New Jersey--A massive hemorrhoid thought to be at risk of colliding with earth has fortuitously "turned left," raising the chances it will bypass the planet, a scientist out of Seton Hall University, has observed.

From his observatory at the school's new astronomy center in South Orange, Arnold Speckler, Assistant Professor, said, "Thank God it looks like it's taking a different path. I don't even want to think of what could have been."

Speckler has been tracking the swollen, hurtling mass for months, first noting its ominous trajectory last October. Before changing course, he said, it was headed for a direct collision with "Perth Amboy" [New Jersey].

Speckler warned the Mayor of Perth Amboy, Edward Vicsotti, on October 14th in a memo and then by telephone. The Mayor, he said, was "drunk."

Galactic hemorrhoids, Speckler said, are more common than is thought. Rarely, however, does their course take them so near to the Earth. The last such documented collision occurred near Topeka, Kansas in 1962, when Fred McCrumb, a farmer, was knocked off his tractor by a baseball-size, exploding node that McCrumb later swore, delusionally, was a "Bob Feller fastball."