Nooz15B

      “Just as a volcanic eruption fills the atmosphere with ash and dust, so did the disappearance of Professor Mitsuo Ohhohoho fill cocktail parties with pointless chitchat and even reputable newspapers with idle speculation.” That was the way we were going to introduce our editorial for this issue. That was what we were going to say in a ringing and heartfelt defense of Professor Ohhohoho. But that was before the disclosures of the past few weeks, before we knew what we know now about the so-called Professor and his faked disappearance. Alright, we admit it, we were taken. We were duped, we were fooled, we were hoodwinked. But we weren't the only ones. There were dozens of others who believed that Mr. Ohhohoho was actually lost. It wasn't a particularly clever trick, but we fell for it. Like everyone else we were too blinded by our regard for the man to believe that he could do what he was being accused of. After all, this was the man who had discovered the lost city of the cercopithecines. This was the man who had found a crashed UFO in Gabon containing the remains of a primate bestiary. This was the man who had written My Life with the Macaques.
      We overlooked the fact that he had done this exact kind of thing before, in 1972, when he faked another disappearance to hype the sales of his first book The Professor Mitsuo Ohhohoho Primate Identification Book and African Jungle Survival Guide, which were lagging. At the time, we thought it was just a youthful prank, a one-time never to be repeated lapse. We didn't know it was a recurring pattern in his life. We certainly weren't aware that he had hidden in a closet for two and a half days when he was eight to get his parents to raise his allowance, coming out only at night to steal sardine and gobo root sandwiches from the kitchen. We had no idea that in high school he had pretended to be lost in Osaka Prefecture Park just to see what people would write about him in his yearbook. We were amazed to learn that he had once arranged to have himself kidnapped from his college dormitory room in order to get an incomplete in primate pesematology.
      So we had to change the opening line of our editorial. We had to revise the whole pitch of the thing. We had to do a lot more work. We had to eat crow, and we didn't care much for the flavor of it. Thanks a lot, MITSUO!

NORWEGIAN PRIMATOLOGIST
TURNS 102 AT HOME IN BED!

(Reuters) Bjornafjordhavn, Norway. Famed Nordic monkey scholar Professor Rolf Sigurd Vanhammerfest officially became 102 years old last Thursday in a jolly and jampacked ceremony at his bedside in the tiny Norwegian shrimp village of Bjornafjordhavn. The celebration was presided over by the Mayor and village elders of Bjornafjordhavn and the Dean of Primatology at Flekkesund College, where the well-liked Dr. Vanhammerfest has been in residence for the past sixty-two years. Flekkesund College is the sister institution of Sigsbee Junior Night College in Hellmouth. Several Sigsbee alums travelled by slow tramp steamer to Bjornafjordhavn to be with the old primatologist who was Visiting Professor of Simian Sciences and one of Hellmouth's most colorful local characters in 1972.

VETERAN NOOZ REPORTER IS
DETAINED IN SOUTH AFRICA

(Reuters) Bittersdorp, South Africa. In a move that is certain to upset some followers of his “Report from the Field” series, South African authorities yesterday detained and took into custody veteran Nooz reporter Eric Scotmeister Fleiglehaus. He was apprehended, while trying to break into Monkey Island Prison, the maximum security facility, to get an interview with the notorious and evil-looking prison Commandant Dr. Oudtshoorn Grootegraaf. Dr. Grootegraaf has not been interviewed since he took over the prison 17 years ago. He is rumored to wear black felt patches over both eyes and to carry a silver-handled bullwhip. A fragmentary account in a local African newspaper described how the world-travelling automotive primatologist was dragged off kicking and screaming, then driven away in an unmarked gray Mercedes. His status is not clear, but we are making inquiries..