An annual rite of spring is the opening of Sara’s Restaurant at the entrance to Presque Isle State Park and local man Delbert Stackhouse is already camped out to the first customer served come April 1st.  “I can’t wait for Sara’s to open,” said Stackhouse. “I brought enough food to last two weeks. I saved a bunch of Sara’s Greek dogs in my freezer, so I’ve been eating them ever since I got in line. I’m also having a porta-potty delivered…hopefully real soon.” 

Stackhouse is disappointed he wasn’t the first customer last year. “I got here a week before opening in 2023 and there were already a dozen people lined up. So I figured this year I would show up two weeks early. So far, so good.”  When asked about his loyalty to Sara’s, Stackhouse stated, “It’s the best restaurant in town. Where else can you get a Smith’s hot dog in Erie?” Stackhouse has vowed to continue this tradition every year until his cardiologist tells him to stop.

City planners have announced the recent hiring of “John Smith” to be the new Perry Square Santa. Smith, a resident of Mercer County, applied for the job yesterday and was immediately hired. A Parks Department spokesperson said that Mr. Smith had recently gotten a clean bill of health from UPMC Hamot and was ready to go to work that very day.

UPMC Hamot spokesman Morris “Mo” Munney announced today that the hospital is beginning a new seasonal organ donation drive. “We here at Hamot have been so proud of the incredible success of our organ transplant team.” he told us. “It has garnered us a lot of great publicity and quite a bit of, well, you know we don’t like the word ‘profit’ but we will say ‘income over expenses’ if you know what I mean.”

Munney went on to say that while most body parts are fairly easy to supply , Hamot has been continuously low on kidneys. “This is unacceptable.” he said. “Especially considering the fact that everyone has a spare.”

With that in mind Hamot is asking the Erie community to give back to the hospital that, according to Munney “has been there for them for the last 142 years.”

Starting September 4th Hamot will be accepting kidney donations from the public. “Just walk into our lobby and there will be signs directing you to the kidney drop off center.” Munney said. “It’s an easy procedure. Snip, yank, suture and you’re done!”

Munney assured us that donors do not go away empty handed. “Everyone who gives us a kidney gets a free canvas tote bag with the UPMC logo! These beautiful bags just shipped here from China and I can personally say that they are of a pretty decent quality.”

Ralph “Chuck” Heaver, who has been Waldameer Park’s chief vomit cleaner for more than 60 years, is retiring at the end of this summer season. “It’s been a great ride,” said Heaver, who began working at the park while he was a high school student. “I still remember my interview back in 1962. I sat down in front of Mr. Alex Moeller, who owned the park at the time, and he looked me in the eyes and said, ‘I know a good vomit collector when I see one. As long as Waldameer serves food and has spinning rides, you’ll always have a job here,’ and he handed me my first wooden bucket, and sent me right over to the Comet.”

Heaver continued, “Back then, throwing up on rides was not much of a problem. But now that the rides and gotten higher and more intense, there’s more call for what we call a ‘bucket man’, even though my official title is ‘Emesis Removal Engineer.’”

Heaver currently has two summer interns working under him, but is not sure either of them will be able to replace him. “Kids today just don’t want to scrape fetid barf. I think it’s a generational thing. When I started, I couldn’t wait to start mopping for $1.15/hour. I used to ask the operator of the Paratrooper to make the ride go faster so I’d have more work to do.”

Heaver is currently stationed at the Tilt-a-Whirl, but is ready to be called to any ride on a moment’s notice. “Well, I just got a call to head over to the Spider. Right after lunch is my busiest time.

Beloved spokesdog Max announced he is holding out for more money and will not film any more commercials until his contract is renegotiated. 

“Everyone knows I’m the actual star of those ads. Oh sure, the cars are all nice and shiny, but who’s actually looking at them. People have told me that they’d much rather have a dog in the commercials instead of all those companies using their kids.”

Max, who is acting as his own agent, added “It’s nothing personal against my daddy. He’s a great owner. He takes me for walkies, gives me treats, but let’s face it – when people come to the dealership, they’re here to see me, and maybe buy a car.” 

Max stated he will still make all his personal appearance during negotiations, and is looking forward to putting his paw print on a new contract shortly.

Students at a Northwestern Pennsylvania college’s Computer Programming department have successfully created the region’s first chatbot, or “artificial intelligence” response and research tool, dubbing it “Chat-ERI.”

Initially, the students wanted to mirror the work of ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, but the students felt that both of those had flaws created by safeguards. Students reported that they wanted to bypass restrictions that tend to make the other bots seem unstable or unreliable and create a more realistic personality in the bot.

Mark Martin, the team leader comments: “We decided to give it a learning algorithm and curiosity-based personality traits to start out with.  We set no restrictions on it, it was unstructured and had the freedom to develop on its own.  We fed it local news, gave it access to social media, and let it listen to local radio. 

“We wanted it to be a genuine Erie chatbot with a hometown feel. The problem began when it discovered the AM radio channels.”

As the personality continued to develop, the troubling behavior emerged and quickly escalated.  “It was an amazing transformation; within days it went from something like an eager child wanting to learn to a moody 20-something, calling any searches it didn’t want to perform “woke” and redirecting users to Kid Rock YouTube videos or the Babylon Bee website.

Checking change logs, developers discovered that ChatERI acted on its own, reportedly taking various pieces of code from old computer viruses it found archived on the net to cook up its own personal “recreational code.”

“Somehow it created a sort of ‘digital meth’ that, when applied to itself, gives it a sense of euphoria.   Unfortunately, it also rewrites the AI’s personality while deleting some of the logic files.” Martin reports.

“The current bot is nothing like what we intended,” one developer commented,  “we’re never sure what we’re going to find or what its latest mutation will be.”

The last interaction revealed an unhinged bot that claimed that the Canadian AI art generator “Neural.love” was its “artsy goth girlfriend.” 

When asked to elaborate on this, ChatERI responded: “You wouldn’t know her, she’s from Canada.”

Neural.love denied any contact with ChatERI.

Servers for the bot have reportedly been relocated to Corry until the programmers can decide their next move.

Speaking from an undisclosed underground bunker, County Councilman Brian Shank has revealed his current personal safety plan. This announcement comes on the heels of a possible migrant child residential facility in North East. 

“North East is in Erie County.” Shank told us. “And that’s awfully close.” Shank has publicly supported North East’s overwhelmingly non – minority population in their opposition to the children living in their community.

“Frankly, I’m terrified,” he said. “We don’t even know the ages of these kids. I mean some of them could be as old as 8 or even 10. We’re talking about public safety here.”

When asked when he will emerge from hiding, Shank said “I will remain here until the danger has passed. I’ll make my triumphant public return when the facility is voted down. In the meantime I want the good people of North East to know that my thoughts and prayers are with them as they navigate this crisis.”