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  “THE NEW NOOZ SPEAKS
     OUT EVEN MORE
         STRONGLY THAN USUAL!”
        
Over the course of the last several weeks, the New Primate Nooz (and by extension, the old Nooz) has been the subject of numerous and widespread slanderous accusations of journalistic malfeasance.  Newsday stated that we "manufacture stories out of whole cloth" and the Desert Post said that "there is no truth to anything that they write."  The Wall Street Review reported that we "pander to the idiotic tastes of our low-level audience."  And the Journal of the Southwest Arizona Primate Society opines that we have become "nothing but a grocery store tabloid."  This is not the first time that we have been attacked in this manner, but there now seems to be a coordinated effort to make us look ridiculous and damage our credibility.  And so we wish to address these charges and lay them to rest once and for all.
        It has been suggested that we invented the whole planet Zarkon business, but we refer you to Mr. Chris Shaw's excellent book on the subject listed in this issue's Recommended Reading section. The fact that Reader's Digest has refused to publish any more articles by Mr. Shaw is neither here nor there.  Various and sundry astronomers have claimed that there is in fact no giant space primate heading toward the earth, but we are relying on the expertise of Drs. Mawbanna Waddamana and Basil Smith of the Chudleigh-Lilydale Royal Tasmanian Primatological Observatory in Mole Creek, Tasmania, and Nooz readers will be able to judge for themselves the reliability of those two eminent figures.  It is true that we made up the story about the Arizona State FDA banning Uncle Jack's Silverback Cream, and the brief item about the Hellmouth Tropical Rainforest Research Center predicting a new ice age was a bit of an exaggeration, and the whole thing about the message from the future being found in Gorgonzola, well... It wasn't exactly like that.  And we have to admit that the John P. Simon Tree Thistle Plantation was not really flattened by an earthquake the way we said it was, and most of what was in the "Russian" issue was what you might call entertainment, and I guess we could go on, but why bother?  A lot of things we reported are true, and we are really, really angry that anyone has the nerve to say they're not.
         We certainly hope that this has reassured our readers that the New Primate Nooz is a news publication worthy of its name, and we are confident that our circulation figures will not drop any further and that we can continue to supply the southwest Arizona region with interesting, accurate and well-written material of a sort that has come to be expected. We anticipate being again a major contender for the Western Primate Publications Award, and we look forward to hearing from all of you with any comments or suggestions you may have.
 
BLACK HOLE DISRUPTS
LOCAL BOOK SIGNING
(SW Arizona News)  Hellmouth, AZ. A small black hole moved across the muddy Horntoad River Valley last Wednesday afternoon, frightening gobo root farmers and disrupting a local book signing at Arnold Quigley's Books'n'Stuff.  The book being signed was The Planet Zarkon and Its Role in Primate Evolution written by Senior Nooz Adviser Mr. Chris Shaw. The event had been underway for only about an hour when the black hole made its sudden appearance, generating enormous gravitational force and sucking up chairs, books and small dogs.  The Hellmouth P.D. is still looking for Mrs. Francis T. Winterbottom of 220 Arnold Drive, who was last seen cooing and making eyes at Mr. Shaw.  The eminent author could not be reached for comment, but his publicist said that the errant astronomical phenomena was not his fault and that he regretted the disturbance.
 
2nd Moon Discovered
Hiding in Earth's Orbit
(Tasman News Service)  Mole Creek, Tasmania.  The stunning news that there is a second moon circling the Earth was released by Dr. Mawbanna Waddamanna at the Chudleigh-Lilydale Royal Tasmanian Primatological Observatory on Monday.  Apparently there is an area of the sky that has never been studied very closely, and it is in this precise area that the second moon is said to be hiding.  The mysterious celestial body is approximately the same size as the moon we already know about, but Dr. Waddamana laughingly dismissed reports that it is made up of some cheeselike substance.  On Monday night however, Dr. Waddamana's longtime associate and coworker at the Observatory Dr. Basil Smith stated that he believes his colleague is completely insane.  Thus far no name has been suggested for the moon, and the Nooz will hold a contest next month to pick one.
 
200 Months Ago Today

     200 months ago today the Hellmouth City Botanic Garden was struck by the virulent Bean Blight which went unnoticed for some weeks until a gardener in the desert native plants section was pruning some Horntoad River Valley sage and saw what appeared to be yellow blotches on the leaves. He didn't think anything about it until he observed some more blotches on the leaves of the Yuma cowweed.  He immediately called the section manager who notified the chief gardener who brought in the Senior Botanist, and they quickly took some samples back to the lab.  They determined that the blight had been spreading for some time, and had apparently been introduced into the garden on some buckwheat bean plants that had been procured from a gardening supply house in Mt. Sydney.  They decided on a course of treatment but before the blight was brought under control, it had unfortunately wiped out most of the lavender lilies, the sticky-leaved milk-peas, the white tobacco puffs and the Arizona long-stemmed goosetails.

     200 months ago today the Primate Nooz, in a brief and ultimately unsuccessful effort to increase its area of coverage and badly-sagging readership, formed a partnership with Monkey Monthly of Rhode Island. There followed a series of experimental issues with titles like Primate Monthly, Primate Nooz Monthly, Primate Monthly Nooz, Monkey Nooz, and the East-West Journal of Primatology, as the editors attempted to find an an exciting and independent identification for the new publication. Regrettably, in the end, it was determined that the people in Rhode Island did not care a fig about Arizona and vice versa, and the partnership collapsed.  Monkey Monthly was then purchased by K-Mart, and ever since, the Nooz has followed its own path.
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