[Ed. note: we are now being forced to supplement our subliminal advertising revenues by occasionally adding standard advertising like this one into the Alligators in the Sewer site. We know, sooooo twentieth century, and we hate to resort to such anachronistic marketing. But bear with us, OK? We need the extra money, and dammit, they're paying with cash! It's not like we're running those annoying Shockwave splash screens or launching popups, so quit your griping already. And don't worry, we'll keep the subliminal stuff running to feed your impressionable minds.]

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Sometimes the cosmic powers don’t always work in our favor. Once in a while, bad karma just comes out of nowhere and bites us square in the ass. How were we to know a 9000 pound asteroid would come crashing through the roof of our central warehouse in Dallas? Nature’s destructive forces have cleared out most of our inventory, but that means hot deals for you the customer, as we move out the remaining goods…and debris!

Coming soon to your town: Furniture Foundry’s Space Invaders Destruction Sale. You heard it right! Everything in our inventory that wasn’t completely vaporized on impact or otherwise destroyed in the ensuing fireball is now on sale at huge discounts!

Look for the big surplus FEMA tents being set up in cities all across the country. Inside you will find hundreds and hundreds of quality furnishings salvaged from our (former)  warehouse in Texas. Everything has been decontaminated and tested for radiation levels and priced to move! Some goods were miraculously spared from the destructive impact. Other goods sustained some minor damage, and others yet were reduced to splinters - superb kindling for the fireplace! And all of it is on sale!

It’s a one-time only event (we hope!), and it won’t last long, as our lawyers are in court as we speak, initiating bankruptcy proceedings on behalf of the company. So hurry now for the best selection before we go tits-up!

That big iron-nickel meteorite crashed and burned…and so has our company. And the savings have been passed on to you! Don’t miss this gigantic sale!

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A Tokyo restaurant has two macaque monkeys in its employ as waiters, serving hot towels and drinks to their customers. And the only green stuff you have to tip them with is a soy bean. But the simian servers are only allowed to work two hours a day. Either a union thing or some strange wage and hour laws over there.

Now we’re inspired. Time to send Maynard out to get us some sushi rolls. Don’t forget the hot mustard and soy sauce.

Tina, our resident bookkeeper/payroll/human resources/office manager at Alligators in the Sewer, took a few days off last month to attend her cousin’s wedding in Nebraska. Norm usually doesn’t give us lowly staffers much time off. In fact, getting an approved weekday or two off from this place has about the same statistical likelihood as spotting a sober attendee at Ozzfest. But Norm made a special concession in Tina’s case — on the condition she bring back lots of good wedding photos of her…uh…country cousin.

Here is her accounting of the event, told in the usual third person narrative typical of an AITS shaggy dog tale. This is Tina’s story and she’s sticking with it.

The next day Tina and her sister packed their bags and, map in hand and a cooler of Busch beer in the trunk, set off driving toward the land of corn.  It was a tedious eight hour drive across the desolate hill country of mid-America.

Somewhere just past Omaha, Tina spotted a sign (left) of what was to come, which was immediately followed by the pavement ending.  “Redneck Wedding ahead.” Tina and her sister knew that a very special event lay just ahead. Their little hearts were pounding with anticipation. Another half mile and a quick turn led them to a small roadside county park where Tina’s cousin Cletus and his blushing bride-to-be, Liza Jane, were waiting (right). Since Liza Jane was about seven months pregnant (not that anyone could tell), their holy-roller church minister refused to allow them a church wedding. Hence the civil ceremony in the rural park.

Liza Jane’s relatives were all there (left), posing for the photographer (Cletus’s favorite drinking buddy equipped with his point-and-shoot digital). Suitably refreshed after a few hours on the sauce, they were carrying on about the upcoming Huskers season, and how the wedding punch could sure use another quart or two of vodka. A happy, gregarious bunch.

