Huntsville, AL – Nelson Mervin of local software firm SoftHere, was excited to learn that his firm had purchased two VOIP Gateways. That was, until he learned that the gateway had absolutely nothing to do with inter-dimensional travel.

“There was like half a second where I thought that my “boss”* Chris, who is really lame and wouldn’t even buy a water cooler when I asked him to, had bought these things that I hadn’t even heard of (which is “unheard of”) that were going to open two holes in the space-time continuum right in the office,” said Mervin, adding that he recalled right away how lame Chris is and wasn’t fooled for any longer than 1/3 of a second.

Mervin went on to say that despite his initial disappointments when he “simply forgot in [his] excitement that a VOIP gateway is really a tool for converting telephony traffic into IP for transmission over a data network” and not a wormhole machine, it really is pretty cool anyway. At this point, his boss Chris popped his head in to the office and told Mervin to “shut up if [he didn’t] want to sound like an asshole in the newspaper.” Mervin set his phaser to stun.

*Here Mervon used “air-quotes”

“Sometimes I think of our little sweetheart like a souvenir,” says Debra Miller, mother of Madison “Treasure Island” Miller. “I brought home a few keychains for my girlfriends, Brad brought home a mug and $4,000 worth of credit card debt, but we both hit the jackpot with our Treasure.”

Many of these children are like Treasure Miller: the start of a new family. Las Vegas is a popular honeymoon destination and these young newlyweds aren’t going to Vegas to lose control and have an affair, they are there simply to enjoy themselves and, as is often the case, start a family. For them, the sleazy setting is actually a smokescreen for something quite wholesome. Some families will only conceive while in Vegas, believing it to be good luck, a lot of fun, or a combination of the two.

“I met a family yesterday with three kids, all Vegas babies,” says Dennis Lopez, a doorman at Terrible’s Casino. “There was the little girl Sahara and her two older brothers Excalibur and Bellagio. I just hope that if their folks are planning to make another one while they’re out here, they’ll figure out a better name than what our hotel has to offer.”

Of course, not all children conceived in Las Vegas are planned. According to a recent study, roughly 80% of pregnancies resulting from a Vegas adventure are “happy surprises”, while 60% of those surprises are the direct result of an affair or one-night stand. Circus Circus Brandeweis comments on what it’s like to grow up with the evidence that you were an accident displayed in your name.

“My sister Meredith and my brother Thom are both over ten years older than me,” says Circus. “It’s always been clear that I wasn’t exactly supposed to have been born. And the kids at school didn’t really get it at first, they just thought my name was funny and made fun of me for that. That went away eventually as everyone got used to it…but when we got a little older, they figured out that my parents had named me after their one night of passion in their golden years so the kids started giving me grief all over again. You don’t really want kids teasing you all the time about your parents having sex and saying these kinds of sweaty, graphic images over the PA and stuff. Your parents’ naked flesh, wrinkles interlocking and sagging as they desperately paw each others’ skin, it’s not something you ever really want to think about. Oh god, I’m thinking about it right now. Oh Jesus…”

The fact that so many Vegas babies are conceived during affairs has led to another interesting development in modern naming practices, in which the name of a child is based on the context of its conception. This happens very often in other places around the world where it is normal for a child to be named after the situation surrounding its birth. For example, if a woman is pregnant, but doesn’t tell her family right away, the child might be named “Answer” as in the answer to the question: Is my daughter pregnant? Here in America, that style of naming has led to children such as Never Trust a Woman Johnson, the son of a man who was robbed of his testicles by cancer and therefore could not have conceived the child born nine months after his vacation to Vegas with his wife.

One particularly complex case concerns Wyett Davis and his wife Shawna. The couple went to Las Vegas together in May 2007 and decided to attend an orgy, as well as pursue an open relationship for the duration of their time in Vegas. When Shawna became pregnant with triplets, they decided to name the children Swinger, Who Knows and Why Not?, respectively.

The trend of naming children after the hotel or circumstance they were born in has forced orphanages and civil services to rethink the rules allowing them judgment over a child’s name.

“With all these silly names popping up everywhere, we’ve had to allow more room for changing kid’s names than we would like,” says Paolo Nunez, an administrator at St. Augustine Children’s Center, an orphanage with an inordinate amount of Vegas “babies.” “We want to respect people’s choices, but these parents are obviously being completely irresponsible and we need to preempt any further damage they could inflict on their children by naming them something stupid. It’s a big problem, yes, and the solution doesn’t lie here with us. Something needs to be done to stop people from drunkenly sleeping with strangers and then thinking it’s hilarious to name their unwanted child after their night of folly.”

“Phil has always loved to adventure,” says Nancy Herrigan, an old high school comrade of Mr. Collins. “I totally believe that he went to Alaska and loved every minute of seeing those polar bears. I’ll bet he saw a ton of them, he’s always had really good eyesight. We used to be pretty close.”

