New Year's Rocking Eve SNAFU

LOS ANGELES (Ant Farmer's Almanac Newswire) Because of an on-air flub by Ashlee Simpson, co-host of "Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve", the year 2004 has been declared a "Do-Over".

While wishing a happy New Year to Regis Philbin, who was hosting the festivities in New York's Times Square, Simpson repeatedly shouted "Happy 2004" instead of "Happy 2005". Philbin, new to the job and distracted by all the lights and noise, concurred and repeated the sentiment before realizing the error. This gaffe triggered a complex series of events at the World's timekeeping center in the Royal Observatory Greenwich, home of Greenwich Mean Time, that resulted in today being officially and incontrovertibly designated January 1, 2004 instead of the regularly scheduled January 1, 2005.

Simpson, who gained notoriety for lip-syncing to the wrong song while performing allegedly "live" on Saturday Night Live, had since vowed not to use any pre-recorded backup tapes or even a tele-prompter, as a show of her ability to perform "Live, Live" and to prove that she was more than just another vacuous, teeny-bopping action figure.

"I guess I was wrong to try it on my own," giggled an embarrassed Simpson, interviewed by Carson Daly after the broadcast, "My bad."

While most people were still too hungover to fully appreciate that they were facing a rerun of the year they'd thought was finally over, not everyone was unhappy by the unexpected turn of events.

Howard Dean, for one, said he looked forward to not screaming; John Kerry vowed that he wouldn't forget Poland this time; and Yankees' owner George Steinbrenner promised to "beat the crap out of Boston and sweep the World Series, like we were supposed to."

Reached for comment at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, President Bush said he was eager to repeat his dramatic "Mission Accomplished" fighter-jet landing onto the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. When it was pointed out that this had happened in 2003 not 2004, the president stared blankly and said, "Freedom is on the march. God Bless the USA and God Bless America. Good night," and hurried off to cut some brush.