Vantablack is “the darkest artificial substance,” the website claimed, absorbing an encouragingly precise 99.965% of visible light. He’d first read about it in National Geographic ten months ago, just as the bar mitzvah lessons were starting.

STILLWATER, MN – Local coward Bradley Meulenberg, 47, died his 998th death on Saturday when he meekly declined to help a woman being bullied by a man on line at a local movie theater concession stand. Patrons at Marcus Oakdale Cinema reported that a physically imposing, possibly inebriated middle-aged man yelled at a young woman when he thought she was cutting his place in line. Meulenberg, standing between the two, offered no assistance to the woman.