"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."
My Boog Pages
Tuesday, June 24
Start The Revolution Without Me
SHREVEPORT, LOUISIANA (MBP) - Calm returned today to this city in northwest Louisiana, two days after a string of riots that left dozens injured. The disturbance began when a midnight vigil at the local Barnes & Noble turned ugly. Fans of the Harry Potter series began smashing windows, overturning cars, and lighting fires when they discovered that the store's copies of the latest Potter book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, contained nothing but the sentence "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" repeated approximately 32,628 times.
"This should not have happened," said the store's manager, Ignatious Redfellow. "These copies were created as an anti-piracy measure by the publisher, and were leaked to various known book-swappers to clog up their systems. No way should these books have found their way to the public."
Members of the angry mob were not appeased by the news that the publisher would give them each a free copy of the book, plus a Starbucks Grande Vanilla Creme Frappuchino. "Burn it!" screamed Molly Van Lannigan as she stood atop the roof of her Ford Excursion. "Burn it all!"
And burn it they did. At the end of the evening, the Willow Bend shopping center was a smoking ruin, with only the Southern Maid doughnut shop escaping destruction. Several witnesses credited Southern Maid's Fred Newton with dispersing the crowdby passing out boxes of famous Southern Maid doughnuts, causing immediate drowsiness. Many of those involved left in search of chocolate milk and a warm blanket.
Others were disappointed rather than outraged. "It took me all day to find someone a ride over here," said Hypatia Gillespie. "I had to call my mother, my sister, and my aunt, before Lacy from down the street brough me and my boy George over here. George has been saving his money for six months to buy this book. His dad even sent ten dollars from Angola*. I supposed he could get it from the library if his bicycle hadn't been stole."
"This is clearly the work of Satan," said Reverend Abner Whitehead, pastor of the Blinding Light Nondenominational Church. "This book is a doorway, which when swallowed by the unsuspecting, will roll over them like a mighty bolt of God's wrath. Those who suffered in this disturbance have only themselves to blame. And Satan, of course." When asked if the riot that took place a few years ago in the impoverished Cedar Grove area was also the work of the Devil, Whitehead said, "No, that was just the Negroes."
In the wake of the violence, only one thing seems clear. As Hypatia Gillespie put it, standing on the corner of 70th Street and Youree Drive as she tried to flag a ride, "Thank God there's two years until the next one."
