Vatican Launches New Reality TV Series

By Nathan Benedicked XVI
Transitory Problems Bureau Chief

NEW YORK - Following NBC’s smash self-improvement hit, “The Biggest Loser,” the Catholic Church has taken an unprecedented move to reinvigorate the priesthood with its racy new series, “Queer Factor.” The show, which launches in tandem with the Church’s recent 3-year abstinence of “tendencies” policy for gays, follows the exploits and tribulations of 15 gay contestants all in pursuit of a higher calling. As always in reality television, there is a twist. Set in a picturesque and lavishly furnished bungalow minutes from the heart of San Francisco, the 15 contestants will face a series of tempting challenges that range from finding a random verse in the Bible and making sense of it to thinking pure thoughts in a special “Locker Room Challenge” to ultimately facing a contest to see who can baptize the most people at UC Berkeley given only a fire hose. The show’s creator, an ex-gay himself, explained: “Not only do we have video cameras hidden throughout the house 24/7, but we also are able to monitor what the contestants view with broadband internet connections and full access to chat rooms. I believe this show is going to make so many people stronger, not just the winning contestant. It feels so good to have God working through me to help others.”

Vatican officials indicate the show will be simulcast on CBN and Bravo.

We Did It!

By Dustin Michael Harris
The Man Who Saw It Happen

The night was electric as the crowd poured out of Mike Falkowitz Stadium.

Most of the men and women making their way home were stunned. Few could believe that they'd pulled it off. This group of rag tag, well-intentioned kids with little or nothing too lose, but with a lot to gain, had pulled it off like a band of pros.

Very rarely in the game does anything happen that's so significant, so poised to go down in the history books. These people did it - and they did it well.

"I didn't think we'd be able to do it this season," coach Don Coleman said. "But this year, we did it. It's done. And if all goes as planned, next year we’re gonna do it again!" The celebration continued throughout the night as the men and women of this extremely rare and eclectic group met together at a nearby Buffalo Wild Wings to toast the fruits of their victory.

By the end of the evening, many were drunk on spicy wings, success and ... rum. Lots and lots of rum.

"Captain Morgan's baby, yeah!" Lionel Durwitz, a sixth-year member of the team said. "Baby, let me tell you somethin' baby. I'll tell you what - these motherf**kers are the best damn motherf**kers at what they do! They did it baby! We did it! I'm sailin' away baby! I'm sailing! Damn!"

Strong words from a man who did it.

In the beginning, success seemed unlikely for such a group of diverse individuals trying to do something. It was a feeling that wasn't lost on Coleman.

"When we first got together and tried to do it," Coleman said, "I thought 'This is a disaster. We're not gonna do it.' Then, after a few weeks together, I started thinking 'No, we can do it.'”

After just a few months in the same place, these men and women had accomplished something that no one thought possible - they'd done it. It was over. Done. Finished, if you will. Now fans are looking to the future for a repeat, but for the group that did it, doing it again is a long way down the road.

"Man, we're just workin' it," Sturdy Howser said. "If you'd told me that I'd be gettin' it done this far in the game, I woulda said 'f**k you sucker. I ain't doin' nothin.' But then, my momma died and I knew ... I said 'Sturdy you ain't nothin' if you don't do it.' So I did it."

And now, in the words of Sturdy - who died suddenly of a heart attack just a few weeks ago - he's one rich "mofo." At least he was.

In the process of doing it, the team forgot to overlook their contracts and suffered the consequences when shrewd owner Tori Cook, banking on a losing season and planning to sell the team all along, had them sign phony bonuses that actually rescinded the profits they turned under the merchandising window "Doin' it Merchandising."

Cook declined to comment in person, but a spokesman said that she was sure "she'd get away with her heartless, fiendish plan."

"Man, that bitch screwed us while we were doin' it," Howser said, "I got a family ... and a boat. Shit man, I got a family that lives on a boat."

"Doin' it Merchandising" has gone on to make profits upwards of $50,000 dollars. If you're looking for a happy ending to this story ... there's not one. Tori Cook got away with her fiendish plan, just as her spokesman had said and the members of the team that did it disbanded, never to do it again.

"Life's a roller coaster," Coleman said. "One minute you're doin' it and the next minute ... well, you're drunk and livin' on a boat with Sturdy Howser and his seven kids."

