Just when we thought life couldn't get any more bleak and lonely, with all the friendly far awayancing to draw a line through the squiggly thing, and sitting down in fear that our vaginas will spontaneously combust, the unimaginable has happened.

The worst disaster this city has ever known rocked Fork in the Road Saturday night.

In the middle of the night, the Fork in the Road Militia brought a secret delivery of emergency bug spray to this town.

Under cover of night, and with all of its lights and signals turned off to avoid detection by bug spray bandits, the Fork in the Road Militia truck hauled a tank filled with 8.7 million litres of emergency bug spray to the centre of town.

As it came around the corner of Erewhon Road onto Strip Mall Avenue, the dark truck was T-boned by a tow truck hauling a Model π to the scrapyard.

The Emergency Bug Spray Holding Tank exploded on impact, sending melted, flaming plastic ripping through the town, flattening houses in the shockwave, and creating the Bug Spray Tsunami.

As 12,000 tons of bug spray coursed through the city for the next 13 hours, slapping back and forth against the outer gates like a wave in a bath tub travelling from one end to the other and back again, more houses and office buildings were destroyed, and nearly two dozen died, with a further 150 citizens injured.

Fork in the Road Police followed the Bug Spray Tsunami back and forth all night, shooting at it and occasionally at each other, too, before coaxing it into Effluenna River Sunday morning.

Sympathy cards have been flowing in from neighbouring Zitzengunsten. Bloody Stupid Johnson, Mayor of Yurp, who is recovering at his ten million dollar country home outside that city after becoming really super itchy from scabies, sent a bouquet of flowers that was stopped at the border to Fork in the Road and composted in case it carried scabies mites.

Inside this city, it was clear to everyone who had an accepting, tolerant frame of mind that Fork in the Road had done everything in its power to save its own citizens. "We shot a lot of bullets at that Tsunami!" said Superintendent Skinny Pleather. "And we sent, like, 2 or 3 Tweets [tm] suggesting that people consider, you know, not going out, because there was, like, bug spray, and stuff."

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When asked if the Fork in the Road Police had followed their own processes and executed a careful plan to contain the Bug Spray Tsunami, Superintendent Pleather responded, "Of course! We are the Police. We are every bit as prepared for disaster as anybody in this town."

However, Andy Stablusman registered a complaint with the city for not using the Great Big Arooga Horn at the top of City Hall to warn citizens.

"We have this great big thing that can be used to warn people when they are in danger," said Stablusman. "Why don't we use it when there's a real emergency?"

At current count, there are 23 dead from the Bug Spray Explosion.

That is significantly more than the number of people in this town who have died from scabies. Fortunately the news and social media continue to be filled with stories of heroism, demonstrated by those who go to work in grocery stores and gynecologuy clinics, and Big Brother rage, screaming on the internet about people who don't sit the blazes down.

We, the Editors of this qulity newspaper, are glad to see that this tragic disaster has not swayed people from their mindless herd pursuits.

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With the senseless destruction of the Fork in the Road Emergency Bug Spray Holding Tank, Mayor S. Perkele has ordered the immediate cessation of all alcohol sales in the city.

"Effective immediately," Mayor Perkele told reporters at a virtual press conference on Monday afternoon, "All alcohol in Fork in the Road will be diverted to spraying scabies victims and putting out fires in patients' vaginas."

Local businesses such as Weak's Brewery and Green-Eyed Monster Drinks Distillery will ramp up production of bug spray using their facilities.

When asked where the bug spray would be held, now that the Emergency Bug Spray Holding Tank has been destroyed, Mayor Perkele explained that the liquor store would be cleared out to make room for the bug spray, while its current inventory would be moved into the Mayor's basement. "It's a sacrifice I am happy to make for the people of my town," the Mayor added.

For the first time ever, the price of dopamine dipped below zero. A barrel of crude tyrosine was selling for -6 emojis on Thursday.

As the scabies menace grows each day, and now the Bug Spray Explosion has us all quaking in our shoes every moment, so that we call the cops any time we hear a loud bang or see someone buying a BB gun at Fork in the Road Tire, social media and smart phone apps have created an overabundance of click-tap-poke-induced dopamine, causing the market to plummet.

