MONDAY, MAY 29 A leg that was lost, now is found. Here's the sad (and later, happy!) story: When Joshua Fadness was a year old, his leg was amputated below the knee to remove a cancerous tumor, and has since been forced to wear a prosthetic leg. Six years later, while playing with schoolmates in the Tumalo River just north of Bend, Oregon, Joshua took off his leg to wave it at some passing girls (Cute!), when he dropped his detached member into the water! Swept away by the swift current, the leg vanished. A full-blown search by the sheriff's department failed to turn up the wayward limb. Joshua and his family were, quite naturally, devastated.Flash forward one year! On this past Memorial Day weekend, local resident John Short was out wandering the banks of the river--reportedly looking for "shoes and sandals that were caught in log jam" (what-ever!)--and he recovered the missing leg, a bit wet, but fully intact! "When I pulled one of the shoes out, I realized there was a leg attached," said the observant Short, later adding, "I was pretty startled." Then, Short did what any reasonable person would do--he took out an ad in the local newspaper. The next day, the young monoped's father was skimming the lost & found section (hmmma weed whacker, a pair of men's cotton briefs, a card table) when he saw the ad for his son's errant leg! The family was ecstatic, and the limb was returned. Happy, happy day!

Epilogue: Since Joshua's missing leg had long since been replaced, his mother discovered a new use for the old prosthesis: She's turning it into a planter.

TUESDAY, MAY 30 Today, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman was the latest target of pie-throwing political protesters. The Secretary was speaking at a conference on food nutrition in Kansas, when a twenty-four year old member of the very excitable political organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), stormed the stage. Even though the tofuhead threw her pie from pointblank range, Glickman ducked and the pie only grazed the back of his jacket. (Due to a high protein diet, Glickman has the reflexes of a cat.) Authorities were unable to say how many pie tins were injured during the assault.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 31 Justice Sandra "Take No Shit" O'Connor put an end to a nearly two year appeal that tried to deny adoptees access to their birth records in Oregon. Naturally, this clears the way for abandoned children in our state to track down their parents, ask for back allowance and blame them for emotional scars. Meanwhile, in the most detestable state in the union, California (shudder!), a bill sailed unanimously through the state Senate that allows women to abandon newborns in emergency rooms. The bill, if it passes the Assembly next month, gives pregnant women a seventy-two hour window of opportunity (the clock starts at birth) to ditch their newborns and flee, freeing them from any responsibility or prosecution. It's kind of like a grown-up version of playing "Ding-Dong-Ditch"--except without the flaming paper bag full of dogshit.

THURSDAY, JUNE 1 Circuit Court Judge Richard Barron cruelly crushed a young woman's dreams of speaking at her class graduation. Her crime: Possessing beauty and brains, but not a penis. Last April, when spring came to the coast of Oregon, Coos Bay senior Leslie Shorb stepped into the boy's locker room at their school to shower with three of her male friends (and their male members). At the time, she was the graduating class' valedictorian. However, one her prudish classmates tattled, and the school board stripped the young woman (Stripped! Get it??) of her academic title. On Wednesday, she requested an injunction which would at least allow her to speak at her graduation, since the school had already barred Shorb from the prom and a class trip to Mexico. Shrob tried to explain her spontaneous nudity to the dour judge: "There was no reason besides I thought it would be funny." Under cross-examination, the young Lady Godiva admitted she sometimes gets a little crazy during springtime and this was not the first time she had showered with the boys. The judge then drifted off into a dreamy state, before snapping out of it to deny her request.

FRIDAY, JUNE 2 GO BLAZERS! Our blessed basketball team beat the bejeezus out of those bastards from (shudder!) California, the L.A. Lakers. In game 6 of the Western Conference finals, the Blazers--helped by the immensely talented and hunky Steve Smith--made asses out of the overrated Kobe Bryant and his thyroid-enhanced, mutated teammate, Shaquille O'Neal. Though our boys clearly out-played those lousy, stinking La-La bastards, the finest moment was undoubtedly when Coach Mike Dunleavy gave the terminally creepy L.A. gum-chewing jackass, Rick Fox, a colorful tongue-lashing from the sidelines. In the final moments of the game, Fox stooped to harassing our practically perfect Scottie "Too Hottie" Pippen. Naturally, Scottie kept his cool, but when the dastardly Fox began mouthing off to Dunleavy, he got more than he bargained for in return. Though the actual exchange was impossible to hear, a Mercury team of hearing-impaired linguists decoded his response, which went something like this:

"Kiss my lass, you sucking bullslip motherlucker."Put that in your pope and smike it, you L.A. motherluckers!

SATURDAY, JUNE 3 The Starlight Parade. Groan. However, not wanting to miss out on a single minute of potential fun, One Day at a Time fought our way through the rabble of mullets and gold teeth, to the place where the real fun could be had: THE FUN CENTER at Waterfront Park. Here's what we saw!

A lot of very flat asses in tight black pants.

A pregnant mom smoking a cigarette and flirting with some young men while her diapered toddler played by herself 30 yards away.

A girl, 17 or 18, working at the caramel apple booth gazing in utter resignation at a man who pointed to a case of caramel apples (identified in 3 foot high letters as caramel apples), and said, "What are those?"

A man, around 50 years old, idly digging and retrieving a yellowed ball of wax out of his ear, and wiping it on his light blue terry-cloth shirt. He was manning the lotion sample booth.

SUNDAY, JUNE 4 R.I.P. BLAZERS. In a truly heartbreaking turn of events, the Blazers had victory ripped from their grasp and crammed down their throats by those L.A. bastards in game seven of Western Conference finals today. Things were going swimmingly until the 12-minute mark in the fourth quarter, when the Blazer's 13-point lead suddenly swirled down the toilet. Desperation clenched our boys as shot after shot refused to go in, and those ignominious cretins from L.A. swooped in like rabid buzzards to defeat us 89-84, in what some are calling the most crushing defeat in Western Conference finals history. But perhaps today's most heartbreaking aspect is that Portland will have to wait at least one more year to win a championship, get really drunk, and run around town smashing car windows and looting electronics stores. Waahhhhhh!!!

Hey! Seen anything weird lately? Write ann@portlandmercury.com.