A card table set up under a big shade tree displayed the fine wedding cake Cletus and Liza Jane had concocted with 20 bucks spent at Wal-Mart (right). After the ceremony, everyone was invited to step up for cake, which conveniently required no cutting - with 4 varieties to choose from!

A barbecue pit was set up nearby over an open fire (left), and wedding guests were lining up to roast whatever they brought for dinner. Potluck, Nebraska style. There were a few unidentifiable meat-like items added to the “mixed grill” event, leading some to speculate what unlucky animals were run over by guests on the way to the wedding that day.

After the weenie roast in the park, everyone was invited over for a short reception and social at the bride’s parents’ place (right) in the nearby town of Broken Arrow.

No wedding reception is complete without proper entertainment, and Cletus & Liza Jane didn’t let the people down. Dance music was provided by local polka favorites, The Velvet Underdogs (left), who put on quite a show in the back yard.

When the dance wound down and the band packed up to leave, a limo picked up the happy bride and groom, and whisked them away, stopping occasionally for more beer (right). Somewhere along the way, the limo broke down, and the newlyweds had to hitchhike into town in the back of a passing farm trailer. But that couple didn’t sweat the small stuff.

Their bridal suite awaited them, at the only one-star hotel in Broken Arrow, the Truck Topper Inn and Resort (left).

The next day, the happy couple jumped in their car, one of their wedding gifts in tow, and drove off for their honeymoon in the picturesque Nebraska Sandhills.

Tina and her sister arrived back in town the next day, with lots of stories of good times and lots of photos. Nothing like a road trip to help get it all out of your system!

A Romanian woman died in her home recently, her body later devoured by the 20 or so cats that lived with her. Apparently she had been dead for several weeks before her corpse and the feline feeding frenzy were discovered. Which shows what happens when kooky people don’t keep many friends who are willing to check up on them. Think Eleanor Rigby — with a shitload of cats.

Some people may react to this story with horror. But when you have that many cats, and you die at home, of course you’re going to be eaten. Cats are carnivores, and they’re not about to let all that good flesh go to waste.  Look on the bright side: it’s better than feeding the worms. Besides, the deceased would probably be happy knowing she was able to provide for her kitties after death.

We applied this potential scenario to ourselves here at AITS, wondering of Bug would be capable of acting on the same primal instincts. It was generally agreed by all of us that in such a situation, like if Maynard stopped feeding him, Bug would only gnaw on Norm. And only while Norm is still alive.

Which side are YOU on?

Brazen hackers in Finland, calling themselves “Pirates klo Bay” (Pirates at Bay), have successfully accessed sensitive firearms transaction records from within the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) yesterday, and posted the information on at least one website hosted in neighboring Sweden. The documents, comprised mostly of searchable PDF scans of ATF Form 4473, the so-called “yellow forms” filled out by firearms purchasers in gun shops, sporting goods stores, gun shows and back alleys in the United States, was posted on the Swedish site yesterday and indexed. The site, which has been down since early this morning due to massive internet traffic, was set up so that visitors could search the ATF records by purchaser’s name and personal information, seller’s name and address, firearm type, location, and date of sale.

An unnamed ATF spokesperson confirmed the security breach, stating that the hackers were able to download approximately 80 to 85 percent of the more than 115,000,000 gun-sale forms dating back to 1968 and stored on BATF servers, before the agency’s IT department was able to lock down those servers late yesterday.

In a news release this morning, the irate ATF spokesperson verbally lashed out at the attackers, demanding “we want the little commie reindeer-eatin’ bastards to send back our data right goddamn now, or we’re gonna nuke their frozen wasteland right off the map!”

No one is certain at this time what ramifications will result from the data breach, believed to be even larger than the 2006 Department of Veterans Affairs data loss fiasco, which involved the personal data of over 26 million veterans.

