Mon | APR 28 “Goodbye, palm trees,” reports the Press-Telegram in a story with its first sentence ghost-written by Kurt Vonnegut explaining how a debilitating fungus is about to wipe out a palm-tree population that costs too much to preserve. Replacements for the 2,900 reportedly unsalvageable Phoenix palms infected by fusarium—famous for killing thousands as part of a Soviet bio-warfare program before a tearful TV epiphany and rehabilitated career as an ingredient in the tasty meat-substitute Quorn—approach an unbelievable $30,000 per tree, which is more than enough to just pay people to stand around holding leaves and coconuts for a year. Still, Gina Lopez, whose block was preemptively denuded by the city’s crack Spore Squad, wonders if the city isn’t seeing the forest for the fusarium: “The city takes in so much money and we see new palm trees downtown in the redevelopment project,” she said. “I’m perplexed why they can’t put money into the places we live.” At press time, a compromise offer by the city of 16 vacant retail spaces at the Pike was still under consideration.

Tues | APR 29 “Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer. So it goes.”

Wed | APR 30 More bad news from the underworld as the AP reports that “you don’t have to be a laid-off worker in a rust-belt state to have a negative view of the nation’s economy,” though it admits that would offer the best possible options for starting your own trashcan fire. Now even America’s millionaires sense something rumbling on the other side of the topiary. A poll called the Fidelity Millionaire Outlook (conducted by Gallup-Warbucks-McDuck) revealed that 19 percent of those with three million or more in liquid assets and an annual income of at least $270,000 don’t even “consider themselves wealthy anymore,” which is understandable if you’re trying to feed a family of 500 and still keep the labradoodle in designer dog chow. Despite a proposed Perspective Correction Plan that would allow millionaires to adopt up to nine American citizens with incomes of $27,000 each, morale among those with too much money plummets almost to Oct. 23, 1929, levels.

Thurs | MAY 1 Port workers in LA and Long Beach unite as the ILWU shuts down every West Coast port to protest the war. “We’re loyal to America, and we won’t stand by while our country, our troops, and our economy are destroyed by a war that’s bankrupting us to the tune of three trillion dollars,” says ILWU president Bob McEllrath. “It’s time to stand up, and we’re doing our part today.” In unrelated news, a CNN poll reports that George W. Bush is currently the most loathed president in American history—polling numbers so low they had to defrost the machine afterward. Bush’s approval rating of 29 percent means fewer Americans believe in him than believe in UFOs (34 percent) or witches (31 percent) or Satan himself, who with 62 percent of Americans expressing faith in his existence could be the most viable presidential candidate yet fielded. In further news from hell, some vital part of the Press-Telegram’s production line dies of pure fear on this day—when Dean Singleton reportedly flaps into town—resulting in an emergency issue put together without computerized facilities. The embarrassing result: a confident, uncluttered and genuinely appealing newspaper, a design fiasco quickly remedied with an injection of medical-grade infographics.

Fri | MAY 2 Pure fear.

Sat | MAY 3 Bush speaks to reports of national financial difficulty in his radio address, acknowledging that Americans are “facing a tough economic period.” (“For some reason,” he added.) That’s a troubling familiarity with reality from a president whose usual detached optimism presents every booby trap in Baghdad as an unexploded opportunity—if he actually says things are bad, that means the missiles are already on their way. As a response, America taps into some detached optimism of its own—the can-do attitude that makes freedom just another word for nothing left to lose—and turns an appreciative eye to 17-year-old Xochitl Parra, who delivered her own baby in her shower before she was supposed to go to class at Poly and then walked four blocks to St. Mary’s, saving approximately six cents worth of gasoline.

Sun | MAY 4 Four dead in O-HI-O.

Mon | MAY 5 LBReport.com presents results of the National Adult Spelling Bee—hosted in Long Beach this year after a discouraging run in Lake Chargoggagoggmanchaugg—agoggchaubunagungamauugg, Mass.—that lasts 37 rounds until a Pacific Grove man misspells “axolotl” and Garden Grove adult-literate Janice Davis wins the title. The Bee, which directs prize money to winners’ favorite charities and was organized by better angel Justin Rudd, is the only hopeful happy thing ever reported in this column.

Tags: adult spelling bee, george w. bush, ilwu, kurt vonnegut, Long Beach, pregnancy, press telegram, xochitl parra