April 23

April 23. Facebook Friends, The Jourmudgeon’s news update this week has been thrown into a tizz by news of the death of the Prince. People all over the world have responded with sadness, fond recollections and hemorrhaging Facebook posts. Those tributes were tempered by recycled jokes about the size of the Prince’s ears and why he couldn’t be satisfied with a hottie neurotic storybook princess wife, like normal guys. There was also wailing and gnashing of teeth over the cruel timing of his death – near his mother the queen’s 90th birthd – just a moment. The Jourmudgeon has just received an update. Apparently it wasn’t THE Prince who died, but Prince, the iconic musician. Damn. That’s much worse. The Queen is reportedly still bummed that it happened the day after her birthday. For The Jourmudgeon’s Facebook Friends who are young enough to still possess their own hair and teeth, here is why Her Majesty is so torched, or should be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SFNW5F8K9Y
And Her Majesty, by the way, should join The Jourmudgeon in an overdue shout-out to George Harrison. Thank you.
Before the Prince news, as many of you know, The Jourmudgeon was in Florida, and had to rely on Central Florida television for his news. Here, then, are the week’s biggest other stories, judging by the airtime and prominence they were accorded by Orlando TV stations:
1. A couple of hundred miles from Central Florida, a rare tiger decided that “The Revenant” was such a cool movie that he would go DiCaprio on his zoo keeper. Public relations professionals were hired to explain to the tiger that eating the person who cares most about you is probably not the most effective survival strategy for an endangered species. News anchors expressed their heartfelt grief to the family of the victim that there was apparently no video they could show of the fatal attack.
2. TV news anchors similarly reacted with shock and dismay when, even farther from Central Florida, an actual alligator showed up on an actual patch of nature comprising water and sand. Crack television news investigative teams began probing how long alligators have been allowed to live in such iconic environs in the Sunshine State. One alligator who asked not to be identified said that, unlike the tiger, he had gotten fed up with zoo food.
3. Thirteen thousand miles from Central Florida, a chimpanzee escaped from a zoo or something in Japan. It spent a few hours, if you can believe this, swinging from trees, telephone poles and wires and just being generally pissed off at all the attention, especially from guys with microphones, blow-dried hair and perfect tans. Once the chimp was drugged and recaptured, Orlando TV news revisited the story several times a day with compelling updates like, “In Japan, that chimp that ran free for several hours three days ago is still back in his enclosure. And Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.” One enterprising Central Florida station offered the animal a job as executive producer of its newscasts. “We want to go after a slightly more intelligent viewer demographic,” the news director explained.
4. In other animal news, Donald Trump kicked Ted Cruz’ butt in the New York primary. Cruz did, however, manage to secure two delegates from upstate. His campaign’s enthusiasm was tempered when it was discovered that the delegates were actually a couple from Balch Springs, Texas in Niagara Falls for their honeymoon. As attention moved toward the likelihood of a brokered Republican convention, the candidates responded in character. Cruz began bargaining, maneuvering and scheming to secure delegate votes, and Trump whined that any process that doesn’t give him the nomination is rigged. Meanwhile, apparently alarmed by the possibility that the Democrats might win the White House yet again, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton resorted to a Republican-style character-assassination debate in New York guaranteed to further alienate voters who might be expected to vote for either.
5. Six people were wounded in a wild shootout in the heart of a big housing complex in Orlando. But, shootings being far more common in Central Florida than alligators or rogue chimpanzees – particularly when the rogue chimpanzees are 13,000 miles away – TV news kept the story buried, and prayed instead for shootouts between chimpanzees.
6. It was revealed that the nation’s suicide rate increased by 24 percent in the past 15 years, and is up by nearly two-thirds among middle-aged women. Experts attributed the spike to the 2016 presidential campaign and people having to watch TV news in Central Florida.
7. Volkswagen reached a settlement with the government over the company’s cooking the books on pollution tests. The company will buy back hundreds of thousands of its diesel cars and give everybody the Hondas that VW executives drive.
8. Finally, the Treasury Department announced that it would replace former President Andrew Jackson, a slave owner, with abolitionist, suffragist and former slave Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. The change will not take place until 2020 or so, when the bill will probably be worth less than it is today. Officials said the delay is intended to honor the nation’s long history regarding the perceived worth of men and women and white people and African Americans.