Mass hysteria has broken out in Fork in the Road as the scabies outbreak reaches new heights of irrational fear.

At the Intercity Chess Tournament in neighbouring Zitzengunsten, infected women's vaginas have been bursting into flames.

"It's like nothing I've ever seen before," said one Fork in the Road resident who read about it on social media. "One minute, a woman is playing chess. The next, she's running around screaming and begging for a fire hose."

"Big" Ben Blanding, owner of Moebius Strip Club, said that he has seen footage of women begging for fire hoses, and it never ends well.

Fortunately there are no women at the ongoing Fork in the Road Chess Tourney, which has been locked down due to the scabies outbreak in neighbouring Zitzengunsten.

Initial estimates by people on Twitter with monikers like "incel4ever:" indicate that as many as 300% of all women at the Intercity Chess Tournament in Zitzengunsten have had their vaginas burst into flames.

"We don't know what to do," said Leonard Lump, Mayor of Zitzengunsten, at a press conference yesterday. "We're afraid that the whole tournament might go up in flames."

When asked how many women play chess, Mayor Lump said, "According to our best guesses, 0. But we're not very good at testing, so we're not sure."

Source: Zitzengunsten Press

The ferry from Zitzengunsten to Fork in the Road, across Effluenna River, is shut down due to the Chess State of Emergency.

Nevertheless, some Fork in the Road citizens claim they've seen Zitzengunstennians here in town.

"Oh definitely," said Mrs. Pauvrella Meilleurvie, 93, of the Strapped to Their Beds and Never Coming Out Continuing Care Home. "I see them all the time, out on the street, down at the liquor store, buying up bug spray."

Citizens of Fork in the Road who live in the Gulp Islands put signs in their windows and sent stern letters to Mayor Perkele, demanding he do something.

"We're like cattle or sheep," said David David David Junior, who lives with his father on Big Gulp Island. "We're being led to the slaughter here by these scabies people flooding in from Zitzengunsten, with their vaginas all aflame, and all we can do is get angry and scared and moo on the internet."

Mayor S. Perkele said that he was aware of the problem, and promised government relief to rich people and large corporations located on the Gulp Islands who lose family members or their vaginas due to Zitzengunsten invaders.

The official opposition in City Hall proposed building a wall to keep the Zitzengunstennians out. However the proposal was quickly shot down as it became clear the wall would just float away.

Chess master Ernie Hornbeak was locked in the closet yesterday at the Fork in the Road Chess Tourney for refusing to stop rubbing the pointy hat on his wooden bishop.

As mass hysteria spreads and fears of vaginal infernos deepen, tensions increased at the Fork in the Road Chess Tourney as Mr. Hornbeak, refusing to follow orders from Chess Master Officiator Dr. Faustus Gulp, PhD., blasted out tweets:

Chess Master Officiator Gulp, who declared a Chess State of Emergency last week at the Fork in the Road Chess Tourney, had distributed tasers to everyone at the tourney last weekend, along with instructions on how to use them.

"If you see anyone touching their chess pieces," instructed Dr. Gulp, "If you see anyone disobeying the friendly far awayancing order, then zap them with your taser gun!"

When Mr. Hornbeak broke the friendly far awayancing rule, a dozen chess players tasered him, tackled him to the ground, pulled his body to the closet at the back of the shed, and locked him inside with a lit candle.

Dr. Gulp was proud of the chess players for bashing the unruly rebel over the head repeatedly, but he warned that the candle could cause vaginal explosions. Fortunately, someone checked the closet, and found that the candle had extinguished itself after burning through all the oxygen.

A new Ipsurd survey shows that 40% of respondents in Fork in the Road would rather drink than eat.

The poll was conducted outside the liquor store down on Strip Mall Avenue.

Ipsurd published the survey results on its website, indicating a narrow but very slippery margarine of error, and no actual respondents to the survey questions (they were too far away, due to friendly far awayancing rules, to hear what the interviewer was asking; so the interviewer decided to just count heads in the liquor store lineup and in the supermarket lineup, and discovered that there were 20 people in line for groceries, but 1,307 in line for booze).

Source: http://www.ipsurd.forkintheroad.ca

As the mass hysteria around the scabies outbreak at the Intercity Chess Tournament in neighbouring Zitzengunsten continues to grow, citizens of this city are buying bug spray faster than stores can re-stock.

"It's great to see this kind of fearful, paranoid consumerism," smiled Mayor Perkele. "What a good bunch of molluscs we are."

At the Superbeys supermarket, 100 metres away from the garden shed where the Fork in the Road Chess Tourney has been locked down for over a week, the shelves were empty of bug spray, as well as WD-40[tm].

"I'm not taking any chances with my vagina," said Ginger Vidal, whose shopping cart was overflowing with twelve-packs of Toilet Duck[tm].

Punky GenXer, who works at the checkout of the billion dollar supermarket chain his father built from the ground up with only the sweat on his own brow and getting up at 4am to work every day and not quitting until he had made the world better than what his parents left for him, said, "Dad ordered more bug spray. It should be here Monday week." He then went back to picking at a scab on ones of his tats.

