GREENWICH. Work is now underway to transport the entire Royal Observatory from Greenwich, where it has been located since the site was owned by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (brother of Henry V), to an undisclosed ranch near Crawford, Texas in the United States. As a result of a bargain stuck by Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W. Bush, the Royal Observatory is being traded for "Old Faithful" a geyser that has until recently been located in Yellowstone National Park in the western United States.
At a recent meeting between the two leaders, Mr. Blair said, "We can get by just fine once the geyser is installed in Greenwich. You know the geyser spouts up once every 80 minutes---we'll be able to set our clocks by it just as usual. We can also make good use of the fresh water."
President Bush was a bit boorish in his comments about Texas becoming the new center of the planet. "I never could figure out all that adding and subtracting to figure out that GMT---whatever that is. Now the rest of the world can just set their clocks to Texas Mean Time---like it ought to be! I'm going to set that Murdering Line right near the barn. I told Blair I really wasn't interested in all those old buildings---I just wanted to own that Prime Murdering Line thing, but he said that all the buildings were part of the deal. A deal is a deal here in Texas! Maybe I can trade those old buildings to the Chinese for some good firecrackers," said Bush with a big smile.
"I gave Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton a shovel and told her to start digging up Old Faithful. I think she's just about got the whole muddy thing on a pallet now, and soon it'll be on a jumbo jet bound for Paris... uh... you'd better ask Karl Rove about that... was it Paris we were supposed to ship the geyser to? Or do they get that big Statue? I forget. We had better hurry though; Dick Cheney told me that we have to finish all this horse-trading before that election thing this November."