A spokesman for the National Rifle Association has expressed shock and outrage over the incident, calling on government to bolster security of citizens’ gun records. The official stated that the gun-totin’-rights group has “mobilized” and will dispatch email communiques to as many of its nearly 3 million members as possible, warning them of the security breach and advising gun owners to stay at home, lock their doors and load up. But the NRA spokesman conceded that the email warnings would have limited reach, due to the fact that most of the group’s members live in remote locations “that don’t even have electricity or running water, let alone internet access.” The spokesman aimed his own bit of vitriol at the hacker group, warning “those Scandahoovian scoundrels had better watch their backs. There are a few million angry Americans with guns who would love to get them in their sights.”

The effects are believed to be widespread, involving gun owners in all 50 states. The chances of containing the appropriated data are slim, as mirror sites hosting the information are already popping up in places like Romania, Kenya, and Uzbekistan — nations well out of the reach of US law enforcement. So, it appears, the proverbial genie is out of the bottle.

ATF officials have contacted the major internet search engines, asking for their cooperation by not indexing the sites believed to be hosting the stolen content. However, the search companies have not publicly responded to those requests.

The last known reliable site in western Europe sharing the data was believed to operating in a remote fishing village in Lapland. Meanwhile, no one has been able to locate the hacker group, which incidentally has no connections to the similarly-named Pirate Bay, a Swedish peer-to-peer file sharing site. An official with Pirate Bay, who requested anonymity, stated that “our group had nothing to do with the gun information hack. But, damn, we wish we had thought of it first.”

A Catholic hospital in Springfield, Massachusetts, has drawn some unusual publicity after a patient there (no, not from the psych ward) noticed what appeared to be the outline of the Virgin Mary etched in dirt in a back window.

Needless to say, once word got out, pilgrims from around the area flocked to see the apparition. One visitor even traveled from Mexico City in order to pay homage to the image. The crowds and traffic became so heavy that hospital authorities had to direct visitors to park at a nearby church parking lot.

“It’s a miracle, truly a miracle!,” gushed Elvira Franklin, a nun visiting from New Haven, Connecticut. “It is a sign of hope from the heavens.” Franklin spent nearly three hours standing in the hospital parking lot, gazing in wide-eyed wonder at the fuzzy window two stories above. Others took photographs, while television crews started rolling into the lot.

The window also drew a number of avid Star Wars fans, who claimed that the image was actually that of Jabba The Hut. Hospital authorities directed those visitors to park behind a nearby pub.

All this fun had to come to an end, when Edwin Dittmer, the hospital custodian, inadvertently cleaned the image off the window while performing his routine window-washing chores. Upon seeing this, the faithful flock mobbed the hospital, dragging poor Edwin out to the parking lot, where he was tied to a lamp post and promptly stoned to death, while onlookers chanted “Get the heathen bastard!”

After three price reductions in ransom demands with no takers on the horizon, the desperate band of Somali pirates holding a Ukrainian cargo ship loaded with Russian tanks has turned to eBay in hopes of salvaging a fair ransom deal.

In a candid sat-phone interview with AITS reporters, leaders of the pirate group poured out their emotions and their frustrations over what is appearing more and more likely to become a failed business venture.

“It’s quite discouraging,” complained Ibrahim, (left) the self-styled leader of the militant pirates. “We started the ransom bidding by asking 35 million, a number we thought was quite generous for the ship, cargo, and crew. We were hoping they would bargain with us in good faith, Allah willing. But the Russians and the Americans both told us to ‘go pound sand.’ We made a second offer at a reduced figure of 20 mil, but still no takers. We have reached out to people in other countries too - even allies - but to no avail. A final offer of 8 million also failed to generate interest. No one seems to be in the market right now. Infidels!”

“We’re not talking your usual commodities here,” Ibrahim continued, his voice weary from the two weeks of failed negotiations. “This isn’t some common boatload of U.N. rice or bales of khat. It’s the high-octane stuff that despots the world over crave: brand new Russian tanks with lots of ammo. Surely, somebody out there would like to get their hands on this hardware to assist in their jihad!”

