By Skip McScoop, Senior Reporter

The 184th Annual Idiot Parade is scheduled for next week, rain or shine, which has the entire town excited. Businesses on Main Street have hung banners in support of the Parade, and merch like buttons, t-shirts, and stickers has been flying off the shelves of participating stores. The much-anticipated event is expected to draw larger numbers than previous years due to the rise in idiocy, which Parade Coordinator Marcy Delong says is a great thing for the town.

“Everyone looks forward to this event every year,” Delong said. “And we’re really tamping down on who we allow to participate, because of…you know. We’re only accepting lovable idiots. We’ve found that any other kind of idiot just brings down the whole vibe. So: only happy, dopey parade participants for us. Those are the kinds of idiots that everyone not only loves, but also pities a little bit. Not in a sad way, though. More like when a dog with three legs does something funny. Especially if the dog wags its tail afterward.”

Hester O’Neill, whose husband Chris died while participating in the parade a decade ago, still supports the parade and what it means to the town. “I mean, it was his own fault. Who tries to do a headstand on a moving parade float? Anyway, now he’s featured in the In Memoriam section, which I think he would have liked. He always loved this event. Most of the time, people made fun of him for being a doofus. This was the only thing that really celebrated him for who he was. It made him part of the fun.”

The Annual Idiot Parade was founded in 1842, when the idea of idiots-as-entertainment first began to take off this side of the Atlantic Ocean. With the rise of circus culture in the United States, which began in the late 1700s and grew throughout the 19th century, everyone looking back on it now can agree that those origins were pretty effing cruel and made idiots a spectacle by exploiting them. Around the mid-20th century, however, the Idiot Parade evolved into celebrating idiots instead of simply gawking at them.

“The turning point was when Kevin McGrange became the Parade Marshal,” Delong said. “That man was a true loveable idiot, through and through. He had to have two secretaries in order to keep his office organized, and eventually his wife had to step in and oversee them anyway. He was always forgetting what he’d told one of them, and would tell the other the complete opposite. Plus he was always trying to sled down the stairs of the office building on a toboggan. They had to make helmets part of the office uniform, but they mandated it for everyone so that he wouldn’t feel singled out.”

She went on: “On Fridays they had Decorate Your Helmet Day, which was cute. We display some of those historical pictures in the museum we have in the first floor of our office. One Friday, Kevin came in with a full model ship constructed on his helmet. Someone made a comment about it being like a Marie Antoinette wig, and Kevin famously replied, ‘Didn’t she own a bakery or something?’”

Marshal McGrange revolutionized how the town saw the Idiot Parade, which began when he controversially banned the throwing of rotten produce. Other improvements, such as making sure all parade participants wore shoes and were sober, were more well-received when they were first implemented. However, over time it became clear just how much of a positive effect all of the changes made by Marshal McGrange had on the event.

“Now we can really just celebrate the joy of stupidity,” said Henry Smith, a town resident who lives along the parade route. “Sometimes you just want to shut your brain off and stop thinking for a while, you know? Everything is so serious and dreadful these days. Any escape from thinking about that shit—sorry, stuff—is welcome in my book, and the idiots’ enthusiasm is really infectious. It’s fun. The parade doesn’t require any deep thought or mental effort; it’s just joy.”

Delong agreed that that spirit of stupid joy is what the parade is all about. “We’ve really worked hard to keep Kevin’s legacy going, and based on how much the town still loves it, I think we’re succeeding. I think he thinks so too. I mean, he can’t really speak or move very well after that time he tried to car-surf on the freeway. I’m still not entirely sure what happened, but I know it involved standing on top of speeding cars. He was wearing a helmet, though, so that’s probably why he’s not dead. But he always gives me a thumbs-up whenever I update him about the parade. Though his wife Carol told me that’s also his signal for when he has to go to the bathroom. That’s probably too much information; you don’t have to print that. Anyway, the town loves it, Kevin loves it, and the helmet manufacturers love it. I think it’s a great part of what makes our town unique, and I, personally, love being a part of something that creates so much joy in the community. You’re not going to print the bathroom thing, right? Okay, good. No one needs to know about that.”

