Disturbing reports have been reaching my bronze ear-horn over the past few weeks concerning the goings-on at the many Eastern sea-board offices of The Onion news-paper. Evidently, if accounts from my disgustingly subservient dogsbodies in management are to be believed, the constant rustle of news-print and scratch of fountain-pen nibs has been punctuated by the murmur of pleasant conversation and, in many cases, outright laughter among staffers.

I was roused from an unusually restful sleep yesterday for reasons utterly alien to a news-paper publisher: a meeting with the normally biddable and pliant Onion Board of Directors and, more unusual even than that, with the burgeoning horde of misc...

When the Onion's groveling, sniveling Board of Directors approached me with the idea of hiring someone to act as supreme imperator of all advertising-related matters, I was so shocked and enraged by their presumption that a fulminating cascade of bilious ...

By any civilized measure, this should be a golden age for America. My editors inform me that the gap between rich and poor is the greatest in history, which is a comfort, as I wish the coal-smudged wretches as far from me as possible.

The insufferable downy-cheeked technocrats in my employ at the Onion News Net-Work have informed me that, due to some folderol about worm-holes aboard fantastical ships that ply the very oceans of the sky, my news organization can now see the future!

As the longtime publisher of this news-paper, it is my duty and unrestrained pleasure to announce to you spittle-soaked readers that I have sold...

My lackeys inform me that it is almost time to appoint a new President, and therefore time for the suet-brained populace of this...

I have been informed that winter has been upon us for a good month now. It is during this long season that my thoughts invariably turn to my...

There is nothing I desire more than for dear, sweet Death to draw its soft shroud around me and usher me from this mortal coil. But after 132 years, my prayers have still not been answered, so every now and again I attempt to bring about my yearned-for demise myself.

Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Standish and I are currently hurtling away from the Earth in a giant metal rocket-ship. It turns out that the obelisk in which we were hiding as the murderous Society Of 800 Avenging Fists attacked my poor son N. Aeschylus was not an immobile object at all, but a powerful mortar-shell timed to automatically propel it-self from the Earth's grip.

Well, I must say, this is a surprise! My darling son N. Aeschylus has gently lifted me out of my death-bed and is carrying me down-stairs and across the main foyer. This is the season of the Yule-tide, is it not? Perhaps he is taking me to the parlor so that we may open our gifts. I do hope I finally got the shawl I always ask for but never seem to get...

Huzzah and greetings to the fine Onion reader-ship! All is well with you, I hope! You have a crust to gnaw upon and whale-oil aplenty, I trust? No more boils than usual? Excellent! Now, be not misled by my unaccustomed cheer. My concern for your welfare is genuine, I assure you, for everything is splendid to-day.

Hi, everybody! I'm T. Herman Zweibel! I'm old and stupid! I wet myself a lot! I live in a big, stupid mansion! Listen to me talk about a lot of old stuff! I think it's actually 1907! Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!

Several months ago, I informed The Onion's Middle-western readers of their impending sale as part of an offering of this news-paper's mid-continental distribution district. This transaction was conceived as a way to shore-up the paper's dwindling cash reserves. I still believe my asking price of $20 million and the marriage-hand of Lillian Gish was more than fair, but to date I have received no letters of inquiry. God damn my fellow plutocrats for the weak-willed, lily-livered cheap-skates they are!

With the feast of the Thanks-giving nigh upon us, I thought it only proper that I graciously liberate a number of individuals currently chained in my estate's dungeon. Those who have earned pardons this year are:

As the publisher of the greatest news-paper the Republic has ever seen, I have not had a peace-ful existence. My thousand daily cares are like great chains of iron on my spirit, and my soul shrivels inside me as if weeping heart's-blood from a thousand cuts. And being an ulcerated, leprous 132-year-old man with cast-iron dentures and prosthetic ears doesn't help one God-damned bit.

Yesterday in my bed-chamber, Nurse Pin-head opened the glass-doors to my private balcony to release the fetid cloud of odors, miasmas, and sour regrets which had built up over the past several weeks. But as soon as this poisonous atmosphere was expelled, my bed-chamber became contaminated with the cacophony of the out-side world. I could hear the milk-maids' buckets clatter, the cows lowing in the dell, and the indentured servant boy's tortured cries as he was being flogged. But punctuating this din was a sort of inane chattering, occasionally interrupted by a shrill cackle.

Among the mewling, puking horde of bottle-babies that is The Onion's reader-ship, there have always been those who seek to tell me how to run my business. Indeed, hardly a week goes by in which this strident minority of harpies are not complaining about my use of lead-based inks, the occasional tooth which has been pressed into the financial section, or The Onion's continued silence on the prison-reform issue.

I'm sick and tired of ghosts visiting my bed-chamber. At first, I admit, it was terrifying. Then, it became endearing. But now, it is down-right tire-some.

Like many successful and wealthy plutocrats, I am often asked by one or another of you god-damned sheep exactly what it is to which I credit my good fortune. My reply, which I give unhesitatingly, is always the same: Do you call being a wheelchair-bound, half-withered, leprotic corpse-man, whose great iron-lung pumps him like a steam-calliope day in and day out, "good fortune"? You are an envious pack of wheedling, braying jack-asses!