Mexico empty as entire population moves to SoCal

On November 21, 2017November 21, 2017 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire4 Comments

Sacramento, November 21, 2017, Star-Gazer News Service–California officials confessed early today that they were “thoroughly gobsmacked” (completamente sorprendido) when the entire population of Mexico moved into the state’s sanctuary cities for “a brand new life” (vida maravillosa).

**Wikipedia graphic (Most people don’t realize California is a red state.)**

“This is a form of CalExit that, frankly, wasn’t on our drawing boards,” said state planning director Frank Smith. “All we tried to do with our sanctuary cities initiatives was provide neighborhoods for the cheap labor our agribusiness companies need in order to survive.”

Mexican officials, who say they are no longer Mexican officials, said that the country chose a “free and reasonably lavish” California lifestyle over the stress of fighting poverty and drug lords south of the border.

“Some will criticize us for leaving our culture behind,” said a man who identified himself as Mr. Fox. “But that’s not true. We brought it with us, and that it includes real Mexican food (verdadera comida Mexicana) rather than the Taco Bell faux variety.”

While lettuce growers are applauding the fact that their workers will no longer have to fight border guards–and the proposed wall–on their morning commute, they admitted that most companies will shift their corporate headquarters to New Jersey to escape probable tax increases.

“Just think, we used to laugh about the once-famous government money grabs in Tax-a-chusetts,” said iceberg lettuce manager Jonas Wilkerson. “Now, the tax-and-spend experts have moved out here.”

Informed sources (personas informadas) believe many native Californians, who have been staying solvent by taking frequent trips to Las Vegas, will simply move to Nevada so reduce household expenses and state taxes.

“Hell (infierno),” one of the sources said, “just look at the state’s proposed pot taxes. They’re going to be so high that buying weed off the street will be cheaper than buying legal weed–and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Wilkerson agrees. “I read in the newspaper several days ago that the legislature passed a law that allows the unemployed to form a union that gives members the right to not work along with the right to put up homes in other people’s yards without being arrested for trespassing.”

Smith said that he thought the Mexican population’s move occurred as soon as a district judge blocked the administration’s plan to cut off federal funds to sanctuary cities.

“I’m somewhat amused at the historic karma operating here as California returns to the days when Spanish was its official language,” Smith told reporters at an emergency press conference on the governor’s lawn, adding, “Este es un gran día para California.”

–Story by Jock Stewart, special investigative reporter

CIA Operation Rounds Up Mexican Ladders

On October 16, 2017 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire4 Comments

Langley, Virginia, October 16, 2017, Star-Gazer News Service–CIA officials announced this morning the “unqualified success” of Operation Ladder Purge, an eight-month effort to round-up and detain Mexican ladders that pose a threat to the proposed border wall.

“We’ve known for some time that a $10000000000 wall can easily be defeated by professional coyotajes and polleros and other people smugglers with a garage full of two-peso ladders,” said Deputy Director of Wall-Scaling Technology, Robert Hook. “Build a 10 foot wall, you’ll see an 11-foot ladder; build a 15 foot wall, you’ll see a 16 foot ladder.”

Spokesmen say that to date, Operation Ladder Purge has stolen, confiscated, destroyed, or otherwise neutralized 79.8% of all Mexican ladders. The operation began when it became clear that U.S. muscle could not convince the Mexican government to outlaw the manufacture or importation of ladders.

One Mexican law maker who prefers to remain anonymous, said, “It was our feeling that such legislation would drive painters, carpenters, and fire departments out of business because honest people would then be without ladders while criminals had easy access to black market ladders imported from rogue states like North Korea.”

According to CIA studies, people smugglers say to clients, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that swells tunnels in the ground under it, and spews the upper bricks with ladders reaching for the sun.”

“We’re fighting that mentality and fighting it hard,” Hook said. “On the humanitarian side, top brass learned that the suffering people of Puerto Rico cannot pull themselves up by their bootstraps because they don’t have any boots. So we sent them the ladders we collected in Mexico as part of our Up The Ladder For Success Program.”

CIA station agents say that so far children’s step ladders are not being targeted.

According to informed sources, Americans supporting the building of a border wall may have a false sense of security once that edifice is completed if Mexican ladders aren’t neutralized.

Rumors that “sanctuary state” California is sending free ladder kits to Mexico disguised as children’s toys are currently being investigated.

