Dear The Onion

SHREVEPORT, LA - "I win every time," the recovering gambling addict said as he deposited yet another one-dollar bill into the change machine. Other patrons at the laundromat, at the corner of Smith and Main Street, aren't as enthused.

"I've been waiting for half an hour," one patron said. "How much laundry does this guy have, anyway?"

The recovering addict, who only answers to 'Lucky Eddie', smelled of liquor and cigarette smoke and did not seem to have a bag of dirty laundry.

It is believed that Lucky Eddie has up to $47.25 in quarters, and counting.

I saw an ad for this site on The Onion and thought it was fake. Apparently it's real! Though still pretty funny, which maybe isn't what they're going for.

WASHINGTON, DC - Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, a former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, has taken his surge at the polls to heart. The now-frontrunner for the Republican nomination is promising a free can of Surge soda for every vote he receives. "America is in trouble," Cain said. "The economy and our spirits need a boost. The refreshing taste of Surge will not only give us tasty refreshment, it'll give us the energy to make this country great again. And, oh yeah, taxes are bad."

Cain said he got the idea for giving away Surge from his days as head of his pizza company. His company would give away a free bottle of soda when customers bought a combination of pizzas. Despite Cain's claims to the contrary, critics believe Cain's 9-9-9 tax policy idea stemmed from his pizza days as well. Godfather's Pizza was known for their 9-9-9 pizza deal: buy any three medium-sized pizzas with any choice of toppings for only nine dollars each, not including tax.

IOWA CITY, IA - Aspiring writer Anton Merkower believes he will write the great American novel by exploring an aspect of society seldom broached. Anton will look at the triality of man, instead of the standard duality of man found in much of literature.

"The whole duality of man thing has been done to death," Anton said. "Good versus evil, sinner versus saint, city mouse versus country mouse. It's time to expand what the story and our imagination can do."

Anton, currently in his second year at the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop, hopes to portray the three sides of man, rather than the basic two. His novel, "Poseidon's Lament", tells the story of three generations of men who each join the armed forces and participate in different wars.

"You've got a grandfather, dad, and son. That's three. And they join the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Another three. That represents the land, sea, and sky, another triad. This also covers America's ascent, dominance, and downfall, which is another triality," Anton said. "I'm telling you, three is going to be hot, hot, hot."

"Anton is a special student," Anton's thesis supervisor Professor Bill Hendricks said. "It's groovy what he's trying to do, you know? It's different. He's thinking outside of the box."

"I'm reinventing the box!" Anton said when he heard his professor's words. "Boxes have six sides, which is three too many. Man has three sides: the outside, the inside, and another inside, not the gross guts one. They're all in conflict."

"There's the beginning, middle, and end. That's the triality of man. I'm hoping to turn my book into a trilogy."

LIBERTYVILLE, IL - Phone company executives around the world acknowledged they are quickly running out of names for their smartphones. Motorola chief technology officer Tony Ja said that the industry is reaching "Peak Name," when all of the cool and plausible phone names will already have been used.

"Inspire, Thunderbolt, Droid, Droid X, Galaxy, Desire," Ja said. "Those are pretty good names. But there's only so many words in the dictionary, and soon we'll have more phones than words."

Companies like HTC, Samsung, and Nokia, among others, release new smartphones constantly. As the technology quickly improves, phones companies must deliver new products to keep up with the times. However, because companies cannot or will not upgrade phone software via updates or downloads, consumers are forced to purchase new hardware. With new phones come new names.

"There are tons of new phones slated to come out," Tim Horowitz of CNET said. "But frankly, they sound kind of lame. 'Meteor,' 'Aurora,' and 'Laser'. Really? 'Laser'?"

Other names of phones include "Horizon," "Nautilus," "Tubular," and "Marconi". There is also the "Flame," "Sonic," "Robin," and "Awesome".

"They're just getting sloppy," Horowitz continued. "I mean, it's like they're picking words at random. I guess they've used up everything good."

"Heck, even the iPhone is just reusing their own name. What's the next one, the iPhone 5? Real original, guys," Horowitz added.

"We believe that tablets are the next big thing," Wallace Stanton, president of HTC America, said. "So we're saving our good names for those. But even then, we're running out of names. We can only go back to the well so many times. And that well is thesaurus.com. It's tough."

Stanton threw up his hands and sighed. "We might as well try and get ahead of the competition and just call ours the 'Best' phone or 'Better' tablet."

QUANTICO, VA - FBI Special Agent Normand Hubert expressed alarm when he realized that Internet searches for Osama bin Laden more than quadrupled earlier today.

"All of a sudden everyone is searching for bin Laden. He's blowing up!" Hubert said. "There's been lots of 'chatter,' that's what we call it. People everywhere are searching for bin Laden, al Qaeda, and 'dead'. It's really unnerving."

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Late last night President Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda and most wanted terrorist in the world, was killed by U.S. military commandos in a daring raid. The news shocked and delighted many, causing Americans to cheer after spending a few seconds remembering who exactly bin Laden was.

