News of the News

PHONING IT IN, The Beach, mid-afternoon (NNN) — An ambulance service has praised a five-year-old boy after he successfully called 999 to report that his mother had collapsed and was unconscious in their home.

In other news, a pet wears a seatbelt, alleged scientists have yet again discovered a formula for the perfect attractive woman (it apparently involves being short with long legs and large breasts), there’s a piece on ancient Roman bikinis, how to make the perfect cup of tea and lots of pictures of sunburnt, drug-addled women in bikini tops at a summer rock festival, including ones that aren’t Amy Winehouse. And it’s hot.

Crop circles have fallen out of favour in recent years. How the A-levels these days aren’t as good as proper A-levels were back in my day, you mark my words, remains a perennial favourite. With pictures of students in bikini tops.

“We’re holding out hope of the first skateboarding duck of the season,” said one of the few reporters still left in the office. “In the meantime, I’m researching a story about a long, short-breasted, large-legged sunburnt woman in a Roman bikini top making me the perfect cup of tea.”

A Metro writer was nonplussed at this line of questioning and asked precisely what was supposed to be different to their usual content.

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CONSERVAPEDIALITY, Minnesota, Friday (NNN) — John McCain, 72, has announced his Vice-Presidential candidate: George W. Bush.

“We think George represents … I’m sorry, it’s not George. It’s Sarah. And he’s black! I’m sorry, he’s female. Same thing.”

Bush, the governor of Alaska, is a former Miss Alaska, Vogue model and mayor of a suburb of Anchorage, and a firm believer in creationism, the global warming conspiracy, compulsory heterosexual marriage and the right to life only up to birth. “I firmly believe Sarah W. Bush is the most qualified person to be a heart attack away from the presidency,” said Mr McCain. “What is it exactly that the V.P. does all day?” giggled Sarah.

“It’s clear you should vote Republican, especially all you little ladies, because my vice-president shoots moose, rassles b’ars and has great legs and really cute tits. And doesn’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you … I’m sorry, he does plaster on the makeup like a trollop. Tits, though. All the evangelical Hilary fans should vote for tits. Black ones. I’m John McCain.”

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THE TECH GRAVEYARD, Cupertino, Thursday (NNGadget) — Steve Jobs, visionary leader of Apple Computer, has died — and come back, better and stronger.

The news was carried in an obituary run by Bloomberg late last night, which was pulled when news of his resurrection came through.

“They don’t call it the Jesus Phone for nothing,” Jobs laughed with reporters, before eating their tasty, tasty brains.

Jobs’ new cyborg arsenal includes wifi, 3G, laser cannons, a flame thrower and a can opener, all running on Mac OS X Robosteve. Bundled applications include an enhanced hypnotic force field based on the one he uses at MacWorld keynotes. “I can’t wait to try it on Bill,” he said.

Disney, in which Jobs is the single largest shareholder, remained unaffected. “Steve’s just working with the way we do things here,” said the disembodied computer-hosted soul of Walt Disney, who was decanted to a computer in 1966 to avoid being declared legally dead, so that copyright in his works would never, ever run out.

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NICKELANDIME, Stansted, Tuesday — Terrified passengers believed they were about to die as their Ryanair flight to Barcelona suffered a loss of cabin pressure and dropped thousands of feet in seconds.

“We are a budget airline,” said chief executive Michael O’Leary. “We deliver what the customer wants to pay for. The Intact Fuselage Surcharge is optional.”

Several oxygen masks also failed to deploy or work. “I reached for my mask, but I didn’t have 50p for my son’s mask, so he died, which is a pity,” said Brenda Burberry, 34, of Essex. “I couldn’t get a hostess to come over and give me change for a pound. Slag.”

Many passengers suffered nosebleeds and damaged eardrums, though Ryanair was happy to defer the Nosebleed Surcharge and Eardrum Surcharge until after the flight rather than demand cash on the spot.

Mr O’Leary stressed that all safety procedures had been followed correctly. “All passengers extended their arms and said in unison, ‘I do believe in aerodynamics! I do!’ We also had MP3 players for hire to play the comforting phrase into the ears of those passengers who wanted to avail themselves of that extra service, if they were too busy screaming in terror to say it themselves.”