—Story by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter

Candidate Discriminated Against Due to Silver Spoon in Mouth

On August 6, 2017 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Politics, satire2 Comments

Junction City, Texas, August 6, 2017, Star-Gazer News Service–Mayoral candidate George Argentite, 47 Metallica Way, filed suit in federal court under the Americans with Disabilities Act claiming he was being discriminated against because he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

“Slanderous statements by incumbent Clark Trail alleging that a man with a silver spoon in his mouth cannot possibly govern fairly or understand the needs of the majority of prospective voters have not only poisoned public opinion against me in the current election campaign, but have cost me my job at P.S. 47, gotten me kicked out of my role as head deacon at the church, and essentially banned me from local restaurants, movie theaters and grocery stores,” Argentite told reporters outside the courthouse this morning.

Political commentator Joe Everyman, who says his family uses stainless steel flatware, believes Agentite’s troubles stem from Trail’s campaign slogan “My opponent thinks he’s a privileged man or possibly a god.”

Members of the family have mixed views about the origin of the Wallace Silversmiths Grand Baroque teaspoon that protrudes from the left side of Argentite’s mouth. 50% claim that the spoon was swallowed by George’s mother Anne at a Rotary Club dinner while she was pregnant and 50% say the spoon–which is completely fused into Argentite’s jaw bone–resulted from a gypsy curse.

Hospital records indicate that early attempts at removing the spoon threatened to destroy Argentite’s head, “potentially transforming him into a two faced individual.” The pediatrics department believed he would grow out of it by the time he lost his baby teeth while surgeons discovered that cutting off the spoon at the gum line resulted in the object “regrowing rather like a lizard’s tail.”

“Prior to Trail’s smear campaign, most people didn’t realize I couldn’t get the spoon out of my mouth any more than a real rich person could pretend he wasn’t rich,” said Argentite. “People just thought I sucked on the spoon in the same way other people walk around with cigarettes, toothpicks and bits of straw.”

Trail told reporters that “saying your opponent has a silver spoon in his his mouth is a traditional method of vilifying the rich as a class of people who deserve to be tarnished for reaching the pinnacle of the American dream that the rest of us have yet to attain.”

According to informed sources, Argentite has received lucrative offers from monarchs, mob bosses and dictators to serve as an official taster since silver can detect the presence of arsenic in food.

Agentite’s wife, Flora, said, “We’re too scandalized to kiss in public any more,”

–Story by Jock Steward, Special Investigative Reporter

Go to hell and have a nice trip

On May 20, 2017May 20, 2017 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire6 Comments

Mama always said, “If you’re going to insult somebody, do it with a smile on your face.” (Mama always talked in bold face.)

That admonition has served me well for years.

Daddy always said, “You can take the sting out of profanity by putting it in quotes.”

As I noticed on Facebook, the Internet’s great forum for esoteric and learned debate, there’s a world of difference between saying, Bob, you’re really screwed up AND Bob, you’re really “screwed up.”

People think you love them when you add a smile and quotation marks even if you have to raise your hands and extend two fingers on each. Extending one finger on each doesn’t smooth things over.

**I miss this magazine because it taught me everything I needed to know.**

People become used to humorous insults. That’s why Don Rickles got so many laughs. When he made fun of people, they thought he loved them. Most of my friends think of me as “Mister Warmth.” They knew I grew up with the commandment, “Mama don’t allow no swearing ’round here.” So, when I tell them to go to hell, they think it’s satire or love, sweet love.

It takes many years of practice to get people to laugh when you’re dead serious about the “sanity” of their families, the “beauty” of their daughters, the “honor” of their sons, and the “stunning” breakfast of burnt grits they prepared for you.

It’s become clear that a well-publicized “wacky” belief system goes a long way in getting away with stuff. The people who know I believe in reincarnation and not hell, think that when I say “Go to hell,” I’m talking about Michigan.

Actress Barbara Stanwyck purportedly told Fred MacMurray that the secret of acting is truthfulness. “Just be truthful – and if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” Faked sincerity covers almost as many “sins” as a “wacky” belief system. If you sound sincere, people want to go to hell and want to be screwed up.

Sometimes when people learn that I’m a writer (which is just as handy as a “wacky” belief system), they say, “OMG, will you put me in your book?”

My response is usually something like, “You’re already in my book. I just changed your name to keep your spouse from divorcing you.”

“Aw, shucks,” they say, genuinely proud of themselves.

My friends variously think that I’m joking, being wacky, being satirical, and being a writer even when I’m not. Their kind thoughts in such matters have kept me from having to censor myself very often.

–Malcolm

I’m a lot more like my Jock Stewart character in “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire” than most people suspect!

