Electric utility companies across America are setting aside the day this Thursday for an infrequent but necessary maintenance operation: flushing out all of the electrical lines.

It’s a task that is only performed about once every 25 to 30 years, to prevent a condition that, if ignored for too long, can have serious consequences. The culprit is the static-charged dust that naturally clings to electrical wires and builds up inside light fixtures and switches. An over-accumulation of this static dust can lead to electrical problems, short-circuits and even fires. A simple reverse-polarity surge of high-voltage current across the nation’s electrical grid releases the dust harmlessly inside the walls at the users’ end.

Rather than wait for each utility company to decide when to perform the crucial job, the Obama administration has called upon all power companies to do it this Thursday, dubbed Clean the Grid Day.

“We call upon all Americans to get ready once again for this unusual but very important task,” said a White House spokesman. “Electric customers - homeowners, schools, businesses - all need to prepare for Thursday’s power line flush.”

That’s because the power system purge yields one rather inconvenient consequence. Some of the dust will be ejected out of the customers’ electrical outlets. People are urged to take a simple precaution before Thursday: unplug all lamps, appliances and electronics and cover all of their receptacles with small pieces of electrical or masking tape to prevent the electrostatic dust from shooting out of their outlets and into their homes. While the dust is harmless and non-toxic, it can be a nuisance and is quite messy.

Power company engineers agree, pointing out what can happen to people who fail to heed the warning.

“I remember when we flushed the lines last time back in ‘81,” said Rodney Moon, systems engineer for Con Edison in New York. “My neighbor laughed the whole thing off, thinking it was all a big joke. Until the fool came home from work that afternoon to discover the half inch layer of fine yellow dust covering everything in his house. Not a pretty sight.”

Maintenance staff and homeowners everywhere have been scrambling to tape over the wall outlets in their buildings and dwellings. Sales of electrical tape were brisk at home center stores throughout the nation.

“The ordinary 120-volt electrical outlet is the weak link in this whole system. Clean the Grid Day is coming, like it or not!,” added Moon. “A two-buck roll of tape will save you lots of headaches later.”

Meanwhile, officials at several telecoms in the U.S and Canada are watching this event very closely to determine the best way for them to flush out the phone lines in their networks later this year.

Israelis warned about pirate matzah. Just a week before Passover, police in Israel raided a warehouse containing a 7 ton stash of matzah with fake kosher certificates. It is believed the counterfeit crackers were the work of organized crime. Perhaps the Kosher Nostra? Or was it just for somebody’s pirate bar mitzvah? “Avast me hearty yer a man now!” But we digress… In any case, religious authorities have warned people to be on the lookout for more of the bogus bread. “Don’t buy from strangers,” warned one official in Jerusalem.

Suicide bombers now turning to breast implants. Radical islamist plastic surgeons in Pakistan are planning to insert plastic explosives into breast implants - a location that would be virtually undetectable by current airport scanning devices. It is believed that the amount of explosives in a typical D-cup would be sufficient to blow the side out of an airliner. Apparently, these are not inflated claims. The Transportation Security Administration has responded to this potential threat by modifying its screening procedures at all U.S. airports. In related news, the TSA has recently noted a surge in applications from male job-seekers.

This week’s edition of NFTS was compiled by Phil, who once worked as a baker at a Waffle House in Florida. But he was fired after just three weeks for eating all the profits.

Eye bleach, anyone?

Microsoft has released the first Service Pack for its Windows 7 operating system today, with a whole slew of patches, bug fixes and new functionality. In addition to the fixes, Win7 SP1 also offers a few useful tools, including better file management and indexing, improved memory allocation and more secure wireless networking capabilities. Due to popular demand, MS has even added new and improved versions of the Clippy and Search Doggie helper tools to assist with online searching and other tasks.

The Service Pack will automatically upgrade all users with genuine Windows 7 operating systems, and is available in a convenient 34.8 gigabyte download. Win7 users will receive the auto-download the next time they connect to the Internet. Microsoft recommends users backup all their files, close all programs, set a system restore point and take a nice long lunch break while their PCs download and configure the update. In fact, why not take the whole afternoon off? You deserve it!

Microsoft will also auto-install its first “Ad-Pack,” a bundle of useful advertising messages, on machines with previous versions of Windows. This will affect PCs with Win98, Millennium Edition (if any of those really exist anymore), WinXP, and the ill-fated Vista. Ad-Pack will launch a series of helpful popups prompting users to upgrade to Windows 7 and Office 2010, along with other great promotions. Discounts on the new software will be offered if users act immediately.

