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wittytirade.net

BAGHDAD (WT) - The enchanted +7 Shield of Verranith was pilfered from the Iraq National Museum when looting broke out in Baghdad earlier this month.

Museum officials first noticed the shield missing while surveying the damage Monday. "The Shield of Verranith is enchanted with golden runes and is identified as being worth 10,000 gold," said Azma Fatah al-Malik, the Head Curator of Armor at the museum. "It is unconscionable that someone would steal such a priceless artifact." Al-Malik hypothesized that a small band of high-level expert thieves may have been at work, considering that the looters managed to survive two fireball traps and defeat the level 40 ogre mage summoned to guard the shield.

The +7 Shield of Verranith was created around 500 B.C. by the Arab wizard Verranith in the now-abandoned Tower of Tikrit. Soldiers who equip the shield receive both a bonus of 7 to AR and a small increase in sword and flail accuracy.

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savannahsays.com

Single mother Carolyn Fishburn of Anaconda, Montana, held a news conference Tuesday night to concede defeat in her bid to take control of her household. "I ran a good campaign," Fishburn read from a prepared statement, "but, ultimately, I could not muster enough votes to maintain my seat as home governor." Fishburn went on to blame Nintendo and Fox television, specifically The Simpsons program, for her defeat. "My platform of sit-down family dinners, wholesome values, and participation in extracurricular activities fell flat with my children," she admitted.

The five Fishburn children echoed their mother's sentiments. "We really only want to eat cookies and play video games," said 14-year-old Johnny, the eldest, acting as spokesman for the family. "When we went to the polls, we seized our opportunity to oust the incumbent and install new leadership." ...It's unclear who will now lead the Fishburn family.

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asgoodasnews.com

BOSTON, MA—Neighborhood college student Jenny Myers seemed unimpressed with Noam Chomsky's recent lecture. Experts hypothesize that this may had been related to the fact that she covered her ears and murmured, "la, la, la," throughout the entire speech.

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deadbrain.co.uk

Fed up after failed attempts to locate Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Syria, disillusioned U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has turned to the Internet to look for the fallen dictator. Since the start of this week, Pentagon officials have been using search engine Google in an attempt to locate Saddam, but have so far had little success.

"Not many Iraqis had access to the Net, so we thought it would be easy to find Saddam on it," explained the head of military web searching, Douglas Ramsbottom. "We'd checked Hotmail and some of the people directories before the war started but couldn't find any trace of him. Now we've turned to Google, but with over three billion pages to go at the going's tough. Half the time our guys just end up looking at porn."

With morale in the Internet-searching section of the Pentagon flagging, many military analysts had expected Mr Rumsfeld to give up on the idea, but sources close to him suggest that that is not the case. Our man in the brown suit says that Mr Rumsfeld has now launched a personal crusade to find Saddam's private email address– on British web site Friends Reunited.

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borowitzreport.com

In a nationally broadcast address last night, President George W. Bush pronounced the war in Iraq, as well as the singer-actress Madonna, officially over. “The war in Iraq is over,” the President simply stated, “and so is Madonna.”

While Mr. Bush acknowledged that Madonna still had “pockets of listeners,” he added that even they would soon disperse after listening to her new CD, “American Life.” Around the globe, millions who had lived under the yoke of Madonna for the last twenty years poured out into the streets in spontaneous celebrations. Customers at Tower Records on London’s fabled Oxford Street tore down a life-sized cardboard cutout of the erstwhile “Material Girl” before repeatedly throwing their shoes at it.

But even as euphoria over the end of Madonna’s reign spread from hemisphere to hemisphere, Dr. David Henner, who studies annoying celebrities at the University of Minnesota, cautioned that little or no thought had been given to what might eventually replace Madonna. “In a worst-case scenario, her sudden departure could be setting the stage for Kelly Osbourne or Kelly Clarkson or some other Kelly we don’t even know about yet,” Dr. Henner said.

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thegrandoldparty.com

New York -- Americans filled with anxiety over the fate of the world under Iraq's rule are resting easier, and taking to the streets, as the White House hinted today that President Bush would give a televised address to the nation announcing complete and total victory by coalition forces. "This is the first time I've been able to rest in weeks," said exuberant American Mark Jourdain. "One minute Iraq is casting an evil shadow over the entire planet with their weapons of mass destruction, and the next minute we somehow manage to overcome all odds and win the battle. We're all so lucky that we managed to win!"

Tens of jubilant citizens took to the streets of New York's Times Square to celebrate winning the war and to sell US-flag T-shirts.

