London, August 29, 2009 -- Ice cream trucks, the ubiquitous roaming purveyors of frozen dessert products that infest suburban neighbourhoods around the world, announcing their arrival using strident, uniformly irritating off-pitch melodies, have been found in a recent study to be a leading international cause of insanity.

Los Angeles, March 19, 2010 -- Andy Warhol's famous phrase, “In the future, everyone will be fat and slightly stupid,” correctly prognosticated two alarming social trends that have led to a sharp rise in the incidences of heart disease, diabetes, right-wing talk radio and other obesity-related maladies among the ever-larger American populace.

What the eccentric 1960s pop artist failed to predict, however, is another trend that now has sociological statisticians scratching their unkempt scalps: the remarkable rise in short-term celebrity status among citizens from all walks of life.

Washington, D.C, January 2, 2006 -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, apparently dissatisfied with the current American vernacular's inadequacy in consistently reflecting his own ideological positions, has issued a new pamphlet entitled Donald's Dictionary: The Donald Rumsfeld Guide To Positive Speaking. The Secretary of Defense said he hopes this word usage guide will help "keep the conversation on the right track, any deviation from which will only aide and abet the enemy".

Tachs-Yelter, Utah, December 22, 2005 -- Hi, Avant News Readers. I'm Senator Bill Frist, a United States Senator from the great state of Tennessee. Best of all, I'm Senate Majority Leader, which means I'm the most important of all the white male millionaires in tailored suits tasked with acting out the people's will until I get indicted, which we all know might not probably happen anytime soon.