Men who love pumpkins too much
10/07/02 — A 1998-vintage email joke tells the tale of a man caught in flagrante delicto molesting a gourd in a rural pumpkin patch. "Excuse me, sir," says the arresting officer, "but do you realize that you're screwing a pumpkin?"  The perpetrator looks at the officer and, without missing a beat, says, "A pumpkin?  Damn, is it midnight already?"

Well, guess what. Last month, in another disconcerting example of life imitating folklore, a 45-year-old Warren, Michigan man faced trial in District Court for allegedly "using a pumpkin to sexually gratify himself" while prancing around nude in his back yard in full view of gawking neighbors.

We don't know if the real-life accused attempted a "Cinderella defense," but he was ultimately found guilty of indecent exposure and sentenced to 90 days in jail.

Blond attrition
10/03/02 — Barely a week after declaring the towheads of the world on the brink of extinction, news services around the world issued shamefaced corrections today, admitting they had failed to check the facts before publishing. The earlier stories cited a World Health Organization study conducted by "experts in Germany" as the source of the claim that due to a dwindling number of people blessed with the proper gene and increasing competition in the mating arena from bleached blonds, true blonds are an endangered species and could die out completely by 2202.