UPDATE ON FORMER AND PUTATIVE COLUMNISTS - As your (Substitute) Substitute Columnist receives no fewer than one inquiry every several months concerning Messrs. Bimbleburger and Golliwoggle (including the latest, from the Grumpy Old Men's Breakfast Group), she thinks it both timely and charitable to provide further elucidation as to their status.

Missus Putative Columnist Golliwoggle was observed pushing her husband's gurney along the precipice known as Likers' Leap, speaking to him in the forceful manner for which she is known, and which has caused a cold perspiration to break out on the brows of members of the Head o' the Dog River Pyrates' Benevolent & Charitable Society (as they have recently styled themselves, in the apparent hope of warding off the expected retribution from Missus Golliwoggle). Although our auditor was only able to capture about every ninth word, the gist of Madame's comments seemed to indicate her very strong desire that her husband pull himself together, and eftsoons, and start earning a living, ere he go hanggliding off the Leap on his gurney. There was considerable flailing of arms and legs on the part of Putative Columnist Golliwoggle, accompanied by puling in the key of E, which appeared to indicate assent, after which Missus G. drew back from the brink and trundled her hubby home.

Columnist Bimbleburger and the rest of the Whig Nineteen (Minus One, Less Two) are reported to have progressed, by dint of forced marches and ingenious thievery, as far as the West Virginia border. Their strenuous trek has been aided frequently by members of the Whig Underground Railway, a tightly knit but loosely wired confederation of True Believers who cleave to the Old Faith and long for the Second Coming of Clay & Webster. Unless the W19-1-2 are able to commandeer a suitably large vehicle, driver and credit card, their arrival in these precincts is not anticipated prior to the Feast of St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki.

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WHERE ARE THEY NOW - (Substitute) Columnist Wootton Bassett Poughkeepsie is enjoying a well-deserved rest at the Cultural Affairs desk of the Western South Warren Bi- Monthly Crapshooters Guide & Russian Ballet Reporter (formerly the Northern East Granville Monthly Bugle & Hog- Caller's Gazette), a sinecure which was obtained for him by his great-grand-uncle Purbelow Bumbershoot, Chaplain-in- Ordinary to the Last White Rajah of Brouhaha, who summers on the sunny slopes of Scrag Mountain in a chicken coop formerly owned by the great silent film star, Miss Letitia Longwarts.

Squatley Flummage, putative publisher of the putative Pseudonymous Press, is resting uncomfortably after the garbage scow on which he was riding was torpedoed by a submarine later identified as U-38, a relic of World War I (and so identified by the flag of the Imperial German Navy that it flew). The scow was making its way along the lower reaches of the Dog River, carrying the latest staff (the seventh) hired by Mr. Flummage for the PP, the previous six having been fired after tenures ranging from three days to two hours and fifteen minutes.

Third Constable Gulliver Waffleblaster, who observed the whole episode from the municipal destroyer escort, reported that the U-boat surfaced about twenty feet from the scow and fired a wind-powered torpedo, causing an explosion which hurled the scow and its reeking contents several hundred feet into the air and due west and nearly swamped the U-boat. When the waves abated, the Uboat surfaced and the crew clambered out; they goosestepped the length of the boat, sang a chorus of "Hoch der Kaiser," and then boldly retired from the scene, not even troubling to submerge. The scow, on the other hand, was firmly wedged upside down in the fork of an immensely tall bung tree, raining garbage and PP staff on all and sundry. The Third Constable professed himself to be so awestruck by the audacious antique attacker that he saluted the centenarian crew and took his vessel back to the municipal navy yard, leaving Mr. Flummage and crew to fend for themselves. As a result, the Pseudonymous Press is not expected to publish next week (yet again). However, the Bung King of Northfield, who was one of those garbaged upon, was in a state of highest dudgeon about the maiming of one of his prized trees and has vowed to sue Mr. Flummage for damage