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-Local dad realizes how much he forgot about biology after helping 12-year-old son with homework

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-Local ruling class can’t understand why general public angrier than ever after being deprived of food, medicine, and the freedom that comes with being financially comfortable; suggest going on vacation to relax, have heard the Maldives are lovely this time of year

© S. L. Barrett, 2026

by Skip McScoop, Senior Reporter

Most people named Crystal will be able to breathe easy knowing that they aren’t the target of Deb Miller’s anger toward one particular woman named Crystal, who Miller says “is a total and complete [expletive] who should be [expletive] in her [expletive], with [expletive] coming out of the [expletive] [expletive] every day of the week and twice on Sundays. I mean, holy [expletive] how could anyone [expletive] another person over so [expletive] bad? It just makes me want to [expletive] [expletive] and [expletive] until she can’t [expletive] [expletive].”

As a witness to the expletives, I can report that they were both inventive and alarming.

Miller, 38, was careful to note that Crystal is not the real first name of the woman on whom she wishes ill. “In this day and age, you can’t even say that you want to punch a woman really hard in the boob without getting cancelled, or say that you hope her uterus falls out, or something non-gender-specific like you hope she takes up hiking just so she can fall off a cliff. Not only would you be finished on the internet, but she’d likely be able to pursue legal action for threats made against her.”

When I asked why she chose to report it to The Dissociation Gazette, Miller stated, “No one reads print journalism anymore. I just need to vent.”

Tina Prescott, the 15-year-old girl who bullies my niece in Algebra class, agrees that the advent of the internet makes it more difficult to express one’s true feelings about someone they dislike. “You can’t even call someone a [word that still counts as an expletive even though it’s regularly said on prime time TV] anymore without getting called into the principal’s office. Like, they monitor what we say. Creeps. We’re underage, and they’re stalking us on the internet. Well, they monitor what I say. Some [the same prime-time-acceptable expletive but pluralized] reported me a bunch. So now I’m the one who has to be monitored by the fashies in power. Like, why do they care about controlling us so much?”

Edward Deen, the principal of my niece’s school, pointed out the letting a group of 400 teenagers run around unchecked would just be asking for someone to end up dead. He then added “or pregnant” in a way that made me feel like he considered that option worse.

Prescott adds, “You tell someone to [not an expletive but we’re still going to censor it] themself one time and everyone freaks out. My free speech is being infringed upon, here. I know my rights. I can say whatever I want and no one can say [prime time expletive] about it. They have to let me say it. They can’t say anything back. They just have to listen and shut up. That’s how it works here in America. If you don’t like it, get out.”

When told this, Miller responded, “I don’t love that a cruel teenage authoritarian is siding with me, but I also still really hate Crystal. I think the main issue is that she cut me out of work that I had planned on doing. Financial loss makes in an adult problem, right? It takes it out of the petty teenage realm if I call her a [expletive] [expletive] because she impeded my ability to make money. There are plenty of rap songs that talk about killing people over that, or at least getting revenge on them. As a suburban white woman, I don’t usually identify with rap music, but you have to admit that sometimes they have a point.”

When asked what type of revenge she might pursue, Miller replied, “Well, I’ve been looking into witchcraft lately. Some interesting stuff there, I’ll tell you what. Interesting stuff.”

I tried to return to the school for a follow-up comment from Miss Prescott, but upon hearing I intended to ask her about witchcraft as a medium for revenge, Principal Deen threatened to have me put on the sex offender registry if I ever tried to come back there again. So to my niece, Brittany: sorry, but I can’t come to your orchestra concert this year, and this time it’s not because the squeaky violin section makes me feel like I’m having dental work done. You can give me a private cello concert in your mom’s living room, because I know how hard you’ve been working and I’m very proud of you. I love you, sweetie, no matter what Tina Prescott says about your eyebrows.

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-Science woefully ignored for how many answers it holds

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-Politician pretends to like sports to seem relatable, does a worse job than me

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-Local man is doing just fine, thanks for asking

© S. L. Barrett, 2026

By S. R. Petals, Investigative Flower Reporter

At the turn of every season, the fashion industry churns out a new set of trends. These seem to be based on the color schemes of nature (with minor hue variations, so you constantly need to buy new clothes to stay on-trend) as well as what clothes they haven’t already sold to you.