“I guess this is just another symptom of the weak world market,” added Ali Achmed, the pirates’ lieutenant. “Ibrahim and I have built quite a business on deals like this the past 15 years since we graduated Oxford together. We’ve always had success in our ventures. But I think we picked a really bad time economically to pull this one off and we didn’t do our homework. We should’ve hired a marketing firm before launching the venture. Some reliable market metrics would have been helpful too. But we had to roll out this project in late September, right after International Talk Like a Pirate Day.”

The Somalis have now set up an eBay profile and posted listings for the ship and its contents. They started ransom bidding at $100, and as of today, bids are up into the high five-figures and still climbing. Ibrahim remains hopeful for a bounty. “We’ll sell this stuff piecemeal if we have to. Achmed’s also going to post ads on Craigslist sites for Egypt, Lebanon and Dubai, right after morning prayers. Good thing he brought his digicam along!”

The waiting game has taken its toll on the hapless pirates. Loneliness, boredom, and bouts of seasickness have plagued the members in the fortnight spent on the wave-tossed cargo ship. Hunger is also becoming an issue, especially since the Somalis and hostage crew members finished up the last of the Ukrainian borscht provisions 3 days ago. The ship’s denizens are now resorting to eating the rats which scurry about the ship. “I’m not used to these Russian rats,” complained an indignant Achmed. “I grew up on East African rats, which are far tastier, and much meatier. But we make do with what we have. We’re tough.”

“Sometimes I just want to throw up my arms in exasperation, say ’screw the reserve price’ and take the first PayPal offer that rolls in,” said Ibrahim in a rare moment of weakness. “But with the expenses of this hijacking operation adding up day by day, we need to recoup our investment and hopefully turn something of a profit. We owe it to our shareholders back at home in Somalia. And it’s Allah’s will.”

It’s that time of year again and all of us at Alligators In The Sewer would like to take this time to wish you all a fun Halloween.  It’s our happy time of the year, too.

Although the big day is still three-plus weeks away, Maynard the Phone Boy got us into the spirit today by bringing half an orange and black frosted sheet cake he pulled from the dumpster behind a nearby bakery. Even Norm, our cranky editor, joined in the celebration and stopped yelling long enough to shove a piece of  the cake into his face-hole. Then he washed it down with a lukewarm Budweiser, belched and stormed back into his office, yelling and slamming the door so hard our PC monitors rattled. Bug the Cat ran under the pop machine. We’re just overwhelmed with cheer around here.

In fact, Tina, one of our staff writers, commented today that she would gladly trade Christmas for a second Halloween. We couldn’t agree with her more, though a few fundietards out there might get their underwear in a bunch. One satanic holiday is more than those wingnuts can handle already.

Now, if you plan on being home on the 31st, don’t be a Scrooge. Give the kids the good stuff.  Passing off a piece or two of cheap, penny hard candy is more than certain to result in your house getting egged, your trees covered in toilet paper, or your pumpkins smashed. This wonderful holiday comes but once a year, so don’t be such a dickwad. Go to Costco, pick up a carton of decent candy bars and reward the little neighborhood ghouls for not already vandalizing your house this year.  Believe us when we say it, it’s cheap insurance to keep those little urchins happy.

Which leads us to a digression. Why on earth do they call those tiny candy bars “Fun Size”? Talk about bogus branding! What the bloody hell is “fun” about a puny, half-ounce candy bar the size of your pinky? Give us a quarter-pound slab of chocolate with lots of nuts…THAT would be a fun size. Someone call M&M/Mars right now and tell their marketing department they have it all wrong.

It can’t really be that hard, can it? Just follow your crib notes and try not to step on yourself. Here’s an easy-to-follow, Sarah Palin Debate Flow Chart to help you along in the debate process. If she can do it, you can too. You betcha.

A Wisconsin man came close to inadvertent self-immolation one night while swiping gas from a van. Since it was night and the thief couldn’t see what what was going on, he flicked his cigarette lighter to shed a little light on the operation.

Needless to say, things didn’t work out too well.

