​Famous friendly ghost Casper, ‘child’ star of many films and television shows, has given us a rare glimpse behind the scenes of his afterlife and agreed to a tell-all interview with DUFP reporters.
 
As we all sat – or rather, we sat and he hovered, ghost-like, at Casper’s home at Whipstaff Manor, the comic book, video game, movie and TV star began to regale us with stories of his life, afterlife, career and aftercareer.
 
“It all began waaay back in 1930-odd,” said Casper, casting his mind back to a time before social media, Nazis and exposing Nazis on social media.
 
“I was only a child when I got sick, but my parents insisted that modern medicine and vaccines were ‘of the devil’ and kept them away from me. To be fair, the cure for most things back then was heroin mixed with formaldehyde and chloroform, so maybe they had a point.”
 
“Anyway, because my parents ‘knew better’ than the doctors, I died pretty quickly. It’s not like it was anything out of the ordinary – most class pictures were taken in graveyards so they could include the headstones!”
 
But despite his childhood lacking in several key areas – namely having one – Casper holds no grudge against his family.
 
“Sure, I may have haunted them a bit during a period of time which I figured would’ve been my teenage years, but I’m over it all now. Just focussing on being happy and friendly is what I’m all about!”
 
You can read more about Casper’s story in his new autobiography; “That’s the Spirit: From the Cradle to the Grave A Few Years Later”, in stores next month.

​Local amateur comedian and self-described ‘hard case’ Mark McArthur yesterday inflicted a crowd of dozens, gathered to watch a junior cricket match, with a free ‘performance’ of some of his latest material.
 
Firmly planted in a fold-down camping chair, clasping a thermos of coffee ‘with just a little bit of Irish in it, if y’know what I mean!’, McArthur began his set inside the first over, questioning whether or not the umpires needed to schedule an appointment at Specsavers.
 
“I could see that was a run out and I’m all the way over here, champ!”
 
In between quips, McArthur would shoot quick glances to his ‘audience’ as they forced smiles, shifted awkwardly from foot to foot, and became suddenly engrossed with the latest goings-on on their phones.
 
“Hey Ump” he called.
 
“Ump”.
 
“Ump”.
 
“Ump”.
 
Upon finally getting a response from the middle of the pitch, 47-year-old investment banker cracked a grin and responded, “Game’s out there!”
 
“I got that one from The Simpsons. I love that show - isn’t Homer the coolest dad?!”
 
Throughout the day, McArthur made numerous other ‘humorous’ jibes against the umpires, both teams, and several of his fellow spectators.
 
As the game began to wind down, McArthur became more philosophical in his speech.
 
“It’s just a little something I do to bring a bit of joy to people’s lives. I do what I can”
 
“Hell, I’m not even related to any of these kids”.

​While reading the number of messages from well-wishers on her special day, local woman Mikayla Shaw has noticed one message that stands out from among the rest.
 
Her grandmother, Betty McKenzie, at 85 years young, has managed to not only maintain a social media presence but also submit her own birthday wish – albeit on a profile picture posted back in 2016.
 
“Happy birthday love! Youre blossoming into such a beautiful young woman – I HOPE YOU HAVE A WONDERFUL YEAR AND LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU ON FRIDAY A CUPPA. lOVE YOU”
 
The comment, left in a sea of ‘Looking good babses’ and ‘XOXO can I be you?’ comments, stands out like a sore thumb; not just because of the sudden switch to caps lock, but also due to it being several years out of date.
 
“Aww, she made a genuine effort to get it right this time,” said Shaw to herself, as she investigated her notifications.
 
“The real gift here is that she’s posted it on the correct person’s page this time! Well, that and the fact that she has no idea what a Minion meme is!”
 
At the time of writing, Mrs McKenzie was perusing Facebook’s range of floral and cat GIFs she could incorporate into her next birthday wish bonanza.
 
More as it develops.

​It has only taken a matter of hours for Dunedin’s Lime Scooters to cause widespread death and destruction across town, with hospitals, medical centres and morgues reporting an overwhelming influx of people.
 
The scooters, popular across other main centres in New Zealand, were met in Dunedin by excited locals who were looking forward to potentially leaving their cars in the garage and saving on fuel, but their optimism was quickly replaced by terror, as the carnage set in.
 
“There was blood and guts everywhere,” reported an unnamed Dunedin local.
 
“I didn’t know where to look – you just couldn’t escape from it. It penetrated all of your senses at once – the smell of blood, the cries of the wounded, the sight of the gore… I was speechless”.
 
Authorities are warning people to approach the Lime Scooters cautiously, especially if they still haven’t sobered up since New Year’s.
 
“Walk before you can run, people!” said a representative of the Police.
 
“And by that, we mean make sure you can actually put one foot in front of the other before trying to operate any kind of vehicle or machine”.
 
Despite the high human cost, Lime have no plans to withdraw from Dunedin any time soon.
 
“The way I see it, we’re doing God’s work here,” said Tom Carroll, Dunedin’s Lime Scooter representative.
 
“If we can remove the kind of people who injure or kill themselves on a goddamn scooter from the gene pool, then I think we’re doing society a bit of a favour.”
 
More to come.

​As the sunlight of a new day rose to greet the world, news that every single person on Earth who set themselves a New Year’s Resolution has come to terms with that they have already broken them began to circulate.
 