Said one Microsoft marketing exec: “we’re here for all of our customers.”

From you have I been absent in the spring
When proud-pied April, dress’d in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer’s story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem’d it winter still, and you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.

–Sonnet 98, William Shakespeare

The snow is melting, revealing what winter has hidden from us all those cold, dark months. Hope springs eternal. Happy spring equinox from all your fiends at Alligators In The Sewer!

California restaurant serves whale sushi. The Santa Monica sushi bar, appropriately named The Hump, is now serving the delicacy, which was previously banned in the U.S. After Congress recently lifted the ban on eating marine mammals, several west coast eateries began serving kujira - a staple in Japan - with The Hump leading the charge. Said the restaurant’s head chef: “it’s tender, it’s exotic, it’s delicious…you really must try this stuff!” The Hump plans to start adding whale steaks and whale kabob to its menu.

Celebrity launches second diarrhea shakedown cruise. After the cruise line’s last adventure with 450 passengers contracting a gastrointestinal illness, the company pulled the ship, Mercury, into port and scrubbed it - using a whole can of Lysol! Not surprisingly, the next trip out resulted in another batch of sick tourists. Of course it might help if Celebrity Cruises could just get their kitchen staff to wash their hands once in a while.

New Jersey Walmart store evacuates black customers. A Walmart manager at the Washington Township, N.J. store created pandemonium when she ordered “all black people to leave immediately!” over the store’s public address system. Crowds of confused customers rushed toward the doors, thinking some kind of emergency had just occurred. Fortunately, no one was hurt in the incident. Officials at Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, AR, were not amused by night manager Sheila Ellington’s prank, stating in a press release, “we just get our image with the African-American community patched up…and then this happens!”

This week’s edition of NFTS was compiled by Gordy, who is often prone to wearing tank tops and speedos to work but no one really notices.

A major frost that wiped out 95% of Florida’s winter tomato crop has resulted in a severe shortage, putting a financial squeeze on restaurants throughout the nation. Pizzerias, bistros and fast-food chains, faced with skyrocketing prices for low-quality imported tomatoes (left), have chosen to substitute other vegetables in their food servings. Creative companies have discovered vegetables as diverse as eggplant, turnips, rutabagas, even collard greens, as suitable stand-ins for the pricey tomatoes. Restaurant chains and local eateries all over are jumping on the opportunity to cut out the high-priced ingredient.

“We’ve been filling the gaps with red-dyed slices of artichokes on our burgers and chicken sandwiches,” exclaimed a food development scientist at the headquarters of a national burger chain. “So far, only a few people have noticed the difference. A couple emails from customers grousing about a ‘funny textural thing going on’ - that’s about all.”

Still, there was some skepticism from consumers.

“It’s bad enough we have to wonder about the mystery meat served at these places,” lamented a customer at a pizza slice restaurant in Toledo, Ohio. “Now it’s mystery vegetables? What else are they going to start loading into this shit we eat…Soylent Green?”

Despite the criticism, expect restaurateurs to continue with the veggie substitutions, at least until the summer crops hit the market.

We love drinkin’ holidays…and who doesn’t? New Year’s, Halloween, Fourth of July. If there’s an excuse to swill booze, we’re there. But St. Patrick’s Day takes up a very special place in our little alcohol-infused hearts. How can we resist good Irish whiskey and pitchers of green beer? Let the good times roll.

All the best Saint Patrick’s Day wishes from the Alligators In The Sewer fambly.

Hope you find your pot o’ gold…

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has issued an order completely banning the Internet. The South American dictator issued the edict after discovering several embarrassing photos of himself on a user’s Facebook page while surfing porn last week. Chavez would not reveal the nature of the offending images other than to state that he had “completely forgotten” about the boozy birthday party thrown for him last year featuring the two cheerleaders and the donkey.

“This Internet thing constitutes an illegal act, and I want it to just go away,” exclaimed an agitated Chavez in a telephone interview with actor Sean Penn. “It assails our sovereignty, it corrupts our way of life and could even lead to a coup d’etat. That is unacceptable, and it makes me mad!”

Chavez also characterized Twitter as a “tool of terror,” claiming that any communication service that sends 140-character messages could only be “an instrument of espionage and destruction.”

In response to criticism over his attempt at censorship, Chavez cited several unflattering discussion threads on Fark that, in his words, “could be a prelude to assassination.”

“I am personally pulling the plug first thing tomorrow morning…mark my words,” added the defiant Chavez. “Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be certain.”