This all feels, frankly, impractical. In all honesty, my article was supposed to be a fluff piece, but you’ll soon see why my focus got derailed. For one thing, blending into nature is what you do when you want to shoot deer, as I uncovered in the beginning of my investigation.

Randall O’Neil is a self-proclaimed avid outdoorsman who does most of his shopping at the local sporting goods store, but even he has noticed the ridiculousness of the seasonal trend gambit. “I mean, there’s only so many shades of reds for Fall, or greens for Summer. Like: how many shade of white do you need to blend in to snow? But each shade seems to be slightly different each year! Collar shapes keep changing, too, which I do not need. And don’t get me started on where pockets keep migrating to. Sometimes they end up where I don’t even have hands.”

Zoe Livingston, an environmental expert and climate activist, wormed her way into my inbox to pitch me the topic of this investigation. She appealed to my distrust of Big Business and my love of the natural world. I might ask her to marry me. But I already had this bees fashion piece for my assignment, so I’m trying to work in some of her environmental information.

“Don’t get me started on the impact of the materials they throw away,” she wrote in her very strongly-worded email, from which I could only pull out a few quotes that weren’t riddled with profanity…or threats that any reasonable jury would convict over.

She continued: “These idiots think the world is their playground. They think they can do whatever they want. We should [redacted] to show them we mean business. Who even needs their ears anyway? Just look at what they’re doing with leather and tell me some belligerent polluters don’t deserve the same!

“Anyway, while it will take years to make any progress on the materials front, or the [redacted] front, we can co-opt fashion into the rewilding movement and make real change now.”

Rewilding is the practice of reintroducing native flora and fauna into areas that have been cleared of it, either through urban or industrial development, pollution, or other human encroachment. I was going to use an example of a specific little frog and this one very specific river region where it lived, but I seem to have misplaced my notes…well, this frog died off in this specific area. People had captured these frogs prior to that, though, and they brought the frogs back once the area was reclaimed as a nature reserve.

I think it was deforested or something, which seems weird because you don’t normally think of frogs as forest dwellers. Anyway: the frogs came back, people cheered, it was great. I guess they’re just doing their frog thing there now, and all the wildlife conservationists are happy about it. So…suck it, Big Business.

So, here’s where I’m trying to tie everything in this investigation together: we can use fashion to attract bees into spaces we want to rewild.

Whew. Nailed it.

While rewilding out in nature is great, Ms. Livingston admits that bringing native plant and animal species back into urban areas can be tricky. “Who wants critters rooting around in their trash? Or causing traffic accidents? That much I can understand. But there are other species we can bring back besides troublemakers. Birds, for one. Though bird poop becomes an issue. So I think the safest one we can bring back are small pollinators—you know: insects. And the most popular type of insect right now seems to be bees, since people are scared of the other ones. I mean, they’re scared of bees, too, but at least bees gives us honey. What does a spider give us? Nightmares? And don’t even get me started on wasps.”

When confronted with the fact that honeybees aren’t actually native to the Americas, Ms. Livingston seemed undeterred. “Well, bees and butterflies pollinate all of our plants. So we wouldn’t have food without them. So. Yeah…but now I’m wondering if this means we should kill all the honeybees, if they aren’t native. I’ll have to think about that.”

In lieu of planting a garden in your urban space, my research has shown that wearing certain colors can attract bees to you, which is the main point of this article even though it took me 750 words to get here. There was a lot of set-up. It’s like when you start telling a story that you think is going to be a quick anecdote, but then a half hour later you’re still talking about what led up to the story. Anyway: clothes. Colors. Bees.

Geez, I’m really running out of space here. Okay, wear white, yellow, blue, purple, and pink if you want to attract bees, and wear red, green, brown, and black if you don’t. Also, make sure you’re standing near flowers or vegetables while you’re wearing these colors, just to help the bees out. And, I don’t know, maybe release an opossum in your neighborhood? They eat ticks and are rabies-resistant. Plant a chestnut tree or something. But make sure you plant some female trees, because landscape companies have specifically planted predominantly male trees to avoid fruit production, but the male trees are what pump all of the pollen into the air, so that’s why everyone’s allergies are so bad. If we had more female trees to receive the pollen, we wouldn’t be half as miserable as we are every spring. Isn’t that depressing to think about? Anyway, go rewild!

