We’re going into print! Friday, January 12th 2007, Lush For Life will be distributing our first 20,000 copies of our new print edition. Come join us at the Crowbar in Ybor City (1812 17th Street) for music, fashion and of course, the best satirical comedy the world has ever seen, ever (ever). Don’t miss out Lush Progress (no relation) – the hottest new band in the bay area, and so many other bands that the price of admission is a steal – especially considering the paper is free! There will be free drinks, live music, beautiful women, hunky guys (us) and some of the funniest people you’ll ever meet, just hangin around waiting to talk to your drunk ass. So come on down!

Chimps welcome. Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/slantedsynergy

Lush For Life, the Internet’s premiere site for all things bold, comedic, original, and fake, is taking one more shot at arch-rival TheOnion by jumping head-first into the unknown and oversaturated market of newsprint.

Beginning in January, you will be able to pick up a copy of this fine publication at local hot spots and dives in the Tampa Bay area – for FREE!

The overwhelming cry from the public for Lush For Life to go into print is a long time coming, as college students and businessmen alike have sent us heaps of email expressing their want of us to be available in a much more natural form, such as recycled newspaper pulp.

“It’s easier that way,” said University of South Florida student Billy Grant in one of his dozens of emails to us, imploring that we print. “I use my computer for pr0n, and Lush For Life has been impeding that for over a year, now.”

The paper will officially be released on January 12 at The Crowbar in Ybor city, in conjunction with the Slanted Synergy Art Show for Untalented Youths.

We welcome all inquiries about the move, and encourage anyone who is interested in advertising with us to shoot an email to: sales@lushforlife.com.

Our initial run, as stated earlier, will be located in and around the Tampa Bay area, but look for it in the Gainesville and Orlando markets within the next six months and, baring any setbacks (i.e., lack of advertising), we will be in a city near you, no matter where you may reside, in the next 1-2 years.

Wish us luck (as if we need it) and pray for our success. If this doesn’t work, it’s on your hands, bub.

HEAVEN – A recent visit to Heaven with LushForLife.com correspondent, and close confidant of mine Arthur Rocks proved to be a truly…enlightening…experience. We received an invitation from former basketball wacko, and current Holy Committee of God representative Charles Barkley, via an act of Divine Intervention spoken through a series armpit farts from one of our remaining living trained chimpanzees.

According to Barkley’s message, the committee has attempted to contact our staff for several weeks through varying forms of – what they call, mind you – miracles. When senior partner Duncan Idaho’s hallucinations of God following an intense sexual experience with an oversized man-frog occurred, we figured he’d simply lost his mind – not that the Committee was really attempting to contact us. But when Egbert finally got a date, after years of what he claims was an exercise in “religious abstinence,” and the woman who asked him out happened to be a disenchanted nun-turned-eccentric acid-dropping mystic, and spoke dirty to him in tongues, I began to think something was going wrong. Arthur, obviously, thought I had gone completely mad when I told him what I was thinking, responding with a simple, “You took too much.”

In reality, which is something that I’ve never claimed to be an expert, I was on to something. Duncan’s vision and Egbert’s date turned out to be a series of messages from the Holly Committee of God, who were desperate to go on record with us for the first time since the conclusion of the God Election ’05 – mainly because Heaven considers L4L to be the only reputable and reliable news outlet in the vast entirety of both the Pearly Gates, all the levels of purgatory, and the mound-like fuck rock Heaven residents call [expletive], and we call Earth.

Charles Barkley was indeed in dire need to go on the record. For some reason, he felt the best way to contact us was through the vessel of a drug-addicted mystic, using filthy sex jabber with Egbert. This could simply be Charles’ bizarre, inane sense of humor – or just yet another attempt to stake his claim as the most fucked-up individual to ever exist.

It turns out that Heaven has the most delicious empanadas that either Arthur or I have ever tasted. It seemed like a bizarre occurrence that the first thing Arthur and I see as we passed by Saint Peter – tossing him a Marlboro – through the Pearly Gates and into Everlasting Light, was Pontius Pilate, serving greasy, Jamaican empanadas from a rolling concession cart. The Christian consensus of Pilate was that he “walks the earth” for all eternity, but we can tell you from first hand experience that he is alive and well, flourishing in Heaven as an empanada vendor, bringing home an Earthly equivalent of six mules a week.