1950s CIA bread experiment fuels French freakout. A mysterious “poisoning” of French villagers nearly 60 years ago has now been solved after a journalist recently uncovered evidence proving that the CIA had spiked loaves of bread with LSD in a twisted Cold War mind-control experiment. In 1951, many residents of the tiny village of Pont-Saint-Espirit suffered hallucinations after eating the baguettes, leading investigators to believe the bread had been contaminated with some hallucinogenic fungus. Officials in France are now relieved to learn it was merely due to yet another routine CIA experiment. Said one resident who was stricken with the tainted bread: “It’s nice to know that snakes really didn’t try to eat my brains that day!”

TSA worker tries to sabotage terror database. Douglas James Duchak, 46, a now-former Transportation Security Administration worker in Colorado, was charged with attempting to hack into a government network to plant computer viruses. Investigators are trying to determine which is more shocking: that a TSA drone had the audacity to commit such an act, or that he had the intelligence to do so in the first place.

Pope’s brother gets slap-happy with choir boys. Georg Ratzinger, brother of Joseph Ratzinger (aka Pope Benedict XVI), led a German boys choir in Munich back in the 1980s, frequently dispensing a good bitch-slappin’ to any kid who got out of line. The Pope’s brother justified his actions at the time, but says that at age 86 he no longer doles out whup-ass on children, preferring instead to quietly crap his Depends  and yell “get off my lawn!” whenever he sees misbehaving youth.

This week’s edition of NFTS was compiled by Tina, who unflinchingly carries out her writing duties here at Alligators In The Sewer, despite the littered mess of empty beer bottles, unemptied trash bins, broken heating system, hostile work environment and proliferation of cockroaches.

Prince Ike Ubandi would like to set the record straight: he is very much alive and is most definitely not giving away 125 million dollars on the Internet. The 31-year-old Ubandi, the great-great-great grandson of Ajaka Ubandi, a prominent 19th Century sultan and mine-owner, has no plans to part with any of his holdings, estimated to be worth over 900 million.

Nevertheless, billions of emails sent around the world over the past decade have named Ubandi as a benefactor in what is known as the “Nigerian 419″ scam. The 419 hoax is a clever phishing expedition where rogue spammers try to lure gullible recipients into sending a “small fee” - typically a couple thousand dollars - in order to claim the multi-million dollar estate of a deceased Nigerian, a prize that does not exist.

“I do not understand this 419 thing,” said the frustrated Ubandi in a phone interview from his loft in Nairobi. “Why are these people using my good name to steal money from stupid Americans? Why can’t they just do normal things like pickpocketing tourists or looting stores? Leave me out of this - I am getting a bad reputation.”

Indeed, as the scam has become so pervasive the prince can no longer send emails or text messages. No one responds to them.

“It is a shame…I cannot even use the Internet anymore,” complained the prince. “I had to close out my email account and my Twitter page. No one writes back to me. They don’t trust me - they all think I am a crook. The Internet is a lonely place for me.”

Despite Ubandi’s efforts to clear his good name, the scam continues to occur at a massive pace, with floods of emails pouring out of internet cafes across the nation, and no relief in sight.

Whiz-kid shock treatment. Good news: Washington man survives crashing his car into a utility pole. Bad news: he is electrocuted moments later when he decides to relieve himself in the ditch, not noticing the downed power line laying there. Fate sometimes has a second wind.

Former Rep. Mark Foley opens consignment shop. The disgraced Congressman, who resigned last year amid a lurid sex scandal, just opened the West Palm Beach store. The shop, which will primarily feature used furniture and household goods, will not carry books, as the temptation to bend over pages may be too much for him to resist.

Bring-your-kid-to-work day at JFK control tower a smashing success. Last Wednesday marked the third annual event at the air traffic control tower at New York’s busy JFK airport. Over a dozen children of ATC employees enjoyed hands-on experience with radar systems, navigation and communications equipment. One clever lad even required pilots of approaching airliners to solve riddles before being given clearance to land. Said one air traffic controller: “Kids need toys, and those precocious little ones sure bring a nice diversion to our stressful work environment!”

This week’s edition of NFTS was compiled by Norm, who is starting to get pissed off by his court-ordered anger-management therapy.

From those clever Japanese…a fun (and safe) way to give kitty a much-needed bath. In the past, you needed patience (and kevlar armor) to bathe your cat. Not any more. Just pop your furry friend into the machine, drop in a quarter, select “heavy wash” or “permanent press” and hit “start.” The cat even provides its own spin cycle. Bonsai! In minutes, your kitten is clean as a whistle. And plenty pissed. Watch out for the payback cat shit in those house slippers!