Whether people had decided to get themselves into shape, learn how to play the guitar, or simply live a better kind of life, by the dawn of the tenth day of the year, those promises were already shattered and left by the wayside.
 
Crawling out from under the covers of wherever they slept that night, people were quick to deny they had ever thought to set themselves any goal for 2019 at all.
 
“What? No, setting myself the goal of any kind of self-improvement is a bit of a bridge too far, to be honest” said Nick Matheson, a local loser.
 
“I barely scraped through 2018 by the skin of my teeth, so the idea of ‘self-care’ or whatever is a bit beyond me”.
 
“I’m just trying to make sure I’ve got enough money for beer for the rest of summer – that’s probably the closest I’m going to get to a resolution of any kind!”
 
At the time of writing, people around the world were kicking themselves for renewing their gym memberships for a further 12 months, after only going a handful of times the previous year.
 
“At this point, I’m only going to hit the gym to burn off Christmas lunch,” said one recent re-signing gym-goer.
 
“I figure that should be about just before Easter, but we’ll see how we go”.

 In a stunning announcement, the world’s geneticists have announced they may have found the secret to New Zealand’s domination of rugby: it’s literally in our DNA.


The announcement, coming off a four-year study into New Zealand’s continued domination of the oval-ball game, was made today from a laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.


The head researcher, Professor Yann Schmidt, declared that after “hundreds of millions of dollars” and “several years of hard work”, they had finally concluded that rugby was indeed in the DNA of every New Zealander.


“You can see it quite clearly in the shape of the DNA of the average New Zealander – a clear rugby ball shape.”


“We can only assume this is why such a small population of people have dominated one of the biggest sports in the world for over one hundred years.”


The study had hoped to include samples from Australia, but researchers were unable to secure a sample.


“We couldn’t even secure a Petrie Dish of bacteria from Australia. Is this what people mean when they say ‘Australia has no culture’?”

​News straight in from the playground now, as everyone’s just finding out that Nick’s mum – who’s really cool – let him get a sick lightning bolt shaved into his head for his new haircut!
 
Ever since the divorce, Nick’s been getting all sorts of really cool stuff from his parents, like game consoles, new bikes, and now this! He must be the happiest and most-fulfilled kid in school!
 
You can tell Nick’s loving his new life with two families – you see it on his face every day when he’s being dropped off at the school gates and crying tears of joy. I mean, he must be REALLY happy, judging by how many tears there are!
 
Whether he’s with his dad and his new partner – his old babysitter – or with his mum, who living a ‘#badbitch’ lifestyle, whatever that means, Nick looks like he’s having an experience that will really shape him in the near future!
 
And don’t get me started on TWO Christmasses!
 
Some kids have all the luck!

​The entire female population of New Zealand breathed a collective sigh of relief today, after being reminded that ‘Not All Men’ commit violent assaults and crimes against them, in the wake of the Grace Millane tragedy.
 
In the days since the murder of English backpacker Millane by a New Zealand man, comment sections have been awash with comments from men, mentioning how ‘Only Some Men’ commit these crimes, and how they would never do such a thing themselves, because they are ‘Nice Guys’.
 
“Yeah, this guy was nuts, but I would never do anything like this, EVER,” said one commenter.
 
“Problem solved”.
 
“You’re welcome, ladies”.
 
Another commenter went on to say that since they had never seen someone threaten a woman in their immediate vicinity, the problem was clearly ‘overblown feminazi propaganda’.
 
“More bloody liberal lies, I reckon. There are kids starving in Africa, and we’re here talking about this? Crazy stuff.”
 
The commenters went on to add they ‘Wouldn’t Apologize’ for the actions of a few ‘Lone Wolves’, saying the actions of a few members of a societal group did not accurately reflect the group as a whole.
 
Many of the commenters did not have the same viewpoint for the world’s Muslim population, with several dozen comments on the next article calling for a hair-trigger reaction to rising immigration levels.
 
“If we don’t make a stand, then the end is nigh. I’d like to think if I was a Muslim, I would be trying to make real positive changes in my community.”

 Waking last night in a cold sweat surrounded by newspaper articles, printed-off blog posts and opinion pieces, local woman Alex McDermott concluded she could no longer differentiate between the ‘tongue-in-cheek’ satirical news articles and ‘honest-to-god’ actual reporting.


McDermott, 26, is the latest victim of what several psychiatrists are calling ‘News Dissociative Disorder’, or NDD.


“Things could certainly be a lot worse – especially if you’re an avid viewer of Fox News or you put credence in anything Mark Richardson says,” said Dr Vinay Patel, an NDD expert.


“With some of the crazy crap that’s going on in this world of ours, it definitely is becoming harder and harder to separate fact from fiction.”


Dr. Patel went on to describe a new coping mechanism his team had developed to help sufferers cope with the effects of NDD.


“We call it the ‘Trump Test’, and it’s basically where whenever you hear a news report about anything the current American President has said or done, you say to yourself ‘This may or may not be truthful, but I’ve got a million better things to do than worry about anything he gets himself into’”.


“So far, we’ve seen participants experience lessened stress levels and increase their overall happiness levels. I think we’ve found a cure”.


Other experts suggest the effects of NDD can be lessened by putting your damn phone down once in a while.


More to come.