The emergency landing at Limoges International Airport was a “safety precaution” and all 168 passengers disembarked safely, after paying their Optional Emergency Landing Surcharge.

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TEH INTARWEB, Lolcat, Tuesday (NNGadget) — Home Office counter-terrorism experts intend to exploit nu meeja websites to “channel messages through volunteers in Internet forums” as part of a campaign to “taint the al-Qaeda™ brand,” according to a document accidentally posted to Wikipedia this morning.

“We understand that people on Internet forums have no experience whatsoever of participants paid to advocate a position or product,” says the report. “A single image macro exchange of ‘U R TERRIST’ ‘NO U’ ‘O RLY?’ ‘SRSLY’ could save countless lost souls.”

The unit is also targeting the BBC and other online news outlets. The main obstacle appears to lie in writing messages stupid enough to pass for genuine reader comments. “Some of our top fake news writers have burnt out their brains on the task and now sit shaking and gibbering about real life being worse than any parody. And house prices.”

Other work includes faked reports of al-Quaeda branded Zunes on Gizmodo, suitably on-message mouseover popups on XKCD and photomanipulations of Osama bin Laden as Pedobear on 4chan.

The initiative was spearheaded by a Home Office civil servant asked to account for the number of work hours he seemed to be spending on Internet message boards. His latest proposal is to fight al-Qaeda on MP3, BitTorrent and pornographic websites. “I’ve bought a new 500 gigabyte USB portable disk drive on expenses to store this important confidential data,” he said.

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DUBLIN, Sicily, Monday (NNN) — Ireland may go to the polls again for a referendum on the new European Union constitution treaty gentleperson’s agreement. “I stress that this is very much only a personal view at this stage,” said European Affairs Minister Dick Roche, penciling the referendum in for next June at the very latest.

Irish voters plunged the EU into a diplomatic crisis when they had the bare-faced cheek to reject the Lisbon treaty in June. The second referendum will have the options “YES” or “NEXT YEAR.”

“Minister Roche is not calling for a second referendum to be put,” a government spokesman said. “That would not be a fair reflection of his words. Of course, we’re utterly buggered if we don’t.”

EU President Nicolas Sarkozy concurred. “The people of Ireland have to understand: Europe is like a family. This is an offer you would be very unwise to refuse.”

MEP Mary Lou McDonald demanded concessions for Ireland before the treaty could be taken to the voters again. The EU quietly reminded her of their extensive offensive arsenal of “thousands” of truckloads of dangerously tedious documents, carrying toxic payloads of long-winded obfuscation and misdirection in several major and minor languages.

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THE MEMORY HOLE, Whitehall, Sunday (NNN) — Annual reports from Whitehall departments show that the government has lost all data it ever held on anyone.

Losses have occurred through couriered unencrypted disks, misplaced memory sticks, lost laptops, briefcases left on trains and files falling down the side of the tea machine. “The real scandal is that a train was running for them to lose a case on,” said a source whose name has been lost.

Treasury minister Jane Kennedy said the HM Revenue and Customs breaches did not necessarily result in data losses, or at least any that they have records of. HMRC said it takes data losses and security breaches “very seriously” and thoroughly investigates any breach that it does not lose track of.

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas has served enforcement notices on various departments for their data losses, but the departments in question could not find their office addresses to accept the notices. They noted, however, that Mr Thomas’ call was very important to them, and that he had been placed in a queue.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith reassured citizens that plans for an all-encompassing ID card linked to biometric passports and a universal medical record with the NHS would not change because of these losses. “We won’t even be thinking about them.”

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PAGE 3, Wapping, Saturday (Norks News Network) — A new breast cancer treatment has led to new hope for newspaper proprietors being able to run more pictures of topless women with one hand over their breasts.

The story follows mere days after earlier stories concerning red meat, carbohydrates, drinking, high levels of daily stress and deodorant causing breast cancer, stories concerning bone cancer drugs, prostate cancer drugs, a “happy outlook” and high levels of daily stress preventing breast cancer and, of course, several close-ups of Kylie Minogue’s bottom.

