March 30, 2003:   Things you would never know if you did not
browse the tabloids while waiting for your wife at the counter in
the supermarket – this week's headlines:

 
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED:
    ELIZABETH SMART'S
LIFE ON THE RUN
        * Their shocking wedding night
        * REAL reason she didn't try to escape

                                           [courtesy National Enquirer]

 
WILLIE TURNS 70!
         'I've never been better'

                                                     [courtesy National Examiner]

 
JOHNNY CASH DYING

                                    [courtesy the Globe]

 
PRINCE CHARLES IS GAY!

                                               [courtesy National Enquirer]

 
GIANT EARTHWORMS
TERRORIZE NEVADA

                                [courtesy Weekly World News]
 

        and, this week's special, headline plus article excerpt:

UFO is Saddam's secret, watchers claim

    President Bush decided to attack Iraq  because  he was afraid that Saddam
Hussein would use technology from a crashed alien space ship, UFO watchers
claim....
                        [courtesy CSICOP, Edwin F. Kagin, and the New Zealand Truth]
 

LETTERS to the EDITOR!
Dusty Z. Facilitator wrote from New Mexico Sun 23 Mar @09:10:15 MST:
I don't suppose this  [the  Weekly World News Round Table;
see below] is an online meeting, is it?  If so, what time is "after
church,"  translated to Mountain Time?   I know a great,  and
private, chatroom, if you are interested. I could ask the admin
if you could hold meetings there; he is a personal friend of mine.
He might like to attend, also.
Editor's reply:
No, the Weekly World News Round Table is not on line, and
won't be!  What it is, is a device to get people to come visit us
in this lonely neck of the woods.  Thanks, anyway.

Right after church Mountain Time  depends on when y'all go to
church thar'n th'mountains.   Just like the writers and editors of
tabloid headlines, ya gotta use yer imagination sometimes.
 
Fosterdme@aol.com wrote from Maine Sun 23 Mar @12:06:44 EST:
1)  I guess I'll need a reservation for the Britney Spears "pants
     down" round table.   Only for something to do,  of  course.
     Cabin fever, you know.

2)  Are you working on your résumé for the college president
      position in Iowa?
Editor's reply:
1)  Of course!  It's in the mail.

2)  Ha!  Ha!  I was the college president in Iowa.

Harper's Weekly BONUS:
.  .  .  in San Francisco protesters vomited on the sidewalk in
front of a federal building after drinking large quantities of red
white and blue milk . . . .

DISCUSSION GROUP:

       Don't forget!  Readers interested in intellectual dissection of
important current events are invited to attend the Weekly World
News Round Table at the offices of Borf Books outside Browns-
ville, Kentucky, just after church every Sunday.  Guest speakers
lined up for meetings in the near future  include  Elizabeth  Smart,
Johnny  Cash  (we invited Willie Nelson, but he couldn't make it,
his agent said, on account of his health), Sharon Fullilove, and El-
sie the Red White and Blue Cow.
 

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Box 413                                                      The Columbus Book of Euchre
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    (270) 597-2187           Hank T. Hebhoe, publisher         Natty Bumppo, writer/editor




March 23, 2003:   Things you would never know if you did not
browse the tabloids while waiting for your wife at the counter in
the supermarket – this week's headlines:


FISH TALKS, TOWN BUZZES

                                    [courtesy the New York Times –
          see http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0303/codrescu1.asp
         and/or http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/15/nyregion/15FISH.html]
 

BRITNEY CAUGHT WITHOUT MAKEUP

                                                                  [courtesy the Star]

 
Harper's Weekly BONUS:
. . . Tom Ridge,  the secretary of "homeland" security,  declared
that suicide bombings in the United States are "inevitable."  .  .  .
The president of a college in Iowa was arrested for growing pot
in his basement. . . .

DISCUSSION GROUP:

       Don't forget!  Readers interested in intellectual dissection of
important current events are invited to attend the Weekly World
News Round Table at the offices of Borf Books outside Browns-
ville, Kentucky, just after church every Sunday.   Guests lined up
for meetings in the near future include Britney Spears caught with
her pants down.


Previous issue

Next issue

Archives index                    
Borf Books        borf@borfents.com            Ideas for a Better America
Box 413                                                      The Columbus Book of Euchre
Brownsville KY 42210                   War Stories:  The Memoirs of a Country Lawyer

    (270) 597-2187           Hank T. Hebhoe, publisher         Natty Bumppo, writer/editor




March 16, 2003
:   Things you would never know if you did not
browse the tabloids while waiting for your wife at the counter in
the supermarket – today's headlines:

 
U.S. ARMY FINDS NOAH'S ARK
    New Bible prophecies hidden in ship's hold!