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borowitzreport.com

Under pressure to establish a new government in postwar Iraq, the Bush White House today said that it had a vision of instituting what it called “a Florida-style” democracy in that Middle Eastern country. To help Iraq make the transition to a Floridian form of government, the White House today dispatched Florida Governor Jeb Bush and former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris to show Iraqis how a Florida-like democracy works. Bush and Harris’s first mission: to distribute over one million so-called “butterfly” ballots to citizens of Basra.

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brokennewz.com

Washington, D.C. - The White House is trying to quell rumors that it has chosen a new leader for Iraq, the big guy with the hammer. While many Baghdad citizens were spotted trying to hack away at the statue of Saddam Hussein the day Baghdad fell, it is believed the really big guy in the tank top was the man who owned the hammer, or at least he was one of the better hammerers.

Ari Fleischer fielded questions all morning. "We are still at war, everything is still in flux. While we consider the big guy with a hammer-- we think his name is Nasser-- a great patriot and freedom fighter, there are a number of people we are considering for the presidency. There's Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, the guy with the ladder, and the guy with the rope. It's a rapidly developing situation."

...Unnamed sources in the State Department point out that... once stability is ensured over the next few years, a more bureaucratic type can be propped up. Then the U.S. can sell the wimpy beaurocrat missiles and mustard gas to replace the big hammer.

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deadbrain.co.uk

Tony Blair accepted the position of Secretary of State for the United States government today, after a lengthy screening process. He will resign as Prime Minister and replace outgoing Secretary Colin Powell effective 1 July.

As the top diplomat in the Bush Administration, it will be Blair's responsibility to convince the world of the continued need to make war against nations suspected of possessing weapons of mass destruction, while justifying the lack of war preparations against nations which have already affirmed their possession of such weapons.

It was widely rumoured that Powell's position was in jeopardy due to his frequent clashes with US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld regarding Iraq. President and CEO-In-Chief George W. Bush hinted at this while praising Blair's contributions to the war effort... Bush cited Blair's recruitment of the usually recalcitrant island nation of Palau into the "coalition of the willing" as an example of Blair's diplomatic skills.

Unfortunately for the Bush Administration, it appears that Secretary Powell won't be leaving quietly. At a press conference this morning, he angrily told reporters, "Blair set me up. I knew he wanted the job after I found out about the intelligence report." Powell was referring to the case he made to the UN for war with Iraq using an intelligence report provided by the British government. The report was later discovered to have been plagiarized from a book report by Douglas Ramsbottom, 11, of Nottingham.

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deadbrain.co.uk

The British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, unveiled startling new evidence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction today. Speaking to a committee of MPs, Mr Straw set out what progress had been achieved. "Over this last weekend, we have found convincing evidence of Saddam's weapons programme," he began. "As you may know from media reports, we had encountered some difficulties finding these weapons, but I am happy to say that they have been resolved with a single anonymous phone call. A large section of Saddam's massive chemical and biological arsenal has been discovered and will shortly be put beyond use."

Mr Straw went on to explain how pranksters had stolen many of Saddam's weapons during the 1990s in order to test the regime's security and its opponents' intelligence. The criminals were apparently not malicious, however, and returned the weapons to the coalition outside a disused public toilet in Manchester on Sunday night.

Police say that little damage has been done to the weapons, which were discovered in a cardboard tube. A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence meanwhile denied that the public had been at risk from having a large arms cache in the middle of a major city. "The weapons we found were faulty and would have done little damage if used," said Lt Col Douglas Ramsbottom. "Saddam did buy them from us, after all."

Meanwhile, in Iraq, military experts sent from the Pentagon say they have located a "significant quantity" of WMDs. "Now the war is over it has become much easier to find the weapons that the military would have used," said press officer Gregory T Mullet. "A significant quantity of weapons was found in Baghdad and these later exploded, killing several Iraqi civilians. This just goes to show how ruthless the regime was. That they were our weapons is irrelevant." Further quantities of WMDs are expected to be found at US army bases around the country in the near future.

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bobsfridge.com/skew.htm

A group of vandals ransacked the suburban Virginia home of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld while he was working at the Pentagon. Stolen items included all of his chairs, power tools and a rocket launcher he kept in the shed. One of the thieves spray-painted the words “we feel liberated” on a hallway mirror. Rumsfeld commented on the incident at his daily press briefing. “What kind of craven, deranged persons would commit such a heinous crime? These individuals must be found and executed because they don’t deserve to live in a democracy,” Rumsfeld angrily said as he pounded his fist onto the lectern.

Witnesses in the neighborhood reported seeing a white van with ladders in the vicinity of the Rumsfeld estate. “Oh great, another white van sighting...” a crime detective said.

