Burnt Orange Report

Break a Leg

By Karl-Thomas Musselman

It's Monday again, so time for some humor here on the BOR. Our first piece is from Fredericksburg. No, not my hometown out in the Hill Country but historic Fredericksburg, Virginia.

A Fredericksburg man has been charged with yanking off a neighbor's prosthetic leg and beating him with it during an argument.

Authorities say the fight started when the victim, Michael Clapp, 38, discovered a bottle of medicine missing from his Townsend Boulevard apartment Wednesday night.

Clapp suspected his neighbor, 27-year-old Rodney Prophitt, and went next door to confront him around 7:15 p.m., city police spokesman Jim Shelhorse said. When he did, police say, Prophitt knocked Clapp to the ground, then pulled off his artificial leg and struck him with it several times.

"At some point, Mr. Clapp was able to grab his leg back, get back to his apartment and call 911," Shelhorse said.

Police charged Prophitt with felonious assault and petty larceny. Clapp was treated at Mary Washington Hospital for a broken nose and other facial injuries. Shelhorse did not know what type of medication was taken or why Clapp has a prosthetic leg.

Ok, I'm sure Mr. Clapp didn't think it was funny but come on, it's not everyday that one gets beaten with their own body parts.

For more humor, this time involving our President and his Team, check out the extended entry...

Here ya go.

Hot on the heels of the capture of Saddam Hussein, security guards at New York's Kennedy airport today arrested an individual, later identified as a public school teacher, trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule and a calculator.

At a morning press conference, Attorney-General John Ashcroft said he believed the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

"Al-gebra is a fearsome cult," Ashcroft said. "They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like 'x' and 'y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns', but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country.

"As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, there are three sides to every triangle," Ashcroft declared.

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes.

"I am gratified that our government has given us a sine that it is intent on protracting us from these math-dogs who are willing to disintegrate us with calculus disregard. Murky statisticians love to inflict plane on every sphere of influence," the President said, adding: "Under the circumferences, we must differentiate their root, make our point, and draw the line."

President Bush warned, "These weapons of math instruction have the potential to decimal everything in their math on a scale never before seen unless we become exponents of a Higher Power and begin to factor-in random facts of vertex."

Attorney-General Ashcroft said, "As our Great Leader would say, read my ellipse. Here is one principle he is uncertain of: though they continue to multiply, their days are numbered as the hypotenuse tightens around their necks."