                                        [courtesy Weekly World News]

 
SADDAM PLANS MOVE TO FRANCE
     . . . he'll be new French ambassador to U.S.!

                                            [courtesy Weekly World News]
 

CHELSEA PREGNANCY SCARE
          Summer wedding called off

                              [courtesy National Enquirer]
 

DI WINS!  CHURCH RULES
        AGAINST CAMILLA
       . . . she will NEVER be Queen!

                   [courtesy National Examiner]
 

WOMAN FINDS DEAD LEPRECHAUN IN JAR

                                                [courtesy Weekly World News]


LETTERS to the EDITOR!
Theodore Sverre Fiskevold <tedf@lakesnet.net> wrote Sun 9 Mar
2003 @10:12:40 CST:
The  headline  "SHORT THIGHS LINKED TO DIABETES"
was on a TV news story,  and  the  expert  being  interviewed
said, "Fat thighs are a bigger link to diabetes than short thighs."

Carole Otis <sitoc@quixnet.net> wrote Mon 10 Mar 2003 @17:41:45 CST:
...where do u get these...lol
Editor's reply:
This is a fair question,  and deserves a reply.  Our usual sources –
besides an occasional dip into the mainstream press for outlandish
reports  (such as that noted in Mr. Fiskevold's letter above)  – are
a core of six tabloid newspapers published weekly and sold mainly
at supermarkets  (including Wal-Mart),  for about $2 a copy:   The
Weekly World News, the National Enquirer,  the National Examin-
er, the Globe, the Sun, and the Star.

We never reprint a headline without independent corroboration  of
the facts reported in the headline, and we do our utmost to print on-
ly the truth in this column.   Journalism being what it is,  we often fail
in this goal, of course; but that is our standard.

These journals are published by different companies. Curiously, how-
ever, all six have the same street address in Boca Raton, Fla. (where
a photography editor caught a fatal dose of anthrax soon after 9/11/-
01, you may recall).  Isn't rent sharing wonderful?

Incidentally, we find the Weekly World News to be consistently both
the most interesting and  the  most  reliable  of these six main sources.
Perhaps  not  coincidentally,  it is the only one of the six not printed in
color:  Yellow journalism it isn't.

The weekly Harper's bonus comes,  of  course,  from the editors and
publishers of the monthly literary magazine of that name.

Harper's Weekly BONUS:
"A poll found that 42 per cent of Americans believe that Saddam Hus-
 sein is personally responsible for September 11.  Sixty-eight per cent
 believe in the devil, but only 48 per cent believe that God created the
 universe; 28 per cent believe in evolution. . . .  Denver's Ocean Jour-
 ney aquarium was bought by a seafood restaurant. .  .  .  A school in
 England banned stories about pigs in the mistaken belief  that  talking
 about pigs is offensive to Muslims. . . .The Supreme Court ruled that
 it is not cruel and unusual punishment to put a man  in  prison  for  50
 years for stealing a couple of videotapes for his children."

And yet ANOTHER bonus this week [courtesy Yahoo!, Reuters, and Gerry Blue]:

THREE DIE RETRIEVING PHONE FROM LATRINE

 

and yet another [courtesy Gadzooks, Bruce Mitchell, and Fred Dean]:

AN EYEFUL A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY

    German  researchers  have discovered in a five-year study  that 10
minutes of ogling women's breasts once a day is as healthful as a half-
hour in the gym, and can extend a man's life four to five years. . . .

 
Previous issue

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Archives index                    
Borf Books        borf@borfents.com            Ideas for a Better America
Box 413                                                      The Columbus Book of Euchre
Brownsville KY 42210                   War Stories:  The Memoirs of a Country Lawyer

    (270) 597-2187           Hank T. Hebhoe, publisher         Natty Bumppo, writer/editor




March 9, 2003:  Things you would never know if you did not
browse the tabloids while waiting for your wife at the counter
in the supermarket – today's headlines:

 
SADDAM'S SECRET LIFE:
 

      New Jersey woman finds
   HITLER'S MUMMIFIED HEAD
in bowling ball bag at garage sale
 