To check the supply of bug spray at your nearest Superbeys supermarket, visit www.superbeys.forkintheroad.ca.

We spoke with Disruption Man, serial entrepreneur, philanthropist and owner of many top-performing tech companies in Germanium Alley, including www.tunazon.forkintheroad.ca and www.snappenis.forkintheroad.ca, as well as this qulity newspaper.

Disruption Man's latest philanthropic project has been setting up homeless shelters in his back yard for his ex-wives and illegitimate children.

Jean-Richard Pauvremousse's original play of heartache, At the Mutual Fund Bank, was followed by a sequel, written and directed by J. J. Abereboot. I was so obsessed with the franchise, after seeing the original play live at the Polished Brown Globe Theatre here in Fork in the Road, that I felt compelled (and urged on by my meditation app evey night, Buy Something Before Bedtime) to order the DVD from Straight to DVD Video.

Of course, deadlines were looming, so I had to BitTorrent the video before it arrived.

It was the worst thing I've ever seen.

I have since asked the post office not to deliver the package from Straight to DVD Video. Straight to DVD also told me that they cannot accept returns, as they are back ordered on returns for this item.

I might sue Bit Torrent for allowing illegal copies to circulate, too.

At the Mutual Fund Bank 2: Management's Revenge is not an intricate, emotional journey, unlike Pauvremousse's original.

This is bureauhorror B-movie stuff at its worst.

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The movie starts with a fight breaking out in the mutual fund bank between an auditor and a financial analyst. The auditor doesn't know how to spell "GIC", so he insists the analyst stop serving the suffering upper middle class guests at the door. The analyst gets angry and throws a sharp derivative at the auditor, piercing him in the chest. At this point, as in any bureauhorror movie, the buckets of red tape start flying everywhere.

Meanwhile, the upper middle class guests start kicking the door and moaning like zombies, "We want our GICs!" They start clawing at the glass, and one of them runs off, shouting "I'm going to bring back my golden parachute, then we'll show these mutual fund bastards!"

Back in the mutual fund kitchen, the trainee financial analyst has stapled his fingers together while trying to prepare a GIC for the impatient guests. He's now trying to saw off his useless fingers with an A stage fundrazor, while the senior analyst is holding the auditor's head in a jug filled with powdered instance equity.

The guest with the golden parachute returns, lugging gold cords and a gold plated parachute. She whirls the heavy parachute above her head like a lasso, then hurls it through the plate glass window of the mutual fund bank. The zombie upper class managers pour into the mutual fund bank, tearing everything apart, and eating the brains of all the workers inside.

I'm not a bueauhorror fan myself, but this was truly offal. I feel like my soul died when one of the zombie managers ripped the head off a junior analyst, sniffed the gore, and said "This insurance smells funny."

Do not see this movie. It will shorten your lifespan by nearly 90 excruciating minutes, and make you a worse person.

Fork in the Road's family physician, Anne Greewichuk, has proposed a radical approach to halting the scabies outbreak.

In an open letter to the Fork in the Road Enemapidemiology Department, Dr. Greewichuk writes:

Dr. Greewichuk's advice contradicts that of Dr. Mungbean Goernhoofer in nearby Yurp, who told the citizens in that city: "I propose immunization to scabies through mastication on the thalamus."

Bloody Stupid Johnson, the Mayor of Yurp, has been undergoing this treatment since Friday. It is unclear whether he will survive.

When we called her at home on Wednesday, Dr. Greewichuk disagreed with her medical colleague in Yurp. "Curtailing scabies has come a long way since the 1870s. Cannibalism works, but we have better technologies and techniques today."

Grade school students of Fork in the Road Private Academy, currently closed due to the scabies outbreak, took to the sidewalks around town to echo Dr. Greewichuk's advice, writing "Sit the blazes down!" everywhere in chalk.

Supremist Greewichuk, Dr. Greewichuk's eldest daughter, provided her young peers with chalk and bug spray.

This year's Irrational Number Prize in Mathematics has been awarded to Ubertink Dweebat, the mathematics teacher at Fork in the Road Private Academy.

"For his tireless work proving that existence does not conform to the rigid and true rules of mathematics, this year's award honours the legacy of a man who has relentlessly pursued the greater truth in numbers and abstruse equations over the hum drum realities of life."

Ubertink Dweebat is most famously known for his Proof That You Are Not Here.

Mr. Dweebat's phone was out of existence, but we managed to reach his daughter, Zing, who studies Chemistry and Ultimate Frisbee at the University of Zitzengunsten.

"Oh," she said, "That's great. I guess."

Mr. Ubertink Dweebat's daughter Zing is no slouch at mathematics, herself. Last month, she solved the relativistic field equation for optimally catching a frisbee while stoned out of one's mind.

