“We’re extremely concerned. More than just concerned, actually. Ed Flanders and Ellery King, London Division, have taken up with some sort of cult and it’s affecting their business performance. It seems that the two executives have taken to sitting in a lotus position and hooting like an owl for thirty minutes at a time. Why? Because somebody named Harold told them to do so,” said undercover investigator whose identity we cannot disclose.

“We see Harold in our dreams,” King told our undercover investigators. “And he doesn’t like it when we give away secrets, but just to show you what kind of powers he has, he once made the lights go out in the middle of a conference.” When asked how he did this, King said, “He used the light switch, but that’s not the point. What really matters is that he is a spiritual guru of the highest sorts. One time a friend of mine got close to him and he vomited.” King wasn’t clear whether it was the friend or this fellow Harold who tossed his cookies.

“You can’t even take a photo of Harold,” said King. “If you do, it won’t develop. He is like a big ball of light, more powerful than an electrical plant or an asteroid or a rock star. Here, I have a photo of him. Don’t be fooled by his terrible suit and sickly appearance, he hasn’t been feeling well lately. He was hit hard by the Bush economy and has contemplated going back into the mental institution.”

Ellery King showed us a copy of ten books that were supposedly written by one of the cult’s spiritual leaders in a mere two years’ span sometime in the early 1960s. When we asked King how the man accomplished this feat, King grinned condescendingly and said, “It’s easy. He went into the astral plane where there is a big library and went to work by candlelight until he was finished with all the books. That, and he started copying the works of others and changing things here and there and putting his name to it. It was an amazing sacrifice! Wee should at least give him credit for the time he put in, right? I mean, it takes a lot of coffee and determination to do what he did. It’s too bad he died in a hotel room with a call girl, because he was nearly finished with a masterpiece he was writing called Warren Peace.”

Ed Flanders told us that he joined the Brothers of the Fig Leaf in order to attain higher consciousness in this lifetime. “You keep coming back over and over,” said Flanders, “until you meet the Vi Guru, or way shower. He takes your money, sells you a shitload of books, appears in your dreams then makes you feel bad about yourself. This is why I joined. I was too damn happy and didn’t realize it. You see, it’s like this,” said Flanders, “without the Vi Guru we are unable to take care of ourselves. We are lost like sheep. No, a better example is that we are lost like Canadians on holiday in Miami Beach, or like George Bush in a bookstore. Then, when you least expect it, you find out about the organization and are taken to a cave where a Tibetan master, who looks like a Spaniard, takes a cane made out of light and hits you with it. He’s trying to teach you a lesson, but you don’t realize this and want to shove him over a cliff. The only thing that stops you is this feeling deep inside. Well, that and the fact that murder is illegal almost anywhere.”

Both Flanders and King have pictures of the so-called Masters of the Leaf hanging in their homes. Yet they insist this is not personality worship. “No,” said King, “We do not worship the masters. We merely pay them homage. We show that that we are with them in spirit because they are always watching us. Frankly, this has ruined my sex life, but I know it’s punishment for something I did in the past life to a con artist from Kentucky who went by the name of  Paul.”

Visiting both men at their homes in East London, we asked Flanders and King why the portraits of their masters are not photographs, but rather drawings. Bad ones at that. Flanders said, “Well, this is because they prefer it that way. It doesn’t have to make sense. It is what it is. Our Egyptian master looks like he’s from Norway and our Tibetan master looks like he’s from Argentina. We also have a female master who has a Japanese name but blonde hair and large breasts.”

The Brothers of the Fig Leaf meet in caves, have secret words they use to describe various types of sandwiches, and on weekends the brothers get together and talk about spiritual lessons that they’ve learned that week.

“It’s very good for the soul and the mind,” said one person we talked to at the Sunday morning session. “We stare at a photo of Harold and sing like an owl with our eyes closed. This makes us spiritually superior to most other people, but we pretend we are humble so they don’t feel bad. One of my favorite parts is after our singing when we open our eyes and rationalize everything that’s happened to us over the week. For instance, if I lose money in the stock market then I rationalize that I deserve the bad karma, but if I get a promotion, then it’s because I’m being blessed for being a member of the brotherhood. Also, my dog can speak to me because in his past life he was a parrot. He says now that he can lick his own balls, flying just doesn’t appeal to him.”

