Ant Farmer's Almanac

Diebold Sends Voting Machines to Vatican: Bush Elected Pope on First Ballot

 

Pope George I Vows to Make Catholicism More "Faith Based"

VATICAN CITY (Ant Farmer's Almanac Newswire) After just one round of voting, the College of Cardinals has returned a unanimous decision electing U.S. president George W. Bush as the next pope.

 

It is believed the landslide win for Mr. Bush is due to the Cardinals having used computerized voting machines donated by the Diebold Company, whose equipment delivered decisive Bush presidential victories in Ohio and Florida in 2004.

 

While high-ranking church officials and millions of Catholics worldwide were stunned by the news, spokesmen for President Bush accepted the victory in stride. Rumors swirled around Washington and Rome that the Popemobile had already been shipped to California for retrofitting as a Humvee by Arnold Schwarzenegger's favorite customizing shop.

 

President Bush, aka Pope George I, granted a brief audience to reporters from the basilica of his Crawford, Texas ranch, where he vowed to "...Make the Catholic church more faith-based," and to "Bring Catholics and regular Christians together at last." Mr. Bush was initially enthusiastic about being able to "canonize" people until he was told what it really meant.

 

Elsewhere, an organization calling itself "Swiss Guard Veterans for Truth" began a campaign of lobbying for the excommunication of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. Pope George I's newly appointed Grand Inquisitor Karl Rove has denied any knowledge of, connection with, or control over the group.

 

Reports that Pat Buchanan's and William F. Buckley's heads had exploded could not be confirmed at press time.

More or Less with Morrie

Author Apologizes for Deception, Schmaltz

DETROIT, Michigan (Ant Farmer's Almanac Newswire) Best-selling author of Tuesdays with Morrie, The Five People You Meet in Heaven and Detroit Free Press columnist Mitch Albom has apologized for having written a story about Michigan State's NCAA basketball game the day before the event. The deception was exposed when alert readers noticed that several of the things "reported" had not actually happened. Most notably, the "attendance" of Michigan State almuni Mateen Cleaves and Jason Richardson, neither of whom were at the game.

"You can't write that something happened that didn't, even if it's just who sat in the stands" wrote Albom in a column apologizing for what the paper's editor deemed "a colossal error of judgement", and added, "We — the editors and I — got caught in an assumption that shouldn't have happened. It won't again."

Albom went on to admit to and apologize for several "factual inaccuracies" in his best-selling book Tuesdays With Morrie.

"Yeah, I actually visited Morrie on Thursdays, but I always wrote about the visits on the Tuesdays before and sometimes on Wednesday if I'd been at the track. Besides, after the first couple of times I pretty much knew what he was gonna say. He repeated himself a lot," adding, "And, so long as we're talking about it, it wasn't exactly every Thursday, either. I mean, I've got stuff to do."

Albom also addressed questions about the veracity of his other book The Five People You Meet in Heaven, noting that "It isn't necessarily five people you meet," Albom said, "And it isn't necessarily anybody you know. There's always a crowd hanging around the Pearly Gates main entrance, and it usually includes some guy you cut off in traffic 20 years ago who's still pissed off about it."