Page Two
  
“THE NOOZ MAKES
 A DEFINITE STATEMENT!”
 
      Many of you have wondered, as I have wondered, as indeed we all have wondered, just what is this thing called primate plummeting.  Is it an aberrant behavior that hangs like a black cloud over our rubbery, high-canopy forests, or is it the wave of the future?  Do any other orders engage in plummeting, and is their injury rate any better?  Will primate plummeting still be around two hundred months from now when prosthetic prehensile tails and dominance hierarchies are things of the past?
      Just before he disappeared the last time, Professor Mitsuo Ohhohoho had firm plans to investigate this mysterious tropical phenomenon with Mr. Christopher Shaw, West Coast Correspondent and Really Scientific Letters Editor for Primate Nooz.  But then the professor disappeared, and those plans had to be shelved.  Even now that he has reappeared, he doesn't seem all that interested in primate plummeting any more, and has mainly been trying to avoid Mr. Shaw, who has promised to wring his neck.  It has therefore been left to us to illuminate this oft-obscured subject, and we refer you in turn to the 'Recommended Reading' sections of the last few issues of the Nooz for some relevant material.  The truth is that we here do not know what primate plummeting is exactly.  You hear more and more about it every day, but happily ensconced as we are here in our plush editorial offices in the beautiful Baxter-Burnham Inflatable Building which has served as our temporary home since last October, this behavior has swept over us like a B-2 bomber leaving us in its distant, fume-filled wake and trying to figure out just the what the hell that was.
      We have no doubt that in the weeks and months to come, we will be able to tell you something about primate plummeting.  There probably will come a time when we will have articles and sponsor symposia and establish websites, but that time is not now, so don't ask.
 
 
  SPECKLED LEMUR MAKES
  WORLD RECORD PLUMMET
 

      Rumors about the soon-to-be-completed Nooz building have been flying like crazed bats around Hellmouth for weeks.  Ever since the 4th and most recent Nooz building collapsed last October and the whole operation had to be shifted over to the Baxter-Burnham Inflatable Building, everyone on the staff from publisher Arnett Putney, III and executive editor Widen Lundale, Jr. to the most meager paper flattener has been anxiously awaiting the day when the new offices would be ready.  Now, that day seems to be at least, if not on the distant horizon, perhaps just beyond it, and moans of anticipation can quite often be heard from one corridor to another.

      “News Behind the News” has just learned that someone in the Accounting Department has apparently been entirely responsible for all the financial problems that the Nooz has been experiencing lately.  Evidence has turned up that a massive and evil fraud has been perpetrated by an unspeakably vile and traitorous individual whose heinous acts and depraved deeds have corrupted the integrity of the Nooz, and whose loathsome and gangrenous activities have upset us all. We are not making any accusations here against this person, but somehow he was able to make it appear as if publisher Arnett Putney, III and executive editor Widen Lundale, Jr. were to blame.  The individual's name is being withheld pending the outcome of the preliminary investigation but we can tell you that it was Ramsey Pinkbutton.

      West Coast Correspondent and Really Scientific Letters Editor Mr. Christopher Shaw may have had more than was originally believed to do with the new format that was unsuccessfully tried out in the Nooz a few issues back.  “Just about the whole thing was his idea,” said apprentice ink stainer Bill Murk, “he just didn't want anyone to know it unless it was a big hit.”  Shaw had been pushing for a new format for several months and seems to have won over publisher Arnett Putney, III and executive editor Widen Lundale, Jr.  The experiment was a dismal failure however, and was scrapped after overwhelmingly negative reader response and not a few vicious threats.

(Reuters)  Ashanti, Togobogo. Despite pleas for decorum from presidents and prelates alike, the 7th International Primate Plummeting Awards Banquet was disrupted for the seventh year in a row by a group of detractors who claim that primate plummeting is nothing more than a bunch of hooey.  The Sergeant-at-Arms was forced to evict several protestors after two white-cheeked muscatels and a giant mouse lemur were injured by flying objects.
      During the awards portion of the banquet, primates from five continents were recognized for plummeting achievements, and the surviving ones accepted plaques and trophies. The evening's crowning moment was the handing out of the World Record Award to a southern brown speckled lemur from the Nosy-Varinda Nature Reserve on Madagsacar, who late last month shattered the previous world record of 52 meters by leaping from the crown of a green pepper-thistle tree and falling an astonishing 68-1/2 meters into a peat swamp.

RAMPAGING GALAGOS Cont. from page 1.

Sawanda, who said a week ago, “Mad monkeys or mad cows, what's the difference?” A plane left Hellmouth last night bound for Jujube, and the prayers of at least several local residents are going with it. West Coast Correspondent for Primate Nooz Mr. Christopher Shaw released the following statement today:  “I am very concerned about the situation in Jujube, and I will be going there next week as soon as I finish digging the hole for my new barbecue pit.”
      The eastern desert galagos at the Hellmouth Municipal Zoo and Exotic Animal Crematorium are being monitored closely for signs that they might be infected too, inasmuch as three of the four animals there were imported from Jujube in 1989, and they appear to their keepers to have been more irritable than usual lately.

Page One     Page Three     Page Four     Home Page