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theonion.com

LANGLEY, VA—In an alarming report released Monday by the Central Intelligence Agency, Syria may be harboring upwards of 15 million known Arabs within its borders."Reliable intelligence collected by our agency indicates that Syria has conspired to lend physical and economic support to a massive number of people belonging to this group," CIA director George J. Tenet said. "The shocking truth is, there are nearly as many Arabs in Syria as there are people in New York and Los Angeles combined. In fact, Syrians openly refer to their nation as the Syrian Arab Republic, despite knowing full well America's opinion on these matters."

Explaining the CIA's methods of gathering data on the rogue ethnicity's presence in Syria, Tenet said it relied on a combination of satellite imagery, computer-system infiltration, reports from Syrian covert operatives, intercepted radio and television transmissions, and The World Almanac And Book Of Facts 2003.

...This is not the first time Syria has been linked to Arabs. Israel found the Golan Heights heavily populated by Arabs when it annexed the region from Syria during 1967's Arab-Israeli War. Arabs have historically held many influential posts in the Syrian government, and the CIA claims to have data indicating that wealthy Arab businessmen control the greater part of Syria's economy.

The CIA report prompted concern from many Americans. "I'm not surprised," said Wayne Early, an Atlanta-area mortgage broker. "I suspect they're all over that part of the world. First, the government linked them to Sept. 11, then Afghanistan, and then Iraq. It makes you wonder who's next."

"The more I learn about Arabs, the less I like them," said Carol Schecter of Norfolk, VA. "Beirut, Teheran, Baghdad... everyplace there's trouble, they're there, and now we've found them in Syria. I just hope they don't hurt the regular Syrians."

Tenet assured citizens that he is committed to resolving the crisis. "We don't want to cause any undue panic, but now that the Arabs are there, we're going to have to deal with them," Tenet said. "Unfortunately, they're not just going to go away by themselves."

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thedailybull.ca

WASHINGTON, D.C. - After months of suffering from rising oil prices, starving vehicles across America have finally found relief as the first oil shipments arrived following the apparent collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Thousands of motorists lined the docks to watch the first handful of oil tankers unload their precious, power-giving fluid into giant holding containers destined for refineries across the country, while several dozen more ships waited a few miles offshore. One onlooker was heard praising God for removing any icebergs that may or may not have been in the paths of the oil tankers.

"This oil will be sent directly to a refinery where it will be turned into cheap, high-octane gasoline," an OPEC worker announced to a nearby parking lot full of clamouring automobiles. "Don't worry, in a few days, everything will be alright. There will be enough for everyone." The news was met with widespread relief. Horror stories about painful blisters due to ill-fitting shoes ("Who said these shoes had to fit? I never walked anywhere before," said one woman interviewed by The Washington Post) have filled the nation's media, alongside tales of creepy bus passengers ("He kept smelling me!": FOX News).

Many vehicles breathed a sigh of exhaust, most of whom have been running on fumes. For some vehicles, however, it may be too late... Thousands of sports cars have been forced into involuntary storage due to the high price of premium fuel, and record numbers of Dodge Vipers and Ferraris in Miami, FL, have been towed after being driven down to an empty tank.

President George W. Bush addressed the nation in a brief press conference shortly after the arrival of the tankers... "I would like to send my heartfelt thanks to the Iraqi people for sending us this aid," he continued. "For years, they have yearned to help Americans fly down the highway with the wind blowing in our hair, but their desires have been suppressed by a brutal dictator. Now that Saddam Hussein's vice-like grip on the bountiful oil wells of Iraq has been released, the Iraqi people are free to send us petroleum as fast as they can bring it out of the ground."

"My fellow Americans, I urge you to respond to the Iraqis' generous gift by starting your engines in gratitude." Millions of vehicles in every corner of the nation answered the President's call and joined the celebration by taking to the streets. Parades of automobiles could be found leading in and out of every major city during the morning and late afternoon hours while jubilant motorists honked their horns.

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thegrandoldparty.com

The third anniversary of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 will be moved up several months to coincide with the 2004 Republican Convention, GOP officials announced today. The main event will take place in New York's Madison Square Garden... Even though the date will change, Americans will be urged to observe the anniversary in the same manner as before -- such as viewing several hours of cable-news memorials.

The GOP said it is also in the planning stages of several special events as part of the convention which should help to further politicize the 9-11 attacks to the advantage of the President. "We're looking at moving the President's acceptance speech to Ground Zero," said a Republican official close to the White House.

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thegrandoldparty.com

Washington, D.C. -- Dog rights group Canine Liberty Association have come out against statements made by U.S. senator Rick Santorum comparing homosexuality to bigamy, polygamy, incest, and adultery... The CLA's public statement on Sen. Santorum coincided with their annual convention, which hundreds of dogs travel from all over the country to attend. A PowerPoint presentation on the Senator's statements drew growls, barks, and a few accidents in the ballroom of the Hilton Washington & Towers, the site of this year's meeting.

