ant farmer's almanac

1: She was still alive?

2: 78? I thought she was like 90.

3: She lived in Phoenix?

4: Hmmm. . .

5: Well, whaddaya know?

"That was just way too trippy", says Olympic Committee spokesman.

ATHENS, Greece (Ant Farmer's Almanac Newswire) Even before the athletic competitions had begun at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that it would conduct drug tests on everyone associated with the Games' Opening Ceremonies.

"They were just really weird," said IOC spokesman Robert Leroy Parker, "It looked like Burning Man or some Radiohead music video." Parker shook his head sadly, "I mean, a parade of painted people dressed like I don't know what, a pregnant woman with a glowing womb, that blue, winged guy hovering over the whole thing, more wardrobe malfunctions than you could shake a stick at. . . . There's just no way that performance wasn't enhanced with substances. They even messed up the alphabetical order of the countries' names! How high do you have to be to do that?

The creator of the Ceremonies' surrealistic extravaganza was reached for comment at a 24-hour Denny's restaurant in Athens, Georgia where he was eating breakfast at 2:30 a.m. When asked why he was in Athens, Georgia, when the Olympics were taking place in Athens, Greece, he got real quiet, looked around, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, then confessed to having "Serious munchies, dude."

"They get the gold in bizarre, that's for sure," sighed a dismayed Parker, "It was all Greek to me."

New Book Reveals Secret of Last Supper Sneeze

NEW YORK (Ant Farmer's Almanac Newswire) A stunning new art historical thriller, entitled The Da Vinci Cold, claims that the decay of Leonardo Da Vinci's classic fresco "The Last Supper" was caused by the artist's own germs when he sneezed all over the still damp pigment.

Forensic art historians have spent years studying the patterns of deterioration of the famous picture — painted in tempra directly onto the plaster wall of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, in 1498 — and have determined that only someone of exactly Da Vinci's height and standing within arm's length of the wall at a crucial early phase of the work could have created the arcing spray pattern of what is now nearly 500 years' worth of disintegration of the colors and imagery on this icon of Renaissance art.

Scholars have argued for centuries about whether an apprentice to Da Vinci or perhaps the convent's Mother Superior had been the one with the head cold and that the Catholic Church was covering up this fact. Scholars, apparently, have lots of time on their hands. That the church refused to comment about the source of the sneeze — or even confirm there had been a sneeze at all — has only fed curiosity and fueled speculation.

The book's publisher will neither confirm or deny the swirl of rumors that it reveals DNA test results proving that the traces of phlegm embedded in the robes on the figures of Matthew, Mark, parts of Luke and the tablecloth are, in fact, from the master himself.

Plans for the movie rights have yet to be announced.