“I tell you, boys,” Pilate said, “everything I make here is all profit.” During our entire encounter with him, he continually refused to tell us where he actually got the empanada meat from.

“It’s between me and the Big Man,” he said as a demon slave he had chained to his ankle licked the pita bread of an empanada closed.

“That’s who we’re here to see,” Arthur told him. “We’re here to clean out the cobwebs, if you know what I mean.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Pilate said, as he began to stroll away, “but you better be swift. This isn’t a place fit for the likes of the two of you.” He spouted something in Aramaic, kicking the demon dragging by the chain, as he slobbered all over the pile of empanadas he had stuffed in the women’s panties he was wearing.

We were escorted to Barkley’s quarters located on the outskirts of Promised Land by a pair of his personal homosexual Canaanite midget servants. His home was covered in diamond-studded gold walls and floors, with gallons of Old Crow bourbon flowing in streams throughout the home, as well as a ten-foot wide moat surrounding his decadent compound. Arthur decided to abandon the interview, stripping naked and diving into the moat of whiskey with a group of former Philadelphia 76ers Nigerian cheerleaders dressed as Arabic belly dancers.

“He better be careful,” Charles Barkley said as he emerged from his decadent lair. “Last time I did that those girls gave me warts and I shit rocks for a month.”

“Beats your commentary,” I said to him, hoping for a witty response. Let him do what he wants. “Why don’t you tell me why we’re here?”

The two of us staggered back into Barkley’s lair, where we sat and talked, drinking freshly made Mint Juleps, both of us with Nigerian cheerleaders draped on each of our arms, as Canaanite midgets brought us slivers of proscuitto and mozzarella laced insalata.

“I want to make a proposal to you guys, Danny,” Barkley said, leaning forward as he slapped a cheerleader on the breasts. “LushForLife deserves a seat on this committee.”

I was not quite sure if this weirdo was saying what I thought he was saying. “Are you kidding?”

“I’ve got full approval of both the Committee and all of the Heaven residents,” he said, reassuring me he wasn’t joking. “We’d really like to have one of you join the Committee, and well, become God, in a sense.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. These fucking wackos really have gone completely loony now – if they’re going to offer us a seat on this silly thing. I guess I was a bit honored that my colleagues and I are considered God Material – albeit considered one by these crazed, religious apes. Though flattered, I couldn’t help but remember the last thing that Pilate said to us. Better get out while we still can.

“No thanks, ‘Bama boy,” I told him as I shrugged the women off my arms and walked towards the door. “We feel a lot more comfortable down on the ole’ sweat rock, making fun of all you assholes.”

I had a half dozen or so of the midgets drag a drunken, comatose Arthur Rocks onto a stretcher and carry him out of the Barkley Compound and back towards the Pearly Gates. On the way out I grabbed a daily newspaper and saw some of the headlines: “New Holy Committee Sub-Committee to Host Gala in Honor of Committee Member Suze Orman,” and “Daily Mass Results,” and a magazine called “The Nicodemus Reader.”

What a truly bizarre place to want to spend all of eternity.

TAMPA – Because of a class action suit filed on Tuesday, the Internet’s premiere home of wit, wisdom, satire, and parody, LushForLife.com, is in danger of being wiped off the face of the planet, as multi-national corporate conglomerates, in conjunction with the White House and several elite sects of Afghani terrorists and ex-KGB officials, have alleged that the site has leaked valuable classified information regarding the existence of a multiverse, a vast collection of universes, making humankind and human achievement just that much more insignificant.

In an article published in LushForLife.com‘s Special Edition, last summer, Dr. James Whittington revealed to reporter Arthur Rocks the existence of a “universe” much larger than was previously conceived. The article has since been deleted from public record, and the staff of LushForLife.com has been threatened with arrest if any portion of the article is reprinted. Our computers were confiscated and thoroughly searched, resulting in the arrest of no less than five staff writers; four for the possession of child pornography, and one for embezzling $13 million from the US government.

