As Dasain approaches, alert readers will have noticed that there is less and less space in the papers these days for important news about what is not happening in the country. So, before even this space is sold to Royal Stagger, and taking our responsibility as a newspaper of record very seriously, let me quickly run down the list of the week's main items of news that had to be sacrificed at the altar of Mammon to make way for ads with Dasain Tihar Special Offers like these:

Flying Panda Motorcycles (buy one and win a holiday for two in Malaysia)
Air Nepal Irrational (go to Malaysia and never come back)
MI-24 Helicopter Gunships with Rocket Pods (buy two get one free)
Tero Cell (1,000 minutes of free call time, conditions apply, viz.: offer valid only if you can get the darn thing to work)
Eat All You Can Boka-Flavoured Instant Noodles (hundreds of goats, chicken are waiting to be won)
Snow Flake Anti-dandruff Shampoo Special Scratch Offer (win free hair conditioner and/or air conditioner).

And now in the space that is left we can finally bring ourselves up-to-date with important international and domesticated events.

New holidays announced
BY OUR VACATIONING CORRESPONDENT

His Majesty's Government has brought out a new list of nationalistic holidays for the Fiscal Year 2062/2063 that will take into account days that have symbolic cosmic significance.

All solar and lunar eclipses, comet passages, Leonid Showers, meteorite strikes and collisions with asteroids will henceforth be commemorated with nationwide (and in some cases planetwide shutdowns). All Super Novae will be declared holidays retroactively since it would take two billion years for light from the distant explosions in the Andromeda Galaxy to get to us. The activities of all heavenly bodies will be strictly monitored by a special Celestial Committee, and the sun and moon will henceforth be under added surveillance since they are also depicted on our national flag.

"The Gregorian Calendar is not suitable for theocracies like Nepal," said the Astrologer General in an interview, "that is why we have decided to follow the Lunatic Calendar."

Bhaisepati Residents Also Want Royal Tour
BY A CORRESPONDENT WHO (SURPRISE, SURPRISE) WISHES TO REMAIN ANONYMOUS

The residents of the upscale suburban settlement of Bhaisepati have signed a petition humbly requesting His Majesty the King to make a royal tour of their neck of the woods as well.

"His Majesty just came up to Jawalakhel last week, I'm sure it would be no trouble for him to travel up the road a bit," said K P Bhattarai, longtime resident who said he was impressed with the efficiency with which all the potholes were patched overnight in Kopundole for the royal tour. "We feel that is the only way that the road from the Ring Road to Bhaisepati will ever get repaired."

A spokesman for the Roadless Department said he had no problem fixing the road if the "order came right from the top".

Mountain Goats To Get Transit Visas
BY A BORDERLINE REPORTER

Thousands of mountain goats who had been waiting patiently on the Tibetan Plateau to enter Nepal for the Dasain festivities have been finally granted one-way transit visas for the kingdom, the Department of Livestock and Immigration at the Ministry of Animals announced today.

"They wanted multiple entry-tourist visas, but we were convinced they had no intention of going back, so we gave them one-way entry permits gratis and threw in a free medical checkup," said an official in the Alien Goats Registry at the Department.

The first mountain goat to cross the border on International Tourism Day was garlanded, given a Nepali topi and taken around town in a caparisoned elephant before being led off to be castrated.