“It’s been a bumper season,” said Grub Street mogul Desmond Murdoch, “so to speak. We’ve actually had to find a third and fourth file photo of a topless woman with a hand over her breasts. Though we ran a fabulous two-page spread of a self-examination conducted by Luscious Lucy, 19, of Sheppey, who wants to grow up to work with cute puppies and children and be in Nuts next month.”

Additional opportunities were provided by the Portsmouth University breast biomechanics team, who actually managed to get paid money to find out that “breasts move up to 21cm during exercise and they move up and down, in and out and from side to side,” although further funding and DVD duplication equipment is apparently required before final results can be produced.

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INTEL CASTLE, Transylvania, Friday (NNGadget) — A future without batteries — no need to charge phones or MP3 players, or even electric cars. No lost phone chargers, no running out of power sockets. Intel chief technology officer Justin Rattner demonstrated a Wireless Energy Resonant Link as he spoke at the annual Intel developers forum in San Francisco yesterday.

Rattner demonstrated this by causing his ears to light up at 60 watts of power a yard from a power transmitter operated by his assistant Igor. Only four journalists were incinerated when the power earthed through them from his fingertips.

Rattner reassured us that pumping kilowatts of power around the home through magnetic induction power is absolutely harmless. “The human body is not affected by magnetic fields,” he said as one journalist with a pacemaker collapsed and another with a knee replacement watched his leg catch fire. “There’s no danger whatsoever from it, any more than there is from mobile phones cooking your brain, microwave leakage blinding you, chemical waste unraveling all the DNA in your balls or statistical clusters of kids with cancer wherever high-tension power lines run overhead. Asbestos and thalidomide were horribly slandered in their day too.”

“Of course, Nikola Tesla did it first in 1899,” said enthusiast Albert Tedious-Anorak, 54, of Little Boring. “I detailed this at length on Wikipedia, but they refused to believe the value of my revelations on this matter due to a conspiracy of Edison fans amongst the site administrators.”

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CANTBEARSED, East Cheam, Friday (NNN) — UK economic growth ground to a halt between April and June, according to official statistics.

Economic activity has ceased, with nothing being bought or sold. No-one has shown up to work in the last two weeks. Tube stations have been buried under uncollected copies of Metro. The populace have given up eating, choosing instead to sit humming and staring into space.

House prices have dropped 99.998%, the last recorded offer being five quid and a bottle top. “I didn’t take it because I couldn’t be bothered,” said Boris Busybody, 77 (IQ), of East Cheam. “Not that anyone else will be asking.”

Fears of Mad Max-style gangs roaming the country with guns and flamethrowers have failed to come to pass, owing to a shortage of paraffin and general apathy. “What’s the point?” said tribal gang warlord Ravencrush Hornbastard. “There’s no telly on anyway and the shops are all shut. What would we spend it on?”

“It could be worse,” said treasurer Alistair Darling. “We could be trying to use the US dollar as currency.”

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PHONING IT IN, The Beach, mid-afternoon (NNN) — With the vice-presidential buzz and the Democratic convention just days away, what’s most important is what Barack Obama’s campaign does afterwards.

Quite simply, he needs to create a more compelling narrative on change and get angry about something. Our ratings depend on it. It’s August, dammit. How many stories about cute puppies can you run? Attack ads! Push polls! We need material!

We need the argument that this is an election with two choices — not just one popular dynamic guy and one old past-it guy. That’s not a compelling media narrative!

Obama’s 2:1 advantage in the Electoral College is far too confusing for our viewers. We need to re-run polls until we get one with a 1% change, never mind the 3% error margin. It’s so close! Experts say it’s a wake-up call! Better keep your eyes glued to the screen! Oh my goodness!

If Obama can just pull ahead between now and November 4, he may become President Barack Obama … Or not! Who knows? You need to keep watching! Right here! Stay tuned!

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MORDOR, Redmond, Thursday (NNGadget) — Microsoft (NASDAQ: MNPLY) has hired comedian Bob Hope to anchor a $300 million advertising campaign for its struggling Windows Vista franchise.

The software maker is desperate to counter popular Apple ads that personify PCs as un-“hep” and not “with it,” while portraying Apple’s Macintosh as the “happening scene.”

“We felt that resurrecting Bob from the dead and putting him in front of our campaign was just the way to upgrade Vista’s image,” said Kevin Johnson, the fourth executive to be in charge of the development of Vista, just before he quit this morning. “It was also cheaper and easier than actually fixing Vista.”