The tour that Ms. Herrington says Mr. Collins took starts 30 km outside of the tundra, here in Churchill. For $8,500 the would-be adventurers all pile into a “tundra buggy” – an over-sized jeep of sorts raised up on thick tires – and freeze their way out to the middle of a large ice expanse in the hopes of seeing a polar bear. Many people never do, but most swear that they did and there are photos for sale in the gift shop that look like the shitty snapshots a tourist might take, some complete with the date stamp in the corner, just in case there are skeptical friends back home that need to be lied to.

According to Ms. Herrigan, Mr. Collins “definitely saw three bears” and his trip was “definitely inspired by his love of modern art.” “Phil’s the one who turned me on to stuff like that one blank canvas that’s white on white or whatever. He loved subtle variation, probably because he’s this sensitive artist and everything, so I’m completely positive that he wanted to see the polar bears for the aesthetic beauty of a white bear on a white ice block. Positive.”

Ms. Herrigan says that while she hasn’t actually seen Phil Collins since the year after high school, they have “absolutely talked every day for the past 5 years.” The pair, once inseparable for the entire duration of a project they were assigned to do together, reunited after Ms. Herrigan watched the special features of Disney’s Tarzan. She saw Mr. Collins speaking about the role his groundbreaking music had in crafting the magic seen throughout the film and remembered that she knew Mr. Collins from high school. When she got in touch with him, Mr. Collins was eager to pick up their friendship through correspondence. Although Mr. Collins declined to comment for this article, Ms. Herrington says that “Phil can just be a pretty private person. I think he likes me because I was someone from back when his life was normal. I wasn’t some insane fan. I mean, I like his music and all, but he admits to me that his genius makes it pretty hard to connect with people who can’t see the real Phil behind the music like I can.”

Ms. Herrington says that if Mr. Collins’ touring and recording schedule can match up with her vacation time next year, the two of them are talking about maybe seeing if it would be feasible to go on a polar bear tour together.

“That’s how much he loved it,” says Herrington. “He’s going to think about possibly doing it again.”

Italy boasts a landscape littered with beautiful villas and, for as long as anyone can remember, these vista-rich villas have been rented out primarily to those that America deems “undesirables,” and whom Italy refers to as “Cousin Vinnie.” Due to their expensive tastes and expensive wallets filled with large amounts of cash, Italian-American drug-lords, mafia-bosses, money-launderers, and all around good-fellas have been the primary proprietors of Italian Villa Rentals.

It used to be that Joe and Jane Q. Public were the sparingly dished out meatballs in the spaghetti of drug lords and mafiosters. Now, the red-checkered tables have turned and Italian Villa Rentals are being snatched up by regular old American tourists looking for a relaxing atmosphere and a tasty calzone. The cause of this switcheroo has been pinpointed to one exact socio-historical moment – the premiere episode, and subsequent popularity of, HBO’s The Sopranos.

The smash hit television series portraying an Italian-American family headed by Mafia boss Tony Soprano successfully painted a kinder, gentler face on the Italian-American “tough guy.” The softening of this image has virtually evaporated any fear or distrust the average whitebread American has towards the mafia and Italians in general. With the rising popularity of the Italian-American in mainstream culture has come the rise of American tourists signing leases, contracts, and agreements on Italian Villa Rentals. Italian Villa Rental Weekly reported in its quarterly report in May a seventeen percent increase in rentals by families, a demographic previously unseen in this community.

Yet another surprising event has transpired amidst the rise the of Italian villa rentals among American HBO-watchers. This is the decline of rentals among actual Italian-American tough guys. These lovable criminals and their mistresses don’t seem to want to spend their vacation days amidst Floridian retirees or Midwest families of five.

So yet again, what drew in the mobsters was the glorious Italian countryside, what drew in the wholesome families was the mobsters. And now, what shall the wholesome families draw? Well, if what transpired three years ago in France is any indication, it will be American corporations like Barnes & Noble and Starbucks, then yuppies, then the apocalypse.

NEW YORK, NY – In a tragic episode of miscommunication, local tourist Arthur Marmoset wandered onto the stock trading floor of NASDAQ while on vacation in New York and received what he described as “[very awful] directions.”

Marmoset, 43, is a resident of Penryn, CA. He has been visiting New York for the past two days with his wife Anita and their two children. While the rest of his family expressed very little interest in seeing the financial district of lower Manhattan, Arthur Marmoset, an avid fan of the scrolling stock bar on news programs, decided to spend his morning on Wall Street and meet back with his family either in the late afternoon or early evening.

“I just wanted to see all those guys in suits throwing money back and forth to each other,”a despondent Marmoset told Harry Fartoff, the guy sitting next to him at the bar later that afternoon.

Perpetually lost in any city he has ever been to, Marmoset relied countless times that morning on strangers to point him towards Wall Street and was pleased to find that the stereotype of rude New Yorkers was simply not true. First, he received excellent directions to the elevator in his hotel from a French tourist (breaking yet another stereotype). On the street, he ran into a young couple from Atlanta on their honeymoon, who let him use their map for a moment to determine which subway would be best to take. Upon disembarking at his desired stop, Marmoset borrowed another map from a group of perky retirees touring the city in order to locate Wall Street.

