Exhibit 8.23

So to keep up with the town where I lived for eight years during elementary school and middle school, I read the North Platte Bulletin, a paper started out of bitterness toward the town's "real" paper, the Telegraph. I don't know the entire story, but if I had to guess, it probably involved a dare made at the Applebees or some long simmering dissatisfaction over the paper's Nebraskaland Days coverage.

Thankfully, due to a combination of methamphetamines and railroad-induced insomnia, there's enough news to go around. Most of it is the worst kind of news, horrible stories about desperate people, but a good part of it is filled with harmless gossip and hand wringing that must go on in every rural countyseat during this latest apocalypse.

This story falls somewhere in between.

Broken Hearted Arsonist Gets Probation

The headline shows a nice appreciation for the absurd and grotesque, but the real peach of the article is in this line:

Blaine Gillett, Zimmerman’s attorney, said his client now lives in Grand Island and testing revealed that something like this would not happen again.

Science can really test for anything these days.* (**)

*Yes, this blog has now devolved into basically being Leno-monologue quality humor. Still, I at least take comfort in the fact that I can always get a job writing those "From the ____ department" filler pieces in the New Yorker once everyone I love leaves me.

**Other possible joke responses:
1) The test did reveal Zimmerman's next crime. Hardees has already been notified.
2) Gillett went on to express deep dissatisfaction the Philip K. Dick-esque dystopia that crushes our will and renders his legal services useless.
3) It won't happen again because the test was for cancer.