Hit And Ron I

Jersey City, New Jersey, September 3, 2003: Jogger and politico Ron never saw what hit him. It turns out he was blindsided by a whitetail deer. "I went out for a jog about 20 to 6 Wednesday morning, and I was jogging on Seeler Street when all of a sudden I was face-down on the pavement," he said. "A woman who saw it all said I was hit by a deer. I never saw it coming." Ron, representing the Ronatarian Party in the 2004 presidential election, was treated at St. Mary's Hospital for multiple injuries. "It hit me from...

Own Private Hell

Norfolk, Virginia: September 29, 2003 A sudden, irresistible urge. A portable toilet. A confrontation with an angry construction worker. Now, a federal lawsuit. While out campaigning, vice presidential candidate Brad needed to go. Badly. So he dashed to the nearest portable toilet on the Virginia Beach boardwalk. Problem was, it belonged to construction workers for Weeks Marine, a company hired by the city to replenish the beach. And those workers were fed up with outsiders using the company can. They retaliated, Brad claims in a lawsuit filed this month, by driving a bulldozer or front-end loader to the toilet...

Cricket Spitting

New Brunswick, New Jersey: August 26, 2003 The thought of it may bug some people, but New Jersey's newest game has people spitting crickets. A few dozen people puckered up for a cricket-spitting contest at Rutgers University last week as part of 56th annual educational clinic of the New Jersey Pest Management Association. Tom Turpin, an entomology professor from Purdue University in Indiana, says he and his colleagues were looking for additions to their annual "Bug Bowl." A mention of watermelon-seed spitting evolved into a discussion of which bugs would be good for spitting. Turpin suggested the brown house...

Stool Sample

Jersey City, New Jersey: August 21, 2003 Police pulled over a man on a bar stool -- after a slow-speed pursuit on one of Jersey City's busier streets. It started Tuesday when an officer saw a man riding the motorized bar stool at 35 mph. He was being followed closely by another man in a Camaro. Both driver and rider were pulled over. They were identified as Ronatarian front men Ron (Camaro driver) and Brad (barstool operator). Ron told police he had created the motorized stool, powered by a small engine, two weeks earlier in his garage. Ron was...