“Braaainnns,” said Mr Hope.

Few businesses have upgraded to Vista from Windows XP, citing Vista’s cost, incompatibility with older software and hardware and intrusive security features. And twenty years’ pent-up hatred of Microsoft.

The campaign was created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, whose entire workflow runs on Macs.

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LOOK, Up in the Skirt, Wednesday (NNN) — Lunar immigration officials have given Gary Glitter a deadline to leave the Moon by 2am local time or face being locked up in the Sea of Tranquility’s notorious Immigration Detention Centre, where illegal aliens are kept 40 to a room.

The former pop star, real name Paul Gadd, went to the satellite after his deportation from Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong, Thailand again, Somalia, Darfur, the Siberian tundra, the South Pole and an abandoned oil platform in the middle of the ocean.

Lunar officials declared Glitter “persona non grata” and said that he posed a threat to domestic morality. “It’s that horrible little beard. He looks like some sort of pervert.”

Glitter is looking forward to his teleportation to the outer reaches of the galaxy, rather than returning to England. “I’m afraid Jacqui Smith’s just a bit past it for me.”

Glitter’s new single, “Thank Heaven For Young Women With Photographic Identification Certifying They Are Of Legal Age,” is to be released on Jonathan King’s record label.

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TEH INTARWEB, Lolcat, Sunday (NNN) — The originality of a John McCain speech about Georgia has been placed in further doubt after it was found to bear strong similarities to Wikipedia articles on the former Soviet republic.

Congressional Quarterly found that two passages from a speech on August 11th were almost identical to Wikipedia, while a third bore striking resemblances.

“Georgia was one of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion and BUSH IS GAY LOLOLOLOLOL,” said Mr McCain in his speech last week. “After a brief period of independence following the Russian revolution, the Red POOP Army forced Georgia to join the Soviet Union in 1922. CALL ME NOW 555-1212.

“And furthermore,” he added in a resonant, presidential tone, “this user has been blocked as a suspected sockpuppet.”

A Wikipedia administrator said that the speech likely failed to meet Wikipedia quality and notability guidelines, and had been nominated for possible deletion.

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THE GREAT STENCH, Whitehall, Tuesday (NNN) — The Labour Party has elected a sock with eyes as its leader and the new Prime Minister.

The sock is a size 6-10 cotton-blend Argyle, with stick-on googly eyes from a local craft shop and a penny for a nose.

The sock follows a succession of failed candidates in the top job in the wake of Tony Blair’s ten years in the position, starting with Gordon Brown’s eighteen-month premiership, followed by three months for David Miliband, six weeks for Harriet Harman, three weeks for Jack Straw, one week for Jacqui Smith and one day for each of Des Brown, Hilary Benn, John Hutton, Ruth Kelly, Hazel Blears, Geoff Hoon, Ed Balls and Ed Miliband, in that order. They even offered Tony the job back, which he “regretfully” declined with a laugh that could be heard from the Middle East. Alistair Darling was, of course, passed over.

The sock was recruited in the wake of the Conservative Party’s ongoing Parliamentary and opinion poll success with a reassuring animatronic Tony Blair puppet operated by a wind-powered Thatcherminator mechanism.

The Liberal Democrats are taking up a collection to buy a Christmas stocking.

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NASTIE, Nice, Monday (NNN) — The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) has poured scorn on Prof Sir Michael Rawlins of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) after he accused them of profiteering on drugs.

“I am shocked, shocked — oh, my cheque? Thank you! — at the notion they could be profiteering on drugs,” said Stephen Pollard of completely independent thinktank Centre for the New Europe. “As well as saving lives, drug companies eliminated communism and brought the downfall of the North Korean dictatorship, entirely through the marketing of little blue pills guaranteed to give you an erection. Research budgets are up to nearly half the marketing budgets, giving humanity such boons as V1k@grk@, Rogaine, Spanish Fly — the list is endless.”

Professor Rawlins stridently maintained his position that the “postcode lottery” for cancer treatments, where any patient with a letter or number in their postcode gets nothing, was not their doing. “It was the drug companies’ prices that killed all those cancer patients! Them! Them! Not us!”

