In a surprise move, the Boise chapter of the Better Business Bureau announced that they have boosted the service rating of local auto dealer Fairly Reliable Bob's from fairly reliable to mostly reliable, effective immediately. According to Dale Dixon of the BBB, this type of upgrade only occurs when a business has made great strides in customer service.

"Fairly Reliable Bob's has been fairly reliable since they started business in 1975," says Dixon. "But they finally realized that not being more reliable was hurting their business. For example, they would promise to find a customer a low interest rate, and sometimes they would. But a lot of times they wouldn't. That stuff just isn't flying anymore, and they've taken steps to correct it."

A lot of Boiseans, including many former customers, are confused by this turn of events.

"I bought a Corvette from them in the fall of 1982," says Jim Perry of Meridian. "They said the transmission would probably make it through the winter, but of course I didn't believe them. Wouldn't you know it, the tranny lasted four weeks and then I fixed it myself. I've always appreciated their honesty, but now I really won't know what to think when they tell me something about a car."

Bart Mumm of Boise agrees. "I used to flip a coin when their mechanics made a judgment call on a car, because they really had problems with consistency. But at least they admitted it, and we all worked through that problem together. Now I just won't know what to do."

Robert Petersen, the owner of Fairly Reliable Bob's, says that he ecstatic that the BBB has recognized the efforts his business has been making in the last year. "When we say we're going to give you top dollar for your trade in, that's probably what we're going to do now," says Petersen. "In the past, some of our sales guys were a little lazy and just shot out a number without doing any research. Those days are over now. We already have our new signage, and we hope to start hanging it next week."

Still, despite these changes, the BBB says there is still room for improvement. "If they keep at it," says Dixon, "they could actually see their rating increased from mostly reliable to reliable, which is what all car dealers strive for. But they'll have to pay attention to the details. There can't be any further complaints about shoddy car washing. And when they offer a customer a cold beverage, they can't forget to bring it back to the sales office. Those are the kinds of things that make all the difference."

For Joe Francis, the founder and owner of the Girls Gone Wild franchise, every new video is a chance to do something revolutionary in the world of adult entertainment. So when Francis heard that Payette resident Catherine Carlson, a transvestite with a penchant for fires and pipe bombs, had set her mobile home and car on fire before running naked down the road carrying a fake pipe bomb, he knew he had a potential blockbuster on his hands.

"I couldn't get to Idaho fast enough," says Francis. "I knew I had to sign this woman to an exclusive deal, because her story has a little bit in it for everyone. Pyromaniacs, explosion fetishists, freaky chicks, and dudes who love women who used to be dudes will all go crazy for this kind of video."

Francis says that the video is tentatively titled 'Girls Gone Wild: Hot Payette Nights', and he is looking for a few other Payette residents to provide some supporting footage.

"Normally we like to stick with college girls who are on vacation, but in a short amount of time we've discovered that Payette trailer parks have the same kind of vibe as Cancun or Daytona during spring break, except the trucks are larger, the boobs are smaller, and the booze of choice is Idaho Silver Label. It's absolutely crazy when the sun goes down. We don't think we'll have any problem at all finding a few nice girls who want to get a little crazy with Catherine Carlson. In fact, we've found quite a few girls who've done it already."

Filming is scheduled to start in late August, and Francis says we can expect the finished product to be online in late September. "We really hope this video will encourage other girls to combine their sexual identity crises with whatever personality disorders they might have. This is a totally new frontier for the entertainment world, and we hope to be at the forefront of it," says Francis.

Local outdoors reporter Pete Zimowsky says he has been hearing for years that Idahoans love his mustache, and now he's ready to give the people what they want. Zimowsky recently announced that he will hold the first annual "Zimowsky Mustache Seminar" on August 1st at the Shafer Butte Campground, and everyone is welcome to load up their rigs, bird dogs, and hiking boots and make a day of it in the Great Outdoors. Idaho Statesman subscribers get in free. All others can get into the event by donating a pair of small grooming scissors, a little comb, or a tube of mustache wax.

"People have always been enamored by my mustache," says Zimo. "All of my male readers want to know how I get the perfect boomerang shape, and all the women want to know if it's soft or prickly, and if it tickles. In this seminar I'll answer all of those questions and more."

Zimowsky says the three-hour seminar will be chock-full of information about the cool stuff his mustache has done in the thirty years he has been writing his column for the Statesman. "A lot of people don't know that my mustache has actually prevented my kayak from sinking on the Payette River at least two times," says Zimowsky. "And it also scares away black bears. In many ways my mustache is better than bear spray."

Boisean Chip Viescas, an avid outdoorsman, says he's been trying to grow a Zimowsky-style mustache for a couple years, just so he can gain more credibility when he is afield. "I'm really stoked about the seminar, because I think with a few tips from Zimo himself I can actually get this 'stache where it needs to be," says Viescas. "Then maybe I can impress the ladies and get paid to hunt, fish, hike, and camp all the time, just like Zimo."

