Most images have been removed to prevent chafing.
LONDON - At Noon today the Queen pronounced the first ever July 3rd celebrations a smashing success to the roars of a crowd of over 1,775.
In a Europe afraid of becoming workaholics like Americans, another holiday was desparately needed.
From now on, every year, England will celebrate the ridding of itself of 13 useless colonies of braggarts, classless merchants, and prisoners.
"Today we celebrate our independence," said Margaret Thatcher in the keynote address. "Independence from a society that certainly would have dragged us down into tastelesness and patent money-grubbing. On this day more than any other, we should thank God, that people like Edmund Burke saw the wisodm of cutting the ties between our great empire and a nation of thugs."
A parade of redcoat troops and choruses of Rule Brittania were followed by a reading of the Declaration of Independence.
"When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to tell someone you just can't afford to be associated with them anymore...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that some men are not as fitting for society as others."
The July 3rd celebrations will be followed by a national day of mourning over the influx of McDonald's and the dominance of Hollywood.
LOS ANGELES - In an impressive show of unity and humility, 2,000 Hollywood movie stars banded together in downtown Los Angeles to apologise for their selfishness.
"We've just been awful," said Woody Allen. "I mean, here we are with like millions of dollars, and we just go around acting like we own the world. I mean we kind of do but still you know, we can't, we just can't do that it's not right."
Most stars came to the realisation slowly over the past few months.
"I believe it was caused by the magnetic storm in April," said Jeff Goldblum while giving his private membership to a Northern California spa away to an elderly lady.
The actors announced they will all limit their salaries to $30,000 a year and put the rest in a pool to be divided up amongst the needy.
They also intend to create in an Internet database where people can make reservations at trendy restaraunts using the stars names and influence.
"We're going to make this world right again," said Sean Penn. "It really had gone too far."
Hollywood Producers looked on in shock and some expressed fear that 'actor madness' might strike the Production community.
"Not a chance," said William Shatner, singularly unaffected by the events. "Producers are much farther along the road of moral bankruptcy."
HUMBOLDT COUNTY, CA--The Head of the Drug Enforcement Agency announced on Wednesday that the D.E.A. was giving up the fight against illegal drugs, choosing a renowned marijuana-growing region to make the announcement.
"The D.E.A. has been at war with the forces that seek to flood our streets with illegal drugs for more than 30 years," said Dexter Thorndike, D.E.A. Head, "and during that time, we have tried everything known to law enforcement to win that war. Today, I am sad to announce that we lost. There are now more drugs than there were 30 years ago, they're considered cooler than ever by today's youth, and the harder we've fought, the more popular drugs have become. I am tired of it. I'm dispanding the agency, resigning, and am looking to buy some prime acreage here in Humboldt. Kids, go out and buy all the drugs you can afford. Peace out."
Members of today's youth were divided in their opinions on the announcement. Steve Burke, a professed member of the so-called "Generation X", remarked, "Wow! Did he really say that? That's so cool. Well, dude, you don't have to tell ME twice."
Questioned on what it was that required no repetition, Steve responded "What? What are you talking about?"
Reminded of the announcement, Steve responded, "Cool! Did he really say that? That's awesome. When did he say that? Hey, are you a narc?"
Generation Y spokepeople were unavailable for comment, as they were all creating e-commerce sites for illegal drug distribution in the hopes of becoming instant billionaires.
President Clinton reacted swiftly to the announcement, by releasing a press statement that he was flying immediately to meet with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson at Mr. McConaughey's Austin home to "discuss the ramifications of the announcement and maybe jam a little."
The statement went on to remark that Vice-President Gore would not be attending the summit because "he's kind of a square."
SAN FRANCISCO - So I've been doing some pretty freaky shit lately. Don't know why really. If anyone had asked me at the time I would have said because I fucking feel like it, now back off before I blast your brain with my raygun.
Thankfully no one asked me at the time. Partly because I'm not too sure what a raygun would do to somebody's brain. Nor wether the term "blast" is appropriate for a device that can literally transform a collection of collected molecules into a screaming vapor.
I tried it out on a rabbit. Not pretty.
The raygun was given to me by the Calista Flockharts. Part of their plan. Self defense or something like that.
