Weekly Asheville Disclaimer Page: 10/22/08

Ohio, Monday — A proposed sale of a two-man plumbing operation in Ohio has fallen through after the buyer-to-be learned the company was not earning the owner $250,000 a year, as stated.

Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher learned his employer, Al “The Boss-man” Newell, had exaggerated the worth of Newell Plumbing & Heating, but only after bragging to the next president of the United States about the cool quarter-million dollars he would soon be making after he bought out his employer.

“Yeah, I inflated the value a little,” said Newell, who saves $24 a month by moving Joe between job sites on city transit, which Joe rides free of charge, right up front where the driver can help Joe find his stop and tie his shoes. “I had ol’ Wurzelbacher right where I wanted him. Nothing could ruin this deal, unless someone somehow found out the obvious about this company’s earnings and told that knucklehead.”

Newell’s dreams of an early retirement were dashed when Joe — who had verbally agreed to purchase the name “Newell Plumbing & Heating” — unknowingly protected his own financial interests by spewing several minutes of what Joe called “business-guy type stuff” to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and, by extension, the rest of the planet.

Bad news came for both men in the form of intense media scrutiny and universal common sense as the numbers got crunched and it was determined that Newell had led Joe to believe the company was worth much more than the approximately nothing it is currently worth.

According to Newell, prior to departure for what Joe deemed a “historic economic meeting of minds” with the candidate, Joe also expressed concern that Obama’s healthcare plan would make it harder for guys like Joe to become heart surgeons.

“Joe’s the dumbest damn Polack in this entire town, and that’s saying something, because Joe is German and this is Toledo, for Chrissakes,” Newell disclosed while Joe was out of earshot urinating down his own pants leg behind the bushes at the company’s bread-winning account, the Grandma Newell Home.

“What’d he think we was plumbing, the Governor’s Mansion?” continued Newell. “I had him on the line for serious money, and alls he woulda’ gotten was pliers, a bucket, and a decal to put on his own truck if he somehow got a truck or a plumber’s license or a license to drive a truck.”

Newell said he plans to run his business for a few more years, and realistically expects to remain in an income tax bracket that pays dividends in free milk and cheese. Newell has recovered from the blown sale of his business by fronting Joe some Tupperware samples in an “inverse octagon arrangement” that Joe wanted to get in “near the middle.”

“Two presidential candidates fighting over the vote of Joe freaking Wurzelbacher. I don’t let Joe vote for what radio station we’re going to listen to on the job site, even when he’s got earphones,” Newell said. “Quarter-million dollars doing what, using a wrench to knock yourself unconscious once a week trying to brush imaginary bugs off your pumpin-sized head? He’s afraid of spiders, you know that? Won’t go in crawlspaces. Quarter-million dollars.”