RICK PERRY LURES WASHINGTON STATE RESIDENTS TO TEXAS WITH THRIVING DEATH PENALTY

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AUSTIN (The Borowitz Report)—Responding to the news that Washington Governor Jay Inslee had suspended the death penalty in his state, Texas Governor Rick Perry seized on the opportunity to urge Washington residents to “vote with your feet and move to Texas, where the death penalty is thriving.”

At a hastily called press conference this afternoon, the Texas Governor made an emotional appeal to Washingtonians who might be disappointed by the sudden suspension of executions in their state: “Come to Texas. The death penalty is alive and well here.”

Blasting Governor Inslee, he reassured Washington residents that if they move to Texas, “as God is my witness, no one will ever take your death penalty away from you.”

“That’s just not what we’re made of in Texas,” he said. “We believe in the sanctity of death.”

Photograph of Rick Perry by Spartanburg Herald Journal/Michael Justus/AP.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

R.I.P. Pansy The Pot Holder And Tess The Earthworm, Bruce McCall, The New Yorker

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SHOUTS & MURMURS

PET BOOKS PROLIFERATE

by Bruce McCallNOVEMBER 14, 2011

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ABSTRACT: SHOUTS & MURMURS spoof of pet books. “TESS, THE ORPHAN EARTHWORM” It was a muggy May evening and my husband Chuck’s full bait bucket was sitting on the kitchen counter. I plucked a wriggling little worm out of the tangle. We had adventures, Tess and I. I’d lay out a mount of fresh dirt on the floor and watch her wriggle her way in for a game of hide-and-seek. I was out scooping soil for her birthday cake when it happened. Unaware that Tess was inside the toaster, napping, Chuck decided to make himself a Pop-Tart. A few hours later, still sobbing, I carried the dangling little question mark of charred gristle that had been my Tess out to the back flower bed. “THEY CALL IT KNITWEAR; I CALL IT LOVE” Tea cozies, baby booties, long woolly scarves—to me, they’re living, cuddly, almost sentient beings. One fateful day, I took Pansy, the cutest pot holder ever crocheted by human hands, on a weekend visit to my friends Kathy and Neil, in Connecticut. The next morning, my hosts talked me into leaving Pansy home when we went out for brunch at a local inn. That afternoon, Pansy was nowhere to be found. When I returned home, I found a message from my hosts on my answering machine. In that grief-choked voice which can sound so much like giggling, Neil reported that Pansy had fallen into the kitchen garbage disposal; how it happened, he said, was a mystery for the ages.