Banana Report #18: March 2000.

What do cartoonist Charles Schultz and Jerry Garcia have in common?
They both wrote and illustrated the highly succesful comic strip Peanuts.

It has been ten years since Nelson Mandela was released from prison in South Africa. He later went on to become South African President and a top-class dancer. (As I promised, no more Boris Yeltsin-is-a-funny-dancer jokes, they have been replaced by Nelson Mandela-is-a-funny-dancer jokes).

Bottom of the Barrel, the; SEE: Previous Joke.

International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch visited the sight of the Sydney 2000 Olympic games, to which he commented "I am a war criminal".

Recent revelations have come to light that former Australian captured aid workers, Steve Pratt and Peter Wallace were in fact on spying missions, as their Yugoslavian captors alleged. When questioned by the reporters, Mr. Wallace denied the allegations before knocking members of the press unconcious with his cuff-link stun grenades and launching himself into the air with his briefcase rocketpack.

Leader of the recently elected Austrian Freedom Party, Mr Jorg Haider has angrily denied and spoken out against media coverage which compares him to the German Nazi leader, Adolf Hiter. In a written statement he declared "Hitler had a moustache and I don't, therefore it is blindingly obvious that we have nothing in common".

The Academy Award nominations have been released to cries of "Sacrilige!" from the film-going community, as the Pokemon movie only recieved five nominations, none in the best actor or actress categories. Meanwhile, Australian best actor nominee Russell Crowe has caused a controversy by being born in New Zealand.

George W. Bush celebrated his recent primary victories by doing lines of cocaine off the barrells of loaded guns. Amazingly, all the nouns in the previous sentence were plural.

A British backpacker drowned during a routine dive off Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. "Plenty more where that came from" remarked dive operator Peter Warrick to reporters, while making a "dusting off after hard work" gesture with his hands. Bondi police Constable Gary Hardy said in a statement to reporters, "It's a major tragedy for us all here. We were hoping to shoot her dead on the beach later that afternoon, as is standard procedure with all European tourists".

Summer Holidays 2000 are coming to an end as Southern Hemispherian students head back to uni. "Those ten hour weeks are a killer", commented one arts student known as Barold. "Especially this year if I actually go to some classes" he added, before realising this was his twenty-fifth year as an undergraduate. He celebrated by doing nothing and then going for a surf.