Neurologist Brian Klott says that the effects of negative-priced dopamine could be worse than people just banging away at their screens all day until they shit their pants and starve to death, like drug-addled lab rats.

"Sites have been stockpiling dopamine for years," explained Dr. Klott. "There is now way more capacity than demand. It's leaking into the ground, and getting into the drinking water."

There have been reports from Fork in the Road citizens who live in the Gulp Islands that there are more stupid cat memes floating downstream than ever.

Scientists are concerned the fish in Effluenna River will be bombarded with Likes and Hahas until their tuberoinfundibular pathways fill up and they begin lactating enough to enter Women's events at the Boredom Olympics.

Mayor S. Perkele pleaded with the citizens of Fork in the Road to consume more and raise the prices of dopamine.

"Instead of cutting back on binging on useless shit that hurts us all and helps nobody, let's all be strong together, and bring this city full circle, back to the way things were before."

Experts agree that the best way to make dopamine cost positive emojis again is to spend billions of dollars of public money fixing the privately-owned leaky sites, and also end the scabies lockdown.

When asked when the Chess Lockdown would end, Mayor Perkele said that he received a daily report from the Chess Master Officiator with lots of impressive-looking numbers, "But I was never very good at math, so planning is pointless."

Fork in the Road's own sympathy card company, Unhelpful Platitudes, has seen a sudden spike in online orders this week.

"We're working the printing press 24/7," said Bill Shuttle, owner and assembly line manager of Unhelpful Platitudes.

The company's website indicates that several of its lines of cards are sold out, and back-ordered for weeks.

"We're pumping out 'Glad You're Not Dead', 'Keep Strong Bla Bla Bla', and 'Our Empty Soulless Hearts Are With You, Does That Make Things Better For You?' cards as quickly as we get stock," Shuttle continued. "We're doing everything we can to meet demand."

Local mega-online-warehouse company Tunazon has dipped its gangrenous toe in the card market waters, too.

"We're looking to disrupt the sympathy cards industry," said Disruption Man, owner of Tunazon. "We've detected a trend among all you consumer morons that you hate reading but you love to excrete your own empty words to share with the whole world. So we've launched Come Up With Your Own Rubbish Sympathy Cards."

Come Up With Your Own Rubbish Sympathy Cards [tm], by Tunazon, allow you to make up your own platitudes, or repeat the overused platitudes of others who feel the need to express nothing at all in the most sympathetic manner possible.

"We've seen some real inspired messages," said Emotia Bighmore, who works on the assembly line at the Tunazon cards plant. "Like, look at this one: 'It is what it is.' Or how about this one: 'Condolences.' Wow, that's deep. Or, oh my goodness, this one is bringing a tear to my eye, it's so heartfelt and original: 'Thoughts and Prayers.'" Ms. Bighmore began weeping, so we gave up on that interview.

Meanwhile, back at Unhelpful Platitudes, Bill Shuttle is designing new creations to take advantage of everyone's dry outpourings and mindless herd fear: a flag that can be hung in a window, bearing a map of Fork in the Road, a broken heart, and the words: "Too bad you got scabies and your vagina is on fire, guess you should've sat the blazes down, eh? Draw a line through the squiggly thing. Stronger together."

Shuttle said, "This one ticks all the boxes. We're really hoping it gives people who would try to make the psychologically volatile feel bad, and step on the already-downtrodden while carrying groceries back to their Porsches, we really hope it gives them something to consume that will show the world how much they care, how committed they are to self-discipline during this crisis, how much support and love they are willing to send to their fellow human beings."

Ubertink Dweebat, who won the Irrational Number Prize in Mathematics last week, spent his prize money constructing an enormous tower in his front yard, with a bird feeder at the top to attract Berkeley Cardinals.

Mr. Dweebat, the maths teacher at Fork in the Road Private Academy, said: "Now that I've achieved a modicum of respect, after working so hard all these years to demonstrate to the nay-sayers that reality is numerically fallacious, I'm going to start treating everybody with contempt, because I no longer need to struggle or work hard, and condescension is becoming of a man of my stature."

