Nooz22B

      Ninety-three years ago the 20th century was just beginning. The Boxer Rebellion had broken out in China, and Carrie Nation was wielding her anti-saloon hatchet here at home. Some 200 men were killed in a mine disaster at Scofield, Utah, and 6000 people died from a hurricane which hit the port of Galveston, Texas. The King of Italy, Umberto I, was assassinated, William McKinley won reelection as President of the United States, and Queen Victoria was ill. More importantly for us, ninety-three years ago an itinerant shoe salesman named Bucephalus T. Stephens from Ibbesville, Iowa, picked himself up painfully by the scruff of his own neck, moved his collection of Mexican howler monkeys to Arizona, and started jotting down some crazy ideas he had on the back of an old mining claim form. From those humble and inauspicious beginnings and crazy ideas has evolved in fits and starts over the intervening decades the Primate Nooz that you are reading now.
      One of the crazy ideas that Mr. Stephens had was that Southwest Arizona was ready for a primatological publication of its own, and that he was the man to give it to them. When he arrived in the rough-and-tumble Hellmouth of the 1900's, a town only recently removed from the Wild Bill Hickok era, he thought he'd be well-received. After all, he came all the way from Ibbesville, Iowa. He thought he'd be accepted. He thought at least that he wouldn't be run out of town. But the irate residents of Hellmouth did run him out of town, six times before he retired and left the Nooz to his only son Morty. That was the start of the hard years, and they lasted until Morty was finally institutionalized in 1935. The Nooz struggled on through wars and recessions and interspecies strife, and the Nooz building collapsed a number of times, yet we never lost our composure. We suffered through the awful bean blight of the 40's and the plastic shortage of the 50's and the fake fig scandal, and we were rocked by lawsuits and sinkholes and shocked at the disappearance of Mitsuo Ohhohoho and the accidental cryogenic freezing of Win Wing Wan. Yet through it all we have held on, clinging to existence by our very fingernails, and the results have indeed been gratifying. In March, the Nooz received the Hero of Publishing Award from the Smithsonian Institution, and when Chris Shaw rejoined our staff, we anticipated no further legal difficulties from him. We had even been asked by the European Monkey Council to organize a conference on extinct primates which we were hoping to hold at the Man and Mammal Museum in Cheesequake sometime this fall.
      Now that the lights are going out here at Primate Nooz and it appears that our era is over, we just want to thank all you loyal readers, and to let you know how very much we appreciate what you've done for us and what you've meant to us through the years. We certainly couldn't have done it without you. You know who you are, and thanks a million!

When the publishing firm of Potts, Packer and Polthammer packed up and moved from Hellmouth to Los Angeles recently, it was thought that it was due to its desire to expand into a large metropolitan market. After all, PP&P had been limited to producing small technical manuals for the Southwest Arizona Forestry Department, children's books like Petey Goes To Cheesequake and Barney Bear's Guide to Manners, lists of nutritious ingredients for several area Chinese restaurants, and Bill Measely's Chronicles of the Hydrogen Laser Spotlight.
Mr. Potts and Mr. Packer were both local booksellers, and when Mr. Polthammer arrived from Norway in 1979, they decided to establish a publishing house. Their move to L.A. last January, however, was a complete surprise to area residents, and it has now been revealed that Really Scientific Letters Editor Mr. Christopher Shaw, anticipating the demise of the Nooz, decided to purchase the firm so that it could publish the line of books he is planning to write, the first of which, entitled Adrift in Noozland: The Story of My Unfortunate Association with the Primate Nooz, was released earlier this year. Inside sources at PP&P have informed the Nooz that his next book, Annals of the Reader's Digest, is underway and may be released as early as next June.

(ANA) Mole Creek, Tasmania. A brief dispatch was received this morning from the Chudleigh-Lilydale Royal Tasmanian Primatological Observatory, where things have been getting back to normal after that close call with the big meteor that struck last June near Conara Junction, only 127 miles from Mole Creek. The communication was signed by Drs. Mawbanna Waddamana and Basil Smith, and stated that they have conclusively determined that the giant space primate first observed heading toward the Earth in December, 1989, is still heading toward Earth, and there has been absolutely no change in its course or speed. Drs. Waddamanna and Smith are studying the huge space creature with their separate but equal 36" telescopes, and hope to know more soon.

(Agence France) Poitiers, France. A French fiddler monkey was seriously injured yesterday morning in a dangerous and ill-advised plummet from the top observation level of the newly-constructed Poitiers Tower, an exact copy of the Eiffel Tower except that it is twice as high. The fiddler attempted to use an umbrella to brake his plummet, but he struck a palm tree on Level 4, a viewing telescope on Level 3 which fortunately was not in use, and crashed through the pavilion of the cafe on Level 2. No details have been released on his condition.