YET MORE APPLICANTS FOR COLUMNIST “POSITION” – Even after announcing that no further applications would be received for the unlamented Gutthwacker’s vacant space, your Worthy Editor has received further applications. Fortunately, most of these we were able to immediately consign to the trash, although one or two stood out enough, if only for comic relief, to be included with the rest of this dreck.

Some few of the few of you who read this “column” will recall that last week we gave the name of the special web site

(loonybincolumnist@wacko.nuts) where votes could be cast for the applicants, although we stated firmly (or so we thought) that the site would not be available until AFTER all applicants have been listed. However, it seems that two of the applicants previously mentioned managed to hack into the site and start running up votes for themselves – Walawahoohoo Wasabi, “author” of “Crumpet’s Corner” (another misuse of space that could be better devoted to the results of the Washington County Tiddlywinks Round- Robin Tournament and Beerfest), and the Pet Casket King of Northfield. The latter, who disbelieves in computers in general and the internet in particular (although he clings to a belief in the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus), very likely enlisted the aid of the Bung King of Northfield, whose business adjoins his, or possibly of Chief Nylon, who likes to throw a monkey wrench into the proceedings now and again. These spurious votes have been terminated with extreme prejudice (as will Wasabi and the King should they keep this up!), and readers should be aware that any further attempts to hack the site will dealt with to the full extent of any future columnist’s ability to mortify, humiliate and otherwise debase the miscreants, up to and including the naming of names!

Here, then, are the names for this week:

Lucius Q.C. Lamar Bimbleburger (yes, THE Bimbleburger!) – Editor! Publisher! How DARE you attempt to auction off to the highest bidder, like some wrinkled puppy dog with a foreign name, the position which I – yes, I! – created out of whole cloth from the fragments of disparate elements, as it were, from the weft and warp of the fabric of this moth-eaten community, bringing fame and regional, if not statewide, renown to your newspaper! You seem to assume that because I, the Founding and Formative Columnist of this Column, am absent because of the Great Diaspora of the Whigs, a Tragedy of Unmentionable and Unfathomable Breadth, Depth, Width, Height and Scope, that you can, nilly-willy, fill it with some Person of No Talent merely because I, the Original Filler-of-this-Space, am Necessarily Absent on my wearisome trudge home in the company of my fellow Whig (former) Prisoners of Conscience! No, Mister Editor, this shall not be! Why, when I tell you . . . . [Ed. Note: The transmission was interrupted at this point, probably by a posse come to escort the so-called Whig Prisoners of Conscience out of the range of impressionable children. It did, however, bear the following tag at the end: Sent from his Blueberry on the outskirts of Pigeon Dung, Alabama.]

Miss Brunnhilde Fromage, Secretary-General of the Daughters of Unpopular Conflicts – Oh, Mister Editor, it is with great confidence and extreme diffidence mingled together that the below-named presents Herself as a candidate for the Worthy Position of Columnist-en- Chef to this extremely fine, potentially awardwinning journal of news, opinion, and the wildest flights of fancy. Should we be successful in our quest for a position under you, we would abandon the silliness of the previous incumbents (nice enough persons, we are somewhat sure, but misguided and misdirected, to say the least), and seek to elevate the column to a loftier plane, wherein your numerous and highly intelligent readers might go to find reports on the doings of this fine community’s Social, Intellectual and Cultural Elite, such as their tea parties, lawn parties, yachting parties, at-homes, musicales and baby showers (and the weddings which occasionally follow the latter). We believe such a change would go far to elevate the tone of your newspaper, and to educate your readers as to the proper way to hold their fish forks and demitasse spoons. Until then, Mister Editor, we wish you Au Reservoir!

Well, there you have it – two more nutjobs heard from! We’re almost at the end – next week MAY finish them off!