April Fool’s!

Our sometimes annual April Fools edition.

In a scandalous story that hearkens back to a 16th century noblewoman, Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed, family members have verified that Kim Kardashian has taken up the habit of bathing in the blood of young virgins, for reasons both prophylactic and aesthetic.

“Well, she claims she does it to prevent stretch marks,” stated Khloé Kardashian, “but I think she’s just fundamentally evil.”

Khloé said her sister basically drains the children by hanging them upside down, much like the vampire’s blood procurer in the movie Let the Right One In. She takes the whole blood and processes it in high speed centrifuges that she purchased from her friend and ex-lover Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. She bathes in the red platelets, which the eldest Kardashian claims enhances the skin’s natural collagen production, but she keeps the blood plasma for relaxing teas and laundry.

According to a story posted by Run Media at http://tinyurl.com/cp45zgn, Kim featured the “procedure” on her reality show: “’I love trying anything that makes you look and feel youthful,’ Kardashian said.”

Ever the environmentalist, Kim is unwilling to waste the product children gave their lives for, so she upcycles the bathed-in platelets to feed her army of big cats.

When asked where she could find enough children to irrigate her twice-a-day beauty regimen, she replied, “Ebay.” Nearby parents in Glendale aren’t buying that story, however, and many have forbidden their children from visiting the Kardashian bounce house.

Official sources have confirmed the persistent rumor that North Korea leader Kim Jong Il has impregnated American diplomat Dennis Rodman.

“I couldn’t be prouder,” the former basketball powerhouse said. “I didn’t think it was possible with that little sword he was fighting with, but here’s the proof,” showing his pronounced baby bump. “And we got a boy on our first try!”

Shockingly, the expectant father has stated he will not move to North Korea in order to be near his babydaddy, preferring to raise the child in a single-parent home in Los Angeles.

“Just like his daddy, he’ll get the best education possible,” Rodman gushed. “Obviously, that’s not going to be in North Korea.”

The retired Hall of Famer said the future world leader would take a version of his other father’s name: Kim Jong Illin.

“Hey, if he’s going to be president or chairman or Shining Star of Paektu Mountain or whatever they call the boss over there, he’s got to have a North Korean name, right?” asked Rodman.

As for himself, Jong Il said through a spokesman, “Hey, what can I say? We had a couple of cocktails. Shit got real.”

For the first time in nearly six years, a visitor to Reno was actually impressed by the city. Warren “Mike” Mudgrove of Bend, Ore., visited Reno for three days beginning on March 8.

“Well, we just had a fine time,” said Mudgrove. “Really, it’s just a great little place to get away for a few nights!”

Mudgrove, 42, visited the city with his wife, Cindie, 36, her sister, Brandie Smithe, 34, and family friend Harold “Hank” Harfin, 59.

Paul D.F. Kidder, who maintains the blog Reno Does Not Suck, said, “This is the surest sign yet of Reno’s cultural and economic turnaround. Things are really starting to look up here in the Truckee Meadows. Suck it, Muppets!”

The Muppets comment is in reference to a 2011 movie that depicted Reno in an unflattering light. Reno residents, in a characteristic display of thick skin, reacted to the negative depiction with the grace and sophistication warranted by a lighthearted joke in an all-ages film about talking puppets.

When asked what he enjoyed most about his visit to Reno, Mudgrove said he really enjoyed his time in the downtown casinos.

“They had girls in bikinis dealing card games!” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it! I said to Cindie, ’Now, this is high class!’”

Mudgrove was impressed by Reno’s arts and culture.

“I saw some great singers there!” he said. “I went to one show—somebody said it was just karaoke night, but they must’ve been mistaken, because it was in one of those fancy old cabarets where Frank Sinatra used to perform—and there was one gal down there who does a version of ’Candle in the Wind’ that’s just something else. It’ll bring a tear to your heart, it surely will. I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“I think visitors like Mudgrove represent Reno’s bright future,” said Kidder. “This is a new demographic of visitor—sophisticated people, patrons of the arts, who aren’t afraid to say, ’Hey, I like what I like, and I don’t think you have an image problem. And even if you did, I wouldn’t care because I don’t care about the stinking Muppets. I’m impressed by the glitz, the glamor. I’m impressed by the flashing lights.’”

“Right in downtown, right on the main drag, there’s a big, flashing sign that says, ’Reno’” Mudgrove said. “It’s like, you can never forget where you are! And underneath that, it says, “The biggest little city in the world,” and I just thought that was so clever. Because it’s a big city, but in some ways, it feels like a small town, on account of how friendly all the people are there. The biggest little city in the world—I’ve never seen anything like it!”

On March 19 at 2:30 a.m., Amber Tiffany, 28, of Stead, gave birth to a used condom. The condom weighed 2.2 ounces and is said to somewhat resemble its father, Jeff Rammski, 34, of Carson City. The condom was born at home and delivered by Mandy Tiffany, 29, a partially trained midwife and the mother’s cousin. Both the mother and the condom are happy and healthy.

“It wasn’t really planned or anything and not really what I was expecting, but I’m going to love the gooey little guy just the same,” says Rammski.

“The funny thing is I didn’t even know I was pregnant,” says Amber Tiffany.

Jack Stalk, an 11-year-old local elementary school student, traded some of his parents’ dusty old silverware for magical beans. Stalk purchased the beans from an elderly man covered in hideous sores, who introduced himself only as “the Wizard.” The magical beans are brightly colored, pill-shaped and appear to be coated in some sort of plastic. The Wizard recommended that, rather than planting the beans, Stalk might try swallowing them.

