Bringing you the
South on a plate 

“without a schedule, without remorse, without a street address”

Bob Cotten

Publisher, Editor -In- Chief

          The Earnest Herald is as real as any other newspaper but freely admits that it is made up.... which is why we’re able to publish outright lies with a clear conscience. How these other papers do it and keep a straight face remains a mystery.

New Cooking School Opens
by Tommy Lake Ferguson, Local Editor

         From lip-smacking sardine pudding to raisin-impregnated mint-hummus with muscadines and white chocolate, you can learn “how to wow” at Earline Duffy’s Cooking School, opening today at 321 Gardenia Boulevard, adjacent to Mitchell’s Fertilizer & Hardware in the cookware department.
         “This is not just southern cooking,” said Ms. Duffy, “it’s Mongolian, Cajun, Ante-Bellum, Norwegian, Salvadoran, Canadian, everything. Today we are making ‘Tamales Wellington’ on a bed of ‘Oysters couscous-Gai-Pan’ with a beautiful side of smoked-clam cheese grits in puff pastry with cantelope and habanero peppers.”
         A favorite of Ms. Duffy’s is her famous “Popcorn Casserole” made with cream of mushroom soup, angel hair pasta, cheese whiz, alfalfa sprouts, Tabasco and of course, dill-flavored popcorn.
         “The secret to this dish,” she said, “is knowing when to add the peanuts.”
         Today’s class, “British Cooking: a Zesty Oxymoron” will feature boiled parsnips with scones and raw crabmeat in clotted cream with blackened wasabi.
         Enrollment applications are being taken.
 

Book Review: Tom Sawyer
by Sledd Longneck, local contributor

         Mark Twain, America’s premier author, is probably best known for his famous novel; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It is a fascinating book, indeed.
         Twain is a master at creating memorable characters, such as the endearing town drunk, Mr. Holmes and his personal physician and sidekick “Doc” Watson. Together these two make quite a pair as they wind their way across east Africa in search of a mysterious white elephant, owned by “Mr. Hannibal” from Missouri.
         With a finely-tuned ear for local dialects, Twain has “Doc” Watson refer to Holmes as “Bwana”, creating much good humor around the campfire.
Taking some material from his prior work, “Innocents Abroad”, Twain has the sheriff of the town deserted by the townsfolk as he desperately awaits the return of the mysterious “Frank” on the noon train. “Frank” has vowed to kill the sheriff upon his release from prison.
         Into this mix, Twain throws Becky Thatcher, local madam of the upscale “gentlemen’s club”, whose crush on “Doc” threatens her reunion in Hannibal with the mysterious “Frank.”
         This book has recently been removed from the local school library although no one seems to have a clue who took it.

More Science News You Can Use

         Neurologists have determined that taking two or three aspirin can help relieve a headache just as well as the long-respected tribal practice of drilling a hole in your skull and painting your face with animal blood.

Here's the Earnest truth:

           There might be a few towns like Earnest in the South but far be it from us to name names and risk injury. The events and people in here are fictions, except for the occasional deserving member of Congress and the dead people we quote.

CONGRESS' APPROVAL RATING RISES ABOVE MELANOMA, MAD COW DISEASE, AIR HIJACKING

          WASHINGTON, D.C. --- Nationwide the approval of Congress would appear on the upswing, according to a poll of 1,800 Americans released Tuesday. After hovering at one and seven-sixteenths for the past six months, the new poll puts the current number at two and three-eighths, a full point above telemarketers, journalists, hemmorhoids and measles.
         “This poll tells America we’re getting the job done,” said Ohio Senate Republican, Larry Threadgill, and that’s what they sent us here to do.”
         Threadgill, the author of a bill to create a floating, $22 million “History of Brothels” museum on Lake Erie, was the sponsor of legislation last year to connect Youngstown, the Senator’s home, to Las Vegas and Reno by high speed rail.
         Additionally, the poll of randomly selected voters indicated Congress was on track to beat the approval numbers of deer poachers, TV news anchors and people who break in line again this year.

