Difficult to believe that old Ben was ever that much of a punk kid. Josh is almost 30 years old?Ummmm.....:
-Eric
Posted on 11/22/2004 1:51:00 PM PST by LouAvul
WASHINGTON (SH) - Josh Whicker is a 29-year-old middle-school teacher with a taste for the absurd and a talent for writing.
He also has been the source of a bit of a headache for the office of Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind.
Whicker - whose year-old Hoosier Gazette Web site spoofs Indiana news by, well, making it up - created a doozy last week with a fictitious story claiming that Hostettler had proposed changing the name of Interstate 69 because of the number's sexual connotations. Hostettler, Whicker wrote under the phony byline of August Wayne, wanted to change the name to the less risque-sounding I-63.
A handful of Web logs, including www.wonkette.com and www.sierratimes.com, picked up the story, and most reported it as fact. That spurred inquiries from the media and phone calls from outraged constituents to Hostettler's office. His spokesman, Michael Jahr, spent much of a day denying the bogus story as "absurd."
Which is what Whicker said he intended it to be when he wrote it.
Whicker, a geography teacher at Highland Hills Middle School in Georgetown, Ind., has a history as a practical joker. His first Web site was a "sort of alumni newsletter" that goofed on his 1994 high-school classmates. He wrote prank letters for a while. He once wrote a country-music-loving friend pretending to be a representative of the "Mullet Preservation Society."
He launched Hoosier Gazette - www.hoosiergazette.com - last November with friend Chris Kasinger, a Seymour, Ind., chemist. Whicker said they find the most absurd inspiration from reading Indiana newspapers.
(Excerpt) Read more at modbee.com ...
---and Pahrump, Nevada has "Easy Street" also, with no problem--
There's a stop sign in Delaware that had the "S" spray painted off and the letters "Z Z" replaced. It's been there since the late eighties and to this day it hasn't been changed.
Off of I-75 in Kentucky there is a state park called "Big Bone Lick." I would love to have one of the signs for it. I can't imagine that others haven't stolen them before.
Buy a sense of humor.
You'll like this.
I've considered it. But they're just too damn big.
Back in the 60's I worked two summers at a camp in the Adirondacks for educably retarded children..that was the term of art way back then...The good citizens of the municipality put literally hundreds of the big yellow..SLOW CHILDREN signs all around the neighboring roads...When the first parent visiting day came, the uproar was both HUGH and SERIES..
I think he's a hobbit.
This is not the first time news organizations picked up this guys bogus story and ran with it. He did a story last summer about Purdue mistakingly signing a geeky kid to a basketball scholarship because he had the same name as a real high school basketball star.
A kid in Virginia lived in the "Big Pines" development. He swapped the E and I to the delight of his friends.
--there were state-required "Children Crossing" signs at the school I mention above which were protested by the students there, also---
I was trying to think of the name of that park!
Isn't it in the same vicinity as French Lick?
My brother was looking to buy a house in Aiken, SC years ago and was intrigued by a house at the corner of Easy Street and Whiskey Road.
It isn't just the Old Media that gets fooled ... FR has a few postings a month of fake news stories taken as serious by the poster or by those commenting on the thread.
In York County, PA there is an area called Hellum. Local church-goers wanted to change the name because of the "Hell" part. Big fight there. They settled it by naming the Boro - Hallam, and leaving the Township name as - Hellum. So, now...driving into the area from the west the sign says "Hellum," driving into the town from the east it reads "Hallam."
Difficult to believe that old Ben was ever that much of a punk kid. Josh is almost 30 years old?Ummmm.....:
-Eric
sure is, also near a small town called "Beaverlick" :O
Some college friends liberated the Sign on I-80 in Nevada that indicated that the town of Lovelock is about 69 miles away.
Wow! They have it too!
A man after my own heart. Actually I believe that story on I69 was posted here.
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