We at LushForLife.com, however, give the proverbial finger to the threats, naturally, and hereby sign our own death warrants, as there are, no doubt, snipers waiting on the rooftops of the adjacent buildings, listening for word from George “Dubya” Bush’s secret Freemason Bosses to pull the trigger. Here is a partial transcript, including the information that we are being sued over, of Rocks’ conversation with Dr. Whittington:

Arthur Rocks: Dr. Whittington. Is there an existence of a multiverse, with the universe that we exist in being a part of a much larger group of universes, each with their own potential for life and intelligence?

Dr. James Whittington: Yes.

The White House, in particular, alleges that this knowledge is dangerous to the US, as it encourages irrational behavior, such as the idea of “thinking outside of the box” and “making up your mind for yourself”, as well as spreading thinner the likelihood of the existence of one true and almighty God. Also, the US has been encouraging the rumor that the entire known universe is roughly three-thousand miles wide, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, with everything else ever known being only a figment of a madman’s imagination, including 9/11, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust, Mad Cow disease, and AIDS. That madman, specifically, is propagandist Michael Moore.

Similarly, the Afghani terrorists concur with the US, asserting that most atrocities to mankind never happened, except that little skirmish between Afghanistan and Russia, which the Afghanis are still a little peeved about. They are happy to admit, along with top US officials, that the September 11^th bombings of the World Trade Center never actually happened, but was rather a scheduled demolition horribly blown out of proportion.

The ex-KGB officials, of course, are just along for the ride, offering a threatening aid to the US’ spookmeisters, getting drunk on pure potato vodka and scaring the staff’s children at night by whispering Russian nursery rhymes outside of their bedroom windows.

Of the hundreds of corporations along in the suit, the most menacing include Exxon, RJ Reynolds, and, of course, Ray Croc Enterprises. RCE, specifically, has been sending the Senior Staff at LushForLife.com coupons for free Big Macs daily, in an obvious attempt to clog our arteries and kill us off the easy way. A deposition has been discovered by Porcious Crank, of LushForLife.com, implicating that a threatening email signed by one “Ronald McDonald” was actually composed by RCE CEO Kris Kristofferson, filling in for the ailing Jim Skinner.

RJ Reynolds, however, has not been sending us free cigarettes to rot out our lungs, surprisingly, but has been instead sending Hallmark greeting cards wishing us health, wealth, and good fortune, driving our team of top investigators insane with anticipation of what the actual driving force behind their scheme is.

Exxon has guerilla operatives in the ditch in front of our office buildings, forcing us to arm ourselves to the teeth with automatic assault rifles and hand grenades, making each trip to and from work so life-threatening that our regular staff meetings have dwindled from fifty or so reporters per week to a measly three. Senior Writer Danny Albertson has been emailing his stories from home, as he is unable to attend regular meetings as result of a guerilla assassin shooting him in the face. The wound was not life threatening, but has limited the use of his legs.

Johnny Iglesia Gonzales, whilst on return trip from Malaysia, was informed en route, and was forced to return to that God forsaken country to keep his head firmly attached to his shoulders. He has reported via text messages, however, the presence of some suspicious characters onboard, all with suspiciously unmarked boxes wrapped in plain brown paper aboard the craft.

Duncan Idaho has been missing for two weeks, and the police won’t accept any missing persons forms without them being signed in triplicate by Mr. Idaho, himself. Governmental bureaucracy seems to have thwarted us once again.

Writers Edward Payne and Gale Force have turned against us, and have become government witnesses, according to an inside source.

Former LushForLife.com writer James Avalon has escaped all forms of retribution by skipping the country to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a female recording artist after a quickie sex change in Mexico, and is now on his first world tour, opening for Madonna.

In the meantime, any reports coming to you will literally be paid for in blood, sweat, and tears, and is being transcribed via satellite telephone by our half-dozen remaining trained chimps. Peace be with you all; amen.

TAMPA – While on assignment at Tropicana Field in Tampa, Florida, covering the Tampa Bay Devil Rays v. Boston Red Sox baseball game for a local sports affiliate on Saturday, the entire senior writing staff of LushForLife.com were forcefully ejected following crude behavior, obnoxious outbursts, and overall drunken debauchery.

