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Friday, November 21, 2008—We began this day with fresh stacks of our latest outrage, ready to distribute. Newspapers do not, of course, come “hot” off the press. Slightly warm, perhaps, but not hot. They do have a faint but distinctive scent, though. And we love it. Over the course of the next fortnight, upwards of ten thousand people will read something that hasn’t been screened through a corporate sieve. And that is how we justify to ourselves our continued consumption of oxygen. In keeping with our no-doubt-annoying practice, to celebrate today’s new paper we make available a pdf file of our previous issue (3.0 MB). …

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Portsmouth, November 21, 2008—Until three years ago it looked fairly certain that the U.S. Congress was going to allocate almost $452 million to build two bridges in Alaska. The Gravina Island bridge would be longer than the Golden Gate, taller than the Brooklyn Bridge, and connect the town of Ketchikan (pop. 7,368) and Gravina Island (pop. 50). The Knik Arm Bridge, two miles long, would shorten the commute between Wasilla and Anchorage by one hour. Logic would seem to argue that such a large expenditure for projects which would benefit so few would be hard to justify. But logic had the unenviable task of arguing …

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Wednesday, November 12, 2008—The Nation’s Oldest Newspaper™ extends its bemused congratulations and hearty best wishes to the audacious scamps who have temporarily and harmlessly appropriated the New York Times brand, and used it as a platform on which to indulge in some creative, useful, and reality-based re-interpretation of reality. Talk about poetic justice. With its hidebound and blindered interpretation of reality, the hereditary stewards of the alleged “newspaper of record” have been the prime enablers over the past eight years of the Bush maladministration’s vicious and perverse reign. They may or may not face legal prosecution for violation of trademark rights. This is clearly a …

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Sunday, November 9, 2008—We’re a couple of days late posting this pdf file (3.7 MB) of our Volume 253, No. 2, published on paper here in the 28th most historic place on Earth on October 17. Blame our uppityness—or our sloth—for the delay. You can’t go wrong. This was our final paper before the election. Ordinarily, we would have published a paper on October 31, and then again on November 14. That schedule would have put us on a collision course with Thanksgiving and Christmas, though. We avoided that by putting off our schedule by one week. In this issue, we tried to wrap our …

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Thursday, November 6, 2008—We’re fairly well occupied with putting together tomorrow’s edition of the paper, but we couldn’t resist posting this updated version of There’s No One As Irish as Barack Obama, by Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys, in honor of the occasion: Our thanks go to Bob Vincent for alerting us to this.

Saturday, October 25, 2008—Jack Williams, of Effingham, New Hampshire, demonstrated his wooden common press at Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Friday, October 24, 2008. The demonstration was part of the New Hampshire Writers’ Project’s Portsmouth Literary Festival. Jack built the press himself, from plans drawn by Clinton Sisson, of the Smithsonian Institute. Sisson’s plans were drawn up from careful measurements taken from a press in the Smithsonian’s collection which was once used by Benjamin Franklin. This is a newer video of the press, with higher resolution and additional detail not present in the earlier version. The man in the introductory clip, wearing a …

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