NICE’s approach attempts to deal with the problem at the heart of the NHS: patients and their need for care, which can seriously affect waiting times for managerial bonuses and privately-funded infrastructure subsidies. Local doctors will be reducing levels of service and berating and belittling patients who refuse to cease unhealthy habits such as buying food they can afford, living in a city or being too poor to pay for BUPA. Viagra remains, of course, available free on the NHS.

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THE LAB, Transylvania, Saturday (NotScientist) — Prince Charles must prove his claim that GM crops could cause a global environmental disaster, Environment Minister Phil Woolas has challenged.

Mr Woolas said it was the government’s “moral responsibility” to investigate whether genetically modified crops, fully owned and patented to the hilt by Monsanto, could help provide a suitably profitable solution to hunger in the developing world. Monsanto famously protect their hard work, having sued and won for patent violation when their seeds have blown onto another farmer’s land.

“We see this as part of our Africa strategy,” he said. “It’s easy for those of us with plentiful food supplies to ignore the issue, but we have a responsibility to use science to get our hooks into the less well off where we can. We certainly wouldn’t drive them off their land, they’re too useful to us as labour. It’s in their own best interest. I think of it as the ‘Corporate Man’s Burden.’”

Nestlé has also urged the European Union to review its opposition to GM. “People are starting to think Monsanto are a bigger bunch of bastards than we are, and we can’t have such strikes against our public image go unanswered.”

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ATLANTA, South Ossetia, Friday (NNN) — Intarweb 2.0 clickapreneurs Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer have found the corpse of Bigfoot, the famed Sasquatch of the Appalachian Caucasus.

They announced the find on blue-chip Internet news sites Fark, Something Awful and 4chan. “We are merely humble hikers who happened across incredible find! We braved circling of other Bigfeet as they saw body of their blood brother dragged away!”

Evidence presented at the press conference included a single detailed Polaroid photograph (“and you wouldn’t believe how hard it was to find an actual working Polaroid camera and film instead of a cheap digicam,” said Dyer), consisting of red and brown blurs and only slight development-time scratching of the surface of the Polaroid. DNA evidence included an email from Engr. BANKOLE VASANI, assistant to the late JONES WHITTON DYER, who offered access to 25 thousand million DNA bases (kB 25,000,000.00) in exchange for a sample of Bigfoot DNA for assessment and free access to the lab accounts. They were also working on tracking down rumors of a tortilla with Bigfoot’s face on it.

Whitton and Dyer’s website, www.yarlybigfoothonest.com, details their amazing find, complete with T-shirts and caps, embedded YouTube videos, a LOLBIGFOOT generator and many “fabulously clickable” Google ads.

“I didn’t believe in Bigfoot at the time,” said Whitton, “but there’s something deeply convincing about a click-attracting business plan. It certainly overwhelmed my rational skepticism and authentic down-home hillbilly common sense.”

“Are there a lot of psychos in the Bigfoot community?” a reporter asked.

Yes, answered Whitton. “It seems like there are lot of people in the Bigfoot world who are a little delusional. Fortunately, we know all of you are smarter than that.”

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JUNCTION 14, M25 Satanic Sigil, Friday (NNN) — Drivers are still enduring long queues several hours after a Fathers 4 Justice protest forced the closure of four lanes on the M25.

Campaigner Geoff Hibbert, dressed in a superhero costume, used a ladder to climb onto a gantry above the motorway between junctions 14 and 15.

“I will try and stay here all day,” he said, “but the police are going to try and remove me. But the police have been very, very good about it, very supportive. They’ve only shot near me, not directly at me. They were also very helpful in keeping the motorists from lynching me.”

He denied F4J had already made its point during previous stunts, adding: “We need open courts where the truth can come out. We’re fully confident that, given an extra hour on the motorway to get home, the average person will spend that time coming to agree with the justice of our cause, and certainly won’t think we act like gibbering nutters who should be kept away from children under any circumstances.”

F4J members frequently dress as superheroes during campaigns. “I’m a bit annoyed the Spiderman and Batman costumes had already been used,” said Mr Hibbert. “So I got a sort of slug creature. I think it’s Japanese. I’m not quite sure. The slime trail is very annoying.”

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