Happy Valley News Hour

Elsa Rose McLeary, 13, of Sunderland, MA, has just published a list of spoilers for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on her My Space page. Under the heading “SPOILER ALERT!! SPOILER ALERT!! HP&HBP,” Ms. McLeary reveals that Snape kills Dumbledore, that Snape himself is the Half-Blood Prince and that Harry leaves Hogwarts for good, among numerous other plot details from the sixth novel in the popular Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Ms. McLeary purchased the book at midnight upon its release on July 11, 2005, but explains she was only permitted to read it for half an hour per day after her homework was completed. Given that she is a self-confessed “really slow reader” and that the book is 672 pages, she only finished it last weekend. She hopes to publish a list of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows spoilers in July or August 2008.

A local feminist group has announced plans to stage a performance of the Vagina Monologues at a local Amherst preschool. The cast for this performance of Eve Ensler’s ground-breaking play will consist entirely of four- and five-year olds. The performance at the Little Acorn Preschool is scheduled to begin after Morning Circle and will be followed by a juice and cookies reception and naptime. According to the organizers, this will be the first full performance of the Vagina Monologues at a preschool, though the play did get a staged reading at a daycare facility in Berkeley, California in 2006.

This item excerpted from the Happy Valley News Hour, now in heavy rotation at Amherst public television.

As part of an ongoing effort to reduce consumption of fossil fuels in the Happy Valley, Amherst’s Town Meeting recently approved a plan that will convert Route 9 into a 12 lane bikepath. The town is calling it the country’s first “Bicycle Superhighway.” The project will affect the entire four mile stretch of Route 9 within the Amherst town line, from the border with Hadley to the border with Pelham. Motorized vehicles will be rerouted by way of Springfield, a 22 mile detour. In a related project, Route 2 will be restored to an Indian footpath.

This item excerpted from Happy Valley News Hour, now in heavy rotation at ACTV!

The entity currently known as “Vice President Dick Cheney” has abandoned its corporeal form, Happy Valley News has learned. This startling development was discovered last evening, when Secret Service agents found the inanimate fleshbag of what was formerly the Vice President collapsed on the bathroom floor at its residence at the US Naval Observatory. The entity, which exists outside the bounds of the time-space continuum and is for all intents and purposes immortal, is currently searching for a new host organism, preferably in an alternate dimension. “My work here is done,” the entity told Happy Valley News in an exclusive interview. The entity is seeking out new challenges and, while no decisions have been made, one thing is clear: no more politics for a while. “I want to try something fresh,” the entity mused, “Perhaps something in marketing.” Since migrating to Earth a millenia ago, the entity has had numerous incarnations. In 1941, the entity abandoned its then-host, a German general commanding a Wehrmacht Panzer division, and traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska, where it took over the body of a newly born human baby, Richard Bruce Cheney. The entity, whose actual name is unpronounceable to the human tongue, characterized humans a “easy prey” and “sucker MCs.” The entity then departed this plane of existence with these final words of wisdom for its hosts these last thousand years: “Good luck, humans. You’re going to need it.”

Students, staff and faculty at the University of Massachusetts have grown accustomed to making do with less over the last several years as school administrators have been forced to cut everything from support services to sports programs and academic organizations. But a recent budgetary decision will give a whole new meaning to the notion of “doing without.” On Wednesday, Umass-Amherst announced that it was ending the popular “Friends with Benefits” program. Under the new rules, which will be instituted for the 2007/2008 academic year, friends will no longer be eligible for benefits, so don’t even bother asking. The decision is being seen as one of the biggest blows to student morale since 1993, when the Umass-Amherst discontinued the “Free Beer & Weed” concession at campus football games. One of the most popular and successful student social programs in the school’s history, the “Friends with Benefits” program was the successor to the equally popular “Free Love” program of the 1960s, which ended sometime in the early 1970s due to the oil embargo, bad vibes and gonorrhea. It was succeeded several years later by the “I Have Cocaine, Wanna Party?” program, which in turn fell victim to crack and the music of REO Speedwagon. While the “Friends with Benefits” program will be sorely missed on campus, forward-looking students are already embracing its likely successor: Craigslist.