Fat cannibals go on all-Pygmy diet
 
            [all courtesy Weekly World News – We urge you to run
             down to your local Ralph's
to buy this one, just for the
             front page photo of
a cross-dressed Hussein. The issue
             contains
also a truly heartwarming article  about  two
             mothers who shared a room in the obstetrics ward  at
             a hospital in the Ukraine.   One of
them wanted a girl,
             but had a boy;  the other
wanted a boy, but had a girl.
             They traded.
]
 

KENNEDYS MURDERED MARILYN
    claims Joe DiMaggio's son in new book

                                           [courtesy National Examiner]
 

LETTERS to the EDITOR!
FGDean@aol.com wrote Sun 2 Mar 2003 @18:50:01 PST:
Color  me  very amused at this line:   "Concerns over code
breaking by Al Quaeda computers led the Defense Depart-
ment to create a top-secret new office code-named Homey
Land Security."

And NEW SUBSCRIBER "Willow Z. Seaweed" <Seaweed@johncfish.com>
wrote Sun 2 Mar 2003 @08:28:15 MST:
WHERE  HAVE  THESE FUCKING TABLOID
HEADLINES BEEN ALL MY LIFE?

UNSUBSCRIBE?  I never was any good at follow-
ing directions.

Harper's Weekly BONUS:
"James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA, said stupidity is an
 inherited disorder. . . . Lightning struck a small plane carry-
 ing Florida governor Jeb Bush but failed to destroy it."

EXTRA!

The following appeared not in the tabloids, but in one section of one
edition of one issue of one Pulitzer prize winning major metropolitan
daily  (the Louisville Courier-Journal; you probably saw some or all
of the same stories in your own paper) one day last week, Saturday,
March 8, 2003:
 
ARRESTED AFTER 30 YEARS OF HIDING IN OPEN

    Woodbine, N.J. – Jamie Thomas,  50,  was convicted in 1970 in a
drunk driving crash that killed two teen-agers.  But he failed to appear
for sentencing,  moved to a new town just an hour away,  and became
a family man, state employe, township official and minister of the New
World Pentecostal Holiness Church.

    Monday he was re-arrested.  "I'm glad it's over," he said.

    He had given a false birth date upon his arrest 33 years ago,  and he
changed his Social Security number – but not his name. . . .
 

TEACHER FIRED FOR RACIAL REMARKS

    Evarts,  Ky. – Ralph Crow,  48,  was fired from his job as a Spanish
teacher at Evarts High School in Harlan County  after  sending an e-mail
to 40 other teachers saying  that  African-Americans  are responsible for
"about 90 per cent" of violent crimes  and  that  the main achievement of
Martin Luther King Jr. was "introduction and promotion of communism."

    The e-mail said also that white achievements are ignored so that "non-
achieving minorities can have the spotlight."  Crow said yesterday that his
e-mail was meant  as  sarcasm;  that he is the victim of  "political correct-
ness";  that his right to free speech has been violated,  and that he will ap-
peal. . . .
 

PEACE SHIRT MAKES WEARER A CELEBRITY

    Albany, N.Y.  –  Stephen  Downs,  60,  who was arrested at the
Crossgates Mall for wearing a "Peace on Earth" T-shirt and refusing
to change clothes or leave,  has been too busy  giving  interviews  to
Connie Chung,  Bill O'Reilly,  the BBC and News Australia to have
seen himself yet on TV.

    Downs,  chief lawyer  for the New York Commission on Judicial
Conduct,  said he had heard that people sporting anti-war messages
were being arrested at the Mall,  and  he  wanted to see what would
happen.   A free speech advocate  not known as an activist,  Downs
said he had never attended a demonstration but had written letters to
his congressman. . . .

 
WOMEN'S DREAMS DASHED IN ACADEMY RAPES

    Denver – "People told us that if you make it
through  all four years  of the Air Force Acad-
emy  without  being sexually assaulted,  you're
lucky,"  said  victim and former cadet  Sharon
Fullilove. . . .

FRIGHTENER-IN-CHIEF
  
[column by Matthew Rothschild]

    As George W. Bush plans to plunge the nation into war, he is using
manipulative rhetoric.    Though that may not be unusual for a wartime
President, we should recognize when we are being led by the nose. . . .

    Twice in his State of the Union speech Bush used the words "if war
is forced upon us."  No  one  is forcing war on us . . .  Bush  has been
forcing the issue. . . .

    Bush has been calling Iraq a "mounting threat," a "growing danger,"
and a  "direct and growing threat."   How can Iraq be  "mounting"  or
"growing"  when  American and British planes  have  intensified  their
bombing raids . . . and UN inspectors are going anywhere they want
any time they want? . . . .

