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In a surprise move today, the UN announced the adoption of the new international language, Mangrishi, a mix of Mandarin, Spanish, English and Hindi. All over the planet, people have poured out into the streets in total panic, tearing down signs in all sorts of languages, including their own, in apparent confusion about the cause for the impromptu protests.

"Like, uh...does this, um, like, does this mean, uh...does this mean I have to go back to school this summer?" one tanned young man asked me, dripping wet and running from a public swimming pool with a beach towel wrapped around his head like a turban (we thought he might be a Sikh - sorry, tried to snag a cool interview for YouTube - dumped it to a text converter for this lead story on baidu, instead).

Returning from a four-month world tour promoting the gastropod mollusk industry as a means to reignite the sluggish economy, our glorious leader has pronounced this a travesty, proclaiming our country to be sovereign and not subject to the laws of international thieves and bandits. "We have a proud heritage of inclusion, a history where people of all nations are welcome to our shores, but we will not allow the unsanctioned rules and regulations of an international body of bureacrats dictate the words we can and cannot use to communicate with one another. I have called an emergency meeting of my cabinet to address this matter and will make a more formal response later today."

In reviewing the UN document released just minutes ago, it appears that all numbers or references to counting systems in general have been replaced with Mandarin characters. All references to food, foodstuff, or any ingredients used in food, such as plants, animals, herbs and spices, as well as religious symbology, have been translated into a mix of Spanish and Hindi words. All references to business, civilization and other forms of trade and transportation have been converted into English. Any people, places, things or ideas not expressly, explicitly or implicitly stated in the document may still be used on the local level, but any consideration of the international use of such words must be submitted to regional committees for the dissemination of global concepts for arbitration and argumentation. And thankfully, Latin has officially been declared a dead language.

More on this important topic as it develops. And now back to your regular programming, "Slug Herders and the Mothers Who Raised Them."