At a press conference Tuesday, Albert Wrench, branch manager, Screws and Pins, stated, “Maybe this kind of tomfoolery would fly with those bing-bongs in the Advertising Division, but when it comes to screws and pins, you have to be on your toes.”

At the press conference, Goodman made a duck sound then called Wrench a doody-face and whacked him over the head with a foam bat. When Wrench tried to speak, Goodman squirted a can of Silly String all over him.

Dwayne Goodman, a seven-year employee of MooseBusiness says he’s not worried over the firing: “I think those people over in Screws and Pins have a screw loose. What do they accomplish all day? It’s more boring than watching Dick Cheney read War and Peace out loud. I already did get an offer from the advertising department to work on the Fuzzy Car campaign, so I’m packing my bags and movin on up. It’s only two blocks of way, but I’ve arranged a motorcade with a loud speaker to play Helen Reddi’s I Am Woman! and the disco song I Will Survive. I’ll be throwing cheese balls to the bystanders and making dachshund balloons for the children.”

Albert Wrench said, “This Goodman is a loose canon. In fact, he actually brought a loose canon into the parking lot one day, dressed up like a clown then shot himself into the second floor women’s lockerroom. A dozen half-naked women cheered him, threw him in the shower and clawed at his rubber nose and clown shoes. It was disgusting. And another time, Dwayne Goodman brought a rubber chicken into the cafeteria and insisted that they give him some rubber gravy or he would call the cops. People laughed but I didn’t think it was funny. And on another occasion, Goodman dressed up like Pavoratti and set up a whole kitchen outside the conference room, calling himself the Opera Chef. He made Italian meatballs, pasta and clams while singing arias from La Boheme.”

Doris Trumple says she’ll miss Goodman. “Sure he was silly, but he brought out the inner child in all of us. Once he dressed up like a pirate, swung across the cafeteria, grabbed me and took me off to what he called his ghost ship. It was really the custodian closet, but we made love for more than an hour before he accused me of bending his sword. I’ll never forget that day.”

Loretta Moretti, director of sales for Screws and Pins, said, “Dwayne was the only one who could make me laugh. One Friday morning he came into work wearing a Groucho Marx outfit and chased me around the entire first floor before falling to his knees and asking me to marry him. In a great Groucho impression he said, ‘Will you marry me, Lorna?’ And I said, ‘My name is Loretta.’ Then he jumped to his feet and announced, ‘I feel like such a fool. You’ve been deceiving me, and now on the hour of our first engagement you tell me your name is not Lora! How can I forgive you? How can I let you go? No mind, Loretta, I want to marry you anyway. We’ll have three children, one of each. And a little cottage overlooking the freeway where we can grow vegetables and sit on the veranda and try to hear one another over Mac trucks and motorcycles.’

“Needless to say,” said Moretti, “on the spot I told Dwayne I would marry him. Our date has been set for June in the parking lot of Chucky Cheese. For our honeymoon he’s taking me to the Bahamas because he says it sounds like Pajamas, and anywhere you go in your pajamas has to be fun.”

Dwayne Goodman came to protest his firing wearing a bathing suit, flippers, a snorkel, zinc on his nose and a dinosaur float. Albert Wrench waved his hands in anger and screamed out, “See what I mean?” but the special hearing board broke out in hysterical laughter, with the senior member of the panel shooting Pepsi out of his nose.

MooseBusiness, Inc. is proudly sponsoring the First Annual Bad-Breath-a-thon, a national event that promises to attract nearly fifty thousand people. Said organizer Phil Flinsky, “Bad breath is a problem we should all be talking about. For far too long we have ignored the early signs — breathing into one’s own hand, uncontrollable popping of Tic-Tacs, hard core overuse of Binaca and so forth. We all know that one uncle whose breath stinks to high heaven, or that aunt whose breath wreaks of stale coffee. Maybe it’s you or your loved one and nobody tells you that you have the breath of a Border Collie. Worst of all is the chronic hummus-eater and the cheese chomper. Watch out for these characters and if you ever sleep with one, be sure not to stick around when they awaken. In the morning, these types can melt cardboard with their breath.”