 
DRAMA THEY COULDN'T DO   [column, Kathleen Parker]

    Glyn O'Malley's play-in-progress "Paradise" has been rapped both
as Zionist and antisemitic.  Muslims  and  Jews  both  have praised the
work,  also.   It is a fictional exploration of the true story of the deaths
of two teen-age girls in a suicide bombing  –  the  Palestinian  bomber,
18,  and one of the Israeli victims, 17.

    O'Malley hoped to humanize the two girls so that students their age
might  explore  new  ways  of looking at Middle East tensions.  But  a
high school tour of the play was canceled after a group of invited Mus-
lims stopped a performance for schools in Cincinnati. . . .
 

    and, finally, just a headline:


SHORT THIGHS LINKED TO DIABETES
 

DISCUSSION GROUP:

       Don't forget!  Readers interested in intellectual dissection of
important current events are invited to attend the Weekly World
News Round Table at the offices of Borf Books outside Browns-
ville, Kentucky, just after church every Sunday.  Guest speakers
lined up for meetings in the near future include Saddam Hussein's
chef and his "mister" (he never had a mistress).


Previous issue

Next issue

Archives index                    
Borf Books        borf@borfents.com            Ideas for a Better America
Box 413                                                      The Columbus Book of Euchre
Brownsville KY 42210                   War Stories:  The Memoirs of a Country Lawyer

    (270) 597-2187           Hank T. Hebhoe, publisher         Natty Bumppo, writer/editor




March 2, 2003:  Things you would never know if you did not
browse the tabloids while waiting for your wife at the counter
in the supermarket – today's headlines:

 
'THEY WANT TO KILL ME!'
    sobs a paranoid Saddam in shocking breakdown
 

MAGAZINE FROM ATLANTIS FOUND

 
STAMPEDE KILLS 2,000 CHICKENS
           frigtened by new year fireworks in China
 

WOMAN PREGNANT 14 YEARS GIVES BIRTH

 
RAINMAKER'S GOOF DROWNS 7
     and washes away entire Peruvian village

                            [all courtesy Weekly World News]
 
 
    and, for the first time, Tabloid Headlines' own tabloid headline,
    hot off the press:
SWITZERLAND
WINS AMERICA'S CUP
 
 
   This week's special, headline plus article excerpts:

Hip-hop hope
 U.S. TO SEND CODE MESSAGES IN RAP

   Hoping to copy the success of the famous Navajo code talkers
of World War II, U.S. spy chiefs are recruiting a rapper network
to relay messages among American forces around the world.

    "Fo' shizle dawg," an intelligence source said, confirming the re-
port in nonclassified slang.   "We'll win the war against terror with
hip-hop."

    Believed to have been already enlisted in the project are Missy
Elliott, Busta Rhymes, Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z.

    Concerns over code-breaking by Al Quaeda computers led the
Defense  Department  to create  a  top  secret  new  office  code-
named Homey Land Security.

    Code breakers will never be able to figure out the rap code, ex-
perts say, because the lingo constantly changes. . . .

                                                             [courtesy Weekly World News]

 
Harper's Weekly BONUS:
"Hippies from around the world began to arrive in Baghdad to act
 as human shields against  American  bombing.  .  .  .  Two French
 tourists were run over by a police SUV as they sunbathed on Mi-
 ami Beach.   The officer drove over two sisters,  backed up,  and
 ran over them again; one of them died. . . . A British man who de-
 capitated a statue  of  Margaret  Thatcher  was sentenced to three
 months in jail despite his plea that the vandalism was an artistic ex-
 pression of opposition to globalism.  .  .  .  An  Australian  chemist
 succeeded in mixing oil and water."

HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE:

  Remember,  if you don't want to receive any more of this inane crap,
just hit your "Reply" button and type in the subject line, "GET THESE
TABLOID HEADLINES OUT OF MY LIFE AND FUCK OFF!"

  But remember  also,  you have to spell and punctuate the message
exactly as it appears above – without quotation marks, and without
that redundant "Re: " that appears in so many subject lines – or you
will keep getting this shit!  ("Cut and paste" won't work, either.  We
have a special filter to detect that.)


Previous issue

Next issue

Archives index                    
Borf Books        borf@borfents.com            Ideas for a Better America
Box 413                                                      The Columbus Book of Euchre
Brownsville KY 42210                   War Stories:  The Memoirs of a Country Lawyer

    (270) 597-2187           Hank T. Hebhoe, publisher         Natty Bumppo, writer/editor