We can only imagine what thoughts were rattling around his head in those moments leading up the the conflagration:

“…Is the damn can full yet…can’t see nothin.’ I don’t have a flashlight…shit! It’s fuckin’ dark out here. Hmmm…got a lighter, that oughta do the trick…let’s see…alright, who’s yer daddy now…(flick)….

…POOF!

Yeowwww! Yeeeeeowwwwowwwwowww!!! Owww my fuckin’ hands!!!! Gimme some fuckin’ water!!!!! Yeowwwwww!!! Goddammit you bastards!!! Owwwww!!!

The ensuing fireball (and no doubt the screaming) caught the attention of a few people in the area, who promptly called the police. The thief was charged with theft, and–get this–”negligent use of burning materials.” We have to wonder what kind of idiot the legislature had in mind when they drafted that law.

It’s never a dull moment at Alligators In The Sewer. Our humble workplace is just over a thousand square feet of rented space in the back half of a (somewhat) renovated warehouse building that we share with a company that recycles old car batteries. Not the most accommodating place; one could say it’s cozy (read: cramped).  But it suffices for our day-to-day publishing operations and the rent is practically a steal. Cable Internet is pretty reliable in this neighborhood, and there are lots of pubs, liquor stores, check cashing establishments and pawn shops nearby for our convenience. The heating in HQ is so-so, plumbing decent, and air-conditioning is provided by a single window unit that seems to run on an intermittent basis. We all work in cubicles, except Norm, who has the only office with a door. And so it goes.

One hot afternoon this past summer when the A/C unit decided to take another day off, we opened all the windows and propped open the door for some air. In came Maynard, one of the local weirdos from around the neighborhood who simply wandered in without warning. “Got anything I can do ya’ for, for a couple bucks…anything I can fix?,” inquired the scruffy, impromptu visitor. Maynard’s not terribly sharp. In fact it would be fitting to say that Maynard probably rode the short bus throughout the 7 or 8 years he spent in school. But he seemed like a nice kid: relatively harmless, not too far up on the creepiness meter, and to the best of our knowledge, no criminal record. We have no idea where Maynard lives, and we probably don’t want to know.

We took a shine to him right away, and he’s now Maynard the Phone Boy. He answers the telephone, runs to get coffee and doughnuts (we let him keep the change, as we don’t pay him otherwise), and he makes sure there’s always a fresh roll of paper in the bathroom. He even picks up the place once in a while. Maynard is affable and so we keep him around. What’s not to like?

Norm wasn’t so sure about the guy in the beginning. Now he just walks by  Maynard without saying a word and occasionally throws things at him. Norm throws stuff at us too. If Norm likes you, he’ll hurl stuff at you–a sort of tacit approval.

Just don’t let Nigel, our lawyer, throw stuff. You won’t like the smell of what comes your way.

The other day we propped open the door to enjoy the nice fall weather, and in creeps our favorite stray cat, which we have dubbed Bug. “Bug” because that damn cat can crawl under or in between just about anything, and because he likes to munch on the various spiders and roaches that scurry across the newsroom floor. Maynard had been feeding Bug out by the porch from time to time, which explains Bug’s new propensity for coming inside. Winter will be here before long, and Bug is gunning for some new indoor digs. Bug doesn’t piss or crap on anything in here, so we keep him around. Just like Maynard.

But Norm is no fan of Bug. And vice-versa. The first time they met, Bug was perched atop the file cabinet and started hissing when Norm walked by. That cat looked pretty formidable with his back arched,  tail puffed up like a bottle brush, ears pulled back, and showing his teeth. “That cat’s not terribly enamored with you, Norm!” taunted Gordy, one of the staff writers. “You been throwing shit at him again?”

“Get that fuckin’ thing outta here before I make him into a desk accessory,” was Norm’s only reply.

We’ll see how long Bug gets to hang around AITS headquarters. A few of the staffers have started a pool to guess when Bug will turn up as a product of the local taxidermist. Good thing that cat’s adept at hiding. With Norm on the warpath he’ll need those skills around here.