This year, participants in the charity walk will trek, toothbrush in hand, from Main Street, up to Central Park, over to Lexington and back to MooseBusiness headquarters. Along the way, several area dentists will be handing out little cups of Listerine for the walkers. Fifteen “rinse-and-spit” tents will line the streets. Dennis Forlane, DDS, affectionately called Dennis the Dentist by his patients, commented, “We’re providing a community service. You wonder why we wear masks in the dentist’s office? Let me just say this: You try hovering above a middle-aged accountant with breath like onions and cow manure and see if you don’t keel over! Bet your sweet ass we’re going to wear masks! I’m going to be manning our booth personally and motivating the laggers by brandishing my electric drill at them. I’ll also be handing out business cards dipped in peppermint.”

Little Suzie Schwartz, second grade, said, “I’m walking for grandma. She is sweet and I love her, but her breath is pewy.”

Aaron Adamsky, age six, said, “I’m walking for PopPop. He once read me a bedtime story and made me vomit.”

Ally Simmons, grade three, said, “I’m going to walk for my Nanna. She kissed me on my birthday and my candles melted.”

The Bad-Breath-a-Thon is expected to raise nearly $8,000 this year. Phil Flinsky told reporters, “With the money we raise, we’ll throw a big party, and if there’s anything left over, we’ll probably build a swimming pool at my house.”

“We’re still working on a solid sauce that warms up with body heat,” said inventor Glerd Kommers, PhD.

“Actually,” said Dr Klommers, “my invention was, like many others in the history of mankind, a huge freekin mistake. I was going for Bacon-in-a-Bottle when we ran out of bacon. I was so upset that I ran full speed into the north wall of the laboratory, knocking myself silly. When I came to, Donna Sothersby, my young assistant, was standing over me holding a frozen sirloin steak on my bruised keppy. She was also holding her right hand on my groin, but for no reason that I was able to discern.

“I was dizzy for a half hour then sat at my desk sulking like a Republican who was forced to donate to charity. I didn’t know what to do. I had put in three years on the bacon project and came up with a big fat zero. At that point, Miss Sothersby saunters by and says, ‘When you’re finished with my steak, let me know. It’s my lunch, so don’t just chuck it into the can.’

“Bingo bango. The light bulb went off and I put one and one together — the steak and the can. Steak-in-a-can. Why, of course, I said to myself. Why not? That’s when Miss Sothersby and I went to work with a steak knife and a shoehorn. We were able to fit an entire ten-ounce sirloin steak into a can fit for beans. The next week we went into production and here we are — Steak-in-a-Can. Brilliant, if I do say so myself.”

Steak-in-a-Can will show up nationwide on the shelves in airport eateries September with a life-size display of a cow drinking a rum and coke next to a barbecue pit in the sky with the slogan: “Airplane food used to be disgusting, but Steak-in-a-Can has brought things to a new level.”

While not clever or enticing, MooseBusiness advertising ad exec, Kevin Ogilvy, stated, “Our slogan gets to the point for the business traveler who is tired of rubbery bagels or questionable cheese dishes served on plastic plates. Now it’s possible to eat a steak on a plane, on the run and with a spoon. What more can you ask for? MooseBusiness is still working on getting it the right color, but that’s just a matter of the right dye combination.”

“This is really something,” announced Meeve. “I was a little surprised nobody in Florence was celebrating the Fourth, but that’s okay, at least I got what I came here for. I’m more than pleased that I was able to obtain this copy of the Venus. It was the last one left in the gift shop, too, which I found quite fortuitous.  I signed it right away as a precaution to show proof of ownership so that, God forbid, if anything happens to it before I can get it framed back in Miami, the authorities will know it belongs to me.”

