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In This Issue

• A Modest Proposal for Iraq
• An Indie-Rocker Falls Into the Gap
• Beware of People Selling Stuff, Except Us
• Women Need to be Vulnerable and Easy Again
• Marriage is the Perfect Career
• All The Cool Kids Are Doing It...
• Girl Sells Soul to Pour Investment Bankers' Coffee
• Wendy's Sells the Fuck Out: Lame With Mayo
• I Used to Listen to Jesus Christ, Before He Went Mainstream
• The Singing Senators: Behind the "Music"
• In Gateway, I Designed a 3-D Noose
• Barnard Woman Tries to Use, Not Give, Head
• Mexico: Taco Bell Without Plumbing
• Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200
• Wacky Fun Whitey Gets a Date
• Colombia Spectador
• Columbia Bookstore's Introduces New "Ghetto-fab" Line of Clothing

Wendy's International Inc., has announced that it will be switching from its trademark square hamburgers to a more generic round model. Company officials say they hope that this move will help boost Wendy's' profits, perennially lagging behind those of its circular burger competitors.

"The theory used to be that the square burger worked as a gimmick," PR representative Cindy Lomas explained. "It was part of our philosophy that it's good business to give the people something different, to be a square peg in a round hole. Then we realized, that's stupid. Square pegs don't fit in round holes. No wonder we kept losing those taste tests."

While plans for the change go ahead, some company insiders are crying sellout. "Sellout!" cried Gabe Gomez, a senior Wendy's executive and close friend of the late great Dave Thomas^TM. "This is a sellout and a betrayal of Dave's memory. The square burger was no ‘gimmick.' It was a principle. Dave, may he rest in peace, always insisted that at Wendy's we do not cut corners. Now, he's freshly in the grave, and these ambitious young up-and-coming types are cutting corners, tearing down everything. Do they forget that Quality Is Our Recipe®? This is an outrage, and I will continue to fight it. The moment the round burger change-over goes into effect, I am tendering my resignation."

Longtime Wendy's customer Mindy Dumas agrees. "Wendy's was always the cool fast food place, the rebel," she says. "The square burger was a big part of its spunk. It gave Wendy's that special edge that always made me chose it over McDonald's or Burger King. It was different, almost like the indie fast food place, but, like, more corporate. Now it just won't be the same."

Fast food connoisseur Donald King, however, feels differently. "Wendy's always seemed like kinda behind the times," King explained. "It was a total square, while Mickey D's was always hip. I think this is a sign that Wendy's is finally gonna lose the pigtails and move up into the twenty-first century. It's about time they realized that these days, everything's round and sleek. That clunky old burger was like your grandma's big old Cadillac. You didn't wanna be seen driving that boat." A companion of Mr. King commented that Wendy's advertised that it sold old fashioned hamburgers, so maybe it was intentional. Mr. King responded to this comment by making a "ppb-b-bt-bt-t-thhh-thh" sound.

When Wendy herself was approached, she at first refused to comment, but the fast fooderazzi eventually managed to get the following statement out of her:

"Okay, first of all, I don't really have anything to do with Wendy's. It was my dad's. And my name's not actually Wendy. It's Melinda. No one's called me Wendy since I was ten. And I don't have pigtails anymore either, okay? I'm forty-one years old, and I've got a job, a family, and a stylist. And I don't really care what shape the burgers are, although I guess it's not a very smart move because it doesn't leave much reason for people to go there. I mean, everyone likes other fast food places better. People only went to Wendy's because they were stoned or something and thought, ‘Duude, their burgers are square.' Now all they've got is the frosty, and you can't make a business on cold brown sludge."

Wendy's plans to phase in the round burger slowly and have the change fully in effect by January of next year. Employee retraining has already begun. Geometry and art teachers brought in by Wendy's Inc. say they expect that some employees who cannot learn to cut circles may have to be laid off.