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BARNEY DOES BREAKFAST AND CHARGED WITH MURDER 

Washington June 25, 1993 (PETER FUNK PRESS)

      Barney the dinosaur, star of the children's television show
Barney, went berserk this morning during his show and ate three of
his child co-stars. 

      The mayhem occurred in the Pretend Room while Barney and his
co-stars sang the song "Shoo Fly Don't Bother Me." In the second
verse, Barney stopped singing and muttered that he had not eaten
breakfast. He started staring at the children. Drops of saliva
dripped from his mouth. His stomach growled. His eyes widened and
pupils dilated much like someone on the third week of a radical
diet of designer water and raw grass, who stumbles upon a
cheesecake in a bakery window. Just as the children finished the
song, Barney started to shiver. Suddenly, he just grabbed the
children and one by one dropped them down his mouth like
appetizers. 

      A fourth child only escaped because Barney ate the third child
too fast, and he bent over choking for several minutes, allowing
the child to run away. Barney nearly passed out, but a fortuitous
belch cleared the obstruction. He then stood erect, complained of
a severe thirst, and asked for a double gin and tonic. 

      This all seemed very ironic, since Barney had just given a ten
minute lesson, demonstrating to children how to chew one's food
properly to prevent choking. The lesson even included a rhyming
song with lyrics instructing children on the proper technique of
the Heimlich maneuver. Following it, Barney gave a ten minute plea
for responsible drinking among kindergartners. 

      Before Barney finished his gin and tonic, the police arrived
and arrested him on three counts of first degree murder, one count
of attempted murder, and a misdemeanor charge of chewing with his
mouth open.

      The Public Broadcasting Corporation (PBS), producers of
Barney, estimates seven million children and 300,000 very strange
adults saw the killings. However, it estimates that over sixty
million people saw the show that night when many of its local
affiliates broadcast the show again as part of their fund drive.
PBS local affiliates claimed record donations from viewers during
the rebroadcast, especially when the stations ran Barney eating
breakfast in slow motion. They also reported receiving thousands of
supportive letters which said, "Now that's what I call culture.
Keep it up!"

      News of Barney's arrest shocked the show business world.
Barney comes from a show business family. His grandfather did stunt
work in the film King Kong and worked as technical advisor on the
film  King Kong Versus Mohammed Ali. Barney's father played in the
movie 1,000,000 Years B.C. and its sequel 1,000,001 B.C. His mother
ran an acting school, which became famous for teaching iguanas the
Stanislasky methods. 

      Barney began his career as a tap dancer. Later, he starred in
many Broadway shows in which he broke down many barriers against
reptiles. He played Professor Higgins in an all serpent version of
Lerner and Lowe's My Fair Lady. He played Curly in Oklahoma in the
first show produced and directed by stegosauruses. His music
theater career ended though when he tripped over his tail during a
dance scene in West Side Story. He received a severe head injury,
and his I.Q dropped seventy points, giving him the intelligence of
a learned potato. He had to quit the music theater but got a job
playing himself on own children's TV show.

      Upon Barney's arrest, he hired flamboyant defense attorney
A.P. Hee-Haw Ripsnort to defend him. Ripsnort is a smooth, down
home, southern lawyer who speaks with a New York accent. He wears
Rhet Butler suits with a prostitute's lace garter belt wrapped
around his upper arm. In court, he wears no shoes or socks and asks
beautiful jurywomen it they'd like to arm wrestle sometime. While
cross-examining witnesses, he eats corn on the cob and offers
prosecuting attorneys a chew of his tobacco. He specializes in
defending TV creature actors. For instance he has defended Dino of
The Flintstones, Alf of the show Alf, and Herve Villachaez of
Fantasy Island. He became famous for successfully defending Kermit
the Frog of the Muppets from a vicious palimony suit brought on by
Miss Piggy.

      Ripsnort said he would base Barney's defense on temporary
insanity, for only hours before the killings Barney had watched a
pirate video cassette of the film Jurassic Park fifteen times
consecutively. Ripsnort will make the argument that the gratuitous
violence in the film Jurassic Park motivated Barney to consume
children, a diet that even the American Pork Producers does not
approve because of its high cholesterol. Ripsnort intends to
present clips from Jurassic Park, showing dinosaurs hunting and
eating humans, to the jury as part of Barney's defense. He will
precede the clips with a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

      No matter the outcome of the trial, however, Barney has no
future on television. The Federal Communications Center (FCC)
intends to ban him from public airwaves for eating children in
daylight hours, a violation of FCC rules.

                              #
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
From: SCHANG@pitzer.edu
Subject: And for my next costume...
Keywords: smirk
Approved: funny-request@clari.net

	This Halloween, I dressed up as the the Unabomber - hood, dark
glasses, mustache, the works.  I even had little brown curls to hang out 
the sides of my hood.  Aside, from comments of, "That's not really candy
in that brown paper bag, is it?", the only eventful thing that happened
all night long was that I was beset by a group of people who didn't like
everything the Unabomber stood for.  I was immediately beaten to a bloody
pulp.  When my friends found me later, they berated me for my bad choice 
of costume.  Supposedly, they tell me, I should have been something that
was a little more likable, more inline with unconditional love, to exert
the idea of childhood innocence upon all I came across, if not enforce it.

	I'll be Barney next year.  Everyone loves Barney.

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