April Fools Day Post

Observing a traditional holiday, for once, and also remembering the first newspaper columnist I followed--Art Buchwald, whose columns often made sense to a ten-year-old reader--this web site offers a collection of April Fools Day fake news stories. 

1. The General Accounting Office of the US Government uncovered "confidential" payments to China for 1000 voting machines pre-programmed to change all presidential votes to read "Kamala Harris." Further investigation traced these payments to five married men who all said the Vice-President had threatened to reveal photographs of their dates with her to their wives, and, although these dates took place many years ago, when three of the men were single and one was married to a different wife, the photographs were so embarrassing they were afraid to say no when the Vice-President asked each man to pay for 200 sabotaged voting machines. All five men have since left the country.

2. Donald Trump dropped out of the election on the grounds that he has finally grown a sense of humility. Further investigation commenced immediately, as no reporter in Washington believed it was possible for Trump to show humility, and confirmed that the "real" difficulty was that a former Syngenta executive, who was fed glyphosate as a scientific experiment, persists in embarrassing Trump by claiming to believe he is Trump's vermiform appendix.

3. President Biden was ordered not to campaign by a doctor. Nikki Haley decided not to run after opposition candidates confronted her with photographs of her profile and convinced her that campaigning was increasing her resemblance to the late Margaret Halsey. Robert Kennedy reportedly announced a decision not to run due to his cousins having locked him in a boat shed at the Kennedy compound and vowed to keep him there until the Electoral College votes, though it could not be confirmed precisely which Kennedy was speaking because seven of them appeared to be lip-syncing. ("Losing two uncles was enough for one lifetime," a female cousin told a reporter.) Ron DeSantis backed out of the election on the grounds that Florida needed him. Rand Paul announced his candidacy, but his announcement was cut short by a violent attack from a band of his neighbors, all dressed in gorilla suits and singing "If You Go, I'll Follow You."  This has left Michelle Obama as the only candidate with enough name recognition to get her onto fifty State ballots. News media are beginning to refer to her as "Madame President" already. 

4. A man giving his name as "I.L. Ducelino," whose birth name appears to have been Joseph Jones, was elected county supervisor of Prince Georges County, Maryland, on the campaign promise that he would make PG County Metrobuses run on schedule. In the first election where he appeared on the ballot he received nine votes, which is also the number of members of his family who are of voting age. In the next election he went to voters' houses and personally offered to bet voters that he could win the election and make buses run on time. He then won 92% of the popular vote, with exit polls showing that 98% of the voters intended to claim to have voted for him and demand the money. He then personally promised to behead any driver whose bus was more than 60 seconds ahead of or behind schedule. Bus drivers then personally built bridges over the railroads that have traditionally been blamed for the erratic quality of PG County bus service and established a record of 99.99% adherence to their posted schedules. Mr. Chatterjee Yap, a well-known extrovert from Hyattsville, told reporters that the quality of life in PG County has declined because people no longer chat and make new "friends" while waiting for buses. Mrs. Nitta Lott from Upper Marlboro complained of loss of income, saying "I used to knit a sweater a week while waiting for Metrobuses." However, the majority of PG County voters currently support a movement called Fascism For the World.

5. As the Virginia legislative session wore on, Senator Roem fell to the floor and began kicking and screaming, alleging that Senator Obenshain had looked at Roem sidewise. "I can't take all this disapproval," Roem howled. "Virginia is full of old, mean-looking lawyers! Take me back to my home planet--Ork!"

Photo of State Senator Mark Obenshain, looking sidewise, from The Daily News-Record. 

Roem is currently reported to be in stable condition, though still incoherent, at a mental hospital in Richmond. Manassas is currently represented in the Senate by Wags, a county shelter dog whose GPA in remote university courses in astrophysics was 3.93.Wags reportedly deals with opposition constituents by licking their faces until they close their mouths, and enjoys an 85% voter approval rating. The other 15% grumble that he votes Republican merely because he was brought in from the shelter by Delegate O'Quinn, and want to replace Wags with Pooch, who was brought in by Delegate Hope. Pooch has yet to complete his first remote university course.

6. The Florida legislature ordered Dave Barry, Gene Weingarten, and Carl Hiaasen to move to another state. "You lot have lived here so long and written so much humorous content about Florida that people hear the word 'Florida' and start to grin," a state legislator explained, "and we decided that this was inappropriate after watching audiences laugh at a report on the break-up of the Cocoa Beach Birdwatching Society due to the disappearance of birds from the beach." The cutting edge of US humor writing considered splitting up but then decided to make California ridiculous. "What it took us forty years to do for Florida, in California we should be able to achieve in four years," Weingarten said.

7. Governor Abbott announced to US audiences, "The only way to recover any peace is to annex Mexico," while announcing to Mexican audiences, "Hay un solo camino a la paz, y eso es reunirnos con Mexico." Audiences roared approval bilingually for the merger forming the new State of Texico. Due to the imposition of mandatory bilingualism on people who never properly studied the other language, state residents remain unclear where the new state's government is based, but are quick to point out that it is big and rich. Residents of the city of El Ceibo, in the new Tabasco County, have petitioned for funding to build a border wall, "Porque nos gustamos mucho el puerco," said Pablo Enviame Mucho, a 19-year-old unemployed resident of El Ceibo, "and anyway we can always recycle the old one." Residents of Houston, however, want to move the old wall to their western border to keep out immigrants from California.

8. Following the howling success of his proclamation of Easter Sunday as a day to honor a persistent lobbying group of major D campaign funders, President Biden has now proclaimed that Memorial Day shall be rededicated to honor the town of Monodono, Utah, populated by Jim Yellow Dog and his two mules. Each month Mr. Yellow Dog signs his Social Security pension check over to the mules, then immediately reclaims a steadily increasing percentage of it in taxes to offer them more services and keep them safer. "Do you the taxpayers think he deserves honor?" reporters asked the younger mule. "He? Haw!" the mule replied.

9. In the interests of recovering lost readership, the Post-Dispatch, the Oregonian, and the Beacon-Journal announced that they would stop censoring reports of news unfavorable to sales of popular corporate products. "We are not prepared to go that far," said a spokesperson for the New York Times, "but we can promise our readers no more reports about the Kardashians." 

10. Sri Swamy Swampy Bulbul Bolony of Orange County reported a vision in which California fell into the sea. Seventy busloads of Californians, all saying "This time it might really happen," went to New York City. New York City immediately fell into the sea. California suffered a mild earthquake while Sri Swamy Swampy Bulbul Bolony was speaking in tongues to a meeting of the Madly Ecumenical Church of Only In California, during which Bolony fell into the sea.