Poor Mojo's Newswire

. . . In these limp and disspirited economic times, many of your fellow Americaneros have had to "tighten the belts"—an ironic dysphemism, since increased imbibing of fermented wheats, anxiety eating, and the need to maximize calories-per-cent tends to mean that, in these United States, a diminished paycheck brings the concomitant loosening of the belt, rather than tightening, as well as the constricting of the heart and other vital organs by adipose tissue fats, and the inevitable demise from hypertension, acute myocardial infarction, or teenaged thrill-kill gang. In point of fact, I did happen to overhear my teenaged typist, Jarwaun, and his young brother, Trael, bickering on the very matter. As it seems, their "Pops" has suffered a reduction in work hours, necessitating a "tight budget" on Hallow's Eve preperation expenses. The course of their debate came to reveal that the "tight budget" was, in fact, a complete elimination of the "Hallow's Eve-Costuming and Incidentals" line item, and that no expenditpures on such materials could be approved for Fiscal Year 2010-11. Trael rebutted this revelation by pointing out that one makes money of Hallow's Eve, because of the profitability inherent in collecting treats free of charge, and also that no one ever does that which is important to him, even though he consistently performs at the hightest percentile in his class, and he wishes Mom wasn't gone. He completed this rebuttle by leaking fluid from the ducts at the inner corners of his eyes—which he insisted were not tears of anguish or sadness, but rather "hay fever, dumbass!" and then stomped forth from my lab with a quickness. Jarwaun recieved this reubuttal with aplomb, then shook his head, and loudly insisted that all would be well, as he had a plan. . . .

Edward Francis Witherspoon spent the last three minutes of his life—and a good deal of his death—in a casket of his own design, as precise in its specifications as the stone edifices that bore his name. The casket was fashioned from thick lead, its smooth gray surface interrupted only by a slim lead-glass window placed at eye level. Per Edward's instructions he was whisked into the casket the moment his doctors agreed that the end was drawing near. . . .

If, late at night, there's a strange grinding sound
That seems to be coming from under the ground,
You can be certain, someplace you can't find,
The old Undergrinder is starting to grind! . . .

Two mornings this week, I went to Dunkin Donuts and purchased a small coffee and a bagel to kick start my day. On one of these visits, I started thinking about how many calories were in one of their donuts. That opened a can of curious worms. I began to think: "Well a calorie is a term used by chemists as a unit of heat equal to the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one kg of water by one degree Celsius. Dietary Calories are equal to 1000 chemistry calories. It sure is hot out right now. Must be global warming (cough, I mean climate change). Global warming is melting the ice caps (poor polar bears). I wonder how Dunkin Donuts would contribute to melting the ice caps if all of those calories were converted into heat energy applied to ice caps . . . " And so began my quest to discover Dunkin Donuts' latent power to destroy our planet. Or at least the Antarctic ice cap. . . .