Dog leaders said they were most upset with Santorum's comparison of "man on child" to "man on dog" sexual acts. "We dogs resent being folded into the argument of a homophobic Republican Senator," said Murphy [Italian Greyhound Director of the Washington, D.C.-based CLA]. "...Why 'man on dog?' Why not 'man on cat' or 'man on dolphin?' It's unfair to dogs everywhere."

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theschmews.com

US - Fabio the homosexual goat today expressed his bewilderment at the comments of his owner, U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, likening homosexuality to bestiality... Fabio, who has been Santorum's pet for the past five years, is a leading supporter of gay rights amongst the farm-yard community, and now admits to being shocked and confused by the actions of his owner. "When I heard all the fuss Ricky's comments made," Fabio continued, "I thought, 'yes, go girl!'... But then I started getting calls from my friends asking me what was going on. I couldn't just go inside and have it out with Ricky, as I was tethered to the wooden stake in the yard."

Despite attempts to speak to his owner, Fabio remains tethered in the yard and has been unable to seek an explanation for his actions from Senator Santorum. "I am sure this is all a misunderstanding," Fabio told us, nervously lighting a Marlboro Light cigarette... Supporters of Senator Santorum emphatically deny that Fabio is employed in any capacity other than chewing grass.

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enduringvision.com

Noting the worldwide panic over SARS, the deadly new strain of pneumonia that has killed hundreds and affected thousands in Asia while threatening to spread to other continents, President Bush announced today the "complete and total banning" of retail chain Sears.

"I will not allow the citizens of my country to be terrorized by this chain of stores that causes people to become infected with a mysterious flu," thundered Bush in a press conference filled with confused reporters... Bush went on to explain how the deadly infection occurs. "Upon entering a Sears building, one immediately begins to have trouble breathing," the President explained, holding up a crudely drawn picture to illustrate the phenomenon. "This is because of evil air particles within the stores. They enter your respicatary system, and cause difficulty breathing, in addition to heightened sense awareness not unlike that felt after you do a few lines of coke off of your bathroom sink."

"Unlike cocaine, however," Bush added gravely, "Sears can kill you."

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deadbrain.co.uk

A British writer told of his shock yesterday after a satirical article he wrote actually influenced something. "I went into this business for personal reasons," he said, "I wanted to make people laugh as defence against my pitiful lack of self esteem. I didn't want to change the world". Jason Entwistle, 26, from Derbyshire, continued: "It wasn't supposed to be like this. Political satire was supposed to be about pointing out mild hypocrisy in an aloof and rhetorical manner. I never meant it to end up like this."

Entwhistle's article, "Why I love war", was surprise hit, and within an hour of it being posted on the Internet, his website had received more than a billion zillion hits. Among those who read it were Tony Blair and George W. Bush.

"It was a revelation," Bush told a press conference this morning, "With the help of wry British irony, I was able to see how crazy my greedy warmongering has been. His comical prose and poorly argued rhetoric helped me see a much simpler view of the situation in which war was 'just bad, that's all'. Now I'm quitting politics to dedicate my life to the CND". Tony Blair was similarly impressed, responding with a series of verb-less sentences that conveyed a vague peace related intent whilst remaining noncommittal on matters of actual policy. "Sustainable peace," he said. "Globalised non-destructive expansion.....the pursuance of freedom sound economic ideals."

World peace broke out almost immediately, prompting the worst stock market crash since 1926, as bankers dumped their arms shares like hot cakes.

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NOT A SATIRE

therag.com

Children’s Letters to their Future Robot Masters

Dear Robots, Is your first lady a robot? Are your kids robots? Is your dog a robot? Do you have to take your dog outside to poop? - Troy, age 8

Dear Robots of the Future, What color are you? - Deanna

Robot Masters, Are you going to make us wear white robes all the time? I don’t want to shave my hair. - Skyla, age 13

Dear Robot Master, “Kissing her”!! That’s a funny name for a robot! - Elizabeth, age 7

Dear Robots of the Future, If being ruled by robot masters means nobody ever has to take stupid Constitution class any more than I’m all for it. The Constitution is soooo boring. I hate that class. - Amy Roëtgen, age 14

Dear Future Robot Mastes, Have a nice day today. - Bryn, age 5

Dear Robots, How come only a boy’s toy gets to rule the world? Why can’t a girl’s toy get to be master? I wish you were a Cabbage Patch Kid. - Giedra Stewart, age 10

Dear Robots, I’m glad you are president because it’s too hard for a human to president. - Roth, age 10

Dear Mystery Robot, Are you a Autobot or a Decepticon? - Dean K. Age 11

Dear Robot Jerks, My daddy says you can take his guns from his cold and dead hands. He has a gun to start the fireplace with and lots others too. He has a gun for shooting the roaches. - Brenda Lee, Age 8