The actual name of the painting, whose copy Mr. Adams now has in his possession as he bicycles across the Alps, is The Birth of Venus. It was painted by Sandro Botticelli and depicts the goddess Venus who has emerged from the sea as a full grown woman. The model who served as the inspiration for Venus is speculated to have been the lover of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici who commissioned the artist in the late 1470s. The original work hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

Meeve Adams said, “The original is very nice, but we measured it in the museum and discovered that it’s a little too big for our living room. This goes to show how modern technology such as scanners, computers and air travel, allow somebody like me to come across the big blue sea and get a great deal on a masterful work of art. I try to teach my children to appreciate the finer things in life. For instance, when we all took our summer vacation last year to Washington DC, I bought all the kids an Abe Lincoln top hat.”

MooseBusiness interns Eddie Bozmaan and Aaron Flentz, run across cheese wheels trying to get them to explode.

MooseBusiness’ Cheese Division, Switzerland, is in deep trouble. Last month we received a call from a woman identifying herself as Marsha Goodnature, Lincoln, Nebraska. She said that her husband, home from work on his lunch hour, made a grilled cheese sandwich and right before he bit into it, the cheese exploded into a million pieces. He wasn’t injured but his shirt and eyeglasses were ruined and the refrigerator magnets needed to be replaced.

Two weeks later the calls started flooding in so much so that a Cheese Hotline had to be set up. Chuckee Cheese began calling too. Six million pounds of mozarella had to be recalled because, according to regional manager, Leonard Pribble, “It started ’splodin all over the place. The kids were covered, the games were covered and we had to close the rubber ball cage and crawling tubes. Parents were asking for their money back, but the children were having a blast. You should have seen them laugh. We are planning to sue you.”

MooseBusiness Cheese Division spokesman David Grier said, “Cheese is not supposed to explode. We really are at a loss as to what is going on here. We were thinking of calling the company’s new psychic, Sri Kirpi, thinking maybe he could give us some insight. But we couldn’t get ahold of him. It seems he is somewhere away on a retreat with a team of college girls filming something called Guru Gone Wild. Figures, right?”

Denise Falls, Longmonth, Colorado, called our offices on Sunday and left this message: “You people should be ashamed of yourselves. My husband Larry is covered in camambere. We had clients over for wine and cheese and just before they handed over their check the entire cheese plate went kablooey. We want to speak to a supervisor stat!”

Company spokesperson Louise Simpson could not be reached for comment. Our research staff is still trying to figure out what’s going on and scientists are cutting into blocks and wheels of cheddar to look for tiny explosive devices, nitroglycerin and traces of gunpowder. They hired interns from a state school to run across  thousands of cheese wheels to see if they will go off like mines. It’s dangerous work, but some idiot has to do it! Meanwhile the cheese division has been contacted by the State Department to discuss whether the cheese has military implications.

Marketing analyst Benson Leftkover, Chicago branch, said today in a press conference that headphones for dogs are the next wave of yuppie toys.

“These people will buy and use any old shit that has bright lights and tinkling bells,” said Leftkover, thinking microphones were off. He rebounded by saying, “Excuse me, I was merely joking. But seriously, headphones for dogs are soon to become the national craze. Face it, people tend to be egocentric, ethnocentric and speciescentric, if there is such a word. If not, attach my name to it. I want credit for something around here.”

Apparently, Leftkover still has a chip on his shoulder for having to share credit for the invention of the electric spoon, an item still on the drawing board at Moose Business, Inc.

“The headphone idea is something whose time has come. You go out for a walk with Fido or Biscuit or whatever his name happens to be. You have your headphones on and he has his. You can listen to Myrna Carey or whatever her name is, and your dog can be crapping to the tunes of Louis Prima. No doubt there are other benefits. You can calm down a nervous dog, like one of those little ones with the fast metabolisms. Put your chihuahua on Kenny G, or your dachshund on some Yo Yo Ma. But by all means, for the love of God, people, do not let your German shepherd listen to Wagner. Use some common sense and it will all go to plan.”

Leftkover finished the press conference by saying that a dog listening to music is far less likely to bite the mailman, and this is good for everybody.