While attending the game, senior writer Egbert Souse engaged in seemingly friendly conversation with a fellow journalist from the Boston Globe while watching the action in the press box. After consuming a number of screwdrivers and other forms of swill, which Souse made from his trusty and plentiful cargo-pocket stock of Mr. Boston vodka (ironically, but it’s terrible, so it makes sense I guess) and the plethora of Tropicana orange juice which the concessions will never run out of, Souse began ranting in a drunken wail his disdain for Red Sox starting pitcher Curt Schilling. As the conversation became more heated, this journalist attempted to intervene before any real trouble started. Unfortunately, the conversation was unable to be diffused, and I found myself foaming at the mouth with a broken beer bottle in my grasp, waiting for someone to make a move. As the Boston Press began to attack, our colleague Duncan Idaho tripped one of them (with his wide array of judo techniques) and proceeded to mace the remainder of them who still had some fight left. Before security arrived to remove us from the press box, I jammed my beer bottle into the circuit breaker, which killed the power in the box, and allowed us to make a brisk getaway.

Since we didn’t have any real tickets, we snuck our way into the 100 section of the stands – a real nice place to sit, drink, watch a game, and be obnoxious to all the visiting team faggot fans who always seem to take over our illustrious Tropicana Field whenever they come to town. I guess it’s expected to happen when you’re a fan of a team who has finished at the bottom of the American League East all but one year of the team’s existence. The real problem both myself and my colleagues have with these fans, especially Boston and New York fans, is that they are not from these towns they pull for – they are fellow Tampa, St. Petersburg, or greater Tampa Bay area residents just like we are, yet they come only a hop, skip, and a jump down I-275 to pull for the favorites as they watch their home team fall short, usually in a narrow defeat (because the Devil Rays spend a whopping 30 million in payroll on 25 players – the Boston equivalent of a Curt Schilling, a Trot Nixon, and a Mike Timlin) Unacceptable behavior, if you ask me. And LushForLife.com won’t stand for it.

We proceeded to get drunk in the stands, continually pestering Boston fans with random drunken and outlandish outbursts. A friend of mine who was watching the game at home told me the sound equalizer on the television broadcast had to be adjusted from moment to moment, as the network televising the game attempted to drown out our comments so the viewers at home would not be interrupted from listening to Joe Magrane and Dewayne Staats mundane commentary.

Once security realized where we were located, and that we were the cause of the multiple broadcast problems; we were removed from the stadium and issued a temporary trespassing warrant from the next two home games. Not a problem, though, because the Yankees are coming into town later this week, and by then our suspensions will be up and we can subject all of those corned beef-eating, whiny-Jew Bronxians to some righteous Tampa drunken fun. Full of lush. Full of life.

TAMPA – Offices are abuzz at LushForLife.com headquarters, as our trained monkeys have figured out how to program, and are off on new and exciting adventures in the digital realm.

Some of the monkeys have discovered porn and naked titties and are addicted, of course (marketing tells me that LushForLife.com has a bill of over $8,500 at a website called ApeRapingCumGuzzlingSimians.com), but there are a few who have resisted the Internet’s number one money-maker and are opting for more productive outlets. A squad of seventy-five chimps has put enough feces into one of our massive servers to produce a program for us to host the glorious Podcast. It is now available at the top of this page and, as of now, you can hear how the results of the 2005 God Election affect your right to arm bears and our exclusive interview with some movie star.

For the uber-geek, there is an RSS feed now available. The top, like, five or six stories can be displayed on your RSS reader for easy access… If you run a real web browser, such as Mozilla’s Firefox, you can subscribe by simply clicking on the callout on the right-hand side of your address bar. If you are running a different browser, check your user manual, ’cause I don’t know.

Why have we at LushForLife.com forced our monkeys to do this for you? The answer is simple: no one likes to read! You slobs are illiterate, apparently, and only like to look at our pages and our pictures, but I’ll be damned if anyone actually reads them. So, to cater to your lazy whims, we now have doubled the salary of our apes and given them health insurance (including vision and dental) and stock options. Management has been forced to sacrifice twenty-five percent of its future pension (leaving it at a measly $4 million per year per retiree), and my mom is kicking me out of the basement.