By Raabia Wazir
Devout Muslim

NEW YORK, NY – During New York City’s Fashion Week, supermodel Kate Moss appeared on the cover of London’s Daily Mirror newspaper cutting lines of cocaine on a CD jewel box and looking extremely hot. Moss, 31, the mother of a two-year-old girl and girlfriend of rock star/addict/burglar Peter Doherty, was also shown in the inset snorting said lines of coke with a £5 note.

The supermodel has reportedly suffered in subsequent weeks, being forced to attend a rehab clinic in Arizona for “drug and sexual addiction” and losing contracts worth £400,000 ($688,037.38) for advertisement campaigns with retailer H&M and couture houses Burberry and Chanel. While spokespeople for these companies professed to be shocked and horrified by Moss’s behavior, such astonishment on UK’s campus was reserved for her perfectly tousled blonde hair, sexy knee-high boots and possibly non-existent shorts. Interior Design Junior Becky Spagnolini’s rage seemed to equal that of Moss’s employer Rimmel. “Who does that?” she exclaimed, “Who looks like they’re in a fashion shoot when they’re snorting coke in dirty backrooms?” Psychology Freshman Katie Clinton agreed, “It just isn’t fair. Couldn’t she have had a bloody septum or something?” Sighing, the girls ultimately came to the same conclusion: as UK’s Choices Program has taught us time and time again, being clean means being ugly.

By Alex Bibbey
Intergalactic Bureau Chief

ENDOR, Crab Nebula – The hotly-contested election for the University of Kentucky’s Student Government presidency has been appealed to the Galactic Supreme Court, sources on the distant moon Nystorius-delta-7 have reported. The Court, widely recognized as the highest-ranking legitimate judicial body in the galaxy, is organized and operated by a peaceful federation of 26 sentient races that lay claim to roughly 400,000 planetary systems.

“We don’t normally hear cases that affect a single star system or planet, much less a single ‘university’… is that the word?... an archaic facility at which beings gather to engage in manual acquisition of knowledge and uninhibited sexual intercourse, but I must say that the justices of the Court were extremely impressed by Ms. [Rebecca] Ellingsworth’s drive and motivation to have her case heard,” Supreme Justice Ezzlab q’Resyung of the Tr’axiz system was quoted as saying in regards to the case.

Anticipating a university appeal to her recent legal victory in Fayette County court, Ellingsworth, the unsuccessful candidate in the initial election, single-handedly constructed a powerful, broadband radio transmitter and began transmitting a cleverly encoded binary message in the direction of the galactic core describing the details of a carbon based anatomy, our location relative to a series of easily identifiable pulsars, and the details of the election appeal. Documentation of her expenditures is available in the Student Government offices.

The message was intercepted by an un-aliened probe conveniently situated at the fringe of Earth’s solar system, which relayed the message to the appropriate authorities, resulting in the first contact between Earth’s’ inhabitants and extraterrestrials.

In a statement released yesterday, Ellingsworth said, “While the benefits of our recent contact with the intelligent life of the galaxy are numerous, including fusion energy, quantum computing, travel and communication across interstellar distances, and the cure for all known diseases and disabilities, the most important outcome of this fortunate encounter is that justice in this election will finally be served.”

McDonald's to Restore Stability, Justice to Iraq

By Sam Staggs
Washington Correspondent #1

WASHINGTON, DC - In the most recent development in the Iraq crisis, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pledged to construct Iraq’s first McDonald’s restaurant by 2007.

“If democracy isn’t the ability to sell someone a hamburger,” Rumsfeld said, “then I don’t know what the h€ll it is, really.”

Rumsfeld, who in recent months has drawn increasing fire from liberals and conservatives for his handling of the war, told reporters at a White House press conference that the proposed McDonald’s “would represent the final step towards building a truly free Iraq.”

“And besides,” Rumsfeld added, “Who doesn’t like a good Big Mac? Am I right, people?”

President Bush remained stoic at the conference, occasionally nodding his head as Rumsfeld spoke. When asked about the proposal, Bush pointed to his shoes. “I just got these the other day,” he said. “They’re Velcro, see?”

If approved by the Senate, the $50 billion spending bill would green light construction of the McFortress, a heavily armored McDonald’s restaurant to be erected in the Euphrates port city of Fallujah.