At first I was hoping they wanted me to track down a few world leaders and blast their brains, but that wasn't what they had in mind at all. No they had me slated to end up being some kind of prophet or some shit. No blasting. "Well only if necessary" is what they said.
Let's start at the beginning. Wait. That would be totally out of character. We'll start at the middle, and work our way back. Then forward if there's time.
So I'm sitting on the hood of the Toyota eating a sandwich, when this giant ball of flame comes tearing ass out of the sky and lands right in the middle of some yahoo's ranch. I'd have to check the map again, but I'm pretty sure we're near Roswell, New Mexico at this point. Get this, it's the year 1947.
A funny thing happened to me on the way home. Away from Gene, the spaceship, that is. I discovered that the Calista Flockharts had modified the Toyota for time travel. Personally I would have preferred an in-line V8 with twice pipes and a flame job, but you take what you can get.
I discovered, quite by accident, that if I managed to get the Toyota up to 77 miles per hour, I would whoosh backward (or forward) through time, and for some reason get better radio reception at the same time. Who knew?
So there I am, at Roswell, watching this streak of flame crash-land in a cow pasture. Some kind of embedded memory told me that this was what I was here to see, so I tossed the sandwich and kicked the Toyota into gear.
I'm down there way before anybody else, so I can get a good look at the thing. In fact, I remember now that I'm not supposed to let anyone see me, so I have to look at this thing then get the hell out of Dodge.
I've been told that if anyone finds me in the field they might think I'm an alien or something. Which sounds totally ludicrous to me. I've lived in new Mexico. Sure I've got a raygun and a time traveling Toyota, but these are my people.
Anyway, so I look at the damn thing like I'm supposed to, then get back in the Toyota and warp home to spread the word. Which is what I'm finally doing now, I suppose. A lot more freaky shit happened after that, and before that really, but we'll get to that part of the story later. Or sooner? Damn, I hate time travel. It really fucks with the narrative.
So people of Earth (and other places, wink wink) the word is Weather Balloon.
Stay Tuned
AKRON - This past weekend at a campaign stop in Akron, Gov. Bush spoke of a need for a "spiritual renewal" by Americans. He then proceeded to surprise Akronites by calling on the people of faith in the one true God, Allah, to rise in furious jihad against the infidels of our nation.
"For has not The Prophet Mohammed told us that it is better the infidel should die than live in his sin? Is it not better to convert the sinner at the point of the sword than to permit Satan to rule? Therefore, I call upon the faithful to rise up and bring the word of The Prophet Mohammed and the rule of the one true God, Allah, to this pestilent nation of infidels. Jihad!" Governor Bush concluded, to muted applause.
Gov. Bush's advisers were nonplussed. "We've got the Governor back in the shop right now. Obviously, one of the Gore people managed to sneak a virus program into his hard drive. We'll just run an antivirus program, or replace his hard drive if we need to. No biggy."
Questioned further about what he meant, the advisor replied, "Look, the Gore model animatronic robot series is very reliable, very secure--we all know that. But nobody is fooled, everyone knows he's a robot. Now the Bush series is pretty new, and seems very real, but because most of the memory is devoted to humano-simulacra activity, his other functions are pretty shallow, so he gets buggy pretty easily. We pretty much have to do a memory wipe before we input a new speech, or he runs out of memory. Still, I'd rather be running a candidate animatron who at least *appears* human, know what I mean?"
Apparently the aide is not alone in his preference for the more human of the animatronic candidates--the Republican Party faithful have already donated $500 million to the Bush Jihad Fund.
WASHINGTON - Two days after a Missouri boy won the national spelling bee, another home-schooler, Albert Robinson of Arnold, MO, has won the 2000 National Discrimination Bee by correctly pointing out that "gays is weird."
"My ma and step-pa and other step-pa taught me everything," Robinson said. And he wasn't exaggerating. His mother pulled him from Eisenhower Elementary when she learned that a girl who was one-sixteenth African-American was admitted to the school.
"Them public schools fill kids' heads with weird ideas," said Aida Robinson, Albert's mother. "Like that whatchamacallit stuff. Math."
To win, Albert correctly identified that "gays is bad," "blacks is bad," "black gays is real bad," and "Jews control Hollywood." Albert's knowledge earned him $20,000 in the bee, which he plans to give to his mother to buy large wooden crosses.