“Then you’ll be able to climb higher than the clouds,” the Wizard reportedly said.

The Wizard also offered to sell Stalk some “faerie dust” that, when inhaled, would allow Stalk to move so incredibly fast that he would become invisible.

On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid revived the threat of filibuster reform after Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) blocked progress on a stop-gap measure to fund the government, and demanded that Reid instead schedule a vote on an amendment to replace the automatic budget cuts contained in the sequester. The move prompted Reid to say that the Senate may “have to reassess all the rules, because right now they accomplish so little,” reported This Week.

“Congress is plainly broken, and I truly feel American citizens deserve better,” Reid lied in a repurposed statement to reporters. “It’s those Republicans who are at fault for the dysfunctionality of the “world’s greatest deliberative body.’”

One reporter, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, expressed doubt that Reid is truly in favor of meaningful reform, since he’s had many opportunities to change his own Senate rules, but he has not done so: “At what point are we supposed to assume that this is a falsehood that you trot out anytime you want to look like you want the president’s agenda to succeed?”

“Well, my lips are moving, aren’t they?” Reid asked, pointedly. “And when I’m finished with filibuster reform, I’m going hard after assault weapons.”

In a technological advancement that has moved Sasquatch into the 21st century, Waldo Bigfoot has successfully placed an app on BlackBerry’s app site, BlackBerry World. The app, “Where’s Bigfoot?” features the real-time whereabouts of the whole of the primate clan. In the app, the entire family wears red and white striped shirts and hats and Harry Potter-styled glasses and frequently appears in natural habitats like the New Year’s Eve bash in New York City or on Los Angeles beaches.

“This is the future, man,” Mr. Bigfoot said.

“Find Bigfoot?” asked famed Sasquatch researcher Matt Pruitt. “I defy you to find a BlackBerry.”

The Reno Gazette-Journal this week ran out of opinions.

Each of its editorials this week was a reprint from the Poughkeepsie Journal, one of its stablemates in the Gannett chain.

The switch to outside opinion had been building for some time. Poughkeepsie reprints have appeared in the RGJ regularly. Reno advertising agency executive Jo Dough noted that the newspaper frequently avoids calling attention to its opinion page to reduce the risk that someone might be offended by something.

“There are days when they don’t list the opinion page in the front page index,” she said.

She pointed out that the newspaper once ran a weekend “winners and sinners” editorial each week but dropped the “sinners” part for fear of driving off readers and advertisers.

UNR journalism professor Jake Lowton commented, “It doesn’t really matter. When they have opinions, they’re banal.”

The Nevada Legislature is considering enactment of a Mountain Flattening Tax.

The idea came from a Bruce van Dyke column in the Reno News & Review. Van Dyke wrote that since mining corporations that ship the state’s riches out of the country are reluctant to pay mining taxes, lawmakers should turn to a Mountain Flattening Tax.

Mining lobbyist Tim Crowley argued that the proposed levy would still be a mining tax and so would be disallowed by the Nevada Constitution, which limits mining taxes to amounts smaller than can be calculated by human intelligence.

But Sen. Debbie Smith said the Flat Tax, as it is called, would apply not just to mining but to any industry that flattens mountains, such as those big saucers that landed on mountains at Area 51 when they were shot down by crop duster Randy Quaid in Independence Day.

Backers of a new winter Olympics in the Sierra this week denied that the event would obliterate quality of life in the area.

“There’s no question that residents will have to make some sacrifices during the days of the actual Olympics,” said Jon Killer, chief demolition officer of the Reno Tahoe Winter Games Coalition. “But that is always true of exciting economic opportunities. The trees at Tahoe grew back after the Comstock Lode, didn’t they?”

This was a reference to the way the Tahoe Basin was denuded of trees in the 1860s to produce timber for mine supports.

Killer was responding to John Eisele Jr., a Truckee physician who says the proposed Olympics pose a threat to the Sierra.

Eisele wrote in a newspaper essay, “[I]t is impossible to minimize or mitigate the deleterious impact of more people, more buildings (and their infrastructure), more vehicles (particularly buses) and roads, and their consequence of more lake pollution and damage to the fragile Tahoe basin landscape. … Try to think of what Lake Tahoe and its landscape might look like in 2030 as the price to pay for one more Winter Olympics—bringing an estimated 1 million visitors, many from places historically less concerned about the environment than we citizens of the Tahoe region.”

Killer said, “It only took a few decades for the trees to grow back at Lake Tahoe. And how many towns do we need up there, anyway? Carnelian Bay, Tahoe City, Zephyr Cove—it’s too congested by people and their homes now.”

“And environmental catastrophe would be a great story,” said Reno reporter Don Hixton.

Nevada yesterday argued that the sanctity of life is overrated.

“Guns serve a purpose,” said U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, explaining why he torpedoed the federal court nomination of state judge Elissa Cadish. “They hold down the population.”

Cadish withdrew her name from nomination after Heller said he objected to her interpreting the Second Amendment according to legal scholarship instead of political necessity.

“Think of how many of our problems are associated with overpopulation,” Heller said. “Then think of guns as having a role in solving those problems.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid said he is reluctant to oppose President Obama’s use of drone killings.

“I tailored the legislation authorizing the construction of centers for testing unmanned aerial vehicles to Nevada,” Reid said. “There are going to be six centers and, by gosh, Nevada’s going to bag one of them. In a recession, what’s more important than that?”

In this week’s Weekly World News & Review, we said that Dennis Rodman is carrying North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s love child. This is wrong on many levels.