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-*Retching noises*

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© S. L. Barrett, 2026

by S. R. Petals, Investigative Flower Reporter

When this assignment came across my desk, I have to admit that even I was skeptical. However, the more I investigated, the more convinced I became. After all, this would not be the first time that something with the prefix cone- turned out to be an alien in disguise. While I may sound like a conspiracy theorist, I can assure you that I investigated this topic with my usual amount of objectivity, research from reliable sources, and cross-referencing of data. Essentially: I did everything that people who “do their own research” don’t do.

I would also like to point out that every accepted convention first began as a theory. I say “would” because, if I actually did so, people would take that quote out of context and use it to justify whatever hairbrained idea they saw on Reddit that day. Thus, I’ll refrain.

What first led me down the rabbit hole, so to speak, was a tip from an anonymous source. Now, even I admit that anonymous sources are crazy 9.9 times out of 10. When you’ve had to sift through an inbox of people claiming the Earth is flat or the NSA is reading our minds or the government is being run by an elite race of lizard people (which it most certainly is NOT, and please tell them that I told you they are not lizard people, because they are the furthest thing from lizard people that it is possible to be. So: bears. No! I mean humans. They’re totally humans), you tend to approach anonymous tips with cynicism.

However, I say “down the rabbit hole, so to speak” because I later discovered that the source was an actual rabbit who developed human-like consciousness, which he believes is a direct result of eating the suspicious coneflowers. Had I not met him in person, I would not have believed it myself. But when you lose tic-tac-toe to a fluffy little bunny seven times in a row, you begin to take his intelligence seriously.

My anonymous bunny source showed me the patch of flowers he first encountered. They were part of the landscaping in a large corporate industrial park with identical brown buildings, whose architecture is designed to sap the life out of you as soon as you lay eyes on them. The link between the depressing buildings and alien mind-control techniques is still under investigation. But given Hazel-rah’s—shit, I mean the anonymous source’s—experience with interlopers, and his paranoid suspicion of creatures outside of his warren, I was still quite skeptical. However, I took a sample of the flowers to humor him.

I dropped the sample off at the lab of someone who’s done research for me before, and I told them that I was working on an environmental impact piece. Those types of investigative pieces are de rigueur, after all, what with corporations destroying the planet and trying to pin it on everyday people by saying we don’t separate our recycling correctly.

Imagine my astonishment when my scientist colleague told me that the markers in the coneflower samples had more in common with recovered meteorites than with actual coneflowers. Granted, I’m not sure what lumps of space rock have in common with theoretical alien life, but one thing is for certain: those coneflowers aren’t from Earth.

So, naturally, I took the next logical step in my investigation of strange plants of unknown origin: I ate them.

After all, we only know which plants are toxic because a few brave souls were hungry enough to risk it. While I wasn’t physically hungry, I was hungry for answers. The good news is I didn’t die.

The bad news is I had an even worse trip than that time in college when I smoked something my roommate told me was “just weed” and I ended up naked on top of the Student Union. They had to call the fire department to get me down. Luckily, this time, I just ordered a bunch of stuff from Amazon that I don’t remember buying, so the past week has been like a little personal Christmas. I should return everything and get my money back because Amazon is evil, but my tripping brain got some really useful stuff. I’m actually impressed at how organized my thought process is when I’m out of my fucking mind. So, I’ll probably keep it all. I just won’t tell anyone where it came from.

And you won’t either.

Regardless, while the trip was intense, I haven’t noticed any enhanced consciousness since I’ve come back down. And when I went back to find my anonymous source, I was told by other rabbits in the area that he had relocated after accepting a consulting job at a shadowy security start-up across the country. This, coupled with the possible extra-terrestrial connection, has made me even more suspicious of the coneflowers’ origin. That, and the fact that there were more rabbits in the industrial park who could physically talk to me. Whatever the use of the coneflowers turns out to be, it is my educated opinion that the enhancements are not meant for humans, but for rabbits. To what end, I cannot yet say, but I don’t plan to stop investigating until I find out.

