You've Been Framed... and Merked.
It's all about the Palacio 'transfer' today, and it seems like the world has been fooled yet again, just like the time when buck toothed, pan face Esther Rantzen fooled the world into beleiving she was a woman and that spaghetti grew on trees. There have been many internet hoaxes, like the one with um... the fella, and the other one, but one other springs to mind, go get yourself a cup of tea, and let me fill you in...

Back in the heady days of the dotcom boom, when I made even less money that I do now from ArsenalShorts (i.e. none) I ran a site called ArseOnLine, you may have heard of it. You may also remember a series called Dream Team, still aired today on Sky One, albeit without the might actors and actresses who used to swank about the set, one good looking fella called Fletch, a black fella who has been in the Bill and EastEnders, and loads of others probably. Well, there was a player on there called Didier Baptiste who played for Monaco, not really of course, it was just a TV show remember. Any road, said player happened to mention in the show one day, that Arsene Wenger had been trackng him, eyeing him up for a potential move to Highbury. Stick with me, it gets better... On a particularly slow news day, I decided it might be funny to add in a story stating Sir Wenger has been watching the Monaco player Didier Baptiste and might be making a move soon etc, all that good stuff. I even fnished the story with a disclaimer stating the story wasn't a real story, and it was just a TV show thing.

Imagine my surprise when the story started appearing across the national papers, including the Sunday Times, the News of the World, the The Sun, the The Mirror and pretty much every other daily and Sunday paper out there. I started to get slightly worried, but thought, well its their fault for not researching the story, and in true Arsenal fashion: 'f*ck'em all'. Then a few days later, on the rattler on the way to a Champions League game, my mate and I, necking our usual 18 cans of Stella happened to see the front page of the The Daily Star, which carried the story re: the hoax. How we laughed. The story has gone down in Arsenal folk lore, and has since been copied several times, by myself mainly, and this Rod Palacio story smacks of another Didier Baptiste story. A Liverpool website tried to claim, and continues to claim the story as its own, but I know the truth, 'cos I fooking wrote it!

Anyways, the story goes like this, all the furore over the Rob Palacio stuff has been proved to have been yet another hoax, not by us, as we had our suspicions it was a fake story, but by someone else, who actually created a fake blog, and carried the story, and with a bit of luck and some strong headwind, its carried across the worlds media, leading to the international incident we see before us today...I personally, am especially liking the picture of that turtle faced drug addict on their homepage, see it for yourself, but nice one to the merk-ertrators of said hoaxage... it could still be a DBH (double bluff hoax), if we still end up signing him of course!

Wenger Begins Contract Talks...
According to several big, proper newspapers, Sir Wenger is about to make a start on talking about his new deal which will hopefully keep him at AG beyond the end of his contracted contract which expires next summer.

Peter 'Prince Phillip' Hill-Wood has been speaking out about the deal in his usual bull in a chinashop way: "I very much hope he will [sign a new deal]. It's very important. He's done a marvellous job for the last 10 years or so. He looks pretty fit to me and I think he enjoys himself still. He's got a good job and I'm hoping he'll stay with us. We had a fairly lengthy conversation recently and that went very well. Hopefully, in the not too distant future, we'll have something positive to say about it. I'm confident he'll stay..."

When asked about the departed of Jeremie Aliadiere, he called it a big blow, but added: "We've coped before with the loss of Ian Wright, Tony Adams and others who have been great players for the club. You have to move on..."