Mr. Dweebat has a group of Tarski Monsters that he walks every day. He has trained them to poop on the rose bushes at the house of Ahmooda Bahleefir, a fellow teacher at Fork in the Road Private Academy, to demonstrate that things which do not exist are more real, and smellier, than things which do.

Mr. Dweebat's current research revolves around f () the Ineffable Function.

The tower in front of Mr. Dweebat's house is three hundred metres high, and has attracted a great deal of pigeon excrement, but has so far not lured any Berkely Cardinals.

"They'll be here, you'll see," said Mr. Dweebat. "I just haven't yet built the tower high enough. I'll double its height, then you'll see."

Conspiracy theorists on the internet worried that Mr. Dweebat's tower would cause a great sucking wound to open up in the earth, consuming the universe and ending all internet conspiracies.

"We will not be silenced," the conspiracy website, www.conspiracy.forkintheroad.ca, declared, before the Bug Spray Tsunami wiped out all telecommunications infrastructure in town.

Fortunately Mr. Dweebat used imaginary numbers to construct his tower, so the Bug Spray Tsunami left it relatively unscathed.

A team at the top secret military medical research lab just outside Zitzengunsten announced on Twitter yesterday that they may have found an effective cure for scabies.

"By drawing a sample of this specimen into an eye dropper," the Twitter post explained, "TBC", "And inserting it into the nostril of the scabies-infected patient TBC", "We find that 73% of scabies-infested patients TBC", "no longer have scabies TBC", "within 11 to 14 days. TBC"

After 300 pages of anti-vaxer comments declaring the research a hoax, the team continued: "We call this new cure for scabies SARS-CoV-2."

The team said that the novel scabies treatment is most effective in people who have their own ventilators and can afford their own intensive care units, both at home and on their yachts.

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Senita Waddlebum, who last week won three gold foil truffles at the Fat Middle-Aged Boredom Olympics, was stripped of her championship this week.

Ms. Waddlebum, who competed in the Women's Skiing With Only Poles events, was proven to be a man by the lactation test.

The lactation test works as follows:

1. The teats of the alleged female athlete are attached to rubber- or silicone-lined steel cups.
2. The pulsator valve, connected to the vacuum pump, creates a pulsing vacuum at the rate of 60 sucks per second.
3. The alleged female athlete's milk is pulled through the hoses, out through the claw, into the test tube.
4. When the alleged female athlete's udder is empty, the lactation test automagically stops.
5. The alleged female athlete's teats are dipped in iodine.

If, at any point in the testing process, the alleged female athlete says, "Fuck off, no way am I attaching that thing to my tits," then she is deemed to be a man by the Intercity Olympic Cartel.

Ms. Waddlebum refused to be treated like a penned cow, so she is clearly a man.

Ms. Waddlebum also failed the new, experimental scabies test, expected to be used as definitive proof of womanhood at next year's Boredom Olympics: when exposed to scabies mites, her vagina did not immediately burst into flames.

Also the 16 gauge aluminum pole with a camera on the end that was inserted up through her rectum to search for a beating heart to determine whether or not she is human found two hearts.

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Since Ms. Waddlebum is clearly not even a human being, she was disqualified from competing in Women's events at the Boredom Olympics.

When asked what tests are conducted to determine manhood for those who compete in the Men's events at the Boredom Olympics, the Intercity Olympics Cartel responded: "Why would anyone want to test for that?"

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Sadly, Mrs. Paurvrella Meilleurvie died peacefully in her bed Sunday morning, crushed between the cheap thin walls and choking to death on bug spray, as the Bug Spray Tsunami obliterated Strapped to Their Beds and Never Coming Out Continuing Care Home.

Mrs. Meilleurvie was just the latest statistic in this city who died of causes completely unrelated to the scabies outbreak at the Intercity Chess Tournament in neighbouring Zitzengunsten.

Mrs. Meilleurvie is survived by her children, Mrs. Heart Klott and Mr. Dystrophic Meilleurvie, and by her friend Slurpee Gupta, who worked part-time at the Continuing Care facility while she was enrolled in the Masturclass in Pretentious Poetry.

Mrs. Meilleurvie was dearly loved by all her family and those who knew her.