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-Local man dies. Or doesn’t. We don’t know. Jerry, if you’re alive, would you call us back, please? This is getting ridiculous

© S. L. Barrett, 2026

by Skip McScoop, Senior Reporter

Olivia Nash, 34, never thought of herself as the kind of person who enjoyed classical music. “It’s just so boring,” she said. “No lyrics, no bass drop…how can anyone actually get dressed up, go out, and sit in a big room listening to this stuff for hours? Why would you?”

Raisa Paul, who does something for the American Symphony Orchestra but also mumbles a lot, said, “We get this a lot with younger generations. And older generations. Basically everyone. People seem to think that just because a song has been around for hundreds of years, that means it’s boring. That’s simply not the case.”

When asked why that is, Paul couldn’t provide an answer. “Come back to me.”

Once she had a chance to think about it, Paul added, “On one side of the coin, we get parents pushing the classical arts on their kids from an early age. Think of expectant parents holding headphones up to the baby while they’re still in the womb, blasting Mozart. Naturally, kids rebel against anything their parents push on them. On the other hand, the age of technology we’re currently in pushes constant stimulation, which makes it difficult for some people to maintain developed attention spans. No, I’m not calling them stupid. I’m just saying that since there are no dancing cats or guys getting kicked in the nuts during symphonic performances, some people’s minds wander because they’re used to that kind of constant, junk-food-esque entertainment. No, I’m not calling them stupid. They just need to put more effort into being refined. Don’t print that. Let me rephrase: sometimes you need to give the arts a chance in order for them to have the time to enrich your life. Some works of art take a little more consideration in order to appreciate them, and I think that’s what’s so beautiful about them. Wow, that was actually pretty eloquent. Did you get that? Okay, good. That, you can print.”

Nash reasoned that, to Paul’s first point, her issues began at an early age. “My parents took me to a couple of symphony performances when I was a kid, but I always fell asleep. We stopped going after the time I slipped out of my chair and bashed my lip on the armrest. I bled all over the place; it was brutal. They had to get the mop. My mom says I wouldn’t stop screaming, but I can’t remember. Blocked it all out, I guess: all that trauma. Anyway, that’s why we stopped going. That and my parents’ divorce.”

However, Nash was able to overcome her trauma by watching TV. “I mean, I mostly had it on as background noise while I was scrolling through my phone. But then I started noticing this pleasant music that they had on car commercials. And holiday commercials. And sometimes even beer commercials. I was like ‘what is this song?’ and I used my music ID app. Turns out the one I really liked was ‘Clair de Lune’ by Debussy.”

Nash’s symphonic journey didn’t stop there. “It was wild. Suddenly I was finding out that all the songs I liked on these commercials were all by dead European guys. Stuff like ‘Danse Macabre’ by Camille Saint-Saëns, ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ by Edvard Grieg, and do you know how many songs are by that guy Tchaikovsky? They can’t get enough of him around Christmas.”

When asked if this counts as an appreciation for classical music, Paul stated, “Um, well…yeah, I guess. Technically.”

Nash recounted a particularly funny mustard commercial, and after she stopped laughing, noted, “That stupid dog. And the guy was just standing there like ‘What…?’ Anyway, that’s when I first heard Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony, which I guess is his best one? I bought the soundtrack—I mean recording—of it after that. It’s that good.”

Paul, upon hearing this, merely shook her head. “Well, at least she’s listening to it,” she said. “And I guess that’s better than letting classical music die. Though one has to wonder at what cost. Can it really be called an appreciation when advertisers are cheapening art—prostituting it, one could say—by using it to sell whatever they want? When will it end? Where do we draw the line? This subject always makes me really depressed. You dedicate your life to something only to watch corporate marketing jagoffs use it to hock toilet paper that makes your ass bleed. I guess that’s what happens with all good things: inevitably, someone ruins them. Yeah, you know what? Print that. I don’t care anymore. I need to go lie down.”

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-Sometimes I hear the stock market bell in my dreams. That’s normal, right?

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-Bats can wear socks, local man vows to prove it

© S. L. Barrett, 2026