Page Two
   “THE NOOZ HAS
          SOMETHING TO SAY!”
         
As the days drift lazily along here in the dry, air-conditioned heat of the Nooz office and Bessie Weatherford makes a new pot of coffee every four and a half hours, we often feel the urge to cast our mind's eye like the finest Spanish fly across the still waters of previous issues, and we cannot help but have noticed there the preponderance of what we call 'silly' news.  “Bluetail Drowns in Hellmouth Tar Pit,” “Five Fiddlers Framed in Fake Fig Fiasco,” “Gobo Roots Banned Inside City Limits”.... Come on!!   Why is it that nothing newsworthy ever seems to happen?   Oh sure, you say, Mitsuo Ohhohoho has disappeared.  Dr. Dick Doody has been suspended, you say.  Win Wing Wan has Chinaman's Elbow, you say.  Well, of course there are always a few exceptions to everything.  But we're talking about hard news.  Exciting news.  News that gets people where they live, right between the eyes, in the pit of the stomach.  News that you can't swallow without a tall glass of water and a couple of aspirins.  News that runs you down like an 18-wheeler on the Runnamuck Expressway and doesn't even stop to say sorry.  Important news.
        Apparently the world has changed, because that kind of news is rare today.  From once-interesting areas of the world like Gabon and Bali-Bali and Cheesequake now come only tiny insignificant scraps of information, news stories that 200 months ago today we wouldn't even have listened to, reports of rice crises and flying monkeys, lawsuits, imitation leaf scandals, and petty quarrels between primatologists.  Now we're reduced to running leftover news items that no one else wants, features that insult the intelligence, advertisements for spurious products, and even announcements for nonexistent events.  How far must we sink before we reach the level that Nooz publisher Arnett Putney, III and executive editor Widen Lundale, Jr. apparently consider no longer acceptible.  How far do we have to.... &#!$?*$#
        What?  WAIT A MINUTE..... What's that?  %$!!&#@  We have JUST been handed this bulletin.  It appears that the Nooz building has collapsed.  I repeat, the Nooz building has apparently collapsed.  Well! That's certainly something!  I guess we better get our pencils over there and cover the story.  Forget what we said about there not being any news.  Forget what we said about Nooz publisher Arnett Putney, III and executive editor Widen Lundale, Jr.  Just forget it!
  
 

  FOCUS OF SEARCH SHIFTS
  TO TINY BADONGO-GAZIMBI

(BBC World Service)  Adudu, Badongo-Gazimbi. The search for Professor Mitsuo Ohhohoho, author of The Professor Mitsuo Ohhohoho Primate Identification Book and African Jungle Survival Guide, has shifted from the Urubupunga region of the ancient, ant-strewn Amazon where he disappeared last July, to the tiny, unmapped African nation of Badongo-Gazimbi, formerly called Dutch Southeast Africa.  The well-known Asian primate specialist vanished while looking for the flat-footed or ruby-rumped tamarin, Leontopithecus saguinus, according to his friend and mentor Senhor Teófilo Afonso Rosario Sobradinho, who has been in charge of the seach for him.  “Even his guides didn't see where he went,” sobbed the husky Brazilian, “we just have to find him.”
        Primate Nooz has learned that the focus of the investigation has been moved here because of a tip anonymously phoned in to the Adudu Monthly Telegram by a man who claimed to have seen the eminent and knowledgeable Professor or someone just like him buying gobo roots in a local market.  In Africa, the search team will be joined by Dr. Oondóué M. Boué, who has had extensive experience looking for things, and by Nooz West Coast correspondent Mr. Chris Shaw, who is very familiar with Badongo-Gazimbi, and who will be flying to Adudu via Hellmouth where he will inspect the ruins of the collapsed Nooz building and collect his memorabilia.

  
NOOZ NOTES


        The number of Chinaman's Elbow cases in the United States nearly doubled last year, according to the Hellmouth Medical Association, which along with Dr. Dick Doody, Chief Surgeon (Suspended) at the Human Diseases and Primate Testing Facility, has been developing several radically new cryogenic surgical techniques to relieve the painful condition. Chinaman's Elbow should not be confused with Nipponese Elbow, which has a completely different set of symptoms.  Nipponese Elbow has been almost entirely eradicated in the western hemisphere, but there were over 100,000 cases of Chinaman's Elbow in the U.S. in 1988.

         The baby bushbaby found at the back of the Tropical Flora and Rainforest Research Center last February still has not been claimed and may soon be adopted by Primate Nooz as our corporate mascot to replace Arnold, the aye-aye-aye who died under mysterious circumstances.  The bushbaby has been living in a box in the Nooz supply room, where Quincey Brindle has been responsible for keeping it well supplied with its favorite food, gorogo leaves, which he has been purchasing by the pound from Lou's House of Leaves.

        This was not the first time the Nooz building has collapsed, according to City Archivist and Historian Thurston Langston Marston.  That event occurred in the frosty winter of '08.  The original structure stood for only two weeks before collapsing.  The second Nooz building, completed at great expense in 1911, fell in the earthquake of 1912.  The Nooz was forced to shut down for several months while a new building was being erected, but it collapsed in 1914 and, because of the war, was not rebuilt until 1923.  That structure was the one that collapsed just recently. Work has already begun on its replacement, which will be the fifth Nooz building, and we are hopeful that it will be a good few years before it collapses again.

COLLAPSE Cont. from page 1.

over, street name signs turned around, broken bricks littering the dusty sidewalks, and empty Nooz boxes standing mute testimony to the power of man's careless-ness.  Publisher Arnett Putney, III and executive editor Widen Lundale, Jr. declared that the next issue of the Nooz should be no worse than any other as a result of this catastrophe, and Hellmouth townsfolk are breathing more heavily tonight.
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