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Her funeral was on Tuesday. Everybody forgot about it because the latest episode of Zombies and Thrones aired at the same time, except for Slurpee Gupta, whose abusive husband won't let her have a TV.

Because nobody named in the will showed up, Mayor S. Perkele, the executor of Mrs. Meilleurvie's estate, decided to keep all the money for himself. "I'm moving to Alberta until this all blows over. When everyone forgets that I still owe the family money, I'll move back and become Mayor of this town of suckers again."

Mayor Perkele moved back from Alberta Tuesday evening, after the pilot for the reboot of Golden Girls, set in California and starring three bikini-clad busty twenty-year-olds, had finished.

"It's good to be back," said Mayor Perkele. "And it's even better that everyone in this town has the memory of a June bug."

Mrs. Meilleurvie did leave a substantial sum of money to her friend Slurpee Gupta. Slurpee was there in person, after the Tsunami had abated and Mrs. Meilleurvie was gasping her final breaths. So she actually received her bagful of mint condition 1930s coins.

"Grafter! Thief!" cried Mrs. Heart Klott, daughter of Mrs. Meilleurvie, when she found out. She lost her train of thought quickly, though, when the commercial break ended.

"I'm trying to decide what to do with it," said Mrs. Gupta. "I thought originally about donating the money to a women's shelter or a poetry masturclass. But then I thought: What would Mrs. Meilleurvie have wanted?"

We informed Mrs. Gupta that Mrs. Meilleurvie was an advocate of qulity journalism, and she loved newspapers. But Mrs. Gupta refused to hand me the bag of coins. Bitch.

"I'll think of something," said Mrs. Gupta. "Something for Mrs. Meilleurvie."

You can order a card from Unhelpful Platitudes and send it to Mrs. Meilleurvie's family at:

www.unhelpfulplatitudes.forkintheroad.ca/meilleurvie/

The former Dark Sun Society's clubhouse was destroyed in the Bug Spray Tsunami on the weekend, spokesperon Jurgen Folknos-Watt said.

"But there's light at the end of the tunnel," he continued. "We have secured a new clubhouse, down on English Muffin Avenue. And there's more: we have a new name."

Folknos-Watt said the Society has renamed itself to the Dark And Flat Terra Society, after a protracted legal battle with Oracle [tm] over the use of the word "Sun" in its title, and over the distribution of free black-or-white coffee from Indonesia at its monthly meetings.

The Dark And Flat Terran Society was formed on the principle that there is no light in the universe. "Light has been proven to be a hoax," the FAQ on its website reads. "You can tell by watching the footage of the moon landing on VHS and slowing down the tape heads reeeeeeeally reeeeeeeeeally slow and getting fucking bombed on acid. You'll see the individual light particles, and they're moving at a speed that contradicts Einstein's special theory of relativity."

The Dark And Flat Terran Society sign went up yesterday, at the house nestled between the Mormon Scientology Daycare and the Fork in the Road Private Academy high school.

When asked what she thought of the Society setting up its clubhouse right next to her science classroom, Ahmooda Bahleefir replied: "As Fitrians, we must crush these types of hoax science out of existence. Their dogmas, their adherents' refusals to think critically, are impeding real, productive progress toward a better understanding of the universe we live in."

Ms. Bahleefir's most recent book, Dark Fluid: Another Desperate Attempt to Justify Lambda , describes in layman's terms why we are incapable of seeing or measuring 95% of the universe around us.

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On Thursday, David David David Jr. saw Andy Stablusman in Fork in the Road Park, allegedly handing a loaf of bread to a homeless man.

The homeless man allegedly lives in a tree house he allegedly built out of the kites in the Great String Entanglement in the red alder tree. Nobody has been able to figure out who he is. Some people think he might be an alleged illegal immigrant from Zitzengunsten, who snuck over on an illegal ferry. Allegedly.

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But we all know who Andy Stablusmam is.