“We’ve learned some hard lessons,” said McDonald’s Corp. spokesman, Ronald McDonald, the clown prince of a $20 billion-a-year burger empire. “By God, we are not going to have another Beirut,” he insisted, referring to the April 2004 McDonald’s bombing in the Lebanese capital.

“It’s not enough that we replace the hamburger with chicken, the buns with falafel,” he said, wiping away tears. “By God, I will not watch another good man die behind the register.”

At press time, details of the McFortress were scarce. Sources within the corporation, under condition of anonymity, revealed that the new restaurant would be equally capable of serving Big Macs via a Humvee-compatible drive-thru as well as launching volleys of incendiary H€llfire rockets at insurgents from rooftop gun nests.

It will also be the first McDonald’s restaurant to introduce a new Lavash N’ Lamb McFlurry, which is expected to go over well with the region’s predominantly Muslim population.

“It truly will be the mother of all fast-food restaurants,” said Rumsfeld.

But with war costs recently passing the $180 billion mark and rising, and the American death toll hovering under 2,000, it remains to be seen if Congress will take a bite out of Rumsfeld’s proposal.

“It’s ludicrous,” said US Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) in a phone interview. “I like a good McNugget as much as the next free man, but this is just too much money.”

Durbin concluded by drawing parallels between Ronald McDonald and the Furher of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler. “If you didn’t know that an American corporation was building this ‘McBunker’,” he said, “then you’d think it was a modern Anschluss of government and fast-food industry. What’s next: the Sudetenland?”

Resounding Durbin’s criticism is the Burger King, spokesman for the Burger King Corporation, one of McDonald’s biggest competitors, who alleges that the U.S. government gave McDonald’s an exclusive “no-bid” contract.

“Twas not a fair dealing,” said Burger King. “Sir McDonald hath shown himself to be a lowly rapscallion. Henceforth, I shall lobby for a Senate inquiry most investigative.”

A resolute McDonald responded to the criticism, “I may be a clown, sir, but if you prick me, do I not bleed?” He then proceeded to juggle four Happy Meal boxes.

As the debate rages on in America, the question of how the Iraqi people will respond remains unanswered. Despite a civilian death toll that now exceeds 25,000 since the invasion began in March 2003 and mounting evidence that Iraq is entering a period of prolonged civil war, Rumsfeld remains confident.

“Okay, maybe the guns and the bombs and that whole ‘torture thing’ were kind of a put-off,” said Rumsfeld, reaffixing the straps on the president’s ADIDAS. “But a Double-Quarter Pounder with cheese? I’m lovin’ it, so why can’t they?”

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Movies, movies, movies! That’s what’s on the mind of Iraqis these days as they embrace a new life of freedom and the American way - movies, movies, movies!

The Iraqis, previously unfamiliar with American cinema, were treated to several releases at the new Muhammaplex; a ten-screen theatre built just south of the Abbasid Palace Museum ruins. Playing this week were a multitude of films including the Iraqi made documentary Turtles Can Fly, a story detailing the harsh treatment of Iraqi Kurds. But most people were lining up for the new hit Disney flick The Pacifier starring Vin Diesel.

Largely, this hilarious “fish out of water” film about a CIA agent who must protect a group of rag-tag kids had the Iraqi audience in stitches.

“I loved it!” said Ahmed Bakif Aldurabi “It is a wonderfully, lighthearted family comedy. Vin Diesel is excellent and I must say how surprised I am that he made the successful leap from action to family films.”

The movie’s hit status and Vin Diesel’s range aside, some Iraqis had complaints about the nature of the film.

“This movie was okay except for the duck … I did not care for the duck,” said a visibly upset Rabia Nasser. “I think his name was Gary and he was just way too rowdy for a family film. Would John Candy have ever resorted to such sideshows? Could you imagine that happening in a classic like Uncle Buck? I think not.”

Theatre owner Ma’mun Redoir lent his opinion of the movie and offered some future advice for Iraqi moviegoers.

“The Pacifier is very big hit,” said theatre manager Ma’mun Redoir, “except for woman who complain about duck. Gary the duck … not my fault. I did not put duck in film. And please keep feet off seats.”

The Pacifier is currently playing on five of the ten screens at the Muhammplex and should continue its run late into next year when the theatre is scheduled to obtain the screening rights for Turner and Hooch.

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