The New Romford Free Press

Category: National

Magicimo Captures Nilrem

By Skip Daverman

WICHITA – The Magnificent Magician, Magicimo® captured the evil sorcerer Nilrem today outside of Wichita, Kansas, in a magic battle that temporarily decimated the Kansan landscape.

Nilrem, the evil mirror image of the ancient sorcerer, Merlin, was conjuring up his patented Odanrots for fun in the small town of Wellington, just south of Wichita. Odanrots, of course, are reverse tornadoes. Instead of sucking things into its vortex, Odanrots spew wind outwards. How this actually happens is not known to science, naturally, as it’s magic.

Why Nilrem was conjuring up Odanrots is also not known, but it’s probably because he’s “a madman” according to The Maginificent Magician, Magicimo®. With all the houses and streets he spewed across the countryside, he was easy to find. He engaged Nilrem with a few magic spells to constrain him, but Nilrem broke free and started using roads to whip The Magnificent Magician, Magicimo®. The battle continued for nearly eight minutes, leaving Wellington and the Kansas countryside in ruins. Nilrem was finally captured when his mouth and body were wrapped in metal clasps. Then, with a few hand gestures and glowing eyes, The Magnificent Magician, Magicimo® returned everything back to normal. The houses, streets, and farms were as good as new.

“I simply reversed this maddening madman’s madness,” he said. “It was not difficult. After all, he is a third-rate, two-timing thug, and nothing like me, the Magnificent Magician, Magicimo®.”

After answering some more questions with alliteration, The Magnificent Magician, Magicimo® reversed the spell that turned the Twin Cities sentient and, surprisingly, the spell that turned the ivy in Wrigley Field sentient. It was not known that Nilrem was the cause of that, but considering how similar it was to the Twin Cities, it makes sense now. “Clearly, the madman who thought this up was not very imaginative,” he said.

November 14, 2014
Laika Destroys Farm with Slobber and Playfulness

By Skip Daverman

MOSCOW – The giant space dog Laika, who returned from a decades-long trip through outer space, destroyed a farm 120 km east of Moscow with her slobber and rambunctiousness.

After she “hatched” from the asteroid that brought her back to Earth, Laika was taken to a military facility for study. The cause of her longevity and increased size is still unknown, but the Russian government assures that she is not radioactive or giving off any malignant radiation. After a few days of study in the facility, it was clear that she could not stay there, at least without destroying expensive equipment. She was moved to a state-run farm east of Moscow. Ural initially tried carrying Laika, but she squirmed too much. Instead, he just played fetch with her using a tree.

The plan was to give Laika enough space to exert her energy while scientists could study her. But she apparently got too excited. “She just likes everyone and everything too much,” one scientist said. “We try to take a measurement, and she covers us in slobber. We try to strap a collar around her neck, and she wants us to scratch her belly, and then when we do scratch her belly, we must fight off giant fleas. It is a disaster.”

Laika’s slobber has created several “ponds” throughout the farm, drowning equipment and occasionally people (albeit briefly) with her super-charged saliva glands, and her playfulness has destroyed farm and research equipment. Reportedly, she chewed on a tractor like it was a bone.

By all accounts, she seems nice. Laika has not shown any signs of aggression, and Ural stops by once a day to play with her. She could have returned angry and ready to take vengeance on a nation that shot her into space to die for science. “At the very least, she’s happy,” said the scientist. “Thankfully, she doesn’t know or remember being shot into space with no intent for her to return.”

“Well, unless she’s developed telepathy. Then we’re in trouble.”

November 7, 2014
Donald Trump’s Hair Sues Donald Trump

File photo

By Falco Rockbert

NEW YORK – Business magnate Donald Trump is being sued by the unlikeliest of plaintiffs: his hair.

As many had speculated, Donald Trump’s hair was indeed a sentient creature. It was clearly not a natural hair formation for a human being, and either it was a separate animal atop his head or an unusual mutation. Trump had always maintained that it was real, but that is not the case anymore.

The creature, who calls itself “Jimmy Gold” in the legal briefs, is suing Trump for what it deems as “gross negligence and mismanagement” of The Trump Organization, in which it claims a 40% ownership stake. The lawsuit seems to have arisen from the recent actions of Trump to undermine President Obama’s authority and legal right to be president. If the ownership stake is true, then Jimmy Gold would have a vested interest in how the Organization’s money was spent. The various machines Trump has built to undermine Obama could not have been cheap, and that’s not counting the lawsuits Trump incurred from his stunt in New York a few months ago. It is asking for a recoupment of money it says Trump “stole” from it as well as a buyout of his ownership stake.