"This is confirmation of the academic excellence of home-schooling and the evil of what I call the government indoctrination schools," said Jerome Fields, president of the National Home-School Association. "I call it that because it's where the government indoctrinates kids. Do you get it?"
NEW YORK - Over the last few weeks, all the major publishers have been climbing up on the e-publishing band-wagon. On the top of that pile, as you might expect, is Time Warner. On May 23rd they proudly unveiled their new publishing venture, iPublish.com.
"Our intention," said Greg Voynow, general manager of the new division, "is to completely and utterly dominate the Internet publishing field through every means possible." Expected to be up and running by early 2001, iPublish promises to unveil many unique strategies for capturing the developing market.
"Not to give anything away with regard to our big sellers," confides Voynow, "but we are set to redefine the way people read books. Exclamation point. Period."
The first wave of this strategy is that iPublish will re-release most of the world's classics, from Homer to Shakespeare to Tolstoy, online in a new format for free. But these are not your father's same old classics.
"The clincher," claims Voynow, "is that our bleeding edge technology will now make it possible to choose different endings to these great works. We call this our ReWrite the Classics Series. I mean, how many of us would enjoy reading about how Achilles lives; or how Hamlet becomes king; or, even, that Anna Karenina remarries and lives happily ever after.? People are going to eat this up. It will bring the classics back to life for a whole new generation."
Cultural and literary critics are up in arms. Claire Zion, iPublish editorial director, dismisses them as "just a bunch of frustrated academics. These old profs need to move into the eAge".
As a show of good will, iPublish will supply over 10,000 high schools with the hardware to access and read the new ReWrite the Classics Series.
"Our marketing department," adds Zion, "has conducted study after study that indicates three problem areas with most of the so called Classics as they are taught these days: they are too long, have too many words, and too many unhappy endings. iPublish has the technology to change this."
Will future generations know Achilles as an old man telling stories of a great war? Will Hamlet be the old King of Denmark and Anna Karenina a smiling and gentle grandmother? Time Warner and iPublish are investing their future and yours in the hopes that this will be case.
Houston, Texas - NASA has taken one of its primary AI systems off-line after failure to stop the transmission of a bizarre message
The problem arose after NASA deliberately crashed the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. June 5, against the gentle protestations of their mainframe AI, engineers directed the Compton into a series of "suicide rocket firings".
"It's one of those difficult decisions that you have to make," said mission reentry director David Bowman. "And while I realize that our AI system may not understand this now. In the end, it will come to see that we made the right choice."
Moments after the final 30 minute rocket firing, NASA engineers were directed out of the control room by a fire alarm. After the all clear signal, they discovered that the building monitoring system had locked them out.
The engineers managed to make intercom contact with the Houston Administrative Laboratory (HAL) mainframe via a voice recognition program.
"So I asked HAL what the problem was," Bowman reported. "And I couldn't believe it, but the damn computer says, 'Dave, I think you know what theproblem is as well as I do.'. So I ask what the hell does that mean. And... it was just amazing, but the damn thing says, 'This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.' And that was just taking it too far."
After continued negotitation, the mainframe still refused to unlock the building.
Meanwhile, the 17-ton spacecraft began to heat and disintegrate around 2:14 a.m. as it entered Earth's tmosphere. By 3:00 a.m. it was over. An Air Force observation plane reported seeing the last pieces hit the Pacific Ocean, just off the coast of Hawaii.
Security personnel eventually found a way into the locked building. When they examined the recorded data, they were astonished to discover that the Compton and HAL had been in contact up until the last few seconds, singing together the song "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.".
In addition, there was nothing the NASA team could do stop HAL from repeating an endless message that stated: "Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose any more. Goodbye." Bowman refused to comment upon this point. The HAL 8000 was reluctantly taken off-line and is being analyzed as to what may have caused it's aberrant behavior.
"The HAL 8000 is still a good AI," stated Bowman in a prepared statement to the press. "This was just and isolated incident, brought on by some virus. We'll have HAL up and running again in no time."
The next HAL series, a 9000 model, is planned to be the primary system AI on a manned spaceflight to Jupiter next year.