After the seminar, Zimo's mustache will pose for pictures with kids under 8. Then there will be a group hike to the top of Shafer Butte for a wine and cheese picnic, where Zimo will reveal his list of the best RV dumps in the Pacific Northwest.

It's a common story all across the country around the Fourth of July. People love the boom, crack, and glitter of fireworks, but our canine friends don't. That means that on the fifth of July there is always a huge influx of runaway dogs at community animal shelters.

"It's not uncommon for us to get three or four hundred dogs on the fifth of July," says Karen Johnson of the Idaho Humane Society. "Some of them have microchip ID tags, which makes it possible to locate their owners. Other are picked up fairly quickly by concerned owners. But at least half them remain homeless after a week."

Johnson says that normally these newly homeless dogs are put up for adoption after 30 days, but this year a concerned Korean businessman has offered to help.

"People in my country have a real appetite for adopting dogs," says Sung Hung Lee, a computer memory salesman who lives in Boise part time. "I hate to see all these good dogs go to waste in a shelter, so I have offered to adopt them all and send them back to my home country where they will be very well received. Children and the elderly are especially hungry for a good dog to fill them with joy."

The Idaho Humane Society says that Mr. Lee's offer will be hard to turn down, considering the cost of feeding the dogs and the already high number of pets at the shelter due to the bad economy.

"We feel very fortunate that someone has offered to help on such a large scale," says Johnson, "but we prefer to find the original owners and keep the dogs here in Idaho. Still, we won't have much choice in the matter, because Mr. Lee has offered to pay all of the adoption fees and the shelter really needs to money. But we want people to know that he has guaranteed us that all the dogs will go to good homes that have gone through a screening procedure. He assures us there will be a lot of grilling involved during the screening."

Mr. Lee says that he's not a hero, just a person who wants to find the dogs a place where they will truly be appreciated. "Some people don't have the stomach for this sort of thing, but I do," says Lee. "My ancestral people are just starving for some new pets to enrich their bodies and souls, and it feels good knowing I can help make that happen."

Are you planning to hit the road for the holiday weekend? If so, be prepared to encounter a higher than normal amount of cretins, morons, douchenozzles, mongoloids, and unapologetic imbeciles, according to the Ada County Highway District.

"It looks like the 4th of July weekend is going to be a perfect storm of highway incompetence and idiocy," says ACHD spokesman Dan Belanardi. "Normally we see the highest numbers of imbeciles on the road over the Thanksgiving weekend, but lower gas prices, a full moon, and a very active summer concert schedule across the US are going to cause a lot of jackasses to pack up their lawn chairs, blast those jam band MP3s, and hit the road in their poorly-muffled hatchbacks. If you're brave enough to do any driving on I-84 this weekend, make sure you drive defensively, because most of the folks you'll encounter can be considered legally retarded."

Belanardi says that you shouldn't be surprised by anything you might see while you're forced to share the road with these people over the holiday.

"If you see a Buick Skylark with Iowa plates that has so much junk stuffed in it that you can't see the driver, you should probably expect some dangerous lane changes and erratic movements as the lady inside fumbles around trying to find her cat," says Belanardi. "Or if you're behind an elderly couple from Washington who is trying to merge onto I-84 while going 20 miles an hour, you'll need to be ready when Pawpaw slams on his brakes because he thought he saw a wallaby playing ping pong with Harry Truman. Even a few jacked-up red pickups flying Confederate flags is not out of the question."

Captain Michael Dixon of the Idaho State Police says that the ISP will increase patrols over the weekend, but that it will be impossible to completely halt the expected deluge of raw, unfiltered incompetence.

"We deal with dumb and oblivious people every day," says Dixon, "but we just don't have the manpower to do it on the scale needed for this weekend. To do it effectively we would need the police force utilized at a Democratic or Republican national convention. That's the only event I can think of that results in a similar onslaught of unbridled stupidity," says Captain Dixon.

After receiving a tip from someone inside the KBOI organization, local police have arrested KBOI weekend sports anchor Troy Oppie and charged him with violating several sections of Idaho's child labor laws. According to authorities, the chief violation is being under 16 years of age and working without parental consent.

"Approximately five days ago we received a call from someone at the TV station who said they were concerned that a minor was being allowed to drive a station-owned news van, get press credentials, and broadcast the Sunday night sports segment," says Sergeant Dale Drummund of the Boise Police. "That's when we did a background check and found out that Troy Oppie is only 12 years old."

On Saturday afternoon, Police found Oppie at a local snow cone shack enjoying a large blueberry shaved ice. They immediately took him into custody, impounded his Razor, and questioned his friends, who all denied knowledge of the situation and said Oppie is terrible at Madden 2010.