We hope you’re all happy!

L4L HEADQUARTERS, TAMPA – LushForLife.com, the cutting edge of the absurdly ridiculous, the razor’s edge of political hilarity, and the broken mirror prison-shank of Hollywood’s insanity, turns a new corner this week as we bring you the first of many installments of our twisted version of reality.

We begin our endeavor with the classic staple of a society based on idolatry: the celebrity interview.

Our first interview was with the world famous star of thousands of low-budget scream and gore films, Debbie Rochon. Ms. Rochon was gracious enough to grant Mr. Idaho and myself full access into her personal life to get the section rolling.

As our first interview, Ms. Rochon was kind enough to hold our hands (literally?) through the grueling process of getting someone to actually talk about him or herself. She was the “experienced” girl giving the virgin a pat on the back and slowly, gently guiding him though said “process”.

Ms. Rochon is a huge fan of LushForLife.com and, hell, it was her idea. Why not?

Enough about that: you can read the interview in its hacked-up lack of entirety yourself.

We wish to thank Joe C., of JDCasey.com, for his help with the interview.

In the coming months we will present you more interviews from the relatively unknown band River Chicken to (possibly) the wildly popular George “Dubya” Bush, and when we are bored, we will interview our cats and the janitor of your local high school.

I wish to emphasize that these interviews are real, so you may actually learn a little about your favorite quasi-celebrity and, perhaps, just a little bit about yourself. But probably not.

And if it doesn’t work, well, fuck off and live with it and click some ads so we can afford to not even have to get out of bed in the morning to go do the god damned interviews.

TAMPA – Once again, the pressroom at LushForLife.com has been forced to bear the brunt of a hostile corporate takeover, shifting the entire staff around in order to save a few pennies here and a few pennies there.

Halliburton Energy Services, out of Houston, purchased 51 percent of LushForLife.com stocks in the bid last Tuesday. The takeover party was literally a hostile one, as the LushForLife.com headquarters was raided and subsequently held at bay by the US Army, under instruction of Halliburton Chairman, President and CEO David J. Lesar.

Looking to appease their money-hungry, war-mongering stockholders, Halliburton has since done an entire change of the staff and corporate hierarchy.

Since the reallocations, a first-year journalism student from China who speaks no English whatsoever has been promoted to editor starting next week, and the rest of the staff has been relegated to only writing stories that are sponsored by extreme right-wing groups, limiting their freedom of speech and journalistic integrity.

I am sad to report this, of course, because we at LushForLife.com have always tried our damndest to bring you the news in a fresh, unbiased fashion, but now, as of our next update, will be so far removed from objectivity that we may as well pay Republican-minded monkey droids to write our material (that doesn’t sound like too bad of an idea, actually).

So, gentle reader, we bid you a fond farewell as we prance off into the sunset, tails between our legs, heads hanging downs, our laptop screens smashed into oblivion, and our integrity left back at the office.

Eee.

Dearest Reader,

We at L4L have enjoyed bringing you, the beloved reader, nothing but the best in first-class fictional entertainment. Since we started this little hole-in-the-wall website, our first priority has been to deliver artificial hilarity in each and every new edition. We have expended countless dollars and hundreds of hours that we could have spent with our families and loved ones. But, alas, we spent it all for you… Great, right? WRONG! You, oh frugal reader, have let us down. We get no feedback, no one seems to support us by clicking sponsors’ ads, and I’ll be god damned if anyone could give us a little “word of mouth” advertising. And don’t even get me started with the lame-ass submissions that we’re getting! Yeesh!

So, what can be done? Simple enough… Get off your fucking ass and contribute! This shit ain’t cheap (or free) y’know. Click a fucking ad once in a while (I got kids to feed). If you continue to refuse us your help, we will be forced to start a “Rate My Leftover Spaghetti” page, full of virtual minutes of fun. Shit!

Sincerely Written in Best and Warmest Regards,

Egbert Souse