My wife was on my case about being tense and irritable all the time. What does she expect? I'm married to a shrew. So I looked for a meditation app, and I found the perfect one for me.

Buy Something Before Bedtime is a simple, easy-to-use meditation app that guides you through not just zoning out like some hippie moron doing yoga and sipping Tepidly Tea or whatever it is those kale-sucking dreadlock guys drink for fun, but also becoming a better consumer.

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When you first sign up for the app, it asks you for your social insurance number, date of birth, next of kin, login ID and password to your online banking, license plate number, driver's license number, a scan of your handwritten signature, the fingerprint of your right index finger, a retina scan from each eye, and a nasal swab, oh, and also what your opinion is of Cambridge Analytica.

Once you're past the minimal information gathering screens, it's right down to business. You put on headphones so you can listen to ads while the speaker on your phone drones on about hippie shit, so that your wife thinks you're into this meditation garbage. Meanwhile you're ordering a new compressor off Rebay, and having it sent to the office so she'll never find out about it.

The ads are great. I especially love the ones about toasters. There's a new type of toaster called a Swedish rye biscotti toaster that I really want to get, but it's not available yet at Best Yellow electronics.

This app is perfect. Download it, it's free!

Senita Waddlebum, last year's reigning champion at the annual Fat Middle Aged Boredom Olympics, again won all of the Skiing With Only Poles events, bringing home three gold foil-wrapped truffles.

A near miss during the Slalom event, when she stopped in at Donut Disturb on Strip Mall Avenue for a box of Boston creams and a latte, but then had to use the facilities just before the finish line, and accidentally got one of her poles stuck in the paper towel dispenser, had spectators wondering whether she would be able to hold on to the grand prize.

But in a spectacular finish, Waddlebum managed to free the stuck pole with a can of WD-40[tm] she had in her purse.

"I carry it with me everywhere I go," she explained. "Just in case of scabies."

Senita Waddlebum came first overall, with three gold foil truffles. "Big" Ben Blanding, who was expected to win silver, stayed home with an Achilles problem and ate chips instead.

It is uncertain whether the Intercity Olympic Cartel will proceed with next year's Fat Middle Aged Boredom Olympics, given the scabies outbreak at the Fork in the Road Chess Tourney. The organizers are expected to make a decision within a week or 52.

This month's fashion exhibit went ahead more or less as planned last Thursday, except that it was virtual this month.

Designers from Fork in the Road, Zitzengunsten and Yurp brought their latest creations to the virtual runway on www.footoob.forkintheroad.ca.

Fork in the Road's designer Mary Piddle introduced a line of jackets shaped like kites that she titled "Eraritjaritjaka 1".

But it was Bluetooth Zippers Qulity Jeans and Apparel, from neighbouring Zitzengunsten, who brought down the house with their socially conscious, avant garde T-shirts, "Draw a Line Through the Squiggly Thing."

"I was going for something edgy and modern," explained designer Francois Beige. "Something a la mode but that's never been done before. A T-shirt. Worn by a scrawny white chick who looks like she eats nothing other than alfalfa and hasn't seen sunshine since she was locked in the changeroom 18 years ago. Maybe 17, voyeurism with minors is OK in fashion. And a vapid looking young man with no ass, a ton of grease making his hair stand up at the front, and stubble on his cheeks."

Bluetooth Zippers not only achieved, but far surpassed expectations, creating a work of art that is a la mode but has never been done before.

Bluetooth Zippers Qulity Jeans and Apparel can be found at the Teenage Trends Shop down on Strip Mall Avenue. Their "Draw a Line Through the Squiggly Thing" T-shirts will be ready for purchase later this week. You can follow their underage scrawny white chick models at www.bluetoothzippers.forkintheroad.ca.

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Erogan Stink has unveiled yet another of his crazy left-wing inventions.

The Irrefutable Tautology Engine is a new drive for vehicles to lower their emissions. It is powered by the same "hypothesis...see I told you so" technology that has fueled social media, and gossip, in the centuries before the internet was invented, since the dawn of time.

By cleverly posing a hypothesis that means nothing, yet produces "See I told you so" under all outcomes, the Irrefutable Tautology Engine achieves perpetual motion with very little fuel consumption.

Critics warn that copious quantities of smug are produced by irrefutable tautologies -- as much as ten times the output from an average billionaire's mouth.

"Don't worry," said Stink, according to an inside source, "We've got a button for that, and nobody will ever find out about it." According to the insider, he winked and elbowed the insider in the ribs. "Please don't put that last bit in your newspaper, or he'll know it was me!"

In a video presentation to investors, Erogan Stink claimed that he will be producing 400,000 of these engines per year by the end of next week.

When asked if the scabies outbreak mightn't slow him down a tad, Stink scoffed and said "I'm a billionaire. People dying doesn't affect people like me."

Default Motors will be releasing the first SUVs and pickup trucks powered by the Irrefutable Tautology Engine Wednesday week.

For more information on the history of irrefutable tautologies on the internet, do a search for "this is what flattening the curve looks like".