Another One Bites The Dust...
...another newspaper meets its end in these tough times...


Yes, I am speaking of the "Weekly World News"...the little supermarket tabloid newspaper that has given me pause now and then as I passed the time waiting to buy my daily dose of ready-to-eat marked-down stuff from the deli counter. In spite of the fact I have a college 'minor' in journalism, I never got around to actually buying a copy. But I would always read the headlines. And I had plenty of time to read those headlines, since I usually had the unfortunate luck to be standing in line behind a time-consuming Lottery Ticket player who took all day and most of the night deciding which damn lottery games he wanted to play. Anyway, I came to realize that, in some weird cosmic-sort of twisted way, the Weekly World News made sense; it published the really TRUE FACTS...for instance, peruse, if you will, the following "WWN" front page from the past:



Well, if a space alien actually supported Governor Schwarzenegger, I'm sure it understood ol' "Ah-nold's" accent better than the rest of us. And the bit about Danny DeVito being "Ah-nold's" Lieutenant Governor makes alarming sense...it's widely known that DeVito always "looked up" to Gov. Schwarzenegger. As far as Princess Di appearing at the "Weekly World News" office, I'll bet all the journalists who didn't work there kinda feel a little bit cheated, y'know? I'll bet newshounds at the Portland Oregonian, The Spokesman-Review, The Coeur d'Alene dePress, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The New York Daily News, The London Times and many other papers worldwide had cause to break out their Ouija boards, hoping for the next big ghost-busting scoop.

Even if you never actually bought a copy of the "Weekly World News", and all you saw were the screaming headlines on the front page, you had to admit there were items in the "WWN" that made sense; after all, it COULD be true, right? I'm sure there are quite a few folks out there who think that the demise of the "WWN" is going to leave a great big gaping hole in the collective psyche of blue-collar America. And yet, there are still uninformed readers out there who always thought that the Weekly World News was as off-base as, say, your average enlisted man going AWOL. But they're wrong...they've just gotta be...I mean, the following COULD be true...



After all, didn't Prezzident Bush actually LOSE the popular vote when he first became Chief Executive? If the majority of the people voted for his OPPONENT, but yet Bush WON, it MUST have been due to some para-normal phenomenon, perhaps generated by far-distant civilizations from other worlds who are much more advanced than all of us hapless beings on this Third Rock from the Sun. And, it's another otherworldly miracle that the country hasn't FALLEN APART since Prezzident Bush took over. Which leads me to speculate about something else: Maybe Vice Prezzident DICK CHENEY is a space-alien, working behind the scenes. It could be true!

Finally, this last "Weekly World News" photo refers to something that is actually happening amongst Republicans and Democrats alike. There have been some Republican congressional candidates who've kinda balked at the idea of Prezzident Bush campaigning for them; even tho they might be losing by, say, a 90%-to-10% margin, they tell Dubya, "oh, this race is a lock; I'm a shoo-in, just go ahead and stay at home, George"...and in the recent dog-and-pony-show-styled Prezzidential-candidate debates, Democrats have come out blatantly against Bush, while Republicans try to 'distance' themselves from this adminstration in as tactful of a manner as possible...so I won't say that the rats are jumping off the ship just yet, but they're all wearing lifejackets in case it sinks...this last "Weekly World News" EXCLUSIVE PHOTO is, sadly true; friends and foes alike distancing are themselves from Dubya:



The demise of the "Weekly World News" is a huge loss for me. Whose headlines am I going to look at in the supermarket next time I need to forage for my quota of preservative-laden consumables? All I can say is, "lottery players, stay outta my way..."