‘We need to get rid of copyright’ says new copyright office tsar

On May 18, 2017 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire

Washington, D. C. April 1, 2018, Star-Gazer Crystal Ball Service–During his confirmation hearings before the Senate, Joseph A. Doaks, CEO of Big Ass Feature Film and Music Productions (BIGASS), said that before the President nominated him to run the copyright office into the ground, he though copyright was a provision in the Bill of Rights that gave rich and power corporations the right to copy whatever they wanted without paying for it.

“I said ‘Yes,’ Mr. President, I’ll put my BIGASS stock into a quasi-blind trust and help people satisfy their copying rights.”

The confirmation hearings are the first tangible result of the so-called Copyright Reform Act of 2017 which proponents said would “rescue the copyright office from the safety of the Library of Congress and give it to the politicians and lobbyists so that the rights of the creators of original works would forever after be blowing in the wind.”

According to a spokesman for Rescue the Copyright Office, LLC, “Think about this. Why should some rich, former welfare mother in England control the entire Harry Potter world? There are millions to be made here. But she says ‘no.’ This is undemocratic. We need a law that lets Congress decide whether it’s okay to start production on our movie HARRY POTTER GETS LAID and on a proposed new SLYTHERIN GANGSTA RAP musical.”

Doaks said that he supports the Copyright Reform Act “hook, line and sink her” when it comes to people like Rowling.

“Sure, the little people sit in their garrets and write this stuff,” said Doaks. “But they are few and far between. The rest of us have less talent. Without the right to copy and create related works, we have no way of making a living. We need to get rid of copyright because it protects the needs to the few over the right to take what we can and make whatever we can from it.”

After consulting with film and music producers and distributors and their lobbyists and tallying up recent campaign contributions, Senators are expected to approve Doak’s appointment.

Story by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter

Feds Bust Sneezeweed Resisistance Movement Scam

On April 29, 2017 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire3 Comments

Junction City, Texas, April 29, 2017, Star-Gazer News Service–Agents from multiple alphabet-soup agencies within the Department of Homeland Insecurity swooped down like a coven of witches on their brooms and arrested Bob and Sarah Smith for allegedly failing to deliver free snuff samples to the “down-trodden widows and orphans” who donated their life’s savings to “get rid of the haints infesting Congress” in the widely publicized RESIST WITH SNEEZEWEED crowdfunding affort.

According to the warrant, Bob and Sarah Smith “shamelessly and expediently” solicited $100000000000 from a large crowd to build a snuff factory that would purportedly convert dried sneezeweed leaves into enough snuff to force Congress to sneeze all the “treacherous haints and malevolent spirits” out of its system.

Weed enforcement tsar Mary Warner told reporters that while sneezeweed snuff probably causes cancer, the United States is not currently engaged in a war on snuff.

“Thing is,” she said, “if you take people’s money to build a snuff factory, promise to send them a free sample of your best stuff, and then ship the remainder to Congress, you gotta do it. The Smiths didn’t do squat except spend the money living high on the hog instead of bringing home the bacon.”

Congressman Amos “Grandpappy” McCoy (R-TX), best known for his campaign to change the Texas state flower from “something named after a brand of margarine” to the yellow rose, said that as far as he knew, the only evil spirits in Congress were the “bottom-shelf whiskeys sucked up by Democrats and other vermin.”

Smith, speaking through his lawyer like a ventriloquist with a dummy, reminded reporters that his RESIST WITH SNEEZEWEED plan was still in the planning stages because “you just don’t go into your kitchen and whip of a batch of snuff in a Crock-Pot.”

“Plus, who knew you can’t build a snuff factory on an EPA hazmat site?” he asked, more or less rhetorically.

“The irony is that had Smith bided his time, the EPA and its hazmat sites would have been phased out and the factory could have turned out enough snuff for every man, woman and child in the country with no federal interference,” McCoy said.

Informed sources believe that the feds tracked down the Smiths after a church bible study group member “ratted out” Sarah for saying, “We know resistance is futile, but getting people to spend their time and money on meaningless petitions and marches helps them cope. Like we’re really going to send snuff to Congress–puh-leeze!”

“Truth be told,” said Warner, “I hated arresting these folks because clearing the evil spirits out of Congress really was an admirable goal.”

–Story filed by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter

Prisoner Releases to Balance Federal Budget

On April 1, 2017April 1, 2017 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire3 Comments

Washington, D. C., April 1, 2017, Star-Gazer News Service – Faced with growing public anger over the administration’s budget blueprint that calls for the defunding of Amtrak’s long distance trains, NIH, NEA, CPB, CNN, climate change divisions of the EPA and NPS, the Bureau of Prisons (BUBARS) announced here today that “huge numbers” of prisoners will be released from federal and state prisons in the coming months at a cost savings so substantial that the Government Accounting Office will no longer be required to purchase red ink.

