Page Two
        “THE NOOZ SPEAKS
              OUT YET AGAIN!”
       “Just as a volcanic eruption fills the atmosphere with ash and dust, so did the disappearance of Professor Mitsuo Ohhohoho fill cocktail parties with pointless chitchat and even reputable newspapers with idle speculation.”  That was the way we were going to introduce our editorial for this issue.  That was what we were going to say in a ringing and heartfelt defense of Professor Ohhohoho.  But that was before the disclosures of the past few weeks, before we knew what we know now about the so-called Professor and his faked disappearance.  Alright, we admit it, we were taken.  We were duped, we were fooled, we were hoodwinked.  But we weren't the only ones.  There were dozens of others who believed that Mr. Ohhohoho was actually lost. It wasn't a particularly clever trick, but we fell for it.  Like everyone else we were too blinded by our regard for the man to believe that he could do what he was being accused of.  After all, this was the man who had discovered the lost city of the cercopithecines.  This was the man who had found a crashed UFO in Gabon containing the remains of a primate bestiary.  This was the man who had written My Life with the Macaques.
      We overlooked the fact that he had done this exact kind of thing before, in 1972, when he faked another disappearance to hype the sales of his first book The Professor Mitsuo Ohhohoho Primate Identification Book and African Jungle Survival Guide, which were lagging. At the time, we thought it was just a youthful prank, a one-time never to be repeated lapse.  We didn't know it was a recurring pattern in his life.  We certainly weren't aware that he had hidden in a closet for two and a half days when he was eight to get his parents to raise his allowance, coming out only at night to steal sardine and gobo root sandwiches from the kitchen.  We had no idea that in high school he had pretended to be lost in Osaka Prefecture Park just to see what people would write about him in his yearbook.  We were amazed to learn that he had once arranged to have himself kidnapped from his college dormitory room in order to get an incomplete in primate pesematology.
      So we had to change the opening line of our editorial.  We had to revise the whole pitch of the thing.  We had to do a lot more work.  We had to eat crow, and we didn't care much for the flavor of it.  Thanks a lot, MITSUO!		  
 
 
NORWEGIAN PRIMATOLOGIST
TURNS 102 AT HOME IN BED!
  
 

      Contrary to what some people are saying,
Primate Nooz publisher Arnett Putney, III and
executive editor Widen Lundale, Jr. have had
extensive experience with primatology newspapers.
Before coming to Hellmouth, the pair had been
assistant publisher and assistant executive editor at
PRIMATE LIFE, and before that copy editor and
circulation manager for Primate Week, and before
that paper flattener and ink stainer for the docent
newsletter of the Hellmouth Zoo Association, where
they worked on the monkey section.  They now live
in adjoining condos on an exclusive block of Vine
St. and are at the office at 7am every morning except
Wednesday, when they play badminton until 9.  Mr.
Putney has a very extensive collection of antique
French crossbows, and Mr. Lundale likes to go
parasailing on Lake Runnamuck.  Mr. Putney has a
Lexus, and Mr. Lundale has a BMW.

      It is now generally recognized that Professor
Rolf Sigurd Vanhammerfest is quite crazy, and has
been for at least six decades.  Ever since his article
came out in 1928 ["Why I Believe That Monkeys
Originated in Snowbound Climates and Not in the
Tropics," Colonial Paleoprimatology Review, 138:77-
95], no reputable worker in the field has considered
him anything but a loon.  One wonders why such
respected journals as the Record of the Nordic
Society and Natural Geographic and such outstand-
ing publishing companies as Bruce W. Bruce and
Bruce would continue to sponsor his ravings.  Most
primatologists are apparently too afraid of him to
say anything, but the Primate Nooz isn't afraid of
anything.  We don't care if he is 102!  He's loony
and that's the end of it.  Monkeys didn't originate in
snowbound climates at all.  They originated in the
tropics.  Really, they did.
(Reuters)  Bjornafjordhavn, Norway.  Famed Nordic
monkey scholar Professor Rolf Sigurd Vanhammerfest
officially became 102 years old last Thursday in a jolly
and jampacked ceremony at his bedside in the tiny
Norwegian shrimp village of Bjornafjordhavn. The
celebration was presided over by the Mayor and
village elders of Bjornafjordhavn and the Dean of
Primatology at Flekkesund College, where the well-
liked Dr. Vanhammerfest has been in residence for the
past sixty-two years.
      Flekkesund College is the sister institution of
Sigsbee Junior Night College in Hellmouth.  Several
excited Sigsbee alums travelled by slow tramp steamer
to Bjornafjordhavn to be with the old primatologist
who was Visiting Professor of Simian Sciences and
one of Hellmouth's most colorful local characters in
1972.
 
 
VETERAN NOOZ REPORTER IS
DETAINED IN SOUTH AFRICA
  
(Reuters)  Bittersdorp, South Africa.  In a move that is
certain to upset some followers of his “Report from the
Field” series, South African authorities yesterday
detained and took into custody veteran Nooz reporter
Eric Scotmeister Fleiglehaus.  He was apprehended,
they said, while trying to break into Monkey Island
Prison, the maximum security facility off the coast of
South Africa, to try to obtain an interview with the
notorious and evil-looking prison Commandant Dr.
Oudtshoorn Grootegraaf.  
       Dr. Grootegraaf has not been interviewed since he
took over the prison 17 years ago.  He is rumored to
wear black felt patches over both eyes and to carry a
silver-handled bullwhip.  A fragmentary account in a
local newspaper described how the world-travelling
automotive primatologist was dragged off kicking and
screaming, then driven away in an unmarked gray
Mercedes.  
       His status is not certain at present, but the Nooz
has initiated inquiries.
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