[Newspoetry] A Word From Our Editor

[William Gillespie]

Hi everybody.

       Well, it's no secret that we here at Newspoetry Intranational are
operating on a shoestring budget. I mean, one look at the Newspoetry
skyscraper
       will tell you that it hasn't been repainted in over a year.  And
some of the statues in the lobby need repair as well, particularly the
bust of Chomsky.

       Well, I've been trying to look into new ways of generating
revenue for the Newspoetry project. As you remember, the Board vetoed
the idea of
       making our website a pay-per-view credit-card access site, so
I've been trying to find ways of bringing in money other than selling
our poetry. To
       this end I have hired as consultants the international patent
lawfirm Weltschmerz & Zeitgeist so I could run some ideas by them. Here
they are:

       What I think is the most promising product we are currently
developing (and this is still a secret so try to keep it under wraps) is
all-meat vegetable
       substitutes. We have been working on a type of lettuce - looks
and tastes like real lettuce - made entirely of beef. We are pretty sure
there will be a
       market for this. Some meat-eaters get a craving for salad now and
then just like the rest of us. We have also been developing pork carrots
and
       blood tomatoes.

       Now some of you may remember from a few years back (right during
the three weeks or so that Zima and Crystal Pepsi were all the rage) my
       failed attempt to market transparent Crystal Beef, and also
Crystal Pork ("the other clear meat"). Well, I admit, that idea wasn't
very good. We had
       some success with the Crystal Menthol Light 120's (the invisible
cigarette) but studies revealed that clear tar is, if anything, even
worse for your
       lungs than the black stuff. Anyway, I think the vegetable
substitute is a better approach. Our all-meat vegetable substitutes are
a more direct way to
       target that segment of the middle class who would like to become
more health conscious without actually becoming more healthy.

       Now don't think this is the only product I have been working on.
It occurred to me recently while reading Simulating Thermonuclear Fusion

       using High-Powered Lasers for Dummies that, if one were really a
dummy, the book wouldn't help much. That's when I called up the Dummy
       people and tried to pitch my idea of a series of books "for Real
Dummies." They expressed some interest and so I contacted Brad Wank, a
       technical writer I know, and started work on Coffeecups for Real
Dummies - a 150-page guide (laden with helpful illustrations) on how to
       operate a coffeecup safely and properly, with a minimum of
breakage or spillage. Real dummies sometimes try to pour in the coffee
when the cup is
       upside-down or lying on its side, but after reading through our
manual, we think they will soon be able to achieve a 50 percent success
rate. We're
       also working on Shoes 4.0 for Real Dummies.

       In unrelated news, we are having a little bit of legal trouble.
As some of you know, our Newspoetry web server was obtained under very
informal
       circumstances - a man sold it to me out of his trunk in downtown
Champaign. Turns out that it was (and let me tell you this comes as a
total shock
       to me) stolen. Stolen, in fact, from the Republican Party
national headquarters (which explains why their site has been down for
so long - I know
       this because I like to surf the web looking for images of Dan
Quayle (lots of straight liberal guys think Dan Quayle is cute - there's
nothing wrong
       with it, it's not like I'm going to call him for help with my
spelling)). So there's a little bit of legal trouble right now (but
nothing as bad as what we
       went through last year when one of our newspoets kidnapped
Illinois State Representative Rick Winkel, drugged him, and tried to use
him to make
       graphics for use in a Newspoem - the nighttime cleaning lady over
at the Beckman Visualization Lab called the police when she found an
       unconscious naked man on a flatbed scanner). However, this
business with the server belonging to the Republicans might explain why
the recycle
       bin on my Windows 95 desktop keeps disappearing, and might also
explain why, when I have a paper jam, it won't let me abort the print
job.

       Well, thanks to all of you for helping with the Newspoetry
project. Let me know if you can think of any ideas to run by our patent
lawyers, or any
       way to make this funnier.