Oppie is set to appear before an Ada County judge on Tuesday. If convicted of lying about his age in order to obtain employment, Oppie faces extended time in juvenile hall and a few spankings from his father, who says he is very disappointed in his son and will probably make him mow the yard for free for the rest of the summer.

KBOI General Manager Larry Roberts says he was shocked when he was informed of the situation by Boise police. "I feel like a fool," says Roberts. "Troy told us he had been the sports director for a station in Montana, and that he had also covered the University of Washington for Fox Sports Northwest. As it turns out, his favorite football player is Joe Montana, and his dad took him to a Huskies game last year. It's amazing how he spun those facts into a great big web of lies. He told everyone he was 28, and we all believed him."

With the Boise Hawks starting their season tonight in Yakima, local residents should expect the demographics of the city to change quite remarkably when the Hawks return to Boise on Monday to open their home schedule. This is especially true for the city's Dominican population, which is set to go from 0 to 6, delighting Sammy Sosa fans and lovers of revoltillo de huevos.

"We see this every year at the start of summer," says Boise State University sociology professor Kyle Gillian. "There is a definite spike in certain ethnic groups when our semi-professional baseball team shows up, and this is often quite a shock to longtime Boiseans and Idahoans in general. However, if people just realize that these ethnic athletes are only here until early September, and they're out of town for half that time, it's a small price to pay for good quality middle infielders and some wicked sliders."

New Hawks head coach Jody Davis says he feels fortunate to have the six Dominican players -- four pitchers, one shortstop, and an outfielder -- on his team this summer, because it means lots of slick double plays and lots of good cigars.

"Rogelino Carmona's father owns a tobacco plantation in the Dominican, so I think you know what we'll be doing on those long bus trips to Spokane," says Davis. "And they all speak Spanish, of course, so they'll have no problem telling the groundskeepers how they like the grass cut or the mound raked."

Gillian says this sudden influx of people who don't look like us is very similar to the start of the Idaho Stampede basketball season, when the number of people over 6'9" in Boise doubles.

"These outsiders might look a little odd if you see them walking around BoDo, but you just need to realize that they want out of here as badly as you want them out, so at the end of the season everybody comes out a winner," says Gillian.

With the warm weather finally here, many Boiseans are digging out their swimwear and thinking about Boise's quintessential summertime activity: floating the Boise River. This holds especially true for Geoff Upton, one of the many dumbasses who calls Boise home.

"I'm totally stoked about this weekend," he says. "Have you seen the water? It's gonna be like the Log Flume at Six Flags. I'm gonna put on my cutoffs, take off my shirt, and ride this Chinese-made pool raft all the way to Ann Morrison Park."

Upton also says that the nice weather expected this weekend will probably allow him to get a few of his dumbass friends to go with him. "My buddy Brian has the styrofoam cooler, so it sucks without him. It's totally time for some PBR tall boys," says Upton.

Captain Henry Dinger of the Boise Fire and Rescue Team says it's very common for dumbasses to start hitting the river in early June. "We usually rescue at least three or four dumbasses every year before we officially open the river for floating," he says. "But those are just the biggest dumbasses. The regular dumbasses are too lazy to come out until July, and we rescue a whole bunch of them from July until September."

Upton says he is particularly stoked about trying out a new floating technique called 'swiping', which involves steering your raft to the side of the river and then holding onto the overhanging branches while using your legs to keep the raft from being taken by the current. Upton says he learned about this technique from his dumbass friend Jack, who lives in Boulder.

"It's a total rush," says Upton, "and it'll be so much better with the gnarly crapload of water they're letting out of Lucky Peak. This is going to be the best float ever."

BSU French Professor Sophie Renoir thought she had heard it all in her 24 years of teaching the French language to American college students. Then Meridian native Tracy Smith enrolled in her summer session of Advanced Oral French.

"The first time Tracy spoke, I thought it was a joke," says Renoir, who spent six years studying at the Sorbonne in Paris and has a PhD in French from Yale. "But then she kept talking and I realized that she really and truly has the absolute worst French accent I have ever heard. It's like she's not even trying. George W. Bush would have a better French accent. It makes me wonder what she hears when she listens to music."

Smith says she fell in love with French in high school, and she loves wearing berets and writing letters to Laurent, her French pen pal who lives in Lyon. "I have such a great time learning the language," Smith says. "It'll be so much fun to go to France soon and show all the people there that not all Americans are uncultured pigs. I especially want to talk to them about wine."

Despite her student's enthusiasm about her foreign language studies, Professor Renoir says she is prepared to give Smith very low grades to discourage her from ever going to a French-speaking country.

"How she got this far in her French studies is beyond me," says Renoir. "Previous teachers probably passed her just so they would never have to hear her speak again, and that's tempting, believe me. After she speaks I feel compelled to go to my office and write apology letters to the French ambassador, the French president, and the Victor Hugo estate because no one has ever butchered their language so badly. If she ever goes to Paris, I fear we might have an international incident."