Delwood Morris’ friend, Maynard Wilkins, also with the warehouse staff, drove himself home, wiping out every mailbox on the block and getting his pickup truck stuck in a drainage ditch. He tried to walk the rest of the way, then, according to Boca police sergeant Ernesto Riviera, fell into a rosebush. He awoke twenty minutes later and tried to call  Delwood for help, but received no answer. Delwood Morris had by this time, according to police, passed out on his couch with a lit cigarette dangling from his lips.

Thirty minutes later, Delwood Morris’ two-bedroom home by the railroad tracks was on fire. A neighbor said the blaze could be seen a block away and told police, “Me and my husband would’ve called the fire department sooner, but, as I said, there was one more wrestling match to go. We was all watching it — Big Ernie Pile against The Mad Russian, Andre Karkosova. Pile used his elbow and both teeth to break a stranglehold and, Jesus help me, we seen the fire blazing but couldn’t get our eyes off that television screen.”

One neighbor tried to put out the fire with a case of beer and another with a garden hose that, it turns out, was not connected to the spigot. Finally, with Delwood Morris stuck between his sofa and his rifle rack, his dog, Delwood Junior ran back into the house and pulled the 200-pound Morris out onto the street where firefighters worked for a half hour to unfasten his suspenders.

Delwood is recovering in Mount Sinai Hospital and said, “I just love that dog, Delwood Junior. I loved my daddy too, which is the reason why I named him after my daddy. He’s a little feller but stronger than you know. Dachshunds are like that.” Holding back tears, Delwood continued, “For him to have pulled my lifeless body out from the burning embers and into the road is the kind of stuff heroes is made of. I guess you might say I am like the Lord Jesus for I have returned to this world to depart my story. When I leave this hospital me and Delwood’s gonna take to the road and tell our story on television and whatnot.”

“Essentially,” noted Friedman, “these subjects unconsciously had the desire to avoid their wives, but when we put them under hypnosis we discovered that they also consciously wanted to avoid their wives.”

Only one subject, Mr. Carey Wainscott, cared to speak with us, as the others are not to be found.

“I love my wife, don’t get me wrong,” said Wainscott. “But when I am around she finds things for me to do. Fix this, mend that, rub my feet, and so on. I feel abused and neglected, emotionally speaking. For the longest time I felt that something was wrong because when I see my wife I get this urge in my feet to run somewhere. Anywhere. I made myself a small hiding place in my closet right behind my clothes hamper. I was able to put a wire through the wall and watch television in there on a tiny set that they make for sporting events. Thanks to Dr. Friedman’s hypnosis now I know that when I avoid my wife it’s because I choose to do so. It’s very liberating.”

Ben Franklin, father of our country and inventor of the spin cycle washing machine.

AMY SHAPIRO, PUBLIC RELATIONS DIVISION — Today marked a red letter date in history for MooseBusiness. We just announced the opening of our new research lab where, to quote Victor Shaneski, CEO, “Ben Franklin may very well be doing the rumba in his grave right now. This is huge for our company. It’s an innovation all wrapped up by itself.

“We’ll be reporting all kinds of research. It’ll be a hodge-podge grab bag of fascinating, titilating and useful information. Focus? No. We are not focusing on any single topic or genre. This is the largest project of its kind in the history of the world. You want to know how the Greeks made salad? We’ll tell you. You care to understand how birds can fly against the wind? We’ll have an orinthologist up all night to bring you the answer. You say you’re interested in why a single sneeze can kill you dead? We’ll tell you.

“I can’t underestimate the enormity of this project. It’s like Einstein meets Pasteur meets the Amazing Randi. We are pleased as punch, excited and waiting with baited breath. Right here on this website we will be reporting the kinds of research that will make you giggle, your mother cry and your father punch a wall. We will have it first, we will have it right and we will have it in layman’s terms so even an idiot who once served as president can understand. Hold onto your seats because it’s coming — all the things you wanted to know as well as all the things you fear to find out.”

Mr. Shaneski’s interview was conducted at Casey’s Old Irish Pub on Michigan Avenue. He was enthused with the new project. In the meantime, he told the MooseBusiness scientists and public relations department to sharpen their pens and their wits and “prepare for Mr Toad’s Wild Ride.” The first press release is to appear in the New York Times on Saturday.