The news of bin Laden's death came months before the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Bin Laden was the mastermind of the attacks and was hunted for more than ten years. His death made many Americans feel emotions they had not felt in some time.

"I feel...whoa, I feel awesome," Nancy Potts, a college student celebrating outside the White House said. "All of my adult life was spent living in the shadow of the War on Terror. This guy ruined the last ten years. And now he's dead! So this is what happiness is!"

"I'm partying like it's 2001, or 2002, or 2003—you know, when we actually should have caught and killed him," she added.

"When I first heard the news I had no idea what Obama was talking about," Alan Shapiro, a member of the Brookings Institute who lived in Manhattan during September 11, 2001, said. Shapiro was also outside of the White House, waving an American flag. "My brother called me and said to turn on the news, that we got bin Laden. At first I thought, ‘who?’ Then it sunk in. It took me a while. I mean, I hadn’t thought about that [expletive deleted] in years. I’m glad someone was thinking of him.”

Americans are elated and relieved, feelings many haven’t experienced in years. “This is so exciting,” Jenny Lee, a government worker, said. “We haven’t had good news for a long time. What with the economy and the wars and everything. It’s so strange. I’ll be honest, though, I thought bin Laden was dead. I know I haven’t thought about him for ages, but for some reason it really makes me glad he’s no longer part of this world.”

Some have criticized the celebrations and good feelings, condemning the revelers for their excessive merriment at the violent death of a human. “It’s sick,” Robert Collins, an analyst for Amnesty International, said. “People are cheering and chanting. All because we killed this one guy. Um, who was it again? Who’s dead? Who? Ohhh, yeah. Him. Wow. Actually, that’s pretty great. Look, I’m smiling. Huh.”

OXFORD, ENGLAND - Scholars have made a startling discovery on the eve of William Shakespeare's birthday. According to recently unearthed documents, Shakespeare's genius could be attributed to a feather from a magic goose.

"We believe that William Shakespeare, author of Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, and King Lear, may not be the genius we think he is," Professor Henry Thistlewhittle of Oxford University said. "My team of researchers and I have discovered a manuscript that purports Shakespeare used one quill to write all his plays, the feather of which belonged to a magic goose."

Professor Thistlewhittle had been investigating documents related to Shakespeare's lost play, Love's Labours Won, when he stumbled across a dusty parchment. "It was a fantastic discovery," the professor said. "Here was an intimate history of Shakespeare's life laid out, with one major difference. The author claimed that a magic quill, or more specifically a feather from a magic goose, gave Shakespeare his power."

Shakespeare, considered by many to be the greatest playwright and writer to ever live, has had his share of detractors and conspiracy theorists. Some claim that contemporary playwright Christopher Marlowe or the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, were the true authors of the plays. Others believe Shakespeare was an amalgamation of many different writers. But according to Professor Thistlewhittle, there is a new pretender to Shakespeare’s throne.

“We have to rethink our entire knowledge of The Bard,” the professor said, referring to Shakespeare’s nickname. “And we really have to start learning more about The Bird. Gosford the Goose, whoever he is.”

The manuscript, The Wondrous and Tragicall Tale of Gosford, a Goose, was written by the waterfowl whose feather was used in Shakespeare’s quill. The book tells of his collaboration with William Shakespeare.

 “’Twas Christmas morning and a young poet of virtue true came to fetch me, not as an acquaintance or friend but as supper. This young man had a mind that was feeble and empty like an upside down pail. He paid two pence for me, though I was worth my weight in gold and then some. This man was William Shakespeare, and so began our illustrious and tumultuous relationship.”

The goose goes on to describe how Shakespeare, feeling mercy for the creature, decides to set the bird free rather than kill it. This, according to the manuscript, broke a gypsy’s curse of silence on the magic goose. As a reward for sparing the goose’s life, Gosford gave Shakespeare a feather and told him to use it as a quill.

“I told him to take my covering and dip it in ink and let the feather fly across the page. The result ’twould yield more bounty than all the henhouses of all the Kings of England,” Gosford wrote.

While Shakespeare had already produced some plays before meeting Gosford, the quality of his work dramatically improved when he used the magic quill. Gosford marks the year he met Shakespeare as 1593, right as Richard III was being written and, according to scholars, “Shakespeare started to get good.”  

While the claim about the quill is shocking enough, the manuscript makes even more assertions. “What is even more remarkable than the quill is that Gosford takes full responsibility for some of the plays,” Professor Thistlewhittle said. “‘Will,’ as Gosford called Shakespeare, originally wanted Hamlet to be just the play within the play—that is, just about the king getting murdered. It was Gosford’s idea to expand it and he created the character of Hamlet.”

“And it seems Gosford wrote both Henry IVs, Macbeth, and The Tempest entirely by himself,” the professor added.

Gosford’s manuscript ends abruptly. However, in the later pages Gosford writes that Shakespeare let his success go to his head. He tried writing some plays, like Timon of Athens, without the magic quill or with input from Gosford, leading to a critical failure.

“We don’t know what happened to Gosford, or why he didn’t write plays under his own name,” Professor Thistlewhittle said. “But the last pages of the manuscript don’t bode well for poor Gosford.”