BUSTER, Wisconsin (FP) Sam Jansen admits he might have gone a little far in a scheme that involved convincing his family and doctors that he’d suffered a severe head trauma, leaving him hospitalized and unable to recognize his wife.

Back in August, Jansen says he realized that family responsibilities were going to be a season long hindrance to his football Sundays and he began to formulate an “end around” that would guarantee him a seat in front of the television for nearly the entire NFL season.

During the final pre-season game before opening day, Jansen, within his family’s earshot but out of sight, slapped on a bike helmet that he’d hidden with the kitchen pots and pans and hurled himself down the basement steps, screaming all the way down.

Once at the bottom of the steps, extremely sore, Jansen tossed the helmet under the stairs and lay there moaning until his wife and kids came running. Frantically, his wife, Gloria, called 911 while Jansen lay there mumbling “Buster Memorial…Buster Memorial…”

Initially confused as to why he kept repeating ‘Buster Memorial’, they finally figured out that he wanted to be treated at Buster Memorial Hospital, so they passed the request on to the ambulance driver and he was taken directly to Buster Memorial’s emergency room.

While doctors found numerous bruises from his fall, an MRI and visual inspection found no damage to the head. Baffled doctors still assumed that he must have hurt his head in the fall because he was semi-conscious, couldn’t focus on anyone and kept repeating “Buster Memorial”.

“I had gone all around before the injury”, admits Jansen, “and checked out which hospital had the best TVs and settled on Buster Memorial. They had fairly good size flat screens on the wall!”

As the week progressed and got closer to NFL opening day, Jansen began changing his “Buster Memorial” mantra to “football” and doctors, thinking that he was making a breakthrough, instructed nurses to make sure the television in his room was tuned to whatever game was on.

What finally tripped up the plan in week 4 was an open bag of pork rinds discovered by hospital aides, stuffed in a pillow case. When approached with the snack, Jansen, hungry for pork rinds, suddenly lurched out of his fake coma, grabbed the bag and admitted to the entire scam.

Psychologists have subsequently determined that Jansen suffers from acute impulsiveness worsened by an inability to differentiate between a good idea and a bad one.

PEMBROKE, Iowa (FP) Diane Stasiuk’s husband says she’s “gone to the other side”. Extended family members say she no longer answers the phone. Her own parents are scrambling around, trying to solve the riddle of the computer so they can talk to their daughter.

And all of this because Stasiuk, 49, has apparently bonded with the social networking program, Facebook, to such a degree that she no longer relates to anyone not on her ‘friend list’. For a week and a half her husband, Frank, was trying to ask her if she had paid the electric bill, but it wasn’t until he befriended her on Facebook from his workplace that he was even able to find out what they were having for dinner.

Mrs. Stasiuk, whose ‘friends list’ tallies over 4,000, has answered a few questions from reporters but only after ‘friending’ them and then only in the private mail section of the program where she’s explained herself as “only really witty and charming when I’m on Facebook. I’m really popular now and I just can’t go back to listening to my whiny voice and incoherent rambling.”

Apparently, friends agree.  Best friend (BFBF), Melanie Davis, says that “Diane was kind of a dud to hang out with but she’s very entertaining on Facebook. I don’t know what it is but I’d prefer to keep our relationship purely digital.”

The always delicate balance between teenager and parent has also been strained. Stasiuk’s two children, Melissa, 16, and Connie, 15, have shocked their father by urging him to completely sever their Internet connection, admitting that “it’s no fun anyway. She’s friends with all of our friends, which totally sucks.”

HOMELY, Colorado (FP) As far as Horace Greenry is concerned, desperate times call for desperate measures so the owner of the third largest paper mill in Colorado is cutting costs by only hiring immediate and extended family to fill all positions.

Greenry claims that this cost cutting measure will stabilize overhead in an unstable economy and, essentially, keep all profits re-circulating throughout the family. Greenry got the idea one night while watching an old episode of The Waltons where John Boy, Mary Ellen and the rest of the kids helped to keep their lumber mill going during the depression years.

“Everybody’s got a job,” says Greenry, “Grandpa runs plant safety, Uncle Ed got human resources and even my 3 year-old empties the trash in my office.”

The changeover to all family employees has run into a few snags as Aunt Edna and Aunt Romy got into an argument over who would become cafeteria manager, which ultimately determined whose pasta sauce would be used on the menu. Romy brought the quarrel to human resources where her husband Ed couldn’t very well rule against his own wife, causing the spat to escalate to an all-out war between the two families. The situation got worse when Romy called security to have Edna escorted off of cafeteria premises, forgetting that security is run by Edna’s son, Carl, who never liked Romy to begin with.

While Mr. Greenry is in the process of rethinking the practical aspects of his reorganization idea, Aunt Romy has chained herself to the refrigerator, refusing to leave until she receives a promotion.