“We were very lost when Arthur came up to us. I thought he was an unusually friendly local who wanted to help us. I had no idea he was lost himself!” Olive Brunwich, 82, said.

“He was quite the wizard with a map,” added her companion, Ruth Worthington, 91, stating that they would never have found the Statue of Liberty without Marmoset’s help. “I would have died an unhappy woman. Now thanks to him, I’m ready to go anytime!”

Once on Wall Street, Marmoset abandoned his tactic of relying on strangers for direction and began to meander slowly, ever so slowly, up the street. A few hours later, he suddenly found himself on the stock trading floor. Disappointed that there was no money being thrown through the air, Marmoset decided to leave. Checking his watch, he realized that with all the time he had spent lost, it was already time to meet his family.

“I was supposed to meet them at McDonald’s, so I shouted out, ‘Hey, does anyone know where McDonalds is at?’” Marmoset told Brian Vonderberg, the third guy to be sucked into hearing his story at the bar. “It was real loud in there,” he continued, “but I heard somebody shout back, ‘It’s up three and a quarter!’ Now I had just seen a map a few hours earlier, mind you, so I knew there was no such street as three and a quarter. And everbody’s shouting different numbers. One guy says, ‘It’s at 43,’ and the next says, ’57.’ There had to be something closer so I said, ‘Hey, isn’t there something closer? The one I’m looking for is supposed to be next to a Staples.’ Some guy shouts back, ‘Staples is down five eights!’ That’s when I knew they were [messing] with me.”

Back on the street, a downtrodden Marmoset, his life-long faith in the inherit decency of direction-giving human beings suddenly shattered, saw no recourse other than to go to the nearest bar and drink away his troubles. He received excellent directions to local bars from several groups of people.

Glen Hunter, 28, a New York native and day trader for a large investment firm, was working on the floor that day and saw Marmoset struggling to get clear directions.

“I have no idea how that asshole could have gotten onto the trading floor asking for directions,” he said. “God I hate tourists, although as every New Yorker knows, it’s a lot of fun to give them terrible directions and totally fuck with them.”

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – Martin Bow, who claims to be the winner of a Sweeties™ cereal box vacation package, was not believed by his coworkers this week when he announced that he would not be coming into work during the last two weeks in May, but would instead be in Miami, enjoying a luxury 2-star hotel and touring Disneyworld.

Early last Monday, after digging through his cereal and finding no toy, Martin hurriedly removed the plastic bag full of cereal and cut open the box. Finding the word ‘winner’ on the inside, Martin was overjoyed. He sent the box-top back to the company and immediately started looking up fun things to do in Miami. But his announcement the next day at work was greeted with outright skepticism.

“He’s always trying to pull this shit,” Gloria Perez, a colleague at the computer software company where Martin works, told reporters. “Last year, only after, like, two months of working here, he came in all excited ‘cause he won a trip to Las Vegas for a week. He even showed us pictures of it, but I know he didn’t go. He just photoshopped himself onto film stills from Fear and Loathing.”

Peter Yoshenko, another colleague, said, “Martin told me he won a radio sweepstakes to fly down to San Diego for a Silverchair concert, but I looked it up and the show never even happened.”

Former girlfriend Mary Hernandez provides further insight into Martin’s strange compulsion: “He once told me his mom won a free trip for two to British Columbia from the top of a can of tuna. I didn’t see him for two weeks and then when he ‘came back,’ he said he had met somebody up there and that we were through. As far as I was concerned, we had been through ever since I saw his mom buying 10 boxes of fruit rollups at the supermarket the week before.”

“He eats a lot of fruit rollups,” she added.

Martin, 26, continues to deny having invented free vacations to avoid work or other responsibilities. He maintains that he did, in fact, win all of the sweepstakes mentioned, just that sometimes the companies sponsoring them didn’t come through in the end and, in an effort to save face, Martin was forced into stretching the truth. He doesn’t cover them all up, however, he is adamant in pointing out.

“Silverchair was rad. Everyone at work was just jealous,” he said.

In an interview with Martin’s parents, his mother was not surprised at her son’s behavior. She blamed her husband for humoring Martin’s strange excuses at an early age.

“I was just so tickled that this little kid would say he couldn’t take a bath because he had to fly to Egypt for a free vacation at what, 9:00 at night?,” Mr. Bow said. “I guess now I see that I may have caused some inadvertant damage, but how could I have known he would keep using that same made-up excuse into early adulthood? What can I do about it at this point?”

Mrs. Bow suggested he could confront Martin about the issue and tell him he would be thrown out of the house if he lied about a vacation again, to which Mr. Bow replied, “Aaaaah,” and threw his hands in a downward motion.

Martin has complete faith that the Sweeties™ corporation will come through and says he is still planning on going on his Miami vacation even if it means quitting his job.

“And even if I don’t end up going, I have a bunch of work to do on my avatar, so it’s not like a total loss,” he said.