Doing the peoples’ business ..
Congress Trouser Length Debate:
Now Six Months

         WASHINGTON, DC ---After a half-year of floor debates in the Senate, members still seem deadlocked over a bill setting trouser lengths for government officials.
         “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp,” roared Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) from the podium Wednesday, “but his inseam should not exceed his waist size.”
         Efforts to bring up other legislation were postponed yet again, as members rejected as “unconstitutional” any compromise to allow waistlines and trouser lengths of arbitrary dimensions through the use of suspenders.

Earnest Native Featured in Jungle Documentary

         Ridgely Rickett, of Earnest, hosts this film which looks at the everyday lives of members of the remote O’oo’aAa people, of the wild mountain regions of Talawangapolafangaroi.
         One of the film’s scenes shows a marriage ceremony in which villagers are dressed in designer jeans beneath grass skirts and are wearing Gucci aligator shoes and gold “Molex” watches.
         “I tried to focus on just the primitive stuff,” said Rickett, “but they all had cell phones and prefered frozen strip steaks flown in from Nebraska over the ants and grubworms they used to eat.”

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Investment Seminar Will
Focus on Relaxed Attitude

         Doyle Dunwoody, of Dunwoody Financial Planners in Tidwell, thinks stock market investors lose money by “getting uptight”.
His agenda, to be presented Wednesday at a local seminar, includes “Day Trading with a Load On” and “Shorting Stocks With a Dartboard --- How the Pros Do it.”
         “Being worried,” he told the Herald, “is a sure way to screw up a portfolio. If you buy high and sell low, who cares?”
         Dunwoody praises investors who “keep their cool” regardless of market direction and continue buying and selling “on a whim, on the spur of the moment or even on a so-called wild hare”.
         “I say pull the trigger and get it over with,” says Dunwoody. “What the hell, it’s only money.”
         The seminar will be at the Buzby Hotel starting at 9:00 a.m. Admission is $45 and includes continuous bar service and a special Dunwoody CD on avoiding taxes by whatever means necessary.

Do You Know Your Beer Footprint?

         Apparently few people realize that every beer consumed takes its toll on the environment. Fields laid bare of forests are used for growing hops. Corn that could be used for ethanol is consumed by brewing, which also diverts water that endangered fish need to survive.
         Environmentalists say a “beer footprint” is needed to allow beer drinkers to trade offsets at participating pubs and roadhouses. Coupons shaped like human feet and ranging in size from 6 to 14 EEE would be exchanged for jukebox plays, video games or cold sandwiches.
         A person’s beer footprint is determined by multiplying body weight by the number of bottles consumed, divided first by age and then shoe size.

Consolidated Mayonnaise Co to Receive Military Contract

         The company said the Army has requested 60,000 cases of heat-stable mayonnaise, capable of withstanding such high temperatures as found in exploding napalm. The Army has asked for delivery of the mayonnaise by next month.
         Company spokesman, Carl Sneads, said that the mayonnaise can withstand being placed directly under a broiler and will hold a cheese sandwich together three feet from a detonating hand grenade.
         “This stuff can take the heat and stay in the kitchen. The Army wanted something for sandwiches and wheel bearings interchangably and this mayonnaise cuts the mustard,” said Sneads.
         Sneads said the company is also under contract to develop a waterproof ketchep for the Navy Seals and an “anti-personnel horseradish” for ground combat. “You just eat what you don’t use,” he said.

Oldest Cowboy Spins Yarns
About the West, Cows, Yarn
         Rugged and fit at 98, longtime professional cowpoke, Larry “Scratchy” Rawls knows where the wild west is.
         “It’s in New York,” he said, “or maybe Los Angeles or maybe Italy, who knows? But it’s not in the west anymore.”
         Scratchy says he’s had his fill of the rugged life and has settled down to doing needlepoint.
         “I’ve taken to makin’ these here throw rugs,” he said, holding up a specimen which features a cowboy fighting an indian at a church picnic at the top of a waterfall which crashes down on what appears to be a saloon where a shootout is taking place in the middle of a stampede of longhorns at a canoe race during a cavalry charge in front of a cattle drive.
         “It started out as just the church picnic,” he explained.
         Scratchy says there “ain’t no cowboys no more ... jusy boy cows. Bulls.”
         As for frontier wisdom, Scratchy says, “keep your ass in the saddle and stay upwind.”