Well, MWC has made it to the big leagues, by which I mean that a good bit of this issue of MWC will be dedicated to discussing public reaction of MWC's coverage of world events, which is the mark of any successful news organization. Also, we've been threatened with our first lawsuit. There were a wide variety of reactions to Issue 6 of MWC, but I think they can be summed up as: WARNING!!! YOU MAY GET YOUR MOUTH BLOODIED AND RUN INTO CLEMSON TIGERS! OR AT LEAST HAVE YOUR GRAMMAR CORRECTED!

Not-so-alert reader Dave Edwards writes in of an incident wherein Issue 6 violently attacked him, attaching itself to his lower lip and pulling most of it off his face. This resulted in a number of unpleasant blood-related events, which Edwards describes vividly in his letter. He is requesting $22 million. Click here to see the entire text of the letter, although be warned that it contains the following potentially offensive phrase: "little boys' room."

Alert reader Joe Braeuner comments on my remark that people would say "This is what free speech has led us to," noting that enlightened people don't end their sentences with prepositions. Instead, they add several dozen expletives. He goes on to mention that the MWC staff missed a good chance to include Churchill's quote about not ending sentences with a preposition: A five-year-old Winston is reported to have said to his mother one evening, "What did you bring that book I didn't want to be read to out of up for"

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The Army struck a blow for women this week when it decided to allow them to train separately from former Sergeant Major of the Army Gene McKinney. McKinney was acquitted a week ago on 18 of the 19 sexual misconduct and abuse of authority charges brought against him. The six women who accused the Army's highest-ranking enlisted man of sexually harassing them and mistreating them had never met each other before the trial started and did not communicate with each other during the trial. This led all involved to conclude that they were part of a conspiracy. McKinney employed the little-used "Jake Blues" defense, in which his entire testimony consisted of "No I didn't! Honest! I ran out of gas! I had a flat tire! There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! It wasn't my fault! I swear to God!" after which Carrie Fisher sprayed the courtroom with gunfire from an automatic weapon.

Legal experts suggest that McKinney was also helped by taking advantage of an obscure Army rule that allows enlisted men to empanel the jury from the case of Oklahoma City bombing defendant Terry Nichols. For the conviction on one count of obstruction of justice, McKinney received a reprimand and a demotion of one rank. Following the verdict, McKinney, whose lawyers had accused the complainants of "being in it for the money," filed a multimillion-dollar libel lawsuit against one of the women. In a press conference, McKinney said he was "relieved" and announced his candidacy in the 2000 presidential race.

Speaking of candidates and good news for women, Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II (D-Mass.) announced his retirement from politics so he can "spend some more time on the slopes." Trouble has followed Kennedy since last August, when a car he was driving careened off a bridge. In the car with him at the time was family babysitter Soon-Yi Previn, with whom Kennedy had been seen earlier that night at the Au Bar in West Palm Beach, Florida.

In other political news, Miami finally has a mayor. Xavier Suarez, who is also known, in a nickname we are not making up, as "Mayor Loco," won a runoff election last fall. Last week, however, the state 3rd District Court of Appeals ruled that Suarez would not have won if it hadn't been for 5,000 fraudulent absentee ballots. The ballots were illegal because most of them were from members of the World Series Champion Florida Marlins, none of whom were legal residents of Miami for more than 16 hours following the end of the Series. The Court installed as mayor the other major candidate, Indonesia's President Suharto, and they appointed his People's Consultative Assembly, which is none of those, to the City Council. The group goes by the acronym "MPR" instead of its more common name, "The Suharto Family."

We begin our "Danger in the Skies Above" section with this report from alert reader and correspondent Kathryn Orth, filed from 30,000 feet: The players on the Clemson Tigers basketball team escaped from their electronic ankle bracelets long enough to fly from Atlanta to Chicago for their first-round game in the NCAA tournament. The Tigers spent a quiet trip on the plane doing homework out of Muscle & Fitness magazine and asking for gum. "Dude, I need some gum," they'?d say, after which Orth told them that, like the first five times they asked, she didn't have any: "Sit back down and quit touching me," she explained. There was some foreshadowing of the game's outcome when head coach Rick Barnes was discovered in the wrong seat. "What do you mean, row 35 comes after row 34? Where did you learn your numbers?" Barnes said. That may help explain Barnes' reaction after Clemson's loss to Western Michigan last Thursday, when he said, "Wait a minute. We had 72 and they had 75. What do you mean we didn't win?" "Yeah," agreed forward Iker Iturbe, as he emptied a half dozen (5) rounds into CBS reporter Michele Tafoya's kneecap.

The skies are not safe anywhere, as indicated by a complaint filed by environmental pressure group Greenpeace. Greenpeace (this is true) alleges that pigeons living near a British plutonium processing plant are picking up so much radioactivity that they have become "flying nuclear waste." British Nuclear Fuels denied the claims. "Irresponsible scaremongering," said a BNFL spokesperson, as he used all six of his tentacles to distribute a statement to reporters. Greenpeace refuses to go away unless they receive 800 pounds of granola and a gross of Birkenstocks.

The world received yet another scare from above when reports surfaced that a mile-wide asteroid might hit the Earth sometime long after we've all died of heart disease, except for those of you who you don't eat fried foods at the same alarming rate as the MWC staff. Reports indicated that in October 2028, the asteroid, with the exciting name "1997 XF11," would pass within 26,000 miles of the Earth's center. This spawned a rash of movie ads for the summer's sure-fire blockbuster hit, Armageddon's Deep Impact is Lost in Space, in which Bruce Willis is sent on a top secret mission by President Will Robinson, played by Morgan Freeman, to infiltrate LISEL, the LucasFilm Intl. Special Effects Laboratory. Fears were allayed only one day later, however, when NASA scientists announced the first successful tests of HARP, the High-Altitude Radioactive Pigeon defense system.

Finally, in an unrelated story that we wouldn't have even thought to have made up, recently-jailed former Seattle schoolteacher Mary Kay Letourneau is pregnant again, apparently by the same teenager who fathered her most recent child. "We're really hoping to find him a hobby sometime soon," said the parents of the 14-year-old father.