Jimmy Gold is also asking for “emancipation from Trump’s head”. How it came to be attached to Trump and where it came from were not addressed in the legal briefs. But the briefs did indicate that Jimmy Gold had been attached to Trump for 27 years.

When asked for comment, Trump did not return our calls. Jimmy Gold’s legal team also did not comment, and no court date has been set yet.

September 19, 2014
Stock Photo Warehouse Burns Down, Loses Cache of Ridiculous Pics

By Skip Daverman

BALTIMORE – Stupendous Photos, a stock photo warehouse, caught fire last night and burned down to the ground despite the efforts of the Baltimore Fire Department. More than 125,000 photos, some dating back to the 1950s, were lost.

Shane Macklemore, owner of Stupendous Photos, said most of the stock photos weren’t scanned into their computers. “It’s just a shame,” he said. “We had some really great photos from the 50s and 60s. Vintage. We had your classic husband returning home to his adoring wife photos, your businessman drinking a martini with a woman on his lap photos, and even your rare husband spanking his wife like a child photos, which apparently was a thing back then. They aren’t too popular these days, but they were really well shot and popular back in the day.”

Most of Macklemore’s business came from selling stock photos to online advertisers. Many of the images are generic so they can be used in as many ads as possible, but there were just as many that were unique and specific for more adventurous ad agencies. Those were stored on databases inside the warehouse and were also destroyed.

“We had so many great photos,” said Macklemore. “We had a police officer holding a radar gun. That was our biggest seller because it scared people into clicking the ad for just about anything. We also had a gentleman with absurdly gigantic muscles, photoshopped, and that was also a big seller. But I always liked the quirky ones, like the woman with an egg in her mouth, the conjoined twins on the swing set in Hell, the Dalai Lama punching a supervillain, and my personal favorite, the elderly man dressed in a robe with the third eye in his forehead. That guy was real. No photoshop there. It was really only used for male enhancement ads for some reason.”

“It’s a real shame,” he continued. “The world’s going to be deprived of so many unique stock photos on their favorite websites, assuming they don’t use an ad blocker already. These were real works of art.”

Fortunately for Macklemore, many of the images were stored online via their web host, and his insurance will cover most of the damages. He also plans to replenish his stock photo cache as soon as possible.

“I’m hopeful for the future,” he said. “I know exactly the stock photo that represents that hope. It’s one with an elephant standing on a box with wings flying through the sky while holding a baby in its trunk by the diaper. It’s kind of an inside joke, but trust me, it makes perfect sense.”

August 12, 2014
LA Roads Finally Succumb to ‘Permanent’ Gridlock

by Buffy Bolivar

LOS ANGELES — After a battle with the supervillain Monster Man crushed several intersections and freeways in the greater Los Angeles area three days ago, the area’s infamously gridlocked roads finally succumbed to “permanent” gridlock according to reports.

“It’s finally happened,” said KTLA traffic reporter, Sally Martinez. “I’ve been watching LA traffic from the skies for over 15 years, and the gridlock has always been terrible. But now it’s permanent. The roads have become fences now.”

The cars and trucks on every freeway and most major streets stopped moving two days ago. Freeways were the first to get stuck. The 5, 10, 405, 110, 710, 605, and 101 became choked with vehicles. The blockages there forced motorists to the city streets and other freeways, which in turn became clogged as well. After several hours of sitting in traffic, several people left their vehicles and walked away.

“I just locked my car and walked home,” said Martin Foreman, an investment banker from Century City. “It was a ten mile walk or so, but it was getting late, and I didn’t want to sleep in my car. This is just ridiculous.”

While many echoed that sentiment, it wasn’t so easy for everyone to just leave their cars. “I live out in San Bernardino,” said Lucas Forsythe, a music agent who works all over the LA area. “I was up in Burbank with a few clients, and now I’m stuck in downtown LA. I’m not walking all the way home by myself, not with the Terminator Gangs and the Na’vi Nation out there.”

Indeed, the various street gangs inspired by James Cameron movies, who have been annoying pests for the past few years, have been spotted along several freeways, looting cars and trucks. Some incidents have even gotten bloody around East Los Angeles and Monterey Park. Many families have also elected to stick it out in hopes that things will pass. “It’s just not safe,” said Julie Newman-Porter, a mother of two from Anaheim and currently stuck on the 405 near Long Beach. “I’m not risking my children’s lives by walking. And I’ve never liked James Cameron’s movies anyway.”

