ROME, Italy — Following the announcement of the discovery of the Gnome of St. Peter, the Vatican has recently uncovered a trove of unknown Renaissance sculptures deep within the vaults of St. Symian’s Cathedral.

“The popes from the past hid many things,” said art archivist Julian Angeline. “They never knew when greedy or desperate rulers might try to sack the Vatican.”

Among the statuary was a vellum scroll signed by none other than Pope Julius II and Michelangelo. Renaissance historian Herbert Chissel was given access to the find.

“This document is a contract between the two men,” said Chissel. “It is commonly known that the pope was frustrated by how long it took Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. With this scroll, His Holiness bet that he could teach a monkey to create works of art more quickly than Michelangelo.”

There were three sculptures in the vault.

“The first one appears to be an attempt to recreate Michelangelo’s David,” said Chissel. “The figure is upright, with something slung over his shoulder. That’s where the similarity ends.

“There’s a big screaming hole of a mouth, the feet are the size of clown shoes, and the midsection is just a flabby mass of marble.”
The second work seemed to be a sculpture of Moses.

“The monkey didn’t bother sculpting the body, face or the horns that Michelangelo’s Moses has,” said Chisel. “Indeed, it is not even clear whether this Moses has a head. It’s just a lumpy slab with a beard.”

The third statue was the Pieta, a depiction of Mary holding Jesus in her lap.

“It’s difficult to tell where one figure ends and the other begins,” said Chissel. “It looks like a pyramid with feet sticking out and the top of a head from the side.

“While the monkey may have created the statues more quickly than Michelangelo, the poor workmanship — or rather, workchimpship — proved that Michelangelo’s method was superior,” Chissel said. “And though the wager is not explicit in the scroll, the outcome is not in doubt.”

BIKINI BEACH, Fla. — Beach goers were startled last Sunday when a sonic boom erupted over this seaside community.

“I wiped out — big time,” seventeen-year-old surfer Carter Napier told Weekly World News. “The big boom was followed by a shooting star so bright you could see it in the daytime! It slammed into the waters off Crescent Cove, so I scrambled onto my board and dog-paddled around the rocks to see what it was.”

Bobbing in the waters was a strange, white object, about two feet high, cooling in a curtain of hissing steam.

“The thing had to have come from space! It must have gotten superheated coming through the Earth’s atmosphere,” Napier said. “I waited for it to stop sizzling and then towed it ashore on a large half-shell.”

Standing in the warm sands, Napier inspected the object.

“It was a sculpture of some sort of space babe,” he said. “Her beauty was like nothing I’d ever seen. Her big, opal eyes and pouty mouth were offset by a doe-like neck and full breasts — three of ’em! She was really hot in every sense of the word! The only drag was that her arms had burned off during her blazing trip earthward.”

Before Napier could cart the object off, authorities arrived and removed it to nearby Avalon University. There it was examined by renowned astrophysicist Bradley Zimmer.

“Spectrographic analysis suggests it originated from the Planet Venus,” Zimmer said. “The marble-like substance, known as mica-lodestone or ‘milo,’ contains the same proportions of minerals found in the surface of our sister world.

“Because of Venus’ thick cloud cover, we’ve never been able to ascertain exactly what the Venusians look like,” Zimmer went on. “Now we know. My guess is that this sculpture was lost by some alien art dealer while transporting goods to an off-planet gallery.”

Since that day, a bummed Napier has been spending a lot of time at the beach. “If I find any more alien art, I’m keeping it,” he said defiantly. “Can you imagine what I could get on eBay for a ‘Moona Lisa?’”