"I couldn't believe it," said David. "Here we are, all trying to draw a line through the squiggly thing and keep our daughters and sisters and moms absolutely 100% safe from exploding vaginas or anything else that's bad, ever, and here's this guy in Fork in the Road Park -- where he's not supposed to be! Haven't you heard of friendly far awayancing, man? -- he's there giving a whole loaf of bread to this shaggy looking dude who shouldn't be there either. So I says to myself, I have to be a hero. I have to Do Something. Doing Something is always better than Leaving Well Enough Alone. Doing Something is being heroic. If everybody steps up and Does Something, we'll all bludgeon each other to death in no time for thought crimes and misdemeanours. So I says to myself, I must Do Something. So I did."

Like a hero, David David David, Jr. tackled Andy Stablusman to the ground and began pummelling him in the head.

Passers-by noticed, and joined the fray.

Soon, pretty much the whole town was up in arms at the nerve this Andy guy allegedly showed by allegedly breaking The Rules. After about forty people had heaped on top of Andy in Fork in the Road Park, all trying to tear away his flesh because he allegedly refuses to friendly far awayance and allegedly has no god and no soul and allegedly has no respect for the status quo, the rest of the town rushed off and burned his house to the ground and peed on the cinders of the alleged criminal's alleged headquarters of alleged illicit and seditious behaviour.

"Justice was served this day," said Mayor S. Perkele, commending the town for taking action. "I'm glad, because we at City Hall would have been too inept to come up with an actual plan, and the Police wouldn't have followed the plan anyway."

Slurpee Gupta, who had been passing by the park, taking her pet black-capped chickadee for a stroll, when the commotion broke out, and composing a poem in her head about the cruelty of humanity and the tendencies of people to replace childish imagination, as they age, with narrow-minded hatred and shrinkwrapped products to make us all stand out among the crowd because my individualism is bigger than your individualism, lamented the incident.

"We're all so keen to be part of an accepting group," Slurpee said. "We want ready-made, easy-to-digest ideas. The ideas themselves don't really matter, as long as we cling to them, and have unshakable support from our peers and fellow clingers, and bla bla bla, ..." Slurpee went on and on, we turned off the microphone after a while, because who cares?

Meanwhile, Mayor Perkele said: "What we need is a return to normalcy. Flatten the squiggly thing. Sit the blazes down. Stronger together. And stuff." Amen, Mayor Perkele. Long-windedness and critical thinking are for loosers.

The man who is allegedly known as Andy Stablusman is recuperating in hospital, taking up precious bed space that he should have had the decency to save for our frontline workers whose vaginas might explode at any moment because of the scabies outbreak.

Default Motors released the new Model π Wednesday, sporting Erogan Stink's Irrefutable Tautology Engine for lower emissions.

It's smaller than an SUV, and it doesn't look like a pickup truck, so I'm not sure why anyone would want to drive this thing. As everyone knows, the bigger the vehicle, the safer you are behind the wheel.

I also took one look at the driver's seat and I knew it would bug my knees. Sure enough, my hypochondriaticitic tendon flared up as soon as I willed it to.

It would be nice to stop the environment, and save the planet, and all that. But not at the cost of consuming the same shit we did last year.

Also it beeps! Who wants a vehicle that beeps?

After 2 minutes of driving this turd around town, I got sick of the beeping. So I abandoned the vehicle at the side of the road on Strip Mall Avenue, in the hopes that some Irish teenagers might discover it and light it on fire.

I was so happy to return home and accidentally set off both the SUV alarm and the house alarm at once when I accidentally sat on my keys.

Stick to what you know. Don't change.

According to the scientific journal Quack, tonic water has been 100% proven to be effective in the treatment of scabies itching or vaginal inferno.

Zing Dweebat, who studies Chemistry and Ultimate Frisbee at the University of Zitzengunsten, confirmed the advice of the Quack article.

"Tonic water," Ms. Dweebat explained, "Contains quinine."

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When asked if quinine has been tested against scabies in a laboratory, Ms. Dweebat responded, "Well, no. We prefer a model of science called panlaboratorism. The idea is: spread your hypothesis publicly so that you don't have to spend time and money buying expensive lab rats and testing in an expensive, controlled clinical environment. Then wait to see what happens to the specimens."

In this case, she added, drinking large quantities of tonic water will almost certainly be effective against scabies. "As the Quack article points out, quinine has been used for centuries, and it is very effective at what it does. So drink lots of it, and be safe. And sit the blazes down!"

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