Dwight Slammer, editor in chief of “Up the River News,” estimates that giving inmates a “get out of jail free card” will save taxpayers $39 billion dollars by the end of the current fiscal year.

According to Slammer, 2,220,300 Americans are currently in prison. The morality and viable ability of covering up a plan calling for simply shooting them “gave the government pause,” leading to the shelving of the fast action approach plan in favor of a timed release program.

BUBARS director Bill Smith told reporters that the new “get-out-of-free cards” will be good for life, thereby eliminating the recidivism problem through which ex-cons commit fresh crimes that land them back in jail at the public’s expense. While some naysayers claim this is tantamount to making crime a profitable business for former prisoners, the cost savings will more than trump the down stream issues of property loss and public disruption.

“Victimless crimes–such as smoking a joint–will no longer be a gateway to the public dole of prison life,” said Smith. “We see it as a no harm, no foul approach to the criminal justice system that’s been entangled for years prosecuting, housing and feeding people who basically didn’t do nothing to nobody.”

The cost savings plan, dubbed “Cleaning Out the Big House for America” calls for all released prisoners to check in periodically to prove to authorities they are still out of jail.

“While the government will neither confirm nor deny this aspect of the plan, those who persist in finding ways back into jail will be sent to Iraq through a so-called ‘three strikes and you’re out’ provision,” said Slammer.

Informed sources who, as is customary, don’t really exist, called the big house cleaning plan “a strike of lunacy” that will save America from the budget axe that has been characterized as more of an expensive club than a viable fiscal approach to rising costs.

Ex-cons will use their “get out of jail free cards” to get jobs ahead of all other applicants, win lottery money through a system of “fixed numbers,” and go to the front of the line at the DMV.

–Story filed by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter

Nightbeat: Every lie is true somewhere and vice versa

On January 23, 2017 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn quantum, satire7 Comments

Washington, D. C., January 23, 2017, Star-Gazer News Service–Woke up this morning and worried about the fact that my waking up might be a lie. In a post-truth, alternate facts world, it’s easy to doubt oneself, because wrong is suddenly the new right.

My therapist asked me to talk to a sock puppet named Billy Joe.

“Tell Billy Joe how you feel about your lack of certainty,” my therapist prompted.

“I feel bad and that ain’t good,” I said.

“Don’t we all,” said Billy Joe.

“I don’t know who you are anymore,” I said, “much less who I am.”

“Well, I’ll tell you. Most people don’t know what happened on Choctaw Ridge,” said the puppet as he settled down on top of a copy of Carl Jung’s Red Book. “I went up there to talk to my guru, and he said, ‘Every lie is true somewhere and vice versa.'”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

My therapist was furiously taking notes, and by that I mean, writing quickly rather than with anger.

“It’s cutting edge quantum theory,” said Billy Joe. “Unfortunately, the world didn’t understand such things very well in 1967. Personally, the guru’s revelation led to that embarrassing Tallahatchie Bridge incident.”

“I’m sorry that happened,” my therapist said.

“Don’t fash yourself over it because I’m not really dead. Sure, that’s a lie in this universe, but not in the universe next door. As my guru explained, everything that can happen does happen. But the things that happen split off like a family tree into many universes with hundreds of worlds, worlds more numerous than the stars in a clear night sky over the rock of waters.”

“Does that mean alternative facts are true in another universe?”

“It does,” said Billy Joe. “Once a person learns how to listen to the spirit of the depths, he’ll understand that.”

“You’re still up at the sawmill in alt-reality?”

“Alive and kicking along with the cat in the box.”

“So, somewhere else, I’m still asleep,” I said.

“How do you feel about that?” asked my therapist.

“Empowered.”

“That’s why you pay Billy Joe and I $375 for a 38-minute hour,” she said.

She stood, tossed Billy Joe back in the sock puppet bin along with “Big Bopper,” “Buddy Holly” “Ritchie Valens,” and “Judge Crater.” When I walked outside, I saw morning had broken and realized for the first time since February 3, 1959 that the music never died and that even though the spirit of the times loves alternative facts and post truth, the truth will never die either.

As a journalist, my job is to remain neutral while writing a story, but I still think it will be fair for me to ask those whose facts don’t ring true, “What universe are you living in?”