Three days ago, Monster Man was in Hollywood, working as a consultant on an untitled action movie. The decision by Universal to hire a “reformed” supervillain was considered a dubious decision by many people outside (and inside) the studio, but Universal stuck by its decision. Apparently, Monster Man became enraged by the portrayal of the supervillain and rampaged across the studio lot. A battle with the West Coast Peace Force raged all across the greater LA area, destroying several roads and freeways in the process. This caused all sorts of traffic diversions and the eventual gridlock.

“It’s just amazing how fast it happened,” said Martinez. “LA traffic has always been bad, but we’ve always figured things out. But this is just astounding.” Mayor Garcetti’s office said that his team is working around the clock to unclog the streets but noted that it’ll take time to identify the blockage points. The West Coast Peace Force said they’d help as soon as they returned from a space mission that just came up.

For now, people are helping out their neighbors by bringing food and water to those stuck in their vehicles. Some have even invited residents into their houses for the night. “We have to look out for each other,” said Paula Urlacher, a retired teacher from Glendale. “Someone has to with all the Terminator and Avatar cosplayers out there.”

August 8, 2014
Trump Activates Portal Detector, Nothing Happens

By Falco Rockbert

NEW YORK – Donald Trump activated his Trump Portal Detector yesterday, and this time, nothing happened. No explosion, no power outage, no city-wide headaches. The only reason anyone knows that the Trump Portal Detector was operating is because of a secret informant within Trump Tower.

According to the informant, who wished to remain nameless, Trump was using a power generator separate from the electrical grid. Having learned his lesson from several weeks ago, and after receiving a $2 million fine from the city of New York as well as thousands of lawsuits from individuals hurt during his last stunt, he bought four hydrogen generators to power his Portal Detector. Apparently, they were plated in gold.

Once everything was set up, the machine was turned on, and it worked. The Portal Detector was able to detect everything and everyone within a 10-mile radius that came from another dimension. Most of these people and objects are already known, like the superhero Mntok and the dimension-89 exhibit at the Natural History Museum. Trump was pleased, according to the informant, and instructed his science team to increase the range to include Washington, D.C. The scientists said that might be illegal if not unethical, but Trump didn’t care. The Portal Detector swept through Washington, where President Obama was taking questions about the NSA’s warrantless telepathic mindtaps in the White House press room, and the Portal Detector came up empty.

Trump was reportedly furious, yelled at his science team for several minutes, and stormed out of the room. He yelled expletives of every sort as he made his way to his office and slammed the door. Then he yelled some more and threw things. This was the final straw for the informant, and knowing Trump would never publically admit to being wrong, he came forward to the NRFP.

Trump did not return the NRFP’s calls for comment.

July 29, 2014
The Magnificent Magician, Magicimo® Puts Twin Cities to Sleep

By Skip Daverman

MINNEAPOLIS – After several weeks of interminable bickering, the sentient mouths of the Twin Cities have finally been put to sleep by The Magnificent Magician, Magicimo®.

Since the giant mouths started yelling at each other, scientists from all over the world have been lending their support in finding out what exactly made the Twin Cities sentient and rowdy. No one could come up with an answer. “It was clearly not the work of man,” said The Magnificent Magician, Magicimo® in his typical boisterous stage voice, “but the work of a madman. And I do not mean Jon Hamm.”

While everyone understood what he meant, he went on to explain that he had been on another plane of existence for the past three months, and when he returned to hear of Minnesota’s plight, he “smelled the stink of dark, delirious, and demented dealings with the Devil.” In other words, it was Nilrem, the evil mirror image of the ancient sorcerer, Merlin. “Do you not see?” he said. “This is his handy work. To sow disruption, discord, and disaster in the most insane, insidious, inane way known to madman. Clearly it was him!”

Thankfully, The Magnificent Magician, Magicimo® got to the Twin Cities just in time. They had somehow developed hands, and Minneapolis was whipping the Mississippi River at St. Paul. How it was able to grab hold of a river and use it as a whip is also not known, but it was probably magic. St. Paul retaliated by throwing Pickerel Lake at Minneapolis. Again, magic.

The Magnificent Magician, Magicimo® put a sleeping spell on both cities, and then gave a lengthy speech filled with alliteration to the authorities and press. Once he left to search for Nilrem, the Twin Cities were eerily quiet for nearly ten minutes. Everyone who attended his speech in Mankato remained silent, relishing the first real silence in weeks, but it was short lived. It turned out that Minneapolis snores.

July 11, 2014