approaches.

Home in Newton Lower Hills, Mass.

“I’m caught in the middle,” complains Carol Pierce. “To my left I’ve got Marie Sansone,” the wife of a firefighter whose family would benefit from a proposed budget override that will be on the ballot in November, “and to my right I’ve got Polly Endicott,” a widow on a fixed income who wants to stay in the house she’s lived in for forty years. “If taxes go up, Marie’s happy, but Polly’s pissed.”

Carol suffers from OSV, for “omnisympathetic vision,” the ability to see all sides of an issue. Her warring neighbors have forced her to make a choice, however, as the Sansones have placed a large “We Support Our Firefighters!” sign on their lawn, while Polly Endicott has joined the “No New Taxes!” movement that is fighting to keep municipal assessments low.

“I like the platform of this None of the Above fellow.”

Carol, who prefers to stay out of local politics, agonized over her dilemma until she came up with what some are hailing as a grand compromise: “Knee-Jerk Moderates,” a loose coalition of similar-minded folks who are somehow able to live their lives without getting bent out of shape by local, state or national governmental issues.

“Either you compromise with us, or we crush you like a bug just to watch your juice run out.”

“I had a nice sign printed up that said ‘I Support Our Firefighters–Up to a Point,’” Carol says, and passers-by began to wave and honk their horns. “The Sansones are nice people, but so is the kindergarden teacher who’ll get laid off if the override passes.”

Pollsters say this state, whose elected officials are almost exclusively Democrats but which also has large numbers of independent voters, may be the launching pad for a nationwide movement of people who are indifferent to political controversy. “Exit polls in 2010 showed that voters thought the economy was the most important issue,” says Charles Culver, president of Opinion Research. “After that there was no consensus, with national security, healthcare and long lines at Chinese restaurants tied for second place.”

Frank: “If I were this tall, I’d be fat.”

Carol’s indecision extends to the race for her district’s seat in the House of Representatives, as she says she has not yet made up her mind between several candidates, or even between parties. “Barney Frank has been around a long time and he’s starting to get on my nerves,” she says, “but I respect him because he’s the only openly fat member of Congress.”