–Jock Stewart

Russia Hacks WordPress Spam Queues, Distributes Viagra ads to Vatican

On January 13, 2017 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire2 Comments

Moscow, January 13, 2017, Star-gazer News Service–Red faced officials at Federal’naya sluzhba bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii (FSB) confessed today that their hacker bots “went awry” and offloaded millions of dormant WordPress spam queue ads for Viagra, condoms, and sex toys and massaged them into Vatican servers where “computer systems became stuck in limbo.”

According to insiders who were not authorized to admit they were insiders, FSB director Alexander Bortnikov was unavailable for comment because he was personally reading every one of the spam posts to “learn more about helpful products for anyone who might be impotent.”

The Vatican told reporters “we are not amused.”

**Putin mobilizes fleet to search for sex bots.**

Putin complained that the hacker bots were built in North Korea and were guaranteed personally by boss man Kim Jong-un who said, “sometimes Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin) and I get our panties in a wad about the same things. Strange but true. And, as we say in our butt of the woods, ‘Aneun gildo muleogara’ (Even if you know the way, ask one more time.)”

Putin sent a dozen, long-stemmed red roses to the Pope with a card that said, “Lighten up, sweetheart, and start Putin on the Ritz.”

According to Take-a-Leaks, the Russian nonprofit that steals documents without a warrant and shows them to people who aren’t supposed to see them, “We do not have any direct dealings with Mr. Putin or Mr. un, so we are in the clear even though we may have inadvertently sent copies of the critically important information to ‘Weekly Reader,’ ‘Highlights for Children,’ and ‘Watchtower.'”

Various and sundry security agencies in the United States told Congress that “in light of everything that may have happened lately, this is a real hoot for Friday the 13th. We knew somebody somewhere would get caught with their pants down, we just weren’t sure who. Now we can breathe a sigh of relief that it wasn’t us.”

Industry spokesmen said that unauthorized erections were up 20%.

–

Story by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter

Microsoft to update your brain due to atomic clock hacking incident

On January 1, 2017 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn news, satire8 Comments

Washington, D. C., January 1, 2017 (hacked time), Star-Gazer News Service – After the National Security Information discovered that Kim Jong-un ordered the Supreme Hacking Department of North Korea’s administration to hack into and disrupt the Unites State’s atomic clock, President Obama had a new problem:

To be puctual, or not to be punctual, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the land to suffer skewed time
With it’s Slings and Arrows of undestined misfortune,
Or to take Arms against a malware sea of code,
And by opposing, obliterate it, to say we now awake
To end the Heart-Ache of sleep in our hexed abode
And hope the replacement era suits us better for goodness’ sake.

**North Korean hacked time at the fictional present moment.**

According to 98.6% of the federal government’s panel of scientists, most Americans believe today is January 1, 2017 because the North Korean malware introduced a stream of malicious leap seconds into the heart of the atomic clock so that ever since the dog days of August, time has moved “faster than theoretically possible.”

“Among other things,” said Temporal Control Officer (TPO) Erwin Schrödinger, “birds and bees are ‘doing it’ more often than usual, work days are longer and weekends are shorter, and most of what’s happened in the last four months never happened.”

Press secretary James “Jay” Carney said that the administration has decided to “let the temporal cat out of the temporal box” and “take arms against the malware sea of code.”

According to Schrödinger, most Americans will suffer no ill effects from an over-night reprogramming of their brains via software contributed by Microsoft.

“While you sleep, perchance to dream,” said Carney, “your brain will be taken back to August 11th and will be re-set so as to allow the entire nation to move ahead in harmony with time as the good Lord has defined it, ordered it, and calculated it. Most people will suffer no ill effects and will wake up tomorrow as though nothing has happened. Quite frankly, nothing has happened since the lethargic and indolent dog days, so for most people it will be business as usual even though a few people may have to reboot their sex lives and other coping mechanisms several times to get back on track.”

Concerned about the ethics of violating Star Trek’s temporal prime directive and voiding four months of seemingly real activity, the administration erred on the side of caution by taking no action in spite of the fact it was informed of the hack while it was happening. Some government philosophers said that if we got a “do over,” the same things would happen because they were destined to happen. Others said that “tweaks in the updates’ reprogramming code would keep people from doing the wrong things they did and the result would be a better world.

The decision was finally made when Obama asked if reprogramming the clock and the brains of the populace would bring back Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher.

“We told him it would,” said Schrödinger, “even though everything that may have happened since August 11th is neither true nor not true until we reprogram ourselves the new truth is set free–or isn’t.”

“Make it so,” the President said.

–

–Story by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter

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